No matter how frequently I return to the US, I never cease to be amazed at the size of the cars and the size of the people. To be sure, there are plenty of slender folk, but the normalization of the huge is startling to the unacclimated eye.
I renewed my US driver's license yesterday. The woman in charge of license renewals at the courthouse was very nice, truly sweet, and really efficient (a rare and wondrous combination in the public sector). Although young and attractive, she was carrying a lot of extra weight. I've lost forty pounds since I last renewed the license, and as we changed this detail she seemed genuinely pleased and impressed, and asked me how I'd done it, leading with a question about exercise. I said that basically I'd just cut back on carbs. She didn't seem to believe it. After some other administrative details were taken care of for the license, she again asked me I'd really done it just with diet, or I'd also been walking, running, etc. I explained I really had lost the weight just by cutting out most carbs (at this point I simplified and just said, "mainly just elminated all sugar and all wheat", at which point she said she wished she could do that but laughed that she couldn't). I admitted I do now exercise regularly, because I enjoy it, but I didn't start until after the weight was lost. Pure diet, low-carb, not exercise. I still don't think she believed it. She's likely been getting, and will continue to get, terrible advice about "healthy eating" and how to lose weight. I was sensitive to not being a zealot but would gladly have provided more information, but, like I said, she was efficient and there were other people in line.
9 comments:
i was watching News Hour the other day, and Gwen Ifill was interviewing a guy who'd published a paper on obesity.
the discussion, mostly about trends, causes, and possible remedies, was so misinformed that i wanted to throw something.
i can't see how the US can get to a position of health because the dialog is just so wrong. it seems the "solution" is "get out the message," but no one is questioning if the message is correct in the first place.
and a whole lot of blaming the victim, too. if only we had the willpower!
Please, gents, don't make me publicly castigate my putative colleagues....
I have lost almost 40 lbs in the last 3 months since you pointed me toward that Taubes lecture. Thanks. Keep up the good fight. Maybe 20 years from now people will look back and wonder how we all got it so wrong for so long.
Wow, Matt, that is fantastic!
The power of memetic programming is very strong. Even things that are no longer controversial -- e.g. even the dimmest bulbs and biggest villains (say, Ancel Keys) acknowledged that dietary intake of cholesterol is irrelevant -- get repeated incorrectly ("watch your cholesterol intake!") all the time in the press. (Can anyone explain to me the existence of "Egg Beaters (tm)"? Seriously, NO ONE should be worried about eating egg yolks.)
The gluttony and sloth theory of obesity is beloved because it allows the non-obese to bask in the warming glow of moral superiority, and it lets everyone involved in health in a professional or public capacity off the hook. They don't have to face up the long sad story of their own culpability.
The Taubes book (a long read, I know, but worth it) does lay out how we got here. And yes, it's more of the same still: the same bad advice, pitched more and more fervently. It's the "supersize me" blindness (eat a kajillion tons of sugar each day, gain weight, headline: "high fat diet causes weight gain!")
After I saw the lecture I went out and bought his book. It was just all so convincing, especially after years of intense exercise and calorie-cutting leading to nothing more than increase weight - about 5 lbs/year. Seriously, when I say "intense exercising" I mean like climbing 4000'-6000' on snow in a day, at an average elevation of 10k' with 20-40 lbs of gear. On the off days I would spend an hour on the Stairmaster. I could never figure out why I wasn't skinny as a rail. Now I eat as much as I want when I want and haven't even been to the gym in months and I drop 5 lbs. every week or two. Sounds too good to be true, but it works.
My girlfriend has been doing this with me, although not as rigorously, and she is approaching 15 pounds lost.
Pretty sure we will gain some back this week, as we are on vacation at my sister/mom's, and their cooking and desserts are too too hard to resist. We are indulging in moderation and also leaving out the carbs that we can. My mom is surprisingly understanding of this weird diet, probably because the results are very noticable even though we eat a lot.
I am amazed that this is hard for people to grasp. I too have slimmed down in recent years by cutting back on the carb stuff. BTW - congrats on the pounds lost - whatever the motivation one feels better and just as you stated, enjoys doing activities more. I just returned from Alaska where I was on the grizzly diet, salmon, salmon, and fruit. I managed to be the only on on the tour who lost weight even though the eating was copious. Hike, bike, and walk on!
Americans are large... but in my 2 passports of travel, I believe native Germans give them a run for their money. Massive consumption of carbs, combined with a high standard of living, and tons of vacation, and all over Southern France, NW Italy, Southern Spain, and in AZ & SC US, as well as Frankufrt, Leipzig, Feital, Munich, Siegen, Haren, I've seen some really massive Germans - as big as, or bigger, and as numerous, as the obese American herds.
I, too, have noticed Giant Germans like to travel. They also like to get naked. But on my trips to Germany I don't notice the same proportion as in the US.
Funny thing, most people would assume that fat Germans are so because of the sausage, ignoring the massive amounts of starch and sugar in their diets.
I do like the "grizzly Diet" =)
Also.. I dropped an "r" from "Freital" - it is just outside of Dresden.
the only good thing about Germans wanting to get naked, is that when vacationing on the Mediterranean, the shapely college aged German students share the same proclivity for jettisoning clothes as the obese ones. Dr Desert Flower actually did not notice the nearly nude co-eds around us a-la-plage for about 10 glorious minutes, before insisting we move our blanket down the Cap d'Ail beach towards retirees that looked like Zoidberg!
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