** 01-Aug-2021 World View: Weight loss
tim wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:29 pm
> The most important decision someone can make to be healthy is to
> not be obese. ... How many COVID deaths were obese
> people?
It's always so much fun to be lectured at by you thin people. Your
friends and family who are overweight must be really thrilled to see
you when you sneer at them and tell them how morally superior you are
to them because you're thin and they're not. It must be very
gratifying for you.
So let me tell you my experience.
Back in the 1980s, I went through a period of 4-5 years when I dieted
every day. I kept track of everything I ate, and I kept track of the
calories and carbohydrates, and wrote them all down and saved them.
In addition, three or four times a week I went to the gym and worked
out for an hour. So I was in really good shape.
Then one day towards the end of this period, it suddenly dawned on me
that I had gained 4 pounds a year for each of the last four years.
Since I follow trends, this was actually a tremendous shock to me and
was extremely depressing to me. (Well, I'm depressed all the time
anyway, but this was even more depressing.)
By extrapolating backwards, I realized that I had been gaining about
four pounds a year for a long time. In other words, the dieting and
workouts made no difference. Any effects were transitory, to use a
word that is becoming popular.
So I was very depressed about this, and I made a graph of my weight
for the next 30 years and showed it to my doctor. He thought I was
crazy (nothing new there - everyone thinks I'm crazy). But lo and
behold, my actual weight pretty much followed the graph for 25 years
or so, and only began leveling off around a decade ago (thank
goodness!).
During that 25 year period, there were times when I ate way too much
for a while and gained weight, but then my weight fell again to the
figure on the graph. During other times, I went on huge 6-month very
low carb diets, or some other diet (have you ever tried the "rice
diet"?), and I lost weight on all of them, only to gain it back to the
figure on the graph.
So eat too much, eat too little, or eat just right, and my weight
always returned to the graph. In other words (GASP!), the Law of
Regession to the Mean applies to weight just as much as it applies to
inflation!!!
So there are lots of weight loss systems on the market today:
Nutrisystem, Atkins, Noom, Lumen Metabolism, colon cleanse, DietToGo,
BistroMD, Freshology, Sunbasket, and probably a thousand more that
didn't come up on google.
Every one of these systems -- EVERY ONE -- is snake oil. They'll
charge you a great deal of money, they'll tell you how to lose weight,
and they'll lie to you and tell you how to keep it off, but every one
of them has a recidivism rate of 99%. If some diet scheme ever had a
recidivism rate of even 90%, it would be major international news. So
until you see such a headline, assume the system you're paying
exhorbitant money for is worthless.
The exception would be a situation where you have to lose weight
temporarily, such as to fit into a wedding gown. In that case, go on
one of the commercial systems, or devise your own. Just realize that
once the wedding is over, the weight will all come back.
I have a number of additional weight loss tips that I'll post at some
point, but that's enough for now.
As for Covid, I fit all the risk factors -- I'm male, I'm old, and I'm
overweight. So unlike saints like you, I would probably be killed by
Covid.
So tim, whenever you get up on your high horse and sneer at or
ridicule someone because he weighs more than you do, just remember
that what you're doing is no different from sneering at someone for
having cancer.