Don't know anybody personally that wants to be fat, but I many that are overweight and obese because of misleading and manufactured nutritional data.
No, they're overweight because of their diet and lifestyle. Not all obese people are too stupid to realize this. I don't know what "misleading and manufactured nutritional data", but a) watching caloric input and b) exercise have been known as being primary to weight control since antiquity. No matter what your preferences are, you can tweak those two factors to lose weight.
Nobody has forced Americans to consume complacently. I'm not sure how it's been so hard to see.
No.
No, no, no and no.
This kind of misinformation is -=dangerous=-. It pushes overweight people into a dead end which will result only in frustration and sickness.
What was known was that WHAT you eat can make you fat.
Exercise has no impact on your weight (fat-wise).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0GSSSE4l8U&feature=youtu.be...
Exercise is almost always a good idea. It just shouldn't be pushed as something primarily for weight loss.
That's why for most people "diet and exercise" during weight loss, means eating less and exercising more, without any treats to balance out the exercise.
What I think you're saying is that getting overweight people to exercise may yield mixed results because of their lack of discipline or other human psychological factors.
But to suggest that exercise doesn't help with weight loss goes against the laws of physics.
Your comment about laws of physics is true, but misses the point that exercise makes it harder for people to maintain food changes, and it's food changes that are most important for weightloss.
You can adjust either side of the equation by consuming fewer calories, or by burning more calories.
It is much more effective to restrict caloric intake than to try and burn off a lot of extra calories - it takes a great amount of effort to burn a lot of calories
For example, running 3 miles in a half an hour will only burn around 400 calories, thats a lot more effort than just not eating one double cheeseburger a day.
Food choice (or WHAT you eat) only affects your hunger level, it does not contribute in any meaningful way to how you lose weight, other than helping you feel more/less full for longer/shorter (and thus enabling you to consume fewer calories by consuming less calorically dense food)
You need to look at what is driving the calories consumption/burning.
Suppose I have a problem with my sink and call a plumber. He looks at it for a few minutes and then says: "Sir, your sink is overflowing because more water got in than got out." No shit, I knew that. That doesn't tell me anything useful. I want to know if drain is clogged, or if someone opened a fire hose in it.
The question to ask is 'why'. Why am I overeating?
Think about it: You don't see a deer spontaneously explode because there was too much food around it. When it's full, it stops eating.
What you eat influences how your calories are partitioned; what your body does with them.
If I inject you growth hormones, part of the calories you ingest will be used to make you taller. You'll be hungry because your body is growing.
Similarly, if I inject you an extra dose of insulin, you won't be able to just "exercise it away". The insulin will prevent you from accessing the energy in your fat cells (while accumulating more). And because the body sees less energy 'available', it will shut down excessive energy expenditure while sending you a big hunger signal.
> "(and thus enabling you to consume fewer calories by consuming less calorically dense food)"
I don't know why you shifted from total energy consumption to the energy density, but that's just wrong. You can eat fat and still lose weight.
everything else is only methods of doing this, and has nothing to do with the underlying principle.
If you just blindly go into a caloric deficit, without taking into account any of the hormones, your body might not burn what you want (say, for example, muscles). It will also fight you at every occasions and slow down your metabolism, meaning you'll have to be even more in deficit and feel like crap.
Thus, exercise that increases the gluteus maximus (buttock muscle) in your legs, the largest muscle, will increase resting metabolic rate which results in weight loss.
If you just burn more calories, you'll be hungrier and you'll eat more.
Well sure. If you're eating more calories than you're burning, you're gonna have a bad time.
The videos you linked are equally confusing. There is no "debate" over diet vs exercise. They're both metabolic characteristics that interact heavily. If you tell a doctor you want to lose weight without burning calories or restricting caloric intake, he's going to laugh you out of the office. Arithmetic doesn't work like that.
A big culprit in recent obesity is the demonization of oils and fats (necessary for health and satiety) as well as the push by industry groups to increase consumption of refined carbs and sugars.
As an example, the food pyramid that many kids were raised on was released in 1992 by the US Department of Agriculture. Not surprisingly, the base of the pyramid is grains... please try to eat the allowed 11 servings a day and not gain weight.
Another example, Stevia (natural, no cal sugar substitute), which has been used for at least 1500 years in South America, was first imported into the states in the early 1900s but sugar lobbies prevented commercial use of it until recently.
And yes, I find the perverse entangling of health and marketing to be nauseous. There is so much crap out there, it is easy to get lost spending time and energy in a terrible place, like a gluten free diet. Many people willingly lie to themselves to convince themselves that "this author knows anything" without thinking critically. If obese people are stupid, so are foodies, workaholics, gamers, drug addicts, consumers of anti anxiety medication, etc...
People need to learn moderation without passing judgement on what others care about. Americans are inhelthily interested in health for no goddamn reason. Do you really think living longer is gonna help anyone?
Just ask the French.
I visit France every year and I am always amazed how well they eat while staying slim. They don't obsess over health as much, they obsess over food quality.
As a result they are ranked 8th in life expectancy vs the US 34th.