Most of them? So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you think there is a small minority of obese people that are affected by some "real" problem, I'm guessing you mean a severe disorder/addiction here, while the rest are perfectly free to make different choices but simply don't due to a lack of discipline? I think that's the most common opinion on the subject. Well, that and the opinion that all of them are just lacking discipline.
I don't think this view is representative of the reality of it at all. I believe that the problem lies in the foods we have created and made so available more than in the people who desire them. Obesity is the natural consequence of putting an animal in a modern, unnatural environment where it has access to an abundance of rich and artificial foods and where the consumption of these foods is normal and often encouraged. We are simply not biologically adapted to this, and our failure to stay healthy and lean in such an environment is not really ours, because our instincts are not of our own choosing, and they lead us into making bad choices. It becomes an urge or a compulsion rather than what we'd call a free choice.
Food and sex is what all animals have evolved to seek and enjoy. Our instincts tell us to get the most pleasure for the least amount of energy expenditure. In today's world, this becomes a problem. Throughout our evolution it was absolutely necessary for us to feast whenever possible because we rarely had access to concentrated sources of calories, and we needed to store fat as much as possible since periods of famine were so frequent. But now we have abundance, so we just keep storing fat for that next famine that never comes, and we die of diseases of excess.
There's a very helpful analogy that helps with understanding this problem. All of us have observed at some point moths flying into artificial lights or burning candles. Why do they do this? Well, there are competing theories, but this one makes the most sense to me.
"Moths zoom toward unnatural light sources because the lights throw off their internal navigation systems. Moths didn't evolve around bright lights, after all; they evolved at a time when all the light on Earth came solely from the distant sun, moon and stars. In a behavior called transverse orientation, some insects navigate by flying at a constant angle relative to a distant light source, such as the moon. But around man-made lights, such as a campfire or your porch light, the angle to the light source changes as a moth flies by. This confuses it."
It would be silly to say that a moth just lacks discipline when it is engaged in self-destructive behavior. It makes more sense to believe that it is confused. And that's my point. In today's world, we're easily hijacked into a pattern of pleasure-seeking that becomes our undoing. Eating should be pleasurable, but not so pleasurable as to be problematic and confuse our satiation mechanism. This happens when we introduce supernormal stimuli into our environment. I think discipline becomes much more involved once we are aware of this trap and we have tools to guard ourselves against it, but not so much before.
But people are aware of the trap, they just keep falling for it, for lack of discipline.
And while I absolutely love the misanthropic moth comparison, I see no solution that isnt far worse than the problem like a totalitarian control on diets and vices, and I am a strong believer that the moth should be free to fly and be consumed by the flame.
In your previous post you've opened up with an appeal to religious authority, and now you open up with an appeal to motive. Was my main argument not simple enough to warrant a simple response from you in return rather than a logical fallacy? You can question my motives all you want, but one thing is for sure, I don't stand to profit off of whatever dietary choices you choose to make.
Comparing vegetarians who are health conscious to the average beer guzzling/ junk food eating westerner is not going to convince me.
Where have I done that exactly? Provide a quotation please. I said that there was only one diet that was proven to reverse heart disease. It's a simple claim and it's easy to falsify. Can you provide me with peer-reviewed research of an omnivorous diet reversing heart disease or not?
Eating lamb that is naturally reared, eats grass, lives outside and is full of omega 3. I don't buy it.
I've heard this argument from vegans but I know that I would become sick if I were to try it.
I'm with you on that. Clearly you are not open to the idea and because of that you wouldn't educate yourself properly, so the 'it' that you would try wouldn't be a properly planned, sustainable diet. It would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That doesn't say anything about the diet itself though, only your own incapacity.
The people living on this island have been eating 90% animal foods.
And? I was expecting this sentence to be followed up with something that makes a good case for why we should eat this way. Yeah, the Inuits also ate nearly all of their calories from animal foods. They also had high rates of atherosclerosis and strokes, so why would I want to eat like that? So, how does the health of the people on your island compare to other populations? Specifically, how does it compare to the Okinawans and the Adventists who eat the plant-based diets that you so vehemently oppose? Or are you saying that you know for sure that there is a genetic issue at play here and you can't process plant foods like these people can?
It's all about the quality of the food you are eating. Majority of people are eating junk food/soda/candy/chocolate/crisps/alcohol these are the real dangers not fish, lamb and dairy, only if you eat too much of it.
Fish, lamb and dairy do not contain any essential nutrients that can't be obtained from plant foods, with the single exception being B12. But all these foods contain things which are good to avoid. Fish is loaded with toxic pollutants, lamb is high in saturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol, and the only dairy that's good for you is human breast milk, when you are a child. The milk of your own species is "nature's perfect food", and if you compare the nutrient profile of both human breast milk and cow's milk, you'll see massive differences, and that's because we have vastly different needs as different species. What makes you think you need the milk of another species? Why do you think you stand to benefit from the level of naturally occurring hormones in dairy products which is meant to speed up the growth of a calf?
The only thing that's likely to grow from it is cancer cells. The latest meta-analysis of all the best case control studies ever done on the matter concludes that milk consumption is a risk factor for prostate cancer. And the latest meta-analysis of all the best cohort studies ever done also concludes that milk consumption is a risk factor for prostate cancer. Another recent study found that organic cow's milk stimulated the growth of human prostate cancer cells in each of 14 separate experiments, producing an average increase in cancer growth rate of over 30%. In contrast, almond milk suppressed the growth of these cancer cells by over 30%.
I've also never heard of anyone getting sick from eating too many fresh fruits and vegetables. If you say that we become sick from eating too much of those animal products, aren't you conceding that they are inferior, riskier foods? I suspect you'll say something like, "In a way, yes, but we absolutely need them in our diet in some quantity, since they give us things we can't find in plants". To which I would respond, again, this is patently untrue. This is an old myth that anyone who seriously studies nutrition knows is over and done with. The ADA released their official position back in 2009, saying, "It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes." How much clearer could it get?
Your body needs animal vitamin A, animal omega 3 and good luck getting the many complex proteins from plants only.
Finally, some specifics that are falsifiable! Thank you. This is simply false and shows you haven't done your job researching these topics. Vegans aren't consuming preformed vitamin A, but they can synthesize it. It can be challenging for vegans who don't like greens or sweet potatoes, but that's a far cry from your statement that we absolutely need it preformed.
We need animal omega-3s? Nope. Again, we can convert alpha lionelic acid from plants into EPA/DHA. The conversion rates aren't great, but if you optimize your O3:O6 ratio by reducing the intake of omega 6 fats and upping the intake of omega 3 fats, it's going to be plenty. Fish don't even synthesize their own DHA/EPA. By eating the fish you're eating the middleman. If the DHA is all you care about, you can cut the middleman and go directly to the source of where the fish get it from, microalgae. No toxins and no suffering there either.
Vegans need luck to get enough protein? Are you serious? Plant Foods Have a Complete Amino Acid Composition: "A careful look at the founding scientific research and some simple math prove it is impossible to design an amino acid–deficient diet based on the amounts of unprocessed starches and vegetables sufficient to meet the calorie needs of humans. Furthermore, mixing foods to make a complementary amino acid composition is unnecessary."
Please do find me a single case of protein deficiency in documented medical history in a person that was consuming enough calories on any diet. It simply doesn't exist.
I realize that perhaps all these links to scientific articles and pubmed papers don't do anything for you. So does it seem to you like this dude who has been vegan for 20 years isn't getting enough protein?
Your brain needs fat.
Vegans are allowed to eat fat.
They are clearly pushing for people to become plant eaters and my conspiracy senses are tingling. This is their new world utopia of false love (self love) and almost all of the occult/new age garbage also wants you to be vegan in order to reach 'higher dimensions'
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Most of them? So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you think there is a small minority of obese people that are affected by some "real" problem, I'm guessing you mean a severe disorder/addiction here, while the rest are perfectly free to make different choices but simply don't due to a lack of discipline? I think that's the most common opinion on the subject. Well, that and the opinion that all of them are just lacking discipline.
I don't think this view is representative of the reality of it at all. I believe that the problem lies in the foods we have created and made so available more than in the people who desire them. Obesity is the natural consequence of putting an animal in a modern, unnatural environment where it has access to an abundance of rich and artificial foods and where the consumption of these foods is normal and often encouraged. We are simply not biologically adapted to this, and our failure to stay healthy and lean in such an environment is not really ours, because our instincts are not of our own choosing, and they lead us into making bad choices. It becomes an urge or a compulsion rather than what we'd call a free choice.
Food and sex is what all animals have evolved to seek and enjoy. Our instincts tell us to get the most pleasure for the least amount of energy expenditure. In today's world, this becomes a problem. Throughout our evolution it was absolutely necessary for us to feast whenever possible because we rarely had access to concentrated sources of calories, and we needed to store fat as much as possible since periods of famine were so frequent. But now we have abundance, so we just keep storing fat for that next famine that never comes, and we die of diseases of excess.
There's a very helpful analogy that helps with understanding this problem. All of us have observed at some point moths flying into artificial lights or burning candles. Why do they do this? Well, there are competing theories, but this one makes the most sense to me.
"Moths zoom toward unnatural light sources because the lights throw off their internal navigation systems. Moths didn't evolve around bright lights, after all; they evolved at a time when all the light on Earth came solely from the distant sun, moon and stars. In a behavior called transverse orientation, some insects navigate by flying at a constant angle relative to a distant light source, such as the moon. But around man-made lights, such as a campfire or your porch light, the angle to the light source changes as a moth flies by. This confuses it."
It would be silly to say that a moth just lacks discipline when it is engaged in self-destructive behavior. It makes more sense to believe that it is confused. And that's my point. In today's world, we're easily hijacked into a pattern of pleasure-seeking that becomes our undoing. Eating should be pleasurable, but not so pleasurable as to be problematic and confuse our satiation mechanism. This happens when we introduce supernormal stimuli into our environment. I think discipline becomes much more involved once we are aware of this trap and we have tools to guard ourselves against it, but not so much before.
But people are aware of the trap, they just keep falling for it, for lack of discipline.
And while I absolutely love the misanthropic moth comparison, I see no solution that isnt far worse than the problem like a totalitarian control on diets and vices, and I am a strong believer that the moth should be free to fly and be consumed by the flame.
You mean they are aware of a trap, in a broad sense. They are not aware of the trap, i.e. the theory of the pleasure trap. They are only aware that their behavior is somehow self-destructive, but they have no idea that they are being hijacked. See this TedTalk on this specifically:
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
I did a vegetarian diet for two months after watching a lot of vegan youtubers. I got the idea that you'll feel amazing after you stop eating meat, but nothing happened. I don't give a shit about animals or "saving the world" type of stuff so maybe that's why it's hard for me to stick with it. I'm also really into lifting and I felt I got smaller, but I'm not sure if that was all in my head. I ate a lot of those vegan mock meats and they actually taste great, but there are only so many options where I live.
Lol at that 50 year old claiming natural.
play your position small soldier
Last edit: 27/07/2016 14:02
1
asdf2000 United States. Jul 27 2016 17:09. Posts 7690
That guy isn't big, why couldn't that be natural?
Grindin so hard, Im smashin pussies left and right.
On July 27 2016 12:51 spugru wrote:
I did a vegetarian diet for two months after watching a lot of vegan youtubers. I got the idea that you'll feel amazing after you stop eating meat, but nothing happened. I don't give a shit about animals or "saving the world" type of stuff so maybe that's why it's hard for me to stick with it. I'm also really into lifting and I felt I got smaller, but I'm not sure if that was all in my head. I ate a lot of those vegan mock meats and they actually taste great, but there are only so many options where I live.
Lol at that 50 year old claiming natural.
If your goal is to feel better then it's not so much giving up the meat that matters, it's what ends up replacing it. If you end up eating twice as many eggs and cheese and vegan junk food instead then yeah, you won't see improvements.
The guy has an amazing physique and it's normal to have doubts about his claims, but it's not outside of the realm of possibility like you think. After all, he's been passionate about calisthenics for four decades, and vegans are the only group who are, on average, at a healthy weight (and that's after adjusting for other lifestyle factors and activity levels), as shown in the Adventist Health Study and the EPIC-Oxford study. I'd personally be willing to bet that he's natural because he seems to have a good head on his shoulders and good priorities in life. And he's not on YouTube deceiving people into buying his supplements. But even if he's not, it's besides the point I was making. Steroids or not, he wouldn't be able to build and maintain all that muscle for so long if his diet was deficient in protein.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Last edit: 27/07/2016 19:37
1
EzPzLmnSqz United States. Jul 27 2016 19:40. Posts 549
On July 26 2016 03:51 Smuft wrote:
nutrition has got to be one of the least rewarding subjects out there (it's up there with politics)
Word, I cant think of many topics more mindlessly boring than diet, it matters if you are obese or have a shit diet, but its not difficult to eat pretty decently
Obesity is a big one (no pun intended, believe it or not), but it isn't a pre-requirement for most chronic diseases to develop. Most chronic diseases take many decades to develop and thus we typically have no care in the world in the first 2 or 3 decades of our lives. We have no clue what's coming unless someone close to us has suffered immensely from it, but even there, human beings are too subjective and irrational by nature and we tend to feel invincible until misfortune strikes us directly.
Also, I think eating "pretty decently" is extremely challenging/problematic for many people. In my experience, as soon as people give themselves permission to indulge, it becomes extremely difficult not to do so on a regular basis. We live in an artificial world now and our pleasure centers in the brain can easily be hijacked. I think a lot of people have the same problem with highly stimulating food as they would have with smoking cigarettes and they find that it's easier to stop completely than to try to moderate the bad habit.
There's more to diet than the "what can it do for me" aspect anyway. The politics are interesting and have far-reaching consequences for the world we live in. The philosophical and ethical considerations also play a very important part and it's an avenue where we can always better ourselves.
Its difficult because of discipline not because people dont know how to somewhat eat properly, same as tobacco, the problem is not that people dont know its effects on health, so my point about the discussion about diet still stands
So you think people who are obese only have a problem with discipline?
Most of them, yes.
Most of them? So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you think there is a small minority of obese people that are affected by some "real" problem, I'm guessing you mean a severe disorder/addiction here, while the rest are perfectly free to make different choices but simply don't due to a lack of discipline? I think that's the most common opinion on the subject. Well, that and the opinion that all of them are just lacking discipline.
I don't think this view is representative of the reality of it at all. I believe that the problem lies in the foods we have created and made so available more than in the people who desire them. Obesity is the natural consequence of putting an animal in a modern, unnatural environment where it has access to an abundance of rich and artificial foods and where the consumption of these foods is normal and often encouraged. We are simply not biologically adapted to this, and our failure to stay healthy and lean in such an environment is not really ours, because our instincts are not of our own choosing, and they lead us into making bad choices. It becomes an urge or a compulsion rather than what we'd call a free choice.
Food and sex is what all animals have evolved to seek and enjoy. Our instincts tell us to get the most pleasure for the least amount of energy expenditure. In today's world, this becomes a problem. Throughout our evolution it was absolutely necessary for us to feast whenever possible because we rarely had access to concentrated sources of calories, and we needed to store fat as much as possible since periods of famine were so frequent. But now we have abundance, so we just keep storing fat for that next famine that never comes, and we die of diseases of excess.
There's a very helpful analogy that helps with understanding this problem. All of us have observed at some point moths flying into artificial lights or burning candles. Why do they do this? Well, there are competing theories, but this one makes the most sense to me.
"Moths zoom toward unnatural light sources because the lights throw off their internal navigation systems. Moths didn't evolve around bright lights, after all; they evolved at a time when all the light on Earth came solely from the distant sun, moon and stars. In a behavior called transverse orientation, some insects navigate by flying at a constant angle relative to a distant light source, such as the moon. But around man-made lights, such as a campfire or your porch light, the angle to the light source changes as a moth flies by. This confuses it."
It would be silly to say that a moth just lacks discipline when it is engaged in self-destructive behavior. It makes more sense to believe that it is confused. And that's my point. In today's world, we're easily hijacked into a pattern of pleasure-seeking that becomes our undoing. Eating should be pleasurable, but not so pleasurable as to be problematic and confuse our satiation mechanism. This happens when we introduce supernormal stimuli into our environment. I think discipline becomes much more involved once we are aware of this trap and we have tools to guard ourselves against it, but not so much before.
While the moth example is funny, and while I myself don't adhere to the idea of human free will and basically see us as extremely complex input-output machines, human's and moth's ability to fight his or her instincts are not comparable imo. (not really as a conscious choice, but knowledge and understanding can enable you to overcome the pleasure trap - the moth cannot achieve this). Then, fighting your instinct is basically what discipline entails - maybe semantics but I basically do agree with baal. My impression is that most fat people I see know damn well that their diets are crappy - they just prefer the pleasure of eating sugar over the relative pain of losing weight.
lol POKER
1
EzPzLmnSqz United States. Jul 27 2016 19:45. Posts 549
On July 26 2016 03:51 Smuft wrote:
nutrition has got to be one of the least rewarding subjects out there (it's up there with politics)
Word, I cant think of many topics more mindlessly boring than diet, it matters if you are obese or have a shit diet, but its not difficult to eat pretty decently
Obesity is a big one (no pun intended, believe it or not), but it isn't a pre-requirement for most chronic diseases to develop. Most chronic diseases take many decades to develop and thus we typically have no care in the world in the first 2 or 3 decades of our lives. We have no clue what's coming unless someone close to us has suffered immensely from it, but even there, human beings are too subjective and irrational by nature and we tend to feel invincible until misfortune strikes us directly.
Also, I think eating "pretty decently" is extremely challenging/problematic for many people. In my experience, as soon as people give themselves permission to indulge, it becomes extremely difficult not to do so on a regular basis. We live in an artificial world now and our pleasure centers in the brain can easily be hijacked. I think a lot of people have the same problem with highly stimulating food as they would have with smoking cigarettes and they find that it's easier to stop completely than to try to moderate the bad habit.
There's more to diet than the "what can it do for me" aspect anyway. The politics are interesting and have far-reaching consequences for the world we live in. The philosophical and ethical considerations also play a very important part and it's an avenue where we can always better ourselves.
Its difficult because of discipline not because people dont know how to somewhat eat properly, same as tobacco, the problem is not that people dont know its effects on health, so my point about the discussion about diet still stands
So you think people who are obese only have a problem with discipline?
Most of them, yes.
Most of them? So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you think there is a small minority of obese people that are affected by some "real" problem, I'm guessing you mean a severe disorder/addiction here, while the rest are perfectly free to make different choices but simply don't due to a lack of discipline? I think that's the most common opinion on the subject. Well, that and the opinion that all of them are just lacking discipline.
I don't think this view is representative of the reality of it at all. I believe that the problem lies in the foods we have created and made so available more than in the people who desire them. Obesity is the natural consequence of putting an animal in a modern, unnatural environment where it has access to an abundance of rich and artificial foods and where the consumption of these foods is normal and often encouraged. We are simply not biologically adapted to this, and our failure to stay healthy and lean in such an environment is not really ours, because our instincts are not of our own choosing, and they lead us into making bad choices. It becomes an urge or a compulsion rather than what we'd call a free choice.
Food and sex is what all animals have evolved to seek and enjoy. Our instincts tell us to get the most pleasure for the least amount of energy expenditure. In today's world, this becomes a problem. Throughout our evolution it was absolutely necessary for us to feast whenever possible because we rarely had access to concentrated sources of calories, and we needed to store fat as much as possible since periods of famine were so frequent. But now we have abundance, so we just keep storing fat for that next famine that never comes, and we die of diseases of excess.
There's a very helpful analogy that helps with understanding this problem. All of us have observed at some point moths flying into artificial lights or burning candles. Why do they do this? Well, there are competing theories, but this one makes the most sense to me.
"Moths zoom toward unnatural light sources because the lights throw off their internal navigation systems. Moths didn't evolve around bright lights, after all; they evolved at a time when all the light on Earth came solely from the distant sun, moon and stars. In a behavior called transverse orientation, some insects navigate by flying at a constant angle relative to a distant light source, such as the moon. But around man-made lights, such as a campfire or your porch light, the angle to the light source changes as a moth flies by. This confuses it."
It would be silly to say that a moth just lacks discipline when it is engaged in self-destructive behavior. It makes more sense to believe that it is confused. And that's my point. In today's world, we're easily hijacked into a pattern of pleasure-seeking that becomes our undoing. Eating should be pleasurable, but not so pleasurable as to be problematic and confuse our satiation mechanism. This happens when we introduce supernormal stimuli into our environment. I think discipline becomes much more involved once we are aware of this trap and we have tools to guard ourselves against it, but not so much before.
fighting your instinct is basically what discipline entails - maybe semantics but I basically do agree with baal. My impression is that most fat people I see know damn well that their diets are crappy - they just prefer the pleasure of eating sugar over the relative pain of losing weight.
Your argument doesn't make any sense in the context of the pleasure trap. You're oversimplifying a complex problem. The fact that people know that their diet is crappy doesn't lead to an understanding of the pleasure trap. How could it? The pleasure trap is complex and is not something intuitive. People do not come to know about it by "listening to their body" or any such nonsense. You don't learn about it without having come across the theory itself, and very few people have done this. Probably less than 1% of the people on Liquidpoker were even aware of the actual theory from the book by Dr. Doug Lisle and Alan Goldhamer. What does this say about the population at large, who are on average less intelligent and educated than the people here? You can't argue that people are aware of this:
You and Baal are really arguing for something else. Like I said, you think people are aware of a trap in a broad sense, and you're saying that they have a general sense of the direction they should be going in. I agree with that. Where I don't agree is in putting blame on them for not being able to do it. Our brains were designed for an environment of scarcity, so it's the environment that causes the problem, not the lack of discipline in people. And even you, an intelligent and educated person, thinks that it's as simple as blaming sugar. It's not. Far from it. Again, if you are stuck in the pleasure trap, for most people discipline won't help in the long run, because you'll end up trusting that your instincts are right sooner or later, because guess what, you're naturally supposed to. Our success as a species relied precisely on that.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On July 27 2016 18:45 EzPzLmnSqz wrote:
Hi Loco nice to meet fellow vegan ?
I'm not a strict vegan, I'm an ostrovegan. My approach and yours are very different if you're a raw foodist like the guy in the video you linked. I think that man is deeply deluded and misinformed and I couldn't watch more than 3 minutes of it. I did experiment with raw veganism back in 2008 for a few months though and I strongly advise against it for long periods of time, based on both my personal experience and research. For people interested in it there is only one book that I'd recommend reading, this one.
On a different subject which I brought up earlier in the thread, this was just uploaded today. I'd be so curious to try it.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
if vegetables didn't taste like shit i'd be a vegan. there are times i'd wonder why we keep eating for pleasure though, it's like we've obssessed ourselves equating eating with pleasure instead of just not dying. thinking about it did make me eat more vegetables in the past couple years and now whenever i go eat out i order at least an order of vegetables.
On July 27 2016 23:44 whamm! wrote:
if vegetables didn't taste like shit i'd be a vegan. there are times i'd wonder why we keep eating for pleasure though, it's like we've obssessed ourselves equating eating with pleasure instead of just not dying. thinking about it did make me eat more vegetables in the past couple years and now whenever i go eat out i order at least an order of vegetables.
We didnt obsess, its simply an evolutionary trait, most animals have it, animals who did not found pleasure in eating simply didnt survive as much so their genes quickly faded.
Same reason why meat, sugar and other naturally scarse things in nature have better taste, so we pursued them.
I suppose its matter of time when we can grow artificially grown meat and then we can all eat ethically
On July 27 2016 19:20 Loco wrote:
You and Baal are really arguing for something else. Like I said, you think people are aware of a trap in a broad sense, and you're saying that they have a general sense of the direction they should be going in. I agree with that. Where I don't agree is in putting blame on them for not being able to do it. Our brains were designed for an environment of scarcity, so it's the environment that causes the problem, not the lack of discipline in people. And even you, an intelligent and educated person, thinks that it's as simple as blaming sugar. It's not. Far from it. Again, if you are stuck in the pleasure trap, for most people discipline won't help in the long run, because you'll end up trusting that your instincts are right sooner or later, because guess what, you're naturally supposed to. Our success as a species relied precisely on that.
Its not an oversimplification but the real core of the problem, it is a discipline issue, to be able to triumph over ones desires/instincts, the same for any other addiction.
What the video shows is obvious, the body gets used to certain amount of stimulus, whatever it is it might add a bit of comfort to anybody wanting to lose weight thinking the effort isnt life-long, but I dont think thats what stops people from losing weight, its more basic.
You mention intelligence and afaik there is an inverse correlation between IQ and obesity, so apparently intelligence also allows us to be able to control our instincts, now if you want to excuse people from their behavior that is a whole different subject that will lead us nowhere.
On July 27 2016 19:20 Loco wrote:
You and Baal are really arguing for something else. Like I said, you think people are aware of a trap in a broad sense, and you're saying that they have a general sense of the direction they should be going in. I agree with that. Where I don't agree is in putting blame on them for not being able to do it. Our brains were designed for an environment of scarcity, so it's the environment that causes the problem, not the lack of discipline in people. And even you, an intelligent and educated person, thinks that it's as simple as blaming sugar. It's not. Far from it. Again, if you are stuck in the pleasure trap, for most people discipline won't help in the long run, because you'll end up trusting that your instincts are right sooner or later, because guess what, you're naturally supposed to. Our success as a species relied precisely on that.
Its not an oversimplification but the real core of the problem, it is a discipline issue, to be able to triumph over ones desires/instincts, the same for any other addiction.
What the video shows is obvious, the body gets used to certain amount of stimulus, whatever it is it might add a bit of comfort to anybody wanting to lose weight thinking the effort isnt life-long, but I dont think thats what stops people from losing weight, its more basic.
You mention intelligence and afaik there is an inverse correlation between IQ and obesity, so apparently intelligence also allows us to be able to control our instincts, now if you want to excuse people from their behavior that is a whole different subject that will lead us nowhere.
Yes but higher intelligence isn't correlated to greater amounts of self-discipline. And most importantly, a person who is lean isn't necessarily lean because they regularly exert their willpower in order to stay lean. We don't have any evidence that leaner people exercise their willpower more than obese people. In fact, what people tend to report the most is that when you clean up your diet and you cut back on the greasy foods and the refined sugar and salt, your tastebuds change quite rapidly. After a period of adaptation you recover sensitivity and no longer crave the crappy stuff and you look forward to eating the healthy food that you used to find unappealing. Your gut flora changes as well, and there is a theory that says that the bacteria that populate your gut actually make you want to consume more of those foods that they rely on for survival. If this is true, it'd be more correct to say that it's our bacteria that are craving a certain food, not "us". I was reading a news story earlier about the fat guy from Penn and Jillette who lost a ton of weight eating essentially the same diet as I do and in the interview he said that he no longer cares at all when he walks by a McDonalds, his cravings for it have just vanished. It's a common experience, and the junk food addicts often say to the person who eats a really clean diet, "wow, you have a lot of willpower" and they imagine that he is constantly depriving himself. Not the case.
I find your last sentence deeply ironic because I strongly believe that it is blame that leads no where when it comes to obesity and addiction in general. You don't blame a heroin addict for not having enough willpower to stop, do you? I don't think there's any debate within the scientific community that the core issue involved in addiction is the environment, not personal discipline. Every case of addiction cessation involves the re-engineering of the environment for the addict to be successful. The addict needs help in order to do so. It takes planning, and the addict needs knowledge and support first. And only when they have those tools does a person's discipline matter in order to stick to what they know will benefit them in the long term.
It's factually wrong to say that obese people typically have both the knowledge of how to eat and the support they need and so all they need is discipline. Most people know how to eat to lose weight, that's true. That is, they know they have to eat less calories. Problem is, the way that people apply this is usually disastrous and self-defeating. If it's not a sustainable and pleasurable way to eat, you'll naturally run out of discipline, and soon enough you'll be back where you were. The body's signals are much more powerful than your motivational self-talk. It always wins in the end. When it wins, people think something is wrong with their willpower when in fact their bodies are behaving how they are naturally supposed to within their environment and willpower is powerless to change it.
Take the case of the longest lived populations in the so-called "Blue Zones". Are they the longest lived people with the lowest rates of obesity around the world because they have a lot of discipline? Nope. It's understood that longevity is something that happens to them, not something they brought upon themselves. The author makes it very clear in his book that it happens to them because their environment just happened to be conducive to it. If you ask all of the centenarians in those areas what they did to live so long and be in such great health, they'll usually just laugh and say it was never something they were consciously trying to accomplish. Based on this knowledge, National Geographic went to specific areas within the US where there are high rates of obesity and chronic diseases and they tried to re-create the environment of a Blue Zone to see if people's health would improve. And sure enough, it made a significant difference.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
loco, first, sorry if I misused the phrase 'pleasure trap', I wasn't really referring to an academic work or phrase (of which I am indeed not familiar), rather just my immediate intuitive understanding of the phrase, which is something like 'people end up trapped in bad life situations like obesity or drug abuse because they so highly value the sensation of pleasure associated with foods that make you obese or drugs'.
Secondly, I'm not blaming anyone for anything - I think people's lack of discipline is attributed to factors outside their control, much the same as lack of knowledge. I actually think we're largely in agreement - I just think that 'lack of discipline' is still a valid phrase to use when describing people who knowingly eat unhealthy food despite their better nutritional knowledge. Basically, to me, discipline connotes 'what is required to enable yourself to go against your nature'. Your nature seeks pleasure in every form, quite frequently to a harmful degree, whether you manage to not indulge harmfully depends on a combination of two factors where knowledge of likely future events related to your indulgences is one factor, and where 'willpower' or 'strength of character' or 'discipline' or any other word or phrase with a similar meaning is the other. I don't really think that any of these are 'up to you', so when I say that someone lacks the necessary discipline I'm not actually thinking that they should 'just man up', it's more of a 'sadly, this person did not possess the necessary combination of genetic predisposition and experiences to cultivate the strength of character required to take control of his or her own life'. There's no judgement - it's just that I don't think understanding of nutritional science by itself is sufficient to make people eat healthy - there must also be motivation to be healthy, and there must be this personal ability to not choose instant gratification over later benefit. (As a sidenote, I remember reading some article about how when observing children, one of the primary distinguishing factors in determining 'life success' (wealth, education level, % in jail, even lifespan I think, but that I'm not completely certain of) is how they perform in a simple gratification test. Children who, when offered either one piece of chocolate now or two pieces of chocolate the next day, (maybe it was less time, like 2 hours) choose two pieces of chocolate later, perform much 'better' in life than those who take one chocolate now).
Like, for myself, I know how to eat healthier than I do, but I don't, because I value the pleasure I get out of eating candied bacon with melted cheese more than I value the health benefit of not doing so. I'm in pretty good shape and really physically active so it's not a problem for me really - but I also know how to improve my diet, I know that I'd be in even better shape if I did, but it's not important enough for me to bother doing it. When I actually was kinda overweight and out of shape, losing weight at one point was important to me, so I improved my diet, and then I had the discipline to maintain it until I was content with my health. But I also know some overweight people who think losing weight is really important, who know which foods they should avoid, who know they have to work out, but who still don't manage to control themselves, neither in terms of food they eat nor in terms of exercise. Hell, myself I was kinda overweight for probably like, 4 years or so, before I developed the necessary discipline to fix it - I knew damn well that my beer and snack intake was the root of the problem and that if I started eating only vegetables with some fish mixed in it'd solve the problem.
Is it also a problem that overweight people overwhelmingly have bad understanding of nutrition? Absolutely - but these are not mutually exclusive. I can also certainly accept that it's very possible that even people who feel healthy, who eat what is considered 'good enough' (varied food with moderation of particularly unhealthy elements) oftentimes have a bad understanding of what really feeling healthy can entail, and that if they changed to an almost fully plant based diet they would experience it as somewhat of a revelation.
Thanks for the clarification. It seems we do generally agree. As far as discipline goes, I don't really have a problem with how you define it, and I've had the same personal experience as you with it. I knew what I was doing wrong (in a vague sense at least) and I just couldn't be bothered to fix it, because I didn't care about my health enough, and I wasn't in enough pain to be motivated to make what I perceived to be such a drastic change. It's just the path of least resistance.
It's obvious to me now though that any kind of progress can easily be lost due to both bad information and also because of the pleasure trap. No matter how disciplined we are at a certain point in our lives, things that are beyond our control can influence us and we can lose it all. This is where having the knowledge is crucial because it allows us to understand why it happened and gives us the tools we need to be able to regain control over the situation. And it allows us be gentle with ourselves instead of beating ourselves up.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On July 28 2016 16:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:
loco, first, sorry if I misused the phrase 'pleasure trap', I wasn't really referring to an academic work or phrase (of which I am indeed not familiar), rather just my immediate intuitive understanding of the phrase, which is something like 'people end up trapped in bad life situations like obesity or drug abuse because they so highly value the sensation of pleasure associated with foods that make you obese or drugs'.
Secondly, I'm not blaming anyone for anything - I think people's lack of discipline is attributed to factors outside their control, much the same as lack of knowledge. I actually think we're largely in agreement - I just think that 'lack of discipline' is still a valid phrase to use when describing people who knowingly eat unhealthy food despite their better nutritional knowledge. Basically, to me, discipline connotes 'what is required to enable yourself to go against your nature'. Your nature seeks pleasure in every form, quite frequently to a harmful degree, whether you manage to not indulge harmfully depends on a combination of two factors where knowledge of likely future events related to your indulgences is one factor, and where 'willpower' or 'strength of character' or 'discipline' or any other word or phrase with a similar meaning is the other. I don't really think that any of these are 'up to you', so when I say that someone lacks the necessary discipline I'm not actually thinking that they should 'just man up', it's more of a 'sadly, this person did not possess the necessary combination of genetic predisposition and experiences to cultivate the strength of character required to take control of his or her own life'. There's no judgement - it's just that I don't think understanding of nutritional science by itself is sufficient to make people eat healthy - there must also be motivation to be healthy, and there must be this personal ability to not choose instant gratification over later benefit. (As a sidenote, I remember reading some article about how when observing children, one of the primary distinguishing factors in determining 'life success' (wealth, education level, % in jail, even lifespan I think, but that I'm not completely certain of) is how they perform in a simple gratification test. Children who, when offered either one piece of chocolate now or two pieces of chocolate the next day, (maybe it was less time, like 2 hours) choose two pieces of chocolate later, perform much 'better' in life than those who take one chocolate now).
Like, for myself, I know how to eat healthier than I do, but I don't, because I value the pleasure I get out of eating candied bacon with melted cheese more than I value the health benefit of not doing so. I'm in pretty good shape and really physically active so it's not a problem for me really - but I also know how to improve my diet, I know that I'd be in even better shape if I did, but it's not important enough for me to bother doing it. When I actually was kinda overweight and out of shape, losing weight at one point was important to me, so I improved my diet, and then I had the discipline to maintain it until I was content with my health. But I also know some overweight people who think losing weight is really important, who know which foods they should avoid, who know they have to work out, but who still don't manage to control themselves, neither in terms of food they eat nor in terms of exercise. Hell, myself I was kinda overweight for probably like, 4 years or so, before I developed the necessary discipline to fix it - I knew damn well that my beer and snack intake was the root of the problem and that if I started eating only vegetables with some fish mixed in it'd solve the problem.
Is it also a problem that overweight people overwhelmingly have bad understanding of nutrition? Absolutely - but these are not mutually exclusive. I can also certainly accept that it's very possible that even people who feel healthy, who eat what is considered 'good enough' (varied food with moderation of particularly unhealthy elements) oftentimes have a bad understanding of what really feeling healthy can entail, and that if they changed to an almost fully plant based diet they would experience it as somewhat of a revelation.
Word.
I was going to reply but Eri just did it for me... way less swearing.
Maybe you went from fatty to skinny while you educated yourself about nutrition and now overvalue information about it and think that is the key, if only everybody knew that if you eat shit long enough it will taste like glory, but thats not the problem and a legion of obese nutriologists attest to it and now you chant this obvious and patronizing argument, no shit enviroment is the main drive for addition, I thought the drug problem in ghettos were just a big coincidence -_-
Also do you have a source for claiming there is no correlation between IQ and discipline, a couple of studies suggest (obviously not in a conclusive manner) otherwise, so Im interested since you stated it as a fact.
Not sure how much "IQ" influences Self-Control(Discipline) , but i would say genetic and environmental influences are strongly correlated. Genetically i would say, like most things, there are two small extremes and a large average, and the environmental influences will(can) mostly influence the 'large average part' to bend towards one of the extremes. Consumerism will , for example , logically prioritize&reward impulsivity and lack of Self-Control
I wish one of your guys had children if I could kick them in the fucking head or stomp on their testicles so you can feel my pain because thats the pain I have waking up everyday -- Mike Tyson
