Getting Too Fat to Sail

[Lizzy Belle]

Originally Posted by Canibul

I like your line about any thing with a label is basically bad for you.

Not everything, but a lot, yes. As soon as you need to google anything on a label to know exactly what it is, you might as well just put it back on the shelf

Originally Posted by Canibul

I was just reading yesterday what happens in your body for the two hours after drinking a Diet Coke. Scary.

Yup.

I always told my kid (now a grown man) to please not drink soft-drinks, but when you really want one, at least drink one that's full of sugar.
That may not be a healthy option, but it is definitely the lesser of 2 evils, so to speak.

[Sea Dreaming]

Originally Posted by Lizzy Belle

I once tried to go sugar-free (as in, no added sugar, including all ingredients like syrup, dextrose etc which is also sugar) for a month, while still buying my groceries in a local supermarket.

Can't. Be. Done.

Once you start reading labels, you'll find yourself buying fresh veggies more and more, and skipping anything in a package / bottle / jar etc - all processed foods, pretty much.

I especially love all the "light" or "low fat" products, which have switched out a certain % of (usually harmless) fat for ... sugar!

Im right there with you! Aside from Christmas, which was an "experiment" that failed, I have been sugar free and very low carb for two years. I do it by not eating anything that isn't home made. Usually made in my own home.

By BFs kids live near Utrecht with their mother. When they came to visit they wanted to eat all of the favorites they remembered from childhood. Pringles, Sweetened cereal and more. But the one thing none of them would touch was the bread! Commercially available bread, even very good whole grain bread is loaded with sugar here. Since by BF and I don't eat bread, we had no idea! But we did find an organic bakery that did not put sugar in their bread and it was deemed acceptable.

[poiu]

Originally Posted by Lizzy Belle

There's a lady here -a BIG lady- who claims she can't afford healthy food for her or her overweight kids (and they're young too!). So she's buying fast food all the time.

That reminds me of an episode in the '80s. Edwina Currie, an English politician not known for her tact, made a comment that compared to the English the Scottish poor health and life span expectations were due to them having a poorer diet. They should eat better. There was a particularly angry uproar from Scotland, where it was bitterly resented that an English woman was telling them what to do, but more to the point that they didn't have the money to eat well, unlike the M.P. and her over-privileged Sassanach contemporaries in London. The vitriol was so angry her (well meant and correct) message was completely lost.

[Lizzy Belle]

Originally Posted by Sea Dreaming

Commercially available bread, even very good whole grain bread is loaded with sugar here. Since by BF and I don't eat bread, we had no idea! But we did find an organic bakery that did not put sugar in their bread and it was deemed acceptable.

Same here. And some not-so-healthy additives to make the bread seem fresh longer. Not sure what they're called in English, the Dutch word is "broodverbeteraar" - literally translated: breadimprover.

My grantparents were bakers, and I have to be honest: I love bread. I eat bread for breakfast and lunch ... Since I learned that the more expensive bread from the bakery is almost the same as the supermarket bread, I have accepted that "healthy bread" is sort of an utopia. I buy the best I can find, unwilling to give it up *blush*

I was raised a carnivore, and while I do miss my steaks (ohhh a nice, juicy steak! Nom nom nom!) I have cut both meat and dairy almost completely from my diet*, which did a lot for my health. I do eat fish, tho it's hard to find real sustainability caught fish. I try my best tho ...

(*: I don't buy it, but when invited for dinner, I'll eat whatever people would cook for themselves, including meat, nasty stuff from packages etc. ).

A girlfriend of mine lost a lot of weight by simply no longer eating or drinking anything with "lite / light" on the label (!), reading labels / ingredients and making better choices.

I usually eat vegetarian, boat cooked meals. I don't pay much attention to carbs etc., I pretty much eat what I feel like, and that seems to work out for me. At 1,75 meter I weigh about 55 kilo and I'm a lot healthier then I used to be. Which is a good thing, cos I have plans that involve me being fit enough to sail a boat all by myself for a while yet

[zeehag]

ye know, y'all with hand to mouth disease who blame all the ingredients of the slop you force down your throats in lieu of food, the prime cause of obesity is hand to mouth disease.
this is a controllable, voluntary affliction affecting all of the worlds population able to choose the foods they eat.
the sufferer chooses to stuff all kinds of garbage down their throat-- potato chips and junk without food value, yet gripes away because one of the junky ingredients is an appetite stimulator, and they get fat drinking diet cola.
miraculously, that same chemical causing this appetite loss of control is also one that causes total body pain and lethargy. dontcha love where this is going... or can you see it yet? and the dietary habits are continued with little changes except to increase the diet cola and decrease the intake of nourishing foods..... and the complaints increase as this continues.....and the medical bills grow as the person no longer can hold a job due to obesity issues ans lethargy and painful body syndrome.
and then they named one of these conditions fibromyalgia.
ok.
another excuse has been named. and, so, as you are obese, ditch the sugars and drink non sugar drinks. ok so the cycle continues unchecked.
hand to mouth disease. cause of most of the worlds dietary ills relating to obesity.
i am not skinny nor fat, i eat that i want to eat. i drink no sodas, occasionally a flavored mineral water, and , before mexico removed sugar from coca cola, i would drink one every few months, the smallest one, i think 300 ml. isn t much.used to taste good. now has hfcs. usa is returning sugar to coca cola. go figger . they figgered hfcs is bad for ye. duh. mexico is a tad behind on that part of it.
too fat to sail?
sounds like an excuse, to me. dislike excuses? eat real food. not crap. not prepackaged bs. smaller portions. do not sit so long doing nothing active.
it is the hand to mouth disease that impairs ye.

[GoingWalkabout]

The benefits of sailing while fat.

1. Your fat will provide added buoyancy when capsized
2. If you fall overboard your fat will provide insulation against hyperthermia and fat floats great on water
3. You want do anything risky like going up the mast. You'll have someone else do that
4. You will have a shorter life so less money you'll spending till you die on marina charges than someone skinnier who lives longer

I'm sure there are other great advantages of sailing while fat. Have to run to the gym though so I don't have time to write more now.

[Saleen411]

Originally Posted by GoingWalkabout

The benefits of sailing while fat.

1. Your fat will provide added buoyancy when capsized
2. If you fall overboard your fat will provide insulation against hyperthermia and fat floats great on water
3. You want do anything risky like going up the mast. You'll have someone else do that
4. You will have a shorter life so less money you'll spending till you die on marina charges than someone skinnier who lives longer

I'm sure there are other great advantages of sailing while fat. Have to run to the gym though so I don't have time to write more now.

Less chance of being invited to a "swingers party":big grin:

There was a BIG thread on that a year or so ago. One of the complaints from a female "swinger" was that most cruisers could stand to lose 30 lbs or so.

[daletournier]

A little bit of a drift but still related, we've gotten away from basics. Somehow over the decades the environment has changed so much that we no longer know what is natural for us. Here's something I notice as an example. Ive been cruising Asia for approx 4 years, there wouldn't be a village I've been to that every inhabitant in that village couldnt squat their butt to the ground comfortably! If they cant do this , , well they don't go to the toilet. How many of us can stand with feet approximately shoulder width apart and lower our butt to the floor or close to it? Try it! It's actually a simple multijoint basic movement.
Our reference points for healthy are all screwed up. I have a exercise physiologist work in my business training clients in basic movements and being payed ridiculous money through government subsidies to do so! Unemployed people being payed by the government and have their own highly payed ( approx $180/hr) glorified personal trainer to teach them to move!
Here's another in regards to fat loss, alcohol! I'm back in Australia for 2 months, Australia is a land of functioning alcholics! Of course Bob my neighbor here would deny his 3 beers evernight qualifies him as a alcoholic! I disagree, just because all his friends will support his view and not mine and he functions "normally" dosent mean he's not a alcholic.
Cheers Dale

Sent from my GT-N7105T using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Sea Dreaming]

Originally Posted by GoingWalkabout

The benefits of sailing while fat.

1. Your fat will provide added buoyancy when capsized
2. If you fall overboard your fat will provide insulation against hyperthermia and fat floats great on water
3. You want do anything risky like going up the mast. You'll have someone else do that
4. You will have a shorter life so less money you'll spending till you die on marina charges than someone skinnier who lives longer

I'm sure there are other great advantages of sailing while fat. Have to run to the gym though so I don't have time to write more now.

If you fall in ...the whales will simply accept you as one of the pod?

[daletournier]

If you fall in I probably cant pull you out...lol.

Sent from my GT-N7105T using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[dannc]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Fructose, Dan, maybe.

Chinese don't use much of it but America floats on it.
...
Coke in the USA is made with HFCS too, but not in some other parts of the world.

Chinese don't eat as much fruit.
They don't have much deserts, or not as much as us.

So if you were mainly eating in restaurants where food is prepared fresh as opposed to a standard American diet I wonder what other diferences there were too.

Interesting.

I think it was the HFCS and maybe sugar that caused us to loose weight.

The area of China we visited had a lot of fruit eaters. On our walk from the hotel to the boat yard there was big fruit stand on the street that was doing a pretty good business all through the day. We had some fruit we have never eaten before and pineapple on a stick that was really good. There were fruit stands here and there selling these pineapples on a stick. Small, very juicy, with a strong pineapple flavor but very acidic.

With the possible exception of Dim Sum that we had on three occasions, all of the food was made fresh and you could taste how little salt and sugar was in the food. The Dim Sun in at least one place was certainly home made.

Even a chain restaurant had food that was pretty much salt and sugar free.

Course, we got tired of that healthy food all of the time and we did hit McD's a couple of times! Eating McD's in Hong Kong was kinda odd, familiar, but different. But eating at McD's in main land China, in a town that see very few westerners was very odd.

We want to go back in spite of the pollution.

Later,
Dan

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by Jdege

A fat cell doesn't know whether you are exercising, lying on the couch, eating donuts or fasting. It responds to its local energy and hormonal environment and nothing else.

If your insulin levels are high, you're fat cells will not release fat, period, regardless of whether you are eating, exercising, or sleeping.

People who are living with chronically raised insulin levels who try to create an energy deficit, whether through exercise or calorie restriction, find their metabolism slows down and their hunger ramps up. They end up lethargic and ravenous because they are literally starving, on the cellular level. The copious amounts of energy stored in their fat cells are not available, because their high insulin levels keep it locked away.

So what happens, when they try to diet and exercise, is that they get gluttonous and lazy, and they lose muscle tissue and cannibalize their internal organs, and they do not lose fat.

The only way to avoid this is to get their insulin levels down. And that means a strict low-carb, high-fat diet. No amount of exercise will work, and no amount of dieting will work, unless it involves reducing carbs.

Weeelll… kinda sounds a teensy bit like excuse making to me. There is a plenty of evidence that diet is immensely important. Of course. It is obviously the most important aspect of the equation. However you almost seem to be saying that there is no connection to exercise and that is just nonsense. It is extremely well known and demonstrated that exercise reduces the risk of type two diabetes, and helps to manage it as well.

I am afraid that poor diet goes hand in hand with extreme laziness in much of the developed world, and the most important factor in that laziness is not that people are unwilling to go to the gym, but that they are unwilling to walk and use their bodies for basic tasks.

As to your suggestion that exercising actually slows the metabolism… this is absurd and it does the opposite. Your suggestion that "the cellular environment" is isolated in some magical way from the positive physiological and biochemical effects of exercise, while being somehow open to them (I notice that personal feelings of "starvation" are indicated on this side of your odd equation) on the negative side (exercise makes you fatter?) is equally magical thinking.

[dannc]

Originally Posted by Canibul

...
We've been living outside the USA for over ten years now, and make at least a trip or two back every year. We are amazed at how fat Americans are quickly getting. ...

When I was a kid, we had classes with 32 to maybe 35 kids and there would be one, maybe two kids, who were fat. Today, it seems like at least a third of the kids in school are fat.

Now, some people would blame video games and not going outside to play like we did as kids. But today's kids are far busier than my generation. Many play multiple sports so they are much more active than just riding a bike. They have after school programs and work as well. They seem to be more active in some ways compared to my generation.

My generation had soda but it was sugar based and most sodas were bought in six packs of BOTTLES, eventually cans, and finally 2 liter jugs. But a serving was still 12 ounces. Now, you buy 1 liter "bottles" of soda in the vending machine, I can remember 6 oz bottles, and soda is all over the place. Vending machines are in schools which was a no no in most of my schools. Course it is not just sodas that are a problem but "sports" drinks and so called coffee....

I grew up going to WDW once or twice a year and first visited Disney World right after it opened. In many ways it is like going home again to me. When I got into my teens and 20's I only went to WDW a few times every 5 years or so. My wife and I went back twice before we had kids and then there was a long period before we took the kids for their first visit to WDW...

Before the kids big trip, I was reading a discussion on a Disney fan site that was talking about overweight people. One of the posts said that it was child abuse for a kid to be overweight. I thought that was a bit over the top...

Then we went back to Disney after a break of almost a decade....

WOW! What a difference. And not a good one. When I was a kid the only child in a stroller was a baby and there were not many of those. Everyone walked. Today, Disney has some many people using strollers to push CHILDREN around, that they have major spaces set aside for parking areas for strollers. You will see MANY kids 6 and above being pushed in strollers. REALLY?

Then there are the battery powered scooters. Disney has done a great job of allow people who are in wheel chairs or who need scooters to access the parks. That is to be commended. But then you see this....

One evening we had gone to one of the parks and saw this man who had to weigh over 400 pounds riding a cherry red scooter. This was not the usual scooter like you will see in a US grocery store or Walmart. This was a huge scooter that was going at least 10 MPH and the man was zooming around people like they were an pylons. He was YELLING at his teenage daughter to hurry the h...ll up because she was walking so slow. The daughter was 14-15, weighed a good 200 pounds, was red faced, sweating, and a bit out of breath. Given where they were she had walk 2-3 miles and she was in no shape to walk a mile. It was easy for Dear Sweet Fat Daddy to yell at her to hurry up because all he had to do was push the go pedal on his Fat Mobile.

We were still processing that sight when we we saw The Momma, a HUGE women with TWO equally huge children about 6 and 9 riding on another cherry red scooter. Her two young children where also morbidly obese. I am surprised the scooter could handle the weight. She had to have been 300 pounds easy and her two young kids where at least 150 pounds.

After seeing that situation, I have to agree that sometimes having over weight kids is child abuse. I understand that some people truly have health issues that cause obesity problems but what we saw was unreal. While that was an extreme case, the number of morbidly obese people, young and old, walking around WDW is scary. I did not see this as a kid...

And it is not just fat Americans either.

One day we were riding the bus back to our resort and there was this family from England sitting across from us. Very nice, polite people with that so English accent from southern England. They had a son about 12 and I found myself looking at his ankles. No, I am not a pervert! The kid was obese and he had thick fat around his ankles and I caught myself wondering if the kid already had heart diseases.

Later,
Dan

[jongleur]

"Then there are the battery powered scooters."

Went on a cruise liner recently for a conference
and couldn't believe the obesity present. Many
on scooters.

The door on the shower in the room could not
have opened far enough to accommodate those
large people. How did they bathe? We did
see them in the pools. We didn't go into
the pools as a consequence.

"They had a son about 12 and I found myself looking at his ankles. The kid was obese and he had thick fat around his ankles and I caught myself wondering if the kid already had heart diseases."

Quite likely he had lymphedema. This is caused
by lymph stasis which results from adipose
tissue accumulation, which causes further lymph
stasis. It's a vicious cycle.

I'm a Low Carb High Fat advocate. jdege stated the case
pretty succinctly a few posts back, regarding
the role of insulin.

[td0tz]

Warning: Food Rant Follows.
Yes, there are many examples of the huge self imposed weight problem. People who are simply making really poor choices, and do have better options. However, there is another issue both in the US and the UK, where the obesity epidemic seems to have hit faster and harder.
Yes, good food can be cheaper than fast food. Here's the BUT: IF it's available, where you need it.
In our good ol' US of A most low income areas are also called "food deserts" for the simple reason that the supermarket chains can't make enough profit to locate stores there. It's become a visible and actionable issue in Colorado, where I live, both in low income urban areas and low income/sparsely occupied rural areas.
We may want what we want, but like buying a used boat, you get to choose from what's available.
And please spare me the "oh, you could go...blah blah blah... and find all the stores you want" Yeah, tell it to Mom on the ranch in eastern Colorado, where the local store went bust last year, and she has a 90 minute,(yes, no exaggeration) drive to the next one.
More to the point, the single mom working at the day care in Five Points Denver, who (up until last year) didn't have a real grocery store within 30 minutes by bus, each way. Think she's got time for that kind of expedition a couple times a week?
Yet, somehow, McDonald's and Jack in the Box can make a profit in those neighborhoods, so that's what the people have to choose from.
Yet in my very sweet upscale mountain community of Evergreen, we had and have excellent choices, 3 markets within 10 minutes, where frequently the organic produce was as cheap as the conventional.
Time and Money: If you've little of either, your choices are severely limited.
Poverty sucks, especially for those who chose their parents poorly.