Overweight People Quotes

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1 billion people in the world are chronically hungry. 1 billion people are overweight.
Mark Bittman (Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes)
I've noticed a funny thing about people who are over-weight. They spend all their time thinking about food -except when they're actually eating it
Paul McKenna (I Can Make You Thin)
He had never really speculated about this before, since demons came in all shapes and sizes. Indeed, some of them came in more than one shape or size all by themselves, such as O'Dear, the Demon of People Who Look in Mirrors and Think They're Overweight, and his twin, O'Really, the Demon of People Who Look in Mirrors and Think They're Slim When They're Not.
John Connolly (The Gates (Samuel Johnson, #1))
It's funny how people think that they have "a right to life". Now isn't that the biggest load you ever heard? You don't have a right to shit your pants on Sunday. Let's take it back to the jungle. Where the fuck are your rights there? No layers in the jungle. Civilization has allowed the weak to survive. You can sit back and be an overweight, apathetic piece of shit, smoke your dope and still survive because you have a right to life.
Henry Rollins (Black Coffee Blues)
The sad fact is that people are poor because they have not yet decided to be rich. People are overweight and unfit because they have not yet decided to be thin and fit. People are inefficient time wasters because they haven’t yet decided to be highly productive in everything they do.
Brian Tracy
Many obese people spend a significant amount of their energy on suppressing the urge to tell some of the people who are staring at them that they do not eat as much and as frequently as they seem to.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
According to the surgeon general, obesity today is officially an epidemic; it is arguably the most pressing public health problem we face, costing the health care system an estimated $90 billion a year. Three of every five Americans are overweight; one of every five is obese. The disease formerly known as adult-onset diabetes has had to be renamed Type II diabetes since it now occurs so frequently in children. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association predicts that a child born in 2000 has a one-in-three chance of developing diabetes. (An African American child's chances are two in five.) Because of diabetes and all the other health problems that accompany obesity, today's children may turn out to be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will actually be shorter than that of their parents. The problem is not limited to America: The United Nations reported that in 2000 the number of people suffering from overnutrition--a billion--had officially surpassed the number suffering from malnutrition--800 million.
Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals)
Few people actually read. Instead, everyone likes pretending they read. If we spent as much time reading as we say we do, we'd be grossly overweight and depressed.
Dan Wilbur (How Not to Read: Harnessing the Power of a Literature-Free Life)
How do people make the judgments and how do they assign decision weights? We start from two simple answers, then qualify them. Here are the oversimplified answers: People overestimate the probabilities of unlikely events. People overweight unlikely events in their decisions.
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
Children are not cruel. Children are mirrors. They want to be "grownup," so they act how grown-ups act when we think they're not looking. They do not act how we tell them to act at school assemblies. They act how we really act. They believe what we believe. They say what we say. And we have taught them that gay people are not okay. That overweight people are not okay. That Muslim people are not okay. That they are not equal. That they are to be feared. And people hurt the things they fear. We know that. What they are doing in the schools, what we are doing in the media -- it's all the same. The only difference is that children bully in the hallways and the cafeterias while we bully from behind pulpits and legislative benches and sitcom one-liners.
Glennon Doyle Melton (Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed)
70% of the world global deaths are attributable to modifial behavioural risk factors like smoking, physical inactivity and diet. The leading global risks for mortality are high blood pressure 13%, tobacco use 9%, high blood sugar 6%, physical inactivity 6% and obesity 5%. In 2013, an estimated 2.1 billion adults were overweight, compared with 857 million in 1980. There are now more people world-wide, except in sub-Saharan parts of Africa and Asia who are obese, than who are underweight.
Anna Lembke (Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence)
Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I'll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political." It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they 'felt', not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its sub-groups and "specificities." This tendency has often been satirised—the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs—but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance. Anyway, what you swiftly realise if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighbourhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn't change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that "humanity" (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, in this way.
Christopher Hitchens (Letters to a Young Contrarian)
He was defiantly narrow-minded, barely educated, and at least close to functionally illiterate. His beliefs were powerful but consistently dubious, and made him seem, in the words of The New Yorker, “mildly unbalanced.” He did not like bankers, doctors, liquor, tobacco, idleness of any sort, pasteurized milk, Wall Street, overweight people, war, books or reading, J. P. Morgan and Co., capital punishment, tall buildings, college graduates, Roman Catholics, or Jews. Especially he didn’t like Jews. Once he hired a Hebraic scholar to translate the Talmud in a manner designed to make Jewish people appear shifty and avaricious.
Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
Famine sometimes increases the number of people who are overweight.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
In some cases, people with a body (whose size) they did not long for are victims of having a bank balance (whose size) they longed for.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
IT HAS TO DO WITH ALL OF US,” said Owen Meany, when I called him that night. “SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY—NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, NOT BUT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING—I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE—JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT’S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY—AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY,” he repeated; he was on a roll. I could hear Hester playing her guitar in the background, as if she were trying to improvise a folk song from everything she said. “AND THOSE MEN,” he said. “THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN—DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER? AND DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN’T HAVE LOVED HER—THEY WERE JUST USING HER, THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL. THAT’S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY—IT’S A BEAUITFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD—THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL. THAT”S WHAT I THOUGHT KENNEDY WAS: A MORALIST. BUT HE WAS JUST GIVING US A SNOW JOB, HE WAS JUST BEING A GOOD SEDUCER. I THOUGHT HE WAS A SAVIOR. I THOUGHT HE WANTED TO USE HIS POWER TO DO GOOD. BUT PEOPLE WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING JUST TO GET THE POWER; THEN THEY’LL USE THE POWER JUST TO GET A THRILL. MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN—MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN—SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY’RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. THAT'S WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU AND ME,” said Owen Meany. “WE’RE GOING TO BE USED.
John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany)
Ladies and gentlemen, we have just begun our gradual descent into the Indianapolis area, a descent similar in many ways to the gradual slide of the United States from a first-class world leader to an aggressive, third-rate debtor nation of overweight slobs, undereducated slob children and aimless elderly people who can’t afford to buy medicine.
George Carlin (When Will Jesus Bring the Pork chops?)
I applaud people for trying to achieve a healthy weight. I don’t question the worthiness or dignity of overweight people any more than I question cancer victims. My criticism is of a societal system that allows and even encourages this problem. I believe, for example, that we are drowning in an ocean of very bad information, too much of it intended to put money into someone else’s pockets. What we really need, then, is a new solution comprised of good information for individual people to use at a price that they can afford.
T. Colin Campbell (The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health)
It’s about as close to an established fact as things get in the social sciences: People who watch a lot of TV are more likely to be overweight than people who don’t.
Brian Wansink (Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think)
Not making fun of fat people is good for their self-esteem but bad for their health.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Overweight people have chosen food over appearance. When a fat person talks about a great place to get a burger, I lean in. They know.
Jim Gaffigan (Food: A Love Story)
The slightest nudge can send a fruit pyramid collapsing into ruin. Perhaps this is why there is so little ancient architecture and art left in the world. Perhaps ancient fat people bumped into buildings and statues and made them fall. Perhaps this is the real reason Rome fell
Becky Siame
Some 1.2 billion people in the world still have too little to eat; the same number today suffer from being overweight…..For the first time in 100 years medical experts are predicting that life expectancy in developed countries will fall. Thanks to obesity our children face the prospect of dying younger than us.
Felicity Lawrence (Not On The Label)
The realms of dating, marriage, and sex are all marketplaces, and we are the products. Some may bristle at the idea of people as products on a marketplace, but this is an incredibly prevalent dynamic. Consider the labor marketplace, where people are also the product. Just as in the labor marketplace, one party makes an offer to another, and based on the terms of this offer, the other person can choose to accept it or walk. What makes the dating market so interesting is that the products we are marketing, selling, buying, and exchanging are essentially our identities and lives. As with all marketplaces, every item in stock has a value, and that value is determined by its desirability. However, the desirability of a product isn’t a fixed thing—the desirability of umbrellas increases in areas where it is currently raining while the desirability of a specific drug may increase to a specific individual if it can cure an illness their child has, even if its wider desirability on the market has not changed. In the world of dating, the two types of desirability we care about most are: - Aggregate Desirability: What the average demand within an open marketplace would be for a relationship with a particular person. - Individual Desirability: What the desirability of a relationship with an individual is from the perspective of a specific other individual. Imagine you are at a fish market and deciding whether or not to buy a specific fish: - Aggregate desirability = The fish’s market price that day - Individual desirability = What you are willing to pay for the fish Aggregate desirability is something our society enthusiastically emphasizes, with concepts like “leagues.” Whether these are revealed through crude statements like, “that guy's an 8,” or more politically correct comments such as, “I believe she may be out of your league,” there is a tacit acknowledgment by society that every individual has an aggregate value on the public dating market, and that value can be judged at a glance. When what we have to trade on the dating market is often ourselves, that means that on average, we are going to end up in relationships with people with an aggregate value roughly equal to our own (i.e., individuals “within our league”). Statistically speaking, leagues are a real phenomenon that affects dating patterns. Using data from dating websites, the University of Michigan found that when you sort online daters by desirability, they seem to know “their place.” People on online dating sites almost never send a message to someone less desirable than them, and on average they reach out to prospects only 25% more desirable than themselves. The great thing about these markets is how often the average desirability of a person to others is wildly different than their desirability to you. This gives you the opportunity to play arbitrage with traits that other people don’t like, but you either like or don’t mind. For example, while society may prefer women who are not overweight, a specific individual within the marketplace may prefer obese women, or even more interestingly may have no preference. If a guy doesn’t care whether his partner is slim or obese, then he should specifically target obese women, as obesity lowers desirability on the open marketplace, but not from his perspective, giving him access to women who are of higher value to him than those he could secure within an open market.
Malcolm Collins (The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships)
What are you looking for? Do you think you're the only group to be invisible? How about: Older women Older people in general People that are overweight People that don't conform to conventional Western beauty standards Black women Women in general in the workplace Are you sure you're not looking for something that you feel entitled to? Isn't this a kind of narcissism?
Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown)
But the statue attracted a middle-aged, brown-haired, overweight White guy. Clearly drunk, he climbed onto the tiny stage and started fondling Buddha before his laughing audience of drunk friends at a nearby table. I had learned a long time ago to tune out the antics of drunk White people doing things that could get a Black person arrested. Harmless White fun is Black lawlessness.
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist)
The point is, they have a public thing against the overweight and the underbeautiful. Those are my people there, Jared. Those are the people who pull the curtain and write the plays and make the costumes—those are the people who make the dream but who don’t live it on the front of the stage. Anyone who knocks those people is not going to get my business. Or yours, because you’re better than that.
Amy Lane (Behind the Curtain)
But humans have a built-in weakness for fats and sugar. We evolved in lean environments where it was a big plus for survival to gorge on calorie-dense foods whenever we found them. Whether or not they understand the biology, food marketers know the weakness and have exploited it without mercy. Obesity is generally viewed as a failure of personal resolve, with no acknowledgement of the genuine conspiracy in this historical scheme. People actually did sit in strategy meetings discussing ways to get all those surplus calories into people who neither needed nor wished to consume them. Children have been targeted especially; food companies spend over $10 billion a year selling food brands to kids, and it isn't broccoli they're pushing. Overweight children are a demographic in many ways similar to minors addicted to cigarettes, with one notable exception: their parents are usually their suppliers. We all subsidize the cheap calories with our tax dollars, the strategists make fortunes, and the overweight consumers get blamed for the violation. The perfect crime.
Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)
Gunner shook his head; he wasn't in the mood. He stared down at his bottle as he spoke. "Yeah, and what if I do go after it and what if I find no one, and I'm alone for the next sixty years? What then? Huh? Friends and family will get married. I'll be stuck buying gifts. Years pass: children, birthday parties. At dinner parties, I'll be odd man out, forcing people to arrange five chairs around a table instead of four or six. Or, okay, let's say maybe twenty years down the line I meet someone nice and I've already given up on ever finding true love. Let's say the girl is a few pounds overweight, has fizzy hair and an annoying laugh, but at this point, I'm also a few pounds overweight and my hair is thinning and my laughter is annoying. Maybe then the two of us get married, and both our groups of friends will say, 'See I told you that you'd find true love. It just took a while.' And we'll smile, but we'll both know it's a lie--
Michael Anthony (Civilianized: A Young Veteran's Memoir)
Here’s what I’ve learned about the people in this city,” Darcy was saying. “They grade their women on a curve. If someone is described as sophisticated, it means once during college she visited Paris, and if someone is described as beautiful, it means she’s fifteen pounds overweight instead of forty. And
Curtis Sittenfeld (Eligible)
Yeah,” added a man who owned a lawn-care service. “A lot of the people that I know that are in poverty are not healthy… the vast majority of them are very overweight, and the children are overweight.” “And how do you know they’re not healthy?” I asked. “Well,” the man continued, “just by their physical appearance, generally speaking, although you can look at their facial expressions, their faces and look at the coloring of their skin, that type of thing.
Jonathan M. Metzl (Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland)
An overweight officer, having delivered a batch of children to the home, started telling one of the guards about his heart problem. “You think you want to be a cop, but you don’t, because it kills you,” said the officer, mopping his brow. Then he told of another officer with a lung problem, and one who had cancer, and of others who were stress-sick, and of how none of them earned enough to afford decent doctors. Abdul hadn’t previously thought of policemen as people with hearts and lungs who worried about money or their health. The world seemed replete with people as bad off as himself, and this made him feel less alone.
Katherine Boo (Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity)
Some empaths become addicted to alcohol, drugs, food, sex, shopping, or other behaviors in an attempt to numb their sensitivities. Overeating is common since some empaths unwittingly use food to ground themselves. Empaths can easily become overweight because the extra padding provides protection from negative energy.
Judith Orloff (The Empath's Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People)
The worst thing about being underweight or overweight; too dark or too white – in short too plain and bland in someone’s perception is the fact that most people just end up talking to you because they feel you can be a good stepping stone. And guess what – it sucks! It sucks being the ladder to so many, helping everyone grow and bloom, only to find yourself splayed upon the mud to be used as a path from one person to another. Not moving an inch. Just lying there on the sticky dirt infused ground – hoping someone would help you up – no one ever comes. The only person who can help you crawl out is yourself. Get up. Try. Just try. You ARE Enough!
Sijdah Hussain (Red Sugar, No More)
More than nine million people a year come to the Smokies, many of them to picnic. So bears have learned to associate people with food. Indeed, to them people are overweight creatures in baseball caps who spread lots and lots of food out on picnic tables and then shriek a little and waddle off to get their video cameras when old Mr. Bear comes along and climbs onto the table and starts devouring their potato salad and chocolate cake. Since the bear doesn’t mind being filmed and indeed seems indifferent to his audience, pretty generally some fool will come up to it and try to stroke it or feed it a cupcake or something. There is one recorded instance of a woman smearing honey on her toddler’s fingers so that the bear would lick it off for the video camera. Failing to understand this, the bear ate the baby’s hand.
Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail)
In 2014 more than 2.1 billion people were overweight, compared to 850 million who suffered from malnutrition. Half of humankind is expected to be overweight by 2030.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
You think people who are overweight don’t have feelings?
Susan Stoker (Justice for Erin (Badge of Honor: Texas Heroes, #9))
They were not spontaneous people. They were born with too great a love of words, a passion for drama at the expense of truth, and a habit of overweighting common life with romance.
Stella Benson (This Is the End)
Surveys proved that people had less confidence in overweight public figures, who were subconsciously perceived to be lacking in self-control.
Jo Nesbø (The Leopard (Harry Hole, #8))
Most people stop eating not when their stomachs are full but when their plates are empty.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
On the surface, I was bullied for being effeminate, articulate, overweight, well-read, interested in recreations and matters non-traditional for black boys or even black people--essentially for being myself. To be hounded for merely existing in one's own skin is not unique to blacks, but at least during Jim Crow we could turn to one another. In modern-day terrorism, we turn on one another, with limited options for sanctuary.
L. Michael Gipson (For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Still Not Enough: Coming of Age, Coming Out, and Coming Home)
People with more money than time buy $3,000 road racing bicycles with ultralight carbon frames to shave two pounds off the bike, regardless of the fact that they themselves are probably at least 10 pounds overweight.
Jacob Lund Fisker (Early Retirement Extreme: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Financial Independence)
People who sleep less than seven hours a night are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, asthma, arthritis, depression, and diabetes and are almost eight times more likely to be overweight.
Greg McKeown (Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most)
Indeed, to them people are overweight creatures in baseball caps who spread lots and lots of food out on picnic tables and then shriek a little and waddle off to get their video cameras when old Mr. Bear comes along and climbs onto the table and starts devouring their potato salad and chocolate cake. Since the bear doesn’t mind being filmed and indeed seems indifferent to his audience, pretty generally some fool will come up to it and try to stroke it or feed it a cupcake or something. There is one recorded instance of a woman smearing honey on her toddler’s fingers so that the bear would lick it off for the video camera. Failing to understand this, the bear ate the baby’s hand.
Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail)
How is Life Full of Choices? When we eat too much, we make a choice to be overweight. When we drink too much, we make a choice to have a headache the next day. If we drink and drive, we choose to risk being killed or killing someone in an accident. When we ill-treat people, we choose to be ill-treated in return. When we don’t care about other people, we choose not to be cared for by them. When we light up a cigarette, we choose to invite cancer. Choices have consequences. The most important thing to understand is that we are all free to the point of making choices. but, after we make a choice, the choice controls the chooser. We have no more choices. What is success? Series of positive choices is called success and series of negative choices is called failure. We have an equal opportunity to be unequal. The choice is ours. Life can be compared to a pottery maker who shapes clay in any form he wants. Similarly we can mould our lives into any shape we want.
Shiv Khera (You Can Win: A Step-by-Step Tool for Top Achievers)
The term “obese” is derived from the Latin obesus, meaning “having eaten oneself fat,” inherently blaming fat people for our bodies. A growing number of fat activists consider the term to be a slur, and many avoid it altogether. The term “overweight” implies that there is an objectively, externally determined correct weight for every body. Both terms are derived from a medical model that considers fat bodies as deviations in need of correction. Both are also defined terms used frequently within medical and academic research.
Aubrey Gordon ("You Just Need to Lose Weight": And 19 Other Myths About Fat People (Myths Made in America))
In 2014 more than 2.1 billion people were overweight, compared to 850 million who suffered from malnutrition. Half of humankind is expected to be overweight by 2030.4 In 2010 famine and malnutrition combined killed about 1 million people, whereas obesity killed 3 million.5
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
There is also the issue of many people who have been consciously invalidated by their parents or others in authority. This would be when someone is constantly berated for being overweight, not smart enough, not athletic enough, not tall enough, not pretty enough, not helpful enough, not thoughtful enough, not, not, not...This invalidation comes from others, but as we grow into adulthood those voices from the past become our voices in our heads, as we continue to invalidate ourselves. This could just result in low self-esteem, or it could lead to the unconscious seeking of others to validate us.
Richard L. Travis (Validation Addiction: Please Make Me Feel Worthy (Dr. T's Addiction Series Book 1))
Do you ever wonder why a battered wife stays with her husband? Why people continue to spend money they don’t have even though they know they are deeply in debt? Why some keep jamming food in their mouths when they’re already overweight? Why do people stay in bad relationships? Why are some people still racist? Why do people still drink and drive? You’d think the response to all these things would be obvious and cause them to scream, “Duh, of course I need to change this.” Why do we keep doing church the same way even when we know it’s in critical decline? Why do paid church leaders spend so much time preparing for a 90-minute service for Christians who have heard it all before? Why do we still call our message the good news when it clearly seems to be bad news or no news to Sojourners? Why do we think Pharisees are only found in the Bible? Why is returning to a simpler form of ancient church so hard to grasp?
Hugh Halter (The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series Book 36))
The more you exercise, the less overweight you are, the better you sleep, the healthier you eat, the more energetic you feel. What is interesting is that all these components affect each other: If you exercise more you have better metabolism and better weight, you sleep better, your appetite is suppressed, and you eat less unhealthy food.
Andrii Sedniev (Insane Energy for Lazy People: A Complete System for Becoming Incredibly Energetic)
Still, Yolanda appreciated the fact that her meds allowed her to go among other people, who would treat her, when she was medicated, much like they would treat any other big-boned, over-weight girl with straight, mouse-brown hair, who lumbered across floors so heavily that objects rattled and the surfaces of liquid in glasses boiled. It was a relief not to be viewed as someone with special problems.
Richard Russo (Straight Man)
Triglyceride-to-HDL Ratio After assessing each of these five biomarkers, there is one more step: calculate your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio to better understand insulin sensitivity. Simply divide your triglycerides by your HDL. Interestingly, studies have shown that this value correlates well with underlying insulin resistance. So even if you are unable to access a fasting insulin test, the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio can give you a general sense of where you’re at. According to Dr. Mark Hyman, “the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is the best way to check for insulin resistance other than the insulin response test. According to a paper published in Circulation, the most powerful test to predict your risk of a heart attack is the ratio of your triglycerides to HDL. If the ratio is high, your risk for a heart attack increases sixteen-fold—or 1,600 percent! This is because triglycerides go up and HDL (or ‘good cholesterol’) goes down with diabesity.” Dr. Robert Lustig agrees: “The triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is the best biomarker of cardiovascular disease and the best surrogate marker of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.” In children, higher triglyceride-to-HDL is significantly correlated with mean insulin, waist circumferences, and insulin resistance. In adults, the ratio has shown a positive association with insulin resistance across normal weight and overweight people and significantly tracks with insulin levels, insulin sensitivity, and prediabetes. Perplexingly, the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is not a metric used in standard clinical practice. If you remember one thing from this chapter, remember this: you need to know your insulin sensitivity. It can give you lifesaving clues about early dysfunction and Bad Energy brewing in your body, and is best assessed by a fasting insulin test, discussed below. Right now, this is not a standard test offered to you at your annual physical. I implore you to find a way to get a fasting insulin test or to calculate your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio every year. Do this for your children, as well. And take the steps outlined in the following chapters to ensure it does not start creeping up. RANGES: Range considered “normal” by standard criteria: none specified in standard criteria Optimal range: Anything above a ratio of 3 is strongly suggestive of insulin resistance. You want to shoot for less than 1.5, although lower is better. I recommend aiming for less than 1.
Casey Means (Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health)
Society is not filled with evil souls. But it is filled with people who are mobile, fractured, overworked, overweight, overcrowded, and overtired. That’s a potent combination, particularly for people with poor coping skills and volatile tempers. And we’re seeing the proof of that in the increasing number of impulsive, angry acts, such as mass murders and road rage.” Rainie sighed. She rubbed her temples.
Lisa Gardner (The Third Victim)
more than half of all first heart attacks (fatal or otherwise) occur in people who are fit and healthy and have no known obvious risks. They don’t smoke or drink to excess, are not seriously overweight, and do not have chronically high blood pressure or even bad cholesterol readings, but they get a heart attack anyway. Living a virtuous life doesn’t guarantee that you will escape heart problems; it just improves your chances.
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
Sugar substitutes aren’t any better. Many people (including me when I was overweight) turn to artificial sugars to quell their cravings without packing on the pounds. Back then I would have happily performed heart surgery with a Diet Coke in my hand if only I could have found a way to sterilize it! But ironically, although these products are supposed to aid in weight loss, they do just the opposite. That’s because products such as sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, and other nonnutritive artificial sweeteners kill your gut buddies and allow the bad bugs to multiply. Believe it or not, a Duke University study28 showed that a single Splenda packet kills 50 percent of normal intestinal flora! It’s sad but true: if you eat too much of anything sweet, your gut buddies will starve to death, and your bad bugs will live long and prosper—and multiply. Even fructose, the sugar in fruit, has been shown to be a mitochrondrial poison! There goes the neighborhood.
Steven R. Gundry (The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age (The Plant Paradox, #4))
It was the language that left us first. The Great Migration of words. When people spoke they punched each other in the mouth. There was no vocabulary for love. Women became masculine and could no longer give birth to warmth or a simple caress with their lips. Tongues were overweight from profanity and the taste of nastiness. It settled over cities like fog smothering everything in sight. My ears begged for camouflage and the chance to go to war. Everywhere was the decay of how we sound.
E. Ethelbert Miller
But I also like myself, my personality, my weirdness, my sense of humor, my wild and deep romantic streak, how I love, how I write, my kindness and my mean streak. It is only now, in my forties, that I am able to admit that I like myself, even though I am nagged by this suspicion that I shouldn’t. For so long, I gave in to my self-loathing. I refused to allow myself the simple pleasure of accepting who I am and how I live and love and think and see the world. But then, I got older and I cared less about what other people think. I got older and realized I was exhausted by all my self-loathing and that I was hating myself, in part, because I assumed that’s what other people expected from me, as if my self-hatred was the price I needed to pay for living in an overweight body. It was much, much easier to just try and shut out all of that noise, and to try and forgive myself for the mistakes I made in high school and college and throughout my twenties, to have some empathy for why I made those mistakes.
Roxane Gay (Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body)
But most people lack the courage to confront their own weaknesses and make the hard choices that this process requires. Ultimately, it comes down to the following five decisions: 1. Don’t confuse what you wish were true with what is really true. 2. Don’t worry about looking good—worry instead about achieving your goals. 3. Don’t overweight first-order consequences relative to second- and third-order ones. 4. Don’t let pain stand in the way of progress. 5. Don’t blame bad outcomes on anyone but yourself.
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
Humeyra believed there was something markedly similar about the experience of being overweight and being prone to melancholy. In both cases society blamed the sufferer. No other medical condition was regarded this way. People with any other illness received at least a degree of sympathy and moral support. Not the obese or the depressed. You could have controlled your appetite … You could have controlled your thoughts … But Humeyra knew neither her weight nor her habitual despondency was really a personal choice. Leila had understood this.
Elif Shafak (10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World)
I was just wondering: Is there some sort of diet you recommend? I know I need to lose weight, but I really don’t want to feel hungry. I do take diet pills every day. Thank you!” “Thanks, Francine,” Elizabeth said. “But I can clearly see that you are not overweight. Therefore, I have to assume you’ve been unduly influenced by the relentless imagery of the too-thin women that now fill our magazines, destroying your morale and submerging your self-worth. Instead of dieting and taking pills—” She paused. “Can I ask?” she said. “How many people in this audience take diet pills?
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
wife and children any more. I’m not even sure I know myself and what’s really important to me. I’ve had to ask myself—is it worth it? I’ve started a new diet—for the fifth time this year. I know I’m overweight, and I really want to change. I read all the new information, I set goals, I get myself all psyched up with a positive mental attitude and tell myself I can do it. But I don’t. After a few weeks, I fizzle. I just can’t seem to keep a promise I make to myself. I’ve taken course after course on effective management training. I expect a lot out of my employees and I work hard to be friendly toward them and to treat them right. But I don’t feel any loyalty from
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
Eleanor, I said to myself, sometimes you’re too quick to judge people. There are all kinds of reasons why they might not look like the kind of person you’d want to sit next to on a bus, but you can’t sum someone up in a ten-second glance. That’s simply not enough time. The way you try not to sit next to fat people, for example. There’s nothing wrong with being overweight, is there? They could be eating because they’re sad, the same way you used to drink vodka. They could have had parents who never taught them how to cook or eat healthily. They could be disabled and unable to exercise, or else they could have an illness that contributes to weight gain despite their best efforts. You just don’t know, Eleanor, I said to myself.
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
Indeed, in most countries today overeating has become a far worse problem than famine. In the eighteenth century Marie Antoinette allegedly advised the starving masses that if they ran out of bread, they should just eat cake instead. Today, the poor are following this advice to the letter. Whereas the rich residents of Beverly Hills eat lettuce salad and steamed tofu with quinoa, in the slums and ghettos the poor gorge on Twinkie cakes, Cheetos, hamburgers and pizza. In 2014 more than 2.1 billion people were overweight, compared to 850 million who suffered from malnutrition. Half of humankind is expected to be overweight by 2030.4 In 2010 famine and malnutrition combined killed about 1 million people, whereas obesity killed 3 million.5
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
Today I: smoke/am overweight/have a shitty attitude/am depressed because: my mom died of cancer/my uncle put his thumb up my butt/my dad hit me with a razor strop” seems kind of overly deterministic to Randy; it seems to reflect a kind of lazy or half-witted surrender to bald teleology. Basically, if everyone has a vested interest in believing that they understand everything, or even that people are capable in principle of understanding it (either because believing this dampens their insecurities about the unpredictable world, or makes them feel more intelligent than others, or both) then you have an environment in which dopey, reductionist, simple-minded, pat, glib-thinking can circulate, like wheelbarrows filled with inflated currency in the marketplaces of Jakarta.
Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
Much of the so-called environmental movement today has transmuted into an aggressively nefarious and primitive faction. In the last fifteen years, many of the tenets of utopian statism have coalesced around something called the “degrowth” movement. Originating in Europe but now taking a firm hold in the United States, the “degrowthers,” as I shall characterize them, include in their ranks none other than President Barack Obama. On January 17, 2008, Obama made clear his hostility toward, of all things, electricity generated from coal and coal-powered plants. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal . . . under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. . . .”3 Obama added, “. . . So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”4 Degrowthers define their agenda as follows: “Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions.”5 It “is an essential economic strategy to pursue in overdeveloped countries like the United States—for the well-being of the planet, of underdeveloped populations, and yes, even of the sick, stressed, and overweight ‘consumer’ populations of overdeveloped countries.”6 For its proponents and adherents, degrowth has quickly developed into a pseudo-religion and public-policy obsession. In fact, the degrowthers insist their ideology reaches far beyond the environment or even its odium for capitalism and is an all-encompassing lifestyle and governing philosophy. Some of its leading advocates argue that “Degrowth is not just an economic concept. We shall show that it is a frame constituted by a large array of concerns, goals, strategies and actions. As a result, degrowth has now become a confluence point where streams of critical ideas and political action converge.”7 Degrowth is “an interpretative frame for a social movement, understood as the mechanism through which actors engage in a collective action.”8 The degrowthers seek to eliminate carbon sources of energy and redistribute wealth according to terms they consider equitable. They reject the traditional economic reality that acknowledges growth as improving living conditions generally but especially for the impoverished. They embrace the notions of “less competition, large scale redistribution, sharing and reduction of excessive incomes and wealth.”9 Degrowthers want to engage in polices that will set “a maximum income, or maximum wealth, to weaken envy as a motor of consumerism, and opening borders (“no-border”) to reduce means to keep inequality between rich and poor countries.”10 And they demand reparations by supporting a “concept of ecological debt, or the demand that the Global North pays for past and present colonial exploitation in the Global South.”11
Mark R. Levin (Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future)
And then we went out to see the town. I was particularly eager to have a look at Gatlinburg because I had read about it in a wonderful book called The Lost Continent. In it the author describes the scene on Main Street thus: “Walking in an unhurried fashion up and down the street were more crowds of overweight tourists in boisterous clothes, with cameras bouncing on their bellies, consuming ice-creams, cotton candy, and corn dogs, sometimes simultaneously.” And so it was today. The same throngs of pear-shaped people in Reeboks wandered between food smells, clutching grotesque comestibles and bucket-sized soft drinks. It was still the same tacky, horrible place. Yet I would hardly have recognized it from just nine years before. Nearly every building I remembered had been torn down and replaced with something new—principally, mini-malls and shopping courts, which stretched back from the main street and offered a whole new galaxy of shopping and eating opportunities. In The Lost Continent I
Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail)
HUNGER AND OBESITY The change in diets around the world is also creating a global obesity epidemic—and in its wake a global diabetes epidemic—even as more than 900 million people in the world still suffer from chronic hunger. In the United States, where many global trends begin, the weight of the average American has increased by approximately twenty pounds in the last forty years. A recent study projects that half the adult population of the United States will be obese by 2030, with one quarter of them “severely obese.” At a time when hunger and malnutrition are continuing at still grossly unacceptable levels in poor countries around the world (and in some pockets within developed countries), few have missed the irony that simultaneously obesity is at record levels in developed countries and growing in many developing countries. How could this be? Well, first of all, it is encouraging to note that the world community has been slowly but steadily decreasing the number of people suffering from chronic hunger. Secondly, on a global basis, obesity has more than doubled in the last thirty years. According to the World Health Organization, almost 1.5 billion adults above the age of twenty are overweight, and more than a third of them are classified as obese. Two thirds of the world’s population now live in countries where more people die from conditions related to being obese and overweight than from conditions related to being underweight. Obesity represents a major risk factor for the world’s leading cause of death—cardiovascular diseases, principally heart disease and stroke—and is the major risk factor for diabetes, which has now become the first global pandemic involving a noncommunicable disease.* Adults with diabetes are two to four times more likely to suffer heart disease or a stroke, and approximately two thirds of those suffering from diabetes die from either stroke or heart disease.† The tragic increase in obesity among children is particularly troubling; almost 17 percent of U.S. children are obese today, as are almost 7 percent of all children in the world. One respected study indicates that 77 percent of obese children will suffer from obesity as adults. If there is any good news in the latest statistics, it is that the prevalence of obesity in the U.S. appears to be reaching a plateau, though the increases in childhood obesity ensure that the epidemic will continue to grow in the future, both in the U.S. and globally. The causes of this surge in obesity are both simple—in that people are eating too much and exercising
Al Gore (The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change)
After a series of promotions—store manager at twenty-two, regional manager at twenty-four, director at twenty-seven—I was a fast-track career man, a personage of sorts. If I worked really hard, and if everything happened exactly like it was supposed to, then I could be a vice president by thirty-two, a senior vice president by thirty-five or forty, and a C-level executive—CFO, COO, CEO—by forty-five or fifty, followed of course by the golden parachute. I’d have it made then! I’d just have to be miserable for a few more years, to drudge through the corporate politics and bureaucracy I knew so well. Just keep climbing and don't look down. Misery, of course, encourages others to pull up a chair and stay a while. And so, five years ago, I convinced my best friend Ryan to join me on the ladder, even showed him the first rung. The ascent is exhilarating to rookies. They see limitless potential and endless possibilities, allured by the promise of bigger paychecks and sophisticated titles. What’s not to like? He too climbed the ladder, maneuvering each step with lapidary precision, becoming one of the top salespeople—and later, top sales managers—in the entire company.10 And now here we are, submerged in fluorescent light, young and ostensibly successful. A few years ago, a mentor of mine, a successful businessman named Karl, said to me, “You shouldn’t ask a man who earns twenty thousand dollars a year how to make a hundred thousand.” Perhaps this apothegm holds true for discontented men and happiness, as well. All these guys I emulate—the men I most want to be like, the VPs and executives—aren’t happy. In fact, they’re miserable.  Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad people, but their careers have changed them, altered them physically and emotionally: they explode with anger over insignificant inconveniences; they are overweight and out of shape; they scowl with furrowed brows and complain constantly as if the world is conspiring against them, or they feign sham optimism which fools no one; they are on their second or third or fourth(!) marriages; and they almost all seem lonely. Utterly alone in a sea of yes-men and women. Don’t even get me started on their health issues.  I’m talking serious health issues: obesity, gout, cancer, heart attacks, high blood pressure, you name it. These guys are plagued with every ailment associated with stress and anxiety. Some even wear it as a morbid badge of honor, as if it’s noble or courageous or something. A coworker, a good friend of mine on a similar trajectory, recently had his first heart attack—at age thirty.  But I’m the exception, right?
Joshua Fields Millburn (Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists)
Chubby: A regular-size person who could lose a few, for whom you feel affection. Chubster: An overweight, adorable child. That kid from Two and a Half Men for the first couple of years. Fatso: An antiquated term, really. In the 1970s, mean sorority girls would call a pledge this. Probably most often used on people who aren’t even really fat, but who fear being fat. Fatass: Not usually used to describe weight, actually. This deceptive term is more a reflection of one’s laziness. In the writers’ room of The Office, an upper-level writer might get impatient and yell, “Eric, take your fat ass and those six fatasses and go write this B-story! I don’t want to hear any more excuses why the plot doesn’t make sense!” Jabba the Hutt: Star Wars villain. Also, something you can call yourself after a particularly filling Thanksgiving dinner that your aunts and uncles will all laugh really hard at. Obese: A serious, nonpejorative way to describe someone who is unhealthily overweight. Obeseotron: A nickname you give to someone you adore who has just stepped on your foot accidentally, and it hurts. Alternatively, a fat robot. Overweight: When someone is roughly thirty pounds too heavy for his or her frame. Pudgy: See “Chubby.” Pudgo: See “Chubster.” Tub o’ Lard: A huge compliment given by Depression-era people to other, less skinny people. Whale: A really, really mean way that teen boys target teen girls. See the following anecdote.
Mindy Kaling (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns))
(Owen speaks in all caps throughout the story) "SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY - NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING - I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE - JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM. LOOK AT HOW DESIREABLE SHE WAS! THAT'S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIREABLE, SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY - AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWYAS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY... THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN - DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER? DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN'T HAVE LOVED HER - THEY WERE JUST USING HER. THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL. THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL... BUT PEOPLE WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING JUST TO GET THE POWER; THEN THEY'LL USE THE POWER JUST TO GET A THRILL. MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN - MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN - SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. ..
John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany)
The Company We Keep So now we have seen that our cells are in relationship with our thoughts, feelings, and each other. How do they factor into our relationships with others? Listening and communicating clearly play an important part in healthy relationships. Can relationships play an essential role in our own health? More than fifty years ago there was a seminal finding when the social and health habits of more than 4,500 men and women were followed for a period of ten years. This epidemiological study led researchers to a groundbreaking discovery: people who had few or no social contacts died earlier than those who lived richer social lives. Social connections, we learned, had a profound influence on physical health.9 Further evidence for this fascinating finding came from the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Epidemiologists were interested in Roseto because of its extremely low rate of coronary artery disease and death caused by heart disease compared to the rest of the United States. What were the town’s residents doing differently that protected them from the number one killer in the United States? On close examination, it seemed to defy common sense: health nuts, these townspeople were not. They didn’t get much exercise, many were overweight, they smoked, and they relished high-fat diets. They had all the risk factors for heart disease. Their health secret, effective despite questionable lifestyle choices, turned out to be strong communal, cultural, and familial ties. A few years later, as the younger generation started leaving town, they faced a rude awakening. Even when they had improved their health behaviors—stopped smoking, started exercising, changed their diets—their rate of heart disease rose dramatically. Why? Because they had lost the extraordinarily close connection they enjoyed with neighbors and family.10 From studies such as these, we learn that social isolation is almost as great a precursor of heart disease as elevated cholesterol or smoking. People connection is as important as cellular connections. Since the initial large population studies, scientists in the field of psychoneuroimmunology have demonstrated that having a support system helps in recovery from illness, prevention of viral infections, and maintaining healthier hearts.11 For example, in the 1990s researchers began laboratory studies with healthy volunteers to uncover biological links to social and psychological behavior. Infected experimentally with cold viruses, volunteers were kept in isolation and monitored for symptoms and evidence of infection. All showed immunological evidence of a viral infection, yet only some developed symptoms of a cold. Guess which ones got sick: those who reported the most stress and the fewest social interactions in their “real life” outside the lab setting.12 We Share the Single Cell’s Fate Community is part of our healing network, all the way down to the level of our cells. A single cell left alone in a petri dish will not survive. In fact, cells actually program themselves to die if they are isolated! Neurons in the developing brain that fail to connect to other cells also program themselves to die—more evidence of the life-saving need for connection; no cell thrives alone. What we see in the microcosm is reflected in the larger organism: just as our cells need to stay connected to stay alive, we, too, need regular contact with family, friends, and community. Personal relationships nourish our cells,
Sondra Barrett (Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body's Inner Intelligence)
Hello, my name is Francine Luftson and I’m from San Diego! And I just want to say, I’m such a fan even if you don’t believe in God! I was just wondering: Is there some sort of diet you recommend? I know I need to lose weight, but I really don’t want to feel hungry. I do take diet pills every day. Thank you!” “Thanks, Francine,” Elizabeth said. “But I can clearly see that you are not overweight. Therefore, I have to assume you’ve been unduly influenced by the relentless imagery of the too-thin women that now fill our magazines, destroying your morale and submerging your self-worth. Instead of dieting and taking pills—” She paused. “Can I ask?” she said. “How many people in this audience take diet pills?” A few nervous hands went up. Elizabeth waited. Most of the other hands went up. “Stop taking those pills,” she demanded. “They’re amphetamines. They can lead to psychosis.” “But I don’t like to exercise,” Francine said. “Maybe you haven’t found the right exercise.” “I watch Jack LaLanne.” At the mention of Jack’s name, Elizabeth closed her eyes. “What about rowing?” she said, suddenly tired. “Rowing?” “Rowing,” she repeated, opening her eyes. “It’s a brutal form of recreation designed to test every muscle in your body and mind. It takes place before dawn, too often in the rain. It results in thick calluses. It broadens the arms, chest, and thighs. Ribs crack; hands blister. Rowers sometimes ask themselves, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ” “Jeepers,” Francine said, worried. “Rowing sounds awful!” Elizabeth looked confused. “My point is rowing precludes the need for both diet and pills. It’s also good for your soul.” “But I thought you didn’t believe in souls.” Elizabeth sighed. She closed her eyes again. Calvin. Are you actually saying women can’t row?
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
One afternoon, while watching TV with Lan, we saw a herd of buffalo run, single file, off a cliff, a whole steaming row of them thundering off the mountain in Technicolor. “Why they die themselves like that?” she asked, mouth open. Like usual, I made something up on the spot: “They don’t mean to, Grandma. They’re just following their family. That’s all. They don’t know it’s a cliff.” “Maybe they should have a stop sign then.” We had many stop signs on our block. They weren’t always there. There was this woman named Marsha down the street. She was overweight and had hair like a rancher’s widow, a kind of mullet cut with thick bangs. She would go door-to-door, hobbling on her bad leg, gathering signatures for a petition to put up stop signs in the neighborhood. She has two boys herself, she told you at the door, and she wants all the kids to be safe when they play. Her sons were Kevin and Kyle. Kevin, two years older than me, overdosed on heroin. Five years later, Kyle, the younger one, also overdosed. After that Marsha moved to a mobile park in Coventry with her sister. The stop signs remain. The truth is we don’t have to die if we don’t feel like it. Just kidding. — Do you remember the morning, after a night of snow, when we found the letters FAG4LIFE scrawled in red spray paint across our front door? The icicles caught the light and everything looked nice and about to break. “What does it mean?” you asked, coatless and shivering. “It says ‘Merry Christmas,’ Ma,” I said, pointing. “See? That’s why it’s red. For luck.” They say addiction might be linked to bipolar disorder. It’s the chemicals in our brains, they say. I got the wrong chemicals, Ma. Or rather, I don’t get enough of one or the other. They have a pill for it. They have an industry. They make millions. Did you know people get rich off of sadness? I want to meet the millionaire of American sadness. I want to look him in the eye, shake his hand, and say, “It’s been an honor to serve my country.
Ocean Vuong (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous)
GET MOVING People are often scared of the word exercise. We associate the word with pain, and we think of it as a chore. (And it can be--who likes going to the gym at 6 A.M.?) If that’s how you’re thinking, then you need to change your psychology. I don’t think of my body in terms of exercise; I think in terms of movement. Look at the actual word--I see it as “meant to move.” As human beings, going back to the beginning of civilization, we’ve had to move to survive. We had to throw spears to hunt, we had to prepare land to plant seeds, we had to gather firewood. Our bodies are hardwired to move. Not even TiVo can rewire those thousands of years of DNA. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s easy to forget: your body is connected to your mind and spirit. People say, “I’m miserable because I’m overweight” or “I’m overweight because I’m miserable,” but these two go hand in hand. I know when I drink to excess or put poisons in my body, the next day I’m not going to feel happy or inspired. The body is the vehicle that can help you reach your dreams. Keeping it moving, strong, and healthy paves the way to overall well-being. You can’t say you love yourself when you abuse yourself physically, and by not using your body, you’re abusing it. But here’s the first piece of good news: you don’t have to be in the gym to exercise. You just need to move--and keep moving. It can be anywhere, at any time. Sometimes I’ll do push-ups during a commercial break while watching TV. Sometimes I take a short walk, even around the block with my dog, just to break up my day. Your body wants to move; your body was created to move. You have to feed that. When you’re feeling miserable, your body is telling you to get on your feet. Moving makes you feel good. It helps you slay the demon of procrastination that lurks in the shadow of every human being. Most of us sleepwalk through life because we’re waiting for the perfect time, the perfect place, and the perfect opportunity to improve ourselves. Stop waiting. Start moving and keep moving.
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
what could Marilyn Monroe’s death ever have to do with me? “IT HAS TO DO WITH ALL OF US,” said Owen Meany, when I called him that night. “SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY—NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING—I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE—JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT’S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY—AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY,” he repeated; he was on a roll. I could hear Hester playing her guitar in the background, as if she were trying to improvise a folk song from everything he said. “AND THOSE MEN,” he said. “THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN—DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER? DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN’T HAVE LOVED HER—THEY WERE JUST USING HER, THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL. THAT’S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY—IT’S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD—THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL. THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT KENNEDY WAS: A MORALIST. BUT HE WAS JUST GIVING US A SNOW JOB, HE WAS JUST BEING A GOOD SEDUCER. I THOUGHT HE WAS A SAVIOR. I THOUGHT HE WANTED TO USE HIS POWER TO DO GOOD. BUT PEOPLE WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING JUST TO GET THE POWER; THEN THEY’LL USE THE POWER JUST TO GET A THRILL. MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN—MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN—SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY’RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. THAT’S WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU AND ME,” said Owen Meany. “WE’RE GOING TO BE USED.
John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany)
To appreciate the asymmetry between the possibility effect and the certainty effect, imagine first that you have a 1% chance to win $1 million. You will know the outcome tomorrow. Now, imagine that you are almost certain to win $1 million, but there is a 1% chance that you will not. Again, you will learn the outcome tomorrow. The anxiety of the second situation appears to be more salient than the hope in the first. The certainty effect is also more striking than the possibility effect if the outcome is a surgical disaster rather than a financial gain. Compare the intensity with which you focus on the faint sliver of hope in an operation that is almost certain to be fatal, compared to the fear of a 1% risk. The combination of the certainty effect and possibility effects at the two ends of the probability scale is inevitably accompanied by inadequate sensitivity to intermediate probabilities. You can see that the range of probabilities between 5% and 95% is associated with a much smaller range of decision weights (from 13.2 to 79.3), about two-thirds as much as rationally expected. Neuroscientists have confirmed these observations, finding regions of the brain that respond to changes in the probability of winning a prize. The brain’s response to variations of probabilities is strikingly similar to the decision weights estimated from choices. Probabilities that are extremely low or high (below 1% or above 99%) are a special case. It is difficult to assign a unique decision weight to very rare events, because they are sometimes ignored altogether, effectively assigned a decision weight of zero. On the other hand, when you do not ignore the very rare events, you will certainly overweight them. Most of us spend very little time worrying about nuclear meltdowns or fantasizing about large inheritances from unknown relatives. However, when an unlikely event becomes the focus of attention, we will assign it much more weight than its probability deserves. Furthermore, people are almost completely insensitive to variations of risk among small probabilities. A cancer risk of 0.001% is not easily distinguished from a risk of 0.00001%, although the former would translate to 3,000 cancers for the population of the United States, and the latter to 30.
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
Lesson one: Pack light unless you want to hump the eight around the mountains all day and night. By the time we reached Snowdonia National Park on Friday night it was dark, and with one young teacher as our escort, we all headed up into the mist. And in true Welsh fashion, it soon started to rain. When we reached where we were going to camp, by the edge of a small lake halfway up, it was past midnight and raining hard. We were all tired (from dragging the ridiculously overweight packs), and we put up the tents as quickly as we could. They were the old-style A-frame pegged tents, not known for their robustness in a Welsh winter gale, and sure enough by 3:00 A.M. the inevitable happened. Pop. One of the A-frame pegs supporting the apex of my tent broke, and half the tent sagged down onto us. Hmm, I thought. But both Watty and I were just too tired to get out and repair the first break, and instead we blindly hoped it would somehow just sort itself out. Lesson two: Tents don’t repair themselves, however tired you are, however much you wish they just would. Inevitably, the next peg broke, and before we knew it we were lying in a wet puddle of canvas, drenched to the skin, shivering, and truly miserable. The final key lesson learned that night was that when it comes to camping, a stitch in time saves nine; and time spent preparing a good camp is never wasted. The next day, we reached the top of Snowdon, wet, cold but exhilarated. My best memory was of lighting a pipe that I had borrowed off my grandfather, and smoking it with Watty, in a gale, behind the summit cairn, with the teacher joining in as well. It is part of what I learned from a young age to love about the mountains: They are great levelers. For me to be able to smoke a pipe with a teacher was priceless in my book, and was a firm indicator that mountains, and the bonds you create with people in the wild, are great things to seek in life. (Even better was the fact that the tobacco was homemade by Watty, and soaked in apple juice for aroma. This same apple juice was later brewed into cider by us, and it subsequently sent Chipper, one of the guys in our house, blind for twenty-four hours. Oops.) If people ask me today what I love about climbing mountains, the real answer isn’t adrenaline or personal achievement. Mountains are all about experiencing a shared bond that is hard to find in normal life. I love the fact that mountains make everyone’s clothes and hair go messy; I love the fact that they demand that you give of yourself, that they make you fight and struggle. They also induce people to loosen up, to belly laugh at silly things, and to be able to sit and be content staring at a sunset or a log fire. That sort of camaraderie creates wonderful bonds between people, and where there are bonds I have found that there is almost always strength.
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
THIS IS MY ABC BOOK of people God loves. We’ll start with . . .           A: God loves Adorable people. God loves those who are Affable and Affectionate. God loves Ambulance drivers, Artists, Accordion players, Astronauts, Airplane pilots, and Acrobats. God loves African Americans, the Amish, Anglicans, and Animal husbandry workers. God loves Animal-rights Activists, Astrologers, Adulterers, Addicts, Atheists, and Abortionists.           B: God loves Babies. God loves Bible readers. God loves Baptists and Barbershop quartets . . . Boys and Boy Band members . . . Blondes, Brunettes, and old ladies with Blue hair. He loves the Bedraggled, the Beat up, and the Burnt out . . . the Bullied and the Bullies . . . people who are Brave, Busy, Bossy, Bitter, Boastful, Bored, and Boorish. God loves all the Blue men in the Blue Man Group.           C: God loves Crystal meth junkies,           D: Drag queens,           E: and Elvis impersonators.           F: God loves the Faithful and the Faithless, the Fearful and the Fearless. He loves people from Fiji, Finland, and France; people who Fight for Freedom, their Friends, and their right to party; and God loves people who sound like Fat Albert . . . “Hey, hey, hey!”           G: God loves Greedy Guatemalan Gynecologists.           H: God loves Homosexuals, and people who are Homophobic, and all the Homo sapiens in between.           I: God loves IRS auditors.           J: God loves late-night talk-show hosts named Jimmy (Fallon or Kimmel), people who eat Jim sausages (Dean or Slim), people who love Jams (hip-hop or strawberry), singers named Justin (Timberlake or Bieber), and people who aren’t ready for this Jelly (Beyoncé’s or grape).           K: God loves Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye Kardashian. (Please don’t tell him I said that.)           L: God loves people in Laos and people who are feeling Lousy. God loves people who are Ludicrous, and God loves Ludacris. God loves Ladies, and God loves Lady Gaga.           M: God loves Ministers, Missionaries, and Meter maids; people who are Malicious, Meticulous, Mischievous, and Mysterious; people who collect Marbles and people who have lost their Marbles . . . and Miley Cyrus.           N: God loves Ninjas, Nudists, and Nose pickers,           O: Obstetricians, Orthodontists, Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, and Overweight Obituary writers,           P: Pimps, Pornographers, and Pedophiles,           Q: the Queen of England, the members of the band Queen, and Queen Latifah.           R: God loves the people of Rwanda and the Rebels who committed genocide against them.           S: God loves Strippers in Stilettos working on the Strip in Sin City;           T: it’s not unusual that God loves Tom Jones.           U: God loves people from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates; Ukrainians and Uruguayans, the Unemployed and Unemployment inspectors; blind baseball Umpires and shady Used-car salesmen. God loves Ushers, and God loves Usher.           V: God loves Vegetarians in Virginia Beach, Vegans in Vietnam, and people who eat lots of Vanilla bean ice cream in Las Vegas.           W: The great I AM loves will.i.am. He loves Waitresses who work at Waffle Houses, Weirdos who have gotten lots of Wet Willies, and Weight Watchers who hide Whatchamacallits in their Windbreakers.           X: God loves X-ray technicians.           Y: God loves You.           Z: God loves Zoologists who are preparing for the Zombie apocalypse. God . . . is for the rest of us. And we have the responsibility, the honor, of letting the world know that God is for them, and he’s inviting them into a life-changing relationship with him. So let ’em know.
Vince Antonucci (God for the Rest of Us: Experience Unbelievable Love, Unlimited Hope, and Uncommon Grace)
Yes, imagine looking like another person. Perhaps that was what we should do more often. Put yourself in their shoes was a familiar piece of advice, but it might be particularised into Imagine looking like her. That brought it home, because that was often the issue with how the world treated people. If you stood out, you were vulnerable. If you were excessively overweight, or very small, or if you walked in an odd way, then people treated you differently from the way they treated those who were none of those things. They might not do that so readily if they could imagine what it was to be you. And although there was no reason why the way you looked should be you, that was the way in which the world tended to see things. The way you looked could be taken as you, whatever was going on inside.
Alexander McCall Smith (The Geometry of Holding Hands (Isabel Dalhousie, #13))
And then there are our bodies. We live in a time where the majority of people in the Western world are massively overweight. In the United States, nearly seven in ten Americans are either overweight (defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as having a body mass index of 25.0 to 29.9) or obese (having a BMI of 30.0 or higher).
Anthony Robbins (MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (Tony Robbins Financial Freedom))
In Mexico, there have also been changes in the foods people eat as a result of NAFTA, particularly in the increased availability and consumption of high-calorie food.62 This has led to a spike in levels of obesity with, as noted in the introduction, the observation that the closer a family lives to the border with United States, the more likely it is that its children are overweight.
Raj Patel (Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System - Revised and Updated)
The people rushing around at the airport, the anxious drivers on the road, the overweight women at the university, the people shopping in the malls, all of them had their own stories. We take as much interest in their stories as we do in our own, as long as each story is taken on its own merit. Each story is, in the end, the story of human experience, of all of our lives slipping away.
Zülfü Livaneli (Serenade for Nadia)
When you’re overweight, your body becomes a matter of public record in many respects. Your body is constantly and prominently on display. People project assumed narratives onto your body and are not at all interested in the truth of your body, whatever that truth might be [...] People are quick to offer you statistics and information about the dangers of obesity, as if you are not only fat but also incredibly stupid, unaware, delusional about the realities of your body and a world that is vigorously inhospitable to that body. This commentary is often couched as concern, as people only having your best interests at heart. They forget that you are a person. You are your body, nothing more, and your body should damn well be less
Roxane Gay (Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body)
The Presence of Support In a change process, support is essential. Change takes place when we are surrounded by people who support our desire for change and growth, whether in our personal or our professional lives. Recent research has shown that a lot of what people desire in life, such as healthy lifestyles, is actually “contagious.” If they are surrounded by overweight people, for example, they have a much higher chance of being overweight. But if they are surrounded by people who are healthy, that is contagious as well. Their efforts are supported and not thwarted.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Saad Jalal Toronto Canada - Food allergies and intolerances. It will help you know which foods are safe to eat and the best way to avoid those that may cause a reaction. The nutritionist will ensure that you get the nutrition you need for your health and lifestyle. The nutritionist will help you know which foods are safe to eat and which ones to avoid. It will support you to plan your meals inside and outside the home, according to your lifestyle, it will help you maintain a healthy weight and obtain all the nutrients you need. it ensures that you will get the nutrients your body needs. Saad Jalal - In addition to providing tools to combat obesity and overweight, the work of nutritionists is essential for people to acquire good eating habits. To achieve this, resort to actions of prevention, rehabilitation, education, attention and health care.
Saad Jalal Toronto Canada
When you're overweight, your body becomes a matter of public record in many respects. Your body is constantly and prominently on display. People project assumed narratives onto your body and are not at all interested in the truth of your body, whatever that truth might be.
Roxane Gay (Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body)
However, when it comes to unrestricted access to super-stimulating versions of natural rewards, such as junk food,[170] the answer is no,[171] although certainly not every consumer gets hooked. The reason that highly stimulating versions of food and sexual arousal can hook us – even if we’re not otherwise susceptible to addiction – is that our reward circuitry evolved to drive us toward food and sex, not drugs or alcohol. Today’s high fat[172]/sugar foods[173] have hooked far more people into destructive patterns of behaviour than have illegal drugs. 70% of American adults are overweight, 37.7% obese.
Gary Wilson (Your Brain On Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction)
This is the most common form and generally has a gradual onset. Sufferers generally feel muscle weakness and deterioration, breakdown in cartilage, and possible bone spurs. This form comes with pain that can also progress but can also be relieved with rest. Osteoarthritis is a problem in feet when people are overweight due to the amount of pressure on the many joints in the foot.
dakotafootankle
Cousin Mike, the person most people believe put Richard on the path he traveled, died of a massive heart attack in April of 1995. He was overweight and still haunted by the ghosts of things he’d done in Vietnam, regularly using heroin. The Army gave Mike a hero’s burial with a twenty-one-gun salute.
Philip Carlo (The Night Stalker: The Disturbing Life and Chilling Crimes of Richard Ramirez)
Some people beginning kettlebell swings may start with no weight. Just doing the swings with your hands holding an imaginary weight is a great way to start and develop good form. The box squat where you squat back and down over a 20 inch box is another zero-weight exercise that helps strengthen muscles and prepare you for kettlebell swings. Swinging no weight or very light weight offers virtually everyone the opportunity to gain the benefits of kettlebell swings. Overweight individuals or those who have not exercised for a period are wise to get a feel for the swings with no weight.  Alternatively, a kettlebell of five pounds (2.3 kg) offers new users the feel and form of the weight and handles to grip.
Don Fitch (Get Fit, Get Fierce with Kettlebell Swings: Just 12 Minutes a Day to Lose Weight, Prevent Sitting Disease, Hone Your Body and Tone Your Booty!)
There are some great dancers in our grade; even some of the boys are particularly good. One boy named Alex has been dancing pretty much his entire life and is probably the best dancer in the whole school. When he was younger, he said that the other kids had bullied him and called him a girl as well as a heap of horrible names that he really didn’t want to mention. But I could see that everyone had finally developed a huge amount of respect for Alex and those who were still unaware of his talents were in for a big surprise. Hip hop is his specialty and he’s so cool to watch. I kept telling him that when he’s old enough, he should audition for “So You Think You Can Dance” and he told me that he’d really like to. As well as Alex, there’s another kid in our grade who is kind of overweight and dorky looking. But it turns out that he has an awesome voice. I had no idea that our school has so much talent and it certainly came as a huge surprise to find out that Liam can actually sing really well. The look of amazement when we heard his audition pretty much spread like wild fire. I even caught the teachers raising their eyebrows in astonishment. It just goes to show you that you can’t judge a book by its cover! I never really understood what that meant until hearing Liam sing. Now, I don’t think I’ll ever look at him in the same way again. It’s also a really big lesson for me. From now on, I will never judge a person by their looks alone. I’ll wait till I get to know them because I’ve found out that until you do get to know people, you really don’t know what type of person they are or what hidden talents they might have. Anyway, the musical was shaping up to be a huge success. The dance troupe we had put together was really coming along and we rehearsed during every lunch break and sometimes even after school. Then one afternoon, an amazing thing happened; Blake Jansen, who I’ve had a secret crush on since the fourth grade, turned up at rehearsals with his friend, Jack.
Katrina Kahler (Witch School / The Secret / I Shrunk My BF / Body Swap)
So DCI Hudson explained the legal niceties to me, and warned that he would be forced to arrest anyone who blocked the diggers. I said that I was sure he wouldn’t actually arrest anyone, and he agreed that this was true. So there we were, back to square one. Ron then asked DCI Hudson if he was proud of himself, and DCI Hudson replied that he was an overweight fifty-one-year-old divorcé, and so, by and large, no, he wasn’t. This made Donna smile. She likes him—not like that, but she likes him. I do too. I was going to say to him that he wasn’t overweight, but he actually is a bit, and as a nurse, it’s best to never sugarcoat things, even when your instinct is to be protective. Instead I told him he should never eat after six p.m.—that’s the key if you don’t want diabetes—and he thanked me. That’s when Ibrahim joined us and suggested that DCI Hudson might try Pilates, and Donna said that was something she would pay to see. Ian Ventham didn’t want to join in the fun, and told Donna and DCI Hudson that he paid their wages. Donna said in that case could she ask him about a pay rise, and that’s when Ventham started shouting the odds about this, that, and the other. People without a sense of humor will never forgive you for being funny. But that’s an aside. Anyway, Ibrahim, who is very good with this sort of thing—conflict and inadequate men and stalemates and so on—stepped in and offered to “thin the crowd out” to give everyone a bit of breathing space.
Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club)
Few people fear being overweight as much as they fear terrorism, even though statistically being obese is much more of a threat to your life than terrorism.
Andrew Smart (Autopilot: The Art and Science of Doing Nothing)
Let's consider an overweight person, who is obese not because of a medical condition, but simply through eating junk food and being a couch potato. If that person checks their weight, looks in the bathroom mirror, and says, "Look at me, I'm fat and ugly. I'll never lose this weight." Then that person has just shut themselves in the prison of their own negativity. Their prophecy will be self-fulfilling. They will continue to live a lifestyle of excess, thinking "What's the point, might as well enjoy it!
Michael T. Stevens (The Art Of Psychological Warfare: How To Skillfully Influence People Undetected And How To Mentally Subdue Your Enemies In Stealth Mode)
Darla, a third grader, was overweight, awkward, and a “crybaby.” She was such a prime target that half of the class bullied her, hitting her and calling her names on a daily basis—and winning one another’s approval for it. Several years later, because of Davis’s program, the bullying had stopped. Darla had learned better social skills and even had friends. Then Darla went to middle school and, after a year, came back to report what had happened. Her classmates from elementary school had seen her through. They’d helped her make friends and protected her from her new peers when they wanted to harass her. Davis also gets the bullies changing. In fact, some of the kids who rushed to Darla’s support in middle school were the same ones who had bullied her earlier. What Davis does is this. First, while enforcing consistent discipline, he doesn’t judge the bully as a person. No criticism is directed at traits. Instead, he makes them feel liked and welcome at school every day. Then he praises every step in the right direction. But again, he does not praise the person; he praises their effort. “I notice that you have been staying out of fights. That tells me you are working on getting along with people.” You can see that Davis is leading students directly to the growth mindset. He is helping them see their actions as part of an effort to improve. Even if the change was not intentional on the part of the bullies, they may now try to make it so.
Carol S. Dweck (Mindset: The New Psychology of Success)
sarcopenic obesity.” This is where men and women are clinically obese and overweight, but their muscle mass is so low, they’re weak and nonfunctional. They’re also more prone to degenerative diseases like osteoarthritis, more susceptible to metabolic disorders, and more likely to die young.
Tom Venuto (Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: Transform Your Body Forever Using the Secrets of the Leanest People in the World)
ChatGPT doesn’t even try to hide the biases it has learned from its radical pro-socialist masters. The New York Post put it through a series of tasks that made this point abundantly clear: 12 • ChatGPT would “gladly tell a joke about men, but jokes about women were deemed ‘derogatory or demeaning.’” • Jokes about overweight people were not allowed. • It would tell you a joke about Jesus, but it refused to joke about Allah. • It refused to write anything positive about fossil fuels. • It was “happy” to write a fictional tale about Hillary Clinton winning the 2016 election, but it said it “would not be appropriate” to write a fictional story about Trump winning in 2020. These and similar findings have led many people, like National Review’s Nate Hochman, to distrust ChatGPT and its AI technology because of their “brazen efforts to suppress or silence viewpoints that dissent from progressive orthodoxy.
Craig Huey (The Great Deception: 10 Shocking Dangers and the Blueprint for Rescuing The American Dream)
If a lot of people are suffering because of a few people, why didn’t the majority do something about it a long time ago? Why’d everyone let it get so bad?” “If you drop a lobster in a pot of boiling water,” Zyrha tells him, “it’ll thrash around for its life.” “Wouldn’t we all?” Darrion smirks. “If you drop the lobster in a pot of cool water and slowly raise the temperature, it’ll die without a struggle. It’ll get used to the incremental increases until it’s too late to know it’s dead. You asked how we got here. The temperature had been rising in the Old States for a long time. People were dying left and right without a struggle. A few leaders had control over everything: money, power, the military, health care, schools, utilities, transportation, laws, courts, and the media. They had everything. Everything except the one thing every person in power needs.” “What’s that?” Darrion asks through a strained quiver. “An enemy.” “An enemy,” he repeats. “The question became which one. There were so many to choose from.” Zyrha claps her hands and gives a sarcastic laugh. “Black people. Brown people. Asians. Mexicans. Arabs. Women. The biracial. The multiracial. Old people. Young people. Short people. The overweight, the underweight, the sick, the helpless, the homeless, the unemployed. The asexual, the bisexual, the homosexual, the transgendered. People with special needs. The neurodivergent. Pot-smokers. Immigrants. Socialists. Communists. Atheists. Jews. Muslims. Intellectuals. Influencers. Athletes. Academics. Writers. Pacifists. Celebrities.” Zyrha pauses to draw in a long breath. “They were all contrived of course. They were invented enemies designed to occupy the amygdala—that’s the brain’s fear center—so the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for rational thought and good decision-making—wouldn’t take over. Anyway, there’d been a lot of manufactured enemies, and, frankly, they’d been done to death.
K.A. Riley (Endgame (The Amnesty Games #3))
Dr Saurabh Patel-Best Piles Doctor in Ahmedabad Piles are the swollen and enlarged viens that form inside and outside of the anus and rectum. This can make person uncomfortable and cause lot’s of pain and also cause rectum bleeding. They are common and affect people of all the age. Piles can be of different sizes. If you have any problem related to the piles then you can consult the doctor Dr. Saurabh Patel who is the Best Piles Doctor in Ahmedabad. Causes of Piles: People who are at risk of getting piles: 1. Who are more overweight/obese. 2. Pregnant Women 3. People don’t eat fiber rich diet. 4. Have chronic constipation or diarrhea. 5. People lift objects which are very heavy. 6. Strain while having bowel movements. Symptoms of Piles: 1) When you poo there is right red blood. 2) An itchy anus. 3) You still feel like going to the Poo after going to the toilet. 4) When you wipe the bottom portion then there is mucus in your underwear or toilet paper. 5) Pain and Lumps around your anus. Prevention: 1) Eat fiber rich food and keep yourself hydrated to make it easier for the stool to pass. 2) Avoid Straining when you pass the stool. 3) You should avoid lifting the heavy objects as it can cause the risk of developing the piles. 4) You should maintain the proper weight. 5) You should exercise regularly which can help you to keep yourself active and helps you to reduce the risk of developing the piles. Piles Diagnosis: First the doctor will examine you and ask the symptoms if you have of Piles. They insert the fingers with gloves into the anus to feel the rectum and if there is any lumps present there. The Physician may also recommend patient to get the blood test done if you are suffering from anaemia. Piles Treatment: At Home: 1) Eat fiber rich foods like fruit, vegetables, and grains. 2) Drink more water and don’t strain the bowl movement. 3) Apply ice packs which can help to ease the pain and the swelling. Surgical Treatment: If you have larger piles or if the treatment have not helped then then you have to go for the surgery. Your doctor will: 1) Inject chemicals into the piles which will shrink it. 2) Use a laser to seal off the vessels that provide blood to the hemorrhoid. 3) Place a tiny rubber band around it to block its blood supply. 4) Use a staple to cut off its blood flow.
Dr Saurabh Patel
These are people living somewhere between hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers. Lindeberg wrote, “Cultivated tubers (mainly yam, sweet potato and taro) are staples, supplemented by fruits, leaves, [coconuts], fish, maize, tapioca and beans.” All less calorically dense foods, save for the occasional coconut. About 70 percent of their calories come from carbohydrates—so you could say the Kitavans have a high-carb diet—and they eat around 2,200 calories a day, despite having plenty of food in storage. Critically, Lindeberg reported, the Kitavans eat no processed, higher-density foods. He found no overweight Kitavans and zero indications of heart disease or evidence that any Kitavan had ever had a heart attack or stroke. The majority of people he tested were over 50 years old. A handful even reached past 90—quite a feat without modern medicine.
Michael Easter (The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self)
The uniformed officer stood in her path. ‘Sorry, love, there’s been an accident.’ His voice not quite rude, but obviously irritated, because the stupid, overweight woman hadn’t realized earlier that he was turning people away. She pulled out her warrant card, feeling a ridiculous moment of triumph because she’d found it immediately.
Ann Cleeves (The Seagull (Vera Stanhope #8))
Epidemiological studies have established that people who sleep less are the same individuals who are more likely to be overweight or obese.
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
You shouldn’t spend your time listening to the advice of people who have never done what you want to do. You should never get fitness tips from an over-weight trainer, business tips from your broke Uncle Jim, or marital tips from someone who has been divorced three times. If you think like a successful entrepreneur and do what a successful entrepreneur does wouldn’t you become successful? If you only get your advice from some college professor or academic who has never achieved business or financial success, isn’t it likely that you will never achieve success as well? My friend you need to listen to a successful entrepreneur.
Clay Clark (The Wheel of Wealth - An Entrepreneur's Action Guide)
Overweight people often get stigmatized as lazy and lacking discipline," Blaisdell said. "We interpret our results as suggesting that the idea commonly portrayed in the media that people become fat because they are lazy is wrong.
Anonymous
More than half of the people with sleep apnea are overweight, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Alex Brecher (The BIG Book on the Gastric Sleeve: Everything You Need To Know To Lose Weight and Live Well with the Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy (The BIG Books on Weight Loss Surgery 2))
Consider the recent uncontrolled experiment in which approximately 200 million adults in the United States have been encouraged to consume higher levels of dietary carbohydrate in place of fat. In the same time frame, more than half of us have ended up overweight or obese. The results from this national level experience point us to the logical conclusion that the ability to remain healthy with increasing levels of carbohydrate is limited to a subset of the population. Therefore determining who those people are and what characteristics give them the ability to consume carbohydrate without untoward effects is a major question that can and should be addressed.
Jeff S. Volek (The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable)
Even for people who are overweight, I recommend one ounce of raw, unsalted seeds or nuts per day, such as sesame seeds, sunflower seed, flaxseeds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, pistachio nuts, or almonds.
Joel Fuhrman (Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss)
An overweight Maine coon cat dozed in an open bedroom window, his bulk pressed against the screen so that the gentle breeze of the summer night could ruffle his long yellow fur. With a start, he went on alert. A moment later, he leapt from the windowsill to the top of the dresser and from there to the foot of the bed. He landed squarely on Liss MacCrimmon Ruskin's bare legs.
Kaitlyn Dunnett (Kilt at the Highland Games (Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries #10))
At the Harvard Symposium for Hard Problems in Social Science , Emily Oster presented a very simple, elementary problem: almost all people with type-2 diabetes who are overweight can be cured by losing a little bit of weight. They are made aware of it, yet they usually gain weight a�er diagnosis (she mentioned "Atkins" among the options, so it was not just AMA low-fat.). It is so obvious that we know what to do yet do not carry the action because thinking can be largely ornamental. The proof of the sterility of (a significant class of) knowledgesterility of (a significant class of) knowledge was right there (among the obvious evidence that the population has been gaining weight in spire of technological and educational progress). Yet the others social scientists kept exalting the value of "education" in spite of this simple devastating evidence. Someone even suggested teaching more "critical thinking". This is the great sucker problem: people who teach truly think that teaching, or, worse, preaching, cures.
Nassim Taleb
for the vast majority of people, being overweight is not caused by how much they eat but by what they eat. The idea that people get heavy because they consume a high volume of food is a myth. Eating large amounts of the right food is your key to success and is what makes this plan workable for the rest of your life.
Joel Fuhrman (Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss)
No names. I didn’t know people. I grabbed whatever characteristics I could: crooked or fluorescent teeth, tattoos, accents, lipsticks, I even recognized some people by their gait. It’s not that my trailers were withholding information. I was just so stupid that I couldn’t learn table numbers and names at the same time….Everyone had been there years. There were senior servers who would never leave. Debutante-Smile, Guy-with-Clark-Kent-Glasses, Guy-with-Long-Hair-and-Bun, Overweight-Gray-Hair-Guy. Even the backwaiters had been there at least three years. There was Mean-Girl, and Russian-Pouty-Lips, and my first trailer, whom I called Sergeant because of the way he ordered me around.
Stephanie Danler (Sweetbitter)
Mark is a walking dilemma, one of those people who’s hard to figure out. He is an unmarried Christian professional man with no “horrible” problems like drugs, sex, or compulsive addictions. He’s intelligent, athletic, and good-looking. He’s responsible and loves God. Mark is forty-five years old. And he has no friends, safe or otherwise. He is very, very alone. How does that picture come together? On the outside, it doesn’t make sense. A guy with Mark’s qualities should have a rich, active relational life. But when you understand the power of perfectionism, it makes “perfect” sense. For Mark is a perfectionist and has only recently seen the devastating consequences of this trait. Sometimes we make jokes about our perfectionism: “I looked in the mirror and got depressed about being three pounds overweight.” The genuine article, however, can be much more serious. Perfectionism can be a major cause of depression, destructive behaviors, and divorce. What is perfectionism? Simply put, it’s an inability to tolerate faults. Perfectionists have a phobia about imperfections and blemishes in themselves, in other people, and in the world. They spend enormous amounts of time trying to create a perfect world, running in futility from the realities of sin, age, loss, and cellulite. The perfectionist tries to live in the land of ideals. He sees life the way “it should be.” People should treat each other right. I should be a productive, successful person. Fairness and equality should rule. Then he sees the huge chasm between the land of ideals and the land of the real. For example, he cannot live up to his expectations of himself. Or he is let down by someone important to him. And he has great difficulty accepting where he lives—the land of the real. So he tries to change his permanent address to ideal-land again.
Henry Cloud (Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't)
Though most cells in your body can metabolize glucose quickly, fructose is processed primarily in the liver, where most of it turns to fat. From there, it takes a direct route to your love handles. Though our forebears did okay with the small amount of natural fructose present in fruits, today we’re taking in massively greater amounts. Frankly, our bodies weren’t made to deal with it, as a recent study makes crystal clear.5 Two groups of overweight people were told to eat their usual diet. Individuals in one group had to consume one-quarter of their daily calories as a specially made beverage sweetened with glucose. People in the other group had to consume an otherwise identical beverage sweetened with fructose. There were no other dietary requirements or limitations. As expected, everyone gained weight, but only the fructose-consuming subjects gained fat in the tummy—the most dangerous place to carry extra weight. They also showed increases in insulin resistance plus significantly higher levels of triglycerides. None of these indicators was present in the glucose group. Pass up any product that lists HFCS as an ingredient.
Eric C. Westman (The New Atkins for a New You: The Ultimate Guide to Shedding Pounds and Feeling Great)
All overweight and obese people have a disrupted circadian rhythm leading to weight gain and a multitude of health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease. The weight and health of the body depend largely on how well the circadian clock is working.
Diana Polska (One Meal a Day Diet: Lose Weight Fast for Women and Men - Lose 1 Pound a Day and Lose 10 Pounds in a Week)
Most overweight people are unable to estimate proper portion sizes, which results in excessive calorie intake.15 Therefore, to limit excess food and calorie intake at dinnertime, drink a liquid meal. Studies have found that liquid meals help individuals lose weight.16 17
Diana Polska (One Meal a Day Diet: Intermittent Fasting and High Intensity Interval Training For Weight Loss)
Read the ministry of Christ from a visual perspective. Note that Jesus is always moving—always making choices. Sometimes we let life happen to us. We blame people for who we are and our shortcomings. We live out generational curses that our daddies passed down or our mothers passed down, accepting it as the only way. You know how we do that. ‘That’s just the way my family is.’ ‘Everybody’s divorced,’ or ‘Everybody has children out of wedlock,’ or ‘Everybody is overweight.’ ‘Nobody ever goes to college.’ That’s the choice of death to accept failure. The choice of life is to exercise your faith, through action and with courage, to seek to transform who you are and to make sure it lines up with God’s will.
Rhonda McKnight (What Kind of Fool (Urban Books))
THE APPROACHING TSUNAMI OF OBESITY-RELATED DISEASE Stories about obesity appear regularly in the media, but what gets lost in all the attention is just how quickly this epidemic has emerged. Fifty years ago, 13 percent of adults in the United States had a BMI in the obese range.22 Today, that figure is 35 percent. An additional 34 percent are overweight, leaving fewer than one in three adults in the normal weight range.23 The epidemic has spared no segment of society or region of the country, although people in lower-income communities and belonging to some racial-ethnic groups have suffered most severely.
David Ludwig (Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently)
People, Win knew, made snap judgments based on appearances. No great insight there. And yes, there were the obvious prejudices against African-Americans or Jews or what-have-you. But Win was more concerned with the more garden-variety prejudices. If, for example, you see an overweight woman eating a doughnut, you are repulsed. You make snap judgments—she is undisciplined, lazy, sloppy, probably stupid, definitely lacking in self-esteem. In
Harlan Coben (Promise Me (Myron Bolitar, #8))
for the vast majority of people, being overweight is not caused by how much they eat but by what they eat.
Matt Stone (Diet Recovery: Restoring Hormonal Health, Metabolism, Mood, and Your Relationship with Food (Diet Recovery #1))
But I also like myself, my personality, my weirdness, my sense of humor, my wild and deep romantic streak, how I love, how I write, my kindness and my mean streak. It is only now, in my forties, that I am able to admit that I like myself, even though I am nagged by this suspicion that I shouldn't. For so long, I gave in to my self.loathing. I refused to allow myself the simple pleasure of accepting who I am and how I live and love and think and see the world. But then, I got older and I cared less about what other people think. I got older and realized I was exhausted by all my self-loathing and that I was hating myself, in part, because I assumed that's what other people expected from me, as if my self-hatred was the price I needed to pay for living in an overweight body. It was much, much easier to just try and shut out all of the noise, and to try and forgive myself for the mistakes I made in high school and college and throughout my twenties, to have some empathy for why I made those mistakes.
Roxane Gay (Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body)
Wow" is all I can say. I'm amazed. It never occurred to me to change the clothes to fit me. I always thought it had to be the other way around. And it never occurred to me that people who aren't overweight could have trouble with the off the rack sizes.
K.A. Barson
When you’re overweight, your body becomes a matter of public record in many respects. Your body is constantly and prominently on display. People project assumed narratives onto your body and are not at all interested in the truth of your body, whatever that truth might be. Fat,
Roxane Gay (Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body)
the risk ratio for heart disease in people who are overweight or obese is between 1.1 and 2, meaning their risk of developing heart disease is the same as or only slightly higher than the risk for people with “normal” BMIs.
Harriet Brown (Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight—and What We Can Do about It)
Of all the people in the universe, the overweight are the most conscious of personal space. We never want you to have to rub up against us. It’s possible that feeling never goes away, even if you lose weight.
Kelly deVos (Fat Girl on a Plane: A Spirited YA Contemporary Novel of Self-Discovery in New York City)
Most studies comparing normal and overweight people suggest that those who are overweight eat fewer calories than those of normal weight.” Researchers and public-health officials nonetheless insist that obesity is caused by overeating, without attempting to explain how these two notions can be reconciled.
Gary Taubes (Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease)
Cecilia did not know why her three slender daughters loved watching overweight people sweat and cry and starve.
Liane Moriarty (The Husband's Secret)
There is overwhelming evidence that obesity increases risks of heart disease and diabetes, frequently leading to premature death. It would be quite fantastic to suggest that everyone is choosing the right diet, or a diet that is preferable to what might be produced with a few nudges. Of course, sensible people care about the taste of food, not simply about health, and eating is a source of pleasure in and of itself. We do not claim that everyone who is overweight is necessarily failing to act rationally, but we do reject the claim that all or almost all Americans are choosing their diet optimally.
Cass R. Sunstein (Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness)
We all harbor irreconcilable ideas. (People are no damn good, but I’m a fine fellow. Being overweight is a grave threat to my health; please pass the doughnuts. Life is short; let’s watch TV.) Yet most of us get along pretty well.
Randy Cohen (Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything)
Most of the time, the reason people are overweight is too little physical activity, in conjunction with a high-calorie, low-nutrient diet.
Joel Fuhrman (Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss)
I realized that patients with obesity and patients with anorexia, including those who were severely underweight, had far more in common metabolically than most people would ever suspect. Their blood work showed that both their bodies thought they were starving. How could someone’s overweight body feel it was as starving as someone’s underweight body?
Emily Cooper
Today, a third of the world’s population relies on small-scale farming for their livelihoods. 4 And while agriculture today produces more than enough food to feed everyone on earth, a third of it is wasted; 5 more than 1.4 billion people are overweight, and almost 900 million people go to bed hungry each night
Anonymous
Someone starts out sedentary, overweight, and somewhat insulin resistant. They set out to improve their health and lose some weight by following a low-carb diet. It works great. They lose weight, their insulin sensitivity improves, and their energy is through the roof. They start exercising, which helps them lose some more weight, as well as build some lean muscle mass. Now they are really into it, and the frequency and intensity of their training increases. This individual is now at a healthy weight (or relatively lean), is exercising regularly, and has better insulin sensitivity. They are a completely different person, metabolically speaking, then when they started. But the problem is they are no longer properly fueling their body and recovering from their intense training sessions (which were once non-existent). They are starting to feel tired and fatigued in the gym, are always in a bad mood, are holding on to stubborn body fat, can’t sleep at night, get sick all of the time, and are maybe having some sexual performance and hormonal issues. Their diet no longer matches their new activity levels and current metabolic condition, because those have completely changed over time. If this person objectively looked at their situation and progress and listened to their own body and biofeedback, they would consider some dietary adjustments. A moderate-to-higher carb intake might be a better fit. But some people will cling to a diet that initially gave them good results, and got them from Point A to Point B, thinking it will get them from Point B to Point C. I’ve been there myself. Part of it is initial experience, part of it is marketing material, and part of it is pure emotion. It doesn’t always work that way for continued progress.
Nate Miyaki (The Truth about Carbs: How to Eat Just the Right Amount of Carbs to Slash Fat, Look Great Naked, & Live Lean Year-Round)
Bruxism” is what dentists call the nighttime habit of grinding your teeth until the enamel is worn down. And as many overweight people often eat under stress, chewing gum can slow down this mechanical swing toward eating whenever you feel under pressure.
Pierre Dukan (The Dukan Diet: 2 Steps to Lose the Weight, 2 Steps to Keep It Off Forever)
The BMI (Body Mass Index) is accurate in telling if you’re overweight. The BMI’s only applicable if the person is incredibly underweight or overweight. You don’t need the BMI for that because your eyes can easily tell if a person is malnourished or not. A mathematician called Adolph Quetelet in a social physics class created the BMI. He was not a doctor or a dietician. Furthermore, are you going to trust a guy called Adolph?
James Egan (The Mega Misconception Book (Things People Believe That Aren't True 5))
The media wants to put out a perception that being overweight is the new goal when it’s actually unhealthy ... it’s actually clinically unhealthy. and for people to promote that, it’s demonic.
Kanye West
In short, the invention of agriculture caused the human food supply to increase in quantity and deteriorate in quality, but food industrialization multiplied this effect. Over the las hundred years, people have developed many technologies to produce orders of magnitude more food that is usually nutrient poor but calorie rich. Since the Industrial Revolution began about twelve generations ago, these changes have enabled us to feed more than an order of magnitude more people and to feed them more. Although approximately 800 million people today still face shortages of food, more than 1.6 billion people are overweight or obese.
Daniel E. Lieberman (The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease)
But we’re just trading idols: we’re just moving the mold to a different room in the house. This is salvation by carving a piece of creation (job, beauty, money, etc.). We may be failures, we may be guilty, we may be foolish, we may make mistakes, we may be overweight, we may be ugly—but at least we have friends! at least we wear the right clothes! at least we have a membership at the gym! at least we celebrate our oddity, our perversion, our dysfunction, by hanging out with other people who have the same problem! In other words, this is authenticity by self-justification, by the justice of man. But everybody still ends up buried in the ground. And none of those friends can keep your heart beating. None of the smiles can keep your skin from wrinkling. None of those clubs can prevent cancer or Alzheimer’s. We need a better source of authenticity. This is why the answer to all insecurity and all failure is Jesus. Jesus is your righteousness.
Toby J. Sumpter (Blood-Bought World: Jesus, Idols, and the Bible)
We live in an extremely individualistic culture, where we are constantly pushed to see our problems as individual failings, and to seek out individual solutions. You’re unable to focus? Overweight? Poor? Depressed? We are taught in this culture to think: That’s my fault. I should have found a personal way to lift myself up and out of these environmental problems. Now, whenever I feel that way, I think about the mothers in Rochester whose kids were being poisoned by lead, and they were simply told they should dust their homes more, or that their kids had a “perverted” desire to suck on chunks of lead paint. We can see clearly now there was a huge problem with a deep cause in the environment—and yet the primary response was to tell people to throw all their energy into a frantic individual displacement activity that made no difference at all, or (even worse) to blame their own poisoned children.
Johann Hari (Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again)
On the face of it, it seems preposterous to think that walking doesn’t help with weight loss. Recall that energy balance is the difference between the calories one ingests and the calories one spends. You probably burn roughly 50 calories more by walking a two-thousand-step mile than driving the same distance. So trudging ten thousand additional steps a day (five miles) will expend a respectable extra 250 calories per day.30 To be sure, those ten thousand added steps might make you hungrier, but if you snack sensibly and consume 100 calories less than you walked off, those supplementary steps will eventually amount to a deficit of about 3,000 calories a month. That amount is just shy of 3,500 calories, the supposed number of calories in a pound of fat according to a much-cited, overly simplistic, and inaccurate 1958 study.31 Further, low- to moderate-intensity activities like walking burn relatively more fat than carbohydrates (hence the “fat-burning zones” on some exercise machines).32 As a result, lots of people try to trudge away extra pounds. Biological systems such as bodies are messy, and anyone who has struggled to lose weight knows that simple theories rarely apply to the convoluted realities of weight loss. What works for one person fails for another, and while many people successfully shed pounds when they start a new weight-loss plan, satisfaction often turns to frustration as the initial rate of weight loss diminishes and then reverses. Study after study has shown that overweight or obese people prescribed standard doses of exercise for a few months usually lose at most a few pounds. For example, one experiment with the clever acronym DREW (Dose Response to Exercise in Women) assigned 464 women to 0, 70, 140, and 210 minutes of slow walking a week (140 minutes is about five added miles). Apart from their prescribed exercise, the women took about five thousand additional steps per day as they went about their normal activities. After six months, those prescribed the standard 140 minutes a week lost only five pounds, while those assigned 210 minutes lost a paltry three pounds (more on this unexpected result below).33 Other controlled studies on overweight men and women report similarly modest losses.34
Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
To what extent and in what circumstances physical activity shifts metabolisms thus offsetting efforts to lose weight remains to be elucidated, but the fact remains that many studies have shown that exercise, including walking, can lead to weight loss. But to do so, one needs to walk considerably more than half an hour per day for many months. In addition, people who exercise more may compensate metabolically, negating some of the effects of added physical activity. Finally, it truly is faster and it’s often easier to lose weight by dieting because everyone needs to eat but no one has to exercise, and not eating five hundred calories of energy-rich food (four slices of bacon) requires less time and effort than walking five miles a day. Please, I do not wish to trivialize how hard it is to exercise if one is unfit and overweight: it can be uncomfortable, unpleasant, and disheartening, and disabilities can make it challenging or impossible. But for those unwilling or unable to run, swim, or do other vigorous exercises, walking remains an inexpensive and pleasant way to get a moderate and useful dose of physical activity. Even more important, regardless of how one initially loses weight, keeping the weight off almost always demands physical activity. The majority of dieters who do not exercise regain about half their lost pounds within a year, and thereafter the rest typically creeps back slowly but surely. Exercise, however, vastly increases the chances of maintaining weight loss.49 One example of this payoff comes from an experiment conducted here in Boston. When doctors put 160 overweight police officers on low-calorie diets for eight weeks, some with and some without exercise, all the officers lost sixteen to thirty pounds (seven to thirteen kilograms) with the ones who exercised losing slightly more. But once the crash diet was over and the policemen went back to their normal diets, only the officers who continued to exercise avoided weight regain; all the rest regained most or all of the pounds they initially lost.50 Many other studies confirm that physical activity, including walking, helps keep those lost pounds off.51 Maybe those ten thousand steps a day aren’t such a bad idea after all….
Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
It became very clear that the kind of jurors we wanted were overweight women. Most people can’t empathize with a sex tape, but overweight women are sensitive about their bodies and feel like they have been bullied on the internet. Men don’t have that problem. Attractive women don’t have that problem. They haven’t been body shamed,
Ryan Holiday (Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue)
IT BLOWS ME AWAY EVERY TIME I walk into a nice home and meet its proud, overweight, out-of-shape owner. They just don’t get it. Your real home is not your apartment or your house or your city or even your country, but your body. It is the only thing you, your soul and your mind, will always live inside of so long as you walk the earth. It is the single most important physical thing in this world you can take care of. We have a choice: To take care of ourselves, or to simply let time make us worse. And it is right now, at this moment, not later, that we must make this decision. Most people in this world choose to lose. They drag themselves through a second-rate life, overweight and under-energetic. They just let time take its toll. Their waistline increases and their height decreases as they get older and their backs hurt and hunch. Eventually their mobility becomes limited. And they meet their maker well before they should. Then there are the others, the minority who decide to really, truly do something about their health. They exercise, and they watch what they eat, not obsessively, only just enough. They have an understanding of nutritional basics, and workout about 20 – 30 minutes a day, 4 – 5 times a week–less than 1.2% of their time–because that is all they will ever need. They meet life’s obstacles with physical, mental, and spiritual strength. They care about how they look, and they look good. They thrive on the energy exercise gives them every day. How it washes away so many of the bad things in life–depression, anxiety, nervousness, tension, boredom, impatience. It lets them think easily and clearly. They know how much worse their lives would be if they did not exercise, so they simply don’t let that happen. They are in control, not their excuses.
Mark Lauren (You Are Your Own Gym: The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises)
Being overweight, especially in the nineties before the antibullying, body-positivity era of today, invited a lot of commentary and critique. I want to say something here before I go any further, today IS better. I don’t mean to make light of body positivity, it’s important and anyone who today feels more comfortable in their skin than they did when the only standard of beauty was a supermodel, I applaud you. For too long we walked around seeing beautiful people in all shapes and sizes that literally had no representation and today it’s drastically better. But being overweight when I was overweight was different.
Josh Peck (Happy People Are Annoying: A Candid Coming-of-Age Memoir of Redemption and Self-Awareness)
While overweight people who exercise and are physically fit lessen their risk of chronic disease, if you must choose between being fit and fat or unfit and lean, the evidence overwhelmingly indicates you should gamble on being unfit and lean.10 One of the largest efforts to tease apart the independent effects of physical inactivity and weight is the Nurses’ Health Study, a prodigious undertaking begun in 1976 that has tracked the habits, health, and deaths of more than 100,000 nurses who volunteered to share their life and death experiences with Harvard researchers. Among the many lessons learned is that nurses of the same weight who are physically active have mortality rates (deaths per year) about 50 percent lower than those who are inactive, while nurses who are similarly active but obese have 90 percent higher mortality rates than those who are lean.11 If so, obesity has nearly twice the effect on death rates as physical inactivity. Even better is to avoid both risk factors: nurses who are lean and fit have 2.4 times lower mortality rates than those who are obese and unfit. All in all, being active doesn’t cancel out the higher risk of death associated with obesity, but being active is still beneficial if one is obese. This is an important message because so many people struggle to lose weight but can still manage to exercise. In doing so, they lessen or counteract many harmful consequences of obesity such as chronic inflammation.
Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
•I’ve started a new diet—for the fifth time this year. I know I’m overweight, and I really want to change. I read all the new information, I set goals, I get myself all psyched up with a positive mental attitude and tell myself I can do it. But I don’t. After a few weeks, I fizzle. I just can’t seem to keep a promise I make to myself.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
Most people are eating too much and exercising too little. If you cannot get the food down, then the exercise must go up.
Steven Magee
The underconfident, people-pleasing, overweight, stuck on one path, bad with money, judgmental kid.
Ankur Warikoo (Do Epic Shit)
In Canada, an estimated one in three people lives with at least one chronic disease. Conditions that appeared to increase the risk and severity of COVID-19 included type 2 diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other heart conditions, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), chronic kidney disease and cancer. All of these conditions have been shown to be associated with inadequate diets and malnutrition, either as a cause or consequence of the disease. We normally associate the word "malnutrition" with undernutrition or starvation. However, malnutrition also applies to overconsumption of calories, protein or fat and frequently results in overweight or obesity. A well-primed immune response depends on good nutrition to function, and malnutrition is known to increase susceptibility to infections. In turn, infection can aggravate malnutrition, since it increases the body's demand for nutrients. This creates a vicious cycle, further increasing vulnerability to infection. In Canada, malnutrition is much more widespread than we would like to believe. A cross-Canada study conducted in eighteen hospitals screened patients for malnutrition on admission and found 45 per cent of them to be malnourished. Those who were malnourished had significantly longer hospital stays than those who were not.
Aileen Burford-Mason (The War Against Viruses: How the Science of Optimal Nutrition Can Help You Win)
SRT Once again, I hope you are filling in your sleep diary and that if you are doing SRT, your sleep efficiency is back up to near 85%, despite the fact that you are now spending more time in bed. If it is, reward yourself with another 20 minutes in bed. By now you should definitely be seeing improvements in the quality of your sleep, and you will be finding it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep. You should be feeling less tired during the day, which in turn will motivate you to do more of the exercises that I have been recommending. As I have said, most people will find that four weeks of SRT is enough to mend their sleep problems, although you can continue for up to eight – it very much depends on how you are getting on. Looking after your Old Friends If you have been eating meals from the recipe section in this book, I would also expect your gut microbiome to have changed radically, and for the better. Your levels of “good” bacteria should have increased, reducing inflammation and making you feel more cheerful, while the “bad” ones, that cause inflammation, will have been displaced. So keep munching those legumes! Remember that quite apart from the positive impact that these foods have on your sleep, they will also help cut your risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and dementia. Treat this way of eating as a way of life, not just a quick fix when it comes to improving your sleep. Eating for better health and weight loss As we have seen, if you are overweight
Michael Mosley (Fast Asleep: How to get a really good night's rest)
If you tolerate disrespect, you will be disrespected. If you tolerate people being late and making you wait, people will show up late for you. If you tolerate being underpaid and overworked, that will continue for you. If you tolerate your body being overweight, tired, and perpetually sick, it will be. It’s amazing how life will organize around the standards you set for yourself.
Darren Hardy (The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success)
The Vietnam studies ran counter to many of our cultural beliefs about bad habits because it challenged the conventional association of unhealthy behavior as a moral weakness. If you’re overweight, a smoker, or an addict, you’ve been told your entire life that it is because you lack self-control—maybe even that you’re a bad person. The idea that a little bit of discipline would solve all our problems is deeply embedded in our culture. Recent research, however, shows something different. When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations. The people with the best self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least. It’s easier to practice self-restraint when you don’t have to use it very often. So, yes, perseverance, grit, and willpower are essential to success, but the way to improve these qualities is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
Imagine if Earth’s 7.7 billion people were shrunk to a village of 100: » 26 villagers would be children (14 years old or younger). 5 villagers would come from North America, 8 from Latin America, 10 from Europe, 17 from Africa, and 60 from Asia. » 31 would be Christians, 24 Muslims, 15 Hindus, and 7 Buddhists. 7 villagers would represent every other religion, and 16 wouldn’t identify with a religion. » 7 people would speak English as a first language, and another 20 would speak it as a second. 14 villagers would be illiterate; 7 would have a college degree. » 29 people would be overweight, and 10 would be going hungry.
Chip Heath (Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers)
I don't know why weighing 140 pounds means I'm middle-aged, but it does. It is a magic number. A matronly number. More important than wishing young people would get their hair out of their eyes and more important than thinking Green Day sounds banal and that MTV is too sexist. If I could lose ten pounds, then maybe I could put off middle age for a while. But the thought of dieting, of thinking of food all the time, seems like too much to contemplate.
Maureen F. McHugh
It’s wrong to mock people for things out of their control. I’ll have you know that I’m overweight because my calorific intake vastly exceeds any energy I expend.
Heide Goody (Holymoly (Clovenhoof, #8))
Life gives everyone challenges, difficult situations they think they don’t want. Conditions like being lonely, broke and overweight. But people push against these things so strongly that they miss the gifts hidden inside them.
Menna Van Praag (Men, Money, and Chocolate)
On the negative front, researchers have found that bad behaviors and outcomes such as smoking, obesity, loneliness, depression, divorce, and drug use tend to grow in social clusters.27 If your friends smoke, you probably will, too. The more of your friends who are overweight or divorced, the higher the odds you’ll get there, too.
Brendon Burchard (High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way)
Notably, women of all sizes expressed concern about being targeted by anti-fat bias and stigma, though they experienced that fear differently and drew conclusions that directly contradicted the study’s findings. “Among those who are not overweight and who have a hard time understanding what it is like to be overweight, stigma feels like it would help strengthen other people’s resolve to eat less because it strengthens their own.”24
Aubrey Gordon (What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat)
Hellcat Maggie, you killed decent people tonight. You’re going to pay with your miserable life at sunrise.” Reverend Joe, a homely, overweight man known for dropping to his knees in prayer to avoid work,
Jason Myers (Twisted Legends: An Urban Legends Anthology)
The beneficiary of this regime of specialists ought to be the happiest of mortals —or so we are expected to believe. All of his vital concerns are in the hands of certified experts. He is a certified expert himself and as such he earns more money in a year than all his great-grandparents put together. Between stints at his job he has nothing to do but mow his lawn with a sit-down lawn mower, or watch other certified experts on television. At suppertime he may eat a tray of ready-prepared food, which he and his wife (also a certified expert) procure at the cost only of money, transportation, and the pushing of a button. For a few minutes between supper and sleep he may catch a glimpse of his children, who since breakfast have been in the care of education experts, basketball or marching-band experts, or perhaps legal experts. The fact is, however, that this is probably the most unhappy average citizen in the history of the world. He has not the power to provide himself with anything but money, and his money is inflating like a balloon and drifting away, subject to historical circumstances and the power of other people. From morning to night he does not touch anything that he has produced himself, in which he can take pride. For all his leisure and recreation, he feels bad, he looks bad, he is overweight, his health is poor. His air, water, and food are all known to contain poisons. There is a fair chance that he will die of suffocation. He suspects that his love life is not as fulfilling as other people’s. He wishes that he had been born sooner, or later. He does not know why his children are the way they are. He does not understand what they say. He does not care much and does not know why he does not care. He does not know what his wife wants or what he wants. Certain advertisements and pictures in magazines make him suspect that he is basically unattractive. He feels that all his possessions are under threat of pillage. He does not know what he would do if he lost his job, if the economy failed, if the utility companies failed, if the police went on strike, if the truckers went on strike, if his wife left him, if his children ran away, if he should be found to be incurably ill. And for these anxieties, of course, he consults certified experts, who in turn consult certified experts about their anxieties. It is rarely considered that this average citizen 1s anxious because he ought to be because he still has some gumption that he has not yet given up in deference to the experts. He ought to be anxious, because he is helpless. That he is dependent upon so many specialists, the beneficiary of so much expert help, can only mean that he is a captive, a potential victim. If he lives by the competence of so many other people, then he lives also by their indulgence; his own will and his own reasons to live are made subordinate to the mere tolerance of everybody else. He has one chance to live what he conceives to be his life: his own small specialty within a delicate, tense, everywhere-strained system of specialties. From a public point of view, the specialist system is a failure because, though everything is done by an expert, very little is done well. Our typical industrial or professional product is both ingenious and shoddy. The specialist system fails from a personal point of view because a person who can do only one thing can do virtually nothing for himself. In living in the world by his own will and skill, the stupidest peasant or tribesman is more competent than the most intelligent worker or technician or intellectual in a society of specialists
Wendell Berry (The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture)
The tendency to use a clock to tell yourself when you’re hungry seems to be especially strong for people who are overweight.
Brian Wansink (Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think)
Still, the hard part wasn’t coming up with a match, but executing it, and there was the real secret of making a shidduch: chutzpah, pure nerve. Because many people could come up with good ideas. It annoyed her the way acquaintances would say, “Oh yes, I thought of Yossi and Miriam, too,” and she would always restrain herself from asking, “So why didn’t you, then?” She knew why. They were frightened. She, Tsippi, normally on the timid side, for some reason was never upset if the parties were insulted (Me with him? Do I look fifty pounds overweight? Do I?) and abused her with their complaints, their How-could-you’s, their wounded expressions. She brushed them off and did her work. She
Ruchama King Feuerman (Seven Blessings: A Novel)
January 26: Marilyn arrives on the set on time at 7:00 a.m., but then departs abruptly in full makeup two hours later. Producer Buddy Adler looks at the rushes and is shocked. Marilyn looks overweight, and he dislikes her chalky white makeup, similar to what she used in Bus Stop.
Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
Isn’t Gresham on the route to get to Colton and the Association’s farm is just down the road from there?” Lt. Vincent rubbed his hand over his face. “Yes, figured you would think of that. But it’s not enough.” “Not for a warrant, but it’s an indicator.” They stared at each other. “My captain just assigned two three-man detective teams to the murder.” “You must have more. What about descriptions of the men? Didn’t the people in the bank give you anything on them?” “Not much. One army sergeant said that four of them were young, moved quickly. The fifth one seemed older, a little heavier, maybe overweight. Only one man spoke, the old guy. The rest of them just waved guns and pointed to put the tellers and the customers down on the floor. “Oh, the first robbery was just before opening. They grabbed an employee who had just unlocked the front door, pushed her inside, all five rushed in and they locked the door behind them. So no customers to deal with. “The second robbery was just before closing time. Again they locked the front door then put everyone on the floor. Two of the men vaulted over the counter so quickly that the workers didn’t have time to press the alarm buttons. So there was no rush to finish the job.” “With military precision?” Matt asked. “Sounds like it. They left both banks by rear doors that are always locked so nobody saw them make their getaway except one guy in the alley who was painting the rear of his store. He was the one who got the plate on the Lincoln.” “You knew the dead guard?” “Yes. He had retired from the PD before I came, but that was my bank and I always talked to him when I went in there. A nice guy. Good cop. Damned sorry that he’s gone.” “What about this lady cop?” “She’s off at four. I’ll ask her if she can have a cup of coffee with us here about four fifteen. Her name is Tracy Landower. She’s barely big enough to be a cop. She stretches to make five-four, and must weigh about a hundred and ten. She’s strong as an anvil tester. Strong hands and arms, good shoulders and legs like a Marine drill sergeant. She runs marathons for fun.” “I won’t try to out run her.” “Good. She has short dark hair, a cute little pixie face, and eyes that can stare you right into the pavement.” “Sounds like a good cop. I’m anxious to meet her.”   CHAPTER FOUR   Anthony J. Carlton was an only child of parents who were comfortably fixed for money and lived in a modest sized town near Portland called Hillsboro. His father was a lawyer who had several clients on retainer, who took on some of the toughest defense cases in the county, and some in Portland. He was a no nonsense type of dad who had little time for his son who had a good school and a car of his own when he turned sixteen.
Chet Cunningham (Mark of the Lash)
If gossip were food, many people would be overweight.
Prashanth Savanur (Daily Habits: How To Win Your Day: Your Days Define Your Destiny)
you burn calories, why wouldn’t you lose weight? When you burn calories, you get hungry. Overweight people don’t eat more because they are greedy or have no willpower. They eat because their hunger pangs are stronger and more frequent.
James Egan (The Mega Misconception Book (Things People Believe That Aren't True 5))
In 2003, epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control, led by Eugenia Calle, published an analysis in The New England Journal of Medicine reporting that cancer mortality in the United States was clearly associated with obesity and overweight. The heaviest men and women, they reported, were 50 and 60 percent more likely, respectively, to die from cancer than the lean. This increased risk of death held true for a host of common cancers—esophageal, colorectal, liver, gallbladder, pancreatic, and kidney cancers, as well as, in women, cancers of the breast, uterus, cervix, and ovary. In 2004, the CDC followed up with an analysis linking cancer to diabetes, particularly pancreatic, colorectal, liver, bladder, and breast cancers. Cancer researchers trying to make sense of this association would later say that something about cancer seems to thrive on the metabolic environment of the obese and the diabetic. One conspicuous clue as to what that something might be was that the same association was seen with people who weren’t obese and diabetic (or at least not yet) but suffered only from metabolic syndrome and thus were insulin-resistant. The higher their levels of circulating insulin, and that of a related hormone known as insulin-like growth factor, the greater the likelihood that they would get cancer.
Gary Taubes (The Case Against Sugar)
Body fat, or adipose tissue, is inflammatory. About 60% of the cells in adipose tissue are macrophages, the robocops of the immune system, and one of the principal sources of inflammatory cytokines. Overweight or obese people, with a higher body mass index, will generally have higher blood levels of cytokines and CRP than slimmer people.62 We also know that overweight people are more likely to be depressed.
Edward Bullmore (The Inflamed Mind: A radical new approach to depression)
I see rather than hear a guy in a suit and tie knocking on my door.  I wave him in, he opens the door and starts strolling toward my desk, he’s followed by two long haired, bearded, overweight, scruffy looking assholes both wearing glasses, short sleeved white shirts with their shirt breast pocket full of pens and little ruler looking things, complete with pocket protectors.       He’s wearing a really cheap looking blue suit, that’s been worn shiny slick and had to be right out of the 50’s.  The suit is adorned with a greasy looking; really wide tie that had more soup stains than Campbell’s.  To complete his ensemble he’s chosen a pair of shit brown shoes that hadn’t seen polish since they were new, which had to be a long time ago.  To top it all off, he’s sporting the most massive “Comb Over” on his head I’ve ever seen.  On the left side of his head was a “Tuft” of very thin gray hair.  He’d allowed this to grow until he could comb it all the way over the top of his bald head and down to his right ear.  I couldn’t help but stare.      Marines are first impression people and if you present a poor one, they generally will turn you off immediately. 
W.R. Spicer (Sea Stories of a U.S. Marine Book 4 Harrier)
The Paleo diet is about eliminating carbs Going along with the “caveman” image, many people mistakenly think that Paleo eating is all about tearing into endless plates of meat and nothing else. This is not true. On a Paleo eating plan, carbs are usually kept below 100 or 150 grams per day, which is actually ample. The kind of carbs is more important, and Paleo eaters get their carbohydrates from starchy vegetables, nuts and seeds instead of the empty calories from bread, rice or pasta. Paleo dieters will occasionally fast and put their bodies into ketosis, but this is not automatically a very low carb plan and has very little in common with the infamous Atkins diet. The Paleo diet is not practical Many people reel in horror at the thought that you could stay alive without grains. The truth is grains, especially wheat, are nutrient poor and usually only serve to disrupt blood sugar and insulin levels, promote fat storage and increase over time allergies, obesity and even the initial stages of type II diabetes. Grains contain phytates and other plant proteins that damage the intestinal lining and lead to leaky gut syndrome and a host of other complaints, not to mention overweight. A diet rich in empty carbohydrates is nutrient deficient, fattening and even addictive, if white sugar plays a big role. You can eat as much fat as you like on the Paleo diet Partly true. Again, it’s not so much the quantity but the quality of the fat in question. While eating fat has been shown again and again not to make you fat, it’s also important to choose the right kinds. Butter, good quality animal fats, avocado, coconut and olive oil as well as the fat found in eggs and good quality dairy are excellent for the health in every way. Avoid refined, deodorized and hydrogenated oils such as sunflower, cottonseed or canola oil. These are incredibly toxic to the body and high in inflammation causing Omega 6 fatty acids. Dairy is forbidden on the Paleo diet Always a point of debate, whether to eat dairy or not comes down to a matter of personal choice. Some of us possess the enzymes to properly digest milk, other do not. The only way to test for your own sensitivity is to experiment and listen to your body. If lactose is a problem, eat cultured dairy like yogurt, kefir and cheese. If milk forms a good part of your diet, be sure that you’re getting hormone free, grass fed milk from a quality source and don’t binge on milk as it’s also quite high in carbohydrates. If fat loss is your main goal, eliminate dairy until your goal weight is reached.
Sara Banks (Paleo Diet: Amazingly Delicious Paleo Diet Recipes for Weight Loss (Weight Loss Recipes, Paleo Diet Recipes Book 1))
The physical state of being overweight has the potential to carry more shame with it than any other sin. In fact, I would venture to say that the depth of it far surpasses what a cheat, liar, alcoholic, or adulterer may experience when they finally wake up, repent, and begin to set out to live a better life. You’d never see one of these people wearing a T-shirt that says “I’m an Ex-Thief” or “Cocaine Rocked My World.” Yet someone that has taken poor care of their body will wear their old sin long after they have let it go. So, if losing weight and walking strong are things you want to do, you’ll need to let go of shame. Again, knowing who God is and how He sees you is key, but if you can’t learn to lay down your pride after you have repented, shame will be your constant struggle. This is by far the hardest part of the journey to walking with Him each day.
Chantel Hobbs (Walk Strong, Look Up: The Most Powerful Exercise for Your Body and Soul)
For millions of years, humans and other primates have plucked fruits from trees and roots from the ground and have taken advantage of carbohydrate’s capacity to nourish us. What is remarkable is that these foods provide energy with relatively little tendency to cause overweight. In many Asian countries, for example, where rice is still the center of the diet and huge amounts of rice are consumed, people tend to remain slim.
Neal D. Barnard (Foods That Cause You to Lose Weight: The Negative Calorie Effect)
Medical professionals have strong weight-related prejudices, with 69 percent of people in the overweight or obese categories reporting discrimination from doctors.
Sandra Aamodt (Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession With Weight Loss)
This is why fasting is the easiest way for people who are overweight to shed off unwanted pounds and slim down.
Patricia Cook (Autophagy: Learn How To Activate Autophagy Safely Through Intermittent Fasting, Exercise and Diet. A Practical Guide to Detox Your Body and Boost Your Energy)
you believe different things about different groups of people: You have beliefs about poor people, beliefs about rich people, beliefs about children, beliefs about teenagers, beliefs about Christians and Jews, beliefs about Americans and every other nationality, beliefs about the different races, beliefs about women, beliefs about men, beliefs about the elderly, beliefs about attractive and unattractive people, beliefs about intelligent and not-so-intelligent people, beliefs about overweight and thin people, and on and on. That’s a lot of beliefs to be aware of and examine!
Gina Lake (Beliefs, Emotions, and the Creation of Reality: New Teachings from Jesus)
Heart Disease is one of the most common and dangerous disease in the world. It is a coronary artery disease which causes a reduction in blood supply to the heart. There are various reasons for this disease but most common are high BP, overweight, saturate life style, junk food, smoking habits and heredity of heart problem in family. Blockage of artery is mainly because of high level of cholesterol in your blood. These issues with slow down your working capacity and will lead you to a point where you will be unable to do what you want to do. You will fatigue, tiredness, unable to exercise and this will ultimately lead towards heart attack & death. The Common remedies for heart diseases are lifelong medicine, angioplasty, bypass surgery. All these methods have great side effects associated with them. Fortunately nature has given us a great gift to cure heart problem. Unfortunately most of the people are not aware about it.
Asrar Al Siha
The most important modification that must be made to a standard analysis of incentives is salience. Do the choosers actually notice the incentives they face? In free markets, the answer is usually yes, but in important cases the answer is no. Consider the example of members of an urban family deciding whether to buy a car. Suppose their choices are to take taxis and public transportation or to spend ten thousand dollars to buy a used car, which they can park on the street in front of their home. The only salient costs of owning this car will be the weekly stops at the gas station, occasional repair bills, and a yearly insurance bill. The opportunity cost of the ten thousand dollars is likely to be neglected. (In other words, once they purchase the car, they tend to forget about the ten thousand dollars and stop treating it as money that could have been spent on something else.) In contrast, every time the family uses a taxi the cost will be in their face, with the meter clicking every few blocks. So a behavioral analysis of the incentives of car ownership will predict that people will underweight the opportunity costs of car ownership, and possibly other less salient aspects such as depreciation, and may overweight the very salient costs of using a taxi.* An analysis of choice architecture systems must make similar adjustments.
Richard H. Thaler (Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness)
In 2013, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a study that aimed to find, once and for all, the link between mortality rates and BMI (a.k.a. is our fat really killing us?). The study was led by Katherine Flegal, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics, and her colleagues. After analyzing ninety-seven studies of mortality rates and BMI that included almost 3 million people, Flegal found what’s known as a “U-shaped curve.” At the top ends of the curve, where death rates were the highest, are people whose BMIs categorize them as either severely underweight or severely obese. At the lowest point of the curve, where death rates are the lowest, are people whose BMI falls within the “overweight” category. Meaning that statistically, people who are overweight according to BMI had the lowest risk of death. Following the U-shaped curve, people whose BMI fell within the “mildly obese” category had no higher risk of death than people within the “normal” category. The increased mortality rate came at the extremes, either side.
Megan Jayne Crabbe (Body Positive Power: Because Life Is Already Happening and You Don't Need Flat Abs to Live It)
Well, the following are my own so they probably "don't already exist in the data base". ------------------------------------------------------ Never visit a place where you have to count your change. When your carrier bags exceed the number of your teeth it's time to check out. What is an opinion but an ersatz fact? Things are nearly always better from a distance [aka The Expectation Is Better Than The Event] There's no such thing as a free 0800 number. The court scene at the end of Alice In Wonderland is a microcosm of the UK justice system. With respect to heterogeneity of shape & size, no other species approaches Homo Sapiens's level. Darwinism relaxes its hold with Western Man's tolerance of its current state of corporeal deviation. [I think this may be a reference to our overweight brethren. Ed.] Много людей - живы,только потому что нeзаконно них убить. The poncier the restaurant the smaller the portion. Remember that although the government may have the backing of the whole army, without the backing of the people tho' they be armed only with sticks, it will not be able to stay in power. An ill-defined border it is 'twixt arrogance and shyness. There are 2 types of people in the world. Those who want to part with as few of their resources as possible, and those aiming to relieve the rest of us of said resources. So if you need facts, you have to go to the news, history books, or your own kith-&-kin. This is why i term our society a "99% bullshit" society. And since the majority of folk are evidently ignorant of this, the state of affairs will endure. Finally, if you are intrigued as to what the future holds for you - take your life up to now, and extend it. Not very exciting I'm afraid.
self (er, that's not Will, that's me).
(Well, the following are my own so they probably 'don`t already exist in the data base'). -------------------------------------------- Never visit a place where you have to count your change. When your carrier bags exceed the number of your teeth it's time to check out. What is an opinion but an ersatz fact? Things are nearly always better from a distance [aka The Expectation Is Better Than The Event] There's no such thing as a free 0800 number. The court scene at the end of Alice In Wonderland is a microcosm of the UK justice system. With respect to heterogeneity of shape & size, no other species approaches Homo Sapiens's level. Darwinism relaxes its hold with Western Man's tolerance of its current state of corporeal deviation. [I think this may be a reference to our overweight brethren. Ed.] Много людей - живы,только потому что нeзаконно них убить. The poncier the restaurant the smaller the portion. Remember that although the government may have the backing of the whole army, without the backing of the people tho' they be armed only with sticks, it will not be able to stay in power. An ill-defined border it is 'twixt arrogance and shyness. There are 2 types of people in the world. Those who want to part with as few of their resources as possible, and those aiming to relieve the rest of us of said resources. So if you need facts, you have to go to the news, history books, or your own kith-&-kin. This is why i term our society a "99% bullshit" society. And since the majority of folk are evidently ignorant of this, the state of affairs will endure. Finally, if you are intrigued as to what the future holds for you - take your life up to now, and extend it. Not very exciting I'm afraid.
self (er, that's not Will, that's me).
(Well, the following are my own so they probably 'don`t already exist in the data base'). ---------------------------------------------- Never visit a place where you have to count your change. When your carrier bags exceed the number of your teeth it's time to check out. What is an opinion but an ersatz fact? Things are nearly always better from a distance [aka The Expectation Is Better Than The Event] There's no such thing as a free 0800 number. The court scene at the end of Alice In Wonderland is a microcosm of the UK justice system. With respect to heterogeneity of shape & size, no other species approaches Homo Sapiens's level. Darwinism relaxes its hold with Western Man's tolerance of its current state of corporeal deviation. [I think this may be a reference to our overweight brethren. Ed.] Много людей - живы,только потому что нeзаконно них убить. The poncier the restaurant the smaller the portion. Remember that although the government may have the backing of the whole army, without the backing of the people tho' they be armed only with sticks, it will not be able to stay in power. An ill-defined border it is 'twixt arrogance and shyness. There are 2 types of people in the world. Those who want to part with as few of their resources as possible, and those aiming to relieve the rest of us of said resources. So if you need facts, you have to go to the news, history books, or your own kith-&-kin. This is why i term our society a "99% bullshit" society. And since the majority of folk are evidently ignorant of this, the state of affairs will endure. Finally, if you are intrigued as to what the future holds for you - take your life up to now, and extend it. Not very exciting I'm afraid.
self (er, that's not Will, that's me).
(Well, the following are my own so they probably 'don`t already exist in the data base'). -------------------------------------------- Never visit a place where you have to count your change. When your carrier bags exceed the number of your teeth it's time to check out. What is an opinion but an ersatz fact? Things are nearly always better from a distance [aka The Expectation Is Better Than The Event] There's no such thing as a free 0800 number. The court scene at the end of Alice In Wonderland is a microcosm of the UK justice system. With respect to heterogeneity of shape & size, no other species approaches Homo Sapiens's level. Darwinism relaxes its hold with Western Man's tolerance of its current state of corporeal deviation. [I think this may be a reference to our overweight brethren. Ed.] Много людей - живы,только потому что нeзаконно них убить. The poncier the restaurant the smaller the portion. Remember that although the government may have the backing of the whole army, without the backing of the people tho' they be armed only with sticks, it will not be able to stay in power. An ill-defined border it is 'twixt arrogance and shyness. There are 2 types of people in the world. Those who want to part with as few of their resources as possible, and those aiming to relieve the rest of us of said resources. So if you need facts, you have to go to the news, history books, or your own kith-&-kin. This is why i term our society a "99% bullshit" society. And since the majority of folk are evidently ignorant of this, the state of affairs will endure. Finally, if you are intrigued as to what the future holds for you, take your life up to now and extend it. Not very exciting I'm afraid.
Self (er, that's not Will, that's me.)
(Well, the following are my own so they probably 'don`t already exist in the data base'.) -------------------------------------------- Never visit a place where you have to count your change. When your carrier bags exceed the number of your teeth it's time to check out. What is an opinion but an ersatz fact? Things are nearly always better from a distance [aka The Expectation Is Better Than The Event] There's no such thing as a free 0800 number. The court scene at the end of Alice In Wonderland is a microcosm of the UK justice system. With respect to heterogeneity of shape & size, no other species approaches Homo Sapiens's level. Darwinism relaxes its hold with Western Man's tolerance of its current state of corporeal deviation. [I think this may be a reference to our overweight brethren. Ed.] Много людей - живы,только потому что нeзаконно них убить. The poncier the restaurant the smaller the portion. Remember that although the government may have the backing of the whole army, without the backing of the people tho' they be armed only with sticks, it will not be able to stay in power. An ill-defined border it is 'twixt arrogance and shyness. There are 2 types of people in the world. Those who want to part with as few of their resources as possible, and those aiming to relieve the rest of us of said resources. So if you need facts, you have to go to the news, history books, or your own kith-&-kin. This is why i term our society a "99% bullshit" society. And since the majority of folk are evidently ignorant of this, the state of affairs will endure. Finally, if you are intrigued as to what the future holds for you - take your life up to now, and extend it. Not very exciting I'm afraid.
self (er, that's not Will, that's me).
Now, I know that people with diabetes have heard over and over that they must limit rice, pasta, and other starchy foods. But keep in mind that diabetes—and overweight—has been rare in countries that have made these foods their staples. The plan does have rules about carbohydrates, but they relate mainly to which ones you choose, not how much. In our studies, we have found that people who include plenty of healthy carbohydrates in their diets do better, not worse.
Neal D. Barnard (Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes without Drugs)
Ketogenasis We as a whole have various reasons getting overweight. Doing this happens it could be on the grounds that you have an ailment that causes you get weight. On the off chance that you think this is for the most part a plausibility, at that point your first the road for call MUST be a specialist. They will do tests and furthermore give you a finding after offer you the assistance that you need. One reason could be that you live an especially sedimentary propensities. Another could be you don't have a self discipline, venerate sustenance, your menopausal, you solace eat in light of the fact that an individual may be focused on anybody don't know spot nourishments expend or buy utilized eat people. There are heaps of various reasons why we gorge yet you'll need to find YOUR reason.
Bryan Wright
across an unexpected finding: Alcohol consumption was associated with liver inflammation (no surprise there), but coffee consumption was associated with less liver inflammation.81 These results were replicated in subsequent studies performed around the world. In the United States, a study was done with people at high risk for liver disease—for example, those who were overweight or drank too much alcohol. Subjects who drank more than two cups of coffee a day appeared to have less than half the risk of developing chronic liver problems as those who drank less than one cup.82 What about liver cancer, one of the most feared complications of chronic liver inflammation? It is now the third-leading cause of cancer-related death, an upsurge driven largely by increases in hepatitis C infections and
Michael Greger (How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease)
Mindfulness, neuroplasticity, trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoanalysis, career coaching, Kripalu yoga – the list of “cures” for our lack of resilience and related problems is endless. If you are overweight, alone, miserable at work or crippled by stress or anxiety or depression, there are hordes of gurus and experts chasing you with books and quick fixes. With their advice, guidance, motivation or inspiration, you can fix your problems. But make no mistake: They are always your problems. You alone are responsible for them. It follows that failing to fix your problems will always be your failure, your lack of will, motivation or strength. Galen, the second-century physician who ministered to Roman emperors, believed his medical treatments were effective. “All who drink of this treatment recover in a short time,” he wrote, “except those whom it does not help, who all die. It is obvious, therefore, that it fails only in incurable cases.” This is the way of the billion-dollar self-help industry: You are to blame when the guru’s advice does not produce the expected outcome, and by now, we are all familiar enough with self-help to know that expected outcomes are elusive. […] Personal explanations for success actually set us up for failure. TED Talks and talk shows full of advice on what to eat, what to think and how to live seldom work. Self-help fixes are like empty calories: The effects are fleeting and often detrimental in the long term. Worse, they promote victim blaming. The notion that your resilience is your problem alone is ideology, not science. We have been giving people the wrong message. Resilience is not a DIY endeavor. Self-help fails because the stresses that put our lives in jeopardy in the first place remain in the world around us even after we’ve taken the “cures.” The fact is that people who can find the resources they require for success in their environments are far more likely to succeed than individuals with positive thoughts and the latest power poses. […] The science of resilience is clear: The social, political and natural environments in which we live are far more important to our health, fitness, finances and time management than our individual thoughts, feelings or behaviors.
Michael Ungar
The condition is most common in people who are overweight, have certain physical upper airway or jaw characteristics, or have a family history of sleep apnea.
Timothy I. Morgenthaler (Mayo Clinic Guide to Better Sleep: Find relief from insomnia, sleep apnea and other sleep disorders)
What if age and obesity really are the two biggest predictors of super spreading? Does that mean that in the middle of a pandemic, passengers will refuse to sit next to overweight people? On a plane, what if the answer is viscous saliva and someone comes up with a 10 second test to measure if someone is in the 99th percentile? Would a restaurant or a movie theater or a church be justified in asking everyone at the door to take a saliva test and then turn away those whose results fall at the extreme end?
Malcolm Gladwell (Revenge of the Tipping Point)
Although few Americans have heard of SIBO and SIFO, tens of millions of us are affected by them. We now know that 35–84 percent of the thirty-five million Americans diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, as well as the equal number who remain undiagnosed but grin and bear bowel urgency and bloating, have SIBO.6 We also know that of the twelve million Americans with the pain and disability of fibromyalgia, up to 100 percent have the bacterial overgrowth of SIBO, as do the majority of people with restless leg syndrome, fatty liver, diverticular disease, various food intolerances, gallstones, autoimmune and neurodegenerative conditions, and type 2 diabetes.6–12 The bacterial overgrowth of SIBO is also present in about 50 percent of the 150 million American adults who are overweight or obese.13 We also know that about a third of people with SIBO also have SIFO.14 It may not pillage the countryside or terrorize people in their cottages, but it is a monster that modern life has created, and it dwells in the thirty feet of your GI tract.
William Davis (Super Gut: A Four-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight)
Back then, as Astwood implied, obesity treatment had become the purview primarily of psychiatrists and psychologists. These were the medical professionals charged with teaching fat people to get thin and supposedly elucidating our understanding of the disorder. They saw the obese and overweight, not surprisingly, from their own unique perspective and context, as clearly suffering from mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. They found it easy to ignore a revolution in endocrinology, because that wasn’t their area of study.
Gary Taubes (The Case for Keto: Rethinking Weight Control and the Science and Practice of Low-Carb/High-Fat Eating)
that people believe that warning labels, threats, and known risks do not apply to them. That’s why my friend’s husband thinks he’s the only person on the planet who can be overweight and sedentary and never have a heart attack. It’s why he can convince himself that he can stay exactly the same, and nothing bad will happen.
Mel Robbins (The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About)
Wanted's lead was Wesley Gibson, drawn by J.G. Jones to resemble handsome rapper Eminem with an eye on the movie potential, but who stood for every shy, overweight, underweight, misunderstood kid reveling in the power to trash, denigrate, and insult his imagined enemies - who were just about everybody, especially the creators of the comic books, music, games, and movies that brought to these miserable lives the only meaning they would ever know. Geek royalty. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Wesley acted out the new porn-fueled fantasies of dumping the fat girlfriend, hooking up with the hot sex-mad assassin chicks, raping pretty newsreaders, and Getting Away with It All. At its best, reminiscent of the cool, amused cruelty of a Joe Orton play, the bludgeoning effect of Wanted's uneasy satire exposed the horrible truth: The fragile, asocial, and different really just wanted to do coke, fuck bimbos, and bully people. The revolution had arrived.
Grant Morrison (Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human)
There is also clear evidence that the most protective weight for health purposes is a BMI of 27.5 (if one accepts the BMI at all) - a figure that is presently in the recently designated overweight category. Interestingly, overweight people who exercise have a lower mortality rate that thin people who do not. So one is led to wonder why thin has erroneously become the gold standard for health.
Susie Orbach (Bodies)
Diabetes Screening Clermont Living in Clermont, a city known for its rolling hills and active lifestyle, it's easy to think health problems are always far away. But diabetes is a silent and growing issue, affecting millions of Americans—including many right here in our local community. Whether you feel healthy or not, getting screened for diabetes is one of the smartest steps you can take for your long-term well-being. Diabetes, especially in its early stages, often has no obvious symptoms. Many people walk around for months—or even years—without realizing their blood sugar levels are out of balance. That’s why diabetes screening is so important. It’s not about treating illness; it’s about preventing it from progressing silently in your body. A simple blood test can detect early signs of prediabetes or diabetes, giving you the chance to make lifestyle changes or start treatment before serious complications arise. In Clermont, more healthcare providers are encouraging patients to get screened, especially those who have risk factors such as being over 45 years old, having a family history of diabetes, being overweight, living a sedentary lifestyle, or having high blood pressure. However, even people outside of these categories can develop diabetes. That’s why routine screening is a smart move for everyone. The beauty of early detection lies in its power to change the outcome. If you catch diabetes early, you have a greater chance of managing or even reversing it through lifestyle adjustments—like eating healthier, getting regular exercise, and managing stress. These aren’t drastic measures. They’re achievable steps that can help you live longer, feel better, and reduce your risk of complications such as heart disease, kidney issues, vision loss, and nerve damage. Contact us : 352-810-4187 Address : 3232 Citrus Tower Blvd Clermont FL, 34711
Doctornearme
Diabetes Screening Clermont Living in Clermont, a city known for its rolling hills and active lifestyle, it's easy to think health problems are always far away. But diabetes is a silent and growing issue, affecting millions of Americans—including many right here in our local community. Whether you feel healthy or not, getting screened for diabetes is one of the smartest steps you can take for your long-term well-being. Diabetes, especially in its early stages, often has no obvious symptoms. Many people walk around for months—or even years—without realizing their blood sugar levels are out of balance. That’s why diabetes screening is so important. It’s not about treating illness; it’s about preventing it from progressing silently in your body. A simple blood test can detect early signs of prediabetes or diabetes, giving you the chance to make lifestyle changes or start treatment before serious complications arise. In Clermont, more healthcare providers are encouraging patients to get screened, especially those who have risk factors such as being over 45 years old, having a family history of diabetes, being overweight, living a sedentary lifestyle, or having high blood pressure. However, even people outside of these categories can develop diabetes. That’s why routine screening is a smart move for everyone. Contact us : 352-810-4187 Address : 3232 Citrus Tower Blvd Clermont FL, 34711
Doctornearme
So how well does stigma work in reducing obesity? One study of ninety-three women split them into two groups—women who believed they were overweight, and women who didn’t. They were all then shown a newspaper article about stigma in the job market toward overweight people. Afterward, they were all monitored, to see if it had any effect on their eating. It turned out that hearing these claims had no effect on the normal-weight women, but made the women who believed they were overweight eat significantly more. In a different study, overweight people who were shown a harsh and judgmental video ate three times more calories than overweight people who watched a non-judgmental one. There is now a broad range of evidence showing that stigmatizing overweight people is in fact counterproductive—on average, it makes them gain weight.
Johann Hari (Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs)
Diabetes Screening Clermont Living in Clermont, a city known for its rolling hills and active lifestyle, it's easy to think health problems are always far away. But diabetes is a silent and growing issue, affecting millions of Americans—including many right here in our local community. Whether you feel healthy or not, getting screened for diabetes is one of the smartest steps you can take for your long-term well-being. Diabetes, especially in its early stages, often has no obvious symptoms. Many people walk around for months—or even years—without realizing their blood sugar levels are out of balance. That’s why diabetes screening is so important. It’s not about treating illness; it’s about preventing it from progressing silently in your body. A simple blood test can detect early signs of prediabetes or diabetes, giving you the chance to make lifestyle changes or start treatment before serious complications arise.In Clermont, more healthcare providers are encouraging patients to get screened, especially those who have risk factors such as being over 45 years old, having a family history of diabetes, being overweight, living a sedentary lifestyle, or having high blood pressure. However, even people outside of these categories can develop diabetes. That’s why routine screening is a smart move for everyone. Contact us : 352-810-4187 Address : 3232 Citrus Tower Blvd Clermont FL, 34711
Doctornearme
Squatting evens out physical differences. Tall people and short ones come closer in height when squatting. You share with others a common point of view. Once you squat, you have to think twice about getting up; you become conscious of choices and decisions. Squatting is a mark of country folk who have worked the land and whose legs are in excellent condition. You can't squat well if you are overweight, if your legs are used to sitting in chairs, or if you're lazy. I wonder if we've lost the art of squatting. In our fast-paced world today, we're too busy or think we're too good to squat.
David Mas Masumoto (Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm)
Human research tends to cleave into two major “kingdoms”: observational studies and controlled studies. Observational studies observe and compare groups of people. This research is conducted passively; in other words, without interventions or controls. Any significant differences that emerge between the populations studied—say, finding that people who drink more diet soda tend to have a higher incidence of depression than people who don’t—can’t prove anything but may be used to generate hypotheses about what is causing this difference. Yet people still assume the obvious when confronted with a correlation of this sort. In the diet soda study, which was actually run by the National Institute of Health and widely reported, many people jumped to the conclusion that depression must be caused by something in the soda. But a moment of creative consideration turns up several other plausible possibilities. What if the people who drink diet soda are simply more judgmental about their body appearance and generally more prone to self-criticism? What if, since drinking more diet soda correlates with a history of being overweight, the depression arises physiologically from the effects of obesity, or as a result of the cluster of health problems that go along with it, such as obstructive sleep apnea and diabetes? What if people who are depressed simply crave sweet things, as evidence suggests? And what of the fact that diet soda drinkers tend to cluster more in urban areas: is there something about this environment that promotes depression? Strong correlation is tantalizing, a just-so homily that satisfies our need for simple explanations. It feels definitive and self-apparent, especially given the huge number of subjects typically involved in such studies. The NIH study that produced the diet soda finding, for instance, had 260,000 subjects. Headlines are driven and public health advice administered whenever a major observational study unearths a provocative new correlation. But it turns out that the record of observational studies like these for generating accurate medical advice is, in a word, abysmal.
Lance Dodes (The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry)
The people look shabby to her - middle-aged, slump-shouldered, overweight. It seems impossible that any of them were ever beautiful or in love.
Stewart O'Nan (Ocean State)