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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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I'm in the fat shaming as a form of public health camp but I do sympathize with the morbidly obese. I think we need to adopt Japanese habits if we want to save people from becoming obese in the first place.

But if someone is already obese I believe they're likely irreversibly damaged wrt regulating their own weight.

At my heaviest I hit 260 pounds. Through a moderate amount of discipline I can keep it parked between 210 and 220. Through extreme dieting I can get down to 190 but then I can't stop thinking about food and lose my shit and relapse.

My doctor suggested I would ideally be between 170-180 and that seems impossible tbh.

I have to imagine those set points scale linearly; if I ever hit as much as 400 pounds for whatever reason, my moderate effort would only ever get me down to 320 at most and falling below that would be unsustainable effort.

This is probably the best one can hope for as not ignorant, not entitled and not stupid and it's not great.

I am of the opinion that the reason why Western cuisine sucks is that one is not allowed to enjoy it: that the foods one gravitates to when in a hurry are the ones most laden in sugars and fats and carbs. Satiety, in my opinion, is a function of digestion.

If you are making the effort to curb it, you're already ahead of the pack. You are probably one or two dietary/lifestyle changes away from maintaining at two hundred pounds (which still isn't great, but better than the median American.)

If you're prone to snacking, I can heartily recommend a popcorn machine (which, with the addition of popcorn salts, makes for a better snack than other fare.) Granted, if you slather butter and oils over it it defeats the point, but it's just an example of a thing you can do.