I think it’s great that the Japanese have small servings, small fridges, small everything. There’s obviously a market for small ice cream containers. It would make me feel better to get a small ice cream instead of a half gallon or quart container here in the US. That way you know you got one serving.
So given the theme of the last few posts, corn syrup, KFC / white meat and now fat folks, can we come to expect that one of the next apps coming down the 37pike will have to do with dietary manangement?
37Signals CuttingBoard. I could see how the “dome” brand in you logos could be easily transitioned to a plate cover like those that come with room service meals. Replace the green field with a brown, wooden cutting board and a nice iconized knife.
I think it’d be a good idea. Seems to be a lot of chatter going on these days among the bloggers on their dieting methods. Would only make sense if a nice app came along to help folks reach their goals.
I wonder if the space constraints of Japan encourage a culture of only buying what you need and/or getting the most bang out of the smallest package. I have a mid-sized house in Canada with room for a full-size fridge and separate freezer and both are filled with crap I’ll never eat. Maybe making everyone move into 400 sq. ft. apartments would force people to ‘Get Real’ with what they buy.
Saw the photo in my feed reader and wondered what the big deal was at first - I live in Japan and thought “yeah, it’s ice cream, so…” but now I get it, it’s really small. It’s true though, there are virtually no fat people in Japan.
Don Wilson
15 Jun 06
Could you suggest that if you build a smaller web app that the user will be happier?
It’s not just the portions in Japan, it’s the actual food they eat. The variety you get is wonderful. I spent two weeks over in downtown Tokyo eating dishes with the locals - consuming most of it apart from some certain chicken parts. I lost half a stone during that time. I came back feeling healthier too.
Blah blah Japanese blah blah blah Americans blah blah fat blah blah small …
Listen: You are fat because you eat too much and exercise too little. End of story. No rocket science, nothing to do with containers or your hormones or what-have-you.
You are lazy and you eat too much. Get off your fat rear, turn off the TV, and go mountain biking. Sheesh.
1. Let’s not ignore the ridiculously healthy foods eaten in Japan by the older generation (pre-McDonalds). Aside from fish (which is debatebly either really good for you or border-line not so good), the Japanese were mainly health-nut vegans (in particular the staunch buddhists).
3. Smaller land also meant they had no room for grazing animals, thus more focused on plants which fill you up more.
Side note, if there is some webb app which could somehow (I don’t know how) help you plan out and be more concious of your food WITHOUT being a pain in the ass to use, I would use that for sure.
jake walker
15 Jun 06
It’s semi-related, but it’s an interesting story.
When I was in Japan last year with the Pixies, I woke up pretty early each morning. One morning in Nagoya, I went for a walk looking for a cheap and easy breakfast. Not too far from the hotel was a shop called Mr. Donut, or something like this. Perfect. I walked in and ordered a donut and a coffee.
The clerk went back to their preperation area and grabbed a set of tongs, then picked up the donut with the tongs. She brought the donut back to an area where it was neatly wrapped in wax paper (fold, fold, fold, fold, then a sticker on top to hold it all together). Then the wrapped donut was placed perfectly into a bag, and the bag was rolled up and a sticker was put on to keep the bag closed.
Next, the coffee was prepared in a cup, and a plastic cover was put in the hole on the plastic lid so that coffee couldn’t leak. The coffee was put into its own white bag, and stickered, and then the donut and the coffee were put into a larger bag with another sticker.
The preparation took a few minutes and was entirely unnecessary (I was going to eat the donut right there!), and certainly wasteful, but it was absolutely charming to see the pride that the Mr. Donut lady was putting into selling and presenting me with my donut.
Phil
15 Jun 06
Mario: www.fitday.com is pretty painless and nice way to keep track of what you eat. Its amazing how easy one gets to 2000 calories.
Paul
15 Jun 06
Fact: whenever fat gets discussed on the web, it gets divided up into these comments:
1. “I lost x pounds, you can too! Just do what I did.”
2. “Fat people are [lazy/gluttonous/stupid/all].”
3. “Fat people eat too much. Just move more.”
4. “You can’t deny the mountains of scientific evidence proving that fat people [die earlier/eat more food/have less sex/malady of the week]!”
I’m sad that this was posted, frankly. And inevitably - as with Don’s comment above - there are ignorant comments galore. Great.
Plus, it seems that most Japanese buy groceries on a daily basis i.e, only buy what they are going to eat that day.
Now, that’s something viable on a place where everything seems to be within reach just blocks away and most people use public transportation, instead of stuffing a SUV with enough food to feed a small army on your only weekend trip to a Vons or Costco since they are so darned far away.
Speaking of which, Costco definitely wouldn’t make it in Japan.
I think the corn syrup/white flour/bad oils/carbs/artificial */fried/etc. diet Americans typically eat is the problem rather than serving size. I eat the same amount of food I ate a few years ago, but I switched to an organic, whole foods, low-sugar, sprouted grains, lean meats, balanced fat/protein/carb, etc. diet and lost 35 pounds. And you know, fermented Kombucha is actually much more fun than 7-up. :)
Jared
Drew Pickard
15 Jun 06
I think it’s a pretty complex issue
It is:
exercise
portion size
content (weird freaky ingredients)
not eating the right amounts of foods (less fat/carb - more fruit/veg)
discipline
There are also several facets to ‘health’
weight
leanness
general physical/mental healthiness
physical fitness
The Japanese are generally thinner and smaller than us and as a whole they probably eat better, but who’s to say they are “healthier”?
I just moved to Japan two months ago. These small portions sometimes made me cry, since I ate much :D. Anyway, I love being here. Everything are well-organized. Anyway, there is 1 litre of ice cream, I just bought it last week :).
toru okada
15 Jun 06
Ah so… Hai, the real reason japanese so skinny, reveal on web, once again! A nation of vegan, buddhist, emporer worship who shop every day for bite sized portion of exotic, healthy, food! Eat only after design robot or walkman and many hour of discipline karate!
A typical japanese diet looks something like this:
breakfast: Mr Donut, coffee, two cigarettes.
lunch: rice ball from 7-11, bottled tea, two cigarettes
dinner: macudonarudos haanbagga setto, or spaageti, or maybe sushi, or something else moderately unhealthy, chased with 4 soju cocktails (women) or 4 beers (men)…and 10 cigarettes.
donut (120 calories) + rice ball (100 calories) + dinner (400 calories) + 4 beers (800 calories) = average of 1400 calories per day.
Matt
16 Jun 06
My neighbor is moving to Japan from Seattle to open 5 new Costco in the next two years, with more planned. Does that mean that the Japanese are getting super-sized?
I’m going to Tokyo on the 28th, first time there so we’ll see how a big guy is able to live for 10 days there. I’m sure i’ll be able to find enough food to survive.
Hopefully…
osisbs
16 Jun 06
The evil war-monger Donald Rumsfeld was the head of Searle Pharm. in 1976 when Nutrasweet was approved for human consumption without ANY TESTING. SURPRISE!! Also, this is the year the obesity charts took off like a rocket. No coincidence there.
Remember Original Coke? It was made with sugar and an 8 ounce bottle made you feel like you’d had enough. One day they took it off the market and replaced it with Classic Coke which contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (also known as the stuff they feed to cows to make them obese prior to slaughter). I challenge anyone to drink 48 ounces of Original Coke made from sugar. I dare you to even try. You’d get sick.
PS. People in Japan are fat. Look around. They eat this crap too.
TELL ME where, SPECIFICALLY, I am wrong. Seriously.
You know you cannot. You KNOW I am right, and you HATE that!
Jeff
16 Jun 06
I hear you Paul.
Personally I’m fat and it has nothing to do with diet… I live a pretty sedentery (spelling?) lifestyle even though I can move pretty fast for someone who needs to lose about 90lbs. My main problem is that, and that I can’t eat breakfast… I literally have no appetite and to eat food in the morning, my stomach gets upset. So I’m screwed because as soon as I eat lunch, my brain is like “want big lunch”. I do better these days though it’s still hard and I’ve pretty much plateaued.
Well, my father, who has the metabolism of an ant, and would eat 6 donuts and half a bag of chips every night that I can remember as a child, is thin as a rail. Everyone always viewed him as “healthy” because he was “thin”. He played sports with the guys from work and ever since my parents’ breakup, he started doing more bicycle riding. He bike rides probably 10 miles every day.
He was “healthy” as far as we knew.
However that changed when he had a heart attack two Novembers ago. Turns out his cholesterol was through the roof.
Can’t always judge a book by its cover, that’s for sure.
Jeff
16 Jun 06
I hear you Paul.
Personally I’m fat and it has nothing to do with diet… I live a pretty sedentery (spelling?) lifestyle even though I can move pretty fast for someone who needs to lose about 90lbs. My main problem is that, and that I can’t eat breakfast… I literally have no appetite and to eat food in the morning, my stomach gets upset. So I’m screwed because as soon as I eat lunch, my brain is like “want big lunch”. I do better these days though it’s still hard and I’ve pretty much plateaued.
Well, my father, who has the metabolism of an ant, and would eat 6 donuts and half a bag of chips every night that I can remember as a child, is thin as a rail. Everyone always viewed him as “healthy” because he was “thin”. He played sports with the guys from work and ever since my parents’ breakup, he started doing more bicycle riding. He bike rides probably 10 miles every day.
He was “healthy” as far as we knew.
However that changed when he had a heart attack two Novembers ago. Turns out his cholesterol was through the roof.
Can’t always judge a book by its cover, that’s for sure.
Jeff, you say “… it has nothing to do with diet…” and then explain how you’re diet is messed up because you don’t feel hungry in the morning.
You mean you’re not hungry even after riding the exercise bike for 30 minutes? I know that, in the morning, after I ride or lift and then shower, I’m ready to eat.
Don’t wait until lunch to eat. Eat at 10:30, something small … and another small meal at noon … eat s-l-o-w-l-y … again at 2:30 … etc etc.
Diet is huge. So is exercise.
Sorry to hear about your dad. Seriously. I know my dad was in a really bad way until he switched to the South Beach Diet a few years back — it’s now his lifestyle and he’s in better shape at 78 than he was at 58.
My wife is from Japan. When she’s in the US all she can talk about is keeping her weight down.
Confirmed: when she in Japan she loses tons of weight.
Your pic says it all, the Japese eat crazy small portions.
reiner
17 Jun 06
There has been some research on the sizes of meals in certain cultures. They do play a role as some sort of social norm to some degree.
Though a lot of the readers here might be quite young and may be in perfect shape, i want to point you to something else - the key aspect of beeing well-fed has almost nothing to do with the size of the meal.
It has to do with the needs of your body at that specific moment. If these needs are not fulfilled by your meal, your body stays hungry.
People from different nations have different genetical needs, ok.
But that’s not half the story - it is even more important to look at the differences between you and the so called average and what your body needs at this very moment.
What is food to one, is to others bitter poison. (Lucretius)
It get’s worse when you fill your body with synthetical dietary supplements. They are too concentrated and when you take the wrong ones, your body has to deal with it ‘the body way’. And this means to compensate for it. So your symptons may change over time but you loose sight of the real problem !
A good starting point for me was “The nutrition solution: A Guide to your metabolic type”. This is not bla bla.
eat consciously !
greetings
to jeff - you might want to have a look at what yeasts and the ‘wrong’ bacteria can do to your digestional tract (they drive out the ‘normal’ blend of bacteria and seriously disturb digestion and produce substances that weaken your body).
Part of the reasons for North Americans weight problems have to do with the love of suburbia. The population density in cities is very low in North America compared to Europe and Asia and as a partial result no one walks anywhere. People don’t even go out for nightly strolls - people get suspicious and call the police.
We walk almost everywhere which allows us to buy fresh food as we need it. At our home in Canada it’s common to get in your car to go buy a pack of gum!
BTW, the ice cream is quite tasty and that portion is just perfect for an after dinner desert.
kam904s
19 Jun 06
What Paul is saying is that the attitude of people on the web towards the overweight population is crappy. And it is. People hide behind the excuse that, “Oh, well, you should eat less and exercise more to lose weight.”
What they’re really saying is, “Conform to my idea of how you look. I’ll quote a bunch of statistics at you that I haven’t researched but I think I heard once from this guy or this article on MSN. Now listen to me because all I really care about is YOUR HEALTH.”
Sure. If you care about the health of those around you (except to feel smug because your butt is smaller than theirs) then you would go to Japan and smack those cigarettes out of their mouths, throw their coffee out the window, and hide all their ice cream (no matter what size it is). But you don’t. Because they’re thin. So OBVIOUSLY it’s because people in America just stuff their faces. Of course.
I’ve studied in Japan, by the way. They are an incredibly repressed culture. One of my students had the “nerve” to bring a hoagie to school one day. Her “friends” ripped it out of her hands and stomped on it because they all were eating one rice ball each for lunch and she wasn’t following what the group did. The square peg is not allowed mentality is still STRONG in Japan. I talked to my boss about it and she said, “There aren’t more fat people here because fat is not young. We all want to be young. There is nothing more pathetic than being fat and young. So we starve.” Then she offered me a cigarette because that was her lunch.
So before you go shooting off your mouth about why someone is fat or what they can do to “Fix It” maybe you’d better concern yourself first with whether they WANT to fix it or not. Because I’d rather be an intelligent, clear-minded, original, individual FATASS than a brain-raped, group-concensus-obsessed sheep.
Oh, and if you’re so worried about the eating habits of Americans, why don’t you go hunt down the Hollywood brain-trusts who spend their days vomiting and purging their way to the magazine covers and give the youth of America an idea what a REAL woman looks like?
L'Dorian
19 Jun 06
Fact: whenever fat gets discussed on the web, the fat acceptance trolls divide up their comments like this:
1. “Diets don’t work, nobody has ever lost weight and kept it off; and the people who have lost weight and kept it off are collaborators in genocide against the fat race.”
2. “The obesity epidemic is a myth: there are no more fat people today than ever; and the reason there are more fat people today than before is their genes, which make it impossible to lose weight even if they eat only 800 calories a day.”
3. “Fat people are just as healthy as healthy people, and while we’re at it, insurance that doesn’t pay for motorized wheelchairs for diabetes amputees is bigoted.”
4. “Mountains of evidence and expert opinion are nothing against the seven crank books in existence that deny it (“Obesity Myth,” “Big Fat Lies,” “Diet Myth” …).”
I’m sad that echo chamber pseudoscientific fat bloggers have invaded this post with their ignorant newspeak comments. Great.
Kam — I couldn’t care less if a person is carrying more fat than is healthy — that’s their perogative and right.
If a person, say, puts their priority on the enjoyment they receive from food over, say, the enjoyment of mountain biking (for example), that’s fine with me.
My only issue is this: we are overweight because we eat more than we burn. Including myself.
So let’s stop the charade and just be honest; that’s all I want. I’m growing tired of “victim-ism” on every level — it cheapens those who truly are victims.
Eat up. I salute you (seriously). But don’t let someone eat half a package of Oreos tell you “I can’t lose weight”.
They don’t WANT to … AND THAT’S OKAY.
ziggy
19 Jun 06
post more pictures
fatty mcfatster
20 Jun 06
kam,
you just made that story up. there are no “hoagies” in japan. if there were, nobody would stomp on it. hoagie stomping isn’t very japanese. Japanese kids go to mcdonalds all the time and eat mountains of candy and other junk food. Half of the kids ARE fat.
“the attitude on of people on the web towards the overweight population is crappy”
I thought “people on the web” == “the overweight population” ???
Kam904s
20 Jun 06
Of course I made it up. I go onto random boards and get upset over what I view as a form of debasement and then decide to back up my argument with a made up story. That makes PERFECT sense, especially after ranting that people don’t bother to get their facts straight when quoting statistics regarding weight-loss, weight gain, and the like. Right. You’re such a detective. You found me out! I mean, it’s not like the kid couldn’t have made the hoagie at her house, especially after a conversation on food I miss from America the week before at Tennis Club. That’s just silly.
As for the “stomping” incident, it DID happen. I SAW it. It might not “be very Japanese” but it happened. I couldn’t believe it. Now maybe those girls were overreacting, maybe the regular teenage population of Japan is *fractionally* less insane than that, but it happened and I was horrified by it. Kids are cruel enough to one another as it is without incidents of that nature occurring.
As for people on the web equaling the overweight population, I disagree. I feel that such a statement is insinuating that staying in front of the computer for many hours at a time means that you are lazy and therefore fat. Perhaps I have misunderstood. If so, please, enlighten me.
There are MANY MANY reasons for being overweight. Perhaps you have a medical condition. Perhaps when you exercise you choose not to bring your heart rate to peak efficiency levels. Perhaps you naturally have a slow metabolism. Perhaps you are happy with extra curves and don’t feel the need to look like Twiggy. Whatever, it’s your body, it’s your choice. Just being online does not make you fat, even if you choose to remain in front of the monitor eighteen hours a day, just as eating food that is “bad for you” will not make you fat. Food is food is food. Some food nourishes your body at a higher nutrition efficiency level but all food will keep you alive.
You can live off of ice cream for a year and if your metabolism can handle it then you will be skinny. You can eat nothing but greens and lean meat and if your metabolism is broken, you will be fat. Serving size nonwithstanding. There is a break-even point in your body for the required calories consumed in a day. Even if you eat “healthy” food ALL THE TIME, if you do not drop under that break-even point, you will remain where you are at. If that is what society considers “Fat” then you will be fat, or skinny, or whatever level you are currently viewed as. Your metabolism maintains that break-even point, nothing else.
The only way you can change your metabolism is through exercise or medication. Nothing you eat is going to change that. And sitting in front of the computer screen is going to do nothing more than maintain the metabolism you currently have.
completely wrong
20 Jun 06
“You can live off of ice cream for a year and if your metabolism can handle it then you will be skinny. You can eat nothing but greens and lean meat and if your metabolism is broken, you will be fat. ____Serving size nonwithstanding.____” (emphasis mine)
Totally false. Portion size is pretty much the only thing that matters. You can eat all the crappy food you want, provided you don’t eat that much of it. Likewise, you can eat all the health food you want, but if you pig out on it, you are going to stay fat, or get fatter.
Anonymous Coward
21 Jun 06
I enjoy eating *and* excercising. I ride my bike for at least an hour each day usually. I’m muscular, strong, and active. I have good cholesterol and excellent blood pressure. And guess what? I’m also fat. I suppose I could starve it off, but why would I want to do that? I’m healthy and I enjoy my life.
Melody
21 Jun 06
Right on, kam904s!
Chris Hulgan
22 Jun 06
Me and my wife are fat and lazy. I am scared my children will end up the same. I do work, but my wife doesn’t and probably will never again. I am feeling less attracted to her every day. She is gross she is starting to look like her sister who I always was disgusted by. She is pregnant and feels she can eat anything. The first time she did too but I figured she would at least try to lose it before we conceived our second. Now I figure she just doesn’t ever want to lose it. Now I get to put up with a fat lazy wife, which was not the case when I married her. Maybe I will find someone who loves me enough to make herself look good for me. YUCK !!
Fred Jones
22 Jun 06
oooohhhhh get rid of her man
common wisdom
23 Jun 06
Look, everybody knows that skinny people can eat whatever they want and never get fat. This is called metabolism. Fat people can starve themselves all they want, but they will never lose weight. Even if they don’t eat anything! It is just metabolism. It doesn’t matter that ice cream comes in small containers - Japanese people are already skinny. Fat people are already fat and no amount of diet or exercise will change this. Metabolism is set in stone - unless you take diet pills.
If “it doesn’t matter that ice cream comes in small containers - Japanese people are already skinny” and “metabolism is set in stone,” then how is it that they’re also facing rising obesity problems?
D
24 Jun 06
A person can eat pretty much as many vegetables and fish as they like and not take in many calories; some traditional Japanese foods like seaweed provide practically zero calories. Even if you splurged several days a week, over a year’s time your calorie intake would still be very low compared to ours. It’s interesting that the French also tend to be thin and have a much different diet. Like the Japanese they often eat small portions of a wide variety of foods, unlike our tendency to eat big portions of a small variety of foods. One reason I think Americans avoid fruits/veggies is that the produce commonly available to us sucks. We instinctively don’t want to eat crummy veggies; our tastebuds are designed to help us select ripe, nutritionally loaded fruits. If you have access to organic produce you’ll notice you immediate crave and enjoy eating your fruits and veggies again because they are ripe and taste good.
common wisdom
24 Jun 06
Japanese eat vegetables because they are skinny. Also, the Japanese have better metabolisms than Americans. Americans are fat because of their metabolisms. It has nothing to do with fruits and vegetables and tastebuds. If an american started to eat vegetables, there is no way they would become skinny. Likewise, if a japanese ate ice cream all day, he would never become fat because of his metabolism! Maybe you people should try reading a book or too and not worry so much about your health. Diet pills work too.
Anonymous Coward
28 Jun 06
jj
Drew
29 Jun 06
And the basic human fascination with the “exotic” rears its ugly head again. Why do we, as a culture, seem to always be looking outside our country for that mysterious society with the solution to all of our social ills? Japan has plenty of social and environmental problems, just like every other country (except maybe sweden… those pesky swedes are way too well adjusted). Japan wastes teremendous resources on individual packaging for every product under the sun. You don’t buy in “bulk” in Japan because of lack of space, but that means every serving you eat is individually packaged. Waste.
Fact: American produce IS different than it was even a few decades ago, primarily due to genetic engineering and selective breeding to make vegetables and fruits which can survive the violence of machine harvesting and still look pretty on a store shelf two weeks later. This has resulted in thicker cell walls, more water, and therefore tougher and less flavorful produce. Sure, it doesn’t taste as good, but if you wait a generation, no-one will know the difference. This seems to be a trend in most foods mass-produced in the US. Quantity over quality, shelf-life over nutrition.
Regarding the metabolism comments: Japanese and americans are not that different in terms of nutritional needs and metabolic baselines. Your metabolic rate is variable and is influenced by how much sleep you get, what you eat, how much you exercise, etc. It also changes as you age. But a slow metabolic rate will not result in weight gain if the total caloric intake is low. By some of the logic presented here, it would be impossible for an overweight person to starve to death. Their fat would just miraculously replenish itself in the absence of any caloric intake. Where’s the critical thinking here?
The most frightening thing about this thread is the lack of scientific understanding displayed in some of these comments.
“The opinion of 10,000 men is worth nothing if none of them know anything about the subject.”
Nikka
30 Jun 06
well thats a bit silly because the japanese peole i know are FAT FAT FAT!!!! cheese on bread hahahaahha
wilberforce
30 Jun 06
OK - I call shenanigans. I lived in Japan 10 years ago - the kids were already getting wider/taller because the diet was changing. They were eating more beef, more carbohydrates like pasta, bread and pizza. I went back to Japan for a holiday two months ago - the FIRST thing I noticed was there were a lot more chunky asses on the subway. As the diet in Japan changes the fatter they will get, just as we in the west have.
Sure - portions are smaller in Japan - but they’re smaller in Australia as well - and we’ve got the same obesity problem as America. It’s the crap you eat at home, not the crap you eat at restaurants (assuming you don’t have every meal at restaurants).
I’m now living in Hong Kong - the asses are getting bigger here as well - more Western foods are making their way into the daily diets and if those foods contain massive amounts of energy that don’t used every day, people here will get fatter too.
Abundance has interesting side-effects.
ryan
02 Jul 06
I think this convo is a load of bs and it is pointless imho.
John Horton
02 Jul 06
I love penis in my butt!!!!
Gerry H
03 Jul 06
As a fat person, I appreciate all the help posted. Pretty much summed up by Paul as follows:
“Listen: You are fat because you eat too much and exercise too little. End of story. No rocket science, nothing to do with containers or your hormones or what-have-you.”
This great bit of advice could be applied to many health issues: Smoker? “Listen, put down the cig. End of story. No rocket science, nothing to do with addictions.” Anemic? “Listen, figure out what you should weigh and eat until you get there. End of story, no rocket science.”
If it was that easy to lose weight, no one would be fat - who wants to go through life treated as fat people are? One issue that has not been addressed in this discussion, and in many others regarding obesity is hunger.
No matter how you slice it, in order to lose weight, you have to go hungry. Your body signals hunger if you have not consumed enough calories to sustain your body weight. Most programs I have reviewed state that you should target a weight loss of 1-2 pounds a week - that “quick-loss” programs should be avoided. If a person is 50 pounds overweight, that means he/she needs to be hungry for 6 months straight. 100 pounds to lose? Figure at least of year of hunger. Not rocket science, just 100 divided by 2 pounds a week.
Davis
04 Jul 06
Gerry H, you have no understanding of the human body….
For starters to lose weight in a consistent and healthy manner, you cut 1000 calories off your normal diet…..this doesn’t mean you get hungry…..you merely replace pop with water, and Mcdonalds with regular sandwhiches….
You shouldn’t be significantly more hungry….if you are….eat some fruits and veggies in addition to the meal…..it’s not as though you’ll suffer if you don’t get a big mac…..
My family and myself have pretty slow metabolisms….3 of my family are extremely obese….yet I’m able to get into shape and my dad was also a former amatuer bodybuilderas well as a skinny kid…..it’s all about the right diet….
ok. I too agree with the fact that many of these comments have no scientific basis. It is a question of thermodynamics- If you burn more energy than you consume (a unit of energy is a colorie) you will lose weight. As someone who lost weight (120 through gastric bypass) my body was deprived caloric intake. I still cannot consume the calories i was eating prior to bypass and therefore remain a 135 lbs. It was my WILLPOWER that kept me from losing- not metabolism- not heredity-not organic vs. regular or whatever the media or societal excuse that is currently presented. If you eat less, you will lose.
ok. I too agree with the fact that many of these comments have no scientific basis. It is a question of thermodynamics- If you burn more energy than you consume (a unit of energy is a colorie) you will lose weight. As someone who lost weight (120 through gastric bypass) my body was deprived caloric intake. I still cannot consume the calories i was eating prior to bypass and therefore remain a 135 lbs. It was my WILLPOWER that kept me from losing- not metabolism- not heredity-not organic vs. regular or whatever the media or societal excuse that is currently presented. If you eat less, you will lose.
ok. I too agree with the fact that many of these comments have no scientific basis. It is a question of thermodynamics- If you burn more energy than you consume (a unit of energy is a colorie) you will lose weight. As someone who lost weight (120 through gastric bypass) my body was deprived caloric intake. I still cannot consume the calories i was eating prior to bypass and therefore remain a 135 lbs. It was my WILLPOWER that kept me from losing- not metabolism- not heredity-not organic vs. regular or whatever the media or societal excuse that is currently presented. If you eat less, you will lose.
Knowitall
08 Jul 06
Actually dieting will make you fatter in the long run with more fat and less muscle if you don’t know what your doing. And 98% of people on diets don’t.
To lose weight you have to get healthy so your metabolism is fast. Here is some things most people don’t know.
1. If you let yourself get hungry your metabolism slows down, especially if you skip meals and even more so if your on a starvation diet. So eat like 6 or 7 small meals a day, don’t get hungry.
2. It does matter what you eat, even if their the same amount of calories. Example: Fructose mostly goes straight to fat and glucose is used more as energy in the muscles and burned up.
3. protein satisfiys your hunger the most, sugar will make you hungry again in a few hours or less, especially if you eat a lot of it at once.
4. Many things can slow down your metabolism which is more of a cause of people being overweight than simply eating too many calories. If your metabolism is slow then you will be eating more than your burning. But you don’t always need to eat less, you usually need to eat healthy to speed up your metabolism.
That’s all I say though, it’s been a while since I’ve read about what causes obesity and how to really lose it, so I’m a little rusty right now.
I do know many people, most in my family that are very fat and they eat way less than I do, I just eat very healthy, no processed foods. I eat my own fried chicken, not KFC with MSG or something. I eat quite a bit of calories, I love eating.
I wasn’t always as skinny as I am now, I used to be bigger when I ate a horrible diet, and was starting to get slightly overweight.
RaisinGirl
09 Jul 06
It seems to me - and I’m willing to concede that I’m no scientist - that the genetics argument is pure bullshit.
I have nothing against fat people. I just hate that escapist, victim-esque whining.
Fat-acceptance people often claim that they eat no more than anybody else. If that’s true - that if our population has evolved in such a way that a good number of us can weigh 300+ pounds on 2000 calories per day - than holy crap, we’re in trouble.
I’m kidding. I don’t understand. Fifty years ago, fat people were much rarer. Fifty years isn’t enough time for such evolution/genetic change to take place, is it? At the same time, I can’t help noticing that the size of McDonald’s french fries have more than quadrupled in size.
Losing weight is HARD. You’re hungry all the time, tired, cranky, and 1400 calories can feel like starvation if you’re used to eating 3x that. I can certainly respect people who choose not to undergo that. It sucks. But don’t bitch that you Can’t Lose Weight if you haven’t bothered to put up with the suffering which Losing Weight entails.
Just say that you Don’t Want to Lose Weight. That is your choice that you have every right to make.
RaisinGirl
09 Jul 06
*quadrupled since
Anonymous Coward
10 Jul 06
fuck you
fat people are cool so get a FUCKING life ASS FUCKER
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHHAHAHHAHAHHHAHHHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH
Awesome Raisin Girl. I too am so tired of people claiming that it is physically impossible to lose weight because of their metabolism or genetics. Its bull shit. its all about consuming less calories! Yes eating more nutritious food can give you vitamins and nourish you more, but if you eat a shit load of “healthy” food, you are still going to be fat. I spent my whole childhood into my mid twenties eating wholesome food and I was Still really fat. I did not have regular pop until i was 16 or a big mac until college. I ate too much. I could not resist the temptation to overindulge even the healthiest foods. If gastric bypass taught me anything, it is that i was eating too much and it was physically possible to lose weight. Please people- face the truth.
The easy wasy out? are you fucking kidding? How about the countless meals i spent vomiting over the toilet? The excess skin i deal with? Ive been out 4 years and have kept the weight off dispite the pouch streching to the point i can eat an entire subway sub. I really have to watch what i eat or i gain. The surgery taught me that i can lose weight if i eat less and exercise. I ran the bronx half marathon two days ago. i ran the full new york city marathon in november and 7 other half marathons between january and today. And i suppose that is the easy wasy to lose and keep weight off? Stop making excuses and be proative
Gerry H
16 Jul 06
Davis - It is you who does understand how the body works. Calories are what drives the metobolistic process. You write �For starters to lose weight in a consistent and healthy manner, you cut 1000 calories off your normal diet�..this doesn�t mean you get hungry�..you merely replace pop with water, and McDonalds (sic) with regular sandwhiches�. You shouldn�t be significantly more hungry�� For the average obese individual who is say 5� 9� tall, 275 pounds and whose activity level is �light�, Fitness magazine calculates that body requires 3151 calaries per day to maintain its body weight. Mind you metobolism is a biochemical process; your body does not know what your height or BMI is � it simply demands the number of calories to support its current weight, metolism and activity level (referred to as BMR or Base Metablism Rate)� that is, it requires the number of calories �burned� to be replaced. If this does not happen, it signals its need via common hungary signals. So you cut 1000 calories off your diet � one-third of what your body needs � and you think you won�t get hungary? Mind you, you are not doing this for one day, or one week, or even one month. You are doing this for many, many months to lose any significant weight. You go on to state �if you are [hungary]�.eat some fruits and veggies in addition to the meal�..it�s not as though you�ll suffer if you don�t get a big mac.� This is exactly what scutles a weight-loss diet � eat some fruts and veggies and add a ouple hundred calories to your daily intake and soon you are not losing weight, still hungary and the diet goes out the wundow.
As sise314 says in her post, it is all about WILLPOWER. And an individual of averge weight, who has no issues with weight or metobilism cannot fathom the significance of so-called willpower. For them, a couple of weeks of �willpower� and they lose the 5 pounds they are overwieght, so why can�t anyone? I say thank God for gastirc surgery; I finally lost 135 pounds after 30 years of trying � yes I took the �easy� way out, am pround of it, and I would recommend the same to any obese indivudual.
Although this is an old topic i need to include my comment. Your upbrining is most important in your weight. I am thin and the reason that is is because my parents researched what it takes. It is VERY simple. Have the child eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full. I haveb a few more things, though fat people aren’t lazy, if they’ve gained their weight steadily throughout their lives, they likely haven’t consumed morre than 100 extra calories a day. Also many people who are overweight can be very healthy (in what they eat). Metabolism does have something to do with it, however most people with really slow metabolisms don’t exercoise. I think your body is your choice, but it is sad that some people start out thin. My dad weighs over 500 pounds, so I understand. I think he really is sometimes embarrased to go places. Still, the older someone gets the more difficult it is for them to self regulate. My sense of hunger isn’t what it used to be. I need to stop myself now-btw i’m only 18. The scale will get higher. I also believe people do have a set point their body tries to keep itself at, but idon’t think that point is ever over the “healty” weight, although once you surpass it itraises. Also eating ice cream doesn’t make you fat. i would say it is abou t the best kind of desert any ways. Alright thank you for letting me say my peace.
Gerry H
20 Jul 06
I think you have way simplified the issue. In my family, my father’s side of the family was thin and most of my mother’s side tened to be overweight. My brother ate the same food as I, yet he was (and is) thin and I was overweight. this was back in the 1960s, and I bicycled everwhere I went, had a newspaper delivery route everyday, was on the swim and wrestling team and lettered in football (my brother earned his high school letter by being the scorekeeper for the basketball team). Genetics, body type, and metobolism are all major factors impacting weight. Eating habits and excercise are secondary.
Melody
22 Jul 06
Sometimes it seems that all of the focus on weight loss here actually impedes any kind of progress…A lot of people think they’re fat, when in reality they simply do not meet the guidelines for what is pleasing to the eye. I do know that what’s in the food here is damaging to the body and metabolism is way more complex than most people understand…it’s all of your body processes. I think metabolism hinders my fat loss. I am fit and at a good BMI, but it’s very hard to maintain because, for about 12 years of my life I never ate lunch…which I believe forced my body into holding onto fat. Also, I find that organic or at least normal looking produce is expensive and even hard to find where I live. It seems that no one really cares if something is natural anymore. They either don’t know or don’t care how they might be harming themselves with partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup and genetically engineered bullshit. Seems to me if we did it right nature wouldn’t need any help with nourishing us.
Kam904s
26 Jul 06
Look, your body is YOUR BODY. The point I am trying to make isn’t HOW to lose weight or if you SHOULD lose weight, it is a simple question if you WANT to lose weight.
Do you?
Are you happy with your body?
If not, why?
If so, again, why?
No one has the right to tell you what to do with your body so long as you are not harming them (i.e. smoking or the like).
Weight loss is a HUGE market across the world. This is a fact. People - Japanese, Americans, Swedish, so on and so forth… everyone - Want To Lose Weight.
We are taught very early to HATE OUR BODIES.
When was the last time you saw a fat person - other than Oprah or a politician - on the cover of a magazine with a POSITIVE MESSAGE as their tagline?
When was the last time you saw a fat person “get the guy/girl” without having to lose weight first (outside of a parody such as Shallow Hal?
We are told time and time again, “A hundred years ago we weren’t so fat”. This is probably true. Is it because people ate better a hundred years ago? Maybe, maybe not. Our ancestors didn’t have any more willpower than we do today they just had FEWER CHOICES and HARDER WORK. Today less than two percent of our population has to work on a farm to support the rest of us. A hundred years ago that was not true. Metabolism speed aside, if you worked from sunup to sundown on a farm and had to survive off of what you yanked out of the ground yourself (or traded for) you’d be skinny too.
So put aside our cultural differences. People are fat the world over. Put aside the “grandpa was a badass” mentality. Times have changed.
The question still remains thus: DO YOU LIKE YOUR BODY THE WAY IT CURRENTLY IS?
If you want to change it, REALLY want to change it, for WHATEVER reason you have, then you will change it. You may pay for surgery, you may do it the old-fashioned way and use diet/exercise, or you may just develop an eating disorder, but if you want the change ENOUGH you will do something about it.
If not, well, you won’t.
And no one should judge you. If you are “fat” by standards of society, who cares? Hold your head high and buy whatever the hell you feel like eating. We live in a PRIVELEDGED WORLD, people. At NO other time in human history has food been so easily accessible, so readily available, and in such great quantities. You can buy that ice cream and KNOW that tomorrow there will be more for other people. If the package is a single serving or the Ultra-Econo-Tub, who cares? It’s your business and your body.
Don’t ever let what anyone else has to say to you make you feel like less of a person. If your partner doesn’t like your body the way it is, well then they can just walk out that door. They have to love you for YOU - not for the size of your breasts/penis, what you eat, or how you appear to others. These things are an aspect of you, yes, but they are NOT YOU.
And - contrary to what the Diet Gurus and the media would have you believe - that is the way it should be. The diet companies have ONE GOAL IN MIND, to make money. The media has ONE GOAL IN MIND, to make money.
And if you want to change your body badly enough you can give your money to them… or you can accept yourself, work for a gradual change, and keep your money in your bank account.
Love yourself guys. What you eat is only as important as you let it be. Be as healthy as you feel you ought to be or can afford to be and beyond that… well, just enjoy yourselves and your bodies.
You only have them for the next hundred years or so, after all.
Chris B
29 Jul 06
Green tea speeds up the metabolism…if youre in Japan now as I am make it all you drink (not difficult, it`s everywhere) in 2 months or so you will lose weight it worked for me
salote
01 Aug 06
YOyO Wat Up MAn DIs BE U No…………
UmMmM YeAh Cuz ItS GOod ThAt The jaPan pepZ eAT hEALtHY……….. yEAH aLl THe cOUNTIRES sHuD bE lIkE thaT YEAH………l8RS…………..
T.C WAT……………………………………………..
salote
01 Aug 06
YOyO Wat Up MAn DIs BE U No…………
UmMmM YeAh Cuz ItS GOod ThAt The jaPan pepZ eAT hEALtHY……….. yEAH aLl THe cOUNTIRES sHuD bE lIkE thaT YEAH………l8RS…………..
T.C WAT……………………………………………..
matt
17 Aug 06
cutting calories and excersise will work for MOST of the population. but fall under 1500 calories a day and your body will go into “Starvation Mode” this is where you metabolism will slow to a crawl and foods are stored as fat for energy to use. so if you don’t eat anything all day and have a big meal for dinner. you are going to gain wieght.
chris has it right with the green tea thing though. a cup before every meal has been scientifically proven to help wieght loss. this is no replacment for excersise and healthier foods though
matt
17 Aug 06
forgot to add it to the other post but i have no clue how people have trouble keeping the calorie count down. i’m struggling right now to keep mine above 1500.
Dave
24 Aug 06
Genetics+Upbringing+Current Lifestyle = Your current body- type
Anyone can lose weight. I’m sick of people who use the excuse “well my brother is thin and we do exactly the same amount of exercise and eat the same foods. He just got better genes”
News flash. You’re brothers body for any number of reasons requires a higher amount of calories to maintain his weight. You require less. Find out what it is and minus 15-10% of it, eat healthy foods 5-6 times a day and exercise and you will lose weight.
Yes it’s that simple. I used to weigh 240 pounds I now weigh 170. It didn’t happen over night, it took three years. I didn’t do it because I had better genetics than you, or had a faster metabolism. I did it because I’m mentally stronger than you.
And that’s what it comes down to, how mentally tough you are. Too many people in today’s society expect instant gratification. If you want something you have to work for it.
Having said that, If you’re happy being fat or obese then great, good luck to you. Just don’t tell other people it’s impossible.
YAY!! NONE-FAT JAPPANESE!!! I LOVE THOSE PEOPLE!!!!
Helliant
25 Aug 06
YAY!! NONE-FAT JAPPANESE!!! I LOVE THOSE PEOPLE!!!!
Nobody Inparticular
30 Aug 06
Alex Garnaut Sucks
Nobody Inparticular
30 Aug 06
What about sumos. those guys are fat as.
Gerry H
31 Aug 06
I agree that to say it is impossible to lose weight is incorrect. It indeed does come down to mental toughness, will power, whatever you want to call it. I think what peeves most fat people is just the opposite opinion: that it is EASY to lose weight. The reaction of “well, gee, I needed to lose 8 pounds and it was easy - so why can’t you lose 75”
The only way to lose weight is to be hungry. Will power is required to endure hunger for an extended period of time. Hunger is a very basic, very strong, very demanding bodily response to lack of food. You may recall stories of people locked in WW2 concentration camps and being starved - they ate their leather shoes, dead rats, and anything else they could find.
It has been shown time and time again that fat people keep trying to lose weight. However, research indicates that 97% of all diets fail - again, because the dieter finally gives in to the continual, overwhelming and depressing feeling of hunger.
No it’s not impossible to lose weight, but it is very, very, very difficult.
What I would like to know is why people concern themselves with being ‘fat.’ If one person is ‘fat’ then they’re ‘fat.’ Leave them be. Don’t go rearing your ugly head at them and screeching, “Why are you so fat?! You should: eat less/excersise more/be anorexic/splurge/starve/stop eating junkfood/buy less mcdonald/etc!!”
Hasn’t it occured to you that the obsession about overweight and skinny people has reached an all time level of hilarity? I find it hilarious to watch people squabble over the fact that ‘they have to be skinny to be accepted/loved/nice/pretty/insert some random stereotyped peice of crap here.’
I, who is skinny, don’t freaking care that I am so. I go to school every day, and get called ‘anorexic, bulemic, and someone who fakes eating food.’ why do I? Because I am simply skinny. I have a good metabolism. I participate in karate, track, swimming, and many other sports through out the year. I eat a ton of food (even the school lunches! EW!) and a blend of junk food and healthy food. My favorite foods are cakes and cheese! See? I spend a ton of time in front of the computer. I do things that both fat and skinny people do: eat healthy, exercise, watch TV, stuff like that.
Overweight and underweight/’right’ weight people get treated bad about their weight. both of them. really and truly. and, I am so sick of it, that I must say,
“SHUT THE HECK UP!” Why are we so superficial that we must obsess about peoples weights?!
Don’t you know, that health is not being over or under or regular weight, it is mental. it is about having a strong mind and heart. it is about making sure that your body gets the vitamins and minerals it needs, along with an unneeded treat now and then of.. say… chocolate, or cake, or ice cream. It’s about things other then weight.
besides, some ‘fat’ people I know can lift up my teacher’s desks. that’s in 8th grade. so some people arent fat, they just are muscular. jeebus.
From: An 8th grader with a very bad temper and a headstrong personality.
Person....
22 Sep 06
What I would like to know is why people concern themselves with being ‘fat.’ If one person is ‘fat’ then they’re ‘fat.’ Leave them be. Don’t go rearing your ugly head at them and screeching, “Why are you so fat?! You should: eat less/excersise more/be anorexic/splurge/starve/stop eating junkfood/buy less mcdonald/etc!!”
Hasn’t it occured to you that the obsession about overweight and skinny people has reached an all time level of hilarity? I find it hilarious to watch people squabble over the fact that ‘they have to be skinny to be accepted/loved/nice/pretty/insert some random stereotyped peice of crap here.’
I, who is skinny, don’t freaking care that I am so. I go to school every day, and get called ‘anorexic, bulemic, and someone who fakes eating food.’ why do I? Because I am simply skinny. I have a good metabolism. I participate in karate, track, swimming, and many other sports through out the year. I eat a ton of food (even the school lunches! EW!) and a blend of junk food and healthy food. My favorite foods are cakes and cheese! See? I spend a ton of time in front of the computer. I do things that both fat and skinny people do: eat healthy, exercise, watch TV, stuff like that.
Overweight and underweight/’right’ weight people get treated bad about their weight. both of them. really and truly. and, I am so sick of it, that I must say,
“SHUT THE HECK UP!” Why are we so superficial that we must obsess about peoples weights?!
Don’t you know, that health is not being over or under or regular weight, it is mental. it is about having a strong mind and heart. it is about making sure that your body gets the vitamins and minerals it needs, along with an unneeded treat now and then of.. say… chocolate, or cake, or ice cream. It’s about things other then weight.
besides, some ‘fat’ people I know can lift up my teacher’s desks. that’s in 8th grade. so some people arent fat, they just are muscular. jeebus.
From: An 8th grader with a very bad temper and a headstrong personality.
yi
03 Oct 06
although the small packaging may be wasteful, the japanese are meticulous about recycling. all public areas have proper trash, paper, and recyclable bottle bins and everyone follows the rules. and if they catch a foreigner throwing a bottle away in the trash bin they will yell at you til you get it right. you’ll never see americans today care that much about recycling in a public space.
Nobody important
03 Oct 06
I’ve read all of the weight arguments. Some of you seem like you Know what you’re talking about (or try to sound like you do…) So I’ve got a little challenge for you: At my highest I weighed nearly 200ibs. But since starting college one semester ago I now weigh 155.
I do not eat any more or less than before, Nor do I exercise any more than before. I am always stressed but I do not eat because of stress. (Stress is suppost to make you fat anyway right?)
I cannot figure out what happend, but would like to continue to loose weight. (I can walk without pain on my trashed knee.) I don’t know what happened to me.
P.S. I don’t drink either(just ruling out the whole Jack Daniels diet thing.)
107 comments so far (Jump to latest)
Nick A. Carlson 14 Jun 06
I lived in Japan for several years. I LOVE Japan. It’s a wonderful country. But yeah, those small servings were hard to get used to.
Brian Breslin 14 Jun 06
are those digital price tags in the freezer? if so, thats 157yen for a teeny icecream, so about $1.20 ?? not too expensive, but not cheap either.
eli sarver 14 Jun 06
I think it’s great that the Japanese have small servings, small fridges, small everything. There’s obviously a market for small ice cream containers. It would make me feel better to get a small ice cream instead of a half gallon or quart container here in the US. That way you know you got one serving.
Jeff Werner 14 Jun 06
Down side: smaller servings waste more packaging and energy per volume.
Anonymous Coward 14 Jun 06
Sumo wrestler ate them
Anonymous Coward 14 Jun 06
Sumo wrestlers ate them
Raymond Brigleb 14 Jun 06
Cause they’re Getting Real with their meal!
tom 14 Jun 06
Instead of a half-assed product, half a product? Har har har, you trendwhores.
Dave Simon 14 Jun 06
So when did SvN become a health/food blog? (The last two posts.)
Not trolling, just kidding. :)
Mark 14 Jun 06
So given the theme of the last few posts, corn syrup, KFC / white meat and now fat folks, can we come to expect that one of the next apps coming down the 37pike will have to do with dietary manangement?
37Signals CuttingBoard. I could see how the “dome” brand in you logos could be easily transitioned to a plate cover like those that come with room service meals. Replace the green field with a brown, wooden cutting board and a nice iconized knife.
I think it’d be a good idea. Seems to be a lot of chatter going on these days among the bloggers on their dieting methods. Would only make sense if a nice app came along to help folks reach their goals.
Steven Pam 14 Jun 06
Maybe it’s the name that’s putting people off eating the stuff?
da�go also Da�go (dā’gō)
n. Offensive Slang., pl. -gos also -gos, or -goes also -goes.
Used as a disparaging term for an Italian, Spaniard, or Portuguese.
cvfoss 14 Jun 06
I wonder if the space constraints of Japan encourage a culture of only buying what you need and/or getting the most bang out of the smallest package. I have a mid-sized house in Canada with room for a full-size fridge and separate freezer and both are filled with crap I’ll never eat. Maybe making everyone move into 400 sq. ft. apartments would force people to ‘Get Real’ with what they buy.
Clayton 14 Jun 06
The title could have also read…
“Proof that Japanese Freezers are REALLY SMALL”
I can’t imagine that in a tiny tokyo apartment you’d have room in a freezer to store a half gallon of ice cream.
Adam Lindsay 14 Jun 06
Are you trying to say there are fat Americans? :)
I assumed everyone was just big boned.
Adam Lindsay 14 Jun 06
Are you trying to say there are fat Americans? :)
I assumed everyone was just big boned.
Mark Beattie 15 Jun 06
Saw the photo in my feed reader and wondered what the big deal was at first - I live in Japan and thought “yeah, it’s ice cream, so…” but now I get it, it’s really small. It’s true though, there are virtually no fat people in Japan.
Don Wilson 15 Jun 06
Could you suggest that if you build a smaller web app that the user will be happier?
Clark 15 Jun 06
Quality over quantity?
Garth 15 Jun 06
It’s not just the portions in Japan, it’s the actual food they eat. The variety you get is wonderful. I spent two weeks over in downtown Tokyo eating dishes with the locals - consuming most of it apart from some certain chicken parts. I lost half a stone during that time. I came back feeling healthier too.
Greg 15 Jun 06
Man, you guys really like food.
Don Schenck 15 Jun 06
Blah blah Japanese blah blah blah Americans blah blah fat blah blah small …
Listen: You are fat because you eat too much and exercise too little. End of story. No rocket science, nothing to do with containers or your hormones or what-have-you.
You are lazy and you eat too much. Get off your fat rear, turn off the TV, and go mountain biking. Sheesh.
Mario 15 Jun 06
1. Let’s not ignore the ridiculously healthy foods eaten in Japan by the older generation (pre-McDonalds). Aside from fish (which is debatebly either really good for you or border-line not so good), the Japanese were mainly health-nut vegans (in particular the staunch buddhists).
2. Highly-disciplined (buddhism, karate, emperor-worship)
3. Smaller land also meant they had no room for grazing animals, thus more focused on plants which fill you up more.
Side note, if there is some webb app which could somehow (I don’t know how) help you plan out and be more concious of your food WITHOUT being a pain in the ass to use, I would use that for sure.
jake walker 15 Jun 06
It’s semi-related, but it’s an interesting story.
When I was in Japan last year with the Pixies, I woke up pretty early each morning. One morning in Nagoya, I went for a walk looking for a cheap and easy breakfast. Not too far from the hotel was a shop called Mr. Donut, or something like this. Perfect. I walked in and ordered a donut and a coffee.
The clerk went back to their preperation area and grabbed a set of tongs, then picked up the donut with the tongs. She brought the donut back to an area where it was neatly wrapped in wax paper (fold, fold, fold, fold, then a sticker on top to hold it all together). Then the wrapped donut was placed perfectly into a bag, and the bag was rolled up and a sticker was put on to keep the bag closed.
Next, the coffee was prepared in a cup, and a plastic cover was put in the hole on the plastic lid so that coffee couldn’t leak. The coffee was put into its own white bag, and stickered, and then the donut and the coffee were put into a larger bag with another sticker.
The preparation took a few minutes and was entirely unnecessary (I was going to eat the donut right there!), and certainly wasteful, but it was absolutely charming to see the pride that the Mr. Donut lady was putting into selling and presenting me with my donut.
Phil 15 Jun 06
Mario: www.fitday.com is pretty painless and nice way to keep track of what you eat. Its amazing how easy one gets to 2000 calories.
Paul 15 Jun 06
Fact: whenever fat gets discussed on the web, it gets divided up into these comments:
1. “I lost x pounds, you can too! Just do what I did.”
2. “Fat people are [lazy/gluttonous/stupid/all].”
3. “Fat people eat too much. Just move more.”
4. “You can’t deny the mountains of scientific evidence proving that fat people [die earlier/eat more food/have less sex/malady of the week]!”
I’m sad that this was posted, frankly. And inevitably - as with Don’s comment above - there are ignorant comments galore. Great.
beto 15 Jun 06
Plus, it seems that most Japanese buy groceries on a daily basis i.e, only buy what they are going to eat that day.
Now, that’s something viable on a place where everything seems to be within reach just blocks away and most people use public transportation, instead of stuffing a SUV with enough food to feed a small army on your only weekend trip to a Vons or Costco since they are so darned far away.
Speaking of which, Costco definitely wouldn’t make it in Japan.
Matt Sidesinger 15 Jun 06
Wow! The women of Japan must never get depressed.
Costco 15 Jun 06
http://www.costco.co.jp/eng/whs_860.htm
Jared White 15 Jun 06
I think the corn syrup/white flour/bad oils/carbs/artificial */fried/etc. diet Americans typically eat is the problem rather than serving size. I eat the same amount of food I ate a few years ago, but I switched to an organic, whole foods, low-sugar, sprouted grains, lean meats, balanced fat/protein/carb, etc. diet and lost 35 pounds. And you know, fermented Kombucha is actually much more fun than 7-up. :)
Jared
Drew Pickard 15 Jun 06
I think it’s a pretty complex issue
It is:
exercise
portion size
content (weird freaky ingredients)
not eating the right amounts of foods (less fat/carb - more fruit/veg)
discipline
There are also several facets to ‘health’
weight
leanness
general physical/mental healthiness
physical fitness
The Japanese are generally thinner and smaller than us and as a whole they probably eat better, but who’s to say they are “healthier”?
They DO have a high suicide rate …
terrie 15 Jun 06
Our local Safeway has three flavors of Ben & Jerry’s 3.6 oz single-servings for $1/each (on sale, a little over at regular price).
I can guarantee that these are not helping me towards a more Japanese physique!
Soyuz 15 Jun 06
I just moved to Japan two months ago. These small portions sometimes made me cry, since I ate much :D. Anyway, I love being here. Everything are well-organized. Anyway, there is 1 litre of ice cream, I just bought it last week :).
toru okada 15 Jun 06
Ah so… Hai, the real reason japanese so skinny, reveal on web, once again! A nation of vegan, buddhist, emporer worship who shop every day for bite sized portion of exotic, healthy, food! Eat only after design robot or walkman and many hour of discipline karate!
A typical japanese diet looks something like this:
breakfast: Mr Donut, coffee, two cigarettes.
lunch: rice ball from 7-11, bottled tea, two cigarettes
dinner: macudonarudos haanbagga setto, or spaageti, or maybe sushi, or something else moderately unhealthy, chased with 4 soju cocktails (women) or 4 beers (men)…and 10 cigarettes.
donut (120 calories) + rice ball (100 calories) + dinner (400 calories) + 4 beers (800 calories) = average of 1400 calories per day.
Matt 16 Jun 06
My neighbor is moving to Japan from Seattle to open 5 new Costco in the next two years, with more planned. Does that mean that the Japanese are getting super-sized?
Lee Salisbury 16 Jun 06
I’m going to Tokyo on the 28th, first time there so we’ll see how a big guy is able to live for 10 days there. I’m sure i’ll be able to find enough food to survive.
Hopefully…
osisbs 16 Jun 06
The evil war-monger Donald Rumsfeld was the head of Searle Pharm. in 1976 when Nutrasweet was approved for human consumption without ANY TESTING. SURPRISE!! Also, this is the year the obesity charts took off like a rocket. No coincidence there.
Remember Original Coke? It was made with sugar and an 8 ounce bottle made you feel like you’d had enough. One day they took it off the market and replaced it with Classic Coke which contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (also known as the stuff they feed to cows to make them obese prior to slaughter). I challenge anyone to drink 48 ounces of Original Coke made from sugar. I dare you to even try. You’d get sick.
PS. People in Japan are fat. Look around. They eat this crap too.
Don Schenck 16 Jun 06
Paul — calling my comments “ignorant” is easy!
TELL ME where, SPECIFICALLY, I am wrong. Seriously.
You know you cannot. You KNOW I am right, and you HATE that!
Jeff 16 Jun 06
I hear you Paul.
Personally I’m fat and it has nothing to do with diet… I live a pretty sedentery (spelling?) lifestyle even though I can move pretty fast for someone who needs to lose about 90lbs. My main problem is that, and that I can’t eat breakfast… I literally have no appetite and to eat food in the morning, my stomach gets upset. So I’m screwed because as soon as I eat lunch, my brain is like “want big lunch”. I do better these days though it’s still hard and I’ve pretty much plateaued.
Well, my father, who has the metabolism of an ant, and would eat 6 donuts and half a bag of chips every night that I can remember as a child, is thin as a rail. Everyone always viewed him as “healthy” because he was “thin”. He played sports with the guys from work and ever since my parents’ breakup, he started doing more bicycle riding. He bike rides probably 10 miles every day.
He was “healthy” as far as we knew.
However that changed when he had a heart attack two Novembers ago. Turns out his cholesterol was through the roof.
Can’t always judge a book by its cover, that’s for sure.
Jeff 16 Jun 06
I hear you Paul.
Personally I’m fat and it has nothing to do with diet… I live a pretty sedentery (spelling?) lifestyle even though I can move pretty fast for someone who needs to lose about 90lbs. My main problem is that, and that I can’t eat breakfast… I literally have no appetite and to eat food in the morning, my stomach gets upset. So I’m screwed because as soon as I eat lunch, my brain is like “want big lunch”. I do better these days though it’s still hard and I’ve pretty much plateaued.
Well, my father, who has the metabolism of an ant, and would eat 6 donuts and half a bag of chips every night that I can remember as a child, is thin as a rail. Everyone always viewed him as “healthy” because he was “thin”. He played sports with the guys from work and ever since my parents’ breakup, he started doing more bicycle riding. He bike rides probably 10 miles every day.
He was “healthy” as far as we knew.
However that changed when he had a heart attack two Novembers ago. Turns out his cholesterol was through the roof.
Can’t always judge a book by its cover, that’s for sure.
Don Schenck 16 Jun 06
Jeff, you say “… it has nothing to do with diet…” and then explain how you’re diet is messed up because you don’t feel hungry in the morning.
You mean you’re not hungry even after riding the exercise bike for 30 minutes? I know that, in the morning, after I ride or lift and then shower, I’m ready to eat.
Don’t wait until lunch to eat. Eat at 10:30, something small … and another small meal at noon … eat s-l-o-w-l-y … again at 2:30 … etc etc.
Diet is huge. So is exercise.
Sorry to hear about your dad. Seriously. I know my dad was in a really bad way until he switched to the South Beach Diet a few years back — it’s now his lifestyle and he’s in better shape at 78 than he was at 58.
eric van 17 Jun 06
My wife is from Japan. When she’s in the US all she can talk about is keeping her weight down.
Confirmed: when she in Japan she loses tons of weight.
Your pic says it all, the Japese eat crazy small portions.
reiner 17 Jun 06
There has been some research on the sizes of meals in certain cultures. They do play a role as some sort of social norm to some degree.
Though a lot of the readers here might be quite young and may be in perfect shape, i want to point you to something else - the key aspect of beeing well-fed has almost nothing to do with the size of the meal.
It has to do with the needs of your body at that specific moment. If these needs are not fulfilled by your meal, your body stays hungry.
People from different nations have different genetical needs, ok.
But that’s not half the story - it is even more important to look at the differences between you and the so called average and what your body needs at this very moment.
What is food to one, is to others bitter poison. (Lucretius)
It get’s worse when you fill your body with synthetical dietary supplements. They are too concentrated and when you take the wrong ones, your body has to deal with it ‘the body way’. And this means to compensate for it. So your symptons may change over time but you loose sight of the real problem !
A good starting point for me was “The nutrition solution: A Guide to your metabolic type”. This is not bla bla.
eat consciously !
greetings
to jeff - you might want to have a look at what yeasts and the ‘wrong’ bacteria can do to your digestional tract (they drive out the ‘normal’ blend of bacteria and seriously disturb digestion and produce substances that weaken your body).
Kelake 17 Jun 06
Part of the reasons for North Americans weight problems have to do with the love of suburbia. The population density in cities is very low in North America compared to Europe and Asia and as a partial result no one walks anywhere. People don’t even go out for nightly strolls - people get suspicious and call the police.
We walk almost everywhere which allows us to buy fresh food as we need it. At our home in Canada it’s common to get in your car to go buy a pack of gum!
BTW, the ice cream is quite tasty and that portion is just perfect for an after dinner desert.
kam904s 19 Jun 06
What Paul is saying is that the attitude of people on the web towards the overweight population is crappy. And it is. People hide behind the excuse that, “Oh, well, you should eat less and exercise more to lose weight.”
What they’re really saying is, “Conform to my idea of how you look. I’ll quote a bunch of statistics at you that I haven’t researched but I think I heard once from this guy or this article on MSN. Now listen to me because all I really care about is YOUR HEALTH.”
Sure. If you care about the health of those around you (except to feel smug because your butt is smaller than theirs) then you would go to Japan and smack those cigarettes out of their mouths, throw their coffee out the window, and hide all their ice cream (no matter what size it is). But you don’t. Because they’re thin. So OBVIOUSLY it’s because people in America just stuff their faces. Of course.
I’ve studied in Japan, by the way. They are an incredibly repressed culture. One of my students had the “nerve” to bring a hoagie to school one day. Her “friends” ripped it out of her hands and stomped on it because they all were eating one rice ball each for lunch and she wasn’t following what the group did. The square peg is not allowed mentality is still STRONG in Japan. I talked to my boss about it and she said, “There aren’t more fat people here because fat is not young. We all want to be young. There is nothing more pathetic than being fat and young. So we starve.” Then she offered me a cigarette because that was her lunch.
So before you go shooting off your mouth about why someone is fat or what they can do to “Fix It” maybe you’d better concern yourself first with whether they WANT to fix it or not. Because I’d rather be an intelligent, clear-minded, original, individual FATASS than a brain-raped, group-concensus-obsessed sheep.
Oh, and if you’re so worried about the eating habits of Americans, why don’t you go hunt down the Hollywood brain-trusts who spend their days vomiting and purging their way to the magazine covers and give the youth of America an idea what a REAL woman looks like?
L'Dorian 19 Jun 06
Fact: whenever fat gets discussed on the web, the fat acceptance trolls divide up their comments like this:
1. “Diets don’t work, nobody has ever lost weight and kept it off; and the people who have lost weight and kept it off are collaborators in genocide against the fat race.”
2. “The obesity epidemic is a myth: there are no more fat people today than ever; and the reason there are more fat people today than before is their genes, which make it impossible to lose weight even if they eat only 800 calories a day.”
3. “Fat people are just as healthy as healthy people, and while we’re at it, insurance that doesn’t pay for motorized wheelchairs for diabetes amputees is bigoted.”
4. “Mountains of evidence and expert opinion are nothing against the seven crank books in existence that deny it (“Obesity Myth,” “Big Fat Lies,” “Diet Myth” …).”
I’m sad that echo chamber pseudoscientific fat bloggers have invaded this post with their ignorant newspeak comments. Great.
Don Schenck 19 Jun 06
Kam — I couldn’t care less if a person is carrying more fat than is healthy — that’s their perogative and right.
If a person, say, puts their priority on the enjoyment they receive from food over, say, the enjoyment of mountain biking (for example), that’s fine with me.
My only issue is this: we are overweight because we eat more than we burn. Including myself.
So let’s stop the charade and just be honest; that’s all I want. I’m growing tired of “victim-ism” on every level — it cheapens those who truly are victims.
Eat up. I salute you (seriously). But don’t let someone eat half a package of Oreos tell you “I can’t lose weight”.
They don’t WANT to … AND THAT’S OKAY.
ziggy 19 Jun 06
post more pictures
fatty mcfatster 20 Jun 06
kam,
you just made that story up. there are no “hoagies” in japan. if there were, nobody would stomp on it. hoagie stomping isn’t very japanese. Japanese kids go to mcdonalds all the time and eat mountains of candy and other junk food. Half of the kids ARE fat.
“the attitude on of people on the web towards the overweight population is crappy”
I thought “people on the web” == “the overweight population” ???
Kam904s 20 Jun 06
Of course I made it up. I go onto random boards and get upset over what I view as a form of debasement and then decide to back up my argument with a made up story. That makes PERFECT sense, especially after ranting that people don’t bother to get their facts straight when quoting statistics regarding weight-loss, weight gain, and the like. Right. You’re such a detective. You found me out! I mean, it’s not like the kid couldn’t have made the hoagie at her house, especially after a conversation on food I miss from America the week before at Tennis Club. That’s just silly.
As for the “stomping” incident, it DID happen. I SAW it. It might not “be very Japanese” but it happened. I couldn’t believe it. Now maybe those girls were overreacting, maybe the regular teenage population of Japan is *fractionally* less insane than that, but it happened and I was horrified by it. Kids are cruel enough to one another as it is without incidents of that nature occurring.
As for people on the web equaling the overweight population, I disagree. I feel that such a statement is insinuating that staying in front of the computer for many hours at a time means that you are lazy and therefore fat. Perhaps I have misunderstood. If so, please, enlighten me.
There are MANY MANY reasons for being overweight. Perhaps you have a medical condition. Perhaps when you exercise you choose not to bring your heart rate to peak efficiency levels. Perhaps you naturally have a slow metabolism. Perhaps you are happy with extra curves and don’t feel the need to look like Twiggy. Whatever, it’s your body, it’s your choice. Just being online does not make you fat, even if you choose to remain in front of the monitor eighteen hours a day, just as eating food that is “bad for you” will not make you fat. Food is food is food. Some food nourishes your body at a higher nutrition efficiency level but all food will keep you alive.
You can live off of ice cream for a year and if your metabolism can handle it then you will be skinny. You can eat nothing but greens and lean meat and if your metabolism is broken, you will be fat. Serving size nonwithstanding. There is a break-even point in your body for the required calories consumed in a day. Even if you eat “healthy” food ALL THE TIME, if you do not drop under that break-even point, you will remain where you are at. If that is what society considers “Fat” then you will be fat, or skinny, or whatever level you are currently viewed as. Your metabolism maintains that break-even point, nothing else.
The only way you can change your metabolism is through exercise or medication. Nothing you eat is going to change that. And sitting in front of the computer screen is going to do nothing more than maintain the metabolism you currently have.
completely wrong 20 Jun 06
“You can live off of ice cream for a year and if your metabolism can handle it then you will be skinny. You can eat nothing but greens and lean meat and if your metabolism is broken, you will be fat. ____Serving size nonwithstanding.____” (emphasis mine)
Totally false. Portion size is pretty much the only thing that matters. You can eat all the crappy food you want, provided you don’t eat that much of it. Likewise, you can eat all the health food you want, but if you pig out on it, you are going to stay fat, or get fatter.
Anonymous Coward 21 Jun 06
I enjoy eating *and* excercising. I ride my bike for at least an hour each day usually. I’m muscular, strong, and active. I have good cholesterol and excellent blood pressure. And guess what? I’m also fat. I suppose I could starve it off, but why would I want to do that? I’m healthy and I enjoy my life.
Melody 21 Jun 06
Right on, kam904s!
Chris Hulgan 22 Jun 06
Me and my wife are fat and lazy. I am scared my children will end up the same. I do work, but my wife doesn’t and probably will never again. I am feeling less attracted to her every day. She is gross she is starting to look like her sister who I always was disgusted by. She is pregnant and feels she can eat anything. The first time she did too but I figured she would at least try to lose it before we conceived our second. Now I figure she just doesn’t ever want to lose it. Now I get to put up with a fat lazy wife, which was not the case when I married her. Maybe I will find someone who loves me enough to make herself look good for me. YUCK !!
Fred Jones 22 Jun 06
oooohhhhh get rid of her man
common wisdom 23 Jun 06
Look, everybody knows that skinny people can eat whatever they want and never get fat. This is called metabolism. Fat people can starve themselves all they want, but they will never lose weight. Even if they don’t eat anything! It is just metabolism. It doesn’t matter that ice cream comes in small containers - Japanese people are already skinny. Fat people are already fat and no amount of diet or exercise will change this. Metabolism is set in stone - unless you take diet pills.
anonymous 23 Jun 06
http://www.oxha.org/alliance-alert/2006-q1-jan2013march/alert.2006-02-17.3664134517/
If “it doesn’t matter that ice cream comes in small containers - Japanese people are already skinny” and “metabolism is set in stone,” then how is it that they’re also facing rising obesity problems?
D 24 Jun 06
A person can eat pretty much as many vegetables and fish as they like and not take in many calories; some traditional Japanese foods like seaweed provide practically zero calories. Even if you splurged several days a week, over a year’s time your calorie intake would still be very low compared to ours. It’s interesting that the French also tend to be thin and have a much different diet. Like the Japanese they often eat small portions of a wide variety of foods, unlike our tendency to eat big portions of a small variety of foods. One reason I think Americans avoid fruits/veggies is that the produce commonly available to us sucks. We instinctively don’t want to eat crummy veggies; our tastebuds are designed to help us select ripe, nutritionally loaded fruits. If you have access to organic produce you’ll notice you immediate crave and enjoy eating your fruits and veggies again because they are ripe and taste good.
common wisdom 24 Jun 06
Japanese eat vegetables because they are skinny. Also, the Japanese have better metabolisms than Americans. Americans are fat because of their metabolisms. It has nothing to do with fruits and vegetables and tastebuds. If an american started to eat vegetables, there is no way they would become skinny. Likewise, if a japanese ate ice cream all day, he would never become fat because of his metabolism! Maybe you people should try reading a book or too and not worry so much about your health. Diet pills work too.
Anonymous Coward 28 Jun 06
jj
Drew 29 Jun 06
And the basic human fascination with the “exotic” rears its ugly head again. Why do we, as a culture, seem to always be looking outside our country for that mysterious society with the solution to all of our social ills? Japan has plenty of social and environmental problems, just like every other country (except maybe sweden… those pesky swedes are way too well adjusted). Japan wastes teremendous resources on individual packaging for every product under the sun. You don’t buy in “bulk” in Japan because of lack of space, but that means every serving you eat is individually packaged. Waste.
Fact: American produce IS different than it was even a few decades ago, primarily due to genetic engineering and selective breeding to make vegetables and fruits which can survive the violence of machine harvesting and still look pretty on a store shelf two weeks later. This has resulted in thicker cell walls, more water, and therefore tougher and less flavorful produce. Sure, it doesn’t taste as good, but if you wait a generation, no-one will know the difference. This seems to be a trend in most foods mass-produced in the US. Quantity over quality, shelf-life over nutrition.
Regarding the metabolism comments: Japanese and americans are not that different in terms of nutritional needs and metabolic baselines. Your metabolic rate is variable and is influenced by how much sleep you get, what you eat, how much you exercise, etc. It also changes as you age. But a slow metabolic rate will not result in weight gain if the total caloric intake is low. By some of the logic presented here, it would be impossible for an overweight person to starve to death. Their fat would just miraculously replenish itself in the absence of any caloric intake. Where’s the critical thinking here?
The most frightening thing about this thread is the lack of scientific understanding displayed in some of these comments.
“The opinion of 10,000 men is worth nothing if none of them know anything about the subject.”
Nikka 30 Jun 06
well thats a bit silly because the japanese peole i know are FAT FAT FAT!!!! cheese on bread hahahaahha
wilberforce 30 Jun 06
OK - I call shenanigans. I lived in Japan 10 years ago - the kids were already getting wider/taller because the diet was changing. They were eating more beef, more carbohydrates like pasta, bread and pizza. I went back to Japan for a holiday two months ago - the FIRST thing I noticed was there were a lot more chunky asses on the subway. As the diet in Japan changes the fatter they will get, just as we in the west have.
Sure - portions are smaller in Japan - but they’re smaller in Australia as well - and we’ve got the same obesity problem as America. It’s the crap you eat at home, not the crap you eat at restaurants (assuming you don’t have every meal at restaurants).
I’m now living in Hong Kong - the asses are getting bigger here as well - more Western foods are making their way into the daily diets and if those foods contain massive amounts of energy that don’t used every day, people here will get fatter too.
Abundance has interesting side-effects.
ryan 02 Jul 06
I think this convo is a load of bs and it is pointless imho.
John Horton 02 Jul 06
I love penis in my butt!!!!
Gerry H 03 Jul 06
As a fat person, I appreciate all the help posted. Pretty much summed up by Paul as follows:
“Listen: You are fat because you eat too much and exercise too little. End of story. No rocket science, nothing to do with containers or your hormones or what-have-you.”
This great bit of advice could be applied to many health issues: Smoker? “Listen, put down the cig. End of story. No rocket science, nothing to do with addictions.” Anemic? “Listen, figure out what you should weigh and eat until you get there. End of story, no rocket science.”
If it was that easy to lose weight, no one would be fat - who wants to go through life treated as fat people are? One issue that has not been addressed in this discussion, and in many others regarding obesity is hunger.
No matter how you slice it, in order to lose weight, you have to go hungry. Your body signals hunger if you have not consumed enough calories to sustain your body weight. Most programs I have reviewed state that you should target a weight loss of 1-2 pounds a week - that “quick-loss” programs should be avoided. If a person is 50 pounds overweight, that means he/she needs to be hungry for 6 months straight. 100 pounds to lose? Figure at least of year of hunger. Not rocket science, just 100 divided by 2 pounds a week.
Davis 04 Jul 06
Gerry H, you have no understanding of the human body….
For starters to lose weight in a consistent and healthy manner, you cut 1000 calories off your normal diet…..this doesn’t mean you get hungry…..you merely replace pop with water, and Mcdonalds with regular sandwhiches….
You shouldn’t be significantly more hungry….if you are….eat some fruits and veggies in addition to the meal…..it’s not as though you’ll suffer if you don’t get a big mac…..
My family and myself have pretty slow metabolisms….3 of my family are extremely obese….yet I’m able to get into shape and my dad was also a former amatuer bodybuilderas well as a skinny kid…..it’s all about the right diet….
sise314 06 Jul 06
ok. I too agree with the fact that many of these comments have no scientific basis. It is a question of thermodynamics- If you burn more energy than you consume (a unit of energy is a colorie) you will lose weight. As someone who lost weight (120 through gastric bypass) my body was deprived caloric intake. I still cannot consume the calories i was eating prior to bypass and therefore remain a 135 lbs. It was my WILLPOWER that kept me from losing- not metabolism- not heredity-not organic vs. regular or whatever the media or societal excuse that is currently presented. If you eat less, you will lose.
sise314 06 Jul 06
ok. I too agree with the fact that many of these comments have no scientific basis. It is a question of thermodynamics- If you burn more energy than you consume (a unit of energy is a colorie) you will lose weight. As someone who lost weight (120 through gastric bypass) my body was deprived caloric intake. I still cannot consume the calories i was eating prior to bypass and therefore remain a 135 lbs. It was my WILLPOWER that kept me from losing- not metabolism- not heredity-not organic vs. regular or whatever the media or societal excuse that is currently presented. If you eat less, you will lose.
sise314 06 Jul 06
ok. I too agree with the fact that many of these comments have no scientific basis. It is a question of thermodynamics- If you burn more energy than you consume (a unit of energy is a colorie) you will lose weight. As someone who lost weight (120 through gastric bypass) my body was deprived caloric intake. I still cannot consume the calories i was eating prior to bypass and therefore remain a 135 lbs. It was my WILLPOWER that kept me from losing- not metabolism- not heredity-not organic vs. regular or whatever the media or societal excuse that is currently presented. If you eat less, you will lose.
Knowitall 08 Jul 06
Actually dieting will make you fatter in the long run with more fat and less muscle if you don’t know what your doing. And 98% of people on diets don’t.
To lose weight you have to get healthy so your metabolism is fast. Here is some things most people don’t know.
1. If you let yourself get hungry your metabolism slows down, especially if you skip meals and even more so if your on a starvation diet. So eat like 6 or 7 small meals a day, don’t get hungry.
2. It does matter what you eat, even if their the same amount of calories. Example: Fructose mostly goes straight to fat and glucose is used more as energy in the muscles and burned up.
3. protein satisfiys your hunger the most, sugar will make you hungry again in a few hours or less, especially if you eat a lot of it at once.
4. Many things can slow down your metabolism which is more of a cause of people being overweight than simply eating too many calories. If your metabolism is slow then you will be eating more than your burning. But you don’t always need to eat less, you usually need to eat healthy to speed up your metabolism.
That’s all I say though, it’s been a while since I’ve read about what causes obesity and how to really lose it, so I’m a little rusty right now.
I do know many people, most in my family that are very fat and they eat way less than I do, I just eat very healthy, no processed foods. I eat my own fried chicken, not KFC with MSG or something. I eat quite a bit of calories, I love eating.
I wasn’t always as skinny as I am now, I used to be bigger when I ate a horrible diet, and was starting to get slightly overweight.
RaisinGirl 09 Jul 06
It seems to me - and I’m willing to concede that I’m no scientist - that the genetics argument is pure bullshit.
I have nothing against fat people. I just hate that escapist, victim-esque whining.
Fat-acceptance people often claim that they eat no more than anybody else. If that’s true - that if our population has evolved in such a way that a good number of us can weigh 300+ pounds on 2000 calories per day - than holy crap, we’re in trouble.
I’m kidding. I don’t understand. Fifty years ago, fat people were much rarer. Fifty years isn’t enough time for such evolution/genetic change to take place, is it? At the same time, I can’t help noticing that the size of McDonald’s french fries have more than quadrupled in size.
Losing weight is HARD. You’re hungry all the time, tired, cranky, and 1400 calories can feel like starvation if you’re used to eating 3x that. I can certainly respect people who choose not to undergo that. It sucks. But don’t bitch that you Can’t Lose Weight if you haven’t bothered to put up with the suffering which Losing Weight entails.
Just say that you Don’t Want to Lose Weight. That is your choice that you have every right to make.
RaisinGirl 09 Jul 06
*quadrupled since
Anonymous Coward 10 Jul 06
fuck you
fat people are cool so get a FUCKING life ASS FUCKER
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHHAHAHHAHAHHHAHHHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH
sise314 11 Jul 06
Awesome Raisin Girl. I too am so tired of people claiming that it is physically impossible to lose weight because of their metabolism or genetics. Its bull shit. its all about consuming less calories! Yes eating more nutritious food can give you vitamins and nourish you more, but if you eat a shit load of “healthy” food, you are still going to be fat. I spent my whole childhood into my mid twenties eating wholesome food and I was Still really fat. I did not have regular pop until i was 16 or a big mac until college. I ate too much. I could not resist the temptation to overindulge even the healthiest foods. If gastric bypass taught me anything, it is that i was eating too much and it was physically possible to lose weight. Please people- face the truth.
evangelo 11 Jul 06
gastric bypass…the easy way out
sise314 11 Jul 06
The easy wasy out? are you fucking kidding? How about the countless meals i spent vomiting over the toilet? The excess skin i deal with? Ive been out 4 years and have kept the weight off dispite the pouch streching to the point i can eat an entire subway sub. I really have to watch what i eat or i gain. The surgery taught me that i can lose weight if i eat less and exercise. I ran the bronx half marathon two days ago. i ran the full new york city marathon in november and 7 other half marathons between january and today. And i suppose that is the easy wasy to lose and keep weight off? Stop making excuses and be proative
Gerry H 16 Jul 06
Davis - It is you who does understand how the body works. Calories are what drives the metobolistic process. You write �For starters to lose weight in a consistent and healthy manner, you cut 1000 calories off your normal diet�..this doesn�t mean you get hungry�..you merely replace pop with water, and McDonalds (sic) with regular sandwhiches�. You shouldn�t be significantly more hungry�� For the average obese individual who is say 5� 9� tall, 275 pounds and whose activity level is �light�, Fitness magazine calculates that body requires 3151 calaries per day to maintain its body weight. Mind you metobolism is a biochemical process; your body does not know what your height or BMI is � it simply demands the number of calories to support its current weight, metolism and activity level (referred to as BMR or Base Metablism Rate)� that is, it requires the number of calories �burned� to be replaced. If this does not happen, it signals its need via common hungary signals. So you cut 1000 calories off your diet � one-third of what your body needs � and you think you won�t get hungary? Mind you, you are not doing this for one day, or one week, or even one month. You are doing this for many, many months to lose any significant weight. You go on to state �if you are [hungary]�.eat some fruits and veggies in addition to the meal�..it�s not as though you�ll suffer if you don�t get a big mac.� This is exactly what scutles a weight-loss diet � eat some fruts and veggies and add a ouple hundred calories to your daily intake and soon you are not losing weight, still hungary and the diet goes out the wundow.
As sise314 says in her post, it is all about WILLPOWER. And an individual of averge weight, who has no issues with weight or metobilism cannot fathom the significance of so-called willpower. For them, a couple of weeks of �willpower� and they lose the 5 pounds they are overwieght, so why can�t anyone? I say thank God for gastirc surgery; I finally lost 135 pounds after 30 years of trying � yes I took the �easy� way out, am pround of it, and I would recommend the same to any obese indivudual.
Haygirl345 16 Jul 06
http://www.studentbmj.com/issues/02/09/news/images/fat.jpg
Then explain that! Haha.
Haygirl345 16 Jul 06
http://www.studentbmj.com/issues/02/09/news/images/fat.jpg
Then explain that! Haha.
Kimmer 19 Jul 06
Although this is an old topic i need to include my comment. Your upbrining is most important in your weight. I am thin and the reason that is is because my parents researched what it takes. It is VERY simple. Have the child eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full. I haveb a few more things, though fat people aren’t lazy, if they’ve gained their weight steadily throughout their lives, they likely haven’t consumed morre than 100 extra calories a day. Also many people who are overweight can be very healthy (in what they eat). Metabolism does have something to do with it, however most people with really slow metabolisms don’t exercoise. I think your body is your choice, but it is sad that some people start out thin. My dad weighs over 500 pounds, so I understand. I think he really is sometimes embarrased to go places. Still, the older someone gets the more difficult it is for them to self regulate. My sense of hunger isn’t what it used to be. I need to stop myself now-btw i’m only 18. The scale will get higher. I also believe people do have a set point their body tries to keep itself at, but idon’t think that point is ever over the “healty” weight, although once you surpass it itraises. Also eating ice cream doesn’t make you fat. i would say it is abou t the best kind of desert any ways. Alright thank you for letting me say my peace.
Gerry H 20 Jul 06
I think you have way simplified the issue. In my family, my father’s side of the family was thin and most of my mother’s side tened to be overweight. My brother ate the same food as I, yet he was (and is) thin and I was overweight. this was back in the 1960s, and I bicycled everwhere I went, had a newspaper delivery route everyday, was on the swim and wrestling team and lettered in football (my brother earned his high school letter by being the scorekeeper for the basketball team). Genetics, body type, and metobolism are all major factors impacting weight. Eating habits and excercise are secondary.
Melody 22 Jul 06
Sometimes it seems that all of the focus on weight loss here actually impedes any kind of progress…A lot of people think they’re fat, when in reality they simply do not meet the guidelines for what is pleasing to the eye. I do know that what’s in the food here is damaging to the body and metabolism is way more complex than most people understand…it’s all of your body processes. I think metabolism hinders my fat loss. I am fit and at a good BMI, but it’s very hard to maintain because, for about 12 years of my life I never ate lunch…which I believe forced my body into holding onto fat. Also, I find that organic or at least normal looking produce is expensive and even hard to find where I live. It seems that no one really cares if something is natural anymore. They either don’t know or don’t care how they might be harming themselves with partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup and genetically engineered bullshit. Seems to me if we did it right nature wouldn’t need any help with nourishing us.
Kam904s 26 Jul 06
Look, your body is YOUR BODY. The point I am trying to make isn’t HOW to lose weight or if you SHOULD lose weight, it is a simple question if you WANT to lose weight.
Do you?
Are you happy with your body?
If not, why?
If so, again, why?
No one has the right to tell you what to do with your body so long as you are not harming them (i.e. smoking or the like).
Weight loss is a HUGE market across the world. This is a fact. People - Japanese, Americans, Swedish, so on and so forth… everyone - Want To Lose Weight.
We are taught very early to HATE OUR BODIES.
When was the last time you saw a fat person - other than Oprah or a politician - on the cover of a magazine with a POSITIVE MESSAGE as their tagline?
When was the last time you saw a fat person “get the guy/girl” without having to lose weight first (outside of a parody such as Shallow Hal?
We are told time and time again, “A hundred years ago we weren’t so fat”. This is probably true. Is it because people ate better a hundred years ago? Maybe, maybe not. Our ancestors didn’t have any more willpower than we do today they just had FEWER CHOICES and HARDER WORK. Today less than two percent of our population has to work on a farm to support the rest of us. A hundred years ago that was not true. Metabolism speed aside, if you worked from sunup to sundown on a farm and had to survive off of what you yanked out of the ground yourself (or traded for) you’d be skinny too.
So put aside our cultural differences. People are fat the world over. Put aside the “grandpa was a badass” mentality. Times have changed.
The question still remains thus: DO YOU LIKE YOUR BODY THE WAY IT CURRENTLY IS?
If you want to change it, REALLY want to change it, for WHATEVER reason you have, then you will change it. You may pay for surgery, you may do it the old-fashioned way and use diet/exercise, or you may just develop an eating disorder, but if you want the change ENOUGH you will do something about it.
If not, well, you won’t.
And no one should judge you. If you are “fat” by standards of society, who cares? Hold your head high and buy whatever the hell you feel like eating. We live in a PRIVELEDGED WORLD, people. At NO other time in human history has food been so easily accessible, so readily available, and in such great quantities. You can buy that ice cream and KNOW that tomorrow there will be more for other people. If the package is a single serving or the Ultra-Econo-Tub, who cares? It’s your business and your body.
Don’t ever let what anyone else has to say to you make you feel like less of a person. If your partner doesn’t like your body the way it is, well then they can just walk out that door. They have to love you for YOU - not for the size of your breasts/penis, what you eat, or how you appear to others. These things are an aspect of you, yes, but they are NOT YOU.
And - contrary to what the Diet Gurus and the media would have you believe - that is the way it should be. The diet companies have ONE GOAL IN MIND, to make money. The media has ONE GOAL IN MIND, to make money.
And if you want to change your body badly enough you can give your money to them… or you can accept yourself, work for a gradual change, and keep your money in your bank account.
Love yourself guys. What you eat is only as important as you let it be. Be as healthy as you feel you ought to be or can afford to be and beyond that… well, just enjoy yourselves and your bodies.
You only have them for the next hundred years or so, after all.
Chris B 29 Jul 06
Green tea speeds up the metabolism…if youre in Japan now as I am make it all you drink (not difficult, it`s everywhere) in 2 months or so you will lose weight it worked for me
salote 01 Aug 06
YOyO Wat Up MAn DIs BE U No…………
UmMmM YeAh Cuz ItS GOod ThAt The jaPan pepZ eAT hEALtHY……….. yEAH aLl THe cOUNTIRES sHuD bE lIkE thaT YEAH………l8RS…………..
T.C WAT……………………………………………..
salote 01 Aug 06
YOyO Wat Up MAn DIs BE U No…………
UmMmM YeAh Cuz ItS GOod ThAt The jaPan pepZ eAT hEALtHY……….. yEAH aLl THe cOUNTIRES sHuD bE lIkE thaT YEAH………l8RS…………..
T.C WAT……………………………………………..
matt 17 Aug 06
cutting calories and excersise will work for MOST of the population. but fall under 1500 calories a day and your body will go into “Starvation Mode” this is where you metabolism will slow to a crawl and foods are stored as fat for energy to use. so if you don’t eat anything all day and have a big meal for dinner. you are going to gain wieght.
chris has it right with the green tea thing though. a cup before every meal has been scientifically proven to help wieght loss. this is no replacment for excersise and healthier foods though
matt 17 Aug 06
forgot to add it to the other post but i have no clue how people have trouble keeping the calorie count down. i’m struggling right now to keep mine above 1500.
Dave 24 Aug 06
Genetics+Upbringing+Current Lifestyle = Your current body- type
Anyone can lose weight. I’m sick of people who use the excuse “well my brother is thin and we do exactly the same amount of exercise and eat the same foods. He just got better genes”
News flash. You’re brothers body for any number of reasons requires a higher amount of calories to maintain his weight. You require less. Find out what it is and minus 15-10% of it, eat healthy foods 5-6 times a day and exercise and you will lose weight.
Yes it’s that simple. I used to weigh 240 pounds I now weigh 170. It didn’t happen over night, it took three years. I didn’t do it because I had better genetics than you, or had a faster metabolism. I did it because I’m mentally stronger than you.
And that’s what it comes down to, how mentally tough you are. Too many people in today’s society expect instant gratification. If you want something you have to work for it.
Having said that, If you’re happy being fat or obese then great, good luck to you. Just don’t tell other people it’s impossible.
sise314 25 Aug 06
ooo-o well said Dave
Garrett 25 Aug 06
YAY!! NONE-FAT JAPPANESE!!! I LOVE THOSE PEOPLE!!!!
Helliant 25 Aug 06
YAY!! NONE-FAT JAPPANESE!!! I LOVE THOSE PEOPLE!!!!
Nobody Inparticular 30 Aug 06
Alex Garnaut Sucks
Nobody Inparticular 30 Aug 06
What about sumos. those guys are fat as.
Gerry H 31 Aug 06
I agree that to say it is impossible to lose weight is incorrect. It indeed does come down to mental toughness, will power, whatever you want to call it. I think what peeves most fat people is just the opposite opinion: that it is EASY to lose weight. The reaction of “well, gee, I needed to lose 8 pounds and it was easy - so why can’t you lose 75”
The only way to lose weight is to be hungry. Will power is required to endure hunger for an extended period of time. Hunger is a very basic, very strong, very demanding bodily response to lack of food. You may recall stories of people locked in WW2 concentration camps and being starved - they ate their leather shoes, dead rats, and anything else they could find.
It has been shown time and time again that fat people keep trying to lose weight. However, research indicates that 97% of all diets fail - again, because the dieter finally gives in to the continual, overwhelming and depressing feeling of hunger.
No it’s not impossible to lose weight, but it is very, very, very difficult.
Anonymous Coward 11 Sep 06
this website sux
Anonymous Coward 14 Sep 06
I AM REALLY REALLY FAT
Anonymous Coward 19 Sep 06
heyy
rachel houston 19 Sep 06
every1 puts on weight
Person.... 22 Sep 06
What I would like to know is why people concern themselves with being ‘fat.’ If one person is ‘fat’ then they’re ‘fat.’ Leave them be. Don’t go rearing your ugly head at them and screeching, “Why are you so fat?! You should: eat less/excersise more/be anorexic/splurge/starve/stop eating junkfood/buy less mcdonald/etc!!”
Hasn’t it occured to you that the obsession about overweight and skinny people has reached an all time level of hilarity? I find it hilarious to watch people squabble over the fact that ‘they have to be skinny to be accepted/loved/nice/pretty/insert some random stereotyped peice of crap here.’
I, who is skinny, don’t freaking care that I am so. I go to school every day, and get called ‘anorexic, bulemic, and someone who fakes eating food.’ why do I? Because I am simply skinny. I have a good metabolism. I participate in karate, track, swimming, and many other sports through out the year. I eat a ton of food (even the school lunches! EW!) and a blend of junk food and healthy food. My favorite foods are cakes and cheese! See? I spend a ton of time in front of the computer. I do things that both fat and skinny people do: eat healthy, exercise, watch TV, stuff like that.
Overweight and underweight/’right’ weight people get treated bad about their weight. both of them. really and truly. and, I am so sick of it, that I must say,
“SHUT THE HECK UP!” Why are we so superficial that we must obsess about peoples weights?!
Don’t you know, that health is not being over or under or regular weight, it is mental. it is about having a strong mind and heart. it is about making sure that your body gets the vitamins and minerals it needs, along with an unneeded treat now and then of.. say… chocolate, or cake, or ice cream. It’s about things other then weight.
besides, some ‘fat’ people I know can lift up my teacher’s desks. that’s in 8th grade. so some people arent fat, they just are muscular. jeebus.
From: An 8th grader with a very bad temper and a headstrong personality.
Person.... 22 Sep 06
What I would like to know is why people concern themselves with being ‘fat.’ If one person is ‘fat’ then they’re ‘fat.’ Leave them be. Don’t go rearing your ugly head at them and screeching, “Why are you so fat?! You should: eat less/excersise more/be anorexic/splurge/starve/stop eating junkfood/buy less mcdonald/etc!!”
Hasn’t it occured to you that the obsession about overweight and skinny people has reached an all time level of hilarity? I find it hilarious to watch people squabble over the fact that ‘they have to be skinny to be accepted/loved/nice/pretty/insert some random stereotyped peice of crap here.’
I, who is skinny, don’t freaking care that I am so. I go to school every day, and get called ‘anorexic, bulemic, and someone who fakes eating food.’ why do I? Because I am simply skinny. I have a good metabolism. I participate in karate, track, swimming, and many other sports through out the year. I eat a ton of food (even the school lunches! EW!) and a blend of junk food and healthy food. My favorite foods are cakes and cheese! See? I spend a ton of time in front of the computer. I do things that both fat and skinny people do: eat healthy, exercise, watch TV, stuff like that.
Overweight and underweight/’right’ weight people get treated bad about their weight. both of them. really and truly. and, I am so sick of it, that I must say,
“SHUT THE HECK UP!” Why are we so superficial that we must obsess about peoples weights?!
Don’t you know, that health is not being over or under or regular weight, it is mental. it is about having a strong mind and heart. it is about making sure that your body gets the vitamins and minerals it needs, along with an unneeded treat now and then of.. say… chocolate, or cake, or ice cream. It’s about things other then weight.
besides, some ‘fat’ people I know can lift up my teacher’s desks. that’s in 8th grade. so some people arent fat, they just are muscular. jeebus.
From: An 8th grader with a very bad temper and a headstrong personality.
yi 03 Oct 06
although the small packaging may be wasteful, the japanese are meticulous about recycling. all public areas have proper trash, paper, and recyclable bottle bins and everyone follows the rules. and if they catch a foreigner throwing a bottle away in the trash bin they will yell at you til you get it right. you’ll never see americans today care that much about recycling in a public space.
Nobody important 03 Oct 06
I’ve read all of the weight arguments. Some of you seem like you Know what you’re talking about (or try to sound like you do…) So I’ve got a little challenge for you: At my highest I weighed nearly 200ibs. But since starting college one semester ago I now weigh 155.
I do not eat any more or less than before, Nor do I exercise any more than before. I am always stressed but I do not eat because of stress. (Stress is suppost to make you fat anyway right?)
I cannot figure out what happend, but would like to continue to loose weight. (I can walk without pain on my trashed knee.) I don’t know what happened to me.
P.S. I don’t drink either(just ruling out the whole Jack Daniels diet thing.)