I wonder what we do in today's culture and society which we'll look back on and think, wtf were we thinking?
Today most young kids are glued to an iPad. At dinner, in the car, at home, everywhere. Maybe we'll look back at this behavior one day, similar to how we think of smoking or eating too much.
> Today most young kids are glued to an iPad. At dinner, in the car, at home, everywhere. Maybe we'll look back at this behavior one day, similar to how we think of smoking or eating too much.
This is all a very selective lens, I'd say the younger generations now are better informed, more empathetic and curious. I don't blame them for "being glued" to their devices, they have the option to have friends and collaborators the world over, it's a more interesting life to be younger now than in any previous generation, notwithstanding the political and socioeconomic pressures (but I guess all generations have/had their demons to slay).
> younger generations now are better informed, more empathetic and curious.
None of the generational research I have seen even remotely supports the "better informed" conclusion, and my anecdata from interacting with current undergrads suggests the opposite very strongly -- current undergrads are *substantially* less well-informed than the zillenials and millenials were about politics, current events, etc.
Not sure about about empathetic and curious, though those smell less implausible.
In any evidence-based discussion of "the kids these days" I think the elephant in the room is the mental health crisis - they have the highest rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness and suicide, they may be the most stressed out and unhappy generation ever.
Are they any more or less stressed than kids who grew up during the great depression or during the world wars? Or is that we just have better tools for data collection and analysis, and a better culture around being open about mental health issues?
Hence why every single weight loss advice says 10% of it is physical exercise, 90% of it is diet (but highly recommends the physical exertion anyway for many side bennies)
Unless you believe we're not animals too, numerous animal studies have shown this. The GLP agonists were discovered, I believe, during an experiment on diabetes meds with rats, where the rats ate so little that they nearly starved themselves.
Hunger is a drive controlled by hormones, and something in the Western diet has hijacked it.
Diet is behavioral. The people who successfully change their diet have to radically change their relationship with food on a deeper level than a lot of people think. For instance many processed, high carb foods are so nutrient poor that simply reducing to a healthy intake number of carbs means that now you're so nutrient poor that your body screams for more. It can even send people to the hospital if you stay in that state long enough. You really have to put your frame of reference for nutrition down and start fresh.
And tell me, what percent of people successfully pull this off conventionally, in the long term, again?
If you took that success percentage and applied it to literally anything else, would it still make sense to blame the person who's trying but failing to be part of that percentage?
a) That movement is unrelated to diet, which is not true. Every moment that you're walking to the bus stop, that you're spending on the bus, that you're hanging out at the fat men's club is a moment that you're not eating.
b) That diet isn't related to behavior, which is also false. Being happy with other people likely reduces depression-driven eating triggers.
> Hunger is a drive controlled by hormones, and something in the Western diet has hijacked it.
Why does it have to be only diet and not environment? You could similarly claim that uncontrolled social media in the Western world is driving large numbers of people to depression and overeating.
Fair points. But I think it's a pretty strong data point that the best known way to lose weight and keep it off in the long term is literally to cut/suck the fat cells out of your body (i.e., bariatric surgery). One would have to wonder what hormonal signals these fat cells are secreting in order to justify their continued existence and get fed...
The current second-best way are the GLP agonist drugs, which tweak hormones.
A very, very distant third is behavior modification/"changing diet and exercise regimen".
Now, to avoid gaining in the first place, you do have some points.
Someday soon, we're going to finally figure out the hideously complex orchestration of hunger, satiety and fat storage in the human body, and the obesity epidemic will finally end, and for the rest of human history this will be known as the "obesity era" /sigh
Lastly, speaking as a Mounjaro taker, you don't quite understand how this works. I do not have to exert willpower from the daily finite reserve I get in order to will it downwards. I do not have to change what I eat. I do not have to force myself to fast. I do not have to exercise (in fact, I exercise for other reasons, such as mood and mental clarity!). I do not have to calorie-track. I do not have to limit myself to specific foods. Here's what happens: I'm simply less hungry and reach satiety much quicker and that makes all the difference. I have far fewer "naggy" feelings of wanting to snack, I often don't finish meals, and I can use that spare willpower on other things in my life that need it, which is fantastic.
Seems like there's an environmental competent to weight gain as well. Wild animals have also been putting on weight. So have lab animals which have had the same controlled diets and activity levels for decades.
A Chemical Hunger opens up with a list of mysteries related to the obesity epidemic. I don’t endorse the list – for one, “wild animals are becoming obese” seems to have been pretty much made up (see the fourth point in this comment), and all evidence we have that “lab animals are becoming obese” is exactly one (1) unreplicated paper co-authored by a guy that has been involved in numerous controversies regarding his conflict of interest with the processed food and restaurant industries.[8]
Hyperbolically, you could just round up to "all major changes in day to day general human behavior since 1890, except indoor plumbing, vitamin supplementation, and vaccination" and be within shouting distance.
Thats entirely depended on the context and assumes some other safeguards exist. Outlawing alone can be utterly horrific, there are quite a few examples of child labor unions (as in working children) fighting such laws. Its no surprise seeing as when there are no social safety nets they are at real direct threat of starvation once they loose their jobs.
This sometimes being seen as an acceptable cost to not have to look at working children gets us into the very much evil category. Its quite gut wrenching how often such distanced simplified signaling results in horrific situations for the people on the ground, even without bad intentions.
My best guess in 30 years will be the killing and eating animals. Not because everyone goes vegan, but because we will only eat lab grown meat, not meat plucked from an animal carcass.
Just like we see some people being cancelled now for being casually racist in the 90s(eg blackface at parties), I think we might see people be cancelled who make jokes in 2020 like "I like my hamburger rare so you can taste the soul of the cow" and stuff like that.
Good luck…40 years ago we were told we were going to have jet packs and food would be yeast based with all nutrients needed for the day in a single convenient cube by now.
Instead we got social media. Pretty sure if I am around in 30 years, I won’t be eating lab grown meat or yeast cubes and there will still be no jet packs for us consumers to be flitting about on avoiding traffic.
If it’s of high quality then maybe. But I think those people will look back on previous people as doing what was necessary to thrive.
Or more likely - lab grown meat will be inferior but natural animal meat will be highly regulated for some arbitrary moralistic reason so only the wealthy can partake.
I'll be a guinea pig here. If animals didn't want me to eat them, then they wouldn't be so damned tasty! I'll check back in 30 years to see if I've been cancelled for that.
I think the medications will someday be viewed similar to how we view the way Coke used to include cocaine. Everyone I know in the US is either regularly using recreational drugs or has some kind of prescription for a condition like ADHD or anxiety. Either that or they will make far more sophisticated drugs in the future and laugh at how primitive our approach used to be.
As if those of us glued to a laptop for the last 20+ years haven't already... And yes I have nerd-neck and I wish I could fix it, but I fear it's too late. Despite which, my habits persist <facepalm emoji>.
To be briefly serious, there are basically three colliding things here:
a) posture is dramatically overrated, in general. Having good posture confers few benefits. Would love to see studies refuting this but I'm not aware of any.
b) Posture is a habit. If you change your habits, it will change. There's no magic to it. Just remember to sit straight. If it's uncomfortable... that's just how it is. I don't recommend it. People have been lounging and slouching since we started walking upright.
c) Postural muscles are often weak, so general strength and conditioning can make a big difference in how taxing it is to use your postural muscles often. A deadlift and some heavy shrugs or farmer's carry are often more effective in my personal experience than any amount of reminders and bracing.
Anyway, there's no time like the present to make a change like that, and you're never too old to start. People in their 70s benefit markedly from strength endurance training and calisthenics as long as they're slow and cautious about ramping it up. I don't imagine you're 70, but even if you are, get a doctor's signoff and go nuts.
Bad posture throws off your kinetic chain and forces your joints and muscles to compensate in ways that are not ideal.
For example, anterior pelvic tilt, which usually comes from being hunched over on a keyboard, causes gait problems (since your lower spine is curved more outwards than it should be), which causes additional stress to knees, ankles, and the lower back that can become problematic later in life.
Then there's "tech neck", which happens when your neck is craned downwards towards a device for far far longer than it should be (yay infinite scrolling and endless content juiced for constant micro dopamine hits!). This causes your shoulders and traps to compensate for this unnatural position, which can lead to upper back injuries.
Endemic back problems are basically game over for a comfortable lifestyle. You use your back for EVERYTHING, especially lifting things. Once you have irreversible back damage, your quality of life drops by a lot. Forget running or contact sports, and forget lifting anything heavy. In more serious cases, you can say hello to taking terminal pain meds to do normal light-touch activities that were easy in the past.
But this is one of those things that rears its head at 45, not 25. Kind of like texting while driving (I.e. socionormalized addiction). It's totally chill to text at the red or in traffic because nothings happening...until you hit a car or a pedestrian who crossed the intersection late because you tapped the accelerator out of habit without gathering situational awareness.
From everything I've seen pelvic tilt is pretty overrated as a core issue, same with kyphotic posture and neck strain. Rather than try to directly correct them, it's better to just strengthen the postural muscles. They're symptoms of lack of upper body musculature and neurological recruitment, not diseases.
Most of the reviews of PT literature I've read say "well you can spend a lot of time and effort trying to fix kyphosis/pelvic tilt through cueing, stretching, and bracing but it's not effective", whereas strength endurance exercises indirectly fix it and other issues as well. I'd love to hear more though, I have suffered from both and only was able to fix them with strength training. Ditto low back pain.
> Being fat was no longer so feted. Membership at fat men's clubs began to dwindle, as did waistlines. For instance, at the last meeting of the New England Fat Men's Club, in 1924, only 38 members showed up, none of whom met the 200-pound mark, Tafrate reports.
Ouch. I'm about 235 and 6'3" (190cm). I haven't seen the other side of 200 since 1993
Down from 275 and trying to reach 200 though (Mounjaro)
I think the average person was shorter then. I'm 6'3" and flirting with 200 lbs, and other than a bit of a dad bod am (or so I tell myself) pretty slim. My guess is these guys were mostly well under 6'
Those are definitely some big guys in the picture there, but it is remarkable that that was the body type that would warrant joining a club and having newspaper articles written about you.
To be fair, 100+ pounds overweight isn't a "body type". It's a health hazard and the direct result of eating too much food. It's easy to lose sight of what's normal when every two out of three [0] Americans share the same diagnosis.
It is that simple. Unfortunately that’s not the same as easy. Especially not when your whole environment, culture, and physiology are designed to encourage you to eat too much food.
70% of people being overweight is by no means good, but that is not even remotely close to 100 pounds of extra body fat. 100+ would usually put you in class II or III obesity. That number is more like 10%.
To be fair, there’s newspaper articles being written around fat women social communities around body positivity or whatever these days, too. I don’t think much had changed!
Just look at the size of American football players. William Perry was considered a giant in the 1980s coming in around 330lbs. College linemen are often bigger today.
