Dude, I was rebuked and requested to leave the topic when I suggested not eating cool whip for breakfast; no way I was recommending Deep Water, haha
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I can’t decide if this thread is a better case study in the backfire effect or dunning-kruger effect. 
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Oh I wasn’t thinking thats what you meant buddy. Was just genuinely interested as to what some of the aspects of it are and if its more challenging than in the UK to eat well, in the UK I would say 90% of the time it is just pure laziness / by choice.
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I think it’s very similar to the UK. We walk even less here
Dear god did I miss out on some glory days of this place
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I guess to add to fitness obstacles in the US, I think we’ve built our entire lifestyles around convenience.
We drive absolutely everywhere, and there’s really few places it’s even safe to walk somewhere; everything is a highway.
Workdays and meeting schedules are built around the availability of convenience foods, rather than an expectation you’ll sit down and eat. I do think this culture is changing a little as our obesity rates have grown and people become more aware.
Meals and drinking are a big part of social culture, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s an excess. So you’ve been sitting in your cubicle all day, eating fast food in meeting after meeting, then your coworkers invite you to happy hour (and you go, because you want to get promoted) and you eat fried foods and drink a couple beers, then maybe you have a customer dinner or the neighbors come over and you’re already on a roll so you force down some more garbage.
Grocery “culture” (that seems funny to type) is a little different here, too. We go maybe once a week, max, and stock up. That tends to let people’s momentary discipline lapses follow them all week; they have to eat the whole bag of cookies they bought or they’re throwing away money! This probably isn’t crazy different from you, but I think further south folks tend to go shopping daily for that day’s dinner.
Anyway, folks certainly overcome these obstacles relatively simply. I think the challenge is the huge amount of inertia up front to start moving in the right direction, and then it’s very easy to slip backwards. So when someone says “I don’t have to do much because I don’t want to be a pro bodybuilder,” I don’t think they’re going to succeed. It’s very much a discipline game and if everything doesn’t matter then nothing matters.
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Yeah I can see how going against the grain could be difficult in that type of work culture.
The UK is getting worse with the convenience problem with companies like Just Eat and Deliveroo. I got up at about 8.30 sat morning to go to a local 5k run and must have seen over 50 delivery riders, people havnt even got to be arsed to get out of bed now to get a mcdonalds breakfast.
In my opinion the biggest hurdle is laziness here, its certainly not cheaper to eat take out food, i would say its not even cheaper to buy shit packaged food over whole food in the shops. An example is one of my co workers said he and his family had fajitas for an evening meal, turns out it it was out of a box straight in the oven. Pre packed fajitas to feed a family of 4 must have been close to £10, you could get all the whole ingredients for the same, have enough stuff to batch cook and freeze for another meal, and it would be healthier…problem is you have to prep and cook the fuckers!
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Laziness is definitely on-point, but here the convenience food is actually cheaper than the individual ingredients… which begs the question: what’s actually in the package??
I think we’re seeing a generational shift, too. Young adults now grew up with internet and video games and tv apps and cell phones in a different way than I did, so their social norm is to be inside on the couch. If we wanted to play with our friends or even meet a girl (gasp), you had to be out in the world to run into them. So I think not even having that habit makes this completely sedentary lifestyle feel a lot more safe/ normal, which makes bucking that convention even more difficult psychologically.
Which all brings me back to: if you want to make a change, I think you really have to be in it.
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On a somewhat-related point: did we ever get to the bottom of why @supercardrives couldn’t cook? There may be something there that we aren’t aware of, lifestyle wise. It could also be my main reason for posting, which is the loss of cooking skills. It’s so much easier to order food in, if you don’t have the skills to cook enjoyable food yourself. This is a self perpetuating cycle because if you can’t cook, you won’t buy ingredients to cook with. Then you have 2 obstacles to eating real food.
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I believe that if he really wants this, he’d go out of his way to cook decent meals, unless he doesn’t own a stove/oven. But… not going out to eat every day for lunch and dinner can buy you an oven in a couple of weeks.
I suck at cooking, but putting ground beef in a cast iron pan and making a salad is SO simple. That’s all he has to do to see immediate body comp improvement.
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I totally agree, and it’s where you really have to hardcore track calories to get anywhere. That, in itself, is a huge obstacle for most folks. If you can cook, it’s much easier to just kind of adjust portions and go.
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It honestly felt to me like you were describing a foreign culture here (in America, where I live), your experiences are so alien to me. I’m in rural/small town New England (previously Austin Texas and DFW Texas, so I have experience of soul-crushing suburbia and big highways). In my world, work lunches are the responsibility of the worker, even during meetings. Occasionally there’s food brought in (we cater for team interviews, had pizza last week for a retirement party/meeting, and now and then someone will bring in baked things or bagels and cream cheese).
The grocery culture you describe plays out in the opposite way for me. Yes, I shop weekly, but seem to completely underestimate the probability that we’ll be sitting here two days later watching Succession and wondering why we didn’t get a single salty snack or one of those chocolate volcano things from the bakery. It’s all salmon and broccoli. ~sad trombone~
I’m very safe walking where I am, but it’s like 15 miles to work, so I drive. There are walking people everywhere, though, particularly in town, where people do bike or walk to work.
This I can heartily agree with. My life is one long rinse/repeat of lose a couple of pounds during the week, then regain it over the weekend, when we’re social or doing long hikes, but then hitting the Italian restaurant afterwards for a joyous celebration of fresh air, a draft beer or bottle of red wine, and whatever meal.
While things were different in exurbia, it seemed to be largely a subculture thing, as it is here in the country. Fit people did what they do; disinterested or lazy people did what they do. When I hear American excess described I often think they’re describing low socioeconomic culture, where junk food and television reign. I attribute these differences to education/awareness/intelligence. The same things that make for much lower income and increased drug use and every other bad thing.
Your post elicited a surprisingly patriotic response from me. We’re a large country with a very diverse population. Poor people in Mississippi don’t have the life expectancy that you or I do. Poor people where I live don’t have the teeth I do. I would imagine that if we had a map of type II diabetes in people under 50 in any given county, the bulk of it would be in the poorer neighborhoods.
Affluent Americans are at the top of all measures of health, and are competitive with the healthiest countries in lists of wellbeing.
I don’t mean that to sound scolding. I just wanted to balance your perspective with my own. I feel like I should know what you do for work, but if so I can’t remember. What do you do, and where? Your “not safe” suggests city.
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Yes.
I learned to cook in 2nd grade and could make decent stir fries by the time I was 7 ish. I could barely reach over the stove so I stood on a step stool
@T3hPwnisher 's hotel meals come to mind here
There really isn’t an excuse
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This is good news! But then you agreed with half my points, so I don’t think we’re really that far apart.
This was exactly my point, though. I’m talking about the inertia a non-fit person has to overcome to become fit. Clearly there’s not some insurmountable obstacles, because we have very fit people, but there is a culture folks are going to have to work through if they’re on the other side.
I think this is a much bigger conversation, but not really great indicators of what we’re talking about. Our poor aren’t poor like much of the world, and our young diabetics outlive other nations’ general populations Access to healthcare is a major variable. I think obesity as a percentage of the total population is a better marker for this discussion. Now we’re talking wins!
Food for thought on my original “cultural norm” point, that you pointed out as well: American poor are more likely to be T2D; that speaks to the availability of low-quality foods.
I’m a corporate bore. I’m currently moving from Cincinnati to Atlanta.
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I think we’re getting caught up on whether there is an “excuse” or something truly in our way, which was neither the point I nor @kd13 originally made. It was just a question of “what makes Americans fat?” I don’t think any of us are really disagreeing on what I think the problems are, just whether they’re “real” obstacles. I never claimed they were, but the reality is we are the fattest country on earth, that proportion is growing, and it’s getting younger.
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Oh, my post wasn’t directed at you.
I was just pointing out how ridiculous “can’t cook” is.
He said "can’t ". not “don’t want to”
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Gotcha! In that case, yep
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That’s why I was asking the reason. Maybe it’s a shitty one, maybe it isn’t.
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Have we considered just counting the macros and banking on everything being fortified with vitamins?
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Maybe I’m slow, but I feel like I’m missing part of that sentence. Have we considered this as a strategy for what?