I wish to visit the restaurants that you frequent, where the servers are jolly and frolicking! Could we get a baseline pic of what an average server looks like, in terms of cheerful attitude and demeanor? That would be of great help in determining how much misery this particular young lady is displaying.

Thanks!

“..ears had already pricked up..”

ha.

Don’t feel bad for most of the waitresses. Its nothing more or less demeaning than hooters or any similar chain. The skimpy outfit nets them a good tip from most.

The one exception is the poor girl by the deep fryer. She has to wear that getup to cook in and always looks like she wants to die.

I’m not claiming that weight loss is impossible. Just that, statistically speaking, long term weight loss is extraordinarily difficult. And that people like you are actually extreme outliers.

Kelly Brownell, the head of the Rudd Center at Yale has pretty much written off adult obesity as a lost cause. They mostly focused their efforts on obesity prevention, because they feel it might be the only way to make a statistically significant impact. I don’t actually agree with their approach, but it does represent a real point of view.

When I was in Singapore last year, I watched as skinny people ate as many as 8 meals a day. I’ve never seen food consumption on such a scale. Yes you are dieting and yes you’ve lost a ton of weight, but I’m still curious as to what makes you different than the Singaporeans.

I don’t think we’re using the word the same way. It doesn’t take any particular skill or talent, in the way that earning a PhD necessarily would. MIT bars the majority from even attempting to qualify for one of their PhD’s.

Your arguments suggest that most people do not successfully lose and keep off weight, not that they can not. Statistically significant data is better at measuring the former, but case studies are better (for practical reasons) at demonstrating the latter.

It does take a bit of work, but not extremely so. Quite the opposite, heroic efforts will be counterproductive, as they can’t be maintained. The real challenge is that it takes a great deal of time. Longer than people can really manage unassisted. As I said above, I’m losing 2-3 kg/month, but you will not notice that difference; your body image will keep up with the loss.

The other bit is that you almost certainly don’t know how much you’re eating, let alone how it’s fluctuated over time. It’s just not the sort of thing you can do in your head. Working that out manually would be prohibitively difficult, I’ll grant. I’ve written software to do it for me.

If you’d like to see my data and tools, shoot me an email (it’s in my profile here). It’s all web based, but I don’t think I’m allowed to link it here.

And me. I’m pretty sure our name is legion.

if you weigh more than 350 pounds you eat for free.

I thought assisted suicide was illegal in Florida?

Pot, kettle, black, as they say.

In high school I worked as a cashier at a fast food restaurant that used lard for all its deep frying. After spending my shifts absorbing aerosolized lard through my skin, I quickly lost my appetite for french fries, and anything fried for that matter. The food is not as tempting when you can’t get away from it for hours on end. I suspect the waitresses at these places probably feel the same.

In general, I think these places are refreshingly honest in the same was as cigarette package warnings that say “smoking can kill you”. They know their food is bad for you, and they make no pretense about it. No consumer with even a few functioning brain cells is going to mistake their food for something healthy. Better this than “crispy bacon ranch chicken salad” at a fast-food place, which I’m sure many people mistakenly think is good for them because it’s a salad.

Just-stick-to-your-diet-and-everything-will-be-ok is patronizing and simplistic, especially if it’s coming from someone who’s never had to do it.

There’s-nothing-you-can-do-about-it-so-don’t-try isn’t any better, though.

a) looking away from the camera

and

b) not smiling.

Really, service workers shouldn’t have to grin like crazy people every millisecond of every day.

If they were really serious they would serve “Pork Brains in Milk Gravy” a single serving, contains 3500 milligrams of cholesterol, 1170% of the USRDA.

I have a theory that there are a few things contributing to this: people move less (get into the car in the garage, park as close to the door as possible at your destination), people generally do less physical work (more people in desk jobs, and we have appliances for the things people used to do by hand, like washing dishes and laundry), and food is more abundantly available to the average person than is has been over most of human history. For most of human history, being able to put on weight and keep it on was an advantage: it meant you didn’t starve when food became scarce. The problem is, (in places where there is a high incidence of obesity) food is anything but scarce these days. People and their genes haven’t changed, the resources available have changed.

Seriously not trolling, just honest feedback.

“I am totally feeding these people premature death on a plate.”

Sigh… I guess preview is there for a reason.

Difficult isn’t the right word. It doesn’t take any particular talent or skill. It is a bit of work, but primarily it just takes a lot of time, with very little positive feedback.

That, I think, is why so few manage to do it, and why so few of those that do manage to maintain it. You don’t lose (or gain) weight fast enough to really associate behaviour with results, nor do you really even get a clear picture of your behaviour if your not tracking it.

I’ve got a log of everything I’ve eaten in the last year, as well as daily weighings, and I’ve written software both to help me do that and to turn the data into something I can see. In that I’m an outlier, sure, but the behaviour isn’t that hard and the software can be shared.

You’re wrong on the genetics, or at least extremely hyperbolic. No one is stuck fat. It does take dedication and a great deal of time to lose weight, and no one deserves abuse for not doing doing it, but anyone can.

No amount of dedication will change one’s skin colour, height, or sexual orientation.

Essentially, from a genetics point of view, a fat person has as much control over their weight as a black person does over the color of their skin.

I’m sorry but this simply is false. I’m not saying genetics don’t play a part in the disposition of whether you are likely to have to work hard to stay slim or be lucky (like myself) and be able to eat whatever you want without stressing about weight.

However stating that controlling your weight is the same as controlling your skin colour is insulting to the people who do have to work hard to stay slim.

Why? If you eat to obesity because you’ve been genetically/chemically programmed to do so, what’s the point of feeling guilty about it? Spending your life on a draconian diet, feeling hungry and angry every moment of every day, just so that you can cleave to the norm? What kind of a life is that?

But ZOMG being fat is unhealthy! Well, so is being miserable all the time.