In your opinion, what is the biggest reason why people are overweight?

[MCheetah]

What do you think is the biggest reason people become overweight?

To some of you, I guess I'd be a "fat ass."

Yes, I know people on the internet can be complete assholes to those who are overweight, assuming it is all 100% due to sloth and gluttony. But let's see what GAG thinks, anyway. Yes, there may be a mix of these things, but I want to know the biggest contributor to it, in your opinion.

And yes, I am overweight despite my cardio exercise and minimalist diet. Speaking personally, I'm a mix of options A through D. I've always had an unhappy life and Hypothyroidism doesn't help in losing weight.

Stress / Unhappiness / Wrong Mindset

Bad Dietary Education / Ignorance of Healthy Habits

Socioeconomics / Income (being healthy isn't cheap)

Medical Reasons or Conditions

Modern Processed Food / Chemicals & Hormones

Laziness / Gluttony / Overeating

Other

[TheSpaceGnome]

The biggest reason people are overweight is because they don't understand how weight loss, weight gain, or their metabolism works.

For example, you can't gain any weight eating a lot of fat, but you can have trouble losing weight you already have if you eat a lot of fat.

This is because while sugars convert to fat, and fat converts to hormones, acids, water, etc, if you eat enough fat to produce enough hormones, acids, water, etc. from your diet alone, then your body doesn't dip into its fat reserves to make those things, and if your food is pumped full of hormones, the same thing applies.

Also, if you eat starch, its worse than candy for weight gain, especially tubers. Starch not only packs on pounds, but it also slows your metabolism over time.

There are other things in play as well, for example excersize speeds up metabolism long term, so the more you work out now, the less you need to a year from now, and its progressively compounding (just like the metabolism slowing of starch is). So depending on how you lived before, you could end up in a situation where you have the hardest time losing weight while constantly exersizing, or you could end up sitting on your ass all day eating pizza and not gaining a pound, regardless of where you started.

Furthermore - You can reverse either, and also doing complex problem solving burns a ton of nutrients in the body, as does creative thinking in general, and eating a lot throughout the day burns more and consumes less as the body pushes out food you didn't entirely finish digesting, while one big meal a day, eating very little, or intermittent fasting, will tell your body to store fat, because it's not getting its needs met every day by consumption. Also stress can cause both weight gain or loss, depending on where you are with everything else I said.

There are of course genetic diseases as well, but most people simply don't know how much of any nutrient they need per day, its something that takes trial and error to figure out because everyone's body is different, but 1 rule remains that whether hitting the gym or sitting on your ass, you need to consume less than you use to lose weight.

[TheSpaceGnome]

Also, long workouts are really bad for men, men are supposed to do short, high intensity workouts for like 15 minutes, and then rest for long periods, or our stress and sex hormones get too high. Women are supposed to to light prolonged cardio like going for walks.

[TheSpaceGnome]

Also, because my metabolism is relatively high right now, whenever I do something exciting while stationary, like intense gaming or horror flicks, it has the same muscle tensing, heart pumping effect that a workout does. So I don't need to excersize, because my body is already in that mode just sitting.

[TheSpaceGnome]

I probably forgot some things, but thats everything I could remember atm.

[TheSpaceGnome]

Oh, there is also that because of how metabolism speeds up or slows down based on current diet, no single diet plan will ever work indefinately. So overtime, you would need to change it in response to your current metabolic changes.

[TheSpaceGnome]

So it should be more "what do I need right now" not "whats the best diet"

[sirderpsalot123]

In my opinion, it starts with depression.

[sirderpsalot123]

Depression is often THE reason people become less motivated to exercise and eat more, therefore gaining weight.

[MCheetah]

It certainly was the case with me.

[sirderpsalot123]

Thanks for MHO

[muscularbumblebee]

I chose misinformation of heathy eating as the main factor although it’s all of those but I think it also comes down to socioeconomic factors too at least according to research articles.. let me elaborate…


Firstly I live in the UK where statistically more of those who are overweight then to be from ‘more deprived areas’ I think this is probably form a) lack of time aka conscience and fast foods such as mc Donald’s being cheap and convenient saves them time to cook as well as ready meals whilst they spend the majority of the time working. But also misinformation. The thing is it’s not expensive to eat healthy at all. It’s just a lot less convenient to prepare fresh meals from scratch and people have misconception it’s is because of many places such as whole foods etc becoming popular. Eg my weekly grocery shop (and I’m a bodybuilder eating lots of meat too) is about £15-20 max £40 if I’m splurging a lot with lots of fresh meat, veg and fruit etc


Also genetic factors, people you surround yourself with too but it’s all individual. For a lot of overweight people once you do come ot a certain stage I think another issue is you tend to get the ‘well I’m already overweight and it’s too hard to change now’ mentality stopping them


But anything is possible

[muscularbumblebee]

I’m a nutshell health is less of a priority and more of a luxury to most

[MCheetah]

Would've given you an MHO, but the site wouldn't let me, for some reason.

[muscularbumblebee]

No worries haha thank you anyway ☺️

[RealMarek]

Obesity rates took off around the time we started using seed oils and high fructose corn syrup.

[Reijen]

This was a tough one for me. I decided on option A as it related to me. Got into the right mindset to finally lose some weight.

[CarolineW]

Because they eat burgers, pizzas, KFC and other garbage. They drink too much alcohol and sit around on their asses all day.

[exitseven]

Too much time watching a screen, not enough exercise and too much fast food.

[Fuentes]

I say lazy & health conditions, processed foods.

[Loveisgirthy]

Not enough sex