• robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    You wouldn't go on a diet to lose weight and improve your health by counting 1500 calories of whisky every day because that'd be insane.

    now, twinkies on the other hand...

    cico is correct and works, but the hard part is sticking with it and handling the pain and stress of constant hunger, especially in capitalist society

    • CarmineCatboy [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The thing about the constant hunger is that it's learned. Hyperprocessed foods make you more hungry, all the time. Everyone knows about insulin resistance, well if you've got that you probably also have leptin resistance. Which means the hormonal feedback loops that make you satiated are suppressed by fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes.

      Then there's the mechanical side of things. A diet based on hyper processed foods is poor in fiber, which not only means your digestion happens too quickly, but the impact of the incoming nutrients (read: sugar) into your bloodstream is that much more severe. Fibers form a protective layer in your gut and feed its bacteria. Without it you have neither.

      Then there's depression that flows from the excessive dopamine feedbacks into your brain, the re-wiring of your brain to actually enjoy artificial sweeteners, the growth of your stomach, the cultural aspect of losing out on cooking as a human experience and snacking all the time. There's two dozen different ways you can analyze the effects of these foodstuffs and they aren't just bad, they all compound on each other.

      Of course, the social stigma associated with being fat doesn't help. And once you're up there, neither do the diseases associated with excessive weight. I've had more than one person die in my family after giving up on their lives because they couldn't walk any more, 'anyways'.

      Going keto, or vegan, or fasting, doing the mediterranean diet, and so on. All of these methods always go back to the same thing. Cooking and rejecting hyper processed foods. You can't go keto on stuff like sausage because it has carbs in it. Vegans at most eat hummus, not some fast food franken dip. And if there's one thing that fasting does is break the 'digesting literal garbage all the time' effect. CICO is so much easier to do and much more reasonable once you aren't hungry for - and I harp on this because apparently its the academic term - industrialized edible substances all the time.

      I think the great struggle against the food industry is long in the making. It will be like cigs all over again. There will be a thousand quack studies and, I'm sure of it, astroturfed social media movements all about discrediting the mounting evidence against hyper processed foods. The worst thing is, they are totally gonna use environmentalism to sell hyperprocessed fake meat rather than just support a transition to eating beans more often than not.

      • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        i meant the hunger from calorie restriction.

        my body was conditioned on a significantly higher activity level than I could maintain now due to injury and depression so the only thing I can do is stay under 1900 kcal, which is misery inducing. I can handle it when I have a stable living situation and the emotional benefits of a romantic partner but not when i don't have such security.

        I also can't do a lot of physical cooking operations for reasons that don't have to do with manual dexterity so it would be cool if we could keep fast food and frozen pizza but make that stuff healthy and filling rather than manipulative garbage for profit.