Fat does not raise your metabolism by a lot (relatively), and tiny changes in diet lead to massive swings in the equilibrium implied by basal metabolic rate formulas. In fact, some formulas do not include weight due to body fat. If you think about it, that fact touches on the idea that your natural weight is being maintained by another body system, one related to GLP-1.
By the way... if humans had to count calories to not accidentally starve or die from overeating, we would not have made it long enough as a species to invent a scientific way to do that. Even the diets of obese or overweight individuals are being naturally regulated, because anyone could physically eat even more.
The potential for overeating chronically has not been possible for most people, in most societies, throughout most of human history. Our current caloric abundance being available to literally everyone in Western society is something unique to the past century.
If you eat 1% fewer calories than you burn every day you will die. You will also die if you eat 1% more calories than you burn every day. Is it possible, really, to suggest that the availability of calories was 100% of the daily requirement of our ancestors, and not 99%, or 101%? That is a level of accident that exceeds belief.
It is incredible to think this precise balance could be maintained by anything other than a closed loop of biological control. How would the wheat on a medieval farm know how much to grow each season? If it was off by 1% consistently, everyone would have died... unless they had a mechanism for satiation.
How do you think our microbial ancestors maintained internal salinity, through the limited availability of salt in the ancient ocean?
You will also die if you eat precisely the amount of calories you burn every day.
There exists something called a "feedback loop", something common in biology. You would probably find it interesting, you should look it up.
Basically, it means that if you try to chronically eat, say, 1% more calories than are burned, your body will try to burn more calories to compensate.
I'm not sure I grasp the rest of your comment, could you try again to explain? The wheat farm your ancestors worked did not provide the excess of cheap calories available to the present day American.
It ends up being the opposite. Rather than the body having a satiation response, it controls the metabolism.
If you've ever fasted, you've experienced this. You just don't have the energy to do much other than sit around when you are hungry.
Ancient societies realized this, it's why they'd give out calorie dense meals to their farm labor. For a serf in England, harvest time was often met with a very calorie dense meal. For roman soldiers, they had a diet of meats and cheeses.
I'd also point out that you don't need to have exactly 100% daily calorie intake. You can go a week with just 99% and catch up with 101% the next week just fine.
In reality there were times of excess and times of shortages far more often in past times. In times where there were plenty of items that didn't last you over consumed. By late winter you were getting lean.
>If it was off by 1% consistently, everyone would have died...
You do realize that starvation was a massive killer in the past. Everyone didn't die, but the young, the old, and the weak sure did.
It's not necessarily about BMR - if you maintain a similar activity level as you gain weight, you consume more active calories as well, in almost every activity, particularly the most common ones such as walking.
Agreed 100%. I think if your strategy for maintaining a good diet relies on weighing food and counting every last calorie, you are inevitably going to fail. Something more fundamental, natural, habit forming, whatever -- that will be the right answer. Naturally trim people don't count calories to stay that way, either.
Of course naturally “trim” people don’t count calories - they don’t have to. Just like I don’t have to monitor my blood glucose level, but my Type 1 diabetic friend does.
You can’t apply to habits of one physiologic group to a different group and expect the same results.
To be fair, 12 step programs would be a counter argument. The maintenance of homeostasis requires constant attention in those programs. You could say overeating is different from other addictions, and I would agree, but there are a lot of similarities too..
One might argue that homeostasis is, itself, a kind of attention that our bodies pay. Maybe by consciously changing our habits we can change our set points. In certainly way more aware of how full I actually am 3 weeks into hitting a 2000 calorie a day diet.
There are a lot of signs that the leader being suggested would be a king, which is not something most citizens in democratic nations would feel natural fighting for.
What does that have to do with Iran? Well, of course besides funding and equipping Hamas to go do dumb things like attack Israel.
Are the Palestinians Iranian citizens? They weren't the last I checked. So no need for Iran to be involved there.
If you want to argue that Israel is "doing things right now" in this broad context against Arabs well, so did Hamas, Hezbollah, and others against Israelis. Iran threatens nuclear holocaust on Israel, Iran also launched ballistic missiles at Israel, funds ISIS/ISIL, Hezbollah, destabilized Syria and tried to destabilize Iraq. Maybe everyone just deserves what is happening to them?
I agree. The United States specifically should get involved and secure Gaza and institute peace, kick out Hamas, and ensure that no weapons from Iran are flowing to the area and causing a humanitarian disaster by encouraging and facilitating continuing bloodshed.
Sure, but better for who? Most likely for the West I'd say. It's pretty bad for Persians as well but who knows what other leader would have done to them. If the regime falls I'd say good riddance but it's no guarantee for a better life or stability in the region.
There is no going "back" to absolutist monarchism because it was actually a highly evolved (over centuries) form of government that eventually became the political norms of Europe today. There are a lot of ways to go forward to an isolated dictator driven by a terrible fear of his own citizens however.
I meant an absolutist monarchy. This is really a dying form, though not yet totally dead.
Paradoxically, republics of today seem more vulnerable to authoritarian turns than the monarchies which survived the 20th century.
Probably because an elected leader has more legitimacy and thus can demand more political power, sometimes too much power. In a constitutional monarchy, there is always a psychological split between the sovereign and the prime minister or whoever gets elected to executive power, and one-man-shows are less likely to succeed.
The focus on a particular location is a religious one (in the scriptures there was a Jewish homeland before Israel or Egypt, and Israel is singled out because God told them to go), but it's also a selective one that ignores all the times God arranged for Israel not to be there; and crucially does not stop and wait for His opinion about the present. It is the most dangerous kind of religious opinion: one invented by us.
Herzl makes no religious argument, he is fairly close to an atheist. That’s why I mentioned people should read the book or a summary before commenting on the matter.
Of course there could be, and Hertzel writes about it explicitly - the idea that Jews need a homeland because antisemitism makes it impossible for them to live within another people.
In regard to religion itself, like the other post said, he couldn't really care less and even advocated for Jews to convert to Christianity at a time, seeing it as another solution to the discrimination they're facing: "I see myself as an average modern Jew and I'm not afraid from the idea of a formal conversion to Christianity. I have a son, and I'd prefer converting today and not tomorrow so that his membership will start earlier and I can save him from the troubles and discrimination he'll face as a Jew".
Look, there's no way the coordinates this guy triangulated lined up with the religious site by chance. That would be similar to the odds that a flawed calculation of the age of the earth would turn out to be 6,000 years. If he had said anywhere else that argument might be right, but not of all places the temple mount, the one place in the world nobody would need any explanation for. If you're saying he was writing from a pragmatic standpoint, perhaps he argued that it would be convenient and more conducive to organizing power to follow along with what others believed: but that's still based on the religious thought.
Of course it did not happen by coincidence, but Hertzel himself was considering other places too. There were real discussions around the best location, and finally it was agreed that Mandatory Palestine is the place most Jews would unite around - due to history, religion, culture, existing population etc.
My point is that the idea that Jews need a homeland was prior to the idea of the exact location it should take place in. If you bundle history, culture, belief and a like into the word "religion", then sure, we can say that the later decision of the exact location was based on religion. For us non-religious Jews that sounds awkward: we feel connected to the place because of our culture, not because of our non-existing religious feelings - but that's just semantics.
I guess we have just been talking semantics. I am only saying that the cultural view came from the religious view originally. I don't think that is something many people would disagree about.
There are other groups that could claim the same: Romany/Gypsies would be a big one but no one seems to want to claim a North Indian homeland for them; Sikhs might be another.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but if there are other groups who are being discriminated against, and have a strong connection to a specific place on earth - be it Romany, Palestinians or whoever - I definitely wouldn't be the one objecting their right for self-determination. The way I studied Zionism as a child was clear: through our (Jews') right to a land we can understand the right to land of others.
Roma do have a supposed homeland in India and have been badly persecuted. There is an exceptionalism about Zionism. Many features can be found elsewhere. When I've seen Haredi in Israel, they look like Eastern Europeans to me in their mannerisms, dress (inappropriate for the heat) and even language. I personally think European Jews succeed better in the USA than Israel. Israel is under siege all the time. I have spent a few months in Israel. I left with a very different opinion.
"I don't believe in god but he promised me this land 3000 years ago" sums up Zionism pretty well, or "Jews aren't safe anywhere so let's create a state by wiping out and expelling the native population and make enemies of all our neighbors". It's such a laughably self-contradicting ideology
The effect you're describing is often created when people with very distinct views agree on one thing and argue in favor of it along conflicting axiomatic lines.
Except none of these statements are part of the Zionist agenda. You putting them in quotes does not make them a quote.
I already explained why your first "quote" is false: Hertzel didn't think Jews should move to Israel because it was promised to them.
The second one is also completely wrong: He never called for expelling the native population, and he actually advocated for close and good contacts with them and the surrounding countries.
Despite their belief to the contrary the executive branch is in charge of very little in this country. They are harassing and extorting in legally dubious and often outright illegal ways, but companies and institutions and individuals are getting wise to the fact there’s very little power these guys really have because the law is structured to prevent executive abuse of power. All you have to do is get your suit filed and get a stay, and sooner or later the governments case likely falls apart. It’s frictionful for everyone involved and will sooner or later cause serious damage to the economy, but increasing as the initial shock fades, everyone is realizing the president is fairly weak and his antics and his hand picked but of loonies undermine any power they might have. It’s not Howard Lutnicks world, and as time goes on it becomes less and less so as they squander the reputation of the presidency tilting at windmills.
By the way... if humans had to count calories to not accidentally starve or die from overeating, we would not have made it long enough as a species to invent a scientific way to do that. Even the diets of obese or overweight individuals are being naturally regulated, because anyone could physically eat even more.
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