6 Of Your Favorite Things That Are Secretly Making You Fat
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Obesity is rampant. The devastating cocktail of fast food and sedentary lifestyle has made the western world look like a visit to the Hutt palace, and we're coming for you next Asia! But this article isn't about junk food. You know you shouldn't crumble a bag of Oreos over your breakfast nachos. These are six seemingly innocent things that fly under the radar, and crash land right on your ass. #6.
Your Caffeine Addiction
"Addiction" might be a tad dramatic seeing as how there isn't actually any hard evidence that caffeine is addictive, but we're willing to stake our reputation as Internet doctors that pretty much everybody reading this has had a liquid stimulant today. There are casual and hard-core caffeine users, but both can find themselves getting fatter by the day. The casual drinkers disguise their stimulant in layers of crushed ice and whipped cream. This gets to be a problem when drinks like Starbucks' famous Frappuccino have around 500 calories per cup. Even worse, the human brain has a logical disconnect when it comes to liquid calories. That is to say, it doesn't acknowledge them at all.
So for instance, a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut has 610 calories. Therefore, your Starbucks beverage is like a little pizza transformed into a little fruity coffee with training-wheels. The difference is that the pizza will make you feel full. The Frappuccino won't.
Then you've got the hardcore caffeine users, who prefer high-energy beverages with names like Rockstar and Monster and Red Bull and many other things the drinker will never actually resemble. They may also drink black coffee or espresso. The hardcore drinker just wants the quick energy rush. Now, while those drinks don't have the pizza-scale calories of the Starbucks drink up there, it doesn't matter because Caffeine has so many inventive methods of fattening you up that we could've named this article "6 Ways Caffeine Is Making Your Ass Resemble A Pile Of Damp Towels."
The biggest thing caffeine does is jack your stress level through the roof, which steers your metabolism straight into "Survival/Conservation" mode. While it's doing that, it also increases your appetite, which makes you seek a whole pile of comfort foods to swallow in order to cope with that stress we just mentioned. And while it's doing that, caffeine will also be running around your body fucking with your hormones and raising your cholesterol and basically just being a complete dick.
What we're trying to say is that the only reason a can of Red Bull hasn't gained sentience and murdered your entire family is because doing that probably wouldn't make you any fatter. #5.
Saving Money
All that careful, thrifty shopping you're doing isn't only making you fatter, but it's also probably wasting your money. You can bulk-shop in two different ways; you can either buy a single huge unit of a foodstuff (say, an eight-gallon tub of pretzels) or you can buy a whole bunch of single-serving packages (a pallet of 48 juiceboxes.)
What you're thinking at the time of purchase: "For the price of one trip to a restaurant, I can have a year's worth of pretzels and juiceboxes!" You then cart your purchases home and immediately start devouring them at twice the rate you would if you didn't have so damn much of them (according to a survey published in the Journal of Marketing Research). This foodthusiasm lasts for about a week, after which your insides are so clogged by juice and pretzels that every time you see their hateful forms squatting in your cabinet your throat seizes shut and your gut fills with bile. And thus it is that your smart purchase migrates its way to the back of your pantry while you go and flush out the pretzels with a cheeseburger.
#4.
Air Conditioning
"But Cracked," we hear you crying, "our air conditioning? You've already taken away our Red Bull! Surely keeping cool can't be making me fatter!" We thought the same thing. But, we were wrong (and fat) again. The body has to burn energy to maintain its temperature. Make it too cold or too hot, and the body has to burn calories to adjust. But put the body in a room that's 72 degrees all the time, and those processes don't run. No energy is burned and no calories are spent.
This energy burning varies from person to person, but it's generally works out to a couple hundred calories a day, which adds up over the lazy summer months. And that's not even the whole story, according to a report published in the International Journal of Obesity, whose valiant researchers of all things pudge-related recently found a link between being hot and not eating very much. Go figure, right?
Though now that we think about it, all these researchers could probably save a lot of time and ink by just getting together and publishing one huge report entitled It's Official: Studies Confirm That Misery Takes Fat Off And Keeps It Off. |
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So why do the weight loss pills that have been around forever (Dexatrim, for instance) have caffeine in them? People probably think that it gives you more energy and therefore you will be more active. Good thing I read this before I put my "drink more coffee to lose weight" plan into action...
stress can totally help you lose weight--if you're a broke-ass college kid who chain smokes and has a perscription for adderall. college, f**k yes.
my computer, weed, and restricted grocery shopping have made me lose 20lbs so far. i restrict the shopping to only the food i need for 2 weeks (paycheck to paycheck) and when my mind starts screaming for the junk food i always want i just smoke a bowl and find something to read/watch on the computer. i get distracted and totally forget all about wanting to go buy up all the doritos 7-11 has to offer. i can't claim smoking is in any way healthier than the crap food i love so much, but the best looking guy i always see at work starting hitting on me so i'm gonna call it an improvement.
I was reading about the problem of eating in front of the computer while... well, eating... in front of the computer. When I choked with something that wounded my bloody throat.
It still hurts, almost three days later.
Damn you, Cracked.com. First you gave me insomnia, now you destroy my throat. Damn you to hell.
Also, very nice article.
I eat while using the computer, spend the whole day sitting in front of the computer, drinking coffee, eat more than necessary because, you know, the f*****g stomach does not tell me when it's full and I always eat more when buy more food.
And I'm getting pretty fat.
Personally, I blame Cracked.
The body uses up energy shivering. That's the reason it's easier to get fat in warmer countries (have you ever seen an obese Eskimo?)
However, if your air-con doesn't make it too cold, you aren't going to shiver.
It takes a tiny bit of energy to sweat, plus your body burns its stored fat. Also the water content in your body (which will obviously drop when you sweat) does make up a part of your weight. Therefore, you can literally sweat some of your weight away. Air-con will prevent this.
The part about the Air-conditioner doesn't make any sense. You said that the body burns no calories in a room at 72ยบ degree, but that's obviously a HIGH temperature, and air-conditioners provide LOW temperatures. If we follow that logic of a body wasting no calories at a higher temperature, we could say that the body actually wastes MORE calories at a lower temperature.
Also, you said it yourself: "Make it too cold or too hot, and the body has to burn calories to adjust." - Thus, if you lower the temperature, your body will burn calories to adjust.
LMAO.. I am actually eating Doritos with one hand and scrolling down with the other. It's like they SEE me!
Yeah, I felt like a d'bag after reading the last one; I was LITERALLY putting a Cool Rach Dorito in my mouth as I came upon the part of "so you're eating chips with one hand and moving the mouse with the other". Hmph.
I shall never eat nor drink anything ever again.
I should probably quit reading these.
I tend not to get up at all when I'm on the computer. So I don't eat at all.
I only get up to go to the toilet and that's when I'm absolutely about to piss myself.
If I'm on the computer all day then I don't eat.
The eating with friends thing is so true, when I eat with my buddies at the chow hall and we have nowhere to be, we will eat for like hours, but not really cus were hungry, just to hang out, but since theres food there...
I must say i love that the things that are making us fat have photos of people who clearly aren't.
Can you imagine how bad the soup experiment would f**k with you?!?!?!? "My God!!!! I haven't made a dent in this soup, and i've been eating it for hours!!!"
I think I speak for every one when I say I already knew the internet was making us fat.
xD
caffeine only affects cortisol levels if the user rarely consumes caffeine. If one consumes caffeine on a daily basis, then the body abolishes the cortisol response. It resumes natural function after a few hours, however.
dontbugme3: Good point about the internet. That has happened to me more times than I can count. Rarely do I eat while I'm online, because I know I'm a damn slob and I don't want to get food in my keybaord.
Caffeine is physically addicting. I used to drink at least ten cups per night, some of those with espresso mixed in. Spending all night in the cafe eventually led to sleeping two or three hours at a time before work in the morning, and maybe another two or three after work, before heading back to the cafe. The caffeine curbed my appetite to the extent that I once forgot to eat for three days, which resulted in fainting at work. On a particularly hardcore binge, I didn't sleep for days, and started to see and hear things that weren't there, and burst into fits of maniacal laughter for no reason. When I finally quit, I went through withdrawals; extreme fatigue (falling asleep whenever I sat down, even if I just woke up), a little depressed, and mind-numbing headaches.
I never gained weight from it though. Caffeine; fun, scary, and when taken in large amounts, produces the same effects as Cocaine.
I am willing to forgo most - it's the air conditioning I can't live without. Well, thank Heaven for the treadmill machine, eh!
First minute of Who's Nailin Paylin
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Wouldn't the Internet and the caffiene thing negate each other? I mean, if you sit at the computer not wanting to eat but caffiene makes you hungrier, how does that play out?
As for the mom thing, I think some of us were actually taught how to portion our meals better than others because my mom never made me fat by telling me to finish my meal---and if you continue crackin' jokes 'bout my momma, imma cut ya. :)