6 Of Your Favorite Things That Are Secretly Making You Fat
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.
You, as an unsatisfied, horse-faced Frappuccino-drinker.
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.
This panda thinks he's laughing all the way to the bank, when in fact he is going to the emergency room (he has diabetes.)
#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 guy's taking it a little far, but he has the general idea.
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.
If you can't be addicted to caffeine, how do people get real withdrawal symptoms--headaches, shaking, chills?
ReplyFuck. I made this exact comment in February. This is why there needs to be a search system for finding your own comments!
I always thought caffeine, while stimulating the metabolism a little, suppressed appetite? At least, that's what it does for me.
ReplyThough I think it's probably more the stuff you put in your caffeinated beverage of choice that's going to make you fat than the stress from the caffeine itself. It's totally possible to be stressed and eat healthy, it just takes some getting used to, because it means you can't use the food to cope. Which, while it initially sucks, is actually pretty good since it forces you to address the issues, and find a real solution instead of just burying your problems with cheese.
I can stop drinking coffee whenever I want. e-e;
ReplyTwo more things that are really good at making you fat if you're not careful: Fruit juice and fruit. Yeah, healthy, but very high in sugar, even if it's mostly fructose (which, I suppose, would be at least one potentially energy-consuming step away from being converted into glucose). Not much of a difference between eating a chocolate bar and drinking a glass of orange juice (other than the vitamins, of course), and the calories really pile up fast if you're used to just gobbling apples in bulk.
ReplyIt took me becoming a teenager to realise that ice cream, of all things, is high in calories. I'd kind of assumed that since it was creamy and not-substantial and stuff, it didn't really matter. XD
Reply"They're probably making fun of you behind your back, and having sex with your girlfriend right now."
ReplyEr, you could've gone without implying that any reader of Cracked is either a straight male or a lesbian woman.
Good article, though.
I dig your writing style Malcolm. More please.
ReplyI'm not giving up my air-conditioning. My great, great, great.... didn't conspire to kill Caesar just so I can be hot in the summer. Besides, ever heard of chocolate-dipped cheesecake on a stick? Yeah, if it gets that hot in my house (by whatever oppressive regime decides to take away my air), I'm going to eat nothing by chocolate-dipped cheesecake on a stick to stay cool. Don't tell me a hot house will help me lose weight!!
Reply... okay look I'm gonna need a link before I believe my jet black coffee somehow raises my cholesterol level. There's like four calories in a cup on a good day; I have to drink three cups before I'm up to a stick of gum.
ReplyI don't buy number 6.
I know a guy who lost 10kg (22 pounds) in 3 months by drinking coffee 4 times a day. Coffee speeds up your metabolism.
I don't get it, Wouldn't your body bringing your temperature from 70 degrees (Which is how cool I keep my air) to the norm 98 degrees burn more calories than your body cooling yourself down from 100 degrees (how hot it can get here in FL ) to 98 degrees?
ReplyCore body temperature is 98.6, skin temperature is around 72, which is why that's comfortable room temperature. If the air around you were that hot, you'd start sweating like crazy, because your whole body isn't meant to be at a uniform 98.6.
The reason hot will make more of a difference than cold is that you'll generally stay sweating in the heat, where if the temperature gradient was the same but colder most people compensate faster (with a sweater or something).
Like RobertMastragostino (wow, hell of a name) said, you perceive the temperature of their air in comparison to the stuff you perceive it with, which is your skin. There's a reason you stick the thermometer into your armpit when measuring a fever.
Anything hotter than your skin makes you sweat to cool down, which expends energy. Anything colder makes you burn more calories to stay warm, which expends energy.
Well at least I don't have that AC problem (I get cold really easily).
ReplyThe AC part and the one that says misery makes you thin... they are so related. And I was so eating dinner while reading this.
ReplyMisery makes you
ReplyLose weight therefore Ted from scrubs should be the fittest person in the world
Fit and thin are two different things.
Yeah there's tons of conflicting data on caffeine and coffee. It is addictive though. Just ask anyone who goes from 4-5 cups a day to 0. Psychologically and physically addictive. It's not crack or anything but its still addictive in general.
ReplyAddicts that go cold-turkey usually have tremors and constant headaches
When I go half a day with no caffeine I get violent headaches. If I continue to abstain My brain goes numb and I feel like I'm walking under water. Don't tell me it's not addictive.
That does make sense though, being too hot and you don't feel like eating. Apparently, having your aircon at slightly higher or lower degrees ceases your appetite and helps you lose weight
ReplyLike hell I'm giving up air conditioning. I'd rather give up solid food. And once you start living through summers where it routinely hits 100 degrees F or higher for at least 50 days per summer and the humidity's enough to make your clothing cling to you should you choose to walk outside for more than twenty minutes, you will see why. BTW, I'm not giving up the caffeine either, but a lot of that is in the form of delicious black coffee.
ReplyI've grown up without AC and just last year we had a heat dome (a heat wave that just sits there) that broke the 40 degree mark..... We're just getting spoiled as a society if you ask me....
.. But if you're cold, your body burns more calories to help make you warmer.
Reply...but if your hot you won't want to eat and won't have those calories to begin with
Your body also burns an increased amount of calories when you're hot. Burning calories is just the body's way of producing energy, and you need energy to both heat and cool your body. Just like you need energy to make your freezer produce that nice icy blast you stand in front of when it's balls-sweatingly hot outside.
Forgive my ignorance here, but does drinking black coffee (probably 3 times a day) bad for my health? I thought it was low on calories :/
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI'm sure that caloriewise you chose well, but keep in mind the other effects they mentioned related to coffee, such as the heightened stress level for example. Also, no matter what the calorie count is, they noted in the article that coffee tends to cause your body to kick into "survival" mode, where you need to conserve all the calories you consume. So most likely, yes, drinking black coffee around 3 times a day is going to negatively impact your health.
There are both positive and negative health effects from drinking coffee, in part depending on who's doing the drinking. The effects are fairly mild, though, and nothing to worry about if you are healthy and not pregnant... and not drinking 15 cups a day.
Caffiene is also a powerful appetite suppressant, and the bodies "survival" mode also strongly suppresses the entire digestive system functioning. Most people attribute my low weight to an overconsumption of caffiene.
I drink coffee because it makes me lose the urge to eat...
ReplyI totally get the whole "the more you have, the more you will consume" thing. Back before I quit smoking, I would never buy whole cartons of cigarettes because having so many around made me smoke twice as much as if I'd just bought one pack.
Reply