BigStar

As usual, denigration of Thais just applies to the poster himself.

No, that was TAT: ANF stats. What were those numbers again?

Before we take too much comfort in the idea, we should note that we've always had threads with sorry tales of woe from ANF (TVF) posters for the last twenty years. Used be only during low season, but was then extended to high season as well, two annual DEATH threads. COVID led to many a delighted orgy with countless dire prophecies that it was FINALLY the LAST last nail in the coffin. However, pre-COVID, the low seasons weren't as low as they used to be, thanks to more domestic and Asian tourism. Our Economists only survey tin-roofed beer bar owners, however, to represent the entire economy of Pattaya. And they've always been notorious poor mouths anyway.

Maybe they've been reading the ANF Pattaya forums too much. Or maybe you've mistaken them for Thais. Or for some simps delighting in their rented women. Now I don't recall seeming Germans walking around all shiny and happy-faced in all the years I've been in Pattaya. Never any worries here about that. What our old buzzards want is as usual to sit in their tree and aim droppings at the current non-monger group welcomed by TAT.

First, the "excess" argument is one of our favorite straw men. @scubascubarefuted the whole CIM (carbohydrate insulin model of obesity) with this gem: eating too much cheese will make you fat. That's it, then--get nekkid! Lemme join in: Strange but True: Drinking Too Much Water Can Kill. Trouble is, this gets us really nowhere. Nobody says do harmful things to excess. In fact, everyone advises against it. None of those 93% of Americans metabolically unhealthy thought they were doing anything, like, excessively. But they obviously were. So we always beg the question of what the excess is, exactly. That all depends on an individual's own metabolism and how much it can take, over time, without getting diseased. The great anti-christ himself, Gary Taubes, makes exactly this point in his book Why We Get Fat, as our anti-low carb Authorities would know if they ever read him; but they may now lift their fat fingers from their keyboards to make the sign of the cross, last chance! . . . there’s no one-size-fits-all prescription for the quantity of carbohydrates we can eat and still lose fat or remain lean. For some, staying lean or getting back to being lean might be a matter of merely avoiding sugars and eating the other carbohydrates in the diet, even the fattening ones, in moderation: pasta dinners once a week, say, instead of every other day. For others, moderation in carbohydrate consumption might not be sufficient, and far stricter adherence is necessary. And for some, weight will be lost only on a diet of virtually zero carbohydrates, and even this may not be sufficient to eliminate all our accumulated fat, or even most of it. . . . A blanket recommendation to eat fruits and vegetables and whole grains, as Oz prescribes and now Weight Watchers and the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, ignores this aspect of human variability completely. It assumes that people who are predisposed to fatten can tolerate the same foods and benefit from the same very mild dose of carb-restriction that the naturally lean can. --Why We Get Fat Now among the What, Me Worry? Settled Principles of mighty ANF Longevity Science is the Genetic Voodoo: 8. What, me worry? I: The genes It’s all genes. Git nekkid! But Study of a high physical exercise cohort compared with community controls over more than 20 years showed that disability at age 80 years had been postponed by nearly 16 years while mortality had been postponed about 7 years in the exercise cohort as opposed to controls. A similar study compared three groups of university alumni divided at baseline into cohorts with zero, one, or two/three major risk factors out of exercise, weight, and tobacco use and followed from age 69 to almost 90 years of age. The zero initial risk factor cohort postponed morbidity by 10 years and mortality by 3.3 years compared to high risk. The differences increased over time, occurred in all subgroups, and persisted after statistical adjustment. --“On the Compression of Morbidity: From 1980 to 2015 and Beyond.” Handbook of the Biology of Aging, Jan. 2016, pp. 507–24. www.sciencedirect.com, doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-411596-5.00019-8. Compared to control animals showing a median survival time of 6.4 years, CR extended survival by 50%, reduced aging-associated diseases and preserved loss of brain white matter in several brain regions. --https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6420603/ Human longevity seems more consistently linked to insulin sensitivity than to IGF-1 levels, and the effects of IGF-1 on human longevity are confounded by its inverse proportionality to insulin sensitivity (Vitale, Pellegrino, Vollery, & Hofland, 2019). --Fahy, Gregory M., et al. “Reversal of Epigenetic Aging and Immunosenescent Trends in Humans.” Aging Cell, vol. 18, no. 6, 2019, p. e13028. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/acel.13028. It’s a mystery why our Genetic Voodoo Believers bother seeing docs and gobbling all those meds. Should do no good. Why fight the Voodoo? Save yourself lots of time, bother, and money. Use the Voodoo, Luke! Mark Baker's advice: . . make sure you keep healthy, because health is your supreme asset. If you’re ill your life is f**ked. Most people don’t become ill for no reason; it’s the consequence of being a w.a.nker, not caring about their physical condition or what they eat. Your life is f**ked anyway because you’re going to die; but don’t accelerate the d**n process! Leave that to the morons who blame their genetics or hormones for their illnesses. Keep strong, build muscle, face physical tests and challenges. --Gang Fit (Part 2) So I'll go with the science rather than the voodoo. True, centenarians may have done nothing special in their lives and do have the genes to postpone the onset of chronic disease. And those geners may vary. My genes haven't told me that I got The Power, however. I'll just try to hedge my bets and postpone the metabolic diseases, docs, meds, bills, and suffering as long as I can, thank you. Before the personal attack begins, no, I don't find it difficult at all, probably because my insulin is under control. Don't desire bread, rice, pizza, ice cream, and other starches and sugars. I have a good life, no complaints here. I'd like it to continue into my 90s w/o having to deal w/ chronic diseases. Nobody really knows what's excess without a CGM (continual glucose monitor). People have been shocked what spikes arise from eating their fave high carb dishes. Unfortunately these CAN be cumulative but that isn't obvious until damage has already been done via insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, and diabetes itself. OH--could that be YOU? Yep. Turns out that you can’t be sure that being “healthy” and "feeling good" right now is any protection against the cumulative effects of glucose spikes. Metabolisms differ, so that even whole foods aren’t necessarily safe. If safe, how are you sure? And if safe, in what amounts? When? How long? Well, you don't have a clue. It turns out that the level of sugar in an individual’s blood — especially in individuals who are considered healthy — fluctuates more than traditional means of monitoring, like the one-and-done finger-<deleted> method, would have us believe. Often, these fluctuations come in the form of “spikes,” or a rapid increase in the amount of sugar in the blood, after eating specific foods — most commonly, carbohydrates. . . . The covert spikes . . . can contribute to cardiovascular disease risk and a person’s tendencies to develop insulin resistance, which is a common precursor to diabetes, he said. Often people who are prediabetic have no idea they’re prediabetic. In fact, this is the case about 90 percent of the time. It’s a big deal, Snyder said, as about 70 percent of people who are prediabetic will eventually develop the disease. —Diabetic-level glucose spikes seen in healthy people: A study out of Stanford in which blood sugar levels were continuously monitored reveals that even people who think they’re “healthy” should pay attention to what they eat. WOT? Healthy?? Conversely, up to 40% of the normal weight population have the exact same metabolic dysfunction that the obese do, they are just normal weight. And so they don’t even know they are sick, until it’s too late, because normal weight people get type-2 diabetes, they get hypertension, they get dyslipidemia, they get cardiovascular disease, they get cancer, they get dementia, etc, etc. —https://robertlustig.com/fructose2/ WOT? Normal weight???

Yes, as it all depends on your current metabolism and how sure you are the current goodness is going last long-term thru your moderation. It was only after i STOPPED eating the heart healthy whole grains and omega 6 oils in moderation that I was able to moderate my eating of everything else. Once my insulin levels and IR dropped into normal range so did my appetite. —https://www.dietdoctor.com/why-everything-in-moderation-is-terrible-diet-advice As for moderation in general, the principle of moderation (also beloved by ANF Nutritionists) tends not to work so well either, akin to “push away from the table.” “A Little Bite Won’t Hurt”: The Failure of Moderation Reading testimonials, you always find a lot of people affirming they “can’t stop” once they get started or else backslide. As Dr. David Unwin recently tweeted: Also please don’t forget about food addiction Most of my obese patients over 110 kg CANNOT moderate some foods like bread The only thing that works for them is abstinence. Even then it is very hard for them Rather like alcohol or nicotine . And quickly got this response: you just described me to a T! My body cannot tolerate certain carbs, specifically bread. If I don't eat it I don't crave it. Eat one slice and I can't stop. Pizza is the worst. One slice and I could eat the whole pie. So the last time I ate pizza was 3 years ago.

Caloric restriction will of course lead to weight loss, spikes or no spikes, fat or no fat. One of our faves is the Twinkie diet. But the classic is the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, sometimes misunderstood by hack fitness writers who haven't read it.

Of course it did. I have one glass of red wine daily. Tastes good and I want the polyphenols.

Leads to an insulin spike telling them they're full. It soon drops, as it does with you, and then they need another fix. It's how average people get fat and unhealthy.

LOL. Not seeing any answers to my questions. Why's that? Simple-mindedness takes it toll. Chinese may join tours for transport, then fan out independently. About 61% are independent travelers. Go to the lobbies of high end (or medium) hotels yourself and see who's staying in them. OH--you haven't done that. What do you actually know and can verify? See some tour buses? CHECK.

No need to wait long. I doubt you've verified the Chinese ownership of all the hotels Chinese are staying in. If so, please list the owners. Are the Hilton, the Holiday Inn, Central Festival, Terminal 21 (and all those shops and restos in both malls), Lotus, Tops, Big C, even Foodland owned by Chinese? Local beachside restos such as Maesriren? And all the Thais working on all those places? They working for free, which is what we're all fantasizing? Waiting . . . .

I said no such ridiculous thing, of course, just more lying. I also distinguish where an oversupply, or undersupply, may exist, which isn't actually everywhere or necessarily eternal--merely doomster rhetoric to enhance the awesome portentousness of their irrelevant prophecies. But who cares? It's really a matter for those affected. Not something I lose sleep over or need to use to play that ol' scary music for trolling purposes. I roll w/ the flow.

Not inconsistent w/ dynamic market economics at all. Costs always rise and fall. Businesses adapt, close, and open. Sad for those who close, happy for those who open, at least while their market lasts. Lest we raise a straw man argument, gov'ts have always interfered, one way or the other, in the market to greater or lesser degrees. Of course, that interference affects businesses as well. If you're interested how nearly perfect free market might be managed w/ minimal interference, you could read David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom. Fascinating discussion in there about a free market legal system in medieval Iceland.

Whatever you say @newnative said usually isn't what he really said, just a distortion. He can respond. That's an inevitable, ignorant misunderstanding of what I said and a distortion. Again: can't you find a basic course in economics to study and stop trolling and wasting our time here? <further nonsense snipped>

AOT is to be believed, I think. Mastercard Int'l accepts the official numbers. When the numbers are said to be up, they certainly feel up in Pattaya. We've all seen what happened when the "imaginary" millions of tourists stayed away, including the groups our bigots insist don't spend anything. Estimates may of course be more or less accurate. In this case, it seems the reality exceeded the estimates. We hate that. I also have to wonder if the problem is not really the numbers but just the way posters like to view all things Thai. That's exactly what's behind the chorus of sneers whenever the real TAT comes out w/ some numbers. Minds will change totally when it contributes to a negative view. It also applies to TAT's revenue generated numbers. TAT: ANF members ignorantly confuse this with the tourist spend. Dividing the revenue generated by the number of tourists leads to the brilliant conclusion that each tourist couldn't possibly be spending that much! TAT is faking again! ???? Another issue is that, as part of the bigotry, TAT: ANF doesn't recognize any non-European tourists. They're really talking only about Europeans, mostly Brits (the great Golden Egg Layers on whom the entire Thai economy depends); and of those mostly mongers who can be seen filling up the beer bars at all times. Not shopping malls, as TAT: ANF members never go in malls and insist they're empty, just laundering money. What tourist would shop in a Thai shopping mall? They have shopping malls back home. We don't apply that argument to the shops in Brighton, however. So, w/o crowded beer bars, there just can't be all those millions of tourists visiting Thailand, irrespective of what anyone says.???? You may rely on TAT: ANF for the real truth about tourism in Thailand.

No. I feel I'm living in a sauna already in Thailand. Cold country, in the winter, they're great, as are jacuzzis.

Enough with the paranoia.

TAT: ANF agrees they make perfect sense any time the numbers show a decrease. Amusingly, after sneering at the 40 million 2019 number, they then flipped and embraced it to wring as much mileage as they could from the decrease in 2020, with dire predictions that tourism would never recover to the numbers they'd always dismissed. I love this forum.

Leaver constantly resorts to the Just In Case Fallacy to build a little fantasy then demands it be refuted, a resort to Russell's Teapot. Just trollish rhetoric. Posters should stop falling for it.

And the Brits, of course. Better looking, better manners, and speak more understandable English. But I'm starting to see some good-looking Chinese women around. No complaints.

Try not to get too fixated on those. After all, the good-looking Thai women have always been so offset since the actual 1970s. Overall, Russian men are in better shape than the average Western tourist or expat of the same age. And there are a lot of younger guys in great shape out there. We hadn't seen many of those anywhere until the Russians arrived.

Saw lovely hottie today, perfect body, sunning herself topless. NICE. I think the members of our Pattaya Proctological Photography Club should leave off posting photos of garbage dumps, construction sites, neglected pavements, hanging wires, etc. and start posting photos of the Russian hotties. To support the bigoted narrative, previously we've only had a careful selection of fatties. Not responsible. Our members want booties, boobies, & crotch shots!

Easily devastated with a powerful anecdote. We don' need none o' thet ol' book larnin' here. Stupid docs 'n' scientists. Oh--gotta be sure to check me HbA1c.

I was being sarcastic, actually. Good you defended the UK against Euro arrogance.

If not, try to postpone the onset of any such conditions as long as possible. By the time they show up, you've got a big problem. So you may need to adjust what you are doing rather than just blithely cruise along as they all did, thinking they had nothing to worry about.