What do you think of the obesity epidemic in the U.S.?
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Something that aggravates me is the movement of normalizing being overweight. This ties into vanity sizing. About 5 years ago I measured myself so I could use a sewing pattern and I was shocked to discover I wasn't a size 4 (as Gap convinced me) but rather a very tight size 12. This wasn't an old pattern either, I was picking it out at the store at the time. I remember at the time comparing the measurements on the new pattern to those on a pattern my mother had from the 1970's and they were the same.
Or, when I bought the exact same style and size of jeans from Lucky Brand several years in a row. I would retire the old pair and stick them in my closet because they were too small. I assumed shrinkage at the time. But later I pulled out all three pairs (after having worn/washed each a year) and I stacked them on top of each other and each pair was progressively larger. Sure, that's anecdotal, but vanity sizing happens so often that we don't even notice. It gives people the impression that they're not getting heavier and provides them with the security of knowing they're still a size 8 (or a size 12 or whatever their ideal size may be for their height).0 -
I'm not reading 20 pages, so apologies if this has been said already, but I think we're fat because we can.
In the past, people restricted food intake and assigned moral value to physical fitness because food was scarce and fitness was necessary for survival and productivity.
Nowadays food is plentiful and - as long as you're not too fat to leave your house - fitness has only a tenuous link to productivity... a link which will become less and less significant as we continue to automate production and transportation tasks.
I for one think the obesity "epidemic" is a small price to pay for a stable food supply and a technologically advanced civilization.0 -
Thepinkdaisy wrote: »Now that has changed, it's due to lifestyle and the poisons in foods (video games, Internet, texting, McDonald's on every corner.
Mario and other video games never made people fat, just like playing board games like Monopoly never made people fat.
The Internet never made people fat just like televisions and telephones never made people fat.
Texting never made people fat, just like writing letters never made people fat.
You know what makes people obese? Eating more calories than they burn each day for extended periods of time. Period. Full-stop.
Assigning blame to things which are not the problem does nothing to solve the problem.
Yeah, ok, that's the immediate cause of any one person's obesity. It doesn't explain why 66% of murricans and canucks are overweight or obese now, vs. the past.
- Greater access to food in general...everyone is bitching about how it's soooo expensive to eat healthy or whatever...it's cheaper than it's ever been. Food is abundant and cheap...
- People are lazy and prefer convenience to cooking scratch meals...convenience food tends to be calorie dense particularly as compared to nutrient density
- People eat out WAY more and restaurant portions are huge. When I was a kid, eating out was an event...most people I know eat out at least 5x weekly. I would also argue that restaurant portions have also skewed people's perception of what a "normal" portion of food should be even with good home cooked meals.
- There are fewer and fewer physically demanding jobs out there and people sit all day, but consume energy as if they were busting their *kitten*
- People move less and are less active in general...when I was a kid, I was likely to be outside playing...playing catch in the yard with my dad...shooting hoops with my friends...riding bikes around the neighborhood, etc. Now I have to make sure I control my kid's screen time or they would literally sit their all day...sometimes my 5 y.o. is into the idea of a game of catch with me and other times he'd rather I sat and played a video game with him, etc.
- People are generally lazy...I'm one of just a handful of people I know who actually exercises on a regular basis. Out of 95 people at my office, there are 6 of us who actually use the stairs regularly.
- etc, etc, etc...there's just way more to it than just junk food or junk food being cheaper (I still say it's not) than healthy food, etc.0 -
I'm one of them... But I'm doing something about it!
Common statistics place this at 1 in 3 adults are obese.
Yes, I too have found myself paying much more attention to this after I started losing pounds myself.
It's said that our children have a shorter life expediency than us because of this.. Sad.0 -
I see it day in and day out where I work. We have a rehab facility downstairs from our gym (you have to pass it going up the stairs) and you see people who aren't members going in for not only physical therapy for injuries, but from stroke, hear attack, gastric bypass, etc. and usually they are all overweight or obese.
It's much less here in CA where I live, but when I lived in VA it was much more prevalent. I personally noticed more when I went grocery shopping. When a family with obese kids passes me, I tended to glance into there cart and hardly saw vegetables or fresh food products. Usually boxed or packaged items.
Unfortunately we can personally only do so much. Sites like this one offer lots of good information on better eating habits and responsibility, but the people that need it most won't see it until they come in trying to lose weight. I personally volunteer a couple of times a year at my DD's school to teach about nutrition and physical education.
The reality is that one day our biggest threat in America won't be terrorism (it isn't anyway but probably perceived that way). It will be the trillion dollar costs of medical expenses that will be put upon the taxpayers because of obesity risk health issues. It's already happening now and I don't see it changing until people change habits.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Thepinkdaisy wrote: »Now that has changed, it's due to lifestyle and the poisons in foods (video games, Internet, texting, McDonald's on every corner.
Mario and other video games never made people fat, just like playing board games like Monopoly never made people fat.
The Internet never made people fat just like televisions and telephones never made people fat.
Texting never made people fat, just like writing letters never made people fat.
You know what makes people obese? Eating more calories than they burn each day for extended periods of time. Period. Full-stop.
Assigning blame to things which are not the problem does nothing to solve the problem.
Yeah, ok, that's the immediate cause of any one person's obesity. It doesn't explain why 66% of murricans and canucks are overweight or obese now, vs. the past.
'Cause we're lazy and can afford to get away with it.
Mmm, not convinced, sorry. We were always this lazy (most likely), and the middle class has declined since the post WWII boom.
We used to mainly have jobs that required physical activity, lives outside of our jobs that required physical activity, and recreation that was more physical than TV, video games, and the internet.
We also had less available food, and the food we had took a lot more work to make. Even living in a big city like I do, and even if I were at the same economic level, relatively speaking, my food options would be vastly more limited, especially in the winter and early spring. For my grandparents, 2 of whom lived on a farm in a small town, the other 2 who lived in rural farming areas although they weren't farmers, much more so.
And if you gave me a choice between living in 1915 and now, I'd pick now without question.0 -
Meantime, I teach my about-to-be-dating daughter that if the boy she's interested in has a porker of a dad who can't move any further than the beer-holder on the arm his Laz-y-Boy, that's most likely where that currently-cute kid will end up, too.
:drinker:
Not necessarily so. My brother and I are quite vastly different from our parents in MANY ways. Many, many, many, notable ways.
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I for one think the obesity "epidemic" is a small price to pay for a stable food supply and a technologically advanced civilization.
Yes, I wrote my last post before reading this, but this is what I was thinking.
And as a woman in particular, I think these things play into the much greater freedom I have too, and the lower amount of drudgery in my daily life (although the same is very certainly the case for the average man too).0 -
l0
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I'm mainly shocked by how regional obesity is. I lived in Texas and there were tons of heavier people, in the part of MA I live in it's completely different. People are much more active, there are parks and bike lanes everywhere.0
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There's not a whole lot in the world that is "necessarily" so - I'm just playing the odds.0 -
marissafit06 wrote: »I'm mainly shocked by how regional obesity is. I lived in Texas and there were tons of heavier people, in the part of MA I live in it's completely different. People are much more active, there are parks and bike lanes everywhere.
I am afraid this is actually not true.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to have this live map they would show, with the obesity rates colored coded for every state. This map would update every year from something like 1985 to the present as you watched it. As the map started, the highest obesity rate in the country was always in Mississippi. But then that same rate would spread out to the surrounding states -- Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, etc. Eventually it would get all across the country, but just before it did, Mississippi would tick up again.
California -- which has the weather that should encourage physical activity the most of anyplace (high temps, low humidity) -- has an obesity rate of 25 percent as of 2013. That is one in four people. And obese is not fat, it is more than that -- 20 percent over expected body weight for height. And, that 25 percent is up from 21 percent in 2004 and 10 percent in 1990.
No state or region is being spared from this epidemic.
In fact, it is world-wide. Canada has been behind us, but they are catching up.
A few years back, doctors around the world measured BMIs in every patient seen by them for a day and reported their results. They found that almost 40 percent of adults around the world are overweight and 13 percent are obese. I believe they only found one or two places on the entire globe that had an obesity rate less than 5 percent.
The good news is that the rate of growth of the obesity epidemic has appeared to be slowing in the last few years. But, then again, the rates are so high, how could they go any higher?
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marissafit06 wrote: »I'm mainly shocked by how regional obesity is. I lived in Texas and there were tons of heavier people, in the part of MA I live in it's completely different. People are much more active, there are parks and bike lanes everywhere.
I am afraid this is actually not true.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to have this live map they would show, with the obesity rates colored coded for every state. This map would update every year from something like 1985 to the present as you watched it. As the map started, the highest obesity rate in the country was always in Mississippi. But then that same rate would spread out to the surrounding states -- Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, etc. Eventually it would get all across the country, but just before it did, Mississippi would tick up again.
California -- which has the weather that should encourage physical activity the most of anyplace (high temps, low humidity) -- has an obesity rate of 25 percent as of 2013. That is one in four people. And obese is not fat, it is more than that -- 20 percent over expected body weight for height. And, that 25 percent is up from 21 percent in 2004 and 10 percent in 1990.
No state or region is being spared from this epidemic.
In fact, it is world-wide. Canada has been behind us, but they are catching up.
A few years back, doctors around the world measured BMIs in every patient seen by them for a day and reported their results. They found that almost 40 percent of adults around the world are overweight and 13 percent are obese. I believe they only found one or two places on the entire globe that had an obesity rate less than 5 percent.
The good news is that the rate of growth of the obesity epidemic has appeared to be slowing in the last few years. But, then again, the rates are so high, how could they go any higher?
Sorry, I didn't mean that only people in the South are obese. I meant how much more pronounced the issue seemed in the South.
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marissafit06 wrote: »I'm mainly shocked by how regional obesity is. I lived in Texas and there were tons of heavier people, in the part of MA I live in it's completely different. People are much more active, there are parks and bike lanes everywhere.
I am afraid this is actually not true.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to have this live map they would show, with the obesity rates colored coded for every state. This map would update every year from something like 1985 to the present as you watched it. As the map started, the highest obesity rate in the country was always in Mississippi. But then that same rate would spread out to the surrounding states -- Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, etc. Eventually it would get all across the country, but just before it did, Mississippi would tick up again.
California -- which has the weather that should encourage physical activity the most of anyplace (high temps, low humidity) -- has an obesity rate of 25 percent as of 2013. That is one in four people. And obese is not fat, it is more than that -- 20 percent over expected body weight for height. And, that 25 percent is up from 21 percent in 2004 and 10 percent in 1990.
No state or region is being spared from this epidemic.
In fact, it is world-wide. Canada has been behind us, but they are catching up.
A few years back, doctors around the world measured BMIs in every patient seen by them for a day and reported their results. They found that almost 40 percent of adults around the world are overweight and 13 percent are obese. I believe they only found one or two places on the entire globe that had an obesity rate less than 5 percent.
The good news is that the rate of growth of the obesity epidemic has appeared to be slowing in the last few years. But, then again, the rates are so high, how could they go any higher?
California is a VERY big state with widely varying topography and weather. It's a myth that it's temperate year-round. In certain coastal communities that comparatively few can afford? Sure. Where I live, at the eastern edge of Los Angeles County (so in other words, inland), we have a solid three months of 100F and above weather, generally with maybe between three and five days in there where it's only in the high 90s. Not exactly "get out there and do stuff" weather. It may be a "dry" 100 degrees but it is still 100 freakin' degrees, with full-on blast-you-into-blisters sun. Further east of me - further inland - it's hotter than that and for even longer.
I'm not using that as an excuse, just pointing out that people tend to think that "everybody" in California should be fit because the weather is constantly nice and there's no reason not to be outside. There are rainy areas, there are extremely hot areas, there are areas that definitely aren't beach-bunny weather in winter, there are many, many, many mountain towns where snowfall is heavy and winters are very cold. And there are a WHOLE LOT of people. It is impossible to generalize California - and inaccurate to assume that we are all able to be outdoors comfortably all year 'round.
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I work at an indoor amusement park in Florida, and several of our rides have weight requirements, so we weight everyone who gets in line to ride our roller coaster simulator. Previous to this job, I had noticed overweight people, but now that I actually measure it, it's eye opening. I still remember the first time I weighed a ten year old boy who was the same weight as I am, and it made me want to cry. I firmly believe you can be (most) sizes and healthy, but when I see young kids severely overweight, it just makes me so sad for them.0
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DearestWinter wrote: »Something that aggravates me is the movement of normalizing being overweight. This ties into vanity sizing. About 5 years ago I measured myself so I could use a sewing pattern and I was shocked to discover I wasn't a size 4 (as Gap convinced me) but rather a very tight size 12. This wasn't an old pattern either, I was picking it out at the store at the time. I remember at the time comparing the measurements on the new pattern to those on a pattern my mother had from the 1970's and they were the same.
Or, when I bought the exact same style and size of jeans from Lucky Brand several years in a row. I would retire the old pair and stick them in my closet because they were too small. I assumed shrinkage at the time. But later I pulled out all three pairs (after having worn/washed each a year) and I stacked them on top of each other and each pair was progressively larger. Sure, that's anecdotal, but vanity sizing happens so often that we don't even notice. It gives people the impression that they're not getting heavier and provides them with the security of knowing they're still a size 8 (or a size 12 or whatever their ideal size may be for their height).
I had a fun experience with vanity sizing at Kohl's recently. Most pants in size 6/8 fit me reasonably well. Then I put on a pair of 8s and they were huge. I was grabbing 4-5 inches of extra fabric around the waist. I took the pants off and rechecked the tag because I thought I had made a mistake and pulled something not 8 off the rack. Nope, plain as day stamped 8s on the tag.
I am now an S in vauge sizes. I sure still don't feel like a small having a middle of the road normal BMI (22.0). But when around 70% of the population is either overweight or obese, I guess it makes sense.0 -
I work at an indoor amusement park in Florida, and several of our rides have weight requirements, so we weight everyone who gets in line to ride our roller coaster simulator. Previous to this job, I had noticed overweight people, but now that I actually measure it, it's eye opening. I still remember the first time I weighed a ten year old boy who was the same weight as I am, and it made me want to cry. I firmly believe you can be (most) sizes and healthy, but when I see young kids severely overweight, it just makes me so sad for them.
I was quite humiliated last summer when our family was going horseback riding...to learn I only JUST made the cut-off weight for riding a horse.
A horse.
A thing that pulled covered wagons across the prairie.
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I don't have the word skills to write what I think with out sounding like a jerk or being reported for abuse.
What do people think of the body positive/beauty at all sizes movement that seems to have links with feminism/tumblr feminism? Even unhealthy body sizes as in extreme over or under weight sizes.
My limited understanding/experience suggests Americans portion sizes are a far bit larger. My mum went on a cruise and was eating with some Americans and she said they pile the food onto the plate and then go back for more. Maybe they were going extreme cause they were on holiday.
Pizza, I think on here I mention pizza and someone looked it up and said some thing along the lines of the pizza being small. I'm from Australia and I think they were from the U.S. and didn't think a pizza could have as few calories as I said. Leads me to think that when I say I eat half a pizza (600 cal) Americans think half a pizza as in 1200 cal or some other large number.
Off to google pizza sizes
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What do people think of the body positive/beauty at all sizes movement that seems to have links with feminism/tumblr feminism? Even unhealthy body sizes as in extreme over or under weight sizes.
Not sure, but I think it's a reaction to the "shaming" that women have endured for not being "perfect." Whatever "perfect" is...Meaning, we all deserve to be treated with respect. We are all beautiful. We all need to love ourselves.
There are some women on this forum who have posted that people have cat-called them while they were out walking/exercising, yelling "Move it fattie" or something like that. One of my MFP friends posted in her newsfeed today that one thing that got her motivated was going on a cruise with her husband and someone on the cruise made a rude remark about her size.
My friend won a trip to an indoor water park for her family and she was apprehensive about going because...she is bigger than she wants to be and is unhappy with her self.
My mother on the other hand was rail thin and probably weighed 80 lbs soaking wet. She would endure wearing long sleeved blouses and long pants in the heat of summer when she left the house to avoid people making comments about her skinny arms or legs. She was asked multiple times if she was anorexic. She was not. She was a nervous woman, but worried about fat, she was not. She tried unsuccessfully, for years to gain weight.
People - men and women - deserve to feel comfortable in their skin, no matter how heavy or skinny they are. They deserve to not be spoken to harshly because they are obese or skinny. They deserve respect.
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