Aren't you a little tired of the "Obesity Epidemic"?

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  • Katsiler707
    Katsiler707 Posts: 1
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    i was always thin,i worked at it daily as a young lady to stay that way,BUT after i had kids i was never really thin again and still am not but i plan to be..Im doing great..what i find is just as you hear,you are supposed to eat when your hungry..just what and how much we choose to eat is the key..Ive learned from lets say reteaching myself not to eat garbage...that healthy food is good,preparation is everything..i cook so heakthy now it scares me..and for those times when i have these crashing moments..i chalk it up to,if you dont buy it,you dont have it,you wont eat it..also,do not drink sugar,not in any form,no juice,soda..water water water...when you get those snack attacks,choose ice cold watermelon ,or cut some berries up over cottage cheese,or just eat them,very satisfying..i am luck though that when i get sad,depressed,tired of everything,,i dont eat,so i feel for you on that one..rem to visit this site daily it helps me so much keep track of what im eating and stick to my exercise,,and rem 1 pnd at a time,a pnd is a nice chunk of beef,its a great thing to drop a pnd..keep thinking day at a time,till it becomes an addiction,hugs..ps i know what your talking about,i have had coworkers have a baby and be skinny already and be eating like 2 bites of a sandwich cause their fat and,their not!! and i am ,but me i said something,maybe you should too
  • zenalasca
    zenalasca Posts: 563 Member
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    This article explains how clothes sizing has changed since the 1950s.

    http://abeautifulmess.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/08/how-to-shop-for-vintage-clothing-understanding-vintage-sizing.html

    It's interesting to see how clothes sizes have shrunk.
  • csuhar
    csuhar Posts: 779 Member
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    I think most of the excuses people don't like are when individuals try to come up with an external cause for weight problems.

    As you say, it's not black and white, but, in the end, most weight issues reduce down to things we have done to ourselves. From emotional eating, to bored eating, to coming from a culture that heavily emphasizes food, most of the time, it boils down to the fact that we are the ones who put food into our own mouths.

    The takeaway from that is that we need to make sure we aren't trying to deflect responsibility. It's not our friends or family who "sabotage" us by providing unhealthy foods. It's that we choose to put that food into our bodies and, therefore, must acknowledge our own responsibility.

    To an extent, it's not even medical situations because there are often are things the individuals can do once the issue is recognized. In the military, we have people who become injured and can't be as active as they once were. In some cases, their weight goes up because they didn't change their eating habits to compensate. As a result, when they're injured and unable to exercise, we actively remind them they will need to reduce their intake.


    The issue that then comes up is that not all of us reach the point of acknowledging the challenges we face and taking more control at the same point in time.

    That's where perspectives, such as those of your coworkers, come out. In my family, we also sometimes ask ourselves how individuals can become obese. We don't think they're bad people, but watching our diet, activity level, and waistlines is such a part of our day to day life that we wonder why they do not *seem* alarmed or don't *seem* to take action at points where we would have said "okay, I need to change something". (Of course, it's all based on what WE perceive to be going on in their minds. They may be in a self-propagating emotional eating cycle that we don't know about. If we knew what was going on, then we wouldn't be wondering.)

    One example of where my family as asked "how can they get that overweight" would be people who use the Freedom Wand. We can understand people needing to use it because they've had surgery, have arthritis, or have hip or shoulder problems. What puzzles us is when someone needs to use it because they are obese and cannot wipe themselves. To us, we would have wanted to address our weight issue BEFORE self-sanitation became so difficult we needed tools.
  • ShengHuo
    ShengHuo Posts: 42
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    When I think of the "obesity epidemic," I think of patients who are so overweight they can barely walk, need bigger bed and wheelchairs ordered, can't wipe themselves, etc. When I worked on the cardiac floor, we would have patients who needed six or seven people to be transferred from the bed to the stretcher, because they couldn't stand and turn (sometimes because of their weight, sometimes because of the medical problem). That is half the unit staff who now can't take care of their other patients. When I was on the orthopedic floor there would be morbidly obese people getting joint replacements, because now surgeons are able to perform on them (in the past most wouldn't because it was too high risk, now they're used to it). But it takes longer for them to recover and often they come back within three days with the wound now open because of their weight. It's more stress on the wound, and fat doesn't heal well. Then there is a rapid increase in the number of children with type II diabetes. The major risk factor is weight, and losing weight is a tried and true help for it.

    When medical professionals talk about an "obesity epidemic," they don't mean people who need to tone up and lose ten pounds. They mean that the healthcare system can't support all the people with obesity related conditions. The BMI standards were changed because there was a lot of research to support it. A lot of it has to do with risk factors. Hopefully by telling more people they are overweight, they won't get to the point of obesity. Normal blood pressure has been lowered as well, because too often it gets higher, so treating it early will prevent dangerously high blood pressure. It's the same thing for blood sugar. More and more of healthcare is based on so many people being overweight or obese.
  • brower47
    brower47 Posts: 16,356 Member
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    I wrote this to see what kinds of people were on the board and how much self-loathing was going on. I'm past that, so I really don't want to see fat-phobic rhetoric.

    You came to a fitness/weightloss website and are suprised to hear that people on this board will emphasize fitness and weight loss?
    I see there are people who "don't like excuses," whatever that means, because I've found that life isn't very black and white. It certainly isn't "You're fit or you're making excuses." Almost all of my family is overweight, so whether or not that's genetic or behavioral, I don't know. I also eat because I'm stressed out or depressed, as do other members of my family. These are facts. Glossing over it or calling it "excuses" is being dismissive.

    It's not being dismissive, it's being realistic. Some people do like avoiding the reality of their situation, unfortunately.
    I've lost hundreds of pounds and regained them (not all at once, but definitely over 20 years), been on numerous diets (my mom put me on one when I was 10) so I come here trying to make peace with my experience with food and eating, and promote acceptance and common sense. This experience doesn't come in one size nor does it fit all.

    Promote acceptance of what? Unhealthy lifestyles? There is no sense in that, common or otherwise.
  • jennifer_417
    jennifer_417 Posts: 12,344 Member
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    People who don't struggle with their weight really don't realize that it's mostly commonly an emotional issue. Actually, a lot of people who are overweight don't realize it, either, which is my theory about why so many gain the weight back, because they don't deal with the root emotional issues that led to them being overweight in the first place.
  • candylilacs
    candylilacs Posts: 614 Member
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    Yes, I have had that experience, too! It's as if many doctors have been to seminars that promote this idea that if you're overweight you *must* have high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes. And, inf my experience anyway, it also seems to mean that you must be completely sedentary and clueless as to how you got to be overweight!

    Thanks for sharing!

    c.
  • candylilacs
    candylilacs Posts: 614 Member
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    i was always thin,i worked at it daily as a young lady to stay that way,BUT after i had kids i was never really thin again and still am not but i plan to be..Im doing great..what i find is just as you hear,you are supposed to eat when your hungry..just what and how much we choose to eat is the key..Ive learned from lets say reteaching myself not to eat garbage...that healthy food is good,preparation is everything..i cook so heakthy now it scares me..and for those times when i have these crashing moments..i chalk it up to,if you dont buy it,you dont have it,you wont eat it..also,do not drink sugar,not in any form,no juice,soda..water water water...when you get those snack attacks,choose ice cold watermelon ,or cut some berries up over cottage cheese,or just eat them,very satisfying..i am luck though that when i get sad,depressed,tired of everything,,i dont eat,so i feel for you on that one..rem to visit this site daily it helps me so much keep track of what im eating and stick to my exercise,,and rem 1 pnd at a time,a pnd is a nice chunk of beef,its a great thing to drop a pnd..keep thinking day at a time,till it becomes an addiction,hugs..ps i know what your talking about,i have had coworkers have a baby and be skinny already and be eating like 2 bites of a sandwich cause their fat and,their not!! and i am ,but me i said something,maybe you should too

    Thanks for sharing! Personally, I've had a lot of success starting to use the Glycemic Index Diet -- which is basically eating more fruits and veggies, smarter protein and complex carbohydrates. You can even eat 1 oz. of chocolate a day! I am a snacker, too. I love crunchy -- and depending on the time of month, I like salty, too.

    I haven't drank sugary soda in probably about 5 years (I had a vanilla coke, love those one in a great while) and I don't drink juice because fruit gives me more fiber, which I need. I've hired a personal trainer because I need to be accountable to someone and work harder. It's working. My husband is now on board and joining me for workouts.

    When I was depressed, I *craved* sugar. My psychiatrist said that it was very common in depressed patients. And now that I'm working out more regularly, I find I don't crave it like I used to.
  • candylilacs
    candylilacs Posts: 614 Member
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    The takeaway from that is that we need to make sure we aren't trying to deflect responsibility. It's not our friends or family who "sabotage" us by providing unhealthy foods. It's that we choose to put that food into our bodies and, therefore, must acknowledge our own responsibility. . . .

    That's where perspectives, such as those of your coworkers, come out. In my family, we also sometimes ask ourselves how individuals can become obese. We don't think they're bad people, but watching our diet, activity level, and waistlines is such a part of our day to day life that we wonder why they do not *seem* alarmed or don't *seem* to take action at points where we would have said "okay, I need to change something". (Of course, it's all based on what WE perceive to be going on in their minds. They may be in a self-propagating emotional eating cycle that we don't know about. If we knew what was going on, then we wouldn't be wondering.)

    I would say that if someone is very overweight, then it likely has an emotional or psychological component. That needs to be addressed because all the exercise and food (or lack thereof) will do nothing to help relieve that. Like losing weight, gaining weight occurs over time and doesn't come all at once. It's more complex than that. I grew up in a family that was overweight, ate emotionally and had a physically and emotionally abusive parent. It wasn't a place that gave a child loads of tools for coping, so me and others like me learn how to do that as an adult. The reason I wrote the original repost was to deal with the judgment that goes on by people that assume everyone has the same experience as he or she does.

    By the way, I will say that some partners do sabotage. A family or partner that works with you is an amazing support system that really helps with weight loss and exercise. I consider myself lucky.
  • candylilacs
    candylilacs Posts: 614 Member
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    People who don't struggle with their weight really don't realize that it's mostly commonly an emotional issue. Actually, a lot of people who are overweight don't realize it, either, which is my theory about why so many gain the weight back, because they don't deal with the root emotional issues that led to them being overweight in the first place.

    True, but doctors aren't overly concerned with that either.
  • Samson20011
    Samson20011 Posts: 36 Member
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    I agree entirely. When I was really slim, I was size 10 UK. I hear people saying they are size zero and I look at them and see that they are fatter than I was then. Something has changed!
  • Skrib69
    Skrib69 Posts: 687 Member
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    I don't think anyone can deny the obesity problems of the US, and here in the UK we are not far behind. It's easy to blame everything but yourself, but with our busy lifestyles of today and the poor food choices available, people will take the path of least resistance. Personally I blame the rise in convenience and fast foods with their reliance on fat and sugar to make them taste nice and make us feel good while eating it. The job of "Food Scientist" exists for a reason, and it isn't necessarily for our good health.

    There is a really interesting book called 'Pure, White and Deadly' about the sugar industry and how sugar consumption has gone up. If you only believe a fraction of it, then you are half way to understanding the scale of the bad choices wafted under our noses.

    Personally, I try to avoid manufactured, processed foods in favour of something I have created myself. If nothing else, it gets you further away from the chemicals often added for preservatives and so on that send your kids hyper. I don't think it takes a genius to correlate the rise in obesity with the rise in convenience food.

    Avoid!
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 9,039 Member
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    Yes, I have had that experience, too! It's as if many doctors have been to seminars that promote this idea that if you're overweight you *must* have high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes. And, inf my experience anyway, it also seems to mean that you must be completely sedentary and clueless as to how you got to be overweight!

    Thanks for sharing!

    c.

    I don't think doctors say if you are overweight you must have high BP, high Cholestrol, diabetes etc - however the statistical reality is that overweight people do carry much higher risks of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease.


    This isn't an 'idea' - it's an evidence based reality.
  • 5ftnFun
    5ftnFun Posts: 948 Member
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    Yes, I have had that experience, too! It's as if many doctors have been to seminars that promote this idea that if you're overweight you *must* have high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes. And, inf my experience anyway, it also seems to mean that you must be completely sedentary and clueless as to how you got to be overweight!

    Thanks for sharing!

    c.

    I don't think doctors say if you are overweight you must have high BP, high Cholestrol, diabetes etc - however the statistical reality is that overweight people do carry much higher risks of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease.


    This isn't an 'idea' - it's an evidence based reality.

    Agree. You may or may not develop those health problems, but you definitely increase your risk by being overweight. Everyone seems to have the relative who smoked a pack a day and lived to be 99 with no problem. But not everyone will be so lucky.
    Why take the risk if you don't have to?

    Now, excuse me while I head out to the hospital. My obese husband with Type II diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol is having health problems. He wasn't one of the lucky ones.
  • stu1102
    stu1102 Posts: 129 Member
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    Oxford University ( http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/science_blog/130116.html ) have updated the body mass index with a new formula that they say more accurately estimates body fat the reasons are articulated in the attached article which has the old calculator (used in the UK ) to the proposed new one

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9816596/Interactive-calculator-do-you-win-or-lose-with-the-new-BMI.html
  • LeakieChan
    LeakieChan Posts: 31 Member
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    I agree entirely. When I was really slim, I was size 10 UK. I hear people saying they are size zero and I look at them and see that they are fatter than I was then. Something has changed!

    i'm not exactly sure what a size 0 is in UK but the size 0 i'm use to I would never call anything close to fat
  • NonnyMary
    NonnyMary Posts: 982 Member
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    What scares me is seeing a few of these documentaries on tv - i.e. the people who go thru the very drastic bariatric surgery, and then after they gain the weight back and/or they are shown eating soda pop and macdonalds, and they have not changed their eating habits. This is disastrous and might kill them.

    the other thing - when i see the hospitals where the bariatric patient is going - they are shown refusing to do the program and sneaking in fast food deliveries -

    the other thing - when they have the super obese featured on a documentary like the 1,000 ton man, and he is acting so desperate, however, when the doctor talks with his wife, his wife cant put up with his screaming for bad food or she doesn't know good food choices, or she feels sorry for him or whatever, but he cant cook and she is bringing him food that is way unhealthy.

    so if they are having a hard time following healthy eating, even to save their life, this is alarming to me.
  • squirrell79
    squirrell79 Posts: 154 Member
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    I've lost hundreds of pounds and regained them (not all at once, but definitely over 20 years), been on numerous diets (my mom put me on one when I was 10) so I come here trying to make peace with my experience with food and eating, and promote acceptance and common sense. This experience doesn't come in one size nor does it fit all.

    Promote acceptance of what? Unhealthy lifestyles? There is no sense in that, common or otherwise.

    I am going to take a stab at this....

    I am guessing that the acceptance in question is not meant as "accepting unhealthy lifestyles." My guess is that it is a subtle critique of the fact that "healthy" is frequently used as a proxy for "skinny."

    I am going out on a limb, because I can't read the person's mind who wrote it, but here's what I *think* they meant: healthy does not automatically mean thin, nor does thin automatically mean healthy. The two can certainly overlap, but it's not as black and white as we are generally taught to think. There exists a range of sizes and shapes in which people -- people who eat healthy foods and who are active -- are actually healthy.

    Now, I doubt this person is talking about folks who are obese or morbidly obese yet have excellent blood pressure numbers, etc. But rather, I suspect they are talking about the folks swimming around in the "overweight according to the BMI charts" pool. This would include people like me -- my BMI is currently 26, which qualifies me as overweight. Yet I have excellent numbers, I wear a size 8, and I am quite active.

    EDITED to say this: Re-reading my post, I would like to be upfront and say that I would like to lose about 10 vanity pounds. However, I do not think that losing these vanity pounds will make me healthier. Their loss may help in athletic ability (run faster), but I think that their impact on my overall health will be minimal.
  • candylilacs
    candylilacs Posts: 614 Member
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    Oxford University ( http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/science_blog/130116.html ) have updated the body mass index with a new formula that they say more accurately estimates body fat the reasons are articulated in the attached article which has the old calculator (used in the UK ) to the proposed new one

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9816596/Interactive-calculator-do-you-win-or-lose-with-the-new-BMI.html

    Apparently I'm about 1 point less on the new chart.
  • Katie_Y89
    Katie_Y89 Posts: 330 Member
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    I hope we all know that part of the reason that "Everyone is overweight" is that they changed the standards of the BMI -- I think around 2000 --- so that all these people who were considered average were now overweight. Part of the reason I don't like all this talk is that it doesn't take into consideration the "why" rather than the "how."

    I have had very slender coworkers talk about, "How can people get that big? They really need to learn discipline" or even "It's disgusting to be that fat!" (I was never thin so I don't know why they said these things in front of me!) And I keep hearing that, "Oh, yeah, I'm really just concerned about your health," but they know nothing about these people. So how much of it is really that we "We want everyone to be healthy!" and how much of it is, "I don't want to see fat people"? I've even had a (slender) doctor tell me to my face, "I can tell just by looking at you that you have high blood pressure." (He was wrong, it's normal.) So I wonder what kind of assumptions everyone makes -- that you're unhealthy and you need to be told to lose weight?

    I've struggled with my weight all my life, but I've found that I eat most when I'm stressed or emotional. I eat as a way to self-soothe and I'm working on doing things differently now that I'm older and hopefully wiser. Why can't we address this if we really want to stop people eating when they're not hungry or teach them new coping skills?

    Sorry, just on my mind today.

    c.

    First, that doctor you went to see is a real jerk-off. Second, I agree completely to an extent. Almost every over-weight person I have met (including myself at one point) was/is a emotional eater. The two common emotions are when people are stressed/depressed and (for me) when people are bored. Healthy eating should really be a focus in our society, but appropriate coping skills should be as well.
    With this I'd like to bring up a few other things I have noticed that society and the world loves to do.
    1.) Has anyone else noticed that clothing stores are making their clothes smaller???
    2.) If obesity is such a epidemic right now, why is organic food, fruits and veggies are expensive but I can buy a box of little debbies for 1.50???

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