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Obese Americans now outnnumber overweight Americans.

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Jesus....
 
It takes me more time to go to a fast food restaurant, buy my meal and return home than it does to stir fry some pork, cabbage and mushrooms and take some pre-steamed rice out of the freezer. It's not like top class cuisine but it's a hell of a lot better than Carl's Jr, and I won't have my stomach bubbling and farting into my bed sheets all night.

And your home is perpetually stocked with these items? Second, you don't leave your house for fast food, you grab it while on a lunch break or your way home. Finally, how long does it take to wash the sack your Carls Jr comes in?

You can make a case for just how quickly you can prepare your own meals but day in, day out nothing is faster than fast food for the working person.
 
And your home is perpetually stocked with these items? Second, you don't leave your house for fast food, you grab it while on a lunch break or your way home. Finally, how long does it take to wash the sack your Carls Jr comes in?

You can make a case for just how quickly you can prepare your own meals but day in, day out nothing is faster than fast food for the working person.

I get what you are saying, but in the end fast food makes people lazy and gives excuses like the above.

Last night I spent ~2 hours cooking up lunch for the next week for the missus and I. 14 stuffed peppers with onions, lean beef, peppers, garlic, mushrooms, tomatoes, lentils and spices. Sure it took me about two hours but now I have a healthy meal for everyday during the week and it will take me all of 2 minutes to heat it up. That is much faster, easier and healthier then me going out to get fast food everyday for lunch. Even if I got fast food everyday for lunch it would take me over 2 hours in the end and cost me much more.

In the end fast food just promotes laziness and being unhealthy. It only gets worse with companies coming out with new even more disgusting items, bigger portion sizes and making it so you don't even need to leave your car to get it.
 
Overweight people always make the argument "I don't have the time".

You really won't have the time because you're lifespan is being cut in half.
 
Nutritional education is more abundant than ever before. This one of many topics where research shows that the problem isn't that people are ignorant and that simply telling them "eat healthier" will solve the problem.

A lot of really bad information out there, too, and it's hard to navigate for many people.

When the prevalent wisdom is "eat less, move more" and all foods are boiled down to a simple number, it's no reason people fail at trying to lose weight.

A lot of people think "eat healthier" involves switching to whole grain products and dropping soda for fruit juice.
 
A lot of really bad information out there, too, and it's hard to navigate for many people.

When the prevalent wisdom is "eat less, move more" and all foods are boiled down to a simple number, it's no reason people fail at trying to lose weight.

I agree, lots of bad / just plain wrong information / massive over-simplification.

Problem is with alot of people, it's a complete lifestyle change that they're unable / unwilling to make, their whole family is big "we're big boned" "I'm just made this way" "you have to accept me for who I am" .

People will endlessly rationalize their behavior.
 
ER, what? Butter being bad for you is grossly exaggerated, and that's not even a lot of butter.

as for the pancake, I can easily finish that off.
You're right that it's not that much butter. It just looks like a lot because it hasn't been spread. However, that is a LOT of pancake. If you don't mind me asking, are you American?
 
You're right that it's not that much butter. It just looks like a lot because it hasn't been spread. However, that is a LOT of pancake. If you don't mind me asking, are you American?

The worst thing there is the pancake and syrup. Very calorie dense and barely any fiber.
 
I get what you are saying, but in the end fast food makes people lazy and gives excuses like the above.

Last night I spent ~2 hours cooking up lunch for the next week for the missus and I. 14 stuffed peppers with onions, lean beef, peppers, garlic, mushrooms, tomatoes, lentils and spices. Sure it took me about two hours but now I have a healthy meal for everyday during the week and it will take me all of 2 minutes to heat it up. That is much faster, easier and healthier then me going out to get fast food everyday for lunch. Even if I got fast food everyday for lunch it would take me over 2 hours in the end and cost me much more.

In the end fast food just promotes laziness and being unhealthy. It only gets worse with companies coming out with new even more disgusting items, bigger portion sizes and making it so you don't even need to leave your car to get it.
How did much did that cost to make a weeks worth of food in a day?
 
The butter on that is WAY too much as well.

I know you wrote "as well," but I think the fact that you decided to point out the butter of all things in that image indicates how mistaken the common wisdom is in regards to food.
 
I kind of disagree with the way "overweightness" and "obesity" are measured. I mean I know it still isn't necessarily correct in estimating the overall health of a person but body fat percentage I think is better than going by weight alone. I mean muscle still has weight and often very fit people are considered overweight because of their muscle mass.
 
This year I've gone from obese to overweight to normal (BMI-wise).

I think most people definitely have to make an effort in order to be a healthy weight in the current environment. Everyone is expected to drive everywhere, to consume sugary drinks, to sit at work all day, and to eat large-portioned meals with snacks in between. You'll run into various kinds of resistance if you try to go against pretty much any of those.

You shouldn't have to make an effort not to be obese. It should be hard to become obese. I think that our puritan approach to nutrition and weight loss is one of the chief contributors to the problem. It wouldn't be difficult to set up a social, legal, and cultural context where it's safe and normal to bicycle wherever you can go with a car, where you can get a reasonably proportioned, healthy meal at a fast food place, or where 300 calorie drinks are considered abnormal. But I think people actually prefer to believe that a healthy weight is a moral victory and they like viewing overweight people as lazy slobs.
 
Would we still blame individuals if 100% of the population became overweight or would that be our cue to finally accept that systemic issues within our society need to be addressed?

Honestly? I think a lot of people would. The whole "personal responsibility" angle seems to resonate with so many of us Americans, despite it rarely reflecting reality.
 
I'm saying that it's a sliding scale between "high expectations for fitness" to "low expectations for fitness" , and each side has its own pros and cons.

A culture of low expectations for fitness is mentally comforting, but doesn't motivate hard effort in fitness.

A culture of high expectations for fitness motivates hard effort in fitness, but increases mental discomfort.

Both sides have their problems, and their benefits. So what's the ideal... In the middle, right? But moving towards the middle for America would be to raise the expectations for fitness slightly. I think so-called fat acceptance is essentially moving it in the other direction.



Maybe you aren't as intimately aware of how that culture works so I can understand your response. I think Asians probably do stay slightly skinnier due to metabolism. But this fact is completely dwarfed by the power of culture, and you only have to spend a little time in each nation to see it as plain as day. The view in Japan to see obesity as rare and abnormal. There's a culture of excercise at work. The food portioning there discourages gluttony. You'll find it very motivating and easy to want to get fit over there. While just the opposite in America, you'll find it very easy to get fat and not give a damn about it, because nothing in society will prompt you otherwise.

I don't encourage insulting overweight people. I do encourage the view that overweight people are in a bad state, but no worries, it's actually quite easy to do something about it. "Accepting" makes it seem like something that is stuck and there's nothing to do about it, when that is not the case. We shouldn't be afraid to have expectations of improvement.
I understand your point but it seems an oversimplification to a mutli-faceted issue. This is not a culture of low expectations of fitness. The expectations are high and the vast majority of people are falling short of those expectations. The fitness industry in The United States is huge. The Hollywood stars, and other people that the majority of Americans look up to are more fit than they were a mere 10 years ago. People that are overweight or obese do not get the acceptance you seem to imply.

It's not a binary issue. You've yet to prove or support your premise and yet you go through with your post sure in it's truth.

The thing is though we agree on a lot of issues. I agree that our portion sizes are absurd. I agree that we aren't as physically active as we once were. I also agree that the foods themselves that are mainstays in our diet are terrible compared to what the rest of the world eats. None of this however is solved by fat shaming. I am glad to hear you say that you don't encourage insulting overweight people. If that is true though, which I am skeptical of based on previous posts in this thread, I don't see what we are even arguing.
 
God.

Damn.

Ice cold.

But ignorant. People in the overweight category don't have a shorter lifespan than people in the normal weight category. In fact, the lowest mortality is seen in people with a BMI of 27. It isn't until you become morbidly obese that your life expentency starts to decline significantly. Cigarette smoking is still far worse than being in the overweight or class I or II obese categories.

Obesity interventions need to start early. Unfortunately, once someone becomes obese, their chance of becoming normal weight is very unlikely, statistically. This is because the body and brain will cause hunger to increase and energy expenditure to decrease, beyond what is predicted just based on weight, after weight loss. What ensues is almost an inevitable weight regain, often beyond the weight of the person before they started dieting. In fact, this "overshooting" beyond the pre-diet weight is so pernicious that it may be the biggest factor in the current obesity rates. Recent studies have shown that when normal weight people attempt to lose weight, they are far more likely to end up obese than normal weight people who don't try to lose weight. If the diet industry went away, I suspect that obesity rates would drop, or at least stabilize.
 
How did much did that cost to make a weeks worth of food in a day?

1 week worth of food for two people in a day. It made 14 servings.

~$30 Australian dollars (with leftover ingredients)
-$15 for the lean mince
-$3.00 for a kg of Green Peppers
-$1.00 worth of onions
-$1.50 worth of mushrooms
-$4.00 for a big tin of tomatoes (1/4 the tin is left)
-$5.00 for a 1kg of Lentils (3/4 left)
-$1.00 for the Garlic
Salt/Pepper/Spices

That's $2.17 AUD a meal.
 
This year I've gone from obese to overweight to normal (BMI-wise).

I think most people definitely have to make an effort in order to be a healthy weight in the current environment. Everyone is expected to drive everywhere, to consume sugary drinks, to sit at work all day, and to eat large-portioned meals with snacks in between. You'll run into various kinds of resistance if you try to go against pretty much any of those.

Mhm, there's a very strong culture of 'eat everything on your plate or you're in trouble' among parents (well, at least mine), and this really doesn't help, this attitude is what made my 12 year old brother a fatass. (He's since rectified it by going into sports, and he's ripped by 12 year old standards lol) But seriously, it's that and combination of people not having a clue what a serving size is (well, at least my stepfather, he put so god damn much spaghetti on our plates, I am physically incapable of eating that much jesus christ).
 
I understand your point but it seems an oversimplification to a mutli-faceted issue. This is not a culture of low expectations of fitness. The expectations are high and the vast majority of people are falling short of those expectations. The fitness industry in The United States is huge. The Hollywood stars, and other people that the majority of Americans look up to are more fit than they were a mere 10 years ago. People that are overweight or obese do not get the acceptance you seem to imply.

It's not a binary issue. You've yet to prove or support your premise and yet you go through with your post sure in it's truth.

The thing is though we agree on a lot of issues. I agree that our portion sizes are absurd. I agree that we aren't as physically active as we once were. I also agree that the foods themselves that are mainstays in our diet are terrible compared to what the rest of the world eats. None of this however is solved by fat shaming. I am glad to hear you say that you don't encourage insulting overweight people. If that is true though, which I am skeptical of based on previous posts in this thread, I don't see what we are even arguing.

Have you proved your claim that fat shaming is ineffective? I mean, we can find anecdotal evidence for both sides of the argument, and while I agree that negativity doesn't work with a lot people, some people do get their shit together when bullied or shamed.

Personally, I try to not be an asshole, so I'd never shame someone for being fat. I do think the fat acceptance movement is plenty dangerous, though. I'd never encourage someone to be proud of being obese.
 
God.

Damn.

Ice cold.

Speaking from experience here, at my heaviest I was 320lbs, I lived a completely sedentary lifestyle, only things I would leave the house for was weed and junk food late at night, my mother cooked all my meals, I didn't work, didn't do shit but WoW and whatvever the fuck else I was into back then.

It's not easy, it's not simple, but it can be done.
 
I agree, lots of bad / just plain wrong information / massive over-simplification.

Problem is with alot of people, it's a complete lifestyle change that they're unable / unwilling to make, their whole family is big "we're big boned" "I'm just made this way" "you have to accept me for who I am" .

People will endlessly rationalize their behavior.
This is an oversimplification of possibles solutions.
 
You shouldn't have to make an effort not to be obese. It should be hard to become obese. I think that our puritan approach to nutrition and weight loss is one of the chief contributors to the problem. It wouldn't be difficult to set up a social, legal, and cultural context where it's safe and normal to bicycle wherever you can go with a car, where you can get a reasonably proportioned, healthy meal at a fast food place, or where 300 calorie drinks are considered abnormal. But I think people actually prefer to believe that a healthy weight is a moral victory and they like viewing overweight people as lazy slobs.

Just to summarize my point, I think people actually like that it's easy to become obese and hard to lose weight in our current environment. There's no impetus for change.
 
Obesity interventions need to start early. Unfortunately, once someone becomes obese, their chance of becoming normal weight is very unlikely, statistically..

Indeed, your brain just says eat more even though it's already more than enough.

I am actually currently working on losing some weight. Amusingly wii fit was a great way for me to lose weight the first time (not even playing it just weighing myself each day as it let question if i needed something easier)

as long as I stick to weighing myself each day I should be able to lose some weight. I'm not a small guy and my job is quite physical at times so I have to be careful and make sure I still eat enough though. (and even though I am much bigger than most of my coworkers a lot of that is actually muscle and i can run laps around them lol)

I personally hate the BMI system though as each person is different. A person really should have a personal weight that they should aim for and not worry about BMI as it skews horribly with muscle or many other things.
 
1 week worth of food for two people in a day. It made 14 servings.

~$30 Australian dollars (with leftover ingredients)
-$15 for the lean mince
-$3.00 for a kg of Green Peppers
-$1.00 worth of onions
-$1.50 worth of mushrooms
-$4.00 for a big tin of tomatoes (1/4 the tin is left)
-$5.00 for a 1kg of Lentils (3/4 left)
-$1.00 for the Garlic
Salt/Pepper/Spices

That's $2.17 AUD a meal.

Seriously, people make it as if not eating junk food everyday is the most expensive/time-consuming thing of all time. Thats ignorance at its best. Also most likely trying to rationalize their lazyness to change their lifestyle into something not as "easy".

I havent eaten fast food in over a year and cant even begin to imagine eating it daily. Shit must be disgusting.
 
I kind of disagree with the way "overweightness" and "obesity" are measured. I mean I know it still isn't necessarily correct in estimating the overall health of a person but body fat percentage I think is better than going by weight alone. I mean muscle still has weight and often very fit people are considered overweight because of their muscle mass.
While BMI is far from perfect, it's not like the US is becoming a nation of bodybuilders which is then skewing the data. It would be a minority of people that get misrepresented as overweight or obese. For the average sedentary person, I'd say the scale at least gets the point across about what kind of trends we are seeing.
 
What is the actual difference between obese and overweight? And I mean in pounds, not BMI. BMI is somewhat bullshit since it doesn't take into account someone being athletic (i.e. according to a BMI calculator JJ Watt at 6' 5" and 280 pounds would be obese at a BMI of 33.2).

BMI is valid for use on populations, not individuals. That said, there's a strong correlation between BMI and body fat percentage. In fact, BMI tends to underestimate how fat people are. That is, many people in the "normal" range are too fat and therefore at a higher risk for the plethora of diseases associated with being overweight and obese.
 
67.5 million adults in America (over the age of 25) are obese. Wow. Childhood obesity tends to be a result of adult obesity, so I'm really curious to know the latest childhood obesity mumbers.


I'm most likely in the extremely obese category weighting around 450lbs. Well least when I die I won't be part of the percentage anymore.

Why on Earth do you assume it's too late? Unless you weigh 450lbs and are in your 90s (which would be extraordinarily rare), your weight can literally be halved before the next Nintendo console ships.
 
I wonder how fatties get like that. Like at one time I noticed I had a little beer belly and was 5-10 pounds over weight. So I lost the weight, you don't wake up 400 pounds overweight
 
I don't mean to sound rude here, but where are all these fat people at? I work at a grocery store so I see tons of people everyday and while there's a fair share that's obese I wouldn't say its anywhere near 35%.

Then again it might just be a mental issue and I'm just not noticing them because I'm pretty sure I have body dysmorphia. My bmi is 19 but I still feel I need to lose weight.

America has an estimated population of over 318 million people. 318,000,000. A single grocery store would not provide sufficient data for anything population-related.
 
America has an estimated population of over 318 million people. 318,000,000. A single grocery store would not provide sufficient data for anything population-related.

That's not really how sample sizes work. Criticizing the sample based on geographical correlation would be a better avenue, but you can probably draw some broad conclusions based on observations of a single grocery store.

You only need a random sample of about 400 people to get a 95% margin of error in a large population.
 
This is an oversimplification of possibles solutions.
For the majority it's still true. If people start spending even 30 minutes a day for exercise and watch what and how much they are eating, then they can remain relatively healthy.
 
America has an estimated population of over 318 million people. 318,000,000. A single grocery store would not provide sufficient data for anything population-related.
You should see/study how statiscal inference is done.
 
You should see/study how statiscal inference is done.

Well, it's certainly not done by taking one random supermarket in the United States and using anecdotal observations to make statements about the population at large.
 
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