CDC: 42 percent of Americans obese by 2030

Yesssssssssssssssssss! Fuck you, fatties! Stop eating so much!

 

The only thing I'm saying is that it's *really* easy to assume that because someone happens for you, it should be easy for anyone else. The same person who says "they wouldn't be fat if they weren't so lazy" would recoil at "they wouldn't be poor if they weren't so lazy."

Personally, I don't understand why everyone doesn't have a better sense of logic and human cognitive biases. It's so easy to understand that extrapolating from your own experiences is fallacious.

 

The thread is about American habits as a whole and I made general statements about the obesity epidemic. I even noted that I am sure there are people with legitimate health problems that make it difficult to lose weight. I'm pretty sure the evidence backs up the notion that Americans, in general, are fatter today than they were decades ago because they are less physically active and do eat more.

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/wecan/news-events/matte1.htm
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/less-active-at-work-americans-have-packed-on-pounds/

Are you asserting that Americans, as a whole, aren't getting fatter because because they eat more and are less physically active?

 

If I were, wouldn't I have said that?

 

Your tone sure changed. Is that because you linked to an article that posits a more sedentary workforce has helped led to obesity, and is not necessarily due to a bunch of total slobs who can't stop themselves from shoving Snickers bars and tapioca pudding down their gullets?

 

Finally, ucacm posts something worth debating. We are more sedentary and that's not due to laziness. It's expensive to eat healthy, which includes fresh fruit and vegetables.

How do you suppose we can change this? I know gym memberships can be a pre-tax deduction on paychecks, and some insurance plans reimburse you if you go to the gym several times a month, but that only goes so far. How do you change appetites when sedentary lifestyles are a fairly recent development in civilization compared to thousands of years of appetite behavior evolving?

 

Massive public awareness campaigns. Worked for smoking.

 

Combined with state's attorney general lawsuits.

 

Something will indeed be done about it: Insurance companies will quit covering obese individuals.

It will start gradually, with rates ramped up (slowly at first, then more dramatically) on sliding scales tied to BMI, but in 20-30 years or so, it will basically come down to: if your BMI qualifies you as "morbidly obese," you will be deemed uninsurable. And that's for everything -- basic health coverage.

That'll eliminate most of the problem within a couple decades.

 

It's simple, not easy. If it were easy, nobody would be fat.

 

It's a very simple cause-and-effect. If you eat more than you require, you will gain weight. Those requirements may be affected by 1,000 different factors, from being at a desk for nine hours a day to having "low metabolism," which is pretty much just another way of saying you eat too much. And yeah, the fact that companies like ADM and ConAgra are getting billions in subsidies to feed you unhealthy, unnutritious crap is a big part of it.

But that's what it is, at the end of the day. If you want to lose weight, you have to eat less than your body consumes. If you want to maintain a weight, you have to match that figure.

Like a previous poster, I managed to lose a substantial amount of weight by simply cutting the amount of food I eat, in addition to doing a bit of exercise (walking and playing softball, pretty much -- and the softball tends to come with beer). At the beginning, it was seriously steps like switching the type of crappy store-bought pizza I ate. (To thin crust. It had fewer calories. Seriously.) That helped a bit; getting serious about it helped a lot more. I discovered, for example, that getting five servings of fruit and vegetables a day helps in multiple ways: You don't have to eat as much to get the nutrients you need (as opposed to eating a bunch of processed calories with a bit of nutrition hidden in it somewhere) AND it fills you up so you don't feel the need to eat as much other crap.

Over about a two-year span, my BMI has gone from 32 to 23. And let's make one thing clear. When they say 42% of Americans will be obese, we're not talking about, well, the BMI numbers are crap. Mine is technically 27, but I'm perfectly healthy. No. Obese is 30 or above. And no one normal is healthy with a BMI that high. If your BMI is 33 and you're not an NFL offensive lineman or a competitive weightlifter, then you're fat. Unhealthily, dangerously fat.

But here's the other thing. If your BMI is 33, then yeah, you'd be better off with one that was 23. But you will also be better off with a BMI of 32, or 31, or 30. And I'll tell you the one thing I learned: Once the first five pounds come off, it's pretty easy to keep that ball rolling. And you know, I love pizza and Doritos. Genuinely enjoy them. You know what I enjoy a hell of a lot more? "Wow. You've lost some weight. You look good."

 

Not just America. Not just sedentary.

www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/08/obesity-rates-rising-worldwide-us-could-hit-50-by-2030.html

The across-the-board rise in obesity appears to be driven by changes in the global food system and the increased availability of processed, affordable foods, along with more sedentary lifestyles, the authors concluded.