Darth_Firebolt

it's crazy how fast some of them change. Either one would be a great improvement for AR! I was in High School in 2006 and I remember talking to my friends about how MS was such an obese state. Our governor at the time was trying to take all vending machines out of schools and people were throwing fits.

CliffordK

Coors LIGHT?

canklecat

They've been suckered by lies that "the others" are getting all the goodies. Martians stole all the ponies. Tourists blew up all the balloons. Oompa-Loompas are indoctrinating the children with rhymes about physics, geology, nutrition and other facts of life. There isn't enough disability pay, Medicade or chips for real Americans because Chelsea Snowden stole it all through Winkyleaps to spend on vodka in Ukrainistan. And they'll give up all the benefits they worked for to help build a war and fight the wall on illegal integers. We don't mind suffering a little, as long as the other guy has it worse.

bruce19

I'm open to new information but the whole genetics thing seems like an extreme rationale of poor choices to me. I do not recall obesity at this level when I was growing up in the 40's-50's. Some other things we didn't have were fast food joints, manufactured foods and diet soda. That's just for starters. Our lifestyle has taken a very unhealthy turn in my lifetime.

twodownzero

The District of Columbia has a long more young adults than a lot of other places in the United States. I'd have to look at the data, but when I lived there, it seemed like the trains were full of people in their early to mid 20s and 50+ with nothing in between. It's like everyone reaches their late 20s, gets married, leaves the District, and then returns after the kids go to college. The demographics are very strange.

While people in their 20s are obese, there's fewer obese twenty somethings than older people, and so whatever stats D.C. has, they have to be skewed by the demographic shift that is D.C. even compared to its neighbor states, which have a more diverse population in terms of age.

berner

(illegal integers) I like that one. A commanding use of language.
Anyway, there have always been some people with genetic predisposition to put on weight easily. What we are seeing though is way beyond an extra 15 pounds. We are seeing, not a mere few, but a great many carrying an extra 150 pounds and more. I don't understand at all how anyone could be that far out of the norm as to inflict a death sentence on themselves.

Darth_Firebolt

well, food is tasty, exercise is hard, and bicycles are toys. once each of those statements makes sense to you, you magically gain 150 pounds.

CliffordK

i? You must be imagining things.
I am one that can be say about 15 pounds overweight, give or take a little, despite a lot of riding the bike.

However, I've drawn the line at 200 lbs. If I ever get close to 200 lbs, I will make changes to keep me under the limit.

I suppose I've always been a 6-pack short.

bruce19

Last week I came to about 2 lbs. more than my college football weight. Strangely, it didn't look the same on me as it did 50 yrs. ago.

berner

Same with me. I'm a pond or two over my high school weight but that weight seems to be distributed a bit differently. What has worked for me is vanity. Sheer vanity.

Seattle Forrest

Like sitting at a machine with their phones in hand. Roughly half the people in my gym.

awesomeame

That article is 5.5yrs old. Things have gotten worse:

https://stateofobesity.org/adult-obesity/

Matt

noglider 

High calorie foods don't necessarily cause weight gain or weight retention. There are numerous stories about how and why you can lose weight eating high fat, high calorie foods. I'm one such case though not an extreme one. I've increased my fatty foods and am back to my college weight and waist size, at age 56.

12strings

Yes, its mind-boggling. The connection of mind and body is very hard to understand, though undeniable.

I had a mental-health professional counselor with 15 yrs experience tell me that for his depression who exercise regularly, it almost never comes to the point of needing medication...and he's NEVER even had a depression patient who did long distance events like marathons or triathlons.

Exercise helps brain and body, but Its obvious that many don't have the motivation to so it. Or to change food habits.

(I say this as one who has seen mild depression in the last year, which exercise has been part of the help...And as one who has, for the last few weeks, eaten A LOT of Christmas snacks and cookies...but I ate a salad yesterday, so it's Ok. (I'm 37, and about 7lbs over my high-school soccer team weight...but aim more muscular now! ;-)

knitguy

I don't know whether or not to be happy that I'm not able to buck your counselor's trend simply because I haven't been his patient. Exercise appears to be great for some people's mild depression. Mild being the key. My depression doesn't respond to exercise and at this point it's laughable to assume it would. I also know various people who do triathlons and who have depression. I know way more people who exercise regularly and have mental health issues. Your counselor, sadly was oversimplifying things.

Never mind the numerous professional and elite athletes with various mental health issues.

ironwood

I suspect that there are other things besides diet and exercise involved. These might be the over prescribing of antibiotics ; animals are given antibiotics to make them gain weight. Residues of herbicides in our food might also change our gut microbiome. Diet sodas are thought to screw up intake regulating systems, etc.

The latest figures are from 2016, I think the District of Columbia has become fatter, and NY a little thinner.

Darth_Firebolt

In May - July 2016 I lost 30 pounds without really changing my diet. I counted calories, limited myself to fast food 3x per week, and started eating more turkey sandwiches and bananas. I already ate turkey sandwiches and bananas, I just ate them more frequently. Mostly I just ate smaller portions of the same stuff and actually kept track of what I was eating and how far I was riding. Like instead of a 1/3 lb cheeseburger, medium fries, and medium milkshake, I got the 1/6 lb, small, and small (or water). I kicked the soda habit 15 years ago, so I couldn't even get rid of those easy calories. I'm still down 25 lbs, even after the holidays, and I still eat whatever, just less of it. Getting an accurate base calorie need for day to day living and staying 10-20% under that was the most difficult part. Just figuring out what that number was took me almost the whole first two weeks. I used 3 different calorie calculators before realizing they were all about 30% too high.

Seattle Forrest

There's this idea of "non-exercise exercise," it's when you walk to your car, for example. People are doing it less. A lot of jobs used to have file rooms, and people had to walk across the building to get what they needed; now they have database servers and get documents without leaving their chair. We have remote controls so you don't have to walk across the room to change the channel. I could go on and on and on.

At the same time, portion sizes are getting bigger, people eat out at restaurants more often, and when people eat at home it's often packaged foods, there's hyper-palatable (id very yummy) calorie dense nutrient sparse food everywhere, which isn't filling. The way we eat has changed drastically in the last few generations.

So, most people have lots of opportunity to take calories in and not so much reason to burn them. It's very much diet and exercise.

The fact that people (like @Darth_Firebolt above) are able to lose weight shows that it's diet and exercise, he lives in the same world of growth hormones in meat as everyone else.

Dave Cutter

We've (almost globally) reached a point where the abundance of resources has changed our actual expectation of size. Whereas half a century ago.... the general population was somewhat critical of obese people. It is now considered rude to not overlook obesity. Pointing out unhealthy an weight problem.... is now called "body shaming".

It isn't so much related to borders (states, regions, or nations). Or the various types of foods/diets eaten. Food tastes good and eating is also emotionally satisfying. With loose expectations of typical human behavior.... we should expect to see increasingly heavier, self indulgence people.

Seattle Forrest

Finally, it isn't any one particular food, it's too much of all foods.

Darth_Firebolt

That was exactly the point I was trying to make. Before putting numbers on it, I was just eating a cheeseburger for lunch, half a pizza for dinner, and 3 eggs with some biscuits for breakfast. After I got an accurate basal metabolic rate for my height, desired weight, and activity level (office worker at the time), I realized how far away from "right" my eating habits were. Getting an accurate number for calories burned per mile or minute of cycling was even harder. For my riding style I eventually figured out that I burn between 20 and 25 calories per mile at my average pace of 13-15 mph on the greenway. Using that number to calculate how far I needed to ride each week to offset any overeating I did really helped me lose weight fast. I finally figured out that 1800 calories was about what I could eat and have a net 0 day. If I ate 1500 and didn't ride, I would lose weight. If I ate 2200 and rode 20-40 miles, I would lose weight.

My job changed and I'm much more physically active throughout the day, and I can ride to work and back now so I'm not as worried about counting calories, but the act of losing 30 pounds in 3 months (2.5, really) gave me portion control that I never had before. I'm 6'0" and I weighed 215 on May 1, 2016. July 31 I weighed under 185. I weighed myself this morning before breakfast and I was at 182, so I'm actually a little lighter than I thought I was. For people that are more than 30 pounds overweight, simply counting calories can absolutely drop weight off their bodies. If you're already fairly in shape, you've already lost all of the "easy" weight, and it's going to require more discipline and macro percentage calculations, but the basic process is still the same. At that point, WHAT you eat starts to play more of a factor in losing weight than HOW MUCH you're eating.

12strings

I can do accept that. I'm certainly no expert. Though I must say you would be a anomoly in my experience if regular exercise did not help your overall state of mind AT ALL, as opposed to no exercise. If so, I'm sorry to hear it.

ironwood

The chart in post#45 is interesting in that it shows obesity rates rising but sugar consumption dropping. Up until 2000 they were going up together.

DMC707

public perception of what is fat or what is not has changed. Tv and movie characters and actors who were considered comically fat would hardly even raise an eyebrow anymore

Paul Blart makes Curly from the 3 Stooges look sleek. I think this is mainly comedic actors -- but there are some fat lady comedians out there too.

leading actors in more serious type roles still have to keep up appearances, --

But action stars have become more and more cartoonish as well,- with levels of muscle definition and mass that is tough to achieve without abuse of androgens -- i doubt they would even let Bruce Willis have a crack at making Die Hard if it were made today as he looks too regular -- he'd have to add 10 lbs of muscle and reduce body fat by 6 or 7%

I guess what i am thinking out loud is that the general public is much more accepting of people at the extremes, whether it is a 300lb Melissa McCarthy cutting up or a 225 lb Amy Schumer acting like a hoochie mama, or 260 lb guys' with bodyfat levels that would qualify them for an amateur bodybuilding show doing impossible things

We like looking at the extremes while consuming extreme amounts of dr pepper and popcorn i guess

knitguy

Thanks and honestly it is what it is, the issue is that my depression isn't mild and exercise tends to be really helpful for mild depression, not severe depression. I'm not saying that exercise doesn't sometimes up my mood (though if it's a long ride it's after the fact not during) but that's more of a, "this is a thing that I like to do" as opposed to, "my body is physically healthier when I'm exercising." For me it's definitely not a replacement for therapy like some people make it out to be.