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|epidemic-
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|u/tauntonlake - 1 day
|
|Completely unsurprised. Have been watching this happen for about the
|last 20 years. Watching school kids get more and more overweight,
|compared to my high school days in the 80's, where there were only 2-3
|what would be called "obese" kids in my class of 300. And they weren't
|even THAT big. Go to a flea market in the U.S now on a weekend. That
|is a real eye-opener, to the current mass obesity phenomenon .. We are
|headed for the space ships of Wall-E ...
|u/Quotalicious - 1 day
|
|At the same time it feels like fit people are even more fit than ever.
|Two diverging groups...
|u/thomasrat1 - 1 day
|
|Maybe. The gym scene was crazy 80s to the 2000s. I think it’s more
|that extremely fit people now post online about it. Instead of just
|doing there 5 hr workout and going home.
|u/deadpoetic333 - 1 day
|
|Have you not heard of gym-flation? Peak 2000s physiques are
|considered mid now days.
|u/What_Do_It - 1 day
|
|Recently I saw [this picture](https://i.imgur.com/2fVQ8Dc.jpeg)
|of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, both known for their ridiculous
|physiques and yet somehow those seems more attainable than that
|of random gymfluencers today.
|u/IEatBabies - 1 day
|
|Ehh their shoulders and arms are massive and look how broad
|their back is. The thing that makes them look
|smaller/different than today is mostly the lack of massive
|pecs, because these days people focus an extreme amount of
|effort into bench press. Which makes your chest look nice and
|bulky, but isn't all that practically useful or seen in more
|natural builds anywhere near to the extent as people now. And
|in the past people looked more towards natural builds and
|greco-roman ideas for the ideal physiques to achieve, and even
|statues of gods like Zeus who are shredded to the maximum and
|exaggerated a bit beyond what people would have actually seen
|to model off of, don't have pecks as big as bodybuilders do
|today.
|u/Killercod1 - 23 hours
|
|Even finding good exercises to target the pecs is hard. Many
|people bench press by using their arms, and they struggle to
|target their chest. You have to like crush something between
|your hands to target the pecs. It's the least practical
|muscle group.
|u/inductiononN - 1 day
|
|Blonde Chinese hair and skin of a hot dog
|u/TristanIsAwesome - 1 day
|
|Heaps more steroid use these days, also at younger and younger
|ages
|u/Asleep_Shirt5646 - 1 day
|
|Also some bro science is now proven science Some. Not all. Or
|even most.
|u/asphaltaddict33 - 1 day
|
|Apparent older also, I have friends doing cycles *for the
|first time* in their mid 30s…. Shits wild
|u/themonicastone - 1 day
|
|I know someone on gear at 61
|u/notafanofwasps - 1 day
|
|Technically better for you than going on T earlier *and*
|more likely to distinguish you from peers at 37 vs 19.
|Assuming it's just TRT and not anavar/tren.
|u/midgaze - 1 day
|
|They shouldn't call it gymflation. It's steroidflation.
|u/Acerhand - 1 day
|
|Insecure kidflation
|u/LogicianMission22 - 1 day
|
|That’s because more and more young men are taking steroids,
|sarms, peptides, or growth hormone.
|u/AlwaysBored123 - 1 day
|
|Instead of the 2000s “roid heads” I used to see sporting those
|nipple tanks, it’s now “sarm goblins” that come in wearing
|pajamas.
|u/Legitimate-Carrot197 - 1 day
|
|Right, more steroids or BBLs doesn't mean fit people are getting
|in better shape.
|u/deadpoetic333 - 1 day
|
|There’s also a misperception of what’s possible naturally in
|both directions. Some assume everyone is on steroids and
|others expect anyone on steroids to look like a mass monster.
|Unless their genetics are completely cooked someone can get
|incredibly jacked naturally. It just takes *years* of
|consistent close-to-optimal diet and training.
|u/das_war_ein_Befehl - 21 hours
|
|A lot of these physiques being touted on social media are
|not natty. Even a lot of the natty competitions aren’t natty
|u/Holepoke - 21 hours
|
|What if I told you most people that take steroids look like
|absolute garbage and not fit at all? Source: Bodybuilding
|coach
|u/night-mail - 1 day
|
|Photo filters have improved a lot since the 2000s
|u/magicarnival - 1 day
|
|Heroin chic was popular during that time period
|u/OePea - 1 day
|
|And The California Raisins
|u/HanSchlomo - 1 day
|
|I heard that through the grapevine.
|u/VelvetHorse - 1 day
|
|I saw them open for Kiss
|u/Prudent-Ad1002 - 1 day
|
|Was a kid in the 80s n fitness was pretty big, wresting was
|super popular, Arnold was a movie star, I remember Body Shaping
|on ESPN and American Gladiators. Heroin chic was more 90s imo,
|Grunge, Calvin Klein ads, and Kate Moss.
|u/Asleep_Shirt5646 - 1 day
|
|The science on fitness is getting very dialed. You really don't
|have to work that hard, just smart.
|u/Mission_Shock2564 - 1 day
|
|Two caveats. I think that a lot of fitness influencers heavily
|edit their images to make themselves look more muscular/defined
|which perpetuates this chase for people that want to be fit. But
|also gym science in the 2000s was a joke. Most of the stuff that
|was considered good or mandatory has been debunked and left
|behind. We have optimized what it takes to be really really fit
|down to a perfect science. And people are following the science
|and getting way more jacked, way more defined in way bigger
|numbers (because this information is readily available online).
|u/Freeasabird01 - 1 day
|
|It’s the contrast. I’m a bald average looking mid 40s single male.
|But with a flat stomach from eating well and cardio, and a little
|bit of upper body muscle from lifting weights a couple times per
|week, I’m in a class of my own on the dating market.
|u/tommy_b_777 - 1 day
|
|I'm 50something and coasting on years of lifting climbing
|mountaineering etc - right now I consider myself Colorado fat
|(lack of cardio) but my dad kept saying I was the healthiest
|person he'd ever seen when I was in MI
|u/EbolaPrep - 1 day
|
|Colorado fat…. That’s a great term! I live in Boulder, everyone
|is fit, I go to my rental in Weld county to work on it and the
|weight difference is at least 100 pounds.
|u/HungryScholar7247 - 1 day
|
|A good class I assume, right?
|u/Upbeat_Advance_1547 - 1 day
|
|100% If you're middle aged and fit you can have a trainwreck of
|a face and still be the goods Not as helpful before 35 or so
|because youth ameliorates poor fitness for a while, but people
|who never developed fitness habits really fall off a cliff at
|35-40 and the people who manage to stay healthy have a huge leg
|up
|u/nevernotmad - 1 day
|
|And it’s not too late. I didn’t exercise for 30 years between
|20 and 50. I started swimming a couple of times per week at
|50 and I literally felt my chest and shoulders expand.
|u/Houseofsun5 - 1 day
|
|I am 50 now, always been a fitness kind of guy, still in the
|gym 4-5 times a week after work, not body is a temple levels,
|just everything in moderation type guy, so I am slim and
|capable of continuing my hobbies such as hiking,motorcycles,
|swimming etc. My peers and friends over the years, starting to
|drop like flies, so many funerals it frightening, I had a go
|at my two best friends one who has had a heart attack at 51
|that they better start taking care of themselves as I have few
|friends left now and don't want to retire with no buddies to
|go golfing with!!
|u/MrNerd82 - 1 day
|
|fellow 40's bald guy here (i shave it and it comes out kick ass)
|and while I'm not in the peak form I was in college, I still do
|weights and light cardio and can run up a flight of stairs without
|getting winded. Unlike most people at work. Watching my parents
|not take care of themselves over the past 20 years really opens
|your eyes. Watching them "give up" and gain weight and think
|everything is just fine, it sucks the one good thing I pull from
|it is motivation to hit the rack. The irony of the dating market
|these days though -- everyone is just looking for a free meal out,
|or to move in and play insta-dad for her kids. Hard no. That,
|or it's just bots and scammers online.
|u/kuroimakina - 1 day
|
|Social media is giving people body dysmorphia. There’s a huge
|section of people who now feel a compulsive need to spend all their
|free time working out, body building, etc. Many are on steroids.
|They’ll constantly talk about how society is getting so fat
|(objectively true) but then they’ll act like they’re invalid if
|they’re not ripped, and to a lesser extent, some act like *others*
|are invalid if they aren’t working out all the time. It’s replacing
|one addiction for another. Which, to be fair, as long as there’s no
|steroids involved, a fitness addiction is a much, much healthier
|mental addiction than the vast majority of other things. But it
|all points to the huge issues in food quality, unaddressed mental
|illness, lowering education standards, and the damage of social
|media. It’s creating a population where nearly no one is what one
|could consider “healthy.” Even the people who are healthy weight are
|often struggling from some form of anxiety, depression, or other
|unaddressed mental illness. This isn’t some “the 50s were better!”
|Type thing either. We don’t need to return to the issues of decades
|ago to fix it, we just need actual goddamn progressive reform in
|America, higher food standards, better access to healthcare, better
|education…. Basically the exact opposite of everything that a little
|over half the populace just voted for. So, expect things to get
|much, much worse **Edit to put these links here**
|https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32318383/
|https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10471190/
|https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36882132/
|https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1121529/ I did not say
|that every gym goer is mentally ill. I said there’s a large section
|right now who are obsessive about fitness due to social media. This
|is an objectively true statement. The data shows that body
|dysmorphia is rising at unprecedented levels. This does not mean
|every person who works out is mentally ill. Anyone who reads this
|comment and gets angry about it needs to do some serious self
|reflection on whether they are commenting to be helpful, or to be
|self righteous
|u/hotacorn - 1 day
|
|It’s also definitely an income and education disparity thing, just
|like with a lot of other problems. If you walk around a
|neighborhood where successful “young professionals” live you’ll
|see almost entirely very fit people. If you go to a neighborhood
|in a poor rural or urban area and look at people in a similar age
|range it’s like looking at two different planets.
|u/ManOfTheCosmos - 1 day
|
|I got this effect when I would go to the Costco across the
|highway after my workouts at lifetime fitness. Two entirely
|different kinds of people.
|u/ernest7ofborg9 - 1 day
|
|Good point. The Costco and the FoodMaxx are a block apart in
|my town and the clientele are night and day different. Never
|thought about it until now. Damn.
|u/Techun2 - 1 day
|
|In my experience Costco is middle class and well off healthy
|people. Poor people aren't shopping at Costco
|u/Houseofsun5 - 1 day
|
|Two different types of gyms too, I have a membership to a
|cheap chain store gym for when I am working away as there is
|one in every town near enough, and I have my main near home
|gym membership which costs 4 times as much a month. The cheap
|gym is full of kids trying to be the next influencer, taking
|photos, talking about cycles and what protein they are using,
|noisy grunting sets and weights scattered far and wide and the
|dumbbell rack all mixed up. My home gym, it's a much more
|chilled place, people who are fit but not stacked, quietly
|doing their hour or so with or without a personal trainer,
|everything clean, weights always properly put away and
|equipment wiped down after use.
|u/Lazy-Bike90 - 1 day
|
|Competitive body builders and amateurs who want to be them have
|always been that way. They haven't changed at all but social media
|gave them a large platform. The overwhelming majority of gym
|goers are pretty chill. They're lifting for personal enjoyment,
|mental health, physical health and hanging out with their
|community.
|u/SirJuggles - 1 day
|
|I work out in the athletic center at a college. It's been
|interesting watching the shifts in the population of students
|who use the fitness center. Since the return from covid lockdown
|there's been a significant uptick in the percentage of student
|population who works out. It's becoming more "required" to be in
|good shape if you want to engage in the college social scene,
|the amount of effort you have to put in to be considered
|attractive is getting higher for everyone.
|u/DeputyDomeshot - 1 day
|
|I also think there’s a huge piece since Covid of people not
|getting out and interacting with each other as much. I imagine
|it’s a lot easier to just be fat and terminally online homebody.
|u/meka_lona - 1 day
|
|There is also a good chunk of people who got into healthier
|habits during COVID (home workouts, walking, going out into
|nature or doing outdoor recreation, running, etc.), if they had
|access to these spaces. But overall, yeah, COVID did do a
|number.
|u/AnbennariAden - 1 day
|
|100% - many people are A-OK with wholly replacing real
|commection with online interactions. During COVID it was
|necessary, now it's being expressly CHOSEN I'm not smart enough
|to have an idea of how to fix it :/
|u/YouHaveToGoHome - 1 day
|
|To add to the mix, a lot of people's economic situations are
|pushing them toward unhealthy lifestyles as well. It's hard to get
|in enough time for resistance training + cardio, sleep, and making
|proper food choices each week if you're working 2 jobs, constantly
|tired from stress or inadequate sleep, and spending more time
|commuting to a job from the increasingly far neighborhoods where
|housing is affordable.
|u/carolineecouture - 1 day
|
|One of the best exercises you can do is walking, but walking
|becomes problematic if you don't have access to a safe area to
|walk or run. If there are no sidewalks or if the sidewalk is in
|poor condition. WFH, I can take "short walks" of 10 to 15
|minutes around the block every couple of hours. It's enough to
|get some steps in and be outside for a bit at no extra cost.
|u/jacob6875 - 1 day
|
|It takes me ~1.5hrs to hit 10k steps on my walking pad. I
|have a pretty active job where I get 6-8k steps so generally I
|don't spend more than 20mins on it outside of work but it
|would take up a large portion of evening if I had a desk job.
|u/abratofly - 1 day
|
|I LOVE walking. Going on long walks on weekends is my favorite
|thing. I've tried the "gym scene" multiple times and hated
|every second of it. I like kickboxing, too, but I found going
|to facilities is also miserable. The last one I was a part of
|did HIIT as the warmup, and then group activities, two things
|I loathe. I'm hoping to get a bag for Christmas so I can
|finally do it in the comfort of my own basement, alone.
|u/beebsaleebs - 1 day
|
|Don’t worry! The return of preexisting condition exclusions will
|cause early death and the average life expectancy of Americans can
|fall again.
|u/vellyr - 1 day
|
|I think you’re talking about an incredibly small % of the
|population here. It doesn’t take ridiculous dedication to have a
|nice beach body, and even less to look fit under normal clothes (I
|lift 3-5 hours a week, for example). The vast majority of regular
|gym-goers are normal, healthy people and I don’t think it’s
|helpful to paint this picture of two extremes. All it does is give
|people an excuse to not take care of themselves.
|u/ActionPhilip - 1 day
|
|Getting a beach body is as simple as eating less and moving
|more, emphasis on eating less (assuming you're overweight. It
|technically takes no physical or time commitment at all.
|u/kuroimakina - 1 day
|
|I am going to copy and paste this response to several people
|here who are saying the same thing: I’m not talking out of my
|ass about the rise in body dysmorphia, you know.
|https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32318383/
|https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10471190/
|https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36882132/
|https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1121529/ Literally
|just search “rising body dysmorphia rates in young men” or
|similar. I did not say that every gym goer is mentally ill. I
|said there’s a large section right now who are obsessive about
|fitness due to social media. This is an objectively true
|statement. The data shows that body dysmorphia is rising at
|unprecedented levels. Shame never helped anyone suffering from
|mental illness. Let’s not turn this into a fat shaming post out
|of some sense of self-superiority. It’s nearly 75% of people who
|are overweight or obese. That is *not* just a “some people are
|being lazy” number. That’s a “societal issue” problem.
|u/MetaOverkill - 1 day
|
|I'm in the middle group. I'm technically overweight but I also hit
|the gym at least twice a week. I'm in better shape than some people
|and in way worse than others.
|u/LaIndiaDeAzucar - 1 day
|
|Yeah, im considered overweight for a woman but my body sits at 21%
|body fat and i hit the gym 4-6x per week for weight training. Im
|just buff and carry my weight in my hips.
|u/Elly_Fant628 - 1 day
|
|I'm not fit, but I do get called "tiny" and "skinny" because my
|only excess weight is on my belly and hips. However, on the
|charts I am "overweight" and at only 10 kilos more, am 'obese".
|I'm very fortunate that I apparently have a very cooperative
|metabolism, but I can never shift the belly fat. At a hospital
|interview pre-surgery, I was re-weighed on a different scale
|because I "Don't look like 63 kilos"!
|u/Skyblacker - 1 day
|
|Weight correlates with income and we've lost the middle class.
|u/DrMobius0 - 1 day
|
|Most of the working class doesn't have the time/energy/money to
|actually eat well.
|u/Skyblacker - 1 day
|
|You can be skinny on eggs, toast, and Folgers coffee. But if
|you're poor, then fatty takeout food might be one of the few
|pleasures you can afford. Rich people go to therapy. Poor people
|eat their emotions.
|u/rkiive - 1 day
|
|Lucky eating less is always cheaper than eating more and if
|you’re 300lb thats the main concern
|u/Obscure_Moniker - 1 day
|
|Reminds me of young people having less sex in general, but a handful
|of young people having way more than has been common in the past.
|u/transemacabre - 1 day
|
|I'm not even that old (not 40 yet) but the Zoomers are curiously
|asexual. Back in the 2000s, we Millennials were definitely
|interested in dating, sex, and looking hot. The Zoomers I meet who
|are the same age now I was back then, profess little to no
|interest in dating and studies seem to back it up.
|u/Im_Balto - 1 day
|
|ehhhhhhhhh I wouldn't give this too much credit. I think its just
|the magnitude of difference has increased due to the increase in
|unhealthy life styles as well as the abundance of people posting
|their lifestyles online in ways that emphasize their fitness without
|showing the rest of their life
|u/BlueShift42 - 1 day
|
|It started in the 80s and early 90s when they took out fat and added
|in sugar. Corn syrup in everything. Super size all meals. Millennials
|really got screwed over by the generation that raised them.
|u/ussrowe - 1 day
|
|The sugar industry funded studies that placed the blame on eating
|fat: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
|way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-
|scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat
|u/_Thermalflask - 1 day
|
|And now they're villifying sweeteners as being "even worse than
|sugar"
|u/temp3rrorary - 1 day
|
|My mother allowed whole milk for my very skinny, unable to gain
|lots of weight older brother. But forced me to have skim and low
|fat bc I tended to be a bit chubbier. It wasn't until college that
|she got upset and blamed the pediatrician for telling her it was
|healthier when she herself ate full fat everything growing up.
|u/Tibbaryllis2 - 1 day
|
|Skim vs 2% vs whole milk is either a tremendous failure or, more
|likely, a tremendous success of marketing. The difference is
|basically 0%, 2%, and 3% milk. Yet we all know someone that
|only drank 2% because it was *a lot healthier than whole milk*.
|Meanwhile the fat removed from skin and 2%, which has a pretty
|equivalent price as whole, is used to create other diary
|products to be sold. ETA: Half-Half, Whipping Cream, and Heavy
|whipping Cream are ~16%, 30%, and 36% respectively. Don’t drink
|those.
|u/Buzz_Killington_III - 1 day
|
|Estimate Time of Arrival?
|u/Dack_ - 1 day
|
|Some parts of the internet felt like shorting "Editing to
|add:" into ETA. Which is just.. wrong on so many levels.
|Just spend the extra letter and write "Edit:" and it is
|perfectly legible on its own.
|u/IEatBabies - 1 day
|
|I usually use 2% milk, but when im feeling gluttonous I like
|to pour a little bit of half-half or whipping cream in with my
|cereal.
|u/HabeusCuppus - 1 day
|
|portions are completely out of control too. the 1955 a burger,
|fries and drink (no 'combos' yet) at McDonald's was a 1/10th lb (1.6
|oz) patty, pickles, onions, and ketchup, on a plain white bun.\*
|side was 2.4oz of french fries, fried in lard. and the drink,
|starting in 1955, was a 7-oz coca-cola in a wax paper cup. And those
|were the only sizes for everything. That was the adult meal, and
|it runs out to about 600 calories (613 calories by my tally.)
|Today's _Children's Meal_ is about that size. the adult combos are
|for the most part, twice that. and McDonald's is hardly the worst
|offender, they're just the easiest to compare apples to apples on
|since their menu has changed very little overall. --- \* and I do
|mean plain, no egg and no dairy in the bun.
|u/LurkLurkleton - 1 day
|
|Americans didn't start consuming less fat. Absolute fat consumption
|stayed about the same. We started consuming more calories though,
|mostly in the form of highly processed foods heavier in refined
|carbohydrates. Pizza, donuts, cookies, candy bars are all high fat
|foods also high in refined carbohydrates.
|u/Tibbaryllis2 - 1 day
|
|A *major* change has also been in the amount of calories we
|consume in beverages. Drinking liquids doesn’t satiate in the
|same way eating does. It’s very easy to drink a ton without
|feeling full or feeling less thirsty. And things like Mt Dew are
|~13 calories per ounce.
|u/Klickor - 1 day
|
|The combination of fat and sugar is the real killer which is shown
|in those foods you listed. If it is mostly fat and some proteins
|you usually feel rather full and won't eat too much. If it is just
|sugar it quickly starts to feel icky in some way for a lot of
|people. But if it is rich in fat and sugar you get to the same
|feeling of full or too much at around the same amount of calories
|of fat, in a fat heavy meal, or sugar in a sugar heavy meal but
|you also get the added calories of the other one. So if your
|limit is 50g of fat, 450 calories or 110g of sugar/carbs, 440
|calories, a "healthy" meal probably stops at around 650 total
|calories before you hit one of those limits. But an unhealthy meal
|could easily be 900 calories from 50g of fat AND 110g of carbs +
|some protein and land you on 1100 calories without being more
|volume or more filling than the 650 caloric meal. Doesn't help
|that the unhealthy stuff often also have more salt that make the
|food tastier as well, besides the fat and sugars that are so
|delicious, so it is really easy to over eat. Bread and
|pastries/cookies are about the same amount of carbs by weight but
|the latter could easily have 200 extra calories for each 100g just
|from fats. Not only that but they are often actually easier to eat
|by weight than bread too due to being less dry and more juicy so
|can eat more in weight and massively more in calories in a single
|sitting.
|u/honest_arbiter - 1 day
|
|I'm also really shocked at how large kids in high school have gotten.
|Just as you point out, *so many* obese kids now, and even for the kids
|that aren't outright obese, lots of them just look like they're
|carrying way more fat on them than they should, even ones who are
|otherwise athletic. The scary thing is that high school is usually
|the time when most people are the fittest (or at least skinniest) in
|their life. Super high metabolism, often lots of activities and sports
|(though the huge drop in unstructured physical activities - think
|stuff like skateboarding or heck, even just walking around a mall -
|that's been replaced by lying in bed scrolling on your phone),
|generally lower stress and more free time. So many of these kids are
|going to absolutely balloon once they have 40 hr/week jobs and their
|metabolism starts slowing down.
|u/tauntonlake - 1 day
|
|I watch the "nostalgia" facebook reels showing high school days in
|the 80's and 90's and the contrast is so evident. Something went
|drastically wrong after 2000's.
|u/IHadTacosYesterday - 1 day
|
|> once they have 40 hr/week jobs and their metabolism starts slowing
|down. At what age does it normally happen? early 20's to mid 20's?
|u/iamkoalafied - 1 day
|
|I'm not the person you're replying to, but it's more a difference
|in activity levels than a difference in metabolism. Metabolism
|does slow down as you age (there's even technically a difference
|from one year to the next), but it isn't like there's a drastic
|jump between 16 and 25, for example. Teens are just generally more
|active on a day-to-day basis than adults.
|u/Agret - 1 day
|
|Walking around the yard for an hr while out on lunch breaks and
|walking between classes then walking home after school is way
|more steps than I get waking from my bed to the kitchen then
|from the kitchen to my car then walking from the car to my desk
|where I sit for 8hrs then walk to car then walk from car to
|kitchen again.
|u/theredwoman95 - 22 hours
|
|Your metabolism doesn't actually slow down [until you're
|60](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58186710). It's stable between
|the ages of 20 and 60, and it only gently slows down between the
|ages of 1 and 20. There's no reason for people to suddenly gain
|weight after their teens unless they have a metabolic/hormone
|imbalance. The real reason people probably tend to gain weight
|after their early 20s is because they're doing way less exercise. My
|father used to complain about this, but I pointed out that he went
|out clubbing multiple times a week in his early 20s, which is a ton
|of exercise, what with all the dancing, and now he goes on a walk a
|few times a week. I've asked the same question to a few of his
|friends when the topic's come up, and it's all pretty consistent -
|except for the people who haven't actually gained weight since then.
|u/General_Mars - 1 day
|
|- High fructose corn syrup is added to everything. Fast food is
|calorie dense, cheap, and very unhealthy. Healthy foods are more
|expensive and time consuming. Also can’t learn to cook from parents if
|they’re always working. - There are few open public spaces that are
|accessible and nearby that can be used for a *variety* of exercise
|purposes - Commodification of adolescent athletics has become
|increasingly competitive and children are burning out or are being
|cut/left behind at earlier ages - We have conflated shaming with
|concern. People are fat but calling them fat is mean. I myself am
|obese, and I’m not saying people should be insensitive. But the whole
|“big boned,” “embrace your body,” and reverse shaming skinny people
|has culturally reinforced our obese attitudes and perspectives. We
|shouldn’t be normalizing obesity, it’s a health issue
|u/MCuri3 - 1 day
|
|I think what also contributes is that physical activity used to be
|baked into our (grandparents' and beyond) lives. For example, my
|grandpa didn't have a car for a long time. He cycled to his work,
|which was maintenance work at the railroads. He didn't have heating
|in his house like we do, so he had to chop wood for the fireplace
|and he had a massive garden which of course also required manual
|labour to maintain. Fresh produce was also the standard of food, and
|what processed foods they had was either emergency rations, or my
|grandma putting stuff in sugar-water to conserve it over the winter.
|His brain was also allowed to rest, instead of being constantly
|drawn to a dopamine-overloading screen. I don't mean to say that
|"everything was better in the good old days", nor do I mean to shame
|anyone who doesn't have a very physically active lifestyle (I don't
|either), but my grandpa didn't have to go out of his way to plan a
|few hours at the gym every week, or eat healthy, or plan time in a
|quiet, peaceful environment/nature to de-stress, or plan IRL social
|events weeks or months ahead. It was all just inherently part of his
|life, but nowadays, the standards of our daily life are so insanely
|unhealthy, that we need to go out of our way to "work on our health"
|if we don't want to end up with 5 chronic illnesses or mental health
|conditions by age 30.
|u/Klickor - 1 day
|
|Low activity levels leads to low calorie expenditure which
|combined with the abundance of food that are as tasty as possible,
|often from putting as many calories as possible in them, that we
|have within arms reach at all times in a modern society, leads to
|people getting fat. Probably wouldn't be nearly as bad if we
|were as active as before or didn't have as much super tasty and
|caloric dense food available. But both have doomed modern
|population's to obesity unless we can come up with some good
|solutions.
|u/Immediate-Meeting-65 - 1 day
|
|Point 3 is a good one. Sports are so focused on success and youth
|leagues. There's not a whole lot of options for adults to just go
|play in a league for shits and giggles. The league's that do exist
|are often made up of former nearly pro's. So they still hold a level
|of skill that puts off most people from wanting to participate.
|u/transemacabre - 1 day
|
|Kids, especially boys, also used to play outside. Any town or city
|would have boys playing stickball in the streets if not baseball in
|the park. Now parents keep their boys inside and stick them in front
|of video games and we can't figure out why they're so fat. This
|past summer I was delighted to visit Port Washington on Long Island
|and saw a whole pack of tween boys all riding their bikes and
|skateboards together, probably 6-7 of them. That sight shouldn't be
|rare anymore.
|u/NegZer0 - 1 day
|
|This doesn't help, but it's not as much of a factor as you think
|it is - that sort of exercise doesn't burn that many calories.
|It's a contributing factor at best, those kids would probably
|still be getting fat if they were playing outside for an hour or
|two because of the extremely calorie-dense foods that they
|consume. Same reason someone who is significantly overweight
|generally can't solve it by hitting the gym for a few extra hours
|and needs to look at diet as well.
|u/Careless_Home1115 - 1 day
|
|>Same reason someone who is significantly overweight generally
|can't solve it by hitting the gym for a few extra hours and
|needs to look at diet as well. As someone who lost 60 lbs
|without working out, ALL I did was change my diet. I feel like
|DIET is 10x more important than working out. Working out helps
|you burn faster or enables you to consume more calories without
|going over your daily limit but in my experience most people
|overexaggerate how many calories working out actually burns and
|it is actually difficult to calculate. I think the biggest
|culprit with kids, is the fact that working parents are burnt
|out from work and there largely isn't a parent who stays at home
|anymore to make healthy meals for their children. Its working
|parents who opt for easier meals because of a time crunch. In
|my area there aren't even busses to cart kids to and from
|school. So parents take kids to school, work 6 to 8 hours, and a
|lot of them are in after school activities and it is 6 to 8pm by
|the time they are done with their regular day and are home for
|the day.
|u/chandy_dandy - 1 day
|
|What's crazy is I saw this coaching kids as young as 7. They were
|shockingly unfit.
|u/bytethesquirrel - 1 day
|
|> People are fat but calling them fat is mean. Telling a fat person
|to lose weight is like telling a depressed person to be happy.
|u/General_Mars - 18 hours
|
|You’re completely correct. It is a health issue and should be
|treated as such.
|u/solomons-mom - 1 day
|
|I have been watching since the 1980s as spending on food-away from
|home increased There are lots of variables in there, but the overall
|affects of removing consumers --literally in the case of food!---
|from the ingredients in the consumable product is problematic. Home
|ec classes were not considered a worthy use of time for HS kids.
|Every kid needed college prep to be a lawyer or MBA, right?
|u/poppermint_beppler - 1 day
|
|Agreed. I was lucky to get a food and nutrition class in highschool
|and it was one of the most useful classes I ever took. Still use
|stuff I learned in that class today, and am not overweight in my
|30s. We know there is a direct correlation between health and
|food, so I really think kids need that education. If no one ever
|teaches you how or what to cook, you may never start.
|u/nuisanceIV - 1 day
|
|I think a bigger problem is people being “taught” things but not
|really learning/utilizing the info. I feel like a weirdo when I talk
|about things I learned and still remember from college and HS. More
|focus was on passing/good scores more-so than becoming enlightened
|it always felt like. Oh and yeah no I don’t expect everything to be
|remembered. That’s a silly expectation.
|u/Arthur-Wintersight - 1 day
|
|I think it's actually reasonable to expect people to be *at least
|somewhat enlightened* after 13+ years of education. If someone can
|pass to the next grade 12 times in a row without being at least
|"somewhat enlightened," then the education system has failed...
|everyone. It failed them when it didn't hold them back a grade,
|and it failed everyone else by debasing academic credentials to
|the point of worthlessness. Even passing the 5th grade should
|have meaning to it - that you can read and write, and do basic
|arithmetic.
|u/IEatBabies - 1 day
|
|I feel like a lot more people than anyone wants to admit managed
|most of their way through school by just pure rote memorization of
|keywords and that they don't and never really did understand the
|vast majority of things they were taught. But stopping,
|identifying, and addressing all the people doing it to different
|extents at different times and not actually understanding just
|doesn't work well with either the horrible teacher-to-student
|ratios nor society wanting to pipeline people through education
|for as cheap as possible.
|u/ayatollahofdietcola_ - 1 day
|
|I made a similar observation while watching that Netflix Woodstock 99
|documentary Pretty much none of the attendees were overweight.
|But you show up to a music festival *now*? Forget it, literally
|everyone is overweight or obese And if anyone wants to argue that the
|people in that doc were skinny because they were young… you have not
|been to a college campus lately. I live near a college campus and
|they’re all obese too
|u/GoldSailfin - 1 day
|
|> I live near a college campus and they’re all obese too I am not
|trying to be offensive, but what part of the country are you in?
|u/Anne__Frank - 1 day
|
|We know what part of the country he's in
|u/CrownLikeAGravestone - 18 hours
|
|I'm not American - do you mind explaining for me?
|u/Anne__Frank - 17 hours
|
|South East and mid west are very fat
|u/qft - 1 day
|
|This man was zero percent worried about being offensive
|u/Octopus_ofthe_Desert - 1 day
|
|You're not wrong about that correlation, but please realize it
|is no longer a North vs. South argument, and the divide that has
|been driven through America this time is more about rural vs.
|city. It's all so stupid. Being forced to throw mud at each
|other when those that foment this disharmony deserve to be
|buried in it.
|u/Ban-Circumcision-Now - 1 day
|
|I took a trip to Japan for a few weeks, arriving back in the US
|airport was shocking when i realized I hadn’t seen an overweight
|person (by American standards) for weeks.
|u/-Chemist- - 1 day
|
|Yep. We went to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taipei this summer and
|pretty much everyone we saw there was a healthy weight. The U.S.
|is a total dumpster fire.
|u/transemacabre - 1 day
|
|Visit NYC, not many obese people here. Some chubby people but
|true obese people are rare, almost solely due to the walking we
|all have to do. Go an hour into New Jersey and holy shitttttt
|are people big.
|u/xanadumuse - 23 hours
|
|Go to Mexico. They’ve been in an obesity epidemic for quite some
|time. Thanks to Coca Cola. I think more thank 60% of their
|population is considered obese. Add fried food and all of the
|corn they eat and it’s just exponentially grown.
|u/shannah-kay - 1 day
|
|Living in Japan I've lost 90lbs in the last few years just from
|eating the school lunch basically. Even when I 'binge out' on the
|weekends it still ends up not being that bad because the food here
|just doesn't have all the additives. Also having more chances to
|exercise and move my body helps. It's so safe here that I don't
|worry at all about walking around by myself.
|u/KaiserNer0 - 1 day
|
|Back in school we learned, that if you go to the US for one year
|on a school exchange program, you will roughly gain 10kg. It was
|true for many of my peers.
|u/Alfa147x - 1 day
|
|This is definitely regional. I went to college in south GA then
|lived in NYC and now I’m LA.
|u/sayleanenlarge - 1 day
|
|Man, I was so slim in 99. Now I'm a bit podgy.
|u/TobysGrundlee - 1 day
|
|And they'll all tell you confidently about how flawed the BMI system
|is and how they totally don't adhere to it because they're all
|evidently 6'6 and 300 lbs of muscle.
|u/Skyblacker - 1 day
|
|A very overweight friend recently told me, "I'm just dense." Also,
|she's looking for a new home without stairs because they hurt and
|exhaust her. Sure, Jan.
|u/shannah-kay - 1 day
|
|To be fair I think a lot of obese people have body dysmorphia but
|in the opposite way. I always thought of myself as chubby and
|chunky when I was over 250 lbs as a 5'4 woman. It wasn't until I
|lost 90lbs and looked back at old photos I realized I was grossly
|obese. I have no clue how bad I was at that point though since
|there were so many other people bigger than me. Sure I couldn't
|run a mile and I thought it was normal to stop at multiple
|different fast food restaurants to pick up full meals at each to
|then take home and eat in one sitting but yeah I totally didn't
|have a problem. Not that far shaming is the solution or anything
|but where I live now (Japan) it's absolutely normal to get a stern
|talking to about your weight by, well, basically everyone. It's
|not seen as a bad thing, just them trying to help you.
|u/CrownLikeAGravestone - 18 hours
|
|Someone I know had a similar issue in reverse. She went from 140
|lbs to 230 lbs in 4 years or so, but she was _adamant_ that
|she'd always been this shape/size. I gently showed her some
|photos of herself from a few years beforehand - in retrospect I
|should have gotten some professional advice on that - and she
|was absolutely shocked.
|u/Ban-Circumcision-Now - 1 day
|
|It’s alarming to be a reasonably active/reasonable weight person
|in their 30’s and then have a friend younger than you get winded
|just going up a flight of stairs, this should not be normal
|u/CrownLikeAGravestone - 18 hours
|
|I've just turned 30 and I have friends younger than me who are
|already having joint issues in their knees/ankles due to
|obesity. It's tragic. I've tried in dozens of ways to help
|people with this (usually because they've asked) but it's clear
|that they need to _want_ the process of staying fit, not just
|the end result of becoming fit. I don't mind helping but if
|people ask I now tell them they need to see a therapist and then
|a dietician; I can only be there with them, I can't make it
|happen.
|u/istara - 1 day
|
|The normalisation of obesity is a problem. For example back in the
|day in the UK we had the sitcom Roseanne on TV. To us it was about a
|really fat/obese couple and their kids. My sense is that to
|Americans, it was just about a regular couple with their kids.
|These days there's huge condemnation of older programmes where the
|word "fat" is even used.
|u/malfive - 1 day
|
|They were considered fat in the US when it aired too (in the 90s).
|Idk about now
|u/enaK66 - 1 day
|
|I'd say that's pretty average american fat nowadays. I had to
|look the show up to remind myself what they looked like. I was
|expecting roseanne to be bigger, but I think my perception of
|fat has been skewed since those days.
|u/andydude44 - 1 day
|
|Roseanne was and always has been considered a meatball.
|Definitely not something considered normal in the US, or at
|least New England
|u/ChiliTacos - 1 day
|
|When that show first aired in the US, the fattest state at the
|time was less obese than the fittest state today.
|u/istara - 1 day
|
|Wow. That is some statistic.
|u/300ConfirmedGorillas - 1 day
|
|I often think about The Simpsons, in particular Homer. He's
|portrayed as being very overweight and out of shape, but as
|revealed in S07E07 (King-Size Homer), he's 239 pounds. Back in the
|late 80s and early 90s that was probably considered to be quite
|overweight. But by today's standards? It's just normal, if not
|maybe on the skinnier side.
|u/IEatBabies - 1 day
|
|Nah when that show aired in the US I think they were also
|considered really fat, or atleast I thought so at the time. But it
|wouldn't be too long after that before enough people were getting
|fat enough for being that fat to be not considered some sort of
|character quirk or comedic anchor.
|u/thex25986e - 1 day
|
|curbing or calling the normalization of anything "a problem" gets
|people very upset as they usually feel very personally attacked.
|u/ansiz - 1 day
|
|Any local Wal-Mart will give you the same experience with the bonus of
|a LIVE preview of Wall-E with about a dozen people riding around on
|those obesity scooters.
|u/rickstevesmoneybelt - 1 day
|
|Even the ones at the flea market can walk, drive, get themselves out
|of the house. There must be many more that can’t leave their houses.
|u/PeterMus - 1 day
|
|I went to a small school of about 500 but was always the biggest kid.
|I weighed 290 my senior year. But the guys would also gather around
|during weight lifting class to watch me because I could max many of
|the machines. I still enjoyed sports and activities but ate too much.
|I have younger cousins who have me beat by a mile in terms of weight
|at 18, but they're physically very weak because they vegetate playing
|video games 24/7 and struggle to walk a mile.
|u/Desirai - 1 day
|
|I don't have any kids but of course almost everyone ib my life does,
|and seeing 7 year old girls already having to wear bras or plus size
|juniors clothes, it makes me so sad. They shouldn't be this large this
|fast
|u/ZALIA_BALTA - 1 day
|
|Cities are also rarely walkable, which adds to the problem. This is
|the reason why people in the US have a much lower average number of
|steps per day compared to Europe.
|u/TheVenetianMask - 1 day
|
|I've always thought it's not an an accident cars keep getting bigger.
|People want to keep a "proportional" look.
|u/flukus - 1 day
|
|You see it in media from the 80s too, even stereo typical "fat guys"
|like John candy don't seem so big by today's standards.
|u/JJ650 - 1 day
|
|To be fair, John Candy is and was a big dude...even by today's
|standards. He just looked more out of place in the 80s and 90s.
|u/HumanDrinkingTea - 1 day
|
|I'm pretty sure by today's standards John Candy is still really,
|really fat.
|u/thenewyorkgod - 1 day
|
|Just curious, why specifically a flea market?
|u/Get_off_critter - 1 day
|
|Gosh I get so sad to see significantly overweight kids, like
|elementary age
|u/The_Last_Ball_Bender - 1 day
|
|> Go to a flea market in the U.S now on a weekend. That is a real eye-
|opener, to the current mass obesity phenomenon .. For me it's the
|double wide asses that are bigger than the shopping cart and barely
|fit down isles at Walmart
|u/UpstairsBeach8575 - 1 day
|
|My favorite movie of all time is Wall-E. I make so many jokes that the
|world is gonna turn into Wall-E one day. I wasn’t expecting to be
|right tho…
|u/tauntonlake - 1 day
|
|Wall-E + Idiocracy = 21st century
|u/digi57 - 22 hours
|
|You only have to walk from your couch to the door to get delivery from
|any restaurant. You don’t even have to walk across the parking lot
|anymore.
|u/AVeryHairyArea - 1 day
|
|"It's not my fault though! I got a thyroid issue!" - 3/4ths of
|Americans
|u/ArticulateRhinoceros - 1 day
|
|I was the fattest kid in my school growing up in the 90's. I was
|150lbs at 5'3". I'm now a healthy weight, but a 150lbs 15-year-old
|wouldn't shock anyone these days.
|u/Woodit - 1 day
|
|Most people don’t seem to have a good idea of how much they’re eating
|and especially drinking in terms of calories. It always shakes me to see
|grocery carts at the store filled with full sugar soda and other
|garbage. Parents are giving this to their children
|u/ReverendDizzle - 1 day
|
|A chocolate chip cookie from the Costco food court is 750 calories.
|I bet if you asked 100 people in a row to estimate how many calories
|are in the cookie (which isn't even that big of a cookie, size wise!)
|they wouldn't come close to guessing the right amount. The food
|court pizza has 700 calories a slice by the way. A 20 oz soda has 250
|calories. Now pretty much everyone can tell you "Well yeah, eating a
|slice of pizza, a cookie, and a cup of soda is not super healthy" but
|would they be able to guesstimate that it's, collectively, 1,700
|calories... around 2/3rds of the daily caloric intake needs of your
|average adult? Add in two more meals with similar American
|calories/portions and you're easily at 4-5,000 calories without even
|really realizing it. There are a lot of factors at play in why
|Americans have gained so much weight, but it sure doesn't help that
|food is so relatively cheap and the calorie density of said food is so
|hard to estimate.
|u/infernalmachine000 - 1 day
|
|750kcal for a cookie? Is it a big cookie?! In Canada we require
|calorie counts on all food now and it is quite informative
|u/meltingpnt - 1 day
|
|It's a 7 inch (18cm) cookie. So it is pretty big. I don't know
|why people are saying it's not that big. It's not some ginormous
|pizza sized cookie but it's a decent size
|u/Admirable-Job-7191 - 1 day
|
|That's not a cookie, that's a small cake for yourself.
|u/Zidji - 1 day
|
|Yes if that is what Americans call a small cookie I think we
|have more problems than calorie counting.
|u/harrisarah - 1 day
|
|I'm an american and just thinking about eating a cookie that
|big makes me nauseous. Then again I've never eaten
|anything from Costco whose whole schtick is grossly large
|amounts of everything, so it's not surprising that includes
|grossly large cookies. So I'm not that kind of American but
|there do seem to be millions of them out there
|u/njkmklkop - 22 hours
|
|> (18cm) cookie Is that seen as a normal thing to eat in the
|US? When I think of a cookie I think of something like 6-7cm in
|diameter. If I saw an 18cm cookie I'd see it as a joke item like
|"look at this ridiculously big cookie!".
|u/-Chicago- - 23 hours
|
|If you showed me a cookie with a diameter larger than the length
|of a dollar bill there is no way I'm guessing anything less than
|600 calories. Depending on how decadent it looks id probably top
|out my guess at 1000 calories.
|u/HAN-Br0L0 - 1 day
|
|The people saying it isn't big are smoking crack it's about 6 inch
|diameter and 3/4 of an inch thick.
|u/pfn0 - 1 day
|
|I'm curious, what is the intersection of those that say "it's
|not that big" and being overweight.
|u/DotJata - 22 hours
|
|I'd bet that venn diagram is just a circle. Kinda like a
|cookie.
|u/QouthTheCorvus - 1 day
|
|We can guess which portion of weight distribution those people
|fall into.
|u/fbiguy22 - 1 day
|
|A serving is also 1/4 of it. They even give you those dividers
|to cut them into quarters. I’m pretty sure they’re meant to be
|shared.
|u/clearwaterrev - 1 day
|
|It’s a giant cookie, much larger than the typical homemade one.
|u/HumanDrinkingTea - 1 day
|
|I don't know what Costco's cookie looks like and I don't know if
|you've ever been to Costco, but it's definitely a "thing" for
|everything at Costco to be huge.
|u/ActionPhilip - 1 day
|
|Canadian Costco connoisseur here. IIRC it's 800 calories. It's
|pretty big.
|u/_OrionPax_ - 1 day
|
|It's not even that big which is INSANE! 750 calories for a
|cookie...
|u/lavosprime - 1 day
|
|Are we thinking of the same cookie? The cookie at my Costco is
|huge.
|u/tollbearer - 1 day
|
|I'm also very confused. It's literally the biggest non-novelty
|cookie ive ever seen
|u/dodoaddict - 1 day
|
|I think this "not that big" is part of the problem
|u/UXyes - 1 day
|
|It’s huge bro
|u/pfn0 - 1 day
|
|I'm curious, what is the intersection of those that say "it's
|not that big" and being overweight.
|u/dodoaddict - 1 day
|
|The Venn diagram is more of a circle
|u/Seicair - 1 day
|
|It’s like four servings… a quarter of it seems like a reasonable
|amount to eat at once.
|u/_OrionPax_ - 1 day
|
|Maybe if you have self-discipline... Which is why I don't buy
|it when I go to Costco!
|u/screwcirclejerks - 1 day
|
|they're massive. crumbl has nothing on on costco cookies
|u/GrizzlyTrees - 1 day
|
|Just to clarify, 1700 calories are not 2/3rds of the daily needs,
|it's more like 6/7ths, or 85%. BTW, are the pizzas sliced in
|quarters there? If it's the usual eights, that is crazy.
|u/jamar030303 - 1 day
|
|It's sixths, I think.
|u/zbrew - 1 day
|
|It is sixths if you buy a single slice, which is where the 700+
|calories number comes from. If you buy a whole pizza they cut it
|into 12 slices. So a slice purchased individually is actually
|two slices of a full pizza.
|u/npsimons - 1 day
|
|Just to clarify, not everyone needs 2000 calories per day. There's
|a reason subs like r/1200isplenty were created. 5ft office
|workers don't need to eat as much as 6ft construction workers.
|u/turunambartanen - 1 day
|
|Calorie requirements vary drastically between people. Age, sex,
|size all play a big role. For a young male, 2600 kilocalories per
|day seem entirely reasonable. It's a good point to make though,
|because for someone else 1700 kcal may already be the daily
|maximum allowed if they want to keep their weight.
|u/IEatBabies - 1 day
|
|I thought I was a madlad for enjoying fractional units, but I got
|nothing on someone throwing out 6/7ths.
|u/Hi-kun - 1 day
|
|I recently did a long cycling tour in Japan. My daily calorie needs
|were above 4,000 cal a day. Those days included 100+ kilometres of
|cycling on a heavily loaded touring bike through the Japanese Alps.
|I was struggling to eat that much food and sometimes would order two
|meals in a restaurant just to get the amount of food I needed. I
|can't imagine what it means to eat up to 5,000 calories a day on a
|regular basis, without the exercise component. That is an incredible
|amount of food.
|u/jacob6875 - 1 day
|
|It's very easy when you count drinks. A lot of people start the
|day with a 700 calorie "coffee" and then drink 3-4 Sodas
|throughout the day. You can be at 1500 calories before you even
|eat anything.
|u/SyllabubDull7405 - 1 day
|
|I find it hard to believe that people drink 3-4 sodas a day!
|u/AlwaysBored123 - 1 day
|
|When I was in my early tween to end of teens that would be my
|average along with mostly candy for my diet. I am pretty
|strict with my food choices now, I’m sure I lost a few years
|of my life from how my younger self ate.
|u/killslayer - 1 day
|
|Some people don’t drink water at all. It’s just soda instead
|u/themonicastone - 1 day
|
|Growing up I would have absolutely had at least that much,
|plus a couple of chocolate milks and maybe some fruit punch.
|Water? Never
|u/Outrageous_Tie8471 - 1 day
|
|I had to scold my boyfriend recently for drinking *multiple* of
|the free mocha latte whatever sugar filled coffee drinks in a
|day at his new job. (He is trying to lose weight.) I was like
|"you realize that three of these is probably every calorie you
|need for the day???" Drinking calories to such excess is insane
|to me. I'll have a glass of juice or a soda once in a while and
|I always get my annual pumpkin spice latte but those things are
|treats, not an actual source of hydration. So many people don't
|"like" water and need to fill it with weird sugar-y mix-ins. It
|boggles my mind. It's literally water!
|u/_waterdog9_ - 1 day
|
|When I was thruhiking, I burned 3500-4000 cal a day. Coming into
|town, I'd aim to have as little food as possible left over so my
|pack was around 10-12lb. Leaving town, packed full of food for the
|next 3-5 days, I once weighed my pack at 34lb. Meaning, 24lb of
|all fairly calorie dense foods like peanut butter and instant
|noodles.
|u/FuzzyCuddlyBunny - 1 day
|
|> Coming into town, I'd aim to have as little food as possible
|left over so my pack was around 10-12lb. Leaving town, packed
|full of food for the next 3-5 days, I once weighed my pack at
|34lb. Meaning, 24lb of all fairly calorie dense foods like
|peanut butter and instant noodles. I strongly suspect your base
|weight is underestimated or your packed weight is including
|water as well as food, or possibly both. I've packed 7000
|calories a day for a full 6 days and it was still only 18
|pounds. Typical recommendation for people going by weight
|instead of calories is 1.5-2 lbs per day.
|u/_waterdog9_ - 1 day
|
|Base weight 8.2lb (I'd share the lighterpack if I still had
|it) so we can be generous and round to 13lb total with 2l
|water. I've always found 1.5-2lb per day to be too little -
|4000cal of clif bars is 2.4lb; 4000cal of instant noodles is
|2lb but then you either need more fuel or you're carrying an
|extra 8-12oz water half the day to cold soak. Mix in some more
|palatable foods like tortillas and knorr sides, over pack
|slightly, and you hit 20+lb easily.
|u/geopede - 1 day
|
|Imagine eating that much every day just to not lose weight.
|u/y0buba123 - 1 day
|
|There’s probably some super calorifically dense foods that people
|are eating though. If they’re eating a lot of really sugary carbs,
|I can imagine that adds up quite quickly.
|u/MadTube - 1 day
|
|I started biking heavily about a year and a half ago. Right now, I
|average about 100-150 miles per week. At that time, I also
|drastically reduced my calorie intake. The result was almost a 50
|pound loss in a few months. Now I have always done intermittent
|fasting, meaning my first meal of the day was dinner. Over the
|years, my body has adapted to that. But I’ll be damned if I was
|hit with massive low sugar episodes because of the fasting
|combined with biking. Now I still bike 5 days a week. But I have
|upped my calorie intake a bunch compared to when I started. The
|change is jarring to think.
|u/ArticulateRhinoceros - 1 day
|
|Here's one that shocks people, a medium-sized apple is 100 calories,
|a medium banana about 120. I know so many people who treat
|"healthy" foods like they're calorie-free.
|u/litlelotte - 1 day
|
|When I did weight watchers years ago, fruits and veggies were
|listed as zero points. There were several people in my group who
|were eating 15+ pieces of fruit a day and couldn't understand why
|they weren't continuing to lose weight because they were always
|under their daily points. I showed one of them that eating 10
|bananas was 1200 extra calories that she wasn't accounting for and
|she still wasn't grasping the concept
|u/hpsd - 1 day
|
|It’s still a great snack though compared to many other options. I
|could easily destroy a few cookies as a snack which would be 5x
|the calories(if not more) whilst have very little nutritional
|benefit. There is no way I am eating more than 2 apples as a
|snack and most of the time 1 is enough. Just don’t turn into a
|juice because then you can easily consume multiple pieces of fruit
|like it’s nothing.
|u/PunnyBanana - 1 day
|
|I don't know which caused the other but I know that with Weight
|Watchers that those types of foods have zero points (effectively
|treated as being zero calorie).
|u/LaNague - 1 day
|
|i guess because they prevent you from doing worse choices. If
|you eat 1 whole apple or banana normally, you save 200+ calories
|from eating 3 of them in a smoothie. Stuff like that. Really
|overweight people dont need to stop eating, they just need to
|eat better stuff.
|u/ArticulateRhinoceros - 1 day
|
|I've never been on WW but I get advertised their facebook group
|a lot on FB and one time I added up the calories in one serving
|of a "low point" dinner that people were treating like it was
|basically calorie-free. It was over 800 calories but something
|like 4 points. People were talking about how they could have
|2-3 servings. I posted the calorie count and said they should
|pay more attention to that than imaginary points and was
|immediately banned from posting again.
|u/PloppyPants9000 - 1 day
|
|Just to give everyone some context on how much 1,000 calories are… I
|work out like a beast for an hour, doing high intensity interval
|training — burpees, pushups, squats, squat jumps, jumping jacks,
|high knees, leg lifts, bicycle crunches, situps, hollow hold, V ups,
|and a few others. I am soaked with sweat. Then I do hard kick boxing
|for a half hour. At the end, I am LUCKY if I burned 1,000 calories.
|I am gasping for breath and utterly exhausted. Now, if that sounds
|exhausting and a single cookie is 750 calories, that costs 45
|minutes of that work out. If you dont wanna pay the workout cost of
|that cookie, dont eat it! and if you eat it and dont pay the cost,
|well… then your waist line will pay it instead. And thats why 80% of
|americans are now obese…
|u/slimeyellow - 1 day
|
|Double CHUCNK chocolate Cookie
|u/reinadelacempasuchil - 1 day
|
|I kinda take umbrage with that statement. Caveats here that I’m not
|a very large person but I’ve bought one of those cookies and they’re
|massive. Literally, you can feel the heft of the mass of the cookie
|in your hand. While I love sweets and can put away my fair share of
|desserts, I can’t finish one of those cookies, even if I haven’t
|eaten anything else that day. I always end up splitting it with
|someone else, and a 325 cal dessert, while large, is not totally
|unreasonable as an occasional treat.
|u/TruffelTroll666 - 1 day
|
|That's nuts. I really struggle to get 4k calories in daily in
|Europe, because everything has so little
|u/Hand_Sanitizer3000 - 1 day
|
|700 calories per slice is wild
|u/Esreversti - 1 day
|
|That reminds me of when I was at a Costco eating a slice of pizza.
|Sitting me were a family with young kids. They parents were a bit
|larger than the kids who were probably in the 7 to 13 year range.
|One of the kids asks if he can have ice cream and was told by a
|parent that they can have ice cream when they finish their strong
|food. Their strong food being pizza as they sipped on a soda.
|Kinda drives me nuts when kids have to eat everything in front of
|them to have dessert and you see the results of this with kids who
|have obesity. One kid I saw repeated their parent they're a big girl
|with a big appetite and the parent reinforced it. One look at the
|family and along with what they're eating and it'll stand out.
|Makes me sad to see so many kids eating while on their tablets.
|Disconnected from the adults on top of eating something like 20 to
|30% more calories when eating while watching a show/movie from a
|study I had read. Also went out on a post dinner walk with some
|kids between 7 and 11 who don't get much exercise and tired out
|after running for literally fifteen seconds. Planning to generally
|include my kids into dinner, put down the tablets when eating at
|least, and participate in exercise and sports with them. Still
|gotta work on my overuse of electronics which is an issue that
|bothers me.
|u/plasmaBearcat - 1 day
|
|Yes! You have to avoid drinking calories. Easy way to cut out
|unnecessary calorie intake.
|u/demokiii34 - 1 day
|
|To no surprise when tryin to gaining/bulk weight it is strongly
|encourage to drink those last 100-1000 calories bc intake is easier
|u/ActionPhilip - 1 day
|
|When I diet coach people, they generally fit into two categories:
|skinny and want to gain weight or fat and want to lose weight. The
|first piece of advice for both is exactly the same. If you want to
|lose weight, stop drinking your calories. If you want to gain
|weight, start drinking calories.
|u/Septopuss7 - 1 day
|
|First words out of my mouth when someone mentions losing weight and
|they invariably cannot help themselves and get defensive about it
|like I'm the one who wanted them to lose the weight or something?
|u/lorddumpy - 1 day
|
|Yeah, I've gotten pushback when I suggest people should drink
|water. Some people are conditioned to only drink soda, especially
|in poorer backgrounds which is really sad.
|u/jacob6875 - 1 day
|
|I lost like 40lbs changing nothing but cutting out all drinks
|that had calories. I don't even miss soda. Can still have all
|kinds of coffee, tea, flavored waters etc.
|u/Septopuss7 - 1 day
|
|Hell yeah, that's what I'm talking about
|u/SouthernNegatronics - 1 day
|
|You can still drink soda but at least get the sugar free stuff.
|It costs the same so being poor isn't even an excuse.
|u/GrizzlyTrees - 1 day
|
|Yep, as a type 1 diabetic who used to drink a lot of juices
|before diagnosis, finding a sugar free replacement for soft
|drinks was the easiest change in my diet. Now go find low carb
|version of breakfast cereals, that's a real challenge.
|u/LongJohnSelenium - 1 day
|
|I switched when I was around 30 and realized I was drinking a
|thousand calories of sugar a day. Diet takes about 2 weeks to
|get used to then its fine, and after a few months you won't
|even like regular soda much.
|u/brittneyacook - 1 day
|
|My mom still insists that she doesn’t eat much and doesn’t know why
|she gains weight, even though I had her track her calorie consumption
|for one day a few years ago and it was well over maintenance. At the
|end of the day, people have to want to change and have to do it
|themselves
|u/Pinkmongoose - 1 day
|
|A family member complained this year that she gained 9 pounds in a
|month and was really worried. Her doctor dismissed her and said it
|was her diet; she was upset bc she said she was watching what she
|ate and that wasn’t it. So she decided to photograph everything she
|ate so she could show her doctor at the next visit. It helped her
|realize it was definitely her diet. I’m also shocked by how many
|people eat out or door dash food multiple times a week. Not good for
|your weight or your pocketbook.
|u/seedsnearth - 1 day
|
|I love this idea of photographing your food for your doctor.
|u/brittneyacook - 1 day
|
|I’m not gonna lie, I do get food delivered a lot but it usually
|lasts me for 2-3 meals because of the portion sizes. But you’re
|absolutely right, it’s so expensive. And I’m glad your family
|member finally saw the light!
|u/Elliebird704 - 1 day
|
|You can eat very, very little and still be packing away too many
|calories, depending on what you're eating. And it's not always the
|obvious stuff, like of course if you snack on cookies you're eating
|a lot of calories in a very small portion of food, but even stuff
|that we perceive as healthy can be surprisingly calorie dense and
|easy to go overboard with.
|u/brittneyacook - 1 day
|
|I’m well aware of this (used to be nearly 300 lbs, now averaging
|around 127 lbs) and I’ve explained it to her but she refuses to
|accept it.
|u/Polymersion - 1 day
|
|>she doesn’t eat much She may mean that she eats a small percentage
|of what it would take to not be hungry. That, at scale, seems to
|indicate an issue with the food supply.
|u/Electronic-Bit-2365 - 1 day
|
|It indicates too much caloric density and not enough fiber.
|u/EscapeParticular8743 - 1 day
|
|Cant help some people. My grandma is obese with fucked up knees.
|Wonders why her heart is so weak, I tell her that she is barely
|moving and overweight, but no, lets spend another fortune on voodoo
|doctors that might find the problem…
|u/PumpkinPieIsGreat - 1 day
|
|I was shocked when I first looked at an iced coffee label. I don't
|think it's the caffeine that keeps people coming back for more, it's
|the sugar.
|u/asielen - 1 day
|
|Seems we have lost our ability to tolerate bitter flavors. Good
|coffee doesn't even really need sugar or milk. Especially when iced.
|Black cold brew or iced americans are so good on their own.
|u/Gizogin - 1 day
|
|Food standards in the US are also lax. Someone in the US can eat
|exactly the same foods - down to the exact *brand* - as someone in the
|EU and end up with more sugar.
|u/PaulieNutwalls - 1 day
|
|Blown a lot of people's minds by pointing out to them the lowest
|calorie way of drinking alcohol is shots, and a shot is about 100
|calories no matter what you're drinking. A night out drinking 5 or 6
|drinks is easily over 700 calories and potentially a lot more
|depending on what you were drinking.
|u/Karsa69420 - 1 day
|
|This so much. Been counting calories for about a year and a half now.
|It’s shocking. Once I cut out soda it’s was an easy 1K-1.5K less
|calories a day. Beer is another calorie black hole and I’ve been
|working to limit how much of that I consume.
|u/Woodit - 1 day
|
|When I was cutting hard last year I swapped beer for vodka & soda
|water (the official drink of AA)
|u/TheLonelySnail - 1 day
|
|I started on my weight loss quest with r/LoseIt a food scale and a
|people scale. The amount a ‘serving’ of things are boggles the mind!
|I’m down 50 pounds and got more to go, but it’s just that - massive
|portions are the norm. Massive calories are the norm.
|u/Octopus_ofthe_Desert - 1 day
|
|Have you seen people fitting packs of soda onto the sides of carts
|like saddlebags? It's an ingenious way to save space, but damn.
|There are better uses for human intellect
|u/TfWashington - 1 day
|
|They have no idea how much they're eating and have no idea how little
|movement they're doing daily. Most of an average American's day is
|spent sitting/laying down. I believe most Americans walk 1-2 miles a
|day when they should be doing at least 5
|u/blueooze - 1 day
|
|Carts full of boxes and packages. Zero raw ingredients. Not even
|chicken. Instead it will be Tyson BBQ glazed fried tendies
|u/uCodeSherpa - 1 day
|
|The Overton window is so crazily shifted on weight as well and that
|really doesn’t help. I am barely overweight (25.1 BMI) and people
|tell me I am too skinny. Like what? In before “BmI iS a BaD MEAsuRe
|of HeALtH!!!!1!1!2!1”: BMI is fine. Shut up.
|u/pt199990 - 1 day
|
|It's perfectly fine for sedentary people. But it doesn't take into
|account the differences in density between muscle and fat, which is
|why two people who weigh 200lbs can look vastly different. The
|people who say it's bad are wrong, but not wholly so.
|u/DevSynth - 1 day
|
|Every time I try to get a drink at walmart, the amount of sugar in
|those mfs astounds me. I don't even buy drinks anymore, I just drink
|water. As a kid, I was told that there's sugar in everything in the US
|and I'm starting to (already did) see that it's more than true. I just
|avoid most grocery store items now unless they're organic. Yeah
|sometimes I'll drink some almond milk or oatmilk but hey, sometimes
|you gotta, I'm under 170 pounds and super fit.
|u/horseman5K - 1 day
|
|Soda machines in schools should be banned
|u/SaraJuno - 1 day
|
|I know this gets repeated a lot by outsiders, but as someone from
|Europe I can't stress enough how shocking US food culture / portions
|are. The huge portions, the overeating, the laundry list of early-
|death ingredients in practically everything, the unavailability of
|normal healthy options, the aggressive marketing of the worst foods to
|children and low-income folk specifically, the drive-through culture,
|the eternal aisles of a million different 'brands' all packaging the
|exact same slop, the all you can eat buffets, the 'eat a potentially
|heart attack inducing amount of food within 30 minutes and it's free'
|competitions. And on top of all that, I've often got the impression of
|a strange sense of national pride in overeating and being overweight,
|as if it just another facet of the 'extreme / larger than life'
|category that makes America great. I really hope things turn around
|somehow.
|u/AdDisastrous6738 - 23 hours
|
|Don’t forget the purposely misleading serving sizes. For instance, at
|a convenience store I saw a package of 4 Oreos but the recommended
|serving size was 3 cookies. Like anyone is going to leave a single
|cookie in the pack. There’s some extra calories you don’t realize
|you’re getting. Also ice cream is a big offender. Huge tub of ice
|cream but the serving size is half a cup.
|u/SlowUrRoill - 1 day
|
|And when you track calories people are like totally surprised and
|almost look at you as if you are some prude. I’ve been argued against
|about counting my calorie intake
|u/Leigh91 - 1 day
|
|My biggest downfall is sugar, so I’ve made a rule in my house that if I
|want a dessert or sweet snack, then I have to make it myself from
|scratch. Most of the time I’m too tried, so it works. I also downsized
|all of my kitchen equipment to make smaller portions of everything. I
|cut all of my recipes in half And lastly, keeping even moderately
|active does a lot to keep hunger at bay. Most people eat out of sheer
|boredom.
|u/SemanticTriangle - 1 day
|
|Pretty much every processed food in the US loaded with fructose. It's
|incredibly noticeable as a foreigner. You move to the US or visit for
|a while and you practically feel your gut bacteria populations shift,
|and again when you leave. The only way to minimise it is to only buy
|unprocessed food, but most folks just don't have time for that for
|everything. So, all fat.
|u/Leigh91 - 1 day
|
|I have to strike a very delicate balance with my job. I’m an
|archaeologist in the US, so I’m on the road most of the time. I’m in
|the south, and a lot of my projects are in rural areas that have
|maybe one grocery store in town, so you have to eat what you can
|get. In general, though, I just try to pack the basics like jerky,
|trail mix, and a jar of pickles as my snacks. When I get home
|I feel like I need to detox and don’t eat anything other than
|organic vegetables and meat, maybe the occasional bone broth stew.
|Anything with high nutritional value.
|u/Polymersion - 1 day
|
|Makes me wonder if you've ever worked with my friend in Arizona,
|she started doing fieldwork like two years ago and this is exactly
|how she describes it. She's also a martial artist (Krav) but
|obviously can't go to her gym during rotation
|u/Leigh91 - 1 day
|
|Probably not then, I haven’t worked in Arizona yet! So far I’ve
|hit Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee for
|field work. But New Mexico and Arizona would be a dream.
|Southwest archaeology is amazing!
|u/Powerful_Artist - 1 day
|
|Even our bread has way too much sugar
|u/Tall_poppee - 1 day
|
|Yes, even bread marketed as healthy "Dave's Killer Bread Organic
|100% whole wheat" has sugar as the third ingredient (and, that's 4
|grams of added sugars, not a trivial amount). I guess at least
|it's good they use organic cane sugar.
|u/Powerful_Artist - 1 day
|
|ya you have to buy low carb bread to get normal levels of sugar
|it seems. But I just try to avoid bread anyway, try not to eat
|it much
|u/Pksnc - 1 day
|
|I found a sugar free bread in my grocery store and love it. They
|didn’t have it one day so I bought the supposedly “healthy”
|whole grain bread. I made a sandwich with the new bread and
|couldn’t eat it, the bread tasted like pure sugar.
|u/Lady_bro_ac - 1 day
|
|I moved to the US 20 years ago, and still will never get used to
|how sugary the bread is here. It’s damn near impossible to find
|ready made bread that isn’t freakishly sweet Same for most
|things, even things like candy bars are significantly sweeter than
|elsewhere. It’s like the base level for sugar is significantly
|higher than other countries for pretty much every item of
|processed food
|u/lorddumpy - 1 day
|
|a coworker had a NOS energy drink with no joke 51 grams of sugar
|a serving. Something like 102% of your daily amount. We need
|health warning labels or some kind of sugar tax, it is so out of
|hand.
|u/excaliburxvii - 1 day
|
|Sugar is a drug and America's tolerance is extremely high.
|u/Acceptable-Bell142 - 1 day
|
|The recommended maximum amount of added sugar is 29g per day.
|So it's about 176% of the maximum intake and probably 5 times
|the amount that you should be eating.
|u/ROGUERUMBA - 1 day
|
|I usually get sourdough bread because most brands, at least
|where I live, don't have sugar, or maybe it's listed as an
|ingredient but it's less than 1 gram. Putting sugar in sourdough
|bread would kind of defeat the purpose, so I'm guessing that's
|why it doesn't usually have it. Other than that, I believe fresh
|baked bread at the grocery stores tends to be ok (of course you
|can always ask if they add sugar to it). Maybe the bakery
|section could slice it for you, or maybe there's a bread slicer
|that you can get that will slice a whole loaf all at once, like
|one for regular at home use not an industrial one. For candy,
|you could try Tony's chocolate. Not sure if there's more sugar
|in the bars here than in kther countries, but there's no corn
|syrup (at least in the basic bars) and it's pretty good quality.
|The price is also not bad considering the size of the bar.
|Tony's chocolate is based in Norway (I think) and they didn't
|start selling it here until 2017 or something, so you may not
|have noticed it before. I definitely love my sweets but don't
|crave them like I used to since I rarely eat things with corn
|syrup nowadays. Seems like regular sugar just isn't as
|addictive.
|u/sayleanenlarge - 1 day
|
|You're bread tasted odd to me. More like brioche. It didn't suit
|sandwiches, but it wasn't all the bread. It was really odd buying
|what I thought would make a good sandwich and it was sweet instead
|of savoury. But even none sugary bread converts to sugar when you
|eat it, so our bread isn't the best for you either.
|u/deja-roo - 1 day
|
|My recent revelation is that bread is so incredibly easy to make
|there's literally no reason to buy it
|u/TummyDrums - 1 day
|
|Regardless, your body breaks more complex carbs down into sugar
|anyway. It's just a slow release instead of the sugar hitting all
|at once. We need less carbs in general.
|u/deja-roo - 1 day
|
|While that's true, there's a separate problem in that you get
|used to the sweetness, and it has addictive properties, so it
|exacerbates the problem even outside of eating bread.
|u/BoxFullOfFoxes2 - 1 day
|
|> The only way to minimise it is to only buy unprocessed food, but
|most folks just don't have time for that for everything. So, all
|fat. It would be irresponsible to ignore that these foods are often
|*prohibitively* expensive for many, even before the current price
|gouging. I would argue that's the bigger problem.
|u/varistance - 1 day
|
|If they’re even available. Grocery deserts are absolutely a thing.
|u/ranged_ - 1 day
|
|It's extremely noticeable as an American if you cut added sugar and
|processed food for a month or two. I can hardly stomach a cookie
|now, the sweet tooth has disappeared.
|u/madman19 - 1 day
|
|Keeping active makes you less hungry? I can definitely judge my recent
|activity level by how hungry I am.
|u/Leigh91 - 1 day
|
|Well, for me, at least. If I’m hiking or just walking around, I tend
|to not even notice if I’m hungry.
|u/dagit - 1 day
|
|This matches the science. Exercise helps you feel full up to a
|certain amount of it then after that it makes you hungrier. The
|amount that makes you hungrier is more than most of us are
|getting. Like you'd probably have to be an endurance athlete or
|making a point to walk like a couple hours a day to reach that
|point.
|u/Powerful_Artist - 1 day
|
|I used to hate sparkling water until I cut out soda and found a few
|brands/flavors that were pretty good. Its still kinda mediocre imo,
|but its a great alternative to sugary soda.
|u/Leigh91 - 1 day
|
|It is! I went that route for the same reason. Now I only drink
|water, and the occasional glass of orange juice. I’ve made it a
|habit to take sips of water between bites - gets me my daily water
| intake, and it forces me to eat more slowly.
|u/Powerful_Artist - 1 day
|
|Ya I used to put sugar in my coffee so I cut that out, that helps
|for me. Ill drink a soda sometimes but very rarely.
|u/kmn493 - 1 day
|
|I'm in the opposite boat. Being sedentary helps me conserve energy and
|not get hungry. Be distracted with games and videos all day and I
|won't eat until 2pm. But if I start moving early and go out somewhere
|then I'll want breakfast or I'll be hungry.
|u/crackeddryice - 1 day
|
|I made it a rule in my life--no more sugar. I can't just have a
|little, because if I do, then I start to make excuses for having a
|little more. So, I dropped it five years ago. Some might think, 'Oh,
|but you get sugar in foods like spaghetti sauce and just don't know
|it', Nope. The very few processed foods I eat have no sugar.
|u/VirtualMatter2 - 1 day
|
|Filling your plate half with vegetables or salad also helps. Quarter
|carbs and quarter protein. And don't get seconds.
|u/GrubberBandit - 1 day
|
|I've lost 60 pounds this year going sugar-free unless I can make it
|out of scratch. Tastes way better for the calories too
|u/harrisarah - 1 day
|
|I just got a 7" pie plate and I'm so happy. Perfect for half-sized
|pies. I love baking but with just two of us in the house half or
|quarter sized recipes of treats are the best. I do not need to be
|eating half a pie every time I make one! So the 7" pie plate is
|amazing
|u/FrancoManiac - 1 day
|
|Half of our adult population can't read past a sixth-grade level. Who
|knows what percentage is merely the newest iteration of
|intergenerational poverty? Hell, we're a nation where your ZIP code is
|still a pretty spot-on determinant of your future wealth, health, and
|likelihood of going to prison. Couple this with low-paying wages,
|intense cultural strife/division, and climate anxiety — anxiety which I
|suspect is playing a larger role in our day-to-day than what we
|presently understand — and I'm surprised that our obesity rates aren't
|higher!
|u/DrDankDankDank - 1 day
|
|The people need to be made to understand that there’s a class war
|going on and everyone but the wealthy are losing badly. We have to
|unite around our economic commonalities. Too bad there’s whole
|propaganda networks setup to dissuade this kind of thinking.
|u/ASexual-Buff-Baboon - 1 day
|
|The fact that minimum wage workers went from heroes Necessary for
|the economy back to wage slaves in only a couple years solidifies
|my belief the rich have already won that war
|u/MediocrePotato44 - 1 day
|
|A couple of years? That acknowledgement was gone within a few
|months.
|u/Bo_banders - 1 day
|
|Weren’t there multiple significant nurses strikes *during* the
|pandemic? The narrative shifted their portryal as “heroes” to
|“opportunistic leeches” in a heartbeat.
|u/woolfchick75 - 1 day
|
|The book "Nickled and Dimed" came out in 2000. It might have been
|went the idea of working poor became mainstream.
|u/Normal_Package_641 - 1 day
|
|Just about every issue in our country stems from wealth inequality.
|Politicians won't talk about it because they're part of the party.
|u/Laiko_Kairen - 1 day
|
|>Just about every issue in our country stems from wealth
|inequality. Politicians won't talk about it because they're part
|of the party. Just cut to the chase and quote Karl Marx. “The
|history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
|struggles”. There has been a very large response to that
|statement, not always positive. It's an overly reductive lens
|through which to view the world that necessarily ignores ideology
|and human nature in order to force a narrative.
|u/duffstoic - 1 day
|
|Hell yea, no war but class war
|u/fireintolight - 1 day
|
|The class war is over, it ended decades ago. Our education system
|was broken, workers rights are all but gone, political power rests
|solely in oligarchs hands. The majority of people in this country
|wouldn’t even understand the phrase economic commonalities.
|u/rockemsockemcocksock - 1 day
|
|And we’re all forced to drive and there’s no public transportation
|outside big cities. I feel like we’d have less obesity if our cities
|and towns were more walkable
|u/redsleepingbooty - 1 day
|
|And it’s only going to get worse over the next four years. Almost like
|this was all on purpose….
|u/shiruken - 1 day
|
|Direct link to the peer-reviewed study: [GBD 2021 US Obesity Forecasting
|Collaborators, National-level and state-level prevalence of overweight
|and obesity among children, adolescents, and adults in the USA,
|1990–2021, and forecasts up to 2050, *The Lancet*
|(2024).](https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01548-4) * Comment: [The
|obesity crisis in the USA: why are there no signs of plateauing
|yet?](https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)02467-X) Commentary from
|the authors about using BMI: > The paper defined “overweight” adults as
|those who were age 25 and over with a body mass index at or over 25, and
|“obese” adults as those with a B.M.I. at or over 30. The authors
|acknowledged that B.M.I. is an imperfect measure that may not capture
|variations in body structure across the population. But from a
|scientific perspective, experts said, B.M.I. is correlated with other
|measures of body fat and is a practical tool for studying it at a
|population level. > > The authors found a steady increase in the share
|of people who are overweight or obese over the past three decades. The
|rate of obesity in particular rose steeply, doubling in adults between
|1990 and 2021 to more than 40 percent — and nearly tripling, to 29
|percent, among girls and women aged 15 to 24.
|u/colcardaki - 1 day
|
|I wonder if this figure helps largely explain the corresponding
|increase in cancer amongst the population? I know it’s just
|correlation, I’m sure plastics may have something to do with it, but
|the older generations had high exposure to toxics before we had any
|regulatory structures but generally weren’t overweight.
|u/WigglumsBarnaby - 1 day
|
|Obesity is a known cancer cause so it's partially responsible but
|only for a certain types. I'm sure the rise in colorectal cancer is
|related to diet but not necessarily obesity.
|u/TruthOrTruthy - 1 day
|
|Thank you for directly linking to the study. As usual, the single
|sentence summary does a poor job of showing the real patterns, but the
|temporal pattern is quite alarming. Check out Figure 3 — all debate
|about borderline BMI aside (ie “overweight but not obese”), the clear
|trend in males is a reduction in “overweight” adults over time, with a
|much faster increase in “obese” males - ie obesity goes from ~19% in
|1990 to ~40% in 2021. Females similarly go from ~22% to ~45% obese.
|In other words we’ve seen a doubling of the proportion of obese adults
|in the last thirty years. Scary! But rolling in the “over weight”
|category erodes the trend and invites BMI pedantry.
|u/NKGra - 1 day
|
|Knowing that this is BMI is super important, as we know underestimates
|obesity by around a factor of 2 as it has quite a low sensitivity
|(around half false negatives).
|u/thatmikeguy - 1 day
|
|Mostly the garbage that is considered "food".
|u/rjcarr - 1 day
|
|Yeah, processed food is so calorically dense. We're more sedentary
|than ever, sure, but it's really the processed foods that are killing
|us. You can eat 100 calories in 5 seconds but it takes 10 minutes of
|running to burn that off.
|u/PaulieNutwalls - 1 day
|
|I feel like processed doesn't really make a big difference. Anything
|fried is a ton more calories. Anything super fatty or carby is high
|calorie. A McDonald's triple cheeseburger is mega processed and is
|\~450 calories, if you skip the fries that's a pretty reasonable
|amount of calories for a meal. Even with a small fry bumping it to
|680 you're still in a good spot calorically.
|u/rjcarr - 1 day
|
|Sure, if people just ate that meal it’d be fine. But then they go
|eat cookies. Or chips. Or soda. It adds up super fast.
|u/PennilessPirate - 20 hours
|
|McDonald’s fries in the UK contains 3 ingredients. The same McDonald’s
|fries in the US contains 19 ingredients - one of them a derivative of
|formaldehyde (a chemical used to preserve dead bodies). So yeah,
|when all of our food is loaded with sugar and artificial
|preservatives, it’s no wonder 3/4 of the population is obese.
|u/gymleader_michael - 1 day
|
|I went to the doctors. They said I was obese. They said it very
|nonchalantly and kind of just didn't care. Went back in for a checkup
|and they were surprised I lost weight and asked if it was intentional. I
|told them yeah. It's like they didn't expect someone would actually
|start making an effort to lose weight after being told they are obese. I
|honestly think doctors have stopped really caring or trying to convince
|people to lose weight because a lot of people don't bother and can get
|sensitive.
|u/Bdanie6 - 1 day
|
|They ask if it was intentional, because unintentional weight loss is
|typically the first sign of cancer. And research shows “recommending
|diet and exercise” doesn’t work 99% of the time. It’s shifting more
|towards pharmaceuticals like the GLP1s, since they have better data
|u/RevolutionLittle4636 - 1 day
|
|90% of obese patients will fail to successfully lose any weight so yes
|a doctor can get demotivated to even bother. Any the oversensitivity
|is real as well. I've had many patients report me for using the "O"
|word.
|u/SeashellDolphin2020 - 23 hours
|
|It's known that it's hard to permanently keep the weight off after
|gaining it.
|u/Particular-Annual853 - 1 day
|
|Making changes takes so much will power. Will power many people don't
|have because life is already kinda hard on them, so of course they
|turn to things that give them comfort, like food. Trying to reach a
|healthy weight deserves recognition. I hope you can be a little proud
|on yourself for that.
|u/FloridaGatorMan - 1 day
|
|DISCLAIMER: Diet has a bigger effect on weight than exercise. If you
|comment the same argument that it's more diet than exercise then you
|missed my entire point, and ignored my edit at the end of my comment.
|For years it was diet but now I think inactivity has become a larger
|factor across the board than maybe any other time. Especially with so
|many people working from home. I know on days when I have a lot of
|zoom meetings and a lot of work, it might hit 5:00 pm before I have 1k
|steps. Couple that with schools axing nearly all after school programs
|that aren’t organized sports, and you get basically families across the
|country who might get 10k steps a day combined. Then, add in the final
|kicker which is rising food prices and larger families have no choice
|and/or fall into the habit of choosing higher calorie density to get by.
|Edit: This sure got some responses. To be clear - I am not saying
|everyone should start exercising and then this wouldn't be a problem.
|I'm saying sustained inactivity is detrimental to endocrine system, risk
|of diabetes, and cardiovascular health. That in turn can lead to further
|inactivity, health complications, and snowball weight gain. Don't
|exercise because people will say it make you lose weight. Exercise
|because it make your body function better. At the very least when it
|functions better, you feel better, when you feel better you are more
|likely to seek additional beneficial activities. Really - my only point
|was that diet has been a serious problem for some time now. I'm
|suggesting on top of that inactivity has become a rapidly rising
|problem.
|u/Pegasus7915 - 1 day
|
|I'm a janitor and walk about 25k to 30k steps a day. I'm still 20
|pounds overweight. Americans make poor food choices, but are also
|given a bunch of processed slop to eat. We add unnecessary chemicals
|to everything. We really need to work on our diets.
|u/SpiceEarl - 1 day
|
|You may not think the walking is helping, but imagine how much you
|would weigh with your current diet, if you worked a sedentary job.
|Likely that you would be at least 50 pounds overweight, if not more.
|u/Pegasus7915 - 1 day
|
|Oh yeah, I know it helps. I just need to eat better and do actual
|exercise. I'm not really blaming anyone but myself since I am well
|educated and know how to be healthy. In general, though, most
|people don't know how or don't have the time or money to be
|healthy in America. Capitalism has done a number on us.
|u/kahmeal - 1 day
|
|At 25-30k, while exercise will certainly help, you really just
|need to tweak your diet a bit.
|u/dagobahh - 1 day
|
|Yeah. I dropped 40 lbs when I started walking and only did 3
|miles a day. The walking is fantastic, sounds like diet is
|still u/Pegagsus7915 stumbling block.
|u/Laiko_Kairen - 1 day
|
|>Oh yeah, I know it helps. I just need to eat better and do
|actual exercise. 25k steps a day is actual exercise, my guy.
|That's hundreds of calories per day.
|u/pt199990 - 1 day
|
|When I pushed carts at Walmart, I was logging 30-40k steps per
|day. It coincided with the skinniest I've ever been as an
|adult, and my stamina was neverending outside of work. Burned
|through a pair of running shoes every two months, though...
|Nowadays I manage 8-11k per day, but I kinda miss the days of
|nonstop walking.
|u/Velocilobstar - 1 day
|
|I’m cycling all day every day doing food delivery (albeit on
|an ebike), with added steps walking up a ton of apartments
|and carrying and lifting bags of at least some weight. I’ll
|be continuing my medicine masters soon, but I’m going to
|miss all the exercise and time being outside. There’s
|something to be said for moderate exercise all day, like
|walking. We were made to walk, and it feels good to just be
|busy, but not overworked or overexhausted. I’ll probably be
|sitting all day at any job I’m going to have, and it
|frightens me. I know how hard it is to push yourself. I’m
|fit, always have been, and loved sports but could never
|motivate myself to get out and do something. There’s no way
|I’ll have the motivation to get a routine going outside of a
|9-5
|u/TurtleMOOO - 1 day
|
|You are more than active enough with that many steps. You don’t
|need to walk for an 8 hour shift and go to the gym to not be 20
|pounds overweight.
|u/GANTRITHORE - 1 day
|
|Your body does adapt to your (same) activity level after about 6
|months. It's almost always better to tackle diet after 3-6 months
|because your body becomes efficient at the same activity over
|time.
|u/TwoIdleHands - 1 day
|
|Yeah. It’s portion control and putting extras into our food (sugar
|added into store bought yogurt, sandwich bread, etc). Exercise is
|great for your body but lack of exercise is not why Americans are
|fat, we’re fat because most of us eat too much.
|u/Laiko_Kairen - 1 day
|
|>Exercise is great for your body but lack of exercise is not why
|Americans are fat, we’re fat because most of us eat too much. No,
|it's both. Sure, a few doritos can outdo an hour on a treadmill,
|but if we as a society were less sedentary, we'd be thinner.
|Which is a bigger factor? Food. But being sedentary absolutely
|matters.
|u/ginns32 - 1 day
|
|I used to walk 20 minute to the train station and 20 minutes back
|during the work week. I moved and didn't have that 40 minute walk 5
|days a week. I gained weight. Our portion sizes continue to go up
|and our activity continues to go down. The processed foods and
|chemicals don't help but I think people don't realize how much less
|we move our bodies in general compared to 40 years ago.
|u/Pegasus7915 - 1 day
|
|Oh yeah portion size is a huge problem.
|u/Tr8ze - 1 day
|
|I’m not doubting your self assessment but in defense of many who eat
|poorly, convenience and price are important factors, too. You can
|buy a lot of bad calories cheaply and easily, and I don’t judge
|anyone who works hard and doesn’t have the energy and willpower left
|at the end of the day to eat a little healthier. I recognize I am
|oversimplifying the problem and that there are some easy, healthy
|options. Just not as many.
|u/Pegasus7915 - 1 day
|
|Oh for sure, I need to better myself. I could definitely lose it
|if I tried, but you have to actively try in our food culture.
|u/speedoboy17 - 1 day
|
|Thank you for acknowledging the part your own choices play. Many
|people in these comments are acting like they have no
|accountability in what they put in their bodies.
|u/Pegasus7915 - 1 day
|
|Everyone is accountable for their own choices. Sometimes the
|options we have make it pretty hard though. My main issue is
|that I have alot of food intolerance and auto immune diseases.
|I also work a physically demanding job. At the end of the day
|I use food to help cope with it. It is an unhealthy cycle
|though because I would feel better if I ate better, but I am
|often very tired and don't take the time to cook healthy food.
|Society could give me healthier options that are easier to
|access, but at the end of the day I still have to do the work.
|It is actually a fairly complicated issue for our society, but
|as always better education would help too.
|u/dersteppenwolf5 - 1 day
|
|I'm guessing that Americans haven't eaten any veggies since
|Wendy's got rid of their broccoli and cheese baked potatoes. On a
|side note, Wendy, if you're reading this, please bring back the
|broccoli and cheese baked potatoes, thanks in advance!
|u/Woodit - 1 day
|
|God those were so good
|u/themrjava - 1 day
|
|I'm not American. But I visited the US a few years ago an was
|surprised how more caloric your processed food was VS the same
|processed food in my country. The serving sizes were another thing I
|noticed, a small fries portion was the same as a big portion in my
|country. Same thing with soda. And I'm only talking about junk food
|because it was extremely hard to find affordable fresh food as a
|tourist.
|u/PMMEURLONGTERMGOALS - 1 day
|
|I’m not sure what you’re referring to specifically by “chemicals”
|but just to be clear, you can eat as many preservatives and food
|dyes as you want and not gain weight. Processed foods are bad for
|you (don’t provide enough nutrients, too much salt and sugar) but if
|you only ate 1000 kcal of processed food per day you would lose
|weight. Calories are the one and only cause of weight gain. What
|kind of food you eat is important though, (ultra) processed foods
|are designed to make you want more thus increasing calorie intake.
|u/Van-garde - 1 day
|
|Sad that every time a crisis is identified, it becomes the
|responsibility of individuals to remedy the population-wide actions
|of conglomerates concerned about the dollar. Chronic diseases,
|traffic deaths and injuries, suicides, environmental outcomes…the
|disseminated solutions aren’t at the same population-level as the
|root causes, it’s all like, ‘make better food choices, reduce your
|carbon footprint, exercise, put Vision Zero signs up, etc. It’s
|always the responsibility of individuals to counteract societal
|problems. It’s like the cliche phrase about corporate bailouts,
|‘socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor,’ or however it
|goes. All of the collective wealth, market research, subsidiary
|networks, etc. (disproportionate resources, generally) are matched
|against an individual’s ability to self-regulate.
|u/ajnozari - 1 day
|
|We don’t add unnecessary chemicals. They’re absolutely necessary
|because without them the food wouldn’t be edible. By removing fat
|from our food we have put ourselves in a situation. Either eat food
|that tastes off, or add sugar to *everything* to make up the
|difference along with other stuff to make the mouth feel correct.
|Like take Publix’s low fat chocolate milk. They add seaweed extract
|to make it creamier. The issue is by removing the fat we’ve had to
|do things to make the food taste the same. This added sugar also
|means we have to add preservatives or the food wouldn’t spoil
|faster. This has set Americans up for a situation where the fat
|that would satisfy our hunger is gone, and the replacement is
|addictive, doesn’t actually make you feel full, and requires
|preservatives to be shelf stable.
|u/bluemooncalhoun - 1 day
|
|American's overall sugar consumption has actually declined since
|2000, so that doesn't fully explain why obesity continues to grow
|over time. Some people are tying to blame seed oils but they don't
|directly correlate to a rise in obesity either.
|u/uncleleo101 - 1 day
|
|I would argue that work from home is actually not a very significant
|factor. Many of my work colleagues simply won't walk anywhere that
|isn't less than a few hundred feet. Sedentary lifestyles have become
|so catered to in American society (extremely car-centric cities and
|towns) that many don't see any issue at all with their lifestyle. I
|walk and cycle for most of my errands and work commuting, and it's
|legitimately an alternative lifestyle in Florida where I live. People
|don't act like it's a remotely feasible option, when it very much is
|if you get off your ass. It's straight up laziness and a built
|environment and culture that facilitates that laziness.
|u/DigitalSchism96 - 1 day
|
|Weight is not lost in the gym, it's lost by diet (this is obviously
|hyperbole but it's still true). The amount of steps you would need to
|take to even burn 100 calories is pushing 2000 for the average person.
|Now sit down for lunch and drink just a 12oz can of coke. That's 140
|calories. 2000 steps doesn't even burn off one single can of soda.
|American diets are full of empty calories and our portion sizes are
|gigantic. I always tell people, you need to ween yourself to smaller
|portion sizes. You don't even need to give up the "bad" foods. Just
|eat less. You don't need the double bacon cheeseburger and the large
|fry. Try the single bacon cheeseburger and the small fry. It might
|take a few days but you will get used to eating less and then you'll
|wonder how on earth you ever managed to eat so much.
|u/halligan8 - 1 day
|
|I was unable to make this shift until I started logging calories and
|more importantly, weighing portions with a food scale. Before that,
|my default bowl of cereal was like, three bowls of cereal. Our
|predominant perceptions of proper portions are patently
|preposterous.
|u/Important-Parsnip628 - 1 day
|
|Completely accurate diet advice from V for Vendetta
|u/_eternallyblack_ - 1 day
|
|Exactly this!! I lost (and have kept it off) a few years ago 90
|pounds, by logging calories and using a food scale. It taught me
|proper portions and more importantly what I was putting into my
|body - I drastically changed how and what I was eating. When you
|read food labels it is SO eye opening.
|u/teenagesadist - 1 day
|
|The amount of carbs they can jam in things now is almost impressive.
|We sell 3 cookies for 2.99 at my work. Each cookie is about 40 grams
|of carbs. We have people that come in and buy them almost every day
|u/uCodeSherpa - 1 day
|
|A 50 minute fast walk (5.5 kilometers) is 350 calories for me. When
|I do intense exercise, 1 hour is good for about 500-550 calories.
|These are non-trivial amounts, only made trivial by people eating
|4000 calories a day.
|u/Paksarra - 1 day
|
|Not to mention that most of us live in places that aren't walkable and
|one political party thinks that building walkable communities is un-
|American. My city passed a small sales tax increase that will
|expand bus service and pay for many, many miles of bike and walking
|trails and people of a certain political persuasion are wailing about
|how they're going to take your cars away and forbid you from leaving
|your neighborhood. Complete disconnect from reality.
|u/marigolds6 - 1 day
|
|On the flip side, I live in a deep red area (we voted to secede from
|Cook County), and we have a local sales tax that pays for an
|extensive bus system and about 140 miles of bike and walking trails.
|While people routinely complain in local forums of the "wasted"
|money on the trail system, we keep passing more funding for capital
|projects for it too.
|u/Paksarra - 1 day
|
|You're lucky to have it.
|u/fperrine - 1 day
|
|The car slice of this pie is the most interesting to me, because
|it's one that nobody seems capable to even see. I'll have
|conversations with people about obesity and everyone acknowledges
|"Yeah and I drive everywhere so I'm just not even walking to the
|grocery store. But oh well what can ya do?" To which I say... make
|our towns more walkable/ expand transit. We are CAR country and we
|don't even grasp how badly our brains are wrapped around it .
|u/hopefulbutguarded - 1 day
|
|I’m not from the US, but I was shocked by the lack of sidewalks in
|your cities. Family we visit needs to drive to playgrounds.
|While every country has its issues, my home is in a community
|where we can safely walk on sidewalks to a pathway that connects
|us to no less than 4 parks. People walk, cycle, kids cavort and
|strollers roll down the pathway all day long. We use cars for
|shopping, but there’s lots of options for outside play. Walkable
|from our front door (even with an unpredictable two year old!).
|If you want to bike (with a carrier) you could easily get
|groceries.
|u/fperrine - 1 day
|
|Yep. In the US you must drive to every location. Unless you live
|in a few rare cities, public transit is horrific. And when I say
|*must* I mean it. There are some places where you or your
|unsupervised child will be arrested for walking to the park.
|u/YoungGirlOld - 1 day
|
|Years ago, my car got stuck in the snow, so I walked to work.
|It wasn't a highway. The police picked me up. They said it
|was too dark and unsafe. At least they gave me a ride to work.
|Even if I wanted to walk, apparently I couldn't.
|u/Egrizzzzz - 1 day
|
|We are so car brained and burdened here that walking and public
|transit has become something folks only do if too broke for a
|car. I’m frequently glanced at with suspicion for the crime of
|walking *in a city* after dark.
|u/Paksarra - 1 day
|
|And even when the stores are in walkable distances, they're
|usually on busy, heavy traffic stroads that are dangerous to
|cross on foot. You end up driving to the store because it's not
|safe to walk that quarter mile.
|u/crazycatlady331 - 1 day
|
|I live walking distance from a grocery store, which happens to
|be on a busy highway. Thankfully my apartment complex sits
|right behind said grocery store.
|u/HelloSkello - 1 day
|
|I immigrated to the US at age 6. I remember one of the biggest
|culture shocks was the total lack of sidewalks. Another was the
|insane ratio of morbidly obese people within the population.
|Then when I moved back to Canada over 20 years later I got the
|reverse shock: almost everyone is at a visibly healthy weight
|with very few people as huge as I was accustomed to seeing.
|There is like one very short block that i can think of, on one
|side of the street, that doesn't have a sidewalk in the city I
|live in. And it's very clearly a space issue in that spot, and
|there's signs warning all over to cross the street to the
|sidewalk side.
|u/GoldSailfin - 1 day
|
|It also depends where in the US you live. Richer areas tend to
|be thin areas.
|u/baconbananapancakes - 1 day
|
|Drive-up services even take the edge off getting out and
|schlepping around Target. It’s definitely insidious, the creep of
|inactivity.
|u/2muchcaffeine4u - 1 day
|
|I fully agree with this and have been shouting from rooftops for a
|while now because you're right, people are *so* blind to it.
|u/Altiloquent - 1 day
|
|Drives me crazy to see all these new developments that Taylor
|morrison and others are putting up but they don't spare any plots
|for commercial buildings. And they're all out in the suburbs like 2
|miles or more from anything, so what are people going to do but
|drive to the nearest grocery store or cafe?
|u/rich1051414 - 1 day
|
|Phantoms are easier to fight. You can make them go away by no longer
|fear mongering about them.
|u/theefle - 1 day
|
|It's the food, it's always been the food and will always be the food.
|Even rigorous exercise burns only a few hundred calories. You can walk
|as many steps as you want in your workday and the Big Mac Combo for
|dinner will still absolutely annihilate your calorie expenditures and
|then some.
|u/Interesting-Goat6314 - 1 day
|
|A big mac is equivalent to about 3 hours of brisk walking. Not to
|mention the fries and the drink.
|u/Shuriin - 1 day
|
|Sedentary living alone doesn't cause weight gain as long as you're
|eating less to compensate.
|u/Sloogs - 1 day
|
|This has not been my experience at all. When I'm at the office, the
|only thing I have to look forward to when I step outside for a walk is
|a rotting downtown core and drug addicts, so I don't move around much.
|When I'm at home I walk around in the neighbourhood with my dog twice
|a day during my workday.
|u/FloridaGatorMan - 1 day
|
|Yeah I probably didn't need to drag work from home vs office into
|this. My only point is inactivity affects health and sustained
|inactivity dramatically impacts health. That can impact ability to
|keep weight off and not just from a calorie deficit standpoint, but
|from a muscle loss and overall health standpoint.
|u/Rishkoi - 1 day
|
|Wfh helps people move more in the studies I've read. I know
|anecdotally it made me a helluva lot more active
|u/-TheOldPrince- - 1 day
|
|Start doing burpees, lunges, push ups, pull ups and squats at home
|u/FloridaGatorMan - 1 day
|
|Yeah I'm writing down a program this weekend and sticking to it
|because it's not just weight. I can feel myself getting
|progressively less healthy.
|u/NotLunaris - 1 day
|
|> larger families have no choice and/or fall into the habit of
|choosing higher calorie density to get by Agree with your other
|points but literally never seen this as the real rationale behind
|high-calorie purchases. "Yes I'm going to get that bag of chips and
|soda because it's going to provide more calories" Literally never.
|It's also not true because you can get meat, veggies, and grains for
|cheaper when equating the calories. It's the time, effort, and
|tastiness factor that causes the difference in food choices, *not* the
|necessity of getting enough calories to subsist.
|u/nijmeegse79 - 1 day
|
|Only a 1000 steps till 1700? Don't you feel restless then on the end
|of the day? I'm from that always cycling and walking nation called
|the Netherlands. Only people I know that have less then 1000 steps are
|real old people and the sick/disabled people
|u/fritzlbasement - 1 day
|
|I mean, we Americans are mostly sick/disabled when you boil things
|down. Just look at our politics.
|u/nijmeegse79 - 1 day
|
|You politics is a source of entertainment, till the second you
|realise, those same politics actually kills their own civilians.
|We have troubles as well, but I would not want to trade places.
|No country is perfect, don't beat yourselfs up to much. Only thing
|certain is that nothing stays the same. So times will change.
|u/geeves_007 - 1 day
|
|I think its still largely diet
|u/Jgusdaddy - 1 day
|
|It’s also a lack of infrastructure and free mobility options. If you
|live in the suburbs, there is no functional, utilitarian bike paths
|and sidewalks to get to work or shopping centers. Further, if you are
|lucky enough to have sidewalks, they are not well lit and can be
|dangerous and awkward (walking in the rain at night is not a cultural
|norm). Most fit nations have cohesive transportation options aside
|from financing a $70k Ford. We need to be able to use our own calories
|again.
|u/GenericBatmanVillain - 1 day
|
|Do you think driving to work makes you fit?
|u/Fightlife45 - 1 day
|
|After covid a lot of people became less active and gravitated more
|towards being homebodies because of the loss of third places.
|u/Interesting-Goat6314 - 1 day
|
|It is fairly widely accepted that activity has almost no effect on
|daily calorie use over time. Your body compensates pretty quickly if
|you consume the same amount but are more active. It finds ways to burn
|less calories during your 'downtime'. You will sleep deeper and longer
|for example. Obesity is almost entirely down to overeating calories.
|However you lower your calorie intake doesn't really matter. If you
|engage in caloric deficit in a disciplined and structured way, you
|will become a healthy weight. Exercising to lose weight is
|essentially a myth at this point, pushed by the fitness industry for
|obvious reasons.
|u/FloridaGatorMan - 1 day
|
|Studies have shown exercise, as opposed to calorie restriction,
|plays a minimal role in success of weight loss. However, exercise is
|recommended across the boards for functioning of endocrine system,
|reducing risk for diabetes, and for cardiovascular function.
|American Diabetes Association, American Academy of Endocrinologists,
|and National Academy of Nutrition and Diatetics, in addition to
|probably 99.9% of doctors would recommend exercise over no exercise
|as a method for improving overall health and health outcomes over
|time. Exercise to lose weight is not a myth, the benefit of
|strenuous exercise is overvalued. You will see benefits if you are
|100% consistent in a calorie deficit every day and get some level of
|exercise, compared specifically to that exact calorie deficit and no
|exercise. So you're not wrong, but it does kind of sound like
|you're saying exercise doesn't do anything and it's all a myth.
|Inactivity specifically is treated similar to smoking by most
|doctors and sustained inactivity has been shown to have a similar
|effect on health outcomes to smoking.
|u/Interesting-Goat6314 - 1 day
|
|I didn't mean it to sound like I'm saying exercise is totally
|useless. It clearly is not. It's amazing for almost every aspect
|of life. It's just it's form that has been exaggerated a lot,
|particularly by the fitness industry. You don't need to spend 4
|hours in the gym and run 10 miles a day to be 'fit'. Walking
|briskly for an hour or so a day will do 90% of the benefit of
|heavy exercise for your life expectancy and quality of life. Add
|some very basic low intensity resistance training every few days
|and you are essentially golden. Complete sedentation is obviously
|horrific for quality of life and life expectancy. But you don't
|have to do a lot to get a hell of a lot of benefit, and the
|returns are diminishing.
|u/TwoIdleHands - 1 day
|
|If you want to lose weight, cut calories. When you’re close to
|your goal weight, start exercising. People who start dieting AND
|exercising at the same time are more doomed to fail because it’s
|a lot of changes at once and most people are hungrier when they
|exercise. Get your body into a good caloric routine THEN add
|more exercise. If you’re weight training and building muscle
|you’ll be able to maintain weight with more calories.
|u/JokesOnUUU - 1 day
|
|> Exercising to lose weight is essentially a myth at this point,
|pushed by the fitness industry for obvious reasons. True, but
|fitness affects health separately from just having the weight. I've
|had so many coworkers get winded by simply walking down the street,
|while I'm the fat one, I actually walk all day, and they drive cars.
|So without exercise, your system still becomes weak even if you
|"look good".
|u/Interesting-Goat6314 - 1 day
|
|Absolutely, a basic level of fitness is mandatory for good health
|You can be physically fit and strong at extreme weights, look at
|Brian Shaw. He's over 400lb (\~200kg) and is possibly the
|strongest person to ever live. It doesn't change the fact that
|much disease and illness is demonstrably linked to obesity, and
|although Brian is fit and strong, his extreme weight is definitely
|a contributing factor to his life expectancy. Bodybuilders **and
|Strongmen** aren't renowned for living long lives. Petite people
|are. **EDIT:**
|u/AuryGlenz - 1 day
|
|Since I started using a walking treadmill as I work I don’t need to
|really worry about what I eat. To be fair, I’m not fat - but I
|always did need to watch what I eat otherwise just like anyone else
|the pounds would pack on. So, I’d say that yeah - if you’re just
|doing 20-30 minutes of cardio a day that probably holds true. If
|you’re walking 5-6 hours a day, not so much. Your body can only
|adjust so much. Not that a person couldn’t out-eat that either.
|u/Interesting-Goat6314 - 1 day
|
|100% I totally agree with you. It's just surprising how few
|calories exercise actually burns. It takes about 30 mins of brisk
|walking to burn off a 139 calorie can of Coke, for example. So
|your 6 hours of walking is burning about 12 cans of Coke, or
|roughly 1600 calories. You would have burnt about 600 just
|resting. You're buying yourself about 1000 calories per day,
|which sounds like a lot but it isn't really in relation to how
|much obese people actually eat to reach the weights they are. 1000
|calories is roughly two big macs. Obese people are eating
|multiple thousands of calories over their calorific needs. It
|doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen because they make
|a few bad choices here and there, it takes consistent overeating
|over years, and it takes higher and higher amounts of food as you
|get heavier as your resting rate begins to increase with weight.
|u/Special-Garlic1203 - 1 day
|
|They kind of go hand in hand. I eat a lot less when I'm out doing
|yardwork and stuff,but its so easy to snack while you're sitting and
|either bored *or* doing mentally intensive stuff.
|u/blinicat95 - 1 day
|
|I use a Fitbit and the difference in calories burned on a high steps
|day vs a low steps day is pretty big. If I’m in the 15k + steps range
|— and that doesn’t even need to be “exercise” in the traditional sense
|but even just a walk and running errands — I can burn over 2000
|calories in a day. Whereas if I stay inside and play video games all
|day it’s only like 1300 calories. Really it’s just all about
|calories in and calories out. It’s worked for me at least, I have not
|gained any weight since age 18 and I’m almost 30 now. Whether you
|balance those numbers through increasing the calories out or
|decreasing the calories in, that’s what it comes down to, and I think
|people these days struggle to do both of those things.
|u/CaregiverNo3070 - 1 day
|
|Maybe has something to do with ultra processed foods being way more
|widely available than in the past. My grandparents had home cooked food
|all their lives, and my parents had processed foods in adulthood. It's
|only been millennials and down that have had ultra processed foods all
|their lives. And yes, obesity is linked to ultra processed foods. Theirs
|been so many people that went to eating minimally processed that lost a
|bunch of weight, including myself, so I know this intimately.
|u/Slipin2dream - 1 day
|
|People also dont realize how many calories are in things. A muffin
|from the gas station is 600calories. A honey bun. 750 calories. Thats
|almost half of your daily calories in a day. So many people consume
|that everyday and on top of that eat their full course meals without
|thought.
|u/Fightlife45 - 1 day
|
|A crumbl cookie is 800-1000 calories.
|u/Slipin2dream - 1 day
|
|Thats insane. With some of these foods we near almost 1-1 weight
|to energy levels. Which to me is a marvel of science.
|u/salmz0hr - 1 day
|
|What are you guys eating over there?
|u/Fightlife45 - 1 day
|
|Crumbl fuckin cookies bro.
|u/baconbananapancakes - 1 day
|
|Say what you want about those cities or states that require calorie
|counts next to menu items, but I am consistently shocked by which
|pastries at Dunkin are highest. It’s never the one I’d guess. It
|really helps inform choice.
|u/Winjin - 1 day
|
|Also as far as I saw, some drinks are even more calories. When I
|started fighting my own obesity, man, just walking with a small
|calculator in hand got my jaw drop more than once. Like, I once
|counted my McDonalds meal and not only the milkshake was like half
|of the entire meal in calories, that whole meal was like 120% of
|my recommended daily calories... And it was only one of the three
|meals of the day!!! No wonder I was growing fast, as soon as I
|switched job from a high-maintenance to sedentary.
|u/baconbananapancakes - 1 day
|
|The drinks are wild. You see a medium shake and it seems like a
|single serving, not like a pint of ice cream.
|u/Winjin - 1 day
|
|Exactly. I remember there was a post about it and I found it:
|"Baskin Robbins used to have a milkshake that contained 2600
|calories, 1700mg of sodium, 135g of fat, and 263g of sugar.
|Unsurprisingly, Men’s Health Magazine dubbed it the worst food
|in the U.S." \\\\ to be honest, using miligrams of sodium and
|grams of fat and sugar is dishonest, that's only about 2 grams
|of salt. But that's just icing on the cake. 2600 calories! IN
|A SHAKE. My daily recommended intake is like 1900. That's
|more than a day's worth of energy for me!
|u/apistograma - 1 day
|
|> 1700mg of sodium That's almost the max amount of sodium
|intake in a day, and it's a milkshake > 263g of sugar
|Easily the max amount of added sugar that is reccomended in
|10-14 days. Can't imagine most people buying this and
|saying: well, no more sweets for two weeks It's almost like
|some food scientists were competing to see who could make
|the most monstrously unhealthy food that someone could still
|order.
|u/whitedolphinn - 1 day
|
|Exactly this. It is a lack of health education and/or discipline.
|u/RobsSister - 1 day
|
|It’s eye-opening to compare nutrition labels from the 90s to the
|labels on the same products today. The added sugar content is insane.
|u/yukon-flower - 1 day
|
|I would love to see examples I could show to others!
|u/RobsSister - 1 day
|
|Check out products like Pillsbury biscuits (the ones in the can,
|in the refrigerator section) or Kraft Mac n Cheese in the box.
|Both products have been around for 50 years, but taste nothing
|like they used to. They’re disgustingly sweet now. Apparently,
|manufacturer’s add sugar (or high fructose corn syrup) because
|it’s a cheap way to increase flavor and make products more
|addictive (sugar addiction is a real thing). Also, when the FDA
|bans certain chemicals (added preservatives, coloring agents,
|etc), manufacturers have to replace those ingredients for taste
|and/or texture. It seems their go-to replacements are sugar (in
|the form of high fructose corn syrup) and sodium.
|u/yukon-flower - 1 day
|
|I meant pictures of the old and new nutrition info side-by-side.
|I don’t doubt the nutrition has gotten worse.
|u/WigglumsBarnaby - 1 day
|
|I cook all my foods from scratch and I have to say, it's definitely
|diet. I can't even eat most American food because it bothers my
|stomach. There's so much sugar and preservatives in that stuff. I'm
|not very active, but frequently get called skinny. I eat whole foods
|that I prepare myself, nothing hyperpalatable, just normal food, and I
|just eat when I'm hungry without regard to calories.
|u/ThePicassoGiraffe - 23 hours
|
|My kids complain about living in an “ingredient house” but I know
|they’ll be better off as adults and thank me later
|u/ahumpsters - 1 day
|
|We were just in Disney World. The amount of obese children we saw was
|really upsetting. Not a little chunky but obese! That honestly should be
|considered child abuse.
|u/EricTheNerd2 - 1 day
|
|Anecdotally, I was in the borderline obese category four years ago but
|now am in the borderline of just being overweight. In the past couple
|years I have undertaken weightlifting so I am not too concerned with a
|25 BMI, though my former 30 was way too much especially considering I
|had five less pounds of muscle mass. For me, I've had to take a hard
|look at eating. Sometimes I'm amazed how 'healthy food' is high in
|calories with low nutritive value. Chicken is a staple of my diet now as
|is mixed vegetables. From an activity standpoint, I walk a lot more
|getting five million steps last year, and I cannot recommend disc golf
|highly enough. I've made friends and gotten a lot of steps while having
|a lot of fun I am still working on sleep, but I average seven hours of
|actual sleep each night according to my Fitbit. I'd like to get this to
|7.5 Finally having healthier relationships and more healthy
|relationships helps a lot. I realize that a lot of my binge eating
|floated around times where I was over tired or a bit on the depressed
|side. The sleep and friendships have helped this a lot. So while a
|study like this can make you feel helpless, at least in my case, you can
|buck the trend. Edit: part of me getting better at sleep is wearing
|ear plugs at night. I have found that being able to block out noise from
|my partner helps me to stay asleep.
|u/Ikanotetsubin - 1 day
|
|That's what happens when the majority of your population is completely
|reliant on cars, walk less than 3000 steps per day, have poor nutrition
|outlooks and live mostly sedentary life styles outside of work.
|u/_Soup_R_Man_ - 1 day
|
|Combined with an endless stream of mental, emotional, and physical
|stress. Yep!
|u/Trumanhazzacatface - 1 day
|
|and cars also encourage over consumption. I moved to the UK and I only
|do the shopping on foot/bike so I am so much more conscious about the
|food I am buying because I only have a limited amount of
|space/strength to carry my shopping home. I used to think nothing of
|buying 24 cans of soda because the car carried it for me. Now that I
|have to walk uphill for 15 minutes, that 24 cans of soda is staying at
|the store.
|u/alienofwar - 1 day
|
|Republicans states are the fattest states. California has one of the
|lowest rates.
|u/HaCo111 - 1 day
|
|Colorado has the lowest rate of obesity and it's honestly a pretty big
|part of why I moved here.
|u/NotAnotherRedditAcc2 - 1 day
|
|Colorado's rate of obesity is higher than the *highest* state's rate
|of obesity 40 years ago. You're on a sinking ship. (But that's
|okay, because all our outdoor spaces are shockingly stressed and
|verging on collapse so the more people staying in Denver and
|drinking beer, the better.)
|u/BarrittBonden - 1 day
|
|That's why we have RFK Jr! It's going to be no vaccines, no evidence
|based medicine, and deregulated food inspections. IOW... chronic
|diseases and parasites for everyone! You're gonna trim down America!
|Your waistline AND your life expectancy.
|u/En4cr - 1 day
|
|And it will just keep getting better and better now that we know who's
|leading the Department of Health.
|u/Burnnoticelover - 1 day
|
|I kinda think that’s why we got him though. There hasn’t really been a
|concentrated push on this stuff since Michelle Obama even though by
|all measurements it should be a serious priority.
|u/Zingledot - 1 day
|
|The "epiphany" I had that changed my relationship with food was to stop
|entirely thinking about calories, but instead, whenever I make a food
|choice, I ask myself "how nutrient dense is this?" , before I eat it. It
|turns out that the most calorie dense foods generally don't have a ton
|of nutritional benefits/density. So the mindset is less about what you
|can't eat, or not eating and being hungry, and more about filling up on
|nutritious food choices. Cheesecake has a ton of carbs and fat, and
|you need those, but probably not that much for how very little else that
|you get: pass Hot dogs have a good amount of protein, kinda high in
|fat, but perhaps combined with a bun with a lot of whole grain fiber
|it's a decent meal. And if I'm hungry I can eat them until I'm full. But
|the side of fries has very little nutritional value, so leave that out.
|Go out for Mexican food and beans are a lot of calories, but they have a
|lot of good stuff for you. But the rice is pretty vapid, so I taste it
|and then simply leave it on the plate. Sugary drinks might be what you
|need if you just did a lot of physical activity, but otherwise they're
|useless. Eat as much quinoa as you want. Skim milk is pretty
|nutrient dense, whole milk just adds useless amounts of fat. Etc
|Dropped weight so easily like this, and I'm never hungry. Hope maybe
|this helps someone else, too.
|u/TristanIsAwesome - 1 day
|
|You just discovered macros
|u/Zingledot - 1 day
|
|Understanding macros, and how you approach your food are two
|different things.
|u/ZebZamboni - 1 day
|
|Whole milk has been shown in studies to have a positive correlation
|with weight loss versus skim milk. Likewise, whole milk yogurt is
|better for weight loss than fat-free yogurt. The extra fat is
|satiating, and it helps digest fat-soluble nutrients. And in the case
|of yogurt, the extra probiotics are great.
|u/oojacoboo - 1 day
|
|I’ve never been overweight, but I bulked up with bodybuilding and had
|been doing that for years. When it came time for a cut, and also
|focusing my efforts on gut health, another necessity for a proper cut,
|as going into a deficit is harder on your immune system, I had to make
|some changes. This is exactly the realization that I came to. I
|focused on nutrient density and fiber. I don’t really count calories,
|but I do better understand caloric makeup, as a result. Doing this
|has allowed me to operate efficiently, while weight training hard, but
|still in a caloric deficit. I’m going to disagree on the whole milk
|though. I don’t find it necessary or enjoyable to be overly focused
|on cutting fats. Also rice is a great carb, something your body still
|needs. Go for a balanced diet and don’t try to overdo things.
|u/Zingledot - 21 hours
|
|It's definitely also about each person's preferences. I'll pass on
|my milk fat and eat some aged salami or something that has plenty of
|fat and I feel balanced in my fat intake. Same with my carbs -
|definitely get them, I just try not to get them from a pile of white
|rice. I don't order my burgers without buns or eat low carb breads
|or anything. I just don't dive into piles of pure carbs - and this
|has worked for me.
|u/xevizero - 1 day
|
|The weirdest thing is people's expectation of how a healthy person
|should look have shifted as well. In the last few years I've been very
|inactive, didn't work out at all (which is bad, no matter how much you
|weight, and I will need to do better). I did reduce my portions and
|basically eliminated all extra sugar from my life (in coffee, for
|example). This brought me down to a BMI of 18.5, which is on the lower
|side of normal, but still normal, especially for someone who's not
|working out (so my muscle mass is quite low, which would increase this
|count quite a bit, my body fat is instead quite healthy - basically I
|just need to work out a bit). People act like I'm basically starving
|myself when they see me. They say I should eat more, I tell them I feel
|good and energetic and healthy, they tend to disagree. I even got told
|this by people who were actually underweight themselves, just based on
|their perception of what the average person actually looks like out
|there. And..this is not in the USA. This is northern italy (where only
|40% of people are overweight, and about 11% are obese). I can't imagine
|how the perception of others, and self perception itself, would be
|completely nuts in the US, which would make the issue quite hard to fix
|as these people become culturally harder to reach.
|u/sleepcurse - 1 day
|
|Go walk around Disneyland. It’s like 99% over weight people. So this is
|not surprising to read
|u/Carbon-Based216 - 1 day
|
|I think part of the issue is that most Americans don't realize how
|little food they actually need to survive. That package of oreos you're
|eating can feed a family of 4 for a whole day in caloric intake. A box
|of pasta is enough calories for a day and a half for 1 person.
|u/FenrirHere - 1 day
|
|You could make a box of pasta last a week honestly. I make like 4-6
|meals of pasta for one with one box. I really like Barilla protein+
|as well, in fact I won't eat any other pasta now.
|u/great_apple - 1 day
|
|I like the Protein+ stuff but where I live it's 4 times the price of
|plain pasta for an extra 3g of protein per serving. It's literally
|just regular pasta with a tiny bit of chickpea/lentil powder mixed
|in. I'd rather spend the extra $3 on some ground turkey to make a
|meat sauce and boost the protein by 20g instead of 3g. Or just buy
|some lentils to mix in instead of pay so much for a bit of lentil
|powder!
|u/Carbon-Based216 - 1 day
|
|Yeah that's pretty much most of my diet. About a 1/4 box of pasta
|(or less) or rice. Some sort of sauce. Maybe 4 or less oz of
|protein. There is a whole meal with more than enough calories for my
|relatively active life.
|u/WereAllThrowaways - 1 day
|
|Our culture thinks anything other than full indulgence all the time is
|"anorexia" or "starving yourself". The nuts have taken over the nut
|house. We're outnumbered.
|u/AnbennariAden - 1 day
|
|100%. It kinda sucks to say but it's getting used to the FEELING of
|being hungry and choosing not to eat. I've been dieting for over a
|year now to good success (lost ~30 lbs, from around 180 to about 150
|now, 5'8" male), and it's only recently that I'm NOT perpetually
|hungry. I was so used to eating BIG meals and multiple
|snacks/desserts. Unfortunately, I also think it NEEDS to be specific
|to each person's personal relationship with food. For me, I actually
|eat out of the house MORE and buy groceries LESS now because plenty of
|the sizes you find in US grocery stores are for families/households,
|not single people, and I'd either eat too much at once due to lack of
|discipline or would not be able to finish it before going bad. The
|other difficulty is indeed "cutting yourself off." You can still have
|the McDonald's Big Mac + fries, but it means maybe you don't eat
|ANYTHING else that day - and you've gotta follow through. I do this,
|so letting people know it IS possible! And, yes, it probably IS more
|than enough calories to reach your deficit.
|u/ceti-454 - 1 day
|
|This. People think they MUST follow the three meal a day modern
|standard else you have an eating disorder. I have McDonald’s once a
|week. Like you said, that’s my meal for the day. It’s dense calories
|so no need for more.
|u/MacReady82 - 1 day
|
|I was at an elementary school crossing just when the kids were let out
|of school. While waiting, I couldn't believe how obese some of these
|kids were. I don't mean a little overweight. Some of them looked like
|freaking adults.
|u/purringeeyore - 1 day
|
|I work at an elementary school. One of my students is 8 years old and
|close to 200 pounds. I'm not exaggerating. One of my coworkers has
|known him since he was 3, and he was around 130 pounds at that age.
|It's so unfair to him. His diet consists of mostly cookies, chips,
|pizza, fruit, soda, and just things that aren't healthy. When he's
|home, he's on an iPad to keep him entertained. It's so sad
|u/Powerful_Artist - 1 day
|
|Makes sense. Going to a football game in my city is a nightmare with how
|big people are, theres not enough space on the bleacher seats. Or
|going on a plane seems like a 75% chance youll have someone's fat rolls
|touching you over the armrest.
|u/Jingle_Cat - 1 day
|
|I’d be interested in the regional distribution of obese and average-
|weight people. I’m sure being surrounded by heavier people makes you
|feel like you’re not that bad, and when even your doctor is obese, it
|would be difficult to look in the mirror and realize you’re simply too
|large. On the flip side, I think thin people tend to be surrounded by
|other thin people in their neighborhoods, workplaces, etc. given that
|weight is usually stratified along income and education. Obesity truly
|acts like a disease in the way that it “spreads” among people.
|Processed foods are definitely designed to make you crave them, and
|they’re calorie dense and not always very filling, making it easier to
|overeat. At the same time, people just eat way, way too much and too
|often. I think they aren’t used to feeling a little hungry, or eating
|slowly, or not snacking. It’s a massive issue.
|u/HelenEk7 - 1 day
|
|And [73%](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10121643/) of the
|food Americans eat is ultra-processed.
|u/Baud_Olofsson - 1 day
|
|But thanks to GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide or tirzepatide, we can
|finally buck this trend.
|u/lobonmc - 1 day
|
|Kinda weird question but why is it that when I see videos of the US it
|doesn't seem quite that prelevant?
|u/jwattacker - 1 day
|
|Probably seeing videos of major/walkable cities. I live in the rural
|south and easily 60% of the people I see are quite overweight.
|u/Canadairy - 1 day
|
|There's also that our perceptions of what a human should look like
|have been warped by the sheer level of obesity. People that are
|healthy weights are often called scrawny, while people that are
|heavily overweight are "normal".
|u/horriblegoose_ - 1 day
|
|The warped perception of what constitutes as fat is crazy. So I
|was a teenage girl in the 2000s. When I was in high school I was
|considered extremely fat. I could only buy my clothes in special
|plus size stores or wearing XXL. I was 5’7” and between
|180-190lbs. Again, I was comically fat by the standards of the
|day. I’m currently the exact same size I was in high school and
|I’m considered “normal sized”. Now all my clothes are size large,
|I can buy pants at normal stores, and my jean size is now a 12
|when in 2006 I was wearing an 18. Vanity sizing is out of control.
|u/Gavagai80 - 1 day
|
|California makes most of the popular videos, and we're one of the
|least-obese states (28% obesity). It's also fair to say that the more
|obese someone is the more likely they are to spend almost all their
|time at home not being visible (as both effect and cause).
|u/MandaloreUnsullied - 1 day
|
|No one wants to watch videos of obese people, it’s a market tendency
|u/Special-Garlic1203 - 1 day
|
|Probably the same reason videos tend to favor attractive well dressed
|people Edit; non Americans also have a wildly inaccurate idea of
|what our schools look like. We have yellow school buses but that's
|about it. You basically exclusively see upper middle class suburban
|style high schools in media.we don't go for accuracy, we go for what
|plays well on screen. A candid news segment usually chooses to film in
|the nicer parts of town whenever possible, etc
|u/lupuscapabilis - 1 day
|
|It’s amazing how it feels when you’re in your 40s and keep in shape and
|watch nearly everyone around you balloon up. It’s like a super power. A
|super power that I just had to do a killer weight training workout to
|maintain.
|u/therealkaiser - 23 hours
|
|Our food is literally poison.
|u/TheGeoGod - 21 hours
|
|It’s largely due to the horrible food we eat. The food in other
|countries is much better. I’ve seen it first hand.
|u/62609 - 21 hours
|
|Ban high fructose corn syrup and put a tax on processed snack foods
|(like soda, candy, chips, etc.) that have no nutritional content
|u/RobsSister - 1 day
|
| Do public schools from G1 to G12 still have daily PE as a requirement?
|u/FightingAgeGuy - 1 day
|
|Barely, I believe my kids have PE three times a week. I think it’s
|very casual too.
|u/rossdula - 1 day
|
|Once a week for mine, all 3 in elementary school.
|u/FightingAgeGuy - 1 day
|
|That’s even worse, elementary kids need to up running around.
|u/RobsSister - 1 day
|
|Yikes. When I was in school, it was mandatory. It was a grade
|requirement.
|u/jibbyjackjoe - 1 day
|
|Too busy testing
|u/kajigleta - 1 day
|
|Once a week at my kids' elementary school.
|u/carefulyellow - 1 day
|
|My 6th grader won't have gym until her last 12 weeks of school in
|2025, but then it's everyday. She's asthmatic though, so she won't be
|doing much. My 3rd grader has it once a week.
|u/mmmeadi - 1 day
|
|PE was never daily. At least not I when went through K-12
|u/IM_PEAKING - 1 day
|
|It was for me.
|u/FenrirHere - 1 day
|
|It is for 7-12, but it is very easy to get it waived and just choose a
|different elective. I did it.
|u/francohab - 1 day
|
|Another effect of universal healthcare (or in this case, its absence) is
|that states have an interest in regulating food, incentivizing people to
|exercise, eat healthy, etc. Because it has an economical effect on the
|public healthcare budget. If an EU country had that rate of obese
|people, it would be a significant cost for the system.
|u/shizzurpcrackalak - 1 day
|
|They're also shockingly stupid. Source: I watch a lot of youtube.
|u/Playful-Collar-3247 - 1 day
|
|I was obese too until I decided to eat home cooked meals more. That was
|the only change. I lost 90 lbs in a year and a half. I really think for
|me and some other young people, we are so busy we don't have time to
|cook so we go for quick convenience foods too often and it's not healthy
|or sustainable. I also think that our food administration needs a
|rework.
|u/do_you_know_de_whey - 1 day
|
|People are addicts that’s the reality.
|u/maxens_wlfr - 1 day
|
|This might be relevant : [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/p
|ii/S1871403X15001210](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S
|1871403X15001210)
|u/RecoverSufficient811 - 1 day
|
|It's crazy going to places like Costa Rica or Colombia and seeing 80-90%
|of people walking around are actually thin.
|u/FuckKarmeWhores - 1 day
|
|Greetings from Denmark, proud sponsor of making USA just a bit smaller,
|or at least trying.
|u/BlueAndYellowTowels - 23 hours
|
|As long as food is a business. Americans will be fat.
|u/Phatty8888 - 23 hours
|
|The absolute biggest health crisis in the US by FAR. Nothing else comes
|close.
|u/GirthyRooster69 - 23 hours
|
|Wish they would give these kids better education on dieting and healthy
|eating. So easy to lose weight. Replace all sugar drinks with water is a
|great start. Swapping some of your unhealthy options for healthier ones
|gradually over time. Only eating half of your meal and see how you feel
|10 minutes later, if you’re no longer hungry you dont need to eat the
|rest, its not about getting full its about eating enough to not be
|hungry.
|u/bipedalnakedape - 22 hours
|
|It's pretty simple.. You have to go out and play. Just read a story
|about a young boy who walked less than a mile and someone called the
|police and mom was handcuffed. I was born in 63. You couldn't keep me
|in the house and my friends and I would venture far more than half a
|mile away. I lived in a building in NYC and the only rule was I
|couldn't go out until someone else was there so my best friend would
|knock on the door at 7am and with a larger group of friends wouldn't be
|seen until 5. No phones, no computers. It was glorious! Punishment
|from your parents was being confined to the house and you hated it. Now
|kids don't want to leave the house. I'm 61 and you still can't keep
|me in the house. I have a cool cruiser bicycle I'm on regularly. A bike
|more suited for distance I ride regularly. Was out hiking the desert
|yesterday. Go kayaking. Lift weights at least 4 times a week. A day not
|out playing is miserable. Make no mistake.. I don't look like a 25
|year old but I still love to be out and I manage at 5'9 and 165 lbs and
|zero gut. The amount of obese people at the market riding those
|stupid scooters is nuts and don't get me started on almost every teen
|being fat.
|u/logicbound - 22 hours
|
|Two reasons: 1. Sedentary lifestyle without 10k steps a day or 30
|minutes of continuous exercise. Car culture, unwalkable areas, and
|office jobs contribute to this. 2. Diet changes based on what's
|available in grocery stores and restaurants. Processed foods, where they
|remove the fiber, are horrible for you. Added sugar foods are terrible
|for you. And most people are eating mostly processed foods.
|u/Redshadow40 - 1 day
|
|Unfortunately ozempic (whatever the weight loss equivalent is) is
|expensive in the United States compared to Europe and Canada. Good
|thing the health of a nation isn't getting in the way of a greedy
|corporation
|u/sylvester_0 - 1 day
|
|Weight loss drugs treat a symptom, not the core problems.
|u/PaulieNutwalls - 1 day
|
|In many cases, this is also true of medication that regulates blood
|pressure and cholesterol. If patients can't or won't make the
|change, but we have medication that can solve the problem, probably
|best we use the medication instead of just letting them kill
|themselves.
|u/sylvester_0 - 1 day
|
|I'd be careful of using the phrase "solve the problem."
|Medications can improve conditions. Also, no medications are
|without side effects.
|u/PaulieNutwalls - 1 day
|
|Semaglutide is clinically proven to solve the problem of obesity
|in patients where the issue is caused by overeating (like 99% of
|people). We know it solves the problem. Sure there are potential
|side effects, none of them are a big deal and like most commonly
|perscribed medication most people won't experience the side
|effects.
|u/datsyukdangles - 1 day
|
|the core problem is human beings are animals with a natural high
|food drive and we now live in a world were calorie dense food is
|available in abundance. Our bodies didn't evolve for these
|conditions, the constant availability of large amounts of food is
|extremely recent. We are naturally driven to seek out food and eat
|in a surplus when food is available, we are also naturally driven to
|want high carb and high fat foods. For almost all of human history,
|expect for in the past few decades in some countries, this was a
|good thing that aided in our survival. People want to be skinny,
|people try hard to be skinny, but its hard to go against naturally
|driven behaviors. There is less and less effort needed to get high
|value foods that activate the reward centers in our brains, and more
|jobs being non-physical/WFH, meaning you are not physically occupied
|(and also not burning extra calories), so you are free to eat. The
|"core problem" is not possible unless you want to make some pretty
|terrible changes to society. The least obese countries are either
|poor countries with rampant poverty, or countries where food prices
|are very high. The reason for lower obesity rates in both cases is
|lack of constant access to food. If you want to completely outlaw
|fast food or high sugar/high fat foods that would help greatly but
|there is pretty much zero chance you will get many people to go
|along with those plans.
|u/BallsAreYum - 1 day
|
|Well I’d say the core problem is people eat too much. Weight loss
|drugs like Ozempic seem to treat that problem very well. They
|significantly reduce food cravings and appetite which makes it way
|easier to eat healthy and lose weight. I started it recently and
|it’s remarkable how well it works. It’s much easier to cut out
|processed and sugary foods when I don’t crave them constantly.
|u/Redshadow40 - 1 day
|
|We have an immediate solution for weight loss. How about we start
|there and keep our citizens healthy while we continue to find
|solutions for the core problem?
|u/Chloebean - 23 hours
|
|It’s a lot easier to develop healthy habits when your brain isn’t
|constantly telling you to eat, constantly thinking about food, and
|not recognizing when you’re actually full.
|u/Full-Discussion3745 - 1 day
|
|I know a lot of people don't read non native news specially when it's
|not in their own language and they cannot be bothered to run Google
|translate on a website... But.... Americans, there are
|anthropologists, scientists, researchers from other countries
|researching on you and writing academic thesis about you. This appeared
|in a Swedish newspaper today Americans are getting poorer and shorter
|https://www.svd.se/a/1MrpoB/forskare-usa-s-invanare-blir-allt-fattigare-
|och-kortare
|u/fattsmann - 1 day
|
|I'm 45M and I never thought that one day, I would have a highly
|desirable body type. Yes I take care of myself and I'm lean from boxing,
|MT, MMA, but not particularly well built or chiseled. The number of
|women telling me I'm hot has significantly increased over the past years
|even though my physique has not changed (no changes in waist size or
|suit size for the past 10 years). So for all the nerds that work out...
|this is our time!!!!
|u/-Kalos - 1 day
|
|I mean you’re probably better built than the average 45 year old than
|you were the average 35 year old even though your physique didn’t
|change since
|u/igivesomanyfucks - 1 day
|
|r/humblebrag
|u/mthlmw - 1 day
|
|Tax any "food" products that fails to meet certain ratios of
|fiber/protein to carbs/sugar/fat! Even if the thresholds only catch
|candy and hostess-type stuff, I'd call it a step in the right direction!
|u/financebanking - 1 day
|
|Who pays the tax? Make monster energy drinks and donuts more expensive
|via taxes, guess who pays it. The same blue collar workers on their
|regular trip to the same gas station before their next project.
|Nothing changes except the low income pay more in taxes and feel the
|hit harder than anyone else. Tax the company instead? They just pass
|the expense along to the consumer. Same outcome. Your “solution” is
|not that simple.
|u/rapaxus - 1 day
|
|The solution is that you tax unhealthy stuff slowly more over time,
|while simultaneously subsidising more healthy foods (e.g. no VAT on
|vegetables). Which should lead over time to making unhealthy food to
|expensive for poor people, while simultaneously making the healthier
|options more affordable. Yes the consumer gets taxed, the whole
|idea here is to have a tax that makes consumers go "far too
|expensive" and to then look at the other options.
|u/coldbluhded - 1 day
|
|95% of the grocery store is not sustainable for a stable weight or diet.
|This is definitely no surprise. If I don't consciously try and lose
|weight, I'm always going to gain.
|u/userseven - 1 day
|
|Have not seen anyone mention this yet. But there's a big culture problem
|with food in the US . Every activity or event has to include food.
|Birthday party? Food. Reward party at work? Food. Baby shower? Food.
|Super bowl party? Food. Like it's a party to watch a sports game why do
|we need food? It's a big issue. Why do we need food at all these
|things? Just stop and think about it.
|u/brainiac2482 - 1 day
|
|Since we have known for 25 years that the medical BMI standards used to
|define overweight or obese are outdated and not useful in many
|situations (athletes for example), i propose a Nobody Left Behind
|approach, where we change the standard. Boom, now we have a far lower
|percentage of obesity. Even better, let's only judge Americans by the
|new standard - then we can be the least fat nation on earth. Problem
|solved. Yes, sarcasm.
|u/rocketdog67 - 1 day
|
|Then we normalise obesity. Thicc is deemed to be sexy. Massive fat ass
|is deemed to be sexy. No fat shaming here, but overweight and obese is
|overweight and obese.
|u/redditsuxdonkeyass - 1 day
|
|“Obesity comes from genetic, physiological and environmental
|interactions,” she said. “It’s not the fault of any one individual who
|has the disease.” Of course the issue is multi-faceted but completely
|disregarding anyone’s personal responsibility for what they put in their
|mouths and how often and intensely they exercise perfectly encapsulates
|the cultural facet the article strategically ignores.
|u/Wrapscallionn - 22 hours
|
|I am 6'2" and 230 lbs. Apparently, that's borderline obese......
|u/Kaitanas - 22 hours
|
|It's a ploy by the Deep (fried) State
|u/wiggermaxxing - 22 hours
|
|Staying obese is a choice
|u/BowlingBallInMyAnus - 21 hours
|
|Imagine that stats for Reddit users
|u/Impossible_Soup_1932 - 21 hours
|
|Once you’re fat, there is no way back for 90% or people. I guess ozempic
|in the drinking water will be the future
|u/Optimal-Hunt-3269 - 21 hours
|
|And, when considering their new dietary guidelines, the FDA is hedging
|on whether to declare whether ultra-processed food is bad for you.
|u/thatguybythebluecar - 17 hours
|
|But those masks full lock downs and vaccinations were super necessary,
|meanwhile people are eating twice as much calories as they need and
|exercising at the lowest rate in the history of mankind.
|u/Mountaintop303 - 12 hours
|
|I think ozempic and weight loss drugs is going to hopefully help. It’s
|working. In the past people would get surgeries to reduce the size of
|their stomachs. Some people genuinely can’t stop eating. Now instead of
|surgery you can get an injection. So much easier
|