USA Obesity Epidemic - how fast it happened!!! 25 years!

[JoeWras]

Maybe it's because fat obese folks are not out hiking, walking, running, biking etc.

No joke.

Obese or not, we create homes with garages that allow us just a few steps from our couches to our driver's seats.

 

[Nemo2]

And as some are fond of reminding us, "nobody ever caused an accident after eating too much cake."

Unless they happen to mistakenly sit down in a chair that you are already occupying.

 

[Sunset]

A few things about obesity...
Standard calculations to determine body mass index BMI can be found here:

https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm

That said, the standards have been questioned and an alternate measure (based on height/weight ratios for taller persons is shown here:

New BMI Calculator

.......

Thanks, but the new calculator is broken as it STILL shows me as Overweight...

 

[MRG]

This works for some folks. But it turns out for many that what you eat matters, and managing hunger/cravings is a big part of the battle, and that there are easier ways of dropping pounds that don't require calorie counting.

Yes, no question that portion sizes have mushroomed along with the obesity epidemic, and people get used to eating these massive portions. It's cheap, so the more you get, the more you eat - god forbid any of it should go to waste!

Yes, US folks in general eat way too much. How to get them to eat better? That's the challenge. And it doesn't help that they've been getting poor dietary advice for decades, that healthy food is expensive and usually requires more preparation, and that unhealthy food is cheap, abundant, and very convenient. Just a run through the drive through on the way home!

For me the calories counting led to accurately understanding the macros I was eating enabling me to understand what kept me full.

I didn't find it onerous at all. I loved the idea of scanning barcodes. Then looking at the macros, vitamin, and minerals made me understand I couldn't eat food that had barcodes. It also allows you to modify the macros and gain visibility to what keeps me full.

Once you get past that it's very easy. A quick estimate is I've entered about 5000 meals for DW and I over a couple of years.

Some foods are surprisingly calorie dense. My big shock was pasta, I had no idea. My old serving size was 1600 calories, before meat, sauce, and cheese! And bread, how can a civilized person enjoy pasta without bread? I weigh food now, serving sizes lie.

 

[Sunset]

When we order take out lunch special Chinese food, I order one. Then we split it, and are both full feeling until supper or later.

A long time ago, we used to order one each, but after a while I realized we were throwing away food as it was simply too much.

Restaurants server large portions, and being frugal does get in my way of proper eating, especially at the buffet restaurants. I always feel I need to get my money's worth.

 

[Rustic23]

U.S. Weight (Quarterly) | Gallup

The above link is to Gallop's US Weight chart. It goes from 3/31/2008 to 6/30/2015. It shows a graph of the fore major groups Obese, Overweight, Normal, Underweight. It has no analysis of the data. However, the data does not seem to indicate much change since 2008. In the last 15 years I have gone from Obese 31.5 to normal 24.7. At 6'2" and 245lbs I clocked in as obese, however, I never felt obese.

Side note: When I was 25 (now 73) my BMI was 22.7 and my weight was 182. However, today, I am an inch shorter and that same weight would be a BMI of 23.4.

2008 2015
Obese 25.1% 28.5%
Overweight 36.8% 36.01%
Normal 36.3% 34.05%
Under 1.8% 1.9%

So while Obese is up almost 3.5%, Overweight is actually down almost a percent, and normal weight down almost 2%. So to get the Obese category did the increase in obese go straight from Normal to Obese?

 

[hankster]

Part of the problem with our messed up diets is that we can eat large portions and then be hungry again very soon after. If I eat a big stack of pancakes with syrup, within three hours I am hungry again. However, if I eat a three egg cheese omelet with a big slice of ham, I may not be hungry by lunchtime. Our bodies will self regulate if we give them them the right food.

I experienced the same thing. A big ham and cheese omelet for breakfast often has me skipping lunch or just having a few carrot sticks, cheese and some sliced chicken because I'm simply not very hungry. This was unheard of with my previous carb/snack heavy diet that kept me on the blood sugar roller coaster.

 

[Marita40]

I do note that in family photos from the immigrant generation and in the old world (Czech, German), all the young people are slender but the women put on weight as they aged--not obese, but clearly the "menopause 20+". By contrast the older men are tiny!
I have found, like nearly every woman before me, that it is MUCH harder to keep the pounds at bay at a certain age. However, I have also been learning to radically adjust my eating to account for that. Weight Watchers has me being very careful with portions and making really good choices--protein, veggies, fruit, minimal carbs. You quickly find what will fill you up and last when you have a certain amount of points to use every day. It is working.

 

[JoeWras]

I do note that in family photos from the immigrant generation and in the old world (Czech, German), all the young people are slender but the women put on weight as they aged--not obese, but clearly the "menopause 20+". By contrast the older men are tiny!

Noticed similar, from similar old world background. As a general rule, the men smoked, the women did not. Additionally, the men all had hard labor jobs.

One of my great uncles lived to 80+, so I got to meet him. He was very small in stature, thin, and generally looked unhealthy. My family always said: "See what happens when you smoke a lot."

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

The problem is that most people simply eat too much. Try seriously measuring and counting the calories you consume in a typical day. I did it a few years ago over a several day stretch, and it was shocking.

Portion sizes at restaurants have grown considerably over the years, particularly at fast food restaurants.

Fast food burgers tripled in size since '50s - NY Daily News

Portion size is a lot of it, too. Granted it's been a few years since I have been to Europe, but the meals you got at McD's were the sizes I was used to see as a kid. A small cheeseburger, a small fry (what comes in the happy meal now) and a soda that is 8 or 10 ounces and a large soda was 20 oz.

 

[Marita40]

Noticed similar, from similar old world background. As a general rule, the men smoked, the women did not. Additionally, the men all had hard labor jobs.

One of my great uncles lived to 80+, so I got to meet him. He was very small in stature, thin, and generally looked unhealthy. My family always said: "See what happens when you smoke a lot."

Good point about the men smoking: they all smoked. In fact, the Czech side worked rolling cigars at home. The men in our family photos from that era look thin but sallow and ill, generally. The women look "well fed."

 

[Walt34]

It's really not that hard to start exercising if you're 20 pounds overweight, but it certainly is a lot harder if you're 60 pounds overweight.

I've noticed this at the gym when I see a new person on the machines. If they are 60+ pounds overweight it's rare to see them coming in for more than a month. The person who is 20 pounds over still has only about a 50% chance of sticking with the program.

I asked the manager once about how many people start memberships and are still with it a year later. He said about half.

 

[haha]

Noticed similar, from similar old world background. As a general rule, the men smoked, the women did not. Additionally, the men all had hard labor jobs.

One of my great uncles lived to 80+, so I got to meet him. He was very small in stature, thin, and generally looked unhealthy. My family always said: "See what happens when you smoke a lot."

Good point about the men smoking: they all smoked. In fact, the Czech side worked rolling cigars at home. The men in our family photos from that era look thin but sallow and ill, generally. The women look "well fed."

This is also the 19th and pre-WW2 20th century American farm family look. It's pretty hard to get fat walking behind a plow, hoeing, feeding hogs, going into the pasture and rounding up cows to milk... My grandfather was so tired at dinner he could barely manage to eat. It must not be particularly unhealthy for the women, because once women were past childbearing, they usually outlived their men, as they do today.

Activity is very important on a societal level, but imo not an easy way for an individual to lose weight.

It might help to forget all the nit-picking about carbs and insulin, is it all carbs, simple carbs, or only sugar. All these things, indeed any carb at all, will cause insulin release. And as Dr. Jason Fung charmingly says, "I can make you fat", just inject some insulin, as there is almost no one who started to inject insulin who hasn't gained fat. Sugar is fattening, but so are biscuits, as saliva has an enzyme named amylase which immediately starts to unbundle carbs into their constituent sugars.

To me, our goal is not to decide which guru is correct, but to lose weight and maintain a healthy, attractive weight. This is more easily done before one is particularly fat, because there is that backing down of metabolism that makes weight loss or even maintenance harder for one who has gained a lot of weight.

Ha

 

[Nemo2]

I've noticed this at the gym when I see a new person on the machines. If they are 60+ pounds overweight it's rare to see them coming in for more than a month. The person who is 20 pounds over still has only about a 50% chance of sticking with the program.

I asked the manager once about how many people start memberships and are still with it a year later. He said about half.

In the 1970s when I worked out in Toronto there was a small indoor track.....periodically you'd see 'heavy' people who would plod around until they almost collapsed, (which generally didn't take long).......trying to unload decades of weight in one session, I guess.....don't think I ever saw one of them twice.

 

[Music Lover]

I asked the manager once about how many people start memberships and are still with it a year later. He said about half.

Actually, I'm surprised it's that high. I would have expected less than 20% stick with it for a year.

I now work out at home, but when I had a gym membership I used to dread January and big influx of people who had made New Year's resolutions to get fit. Most of them were gone by February.

 

[Fedup]

You don't need a gym membership. Just go for a walk everyday slowly. Increase the distance day by day. You'll be surprised how much you lose after a while.

 

[Elbata]

Between 5:00 and 5:10 of the video, the speaker says "you can get away with it" in regards to eating a high carbohydrate diet. He is speaking about an indigenous tribe and Asian people.

It's not a matter of "get away with it" in regards to eating a high carbohydrate diet. That is what all successful populations did in the past. Did I say "all"?

It was the storing of carbohydrates that built civilization.

Our brains, while only weighing ~3 pounds, uses 20-25% of the food we eat. Our brains can only use carbohydrates. (In a fasting state, the brain uses ketones.)

So to save us from the obesity epidemic, we should all (the whole world) be eating more butter, cheese, animals?

This man is wrong. And Gary Taubes is wrong. But this idea is mainstream and has won the narrative. Once more, here is a paper, the polar opposite but is backed by fact:
https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2013nl/feb/pritikinpdf3.pdf

 

[iloveyoga]

This thread makes me want to go for a bike ride, so here I go.

 

[euro]

It was the storing of carbohydrates that built civilization.

Our brains, while only weighing ~3 pounds, uses 20-25% of the food we eat. Our brains can only use carbohydrates. (In a fasting state, the brain uses ketones.)

So to save us from the obesity epidemic, we should all (the whole world) be eating more butter, cheese, animals?

This man is wrong. And Gary Taubes is wrong. But this idea is mainstream and has won the narrative. Once more, here is a paper, the polar opposite but is backed by fact:
https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2013nl/feb/pritikinpdf3.pdf

It was the storing of carbohydrates that built civilization.
Well, it has allowed the population explosion

Our brains can only use carbohydrates. (In a fasting state, the brain uses ketones.)
Our body can covert protein into glucose (see: "gluconeogenesis").

So to save us from the obesity epidemic, we should all (the whole world) be eating more butter, cheese, animals?

Ideally, yes, but given how large the Earth's population is now, this is no longer practical. It's a huge dilemma on a global scale.

This man is wrong. And Gary Taubes is wrong.

That is a matter of opinion - MINE is that they are RIGHT.

 

[NW-Bound]

Poultry has a feed conversion ratio (FCR) of 1.6. This means for 1.6 lbs of chicken feed we get 1 lb of meat. FCR of chicken egg is 2. FCR of hog is 3.5.

The corn that is used for animal feed is a type that is not consumable by humans. It can be converted to corn syrup or ethanol, etc...

 

[Bestwifeever]

I miss smoking.

 

[haha]

Poultry has a feed conversion ratio (FCR) of 1.6. This means for 1.6 lbs of chicken feed we get 1 lb of meat. FCR of chicken egg is 2. FCR of hog is 3.5.

The corn that is used for animal feed is a type that is not consumable by humans. It can be converted to corn syrup or ethanol, etc...

Sweet corn is our summer corn on the cob.
But the came corn (maize') that we fed to hogs and chickens is the corn that that corn-based civilizations like Mexico, Central America etc. either grind or turn into hominy for human food. I have muyself ground feed corn to make corn dodgers, hush puppies, cornbread, etc.

Ha

 

[garyt]

It could just be that you don't recognize the limits of overweight/obese. I'm 6'1" and weigh (currently) ~230 lbs. I am in my height's obese category, but I doubt many people would look at me and think "obese". I've got a belly, but the rest of it is spread out pretty evenly. I would have to get under 189 lbs to not be overweight, with 162 lbs. being my supposed "ideal" weight. That would be pretty thin, IMO. I have a friend who is my height and around 185, and most people call him skinny/scrawny.

I suspect that we've become used to people carrying more weight around, and don't think "obese" unless someone is extremely overweight.

I know for a fact that they have lowered the BMI for height. So if you were within your healthy BMI before, when they lowered it, your now "obese" without gaining an ounce.
For men especially, if you workout much and carry any real muscle, you'll have a tough time reaching your ideal BMI. I remember an NFL player, I believe it was Barry Sanders, had a 7% body fat ratio but because of his huge muscular legs was rated obese going by his BMI.

 

[brett]

I never noticed this but some time ago we were lined up in Costco. DW said take a look at the people lined up and then take a look at their shopping carts.

Incredible co-relation as one would expect. Who had the bags of chips, popcorn, processed foods, baked goods, and other junk food. When we go into the supermarket my assumption is that these are high profit items simply because they are located in the primo locations, at eye level (and lower for the children) as well as stacked near the check out counters.

I just imagine how frustrating it must be for a physician to see an obese person time after time, give then advice and direction for eating properly, only to have them back next time at the same weight. And then have to work them through and treat them, for all the illnesses, complaints, and discomfort that comes from it.

 

[Walt34]

DW said take a look at the people lined up and then take a look at their shopping carts.

Incredible co-relation as one would expect. Who had the bags of chips, popcorn, processed foods, baked goods, and other junk food.

I've been noticing this for years. Almost invariably the people with lots of fruits & veggies are thin or normal weight. It does a lot to help me control any impulses I may have to buy junk food.