User Post: Americans getting even more obese

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  Posted by snowbunny1222 Tue Jul 7, 2009 10:38am PDT

  I'm glad Montana did well on both lists! we definitely stay active with all of the mountains, lakes, and rivers. sorry about gloating but I'm proud!

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  Posted by Samx Tue Jul 7, 2009 11:00am PDT

  Also on shine post there is an article on do we live to long.

  Well if ppl keep getting fatter, I don't see what the problem is, the FAT ppl will be dropping like flys' and living long won't be an issue then.

  I also observed one of the main reasons what society has against ppl living long is the quality of life. Well now how is life great when you can't run and play with your children, climb stairs, your poor lungs and knees were not designed to carry more weight then normal. You all know know what normal is - so don't even go there.

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  Posted by allee Wed Jul 8, 2009 7:29am PDT

  I lived in Michigan my whole life, and watched parents get fatter, kids getting fatter. everyone prettty much. When i worked at a local store I would watch women walking by practically busting out of their clothes. See children and teens waddling down the sidewalk. And I myself am not a thin woman, but i keep my areas of insecurity covered.

  I just moved to another country, and have yet to see any obese people. Compared to them my 5'8 185lbs is obese. Now I see why my husband has called me fat on occasion. In America I was average. Here I am big. lol..

  When in the states we drove everywhere. excersise was limited. And junk food was the norm. Now where we live we do not own a car. We have to walk everywhere. Junk food pretty much does not exist. And I think I have already lost a lb or two.

  I know what I look like. I am not a supermodel. I am a woman with a full figure. I have had two pregnancys, resulting with 3 kids. I am proud of my scars. I love my big boobs. I feel comfortable in my own skin . I am not ashamed of my body. However I would like to be a little more trim in the mid-section.

  For me it is a matter of stopping the junk food. And walking. I do not want to be the fat American, but I will not freak out about it.

  I feel bad for so many people who dont even bother to try and be healthier. I feel really bad when I see obese kids. It is so unnesessary.

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  Posted by Joseph M Wed Jul 8, 2009 10:24am PDT

  The obesity epidemic is caused by a number of different factors not the least of which include sedentary lifestyle, a lack of understanding with respect to proper diet and nutrition, emotional stress and financial constraints. For example, people tend to spend more time in front of the computer or home entertainment center than they do getting outdoors for a breath of exercise. When you are physically active you will burn more calories than you would if you remained sedentary.

  Also, many people are unaware that we need to eat small meals throughout the day. The reason for this is that the body is a living machine and it needs fuel to function properly. If you don't eat enough food your metabolism slows down and you will gain weight. Coupled with this is that we must make proper food choices, getting a healthy balance of meat, fish and poultry, fruits, vegetables, grains, bread, cereal, nuts, and healthy fats. But with the rising food costs and so many people either unemployed or underemployed, putting any sort of food on the table is the number one priority. So this will contribute to a rise in obesity or overweight. Put another way, food quality is a factor in whether or not a person will gain weight.

  Finally, emotional stress often increases weight gain. This is due in part to the release of stress induced hormones which may trigger the body to eat more food in an attempt to combat the stress (emotional eating) or cause the body to more readily store fat and slow metabolism. So, people must find a way to reduce stress (in a healthy way) to avoid weight gain.

  My website "Living Fit, Healthy and Happy" has a number of articles discussing the topics of childhood and adult obesity, stress and emotional eating, and steps people can take to get into shape in spite of limited finances.

  One such article is "Thinning Wallets and Bulging Waistlines" which can be found here:

  http://www.livingfithealthyandhappy.com/2009/01/thinning-wallets-and-bulging-waistlines.html

  Health is important to mind, body and spirit. The key to becoming healthy and staying that way is to make a permanent change in lifestyle which is something anyone can do if they really want to.

  Living Fit, Healthy and Happy

  The website committed to helping people lead a healthy life!

  http://www.livingfithealthyandhappy.com

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  Posted by Danielle H Wed Jul 8, 2009 4:13pm PDT

  It's not lack of money at all. I'm broke and pretty much have always been broke. It's just laziness, simple as that. To lazy to cook so they feed themselves and their children hmmmm....McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell. They don't want to walk inside so there is drive-thru everything...banks, restaurants, even liquor stores. Now Star Bucks is drive-thru. We all know how calorie laden those sugary coffee drinks are. Here's a tip: park your car as far away as possible to the door of the grocery store. Fill your cart with produce, bottled water, whole grains and calcium products such as yogurt, low fat cottage cheese and skim milk. Go home and cook for your family then go for a walk with them instead of parking yourself in front of the T. V. Then come back and tel me how much weight you lost. Also stop blaming it on emotional eating. I've heard too much of that and it's just an excuse. Me and a number of people I know actually lose weight when they are stressed out. There's a reason they say a moment on the lips a lifetime on the hips! Make better choices people for you and your children.

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  Posted by Samx Wed Jul 8, 2009 5:57pm PDT

  To the last blog - ppl know what to do, its the doing part that they aren't willing to do.

  Yeah, pass the remote, go grab some burgers in the drive thru, and oh yeah its my hormones or is it my meds. There will always be excuses, like the dog ate my homework.

  A long time ago I heard a saying "you are what you eat" I finally understand that.

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  Posted by jessisbest Wed Jul 8, 2009 10:00pm PDT

  One of the BEST reasons I love being a Colorado Woman :0)

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  Posted by Terri Thu Jul 9, 2009 11:41am PDT

  beans and (brown) rice are yummy, satisfying, healthy, and more affordable than any junk food. They can be seasoned and augmented by the most pathetic scraps of veggies in your crisper.

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  Posted by Jett Thu Jul 9, 2009 2:25pm PDT

  This is just my opinion, based on supposition, not on research. Take this for what it's worth:

  This is unfathomable to me. I knew that about a third of the American population was obese — I just mentioned this to my husband two days ago when we were walking around Disney World noticing how about one in three people was, in fact, obese. Still, how can ONE THIRD of America be THAT FAT??

  Sadly my state Virginia is about halfway down the list, not the worst, but certainly not the best. New Jersey, too, where I grew up, is about the same. For children, it’s even higher in both states.

  So my question is WHY? Why, as the author says, is it so much worse than in 1991? What’s different now than it was in 1991? The obvious answer is technology — computers, iPods, Internet, whatever. BULL, I say. In the 70s there were Kalieco (sp?) and Atari, in the 80s, Nintendo and Saga. It’s all the same. So we were surfing the tube instead of the Web. I don’t believe children today are less active than they were in the 80s because of cell phones or portable DVD players.

  So, then, is it the food? Are snacks more processed today than they were 30 years ago? I don’t believe they are. We were eating Kudos and Pringles and spray cheese from a can in the 80s. In the 70s they were eating Snowballs and Spam and Fluffer-Nutters (peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches). Food is not any worse today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. McDonald’s has not changed its menu since then.

  It IS possible the portion sizes have gone up, I’ll concede that, but are children really eating larger meals than they were in the 70s or 80s? I had a friend, growing up, whose parents always made her “clean her plate.” She isn’t obese now, at the age of 28, nor was she then.

  So I have to ask what’s the problem, then? What’s different in the 21st Century than how it was in the late 20th?

  The ONLY other idea I’ve got is that it’s a new generation. It fits, doesn’t it? Approximately 15 years or so after 1991 is when we really began to pay attention to obese children, when the obesity rates really reached an astronomical height.

  My mom has a theory for why children today are such spoiled, horrible brats, but it might serve to explain the rise in childhood (or general) obesity as well:

  My grandparents lived in The Greatest Generation. They fought in WWII, and when they returned they gave birth to my parents’ generation, The Baby Boomers, which spanned roughly the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s. My parents and their contemporaries were brought up on stories of how their parents had to scrape for money during the Great Depression and how they had to ration food during the war. They, likely, also experienced poverty during childhood. They, in turn, raised their children — my generation, from about 1977-1990 — to appreciate what we have, work for what we want.

  The problem, as my mom sees it, is the in-between generations. The people who became adults during the 20s, had their children during the late 50s and 60s, whose children, in turn, began having their own children during the 90s — the people who not only didn’t fight in any wars but in fact protested the wars and grew to believe that we shouldn’t HAVE to fight for what we want, or work for what we want. It should be handed to us on a silver platter.

  I can understand why that scenario would produce entitled, spoiled people who are a detriment to the workforce and to society, but does it explain the obesity problem? Is it all related?

  Obviously there are obese people in every generation and at every age, but why is it so much worse now? What is different since 1991? Is it possible that a particular generation could feel differently about food and exercise?

  Just a thought; I'm sure it's not a unique one.

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  Posted by Jett Thu Jul 9, 2009 2:32pm PDT

  Doktor Eevol: I agree to an extent with what you said, "The 'eat right and exercise' mantras aren't working. The diet industry isn't working - it's sucking BILLIONS from the American economy and solving NOTHING," but that's not to say I think we should just toss those ideas out the window. Eating right and exercising DO work, but people today misinterpret what HEALTHY is. They think eating healthy means eating 100-cal snack packs made with Splenda instead of sugar. They think it's eating egg whites and using butter spray and drinking Diet Coke. That's not "healthy" it's "low-fat," it's "low-cal." There's a difference, they just don't see or understand it.

  Eating healthy doesn't have to taste like eating card board. It doesn't mean having to give up bananas and cashews and egg yolks, simply because those foods contain fat. FAT IS NOT BAD. It's INGREDIENTS that are bad. It's PORTION SIZES that are bad. We don't need a 36-oz soda from 7-11. We need WATER. If people ate more fiber and more veggies and more healthy protein they wouldn't be hungry all the time and they wouldn't have to subsist on low-cal/low-fat foods simply so that they could eat MORE and not gain the weight that comes with eating MORE.

  Oh, and they need to EXERCISE. Take a walk or a hike, or go swimming, or join a soccer league. ANYTHING. It doesn't have to feel like work. Personally, I hate lifting weights in a gym, but doesn't climbing a tree sound like fun? It uses the same muscles.

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