[OT] Why are so many Americans "overweight"

[DarkJester]

I wish I could gain a little weight. I'm 6.4 and 150 pounds. (Can you say, toothpick?)

A couple of the people I know that are overweight say all the time that they are going to start working out and loose it. I don't like to call friends and family lazy but they have been saying it for a long time. Ehh, I shouldn't be talking, I'm to lazy to go work out and build up....

Nevermind me....

 

[Warchild]

I agree with the someone who mentioned soda (or maybe he said pop. LOL). I played footbal in school (both kinds) and was a hard body. Thats probably why i pay more attention to calorie counts and the like, it was a big thing in playing football (the american version anyway). Conditioning coaches always stayed on your back about stuff like that. Of course my soccer coaches were always on me to lose muscle content! I've seen one coach argue with another one about it! LOL!
Of course when i ran into my soon to be D&D croonies, i quickly shed my "all american persona" (and physique, little by little) and became the proverbial super geek!
I can tell you though, its a lot easier to increase your intake of foods by double, not so easy to stop doing it once your use to it.
After i graduated and started real life, i slowly became a wide-body. Still muscular and big, but adding on about 20-45 lbs. I wavered back and forth for years and so did my workouts. My worse was about 285 (6'3"). I've made a decent recovery in the last year or so. You see, i did the math and quit drinking soda. I found out that even the fast food (sans soda) wasn't nearly as bad as the actual soda. Its still not great for you, but in small doses, its not that bad. But the soda is not only huge in calories, but its like cigarettes in that it makes you want to drink more and more! I could eat only once or twice a day, but I got to the point where i was drinking 3-5 20-24 oz's a day ( i may have been bordering on diabetes at that point. I know 3 guys, including one at work that does have diabetes and had the same situation). Most of the sodas rank in at 300 calories per 8oz (not per bottle. thats the sneaky math). 300 calories x 3 (24 oz bottle) x 4 = 2700 calories!!
Add 2700 calories to your daily diet and see what happens. Add a half or even third and see what it does for you!! So when i cut soda (and sweetened tea which is the same thing) out of the daily "regimen" and switched to water/non sweatened tea, i was cutting 2000 +/- calories a day. In the first 2-3 months alone i wreaked havoc on my wardrobe (which had gotten bigger and bigger). Now almost a year later i am only about 15 lbs over my playing weight (football and soccer). Although the ratio of muscle/fat is skewed in the opposite direction that it was back then. I still have work to do.

Anyway, its not some huge social or psychological statement, just my personal experience and why I got fat!

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Well crime in the states is bad... very bad.. at least in the larger cities (of which there are alot) in the States it's rediculous compared to other western countries. And especially the worse kinda crimes as rape, murder, armed robbery and stuff.

Statistics tell it, and friends of mine in the states and people I know on the boards veery well and who live there tell me.

And another thing, in europe having a real weapon is almost unheard of. Even walking across the streets with a knife is not done. Exept maybe in some bad parts of larger cities as Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris.
But overal weapons are just not done and unheard of.. that is one of the main causes IMO... America is gun and weapon crazy and as I've been told to walk in the larger citiesespecially out of the city core is just plain dangerous and an invitation to get robbed or something worse.

Just from things I read, hear people say and again from my own experience in the States where some towns and large parts of cities are really really discouraged to go to and you are warned about them as tourist.

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This, I believe, is a skewed perception of the US. You would think that everyone in the US was dying of West Nile virus if you listened to the media, and I firmly believe what you're saying here is a funhouse-mirror view of the US that comes from TV and the movies. You mention statistics - cite them specifically, and where we can compare them to that of other nations.

I will say this, and leave the subject alone (I don't want a flame war or the thread locked) - if the US was that bad, why would anyone live here? Or visit? We've had around 130+ years without a war in North America - what other region of the world can say that there hasn't been a war in the last 10 years, let alone 100? My point is, the US can't be that bad.

 

[mmadsen]

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I'd like to see the statistics.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has quite a bit of information, including a PDF report on obesity.

One stat from the article: Obesity (BMI 30+) increased from 12% to nearly 18% from 1991 to 1998. That's a dramatic increase in less than a decade.

 

[Umbran]

Maybe americans dont see fat people in such a bad light as other countries do. Grossly overweight people in America dont seem too concerned about how people see them. True ?

I side with ColonelHardisson and Heap Thaumaturgist. False. Very false.

Self-esteem problems are pretty common among highly-overweight people. In fact, they tend to suffer from a vicious circle - being overweight contributes to low self-esteem, which leads to depression, inactivity, overeating the wrong foods as a form of comfort, lack of will to change... which contributes to being overweight, and so on.

Not to mention Anorexia and Bulimia. If being overweight were acceptable, would we develop eating disorders based upon the need to be skinny? Would we have Ally McBeal? A huge business in diet books?

 

[Someone]

Because we are rich. We can afford it because Americans have worked long and hard to make us the most prosperous nation on earth for close to the last 100 years. Americans are, on average, more overweight than the rest of the world. On the other end of the spectrum we produce more world class atheletes than any other country on earth. The French are whining themselves into a frenzy because an American can't be beat in their own backyard bike race. Whatever else may be wrong with America, we can more or less choose our destiny ourselves. If you want to be a big fat lard-a**, go right ahead. You want to win the Tour de France 4 times in a row, no better place to train than here.

Ah! One of these exercises of modesty that make Americans so well loved all around the world! By that rate, Spain must be a marvelous country; Miguel Indurain won the Tour 6 times in a row in the late 90s.

That proves nothing. Only that there´s a freak whose heart beats 30 times per minute.

 

[MaxKaladin]

Cities tend to be dangerous, armed or not. I come from a well-armed small town in Texas where pretty much everyone has at leas one gun, but there is very little crime and what violent crime there is almost invariably is committed by people who came there from a big city. I've lived in a large city for the last 5 years and I've never witnessed a violent crime. You hear about it on the news all the time, but it's always in the same "poor" neighborhoods. I think it's got more to do with the people involved than anything else.

ANYWAY, on the weight thing. I'm always amazed at the amount of soft drinks people around me put away. I never drink them. I am, however, fat. My problem, and I think this is overlooked a lot, is metabolism. I was fine until I got to college. A busy schedule where I didn't eat meals at regular times, skipped meals entirely and then overate at the next meal and snacked a lot to stave off cravings really threw my metabolism off. It went into 'survival mode', and I started gaining weight.

I think our hectic "on the go" culture has a lot to do with it. That and the soft drinks. I have nieces and nephews who won't touch water and would survive on nothing but soft drinks if given a choice. As it is, they drink the things way too much. I think that's a big part of the problem with kids. That and not being outside enough. Either they don't want to go out because there is no tv/video games or their parents won't let them out (like one of me nephews) because they're sure the kid is going to get kidnapped and killed (and this nephew is 14) so you get lots of kids spending their time inside instead of outside.

Another thing that comes to mind on that score is air conditioning. When I was a kid we didn't have it and staying inside was too stuffy in the summer, even in Texas. Nowdays, given the choice, I wouldn't leave the air conditioning if I didn't have to. That probably has something to do with it.

 

[Melan]

Colonel Hardisson: the points you are making are excellent, but on the wars thing, you must not forget that the US has an excellent geopolitical position - surrounded by seas and two pretty friendly neighbours with land borders. America couldn't have avoided any war if it had been situated in, say, the middle of Europe.

Aside from this, you are right - the cult of the "Übermensch" (oh, sorry, the physically perfect human specimen) is getting really annoying - it is as if normal, average human beings were somehow deficient and lacking...

 

[The Forsaken One]

Such as...? There is not another segment of the population that is so negatively portrayed in the media. None. Ridiculing or insulting people based on appearance, especially in the media, is taboo - except when it comes to fat people. If any other group - racial, religious, whatever - were so negatively portrayed so consistently in the media, there would be boycotts and lawsuits everyday. There are already a lot of such things happening as it is, but it is becoming increasingly rare for every group except fat people to be openly mocked.

I put that up to see if it was correct since I have no personal experience with much american media and how they portrait certain people. But if you are correct about this point than that is most certianly a very sad buisenss indeed.

This, I believe, is a skewed perception of the US. You would think that everyone in the US was dying of West Nile virus if you listened to the media, and I firmly believe what you're saying here is a funhouse-mirror view of the US that comes from TV and the movies. You mention statistics - cite them specifically, and where we can compare them to that of other nations.

This I have learned from personal experience and from what people who live in the states tell me. So it has NOTHING at all to do with what the media tells me. And we are talking about certian parts and places in America in specifique alot of parts of tje major cities and as someone put up as even in some small towns.

What do you guys precicely mean with that "on-go" culture and how did it get that far..? One page ago someone was talking about massively bored americaan Youths that eat because they are bored. (The last is obviously linked to another statement about that parents keep chldren inside because it isn't safe in their eyes, another point to that safety and security feelings in the US leave much much work.)

 

[The Forsaken One]

I favor average humans and dislike the perfect ones... especially the ones that want to get perfect via any means and just don't seem to be able to be happy with who they are, and now I'm even talking about very average and sometimes even already above average attacktive people.

It's just plain sad.... world is going crazy and in some parts a bit faster then others