Everyone blames food/diet/portions for this, but personally I think the car-centric culture should also bear a large portion of the blame.
When I stayed with friends in Europe, they easily ate as much as my American friends, but everywhere we went we were either walking or biking.
Meanwhile, in the VAST majority of the US, if you so much as want a safe place to walk that isn’t adjacent to the pervasive pedestrian-hostile street design, you need to take a car to get there.
American car culture essentially turns the average routine into ferrying oneself from chair to desk to chair to bed, intermixed with brief walks throgh scenic parking lots.
We need to counter the sedentary lifestyle within the design of our actual cities, but its the american way to push societal problems onto the responsibility of the individual… so I do not see this changing within our lifetimes.
I’m not sure that’s correct, check out how many calories you’d have to burn just to cover those in a can of soda.
I think walking does way more than burning calories though.
For one it gives you a lot more awareness of your physical condition, if you go everywhere by car you may barely notice your weight has doubled.
Secondly I find any physical activity, especially running or walking, helps to combat urges for stuff like snacking.
Sure, that may be true although I’d push back on your assertion that people somehow won’t notice they’ve added 100lbs unless they walk everywhere.
The main issue is that processed foods are very high in calories and low in everything that is good for you and these foods are absolutely everywhere in the US. Work meetings frequently have a box of donuts on the table (700 calories each) huge sodas are common, coffees are more like a dessert than a drink, etc.
According to my watch if I do a 15 minute walk with some light jogging that’s around 120 calories. I’d have to do that twice to cancel out a single can of soda.
I am one of those obese people, and it seems so achingly unfair.
I am an active person. I eat similar foods and quantities as my peers, with drastically different results. I drink water, not soda or juice. I basically stopped drinking coffee, but when I did, it was always plain black. The only weight loss success I’ve had was spending a year on a keto diet, which my doctor swears was slowly killing me (salt, sulfites, etc). My doctor says I have mild hypothyroidism, but not bad enough to call for treatment.
I have been overweight my entire life, living in a world that fundamentally believes that this is entirely my fault. I don’t know how to convey the hopelessness that people like me have to live with, and the resolve that it requires to keep making healthy choices in spite of it, and never seeing beneficial results.
I don’t know how to get off this ride. All I ask is for other people to not believe I am a lazy shameless grotesque person for being forced to ride it.
You’re not lazy or shameless.
Everyone has different struggles, for you one of those struggles is going to be your genetics which means you can’t eat and exercise the same as your peers. You have to do better. That means cut out the ultraprocessed stuff and limit the amount you eat at restaurants. When you cook for yourself be careful of how much butter oil or sugar and salt you’re adding to your food. But you know this already.
If you’ve done a keto diet you have the willpower to make the necessary lifestyle changes. Don’t let a temporary setback be permanent. Good luck!
Only ten percent? I’d have guessed it’s higher, but perhaps the states I haven’t visited have slimmer people.
It’s those who are severely obese. 40% are obese and 75% are overweight.
Math aren’t mathing here.
Obesity and being overweight overlap. Like how all squares are shapes but not all shapes are squares
This reminds of upgrades in tower defense games for some reason.
Gun
Rifle
Gatling gun
Machine gun I
Machine gun II
Machine gun III
Maybe it would help you to read in an “at least” to those stats
I’m not going to argue semantics.
Severe/morbid obesity is a BMI of 40+, rather than 30 for obese. I’ve been at the low end of that briefly and started getting out of breath doing things like going to my car, so I immediately decided to drop weight. Bar things like severe depression or significant medical issues, I don’t see how people are able to maintain that kind of weight when it has such an obvious direct impact on quality of life.
Curious if the survey also included children, where the rates tend to be lower.
Child obesity has been higher than the national average for the last 30 years.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-child-17-18/obesity-child.htm
Young children were like half the rate of adults and adolescents. Even if you averaged the 6-11 in with them, they’d still be below adults and adolescents.
It’s my understanding that the US considers children to be people under 18 years of age.
surprised pikachu face
