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Perhaps not, but as someone who spent most of her life living abroad, I've noticed the difference in weight. Americans are overweight if they're not constantly working out and watching what they eat. Abroad I haven't seen the emphasis on gym memberships, the constant dwelling on overweight, nor the countless diet products, diet doctors, diet books, hundreds of thousands of diets, etc. that I see in the U.S.
What I do notice in the U.S. is that it's a car nation, so people don't walk daily and need a membership to a gym just to maintain their weight. Also, they have very little time off compared to people of other countries. Lastly, they don't have a very full lifestyle, full of enjoyment.
I think the lifestyle in the U.S. is another illness that needs to be addressed and hasn't been.
Also, when I live abroad I weigh 15 lbs less, approximately, and with no working out, no memberships to gym, and no watching my weight, and no diets.
The moment I get back to the U.S., those 15 lbs are back on me like glue.
I believe that you are correct. Our lifestyles don't encourage activity. We look at walking as an event for exercise rather than for pleasure or transportation. I've been trying to use my bicycle more as just daily transportation for trips and work. I'm still fat, but that's not the real point. The point is to make it part of a lifestyle choice that helps to contribute to health. I'm sure there are other issues to Europeans having lower body weights. You didn't say why you felt you gained the 15 pounds? was it more food? The kind of food? The car?
I believe that you are correct. Our lifestyles don't encourage activity. We look at walking as an event for exercise rather than for pleasure or transportation. I've been trying to use my bicycle more as just daily transportation for trips and work. I'm still fat, but that's not the real point. The point is to make it part of a lifestyle choice that helps to contribute to health. I'm sure there are other issues to Europeans having lower body weights. You didn't say why you felt you gained the 15 pounds? was it more food? The kind of food? The car?
I think the "smaller portion factor" helps some. But reality is, there is just so much extra incidental activity when you live somewhere more walkable. Urban design has a huge impact on how much you are willing to walk. Generally speaking, it is way less interesting to walk 5 minutes in a strip mall parking lot vs a 20 minutes on a nice tree-lined main street.
I work too far to make my commute active (30 miles from home). I've been on a mission to use my bike more too, and basically use it for stuff around town, groceries, and social stuff! I will say, it is infinitely easier for me to use my bike for errands since it is outfitted as a "city bike" with fenders and step-through frame. So basically I can wear normal stuff (like a dress!). Then I am excited to take my bike out, vs I wouldn't use it if I had to wear sporty clothing.
I have been low energy for months now, but have mustered enough to fit in 15-20 miles most weekends between trips to brunch, the farmers market, the pharmacy and so on! Once I feel back on track, I hope to get in some more strenuous exercise, but each little bit helps.
But since I am usually pedaling around in a dress, I get lots of friendly comments!
I mentioned earlier, we have engineered the activity our of our lives, and most people don't want to take a walk if it is unpleasant: crappy sidewalks, no scenery or unsafe streets make it difficult. Fitting in activity in daily life is way more helpful and easy to maintain.
I am 60 years old, and live in England. We have a growing obesity problem here. When I was young, most everybody was slim. Not all, but most young people for sure. Now, everywhere I look, I see overweight young folks.
People make excuses for being fat. For most, it's simple. They eat too much, especially fattening foods. Plus of course, folks ride everywhere in their cars, and don't get enough exercise.
I travel to many different countries. In America I see a lot of fat people. In Tunisia, I see a lot of slim people. It's the food we eat ......... simple as that. Too much pizza, too many burgers, too much sody pop. Just too much junk food.
Let's see.........from when I grew up in the 70s.... fast food drive thru-s, cable TV, remote controls, video games, snowblowers, cordless phones, economy changing to service oriented as opposed to manufacturing, more automobile ownership than ever before, increase in delivery services, internet, smartphones, etc hell, who needs to get out of the car, house, or even your room anymore ?
If kid's sit staring at their phones. or playing games on their machines in the evening, instead of running around playing outside, what do you get? Unfit, fat kids. It's not rocket science.
When I was a kid, there weren't no supermarkets. Didn't even have a fridge in my house till 1964..... My mother shopped daily at the local butcher, and greengrocer. The only fast food that existed was fish and chips!
Fast forward 50 years, enormous supermarkets full of giant bottles of sody pop, pizzas, large bags of crisps (chips). Large freezers full of big tubs of ice cream. Car park full of cars.
My idea of transport to the shops when I was a kid was my bike! We were outside every night running round playing kid games. The streets are empty in the evenings nowadays.
Plenty of excuses on this thread for being unfit and fat. You might convince young folks who see nothing but fat people around them. I remember a very different time when most folks were slim.
All that's changed since those times is, people eat more fattening food, and they don't exercise. By that, I don't mean the gym, just walking!! I see the guy who lives opposite me. He gets in his car each morning to go for a paper. The shop is about 300 yards away.
Nutrition is not something we have paid a tremendous amount of attention to. Some nutritionists will tell you the food pyramid is crap. What we are teaching is often dead wrong.
There are plenty of ways to get exercise. You may not be walking 5 miles a day to school an back but there are plenty of sports available to get involved in.
There are plenty of ways to get exercise. You may not be walking 5 miles a day to school an back but there are plenty of sports available to get involved in.
I forgot walking to school! From when I was 11 years old, I walked to my school. It took me almost an hour each way. I could have gone to a school nearer home, but we had moved home, and I wanted to go to the senior school my old friends went to.
My dad said, "sure, you go there David, but you'll have to walk." We didn't own a car. So I did..... every school day for years. Now all I hear is about traffic problems in the morning and afternoon because of the 'school run.'
I totally agree. Genetics don't just change like that. Now people want to make every excuse in the book about obesity such as there's not enough sidewalks in the suburbs
Genetics may not, but epigenetics do.
My eggs were formed when I was an embryo, before 12 weeks of pregnancy. If my mother was starving at that stage, then not only I, but also my children would be affected. They discovered this epigenetic effect when the daughters of women who were pregnant during WWII famine in the Netherlands started having babies. There is also an effect on the health of the children of boys who were starving around 13/14 years old.
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More unexpectedly, the children whose mothers had been malnourished only early in pregnancy had higher obesity rates than normal. Recent reports have shown a greater incidence of other health problems as well, including effects on certain measures of mental health. Even though those individuals had seemed perfectly healthy at birth, something had happened to their devel*opment in the womb that affected them for decades after. And it wasn’t just the fact that something had happened that mattered, it was when it happened. Events that take place in the first three months of gestation, a stage when the fetus is really very small and developing very rapidly, can affect an individual for the rest of his or her life.
Even more extraordinarily, some of these effects seem to be present in the children of this group, that is, in the grandchildren of the women who were malnour*ished during the first three months of their pregnancy. So something that happened in one pregnant population affected their children’s children. That raised the really puzzling question of how those effects were passed on to subsequent generations.
Then there are the effects of hormones like ghrelin and leptin on fat storage. It turns out to not be as simple as calories in, calories out. But, I am interested in the number of really overweight little children. A five year old has no control over their diet, and while there are disorders which cause overweight (which is why you shouldn't judge any one individual parent of a fat child), they don't come close to accounting for all of them.
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Kids who are overweight in kindergarten are four times more likely to be obese by eighth grade compared with their normal-weight peers, new research shows.
• About 12% of the children were obese in kindergarten and 15% were overweight. By eighth grade about 21% were obese and 17% were overweight.
Last edited by WildColonialGirl; 07-03-2014 at 07:05 AM..
Well I'm fat and I don't have any thyroid issues. Nor do I have high blood pressure heart disease, or any other major health problems. I have two friends w2ho have had thyroid problems requiring surgery and neither of them is what I would call fat.
I practice a martial art in which I train for 6 hours a week plus seminars the most recent of which I was on the mat for four days straight totaling about 15 hours of workout. I ride and train horses work part time as a farrier and also have a full time job in animal care that has me sweating for about 6 hours a day. I doubt you could keep up with me on your best day. I have been dooing this for many years and always struggled to loose weight.
I have lost some significant weight recently and am thrilled about this. But what changed? It was't how much I eat. It wasn't the amount I exercise. The change for me was a better job that allowed me to buy better foods and to enjoy a lifestyle that was a lot less stressful. The change was beating depression and finding some happiness and peace in life. This took a huge effort to accomplish and it was not accomplished by having my friends criticize and beat me up about my situation. it was having friends who gave support and encouragement and cheered me on when I made every effort.
But I don't owe you or anyone a explanation as to why I am 100 pounds over weight. My question to the OP is this. Why is it any concern of yours why other people have weight problems? It isn't your body it isn't your problem ad your insensitive comments don't encourage those who want to loose weight. Negative reinforcement does not work with either animals or people. You are just heaping more bad feelings on someone who probably already has enough of their own. No fat person needs a friend like you.
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Fatter
My mother shopped daily at the local butcher, and greengrocer. The only fast food that existed was fish and chips!