A weighty issue

[Netzach]

It's not exactly germane to the discussion, but one scientist took the light data and applied it to Alzheimer's patients and other chronically ill elderly. Seems that auto clock tends to break down over time, or gets a little looser in its interpretation. However, when the same test group was exposed to larger amounts of light during the day rather than cooping them up in low light rooms, cognitive measurements jumped amongst the group 11-20something percent. i'm recalling this in a dark room so my memory is obviously shot to hell in response.

I'm not sure it's not germane. Most people are under fluorescents and staring at glowing boxes of one kind or another all the time.

A job in MN in an office often meant that I spent a lot of the winter never seeing sun other than on weekends.

A. Helllooooo emotional eating and drinking
B. The low energy you feel is something I can't even begin to describe.

Before you talk lunch hour, I was informed at almost every job I've had here in an office setting "we don't take an hour, we eat lunch at our desks."

What the cock is that? That's the new workday.

Try finding a salad in the skyway eateries of Mpls, which is all you have time to navigate for lunch. I did - one place. How scary is it that no one else seemed to opt for that ever?

Bring food? Yeah, better idea. I was a mass transit taker, and groceries would have tacked on 2 hours to getting home at 5-6 pm and it's already pitch black.

I don't live like that any longer, thank God. But I can see clearly how my freshman 15 morphed into my postgraduate 50.

 

[nh23]

I'm thinking of this in terms of nationalized care, and I'm torn. I would love for everyone to have basic medical needs covered at an affordable rate. It's the humane thing to do, we would be a stronger and healthier nation for putting people in a place where they can take care of things preventatively, it would actually be cheaper in the long term (because of preventative health care), etc.

However, just as I twitch over women having children to increase their welfare checks [less common than it used to be, I know], I twitch over covering the costs associated with preventable diseases caused by obesity. Cold, I know, but I do.

I would be perfectly happy to have my tax dollars go towards a national fitness membership where people have access to gyms, yoga studios, nutritionists, etc.

Well there are preventable diseases caused by a lot of other things too. So best bet, if you don't want to pay for the bad choices of everyone else, live like me. No insurance, and only pay for your own bills, and your children's too of course. I know with two kids it's outrageous. I can't imagine what it would be with more. You're probably still doing better paying what you do now with insurance than you would be without.

To be fair, he's often an asshole.





Seriously, you two can eat a dick. Sorry, but I have ONE kid and a very demanding job and I'm exhausted all the time. I do make time to walk and work out, barely, but I also am not a single parent with a barely involved dad and young kids. Money helps. Having time helps. Having help helps.

A- fucking- men. I happen to be a single parent, with a barely involved dad. One visit in the last couple of months. Child support sometimes, sometimes not for months. Master does help me with them when I'm working etc..but it is by far not his responsibility so I try not to rely on him.

Damn, man! The teachers' unions in Chicago must totally suck, if their members are routinely expected to put in 13 hour non-stop days.

This is a good example of the overall problem, though. Time spent movin' around should be considered as necessary a part of a person's day as time spent eating meals. And we, as a society, need to either accept that fact and adjust our facilities and employee expectations accordingly, or accept the negative consequences in terms of economics and overall health.

Exercise is not a "luxury." It's a necessity. That's how we need to start thinking.

Your wife wakes up at 4:45 am every day, exercises and then heads off to work, from which she gets off that night at 8:30? When the hell does she have time for contributing to household chores, family conversation, or sex? Hats off to her commitment to 146 vs. 325, but that's just not a reasonable or sustainable schedule for society overall.

That's what I was wondering. When does she have time to fix a healthy dinner, or do homework with the kids. She's also very lucky because she has you to help with all of that. Not all of us are that lucky.

OMG, let's not even get into how much of a health and metabolic fuck this is and how many people are living it. Not only nurses and MD's and security guards, but every third schmuck collecting an insufficient salary.

If we set the wayback machine on this thread to Netzie's first post, it talks about changing labor patterns and expectations and being able to set priorities around them.

I'm sure it has some effect on my metabolism. It also makes me feel like shit most of the time. As soon as I get used to days, I have to switch back to nights and vice versa. I work nights on Sunday's. I work dayshift on Tuesday. I fucking hate Tuesday's. If I come home Monday morning and sleep then I'm up all night and have to go to work with no sleep. If I stay up all day Monday so I can sleep that night, it's a bad day for everyone in our household.

 

[WriterDom]

As someone who has twisted more ankles than i can recall on O'darkthirty runs, the next tidbit really pissed me off. The absolute worst time to exercise is the four hours that follow awakening from sleep. Blood pressure is at its highest for the 24 hours in most humans during that period regardless of lifestyle. Interestingly enough, that's the time your brain is at its best in focusing on the nitpicky details of a single task and/or multitasking the washer is overflowing, the baby needs a diaper change, the dog needs a walk, and your work@home conference call starts in 15 minutes. The best time for exercise is from the seven hour post awakening to eleven hour mark. The body burns calories more efficiently during that period than at any other time of your 24 hour day. i would have thought that flew in the face of an 1800 local testosterone ebb, but that may just mark the end of best physical activity.

.

For me it's only practical in the early morning. Mid 70s vs upper 80s at sundown. In the summer anyway. Plus it's better to get it done before the little devil on your shoulder can talk you out of it. And he'll remind you how hot it is too.

It's really a common thing for people to do really well until summer hits then they hang it up. Then they get going again but the Thanksgiving to Christmas thing knocks them down again. There is also a theory that you can only be extremely motivated for 90 days or so then the body breaks down. If that's true I have about 80 more days before I crash. But at least I won't be staring summer in the face at that point.

 

[intothewoods]

Actually, her employer does make its indoor workout facilities available to both students and faculty - but only before and after school. However, there is no time during the course of the ordinary workday for anyone to work out - and there would be a monstrous hue and cry from taxpayers if teachers were allowed the luxury of working out during the school day.



The one advantage that my wife has presently is that our youngest is nearing 18 and does not require the degree of care that your little one does. However, she started this workout routine before we had children and has maintained it religiously for 35 years through nursing three infants and getting up for weekend soccer and softball games and then through staying up until the dating ones got home late at night.

But it's her choice and I often think that she's off her nut. I raise her example only because it's one person who has managed to keep to a good regime of exercise despite a demanding schedule as a working woman and a mother.

Thanks, but I'll leave the dick eating for others.

If you must.

To my list of what helps, I'll add not needing sleep.

 

[the captians wench]

Actually, have like, 2 bites of something before bed. Not a full on midnight snack, but a handful of pecans or a glass of lowfat milik or a half a banana. I was given this schedule:

breakfast
+2 hrs am snack
+ 2 hrs lunch
+ 2 hrs aft. snack
LIGHT dinner
before bed small snack

This is very close to my diet, only depending on the activity I'm doing that day, I might have to eat more often.

I am scheduled 9 hour shifts. I'm expected to be there at least 15 mins before a shift and often my replacing manager is not scheduled until my shift is sposed to end, so I'm there 30 mins to an hour after my scheduled time off. I also work 45 mins from my current store but with traffic it can be an hour to an hour and a half.

So on days when I have to be there anytime but opening, I eat a small meal before I leave the house (all of my meals are small meals btw). About an hour after I'm at work, I eat a spoon of peanut butter. Two hours later, another spoon of pb. Two hours later I'm hoping we slow down so I can grab a sandwhich (oh and I'm allergic to the grilled chicken btw, papricka). Two hours later is another spoon of pb, maybe two depending on how much crew work I have to do. Two hours later is should be about time for me to be getting off so I'm grabbing another sandwhich.

Now all of this depends on what hours I'm working. I have open availibility which means I can work any shift we are open. This month I've done mostly 4am to 1pm. This is the shift I function on best, but ofcourse I'm not cooking breakfast at 2am, so I snag a spoon of pb and eat once we have food up. I'll probably go back to working11am-8 soon as we get a manager back this week. And sundays I usually work 5pm to close about 2am or so.

It's incredibly hard to get on any kind of rutien with this kid of schedule. Not to mention when I'm bouncing around so much I feel like shit. This month as my schedule has had somewhat of a pattern I've had more energy and just over all feel better.

 

[JMohegan]

I'm thinking of this in terms of nationalized care, and I'm torn. I would love for everyone to have basic medical needs covered at an affordable rate. It's the humane thing to do, we would be a stronger and healthier nation for putting people in a place where they can take care of things preventatively, it would actually be cheaper in the long term (because of preventative health care), etc.

However, just as I twitch over women having children to increase their welfare checks [less common than it used to be, I know], I twitch over covering the costs associated with preventable diseases caused by obesity. Cold, I know, but I do.

The relevant question is: Do you believe that universal health insurance would make Americans more likely to gain weight, or less likely to try to lose it?

I don't see why that would be the case. I have a hard time imagining people saying: "Yippee, health insurance! Now it doesn't matter how fat I get, as long as someone else pays for my insulin injections and triple bypass!"

I understand why you would "twitch" over covering certain treatments for certain people, but that twitching is not the same thing as a rational economic response.

Your points as to why we need universal health insurance are excellent. I'll add manufacturing competitiveness to that list.

 

[CutieMouse]

The relevant question is: Do you believe that universal health insurance would make Americans more likely to gain weight, or less likely to try to lose it?

I don't see why that would be the case. I have a hard time imagining people saying: "Yippee, health insurance! Now it doesn't matter how fat I get, as long as someone else pays for my insulin injections and triple bypass!"

I think in general, people treat themselves like crap - regardless of insurance, access to better diet/exercise, whatever. A percentage of the population will take the opportunities to be proactive about their health and run with them (pun intended), but a goodly portion won't. And logically speaking, those who will should not be held back by those who don't give a damn.

I understand why you would "twitch" over covering certain treatments for certain people, but that twitching is not the same thing as a rational economic response.

Your points as to why we need universal health insurance are excellent. I'll add manufacturing competitiveness to that list.

That's why I said it was a twitch, not an "oh hell no!"

 

[ownedsubgal]

last night i was watching "Half-Ton Dad" on TLC...the documentary's been shown many times, here and across the pond. it's about a Texas man, Ken Brumley, who once weighed 1,030 lbs. of course, he had been bedridden for several years, and to add humiliation to that his bed had long ago broken underneath him so he was basically lying on the floor.

now, i've seen many of these documentaries in the past few years....sad and sometimes inspiring tales of what they now call "the super morbidly obese." that's right, there's now a whole new category of obesity. and it's currently the fastest growing category, more and more people are crossing that line from really really huge to whale-like and bedridden everyday. frankly, i find it terrifying. most of these people have amazingly similar stories as well...an addiction to fast food, low-income (often related), and a loving but murderous enabler. it's the enablers, the people handing 30,000 cals a DAY to these folks on a silver platter that really get me the most, but eh, that's another topic.

but there was something about this Ken guy that really got to me. he was very likable, very friendly and oddly confident...seemed like someone who, 600 or so pounds ago would have been the life of a party and at the same time the first guy you call when you need some help. he's also quite intelligent, with a quick wit to boot. drops little nuggets of homegrown wisdom in-between labored breaths. watching this man's story all i could think was, what a shame, what a waste.

on the bright side, he was able to lose half his body weight through a combination of diet, exercise and gastric bypass. let's just hope he keeps it up. but good ol' Ken aside, it makes me wonder...how many 800, 900, 1000, 1200 pound people were there in 1960? 1970? 1980 even? how often did you hear of people needing firemen with axes to knock down walls and get them out of their homes? how often did you hear of people so enormous that their overstretched skin would tear and weep, that they were unable to roll themselves away from their own excrement? is this "super morbidly obese" phenomenon so shocking, on a GLOBAL scale, to others as it is to me?

 

[Netzach]

last night i was watching "Half-Ton Dad" on TLC...the documentary's been shown many times, here and across the pond. it's about a Texas man, Ken Brumley, who once weighed 1,030 lbs. of course, he had been bedridden for several years, and to add humiliation to that his bed had long ago broken underneath him so he was basically lying on the floor.

now, i've seen many of these documentaries in the past few years....sad and sometimes inspiring tales of what they now call "the super morbidly obese." that's right, there's now a whole new category of obesity. and it's currently the fastest growing category, more and more people are crossing that line from really really huge to whale-like and bedridden everyday. frankly, i find it terrifying. most of these people have amazingly similar stories as well...an addiction to fast food, low-income (often related), and a loving but murderous enabler. it's the enablers, the people handing 30,000 cals a DAY to these folks on a silver platter that really get me the most, but eh, that's another topic.

but there was something about this Ken guy that really got to me. he was very likable, very friendly and oddly confident...seemed like someone who, 600 or so pounds ago would have been the life of a party and at the same time the first guy you call when you need some help. he's also quite intelligent, with a quick wit to boot. drops little nuggets of homegrown wisdom in-between labored breaths. watching this man's story all i could think was, what a shame, what a waste.

on the bright side, he was able to lose half his body weight through a combination of diet, exercise and gastric bypass. let's just hope he keeps it up. but good ol' Ken aside, it makes me wonder...how many 800, 900, 1000, 1200 pound people were there in 1960? 1970? 1980 even? how often did you hear of people needing firemen with axes to knock down walls and get them out of their homes? how often did you hear of people so enormous that their overstretched skin would tear and weep, that they were unable to roll themselves away from their own excrement? is this "super morbidly obese" phenomenon so shocking, on a GLOBAL scale, to others as it is to me?

I want to know the stats on it. It is depressing. I wonder if the enablers are kind of the human-being version of rabbit hoarders or something and it's usually due to deadly hook ups or what? There's no "stop feeding" switch firing in their minds, and the partner tends toward overeating compulsion and voila...

I have a feeling this didn't not-exist though, but more that it's something more widely disseminated when it does. Every single piece of infocrap on earth is available to everyone, so if it's out there it's on the air so to speak.

But I also would not be surprised if it's on the rise. 30,000 calories are a lot cheaper now than ever before.

 

[Homburg]

This sums up neatly my qualms about universal health care- it leads toward justifications of all sorts of intrusions into our lives on the basis of how we're now fiscally responsible for everybody's well-being.

Well, that's one of my major qualms anyway.

In my case, it was largely the result of giving up on caring about the principles of governance, and then deciding that, if we're stuck with what we're stuck with, we may as well attempt to squeeze the good out of the collective buying power of the absurd machine we've built.

--

i
As a species, our meal times have drastically changed in less than a century. We formerly ate a major meal upon rising, between 1/4 and 1/3 of our daily caloric intake at the midday meal, and a small evening meal. We've all heard the nugget "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day." Turns out the general population's diurnal clock has a metabolic chaser. It's called break fast for a reason. Namely, your body has been doing low level maintenance while you're asleep and expects a fuel tank fill-up to face a fully conscious engine. The body does its best work at processing food for that first meal, and actually has no freakin' clue what to do with a large meal before bedtime.

Reminds me of an old saying:

"Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper."

As someone who has twisted more ankles than i can recall on O'darkthirty runs, the next tidbit really pissed me off. The absolute worst time to exercise is the four hours that follow awakening from sleep. Blood pressure is at its highest for the 24 hours in most humans during that period regardless of lifestyle.

There's another issue there. After 6-8 hours horizontal, the synovial fluid in your joints has wandered around a bit. Your spinal column is especially prone to this, as are wrists and ankles. This means spacing and cushioning effects the fluid provides are very much not at their peak. Thus load-bearing movements are not the best idea first thing.

The same overall effect means that load-bearing movements are not as good an idea for a woman when she is on her period.

 

[Netzach]

In my case, it was largely the result of giving up on caring about the principles of governance, and then deciding that, if we're stuck with what we're stuck with, we may as well attempt to squeeze the good out of the collective buying power of the absurd machine we've built.

--



Reminds me of an old saying:

"Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper."



There's another issue there. After 6-8 hours horizontal, the synovial fluid in your joints has wandered around a bit. Your spinal column is especially prone to this, as are wrists and ankles. This means spacing and cushioning effects the fluid provides are very much not at their peak. Thus load-bearing movements are not the best idea first thing.

The same overall effect means that load-bearing movements are not as good an idea for a woman when she is on her period.

I can always rely on Hommie for some workout-shit-I-did-not-know

thanks!

Anyone ever heard of the Doctor Diet? This is a common joke among MD's.

breakfast: egg white omelet and an oat bran muffin
moning snack: green tea and a banana
lunch: roast beef on rye, potato chips
afternoon snack: gum in desk
dinner: porterhouse and red wine
before bed snack: 2 martinis.

 

[Homburg]

I can always rely on Hommie for some workout-shit-I-did-not-know

thanks!

No sweat. I figure as a guy in his mid-30's tossing around heavy weight beyond which the human body is normally asked to lift, it behooves me to study as much as possible in the name of prevention. Better to keep my old joints at least in the same basic condition they're in.

Anyone ever heard of the Doctor Diet? This is a common joke among MD's.

breakfast: egg white omelet and an oat bran muffin
moning snack: green tea and a banana
lunch: roast beef on rye, potato chips
afternoon snack: gum in desk
dinner: porterhouse and red wine
before bed snack: 2 martinis.

Yup. Always struck me as amusing.

What do you think of the Paleo Diet thing?

 

[Netzach]

No sweat. I figure as a guy in his mid-30's tossing around heavy weight beyond which the human body is normally asked to lift, it behooves me to study as much as possible in the name of prevention. Better to keep my old joints at least in the same basic condition they're in.



Yup. Always struck me as amusing.

What do you think of the Paleo Diet thing?

You mean MLB? (meat leaves berries)
I think it's where it's at. In theory anyway, if not in that exact form. I think you can eat more things than just that list, though not a lot more. If you did that you'd be healthy and feel fed.

I swear by a version of it, and I honestly think it's why I've been med free for almost 2 years now. Want to hear me get on a far-out anti-wheat diatribe?

The idea is adaptable for indivisdual needs - you CAN do it lower fat if you aren't buying in to "fat doesn't matter." there's no law that says it has to be moo and not braised fish or roast chicken.

You could even do it veg or vegan, if you're really careful about it. Yeah yeah, beans toxic, sure. If you're talking gut, some are some are not.

Kidney beans, black beans - yes, if soaked 24 hours before cooking. Chick peas, sadly no. Pinto, no. String beans aren't related to the other legumes enough to be passed up raw.

Dairy - one exception. A lot of equally as healthy shiny and lean people as HG's live off cows eating meat and...cultured yogurt. Yogurt that's done its thing for 24 hours or more is good for you. Oh, also cheese that's been aged is green lit for me, so cheddar 2 yr. yes, cream cheese no.

My experience with being a vegetarian was not a good one, it was pretty much coat everything in flour potato and cheese or soy cheese (that can't be good for you) so it's actually filling, and I was eating cooperatively cooked dinners in college.


I don't understand why anyone does Atkins, other than being overly impatient. A sensible meat-leaves-fruit mix is an amazing thing. Eating only steak for a week is fucking silly. Yeah, it catapults your weight loss with ketosis, but seriously, unless you need to make a weight for a fight in 2 weeks, just take your time, it won't take long with south beach or phase 2 Atkins, or MLB.

However I actually need to get my ass back ON it, like, yesterday. Father's day I ate the MD diet.

 

[nh23]

I will say again, BMI is garbage. There are loads and loads of people out there both with overweight/obese BMI's that are stunningly healthy*, and people with "normal" BMI's that are anything but. Calling an overly basic charting of height vs weight as "well-executed statistical analysis" is specious.

It also doesn't take body shape into consideration. I'm an hourglass like wenchie. (absolute hell to buy pants that aren't huge in the waist) My ex hubby had a lower BMI than me, but he had a big stomach. I have a relatively small stomach for my body size. Abdominal fat is much more dangerous than fat on the thighs, ass, etc.

Wait, what? I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you. I was too busy eating Ding-Dongs and mouth-breathing.

Ok, y'all do realize that if poor folks had health insurance, we'd possibly be less likely to be fat, right? Also, if you're gonna fund drug addicts, alcoholics, and smokers, what's the difference? Maybe we shouldn't let people who engage in high-risk activities, like downhill skiing or jumping out of airplanes have insurance, either. Sure, there are fewer of those types of people than fat people, but if you're going to draw the line arbitrarily, then you have to understand that it'll move around arbitrarily later, too.

Obesity is not just an epidemic in humans. It's actually becoming one in domesticated animals. Metabolic disorders abound in horses. Things people never heard of 20 years ago. Sure, it's partly related to diet and exercise, but I think we're breeding for these things, too. And that doesn't just apply to horses, either.

No it's because you aren't thinking thin. THINK THIN dammit. Oh and think rich too. We could really use the money.

 

[the captians wench]

I want to know the stats on it. It is depressing. I wonder if the enablers are kind of the human-being version of rabbit hoarders or something and it's usually due to deadly hook ups or what? There's no "stop feeding" switch firing in their minds, and the partner tends toward overeating compulsion and voila...

I have a feeling this didn't not-exist though, but more that it's something more widely disseminated when it does. Every single piece of infocrap on earth is available to everyone, so if it's out there it's on the air so to speak.

But I also would not be surprised if it's on the rise. 30,000 calories are a lot cheaper now than ever before.

As I've said before, my ex husband is a feeder. My mom and i often tried to decide why he is this way.

When we got married, there was a lot of fucked up shit going on in my life. Our marriage did not start off in happy times. I ended up having a nervous breakdown and could not leave the house with out curling into a ball and crying for a hour or two first. Naturally I wasn't working, I was home all day with no kids, and I had always been on the "only must do" side of activity so I began to balloon up. As I did my depression worsened.

My ex didn't like seeing me so depressed, so when I had really bad days, we went out to dinner that night. When something up set me, we went for ice cream. On special occations he brought home Olive Garden complete with chocolate cake. If we had a fight he made up with chocolates. You get the idea. I was almost rewarded with food, and apeased by it.

What my mom and I decided, based on other charateristics he showed, was simply that he is, like many, all about instant gratification. He isn't a long term thinker, he wants a problem solved now. If that problem is I'm upset, ice cream is a quick way to get me to smile. Deep down he just wanted to see me happy, what he couldn't see was how he was trying to make me happy was superfishal, and usually only lasted until I passed the hall mirror.

He wasn't a bad guy, just misguided.

 

[Netzach]

As I've said before, my ex husband is a feeder. My mom and i often tried to decide why he is this way.

When we got married, there was a lot of fucked up shit going on in my life. Our marriage did not start off in happy times. I ended up having a nervous breakdown and could not leave the house with out curling into a ball and crying for a hour or two first. Naturally I wasn't working, I was home all day with no kids, and I had always been on the "only must do" side of activity so I began to balloon up. As I did my depression worsened.

My ex didn't like seeing me so depressed, so when I had really bad days, we went out to dinner that night. When something up set me, we went for ice cream. On special occations he brought home Olive Garden complete with chocolate cake. If we had a fight he made up with chocolates. You get the idea. I was almost rewarded with food, and apeased by it.

What my mom and I decided, based on other charateristics he showed, was simply that he is, like many, all about instant gratification. He isn't a long term thinker, he wants a problem solved now. If that problem is I'm upset, ice cream is a quick way to get me to smile. Deep down he just wanted to see me happy, what he couldn't see was how he was trying to make me happy was superfishal, and usually only lasted until I passed the hall mirror.

He wasn't a bad guy, just misguided.

That makes a lot of sense. Being with a depressed person is hard, and it's really easy to come up with crappy coping ideas in lieu of therapy, meds, or addressing the problems in some good way.

 

[ownedsubgal]

I want to know the stats on it. It is depressing. I wonder if the enablers are kind of the human-being version of rabbit hoarders or something and it's usually due to deadly hook ups or what? There's no "stop feeding" switch firing in their minds, and the partner tends toward overeating compulsion and voila...

I have a feeling this didn't not-exist though, but more that it's something more widely disseminated when it does. Every single piece of infocrap on earth is available to everyone, so if it's out there it's on the air so to speak.

But I also would not be surprised if it's on the rise. 30,000 calories are a lot cheaper now than ever before.

income and food cost seem to play HUGE factors in obesity. i know everyone gets tired of hearing it, but when your household earns just enough to barely cover the necessary bills and you have multiple mouths to feed, especially when most of those mouths are children, it is a lot more feasible to spend 15 bucks a day on the family at mcdonald's or kfc than 40 bucks a day on the perimeter of the grocery store. and this with the assumption that you live in an area in which there is even an actual grocery store.

but i would just think that there would be a bit more of a freak-out when you become too heavy to drive, too heavy to walk around the house, and then too heavy to get off the bed. i understand addiction and all, truly i do, but really...come now.

as for statistics, they aren't pretty. according to a Rand study, from 2000-2005 the prevalence of folks with a BMI over 40 increased by 50% and the prevalence of folks with a BMI over 50 increased by 75%. strangely, the rate of morbid and super morbid obesity is increasing much faster than the rate of plain old obesity.

also found an interesting old article from the WSJ (http://www.karlloren.com/diet/p6.htm) which discusses how hospitals, their equipment and staff are just plain unable to efficiently handle the tremendous influx of super-sized patients. the scales can't weigh them, the staff can't move them, the examination tables can't hold them, imaging scan machines can't accommodate them. hospitals that used to rent special equipment like super-sized wheelchairs, lift equipment, etc. for that rare 500 lb patient now need to purchase that equipment because it is required on a regular basis.

it's disturbing and frightening to me that people in this condition have become almost commonplace. and frankly i think it speaks more to some glaring issues we have as a society in general than to the issues of the individuals themselves.

 

[Netzach]

income and food cost seem to play HUGE factors in obesity. i know everyone gets tired of hearing it, but when your household earns just enough to barely cover the necessary bills and you have multiple mouths to feed, especially when most of those mouths are children, it is a lot more feasible to spend 15 bucks a day on the family at mcdonald's or kfc than 40 bucks a day on the perimeter of the grocery store. and this with the assumption that you live in an area in which there is even an actual grocery store.

QFT. Everyone in this conversation, self included, is presuming access to food that doesn't suck ass and a place to work out that doesn't cost anything and in which you are not likely to be shot at.

I did some work in a public school with 90 percent breakfast participation. They gave these kids quarter water with breakfast.

I can't be the only other person that's shopped an inner city for food at some point? Yeah, get up at 4:45 AM for a jog.

HA!

Prior to the massive gentrifuck of Harlem, you had access to shriveled fruit for 3x as much as you'd pay anywhere else and that was it. It. Almost it. God bless those dietarily wacky Rastas with some health food stores and books and stuff.

Now, someone tell me this is just some accidental pattern pulled from the pants of the universe and not an actual and deliberate fucking harder of people you are fucking with another manufactured drug crisis.

 

[nh23]

QFT. Everyone in this conversation, self included, is presuming access to food that doesn't suck ass and a place to work out that doesn't cost anything and in which you are not likely to be shot at.

I did some work in a public school with 90 percent breakfast participation. They gave these kids quarter water with breakfast.

I can't be the only other person that's shopped an inner city for food at some point? Yeah, get up at 4:45 AM for a jog.

HA!

Prior to the massive gentrifuck of Harlem, you had access to shriveled fruit for 3x as much as you'd pay anywhere else and that was it. It. Almost it. God bless those dietarily wacky Rastas with some health food stores and books and stuff.

Oh, school lunches. My daughter qualifies for free lunch, and sometimes we have to use it. I don't always have the funds to pack. For breakfast they have things like cinnamon toast crunch and sausage links. For lunch pizza on white crust, fried chicken patties, french fries. Oh, they throw in a tiny spoonful of canned pears too.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

.... frankly i think it speaks more to some glaring issues we have as a society in general than to the issues of the individuals themselves.

Annnnnndddd... we're back to the OP's premise

... I came across a statistic stating 34.5% of Americans are obese. I kept reading. Then I went back and read that stat again.

34.5% obese. Holy cow. That's a third of the population. This prompted some searching.

According to the WHO, the US has the 9th highest rate of obesity/overweight of all the countries in the world, with 74.1 percent of the population weighing in as such. It's the biggest medical problem in the country. I couldn't find recent statistics for Canada, and we weren't in the top 20, but I'm sure we're up there, too.

The WHO considers people with a BMI index higher than 25 as overweight and over 30 as obese. And it's not just the US, this is a global problem. For the first time since stats have been taken, more people in the world - 1.6 billion - are overweight than underweight.

Is it just me, or is anyone else completely floored by this? Can we not control our food consumption?

So what's happening? And what can be done about it?

that this is a global issue that needs to be addressed, not an indictment of specific individuals, no matter who they are.

 

[JMohegan]

Income disparity explains the gap between the trend lines below, but it does not explain the trend itself.

Notice that the wealthiest segment of our population was heavier, in 2002, than the poorest were, on average, in 1986.

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa78/johnmohegan/income.jpg


As the source concludes, "the similarity in weight gain across groups indicates that hypotheses successful in explaining weight differences across sociodemographic groups may be less successful in generating policies to stem the obesity epidemic."

 

[Sir_Winston54]

Income disparity explains the gap between the trend lines below, but it does not explain the trend itself.

Notice that the wealthiest segment of our population was heavier, in 2002, than the poorest were, on average, in 1986.

Eyeballing it, it looks like the 2002 wealthiest stat is about even with the 1993 poorest stat, which makes it even worse!

 

[Netzach]

Income disparity explains the gap between the trend lines below, but it does not explain the trend itself.

Notice that the wealthiest segment of our population was heavier, in 2002, than the poorest were, on average, in 1986.

That's interesting.

I mean if you consider the wealthiest people, these are people who can work out 24/7 while their investments rise or fall, doesn't matter, won't change their lifestyle. They can eat grass fed beef and haricots every night with a green salad clipped with scissors by the gardener in a cashmere jockstrap.

So it's weird.

 

[JMohegan]

That's interesting.

I mean if you consider the wealthiest people, these are people who can work out 24/7 while their investments rise or fall, doesn't matter, won't change their lifestyle. They can eat grass fed beef and haricots every night with a green salad clipped with scissors by the gardener in a cashmere jockstrap.

So it's weird.

No, the "highest income" category is much broader than that.

I've copied the explanation from the study below. My translation: the lowest income and highest income categories are each intended to represent roughly 20% of the population in any given year.


"BRFSS data provide income categories, not actual income, for each respondent. The percentage of people in each of the 7 income categories in BRFSS data varies from one year to another, substantially so in some years. To generate a subsample of data containing the lowest and highest income groups with the percentages roughly constant over the study years, it was sometimes necessary to combine BRFSS income categories. For instance, the 2 highest income categories for 1986 (13.83% and 7.29%) were combined to produce the new highest income group of 21.12%, roughly comparable to the lowest income category for 1986 (19.97%). Income categories from BRFSS data were combined for the years where there were considerable differences in the percentages. As a result, there are 676830 observations in this subsample. This reclassification allowed us to obtain a crude estimate of the effects of relative income. The results for BMI trends across the 2 relative-income groups were based on this subsample."

 

[Netzach]

No, the "highest income" category is much broader than that.

I've copied the explanation from the study below. My translation: the lowest income and highest income categories are each intended to represent roughly 20% of the population in any given year.


"BRFSS data provide income categories, not actual income, for each respondent. The percentage of people in each of the 7 income categories in BRFSS data varies from one year to another, substantially so in some years. To generate a subsample of data containing the lowest and highest income groups with the percentages roughly constant over the study years, it was sometimes necessary to combine BRFSS income categories. For instance, the 2 highest income categories for 1986 (13.83% and 7.29%) were combined to produce the new highest income group of 21.12%, roughly comparable to the lowest income category for 1986 (19.97%). Income categories from BRFSS data were combined for the years where there were considerable differences in the percentages. As a result, there are 676830 observations in this subsample. This reclassification allowed us to obtain a crude estimate of the effects of relative income. The results for BMI trends across the 2 relative-income groups were based on this subsample."

Ah. So no one's actually studying that demographic, more likely the highest income is like, an MD and his lawyer wife.