I'm surprised it's only 25% given that 42.4% of US adults are obese (not just overweight, obese!)
America's obesity rate has exploded in the last 20 years. I was lucky enough to have a chiropractor tell me if I didn't lose weight my life would suck.
It's a social taboo for doctors to just outright say you're going to have a large array of medical issues unless you get to a healthy weight. You have the Huffington Post which runs a new "You can be morbidly obese and just fine" article once a month.
As someone who used to be morbidly obese, it was a living hell. I was diabetic had no luck finding a partner and was in constant pain. Did the keto diet, lost about 70 lb, got rid of my diabetes, and finally met somebody nice in real life .
Diabetes doesn't care about your feelings. I lean left , but theirs an insane amount of victimization on the left.
You can buy a salad at any fast food restaurant, meaning you have access to healthy food even in a "food desert".
It just takes an insane amount of self control. It's much easier to call everyone else a fat shammer. Doesn't help with your chronic pain or health issues though
Sometimes the salads are less healthy than the alternative at fast food restaurants because of the dressing and portion sizes they give.
The dressing can be given on the side. This is also a personal choice.
Salads can be pretty good, if they're loaded with vegetables. You can get those at places that specialize in salad, and maybe even Subway. But the "side salads" that you get at fast food restaurants, while better than a burger and fries, aren't very good.
As you say, personal choice. But a decent diet consists of avoiding fast food restaurants most of the time. If you have to, make the the best choice you can, but be aware that lettuce isn't magic health food.
It doesn't act like a video game power-up. It just provides adequate nutrition without overdoing any one aspect. It fills you up without giving you too many calories (the main thing that people overeat).
Though really, I think it's unlikely you'll have a salad that's higher in calories than a burger and fries.
That's kind of sad, since Europeans are pretty fat too. When you hold up "only 25% obese!" as an achievement, it goes to show just how normal it is for humans to be overweight.
Edit: search for 'vertebral artery dissections from chiropractic neck adjustments
Still it's kind of sad, you can't get honest medical advice from a doctor anymore.
You can't even find maybe you should lose weight in a dating book. Even books targeted towards men are afraid to offend.
Strength Training Anatomy, 3rd Edition by Frederic Delavier
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0736092269/
The Strength Training Anatomy Workout: Starting Strength with Bodyweight Training and Minimal Equipment by Frederic Delavier and Michael Gundill
https://www.amazon.com/Strength-Training-Anatomy-Workout-Bod...
I think for weight loss, seeing a dietician is better. Wikipedia says dieticians are better regualted than nutitionists - they list regulatory bodies in countries including USA.
Dietician:
Seconded. 90% of what chiropractors do is complete quackery.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic_controversy_and...
Is it? I've had doctors literally tell me that my weight was the proximate cause of my medical issues. They may try to be delicate about it, but they say it.
10 minutes to the grocery store once a month does not count.
“During the past month, other than your regular job, did you participate in any physical activities or exercises such as running, calisthenics, golf, gardening, or walking for exercise?”
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/data/inactivity-prevale...
Most people doing weekend golf are getting golf carts. Others almost always have a caddy. I suppose walking the course while someone does the heavy listing is some degree of exercise, but they really need to clarify that in order for golf to be exercise you need to walk the course.
Also, most walkers in the golf world don't have a caddy. They're not available at most courses. Even quite a few private clubs with biiig membership fees don't have caddies. I just looked it up and a random link says 32% of private clubs have caddies. Of public courses, a few destination courses have them (Pebble Beach, Bandon, etc.).
Personally it used to cause me a ton of mental anguish until I realized that BMI (the metric used to classify someone as overweight or obese) is flat out wrong. At my peak fitness level my BMI was 30. I was lifting weights 3 days a week and running 3 days a week. Lifting sessions were 90 minutes and I was capable of running half marathons in less than 2 hours. My resting heart rate was between 52 and 57 BPM. I wasn't an athlete but my fitness level was pretty good.
[1]https://conscienhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/BMI-Tr...
Does it do that correctly though? I've always wondered why the formula is not w / h^3, since I imagine your weight should scale cubicly with your height.
I agree with the point you're making, but this generalization is nowhere near accurate.
I’m unsure I ever meet an adult that was obese on the BMI, was not obese by body fat percentage scale, and did not know BMI was inaccurate for them.
[0] CDC: BMI is not a valid diagnosis tool, but is generally correlated with body fat percentages. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/downloads/bmiforpactitioners.pdf
The nice thing about DXA scans is that they can distinguish between visceral versus subcutaneous fat. For most medical conditions it's the visceral fat that's a real killer.
If my weight gets lower, into the low-to-mid-160s, even notoriously-skinny cyclist friends start to think I'm looking exceptionally thin and should watch it.
At my physicals the software automatically classifies me as overweight, but the doctor never mentions it, because he clearly gets how these categories can go wrong for folks like us. Someone my same height, with longer legs and a shorter torso, ends up 10-20 pounds just by nature of having less core. But of course BMI is just height vs. weight.
I'm currently 180lbs and trying to put on more muscle mass. I'm still pretty lean, with ab veins and shoulder striations.
I've only ever been out of the overweight category (<174) once in my life. I felt sapped of energy and looked gaunt, with veins popping everywhere.
That is a super interesting observation about inseam length mattering. I had never considered that and I have always looked with amazement at people my height who seem muscular yet weigh in the 150s. I always thought I was doing something wrong.
Bikes are sized based on the horizontal length of the frame, via measurements "effective top tube length" or the similar "reach", with almost everything else being adjustable. So long as that length is good for your torso length, the other parts can be adjusted or swapped to dial in the fit. (This is why bicycle sizes tend to indicate a height range.)
The whole long torso length thing means that I tend to ride a larger frame with the seat adjusted shorter than someone with a shorter torso would. Thus, I generally ride a large from most companies, but have to be careful that the seat can be adjusted in the right position. Similar height buddies will often ride medium frames with the seat much higher. Their longer legs exacerbate the need for a shorter (length) frame because moving the seat up moves the hips rearward on the bike, making something even shorter needed. For a lot of the typically-athletic-build women (long legs) this can make it a real problem for them to find bikes as it's often difficult to have the seat high enough for their legs but a short enough reach.
(That old thing about sizing bikes based on being able to stand over them is completely wrong. Bike sizing needs to be done based on riding the bike, not standing over it.)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20125098/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2877506/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Go watch the 1985 movie The Goonies and look at the character "chunk". By 1980s American standards he was so fat that it was a defining characteristic. In 2020s America he's an average kid. The same thing can be seen anywhere. Look at any photo of the general public prior to about 1980- high school year books, concerts, festivals, political rallies, beaches, shopping malls and compare it to a similar photo today, and the change in the average body and the number of obese bodies in the contemporary photo will be night and day different.
I think it goes the other way round. Carrying excess fat has been normalized so most people don't notice they are overweight. Unless you are lean enough to have some clear abdominal definition I wouldn't be so quick to attribute overweight BMI to excess muscle.
Based on those numbers you were literally built like a NFL linebacker. If you were to swap out your hypertrophy sets for max-strength instead you'd likely be relatively stronger and could probably cut your per-mile time down to 7 minutes (from 9) as well.
Ignore BMI and use body fat percentage instead. Try to find a four-electrode machine (hands and feet) you can borrow periodically. (My gym has one and charges $20 per use; I would only expect to need to use it 3-4 times per year.)
And yes, heavyweight boxing champs and NFL linebackers do it, but it just goes to show what a joke PED testing is in most pro sports leagues.
> At that point, you're barely short of peak Arnold Schwarzenegger
Both of these examples are the low side of healthy body fat % though (as evidenced by impressively visible abs), approaching 10%; Where 15% body fat is 50% more than visible abs, and still very healthy.
Stallone could be an example though https://bodywhat.com/?v=ah9a486f 17.8% body fat at 5'10, 27.8 bmi (at age 38)
Vin Diesel @ 50 is not a bad option either for a 6' bmi obese (30.5), muscular, movie star (that isn't a body builder) https://www.bodywhat.com/?1=5h9cfjk7&2=39fkk0o3
At 5’10 you need to be about 210 lbs to hit a BMI of 30. Highly doubt you will get there with a sub 15% body fat without AAS.
There is some reason to think that environmental pollutants are impact hormones in humans causing an overall rise in obesity. Genetic factors definitely play a role. My father never exercised, ate what he wanted, and was always skinny. I was not so lucky.
I can eat 1000kcal of ground beef and go looking for more, but 200kcal of gummy worms and I'm hoping I never see them again.
200kcal of gummy worms is 7 gummy worms [2].
1000kcal of gummy worms is 34 gummy worms [2].
It's just like the people I see on here who have some bad habit, like browsing Facebook or HN all day when they should be doing something more productive. They will do things like set up a special program to lock themselves out of the computer or out of the web browser--using some technical hack rather than the correct approach: which is to simply DECIDE not to do these things and WILL oneself not to do it, in the process developing self-control and self-discipline.
The reason an obese person has such a raging hunger is because they are in the HABIT of eating so much. Habits are hard to break, because it takes willpower and dedication, which the average person in our corrupt society has been brainwashed and trained from birth not to have. In this society, we are trained to be weak, passive consumer drones, to indulge every feeling and craving foisted upon us by media "influencers"; to always give in to impulse, to never to make own decisions or say NO to anything, and if we try, to quickly give up and make excuses for failure. And look what destruction it has wrought.
One might slip up at first and not perfectly follow through on the decided agenda, especially after a lifetime of being trained to just give up and give in, but the correct response is to note when one is slipping up and CONSCIOUSLY take corrective action, rather than give up and blame "luck" or whatever--which is a loser mentality, like the cigarette smoker who "just can't quit" as he takes another drag, until he dies of lung cancer.
I was not myself born as a perfect snowflake who never got into bad habits or screwed up in life. I have done plenty of both. The difference is I CHOSE to give up the bad habits and live differently, for the long term benefit. Once the good habit is locked in place, doing the right thing is effortless.
If a fat or obese person decides to make a change, they will. If they quit eating garbage and cut back on portions, they will crave it for a time, but over time the cravings will lessen, and then disappear entirely. It's simply a matter of breaking old habits and forming new, better ones.
There was a time I used to drink soft drinks and eat fast food and Doritos like the typical fat ass does. The very conveniently placed vending machines at the government-owned school, with all the conveniently located fast food establishments, helped and encouraged me to develop these habits. Now after breaking the habit, none of this junk appeals to me AT ALL. There is ZERO appeal. From the outside, now I can see it to be what it actually is: JUNK. It is repulsive.
In time, as people change their habits, not only will much of this JUNK no longer appeal to them at all, but if any of it still does to some degree, they can indulge in it a little without harm--because they have developed the SELF-DISCIPLINE to control themselves.
Not to mention also that the willpower to override your habits is a limited resource and not everyone has the ability to apply it to this aspect of their lives.
It's the same process either way. As I've taught all my children, you can spend an hour on a treadmill and burn 400 calories. And you can then eat a 10 piece chicken McNugget and large fry from McDonald's to consume about 1,000 calories. Add a sugary soda to that and you can blow the vast majority of your daily calories in about 20 minutes.
My father never exercised, ate what he wanted, and was always skinny
There are definitely multiple factors in play but the #1 factor is how much you eat. I have two sons; one is extremely skinny and the other is overweight. Not coincidentally, the skinny one "eats whatever he wants" which isn't much at all. My overweight son thinks nothing of eating 3-4 slices of pizza for dinner and my skinny son eats 1 slice and he doesn't like cheese so he scrapes that off first.
You hit the nail on the head when you said he "ate what he wanted".
People who are "naturally skinny" are that way because they don't want to eat much. They have low appetites in general and will frequently simply forget to eat meals.
I'm always shocked the medical community still uses BMI in 2022.
I don't think anyone would argue that you should lose weight because your BMI is high, nor does anyone believe that the obesity epidemic in America is due to vast swaths of the population suddenly becoming powerlifters.