Fuck fat people. Try being a skinny little fuck, because there's only so much food you can shove in one mouth in a day.* *Fuck, fat people existing kinda argues against this.
I'm on the fence as to this argument, but the one possible answer seems to be nutrition and poverty. Calories have never been available so cheaply in history, and that affects statistics. For example, post-WW-II Japanese people are, on average, three inches taller. For the first time ever, we can get fat on a budget.
Completely up to the individual. Preferences, Utility, Habits, and Tradeoffs. I'm 29 years old, 5'8", and my weight fluctuates between 195 and 205 depending on how frequently I'm going to happy hour after work. This puts me somewhere in the overweight to obese category. I call myself George Castanza fat. Newman is not an option. I was never an athlete when I was a kid, it was never part of my lifestyle, so I have had a really tough time breaking out of my sedentary lifestyle as an adult. I sit at a desk all day staring at financial models. My friends and coworkers idea of socializing together is completely based on going out in the city for dinner and drinks 4-5 times a week. I eat 80% of my meals at restaurants. It's fucking scary. I don't want to be a fat piece of shit the rest of my life, but I continually fail to make exercise and diet a disciplined part of my day. I'll go to the gym at lunch every day for a week, end up with shin splints or something equally lame, and then puss out for another week. Cycle broken, weight goes back above 200. All belly and face fat. I don't eat sweets beyond a packet of sugar in my coffee a few times a day, I don't drink any soda, but the bar habits kill me, as does when instead of going to the gym at lunch, I go and eat something from Potbelly or Jimmy Johns. I've tried counting calories, but I fall off the wagon every time someone puts a beer in front of me and then I end up eating a burger at 2am. It's completely a discipline problem. I know what I need to do to lose 20 pounds, but I haven't been able to convince myself it's worth doing, and thus, I end up living with a different mental image of myself than how I actually appear. I look at pictures of myself and say "I don't really look like that do I?" Yup. I don't know enough about biology to know if there are legitimate claims to "glandular problems", but I do know that my lifestyle is the single biggest contributor to my biggest health risk. Until I wake up and decide that I would rather be in shape than enjoy that hoagie at lunch, or that third IPA, I have no one to blame but myself, as does every other fatty out there.
You know what else has skyrocketed? Alzheimer's, I say we herd them up and cattle prod them until they remember shit. I think there was a lesson there but I forget it.
Fuck gym class, bring back recess all the way through high school. It's criminal how much of my time I could have spent engaging in play and physical exercise, but was wasted playing handball or some shitty game against a team of girls that refused to run. And yes, ladies, I will point the finger and say that your gender has no drive in high-school P.E. Quit texting and catch the ball, bitch. This really gets hammered home if you live with an elder relative. All that shit's getting paid for, and it's all mortgaged out of my future social safety net. Thanks, geezers. Bring back ice floes.
TL;DR But I can say this-I'm 32 years old, 5'11, 180 pounds on a good day. I'm blessed with a great metabolism. I'm a work out guy, but I haven't done squat in about 2 months because the heat in GA (110 heat index since May) has made me lazy. My. Fucking. Fault. I drink and smoke. A lot. Not good for my health. I do work 45-50 hours per week, and I'm wicked stressed, which keeps my weight down. That said, I know a guy who is my age, he weighs 320+ pounds, and receives SSI payments because he's too fat to work. That makes me want to puke. Also, my mother is pretty overweight. She's a saint among men. I'd die for her. But she needs to stop making food with a pound of butter daily (literally), and get her ass out there and exercise. Walking isn't that hard.
Here's the Straight Dope's take on the subject. ANTI-SPOILER: IT'S MOSTLY PERSONAL CHOICE. Let me tell y'all a story about two different women who gained weight after pregnancy. One is my ex-wife, the other is my brother's ex-wife. (One lost the weight, the other didn't!) My brother knocked up his highschool girlfriend when he was 18, and at the time, she was approximately 120 pounds, and about 5'-6". She gained weight during the pregnancy, which is natural. And she kept gaining weight, which is common. And she kept gaining weight. To this very day. Fast forward 10 years: I get my highschool girlfriend knocked up when I was 18, and she was about 120 pounds and 5' 4". She gained 50 pounds during the pregnancy, and loses: 9 lbs, 6 oz: Baby 2 lbs?: placenta 1 lbs? amneotic fluid 2 lbs? Uterine shrinkage I didn't weigh her immediately after she had our son, but I do know that she kept packing on weight after he was born, until she got to 200 pounds (according to the doctor's scale at her OB/GYN). She didn't see it coming; in her mind, she was eating healthy. She was eating salads for two meals of the day (lunch and dinner), for crissakes! And breakfast was sensible (even in my opinion)! But she smothered her salads with Ranch dressing (I still don't understand how anyone can eat that SHIT. Seriously, it's bad stuff, and I will never eat it.) My ex wife gained a shitload of weight just by eating Romaine lettuce covered in Ranch dressing. But she lost the weight about a year after we split-up. I will not go on record saying how she lost it, because it's probably not medically advisable, but she has kept it off ever since, and she has been living a healthy lifestyle lately. She watches what she eats. Anyway, my brother's ex-wife is now reduced to wearing custom-made clothes all the time. I estimate her weight to be about 400 pounds. Interesting story: After I divorced my ex-wife, she got a job working as a delivery girl for Domino's Pizza. My brother's ex-wife is a certified cheap-pizza junkie (how do you think she got so fat?), and she called the local Domino's for delivery. My brother's ex-wife didn't recognize my ex-wife because she had lost about 80 pounds, but MY ex-wife already knew the house, and knew that the blob of a woman answering the door shouldn't be buying 3 large pizzas with 3 2-liter bottles of soda (the deal at the time was 1 large pizza got you one 2-liter bottle of soda. And it was cheap as hell! Can anyone else see why this is a problem?). So with that said, fuck anyone who brings it upon themselves.
Just wanted to address this quickly: The reason this has become such a problem lately is because we've become a white collar society. Many jobs involve sitting in an office for eight hours a day in front of a computer. I'd venture to guess that the majority of jobs aren't exactly physically strenuous, anymore. Sure, there are still manual labor jobs that are very strenuous, but how often do you see really out-of-shape obese men or women at those jobs? As society becomes increasingly sedentary, our weight (as a society) naturally increases. I was a fat piece of shit. Now, I'm a slightly overweight piece of shit. I've spent my summer dropping 50 lbs (10 to go!), and it really wasn't as hard as people want to make it out to be. Just did a few very simple things: 1) Cut out fast food. The most I allow myself is a six-inch sub from subway, only on whole wheat bread, and only if it is something that is fairly low-cal. 2) Light workouts. Walk/run every day. 3) Check labels for calorie counts and serving sizes, and respect that. I found good breakfasts, lunches, and dinners that I can eat, and that leave me feeling like I've eaten enough, without so many calories that I end up weighing 900 lbs. The biggest difference is portion control. The difference between the smaller people I see and the larger people isn't necessarily WHAT they eat, but how much of it. I've eaten with my parents and brothers a lot this summer. They'll make burgers, hot dogs, Italian sausage, brats, and other such food, and I've eaten it. The difference is I'll eat one burger, with some veggies, and that's it. My dad or brothers will eat a brat, a burger, a hot dog, fries or potatoes, veggies, and then when there is a burger left, they'll be upset about throwing away food so they fight over who is going to eat it, as one of them is going to HAVE to eat it. Consequently, they weigh a lot. I just eat my portion, and stop. If people just did this, their weight would start to decline to a point they can maintain. My favorite, though, is my old boss. He is about 6 feet, but easily weighed 350, maybe even 400 lbs. Dude was huge. He'd complain that he ate baked chips and other 'diet' foods, but never lost weight. Well, when you buy a large bag of baked chips, and sit down and eat the whole thing in one sitting, that's not a fucking diet. Going to subway and getting a footlong meatball with extra sauce isn't "eating healthy" because it is Subway. He brings it on himself. Good guy, but his size is his own doing.
I feel for people who have a medical reason for uncontrolled weight gain, it's stressful and depressing, and they are often the people in doctors offices or at the gym willing to do whatever it takes to get it under control. That being said, I've also been in a position where an injury left me unable to walk for six months. Inactivity coupled with overeating made me gain a ridiculous amount of weight, which I lost by changing my eating habits, and eventually incorporating whatever physical activity I could do into my lifestyle. It was incredibly hard, and I can understand how frustrating and discouraging it can be. However, I also worked at a popular weight loss centre for a few years before I went back to school. The majority of our morbidly obese clients had absolutely no idea the number of calories they were consuming in a day. Those clients were also willing to pay the money to be on the program, but were also quick to make excuses about why they couldn't stick to it. I heard how 'inconvenient' it was to eat our prepackaged meals, but it was 'too hard' to cook anything healthy and portion controlled. I also got to hear about how "they couldn't find time for exercise" but "went to the movies twice last week and had large popcorn both times". Or how, the carb and fat loaded pasta they were eating "couldn't have been more than 200 calories", and then they'd complain because they were paying for the program and following it so well but not losing any weight, so clearly it was all genetic and there was just nothing they could do. Those people I do not have very much sympathy for. I also don't think any weight loss surgery will fix the problem. They might initially lose weight, but consuming ridiculous amounts of junk, extremely slowly over the course of the day is still consuming ridiculous amounts of junk; it's not doing your body any favors regardless of how much or little you weigh.
This conversation would be more helpful if all the terms were defined. What does fat mean? Does it simply refer to the amount of body fat you have, or the ratio? I'm firmly against any camp that incorporates "lazy" into the definition, because they are absolutely not synonymous, no matter how huge you think the overlap might be. Are we using "overweight" by a BMI calculator? Speaking of which, are we using "obese" to mean really, really fat or in any sort of scientific sense? Because the clinical definition of obesity, it has problems. For example, according to BMI, this girl is "overweight": So is this one: This girl is obese: BMI is kind of a blunt tool, is the point I'm trying to get at here, and we're likely going to argue in the circles if people keep bringing up anectdotes about 400 pound women who inhale pizza like its donuts, donuts like they're altoids and altoids like they're tic tacs.
BMI is highly innaccurate. I measure as obese and I am definitely not. I have been overweight. My blood pressure was through the roof. I was starting to develop some apnea-like snoring. My clothes didn't fit. I was severely depressed. I couldn't keep up with my toddlers. When I realized that this was not who I wanted to be, I made changes. I quit smoking a pack and a half a day. I started running the stairs at Red Rocks Ampitheater. I started waking up early to go run around the block. I stopped drinking soda. I stopped eating fast food. I cut back on red meat and carbs. I felt GREAT. So I started lifting weights. I bought a mountain bike (and use it!). I started making things from scratch, to avoid hidden toxic ingredients. Lately I haven't even been drinking and my marijauna habit is way down. I lost a little over 80lbs. I don't starve myself, I rarely eat salad, to be honest. I eat small portions, every 2 hours or so. The problem I have with fat people is that they don't take the initiative to help themselves. Instead of sitting on the couch watching t.v. with a bag of Lays and your Diet Mountain Dew, lay on the floor and do situps and pushups during commercials. Drink water. Take the hard road. Apparently there are some legitimate reasons for a few obese people. I try not to lump them all into "lazy." It isn't easy though. Especially at WalMart.
If i remember correctly, wasn't Brad Pitt in "Fight Club" considered to be overweight/obese according to the BMI?
Yeah, I think the first time I looked into BMI online a few years ago I was 5'6" and 118 lbs. According to this BMI website my "target weight" was between 113 and 118. So, if I gain a pound I'm officially overweight? It was around that time that I stopped weighing myself and started focusing solely on my performance and body fat percentage. Fuck BMI.
Hardly, he was about 150-155 lbs at 5'11", putting him at a BMI of around 21. And isn't a "healthy weight" anything between 18.5 - 24.9 BMI. So for me, at 5'5", the range would be from 112 - 149. I think that is a pretty big range. And I can tell you, I haven't weighed 112 lbs probably since grade school, and I dont think it would look good on me. Some of you may argue that point, but that is not a weight I would ever strive for. It is unrealistic given my body type. Defining morbid obesity, I don't think we can offer a clearcut definition as Nom had proposed. As you can see here, there are always exceptions.
BMI by itself is not indicative at all of obesity, its real purpose is to determine people who are predisposed to heart conditions (fatty problems and whatnot.) BMI combined with waist circumference is the accurate way to measure if you're going to do it that way.
I'm technically on the high side of "healthy". 5'3" male, 140lbs, about a 24.8 BMI last I checked. Apparently I'm almost overweight? The most I'm ever going to get down to is 125 or so without going anorexic. I'm just not a super-skinny build. Just as well, I liked keeping my lunch money in high school. If you really want to have a laugh, look at the BMI of professional athletes. Tom Brady has a BMI of 27.4! Fatty fatty bo batty! If you want a better measure, I hear measuring skinfolds with calipers is pretty accurate. I shudder to think what I'd score by that method.
BMI is notoriously unreliable when it comes to athletes or anyone with significant muscle mass, but for your average joe, it can give you a good range. Let's face it, most people are not at the athletic level of Tom Brady or Paul Pierce. I'm not saying to take it as gospel, you should always focus on how your body feels/performs over a number, but the BMI gives you a pretty wide range (30 - 40 pounds) to work with and can be a useful step in figuring out healthy goals. Also, I wrote this to TX., but her BMI calculator was WAY off. 5'6 and 118 lbs. is approaching underweight (not even counting the muscle she probably had as a dancer). The BMI calculator used by the US government (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/</a>) has a healthy weight range for that height anywhere from 115-154, but that could go higher for athletes. I think the point of the BMI is that a lot of people don't even realize how big they are or that they are heading towards an unhealthy weight. For some, it could be a sign that you may want to re-evaluate your lifestyle if you are trending towards the obese range. Not sure if anyone else here has seen "Food, Inc.", but it changed the degree that I blamed people for being overweight. There are always examples of folks who are just lazy, but part of the reason that I am fit is because I have a decent job that lets me afford fruits and vegetables. Not to mention that I live in a walkable city where it is easy to run and my company subsidizes my gym membership. I'm exhausted after a 50 hour week and I mostly sit at a computer. I can't image being on your feet for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and still having the energy to work out or cook yourself a healthy meal. There's personal responsibility, but there's also how much a person can realistically handle.