You must log in or register to comment.
Mildly infuriating you didn’t say what’s being measured.
It is in my title
I created this post and then edited it a few seconds later. Apparently the changes didn’t propagate.
Sure, but what constitutes obesity in the U.S.A.?
It is based on BMI
I first noticed when I went to a Walmart in the Midwest.
I understand it would be based on BMI, but the threshold for obesity varies per country. I remember the health ministry in my country increased the threshold for obesity from 24 to 25 in an attempt to decrease the obesity numbers.
Eventually, BMI only works for “regular” people and not for “sportive” people or “athletes” as muscle is heavier than fat. (A body builder may have a BMI of 26 with little to no fat)
BMI “works” for populations. It was originally designed and characterized to measure populations, and so it’s the perfect thing to compare massive populations, like states. The majority of people are adequately characterized by BMI, just as they are by waist circumference measures. The “outliers” are vastly more likely to pipe up online.
The people who don’t understand what you mean but are obese are more likely to pipe up online.
Ah yes. I too have 20% obesity.
But what about your state?
Fat explosion
When I returned from Asia and landed in Denver by how fat everyone is now. I swear I could’ve counted the number of obese people in East Asia on one hand but in the Denver airport I think it would be safe to say about 80% of the people there were noticeably obese. It certainly isn’t due to a lack of food in Asia, they practically force feed you in China.
Are you Asian? (Don’t feel pressured to answer this)
The reason I ask is that according to the CDC Asian obesity is almost non existent. I think this has to do with culture and racially motivated pressure. In the US there is a stereotype of Asians being perfect and smart. That actually comes from the time right after the US interment camps. The idea was that Asians coming out of the camps should be “good little Asians.” I wonder if the pressure put on Asians has to do with them not being overweight. I personally used to know an Asian kid in high school who was almost driven to suicide because all the teachers expected more from him because of his race. He was extremely ADHD but couldn’t get any help as he was told that Asians are smart.
I think that stereotype is also partially driven by immigration selection pressures: those that were able to immigrate would statistically skew towards higher income earners or those that have had higher education. The parents themselves are going to hold higher expectations of their kids due to their own achievements.
Sorry to hear about your friend. I’m not sure to what degree you knew him, but that’s horrible :(
I don’t have any dtata, but my manager is from China, and that’s what she always claimed. It’s not easy to emigrate from China, it’s not easy to pursue US immigration and naturalization, so there is a strong selection bias. Not necessarily smartest, but definitely the most driven people
It very much depends which gate you’re looking at. There are a whole lot of people flying through Denver to get somewhere else; not everyone in DIA is from Colorado. As someone from Denver, I can say for sure that the airport has a whole lot more fat people than you see out and about.
I’ve only visited Colorado once, during my cross country road trip maybe 10 years ago (I’ve since left the US) and loved it there. I did notice how much healthier/thinner everyone was. I was in Boulder for 2-3 days and did a couple day hikes. Everyone was very friendly. I would love to live there. As someone who’s on the higher side of normal weight, I’ve never felt so unfit.
Living in a green state can’t be that bad. It’s green!
Green state, currently enjoying some green. It’s not bad at all.
Too much green, and you may crave a burrito with green chili!
I feel as if your threatening me with a good time.
Is this OP’s way of asking the rest of us to send OP holiday snacks ?
Do you need food OP ?
I would like others to care for themselves. Stop slowly killing yourself.
I’m good. I’m a 150 lb six footer. But holiday cookies are still welcome into my hutch. People used to die from just winter coming and starving. Don’t be too disappointed at us for falling for biology.
Enjoy the winter celebrations, my kind OP. And I will continue to work on it, too.
That’s not that bad. I have family who are in the 250-400 range (my estimate)
My BMI is well on the obesity side, though I’m reasonably fit and more importantly, have built some muscle. I think last we checked it was around 35 or so, yet I do frequent 25km day off-road marches with ~25kg backpack just keep my body comfortable with the much less frequent, though much more enjoyable, longer hikes I try to fit in each year. Last I ran the (admittedly not all that useful) Cooper’s test, I got just past the 3km threshold.
All this, while technically being… *checks notes*… obese.
I’m 92kg and around 170cm, which I think gets close to 200lb and 5’7 in the land of the free units. Never felt better about my body and shape, although back in the day when I was doing my NCO school, I was in a much better shape. But about the same weight. Now I have some fluff on my dad belly. But I really find it sad that so many are scared of weight, when it’s the composition that matters.
I think speech like this is scaring people off of gaining a healthy amount of muscle, especially if they are longer in height than average. I’m short and I had to work a lot to get this weight and muscle. Someone tall wouldn’t have to work as much, and would not even be in as good a shape, but feel doubly worse because a lot of people just talk about all this in terms of weight.
All I’m saying is we should be critical of both using BMI in anything else than statistics where it’s at least helpful, and weight alone, which is even less helpful in any general sense. The kids will be too thin and frail in general, if they are scared of getting a healthy amount of strength, since that easily throws the scales off.
???
BMI is sketchy and at the boundary points doesn’t take build into account. Still, at large BMIs it does reflect a general fat burden.
I’m a pretty healthy person. I work out regularly, this summer biked up to 8 very hilly miles every day and I’ve been actively reducing sugar in my diet. It’s nice to let loose for holidays and indulge in more sugary and savory foods than you normally would. It’s part of the fun of holidays.
Also stop fat shaming. There’s a million and one reasons for people to be fat and there’s a million and one reasons for people to be thin. Would you judge less if you knew your super skinny cousin was only skinny because he starves himself and purges after the pendulum swing back and he binges? Or that your fat aunt was fighting with an idiot rhumotologist who insists the tests he ran that indicate an autoimmune disease which also causes weight gain don’t indicate that same autoimmune disease? Or how about a fat uncle who only eats one meal a day, tons of salads, walks multiple miles but never sees his weight change no matter what? Or your grandmother who periodically goes into an expensive commercial starvation diet so close to the edge you aren’t allowed to excercise in order to lose weight?
These are all real experiences of people I know, and I know these experiences because I stopped to listen instead of jumping to judgment. Of all of the people I know who struggle with either gaining or losing weight I only know 2 people who found changing their diet actually affected their weight
No, the reason people are fat is diet and lack of physical activity, they just don’t want to give up their lifestyle. Nothing changes “calories in vs calories out”. Saying it is “glandular” and such is a way of defending your drug of choice, food. If you keep a food diary you quickly realize how many more calories you are eating than you admit. Now changing that is tough because every fiber in your being is fighting you and it requires a multipronged approach. I know people who have lost weight and kept it off through diet and changing their attitude towards food (i.e. not treating it like a reward).
Fuck off. My favorite meal of the day is breakfast. I’ve been doing without it in an attempt to lose weight for 2 years now. Also making it a point to walk on a treadmill at work twice a day. It is measurable fact I eat less now than I did 2 years ago, and am more active, and yet my weight continues to hover around 300 pounds. 5 years ago I quit smoking cold turkey after 20 years, so it’s not like I lack willpower. But go ahead, tell me all about it.
the reason people are fat is diet and lack of physical activity
only eats one meal a day, tons of salads, walks multiple miles but never sees his weight change
Calories in/calories out would have a couple of my friends looking like skeletons. I’ve seen their lifestyles up close and theyre healthier than I am. There’s simply more to the story than just diet and exercise. Many autoimmune diseases, and other incurable and/or chronic health conditions directly cause weight gain/prevent weight loss.
Or put another way, I’ve weighed about 120lbs the entire time I’ve been an adult, whether my diet was 90% poptarts and candy (I wish that was an exaggeration) while doing no exercise at all or a super whole dairy and veggie heavy diet combined with regular varied excercise. If I can be entirely incable of gaining weight while doing everything that should make me a balloon, why isn’t the inverse possible?
Nobody ever worries about the health of the skinny person because they’re skinny and therefore healthy. Nobody ever worries about a fat person who’s gotten skinny because obviously they’re getting healthier (never mind if they’ve got an eating disorder and are on the verge of suicide. They’re skinny now so theyre totally healthy!)
Stop trying to educate fat people about their moral failing and maybe listen instead to what their lived experiences are
Of all of the people I know who struggle with either gaining or losing weight I only know 2 people who found changing their diet actually affected their weight
As much as I agree with the rest of what you said, I’m literally an example of how diet can affect your weight. I had a terrible childhood growing up and was >250# all through high school because I ate shit food and drank a ton of soda. When I went to college I couldn’t afford that shit and actually had to change my diet and I dropped 70-80# within a year, and my now mother in law discreetly asked my wife if I was OK because here parents were seriously concerned for my health.
There is definitely a middle ground here where there are a lot of extenuating circumstances that lead to obesity, but there’s also a ton of terrible food packed with empty calories that are specifically formulated to keep you addicted to the dopamine hits, and its superficially cheaper to eat shit food than to buy whole foods and make real food. Especially if you have no equipment/spices or no knowledge of what to do.
Oh I absolutely agree that there’s so much absolute trash packed with far more sugar and other overabundant calories than should even be allowed in processed foods. Like it’s genuinely incredible how much sugar is in everyday items to the point that I look at the nutrition label on literally everything because holy crap why is one slice of bread 10% of my daily sugar budget?!
The reason my comments focused so hard on health problems affecting weight is that most people who have pretty bad diets have some idea that their diet isn’t good, and most people who don’t excercise know that they probably would be healthier if they did. But those who do engage in fat shaming whether intentionally or not usually do so because they don’t realize how many health conditions basically disconnect ones bodyweight from their lifestyle (and that some of those conditions generally take years of doctors appointments to actually diagnose, in part paradoxically due to fat shaming doctors)
Oh and in my small friend group and family, I’ve had 6 with whom we’ve discussed their struggles with weight or their weight loss journeys and of them only 2 saw real impact by diet improvement
Well obesity according to what metric? The notoriously outdated and inaccurate BMI?
BMI is honestly a terrible tool for individuals, (meh but I get it for larger societal groups). Everything on me is bigger than average. Size 14 US shoe, size 3x helmets. 2x gloves. My wingspan is significantly wider than I am tall (6’5" vs 5’10"). Even my bones are far wider than average. I’m no bodybuilder but I hike extremely steep hikes for fun and at least my ass and thighs have a bit of muscle.
My weight has varied over the years but even when I’m so thin I’m constantly getting questions of, “Are you alright? You’re way too thin.” I’m still just into the overweight category. For me to get to a "healthy"BMI I’d have to be sickly thin. So I just take care of what I think makes me healthy. And at 51 my only medication is a Zyrtec every day but I’m still technically solidly overweight.
That’s my point. According to BMI, the likes of Dwayne Johnson are obese so that’s why it’s worth asking what standard of obesity the graph is referencing.
If BMI is bad for measuring individual health, why would it be at all good for measuring a large population?
Sorry, but when people complain about obesity and talk about how easy it is for them to be healthy, all I think about is my brother. He eats more than me and isn’t any more active than me, but hes borderline underweight and can’t keep weight on to save his life. YES, people don’t take care of themselves, I know, that’s not my point. At my most active, most healthy eating part of my life, the best shape I’ve ever been, I was still considered overweight, so forgive me for rolling my eyes at this.
I realize some people struggle more than others.
I’m mostly talking about the extreme obesity.
Im not trying to be mean or anything, but how active and how healthy were you eating at that time?
Yeah, the skinniest couple I know eats candy and taco bell all day long (they’re approaching 30 so that teen metabolism is long gone). They’re not unusually active or anything, just thin. My husband is thin and has basically zero regard for his diet. Southern amounts of butter on everything. I’m much more careful than him, I enjoy plain veggies as snacks (as opposed to his pastries) and I’m ten pounds more than him at 7 inches shorter than him.
I eat fast food a lot and people have this perception about me but the reality is I only usually eat one meal a day so overall I’m not overeating. Admittedly it’s terrible nutritionally but my living arrangement limits my options.
It’s not hard to stay skinny/lose weight while eating sugar/fast food. At one point I was doing intermittent fasting - I had 1 slice of cake a day and it was delicious. I just ate that slice and I lost weight.
Is it possible they’re expressing admiration or paying you a compliment and not trying to invoke your smirking condescension?
Incidentally, according to the most recent CDC numbers, Colorado is no longer “green” on this map, just Hawaii and DC.
There’s only eight states under 30%. West Virgina tops the numbers at 41%.
~75% of the United States is classified as overweight or obese, which is staggering. It has to be pretty unevenly distributed even within states, because I live in a college town in a low-middle-weight state, and very few appear obese, and I’m regularly in a nearby major metro, and I don’t see a ton of obese people there either. Rural children are 10-15 times more likely to obese, so I’m guessing that is probably a major factor as well.
25-35% obesity rates covers like 80% of states, so the US is just fat and getting fatter.
I’d expect a county map to more appropriately show the trend. Coastal cities can steamroll stats for a state with vastly disproportional representation. I would expect cities to have lower obesity rates due to increased travel by walking while deep rural counties to have higher rates due to driving everywhere, including on your own property. Perhaps it’s not California and New York that’s doing the right thing, but rather LA and NYC doing the heavy lifting. A county map could also pull in variation correlated to ethnicity of people (genetics, imported cultural norms) and ethnicity/variety of food available, too (can you get fresh fare or is it all McDonald’s?). I would expect DC to be more in line with other large metro counties.
Basically the same issues with the electoral college. States are big and not necessarily a good representation of human statistics. Counties may not be granular enough, but I expect it to be an improvement. I’m not seeing date marked results past 2008.
I have no relevant comments for Colorado, I don’t get it
Agreed. A more granular map would be interesting to see. I mean, something like 65% of NY state’s population live in the NYC metro, which is a tiny part of a deceptively large state.
Re: Colorado, it’s just a relatively healthy state with a general ethos of living well. I think you’re seeing some of the urban effect through the Denver, Colorado Springs, etc. and the addition of rural areas of Colorado still having an outdoorsy culture, as well as (often) affluent rather than “rural poor.” Colorado has one of the lowest rural poverty rates in the United States.
And since Colorado would be in the 25-29.9 category now, it’s comparable to many states that also have comparable rural poverty rates. The fact that the states with the highest rural poverty also have the highest weights makes me assume obesity rates and poverty rates heavily overlap.
Edit: to the point, look at the county map for childhood obesity. You can literally point out almost every major city in the United States.
Is it getting fatter, though? Modern obesity drugs have got to be making a dent now.
Well for the wealthy, sure. Can’t ever stop taking your drugs to fix your life and need the funds to do it.
Unevenly distributed, but also statistical bias. Anywhere you go obese people are less likely to be out and about.
A good way to sample is a hospital or Dr office waiting room.
That be the inverse uneven distribution. You want somewhere everyone has to go, regardless of health
Pretty sure healthy and unhealthy people go to the doctors for check ups. In fact, healthy people might be more likely to go to their annual appointment.
An annual checkup is a blip in comparison to the frequency of visits by the unhealthy
I think the main problem is that people are eating way to much sugar and salt. The problem is that a lot food you can buy at the store has way to much sugar and salt. Also some people have grown up being conditioned to eat junk like heavy sugar and grease.
Do you have any source for salt casing obesity? I’ve never heard of that being a thing.
Coding data in color is a pet-peeve of mine. As a colorblind person, maps like this are nearly useless to me.
There is an ISO somewhere that sets out color blind colors for accessibility.
Don’t worry, this particular map is just as useless for everyone.
Dark = bad
The green is almost exactly the same in value as the red or orange, whatever that color is.
If it helps, Washington D.C. and Colorado are the only “green” ones.
I don’t see anything represented by the “<20%”, “45%-50%” or “50%+” colors. Not sure why they’re even included.
Thanks, I could kind of tell CO by comparing to those around it, but that’s not an option the way DC is presented.
The first 2 on the legend look darker than the following 3 .
I agree with the zombiepirate. Colour coded maps are useless for about 25% of the population.
The green doesn’t follow that.
Simulated red/green colorblind (the most common one). Dark = bad sorta works but not all the way.
I first got this realization when I started using grey scale mode for my phone at night. A “good to bad” scale in an app became unintelligible. Since then I try to consider colorblindness if I design stuff myself. It’s fantastic if color scales carry meaning in both their colour but also the same meaning in their lightness, so everyone can understand them the same.
This is how I see the map. Didn’t notice CO was green until a comment mentioned it.
That’s cause red and green both look like puke green to people with the most common type of colorblindness.
it’s really just a Gameboy huh
If a GameBoy could reproduce shades of blue and yellow too, then yeah, like a GameBoy.
When people comment about my weight I just turn it back on them. I’m not anxious about my weight so it’s easy to just be like, “You look like you’re eating enough for both of us!”
Kentucky: “don’t bother asking”
If you look at the KY state numbers is dark red
Time to add another hole to the Bible belt.
That’s just cuz yo mama so fat the color wheel went all the way 'round her.
Anecdotal story about Colorado.
I visited CO a couple of times a while ago for work. I was in my mid 30’s (2007) and fairly fit. I left Cincinnati Airport surrounded by overweight people all around me where I felt pretty good about myself. I arrived in Denver, and suddenly felt like I was on the less fit side of the spectrum.
It was VERY obvious the change. It was not something I noticed / thought about in Cincinnati, but it hit me like a ton of bricks when I landed in CO.
I’ve talked about that experience through the years. I have to watch what I eat, and work to be ‘as fit’ as I am, it definitely does not just come natural or anything remotely like. I drove around / hiked pretty much every moment I was not working and both trips were amazing. Such a beautiful state!
When I moved to Colorado from the midwest in the 90’s, my weight started to drop. When I left Colorado for Arizona, my weight went back up.
Partly it was the food, but really it was the outdoor activities… if you wanted to hang with friends, you spent time outside. (Though restaurants seemed to have healthier options, there were just less restaurants overall so I ended up cooking more too)
I think there is a lot less of a sugar culture here. People drink water and seek fresh food. If people are seeking junk companies will serve junk. When the general population wants fresh healthy meals that is what companies will sell. In my experience many people in Colorado want healthier food which creates a demand.
I think it has to do with the population
Ya, the amount of people outside bicycling, hiking, rafting I saw out there was awesome!
When I went to Japan in college for 2.5 months I felt kinda big (I was normal weight), but then my flight back home stopped in Texas and…WOW the absolute SHOCK. I felt like a twig. This was many years ago and I still remember it so clearly.
I live in Japan and am overweight, though slowly dropping it. Two years ago, I went back for the first time in like 6+ years and was shocked and horrified at how huge people were.
I got to experience Japan too, but I was even younger but 6’ tall. So my experience there was mostly around how I could see over everyone :)
I’d like to see this on county level like voter maps.
Curious how cities and rural look compared to each other within a state, and how rural in low average states look across.
For example is LA just so skinny and populous it hides that rural California is as bad as rural Oklahoma?
You know the answer. Venn diagram is a circle.
