DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... The average American woman now weighs as much as the average 1960s man

'The average American woman now weighs as much as the average 1960s man'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonk...ince-the-1960s/

By Christopher Ingraham June 12

The average American woman weighs 166.2 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As reddit recently pointed out, that's almost exactly as much as the average American man weighed in the early 1960s.

Men, you're not looking too hot in this scenario either. Over the same time period you gained nearly 30 pounds, from 166.3 in the 60s to 195.5 today. Doing the same comparison as above, today's American man weighs almost as much as 1.5 American women from the 1960s. At 195.5 pounds, put five American guys in a room and you've gathered roughly half a ton of manhood.

Overall weight gain since 1960 is slightly greater for women (18.5 percent) than for men (17.6 percent). And both sexes have gained roughly an inch in height over the same period, which accounts for some of that weight gain.

But story is mostly one of growing girth, and it basically boils down to three factors: we're eating less healthy food, we're eating more of it, and we're not moving around as much. According to a study published in 2012 in the journal BMC Public Health, Americans are now the world's third-heaviest people, behind only the Pacific island nations of Tonga and Micronesia.

The average American is 33 pounds heavier than the average Frenchman, 40 pounds heavier than the average Japanese citizen, and a whopping 70 pounds heavier than the average citizen of Bangladesh. To add up to one ton of total mass, it takes 20 Bangladeshis but only 12.2 Americans.

Together, the world's adult human beings added up to 287 million tons of biomass in 2005, according to the BMC Public Health study. But if every country had the same weight distribution as the U.S., the world would be 58 million tons fatter, an increase of 20 percent.

The study concludes that "tackling population fatness may be critical to world food security and ecological sustainability." And as with so many of the world's problems, the solutions start at home -- on the bathroom scale in this case. But boy, those donuts sure do look delicious.



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Kinda sad, especially if you're single and like girls that are in good shape (lean).

Yeah, and most kids when I see them waiting for the bus are also on the chubby to overweight side. Sad just isn't the word to use, but it's indeed very sad.

I had to yell (well, not actually yell) at my mother about a year ago for feeding one of my nieces to no end, who is overweight, just like my mom is. She also "bulked up" the family dog, who could lose about 5 to 10 pounds. (I walk him every day.)

Misery loves company.

25 years removed from high school. Still wear the same pant size. 30x34. People need to learn portion control. There's no need to eat each meal as though it's your last. Add the fact that most people also drink far more calories than they realize over the course of a day. A 400-600 calorie coffee drink every morning... Then sit at a desk for 8 hours. Yet still eat breakfast and a lunch as though they're plowing fields with a horse.

It's all about being active, and watching your portions as Portland said. All this bullahoo about sugars, MSG, trans-fat, carbs, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, and the other boogeyman ingredients completely miss the point.

Stay active, and watch what you eat. That's the best diet to have.

man that sucks, but we all can see that. it's....sad.

people don't wanna cook now. just eat fast food. and then there are so many options to eat quick meals out in the city that are still relatively healthy, but nobody is really choosing those things.

then all the processed foods we buy.....yea.

WOOHOO I weigh less than your average male *doing my happy dance*

My girlfriend and I have a saying we use, "brown food, round people". Frozen fried food out of a bag delivered from a refrigerated Sysco or Gordon Food Service truck. Applebee's, Outback, Chili's, Friday's...the list could go on and on...all order from the same couple companies. The same garbage processed foods. They just fry the crap in their franchises sprinkle some cheese food or spice on it and call it their own. It's factory food garbage.
At the grocery the goal is to shop the outer ring for 90% of your food. That's where all the healthy choices are. If your primary shopping is done in the ailes your diet is probably not great.

Big business my friend... This is why we need regulations

School lunchs around the world, if you can't see anything wrong with this picture I don't know what to say.










There are more with descriptions of the food.

linky

While you're absolutely spot on about portion control, sometimes it just isn't as simple as that.

Have you ever seen "Fed up" --?

It's a documentary on Netflix outlining some pretty important issues with the food industry in today's incredibly fat America.

To sum it up without giving up too much or making this post boring...

The biggest issue facing most over weight Americans is sugar addiction. Whether they realize it or not, many of us do have a sugar addiction. The documentary outlined some conducted studies saying that sugar has the same effect on the brain as cocaine does, which I found to be fascinating but almost unbelievable. I did some more reading online, and their are a dozen different web resources backing up the information presented in the film.

Ever notice how your daily percentage of sugar isn't listed on a food label? That's because one can of Coke would be 205% of your daily suggested sugar intake. Sugar intake slows down the pancreas and has a really negative effect on your insulin levels, so even if you're staying under 2,000 calories a day, if you're consuming huge amounts of sugar, your body will store all the food you eat as fat instead of turning it into energy. I'm sure there are more detailed and accurate explanations out there, but that's just kind of a run down.

Portion control is very important, watching what you're eating is equally as important, but sugar addiction is real, and the food industries aren't doing anything about it.

I'm over weight myself. I have all the knowledge in the world on how to diet and better myself, but I still struggle beyond measure with my cravings and portion control. Why? My brain is telling me that I need sugar, and that I need it BAD.

lurker remember, everybody was pissed that michelle obama was trying to change our school lunches though.

cause MURIKA

I'm 6'4" and weigh 215.

When I graduated high school I was 6'4" and weighed 135!!!

I hear ya Swish.. In the Murika's school lunch, everything was processed.

so you went from looking like a fashion model, skin and bones, to looking like you're a bouncer at a club. nice

So in France the typical school lunch includes filet of prime rib, fresh green beans, kiwi, apple slices, and
brie? That's a $19.95 lunch ... somehow I doubt it.

Here's what I had for lunch as a kid:





It didn't cost a fortune and I wasn't fat. Of course, back in those days we actually got exercise when we played, as opposed to kids today whose exercise is pretty much confined to their thumbs.

My senior year in hig school I was 6' 195 with a little belly. Left for basic training 7 days after graduation, was 215 right out of boot camp and ripped.

At 50, I'm 265 old and fat. Gained 50 pounds over 30 years.

There is sufficient evidence that the no-sugar, low-carb, and natural food diet is the right choice, but yes, as long as you're active and watch your portion size, you'll be fine.

I try to get 60 minutes of activity per day (75% resistance and 25% cardio). I'm 5'11 and 159 lbs. I just started a ketogenic diet with the help of my sister (she works at a wellness clinic in Ohio). Essentially, high fat, moderate protein, veggies, fruit, natural foods, and no grains (throw all sugar out the window). I lost 6 lbs. in the first three weeks, down from 165 at the start. My wife lost 10 in 4 weeks, though she has about 20 more to go to get to her target weight.

Ketogenic Diet

In this country, we eat too much of the wrong foods. That push in the 80's and 90's to avoid fat at all costs and replace with carbs was terribly stupid.

Keto diet does not work, long term.

Most people will gain all the weight they lose as soon as the reintroduce carbs back in their diet.

Only people I know who were successful on a keto diet are gym rats and that's because after they cut the fat, they work out hard to keep the muscle.

Lurker, not going to copy/paste all of your pics but I have trouble believing that. the problem with school lunches is they give them choices that aren't good. It's a constant battle between my daughter and I. they will offer decent food but she won't eat it because they have other choices that are crap.

I think I read that last year was the first year in history that the US spent more money eating out than they did at grocery stores.. don't remember the exact fact but it was something like that. And that is an indicator of 2 things.. why we are fat.. and why we are broke.

I agree with Portland that portion control is important but so is content. Yes there are boogey men out there and a little transfat or a little gluten isn't going to kill you. However, what you eat leads to what you want to eat. If you eat carbs and sugars, even in smaller quantities, the bodies natural reaction is to crave more carbs and sugars. If you eat more veggies and lean meats, the body stops craving carbs and sugars.

As a pseudo internet diet guru I have some thoughts. This is the general opinion of obesity researchers (not necessarily diet book authors) in the field at the moment:

I'd focus less on the role of insulin (although you'll find a lot of information blaming carbs etc.) and more on food reward. Insulin/carbs get a bad rap I won't get into disputing here.

Here is a quick primer on food reward and how it drives obesity and appetite.

Your appetite, satiety, mood, desire to exercise etc. are all controlled in your hypothalamus. Quite a few things are. A healthy functioning appetite specifically is controlled by leptin interacting with your hypothalamus (along with a few other regions in the HPA axis). Leptin is released by fat cells to tell your body basically "how fat I am" and your appetite is controlled accordingly. Some people have differing setpoints on what your body thinks is the right level of fatness but in general they are pretty similar.

However! Other areas such as mood are also found within your Hypothalamus. Ever wonder why weed gives people the munchies? It screws with the reward / pleasure system in your hypothalamus. Ever wonder why stimulants reduce peoples appetite? It screws with the reward / pleasure system in your hypothalamus.

This is where "food reward" comes into play. The more rewarding a food is, the more your brain is triggered to eat. So what is food reward? Food reward is not how tasty a food is; Healthy foods typically don't taste worse than unhealthy foods. Few people would argue a good tasting steak is less tasty than potato chips. Food reward is a foods intrinsic ability to make you desire to eat it. This often comes from a number factors like texture, high fat + high carb, variety of flavors, saltiness, sweetness, and most of all a variety of foods to choose from. Processed foods are engineered to be as rewarding as possible, not as tasty as possible. Reward is what influences your purchase and desire to consume, not how good something tastes.

By consuming a lot of highly rewarding food you start to do two things (and the research debates these a bit). You are either #1: Ignoring and disabling your regulation of your appetite that is normally controlled by leptin and other hormones (ghrelin etc.) or #2: You are making it so that this reward aspect actually changes your bodies "set point" where it feels comfortable with how fat you are. So that you aren't only compelled by the rewarding aspect of the food, but genuinely hungrier than you should be for your weight.

This is where your sugar addiction thing is basically spot on. I disagree with the insulin aspect...because what is really happening here is people are using highly rewarding food as drugs. Whether you want to call it a sugar buzz etc...The foods we evolved on were pretty monotonous and boring. Our body reduces are appetite constraints when we stumble upon highly rewarding foods that have tons of carbs or fats or salts. Because that stuff is craaaaaaazy rare in the wild. And you should eat as much as possible (so sayith the body).

Technology has lead the natural human desire for tasty foods into the sad space of the natural human desire for rewarding food. We have turned foods into drugs rather than into tasty things. Eating a whole bunch of baked potatoes or steak or steamed asparagus isn't going to make you fat in general. Those things are dang tasty though. Things artificially produced to drive consumption are what screw with your brain and should be avoided. Most diets tend to work because these products are the first to go

(as an aside keep in mind I'm an ardent capitalist so I'm not saying we should burn down Coca Cola, this is just information people should have)

Stephan Guyenet writes a lot about this and is my primary source if anyone wants to check it out. It is mostly sciencey explanations but here is the more simplified diet advice on the subject. link

You doubt it because the economics of food differ compared to the US. They get most of their food locally, so you aren't paying Paris prices in the country for example. The food is prepared by the school staff, rather than unboxed from plastic wrap containers and microwaved.

I worked in Clermont-Ferrand for 2 weeks and I never ate so good in my life and the food wasn't expensive. Sure you have some differences in cuisine. The French are not above organ meat, unlike Americans. I had tripoux (sheep stomach), cow tongue, and a few other things and enjoyed them all. The only one I wasn't adventurous enough to try was Andouillette. Think of a sausage where the inside meat is chitterlings and the casing is colon... Even among the french it was 50/50 on who enjoyed it.

Also in France most of the kids walk to school from preschool on up. In the US we don't live that concentrated, and in places we do; we're too worried about child predators to let our kids out of our sight anymore.

Well, that assumes you re-introduce the bad carbs. My sister explains a person can stay in one of the earlier phases and never bring rice or grains back into the picture. It's a diet you can tailor to your short or long term goals.

And yes, people that exercise stand a better chance to keep the weight off on this diet, but that goes with any other diet or non-diet. Active people will be in better shape, in general.

I think the non-active people slowly fade back into their old eating ways, which happens with a lot of other diets too.

Moderation is the best advice for any diet. I avoid bad carbs (grains, rice, sugar) and focus on meat, veggies, and fruit. I know I probably eat too much bacon, but it's so damn good. I figure it's still better than a bagel, donut, or can of coke. I miss beer, but I like wine a lot too.

Which relates right back to what swish said.. we have been told to fear everybody all the time. The cases coming out about do-gooder parents ratting out other parents just for letting their kids play unsupervised is amazing..

I assume you heard the story of the couple in Florida who were arrested and charged with felony neglect because their 11 year old son was playing basketball in the driveway for 90 minutes unsupervised? Yea, that's where we are.

Also, I'm a fattie and working to lose weight. My dad is obese and on a ton of meds and don't want to end up that way. Plus now with a 6 month old at home it's important to set a good example. I have had little success in the past and I think it was because I was too goal oriented. Would get my spreadsheets and scale and check it every day. Then every day became once a week because I got frustrated with the daily weight fluctuations. Then once a week became once a month, and with that the weight would come back.

So the last month I decided something radically different. I am not touching the scale at all. I just decided to not eat lunch anymore. I found out I wasn't really hungry at lunchtime and was just eating because someone told me I had to. So now my food schedule is roughly:

Eat in the morning
Eat around 4PM

I've actually found my portions have gone down in both meals . You are hungry, but there's just a limit on how much you can chow down before your body says "no mas." My clothes fit better and I can find I can do tasks that I couldn't as easily do last year. Probably the best positive side effect is my heartburn has mostly gone away. This past year I would suffer from heartburn a few times a week, and it would get real bad, like acid coming up at night etc. Since I started on this food schedule the heartburn has gone away. Even with inlaws being over this past weekend, I did alot of smoking on the smoker. Smoked some spare ribs one day, then brisket, then sausage. Heartburn count? zero.

Yup we park them in front of a TV so we can watch them and then cry to the government when they end up fat.

You know what might be one of the scariest movement in recent memory? HAES to the extreme. The idea that obesity is not a problem and you are healthy even if you way several hundred pounds.

http://www.weightymatters.ca/2013/12/guest-post-why-i-am-walking-away-from.html

Sure glad I was a kid in the 60's and 70's and was able to have fun growing up.

Setting up a diet is mega easy, sticking to it and following it is another story.

+1

Add in physical activity and it's sometimes too much of a lifestyle change for someone seeking a weight reduction.

I've always been thin, never weighed above 173, and it's a daily struggle to keep getting my workout clothes on and leaving the comfort of the couch. And I like working out. I can only imagine the struggle for someone that eats poorly and doesn't want to exercise, but yet wants to lose weight or get healthier. My best friend had both of those goals and smoked plus drank heavily. He wanted to change all four, but it was too much. He failed every time he went cold turkey.

My doctor says to stay away from the "whites".

No white bread, pasta, rice, and so on.

I have never been able to stick with it.

The only thing that ever did the job for me was when I could work out, and I got down to the 190-195# range. That doesn't sound great, but I had a 32 inch waist , and was in great shape. I hit the bike for an hour 3-5 times/week, and worked out with weights 4-5 days/week. (yes, I overlapped, and sometimes had workout days that went an hour and a half, to 2 hours) I got to where I could hit the bike and still use the computer.

Then my back went, and my weight ballooned. *sigh* I should eat better than I do, but I cannot always fix a good meal, (in fact, I often cannot) so I wind up eating prepared meals instead. Even "healthy" prepared meals are often anything but. Amazingly enough my blood work always comes back in excellent ranges ..... but my weight is horrible, and I do have diabetes and high blood pressure now.

I would suggest that anyone who is extremely overweight, (and you can tell by what kind of gut you're lugging around) that they have blood work, including sugar, done on a regular basis. You can do a lot of damage toyour body with uncontrolled blood sugar, or blood pressure.

j/c

Yesterday, the only food I ate was a bag of popcorn at my daughter's doubleheader softball games.

Actually, now that I think about it - aside from the popcorn last night - last time I really ate was Sunday night.

Perhaps that's not healthy?

More like a bean pole to a tired 60 year old.

ya think?

at the very minimum, to keep your metabolism rate decent, you need to eat 3 square meals a day.

to get most out of it, 3 meals, with 2 snacks(fruit, pre made sandwich or chicken wraps).

my wife makes a big batch of chicken breast, and cuts them up for the week. that way everyday starting monday, i can just go in the fridge and make some wraps.

My observations from travel.

Most every country I have had the pleasure of visiting, has been much more active, people walked, rode bikes, etc more often than we do.

In general, seeing an obese person was far and few between, in fact, most I saw turned out to be Americans traveling as we were.

There were far less fast food options abroad, with many more small deli's, cafes and restaurants. And sitting for a meal, was an affair, not a 10 minute ordeal and off they go.

The "grocery" stores were smaller mostly, at least in the areas we were, with much more fresh meat and produce, and a lot less snacks and processed food. Even the "corner stores" had more fresh food varieties available.

The food on the foreign airlines was not only better tasting, but was healthier and fresher than what was offered by the domestic lines. The chicken cacciatore actually had real pieces of chicken, and tasted as good if not better than I have had in American restaurants.

There's a growing effort to allow kids to be kids again.

Instead of calling police when a mom lets her kids play unsupervised these people believe if they survived their childhood back when they were young then these kids will survive too.

It's an effort to counter the stranger danger at every corner.

The wife told me that it's healthy to eat when you're hungry and to fast on occasion.

I eat too fast all the time.

Not sure where you all live, but the number of cars sitting at the bus stops, with kids sitting inside, just amazes me, the kids don't even walk to the bus stops.

I see this even in small apartment complexes, where even a 5 year old can walk to the bus stop unassisted in less than 3 minutes from the farthest building. It must take longer to open, get in, and start the car than to just walk to the bus stop.

We have gone from fat shaming to skinny shaming.. I see it on my FB all the time.

We are now celebrating plus size and plus plus size models for their bravery in wearing a bikini even though many of them are 30-50 pounds overweight and shaming women who are skinny even if they are just naturally skinny and not starving themselves to be skinny. It just hits home with me because my wife is very skinny.. she's 5'11" about 125 and she eats whatever she wants whenever she wants and doesn't have much of an exercise plan. She was under her original weight 2 weeks after having both of our children.. it's just how her body works and she gets really frustrated with people telling her she needs to eat more, she's too skinny... she realizes she should probably be 10-15 pounds heavier but no matter what she does, she can't gain weight... and women tell her this all the time.... now try going up to a woman at the office and telling her she looks like she needs to lose 20 pounds and see what happens... but to tell a woman she's too skinny is perfectly acceptable.

I can stick to almost any diet so long as someone else makes me the food and doesn't ask me what I want to eat. Once I hear that phrase,"What do you want for dinner?" I am doomed. Yet, if the ol' lady just says here this is dinner I just eat it and shut up. Oh I might grumble here and there but for the most part I am complacent provided it ain't the same darn thing three days in a row ^^