Americans are fat. You only have to walk down the street and look around yourself to see it. Either that, or you could hop over to the and look at their obesity data for yourself. It’s not a pretty picture.
As I’ve noted in the past, “obese” is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or greater. For reference, that correspond to weighing 221 (or more) pounds if you’re six feet tall.
Now for some depressing numbers… In 2009, only one state – Colorado – plus Washington, DC had obesity rates below 20%, whereas 33 states had obesity rates of at least 25%. Looking across states, the obesity rate averaged 26.7% overall.
These numbers stand in stark contrast to the goals of the Healthy People 2010 program, which had as its primary goal reducing the obesity rate to 15%. As you can see from the above, every single state failed to meet this benchmark.
Not only that, but pretty much all states are moving further and further away from this goal. From a societal perspective, this is an economic disaster waiting to happen. From a personal perspective, it’s important to keep in mind that obesity dramatically shortens your life expectancy.
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot we can do about the overall epidemic from an individual perspective, but… You can combat the problem on your own. Making better eating choices, add some exercise to your daily routine, set a good example for your children, and so on.
Based on personal experience, I would recommend targeting small, sustainable changes that will add up to big results over time. Remember, if you cut (or burn) just 100 extra calories per day, you’ll lose 10 pounds over the course of a year.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Just one nitpick on your burn/cut 100 extra calories thing to lose 10 pounds. This is only true if you’re only 100 calories in excess. In other words, if someone is having problems because they have an excess of 500 calories, while cutting 100 calories will certainly help them, they’re still going to be running a 400 calorie excess and likely still be gaining weight.
Alissa: You are absolutely right that I oversimplified things. I actually addressed that angle in the linked article, but (apparently) got lazy here and didn’t detail it.
In fact, you would only lose ten pounds if you were eating the exact right number of calories. At the 100 calorie excess in your scenario, cutting 100 would merely get you back to a no-gain situation.
And at the +500 calorie level, they would still gain, but would end up gaining 10 fewer pounds than if they didn’t cut out those 100 calories. A bad situation to be sure, but not as bad if they just kept on with their 500 calories excess.