The Obesity Epidemic

So today I had a thought on the obesity epidemic as I was going to work.
Right now I am possibly in the best shape of my life and no where near my 20's. It took a while to get there but the habits I have formed that got me here provided me with an insight, which ought to be obvious, as to how I got it done. Yes it helps that I am naturally slim, but don't mistake that for the magic metabolism(tm) that some people have. I was on my way to being very out of shape and heavy before I snatched the reigns. Anyway the obesity epidemic as broken down by habit:

In the morning I have a small high fibre breakfast(Oatmeal (160 Calories), which includes nothing with high fructose corn syrup, two fruits (apple and banana @80 and 108 calories respectively) and plenty of water. A lot of people will grab a bagel with all manner of high carb toppings and coffee in the morning(A DD sesame bagel is 330 calories. add 150 for the cream cheese and another 120 for the latte for a total of 660 Calories. You don't even want to discuss how much of that are from fat. Really you don't even want to think about it). The calorie count of these things are high and the nutritional value, questionable. There are also long lines at the Dunkin Doughnut stores I pass, usually a large portion of the line are people who simply ought not to be there. They are getting bagels, doughnuts and creamed coffee. So a lot of these people have hit nearly 1,000 calories before 9AM. Particularly if they work in an office with food around. Meanwhile I may have hit 300 or so of far more nutritious food.

Then they work at a job that usually requires a lot of sitting. You don't burn all that much energy sitting. What your body does not use, it excretes or stores. At my weight, 189, it takes me 20 minutes running at 8.6 MPH to burn 440 calories. So we can safely assume that persons who are sitting down for the morning have not burned through most of what they ate in the morning though at noon, they will be "hungry".

So at noon, these individuals, who had close to if not 1,000 calories in the AM most of which were carbs, will go and eat McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC or something else. The calorie counts on these meals can reach 2k calories. Say they have a large fries(570 calories), cheeseburger(310 Calories),and large coke(310 calories)and an Apple Pie (250 Calories) That's a 1.4K Calorie lunch. So by 1PM a lot of people have eaten more calories than the average human will expend in a full day. Yet their entire physical activities for the day will contain: walk to the car, drive, walk from the car, sit, walk to the car, drive, eat, sit, walk to the car, sit.

At noon, I eat a sandwich, hand made, lean cuts, low fat butter. I have some chocolate chip cookies, cause, hey.. I'm not on a diet. I also work out for an hour. So usually by 1PM I'm running a calorie deficit but maintain protein to keep my body from eating away at my muscles.

By the time I get home in the evening I am hungry. I should be. So is the average American. The difference here is that I am hungry because I'm running a calorie deficit for the day and I need to refuel. The average person is hungry in the evening because he or she is used to being fed. Many people are hungry at certain times simply because their bodies are conditioned to expect food. In any case. Dinner is my largest (calorie wise)meal plenty of carbs and protein but still balanced. A lot of people eat far more than I do of food high in fat. Mind you they haven't done much to "earn" that meal by way of physical activity but it's likely they've eaten another 1.5-2k calories at meal time. So if we look at what average people are consuming daily we can see that they are ingesting around 3500 calories each day. In exercise terms, I would have to run 2 hours and 20 minutes at 8.6 MPH to burn all that. Each. Day. Most people aren't even power walking for 20min a day much less running. I wont even get into my no snacking after 10PM rule.

So you understand why someone who was say 120 lbs at age 20 can balloon to 300+ pounds in 10 years. people are taking in upwards of 17,000 calories each work week but all they are doing is sitting down all day. They hire other people to do yard work if they have one. They are parked in front of tv and computer screens in the evenings. It is no surprise then that we have people who are not only out of shape but people are literally gorging themselves to death. If we want to look at the incidences of hypertension, heart disease, etc. we cannot escape that people are having these problems primarily due to how they eat. And the fact is that companies are all willing to profit from this. Republicans like to talk about so called "death panels" but the real death panels are in the corporate boardrooms where they think of new ways to get Americans to eat more fat calories per sitting.

It's a really sad state of affairs. And while I agree that overweight people ought not be discriminated against, I believe the whole "fat acceptance" thing is simply adding fuel to this fire by attempting to legitimize very bad eating and exercise habits and passing it off as self-esteem and anti-thin-establishment.