A, I am, myself, presently obese and totally hate it. I've always been on the chubby side but several factors have come together in the past few years,,,age, lack of exercise due to physical injury and inertia, crummy eating habits, and a period of about two years on a high dose of Zoloft, to really pack on the pounds. Some doctors will be honest and tell you that the SSRIs can cause sudden and dramatic weight gain in about 10 percent of those who take them; mine was not one of those doctors. Now I'm scared I may never get it off; I've also read prolonged use of SSRIs can permanently alter metabolic function, regardless of whether you continue to take the drug or not. I'm now totally head-med free for the first time in years, and just begun getting up early to do some walking every morning, which I will mix with some swimming, and hope to god I can get myself on that long road to being actually fit within the next couple years, by the time I'm 50. Fat acceptance, schmat acceptance. All the health info coming in regarding the effects of being composed of too much fat is rather blowing that message right out of the water, isn't it?
B. Don't know where you folks hang out, but if you're living in pricier urban areas it's a good bet you won't be seeing how gigantic some Americans have been getting; there is a relationship between excess fat and class, no question in my mind. Rich people can't be too thin; and if you want to see how fat Fat America is, the place to hang out is Wal Mart. Out here in the boonies, it's not at all remarkable to see people everyday, all over the place, who are 100 pounds or more overweight. People who are by any definition HUGE. Or where I'm working right now: a call center for monitoring alarm systems. Beginning pay $9.00 an hour, work consists of sitting on your butt for stretches of 2-3 hours at a time. I think I've seen more morbidly obese people in this one workplace than I've ever seen anywhere else, Being surrounded by all this flab everywhere I turn has motivated me as much as anything else to get my own act together. I have the encouragement of my new doctor, who went over that lovely BMI index with me just last week; of course, I politely declined to point out he's gotta be at least 50 pounds overweight himself...
Why are US people getting so whale-like? Lousy diet, which results when you try to eat cheap: lots of starch and fat. No consistent calorie-burning exercise to speak of: don't have time, don't have the energy to move all that bulk, when you do it's unpleasant. And LOTS of propaganda/advertising 24/7 coming from everywhere to EAT, EAT, EAT JUNK!!!
It's not a fabricated crisis. One of the first things foreigners notice about Americans, whether they're visiting the US or we're visiting them, is what lardbutts we tend to be.