Why do obese people in the US always say they don't eat much?

Say you had that for lunch, the issue is that the meal you just had, closes in on the 2000 calorie diet, and oddly enough, pretty much all other combos or actual meal combos come close or pass that. In fact, you could potentiall reach right next to 2000 at mdonalds with some menu items. not even counting in cookies or mcflurries for desert.

Eddie-Murphy48

Its tough to explain.  I am very obese (morbidly so, as the doctors call it), but I have also been overweight my whole life.

In my opinion, though, anyone that is significantly overweight needs to be approached as if they have a psychological problem, not a physical one.  Treating the weight is the wrong approach; they need to reframe their view, and make mental lifestyle changes, not just "walk" and "go to the gym".

I was an athlete growing up, went to college, started training for strongman competitions.  Somewhere along the line, something happened, and I got fat.

I don't know. It's easy to claim that obese people eat too much and that being thin is a choice but life its a little bit more complicated than that. Not sure what the purpose of viewing the world in black and white is. Undermines its complexity. MrPraline

[QUOTE="MrPraline"]I don't know. It's easy to claim that obese people eat too much and that being thin is a choice but life its a little bit more complicated than that. Not sure what the purpose of viewing the world in black and white is. Undermines its complexity. Rich3232

[QUOTE="Slashless"][QUOTE="Ackad"]http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/jhcho2

Haha. That caught my attention as well. That one in particular.

Mayonnaise itself is disgusting and you want it on your PIZZA???

In fact most of that stuff doesn't even look remotely appetizing.

>Dat disgusting excuse for a burrito

>pizza fries, the most overrated food in existance

>dat baco (wtf?)

>the super guser (gushers are terrible)

I will admit though

dat Kit kat cake

who wants to live to 40 anyway? \0/

[QUOTE="Rich3232"][QUOTE="MrPraline"]I don't know. It's easy to claim that obese people eat too much and that being thin is a choice but life its a little bit more complicated than that. Not sure what the purpose of viewing the world in black and white is. Undermines its complexity. MrPraline

denial.

Cheap food have empty calories.

US is all about cars and driving around and you dont get excersise.

So the intake is high and the output is low.

 

I live in tokyo where you have to walk and use public transport so you get to burn a great deal of calories, as well as have a culture of drinking tea, not soda and juice.

So naturally it seems people are a lot slimmer here.

 

A lot of friends that went to live abroad come back massive so there has to be a corelation.

Angie7F

There are many other countries in Asia which do not have as good a transport system as Japan, and yet do not have an obesity problem. Japanese food is generally quite healthy, with a lot of things being raw, or just cooked in a very minimal way.

[QUOTE="MrPraline"][QUOTE="Rich3232"] Makes it easier for people to point fingers and demonize and dehumanize. Rich3232

Well, if people get so fat until they block an entire isle in the supermarket, and have difficulty to even move aside to let me pass, why is it not my business? And obese people have a tendency to take up 2 seats in cinemas, planes, trains or buses. It impacts the public. You can't compare it to watching pr0n, whereby you do it in private.

the only people who think all americans are obese like the OP are people from other countries who are just jealous of us. Don't blame us that we're better then you and mother didn't hug u enough ;)

kickingcarpet

lol, I don't believe i said all Americans are obese, but studies show that one in every three adults is obese in America. That's extremely high, and feels like almost every other person passing by is obese.

[QUOTE="Rich3232"][QUOTE="MrPraline"] Yeah, true. Wish people would just mind their own f*cking business.jhcho2

Well, if people get so fat until they block an entire isle in the supermarket, and have difficulty to even move aside to let me pass, why is it not my business? And obese people have a tendency to take up 2 seats in cinemas, planes, trains or buses. It impacts the public. You can't compare it to watching pr0n, whereby you do it in private.

Poverty, wealth inequality, car culture, and a poor educational system in the U.S. plays a large part in our obesity problem. When you're born into a toxic environment spending billions to control your mind it's going to be harder to overcome it.

Edit: As well as a dysfunctional healthcare system.

it is not a scientific scale, it holds no sound theory other than the rantings of an 18th C  quack who tried to scale his frame up and down in height, because he thought he had the perfect body. if weak and anemic is healthy, i suggest you pick up a modern text book and find the definition of "healthy" surrealnumber5

Those idiots who tell you BMI makes them overweight or even obese, dispite the fact they run daily and have a body fat of 8%, simply are not using it correctly.

I just don't understand why everybody NOT from the USA thinks 1 in every 2 americans is a fattie blahblahblah you've never been here, and honestly I'm around a lot of people daily and i see very few obese. I'd say obesity is more of a 1-25 thing or more, you can't stand outside a McDonalds and take the statistic....your just an arrogant fool

People from England seem to be fatter then us, from the clips and videos i've seen of their news I see alot of "big boned" borderline obese people..

[QUOTE="jhcho2"]

[QUOTE="Rich3232"] Here is my final point...About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography...What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, or take into my body as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet? And for those who are having a little moral dilemma in your head about how to answer that question, I'll answer it for you. NONE of your **** business. Take that to the bank, cash it, and go **** on a vacation out of my life. - Bill Hickssurrealnumber5

Well, if people get so fat until they block an entire isle in the supermarket, and have difficulty to even move aside to let me pass, why is it not my business? And obese people have a tendency to take up 2 seats in cinemas, planes, trains or buses. It impacts the public. You can't compare it to watching pr0n, whereby you do it in private.

Most people would not compare discriminating fat people with being sexist or racist. People don't get to choose their sex or race at birth. In the case of being fat...you could simply just be a little more disciplined.

And your argument about not blocking the isle thing is just plain stupid. That's just like saying that a smoker has the right to make everyone else around him/her second hand smokers just because nobody owns the place, and he/she can pretty much do what he wants. And in case you didn't know, isles in supermarkets are something like 7 feet wide. clearly meant to fit more than one person. No human being should eat himself/herself till they take up the full 7 feet width.

And you're finding fault with the BMI now? The BMI ratio may not be fully applicable to body builders, but that's because muscle weighs more than fat. And the last time I checked, having muscle isn't nearly as unhealthy as having the equivalent weight of fat. And more importantly, to gain muscle, you must have been burning off a lot of energy. You gain fat when you're clearly not exercising enough. See the disparity there? The main point of the BMI is to give a ballpark indication of how much you weigh relative to your height. So if you're say...5' 9" tall, and weigh 400 pounds, and you're not a body builder, then something is clearly not right. It's no more complicated than that. However, the trend I notice among Americans is to dismiss the evidence, and then blame it on trauma, psychology, genetics (lol) and whatever they can think of.

[QUOTE="Rich3232"][QUOTE="MrPraline"] Yeah, true. Wish people would just mind their own f*cking business.jhcho2

Well, if people get so fat until they block an entire isle in the supermarket, and have difficulty to even move aside to let me pass, why is it not my business? And obese people have a tendency to take up 2 seats in cinemas, planes, trains or buses. It impacts the public. You can't compare it to watching pr0n, whereby you do it in private.

[QUOTE="kickingcarpet"]

the only people who think all americans are obese like the OP are people from other countries who are just jealous of us. Don't blame us that we're better then you and mother didn't hug u enough ;)

jhcho2

lol, I don't believe i said all Americans are obese, but studies show that one in every three adults is obese in America. That's extremely high, and feels like almost every other person passing by is obese.

[QUOTE="surrealnumber5"][QUOTE="jhcho2"]

Well, if people get so fat until they block an entire isle in the supermarket, and have difficulty to even move aside to let me pass, why is it not my business? And obese people have a tendency to take up 2 seats in cinemas, planes, trains or buses. It impacts the public. You can't compare it to watching pr0n, whereby you do it in private.

jhcho2

Most people would not compare discriminating fat people with being sexist or racist. People don't get to choose their sex or race at birth. In the case of being fat...you could simply just be a little more disciplined.

And your argument about not blocking the isle thing is just plain stupid. That's just like saying that a smoker has the right to make everyone else around him/her second hand smokers just because nobody owns the place, and he/she can pretty much do what he wants. And in case you didn't know, isles in supermarkets are something like 7 feet wide. clearly meant to fit more than one person. No human being should eat himself/herself till they take up the full 7 feet width.

And you're finding fault with the BMI now? The BMI ratio may not be fully applicable to body builders, but that's because muscle weighs more than fat. And the last time I checked, having muscle isn't nearly as unhealthy as having the equivalent weight of fat. And more importantly, to gain muscle, you must have been burning off a lot of energy. You gain fat when you're clearly not exercising enough. See the disparity there? The main point of the BMI is to give a ballpark indication of how much you weigh relative to your height. So if you're say...5' 9" tall, and weigh 400 pounds, and you're not a body builder, then something is clearly not right. It's no more complicated than that. However, the trend I notice among Americans is to dismiss the evidence, and then blame it on trauma, psychology, genetics (lol) and whatever they can think of.

[QUOTE="surrealnumber5"]i am not for smoking Nazism either... only stupid people try to make exceptions the rules, as of 2008 the average male weight was 189 pounds, and you are talking about people several deviations away from that and then you are using this to base an argument of controlling other peoples lives. this is not a respectable argument, not be any objective measure i am aware of jhcho2

189 pounds is rather fair for an average male. Obese people easily weigh 300 pounds. I'm not even going to the extreme of 500 or 600 pounds. Those are contenders for being top 100 fattest people in the world. But even for 300 pounds, that's not merely several 'deviations' away from 189 pounds. Again this could turn into a semantical debate about what one deviation means in this context. Since the obesity rate in America is incresing, it is also becoming more and more common, meaning that normal distribution curve would flatten out, and the magnitude of one deviation would be larger. But I don't think that's the point.

Obese people are just really fat people who we can identify as being fat just by a single glance. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. And we don't even have to talk about those on the borderline of being obese. Many people are clearly way pass the borderline and are downright obese. The labeling and stimatization arises due to these people being way heavier than a normal human being should be. 40 to 50 years ago, this kind of weight and size was unheard of. Only now, is it becoming commonplace. And these obese people are trying to claim that it's somewhat 'normal' to be such. Any kind of pressure is interpreted as an insult or stigma. The cause is blamed on food companies and genetics. It's just the American way. What do we do when we have school shootings? Blame the NRA. Blame video games. Blame Hollywood. Err....why isn't parenthood ever mentioned? The fear of victimizing people the way fat people are being victimized? Probably. Coincidence? Nope.

BMI, for people who think a 6 foot 4 man is "healthy" if he is 156 pounds..... HEALTHY! go tell that to someone 6'4"



Average American height 5 9 average weight 189 OMG the average American man is over weight(according to BMI) and if this average had a form he would look absolutely ordinary. not like a 600 pound wheelchair bound chocolate siphoning fat machine, but like the standard extra in a movie. but ZOMG the 1800 and all of its great medical quackeries were right, we must have a flood tide of amorphous blobs flooding the streets.

[QUOTE="jhcho2"]

[QUOTE="kickingcarpet"]

the only people who think all americans are obese like the OP are people from other countries who are just jealous of us. Don't blame us that we're better then you and mother didn't hug u enough ;)

surrealnumber5

lol, I don't believe i said all Americans are obese, but studies show that one in every three adults is obese in America. That's extremely high, and feels like almost every other person passing by is obese.

[QUOTE="surrealnumber5"][QUOTE="jhcho2"]

lol, I don't believe i said all Americans are obese, but studies show that one in every three adults is obese in America. That's extremely high, and feels like almost every other person passing by is obese.

Nibroc420

[QUOTE="surrealnumber5"][QUOTE="Nibroc420"] /facepalm Wikipedia has citations, in this case, it goes to a report done(and hosted by) the World Health Organization. I'm going to take a committee of world renowned doctors and nutritionists over a personal trainer with a few "cirts" who cannot follow simple citations to find how credible a source of information is.Nibroc420

Ever stop to consider that maybe some people are just big boned

Fat women love to claim they have thyroid problems, metabolism disorders, hormone issues. No fatties, just no. 

The obesity epidemic is not just happening in the US it is happening in most western countries remember. I blame it on the people who shop for these people their families are killing them.seahorse123

I hate how fat women are all "curvy" now and if you don't find fat women attractive you must be gay and "like little boys bodies". Why do fat women love to tell men what they should be attracted to, yet nobody tells women they should be attracted to fat men? 

[QUOTE="surrealnumber5"]
it is not a scientific scale, it holds no sound theory other than the rantings of an 18th C  quack who tried to scale his frame up and down in height, because he thought he had the perfect body. if weak and anemic is healthy, i suggest you pick up a modern text book and find the definition of "healthy" Nibroc420

Those idiots who tell you BMI makes them overweight or even obese, dispite the fact they run daily and have a body fat of 8%, simply are not using it correctly.

[QUOTE="kickingcarpet"]

the only people who think all americans are obese like the OP are people from other countries who are just jealous of us. Don't blame us that we're better then you and mother didn't hug u enough ;)

jhcho2

lol, I don't believe i said all Americans are obese, but studies show that one in every three adults is obese in America. That's extremely high, and feels like almost every other person passing by is obese.

[QUOTE="jhcho2"]

[QUOTE="kickingcarpet"]

the only people who think all americans are obese like the OP are people from other countries who are just jealous of us. Don't blame us that we're better then you and mother didn't hug u enough ;)

Murderstyle75

lol, I don't believe i said all Americans are obese, but studies show that one in every three adults is obese in America. That's extremely high, and feels like almost every other person passing by is obese.

Someone who has a few extra pounds around the mid-section is categorized as 'overweight', not obese. That's why I never used the term 'overweight', as there is a lot of room for a semantical debate. Obese is normally one whole category beyond just being overweight. So...it's not just a few extra pounds like you said. To be obese, you'd have to be something like a hundred pounds heavier than a normal person.

[QUOTE="Murderstyle75"][QUOTE="jhcho2"]

lol, I don't believe i said all Americans are obese, but studies show that one in every three adults is obese in America. That's extremely high, and feels like almost every other person passing by is obese.

jhcho2

Someone who has a few extra pounds around the mid-section is categorized as 'overweight', not obese. That's why I never used the term 'overweight', as there is a lot of room for a semantical debate. Obese is normally one whole category beyond just being overweight. So...it's not just a few extra pounds like you said. To be obese, you'd have to be something like a hundred pounds heavier than a normal person.

[QUOTE="jhcho2"]

[QUOTE="Murderstyle75"] But what defines obese? When we think obese, we are picturing the woman with three chins grocery shopping from the electric cart at Walmart. The data these studies go by actually label somebody who looks completely normal with the exception of a few extra pounds around the mid section as being obese. As somebody else mentioned, BMI is bullshit but that is what the studies are based on. Meanwhile there is no way to take things like bone density and muscle mass into account. Now instead of having toned and fit arms and legs, I could have flabby ones and weigh exactly the same or less.Nibroc420

Someone who has a few extra pounds around the mid-section is categorized as 'overweight', not obese. That's why I never used the term 'overweight', as there is a lot of room for a semantical debate. Obese is normally one whole category beyond just being overweight. So...it's not just a few extra pounds like you said. To be obese, you'd have to be something like a hundred pounds heavier than a normal person.

I know. It's like having the entire weight of a young teen on you.

[QUOTE="Nibroc420"][QUOTE="jhcho2"]

Someone who has a few extra pounds around the mid-section is categorized as 'overweight', not obese. That's why I never used the term 'overweight', as there is a lot of room for a semantical debate. Obese is normally one whole category beyond just being overweight. So...it's not just a few extra pounds like you said. To be obese, you'd have to be something like a hundred pounds heavier than a normal person.

jhcho2

I know. It's like having the entire weight of a young teen on you.

[QUOTE="jhcho2"]

[QUOTE="Nibroc420"] a hundred pounds of "extra weight" looks a lot more than it sounds.Nibroc420

I know. It's like having the entire weight of a young teen on you.

Tell that to the self-conscious fat people, and the ones who are trying thier best to discredit the BMI system. Not that I think the BMI system is perfect, but it gives a pretty good representation. You can't possibly have a BMI of over 40 and still argue that you're not obese.

i am not for smoking Nazism either... only stupid people try to make exceptions the rules, as of 2008 the average male weight was 189 pounds, and you are talking about people several deviations away from that and then you are using this to base an argument of controlling other peoples lives. this is not a respectable argument, not be any objective measure i am aware of surrealnumber5

189 pounds is rather fair for an average male. Obese people easily weigh 300 pounds. I'm not even going to the extreme of 500 or 600 pounds. Those are contenders for being top 100 fattest people in the world. But even for 300 pounds, that's not merely several 'deviations' away from 189 pounds. Again this could turn into a semantical debate about what one deviation means in this context. Since the obesity rate in America is incresing, it is also becoming more and more common, meaning that normal distribution curve would flatten out, and the magnitude of one deviation would be larger. But I don't think that's the point.

Obese people are just really fat people who we can identify as being fat just by a single glance. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. And we don't even have to talk about those on the borderline of being obese. Many people are clearly way pass the borderline and are downright obese. The labeling and stimatization arises due to these people being way heavier than a normal human being should be. 40 to 50 years ago, this kind of weight and size was unheard of. Only now, is it becoming commonplace. And these obese people are trying to claim that it's somewhat 'normal' to be such. Any kind of pressure is interpreted as an insult or stigma. The cause is blamed on food companies and genetics. It's just the American way. What do we do when we have school shootings? Blame the NRA. Blame video games. Blame Hollywood. Err....why isn't parenthood ever mentioned? The fear of victimizing people the way fat people are being victimized? Probably. Coincidence? Nope.

[QUOTE="Nibroc420"][QUOTE="surrealnumber5"] appeal to authority, sadly wiki has none and my first profession was as a personal trainer, i had several cirts including two from the NASM including a FNS and PSE. you failed at getting an actual understanding of the material and measures. surrealnumber5

Being fit and being healthy are two different things. We all know that. If your BMI is within the normal range, it means you're fit, but it doesn't mean you're healthy. Similarly, when your BMI is say...40, clearly you are very unfit. However, if you're that unfit, chances are you're not healthy either. You can't have that much excess fat relative to your height, without having some adverse health complication.

[QUOTE="surrealnumber5"][QUOTE="Nibroc420"] /facepalm Wikipedia has citations, in this case, it goes to a report done(and hosted by) the World Health Organization. I'm going to take a committee of world renowned doctors and nutritionists over a personal trainer with a few "cirts" who cannot follow simple citations to find how credible a source of information is.jhcho2

Being fit and being healthy are two different things. We all know that. If your BMI is within the normal range, it means you're fit, but it doesn't mean you're healthy. Similarly, when your BMI is say...40, clearly you are very unfit. However, if you're that unfit, chances are you're not healthy either. You can't have that much excess fat relative to your height, without having some adverse health complication.

[QUOTE="jhcho2"]

[QUOTE="surrealnumber5"] what the BMI IS and how it was created and the theory behind it are not up for debate, and yet you are debating it. weight and height are not measures of health, they cant be as those things are not material to ones health. ignoring body composition, nutrition, and other factors like age genetics and history all of whom are measures of health. what about vitals? blood pressure, sugar levels, hell water consumption has more to do with general health than weight and height. surrealnumber5

Being fit and being healthy are two different things. We all know that. If your BMI is within the normal range, it means you're fit, but it doesn't mean you're healthy. Similarly, when your BMI is say...40, clearly you are very unfit. However, if you're that unfit, chances are you're not healthy either. You can't have that much excess fat relative to your height, without having some adverse health complication.

You like ignoring the main context of an argument and instead go for the semantics. Ok, if you say that someone who has the right proportion of height and waistline but without any muscle isn't fit, then fine. He isn't fit. But that's what having a normal BMI means. You have a 'normal build'. You have 'normal proportions'. So now replace the term 'normal proportions' with the 'fit' term in my previous post.

[QUOTE="jhcho2"]

[QUOTE="surrealnumber5"]i am not for smoking Nazism either... only stupid people try to make exceptions the rules, as of 2008 the average male weight was 189 pounds, and you are talking about people several deviations away from that and then you are using this to base an argument of controlling other peoples lives. this is not a respectable argument, not be any objective measure i am aware of surrealnumber5

189 pounds is rather fair for an average male. Obese people easily weigh 300 pounds. I'm not even going to the extreme of 500 or 600 pounds. Those are contenders for being top 100 fattest people in the world. But even for 300 pounds, that's not merely several 'deviations' away from 189 pounds. Again this could turn into a semantical debate about what one deviation means in this context. Since the obesity rate in America is incresing, it is also becoming more and more common, meaning that normal distribution curve would flatten out, and the magnitude of one deviation would be larger. But I don't think that's the point.

Obese people are just really fat people who we can identify as being fat just by a single glance. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. And we don't even have to talk about those on the borderline of being obese. Many people are clearly way pass the borderline and are downright obese. The labeling and stimatization arises due to these people being way heavier than a normal human being should be. 40 to 50 years ago, this kind of weight and size was unheard of. Only now, is it becoming commonplace. And these obese people are trying to claim that it's somewhat 'normal' to be such. Any kind of pressure is interpreted as an insult or stigma. The cause is blamed on food companies and genetics. It's just the American way. What do we do when we have school shootings? Blame the NRA. Blame video games. Blame Hollywood. Err....why isn't parenthood ever mentioned? The fear of victimizing people the way fat people are being victimized? Probably. Coincidence? Nope.

Once again, you stray from the main point and instead prefer to argue semantics. The example you gave are people who are at the borderline, ie. BMI = 30. I believe I explicitly said that we are not necessarily talking about people who are at borderline because there's too much room for debate on whether they actually fall under the category of overweight or obese. There are clearly so many obese people who have BMIs above 40, and just by one glance, you know they're obese. This entire thread was about such obese people, but somehow your method or debating is about taking a small point relatively out of context from and entire post, srutinize it in isolation, and then use it to discredit the entire post by arguing semantics.

[QUOTE="Murderstyle75"][QUOTE="jhcho2"]

lol, I don't believe i said all Americans are obese, but studies show that one in every three adults is obese in America. That's extremely high, and feels like almost every other person passing by is obese.

jhcho2

Someone who has a few extra pounds around the mid-section is categorized as 'overweight', not obese. That's why I never used the term 'overweight', as there is a lot of room for a semantical debate. Obese is normally one whole category beyond just being overweight. So...it's not just a few extra pounds like you said. To be obese, you'd have to be something like a hundred pounds heavier than a normal person.