Agriculture policy needs to change. We should stop subsidizing corn so heavily. A ton of what we eat is derived from corn, including soda. High fructose corn syrup is dirt cheap and probably has a lot do with the obesity crisis. One early commenter mentioned that you will never get people to eat healthy when a fast-food meal for three costs so little. Modern agriculture (the production of corn, beef, etc.) is likely a significant contributor.

Personal responsibility and education play a part as well. We need to give people good information, and people need to make good decisions. Our culture needs to change, as well. It needs to be “cool” to eat and drink healthy foods–not Pepsi, Coke, and McDonald’s.

Corporate law should be modified. The shareholder-primacy model is stupid. We need to change the incentives that corporate executives face. Yes, the model does good and has produced a lot of progress, but it causes so many unquantifiable problems. If you think the CEOs of food and beverage corporations are interested in our health, then you are sorely mistaken. They get judged (and their jobs and social status depend on) short-term profits. They will do virtually anything to keep those profits coming. We need to give other stakeholders (employees, the community, etc.) real power in corporate decision-making.

We need to realize that while personal responsibility is important, humans are built to crave sugary and fatty foods. It’s how we’ve evolved. I think some regulation of food would help, mainly the really unhealthy and valueless stuff like soda and fast food.

We need to stop advertising crappy food to children. Food and beverage companies buy their way into schools and try to get our kids hooked on junk food…and it works.

Parents need to take responsibility for their kids’ health. Stop feeding your children junk food. A treat here and there is fine, but fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats need to be the basis of a good diet. If you start them early on this stuff, they will like it. My three-year old still loves black beans, homemade salsa, grapes, apples, salad, and much more because that’s what we’ve fed her from the start and that’s mainly what we keep around the house.

There are many other things, including exercise, that would help, but I’m not writing a book so I’ll stop now.

If you are poor, you usually don’t work near your home because there are no jobs where you live meaning you commmute. So on top of your work day (which is at least 8 hours, usually longer) you have commuting time. I’m away from home at least 11 hours on a work day. This is only if you don’t have to work 2 jobs to get by. After a long stressful day at a job that most likely sucks the last thing most people want to do is cook a meal or workout.

Now for that meal. Fish and fresh veggies? Yes, they are quick to prepare but not everybody can afford them especially if there are kids that need to be fed. In some inner-city stores they aren’t even available. Quick, healthy food takes planning and effort. When your working and chasing kids it’s not always easy to manage. Mcdonald’s dollar menu starts looking pretty good at the end of the day.

It also takes money to have a place big enough to have room to workout. Sure you could go for a walk or run outside, except it rains for months on end here (no, really, we just had a week of rain in July) which means you need stuff to keep dry whcih takes money to purchase. Ditto for places that get snow. Again, if you have kids, what do you do with them when you’re working out?

All these things are totally doable, I’ve done them, I’ve had friends that have done it but it takes commitment that can be really hard to muster when you’re dealing with all the other stressors of being poor. That and education.

And for anyone that would like to comment that people shouldn’t have kids unless they can afford them, they should talk to my friend that just left her alcoholic husband so she and her three kids could have a better life. She comes from an affluent background and is now dirt poor and scrambling to get by. Not to mention those unplanned events (as someone once told me: here, “You use birth control?” Me, “Yeah.” Her, “Well it doesn’t always work!”)Sometimes where you start out is not where you end up.

Just about any weight goal is attainable within a year on this diet, but most will achieve their goals much faster than that.

Once goal weight is achieved, stabilize on a diet with very low bread/pasta/rice and low animal products (meat, cheese, eggs, milk, etc) and a high proportion of fresh, raw ingredients. It’s okay to eat anything sometimes (I enjoy fish, but don’t tell the vegetarians), however fruits and veg should always be the mainstay. Combine with regular physical activity for best results.

Most people are obese because they eat far too many calories in the form of bread, pasta, refined foods from boxes/packages, oily fried foods, and cheese. People will never get healthy until they decide to eat healthful foods. It’s simple.

Secondly, nowadays, I’m a fat girl, and I honestly don’t think my life costs me any more. I don’t eat junk. I have a cheap gym membership and I use it. I don’t buy any wacky weight-loss supplements. I don’t have any serious health problems (except insomnia, which I’ve had since I was 9). I’m just fat. That’s it. I have a freakishly slow metabolism (when I weighed 125, I was working out 2 hours a day and eating about 800 calories because that was the only way I could lose weight) and I’m fat. Tada!

I would rather wonder if part of the reason us chubsters have more expensive health costs is because we actually acknowledge our health. I go to the doctor for preventative reasons (blood tests, etc.) a LOT more than my skinny friends do. They just assume they’re healthy because they’re skinny. This is purely anecdata, of course, but I always wonder if people who put these figures together have issues with correlation vs. causation because that’s often a factor.

See http://www.The-Menace-Of–Obesity.com
Thank you
Oliver Greene
Author “The Menace of Obesity”

I still think that I can understand extreme lack of sleep and you don’t really know enough about my life to say whether my experience compares to lack of sleep with children or not, as commented by Beth. Hopefully I will have kids someday and maybe I will eat my words then, who knows. But I’m just saying, just like I don’t know your life and shouldn’t have been so quick to judge you, you don’t know my life and shouldn’t be so quick to judge me and my experiences with insomnia. Stupid internet makes it way to easy to jump to conclusions because we obviously have very little information to base our judgements on and we humans are so very good at making snap judgements on people. Sorry if my comments seemed harsh at the time, I just your statement a little too close to home with my family situation and I couldn’t tell that you are actually pretty healthy. My mom was never active at the level you already are and never ate healthy so it’s a totally different situation. Just keep doing fun active stuff with your kids and having a healthy diet and attitude and you will live a long and happy life.

However, one of my fears is having some kind of accident or something that makes me need assistance. There is no guarantee that if I weighed much less that my parents would be able to care for me, but it IS a guarantee that at my current weight none of my family or friends could move me. If I had to have help getting up or moving, I would have to go to a care facility. Now, lots of “normal” weight people would have to do the same but it’s a certainty for me at this weight.

Yes, 30 pounds is a bit of weight, but there is more than 30 pounds difference within the “normal” range of BMI, so it sounds like you’d be just as critical as one in the “normal” BMI who was at the high end of the scale as that an additional 30 pounds too. (And I know exactly what it feels like to carry an additional 30 pounds because that’s exactly what happens with our family walks–I carry my youngest–my current way of getting more exercise into the walk).

As for lack of sleep, there is no comparison between kids and grad school. I went thru law school at a top rate school and studies night and day to graduate in the top percent. The Bar Exam studies were even worse since I did that when I was working. I never felt as sleep deprived as I did with kids. Most of my law school friends who had kids had the same experience, thinking we knew sleep deprivation and it would be an issue and then being shocked at the difference.

I guess that why when my GF asks me to “force her to workout” I just can’t do it – I say, “I love you, but you are in control of your life and your will power.” I barely have enough will power to make myself work out, let alone police someone else, too! (And she consistantly weighs less than me, anyway, so I don’t think she needs my help!)

I am a firm believer in self control and discipline. But when a drive through meal for three costs less than a plate of healthy food…. what do you expect from the low income group in our society? skip their bills to buy healthy foods? There is a society problem and this problem will exist as long as this disparity remains.

Finally we all can change the way we ‘do life’ by for example parking a little further in the mall instead of circling for an hour to get parking by the door, and for all of us who understand the risks being overweight, making deliberate efforts to encourage our friends and family to live a healthier lifestyle.

I am not healthy either, despite eating healthy. I suffer from several conditions, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus and the lowered immunity that comes with those (ie… I get sick with the common cold a lot easier than most people).

Meanwhile, my obese friends (some of them morbidly obese) make 6-figure incomes, and are overall healthier than I am.

Yes, this is anecdotal evidence, but then again, that’s what the question asked for at the end of the blog.

Also: Some of the comments from people in this blog were just plain hateful. :/

Lisa it sounds like maybe you already know you are low thyroid or have symptoms of low thyroid check out “stop the thyroid madness” for information

1. Cats are not a wild animal, they are domesticated
2. ‘Keeping’ a cat at all is not ‘natural’
3. ‘Natural’ is not always the best method anyway

Also, the percentage of fat people who require reinforced furniture and mobility aids is vanishingly small. I weigh about 315lbs and I have no mobility issues, I’ve never bought a reinforced anything, and the only time I’ve ever needed a mobility aid was when I sprained my foot last year and needed crutches.

For those of you with insuranc who are curious about what medical care costs when you get sick, just take your per visit co-pay and multiply it by 20. I got pneumonia and the visit at the doc-in-the-box was over $500! THAT WAS JUST ONE VISIT W/O MEDS!

I’ve dropped 21 pounds, but I’m nowhere near where I need to be to get coverage.

For those of you who need motivation, picture this: a single woman with the typical American debts (car note, student loan, credit cards) who makes $30 K a year having to CASH HER WHOLE PAYCHECK just to take it to the doctor’s office! That should help you drop a pound or two, too!

The biggest cost related to my obesity is clothing. Plus size clothes cost more. I haven’t flown in a couple of years, but the clothes would indirectly cost me more there too. More material = less items fit in suitcases = more checked bags fees (If I’m going somewhere for a longer period of time).

I’m sure, over time, that it’s cost me more in gas than if I weighed 120# but I don’t know if that’s a significant amount of money. I rather doubt that it is.

What it hasn’t cost me: sick days or salary or prescription medication. I’ve called in twice this year … because I wasn’t willing to risk life, injury or my car traveling to work in a blizzard. I received one of the highest raises in my department (according to my manager, take that with a grain of salt). I have yet to be sick this year, aside from the allergies and asthma I’ve had since I was 18 months old. FYI, I wasn’t obese until I was as adult, so no, obesity did not cause my asthma and allergies issue. I was diagnosed with an ulcer when I was about 8 years old, while not obese, so it didn’t cause that either. I had migraines in grade school and middle school – not obese, it didn’t cause that either.

I was, however, diagnosed as diabetic 3 months ago. Not a big surprise to me. I am 5’6″, weight 285 pounds and have a family history of diabetes. I also LOVE sweets and HATE vegetables. I test my blood twice a day and am on no medications. The spike in sugars that precipitated my diagnosis was very sudden (because of my weight, my doctor had been monitoring things for a few years now – always normal across the board) and I wanted time to see if I could get it down again. I cut off pop (mostly) and started sporadic exercise. My sugars aren’t totally normal yet, but they’re getting there. I had my checkup last friday and the doc is still ok with me avoiding medications. I bought a treadmill (I’ve had gym memberships often, but never stuck with them) and I’m trying to get healthier.

I have issues from when I was younger and from now that make getting into better shape difficult, but I can do it through diet and exercise. It’s going to take awhile though. Even though I fit the stereotype of the fat person who just needs to exercise more and eat better/less, I absolutely empathize with those who have other things going on.

It has cost me more in intangible things than in money. And that will continue to be the case as long as people think it’s perfectly normal to mock and denigrate people based on their looks. I have yet to be penalized on salary, but I’ve also been with the same company for 12 years so they know ME and recognize my worth. I am wanting to change jobs and I carry myself very confidently, but sometimes these studies about salary make me nervous that some jacka$$ will try to cheat me based on my fat. And it is cheating me when you make a decision based on my body type rather than my skills (outside of a fitness related job). Anyway, hate these type of articles that encourage the fear mongering instead of taking a more balanced view of things.

With that said, my BMI is 27.5 which would put me in the high overweight category.

I don’t think we can really compare whose lack of sleep is better or worse because it’s an individual experience and it’s going to have different consequences for all of us.