How many of you are Overweight or think you Obese?

The biggest factors in my opinion (not necessarily in any order):

- Remote controls on TVs and other things (we can do too many things without evn standing up, let alone walking across the room!)

- The size of meals served by restaurants (I'm a big boy and nearly always leave some or get a doggy bag)

- Air conditioning (when I was a kid, it was cooler outside at 90 degrees than it was inside - so we got used to playing outside all day)

- Cable TV and electronic games (with 3 channels to watch, and a choice between game shows and soaps during the day, playing outside was better even on cooler days)

- The packaging of meals with an emphasis on convenience, not on quality. If we fixed meals at home the emphasis might be different. With my mother it was,

- Ignorance. It amazes me to see people load up on things at a buffet and then get a diet Coke.

When I was 16 I ate 5 burgers a day with extra fries. I weighed 7 stone. 10 years later and I had put on 25 stone. I considered lipo but the soctor said that If I went ahead with it I might die. I decided my only option was to eat only salad for a year. After a year I had dropped 10 stone. Then i decided to lift weights, and I got reallly into it and was offered a female body building contract. My husband divorced me, my parents disowned me and my only child ran away from home. I lost my house and all my posetions and became depressed. After I hadnt been working out so much I put the weight back on and lost my contract. I was then diagnosed with AIDS but as a homeless person, didnt qualify for medical insurance. As I couldnt afford clothing, I was arrested for indecent exposure on the streets and sentenced to a 6 months or a fine of 400$. I couldnt afford the fine so I took the sentence. I am writing to you now from prison. In answer to your question Americans are obese because we have unhealthy lifestyles.

I will always be "overweight" because of my frame size. I take a size 11 shoe, have a 32 inch inseam, have long arms, and huge hands and bones. Even with my bones showing, I am at least 20% over my "recommended" weight. I am strong too, and can out-lift most women on the weights at the gym.

I am 5 foot 8 and supposed to be 135. I will never weigh that, nor will I ever be a size 6. I'm a size 12, and 185 lbs, and yeah I could lose a few more but I am not going to depress myself over not being Angelina Jolie. I have never been below 160 in my adult life.

Technically I'm "obese" but i take a size 12, and have good health numbers. I'm not worried.

Because we live in a society driven by convenience. We want everything to be easy. If we want something, we want it now. We are spoiled and arrogant.

If the grocery store is 300 yards away, we will drive. If we want to eat fast food at 3am, we only have to drive 5 minutes. We have a load of video games. Everyone has a car. We complain about the weather and now stay indoors.

We are lazy. We want to get paid a lot to buy a bunch of materialistic stuff. Since we don't make that much, we charge it anyway.

We are never happy with ourselves. We are willing to pig out and get cosmetic surgery to look like Hollywood stars. We are shallow and spoiled.

All this equals, fat and obese.

I think that we're more "overweight" - i.e. we deviate more from the mean weight for a human being - because we have more ready access to nutrient rich foods than some other nationalities (remember, nutrients include fats, carbohydrates, and proteins). This means that we are, on average, taller and have heavier skeletal and muscular structure than some other cultures.

Obesity is being more than overweight (you can be "overweight" and lean), it is being "fat". We're fat because, again, our ready access to nutrient rich food combined with our sedentary lifestyle brought about by our culture of convenience and our reliance on technology to accomplish things with automation which other less technologically rich countries still have to do manually (like getting from point A to point B).

We also have a culture of consumerism which lends itself to overconsumption. If an ounce is good, a pound is better. We have the double edged sword of being a reasonably successful nation - richer than many others and with access to things that others only dream about. The problem is: rather than weilding this sword successfully, we keep falling on it.

i am not personally overweight but I think that collectively, Americans are far more obese that those in other countries. On one hand, this shows economic prosperity and yet the drastic unbalance in body type across the world also implies that maybe a country as rich and prosperous as America ought to share the wealth.

Because more and more people eat out and eat a lot of fast food these days. I personally am not over weight. I'm only 5'2" and weigh 106lbs. I've also had a child! I have had a lot of medical classes in college and I know how eating food that is bad for you does to your body. But I also live in the South where we think fried food is a food group. haha

Well different cultures also have different eating habits and lifestyles. Asian countries focus more on rice and little portions of meat when Americans plan the meal around the meat being the largest portion. Then there's lack of exercise and laziness.

i think that we are overweight because our society calls out for us to be that way. let me explain, where i live at there is a chinese store, mcdonalds, white castle, starbucks, chicken shack, pizzaria, pizza hut, dominoes, burger king, dunkin donuts, and alot more every 5 seconds. now you put 2 and 2 together, and this is an overweight person talkin, by 80 lbs.

All we do is eat.. and eat at places like McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, Denny's, your favorite diner.

We also don't exercise enough.. or for some, at all.

I think that is probably why diabetes is such a problem in this country, also.