Millions more middle-aged are obese, study suggests

It’s kind of funny that this is a logical consequence of the ‘BMI is wrong because bodybuilders exist’ argument. 

BMI overestimates obesity for muscular people, which suggests it also underestimates obesity for people with little muscle. There’s a lot more of the latter group in our very sedentary society, so BMI underestimates obesity instead of overestimating it which is what the argument is usually used to suggest.

If we’re honest, how many people are actually educated on nutrition and exercise to make permanent healthy changes to their lifestyles?

How many people know how to read nutrition labels, or count calories, or tell the difference between simple and complex carbohydrates?

I wonder how many people you’d ask who say they eat healthily but aren’t losing weight for example, when their diet gets broken down they find out they’re actually overeating by 2/300 calories each day without knowing.

And to be fair, no one teaches people these things. You have to want to seek it out.

It should be mandatory in schools for parents and children to learn this stuff.

Fat has become the new normal and overweight people judging their size by those around them feel that they are a normal size. Then there are those that make excuses such as “I’m big boned” or my personal favourite “Some people can’t lose weight because of a medical condition”. These people are very few and far between. As an ex fatty I can see how it is easy to gain weight and make excuses for yourself, but honestly there is no real excuse. I dropped 32 Kilos whilst on a drug that is notorious for making you gain weight.

Losing weight is hard, it requires a lifestyle change as well as a change of diet, but if we don’t do something about this issue then we will soon have the youngest ever age group requiring care.

In your middle age muscle atrophy begins, and if you don’t have enough muscle to carry your weight far in your 30’s then by the time you hit your fifties and sixties you will be in big trouble. Previous generations didn’t have this issue as they had active jobs, or even if they had an office job they cycled or walked to work. They had a base of cardio and muscular strength to ensure that they didn’t enter care until their true old age.

This generation that are currently in middle age and obese are going to require care much earlier simply due to the fact that they are immobile and unable to move any distance.

The UK is closing in on the U.S. for obese people, but nowhere near close to Mexico, the reigning champion for fat people.

I wonder if we’ll all be taking the semaglutide injection in a few years.

Just going off the eye test a lot of people seem to have gotten so fat since lockdown.

So people will be extremely unhealthy and unwell starting earlier in their lives, middle aged.

AND they will also be expected to work much longer than previous generations before they can retire.

Plus the quality of their lives is getting worse.

Add in that AI and robotics will take over many jobs and lots more out of work.

There’s a bit of a shit storm brewing here and when it hits in a few years it’ll be awful.

I grew up in a family which barely could afford the clothes on the back of me and my siblings. My mother worked multiple jobs and my father was struggling to provide even on a full time job.

My parents would buy the cheapest possible food they could, which was always ultra processed food, because you can buy it in bulk and also frozen food had a great shelf life and could last us a while.

This means I grew up on a diet of Fishcakes, Peas and Frozen Chips for most of my life. My dad was obese and would often comfort eat, as I grew older I eat the only thing I knew, at the time schools were also serving ultra processed food all my friends around me eat processed food and having fish and chips or mcdonalds as a treat on a friday was normal.

In my twenties this mean I was obese and on my way to be morbidly obese. People would often see me being fat as a lifestyle choice which is partially true, but I can promise you no obese person in the UK intentionally wants to be obese, its due to the food culture they have grown up in, its really really hard to change your cooking habits and diet when your poor and really busy, but its possible.

My diet has changed thankfully but it wasn’t easy and I could only do it because I am on a better wage than my parents were. But we are so easy to blame the individuals being obese when clearly if 40% of adults are overweight there is a societal issue with eating cheap junk food in the UK.

Companies are making billions off feeding families crap which will make them overweight and could kill them. If healthier food was made cheaper and eating junk food was made to be more of a taboo, I think we would see a vast change in the rates of obesity in the UK.

Might be an unpopular take. (Nuance often is)

But we really just don’t understand obesity. It’s actually quite a compelling mystery.

We had high food availability for decades without obesity. Ample access to calories. 1970-80’s France being a particularly decadent example of everybody having abundant access to high calorie foods and not being anywhere near as fat as today. (Or early 1900s American)

Even people with sedentary occupations like Doctors and Lawyers in the past were lean (The common lean man was not some exercise obsessed health guru). We’ve had cars, escalators and lifts for decades as well.

But now in the relatively recent past we’ve had populations all over the world explode in weight from the obvious examples of the Americans to low sugar Vegetarian Indians. (With corresponding rates of diabetes)

Almost every country is dealing with obesity they are just at different points in the time line.

Apart from Korea and Japan are seemingly largely immune from this trend.

Borderline every single fat person has tried to loose weight multiple times. Move more, eat less doesn’t seem like viable advice.

And scientific studies on long term weight loss are equally depressing. We just don’t know how to fix obesity.

(Tautological really, if we knew how to solve it, it would be solved)

It’s very difficult to solve a problem you don’t understand the causes of.

I use to believe dieting was a up hill battle until I learnt about TDEE, BMR and counting calories.

Conceptualising those aspects of dieting basically stopped any mental blockage I had with losing weight.

Most people who are overweight and obese aren’t aware of the science behind this and if they know simple life changes (increasing tdee) or how many calories there are in peanut butter, most people would be at a healthy bmi.

I’ve went from 118.8kg down to 103kg in less than 2 months as a 178cm male. I didn’t realise how much calories there are in food and how beneficial walking.

There is no excuses for being obese besides from being raised obese by parents.

I’m 6’1 and 67kg. Feels good.
Combination of very physical job and I don’t consume any sugar in my diet.