There are really two different aspects of this discussion on these boards, and most of the time they get mixed in together. The first issue is dealing with the facts surrounding Americans getting bigger and the health implications surrounding it. As the healthcare reform debate is raging it is becoming increasingly obvious to those on both sides of the different solutions that the one thing you've got to get a hold of is the massive strain preventable diseases are putting on the system. I put up a link in one thread to an article regarding the supermarket chain Safeway, and how they gave incentives to employees to reduce their risk factors (weight level, cholesterol, smoking, etc.) by giving them reductions in their insurance costs. They were actually able to bring costs down, and their workers are now in better health. The workers get the benefit of a healthier life, and the company gets the benefit of less insurance costs.

I've also shared statistics about how the average woman's size bought in 1980 was a size 8, and today it is a size 14. I also gave the statistics on the increase in daily caloirc intake of the same time-period. There's also a lot of other supporting statistics that Americans as a whole weigh more, exercise, less, and are overall much less healthy. Type 2 Diabetes among children has soared to an almost epidemic level, and the overwhelming majority of those cases is due to childhood obesity. When I'm around my children's high school it is amazing how much bigger (not in a good way) high school students are today versus when I was in high school (80's).

I agree that what is really sad is that instead of dealing with these trends in a positive way there has instead been a massive PR campaign to try to get us to accept that bigger is beautiful. I sincerely believe as we see more and more health complications as well as other problems due to obesity that we'll see the pendulum swing in the other direction, and we'll start to see obesity treated more like smoking instead of it being celebrated.

In terms of the facts and statistics you really can't argue that. As I said no matter what side of the healthcare reform debate someone is one they uniformly agree that the growing obesity rate has to be addressed for the sake of personal health as well as the strains it is putting on the health care industry. But what you run into when discussing weight on these boards is that people get really really (and oh did I say really ) defensive about their weight.

The one thing that you might could get a majority agreement on is the definition of overweight and the definition of obesity. Overweight would be someone who is outside (over) their ideal range but not medically obese. Obese is being a certain percentage over that overweight range. I'm not sure how much overweight you have to be in order to be classified as obese, but I think for a lot it works out to be around more than 30 pounds overweight. I do think it would come as quite a shocker to some if they found out that they were actually in that obese range and not just overweight.

Maybe some good threads in a section like this dedicated to health and wellness can be of help to those who are looking to get more healthy and lose some weight.