Why non-city Americans soo overweight?

I grew up in a rural area where it was either walk or use my bike as a kid. As a teen I was in a city and then it was either public transport or walk. Walking was faster most of the time so I only used PT when I had no other option. Moved to suburbia when I built my first house. Still kept on walking because by then it was a habit. Only stopped walking when I was misdiagnosed with sciatica and ended up bedridden for a couple of years. Once that was sorted out I went back to walking but now I was carrying excess weight from being immobile and my body was no longer in balance. Took up swimming and water workout exercises on top of the walking. I will be doing some intensive bush clearing twice a month starting in the new year so that will help with keeping in shape.

As you get older you need to work on core and balance because it is a use it or lose function. Sitting on your ass in an office or on the sofa at home do more harm than good IMO. I watch about an hour or two of TV a day and I spend some time on the internet, like now, but for the rest of the day I can always find something to do that keeps me active.

 

Based on what?

https://stateofobesity.org/adult-obesity/

 

Have stats on that? I go there often to visit my mom and I see lots and lots of very heavy people in fact probably more than I see in my very rural one stoplight town in flyover country.

 

Sounds like the Atkins diet

 

Use it or lose it.

 

Yep. Atkins probably saved my life. In fact I would bet on it. I was heading down fast when I decided to take action. I was dying.

I was starting to get these black blotches on my skin. It turned out that I was releasing so much insulin that it was coming out of my pores and necrotizing the skin. I was into insulin toxicity. And any time I tried to eat, I would be on the verge of passing out if I didn't pass out entirely.

 

I have seen many great results from that diet and it works for lots of people.

 

I would add this: Righties and rural people have been unjustly slamming liberals and city people for decades. I used to love rural American until I realized they all hate us. And I'm not even a lefty! So don't be surprised when decades of slams and insults come back in your face. You [the rw media and the general attitudes of the people] have trained liberals to hate you. Of course they are going to see you ALL as backwoods slobs.

And btw, my ex and I moved to a small backwoods town. And just about everyone WAS fat. Even when I was 70 pounds over weight, I was one of the skinny folks.

 

The battle of data sets?

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/prevalence-maps.html

 

Same thing happens with AGW. Everybody has charts and graphs supporting their position.

 

I never claimed to be skinny as a little "Pound Power" comes in handy when you have to bend steel. A lot of blacksmithing is learning how to bent / shape steel bars while its cold using pipe, bending forks, brute force etc. I'm about 245lbs & 6'2" however I've seen smaller blacksmiths, including women who produce some beautiful wrought ironwork.
Being larger just makes blacksmithing easier but as the saying goes "With a long enough lever, you can move the world"

 

Exactly. Obesity should not be viewed as an ideological issue, which it seems obvious to me was the point of the OP.

 

Definitely hard work, I'm surprised you can still do it at your age. I did hard work too and had to retire whether I wanted to or not as my body wore out.

 

True enough, more geographical than ideological if you really want to draw lines on something like this. No doubt the south is heavier than the norm due to everything being deep fried which is about culture not politics.

 

Mountain climbing is one of my favorite activities - I've covered a significant amount of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia over the course of my many years. We don't have the big mountain ranges and peaks you find out West but the Blue Ridge has its own unique and beautiful appeal. You're right - it does have a euphoric effect on people...

 

I was diagnosed as celiac at 3 years old I have been eating what amounts to the Atkins diet virtually my entire life since bread, cookies, pasta, etc would make me feel sick.

According to the popular eating mythology I should be as fat as a pig with cholesterol levels off the charts based upon nothing but the amount of meat and fat in my diet. Aside from the residual fat around my waist from being bedridden I am a relatively skinny guy with normal BP and cholesterol. One of my family doctors opined that my body just adapted to use what was available and adjusted accordingly. Just before I turned 64 I swam 64 laps in a full length competition pool and my resting heart rate was in the mid 50's. I should be back at that level again in a couple of months.

As far as eating goes I don't diet aside from not eating gluten. Aside from that one restriction I eat exactly what I want to eat and just watch my portion sizes. Breakfasts are my main meal and lunch is mostly some kind of snack on the go and then for dinner I will try to eat modestly but I do have desert because I like having it. My weight does fluctuate a small amount but it is usually in the 235-245 range. At 6'2" that is verging on obesity according to the charts but no one looking at me would consider me to be obese.

 

Get into water exercising. It doesn't punish the body while enabling you to remain fit. Swimming can be boring but there are plenty of other kinds of exercise routines that you can do in water. The ones I use can get your heart rate pounding when you really push yourself.

 

Obesity charts are complete BS. So much depends on muscle mass as opposed to fat mass. In my 30s 40s and even into my fifties I did extremely hard manual labor and was 6 ft 220 lbs but didn't have any fat on me. Now pushing 70 and retired I'd be obese at that weight and stay around 180. Don't know where all that muscle went but it's gone, LOL

 

I was a paratrooper & there's definitely a rush when you jump out of the door of a C-141 jet or C-130 like the ones in Jump School. It must be the altitude.
I also used to bicycle up the foothills, smaller mountains of the Alps to drink wine with lunch among friends, now that's a real buzz. We had to change brake shoes at least once during the race to the bottom.

 

I do lots of biking now, easy on the knees. I x country ski in winter which is also low impact and snowshoe too

 

I've lived in both the city and the country, which is why you don't find me peddling the blatant bigotry in the OP or making excuses for it. Furthermore, I don't know what part of rural America you come from, but everyone where I live does not hate city folk.

There's plenty of blame to go around for this problem and it's been going on for a long time. I trust you're familiar with what happened in the Vendée during the French Revolution...

 

My new Mt bike has hydraulic disc breaks that last a long time and work fantastic. Technology marches on.

 

Yeah I'm as country as you can get and have some very good friends I the city