This is a serious mental issue that has serious physical implications. Society has sacrificed healthy living, addressing mental health issues, and bodily care with this fake sense of inclusion and pseudo-support. The truth is Obesity, in all external causations, is a serious issue that we must talk about and address, and not accept, include, or support self destruction.

The US obesity prevalence was 41.9% in 2017 – March 2020.  From 1999 –2000 through 2017 –March 2020, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 41.9%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%. The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was nearly $173 billion in 2019 dollars. Medical costs for adults who had obesity were $1,861 higher than medical costs for people with healthy weight.

Some racist morons try to make this about a race issue, but it’s a culturally common dietary issue. Non-Hispanic Black adults (49.9%) had the highest age-adjusted prevalence of obesity, followed by Hispanic adults (45.6%), non-Hispanic White adults (41.4%) and non-Hispanic Asian adults (16.1%).

The age grouping is either a no-brainer or prophetic. The obesity prevalence was 39.8% among adults aged 20 to 39 years, 44.3% among adults aged 40 to 59 years, and 41.5% among adults aged 60 and older [13]. The older people get, the more weight they gain but then they get to the age of retirement and naturally start losing weight. See, WE KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT. If you are are 25 years old, there is a good chance you will gain weight by 35, and more weight by age 45. Knowing this, allows you to PREVENT THIS.

Of course the NIH [1] and CDC [3] list all known causes of obesity and just blur which are common and which are preventable due to their politicization. Notice how they cite each other and themselves, that’s like having your best friend and yourself grade your own tests in school. Even the Mayo Clinic muddies the water a bit [14]. But, that’s another matter. We can still draw from, research, and think about all the causes listed.

Then we have this study/book: Pathophysiology of Obesity [15]. Where these experts state:

“Obesity is one of the most common preventable diseases… Obesity measurement can also be used to estimate morbidity and mortality… Exercise and dietary restrictions have been strongly advocated to reduce weight gain and its related complications. Caloric restriction has been proven effective in reducing inflammation in obesity… regular exercise significantly affects chronic inflammation related to obesity and obesity-associated conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, etc.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK572076/

PREVENTABLE	NOT PREVENTALBE
Calorie Intake	Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) [2]
lack of exercise (not disabled)	Lack of exercise (disabled)
Environment / Social Determinants of Health (SDOH)	Cushing syndrome, disease [4]
Excessive Food Portion Sizes	Polycystic ovary syndrome [5]
Poor Quality Food Intake	Medicines (w/o exercise, dieting)
Food Company Advertising	Monogenic obesity, very rare [6]
Insufficient Sleep
Stress, Emotional Factors

Those above are the causes of Obesity. But the causes listed under “Preventable” are cause that YOU can change. There are no legitimate excuses for these. Notice what IS missing from their lists is mental illness… But, don’t worry, we’ll get to that later.

CALORIE INTAKE

The Human body doesn’t create body fat out of thin air. You, literally YOU, are the one that ingests something that your body then converts and stores as body fat. No matter your genetics, medications, syndromes, and or diseases; your body needs YOU to ingest calories in order to have something to store. You and your MIND is your first primary influencer and impactor of your body weight and body fat. If I asked you: “How many calories do you usually consume on a daily basis?” Most people would have no idea. I would then ask “By how many calories are in excess?” And again, most of you yuppies have no idea how many unnecessary calories you are consuming. AND THAT begins the problem, because what do you think happens to all your willfully ingested daily unnecessary, excess calories? Turns into body fat.

You can workout all you want, but if you are still having an overly abundant excess of calories, your workouts aren’t doing anything for your. It’s called math:

Daily calorie intake, average: 3,200

Daily calories burned (w/o working out), average: 2,200

Calories burned at workout: 700

Total Daily Calories burned with workout: 2,900

3,200 – 2,900 = 300 excess, unused, unburned calories.

Now, if you take medication or have a condition that effects how your body metabolizes calories (sugar and fat, mainly) than you are giving your body 300 extra calories a day. If your carb macros are 45% and Fat 30%, that means you are NOT burning 33.75 GRAMS of sugar and 10 GRAMS of fat. Guess what that 33.75 grams of sugar will turn into since it’s not being burned? Fat also. So, that’s, eventually, about 43.75 grams of fat, stored, daily.

300 excess calories x 0.45 carb macro = 135 calories of carbs

135 calories of carbs / 4 (one gram of carbs equals four calories) = 33.75g

300 excess calories x 0.3 fat macro = 90 calories of fat

90 calories of fat / 9 (one gram of fat equals nine calories) = 10g

33.75g of carbs + 10g of fat = 43.75g of unburned food absorbed and converted into body fat, every day.

Math.

SOLUTION

Identify your BMR/RMR (Basal Metabolic Rate/Resting Metabolic Rate) and or Maintenance Calories (MC). You can do this by using… math…

The Harris-Benedict Equation is often used to estimate basal metabolic rate.

• Men: BMR = 88.362 + (13.397 x weight in kg) + (4.799 x height in cm) – (5.677 x age in years)
• Women: BMR = 447.593 + (9.247 x weight in kg) + (3.098 x height in cm) – (4.330 x age in years)

And yes, men and women’s bodies are different… smh.

Once you have determined your BMR/RMR, you then count calories, and do not exceed your BMR/RMR. Weigh yourself and determine if your BMR/RMR needs to be lowered, since the equation is a general equation and not a personalized one.

And a more accurate way to determine your MC is over a 2-4 week period. Count your calories and weight your self, every day. If your weight keeps going up, reduce calorie intake. Once your weight stops going up, and isn’t going down, but has stabilized; bam, there you have it, your MC.

If you do not exceed your BMR/RMR and MC, then, you have the greatest chance of NOT having as many calories to store as body fat. Then, you just gradually reduce and control your calorie intake and you’ll naturally start losing weight. This takes some self-respect, discipline, self-care, and foresight about the future you really want to have.

LACK OF EXERCISE

Now we can come up with all kinds of excuses for a lack of exercise. Work, travel, motivation, disabilities, etc. But, just let me show you something:

This dude can’t even walk, yet, he is able to workout like a beast. He can shred body fat and gain muscle, while disabled. He puts everyone who is NOT disabled, but full of disabling lame excuses, to shame.

This chick melted away her body fat with dedication, self will, self discipline, and consistency and determination. Which, I’m sure, followed by a solid diet and effective workout routine.

I dare you to google “extreme weight loss before and after” and you will see hundreds, thousands, of people who proved that it can be done. They have a life. They have work. They have busy schedules. They have disorders, and disabilities. But they CHOSE to make it happen.

Either way, the greatest thing in the way of working out, is your mind and your mentality.

Can’t afford a gym membership? Cool, workout at home. We got body weight routines for that.

Claim to be too busy? There are things you can do for that:

SOLUTION:

• Re-prioritize your life; your health should be a priority, for your future and your family’s future sake.
• Use stairs, not elevators –  ‘stair-snacking’
• Park in the back of the parking lot, not the closest to the front doors. ‘steps-snacking’
• Ride a bike to wherever your going. ‘Flintstone it’
• Pack your lunch, meal prep for the week.
• A breaks and lunches at work, do a quick 30 min workout of squats, sit ups, and pushups.
• Set an alarm to do some jumping jacks at your work station every so often throughout the day
• Stop walking and start power-walking or jogging (where allowed) everywhere.

For women, the average BMR in the United States is 1,493 calories. For men, the average BMR in the United States is 1,662 calories.

When you climb or descend stairs, you burn calories. To be precise, 0.7 calories are burned when you climb one stair and 0.5 when you descend one, walking [8]. An average of 15 “risers” per flight of stairs [9], per floor equates to about 10.5 additional calories, going up 1 floor, and 7.5 going down. That’s 36 extra calories burned just going up to the second floor, using the stairs, and coming back down. 72 calories burned if you go up to the 4th floor. You can do the math yourself, it’s an average estimated 18 calories burned going up and down 1 flight of stairs, walking. Try jogging, and going up and down several times; now we’re talking.

See, if you nickel and dime calorie burning, it all adds up… outside of ever stepping foot in a gym, and being “too busy” to workout. It’s all a state of mind.

Basically, if you are too busy to workout, than Stair-snack, Step-snack, Flintstone It, Meal Prep, and do quick workouts on breaks and right when you get off or right before work. All these actions in coordination with your RMR/BMR controls, would help you NOT retain extra calories.

ENVIRONEMENT

This is a VERY pathetic excuse (propaganda) developed by government and government funded policy think tanks. That some how because there are no area parks, sidewalks, and affordable gyms makes it hard for people to be physically active; oversized food portions increase Americans’ calorie intake; people don’t have access to supermarkets that sell affordable healthy foods; and Food advertising encourages people to buy unhealthy foods [1]… Some government nerd thought of this. Trying to make you feel like none of it is your fault and you need big mommy daddy government to swoop in and save you from your evil environment. Learned Victimhood is the real environmental factor here.

SOLUTION

No area parks, sidewalks, and affordable gyms? Body weight workouts at home.

Oversized food portions? Don’t eat it all. Save some for later. Break up 1 meal into 2 or 3.

Don’t have access to supermarkets that sell affordable healthy foods? Count your calories, and eat what you got. Prisoners, in prison, eat junk food and they workout too. Some of those dudes are ripped for such a trash diet.

Food advertising encourages people to buy unhealthy foods? LOL then don’t buy it.

All these excuses, by the NIH, basically say that you are all stupid poor people who do whatever food corporations tell you and are victims and need the FDA to regulate more.

All these excuses are CHOICES. Which, goes back to the issue of mental illness.

Insufficient Sleep

Having poor sleep, in either amount or timing, is associated with difficulty in controlling appetite, resulting in obesity. Being overweight or obese increases the risk of developing sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea, which may further impair sleep quality [10].

The amount and timing is a factor that you can influence. Yes, this too is not an excuse, initially. Now, we say initially because once you get caught in a cycle, to get back to a healthy sleep cycle would take fixing other areas of your life first. So, to avoid digging yourself into a hole, don’t let yourself have the shovel in the first place. Prioritize sleep.

There is mounting evidence that people who get too little sleep have a higher risk of weight gain and obesity than people who get seven to eight hours of sleep a night. In 1998, 35 percent of American adults were getting 8 hours of sleep a night, and by 2005 that had dropped to 26 percent [12]-lack of sleep could be a major contributor to the obesity epidemic. [11].

SOLUTION

There are A LOT of things YOU can do to improve your quality of sleep.

1. Implement a standard Bedtime Routine to train your brain into knowing WHEN it is time to fall asleep.
2. Do NOT play with your phone or watch TV while in bed. When you are IN BED, it is BED TIME.
3. If you are “wide awake” and your mind is going, read a book to get drowsy
4. Consider the time you have to wake up, then count back 9 hours. That gives you 1 hour to fall asleep, and 8 hours of actual sleep.
5. Wear and eye-mask
6. Use a Sound Soother or White Noise
7. Use a Weighted Blanket/comforter
8. Don’t workout or do any physical activity right before bed.

Stress, Emotional Factors

Some people eat more than usual when they are bored, angry, upset, or stressed. But what you DO when you are bored, angry, upset, or stressed is still in your control, which is why if you commit a crime when in those states of mind, you are still held responsible and accountable for your choices.

But this area goes deeper into your mental state. A state of mind that may need therapy and counseling to help get under control. Which, would be a choice of yours to make as well.

Interestingly, the gym helps with all these: bored, angry, upset, or stressed. Working out can have a positive impact on stress relief, boredom, and clearing your mind which reduces the anger and being upset about something.

THE MENTAL ILLNESS ASPECT

A research study stated this:

“The American Medical Association recently recognized obesity as both an [mental] illness and a leading cause of preventable death and chronic disease… as obesity has also been extensively associated with mental illness as well.” 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26627487/

Depression is the most studied diagnosis when it comes to the correlation between issues with mental health and obesity. It is not categorized under the same umbrella as severe mental illness that usually focuses more on Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia [17].

Longitudinal studies centered around depression revealed the associations in both directions: people with obesity had a 55 percent increased risk of developing depression over time, while people who were depressed had a 58 percent increased risk of developing obesity.

When dealing with severe mental illnesses such as Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia, studies have shown a higher increased risk of obesity. One study found that:

• In 50 percent of women and 41 percent of men, obesity was more prevalent with a serious mental illness.
• These numbers are much greater than in those individuals without a severe mental illness – reporting just 27 percent of women and 20 percent of men with obesity.

If you are uncontrollability eating yourself to death and committing a slow torturous suicide through food consumption, you are mentally ill. Period.

Obesity directly reflects a lack of SELF-CARE, and lack of SELF-CONTROL.

But, on the flip side, if you claim to love your obesity, that is SELF-CENTERED, NARCISM in that you have a lack of consideration for all the people that have to help you as time goes on, and all the medical costs the community, your family, and you would have to cover down the road.

This is the new, inclusive, supported ideal now: to love your true self. So, people are encouraged by a sick society to slowly self destruct through food. Instead of resisting those who love their morbid obesity, ideologues now encourage it and support it.

Your true self was never meant to be obese; hence all the sad and painful natural side effects of it:

• All-causes of death (mortality).
• High blood pressure (hypertension).
• High LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, or high levels of triglycerides (dyslipidemia).
• Type 2 diabetes.
• Coronary heart disease.
• Stroke.
• Gallbladder disease.
• Osteoarthritis (a breakdown of cartilage and bone within a joint).
• Sleep apnea and breathing problems.
• Many types of cancer [18].
• Low quality of life.
• Mental illness such as clinical depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders
• Body pain and difficulty with physical functioning
• higher annual medical care costs by +$2,505. In 2016, the aggregate medical cost due to obesity among adults in the United States was $260.6 billion [19].

The moral and ethical costs as well:

• Disability payments – Tax dollars – someone else’s money
• Medicare coverage – tax dollars – someone else’s money
• Friends and family having to take time away from their lives to help with living duties, maintenance, doctor appointments, etc.
• The lifestyle example for children
• The pain and suffering of friends and family of serious health issues and events.

If ANYONE feels fine and okay with all these above, they have a mental illness, period.

Sources and Citations

1. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/obesity/conditioninfo/
2. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/prader-willi
3. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/basics/causes.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fobesity%2Fadult%2Fcauses.html
4. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/cushing
5. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/pcos
6. https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/91/1/5/4597188
7. https://www.verywellfit.com/what-is-bmr-or-basal-metabolic-rate-3495380
8. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/weight-loss/the-number-of-calories-you-burn-when-you-take-stairs-instead-of-a-lift/articleshow/68063038.cms
9. https://civiconcepts.com/blog/flight-of-stairs
10. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35216758/
11. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-causes/sleep-and-obesity/
12. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-causes/sleep-and-obesity/#references
13. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
14. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/obesity/symptoms-causes/syc-20375742
15. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK572076/
16. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26627487/
17. https://www.obesityaction.org/resources/obesity-and-mental-health-is-there-a-link/
18. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/obesity/obesity-fact-sheet#what-is-known-about-the-relationship-between-obesity-and-cancer-
19. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33470881/

* Always consult with your doctor. This article is NOT medical advice, but just an open discussion of public information published by medical professionals.