[abraves10001]

"While we await the results, the best course to help fight that middle-age spread hasn’t changed. Eat right and follow an exercise plan that you know you can stick to—it will make you feel better. Take it from me, a guy who decided eight years ago that it was time to shape up, stopped eating honey buns, got into a regular exercise program with a trainer to keep me accountable, and lost those 30 pounds. You can do it, even without a DNA-PK inhibitor!"

I'm glad the article finished with the above paragraph because while the study is interesting, Americans don't seem to have unique physical traits that cause them to gain weight, we just don't have healthy habits. I wonder what the weight gain in the same time period is in different regions of the world

[akgerber]

We have pretty successfully engineered almost all physical activity out of the normal daily life of a middle-aged suburban American, who move from bed to car seat to desk chair to car seat to couch to bed with as little walking as possible in between.

Most other societies make walking (including to and from public transit) and bicycling much bigger parts of their transportation landscape, rather than designing new communities to make driving as easy as possible and other means of transportation impossible, either intentionally or implicitly.

[snuxoll]

I work from home, so it's doubly bad for me - I don't even have to walk to a car, just the couple steps from bed to my office.

I went to Boston for Red Hat Summit last week and it amazed me just how exhausted I was after all the walking to/from the train stations and around the convention. I used to bike every day to/from work when I was just a couple years younger and never felt as sore and tired as I did every day during the event. I really need to start getting out more, even just walking to the coffee shop 1/4 mile away on occasion and working from there.

[convolvatron]

its really amazing how much a difference 20 minutes of walking a day makes.

so instead, spend that time in a car, and that time again at a gym. what wealth!

[RugnirViking]

> Most other societies make walking

Unfortunately, obesity is a global epidemic, and it is not showing signs of slowing in, as far as I can tell, in any developed nation.

[HannibalChew]

It's worse for me because I move from bed, to shower, then down to the office downstairs.

You'd be surprised how many steps you get from just walking around the office. Luckily, I don't have a problem exercising on a daily basis, whether it's just walking outside or hitting the gym.

Losing weight is an entirely separate issue for me though. After hard-core lifting sessions, I'm eating way too many calories.

[metamet]

> Americans don't seem to have unique physical traits that cause them to gain weight, we just don't have healthy habits

A diet of hyper-palatable, nutritionally void processed food will do that.

Eat real food. Meat, fish, nuts, fruits, veggies, maybe some carb-dense grains (I like rice) here and there when your body can take advantage of the extra glucose, and you'd be surprised how easy it is to both manage your hunger and your weight.

[nsxwolf]

Frankly, this is bunk. If it's calories in and calories out, then there is an exact number of daily potato chips one can calculate for each person to achieve and maintain an ideal weight. You'll get just as fat on "real food".

[cookiecaper]

Yes, there's a systemic issue here. Just as we don't say "Users just need to be smarter!" when a substantial segment of the population is having difficulty accessing our programs, we shouldn't say "Eaters just need to eat fewer calories!" when OVER HALF of the population is getting sick on the food supply.

Try to buy something healthy at your conventional grocer. It's generally tucked away at the far extremities of the aisle if it's there at all, and you normally have to bypass several fake "healthy" options that are really just slightly different formulations of the primary recipe. You have to really hunt just to find something as simple as a loaf of bread that isn't infused with extra sugar. Some loaves that bill themselves as "wheat" are still mostly white bread, etc. There is a large array of deceptive tactics used to get people to buy the more addictive formulations when they think they're buying healthier ones.

IMO this is a technology problem. We have sufficient technology to bring a steady supply of maximally-desirable foods, which, unfortunately, tend to have the least nutritional value. This creates perverse incentives across the marketplace because grocers, suppliers, distributors, and farmers all want to sell more, which means they will always favor the higher-calorie options, because human biology always favors it. It's a really bad place to stall at a technological stasis.

Instead of fighting chemistry and biology and berating those who fall victim not only to their own strong physical inclinations but also to a barrage of marketing tactics designed to trick them into continuing to buy addictive-but-unhealthy foods when they're explicitly trying not to do so, we need to develop technology that makes broccoli maximally-desirable without changing its basic nutritional and caloric properties, or technology that infuses maximally-desirable foods with nutritional and caloric properties akin to maximally-nutritious foods.

I don't think most people are compulsive overeaters. There's a myth among some naive people that every overweight person has a stash of 40 SNICKERS bars constantly at hand and that they eat 10 of these per day. This is not true except in the most extreme cases. The truth is that most people eat reasonably normal amounts and types of foods.

[0xdeadbeefbabe]

I've lost 20 lbs that way, eating real food.