November is National Diabetes Awareness Month and things are not looking good for the nation. People can become offended by the wording, but the facts don’t change, fat is the new normal according to data from the Centers for Diesease Control and Prevention.

However, beyond the obvious health issues, the cost of obesity threatens individuals and organizations as it weighs down the healthcare system. It’s like a perfect storm of a population that gets sicker and sicker as it, literally, grows, and with that comes more expense and the need for more healthcare resources to be devoted to a problem that might be, arguably, self-inflicted.

This is probably the point where you might see a thousand personal trainers jump up and scream about comorbidity, health, and exercise.

That’s great, but there is no escaping the fact that as memberships in gyms and health clubs has increased over the last three decades, as more money has gone into the fitness industry, the increase in obesity rates has not seen a commensurate decline, in fact, the opposite.

Source: Axios

There are also some interesting factors at play in the level of obesity, For example, while West Virginia has the lowest percentage of overweight adults, it has the second highest percentage of obese adults meaning that there is no middle ground.

The problem is, frankly, very, very big. But at the end of the day, the data shows that high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholestrol pretty much track with the worst states in the charts. You can check out the infographic on obesity factors among states here.

The Facts About the High Cost of Being Fat

• $294.6 Billion: Estimated medical cost of diabetes in the U.S. in 2019.
• $9,506: Average annual diabetes-related health care costs for patients.
• 2.3: Number of times by which a diabetes patient’s health care costs increase.
• 14 & 18 Years: Reduction in the average male and female type 1 diabetes patient’s life expectancy, respectively.
• 88 million: Number of American adults who have “prediabetes” (84% of them don’t know they have it).
• 70%: Chances of developing diabetes if both your parents have type 2 diabetes.

The following data breaks down the top 20 states by prevalence of obesity, courtesy of Wallethub. Where does your state rank? And do you know why?

It’s worth asking the question whether there is a culture of obesity that can be identified by state and what are the demographic, socio-economic, and cultural factors driving the statistics.

Going to the gym or exercising more or eating better doesn’t seem to resonate equally across state boundaries. Figuring out why is an important part of finding solutions that aren’t just the usual fitness industry quick fixes and promises.

The post 2020’s Most Overweight and Obese States in America appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Comedian Bill Maher recently used his “New Rules” segment to call attention to American health, stating, “New Rule: at next Thursday’s debate, one of the candidates has to say the problem with our healthcare system is Americans eat (crap) and too much of it.” He went on to demonstrate just how pervasive the health epidemic has gotten in America while inviting the ardor of millions with his blunt snark. The seven-minute segment was funny and well-argued, but a great deal of criticism followed one statement in particular:

“In August, 53 Americans died from mass shootings. Terrible, right? You know how many died from obesity? 40,000. Fat-shaming doesn’t need to end. It needs to make a comeback.”

His point is clear—we wouldn’t make statements about shooter-shaming, but we seem to have a problem identifying just how destructive modern eating norms have become. These numbers are staggering and demand public concern, but the focus revolved around the last part of Maher’s statement. As you might expect, the internet exploded with outrage as the pundits weighed in.

The most notable response came from CBS’s James Corden on his own late-night show. Corden, who has struggled with his weight for years, made the case that fat-shaming has been proven to make things worse, not better. He then argued that overweight people are well aware of their weight and they would like to change it, so they don’t need any more social reminders.

It appeared that there was a line in the sand and people were left to pick their sides. But, what struck me was how often Maher and Corden seemed to genuinely agree. They are comedians, prone to exaggerate and use hyperbolic language, so it is easy to focus on soundbites, but what came from both of them was that:

1. More people than ever are struggling with their weight.
2. Public health has never been worse and it is killing people.
3. You should not bully or call people fat. (Maher actually makes this point a few times.)

Maher was speaking honestly about the insane norms characterizing American eating habits. Corden responded with his own honest comedy, basically saying, “You think I haven’t tried to lose weight!?! This is hard! I keep trying and my efforts aren’t working for me and millions like me.”

And those are two very important perspectives to move the dialogue forward. The beauty of comedy is that it is a mouthpiece for people to speak honestly (even though often in very exaggerated tones). We can all agree that people would prefer not to be overweight and unhealthy. I don’t care how “body-positive” you are.

If given the choice between being a pre-diabetic who is 30 pounds overweight or healthy, you’d choose healthy every time. Self-consciousness won’t be eliminated by body-positive campaigns. Outside of brainwashing by a totalitarian regime, most people are going to wish they weren’t overweight. That is reality.

So the obvious next question is what do we do to actually improve public health? Our eating norms are killing people and setting our children up for limited lives of weight struggles, health concerns, sluggishness, and self-consciousness.

The most frustrating part of the exchange came from James Corden when he expresses an all too common sentiment: “I know I will struggle with this for the rest of my life.” That mentality and its pervasive normality is just the problem.

How Do We Change This Toxic Ocean?

What Corden never concedes is that the modern environment is completely crazy. What we’ve been indoctrinated to see as a normal diet is beyond insane. I can’t go to the bank, the barber, or the doctor without my kid being offered candy.

Every daycare option I looked at serves breakfast and lunch each day and it was always sugar-covered fried waffle sticks and then pizza and chocolate milk for lunch. Every event in their lives from their youth sports games to using the potty centers around normalizing garbage food.

Treats are wonderful, but only when they are deviations from the normal. Today, we normalize processed sugar-infused foods at every meal and we can hardly conceive of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack items that don’t come from a package.

These norms happened quite honestly. Just like today’s technology designers, the Food Giants spent enormously to hack our minds and normalize destructive eating patterns. Before we knew it everyone had bowls of M&M’s around the house, pantries full of chips and Pop-Tarts, and fridges full of Coke and “healthy options” like orange juice, “fruit infused” Capri-Sun, and sugar-filled Go-Gurt.

This is the source of our issues and far more than his tongue in cheek remark about fat-shaming needing to make a comeback, this is the point Maher was harping on. The solution lies in changing our environmental norms and that means we have to talk about why most people are overweight and how to fix it. How else do we steer ourselves away from the Wall-E dystopia we seem to be headed towards?

“We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”

– Alan Watts

Nothing influences our behavior like the environment we are saturated with. In a different environment, James Corden might dig coal, drink bourbon, and use the word “kin.” Had he grown up in the Ancient Spartan world, he would be in peak physical condition holding a shield in front of his comrade’s body with one hand and a hoplite spear in the other.

My point is, the contexts we live in drastically change the way think and act. Therefore we should be going to great lengths to create an environment where social norms pull people toward more fruitful behaviors.

There are modern environments where far fewer people live their lives constantly struggling with their weight. They embrace different norms and respond very differently to the ploys of the processed Food Giants.

Vending machines are less common and kids are more likely to see their friends eating fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods. This, in turn, makes it far easier for people to naturally adopt healthy eating patterns.

We should be asking ourselves how do we change our public values so people like James Corden don’t feel resigned to struggle with their weight for the rest of their lives? How do we nudge people towards healthier decisions and create friction in our current unhealthy norms?

You could point out that the reason Corden believes it will be a lifelong struggle is because he has an addiction. We don’t like to call it that, but what James Corden and most Americans are dealing with is an addiction as real and powerful as any other. His experience living in this sweets-saturated environment has created a powerful addiction that makes it very hard for him to control what he eats.

So, how do we make people less likely to develop this addiction? Since when is it standard practice to normalize addiction and demonize anyone who would try to open people’s eyes about how much addiction has grown?

Excessive sugar may kill more people than smoking, but we give children candy for every mundane moment of their lives while teaching them to “shame” Uncle Sterling about how smoking will kill him. We have no problem pointing out that drinking alone or early in the morning is not a very healthy habit.

Yet, we’d be aghast if someone mentioned that eating sweets alone or early in the morning was similarly indicative of a problem. This inability to talk is the greatest barrier to helping the next generation avoid a lifetime of food addiction. And if current trends continue, projections indicate that over 57% of today’s youth will be obese by the time they are 35.

The Uncomfortable Conversation

We have to have this conversation whether it is uncomfortable or not. And that’s why the other half of IHD, Justin Lind, and I sat down to discuss the public health issues and the role shame plays in behavior modification.

There is a distinction between shame and shaming that should be made. Shame is an innate feeling that can be very useful in our maturation. Society has always used social norms and expectations to modify behavior for the better. This does not mean bullying or meanspirited verbal assaults. Yet, we must be able to talk about our challenges and discuss how the environment can be improved.

The most important takeaway is that this is an issue that demands everyone’s attention. Parents have to start seeing the insanity for what it is and demanding better from schools. Schools have to start turning down Coca-Cola contracts and begin cleaning up their cafeteria offerings. Society needs to bring this issue to the forefront of its public concerns.

After all, when you aren’t healthy, everything else suffers. As John F. Kennedy said, “Intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong.”

Public health is a national concern that we have to be able to discuss in order to improve.

The post You Can’t Solve the Obesity Epidemic If You Can’t Discuss it appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Set Up for Failure

It Takes a Village to Improve Health

Chronic Obesity: An American Tale

Our Resistance to Change

Silence Solves Nothing

The post Fit-Shaming: Why Health Must Be a Community Dialogue appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Comfort and convenience drive our lives to such a degree that people have begun to think it is a right to be free from any kind of discomfort, including emotional or intellectual varieties. We are encouraged to censor our public expression to remove any trace of authenticity, and admonished if we don’t.

After writing a billion and one articles about the need for education reform to promote greater physical literacy and health, I decided to turn my attention to parents. I felt my approach was going nowhere, so I asked parents to consider how essential they could be in promoting health to their children. In this piece, I referred to some foods as “poison,” in an obvious use of hyperbole. There were a number of reactions to this piece, most positive, but notable was one woman’s infuriated response:

“No food is poison. I stopped reading at that point. Food is food. Yes, less processing is better, but shaming people who choose to eat differently than you is abhorrent.”

This sort of response typifies the increasingly common mindset that precludes any positive discussions and significantly limits constructive change. As a society, we have developed a pathological fear of being accused of “shaming.” There’s fat shaming, skinny shaming, body shaming, food shaming, skin-tone shaming, and probably several I’ve never heard of. Now, I’m the pastiest ginger that ever lived, and it’s comical to think I’m supposed to be offended by you noticing that.

The shaming police have taken good intentions and gone too far. We’ve created an environment where even constructive criticism is recast as some flavor of shaming, and the dogma of neutrality and inoffensiveness reigns at the expense of real progress.

Avoiding the Truth Helps No One

To be sure, one must concede that there is a shortage of kindness, especially from those who hide behind the anonymity afforded by their keyboards. The internet is a fertile ground for insults, rudeness, and mean-spirited commentary. Still, honest, critical stances are more necessary than ever, particularly in regard to health.

For example, the standard model we’ve given kids is ridiculous. No, they shouldn’t have chips every day. No, they shouldn’t have cookies in their cereal or Pop-Tarts for breakfast. No, fast food should not be a daily occurrence. This all sounds like common sense, but try to get people to follow this advice with their kids, and watch the push back you get.

Saying that kids shouldn’t eat garbage isn’t food shaming. Pointing out that kids shouldn’t be obese isn’t fat shaming. It’s a plain truth. I’m not saying to openly call kids fat or criticize their food choices. But neither can we stand idly by, for fear of hurting their feelings.

It is debilitating to shield unhealthy people from any view that might cause them to question their choices.

I empathize with people who struggle with their weight. I’ve witnessed some of my favorite people go through these struggles for years. There are intense emotional and biological reasons that it’s hard to change unhealthy patterns. Struggling with weight is a painful experience that can dominate your life, and positive health change has to happen against the tide of all our culture. Every effort has to overcome the daily invitation from work friends to get fast food and the daily box of donuts in the staff lounge.

It’s because I’ve seen the dissatisfaction and angst poor health causes that I am so passionate about helping people change it. Avoiding the issue for fear of hurting someone’s feelings only serves to perpetuate the cycle. Addressing the growing rate of obesity requires honest, empathetic dialogue aimed at positive change.

Let’s Call a Spade a Spade

No growth can happen if we make maintenance of your comfort zone the top priority, so set aside for a moment what might be offensive to who. What discussions and actions are most likely to spur positive, long-term change?

We could start by acknowledging that our bulging waistlines are not normal or healthy. For example, when data comes out that the average woman’s dress size has risen from a 14 to a 16 in just the past decade, the general reaction was some variation of: “this should be celebrated and promoted so that people evolve to the new norm, and so that people upset about being size 16 or more, feel better.”

We are not even allowed to mention the elephant in the room: rising average dress sizes are yet another indicator of our country’s continued slide into epidemic health disorders. It is not cause for celebration, but rather shows that public health is getting worse, and the consequences are far more dire than mere aesthetics. There are quantifiable health ramifications of creating an environment that demands we all accept size 16 as the new average, without critique.

No one is less of a person for being overweight, but it is a problem to support an environment that normalizes it. Dress size, like BMI, is by no means the best metric. But it is one metric, and for most people, being size 16 isn’t an indicator of good health. Likewise, being size 0 is often not healthy.

There Are No Solutions Without Open Conversation

When children are already morbidly obese and physically broken by second grade, it is not the child’s fault. But the fact they aren’t to blame for their condition won’t stop it from creating a tremendous obstacle to their happiness and success in life. If we are to reverse this trend, we will be required to discuss it frankly and openly.

To promote a free marketplace of ideas where challenges and solutions are openly explored, we must feel at liberty to make some value judgments. This is far from the environment created today. Self-proclaimed social justice warriors scour the internet, seeking out anyone they can label and ostracize. They sling insults and promote an environment where dialogue is discouraged.

Tim Ferris calls this “bigoteering,” while Mark Manson refers to it as “outrage porn.” I think Ryan Holiday describes it best by illuminating the warnings you probably didn’t notice when your 11th grade English teacher made you read Fahrenheit 451. Captain Beatty, the oldest firefighter, explains to a young Guy Montag:

“We do this because the public doesn’t like to be offended or upset. That’s why we burn books. Its not a government mandate, it’s a mandate from the people to get rid of ideas that are unpleasant.”

Whatever you call it, the result is polarization that paralyzes our efforts to correct a real problem. 

The post It Isn’t Fat Shaming: How Protecting Feelings Hurts Health appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Eating and school. These two topics are intertwined in the minds of many adults. Most Americans have vivid, emotional memories of their time in school. We remember the teachers, the smells, the bells, and the rectangular pizzas and sloppy joes sold in the cafeteria.

Today, as parents, our mornings are hectic. Between getting ourselves ready for work and our kids ready for school, there’s not a lot of time to spare. Often, the responsibility of providing breakfast falls to the school, where it regularly ends up consisting of something sweet like donuts, frosted cereal, or just plain candy.

These grab-and-go conveniences were created as treats, not daily dietary staples. As they became the bulk of the average American diet, treats evolved into something that passed for sustenance. Thus, for many kids, eating actual food that is devoid of added salt and sugar has become a form of punishment.

How many school-age children today would even recognize these as things to eat?

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

Parents don’t eat real food, so why would their kids? As a nation of food consumers, this is the odd position we have created for ourselves. It makes it hard to even begin the work of positive change in the eating habits of today’s children.

It’s become a difficult necessity for parents to say to their kids, “do as I say, not as I do.” Parents must be okay telling their kids that because they love them, and they want their kids to eat healthy foods. And then parents need to go to the schools (probably after stopping at a drive-thru) and say, “Will you make sure the food served here is better than fast food?”

The Sugar Gauntlet

Let’s examine what our students’ days look like.

Kids arrive at school having gotten inadequate sleep the night before. They grab breakfast: a tray of French toast sticks with buttery syrup and frosted flakes, or an overly sweet caramel-infused coffee drink and a fried breakfast biscuit, and head to class. After sitting through a period, a friend who arrives late brings them a 20oz soda. They sit through a few more classes and swing by the vending machine or the stand selling cookies that smell intoxicatingly delicious. Next stop is the cafeteria for lunch, where they are presented with a few options: a fried chicken breast on white bread with a pickle, nachos, or pizza. All are offered with an apple (yes!) and milk (yes!) or chocolate milk (dangit!).

Why are students being fed nothing but treats all day? America is engulfed in a health crisis due to unhealthy habits that lead to a host of debilitating conditions and diseases. We are systematically reinforcing these bad habits with the food we offer to kids in schools. If instead we attack the health habits in schools, we could cause a change across the entire population within a couple of generations.

The High Costs of Cheap Food

The costs of poor health habits are broad and severe. If you are unsure of the cost to our nations health and vitality, I’d urge you to read my last article on this topic. One study shows that children who grow up deficient of key nutrientsare more likely to have less capacity to focus, less energy, and lower cognitive ability. Poor nutrition leads to more illness, headaches, and general discomfort.

More studies have found that access to quality nutrition, particularly breakfast, can enhance a student’s psychosocial wellbeing, reduce aggression and school suspensions, and decrease discipline problems. Improving nutrition access causes attendance and grades to trend upward, while behavioral issues are reduced. This creates a far better learning environment, along with a far healthier population.

A large percentage of schools across the country provide both breakfast and lunch for their students. In fact, many schools are moving toward serving breakfast in the first period of the day. Imagine the lasting, positive impact on the health of these students if they could be guaranteed two quality meals each day. Would this create classes with students who were more focused and ready to learn? The research indicates it absolutely would.

Let’s Make the Simple Changes First

Getting people to agree that our schools are disturbingly unhealthy places where students are entrenched in negative habits is surprisingly easy to do. Moving people to make specific change is where things get difficult.

It’s all too easy to overcomplicate nutrition or demonize every food choice. Many people hold the common belief that eating healthy is too hard and expensive. They get bogged down in details of trying to figure out what foods are truly the best. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and quit trying, and revert to the status quo. This is why we must simplify.

Rather than be overwhelmed at the enormity of the task, we need to focus on the small, simple changes we can accomplish.

When it comes to simplifying our food choices, sometimes making even a marginally better choice is the best place to start. Apples are better than applesauce. Chicken is better than pizza. We must allow ourselves to make “better” the barometer for now.

If each school had a farm full of dancing chickens, splashing fish, and rows upon rows of fresh produce, providing healthy options to kids would be easy. But this isn’t the case. We need to move closer to the best food possible, while living within the financial and supply restrictions that are the current reality. We want the obvious, easy ways to be better at eating – the low hanging fruit.

The grade for current school nutrition is a D-. It’s not realistic to expect an A+ in the near future, but shooting for a B might be feasible. Kids need better options. They need to eat more fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, leaner meats like fish and chicken, and less packaged and processed foods. Any steps in that direction, however small, are still progress.

Create a Food Education System

Brandon Marcello, former director of sports performance at Stanford University, created an amazing dining hall experience where each student could find meal combinations grouped by goals. Marcello color-coded foods to help students to see which were brain foods to help them focus, or which foods were immunity foods with qualities to fight sickness. He pinpointed anti-inflammatory recovery foods, and muscle building foods.

Marcello not only helped clean up the serving options, but he categorized each in a way that was appealing and educational to students. Most students graduate college having never learned how to choose wisely when confronted with a dining hall of options. But these students at Stanford were given a simple path to success.

Strategies like these should be studied and built upon. Cooking classes should be reintroduced as part of the curriculum, and students should learn how to fuel their body properly. Learning how to cook teaches planning and organizational skills that translate to mathematics and reading. These benefits apply to every single student and future generations.

Food education pilot programs, like this one in Arlington, Virgina, are a great start. But they need to be happening all over the country.

Eating Well Isn’t Miserable

To make possible such an overhaul of our approach to school nutrition, it’s important to dispel a common fear. Too many believe that a life without their favorite treats is one of deprivation, devoid of life’s sweet pleasures. But being healthy doesn’t need to be some awful, robotic type of life. Pizza and ice cream cones can still be a part of your reality; they just need to shift from daily occurrences to occasional treats. You will value them more.

Make eating healthy a family adventure to constantly learn and seek more creative food ideas. Empower your children with the knowledge and skills to understand nutrition, how to find healthier options, how to control cravings, and when to enjoy treats. These skills will help them (and you) enjoy life and feel physically vital.

Shape the Path to Better Childhood Nutrition

In their book Switch, Chip and Dan Heath use an analogy to demonstrate how to effect movements of change. They use a rider (rational decision making), an elephant (our emotion), and a path to explain how change is about manipulating these variables.

For example, if I want to start waking up early to stretch because I know my mobility restricts me, that is my rider making that rational goal. Unfortunately, when the alarm goes off I hit snooze. The elephant has taken over. At 5am, I don’t care about mobility, back pain, my future, world peace, or anything else. The elephant wins and I go back to sleep.

The fix is to shape the path. Set three alarms, all which require you to get up and find them. Make sure the last one is right by your foam roller or a mat so you’re more likely to follow through on your plan. End with a reward like a warm cup of coffee that you only get after you finish each day, and you’re on your way to a habit.

If we are going to fix our country’s vast health problems, we need to take advantage of our immense opportunity to shape the path of millions of students. Actions are based on habit, and most of our children are forced through a school system that reinforces the negative habits built by our society. No institution has more influence in shaping our collective habits than schools.

We must act now to help millions. Apathy leads to the perpetual, emotional roller coaster of poor nutrition, and ends with thousands of needless deaths. Let’s create a system to reinforce good habits so that our children live long and happy lives. Change is in our control.

More about Kids Health and Fitness:

• The Real and Present Danger of Overtraining Youth Athletes
• 3 Steps to Improving Your Child’s Eating Habits
• Kids Are Fatter, Sicker, and Slower – What Can We Do About It?
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of U.S. Department of Agriculture, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

The post A Healthy Nation Must Start at School appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Fifteen months ago I moved to Denver, Colorado, partly for a fresh start as well as for professional opportunities, namely helping to open up a new fitness franchise. What strikes people funny about the idea of moving to Denver to help open up a fitness studio is that people here are already fit. Why would anyone open a gym where everyone is already fit? That’s the way it works with fitness though, you open a gym where people value it the most. It’s the same reason there are tons of coffee shops in Seattle where they already have tons of coffee shops – people like and value coffee there. Though it seems like the altruistic and worthwhile thing to help those who need it the most, the overweight and sedentary, they also tend to be the people who value it the least – thus, their condition.

In the fitness business, the people that need fitness the least, the hyper-fit, are also those who value it the most. In short, they are my best customers and Colorado is chalk full of them. According to the latest Gallup–Healthways report released in April, four of the top ten least obese cities in the United States are in Colorado (1. Boulder, 4. Fort Collins, 6. Denver, 10. Colorado Springs). That’s not to say that Colorado doesn’t have its fair share of problems with the ever-expanding obesity crisis. In fact, Colorado’s obesity rate doubled between 1995 and 2008. This alarming statistic is an acute reflection that Colorado is a microcosm of our nation in general. Colorado, like the U.S. as a whole, is actually a tale of two states – a fit one and a fat one, superfit and superfat.

You would think it would stand to reason that the best place to open a fitness franchise would be in Texas, home to America’s fattest city (Houston). Texas also has a statewide population that as of 2009 was a third obese. Unfortunately for the overweight citizens of Texas, businesses are not opened on the basis of what is good for people, but by demand. Without sounding too crass, Texas and the South in general is a good place to open up a fast food franchise, not a fitness franchise. My company, a national fitness franchise operator, just opened their seventh franchise in Colorado. We have none in Texas or anywhere else in the South, except Florida.

I like Colorado’s version of fitness because it is my contention that community is the future of fitness. Furthermore community is the way we will combat and win the health care crisis and obesity epidemic. While Los Angeles, California is known for Muscle Beach and the fitness culture, L.A. is also known for how people look. Colorado, also a fitness mecca of sorts, is known for what people do. Everyone in Colorado it seems is in to doing something – climbing a mountain, riding down one, scaling walls, riding bikes on trails – you get the idea. The thing that appealed to me about Colorado’s version of fitness is that doing something builds community, whereas looking like something does not.

If this country is ever to solve our health care crisis and obesity epidemic, it’s going to look something more like Colorado than Texas. Look, I’m not trying to mess with Texas – Texas does many things right and has been an economic juggernaut in our recent downturn. I’m merely commenting on the clear statistical data that says Texas is fat and getting fatter. I am also agreeing with the assertion that obesity is indeed contagious or, said another way, a product of environment. While we look at every possible way to take in a calorie and every possible way to burn a calorie, we seldom look at the lifestyle factors and sociological variables that have contributed to obesity.

It is my assertion that the environmental, mental, and sociological variables are the real cause of obesity. The calorie consumed is not the cause of the obesity crisis, it is the by-product. Additionally, the calorie burned is not necessarily in and of itself the cure. We must solve the obesity crisis by combating the contagious nature of it – by creating an equally effective contagious choice.

The war on fat and the health ramifications that fat causes will be won with community. Those in the fat and sedentary camp need to join the ranks of the hyper-fit, no matter how intimidating and difficult that may seem. To facilitate this tough change, we need community and thanks to things like CrossFit, we’re seeing this trend explode in fitness.

CrossFit has been one of the most interesting case studies in fitness in recent years. CrossFit took a bunch of old-school exercises and packaged them in a new-school way. However, what makes CrossFit special isn’t power cleans and kipping pull ups, it’s community. That’s why it works. Getting fit, and even really fit, is contagious. My franchise is banking on a similar model. We do heart rate interval training by doing muscle endurance exercises and running on treadmills. Running on the treadmill is hardly a new idea, but getting people to compete against themselves while in a supported community is.

Personally, I am banking on the idea that the answers to what ails us are found in a sense of community – starting with our close friends and family and expanding to the community around us such as the fitness studio where we train. Beyond that, we can influence our surrounding community, such as our neighborhood, town, city, and state. It is not an overstatement to claim that our nation is Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, as the title of a recent documentary suggests. If we are going to win the war on fat and turn the tide of health and wellness in our nation, it is going to start small and with those closest to us. Being fit and healthy is contagious and the best way to get somewhere is to find those that are going in the same direction you are.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post A Call to Action: If Obesity Is Contagious, Maybe Fitness Is Too? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The United States of America – land of the free and home of the brave, and home to the worlds’ heaviest population. Yet it isn’t for a lack of effort that we are losing the battle of the bulge. In fact, it seems America never backs down from a fight. We fight wars against tyranny, wars against drugs, and now a war on fat.

America likes a good fight and the strength of America is the willingness to take a stand and not back down. However, knowing when and how to fight is another matter for us. As strong as our nation is at getting into a scrap, our weakness is the honest evaluation of the wars we fight. At some point we need to determine whether we are winning or losing these wars, and when it’s perhaps time to try a different type of fight.

In looking at the war on fat and our nation’s obesity epidemic, it’s helpful to look at two other closely drawn battles – the war on alcohol and the war on drugs. We have historical precedent for the failure of the war on alcohol, which ended in the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.

Some time sooner than later we will also most likely see that our attack on the supply side of drugs has been a colossal failure. The war on drugs, established during the 1980s, has simply burdened our nation with overcrowded prisons and a population that is no less sober than it ever has been. Attacking the supply side of lifestyle issues like drug addiction and obesity simply does not and will not work. It is my fear that we are going down the same rabbit hole in the war on food.

The Alcoholism Epidemic and the Obesity Epidemic

Drinking has been a prevalent part of American culture since the days of our founding fathers. John Adams, the second president was said to start every day with a glass of hard cider. His contemporary, friend, and predecessor, Thomas Jefferson was known to be a connoisseur and collector of fine French wines.

Americans have always been fond of the drink, but serious alcoholism didn’t really make its mark on our society until the supply of alcohol changed. Specifically, after distilled alcohol appeared during the mid-1800s, Americans consumed these harder spirits in the way they did beer, wine, and cider – that is socially, casually, and frequently.

The effects were devastating. With Americans becoming a nation of drunkards, alcohol became public enemy number one and the temperance movement grew to one of the strongest political forces in the nation. Ultimately the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed making the sale, distribution, and consumption of alcohol illegal.

If we look at the obesity epidemic in our society we see interesting parallels to that of alcohol and its effect on American society. Americans, like any culture, have our customs, traditions, and social constructs around food. With food becoming readily available in the Industrial Age, people in our country no longer had to struggle for sustenance.

As technology increased, people also had more time for leisure and automobiles enabled people to live in suburbia and walk less. The sedentary nature of interacting with technology such as televisions and computers replaced many physical activities.

Still, despite the availability of food and the diminished physical activity in our society, the percentage of overweight and obese Americans remained for the most part unchanged for the first seventy years of the past century.

Then, in the late seventies and early eighties the percentage of overweight and obese Americans began to skyrocket and that trend continues today. What happened? As it was with the case study on alcohol, the food supply changed.

Corn became the commodity of all commodities and is still heavily subsidized by our federal government today. Derivatives of corn, like high fructose corn syrup, were introduced in to the marketplace and packaged and processed foods came to dominate the culinary landscape.

Certainly there are other contributing factors from schools cutting physical education programs to bigger portion sizes, but what we eat has also changed how we eat. There is no debating the fact that the dramatic shift in our weight occurred as the nation’s food supply shifted, which begs the question, do we then go to war against our nation’s food supply?

The War on Alcohol, Drugs, and the Wrong Kinds of Foods

In the 1800s, with a clear distinction of where and when the tipping point of alcohol abuse occurred, it seemed to follow logically to go after what caused the problem – the supply of alcohol. The challenge was the slippery slope of where to stop.

As the temperance movement gained ground and momentum, they moved past taking aim at distilled liquors to all alcohol. The thought was that all alcohol can and does cause alcoholism and it was up to our government to protect the population from these evils. The problem is that regardless, Eighteenth Amendment didn’t work. People still drank; they just did it illegally.

You have to wonder if we’re going down a similar road with our food supply. Not that there will necessarily be laws making soda or fast food illegal, but it’s also not beyond comprehension. As our nation got fatter, initially our federal government responded with a war on fat.

Carbs seemed to be the next culprit, and truthfully there is probably no bigger food problem than that of sugar or the derivatives we equate to sugar. But taking aim at certain types of food seems to reek of the same problematic nature of taking aim at the drugs or alcohol that affect many.

People will find ways to get the foods they crave, especially when they are cheaply available. Restriction or taxation will simply cause people to switch their addictions to different foods. Whatever the foods in question, the issues in and around obesity aren’t really about attacking the supply side of food. They start individually with each one of us.

I hate to sound like a hippie, but wars in this sense more often than not do not work. The battle of the bulge will not be won in the corporate boardroom or courtrooms of the Supreme Court, it will be won in the minds of each one of us individually and collectively. It will be won by educating those who don’t know better or those who need to be reminded again.

Taking aim at and blaming corporate America won’t work either, although I am all for holding those that supply our food accountable. It’s up to us as a citizenry and not up to our city, state, and federal governments.

Telling people what they can eat legally is rife with problematic issues – starting with the fact we live in a free society. It’s up to us to demand we are fed healthy and nutritious food. Blaming McDonald’s or Coca Cola solves nothing. McDonald’s will sell organic broccoli if enough of us demand that they do so.

Furthermore, there still isn’t a serious discussion about our nation’s collective mental health or lack thereof. We need to acknowledge that these issues – alcoholism, drug abuse, and obesity – all share a common thread of both economics and a correlation to a person’s emotional make-up.

The war on drugs is a war that affects mainly those in a lower socioeconomic status. The same holds true with obesity. The cheapest food is the lowest quality processed food, and therefore those are our heaviest citizens. Our government feeling that they know what is best for our nation’s poorest citizens is a recipe for disaster.

Addictions are issues that are derived out of an emotional state. People drink or eat in excess in response to not feeling satisfied or satiated. In addition to the dialogue on the food supply and getting people to move or exercise more, we also need to have serious discussion about how best to provide support and help to those who are struggling with food, alcohol, or drugs. We need to ask community leaders and those in the poorer and challenged areas how we can help, versus thinking our government can and should dictate to them what they can and should eat.

Smoking decreased dramatically when the emotional associations with smoking changed in our society en masse. Instead of being hip, cool, and relaxing, smoking became lethal, dangerous, and disgusting. These shifts came about through education and social pressure, not from government laws or corporate initiatives.

Photos 1&3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 2 see page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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The study consisted of thirty obese children that were randomly assigned to an endurance training (ET) or high intensity interval training (HIT) group. The study lasted for 12 weeks. Aerobic fitness, body composition, and metabolic parameters were assessed before and after the fitness intervention. Food intake was also assessed before and after intervention, but no dietary changes were implemented.¹

The ET group performed continuous exercise for 30-60 minutes at 80% of their respective heart rate. The exercise duration was increased by 10 minutes every three weeks, until a total of 60 minutes was reached, which was used for the last three weeks of the study (weeks 10-12). The HIT group performed 3-6 sets of 60-second sprints at full-speed, followed by a 3-minute active recovery period that was 50% of the exercise velocity. The HIT sessions lasted about 70% less than the ET sessions. Training progression was applied by adding one bout of exercise every three weeks. The number of exercise sessions ranged from 3 (during the first 3 weeks) to 6 (during weeks 10–12). Each training protocol was performed twice a week on alternate days for the duration of the study, and after 6 weeks of training, a new maximal graded cardiorespiratory test was conducted for training intensity adjustments.²

The results of the study revealed that both the absolute and the relative VO2 peak significantly increased in both training groups. The total time of exercise and peak velocity during the maximal graded cardiorespiratory test also demonstrated significant improvements in both groups. The HIT group saw a 2.6% decrease in body mass, and only a 1.6% decrease was noticed in the ET group. There was a significant decrease in body mass index (BMI) in both groups, but the HIT group displayed greater results (5%) than the ET group (3%). Nonetheless, all results were very similar amongst both exercise groups.³

As demonstrated by the data from the study, both ET and HIT are effective programs to use to improve health-related paramaters among obese children. Teaching children proper nutrition and including regular exercise in their schedules is essential to their long-term health and well-being. Now knowing that HIT and ET have similar effect, adults may be armed with the ability to encourage doubtful children to try shorter, more intense bursts of exercise.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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