Carol Ann Rinzler - Nutrition For Dummies

The Framingham people were weighed during checkups every two to four years. When Christakis and Fowler toted up the results, they discovered that the risk of becoming obese rose nearly 60 percent for someone with an obese friend, 40 percent for someone with an obese brother or sister, and 37 percent for someone whose husband or wife is obese. And these people didn’t even have to live close to each other for the risk to rise: The coincidence of obesity existed even when the subjects lived in different cities, which leads right to the next section, stats showing the cities and states where overweight Americans are most likely to be found.

How many people are fat and how many leans varies from state to state and city to city depending on a whole list of variables ranging from genetics to physical activity and, of course, the local diet. Table 4-1shows the ten leanest and fattest states. Table 4-2does the same for the top ten fattest and leanest cities. In both cases, the information is solidly reliable drawn from such eminent statistics sources as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Census, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

What do the fattest cities and states have in common? According to Michael Wimberly of the Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence at South Dakota State University, the people living there are

Less likely to engage in physical activity

Less likely to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day

More likely to eat the “wrong” foods

More likely to be living somewhere pretty far away from a really good supermarket

TABLE 4-1The Ten Fattest and Leanest U.S. States

From “Fattest States in the U.S.” https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-states/16585/

TABLE 4-2The Ten Fattest and Leanest American Cities

From https://walletyhub.com/edu/fattest-cities-in-america/10532

Wimberly calls this an obesogenic environment, a situation that encourages weight gain.

Over the years, many health organizations ranging from insurance companies to the U.S. federal government have created charts and tables purporting to establish healthy weight standards for adult Americans. Some of these efforts set the figures so low that you can hardly get there without severely restricting your diet — or being born again with a different body, preferably with light bones and no curves. Others are more reasonable.

In 1959, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company published the first set of standard weight charts. The weights were drawn from insurance statistics showing what the healthiest, longest-living people weighed — with clothes on and (for the women) wearing shoes with one-inch heels. The problem? At the time, the class of people with insurance was so small and so narrow that it was hard to say with certainty that their weight could predict healthy poundage for the rest of the population.

Thirty-one years later, the government published the weight chart shown in Table 4-3. This moderate, eminently usable set appeared in the 1990 edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans (more about the Dietary Guidelines in Chapter 16). The weights in this table are listed in ranges for both men and women of specific heights. Height is measured without shoes, and weight is measured without clothes. Because most people gain some weight as they grow older, the people who compiled these recommendations did a really sensible thing: They divided the ranges into two broad categories, one for people age 19 to 34, the other for those age 35 and older.

TABLE 4-3How Much Should You Weigh?

From Nutrition and Your Health: Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 3rd ed. (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1990)

Muscle is heavier than fat, so individuals with a small frame and proportionately more fat tissue than muscle tissue are likely to weigh in at the low end. People with a large frame and proportionately more muscle than fat are likely to weigh in at the high end. As a general but by no means invariable rule, that means that women — who have smaller frames and less muscle — weigh less than men of the same height and age.

Later editions of the Dietary Guidelines omitted the higher weight allowances for older people so that the “healthy” weights for everyone, young or old, became the ones listed in 1990 in the column for 19- to 34-year-olds. I’m going to go out on a limb here to say that I prefer the 1990 recommendations because they are

Achievable without constant dieting

Realistic about how your body changes as you get older

Less likely to make you totally crazy about your weight

Losing weight to stay healthily slim is generally regarded as a positive thing, but in 2019, a study published in the British Medical Journal showed that there could be problems associated with losing weight later in life. Based on data gathered from 36,000 subjects in the U.S. National Health & Examination Survey, it turns out taking off pounds in middle age and late adulthood may actually raise your risk of dying prematurely, especially if you have an underlying medical condition such as diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. The important message from the researchers: “Try not to gain weight while you’re young and when you’re older focus on maintaining a healthy lifestyle.”