America is a very obese country, but it seems that the rest of the world is rapidly catching up to, and even surpassing, the United States of Fatmerica. Our obesity rate has tripled in recent years, and it seems that the trend is showing no signs of reversal on the way to a fatter America than ever in 2030. But the world is catching on, and the world is catching up. In the Middle East and North Africa, the obesity rate is somewhere between 60 and 65 percent of the population, and that number is growing. So too is the number of obese people around the world. Earth gets fatter every day, and numbers suggest this trend won’t change.
“It’s pretty grim,” said Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the group behind the study, which covered 1700 studies from 188 countries over 33 years. “When we realized that not a single country has had a significant decline in obesity, that tells you how hard a challenge this is.”
Apparently, obesity is only growing over time, and once you become obese, it’s very easy to fall back into the pattern. I lost 150+ pounds at one point, and since then I’ve gained back all but about 50 of it when I started to undergo significant job stress and spent a great deal of time fighting off various illnesses while eating out too much. Long story short, I know exactly how easy it is to regain lost weight, and how hard it is to lose weight once you’ve gained it back. I’m sure there’s a solution to this, but it’s going to involve some sweeping, uncomfortable lifestyle changes for us fat folks.
Tags: obesity, obesity epidemic, world health, health news, world health news, obesity is growing around the world, a third of the world population is obese, growing obesity around the world, the world is getting obese, fatness, fat people, christopher murray, institute for health metrics and evaluation, university of washington