Obesity

I recently saw a story on the Nightly News about obesity in the United States and how it is becoming one of the largest growing industries in America. People are marketing to overweight Americans with Biggie-sized everything. Even hospitals are widening chairs and beds to accommodate fat people. The story really annoyed me. Not once did they mention WHY Americans are fat, what they can do to reduce their weight, or the health risks associated with being overweight. They made it sound like obesity is just another growing trend. They didn't reference the FDA and how they are failing to do anything to help solve the problem, or that Americans are much more sedentary then they have ever been at any time in our country's past. Nor did they mention that fat people themselves are to blame for the problem. How difficult is it to say, "PUT DOWN THE BURGER!!!"? Eat a salad, or, gasp, exercise. I am disgusted by the obesity problem in America, especially when people are starving in other parts of the world. I feel it is another are in which the people and the government have dropped the ball. This is a selfish, consumer-based, apathetic society. Americans expect to have everything handed to them, and shun hard-work and self-control as if it were the plague.

And I should mention that I am not thin. Before I was pregnant I was 15 pounds overweight, but I NEVER attributed the extra pounds to anything but my own lack of self-control and aversion to regular exercise. I should also mention that since I became pregnant, I have put on a minimal amount of weight because I changed my eating habits immediately, exercised self-control much more, and started doing simple things like taking the stairs and walking the dogs more often.