Why is Mommy and Daddy so fat?

1. Sleep debt. Getting too little sleep can increase body weight. Today’s Americans get less shut-eye than ever.
  2. Pollution. Hormones control body weight. And many of today’s pollutants affect our hormones.
  3. Air conditioning. You have to burn calories if your environment is too hot or too cold for comfort. But more people than ever live and work in temperature-controlled homes and offices.
  4. Decreased smoking. Smoking reduces weight. Americans smoke much less than they used to.
  5. Medicine. Many different drugs – including contraceptives, steroid hormones, diabetesdiabetes drugs, some antidepressants, and blood pressure drugs – can cause weight gain. Use of these drugs is on the upswing.
  6. Population age, ethnicity. Middle-aged people and Hispanic-Americans tend to be more obese than young European-Americans. Americans are getting older and more Hispanic.
  7. Older moms. There’s some evidence that the older a woman is when she gives birth, the higher her child’s risk of obesity. American women are giving birth at older and older ages.
  8. Ancestors’ environment. Some influences may go back two generations. Environmental changes that made a grandparent obese may “through a fetally driven positive feedback loop” visit obesity on the grandchildren.
  9. Obesity linked to fertility. There’s some evidence obese people are more fertile than lean ones. If obesity has a genetic component, the percentage of obese people in the population should increase.
  10. Unions of obese spouses. Obese women tend to marry obese men. If there are fewer thin people around – and if obesity has a genetic component – there will be still more obese people in the next generation.

American Medical Association

SOURCE: Keith, S.W. International Journal of Obesity, advance online publication, June 27, 2006.

You will notice that nothing was said about eating too much or too little or not having enough physical activities in one’s life.

I replaced my fast food addiction, and dorito addiction and oreo addiction (still feeding my ice cream addiction and caffiene addiction) with:

64 ounces of water per day
1 yogurt cup (Light’n’fit Dannon)
2 Monster “Lo-Carb”
24 ounces of homemade starbucks “french roast” coffee, unsweetened, black
1 8-12 ounce steak
1/2 sweet potato
1 ear sweet corn (in season)
1 pound cherries

That’s my daily intake of food.  Roughly 1600-1800 calories.  My rested metabolic rate is 2248 calories, according to the machine at Bally’s Total Fitness.  Add to that 550 calories burned on the elliptical (how accurate that is I don’t know) over 35 minutes per day, and I am dropping about 1-3 pounds a week.  Figure in 4-6 months I should be down to my pre-birthing weight.

With that said, the real point of the article was this:

Why is dietting and aerobic physical activities NOT listed in the top ten methods of loosing weight/weight gain???  If you didn’t know better, by reading that article, you’d think it’s perfectly acceptable to have 2 egg mcmuffins for breakfast, 2 big macs for lunch and a large pepperoni pizza for dinner every day!  Doubly good if you practice your Nintendo 360 skills at the same time!