The older I get, the less I understand the notion that getting fat is a natural part of aging

^ This. The US (and likely many other parts of the world) are slow walking ourselves into a disaster. The current crop of older people are in terrible shape and as they age out there is simply no where near enough places to take care of them or enough people to take care of them. On both my wife's and my side of the family virtually everyone over the age of 65 is overweight, is pre-diabetic or has type 2 diabetes along with a litany of other health problems either directly or indirectly caused by their very poor physical fitness. And yet [somehow] many of these people may live another decade or more while they require ever increasing levels of care.

I see a lot of men putting on weight in their late 20s and early 30s as their metabolism starts to slow but their bad habits continue. I see some women using pregnancy as an excuse to become a pig (after they've lured the man in and assured child support money), then their pregnancy weight becomes their new weight even post pregnancy.

Portion sizes are a problem as are the fast food corporations competing by having large portion ssizes. They have meals with 1000-2000+ calories. Excessive for the average person especially with a sedentary lifestyle. Restaurants also glorify large portion sizes as do the commercials they advertise.

The worst part is probably the fat acceptance movement. The left enables this because they want to imply that being a loser is normalized and acceptable--although they will fool losers by providing them positive connotations so they believe their losing is actually "winning."

The institution wants the majority of people to be predictable and obedient, which the losers will defer towards.

Fat acceptance began as body positivity which did not include fatness but body "disfigurations" and regressed into including fatness. It makes sense since fat people generally haven't accomplished much or received much praise in their lives, so they naturally seek validation in other forms. Again, the matrix wants weak people because they are generally dependent and obedient, and fat people are weak people.

Look at it this way, say that your office has a 1x per month birthday celebration for all employees born that month. Cake is served, with frosting. Say a small piece is 300 calories. You just add this one item in per month and a year later you've got 3600 excess calories total. That's one pound of fat. Repeat for a 20 year career and now you are at 180 instead of 160 lbs. It creeped up on you and now you're 50 years old and to get rid of the chunk you need to eliminate 36,000 calories. So you have to eliminate those cake days and run around 360 miles at 100 calories per mile to ditch the fat. Or cycle forever. Or HIIT and not get injured.

I agree with the idea that getting fat doesn’t go hand in hand with aging.

I would say, though, that once a person is obese, the odds that they will permanently reverse their obesity, is not good. I can only guess that the addiction to sugar, or to highly processed foods, is very “sticky” — the person longs to return to their drug of choice, even years after their last donut (or their last Taco Bell, or whatever).

Those of us on these boards who have ever taken more than one year off of running, have some sense of how much effort it takes to get back into a good groove, after spending some time in a not-so-good groove. With obesity, it is probably a somewhat harder task than this.

In my family, people who have never been obese, seem to manage their weight just fine, but those who reach obesity seem to always return to obesity.

My father, was….a drinker

This is also 100% wrong. A full mile of running is "worth" only like two extra bites of a loaded bean burrito. A "little more pizza" would be equal to an entire 5km run.

So eating (how much and what) is by far the biggest factor in terms of weight.

But this is followed secondarily by exercise and finally, by one's metabolic rate. This rate is determined by exercise, gender (sex), weight, age, stress levels, etc.

All three of those factors matter. And none of them are insignificant.

Bmi means nothing, you can be skinny fat. % bodyfat is what counts

I’m 61. Five years ago I was overweight at 5’10” and 193 lbs. Decided I needed to do something about that. So I changed my diet & started running again after years of less activity. Now eat a lot of fish, grilled chicken breasts, beans, greek yogurt, vegetables: generally healthier stuff. Running was hard at first, but I stuck with it. Lost 26 lbs. in the first year. Now stable at about 150 lbs.

Tell me that weight gain is inevitable & unavoidable: I won’t believe it.

There are likely other variables but look at Japanese. They don't gain weight like Americans.

Skinny fat is still fat. Your exercise load is shameful.

Yes, gaining weight is a natural part of aging. As we lose muscle due to aging, our BMR drops. If you continue dropping your calorie intake to try to compensate for the BMR drop you'll eventually get to the point where you're malnourished.

All these people saying, "but it takes so much time and energy to work out, that's why I can't stay skinny," are being willfully obtuse. You don't need to work out to stay skinny. You don't need to do anything except eat less.

It takes less time, effort, and money to be skinny than it takes to be fat. If you choose to be fat--you are choosing to spend more money on food, spend more time preparing food and/or going to restaurants, and spend more time shoving food in your face.

"But, but, but... I work 70 hours a week and don't have time for any of that! I have to eat McDonalds." Time for any of what? Go to McDonalds, but just eat two McChickens instead of five.

"But, but, but... what about my thyroid?" Go to the doctor and get a prescription for levothyroxine for $20 month if you have hypothyroidism.

"But, but, but... I have arthritis in my knees and can't work out!" Okay, that sucks, but as I said before, you don't need to work out to stay skinny. You don't need to run a single step. You just need to eat less.

Being fat should have the same social stigma as being a drug addict.

I didn't read all the responses but wanted to provide two thoughts that I hope haven't been mentioned yet. First, I really wish there would be less criticism of morbidly obese or those just under that level. I feel there's more going on than just poor diet and exercise. I don't know what it is but if you challenged me, I'm not sure I could get up to that sort of BMI. My body wants to be around a certain weight. So, I figure that these people are the same and getting away from that level, either higher or lower, is extremely difficult. Not that it can't be done. In my family, my brother doesn't exercise as much as I do but he eats well and is now much slimmer than me, whereas I was always the slim one. I'm not in that morbidly obese category so maybe it's easier for my body to change. But for them I would bet it's magnitudes harder. Without understanding more about the causes, let's be more sympathetic to them. (No need to be sympathetic toward me. I know my case is my own fault.)

Next, I have come to strongly dislike running and so I've pretty much quit (hopefully only for now), though I'm still a fan of professional running. Running always was what kept me at a lower weight. Not my diet. I do exercise about 5 hours a week but not many sports burn as many calories per minute/hour/session as running. So, the pounds pack on. (And my diet has not changed. I have no excuse for that. It's my own fault.) But my point is that many of us love running so it's easy to make time to get a workout in. In fact, many of us have issues if we don't get our runs in. Now, I can identify with non-runners or non-exercisers. It's no fun doing it so people end up not getting their exercise in. And of course there are the other factors that previous posters have mentioned which make it hard to find time to exercise. Be thankful that you look at running as something positive, not the punishment that many others view it to be.

Since I can't buy you a beer online, here's this:

I think this is an excellent way to explain it. Everyone can understand it easily. I think that sometimes people either gloss over it and just say calories in, calories out. Or they get way too deep into it, using calorie calculators or other methods. Every little bit adds up and it's so easy to overlook "small" things like the monthly cake.

A lot of helping people improve their health depends on explaining things clearly in a way that people understand and also not coming across as passing judgement on them.

I think addiction to junk food should be viewed by society similarly to alcohol addiction.

Kind of like, “you’re in a terrible place. This has to change. Do whatever you have to do. It’s not easy but do whatever it takes to free yourself of this.”

with obesity, people seem to rationalize and justify their addictions to junk foods. no surprise there, because nobody wants to give up their drug of choice. But people seem afraid to challenge that in this day and age.

it seems like there is a culture among alcoholics that is willing to call bullsh!t on people’s stories about why they can’t do sobriety. And not a culture among Americans that is willing to call bullsh!t on peoples stories why they can’t give up self-destructive eating.

basically what I’m saying is, continuing to eat the foods that you consistently and predictably overeat on, is foolish. Like pretending you can have a bottle of jack daniels in the house. We don’t need to overlook the foolishness under the guise of being kind, understanding, sympathetic, compassionate.

I agree with your attitude about being reluctant to accept those that make excuses, but I disagree with your last paragraph. Some people's bodies respond to weight gain and to exercise differently, making them a lot more genetically predisposed to being overweight. I think we need to be accepting of that. What works for you may not for everyone.

I’ll just offer my personal experience getting fat. It was first the result of multiple knee surgeries. Then I had kids, a busy job, a long commute. I ran less and less, and just exercised less in general. My back started giving me issues. I had climbed from 160 to 210 in about 8 years. Then, about 5 months ago I decided to make a change. With two kids running around me I’ll still prioritize doing a bit of core (mostly for the back). I’ll pack my running gear and get out the door minutes after the work day is done. I’ll run a route I don’t necessarily prefer because it’s more time efficient. I don’t run more than like 40 minutes in a normal session. At first I couldn’t handle a jog faster than like 9 minute pace without straining something or seeing my HR climb to the point that I was basically racing. I eat a little more thoughtfully. After 5 months I’m down to 175, cruising 5 milers after work, going a little longer on the weekends. I expect to close in to racing weight by the spring. I’d say the total energy I give to exercise in a day averages out to probably 60 broken up minutes between running, core, yoga, etc.. it’s hard not to see that kind of lifestyle change being accessible to most people. And yet I had some advantages like a history of having been an athlete is huge. Knowing how to work out and how to navigate the bumps along the way is like a form of health literacy if you think about it. The people around me at my stage of life and are overweight are just generally burned out by life, depressed or don’t have a history of working out to begin with. I feel for them and I’ve been one of them for a while , but I’m not sure what could help them. To use the strained alcoholic comparison, the person who’s overweight and getting fatter by the day needs to fundamentally want to make a change, hold themselves accountable and use their resources to make it happen.

In the US, people classified as overweight (25-30 BMI) on average outlive those below 25 as well as those classified as obese (over 30), so you can call them fat all you want, but that doesn’t change the stats. Simple.