I think America is one of the most obese countries on earth.

I completely blame the food. Even eating absolute junk in Europe I noticed I lost 5 or 6 pounds over 2 weeks.

Here if I eat junk food for 3 days my weight jumps by 7 pounds. I am a bit dismayed with all the attempts to normalize obesity in the US. I was morbidly obese up until I got serious about my weight in my early 20s. You can read all the dating books you want, but getting in shape is the only thing that works. It's much easier to hop on Reddit and complain though.

I'm very optimistic I'll be able to move to a healthier country once I retire at 40 or so. Not exactly easy to stay in shape when this country tries to pump us all full of corn syrup

"I completely blame the food. Even eating absolute junk in Europe I noticed I lost 5 or 6 pounds over 2 weeks."

I don't. Certainly it doesn't help and, of course, Americans should eat much better than they do, but ...

I think the most important factor is that our built and cultural environment are constructed to make us obese.

If one does not live in a modern city center one barely ever walks. Most Americans sit all day - at a desk or in a car.

Further, many Americans are 1-2 generations removed from "the farm" and are still heavily influenced by habits like "three square meals per day" that made great sense on the farm and make no sense at all in the city.

We're bad at being urban.

I contrast us with people I see who are good at being urban. The old Chinese women in the park doing Tai Chi every morning. The 70+ woman I saw running (running!) to get the bus in Zurich. The Spanish people I lived with who sort-of ate one big meal every day at 14:00 ...

We'll get there ...

It really is the food. America was as car dependent in the 70s as they were in today, but if you look at photos then, you'll notice how uncannily THIN everyone was.

If you dig more into it, you'll find the obesity crisis started around the late 70s with a change in dietary guidelines and medical guidelines saying basically 'fat & meat bad' and 'carbs good' along with the widespread introduction of vegetable oils, leading to too much insulin and other hormonal effects slowly increasing diabetes & obesity in our population. Also food companies honing on what obesogenic combos of food lead to people to eat more, buy more and thus get better sales.

Read "The Obesity Code" if you want a more detailed description with a lot of links to papers and studies for more info. [0]

[0] I said this yesterday too in another article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25767604

After moving to Japan and living here for a while, I realized when I visited my family back in the US how much of a punch in the face of sweetness/richness literally everything available in US restaurants is; it was honestly exhausting. Plus the fact that the portion sizes are double that of anything here, it's no surprise to me that Americans are obese and Japanese people by and large aren't.

For another anecdote, my wife's friend worked at Starbucks in Canada and in Japan. She said the Frappuccinos in Canada use around double the amount of syrup than those in Japan.

When I moved from Brazil to Canada I was kinda surprised with the portion size in some restaurants here. Also:

> how much of a punch in the face of sweetness/richness literally everything available in US restaurants is

Yeah, too much sugar/salt/syrup/condiments, too many artificial ingredients on things. Today I was talking to my wife how the Cheetos here is not so good, as it has a weird orange color and the taste is way too much superficial. The cheese too. too many cheddar varieties with colors that doesn't seem like something made out of milk.

Milk in general is high calorie + high fat and a Starbucks Grande is 5 times the size of a typical coffee I was used to. Not to mention the fact that they charge a good chunk more for other low calorie non-dairy substitutes. A typical meal at an American restaurant is two meals - easily - and our portion sizes are not small by any means.

The sweetness is another major put off. There's no concept of a savory snack here. There's also no culture of an afternoon or tea time snacking. In my personal opinion, having a small post-lunch snack helps me stay satiated for longer and have a much smaller supper instead of a large dinner.

American sauerkraut, the kind you can buy in supermarkets, has SUGAR in it! What is wrong with you?!? :-(

Everything has sugar in it. Even Sriracha!!! My experiment with cutting adding sugar completely for a month was the single hardest experiment I ever did with my diet. I lost 10 pounds in a month - absolutely unhealthy and I had to reverse course because of that. But, that's how much sugar there is in American food.

There is a great youtube video about exactly that:

Why is it so Easy to be Thin in Japan?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr4MmmWQtZM

What’s the percentage of food spend in the 70s vs today? If I read the USDA charts, it’s about 13% for the decade of the 70s, declining to under 10% today. So I would expect that as food gets significantly cheaper, people consume more of it.

Are rich people on average fatter than thin people? After all, they can afford more food, so presumably they consume more of it.

Spending has dropped because there are such large subsidies to cheap carbs, and that is the bulk of many people's diets. A steak and veggies is no cheaper than it was 40-50 years ago, but we're eating far more refined junk with additives because it is cheap and convenient.

I'm not quite sure what your first point is? Infamously, rich poor are on average thinner (the "poverty obesity" paradox).

I believe the leading hypothesis is that being rich absolves you of the stressors that make junk food attractive. Others are, as you mentioned, the ability to buy more expensive food with more nourishment/satiation per calorie ("protein leverage hypothesis"), or access to nature and refuge from pollution (it's certainly the rich people where I live who ride bicycles.).

Regardless, a poor person from 50 years ago couldn't buy the cheap sugary crap even if they wanted to.

My post was in response to the parent's statements "If I read the USDA charts, it’s about 13% for the decade of the 70s, declining to under 10% today." and "So I would expect that as food gets significantly cheaper, people consume more of it."

That is, the point of the parent's post was not obviously "crap food is so much cheaper than high quality food", but as most naturally read as "because we can afford more food, we're buying and eating more"

My point was "if that logic holds, I would expect the rich to be significantly fatter than the poor". Which, as you note, is not the case. Nothing more.

Portions are now massive. McDonalds, once upon a time, had small and large sizes of french fries; the little white paper pouch or the red cardboard sleeve. Today I believe they have two even larger sizes. The smallest size of soda doesn’t even exist any more.

Other restaurants have retired round plates and serve meals on platters.

I also think cheap food tends to be worse for you on average.

This sounds like the equivalent of lead poisoning being one of the causes for the fall of the Roman Empire.

Is there a study about this?

Please check this video on Vegetable Oils: The Unknown Story by the author of the book "The Big Fat Surprise" [1][2].

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2UnOryQiIY

[2]https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/14...

Don’t forget everyone in the 70s who smoked...

The type and quantity of available food is a huge factor. In the 1970s more people were also involved in jobs that required more physical labor: farming, manufacturing, construction, etc.

>We'll get there ...

You can also write an article for the Huffington Post arguing it's impossible to ever lose weight.

I'm not calling for fat shamming, but you can't be both obese and healthy. You can't really be obese ( over a certain point anyway) and be happy. When I was over 300 pounds every day was an experience in pain.

But it's considered rude even for doctors to say you need to lose weight. I was fortunate enough that an alternative medicine provider told me to just lose weight.

And that said, I'm even reluctant to make the argument above since there's a lot of really angry people who will try to misconcue it and call me a monster or something. But I've been morbidly obese, and I'm in shape now ( still trying to lose that last 10 pounds ) .

Life is better now in every single way.

> But it's considered rude even for doctors to say you need to lose weight.

I'm pretty sure this isn't actually true. I mean I'm sure there are some people that get offended, but some people will get offended at anything and being called "overweight" when you are convinced you are just "big boned" isn't pleasant.

My doctor told me to lose weight. I wasn't offended, I'm not stupid.

It wasn't my doctor's advice that led to my weight loss though, it was my father dying prematurely. He wasn't even obese, he just had a poor diet and little exercise. A real wake up call.

> But it's considered rude even for doctors to say you need to lose weight

Really? Is it a US thing?

I'm overweight but not obese, and basically every doctor I've seen for various issues (blood pressure, back pain, sprained ankle) told me to lose weight, in two european countries.

> Really?

I don't think so. They may be referring to the fact that it is increasingly becoming an issue of political correctness. But science is pretty clear about the risks of obesity and the medical professions follow that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/business/ama-recognizes-o...

I have a friend who's (US) doctor told he needs to lose weight or he will die. It got him to join a gym at least.

There is a Far Side cartoon with an obese doctor talking to an obese patient, and the patient says to the doctor, “you’re the first doctor who has not told me to lose weight!“

Obesity is more or less considered to be normal now, it’s a real shift in the last few decades.

Anecdotal from SoCal, 2 years ago I saw on my doctor’s chart that my BMI placed me in the obese category. She said nothing to me about it. I wish she had bc it was a shock to me. I had become so accustomed to that weight, and everyone I was around was a similar weight so I just didn’t know. If I hadn’t seen it on her chart I would not have made any changes.

With my new doctor, I was looking at my last 2 yrs of blood tests and my LDL cholesterol has been at 105. Losing more weight will help with that, so will changing my diet - but my doctor didn’t point my LDL out as a problem even though it is.

It would've been the right thing for her to tell you. But unfortunately, if she tells the wrong person she could get called out for fatshaming on social media and probably lose her career nowadays. It's the rational choice to not offend anyone's feelings, when those feelings can be used to crush you and your livelihood.

> You can't really be obese ( over a certain point anyway) and be happy. When I was over 300 pounds every day was an experience in pain.

So if that's the case, why does it matter what the Huffington Post says?

I'm not morbidly obese, so perhaps I've missed the pro-obesity PR. A fashion magazine might give a cover to an obese model once a year, but the other 11 months all seem to have the same rail thin models that have dominated since the '80s.

Same goes for TV and movies. Producers wouldn't hire a fat guy to play Mark David Chapman, it'd be an easier sell to get a fit actor and have him balloon up to that desired weight.

The only obese poeople of renown in our society are older politicians and the rich, i.e. people that do not care about meeting society's beauty standards.

>but the other 11 months all seem to have the same rail thin models that have dominated since the '80s

People used to see those and aspire to be like them and improve themselves. Something changed over the last decade or more, and now no one wants to do any better than they currently are. They are despairing in content with themselves.

>Something changed over the last decade or more, and now no one wants to do any better than they currently are. They are despairing in content with themselves<

People still aspire to be attractive they just don't feel the same social pressure to chase it that they used to. Personally I don't see the problem for the USA, if people are happy being unhealthy then let them be unhealthy. If this was Europe I could see a public cost argument but US businesses are already starting to charge more to people who are inconveniently obese so I don't see why it's a real concern.

> Personally I don't see the problem for the USA, if people are happy being unhealthy then let them be unhealthy.

They're not happy. They're suffering and helpless. That's the problem.

"people that do not care about meeting society's beauty standards"

It's not about beauty standards, it's about healthy standards. Remember when there was a push-back from models being too thin? Everyone agreed that it was bad to show ultra-thin models because it was unhealthy and generally unobtainable. The same should be for overweight people, except now we have the concept of body-shaming (which didn't apply to ultra-thin models??). There needs to be more of a focus on self resposibility along with a push-back against the bad practices of the food industry.

While it may be true that the American lifestyle is more sedentary, I don't think obesity can be entirely or even mostly explained by that. AFAIK diet generally affects weight more than exercise does; if your diet is energy-heavy, it's very difficult (without being an athlete) to exercise enough to consume as much as your energy surplus from the diet is.

I don't have any references or numbers to back that up, but that's what I've understood from what I've read in papers and heard from some people who apparently did the math.

With that said, physical activity has lots of benefits beyond just weight loss, and it would be worth it to make one's lifestyle non-sedentary in any case.

You're right, it's impossible to out-exercise a bad diet, but there are secondary reasons that being sedentary leads to weight gain besides just the raw number of calories burned.

For one, an hour you spend exercising or walking around is probably an hour that you're not eating. Many Americans are constantly eating when they're at home, either mindlessly snacking or eating a huge meal. Given that you only have 8 hours between work and sleep, occupying yourself for 1 of those hours could mean a significant decrease in time spent eating.

Incidentally, this is why intermittent fasting works well for some people.

Well it's not literally impossible to out-exercise a bad diet. Look at what some ultra endurance athletes eat. But those are extreme outliers and that lifestyle isn't really sustainable.

Once you start tracking the energy usage of exercise with a smart watch or similar, you'll notice that even extended exercise consumes almost no energy compared to the energy used simply living. Doing an hour of heavy exercise only changes my total energy usage for the day by a fairly small % compared to no exercise.

Diet is clearly a much more important aspect for weight loss. Exercise has many other benefits though.

I don't know, my Garmin watch says my daily 1h-1.5h long walk burns about 500-600 calories. It could be wildly inaccurate. But it definitely gives me more cushion to eat comfortably during the day that is for sure! I realize it is dwarfed by the 2000+ calories I burn naturally but that is almost another meal in calories.

You burn about 100-150 calories just by existing for 1h-1.5h, so walking for an hour or so only gets you an additional 400 calories. Versus eating, you can consume a 400 calorie cookie in one minute.

When I lost 70lbs, I did so by deciding it was easier just to not consume the calories in the first place rather than trying to burn them off.

It’s really a case of the rich getting richer when it comes to exercise, because if you’re fitter you can sustain a calorie burn rate far higher than someone who isn’t.

On my bike I have a power meter which uses strain guages and an accelerometer to calculate force x distance / time at the crankset so I have accurate calorie burn numbers.

Riding for an hour at the output a generally sedentary person can manage, I’ll burn sub 500 calories. Riding at my maximum output for an hour burns about 1000. Given that the recommended energy intake for a day is 2500, you can see what a difference that makes proportionally to what you can consume.

Indeed, energy intake is a big part of the equation and indeed a single run/exercise will not burn off a gigantic amount of calories. What repeated exercise does do is to raise your metabolism and increase muscle mass which will increase energy consumption at rest and combat all kinds of other symptoms.

Heart rate or step based calorie tracking is so inaccurate that you might as well just use Math.random.

The fact that companies sell you these “features” in products is a scandal in my opinion, because it’s nothing more than a totally inappropriate guess. They always overestimate based on my experience when compared against actual output measurements, and that can only be harmful to people that are trying to use them to lose weight.

An average 10km run burns 600cal. Sure just living burns 2000cal, but its a noticeable change. In Addition, for most people its much easier to track their exercise, than pedantic tracking calories.

A casual search on google says a chocolate bar is about 500~600 calories ... so you could maybe skip that chocolate bar and not feel the need to run so much.

(Not to totally give up exercise tho' - there are other health benefits besides losing weight)

This is often expressed as: You can't outrun your fork.

It's really that baseline metabolic burn is pretty high, you have to work a lot to double the number of calories you burn, but it's easy to eat double your metabolic needs

That tracks with what's written in The Hacker's Diet, and I think it's largely right. If you look at how much running you need to do to burn off a daily burger it's intimidating.

The only caveat I've learned is that weightlifting can make a dent. It's one of the few things where as you improve, you can burn more calories in the same amount of time instead of fewer (partly because you're doing more work as you add weights, partly because the muscle you build is more metabolically expensive to maintain).

I also had success restructuring my life so accessing food was way more of a hassle. Kept a mostly empty fridge. Meal prepped so only whole meals were there. Don't take money unless I know I need to buy something, found a few reasonable options at local sandwich places that became routine, etc.

I'd love to see a correlational study on fridge size and obesity. In America we buy SUV fulls of food, in Europe it's much smaller frequent trips, i.e. generally higher hassle per calorie.

>easy to eat double your metabolic needs

Or more! When I started losing weight, my target was 1600 kcals a day. I learned that I was eating 1600+ calories __every single meal__, plus snacks. Pasta is the devil y'all.

> Pasta is the devil y'all.

And yet Italians are generally slim and healthy :)

To be fair they don't eat all that much pasta.

The sum of kcals is not as easy as that,

In take is the kcal of the food times the digestion factor. The kcal out is the metabolic need, which depend on factors such as fat building vs energy usage, which in turn is influenced by stress but also things like dieting.

This is why counting calories can be an ineffective strategy for some while for others it is a good match.

kcal of food is still an upper bound on bioavailable kcals

Let put this is numbers for illustration purposes.

Let say 1000 kcal in, and for an average healthy person 1000 kcal in metabolic rate.

For digestion, this person eat mostly proteins resulting in about 20% of kcal going into energy for the digestion system itself (proteins is relative hard to break down). Let also say that in addition, sloppy digestion and incorrect gut bacteria is resulting in additional 20% of the food never getting digested and resulting in feces. Result is a loss of 400.

If thats the whole story you have a person that is loosing weight despite keeping a diet that seemingly fulfills their calories need.

Lets now change metabolic aspects. Rather than suffering from bad digestion they are suffering from chronic stress with high cortisol, adrenal and other stress hormones. The body crave more food that cost less to digest, ie fat and sugar, insulin is spiking in order to get the body to take up more energy, the body goes into lethargic state in order to save energy, muscle and organ cell production is decreased in favor of fat cells. Instead of 1000 kcal in metabolic rate we might have 600 kcal, with now a surplus of +400 going into fat production.

The upper bound on bioavailable kcals is still 1000 kcal, but the numbers won't tell you if the person is going to loose weight or gain it, unless the person is in good healthy to begin with.

I found this pasta made purely from peas or beans in the shop. They are a bit harder to eat but fill you up much faster and feel lighter in the stomach. (And they have less carbs and more protein.) If you like pasta I can recommend trying this.

Hmmm this makes me think of powerlifters. Curating a 'power gut' is pretty normal for competing lifters (even hobbyists).

Intuition would make me wager testosterone levels of you average powerlifter would be in the higher ranges (necessary to build muscle), despite not generally being lean.

> Further, many Americans are 1-2 generations removed from "the farm" and are still heavily influenced by habits like "three square meals per day" that made great sense on the farm and make no sense at all in the city.

Meh, Americans snack all the time. French people are anal about their meal structures and times and we’re not fat.

It's weird how HN commenters consider free office snacks as an employee "benefit" and complain when they're taken away. I'd rather the company not put any snacks out and remove the temptation. For most of us that work at computers all day we really don't need extra snacks.

The bigger and unhealthier you are, the less motivated you may be to get up and leave your desk.

Or...to quit and become a lumberjack, etc.

I concur. I am French living in US. And I do not snack at all. I only have 3 meals a day. And I try hard to get a lighter dinner (dinners here are generally too big for me).

I don't like to go to parties with an empty stomach, because of the poor choice of food there (chips, salsa, cake, cookies, etc.). If I go with an empty stomach, I know I would not resist, and I would feel sick and bloated later, high on sugar & salt, and dehydrated with alcohol.

Just don't snack.

One time I went to a restaurant in upstate New York and I swear to god, I ordered the chicken and an entire roasted chicken arrived on a plate! The mashed potatoes came in a second plate and I spent the first 15 minutes laughing at how ridiculous it all was. Oh, and my meal without drinks was like $16.

I agree that portions are ridiculous, but do Keep in mind that in most lower-end restaurants the customer expectation is to have enough for a doggy bag

Doesnt that just mean you are going to have two or three unhealthy meals instead of one?

portion size is generally way way way too big in the US. I always put on weight when I visit the US.

I live in China, I can assure you there are plenty of obese chinese people here in the major cities I've been to. It's not as bad as the US, and the culture is more aggressively against it, but it's not uncommon. Obesity is a problem that most developing nations are facing. You can buy junk food anywhere.

> If one does not live in a modern city center one barely ever walks. Most Americans sit all day - at a desk or in a car.

As opposed to someone in China, where we must do such extraneous physical activities like order take-out delivered to our place less than 15 minutes, then order a masseuse to come give us a massage and finally order a bottle of wine to top the night off, all without needing to get out of bed.

As a formerly obese American, I need to say you are both right.

The food ingredients in this country are, on average, garbage. With careful shopping you can get around this but it does take effort and vigilence.

Cultural expectations around both diet (especially portion size) and exercise (I cite the walking thing a lot too) are also bad. It takes effort to avoid those hazards.

I think both of these and probably a few other factors are a terrible combination that compliment each other in a bad way.

Portion sizes are a huge factor. My wife tried a few new recipes this week. All of them said they serve 4. We are a household of two adults and one almost adult and didn't eat half of what she prepared (they all tasted great).

That said, I'm 30 lbs heavier than I was a decade ago. I know WHAT I need to do (exercise more, drink less), it's just been hard to get back into better habits.

Vietnam has the lowest adult obesity rate yet is the 8th most sedentary population. The only thing I see that accounts for this is the lack of cheap, processed foods. The Vietnamese diet is largely prepared at home from scratch. Sugar is not crammed into every effing thing you eat the way it is in the U.S.

Were you travelling in Europe? I typically lose weight while travelling because I'm walking more and have fewer snacks around. This includes months in the US last year where pace and timing of a lot of our driving meant we ate fast food a bit. It was hot so we couldn't stash chocolate/ice cream, we didn't have access to a fridge so we didn't scoff leftovers, etc. We mostly lived out of a cooler and cooked on fires. We walked around exploring cities/towns where many residents would not have though. The number of mobility scooters and the like is incredible.

I lived in Europe for multiple years and then moved to the US. I gained a lot of weight. This had to do with both less of an effective culture of walking and public transit in the city I lived in the US. And also the quality and availability of relatively healthy, tasty foods at a reasonable price.

I’ve also had the same experience on shorter (few month) stays in Europe, while still working a 9-5.

When I came to the Philippines I was shocked by the large number of obese people here. I thought it would be like China because that was my only reference point in SE Asia. Relatively speaking, it's not as bad as the States or the UK but it's getting there. If you look back only a few generations, you'll see what happened here: they were colonized by the US and adopted Western-style processed food and soft drinks. Also, car ownership is a new thing for most families. Before WW2 this was not the case, and thus there was far less obesity.

Western style != American style.

Philippines was part of the Spanish crown and had Spanish customs. Plenty of European (Western) countries have balanced diets and healthy lifestyles.

They were under American rule more recently, and were only given their Independence without a fight after agreeing to preferential trade on importing American products.

I didn't argue about that. I just said that before American rule they were ruled by Spaniards.

Sure, for you and I it's not equivalent.

But for them, it might as well be. People simply did not eat large amounts of packaged, processed food only a few generations ago, like people do everywhere in the west, including the EU.

I just complained about the use of "western diet" as a catch-all epithet for unhealthy, processed food.

I barely walk, but I've been losing weight like mad because I've been cooking at home everyday now, not eating fast food, and not drinking soda. Look at the ingredients for any premade foods, even the ones that bill themselves as healthy, they are mostly sugars and carbs and sauces containing HFCS. Also, the caloric density is insane, one "meal" can be upwards of 1500 or 2000 calories if you ignore their "suggested serving" which is unrealistic to what people eat.

Also, exercise accounts for maybe a hundred or two calories a day for the average person who isn't into marathons or something, so the only true way to lose weight is to decrease what you eat.

It's not lack of exercise, that's the way these corporations try to blame you for being lazy so you forget their food is garbage that's making you fat.

Only in US there's this serving size bullshit that requires effort to figure out how much you're actually eating.

Exactly, that's why we're fat as fuck. We don't have the same culinary habits as most of the world. I ate a cookie for lunch today: it was 500 calories.

I personally think that body composition is 80% food and 20% work.

Yes, driving cars everywhere is not great. But we’re also more obese than other car dependent cultures, so it’s not a satisfactory answer to say that it’s entirely about being sedentary.

I agree that there is a big cultural factor here. I wish people focused on this more. So many people want to look at correlations like income:BMI that don’t generalize to other countries or cultures. Really what they expose are cultural and societal idiosyncrasies, much more than they expose that “cheap food is not healthy”. Of course, that is less appealing to an epidemiologist because the cause and effect is less clear and has much greater implications than recommending more exercise.

I actually lost weight when I moved from Switzerland to the US. The food just all felt somehow gross, so I didn’t eat much (also the options on campus were incredibly limited, apart from these horrible undergraduate dining halls there were few normal choices and most only served food for around 2 hours - the food at the supermarket also felt strange)

I’m curious, how did the food in the supermarket feel strange?

I eat mostly fruits, veggies and meats. Pretty much 80% natural foods. But I live in east Asia now so it’s easier to do that and with more variety.

But, I don’t recall American supermarkets food feeling strange. Unless you mean the processed stuff?

The processed food I avoided mostly, though I do that in Europe as well.

For the rest of it: might just be my perception to be honest, my impression was that the fruits and vegetables tasted very watery with little flavour, as if they were grown in the most efficient way to bring them to market quickly. Same for the meat, was kind of floppy and the cheese just didn't taste like much. There were some good things from farmers markets, but at absurd prices.

I see differences in Europe as well, e.g. I think the quality in Switzerland is better than Germany and Austria. In Spain and France I was able to get really good food, probably because it's closer to where it is produced.

Again this might be my perception, didn't do a blind tasting. Unless the food is specially prepared to be stored (like fermented food, cheese, etc.), I don't think the highly industrial production, refrigeration and long transportation is doing the quality any favours.

This isn't the first time I've heard this, and a quick Google search with the right keywords brings up:

https://www.greenoptimistic.com/fruit-vegetables-taste-europ...

https://www.treehugger.com/why-doesnt-american-produce-taste...

The key point seems to be that we prioritize the looks, which unintentionally affects taste.

Walking burns like, what, 5 kcal/minute (generous)? If non-Americans walk on average 20 more minutes a day (generous), that's like 100 kcal per day. Or about 7kg at 15 kcal/kg basal metabolic rate, not taking into account for increased appetite.

While you have a good point, I want to nitpick a little:

As an American who recently moved to Europe, I don't think 20 minutes of walking per day is being generous. COVID-related measures aside, I find I add about 20min/day of walking easily, and more if I need to do something (e.g. buying groceries). Now, in the US I own a car and here I do not -- but in my Midwestern town I am totally obligated to own and operate a car. Here in Europe I get along fine with walking, riding a bike, and using public transport.

> I think America is one of the most obese countries on earth.

Yes but not by a very wide margin. [1]

Average BMI in the US is 28.5, Saudi Arabia is the same, Mexico is 28.1, New Zealand is 27.9, UK is 27.3, Canada is 27.2.

My point is that the impression that the US is unreasonably fat compared to the rest of the world is mostly just bias.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_body_mass...

I don't have any stats to back this up, but the impression I got from the states is that the weight gain is distributed unequally.

Some people seemed very very fat.

Edit found something that would support that idea.

Proportion of people who are obese over the globe: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-men-defined-as-o... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-females-defined-...

This matches my feelings. I'm Australian and id say the average person is overweight but not very overweight. I don't know how common this is in the US but you see those photos of people in Walmart with fat hanging over both sides of the scooter and its something I don't think I have ever seen in Australia.

At least in my rural part of the U.S., you are likely to see one such morbidly obese person at any given WalMart at any given time of the day. But that’s unique to WalMart. You may see such a person at other stores, but something about WalMart attracts the morbidly obese. Then and pickups with lift kits and guys with camo ballcaps.

> photos of people in walmart

Walmarts are everywhere, there are thousands of them and millions of people in them every day. You're going to see the best and the worst just because of sheer numbers.

Not saying that the fatest American isn't fatter than the fatest Australian but "people of walmart" is a bit of a misnomer because you only need one picture of a fat person in a Walmart and there's literally millions of opportunities each day to see that one example.

Averages can easily be misleading in analysis like this, so I don't think you can draw that conclusion.

The US is unreasonably fat today compared to the US 50 years ago. That seems like a more useful comparison than looking at other countries.

I think you are just pointing out very car reliant countries. London has good public transit, but the rest is extremely car dependant.

This shows IMO in obesity rates - they are significantly lower in London than the rest of the UK.

Same thing in many US cities where walking is the norm.

The other major factor is wealth. Richer people can afford higher quality food. Poor people generally consume more calories from junk foods and sugary drinks, which are staples of drive-throughs and fast food chains.

Not sure that the UK is that car reliant. I guess in rural areas, but that's true in most countries. In cities, not at all.

62% of all trips in the UK are made by car, compared to 26% by foot, 6% by bus, 3% by train, 2% by bicycle. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

It is not as entirely car dominated as the USA, but I think it's pretty fair to call it "car reliant".

It very much depends on the city. London has excellent public transport (and is horrible for driving), other cities are much more mixed.

I'd say the average misses the point here. That's quite a lot people! All addicted to sugar and fast food. This is a huge market. Same as the market for fighting the results of this unhealthy life style.

> Here if I eat junk food for 3 days my weight jumps by 7 pounds.

If you are gaining 7 pounds in 3 days, I imagine the vast majority is just water weight, which can probably be attributed to the salt levels in the junk food more than anything else.

I was in Germany for some time, I thought I would lose weight walking everywhere and eating differently; but I actually didn't lose a single pound. I don't know if muscle replaced fat, but I felt I looked the same and weighed the same. I was truly baffled.

During the early pandemic, I stopped drinking for 3-4 months...and still didn't lose any weight. I honestly don't understand the human body.

Genuine question: do you have biscuits, confectionery or ice cream in your home normally?

The most shocking thing to me when I first moved alone was how easy it was too eat a ton of sugar, without realising it till after.

My solution these days is to just ensure its not there, and commit to not getting takeaway (easy if I think about all the money I save).

Even doing all that, I still have habits I need to keep up: eating toast too often is a problem, for example. I've eliminated peanut butter entirely. Don't eat lunch when I'm at a desk job and replace it with just mid afternoon coffee to keep me going.

The human body is stupidly efficient, unfortunately.

I think you need to count calories to really know what your eating. I did it as an experiment for a week, it really interesting to see how fast you blow through your daily calories snacking or adding sauce

Yes, do this.

It's shocking how much of your calorie budget a sugared soft drink has.

Strangely, it’s both most of your calorie budget, and none of it at the same time.

Soft drinks have a ton of calories which have to go somewhere; we all know that. The paradox is that the human brain does not generally treat liquid calories as calories. So even though you might drink down 300 calories of soda, your brain will not adjust your hunger levels to match. This is obviously very bad.

Oh yes, satiety of food is a hidden thing people don't talk about.

Eat warm porridge and on average you will feel twice as full as the equivalent calories in white bread: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b3cf/3b7d71a7485e6355e49b2e...

Anecdotes in this thread aside this is exactly what you would expect. I believe there is strong evidence for a metabolic set point maintained by the body established after some period of time. If you can maintain a weight for a year or something you body works to keep it.

> You can read all the dating books you want, but getting in shape is the only thing that works.

Counterpoint: I got in great shape in my early 20s, but didn't have much luck with dating because I was still a "Reddit niceguys"-style jerk

Later on I stopped being a jerk, and even though I ballooned back to a very stately American weight I had way better luck with dating. Including "attractive females" as a young involuntarily-celibate gentleman might say

Agree. Try to be a good person and be honest. Treat your hygiene as important, clean up your home and maybe think a little bit about some clothes that look nice on you. That's all you need to do.

Assuming you're at least moderately physically attractive. And even then, the quality of partners you can attract in terms of looks is non-linearly decreasing as your own physical attractiveness drops. OkCupid studies have proven that women find 80% of men below average looking.

If you don't happen to be at least average in terms of looks, things are looking grim.

This is like looking at hiring statistics and deciding you'll never get a FAANG job unless you went to a top-tier university

Going on a dating site and messaging attractive women there is like sending resumes into the online job sites for Google/Facebook/etc. MAYBE you'll get a response, but more likely you're just wasting your time.

In the working world, you can build up your skills and network to get a referral

In the dating world, you can improve your hygeine/personality and get an introduction via mutual friends/family/family's friends/family's friends' coworkers.

Speak!

The best way to meet people will always be to leave your house and become socially active. You may even meet people of various genders just to hang out with ! Online dating profiles are more mostly bots / con artist anyway. The FTC filing against Match goes into detail here.

The best fun I've had was on the way to the club with my amazing friends, irrespective of if I meet anyone that night. The biggest sin of social media has been to convince people they didn't need real friends .

The world is great, is you save the 40$ a month Match.com cost for 12 months you can afford a trip to London or Paris, then at least you'll have some interesting stories to share at your local bar!

And why do you think that would be any different?

Do you seriously believe women will suddenly view a physically unattractive male as sexually desirable just because they got an introduction? It doesn't happen.

Raw sexual attraction is not something one builds towards with friend/family introductions/referrals and good hygiene. It's a visceral, almost animal-like condition that manifests at the drop of a hat and physical appearance (face, height, build) is _the_ most (if not the only) important attribute.

Those that have won the genetic lottery are smooth sailing. The sky is the limit.

Those that are average have to put in work to get results (and there are definite limits, they will hit a ceiling).

Those that have lost the genetic lottery are kneecapped from the get-go and they're looking at a vastly diminished set of possible partners and opportunities.

Beware typical-mind fallacy. This is a common source of friction even within couples. People don't all experience attraction the same way, for the same reasons, with the same curve of intensity over time. People don't all assign it the same weight in their relationship decisions. Especially across gender lines. Social and behavioral factors can be a lot more important than you'd think. Confidence, competence, humor, status. Cultural archetypes. Personal archetypes. Social proof. Trust, care, familiarity.

Will she sleep with him that night? Probably not. Would she agree to a date right away? Also probably not. Six months later, after a dozen group social events, might she have a serious crush? Decent chance. (Might his fast-burning infatuation be dead by then? Also yes, been there done that).

If you have others to vouch for you it's helpful since one thing everyone look for is creepiness - how much of a danger could you be? If you're just shy or awkward it might mean tough luck since it's hard to differentiate, but with an introduction this is much easier to overcome.

Seriously, the first hurdle is not 'is this guy sexually attractive' but 'is this guy potentially dangerous', and it's far safer to err on the side of caution.

I've never seen anyone imply: "this person is not a danger"...

I guess you can get some signals, sometimes... For when a person IS a danger.

But anyhow, most abuse happens in the privacy of a home, so I don't think I'd be able to vouch for anyone to really not be a creep. You never know what side of their personality people might be keeping hidden.

The signals that someone isn't a danger are not in any way related to if they are or not from what I can tell.

Creamy, I am 42 and I spent most of my dating period offline.

There is more to sexual attraction than photos. Sense of humor plays a great role. If you can make a girl laugh out loud, you're half way to wherever you want to have her. As are other elements of personality; some people are so irresistible in person that you forget their homely face. This works for both sexes, btw.

Yes, this does not work on Tinder, unfortunately. Dating apps are absolutely unnatural in this regard, very one-dimensional.

Physical appearance really isn't the be-all and end-all you seem to think it is. Social status is also important. Being well liked and respected, highly skilled, charismatic, or just plain rich, all confer social status. High status people hang out with other high status people. An introduction from a high-status person implies that you also have high status, and does indeed carry value.

Not when it comes to sexual attraction. Women are not sexually attracted to your wallet or social circle.

Sure high social status alone can help you land relationships but absent raw physical attraction, the foundation will be shaky. There is such a thing as a trophy wife / gold digger after all.

This raw "sexual attraction" stat you're going on about is basically the only thing that comes through on a dating app for hookups, but it's WAY less important when you meet someone in person and kick off an actual relationship. Especially if you meet them at a group outing with mutual friends.

Instead of being a sweaty, nervous wreck desperately trying to hold an awkward conversation, you could just be a cool dude hanging out with his friends, playing Fortnite or hacking firmware or making pizza. Your date can see what actually makes you cool and fun, instead of just seeing some fake persona you've constructed.. and if she doesn't like it, forget about her.

People tried to tell me this when I was a kid/younger man, and I just assumed they were all a bunch of ignorant old fools. I didn't figure it out on my own until I was in my 30s, and then I was married before I knew it.

I do my best to try and pass this advice on whenever I can, even though I know that most guys who had the same issue as me won't heed it. Shockingly, I explained this to my greasy 12 year old nephew when he was complaining about women.. at the time he basically told me to piss off, but a few months later he had a girlfriend, haha.

I'm not sure how you're defining "sexual attraction" here. If women want to sleep with you, you're sexually attractive. Women line up by the thousands to sleep with famous musical artists, and it ain't because they're chiseled Adonises.

(incidentally - is 'creamytaco' a veiled sexual reference?)

For me, the most frustrating is the failure mode. With people, not being popular doesn’t mean you won’t meet or date, it means you will have a constant negative experience. You may date a nice girl (boy in my case) but the relationship will be taxing, as in you’ll have to work more for the relationship than the other person.

It is entirely justified and reasonable, but if you didn’t notice the gap, you will end up believing people have a bad character.

And unfortunately this can impact their career opportunities as well.

the only way it's going to have a really substantial effect in the USA is if you have bad hygiene

Personally, I think that whiteboarding/in-person interviews are mostly BS and "culture fit" (AKA: You like the person) has an oversized impact. But since you're not trying to woo the hiring manager into bed with you, you just have to make sure you aren't obnoxiously gross. Even if you're the ugliest dude on the planet, all that means is you need to take a shower and wear clean clothes.

Take that stat with a grain of salt. Obviously 80% of women don’t die single & childless, so clearly they just might value non-looks more highly than men? Also OKCupid is purely static visual - in reality, behaviour (confidence, boldness, social skill, ...) is very important as well, but you can’t judge that from a photo.

Sorry, what do you mean « being a jerk »?

I know I’m sounding naive, but if it’s something you decided to change and were able to, maybe it could be interesting.

Whatever it is, it started in the mid 70s. You can see the exact moment obesity rates launched upwards and never looked back.

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/-/media/Images/Health-Information/...

"Here if I eat junk food for 3 days my weight jumps by 7 pounds."

That's impossible you would have to eat 8167 extra calories a day to do that, you are doing something else like drinking lots of water or something.

I see the same, but typically five pounds.

I believe it’s my glycogen storage increasing, along with water weight due to the excess salt.

When I stop, it comes right off again in a couple of days.

Also keep in mind that in vast swathes of America, kids are brought up with low value high calorie food. If you are used to junk food, that's chemically engineered to appeal to our caveman instincts it's incredibly tough to switch later in life to a healthy food lifestyle.

This pandemic of shitty food starts with the kids and their tastes being set at a young age.

The fact that America can't even do chocolate right tells you everything you need to know about the food. Having been to America several times, I've eaten some amazing restaurant food, but the stuff bought in supermarkets is where I think the problem lies.

Just came back from 3 weeks in France, over holiday season. I stayed with my parents, and my dad is a cook... so I did eat well :)

Still managed to lose 2 pounds. In the 3 days I was back here, I managed to eat a burger and pizza. I guess I could have politely say no. But clearly the processed food here in US is ubiquitous and cheap, so difficult to escape.

No idea if this is the reason of lower testosterone. But I realize that simple food based on fresh products would go a long way.

It's mostly the food. It's not like people in other countries get that much more exercise than we do. (Source: lived in Ecuador for two years).

I watched this youtube video recently about recipes for cutting (weightlifting term for a diet that makes you lose weight) and eating some of the food has helped me lose some weight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86ieFuh_4Vs

Food is definitely a big factor. Here in Brasil it's not like we're super healthy eating, we are much more into real food than America, it was the impression I was left with. Some things just seem arbitrarily made junkier for no reason. My colleague who lived in Italy through masters and doctors and recently came back comments on how in Brazil we eat way more meat than europeans, as an additional point of comparison.

It's tough to eat enough meat to get really fat. Most people who try a carnivore diet end up losing weight. (I am not necessarily recommending that people follow a carnivore diet because it might have other negative effects.)

Here the diet is kind of meat and a lot of carbs at all meals(rice & beans in portuguese actually is a term meaning "the basics"), prefferably with a lot garlic and salt.

> I think America is one of the most obese countries on earth.

World obesity rankings are curiously topped by a bunch of small Pacific island nations and Kuwait, followed by the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...

> Not exactly easy to stay in shape when this country tries to pump us all full of corn syrup

That's it I think. Advertising has become much more effective over the past 40 years. Humans can simply not resist.

There should be advertising for healthy eating, to steer people to healthy food.

There should be advertising for healthy eating, to steer people to healthy food.

The problem now is we have #fatfobia that shames people for advertising their healthy lifestyle.

I disagree. Don't blame USA, after all you decide what goes into your mouth. Whole Foods ain't junk and Walmart has a decent plant based area. If you wanna find junk, you get it - everywhere.

Europe is on the rise: https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/noncommunicable-di....

No way to, pun not intended, sugar-coat this fact.

Sorry to say that, but "moving to a healthier country" is an excuse. Come on, dude! :)

In fat tissue testosterone gets converted into estrogen via aromatase, also. Not sure if the estrogenic effects are systemic, but the T is lost from circulation.

Oh interesting. I find that when you look how people move, ie walk or sit down, you'll often find that men with big bellies move very deliberate, not forceful at all.

> I completely blame the food

I don't completely blame the food itself. It's more about food habits.

One of the things I found very weird was American portion sizes. Go to any restaurant and plates were easily double the amount I was previously used to. I felt bad leaving almost half of a plate every time.

And then... I got used to it. But also very fat. With similar levels of sedentarism so it's not only about exercise levels. And frankly, while exercise is healthy, you don't burn that much energy with cardio. Every time I do the calculations I'm shocked. From a weight loss perspective, you're better off reducing food quantity (and the proportion of highly energy dense food types) than just increasing exercise. Unless you are at marathon-levels, that is. Increasing muscle mass is also time well spent (still pales in comparison to just eating less). Need to do it for the health benefits anyway, but it's easy to see why people get frustrated.

The kind of food served must have an impact too. Most places, if you are even offered a salad, it's awful. It's either tasteless or downright nasty and you can only make it palatable by overdosing on dressings. It seems that the nastiest tasting greens are chosen - don't even get me started on the "spring mix". So many people just don't eat salad and I can't blame them. Kids are right to rebel against their vegetables.

The American-style breakfast is delicious. It's just that most options are caloric bombs.

This is obviously not applicable if you don't eat out with any regularity. But that was the norm pre-pandemic, whether it's a restaurant or a $5 meal at Taco Bell with the nastiest (but tasty to our lizard brain) calories imaginable. Given that many people in the US don't really have the habit (or the employer doesn't give them time) of having lunch, burgers and the like are common.

Fine, let's eat healthy then and stop complaining. Let's start with fruits.

... and they suck. Apples are tasteless. Bananas are terrible. Mangos are a shadow of what they are supposed to be. Some grapes are ok. Berries are good (but not cheap in most places!). And so on. Fruits seem to be selected for appearance, easy of transport and shelf life, nevermind if they taste like used cardboard. Except berries and even then, IFF they are sourced locally.

You can make a decent salad with ingredients found in any supermarket, so there's that. Less convenient - you need to make your own with tastier greens(whatever your preference is!) rather than grabbing a box of spring mix that tastes like grass that was mowed a week ago. Add some lemon, vinegar and a very small amount of salt and it's all you need.

Meat is essentially the same everywhere(barring some food regulations). Can be affordable if one is ok with eating based on what's available, as prices fluctuate like crazy.

You _can_ eat healthy in the US. But you'll be battling: affordability, time, convenience and cultural norms. You need to check the labels on everything too, the corn syrup comment is relevant.

I blame the food packaging. BPA and all sorts of synthetic hormones leeching from plastic has invaded both our food and drink.

Kids almost always eat and drink from plastic. It used to be glass and metal.

Little kids are really surrounded by lots of fresh new plastic.

I wonder how much is due to regulation about inner dosage. I hear that mcdonalds recipees varies a lot between Europe and USA, saying that USA have way more everything in it, whereas in EU limits are imposed.

That or USA citizens really like to eat overly sweet and fat stuff.

The portions at the USA are insane. When I first saw the "large size" side drinks at fast foods I started laughing. In Europe the large size is equivalent to the US Medium.

This is also the case in restaurants. I get it that many people pack left over to go, but the portions served are comically large. For someone with broken "I am full" sensor, it is easy to consume the whole portion at once, and then get a dessert.

I find that in most US restaurants the portions are a bit small and I need the desert to fill me up. People always remark about how much I eat though. Most of them completely fail to notice that I eat only at meals, so even though it seems like I'm eating a lot, over the course of a day I'm getting no more than them. However most of my calories are not empty snacks (even counting the desert).

I cook most of my meals at home though, which allows me to get enough without needing desert every meal. Plus my cooking tastes better since it is real flavor not added sugar/salt.

>When I first saw the "large size" side drinks at fast foods I started laughing. In Europe the large size is equivalent to the US Medium.

Depending on where exactly you were, this is the experience of a lot of Americans compared to the sizes from their childhoods. A lot of places missed the point on Super-Size Me and just renamed their sizes to eliminate extra-larges around that time. So a 16oz shifted from being medium to being small.

FWIW, oil prices have a really high (negative) correlation with obesity

There's weirdly enough, quite a bit of scholarly literature on this.

Here's a decent survey, scroll down to see the links

https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/energy/g...

There's also studies that show increasing gasoline sales tax is predictive of future obesity prevalence (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5415832/). The correlation appears robust enough to generally use petroleum prices as an indicator of obesity prevalence as measured through BMI.

They're all pretty careful to note that "the relationship between gasoline prices and physical activity must be empirically determined".

Maybe, for instance, people purchase less food or go out to eat less frequently in high gas-price places. (See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.1550-8528....)

Maybe people spend less time commuting in high petroleum prices areas, which increases well being and decreases obesity prevalence (see https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-012-9678-6)

Maybe petroleum-based fertilizers lead to high obesity (see https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...).

Maybe the psychological activity of driving affects metabolism (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009174351...).

Maybe this is all p-hacking and it's nonsense.

Regardless, if scholarship is to be believed, moving to a place with high gas prices might help you lose weight. Yes, it still sounds nutty to me as well.

"Anything that is more than our necessity is poison. It may be power, wealth, hunger, ego, greed, laziness, love or ambition..."

Rumi

related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lkCsKXAxfo (and other videos of the series)

So you’re blaming the FDA for allowing something into American food that the EU doesn’t?

"You can read all the dating books you want, but getting in shape is the only thing that works."

I don't know my guy. I'm 39, weigh 280lbs at 5'9 but am married to a smart and beautiful women a decade younger than me and 150lbs lighter than me. It's not a sugar daddy thing either, she makes more than I do. Not everyone is shallow and a great sense of humor / shared interests / good personality is more than enough for plenty of people. That said, being fit certainly ups the odds in your favor.

A large component is the dating market you’re in.

If you’re a man in DC, NYC, or some rural town you’ll have more luck.

Bay Area? Zero chance.

Perhaps you missed the part where they controlled for "confounders—including year of study, age, race, BMI, comorbidity status, alcohol and smoking use, and level of physical activity"

So, after correcting for BMI, physical activity, etc, there was still a very significant decline in testosterone between 1999-2000 and 2015-2016.

Yeah, but a few paragraphs later, we have this:

"According to Lokeshwar, potential causes for these declines could be increased obesity/BMI, assay variations, diet/phytoestrogens, declined exercise and physical activity, fat percentage, marijuana use, and environmental toxins."

My personal, totally unsupported hypothesis: society is simply kinder and gentler now. As evidenced by the high testosterone in prison populations, this hormone responds to environmental threats of potential violence.

> My personal, totally unsupported hypothesis: society is simply kinder and gentler now.

Loved reading that. I don't know if it's true, but I hope so.

It's probably not the case that testosterone being lower is a result of society being kinder and gentler, but that society is kinder and gentler as a result of the lower testosterone.

Well, there might be a positive feedback loop factor implied, even if other factors might affect the rise of kinder society and the decrease of testosterone.

That’s funny as the first time I heard about feedback loop was in college biology courses, when we were taught how women hormones interactions are modelizable.

I didn't read it in the former way personally. Your sentence confused me at first with that assumption for you to disprove.

I see that and I'm glad they included it, but ...

Was 1999-2000 that golden age when we all threshed the fields by hand and steered the plows on foot ?

I remember people being quite sedentary and obese then and I don't know that an activity comparison to 1999-2000 has any utility ...

EDIT: OK, I am thinking about this backwards - if, as I suggest, people were just as sedentary in the first period as they are in the second, then the T drop begs a different explanation. As you suggest, they also corrected for age.

So, perhaps, my instinct is wrong. I would still look very closely at the (adjusted, corrected) physical activity before drawing any other conclusions ...

1999-2000 is a period in the past when they had measurements.

I mean ideally they'd have huge numbers of testosterone samples from all of human history, but what are they going to do?

it's a reference point? The article isn't comparing to some platonic ideal of what men's testosterone levels should be...it's just pointing out a statistically significant decrease in those levels over a period of 20 years

There is something double strange about the p values.For the main effect, the broad based decline, p < 0.0001. But for the result for men at "normal" weight, 18.5 < BMI < 24.9, the p value is given as p< 0.05.

The first strangeness is that this hints at a much weaker effect. The second strangeness is reporting the p value rather than the effect size. I clicked the link to a pdf at the bottom of the article, but it is not the paper. shrug

Something that is fairly well known in weightlifting circles is that "lifting heavy" will boost testosterone levels for about a day.

This is something I can anecdotally confirm: A few years ago my libido was low and I had borderline depression. After my lifts exceeded 100 kg (220 lb), there was a noticeable positive correlation between my libido and the deadlift days.

Yep. Lifting heavy is also good because it doesn't take very long and it's far easier to go high intensity for a few reps than medium intensity for many reps. Just gotta be careful to have proper form and not injure ourselves.

I mean, every problem in my life can be fairly neatly explained my a lack of physical activity. Most AWESOME days I have can be neatly explained by higher than usual activity.

Our bodies need to move. Isn’t there strong evidence that we can’t even function properly without exercise? I mean, basic functions like regular waste disposal/cell regeneration. Circulation is insufficient without some added pressure and agitation. All kinds of stuff.

We are too fat and lazy, period.

It’s an “easy” fix, but it’s also really, really, really hard. Man. I used to run 50km per week, now I don’t even walk 5km. So much kid stuff, work stuff, house stuff.

Stress is also linked to reduced testosterone.

Sexual behaviors can radically change testosterone as well.

That’s a reminder that the world has become more and more stressed out. I was reading somewhere that women handle stress better possibly because of estrogen.

That may be part of the explanation, but read this:

> Lokeshwar noted that even men with a normal BMI (18.5-24.9) had declining total testosterone levels (P < .05) during the same time frames.

Literally the first line from the article: “The decline in total testosterone was observed even among men with normal body mass index.”

Personal experience agrees. I'm over 50. Started lifting weights regularly about a year ago. Lost about 15-20 lbs of fat. Consuming way less beer and junk food. Have not had levels tested, but noticing more signs of increased testosterone, increased libido, waking up with an erection, etc.

"The decline in total testosterone was observed even among men with normal body mass index."

The first line in the article is: "The decline in total testosterone was observed even among men with normal body mass index." So obesity may be a factor, but it does not seem to be the only factor.

This is not so simple. Low testosterone cannot always be fixed by exercise.

There are men who exercise and yet have low T.

In the abstract of your [3] we see a problem. Quote:

> If you have a low level of fitness you are likely to have a greater increase in testosterone response to exercise. As your body adjusts to the demands of exercise the testosterone response will decrease.

Basically you have to be unfit to get a T boost from lifting some weights. If you're already fit and adapted to exercise, more exercise won't fix the T problem.

I believe this to be the right answer.

Ive been around this discussion a lot and everyone seems to want to blame the whole phenomenon on some chemical or another, "xenoestrogens" are thrown around a lot. Yes, there are more unnatural chemical compounds entering our bodies than in the past (also important to examine) but addressing the terribly unhealthy lives most of us lead is obviously the first step.

The parent comment both says that this is a global phenomenon and links to a study (not on Americans) whose _abstract_ says "There was a highly significant age-independent decline in total testosterone in the first and second decades of the twenty-first century. The decline was unlikely to be explained by increasing rates of obesity".

Study controls for this, though:

> After controlling for confounders—including year of study, age, race, BMI, comorbidity status, alcohol and smoking use, and level of physical activity—total testosterone was lower among men in the later (2011-2016) versus earlier (1999-2000) cycles (P < 0.001)

When I went to Europe in 2006 I dropped 15 pounds in 3 weeks. I was hardly obese (call it pudge) but those three weeks changed my life completely. Encouraged by the start, I began to exercise and get in shape. That lasted until a severe foot breakage kept me from running for about a year which put most of the weight back on. I noticed that in Europe where I was(Austria, Hungary, Germany) there was very little sugar in restaurant food and most of the time it resembled an elaborate home cooked meal. Here in the states sugar and high carbs for carbs sake are in everything.

They said this accounted for most of the effect.

But if you look at the study the effect persists after controlling for both BMI and exercise. There must be more to it.

I think there multiple things working together:

- High yield, less nutritious crops - Climate change - less physical activity

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrie...

BPA acts as synthetic estrogen in the human body and therefore has a less significant but similar effect as being on female hormone therapy.

But sugar, or more specifically insulin can reduce testosterone in the blood as well. Sugar will also make you put on weight more easily and body fat will also increase estrogen.

My guess is this, but I would have to say, we need to see the data on women as well if thats the case.

> The decline in total testosterone was observed even among men with normal body mass index.

The study in OP controlled for age and weight.