Why are so many men fat?

[lyssword]

If you know anything about physiology, you'd know that it is easier for a man to have lower bodyfat due to muscles burning fat easier, and yet there are more fat men than women, according to any statistics you can look up.

I have a few theories, as applied to men in U.S.
One: women seem to not care about men being overweight as much. Women think being chubby is "just a cute belly". Women sometimes (incorrectly) reason that a 300lb completely out of shape man would be a better protector than a 180lb fit man, so that's "safety" factor.

Two: Men have been obsessed with American Football, and it is #1 sport and is supposed to be a symbol of masculinity.
The game is designed such that half of players can be quite fat and could be an advantage, similar to sumo where the objective is to be as fat and as strong as possible.

Sure those football players spend ridiculous amount of time working out and after their 5-10yr career in the game either try to get back to below 200lb weight or die in 40-50's because of heart attacks, because sustaining that "game" weight is unhealthy. But average man, trying to emulate "masculinity" even if he doesn't workout at least tries to "look the part" by being large.

Other type of men simply do not at all care about their body and spend 100% of their time super-focused on their job that happens to be sitting in front of computer. Maybe they tried working out a few times, it didn't help (because body fat is lost evenly across the body, 1 lb of fat loss is almost impossible to see). Or they look down on fit people as "vain", and they are too intelligent to pursue such "low" goals.

Those are some psychological factors, I'm not trying to troll. What do you guys think, are my assumptions valid?

 

[AMD64Blondie]

Ahem..I resemble this remark.

(short while fat...double whammy right there.)

 

[CottonRabbit]

and yet there are more fat men than women, according to any statistics you can look up.

Nope.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db82.pdf Figure 1.

Men in the US are fat for the same reasons that women are fat. There is no mystery or magic behind why so many people are fat.

 

[lozina]

Statistics schmamistics! There are just as many women I see walking around who are sloppy, thunder-thighed, muffin-topped beasts

P.S. you mentioned football as being a fat lazy friendly sport but what about baseball? 90% of the time the TV is showing them scratching their balls standing there

 

[lyssword]

Statistics schmamistics! There are just as many women I see walking around who are sloppy, thunder-thighed, muffin-topped beasts

P.S. you mentioned football as being a fat lazy friendly sport but what about baseball? 90% of the time the TV is showing them scratching their balls standing there

Yes, but weight in baseball is not as important as in football. Baseball players are far more slim and fit than average american man, just go to any minor league game.

Also, looking at the same chart, obesity in men age 20-60 is higher. Perhaps the reason more women over 60 are obese is because obese men die sooner. Obesity is also around 4% higher for boys vs girls.

 

[Via]

It's the food that's shoved down our throats here. Processed garbage pumped full of horrible ingredients. It seems like more and more people are starting to catch on to that (I hope that's the case).

Go to Italy. I doubt the average male (or female) works out more than we do, and yet the country is full of thin, beautiful people.

Try walking around Rome someday and trying not to trip over your jaw.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I'm not "fat," but as I've aged and my metabolism has slowed, I've accumulated more fat on my body than I'd like. I can slim down with moderate effort, but the thing that I noticed is the most difficult for me is controlling portions.

I recognize that within me there is a deep-seeded urge to eat large portions, as though it is an accomplishment to do so. It may simply be cultural conditioning by the likes of product advertising and marketing, but I also get the feeling that it has something to do with my ideas of masculinity, i.e. "dad gets the big piece of chicken," or "look how many wings *I* can eat." I almost instinctively order the big steak, or the double bacon burger, as though only a wimpy, girly-man would go to dinner and order a salad.

At least having acknowledged this phenomenon I can take measures to avert it.

 

[Crono]

This really isn't hard to figure out at all. Men have higher metabolisms and muscle mass than women, but most of us - men and women both - work in offices or in other environments where there isn't a lot of physical activity.

With high caloric intake from processed and readily available packaged foods, it's no wonder that it is easy for men to gain weight. Plenty of women are overweight, too, statistically speaking, but there's probably a greater psychological pressure on women to be thin for the sake of appearance than there is on men. You see a lot more diets, books, magazines, food items, etc with weight loss in mind marketed at women, though there are plenty of men who are concerned about weight, too.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

It's the food that's shoved down our throats here. Processed garbage pumped full of horrible ingredients. It seems like more and more people are starting to catch on to that (I hope that's the case).

Go to Italy. I doubt the average male (or female) works out more than we do, and yet the country is full of thin, beautiful people.

Try walking around Rome someday and trying not to trip over your jaw.

What kind of processing are you referring to that causes people to magically become lardasses?

 

[lyssword]

Yeah it seems we are psychologically conditioned to think that eating more = more masculine. There is this message that Real Men^TM eat a lot and are kind of fat. In fact there is this kind of image associated with being in good shape = male model = gay. And you don't want to be gay, do you? So shove more oversized portions up your throat.

 

[Crono]

What kind of processing are you referring to that causes people to magically become lardasses?

Nothing magical about it. It's easier to scarf down foods that have most of the fiber removed and that have been designed in food labs to be high in carbohydrates/sugar, fat, and salt. Those kinds of foods taste good to us because they provide calories and sodium which are naturally scarce without the technology and specialization that is possible in modern civilization.

Processed foods don't make people fat, but I defy you to gain a lot of weight on a natural diet. Provided you aren't just eating a lot of meat, it's very hard to get fat off a high fiber diet rich in vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. They take up more volume and are less calorically dense, and digestion (or indigestion) of fiber produces a lot of gas, making you feel full (also making you gassy, which is why beans are notorious, but they aren't the only high fiber food).

 

[Via]

What kind of processing are you referring to that causes people to magically become lardasses?

I don't need anymore proof than I've seen myself. I lived in Rome for 6 weeks, partied like there was no tomorrow, ate and drank like an absolute pig, got less than 3 hours of sleep many nights....

...and lost 20 pounds.

If I don't watch what I eat like a hawk here in the US I immediately begin to puff.

 

[JimmiG]

I think lack of exercise, rather than too much or unhealthy food is the problem.

The male body is designed for manual labor, hunting and other physically exhausting tasks. In the last ~50 years, this type of work has almost disappeared. Now we just sit in cubicles all day, then go home and watch TV. Yet we still eat as if we're out doing hard physical work for 12 hours a day.

 

[Crono]

I think lack of exercise, rather than too much or unhealthy food is the problem.

It's both for a lot of people. You can focus on one or the other to get be healthier or get in shape, but even skinny people can have type II diabetes, hypertension, or heart disease. And some foods with naturally occurring or man-made carcinogens can lead to a higher risk of cancer.

Obesity, though, can be addressed by either diet or exercise, or both.

 

[OverVolt]

Stress

 

[Ksyder]

Also not enough sleep.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/sleep/

 

[IGBT]

it's industrial fast food joints and mass media advertising. The advertising works. The evidence is waddling all around us.

 

[justoh]

I think lack of exercise, rather than too much or unhealthy food is the problem.

The male body is designed for manual labor, hunting and other physically exhausting tasks. In the last ~50 years, this type of work has almost disappeared. Now we just sit in cubicles all day, then go home and watch TV. Yet we still eat as if we're out doing hard physical work for 12 hours a day.

That doesn't make any sense. If they're moving less they should be eating less. How isn't it a problem of overeating?

 

[ProchargeMe]

You must not be from the south. Everybody is fat here. Hell I get picked on because I'm a lean male in the south.

 

[Doppel]

People who say lack of exercise are simply wrong. Americans on average are eating more calories than they were decades ago. As one would thus expect, office workers were much leaner decades ago than they are now, despite being just as sedentary. Exercise also increases the body's requirement for calories (not surprisingly). The body isn't completely retarded and thus increases its perceived needs as output increases.

The reasons we eat more are:

1) Changes in diet (more sugary & processed foods)
2) Public perceptions and stigma softening on obesity. There are so many fat asses around now that the level of shame associated with being one is a shadow of what it once was.

You must not be from the south. Everybody is fat here. Hell I get picked on because I'm a lean male in the south.

Precisely. I bet plenty of fat asses have no problem telling you that you don't eat enough or, if you're seriously lean, you're "unhealthy".

 

[Juddog]

Calories go in, fat comes out. You can't explain that.

 

[PingviN]

Too much food, too little exercise. Wanna be less fat? Eat much less, work out more.

 

[DrPizza]

Yes, but weight in baseball is not as important as in football. Baseball players are far more slim and fit than average american man, just go to any minor league game.

Well, duh! That's because they're using all sorts of drugs to keep in that shape.

This really isn't hard to figure out at all. Men have higher metabolisms and muscle mass than women, but most of us - men and women both - work in offices or in other environments where there isn't a lot of physical activity.

And then go home, sit down in front of the television & not move from there for 5 hours (the average is more than 5 hours per day). When I first saw the commercials - "you can record up to five shows at once" for whatever brand of DVR, I was left thinking, "5 shows at once? Holy shit do people have no life."

 

[Meghan54]

Beer.

 

[Ventanni]

So I'm going to throw some potentially controversial things into this conversation. I emphasize that it's meant to be constructive, however I am willing to admit that I might be wrong with some of these:

Being a "man" and being "macho" are two completely separate things, and I think there are a lot of incorrect things in our society such as our media that give men the wrong impression much in the same way I think we can all agree that women are given the wrong idea too. And it's not that men are being told to shove food down our faces, but if you look at our response as a whole, it may be coming into play in allowing it to happen. Media reinforces to us to be macho, but you can only learn to be a man through experience and through the wisdom of another man.

I think we also have to factor in the "unattainables". Our society loves sex, because seriously who doesn't, but a lot of the things we view are far from realistic. As an example, look at any Marvel comic book for instance. And I'm not saying Marvel Comics are bad, but if you look across the entire board of everything we're consuming, I mean all of it put together, it's rife with unattainables. We watch Diet Coke commercials with men who are paid to work out 6 days a week, or watch movies with women who have had tens of thousands of dollars worth of plastic surgery to make them look the way they are. And, I think because we subconsciously realize that we would never be able to attain that, we don't strive for it. Why bother working for something you can't achieve?

And lastly, we do it to ourselves. We allow it to happen. I'm going to write this post, and afterwards I'm going to go to work, and on the way, I'm going to pick up 4 burritos from McDonald's because it's payday, and I'm hungry. Why? Because no one is going to hold me accountable to my opinion. And I use myself purely as an example, because I work in management and I see it all the time, and that is that we, as a society, are terrible at holding each other accountable in a constructive manner. This is largely due to the fact that we're never taught to verbally communicate in our education system. Most communication and attempts to hold each other accountable come out as extremely passive-aggressive to me, which are completely non-productive and ineffective in both the work place and at home.

When I was young, someone once told me that, "If only you were more confident, you'd get the girls." And while he was 100% correct in every way, the passive-aggressive manner in which it was communicated only reinforced to me that I was, indeed, a failure. And at the time, I responded in the only way I knew how, and that was to jog. I absolutely enjoyed running at the time, and I still do. But for many men, our response to these kinds of pressures aren't so positive. Many men respond by bottling up inside, drinking, or, well, eating, and we're back to square one and another post on the Anandtech OT forums regarding the subject.

So that's my take. I could be completely wrong, but I think there are other factors at play here too. There's no single reason for it, but it's a combination of many factors. The availability of food is definitely there, but there's also a reason why men are eating more in the first place. Something has to drive that.