Texas The Fattest State


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:huh: I think it's more inactivity that creates excess weight, and not so much how much you eat. Your body naturally tries to burn off extra pounds, just that the owner doesn't always cooperate. Life is too easy in some ways in the USA, and there's too many people.

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Jesus Christ, what do these people eat everyday? I'll have a Triple Meat McFatty with some Super-Sized Greasy Fries with one gallon of Coke to go please. No wait, better go ahead and make it two gallons...

Thats pretty much it, I am in Austin and it seems like this is the "Fittest" of the larger Texas cities, but yea....its all that damn BB-Q and Tex-Mex

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Let's set a few things right, people.

The report you're speaking of is the one that recently ran in Men's Fitness magazine and covered on many national networks, such as NBC's Today (Link: Full Video Interview).

According to the report, it is true that Texas does in fact have some of the fattest people in America. Houston (not Huston, like you people in the north like to call it), the largest city in Texas, carried the title of Fattest City in America for three years straight (this year's title went to Detriot, Michigan).

To determine the top 25 fattest cities, the magazine assessed the 50 largest cities in 14 categories including air quality, climate, commute time, total number of fast-food and pizza restaurants, and number of health clubs and sporting goods stores.

66% of the Texas population is considered overweight. 33% of that 66% is considered obese.

As a native Houstonian, I can tell you right now that a lot of factors do hurt the Houston-area.

The Air Quality in Houston is not the best. As cited by the Houston Chronicle in a 1/3/04 article (Link), Houston had 94 days of unhealthy air for the years of 2000 to 2002 (Riverside-San Bernardino, California, ranked No. 1 with 445 days.).

The Climate here is not exactly the greatest either. Summer started early this year in Houston with most of May having temperatures over 90 degrees. Temperatures from then on through early September would hover from the mid-90s to lower-100s with heat indicies in the lower-100s to upper-110s. That alone would keep people indoors.

Getting around Houston isn't exactly easy either. The public transportation system here is nothing but a joke. There is no easy way from getting from Point A to Point B, which is why Houstonians love to travel by car. Unfortunately, this makes traffic a terrible nightmare. For commuters on the Katy Freeway, getting from their homes in West Houston to businesses Downtown during rush hour, they'll average about 45 minutes on the 20 mile stretch and then another 48 minutes on the way back home. And that's on a good day. You could be 1/2 to 2/3 of the way to San Antonio in that amount of time.

As you can tell, Houston just isn't a people city. But the city is taking inititives to turn things around. Former Mayor Lee Brown started a campaign to get Houston into better shape with the Get Lean Houston (Link) fitness program.

METRO, the local transit authority recently open the METRO Light Rail (Link) along Main Street from Reliant Stadium to Downtown. A step in the right direction for public transportation (although one I don't agree with). Hopefully this will open the door to larger commuter rail services from the outlying areas of Houston instead of the smaller Light Rail services.

Downtown is being revitalized with the introduction of the Main Event, a series of music, clubs, resturants, and other entertainment venues along Main Street. This will go along with the recently opening of the Toyota Center, our newest sports arena, Minute Maid Park (formerly Astros Field/Enron Field/the Ballpark at Union Station), the Verizon Wireless Theater, and the Theatre District.

Our very recently inauguated mayor Bill White will also continue what Lee Brown started, by making use of our extensive bayou system and growing parks and venues out of them for people to actually want to get out and visit.

Houston is doing its best to make itself presentable to the world again. It's baby steps like these that will help us improve this city. Hopefully Dallas, San Antonio, and Fort Worth will follow in our footsteps in making their cities better as well. ... ... ... but not too much better. All the cool events always go to those cities instead of Houston. :p

And no... I'm not part of this 66% or 33%. :p

For more information, visit http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/health/2331494

Edited by DorkOfNerky
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I will eat mounds of greasy of food and not think twice about calories and fat because I live a very active lifestyle. There are others I know who wake up, go to work, sit at a desk all day, go home, eat, watch tv and go to sleep. They eat healthier than I do but they rarely get physical exercise. Too many people would rather relax than move around. It's sad to think people honestly feel that they can eat low fat garbage and sit on their ass and expect their bodies to be trim and fit.

Go to the US and visit a Walmart. It's where the fatties commune and reload on garbage and junk. You will see that most of the people are round with huge asses, as if their bodies are formed to the shape of their couch.

We live in a time of convenience and relaxtion. grrr. :cry:

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I'd like to see where Australian cities come on that sort of report. There's always a big fuss over here about how fat we all are (not me!)

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I am fairly sure you could feed a whole african nation with the food the average Texas family eats... Man some of the combined weights of people in a BBQ beat down the entire WWE Crew

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I had a holiday in Houston last year, the portions of food have to be seen to be believed and you buy 1 coke or soft drink and you get free refills for the entire meal. Rather than feeling I HAD to eat everything placed in front of me, I actually left something !!.

We went to several parks and days out and there are even motorised karts for the fatties to drive round theme parks in !!!, they are not disabled, just bloody huge. I`ve never seen anything like it.

I agree with some of the previous posts, some of those people last night were looking to blame anything apart from themselves from the weather to the local transport system.

Get a grip people, dont eat so much ! sheesh.

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I agree with some of the previous posts, some of those people last night were looking to blame anything apart from themselves from the weather to the local transport system.

I know who this was pointed at. :p

But I totally agree with you. It's just like parents and violence. Instead of pointing the blame at their parenting skills, they'd rather pass the blame to movies, television, and video games. People are responsible for their own actions and if they don't do anything about it, well, you can see what happens. Of course this is a day and age of convenience as well, so that doesn't help this situation as well.

And no, I'm not trying to cover my ass about what I said earlier. This just goes to show there are a number of factors that could be the cause of this obesity issue (let's not even go near the Genetics argument!). But hopefully people will realize what they're doing and start taking advantage of offerings their cities may have to do what they can to shed those pounds.

Outside of libo and stomach stapling.

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