Circus fat man 1890

[CK 17]

In 1890 you had to go to a circus to find him. Now, look in any given direction in any western country and you’re likely to see 3 or 4.
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[lupussonic]

Bavaria?

[LeeG]

love them carbs

[Jim Bow]

The Tattooed Lady used to be a rarity also.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Put him in an electric cart and he just becomes another Walmart shopper.

[Gerarddm]

If you google fattest states in the country, you will find lots of folk just like him, or even ( gasp! ) worse.

[wizbang 13]

we call Albertsons "Fatpersons".
sometimes i think maybe socialized medicine would not be best.

[Durnik]

that's hardly fat at all here in TN.. or as I recall, the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

[Bflat]

"One in three Americans weighs as much as the other two." -David Sedaris-

[Jim Mahan]

Recently on imgur I saw a post by a woman who had lost three hundred pounds. She not only posted her before and after photos, she also wrote a bit about it, including that she still felt like she wanted to go another fifty. One of the things she stated was, words to the effect that, the amount of weight she had lost was how much a refrigerator weighs. She asked rhetorically, can you imagine carrying a refrigerator around with you all day every day?

I was only just over two hundred when I changed things and lost fifty pounds. That was about fifteen years ago and today I'm one-fifty-seven. Six one. Funny, to me, that that is twenty pounds under what I weighed from basic training at eighteen to when I was in my early forties, before I somehow gained about fifty, and now I still have the same little bit of flab around my middle. I refuse to get obsessed enough to 'get abs.'

[LeeG]

that's hardly fat at all here in TN.. or as I recall, the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

ermm, there is down here.

[LeeG]

Recently on imgur I saw a post by a woman who had lost three hundred pounds. She not only posted her before and after photos, she also wrote a bit about it, including that she still felt like she wanted to go another fifty. One of the things she stated was, words to the effect that, the amount of weight she had lost was how much a refrigerator weighs. She asked rhetorically, can you imagine carrying a refrigerator around with you all day every day?

I was only just over two hundred when I changed things and lost fifty pounds. That was about fifteen years ago and today I'm one-fifty-seven. Six one. Funny, to me, that that is twenty pounds under what I weighed from basic training at eighteen to when I was in my early forties, before I somehow gained about fifty, and now I still have the same little bit of flab around my middle. I refuse to get obsessed enough to 'get abs.'

Middle age and the internet put 20 lbs on me. Drinking added 40 more. I got the 40 off but I think I’m going to have to make some bigger changes to take that 20 off. My frame was not designed for that much eatra weight and my heart definitely isn’t.

[bluedog225]

I was listening to a doc this weekend who was commenting on the healthy bodies of those who competed in naked and afraid. 60-90 days of gathering food all day, and eating very little. They end up tan, muscled, and lean.

[Paul Pless]

I was listening to a doc this weekend who was commenting on the healthy bodies of those who competed in naked and afraid. 60-90 days of gathering food all day, and eating very little. They end up tan, muscled, and lean.

that show is a guilty pleasure of mine

i am often amazed at participants inability to make fire

i mean ****, if you were going on that show wouldnt you for damn sure know how to make fire in any weather?

[Breakaway]

i mean ****, if you were going on that show wouldnt you for damn sure know how to make fire in any weather?

I think fire-incompetence tops the producers' guest selection rubric.

kevin

[Rich Jones]

In my work at the local hospital, I see obese patients all the time. Discharging them they are sucking on the oxygen bottle for all they are worth. I often put them in a car that is reeking of cigarettes. Sad.

I've lost 20 pounds three times now. Six months after giving up the strict dieting, I've put the weight back on.
It seems my body to very happy at 192-195 lbs.

[Jimmy W]

I think my brother in law was bigger than the OP. He had a heart attack while driving on highway. He did manage to step on the brake and my sister grabbed the steering wheel. She was a RN and said he was dead by the time the car stopped.

[wizbang 13]

Middle age and the internet put 20 lbs on me. Drinking added 40 more. I got the 40 off but I think I’m going to have to make some bigger changes to take that 20 off. My frame was not designed for that much eatra weight and my heart definitely isn’t.

how much does one have to drink to gain 40 pounds ?
ive averaged a six pack a day for 40 years, and i top out at 150,same as in high school

[LeeG]

how much does one have to drink to gain 40 pounds ?
ive averaged a six pack a day for 40 years, and i top out at 150,same as in high school

I think I ate more when drinking.

[Nicholas Carey]

how much does one have to drink to gain 40 pounds ?
ive averaged a six pack a day for 40 years, and i top out at 150,same as in high school

I was about 140-150 from age 17 or so (c. 1977) until I moved to Seattle c. 1994, then I went up to about 175-ish pretty quickly.

The difference was I had been living in Ann Arbor Michigan. Small college town, where it was easier to walk or bicycle than to drive. And doing a lot of distance cycling. And cross-country skiing.

Seattle is not a very walkable city, and bicycling in town is fraught with hazard due to traffic. And, driving an hour to get out of town to bicycle is a little odd. Cross-country? In the Cascades, it's always red lister weather. And I HATES klister: second only to 5200 in its ability to get on stuff yards away from where it was being applied.

Moving in with SWMBO probably didn't help, though -- two people can eat approximately 3 times as much as one, especially if you both love food and drink.

And since the COVID lockdowns? Another 20 pounds -- used to get out at lunch and walk most days. Not any more.

[john welsford]

that show is a guilty pleasure of mine

i am often amazed at participants inability to make fire

i mean ****, if you were going on that show wouldnt you for damn sure know how to make fire in any weather?

I'm sure that a lot of that is staged/scripted.
Fun concept though, I'd be a starter.

John Welsford

[CK 17]

I’m not sure of the accuracy of this, but heard on a podcast that only 8% of US citizens have a BMI under 24, only 2% are under 24 for healthy reasons; The rest have cancer, are alcoholic, have an eating disorder, are smokers etc.

[Tom Montgomery]

In 1890 you had to go to a circus to find him. Now, look in any given direction in any western country and you’re likely to see 3 or 4.
CD669C96-FB84-49C3-84E3-2D59111EF89E.jpg

[bluedog225]

23.7. But I’m using my original height before I lost 2”. Heart association says I’m on the borderline of being overweight.

[Gerarddm]

#12: I have always been amazed at the human body's ability to cope with morbid obesity. When your doc tells you that you need to loose 15 lbs, it's unhealthy for you, want about the people who weigh 100, 200 pounds too much, yet still live? I just don't get it.

Three years ago I got up to 202. I'm just shy pf 6'-1". Other than some love handles you couldn't really tell that I was sort of in shape but out of tone. I gave up some carb indulgences and today I hover around 170, i.e. what I weighed in college. Zero love handles. Good enough.

[Keith Wilson]

What do you expect? For almost all of our species' history, starvation was the problem, not obesity, and we evolved so that at the rare times when lots of food was available, we'd eat it all.

[Paul Pless]

i got up to 325 when i could no longer walk
knee replaced and foot rebuilt
since feb 1st i hike and bike nearly every day and am down to 280
friends (tomf) tell me i could accelerate the weight loss by adding a lifting regimen
but i cannot think of more boring and mind numbing activity
other friends tell me to give up carbs to lose weight more quickly
eff that, life would not be worth living without beer, bourbon, and pizza
life gets easier and better daily
im on the right track

[Joe (SoCal)]

I lost 10 lbs in Italy the Mediterranean diet agrees with me, sadly I’ve put it back on since we got back

[ron ll]

Prior to the pandemic, I bounced between 195-205. Since then I’ve gradually come down until for the last six months I’ve been pegged every day at 180. No conscious effort, just a general lifestyle change of not going out for a beer and cheeseburger as often.

[Too Little Time]

I weigh 10 pounds above my "ideal" "running" weight. It provides a buffer in case of sickness.

[LeeG]

i'm down to 188.4 from 234.4 three years go, so 46 pounds less. my target is still 180, and with the two holidays coming up, i figure mid-february should see me there.
it will be nice to be on maintenance.

That’s about the same as me.

[pkrone]

I exercise because I like beer.

[webishop14]

About 20 years ago my doc told me that "the experts" wanted us to weigh what we weighed in high school. For me, that would have been 185 lbs. (I'm 6' 3"). At the time, I weighed around 250 lbs. My doc had also been add pounds over the years that I had been seeing her. Over time, eating a near-Mediterranean diet and walking two miles daily, I brought my weight down to around 215 lbs. A year ago last summer, my God-daughter (who was staying with me at the time) proposed we go on a two-week "boiled egg" diet (near keto). At the end of two weeks, I brought my weight down to about 202 lbs. Then over a couple of months, I brought it down to 198, where I was able to hold it steady. But, 185 lbs? Something I had given serious thoughts to, but not right then. So I continued to hold my weight at 195, while walking 2 miles a day. OK, 2 miles isn't much, but for me, at 77, it served me well.

Then came my 78th birthday last summer. For dinner I had the salmone grigliato at my favorite Italian restaurant. I finished that (about 2/3 of the way through) with a perforated esophagus. The next day, Saturday, my surgeon was making happy noises about how fit I was. Two weeks later (September 2), I was discharged from the hospital, marginally ambulatory with a walker. When I was finally able to stand up long enough to get to a scale to weigh myself (about 3-4 weeks later) I found I weighed 185 lbs. Just what I weighed in high school. TADA! OK, so I had help. In the weight-loss arena, I'd likely be red-flagged for it. But today I weighed in at 186 lbs. BMI of 23.1. So I'll call myself a 2%er.

These days I'm rotating between walking 1 1/5 miles and 1 3/4 miles each morning. I expect, in time, to get back to walking 2 miles again. My God-daughter, who had been in Med school since last July, was amazed to see me walking about normally just last week. Life is good when the body is reasonably fit. I imagine that I wouldn't be writing this if I had weighted 400 lbs. on my birthday this year.

[leikec]

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I’m a little lighter (about 20lbs) now than this picture back in June, but I’ve been heavy since I got married.

Jeff C

[Tom Hunter]

Suddenly starting about 1980 the obesity rate started to rise world wide. No one can provide a solid explanation why, though researchers are trying. It's not just about eating too much or exercising too little, there are other things going on.