Fat Report: Florida Gets Fatter for 3rd Year in a Row

Very fat man and woman taking a sun bath
For the third year in a row, Florida got fatter and joins 15 other states who also saw a rise in adult obesity over last year reports Marni Jameson in The Orlando Sentinel.

In spite of all the free nutritional and weight loss advice online, tons of local weight loss programs like Calla Slimspa Medical Weight Loss Center, perfect sunny outdoor workout weather and weight loss inspiring shows like The Biggest Loser, Florida still got fatter. Even with bikini inciting weather year-round, Florida got rounder. And we’re not the only ones, not one state in the country got thinner this year states the annual fat report.

But what is considered obese?
A BMI of 30 or above.

Overall, Florida ranks about 29th in the race for the fattest state in the nation. We’re about midway between the fattest state, Mississippi, and thinnest state, Colorado. Our obese population comprises 26.1% of the state and if you factor in overweight individuals as well then our combined score soars to 62.6%. As Jameson states “that means about two out of every three adults is obese or overweight (with a BMI of 25 to 29).”

If you need a visual of the change in our fat levels, check out the graphic below which illustrates the adult obesity rates per county in Florida from 2004 and 2008. And that graphic is over 3 years old. Since then we have only gotten fatter as a state.

From these statistics, it appears that South Beach is the only region in Florida that can claim hard bodies and beautiful people.

“Twenty years ago, no state had an obesity rate above 15%. Today, more than two out of three states, 38 total, have obesity rates over 25%, and just one has a rate lower than 20%,” states the report from Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Here are some of the other findings that Jameson lists on her article:

12 states have obesity rates over 30%. Four years ago, only 1 did.
In Florida, the obesity rate has gone up 80% in 15 years. In 1995, it was 14.3%.
Colorado, the thinnest state with a rate of 19.8%, would have been ranked as the fattest state in 1995. That year the fattest state was Mississippi, which had an obesity rate of 19.4%.

“The fact that America’s weight problem has mushroomed over the last 20 years is not a problem society can afford to ignore, the report emphasized. Obesity is related to more than 13 chronic diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension, and is the biggest reason the nation’s health-care costs keep rising,” writes Jameson.

But why has our weight mushroomed so exponentially?
“Our genes haven’t changed that much in thousands of years, but we have seen a rapid change in the environment, and that has interacted with our genetic propensity toward obesity,” said Dr. Steve Smith, an obesity expert and scientific director of the Florida Hospital Sanford Burnham Translational Research Institute, in Orlando.

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