Obesity in America is still rising. In 2003, 32 percent of Americans were obese. By 2011, the figure was 35 percent. The most current data, for 2014, shows points to 38 percent of the population as obese. The data was collected by the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
This is extremely disappointing for many public health followers, given the shifts in people’s attitudes towards unhealthy foods and habits: Many people know more about nutrition today than they did 10 years ago. Soda consumption is down. Folks are opting for foods with more natural ingredients.
And yet, obesity persists.
The challenge on an individual level is well known. There are just too many temptations, too often during the day, and far too easy to say yes to. Until public health policy measures are enacted (restrictions on junk food advertising to kids, soda taxes, subsidies for fruits and vegetables instead of for soy and corn), it’s up to you personally to fight the system.
In order to beat the odds, you have to reshape your environment. How can you minimize your friction with tempting surroundings? There are many way:
- make your kitchen counter top temptation free, by placing washed fruit in a bowl instead of unhealthy snacks
- even better, don’t buy junk food at the supermarket, and you won’t be tempted to eat it at 11pm when you get a bad case of the munchies
- make your office environment healthy-food friendly. Too many offices today provide or make unhealthy snacks readily available. By speaking with your HR department about improvements, you may potentially impact more than just your own intake.
- improve the social environment by creating more events around physical activity rather than coffee-shop meet-ups.
- Additionally, eat something every 3 hours so that you are never hungry to the point you’ll eat the first thing in your face (usually fast food).
How do you change the obesogenic environment in your surroundings?
