Fat experiences

Went to the beach yesterday and honestly the amount and level of fat I saw on the people around me was shocking. It was everyone there that was fat. Most in shape I saw was a guy whose abs seemed to be struggling to show through some new layers of fat. We are talking about thick and still at the phase where a week or two of gym sessions and cardio would show the abs again. It was just so strange. They weren’t even Americans. Is the whole world getting fat now? There were in total made 4 fit people. Well it was me and my boyfriend then this one girl and her boyfriend. It was so strange.

The average uk dress size is a 16 which is the red zone for belly fat for women as it’s a 34 inch waist. Everyone is getting fatter

I know I am. I only gained like 30 lbs on purpose last year for fun but now I can't seem to shed more than ten of them.

It's definitely happening all over the world though mostly to people without our proclivities. Sugar and cars.

Some sources say Yes.

“Global obesity rates have skyrocketed over the past three decades — According to a study in The Lancet, between 1990 and 2021, obesity prevalence in men increased by an astounding 155%, while women saw a 105% increase. The trend is not slowing down. By 2050, an estimated 3.8 billion adults — more than half the global adult population — will be overweight or obese.

“Obesity is spreading faster in developing regions than ever before — Historically, obesity was most prevalent in high-income nations like the U.S., but the most dramatic increases are now occurring in Africa and Asia. The study found that sub- Saharan Africa is expected to see a staggering 254.8% rise in overweight and obese individuals by 2050, with Nigeria alone forecasted to have 141 million affected adults.

“Some regions are already seeing obesity rates exceeding 80% of the population —
Countries in Oceania, North Africa and the Middle East are experiencing the highest rates, with some surpassing an 80% obesity prevalence among adults. This suggests that, in these regions, being overweight is becoming the norm rather than the exception.”

Article cites: The Lancet March 8, 2025, Volume 405, Issue 10481, P785-838

The quotes are from an alarmist fat-negative (my opinion) article on mercola.com, entitled Global Obesity Rates Are Surging as People Gain Weight Younger and Faster Than in the Past. Didn’t save a full URL for it, but the PDF version’s exact name is global-obesity-rates-surging-pdf.pdf (yes, the .pdf suffix is repeated. That site routinely does that). Likely putting that into a decent search engine will bring it up. The exact article title might bring up the WWW HTML version.

Probably better to just go to the source Lancet article rather than the Mercola one (i have not), unless one wants a dose of tending-hysterical fat negativity. Mercola’s theories as to why this is happening:

* Shifts towards more ultraprocessed foods (particularly in “developing nations”)
* Excess linoleic acid (mostly from vegetable oils)
* Estrogen and endocrine-disrupting chemicals
* Electromagnetic fields
* Intestinal dysbiosis

There’s another article i can’t find right now which claimed that even non-human animals around the world are getting fatter. Apart from pets and others in captivity, that’s not likely to be from ultraprocessed foods. I don’t remember which theories were espoused in that article, other than environmental things.