You know... all these people with the Atkins diet or the other kinda diets were they cut out all sweets or whatnot. Maybe it's just me... but I sort of think that if a person has a nice properly balanced diet and doesn't gordge themself full of food everytime they sit down to eat, then they would lose weight. It's not about completely dismissing one thing or another, it's about learning self responsiblity.

^this. You're right. Besides, diet alone isn't going to keep you healthy. You've got to be active.

Problem is that too many people just want to stay sitting on their couches and claim that they are fat because people shouldn't eat fruit and they aren't eating enough bacon.

Right. And they wait until it's to the point that they can no longer walk. So.. Then they go buy an electric scooter? Yeah, that's the spirit. Now you're expending no energy to move up and down the candy isle, wondering how it came to this.

I don't mean to be sound mean or anything, but in most cases being obese is something that can be controlled if you have the determination. If you really want to change your predicament, you can.

You forget, we are living in a society where nothing is ever the fault of the person that caused the problem. People get fat and sue McDonalds for selling them the food. Kids get burnt and the parents sue the company that makes the matches. A person breaks into someone's yard, climbs a tree and falls out, and they sue the person who's yard they broke into. No one is willing to stand up and take the responsiblity that they should. No one goes, Yeah, I shouldn't have eaten all those triple cheeseburgers, I shouldn't have let my kids play with matches, I shouldn't have climbed that tree. Society really needs to change.

*gets down off Soap box*

*takes a turn on the soap box*

You're right. "I have restless leg syndrome!" No... You have 'Need to go outside and be more active syndrome.' There's a syndrome, disorder, and a pill for everything that we do to ourselves. That's not to say these things don't exist, but a lot of problems people have these days can be traced directly to an unhealthy lifestyle.
And as you said, nobody wants to own up to being the one to blame for these problems. They just take pills to push their problems under the rug. They just sue McDonalds for making them fat because they have no self control. They just give their kids Ritalin because they don't want to deal with their kid. That last one's going a different direction, but they're all rooted in a lack of personal accountability and laziness.

I don't mean to ramble, but.. Will anybody ever take these problems seriously? I mean, hell.. One man almost killed himself trying to warn America about their eating habits (Super Size Me), and.. That seems to have just gotten shrugged off like it was nothing. Easier to ignore the problem, right?

This nation, among others, as you said, needs to change. I'm one man, and I'm doing my part. I can't change anybody, but I can lead by example.

I just keep waiting, hoping Darwin was right and eventually the lower selfdestructive rung of society would eventually wipe themselves out... and constantly I am proven wrong. They make all these exceptions and all these changes so that the group suffers so the individuals can be kept happy.
They recently took out all the playground equipment at the local park... someone could fall off of the slide and get hurt they said. Then they took out the baseball field... someone could try climbing the fence and get hurt they said. Now it's just a parking lot and a field of weeds, but people don't mind. They have television, they have internet. That's all they need. Live in these tight little boxes where they are told they can remain happy so long as they don't go outside, just stay in shop online at WalMart.com, order a pizza and get some Netflix movies.

We've failed as a society, and at times it feels like no one cares about that.

Human evolution has ground to a halt as we try and save everybody from themselves. Remove playgrounds to save children with no depth perception or sense of balance, that gene is passed on. Simultaneously we breed a generation that grows up to be less active.
Darwin is likely turning in his grave over this.

But at once, it's still evolution in action. We are breeding weaker, more fallible humans. Humans that are less resistant to disease, famine, injury.. We take medication and go to the hospital for everything. What will we do when an apocalypse occurs and none of these are available? Half the population will die within a week. I just know it. So many people in modern society couldn't hunt for food to save their lives. So many wouldn't know how to obtain or produce potable water. Too many wouldn't know what to wear in the bitter winter cold if they needed to survive a winter with no heat.

It's sad, really, it is. Not to say I have no faith in humanity. I do. Just not in the majority.

Only one option for survival: Have scientist develop human animal hybrids that will be stronger and better than human!

Carbs are fine. Long as ya burn em off. Now cholesterol, that's the sunuvabitch ya gotta look out for.