Awhile back, I made a point of really looking at people here in my small Missouri town (22,000 pop.) while I was out running . I don't know if I just happened to be out when only thinner people were out or what, but what I noticed was how everyone I saw was slim to average or slightly plump, and at worst maybe 20-30 pounds too heavy to be fashionably slim. I didn't see anyone who appeared morbidly obese or much more than 40 pounds overweight-men and women alike. A few weeks later, I had to pick someone up at the KCI airport, and again-only slim to average sized people in the waiuting area, with the pudgier people only 20-30 lbs too heavy, and only 2 or 3 people (all women) I'd call fat. That was with about 40 minutes of sitting there 'people-watching'.(Bear in mind that I am 5'4" and 113 lbs, so it's not like my view of what's fat is skewed too low or too high -I don't consider Callista Flockhart or Lionel Ritchie's daughter 'fat chicks', or Roseanne 'slightly chubby'.) Now, anecdotes don't equal scientific data, I know...but it really seems to me like I'm seeing fewer and fewer really gigantic people when I'm out, and the ones that are fat are "1970s fat" : 50 pounds overweight, tops, not 300-400-500+ lbs, as was all too common here only a few years ago. Is it possible that headway is slowly being made here in the US? What have other freepers noticed in your towns/cities?
Well, of course you didn't see them. They were all at home, gobbling Hagen Daz and watching the day soaps, while their copies of "Sweatin To The Oldies" moldered on the shelf. ;-)
I live in a small Tennessee town, around 25,000. We've got lots of fat people here.