There are signs that Americans overall are getting a grip on their expanding waistlines for the first time in decades. But before anyone becomes too optimistic, the flip side is a significant jump in Americans who edged into the worrisome category of extremely obese.
The question then, heading into a New Year filled with well-intentioned resolutions for weight loss, is which trend will prevail? Is there reason to hope that Americans are turning a corner on a major public health issue?
“Americans seem to have woken up to the fact that we’ve got a problem, and the leveling off in obesity rates is a very good thing,” says obesity researcher Donna Ryan, a professor emeritus at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. “But there is still lots of hard work to do to get people to healthier weights.”
Recent government data showed that obesity among U.S. adults is continuing to level off after several decades of skyrocketing growth. In 2012, about 34.9% of the people in this country were obese, roughly 35 pounds over a healthy weight. That was not significantly different from the 35.7% who were obese in 2010, according to Cynthia Ogden, an epidemiologist with the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
