Quote Originally Posted by glam View Post
lol, have you ever struggled with being significantly overweight? as someone who is easily prone to gaining fat (i'm primarily endomorph body type), it's been a lifelong struggle to lose or maintain my weight - exercise is basically mandatory for someone like me if i don't want to be huge. yea you do have Americans who are "obsessed" with going to the gym and such, but for me frequent exercise isn't an obsession, so much as an obligatory activity if i wish to be at an ideal weight. i wish i had a body type that allows for easier maintenance of weight, but i'm not that lucky.

every time i have visited Europe i have lost weight, because i am walking everywhere all day long, and the food tends to be better quality. but like some others said, "walking everywhere" isn't really an option in many places in America. i live in the metro Atlanta area and you can't get anywhere outside the city if you don't have a car. even though my local shopping center is a 7-minute walk away from my place, i usually don't walk because there aren't even consistent sidewalks around here. if there are even sidewalks to begin with, they will go on for a bit then just randomly end in an inconvenient place. lol

also, Europeans are fatter than you might think: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-s...like-americans
Idk I have to walk everywhere because I'm a student; yeah Atlanta is probably one of the least walkable cities so that does suck. No I never struggled with being overweight because my parents raised me pretty healthfully and neither of them were overweight in their youth (my dad is now but that's because he eat junk all the time traveling for work, and ofc as he ages metabolism slows). But honestly I do gain weight pretty easily and when I see myself gaining weight, the thing I have to do is portion control. Cut down on my portions, stop eating fried food for like a week or do a water fast one day per week for a little and I'm perfectly fine. Europeans are becoming more and more obese yep but obviously they didn't go to gyms in the past much either. Anyway I definitely understand going to the gym if you have few opportunities to walk or exercise outside!
The uniquely american/western culture of being 'fit' gets on my nerves sometimes bc it seems like a new ideal for women. It's not gyms themselves that irritate me it's this new (late 2000s) ideal in the US that women should lift and have low body fat. This has no historical basis and literally makes no sense. Womanly ideals in the past were not muscular or fit, just slim and healthy. So this is why it bothers me.