I am not offended by this question, because I sometimes wonder the same thing. I can also agree with the person who said that lower income folks tend to be larger because of the less expensive foods that are very filling (pasta and potatoes). Also advertising in the USA is geared toward cars, junk food, and prescription drugs!

I am sometimes amazed at the girth on the majority of people I see when I'm out. In fact, one year at a fair, my neice and I sat and watched people walk by and we tried to count those who were overweight. It got to the point that if they were not huge, we didn't count them because overweight seemed to be normal!

I was raised in a PA Dutch area (German decent) and those people really eat the stick to the ribs diet. It really surprises me to hear that Germans aren't overweight, too. I always thought it was the cooking that made most of the people in my area overweight.

As for me, I wasn't really that much overweight until I had children. Before that, I averaged 150 lbs. I went up a little with the first two babies, but was about 175 when I got pregnant with my 3rd child when I was 40 years old. It has changed my whole body and I still weight almost what I weighed when I delivered him.

As Nat said, dieting made things much worse. The more I dieted, the fatter I got. I have gotten myself into a situation where it is almost impossible for me to lose weight. This will take time to remedy, but that's why I'm here

Carol