generation x is the fattest of them all

Curiosity got the best of me, and I wanted to know which age group has the biggest problem putting down the fork. To no surprise, it's the age group I'm in...

...although you wouldn't know that by looking at me, as my BMI is currently 22.3. On my desk is usually a tall water bottle with a capacity of 700ml (about 24 fl oz) that gets refilled several times a day. Oh yes, I drink water and a lot of it. How much? I don't track it, but I'd guess 2 to 3 liters daily.

What water do I drink? Tap. All I add to it is ice. I drink this for three reasons. Fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to get water.

If I were buying water from the grocery store, I'd have to leave the house, go to the grocery store, get the water, wait in line, pay for the water, cart that out to the car, bring back to the house, drink all the water over a week or whatever, recycle the empty jugs, repeat once weekly...

...or just skip all that, go to the sink, fill my water bottle, add ice and drink. So that's what I do.

And since most bottled or jugged water comes from a local municipal water supply anyway, if I were concerned about the quality of the tap water, I would just get a home distiller to distill the water myself. I mean, sure, there are water filter pitchers and have been for a long time, but to truly get that "bottled water quality" or better, might as well get the distiller to really do it right.

Moving on..

How do I know Generation X is the fattest? I asked AI about it. It said the 40-59 age group is the fattest in America. Supporting articles AI provided were legitimate, so yes, the information was accurate as far as I could tell. Generation X at the time I write this is age 45 to 60. Technically, a little bit of the tail end of Generation Y is in there, but X still has the lion's share for being the fattest.

"Not possible"

There are those who sincerely believe it is extraordinarily difficult to not be fat after 40, and absolutely impossible to not be fat if you're over 50.

I'm over 50, and again, my BMI is 22.3. To put that in perspective, BMI 25 to 30 is fat and BMI over 30 is obese.

At one point in my life, I briefly tripped over into obesity and had a BMI of almost 31. Diet and exercise fixed that. But I didn't drink anywhere near as much water as I do now. My diet has also changed. I eat more greens, more yogurt, keep away from the sweets, and so on.

This doesn't mean I've not had stumbles. At the tail end of last year, I was piling away way too much chocolate, eating terribly, and had put on over 15 pounds. Not good. But now I'm just about back to where I want to be.

Before continuing, BMI 22.0 is as low as I go and no lower. That's a hard limit I set for myself, and it's a good one.

Skinny man problems

The two main problems I have as a skinny man these days are restaurants and "fat guy thinking".

The stomach isn't a muscle, but somewhat acts like one. Eat too much and get fat, and the stomach gets bigger. Eat less and get skinny, and the stomach shrinks.

This is a problem where restaurants are concerned, because all of them serve giant-sized portions for any meal. These meals are designed for big people. I'm not big. I literally cannot fit all that food in my stomach unless I want to eat myself sick, which I obviously don't want to do...

...and this leads to the second problem, fat guy thinking. I spent the majority of my adult life eating way too much, then lost weight and now eat much less food. My stomach is naturally smaller as a result. But to this day, my brain thinks I can still put away a giant plate of food. I see a towering pile of food on a plate and think, yeah, I can totally eat all that. Easy! Nope. Wrong. I can't eat all that, because if I do, I will get sick from overstuffing myself.

Speaking of which, "stuffed" is a feeling I don't like anymore. Being stuffed makes me feel lethargic, tired and slightly sick. In my fat years, I didn't know the difference between stuffed and full. All I knew for the longest time was stuffed. I know what full feels like now, and I can assure you there is a significant difference between stuffed and full.

What I have learned that's stuck with me is to think ahead, as in really consider what will happen after eating certain things.

For example, a doughnut. And not just any grocery store prepackaged crusty crap. A good doughnut that was made that day in a doughnut shop.

Forget the fact the doughnut is at least 300 Calories and completely wrecks staying within a certain Calorie limit for the day. (Depending on what limit you follow, 1 doughnut could be anywhere from 15% to 25% of your daily intake.)

That doughnut, at the mouth, is great. Tastes lovely, and the texture is nice.

After that, it goes down the throat and starts to digest.

It's knowing what happens then that keeps me away from doughnuts.

Eating a doughnut means consuming a baked pile of dough that is effectively a small cake. That dough is going to hit the stomach and stay there for a while. In that dough is a bunch of dough conditioners, sugar, and who knows what else. I know it will not digest well.

The sugar high hits the brain before digestion even begins. Initially, the hit feels good, but not long after that will be a crash. The all too familiar lazy do-nothing feeling sets in and all I want to do is sit somewhere and recover.

All this from one doughnut. But it's not like I'm having just the doughnut. Gotta have the coffee with it because that matches up perfectly with doughnuts. Yeah, let's just eat a cake full of conditioners and sugar and chase that with caffeine. What could possibly go wrong?

I know what goes wrong. A gut full of junk, a momentary sugar high followed by a crash, chased with caffeine so I feel both alert and tired at the same time.

That is a feeling of sick. Being I don't want to feel sick, I don't eat doughnuts.

And that's just one of several "foods" I outright avoid. Don't even get me started on milkshakes.

But this does get me thinking about a question..

Is this natural body rejection or just awareness?

Natural rejection means you could eat certain things when younger, but when older, the body says "don't eat that".

Awareness is what I just talked about a moment ago. Thinking ahead to what will happen after eating things you shouldn't eat.

I think the answer is awareness due to life experience.

In my younger years, sure, I'd pile away all the sodas, pizzas, fast food, cakes, pies, whatever. But when I really think about it, I always felt discomfort after eating any of that. Being I was young, I didn't know any better. If I got indigestion, trapped air or anything like that after eating trash, my thought was I guess this is normal and just left it at that.

No, not normal, and never was.

Later on as I got older, I learned to stop and think first. If I think about eating trash now, my thought is different. If I eat X, Y will happen. If Y is something I know will make me sick, nope, I don't eat it.

What I battle more than anything else is fat guy thinking as I said earlier, even as a skinny man. I know to stay away from the trash foods, but if presented with something not trash that I really like, it's sometimes difficult to back off.

For example, I have a thing for macaroni salad. Loved it ever since I was a kid and still do. If I don't watch myself, I can pile through an entire 16oz container of that in one sitting. Yes, a pound of macaroni salad. And I know that chowing down on that much pasta in one go is a bad idea. A small amount is fine, but a whole pound of it? Yeah, that will make me sick for a few hours.

Or lets take something else, a 6oz box of raspberries. Just like the macaroni salad, if I get a box of those, I'll eat the whole thing quick if I don't watch myself. Will that make me sick? Yes it will. Eating a few raspberries is fine, but downing half-a-pound of them will make my stomach acids go crazy trying to digest all that.

This also counts for other fruits. Seedless red grapes? I'll eat fistfuls of those if I don't watch myself. Oranges? I'll eat one and just one or my gut reacts the same way as if I downed a box of raspberries.

And again, I had these same issues when I was young and they were there the whole time. The difference now is that I've gained knowledge, recognize what will happen when I pile in too much food and know to back off...

...most of the time. I don't always succeed, especially with the fruits.

The 6oz box of raspberries is a really good example of that. Looks so small, but it is literally half a pound of food.

To put that in perspective, normal sized people at their absolute limit can fit 2 to 3 pounds of food in them. I'm on the lower end, so 6oz of food is almost 19% of my stomach capacity.

Remember how I said the stomach isn't a muscle, but acts like one? For an obese person, their stomach has been stretched out so much from piling in so much food for so long that they could probably consume up to 8 pounds in a single sitting.

As gross as this sounds, yes that does mean a 30+ BMI person could literally drop anywhere from 4 to 7 pounds just by "doing a number two" in the bathroom.

Oh, and I still have another problem from fat guy thinking. Chugging.

To this day, I chug drinks, even when it's water. The proper way to drink anything is to sip. Chugging slams a bunch of liquid into the gut, and the gut doesn't like that.

At a restaurant, I thankfully don't chug just out of politeness. But in my living space, yes I sometimes still do it. This is especially annoying with water because I'll get waterlogged, my gut complains, and all I can do is wait it out until my gut stops complaining. Thankfully, this doesn't take all that long, but still, if I just didn't chug, there would be no problem. This is something I'm still learning.

I can only wonder how many other Gen X'ers out there have the same problems

I was heavy but am now thin, but due to fat guy thinking I'm still retraining my brain how to eat and drink.

Diligence and vigilance are the keys to know, I suppose. Stay the course, stay alert. Keep the calories down, listen to what your gut tells you, don't eat giant piles of food, don't chug.

Published 2025 Jul 1