Where are all of the fat people?

One thing that Jubin and I noticed right away here, and keep being amazed by (and commenting on) is the rarity of obese people here in Belfast. Now, to be totally clear, lots of people here appear somewhat plump and a bit out of shape (think about all of the potato, meat, and beer consumed). But, we have seen very, very few obese people. Granted, we are coming from the U.S. with a 35.9% obesity rate. And, Michigan is ranked the 9th fattest US state, with close to 29% of the population being obese....but still, the difference is striking. Note that I am NOT passing any judgments in this post. I am simply stating what we are seeing and what facts I could dig up relatively quickly/easily.

Here comes trouble...above and below!

So ironic...Jamieson wants nothing to do with his stroller, but Watson is always happy to use it!

At first, we attributed the apparent rarity of obesity to life style - certainly, we are experiencing a much more active lifestyle here than at home. However, I decided to dig a little deeper because I was surprised that a country with so much rain, cool average temps, and long dark winters could really support that much better of a lifestyle than MI could. So, is there really a difference? I looked up obesity rates and found that 23% of the N Ireland population, as well as the whole UK population, is obese. That percentage is certainly lower than Michigan's 29%, but that isn't exactly a low percentage. So, where are they? Staying inside (the City is much less accessible than Lansing is...)? Living in the countryside (have scientists found differences in obesity rates in urban vs rural settings?)? Weird!

Jamie and I went for a walk last weekend (mid-Nov) when it was raining off and on.
On the way back home, we saw a rainbow.
We could see it end to end when standing with our backs to our house.

I then thought that perhaps it is the 'morbidly obese' who are so very visible in MI who might be absent from Belfast. What are the stats on that? These stats are harder to come by, but in 2011, 1.7% of men and 3.2% of women in the UK were morbidly obese, as compared to 6.6% in the US in 2010 (couldn't find rates for individual states). So, the small differences in rates of both obesity and morbid obesity between Michigan and N. Ireland might be contributing to our experience here. However, if we do a numbers game, and randomly pull 100 people in MI and 100 in N Ireland, we would expect about 35 people in MI as compared to about 28 people in N Ireland to be either obese or morbidly obese. Could this difference of 7 people out of every 100 really account for the difference in what we are seeing here in Belfast? It doesn't seem like it... Really and truly (no exaggeration), I can think of only 3 obese people I have seen since arriving here! So, that leads me to my title - where are all the fat people?

For those interested, here are some of the websites I found:
http://www.noo.org.uk/NOO_about_obesity/adult_obesity/international
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/