Let’s list all the ways being overweight is terrible for you: It’s terrible for your health, duh; it’s terrible for your relationships; it’s terrible if you’d ever like to get quality sleep; and now, you can add that it’s terrible for your wallet, too.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health wanted to understand just how expensive being obese is. In a study published last month in the journal Obesity, they focused on the high costs associated with medical care, as well as productivity losses due to missed days of work.
What they found was that a 20 year-old who went from obese to simply overweight could expect to save an average of $17,655 over his or her lifetime. If the same 20 year-old went from obese to a normal weight, they would save on average $28,020. That’s a lot of money!
If you’re 40, 50 or even 60 years old, you’re probably like, “Welp, sounds like I missed my chance to save almost 30,000 bucks, excuse me while I go tuck into a pint of Ben and Jerry’s,” right? Not true.
Overweight middle-aged people and seniors would be on track to save even more money than their 20-year-old chubby brethren, to the tune of over $31,000, $36,000 and $34,000 for a 40-, 50- and 60-year-old, respectively.
If raking in the extra cash just from losing weight still isn’t enough, think about your skinny friends who are helping to foot the 38 percent of our $2.45 trillion in mandatory spending built into the federal budget that pays for Medicare. If everyone who’s obese or overweight decided to collectively get down to a normal weight (and save $30,000+ each in the meantime) society as a whole would save even more come tax day.
So let’s recap: If you’re overweight and you start taking your weight loss seriously, you’ll most likely live a longer, happier life, you’ll save thousands of dollars and you’ll balance the budget. Who doesn’t want to get behind that?
A few other things we learned about our bodies today:
- The Daily Mail was kind enough to break down all the things people use to floss their teeth that isn’t floss. 7 percent of you use hair? Really??
- In depressing news about how serious depression is, depressed people risk living shorter lives than people who aren’t depressed.
- Type A personalities struggle with dieting more than others, possibly because they see diet regimens that fail as a problem with the diet, not with themselves.
- Lifehacker discovered a service that allows you to anonymously tell people they smell, which is awesome.
- Sound therapy is the new, trendy way of treating anxiety and depression.
- In today’s “no, duh” news, not eating so much and so often is a great way to lose weight.
Jeff Gross
Jeff Gross is MEL’s senior editor for social media and content marketing. His daily ICYMI column, which chronicles all things meta on the site, is the quickest way to catch up on MEL, and the funniest thing you’ll read all day. Follow him on Twitter.
