Guess what; America is fat. I mean really fat. We’re talking chicken fries, extra cheese, a side of bacon, go easy on the vegetables and wash it down with a lard-shake fat. We’re talking losing your breath when you pull on your pants fat. We’re talking small children think you escaped from the zoo fat.

Without question, we are the fattest society that has ever graced this earth.

The latest weigh-in comes to us courtesy of a study done by the Trust for America’s Health, and according to those fine folks, the nation almost broke the scale. If Florida was America’s foot, we wouldn’t know if they got hit with a hurricane down there because we wouldn’t be able to see it.

According to that study, a whopping 64.5 percent of adult Americans are either overweight or obese. Not a single state in the nation met the goal of having 15 percent or less of the population obese. This means that not only is the majority of America overweight, but that the obesity epidemic stretches across every state, regardless of region.

In the study, Iowa tied for the 20th fattest state with Nebraska. Not horrible, but nothing to brag about, either. It’s estimated that direct costs related to obesity cost every Iowa citizen around $266 a year.

The question on everyone’s mind is: who’s to blame, and what do we do about it?

Our favorite target is, of course, the obese people themselves. The drill sergeant in all of us wants to yell out, “Can’t you see yourself when you get up in the morning? This isn’t a manatee look-alike competition! Do some crunches!” Those feelings are not only hurtful, but they can be misleading. Certainly there is a degree of self-responsibility when it comes to managing weight, but you simply can’t blame this sudden increase in weight on collective laziness.

The first thing to remember is our favorite friend: technology. Ol’ Technology is there to help us out when we want to re-align satellites, research a paper, look up porn or smart bomb a target of opportunity, but he sure does a lot of the manual labor for us, too. That means we’re spending more and more time just sitting around in bodies designed to work best running around hunting and gathering on the Serengeti. That can spell doom for your waistline.

Our other favorite target is “everyone bigger than us.” That means corporations like McDonald’s, the grocery store suppliers, your mother - even the federal government: basically everyone we can’t control that has an impact on our lives.

Although all those major players have a certain responsibility as well, there are other trends to consider.

Consider the fact that most couples, probably even your parents, have to both work jobs to support a family. There’s nobody at home to cook a nutritious meal while someone else is out there paying for it. We eat out more, and consequently, have less time. That means we eat on the run, pack it in when we can between classes or work and have even less time to squeeze in a jog or an hour to go lift weights.

Many people find themselves faced with the following decision; I can either be fat and successful or unemployed and gorgeous.

But frankly, we shouldn’t have to make that kind of a choice. Can’t we be the hardworking Americans we’ve always been, while still having a body that won’t kill us with heart disease, diabetes and strokes?

I think the answer here is; probably. But we’ll have to give up a lot of things. A little self-restraint can go a long way.

And I know you hate me for saying it, but we might even try acting like Europeans for once. They have pretty much everything we have – McDonald’s, booze, lazy chairs, Playstation, etc. Only they aren’t faced with the obesity epidemic we have here. Why is that?

I think it comes back to that old word that we gung-ho Americans hate to hear: balance. Europeans have found a balance between work, play, booze and McDonald’s that seems to work pretty well for them.

It might just be that with such a comprehensive problem we need an equally comprehensive change in the way we view our lifestyles and the way we eat. Even though living in a rational, calm balance isn’t that sexy. Or is it?