Weight of the Union 2.0

From Anytime Fitness has released the Weight of the Union 2.0 infographic to coincide with the U.S. State of the Union Address this week.

Last night, the President gave his State of the Union address to members of Congress and the general citizenry to report that our nation is moving in the right direction. But today we want to address what the President didn’t mention in his speech to the union. We want to discuss our nation’s biggest health concern: obesity. We are offering its own barometer for measuring progress — the second annual report called the “Weight of the Union.”

There’s a lot of data shown in this design, and a good blend of different data visualizations, illustrations and text descriptions. 

My biggest complaint is that many of the data points are just listed in text, and they could have been visualized.  For example, the dollar values showing that “Being Fat is Expensive”, should have been scaled so they could be easily compared to each other or some outside comparative spending values.

The other major issue I have is the shading of the silhouette as a stacked bar chart doesn’t work accurately.  Readers see the “AREA” of the colored sections as being representative of the values.  Because of the odd shape, you can’t just color by height.  The boots are showing the biggest value “Sleep”, but because that part of the silhouette is narrow, “Work” actually visualizes as a much bigger portion of the whole than the data really shows.

I like the inclusion of the QR Code at the bottom as a promotion tool for Anytime Fitness.

Thanks to Amanda for sending in the link!

Comments

[mdenise | postcard printing services online]

I laughed at "Being fat is expensive", I know it's a serious matter but it's just so true. I myself went through different kinds of diet plans and these plans did cost a lot. On the other hand, do you believe that being healthy is also expensive? I mean, natural and/or "organic" goods are expensive too, IMO at least.

[Tim]

Randy, scary statistics for sure! Here's the fix...Stop eating processed foods, grains, sugar, soy, legumes, and all the other inflammatory foods that cause obesity and heart disease, and diabetes. Do the research, inflammation is what causes most all disease, and our typical Standard American Diet, is a diet of inflammation.

Just Eat Real Food. High quality pastured meats, eggs, good fats like coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil, rendered beef tallow, lard (from the pastured animals), eggs, non starchy vegetables (preferably from your local farmer) fruits and nuts and you will not only heal you on the inside, but you'll drop a bunch of weight too.

It isn't about calories in vs. calories out. The type of food you eat is what matters, not how much of it!

Stress less, get more sleep, and daily sun by going outside. For those in the winter climates, taking a vitamin D supplement is necessary when you have no sun! You don't need to kill yourself by hours of exercising which raises the cortisol in your system causing stress and no loss in weight.

The key to all of this is JUST EAT REAL FOOD. You will be surprised how much you "cure" just doing what I outlined above. If you don't believe me, click on my name and read my blog. I'm on the journey for a LIFETIME. Anyone can do this. No gimmicks, no b.s. Just Eat Real Food.