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Listen to the Eh Sayers podcast to meet the people behind the data and explore the stories behind the numbers. Join us as we meet with experts from Statistics Canada and from across the nation to ask and answer the questions that matter to Canadians.
Max: Welcome to Eh Sayers, a podcast by Statistics Canada, where we meet the people behind the data and explore the stories behind the numbers. I'm your host, Max Zimmerman, filling in for Teagan Bridge, who is taking a hiatus to spend some well-deserved quality family time on maternity leave.
I've been getting a lot of "gymfluencer" content on my for you pages lately.
People in fancy gyms with toned muscles and every piece of workout equipment imaginable at arm's reach. They're the kind of posts with motivational captions about how you too could have the physique of an Olympic track athlete if you simply follow a few easy exercises. These posts, they're meant to motivate and inspire us.
And if they work for you, that's awesome. But for the average busy adult in Canada, I'm gonna guess, they often end up having the opposite effect. Our guest in today's episode used a fascinating term in our conversation called obesogenic. It refers to an environment around us that promotes obesity. Think cheap junk food, alluring screens. More sedentary jobs than ever and you get the picture.
This got me thinking about how hard it must be to navigate the world of physical activity. As a young person today, we know how much time our teens are spending on screens and if their for you pages look like mine has recently they're being inundated with depictions of physical activity that just don't seem realistic and an obesogenic environment.
Researchers at StatCan just analyzed new data on obesity, physical activity, and screen time. So given the chance to speak to one of these experts, I had my questions at the ready.
Rachel: My name is Rachel Colley and I'm a senior research analyst at Statistics Canada. I'm a health researcher with over 20 years of experience working in academic and government settings. My broad research interest is examining the relationships between movement and health across the lifespan.
Max: Your team recently published two articles.
What did they study and what were you hoping to learn?
Rachel: Yeah, Statistics Canada recently released new results from the Canadian Health Measure Survey on the topics of obesity and physical activity. The last time we had results from the survey was 2019, which was, as we know before the COVID-19 pandemic. From the early two thousands until about 2019, we saw relative stability in obesity and physical activity among Canadians.
But the new results suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic may have had some important effects on obesity and physical activity.
Max: The term obesity actually refers to something pretty specific. I think when we bring up the term obesity, everybody kind of has an idea in their minds of what we're talking about, but they might not be certain of what exactly we are talking about specifically.
So could you explain what is obesity and maybe how it's measured?
Rachel: Yeah. Obesity is characterized by excess fat tissue in the body that is associated with a range of different health problems. The main ones we typically hear about are heart disease, type two diabetes and certain cancers. It typically results from a long term imbalance between energy in and energy out.
But it is actually very, very complex in terms of a condition and all the factors that influence how someone ends up accumulating excess weight over their lifetime. The way that we measure it at Statistics Canada, is using something called the Body Mass Index, or BMI. This is a quick way to estimate whether someone's weight is in a healthy range for their height.
It's calculated by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height and meters squared. While it's a useful screening tool, it's definitely not perfect, so we can use it for population health surveillance. We have large numbers of data on thousands of people. It works well in that situation, but at the individual level or in clinical settings, it's definitely not perfect.
It doesn't tell the difference between muscle and fat mass very well, so you could misrepresent people at the individual level. But for population surveillance, when we're limited in terms of the tools that we can use on that sheer number of people, the Body Mass Index, it gives us a really good indication of people who are in a healthy range of weight, those who are overweight, and then those who are obese.
Max: According to the articles that you and your team just posted, what are the latest data say about the rates of obesity in Canada?
Rachel: What's new with the results that we're talking about today was that we're, we're getting the first results from the Canadian Health Measure Survey that were collected in a post pandemic world.
So these data were collected between 2022 and 2024, and overall we went from a prevalence of overweight and obesity in Canada of 60% to 68%. Interestingly, the largest increase was observed among young adults, and here we're talking about people aged 18 to 39 years of age. So for males of that age range, it went from 22% before the pandemic to 33% after the pandemic.
And for females, it went from 17% to 29%. So it was that younger age group that seems to be driving that overall increase in the prevalence of obesity.
Max : Wow, those are quite the increases. Interesting as well that it seems to be predominantly our young people seeing those jumps. And what about physical activity? How are Canadians doing when it comes to meeting the recommended physical activity guidelines?
If we look at that youth age group, we went from 36% meeting the physical activity recommendation to 21%. In 2022 to 2024. But when we look at boys specifically age 12 to 17, they went from 50% to 33%.
But when we look at the girls, they went from 21% to 8%. So that's a really big drop and a really low level that we're seeing among the females, and that's what we saw. We saw that same sex difference or gender difference. During the pandemic as well. So that's really the take home message is that some age groups, so adults, young children, preschoolers, are doing okay when it comes to physical activity in terms of, in terms of maintaining their levels.
But youth is the age group that we're observing the biggest drop.
Max: In the Canadian Health Measures survey data in 2022 to 2024 like you were just talking about, we see that jump in the rate of obesity among young people. And at the same time we see the drop in percentage of young people in Canada, uh, meeting Canada’s physical activity recommendations.
So. Like I'm reading these articles and I'm thinking someone might look at this data and simply say, okay, that seems to be a direct sort of cause and effect. Young people are doing less physical activity and their rates of obesity are climbing, but something tells me that's not the full story. So could you explain why it's a bit more complicated than that?
Rachel: Yeah, so obesity is a very complex condition, and physical activity is only a one small part of explaining how people end up gaining extra weight. At its core, you know, it's this imbalance between energy in and energy out, but there's actually a diagram that many researchers use during presentations, which doesn't come across well on a podcast, but it's called a spaghetti diagram.
And if you can just imagine a plate of spaghetti, it has the energy balance equation in the middle, and then all of these lines circling around it, and it's tying together, you know, socioeconomic status, environmental factors, genetics, biology, opportunities for sport, all of these different factors that affect whether we're gonna be able to eat well and be active, and how they're all intertwined and complicated and different for different people. That all sort of feeds into the, what's at the core of somebody's body weight. So it's important to remember that it's super complex that physical activity is, is just part of the picture. And you know, I actually think we do a disservice to physical activity when we only tie it to obesity.
Anyone who's tried to lose weight knows how challenging that is and oftentimes you know, you fail at achieving, uh, a weight loss strategy and then you end up thinking, well, this isn't working. I'm not gonna be physically active anymore. I'm not gonna try to eat healthy. It's, it, it doesn't work. And I think we need to, uh, to think of physical activity a lot more broadly.
It's, it's so good for our health overall.
Max: That's such a good point. I think a lot of people can relate to that for sure. And you mentioned the pandemic earlier. We know how hard the pandemic was for, especially our young people. We're talking about teenagers and we know that physical activity was abruptly taken away from them. For a couple years there.
They were basically sort of encouraged, if not forced to live more of a sedentary lifestyle. We had lockdowns, virtual learning, they weren't going to school. So I mean, God, how can we blame these kids for the lower rates of physical activity. As we're coming out of the pandemic, if you were to look forward to the future release from the Canadian Health Measures Survey, like what would you be expecting?
Would you be expecting that to come down as we come outta the pandemic and things return to normal?
Rachel: Yeah, I think during the pandemic, you know, our lives were, were upended in different ways and I think with adults and their physical activity, they were really able to pivot to different types of physical activity.
They were able to, you know, start exercising in the basement. They might have had a home gym. Uh, adults tend to enjoy, you know, walking for leisure and getting outside. But when we think of teenagers and we think of children during the pandemic, we took everything away from them. You know, we took away phys ed, we took away organized sports.
They didn't have swimming lessons. They weren't even allowed to go to the park and interact with their peers even to have that free play. And I, I think perhaps we've forgotten that and, and we may have forgotten that habits were formed during that time. And childhood and the adolescent years are, are really formative years where a lot of important lifestyle habits get ingrained for us and they carry into adulthood.
And I mean, something that we haven't really touched on yet is screens. That was part of the pandemic strategy, to pivot to home online schooling and working from home. So everybody suddenly had to use computers and screens a lot more. And so the exact thing that we've been trying to tell kids not to do too much of, we forced them to do for their schooling.
And so that created another habit, another reliance, probably more devices in the household available to kids now, and that is, is definitely competing with the time that they have to get outside and to participate in sports. Screens and video games and movies and, and you know, interacting with their peers online, those are all behaviors that were really promoted during the pandemic that have probably carried forward after. So it is an interesting question as to where, where do we go from here? What's going to happen? Interestingly, when we looked at data in 2020, we saw that physical activity was down in both boys and girls in the 12 to 17-year-old age group.
And then we collected the data again in 2021 and we actually saw a bit of a rebound among the boys so they weren't back up to their pre pandemic levels of physical activity, but they were getting pretty close, so they had seemed to be coming out of it, you know, whereas girls, they had dropped in 2020 and then were still at the same level in 2021.
Max: Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned screen time there and I think it's so important. I. When I was a kid, not to date myself, but you know, screens were a place that you went to, to physically interact with, and then once you were done, you got up and and left. They didn't come with you. And I think now we're seeing a generation of kids who are growing up and the screens are very much portable and they're with you wherever you go.
So just that constant, nagging, you know, I have a screen with me and I'm gonna look at it like, how hard is it for kids these days to be able to really sort of disconnect and engage in physical activity as part of their regular day as, as opposed to, you know, something that they have to put down their screens to go and do, and it's more of a chore.
Rachel: Yeah, I think you really touch on sort of the environment around us. We call it obesogenic is is the word that we use, and it essentially means that the environment that we live in right now really promotes obesity. And so we're facing this challenge, all of us, to kind of fight against our environment.
So we have high calorie, high fat, high sugar food readily available all the time that is very cheap. Uh, we have screens with super interesting, you know, things to watch and things to do, and we have sedentary jobs more and more than we did decades ago. So everything around us is kind of fighting against us in terms of of adopting these healthy lifestyle behaviors. And that's, that's difficult. And you know, for adults they might be able to, to think about that in a sort of logical, rational way and be like, okay, I need to make sure that I balance this with some healthy eating and some physical activity. But for children and youth, it's harder for them to do that on their own.
So I think as a society, we need to think about how do we help this age group, this young age group, fight against that environment and make sure they adopt those healthy lifestyle behaviors. Because as you say, you know, if you grew up in the seventies or the eighties. Your childhood was probably very different to the childhood of kids today.
We were spent a lot more time outside. We had a lot less interesting things on screens or video games to do inside the things that kept us indoors. You know, neighborhoods were designed differently. There was bigger backyards, more green space. Our parents let us roam a lot more free decades ago than they do now.
So a lot of things have changed in our environment, and so that's just something to keep in the back of our minds with the young people in Canada right now, that they may need more help than we realize.
Max: Yeah, well said. Conversations around obesity and physical activity aren't easy. It's a topic that's avoided for this exact reason, and I think it can be fraught with misconceptions a lot of the time.
As an expert, I wanted to ask you, is that a sentiment that you found to be true in your conversations on the topic, and what do you want folks to know about these topics that they might not already?
Rachel: That's a good question. One of the things I think that we've, we've focused on historically with physical activity is, is a lot of focus on organized physical activity that is a moderate to vigorous intensity.
We have physical activity guidelines out there. Adults are supposed to get 150 minutes every week. Kids are supposed to get 60 minutes every day of this moderate to vigorous physical activity. And I think perhaps this has sort of not resonated with a lot of Canadians. And I think we could do a better job at promoting physical activity if we kind of met people where they were at.
And a lot of times people hear these high numbers, 150 minutes of physical activity. They'll think, this is impossible. I'm never gonna be able to do that. I don't even know what moderate to vigorous intensity means. And so they sort of ignore these messages. So I think when we're having conversations about physical activity, it would be good to kind of go back to basics and talk about that you know, every little bit matters. And you know, there's a bit of a shift in the field towards thinking about light intensity physical activity, and the incidental movement that we get interspersed throughout the day, and that that is a really good strategy to increase your overall energy expenditure and your overall movement throughout the day.
When it comes to obesity, what we're seeing is that people are entering adulthood at a higher weight now than they used to. So if we think about, in simple terms, for me, it probably means I was a heavier weight at age 25 than my parents' generation and then my grandparents' generation. And while that might seem somewhat trivial, it actually has important implications for health.
Max: So there might be people who hear these stats and they think, you know, I don't work out as much as the guidelines recommend, and I'm not really in a place where I can take up a completely new lifestyle. Or maybe they're thinking about their kids. I know you touched on it before, but do you have any words of advice for someone who hears this data that we're talking about and feels discouraged?
Rachel: I would just say to keep it simple, that physical activity doesn't need to be complicated and it doesn't need to be perfect every day, and that really and truly the data show strongly that every step really does count and that if you can find ways to fit it in, find things that you like to do and help your kids find things that they like to do.
Some people really like sports. Some people hate them. Some people like to do weight training or yoga. For some people it's just engaging in screens less really helps them, uh, find more time to be, to be physically active. So for parents, I would really encourage them to, to think about this screen usage of their kids and their teenagers.
I know it's, it's very, very challenging. I'm a mom myself, and this is something that a lot of parents are dealing with. But I would encourage people to provide as many opportunities as you can for your kids to have alternatives to the screens and try to delay, um, the introduction of screens and cell phones with teenagers, uh, as much as possible.
The Anxious Generation by John Haidt is a great book for people looking for more resources about how to deal with screens in children and what the implications are if, if we don't get that under control.
Max: Why do these findings matter?
Rachel: So these findings are really important because obesity is a bit of a tricky condition. It doesn't lead to health problems overnight. It leads to kind of a long-term chronic inflammation in the body that can eventually lead to damage to organ tissues and cellular function, that that will lead to chronic conditions later on down the road. And so because that it doesn't cause problems really quickly overnight, it often gets forgotten or disregarded in terms of coming to the top of a priority list.
So I think it's important that we, we keep that in mind and that by tracking it at the population level, we can understand people who are at risk right now, but we can also get a pretty good understanding of, of potential risk into the future. That if we have this many people or this proportion of people who are overweight or obese right now, we should be sort of thinking forward, you know, what does that mean for these people when they age 20 years, when they age 50 years?
If they stay on that same track, then we're gonna, uh, start to see, see implications there.
Max: And what's the biggest takeaway from this?
Rachel: I hope that statistics like this help as a, a call to action for paying attention to the prevalence of obesity in Canada. In particular, thinking about the young adults where obesity seems to be on the rise, and also thinking about the teenagers and their physical activity habits and their screen time habits and, and what the implications of that are for the long run. I think these statistics are really important to continue to collect, continue to track, continue to see if we're making progress, and continue to identify the groups that might need more help than others. That's, I think that's a really important role for us to play as, as Statistics Canada and as as data analysts and storytellers with data.
Max: So for people who are looking to learn more about obesity, physical activity and screen time, where would you point them to?
Rachel: Yeah, there's a few really good resources in Canada. For more information about the physical activity guidelines, I would point them to the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology.
Here we have the Canadian 24 Hour movement guidelines, and these guidelines encompass physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep, and really promote the idea that the whole day matters. And that we need to be healthy in all aspects of our life when it comes to the 24 hour movement profile and stresses how each of those movement behaviors are related to to each other.
Participaction is a Canadian, nonprofit charitable organization that has been around since 1971 encouraging Canadians to get healthy by getting active. So there's a lot of really good information on the Participaction website. There's report cards giving kind of the state of the nation on how we're doing as a country when it comes to physical activity.
A lot of really usable resources if you're, you're a teacher or a policymaker or someone looking for really usable information, Participaction is a, is a great resource. Canada's food Guide is, is available to Canadians as well on the web, and that was recently updated and has some really good visuals, really good information about how to find ways to bring healthy food into our lives.
Statistics Canada is continually putting out information from surveys like the Canadian Health Measure Survey. Health Reports is a journal that's put out by Statistics Canada that profiles a lot of the, the research that comes from the CHMS and other health surveys. And if people are interested in some additional reading, I mentioned the Anxious Generation as a book for parents to better understand the impact of screen time in the lives of our kids.
That book also gives really tangible, concrete examples of what we should be doing at all levels of society to tackle this, this challenge. Another book that I would put a plug for is, is Outlive. This is a book by Peter Adia, and he talks a lot in that book about the merits of physical activity and healthy aging.
And, you know, we've talked about, uh, you know, physical activity is good for health, it's good for lifespan, it extends our lifespan. But he talks about something called health span. And I think that's a really interesting concept. And that's, you know, the number of years lived in good health. And that's where physical activity is really a champion.
If, uh, if you wanna be independent and living well into your later years, he really makes a solid argument as to why you should be incorporating physical activity into your life right now. But no matter what age you are, it's never too early to start. It's never too late to start. So that's another great resource for more information.
Max: Thank you so much, Rachel. Thanks for coming in and talking to us.
Rachel: Thanks for having me.
Max: You've been listening to Eh Sayers. Thank you to our guest, Rachel Colley. If you would like to learn more about obesity, physical activity, and screen time, you can find the articles by Rachel's team and more on Statistics Canada's website. The link is in the show notes.
You can subscribe to this show wherever you get your podcasts. There, you can also find the French version of our show called Hé-coutez bien! . If you liked this show, please rate, review and subscribe, and thanks for listening.