Obesity products help Americans live large

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"There are all kinds of theories that abound about why people are getting heavier," said Borgos. "People are more sedentary, people eat more junk food and get less exercise. I don't know what it is.

"But it's a constant level of stress to live as an overweight person. You're always scoping out the environment, looking if you're going to be able to fit. "

Kelly Bliss, a self-described "chubby chick" in suburban Philadelphia offers "plus-size fitness and lifestyle coaching."

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Which means, she says, encouraging overweight clients to exercise as best they can, to eat healthily and to not focus on losing pounds.

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"People cannot just stop being fat," she says. "It's prejudice when you say a fat person does not need things to make them comfortable," she says. "People crumble when you given them even more pressure on top of a life that's already not working."

To make caring for the overweight ill easier, and to make patients more comfortable, there also are specialized medical products for an ever-growing clientele.

Treating the obese is called bariatric care, from Greek root meaning weight. Providing it means hospitals are paying for wider beds, wider wheelchairs, wider doorways, longer needles and bigger CT scan machines. As well as larger gowns and extra-sized slippers.

And for the end of life's road, coffin makers have introduced new lines with higher-gauge steel and widths of up to 28 inches, from the standard 24.

In Indiana, the Batesville Casket Co. calls it "a little extra room for life's final journey."

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