42

I just heard this number last night and it did not surprise me. According to a report that I just heard on MSNBC, by 2030, 42 percent of Americans will be overweight and by that time an additional 11 percent of Americans will be over 100 pounds or more over weight. They say that the number of Americans now over weight is 33.9 percent and they see no time in the future where that number is going to slow down. The question I want to tackle is why, why that number is ever increasing and rapidly picking up steam. Some people believe that this epidemic is due to our over eating and sedentary lifestyles we live now and they are right. I was talking to a person just the other day and we talked about the jobs our fathers had when we were growing up and how they were so labor intense. They would get up every morning and walk to the train or bus station, stand on a crowded train or bus and get to a job where they would use their hands for 8 to 9 hours then walk back to the station only to stand on the way back home. Now every American has a car and drives to work only to sit at a computer for 8 to 9 hours and only take a break when they get bored and then they eat at their desk for the most part. Back only 50 years ago, our mothers never has to tell us to go outside. It was more the other way around; they would tell us to stay inside. We hated rainy days because that meant we would be stuck inside and who really wanted to be inside when there were so many things we could do outside. Stick-ball, basketball, hide–and-go-seek, so many games we played. Now with the internet surge kids still see their friends but now on line. They sit in front of a computer screen killing each other and talking on the web. You would think that my kids would not be prone to this but quite the opposite. Just the other day I went into the basement to find one child on the computer skyping and the other playing on the Xbox while talking to his friends on his head set. I shook my head in disbelief. This is were America is going. Did you know that the FDA had stated that our children will not have the same quality of life we now have because of the problem of obesity? By 2030 most of us will be in our 70’s and 80’s and they will be ruling the roost. This really scares me, especially when the trends of getting fat are going up instead of down. I was just in a fashion show and the producer of the show did not think I was 49 years old. His tells me that I don’t look like a 49 or 50 year old man. Well what does one look like? They are overweight with a huge belly, graying beards and fat legs and well out of shape. They are at least 50 pounds overweight and most suffer from back issues of some sort. Exercising for this population of males is only on occasions when they “have the time”, but other than that nothing of great substance. The average waist size for this population of males is about 42” and growing. Their girth (their bellies AKA core) average about 48 inches and growing every year. Their sleep patterns are poor at best and, well family relations, oh boy. Let me just say that what they were able to accomplish physically only 20 years prior they can no longer accomplish nor can they even get close. I don’t have these issues. Just a few weeks ago I went to get a new belt. I looked for the longest time in the men’s department only to get frustrated and end up purchasing a belt in the young men’s department. Now I wasn’t frustrated at the selection of belts they had, I was frustrated because in could not find a belt in my size in the men’s department. You see I have a 29 inch waist and I don’t have a stomach and in the men’s department they started at waist size 34. REALLY! I did notice one other thing while I was looking frantically, if I were a size 42, I would have had my pick of the litter with no problem. THIS IS BAD, REALLY BAD. The question we need to ask ourselves is what we need to do to stop this trend. The answer is quite easy and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to explain. We need to get active again. We need to stop sitting and get walking. Did you know that the process of us gaining significant permanent weight starts right after we graduate from high school? The reason I can only give is our ability to drive instead of walk to where ever we want to go and our ability to consume alcoholic products as well as eating really bad food when we go off to college or work. Our activity, unless involved in college sports, diminishes quickly and we begin to switch from an active lifestyle to one where we find ourselves sitting at a computer screen or in a library for hours at a time. Unless this trend changes, I can’t see it getting better anytime soon. I knew that when I was in college, we had something called the freshmen 10 which is now the freshmen 20. What is that? They said back in my day that by the end of your first year of college you would have gained 10 extra pounds now that number is 20. Bad food, bad sleep patterns, over consumption of alcohol, and lack of activity are all the reason for this trend and when we get out of college it only gets worse. In this society today our medical expenses have tripled over the last few years and growing out of control. Medications are quickly become part of our everyday existence. We are becoming more reliant on medications than ever before. We spend over $550 billion dollars a year to medicate ourselves so that we can keep ourselves alive. REALLY! Medications are allowing us to feel as though we are ok when quite the opposite is true. Tomorrow I will discuss this in more detail and what we need to do as a nation to stop this trend and take back our health and stop this obesity epidemic.