I am a 51 year old woman, 5'3.5" and I range from 138 to 144 pounds over the course of a year. According to many sources my normal weight range is 125 - 140. According to other sources, every pound I put on past 140 puts me in the OBESE range. Really? I wear a size (are you ready for this?) 8 to 10? I know, huge! So am I really even close to obese? I thought obesity meant grossly overweight. I could stand to lose 10 pounds and I really should exercise more, but I don't think you can define that as grossly overweight by any stretch of the imagination. I would guess many of you are just like me.
So, taking that into account I have to wonder about the national epidemic of obesity. Supposedly there are many more obese people now than there were 10 years ago. (I don't want to site exact statistics, 'cause then I have to do research and this isn't about research. Do your own. I just know what I have heard in the media.) Okay, so how did these statistics come about? Are we all obese now because they have lowered the definition of what obesity is? I think so. If, by any stretch of the imagination I can be considered obese, how many other people are we including in the category that are only 10 pounds overweight?
How are we now defining obesity? Is it a certain percentage over our ideal weight? Is it a certain number of pounds over our ideal weight? I think the problem is that we are all using different sets of numbers to make the definitions. Which numbers you use makes a big difference. I also think it is popular to say that America is Obese and we love drama so we make the problem sound worse than it actually is.
Do I think American's weigh more than they used to? Yes, our live styles have changed over the last50 years. More TV, more video games, fewer children playing outside no matter what the weather, more adults working longer hours in sedentary jobs. Yes, there is a problem. But it seems like we think the problem has to sound more dramatic than it actually is in order to get people to change their lives. Do more American's die because of illness related to obesity? Absolutely! But I deny that it is quite the huge problem it is being made out to be.
All of the blame these days seems to go back to the problem of "Childhood Obesity." I know this exists, I've seen it. But I questions if it is that much greater than it was when I was a child. Thinking back to my childhood (an admittedly long way.) I remember, overweight kids in elementary school. I remember overweight kids in high school. What I don't remember is exact numbers, but it seems like there were 3 to 5 in my high school class. I attended 2 different high schools in 2 very different parts of the country and I think the number of kids was about the same. However, there were fewer than 300 kids each of my class year. I work in a High School now and I think there are probably 4 to 6 obese kids in the class year. Of course, there are 600 to 800 students in those classes. You should know, I'm really only talking about those kids who are obviously obese. I'm not talking about kids who are just a few pounds over weight, I'm talking about people who are obviously FAT. We aren't allowed to use that word anymore, but that's what obese means.
So are we really worried that the number of overweight kids is increasing? Are there more people who are over their ideal weight? Do we have a good standard to judge if someone is "overweight?" I remember Special K commercials saying if you can pinch an inch you are over weight. Over the course of my lifetime I've seen so many different definitions of what my ideal weight should be that I have discounted them all. I am very small boned. Honestly, 140 pounds on me is a bigger problem than on someone who has larger bones. It isn't fair to compare. Until I was in my mid 30s I weight 100 pounds. That was not a reflection of my overall health though. It didn't matter what I ate or how little or much I exercised, I weighed 100 pounds. I even went back to that weight after the birth of each of my children without doing anything about it. Oh yeah, I usually carried an extra 5 pounds while I was nursing my babies, but when I stopped that went away. So, how do you judge if someone is overweight and is that really the standard we should use to judge someone's health?
But perhaps my biggest grip is this new trend to "legislate" health. Of course, we can't force people to eat well and we can't force them to fee their children well, but we think we can control what they eat at school. Has anyone besides me been amazed at the legislation to control what our children eat in school? Talk about ridiculous. Okay, so I work in a high school as I said, we still have Soda Pop available in the vending machines, but now it all has to be diet soda. Have we really determined that diet soda is healthier? I'm not kidding, I've heard of diabetic councilors who tell their clients to stay away from diet soda because it makes you crave more sugar. What about problems with the crazy things we substitute for sugar anyway? But even beyond that, we still have cookies and candy bars available for sale in the vending machines all day. So who cares if they're drinking diet pop? But even beyond that, have you looked at school lunches lately? Talk about a starch high!!! Did you know that french fries are considered a vegetable?? I first heard that on The Biggest Loser, but I thought, "no, that can't really be true." Oh, but it is. We have french fries, tater tots, or mashed potatoes every single day at school. The excuse is that kids will eat potatoes but they won't eat the green beans, or corn, or broccoli, it just gets thrown out. So what? Does that mean we should enable their poor vegetable choice. What if a few kids decide to try the foreign vegetables and they actually like them???? Isn't it worth it? Sometimes, kids get really hungry during the school day and they will eat something new because of it. Why legislate what is in the vending machines without caring about what is in the school lunches?For me one of the big issues here is that you cannot legislate health any more than you can legislate morality. People have the right to choose what they eat and how they live and you can never MAKE them be what you want. Instead of spending time and money deciding what kind of pop our students can drink, or how many calories are allowed to be in a kids meal, how about sending a little money to communities so they can have Recreational Centers or building and maintaining safe jogging and biking paths. Instead of spending millions to encourage people to buy American Cars, how about helping businesses create and fund exercise programs for their employees. Instead of providing Health Care for every American, let's provide more playgrounds, more parks, more hiking, biking and cycling trails, more small businesses with company health programs and more encouragement for employees to have some time off to have a hobby? We just keep working harder and harder for more and more hours for less and less money, which gives us less and less time to spend with families and less and less time to come home and do any kind of physical activity.......Oh wait, that is a topic to continue on another day.
