Posted: 05/03/06

Investing in our future

Mark Gould | contributing columnist
mgould@smcvt.edu

As a fitness columnist, I’ve done my best to provide advice on nutrition and exercise in an upbeat manner this semester. I do my best to come across as encouraging, but to me, the future of America is discouraging at best.

We are living in an incredibly dangerous society where obesity has become normal. Accommodations are being made for passengers too large to sit in a standard seat. Diseases, which years ago didn’t exist, are claiming our loved ones.

Even minute aspects of our lives, like low back pain and tiredness, are interrupting our lives. Worst of all, the solutions to these problems have been established for several decades.

The information is out there, but many are too relentless to face the facts.

Consider these statistics:

According to former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, obesity is responsible for 300,000 premature deaths per year. Obesity has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, and cancer just to name a few.

Heart disease is the number one killer in America, claiming more than 927,000 lives in 2002, according to the American Heart Association. Take a moment to let that sink in. That’s about 500 times the St. Michael’s student population. These deaths, and many deaths from cancer are largely preventable through being active, eating a healthy diet, not smoking, and getting regular medical care.

Two thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese. Two thirds. Unfortunately, much of their failures in weight control get passed on to their children. Up to 30 percent of U.S. children are overweight, and childhood obesity has more than doubled in the past 25 years. The future leaders of our nation are slowly inheriting awful habits.

If our nation continues to embrace fast food and sedentary lifestyles, we will be doomed. Countries which we mock as “underdeveloped” laugh at our ignorance as we continue to fatten the nation.

The problem of obesity stems from nearly all aspects of our culture. It is unfair to place the burden on any one aspect. Parents allow children to consume foods that are a recipe for fat. Soda fills the vending machines in schools where ignorant youth make poor decisions. Restaurants offer fewer healthy alternatives because they don’t sell as well as the bacon cheese burgers.

It is our culture’s failure to take seriously these circumstances that is most bothersome. Parents say they are only trying to make their children happy. Kids say they are just doing what everyone else does. Adults perceive themselves as healthy when in fact their diet and lifestyle could be vastly improved.

It is as though each individual thinks he or she is apart from the problem, as though they were on the outside looking in. We are all a part of the problem.

Last year, a report was published citing that the American lifespan will soon be shortened two to five years due to the growing trend of obesity. How can we let a simple lack of discipline rob us of all that we’ve been given in this world?

I just don’t understand how we can cultivate our minds so intensely, and give such little attention to our bodies, which are the keepers of our minds.

I’m talking about the future well-being of your life. There exists no topic more essential and worthwhile than our well-being.

I beg of you to take seriously the body you’ve been given. You only get one. Think of your body as an investment. Throughout your life, you make several decisions about the foods you eat, and the lifestyle you engage in. The decisions you make are like investments; being healthy will pay off, and being ignorant and lazy will affect the quality of your life. Invest wisely.

Mark Gould is a certified Aerobics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA) personal trainer.