week of 1/15/03
 
 
 

Keep repeating: Take the stairs
By Scott McLeod

It’s cold in the mountains, just below 30, and the muscles in my lower back are tightening and the sweat is making the polypropylene T shirt stick to my shoulders and chest. Most of the wood, though, is stacked and ready: the most seasoned on top so the kids and wife can easily get it; the greenest, largest logs at the bottom of the second pile, which will be ready for splitting and burning next winter.

The leaves that have blown against the house, left over from fall, were just raked and dumped into my pile at the edge of the woods. After the yard work is finished, I plan to go for a jog. Greg offered his leaf blower, but I politely declined. The work, I told him, would do me good. I like the exercise, and I need it. Now more than ever.

The calculator on the Raleigh News and Observer’s website had given me and my 43-year-old self some sobering news this morning: I am borderline overweight, according to the paper’s chart tabulating weight against height. The accompanying story says 66 percent of North Carolinians are like me or worse, and 22.5 percent of those are classified as obese. The headline on the story was “The epic state of overweight.”

The whole obesity issue in this state came to the forefront last Thursday when the state Board of Education refused to heed the request of public health officials to mandate more physical education in our public schools. Instead, state educators adopted a broadly worded resolution encouraging school systems to educate students about the need to exercise more often and encouraging those systems to offer more physical education. For those among us who think being physically fit is a good way to go through life, it’s easy to find fault with this decision. The truth, though, is that the government is not going to solve this problem.

It seems one can’t open a paper or watch TV news without the issue of obesity and overweight Americans confronting us. As our society has evolved, as computers, TV and stereos have complemented the already sedentary pleasures of reading, eating and napping, as food has become cheap and available every minute of the day in oh-so-plentiful portions, as danger and violence have scared us to the point we don’t want children walking or riding their bikes far from home, as moms work and kids stay inside, the obvious has finally turned into a national dilemma: we’ve gotten fat.

Despite the diet and anti-aging rage, though, this isn’t just about looks, which is the same argument those pleading before the state school board used. In this state youth are beginning to get Type 2 diabetes, which used to be seen only in sedentary, overweight middle-aged people. And just last week the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that obesity is shortening our lifespan at the same time medical advances in other areas should be lengthening it. According to the report, men and women who are obese live 8 to 20 years less than those who are trim.

“It is not just an aesthetic issue,” says Dr. Leah Devlin, the acting state health director.

Amid all this emphasis about being fat, perhaps it was only a matter of time before someone started suing. It happened last summer when an attorney representing a 400-pound teen filed suit against McDonalds and four other fast food restaurants for making him fat. His mother argued that she did not know the fries, drinks and burgers were bad for her son. With the right jury the mom and kid will waddle away still fat — and rich.

Perhaps some can argue that the tobacco companies misled people about the danger of the poisons in their product. Perhaps, but anyone who has ever put a cigarette to their lips and then woke up the next morning — banging headache, hacking cough, perhaps both — knows the truth: smoking hurts the body. Arguing that someone else made you fat, though, is going a little beyond ridiculous.

Some could make the argument, though, that our society is holding us — and our children — hostage to a sedentary and unhealthy lifestyle. In addition to all those factors listed a few paragraphs ago, schools in need of money are signing contracts with soda companies to put the machines throughout their schools, and the revenues they generate are used to buy supplies that should be paid for with tax money. Property owners, though, cry foul every time their local leaders propose raising taxes, the schools are underfunded, so principals and school board members let the soda and other fast food corporations set up shop, and our kids get served or have access to unhealthy foods. All of this, of course, is followed by the obesity and the lawsuit.

The recent vote by the state school board not to mandate PE class time is not surprising. It would cost money for more PE teachers, more curriculum changes, less time to prepare for standardized tests, etc., etc. PE, like foreign language, art, music and dance, doesn’t fit nicely into an education system that is fixated on accountability. Even though studies show physically active students do better in class, that didn’t seem to matter.

A couple of weeks ago I clipped an article that caught my attention: a principal in a North Carolina school yanked the Coke machines. Tired of overweight students and cavity-filled mouths, she just said no to the money and took them out. But the problem is not that easy to solve. We’ve found way too many ways to make our lives easier and less active, and moving Coke machines out of the school just changes the battleground.

So I look out at my woodpile in the bitter cold of January, winter’s extra pounds thick around my middle, and think about how I might go ahead and split next year’s supply. Come fall, I’ll try and resist the urge to make quick work of the leaves with Greg’s blower. And I recall over and over the mantra my wife often cites, fatherly advice given when she left home to go to college that she still carries with her: take the stairs. Sound advice indeed.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)