Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 5, 1995 TAG: 9501050010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL ACHENBACH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A: It's time to make your New Year's Resolutions, and no doubt you will vow to lose weight, also known as ``corporal downsizing.'' Sadly, what you don't realize as you write down your naive resolutions is that this is going to be, for you, The Year Of The Pizza.
Fact: Fat's an epidemic. You might be under the delusion that society is slimming down, thanks to trends like aerobic exercise and low-fat food. The tragic truth is that, despite $33 billion a year spent on dieting, ours is an ever-widening society. According to the National Academy of Sciences, in 1980 about 25 percent of Americans were overweight. A decade later, 33 percent of Americans were overweight.
How fat do you have to be to be ``overweight''? Scientists say you're overweight if you're 20 percent heavier than your ideal weight. In other words, you're overweight if you're fat. Many of us aren't technically overweight; we just have 10 pounds of pudge that we plan to lose very soon, but which, of course, will outlast the pyramids.
``We're getting fatter,'' says Susan Yanovski, an obesity researcher at the National Institutes of Health. ``Kids are also becoming more obese.''
We spoke to a whole bunch of fat researchers - maybe that's not the best way to identify them - and they all stressed the simple truth that we eat more food than we burn. You want to lose weight? Eat less, exercise more. It's true that some people have a medical problem with obesity that's not so easily solved, but most of us could lose weight if we change our habits.
But here's an even more basic problem: We are trapped in a world where we don't really belong. A human being has a carefully evolved metabolism. It is efficient. It takes relatively few calories and turns them into energy. It can also store fat for later use, for example in times of famine. This biological utility has been honed in the wilds over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
And then suddenly something extremely bizarre appeared on the face of the planet: Taco Bell. We live in the Burrito Age. There are supermarkets everywhere. Restaurants pour on the gravy, the butter, the heavy sauces - fat brings 'em back! And they don't make famines like they used to.
Meanwhile we no longer hunt and gather, no longer break the soil with a hand plow. Technology alleviates the need to exert oneself. We have escalators, elevators, washing machines, riding lawn mowers, power steering, power windows; we don't even have to get up to change the channel anymore, we can just coagulate on the couch, channel-surfing with the remote control, hoping to find a good action movie or nature documentary.
So you see Earth has become an unhealthy place for a range mammal like Homo sapiens.
Here's another problem: Fat people, ironically, have efficient metabolisms. Ming Sun, a Vanderbilt nutritionist, says research shows that fat people can take relatively little nutrition and transform it into a lot of energy. It's thin people, who stuff their faces without getting fat, who are inefficiently designed; they're burning fat like crazy, and if there were a famine they'd either die or go into modeling.
This is why there's so much obesity among some indigenous peoples around the world. They survived for thousands of years in isolated, hostile environments. Those with efficient metabolisms thrived. Today those peoples often eat Western diets and live more sedentary lives, and they have extremely high obesity rates.
Obesity can be a serious medical problem with genetic origins. Scientists have found an obesity gene in mice; in humans there is probably more than one gene involved. Sheila Ramsey, who runs a Georgetown University diet management program, says that if both your parents are obese you have an 80 percent chance of being obese yourself.
A final problem: Many ``fat'' people, particularly women, aren't fat at all. They've just seen too many pictures of fashion models whose eyes are farther apart than their shoulders.
``You put a group of normal weight women and put them around a table and they'll all talk about how overweight they are,'' says Yanovski. ``The average model you see probably has an eating disorder. She's probably about 80 percent of what we'd consider a normal body weight. And these women are considered role models.''
And meanwhile, men tend to be in denial about how porky they are, even when their health is imperiled, she said. There are a lot of guys out there who consider a beer gut to be an acceptable appendage - a kind of fashion accessory.
It is probably a good thing to feel comfortable in your own flesh. If you tend to be scale-crushing, don't think of yourself as ``fat'' anymore. Just say you're ``metabolically efficient.''
\ The Mailbag:
Recently we wrote that speed limits are often set too low. Now comes Steve M. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who says he never drives more than 50 mph and advertises this fact with a bumper sticker on his truck saying ``50 MPH MAX'' and ``Fuel Efficient Driver.'' So that other drivers can see his intentions at night, he says, ``I plan to post a large `50' in reflective tape on my truck.''
Dear Steve: We're sure that's a big hit out there on I-95. Long ago, in a more immature incarnation, the Why staff found itself forced to drive I-95 from Fort Lauderdale to Miami in a '64 Cadillac convertible with disabled headlights, at night. It was very dark. We were illuminated only by the left and right turn signals, employed alternately. We blinked our way home. You will be thrilled to know that we didn't speed.
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB