I just read an article that states that by 2020 3 out of 4 Americans will be overweight. The article starts by saying that the world's wealthiest countries have an increasing overweight population.
The reason, according to the article is that food is cheaper now, particularly unhealthy food. It also blames eating out as another culprit. As we sit here in a recession, more and more people are gaining weight. I spoke with a woman last night who was lamenting the fact that since she lost her job she has really put on weight. She said that she gets bored at home and ends up eating. From there you can imagine the cycle. Weight gain begets frustration, which begets depression which begets further weight gain which transitions to more frustration, deeper depression and it just goes on.
There comes a time when we HAVE to take action. And let me tell you, the time is NOW. I keep saying it because I believe it with all my heart - Our prosperity is killing us! As Americans we are busy. Constantly busy. Too busy to cook a meal - so we are bombarded with pop n go frozen meals filled with chemicals and just plain funky stuff. Have you ever read how many ingredients are in frozen meatballs? It's a meatball for goodness sake! Yet, there's an ingredient list 3 inches long in microscopic letters just to lawfully list it on the package. We eat fast food almost more than we eat at home, and believe me; I've been the fast food QUEEN in the past. I never met a drive through I didn't like!
Now, on top of our eating habits, add to that our sedentary lifestyle. We drive around 5 minutes looking for a parking space so that we don't have to WHEEL our buggies back to our car. It's not like we're having to carry our purchases on our backs! We don't WALK anywhere. Everything in our lives is set up to make it convenient for us not to have to MOVE. Why? Because recession or not, we are a very wealthy country. Poverty, to most Americans, means that we have to get frozen pizza instead of Pizza Hut. We have more access to health care, doctors, hospitals, disease prevention and health education than most of the planet's population. And yet cancer is almost a plague in this country, heart disease is commonplace, and how many people do we all know on antidepressants?
We all know what the cure is. It's healthy diet and daily exercise. It really is just that simple. We are absolutely without excuse. It's obviously not a lack of information, burt rather motivation that is keeping us overweight. You can't flip channels at anytime and not hit an informercial on weight loss or exercise. Seems everybody has a "quick fix" for obesity. There is absolutely NO QUICK FIX. But there is something significantly scarier than changing our eating habits and getting out of our comfort zone. And that is DYING from an obesity related illness that is so preventable as to border on the ridiculous. We cling to our overeating and underexercising as if it's as part of our American way of life as baseball, apple pie and the American flag. We do have it made. We have jobs (or unemployment), homes, phones, computers, cars, and more cars. We also have an over abundance of time to try and figure out if our life is meaningful or if we're fulfilled when most of the world spends their day just trying to feed themselves. Maybe that's the great equalizer. We have the world's wealth, but we may also have the world's illness. And no matter what our increased mortality rate, that's not living.
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