Obesity is officially an epidemic in the United States.  Today I viewed a webcast from Washington, D.C. about the obesity epidemic.  It looks like in the near future we will be experiencing many cultural changes in order to help rid our country of this dangerous and costly epidemic.  Some of these changes may include banning transfats from restaurants, taxing unhealthy foods such as sodas, making healthy foods more available to the public and making healthy foods cheaper than unhealthy foods.

None of this would be necessary, however,  if our lifestyles had not changed so drastically in the past 30 or more years.  Today the average American is 23 pounds overweight.  Americans are more dependent on their cars to do even the simplest chore outside of their houses.  People have become more dependent on other people and machines to do things for them that people used to do themselves such as housecleaning and car washing.  Preferred pastimes, hobbies and recreation have become more sedentary activities.

It’s only been 38 years since I was in high school.  Due to an upcoming reunion I was looking through old pictures of my classmates and noticed something interesting.  No one in my school was obese and I was hard pressed to find someone that would be considered overweight.

I’ve done many unscientific studies of the percentage of overweight people I find while going about my daily life  such as waiting in line for something.  In every instance in the past few years the majority of people I encounter are overweight or obese.  This is a drastic difference from when I was in high school.

What was different about my generation at high school age?  For one thing we were outside more than we were inside if we weren’t in school.  We walked a great deal.  We had no computers or computer games.  In addition, we had less fattening foods available to us.  It’s easy to manage weight with an environment like this.  We wouldn’t even need gyms and formal exercise anymore as life itself would take care of things.

What Can You Do About the Obesity Epidemic?

The government is going to institute changes in our society in order to combat the obesity epidemic but everyone can do something to start the ball rolling in their own lives.  Here are some tips for doing just that:

• Do chores around the house yourself.
• Walk as much as  possible.  Be creative.  You can probably walk to more places than you thought.
• Take the longest route when using foot power.
• Use a bike instead of the car whenever possible.
• If buying a house, buy a house with stairs if you’re able.
• Have more active get-togethers.
• Whenever possible, do it yourself.
• Wash your own car and do your own gardening.  It will take the same time that going to the gym will take, no more.
• Always choose the method that uses the most energy.
• Reduce consumption of processed foods.
• Shop primarily the outside aisle of grocery stores where the less processed foods are located.

These are just some suggestions.  With some thought and research many more can be discovered.  The government can help with the obesity epidemic but each individual has the most control over changing their lifestyle to one that is naturally fat burning.