The magic word ...The magic word in health and physical education these days is obesity obesity, condition resulting from excessive storage of fat in the body. Obesity has been defined as a weight more than 20% above what is considered normal according to standard age, height, and weight tables, or by a complex formula known as the body mass index. . Pick up any newspaper or consumer magazine and the word, obesity, will jump out at you like a big, fat, juicy cheeseburger. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Men, women, and children are flashing their flab and filling the air with flashy terms like fast food, fat-free, diets, calorie calorie, abbr. cal, unit of heat energy in the metric system. The measurement of heat is called calorimetry. The calorie, or gram calorie, is the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of pure water 1°C;. intake, low carb carb 1 n. Informal A carburetor. , no carb, et al. The problem always seems to be there. Meetings are held. Plans are devised. Outstanding articles are written. Wonderful exercise programs are formulated for·mu·late tr.v. for·mu·lat·ed, for·mu·lat·ing, for·mu·lates 1. a. To state as or reduce to a formula. b. To express in systematic terms or concepts. c. . But how does this stuff work? Forgive the cynical note. There is reason for it. Sometime shortly after Dwight Eisenhower became the president of the U.S. (1953), the country had a minor panic attack panic attack n. The sudden onset of intense anxiety, characterized by feelings of intense fear and apprehension and accompanied by palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, and trembling. Also called anxiety attack. . It seems that an international group of medical people decided to test two similar groups of young people--one from the U.S. and the other from Europe. The feeling was that the U.S. kids with all their enthusiasm for sports, exercise, proper diet, etc., would definitely outdo the European kids. It was a shock. The Europeans turned out to be leaner, quicker, more agile, and more coordinated. The Americans were more obese o·bese adj. Extremely fat; very overweight. obese characterized by obesity. obese adjective Characterized by obesity, see there; excessively fat , and less agile. Thus began a paper war. The American schools and communities began organizing exercise and fitness programs for all kinds of youth groups. There was a program for everyone and everything, and it was eye-opening. Sports Illustrated Sports Illustrated is the largest weekly American sports magazine owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. It has over 3 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men, 19% of the adult males in the country. , for example, started publishing a national exercise program in every issue. It was inspiring, though we cannot recall how long the program stayed viable. We do recall our health agencies trying to get the president to install a health and exercise seat in the president's cabinet. It was embarrassing. Washington, D.C., proposed a substitute: Appoint a famous big-name sportsman to move around the country, inspiring various groups to contribute to the national health program. Fat chance. The result was a total failure. America's great exercise ambassadors produced little if anything of importance. |
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