Opinion: Battle of bulge back on

Well, I just did my annual health assessment and found out I am overweight.

I kind of figured I would be when I filled in the height and weight numbers on the computer screen. Even so, it was a bit of a shock to finish the assessment, click the button and get back an instant response telling me to lose eight or 10 pounds. Come on, nobody likes to be told they need to lose weight — especially not by a machine.

I’m guessing my Dell laptop wouldn’t like it a bit if I were to tell the piece of electronics that it’s not so slender itself, certainly not compared to the Apple notebook I had when I worked at the newspaper. That baby was sleek. The Dell is serviceable and not, you know, bulky, but it could stand to drop some of the bulge around the edges.

I suppose the Dell thought it was doing a pretty good job of staying trim. That’s what I thought, too, until the assessment. I’m a member of the Medicare generation, after all. I’m doing pretty well. I can still see the toes of my shoes when I look down. I can even tie them, if the arthritis isn’t kicking up.

But, I’m officially part of Overweight America, on my way to being part of Obese America, if I’m not careful. Maybe that’s why an article in a past issue of “The Atlantic” monthly caught my eye. The title of the article is “Beating Obesity,” and the author, Marc Ambinder, apparently lost one-third of his weight. The lead-in to the piece says the author’s weight-loss method (stomach surgery) “isn’t for everyone. But unless America stops cheering ‘The Biggest Loser’ and starts getting serious about preventing obesity, the country risks being overwhelmed by chronic disease and ballooning health costs.”

I’m something like 188 pounds, which wouldn’t be bad on a 6-0 frame if it were all muscle, which it isn’t. On the positive side, I weigh 20 pounds less than I did when I finished college in 1966. On the negative side, I was a blimp coming out of college. I left high school at the end of my last year of track weighing a pretty impressive 150 pounds. (I used to bulk up to about 155 for basketball, so I wouldn’t get pushed around in the lane). I put on the Freshman 15, the Sophomore 15 and the Junior and Senior 15 each, you might say.

How did that happen? So easily that I never saw it coming.

Until I left for college, I’d worked on the farm all my life. I walked to school. Everybody walked to school. I ran crosscountry, played basketball and ran track. I ate a ton, but I exercised a lot. In fact, I should probably patent and market a new-age exercise regimen that involves shoveling corn, stacking hay and pitching bales onto a trailer while walking through a hay field. It’s a plan that works the core, as the fitness folks say. It also tones the muscle groups, provides a nice workout for the abs and leaves the customer with an awfully decent tan.

When I got to college, I still worked the farm in the summer. The other nine months, though, I ate like a field hand and sat — in classes, in dorm rooms, in taverns. Light beer hadn’t been invented, so I didn’t even catch a break on calories.

I dropped about 30 pounds in the first five or six months out of college. What was my secret? I got a newspaper job and couldn’t afford quite as much food and beer as I’d become accustomed to consuming in college.

Since then, I’ve been generally not too badly overweight, although a few years ago I drifted up to 200 and just beyond. I cut out the chips and snacks and concentrated on walking and biking more often, and I managed to drop a few pounds.

Looks like I have to get after it again if I want to avoid being a national health statistic. It would be easy, too, if I didn’t take so much satisfaction from sitting and eating.

Terry Woster’s columns are published Wednesdays and Saturdays in The Daily Republic.

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