Holidays intensify battle against E

bulge

By ROGER MARTIN

Special to The Capital-Journal

verybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

That blues-song lyric applies to most of us as we battle against weight gain. In terms of that battle, dropping flab is like going to heaven. The hard work of eating less and exercising more is like dying.

Now, with the holidays promising to tempt our palates, is the time to decide whether we want to go to war against fat.

Our porcine tendencies as a people are much in the news these days. The last week in October brought word that the number of obese Americans had jumped from one in eight in 1991 to one in five. Last year, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that if, as a nation, we continued gaining weight at the current pace, we would all be obese by the year 2030.

The drift away from discipline is everywhere in evidence.

Joe Donnelly, chair of the University of Kansas Department of Health, Sport and Exercise Sciences, notes that even the exercise standards put out by the agencies that look after our collective health seem to be wilting.

This started a few years back when the Centers for Disease Control and the American College of Sports Medicine began peddling what is called "lifestyle exercise."

Says Donnelly, "The term suggests you can work physical exercise into your daily routine, rather than stopping that routine, exercising, then restarting."

Lifestyle exercise includes everything from mowing the lawn, at the high end, to strolling to the water cooler, at the low.

Cynics called it "exercise light." For the criminally sedentary, exercise light's a starting point, Donnelly says. But, he says, "I think we have to ask more than that people get up and hand-deliver their notes to their secretaries."

Donnelly knows his stuff. His department currently has a five- year grant funded by the National Institutes of Health to look at aerobic exercise and a two-year weightlifting study funded by the American Heart Association.

His own research shows people can get the generally recommended 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day in 10- to 15-minute spurts, rather than one long bout, and still cut the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

"Moderate exercise" means walking about three-and-a-half to four miles an hour, he says --- a brisk pace.

Donnelly, by the way, is one of those who is willing to die to get to heaven. At 49, he works out an hour a day five to six days a week. (Ouch! Was that a cramp in my conscience I just felt?)

If you want to lose weight, Donnelly says, that is how you have to exercise.

Moderate won't work, even though it will lower blood pressure, cut your glucose and insulin levels and help you maintain your weight.

That last is a no small matter, by the way --- most Americans add a pound a year after high school.

So I guess the ugly question just won't go away. We all want to go to heaven, but are we willing to die to get there? I don't know about you, but it gives me the blues just thinking about it.

Roger Martin is communications director for the Office of Research and Public Service at the University of Kansas and editor of the Webzine Explore, which can be found at www.research.ukans.edu/ explore/.

Copyright 1999
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