Obesity: Who’s Fat? Not me?
My mother’s favorite ride is Disneyland’s “It’s A Small World.” All the little toy children spin around and sing the same song in different languages. At the time Walt Disney oversaw the creation of “It’s A Small World,” the country was not top-heavy with overweight or obese people as the US is today– 66 percent of our population is above a healthy weight.
A few years ago, I was discussing a case with a medical resident. When I asked if the patient was obese, he said, “No, she looks about right.”
But a peek at her chart revealed that she was five feet tall and weighed 199 pounds, 100 percent over her ideal body weight. When I pointed this out to the resident, he said, “Huh, but she looks smaller than the rest of our patients.”
Is it the Law of Relativity? I’m beginning to wonder if we have forgotten what normal body weight is.
My father keeps telling me I need to gain weight. When he grew up in war-torn Korea, people were famished and skinny. To him, thinness equals malnourishment.
What he doesn’t realize is that he’s the pot calling the kettle black. Most Americans think my parents are too skinny. In reality, we are all at ideal body weight for Asians. Perhaps because larger people surround us, people think we look anorexic. It makes me feel like we’re different– like a Conehead, except we aren’t from France.
Some of my patients also think I should gain a few pounds. True, I’m as short as George “movin’ on up” Jefferson on The Jeffersons, and even women who are shorter than I am tend to weigh more than I do.
The fact is, I appear to be getting smaller– when in truth the country is getting bigger. How’s that for Einstein’s Theory?!
Central Virginia has one of the highest rates of obesity in the nation. Earlier this year when I was flying out of CHO, the Charlottesville/Albemarle Airport, an airline agent announced that we weighed too much for the airplane. We had to lose some luggage and some passengers before we could safely take off.
On the jet to LA, I heard a large woman complaining that the seats were too small. I asked the pilot if seats were getting smaller, and he said that in the past five years the seats have stayed the same size.
I cannot buy a suit in this town without an Extreme Makeover tailor job. When I asked a Charlottesville men’s suit store why there were no pants or sport coats in my size, he told me that there was not much demand for smaller sizes. He told me to eat more donuts.
My concern about the problem of overweight and obesity is medical: High blood pressure, diabetes, osteoarthritis, kidney disease, eye disease, pulmonary hypertension, sleep apnea, certain cancers, skin disease are all exacerbated by obesity. Once a person is obese, the battle to lose the weight and keep it off is very difficult.
First of all, exercise is the only method to lose and keep weight off permanently. But people with bad knees or hips from being overweight find that exercise is hard to do. Also, obese people tend to be de-conditioned, so exercise is about as much fun as getting a root canal every day.
But only gastric bypass surgery has been shown to be as effective. Diets fail within three years 98 percent of the time.
I don’t know how we as a nation will start to live at our ideal body weight. With larger food and drink portions in restaurants and less activity in our daily lives, statistics show that nearly all Americans will be overweight or obese in the next 50 years.
It’s a byproduct of living in a prosperous country. But it’s a health epidemic that has to be addressed. Otherwise, we’re all going to have to find our own DisneyLand ride. But this time it’ll be Space Mountain.
