Aside: I wish that when I'm in my car listening to
NPR's Morning Edition that I had a tape recorder with me, so as to better quote the program I am referring to. I would like to create an "
I Told You So" time capsule for our country and society.
The future should be warned, and it is times like these I wish it could be.
The commentator follows a 41 year old woman on her way to Weight Watchers. She drives the two miles in an effort to stick with the program so that she can keep off the 40 pounds she has loss using Weight Watchers. Sometimes, she walks, but she finds it harder and harder to do so. There are no sidewalks, no other pedestrians on the road, which is located in one of a million suburban sprawls that have been, over the last few decades, filling up the horizon.
For all the convenience and high economic gains brought upon by mega-malls, super Wal-Marts and the like, the health of its nearby residents is at stake. People are getting less and less of even the most rudimentary of exercise, walking. Diseases and disabilities related to obesity, in addition to diet fads and hyper-gyms, have increased dramatically in these areas.
And this is a surprise how?
I remember when I was working in an accounting office of an architectural engineering firm. I was the youngest and slimmest girl in the crew, a good 20 years younger on the average. When they asked about how I came to lose the weight I had I mentioned thermogenic herbs (this was before the popularity of Metabolife, where it had a brand name), and immediately they all wanted to try it. But they didn't exercise, which is what I did in additon to supplements. And, I suppose, I didn't have 40 years of New Orleans cuisine to contend with. Working in suburbia as I do now, I see the proof all around me in the faces of people struggling against the life they've found themselves into, a life of presumptuous ease and convenience. I see people power walking in the damn mall. Women whose asses have spread to fill their desk chairs, women who suck down smoothies and maybe do a half hour at the local gym at lunch (if they are that devoted). I see people trying and I see people who have given up. And then there are those who, for whatever reasons, cannot do much for their weight gain and still complain endlessly about it. I don't see an end in sight.