I was reading over some old nutrition and fitness books and came across a term that I had forgotten about. Back in the mid-1960s a Tufts University professor, Dr. Jean Mayer, coined a phrase he called 'creeping overweight.' The research he had done with nutrition and weight control demonstrated that as a person aged they tend to gain weight.
I was talking with another fitness instructor a few weeks ago and the topic of weight gain was mentioned from the point that a good number of his clients started a fitness program in later life to lose weight. That was when I recalled Mayer’s creeping overweight term. It seems that for over 60 years of information about the value of good nutrition and exercise for weight control is still around as a problem today.
Meyer also did a study on children in physical education classes and problems with overweight at a young age. It turns out that active children ate more than the overweight children but in physical education classes they moved much more. The overweight children ate less, but in physical education class they moved even less, which resulted in more calories eaten then were burned off in activity. And a creeping overweight problem began at a young age.
