These past few weeks, the news outlets have been commenting that 75% of our country is overweight and obese. The disturbing point of that high percentage is that the obese percentage is growing faster. The overweight population is continuing to gain weight and becoming obese. Having been in the fitness group of people most of my life, I started to recall the changes that have taken place to cause this weight gain in people. Today the term AI is in headlines and the advance of technology, in general, has given people a much easier lifestyle.
As kids we rode onespeed bikes to ball games or to visit friends. Any hills required standing on the pedals and pushing down hard to keep going. Then the invention of a three-gear bike made those hills a lot easier. Then with gear changes, lighter bikes, thin tires, and a 10-gear selection of speeds riding a bike became a really good workout. A 40mile bike ride was an easy workout and the gears made pedaling easy.
The games were all outside with a tag, chasing a rolling tire, climbing trees, playing various types of baseball depending on how many players there were. One-o-cat, work up and the Babe Ruth game where you had to select a field to hit because we only had four players. It involved a lot of running. Players did the selection process from kids in the neighborhood.
Women were mostly secretaries for work and employment. I took a typing class in high school on a manual typewriter. If you needed to make copies you had to hit those keys hard. Then electric typewriters were invented. The result was most women secretaries gained 10 pounds or more while doing the same work. The keys no longer required that strong finger push on multiple copies. It seems hard to imagine the difference between a manual typewriter and an electric typewriter would be that much of a change in calorie burning to gain 10+ pounds. They no longer had to reach up and move the carriage back for another line as now a button on the keyboard did it for you. Fewer calories burned over a period of time. Technology made it easier to send information or copies of the work by machine. Secretaries no longer had to make copies and walk the paper to the next person. Hit a button and it was there.
Kids that had scooters got a good workout pushing themselves around the neighborhood. Looking back, I wonder if when you usually pushed with the same leg there was a muscle imbalance from using the same leg all the time. Roller skates were clamped to your shoes and had a key that tightened them up. Then roller blades became popular and wheels became better and skating was now much easier than walking. It all added up to less effort and fewer calories burned. Kids that got a toy car they could ride in for their birthday had pedals under the hood to push if you wanted the car to move. Now battery- operated toy cars barely require the kid to steer the car.
Today the scooters, bikes, and even skates, are electric and will move without any effort from the person themselves. In the past kids invented games to play in the yard and most involved running and jumping. Today cell phones and iPads have games to play for entertainment. The only exercise is the movement of the thumbs touching the object held in their hands. And to really concentrate on the game it is best if you are sitting down on a sofa with your head down watching the screen. It will be interesting to see the posture of adults that grew up playing on their cell phones. Ads for straps that pull the shoulders back and straighten the upper back are making more appearances on television these days. I wonder if there is a connection to early childhood lifestyle?
