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Lifestyle overhaul the only answer

June 16, 2007 12:35 am

YESTERDAY, I took out a tape measure to measure for new kitchen curtains, but ended up measuring myself. To my shock and dismay, my girth was eight inches more than when we moved to Stafford years ago. In fact, I was 38 inches bigger all around.

Not good. My wardrobe, like many others', is in multiple sizes. Suits (no longer worn) in size 10. Dresses in size 12. Skirts in size 14, and pants, we will not even discuss. For years, I could camouflage the weight. No longer. Nobody wants to be a poster child for

fat!

What, I wonder, is driving the fattening of America? I know we get too little exercise, but there must be more to it. I used to blame my job for my own lack of exercise. After all, who feels like doing jumping jacks after sitting in traffic for nearly two hours just to get home? So I remedied that problem by retiring early. I used to teach math at Northern Virginia Community College. Now I tutor and write.

Rather than standing for a living and sitting a long time to get there, I sit for a living and don't go more than a few yards from where I got up. But this factor alone does not define my weight issue. It could possibly add to it.

I used to blame the food industry. How can it feed growth hormones and estrogens to all those cows and chickens and not expect the rest of us to get fat, too? The fatteners are in the eggs, the meat, the milk, the cheeses, the ice creams. One can give up all of those things and become a vegan, like our daughter, but we hardly have the food infrastructure here to make that possible.

In California, where the standard size for women seems to be 4, 6, or 8, there are raw-food and vegetarian restaurants and organic groceries (Trader Joe's and Whole Foods abound). In Europe, where everyone is thinner, food is fresher and less processed. It is also grown differently. And Europeans walk much more than we do, much like the people who live in our big cities.

As a nation, we eat many processed foods, many of them sweetened with "high-fructose corn syrup." High-fructose corn syrup is a cheap sweetener, but the problem, say researchers, is that it turns off the mechanism that tells us when we are full! I see this substance in everything from iced tea to muffins. How can we stop eating if we cannot tell when to stop?

On closer observation, I know I should eat more vegetables and fewer starches. I know meat is not a necessity, and that one can live on other stuff. It is just that we have been conditioned to eat a certain way.

I think back to how my grandmothers looked. They were not fat. Nor was my mother. So what do I do? Should I walk each morning before it gets hot? Yes. There is yoga I can do three times a week. There is the gym we have not been to in months.

Yes, I wish we had the raw juice bars that are all over New York City and the gourmet vegetarian restaurants found in other cities, but I can also learn how to cook--finally!

There is raw white asparagus dipped in hummus that I can eat in the day. There's fresh, ruby-red grapefruit I can eat after 8 p.m. when the munchies strike. I can eat half a sandwich at lunch and bring the rest home. Yeah, yeah, I know --I also can "think thin."

Meanwhile, maybe I should get up from this desk. Never mind the writing I want to do. I can get on the floor instead and do sit-ups. After that, I can do my 25 leg lifts and my stretches. When that's all finished, I will likely call my friend--to see if she wants to go out with me for a latte.