The Washington Times: Commentary
This sort of thing needs to be stopped, and stopped NOW!
There is much more to overweight than McDonald’s. There is even much more to being overweight than how much or what anyone eats, how much someone exercises.
And food isn’t tobacco.
In fact, being fat isn’t a choice that people make. I know that I didn’t make the choice of being fat. There were a lot of factors that got me here.
The first is genetics. There isn’t anything we can do about that at all at the present time.
The second is parental lifestyle. My parents never participated in a regular exercise activity nor did they encourage us to do that. And I certainly hope gym class and P.E. classes have changed, as nothing that was done in those classes when I was growing up encouraged me to do anything active.
The college I went to, also did nothing to encourage the regular student to do any type of exercise. Neither did the AFROTC department — which was the substitute for PE PLUS my at the time future path, since I had a full scholarship.
My first job DID however encourage exercise and did make it easy. I worked for Texas Instruments, and they did have good gyms, and good people working there. They also had a very flexible schedule, which made it easy to go work out.
My current job does nothing to encourage anyone to be physically active — though the insurance program does.
The one thing that has affected my weight more than any single item is my sleep disorders. I am still not convinced we’ve got that solved lately.