By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
February 4, 2002
It’s time to get fit, Chicago. Sure, like many of us, you were a bit surprised in January when Men’s Fitness dubbed us the second fattest city in America. Lest we comfort ourselves with the fact that we’re not yet the fattest city in the nation–that distinction belongs to Houston–bear in mind that just last year we were a distant No. 10.
Well now, it’s time for us to do something about it.
February is “Chicago Sheds a Ton” month, and the Sun-Times wants you to help our city to lose a collective 2,000 pounds more. All you have to do is commit to get fit. Check the paper throughout the month for daily diet and nutrition tips from Weight Watchers, exercise how-tos and success stories.
We encourage you to form teams at work, church or with your social clubs to motivate one another to trim a pound or two. We’ll help to keep tabs on you when you e-mail the names of your team members to suntimes.com. The Sun-Times wants to share your success stories and offer guidance from diet and fitness experts during this campaign.
We’ll report back to you the tally of pounds lost. By the end of February, we hope to be a leaner, meaner city.
Leading by example, four teams have already formed to get Chicago motivated. Staffers have committed to losing at least 1 pound a week, but we need all of of you to help to reach our goal of 2,000. Our teams are: Kaboom, a nonprofit that builds safe playgrounds for kids; the City of Chicago’s Office of Special Events; Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Chicago Urban League.
“Chicago isn’t alone,” says Karen Miller-Kovach, chief scientist for Weight Watchers. “We as a society are getting heavier, so being fatter has become the norm for us. If you look at older TV shows, the TV stars were thin and fit, but they represented the majority of Americans during that time. Now, the thin actors we see on today’s shows represent a minority of the population.”
Still, it just doesn’t seem as though 1 in every 5 people has a serious weight problem. Miller-Kovach attributes that to perception. Or rather misperception.
“Our view of what’s normal changes as we change,” she says. “The people who really notice our weight are foreigners who come to visit America. They’re shocked when they look at us because most nations don’t have obesity problems like we do.”
Case in point: The majority of complaints about the snug stadium seats at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, came from Americans–not Europeans or other Asians.
So what does a society do when “super size” has become a part of our everyday vernacular and “bigger is better” a mantra?
“We just need to change our behavioral patterns,” Miller-Kovach says. “It’s certainly not easy to do, but it can be done. It’s not just overeating that’s making us fat, because our caloric intake isn’t that much more than it used to be. But we’re moving less, and that’s taking more of a toll than eating more.”
She points out that suburbanites, who tend to walk more and drive less, fare even worse than urban dwellers.
Julie Burke fell into that trap, using modern-day conveniences to avoid being active.
“I used to always have my kids get things for me or park as close as I could to the store at a shopping center,” says Burke, 35, of Crestwood. “I’ve always been heavy so I did everything there was to lose weight. I even went to a hypnotist, who suggested the reason I was overweight was because I had been sexually abused as a child. She said the same thing to my friend. Neither of us had ever been abused.
“I do come from an overweight family, but I wasn’t fat just because of that. For me, I was fat because I really just liked food and I enjoyed eating. I didn’t eat because I was unhappy or depressed. I just like the way it tasted. To lose weight, I had to stop eating as much and burn off some of the calories. It was as simple as that.”
For more than four years, the stay-at-home mom lost 72 pounds, going from a size 22 to a size 4. Initially, she was disappointed by her slow weight loss. But experts agree that’s the best way to keep pounds off permanently.
“The best thing about losing weight is that I learned how to cook more healthy meals for my family,” Burke says. “We buy margarine probably two times a year now. We don’t eat toast with butter anymore. I serve reduced- fat peanut butter with breakfast, and the kids love it.”
Burke also didn’t join an expensive health club or hire a trainer. Rather, she picked an activity she liked–walking–and made sure she walked two to four miles a day, four times a week. And instead of asking her children to act as go-fers, she did more for herself.
Now that the weather outside is frightful, she gets her cardio workout by shoveling snow.
“I always make a deal with myself that if I shovel, I don’t have to go on the treadmill,” she says, laughing.
Miller-Kovach says staying active is exactly what more Americans need to do to win the war with fat.
“Today, parents–myself included–drive their children to school so they don’t even need to walk a block,” she says. “We’re worried they’re going to be snatched off the streets so we don’t encourage them to ride their bikes around the neighborhood in the evening. Instead, they sit inside playing computer games.”
But the longer a child is overweight, the more likely he’ll carry it over into adulthood. The number of overweight adolescents has tripled since 1980. According to the Surgeon General, 13 percent of America’s children have weight problems. Some 300,000 deaths in America are associated with obesity. Compare that to 400,000 deaths associated with smoking.
But take heart, Chicago. There is hope for us yet.
“On the positive side, Chicago is a vibrant city that provides lots of opportunity for activity,” Miller-Kovach says. “The lakefront is gorgeous and, unlike many urban centers in the United States, it’s a city where people can feel safe walking around. The food is great there, but you’re used to portion distortion. If you keep getting large portions of food, that’s what you expect and that’s what you eat.
“I always tell people when they eat out to tell the server to wrap up half their meal in a doggie bag before they even bring it out to the table. Or share an entree with your dining partner. In most restaurants, that’s plenty of food. Food choice certainly is important in keeping fit. But the quantity of what you eat is even more important.”
