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Let’s Move: Take Control of Our Own Health Conditions
I am not a big fan of Michelle Obama, but I liked her push to get kids to exercise. Her Let’s Move initiative tried to address a problem that has deep implications for the country, which I feel Covid-19 has highlighted as brightly as a yellow magic marker slashed across the 2020 calendar.
Of course, the Obama administration also canceled the Presidential Fitness Award in schools, which many of us experienced as students, but I’m willing to believe a program that was first implemented in the 1960s needed some updating, and Let’s Move initiatives at least promote 60 minutes of physical activity every day in K-12 education.
But now many schools are not meeting at all. Team sports are mostly canceled. And I know from my own experiences as a parent that any stress on exercise in the school day had eroded quite a bit before the Obama era, much less the pandemic. It’s no great mystery how over 30% of young Americans have become so overweight that they are automatically ineligible for military service. That has long been identified as a national security issue.
Now I should say I personally was not an athlete as a kid taking PE. I was a severe asthmatic who only enjoyed parachute day. But it doesn’t take a genius to see an unfit society with sedentary children leads to all sorts of problems as those kids turn into sedentary adults with lots of underlying health issues. Covid-19 has exposed some of these health consequences, to be sure, though our responses have been so myopic that almost a year into the thing we still aren’t treating any of those problems now, which strikes me as absolutely cray-cray.
Let me highlight some of my own experiences to give you a better sense of my thinking.
I ran three half-marathons in early 2020 before all outdoor races were essentially canceled across the country, and people were told to stay inside. In a matter of weeks, there were no more running clubs meeting. People were told to socially distance while running, so there were no more running partners, no events to keep one accountable, no running community anymore to motivate anyone to go out on those cold, dark days when it’s a heckuva lot easier to just stay inside and eat waffles.
What happened to me in the “lockdown” period?
I gained seven pounds, which I called my “Covid baby,” as I grew unhappier every day and definitely more unhealthy.
I finally said nope.
I felt as if a virus that I’ve never had was actively killing me in the late spring, early summer. I was not willing to let that continue any longer, so I started running long miles again alone through a city that looked like Zombie Apocalypse Land with only homeless people milling about on the sidewalks. I ignored the nonsensical posts I read online about wearing masks in the open air out of a “sense of solidarity” with my fellow man. (Not only were these posts not scientific, they had the real impact of discouraging vigorous exercise.) I convinced my best friend who lives over a thousand miles away to start running with AirPods, so we could “meet up” for super “socially distanced” runs a couple of mornings a week.
Unfortunately, my poor husband with bad knees who lifts weights for fitness had a lot longer to wait to get back to a health-focused regime because all the at-home gym equipment was sold out across the country for months, and the gyms were all shut down. (To this day, contact tracing shows any spread in gyms where they have been opened has been negligible.) This is still the case in many states–gyms are closed–which I believe actively exacerbates this health crisis.
This has made me a bit angry.
I have never once heard Dr. Fauci–or anyone else from the public sector during the pandemic–discuss how Covid-19 shows us the American lifestyle needs to change. Instead of sitting on our couches, we need to get moving. We need to admit that one of the problems we have as a country requires individuals to get up and do something proactive, especially if we have children. We should not simply “stay at home.”
I think vaccines are great, especially for the elderly, but let’s be real, shall we?
Our bigger, long-term problems cannot be addressed with a shot because no mere shot is getting rid of any of the many co-morbidities that have made way too many people vulnerable in the first place. After all, while some of a person’s risk factors are often completely outside a person’s control–cancer, chronic kidney disease, sickle cell anemia–there are other risk factors that have been created by an individual’s poor choices, i.e., obesity, smoking, and (often) the onset of Type 2 Diabetes.
Now I am about to sound super mean.
Instead of worrying about fat people being more accepted in our culture–a movement that has definitely been a “thing” for the last decade or two–I wish we would start addressing our underlying fitness issues in this country. In fact, I’ve started to get a bit resentful about the fact that we aren’t.
When I’m told it’s my “civic duty” to wear a mask when I’m out, why can’t I say it’s someone else’s “civic duty” to put down that Twinkie and go do some squats, so they aren’t as vulnerable to being seriously hurt by this virus in the first place?
In response, you might say “fat” isn’t contagious, but I say people not taking care of themselves has had a huge impact on medical costs in the country, which I have long been asked to help carry. I hear all the time about the percentage of the American population that has a co-morbidity, which has led to my whole life being upended during this pandemic to protect them.
Please don’t hear me wrong. I understand that people in great shape have passed away with Covid-19. Not every co-morbidity can be controlled, as I said above. I also indulge in an occasional Twinkie. Yet it’s pretty beyond dispute that healthier lifestyles often ameliorate the impact of most chronic diseases (including my asthma), say all doctors everywhere. And we know that more than 90 percent of the people who have actually passed away after contracting Covid-19 had an underlying health condition.
So wouldn’t it be worthwhile to have a broader conversation about how people working out is a much better choice than staying home in isolation? I mean, if we actually could start an exercise craze–think the running revolution of the 1970s!–I think the United States would be a stronger, better, happier country in the future.
I don’t care which person gets this started. Let’s just get moving… now.
Published in General
But Michelle Obama never talked about cutting subsidies for corn syrup. I think the recommendations to wear masks while exercising outdoors (or outright banning of outdoor activities) is stupid and anti-science.
I strongly support more recess in school, especially for younger ages. I also support team and youth sports. Kids and parents have gotten lazier (probably parents more than kids). Youth sports require effort from everybody. We have too many other easier things to do and entertain us. Other issues like cost and parents (how often do we see stories of parents and umps getting into fights) have hurt participation as well.
It’s a shame.
The biggest subsidy to corn syrup are the outrageous sugar price and import controls.
Make real sugar artificially more expensive = get the less expensive alternative: corn syrup.
I know two people who died of the “normal flu” in the past. Age 45 and 50. We didn’t have masks or “social distancing” then. People will always die of viruses, most don’t. Covid was just the excuse for certain people to “stick it to the peasants”.
Again, I’m not a big Michelle fan, but that may have been beyond the purview of a First Lady initiative?
Of course the recommendations to wear masks while exercising outdoors are amazingly stupid and completely anti-science.
We moved to a wonderful school district in Atlanta when my son was in the third grade. I got a note he was squirmy. I asked him why. He told me they don’t even have recess. I thought he was lying. I discovered the teacher routinely canceled recess to “use the time.” That made me mad, too.
Team sports are marvelous teachers. In some neighborhoods, parents are definitely over-the-top, and it’s difficult for a kid to play in high school unless really, really good. However, I played softball–badly–in a city league. My mother taught me how to play tennis. I’d be happy if some kids just went on walks!!!!
I really hate masks, but I think they are a good thing to go with this conversation. Whether one likes masks or not, wouldn’t it be more helpful to take control of one’s own lifestyle? Masks are an “easy” fix for some while a giant annoyance for others. I don’t think our health issues are solved by “easy.”
Oh! And to your other point…. I’ve had pneumonia, which hospitalized me three times as a kid with severe asthma, but no one was required to change how they walked around in public to protect me. (Even as that kid in the hospital, I would have found that ridiculous.)
That’s the real problem with the masks. They could honestly be justified forever.
The truth is one of the reasons that I became a runner is that my father wanted to empower me to build up my lungs, to get more in touch with my body, and to take more control of my own health. He did all of that for me, which is why he was a very good dad, even if he couldn’t cure me.
With games like dodgeball deemed “too violent” and monkey bars “too dangerous,” the only exercise average kids get is with an X-Box or PS4. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to play Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey for a few hours . . .
I agree with everything you said. This discussion is completely absent from COVID conversations, and it’s probably a big reason why Japan’s numbers look so much different than ours.
All of my races got cancelled this year. The 15k I run every year was changed to a “virtual race.” (Ugg. So dehumanizing.) I miss hanging out with a bunch of sweaty people at the finish line and going out for a beer with strangers. Running was a big part of my social life and I miss that aspect of it.
First, Japan. Yes.
Second, I love other runners. There really is a ton of natural camaraderie in the sport, whatever the skill level. I knew no absolutely no one when I ran my first marathon in another state, but I ended up talking with a couple of other women for at least ten miles as we helped each other just keep going to the end… I also hate virtual races. Like. Seriously. They mean you are just… uh… going for a run. ;)
A former middle school teacher and I were talking about how “recess” now resembles “prison yard air” because of silly stuff like this….
This whole fitness (non-fitness!) issue has been a huge problem for decades. Too many people are incredibly overweight, which leads to many other health problems like diabetes, heart disease, etc., and the resultant skyrocketing medical costs.
As a young person, I had never been an athlete, but took up running in my 20s and ran three marathons in my 30s. I can’t run now (some joints give up the ghost after 70 years), but that gave me a lifelong desire to stay in reasonable shape.
First, you’re one of my people, toooooo!!!! :)
Running has been a part of my life for decades, but I realize that there might be a time when I can’t still run like I do. I think that will be okay as long as I can still walk. I just love being outside. (A dog helps on this front.) I hope you are still able to do this, even with bad joints. My husband has bad knees, but he still hikes with me.
My grandmother was morbidly obese, and I would’ve gotten into a fight with someone who made fun of her and hurt her feelings on purpose. But she was not a good model for healthy living, and I don’t know when we got to a point in society when we just made excuses for everyone’s fitness choices. I mean, we don’t look at alcoholics and say, “Yeah. Drunk is beautiful. You do you.”
When we do this with really overweight people, it’s kinda the same thing.
Dying of a heart attack is much cheaper for the system than cancer treatment or years of nursing home living with Alzheimers.
Same here. When I was younger, running was doing laps around the track. Now it’s to the bathroom and back . . .
Actually, fat might be contagious. I thought I read some reports 15 or so years ago purporting to show that skinny people who spend a lot of time with fat people get fat themselves. The thesis being that you tend to become like the people you spend the most time with. I took note as I watched a skinny college girl gain a lot of weight after becoming best friends, and then roommates with, a fat girl.
I have always been somewhat “doughy”, but watching the really fat people around me have difficulty with basic tasks like climbing stairs or getting in and out of cars, or walking more than a few Hubbard’s at least incentivizes me not to get fatter.
This is absolutely true and applies to all aspects of life. Financial, health, attitude, everything. You are the average of the five people you hang out with the most.
Hmmm…. I pretty much like every comment made on my posts because I appreciate the conversation, but I had to think about this one for a minute.
An interesting thing about Medicare is that it was successful in one very big way, if I correctly remember an old paper I had to read back in graduate school: the government invested huge amounts of money into heart research because this was a major problem for aging Americans. This investment “trickled down” to everyone else, as well as reviving grandma and grandpa, even after they had suffered from a heart attack.
As a person who grew up with her grandparents in the home, however, I am very in touch with the aging and death process. I remember someone writing here on Ricochet that his doctor father used to call pneumonia the old man’s “friend.” I really understood what that meant. It makes Covid an even more complicated conversation, actually.
I wish that Tabby’s story showed the overweight girl getting into aerobics….
Most heart problems can get lots of long-term care; stents, bypass, valve replacements, angioplasty, open heart surgery, etc.
One hip is arthritic, so I can walk 3 miles with my wife only once or twice a week before it bugs me (she walks 5-6 days/week). I swim laps in our community’s indoor pool to get some aerobic exercise.
A little walking is a good thing. I’m glad you have the pool! Swimming is a perfect alternative to weight bearing exercises.
Going to the gym and working out by myself is boring (even with earbuds). I discovered that I’m a social exerciser. I do best with classes and accountability buddies. The COVID-related shutdown of the gyms in my area took that away. I’m sure that’s a good part of why I gained some weight last spring.
I’m really looking forward to being able to do exercise classes again.
I totally feel you. I would like to go on a run with a friend as much as go out to lunch. Accountability really helps. I hope the gyms open soon. There really is very, very little evidence that they are a problem where they are open.
Both of my paternal grandparents died of the flu. Grandmother in 1919 and grandad in 1966.
That is incredible. Your grandmother must have been a very young woman.
The peak mortality age was something like 28 for the 1918-19 pandemic.
I like casual bicycle riding (not the serious stuff that @thereticulator does), and I prefer to do it alone before dawn (less traffic and fewer other people on the town trails). But I’m not a fan of doing so when the temperature is below about 55 F, and here in north Texas, it’s now below that almost every morning, and even into most afternoons, so I’m not currently getting much bicycling done.
One of my funnest memories in Austin was running very early in the morning across Lady Bird on the pedestrian bridge (obviously before they enabled homeless camping.) The sun was dripping gold across the skyline. I don’t remember the season. I was all alone with my thoughts until a guy started across the bridge on his bicycle, meandering towards me at a slow pedal. We caught eyes, and I did a double-take, though I kept my stride. He flashed a giant smile as warm as a Texas summer, a nice howdy-do exchanged between complete strangers who were both just happy to be alive. (At least that was my projection?)
Who did I pass in the quiet hours? Ryan Gosling. Apparently, he is sometimes a casual bike rider, too. ;)
In a previous life (younger, out of work) I did some casual running, no competition. I ran around Green Lake in Seattle in the morning, and every other day or so I’d see one of the local TV news anchors, running in the opposite direction. Today, I have an indoor rowing machine that I use when I feel like it, which is not often enough. Hubby is bereft, since his athletic club is closed and he can’t play squash, which is his primary mode of exercise. He does ride his bike around the neighborhood, but the weather is getting too bad for that now.