FROM GOOD OLE UNCLE VIC

May 2007

   Ah, May. The beginning of the summer season. Longer days. Shorter nights. Temperature in the 70's and 80's. Reminds me of when I was a wee lad growing up in Hawaii. 1345 Haloa Drive!

   The answer to last month's quiz, who was the first person to make it fashionable to wear your hat sideways? Why, Napoleon, of course.

   This month's quiz: Who was the first one to make it fashionable to wear a headband while playing basketball? As always, turn your answer in to Lisa in writing, or e-mail her at Lisa.Hemovich@BrickBodies.com.

   Lynne and I went to Australia and New Zealand the last two weeks of April. It seems so long ago now that I can hardly believe I went. Have you ever had that happen to you? You really look forward to something; it seems like it takes forever for the event to come, and then it comes and goes so quickly that it is hard to believe it ever happened. That's how it seems to me about our trip. Lynne actually went to Taiwan as well…on the same trip! She had to present BodyVive at a convention in Taiwan, we both spoke at a convention in Sydney and then she had to be in the filming of the next BodyVive release for LMI in Auckland the following week. We also brought Vicki and Ben with us to Sydney and Ben to New Zealand. Vicki was catching up with friends from her time spent in Australia working for Fitness First and playing basketball and Ben was observing how Fitness First ran their personal training and how personal training was set up at the LMI clubs in New Zealand. And that is why this Uncle Vic is so late. I am only now catching up from all that lost time. That is my story and I am sticking to it!

   My good friends, Phillip and Jackie, the owners of Les Mills Health Clubs and the owners and founders of Les Mills International, are writing a book together called Fighting Globesity. In Phillip's own words, Globesity is a metaphor he and Jackie use to describe "the relationship between personal health and fitness, national health systems and global sustainability."

   We all know that obesity is reaching epidemic proportions, not only in the United States but in other modern countries as well. Over 30% of Americans are now clinically obese (BMI, or body mass index weight to height ratio of over 30%) and as many as 70% are overweight or obese. 300,000 thousand people a year die from obesity-related diseases in the United States alone. But, as I said, it is not just an American problem. Over 1 billion people in the world are overweight and over 300 million are clinically obese. 300 million! That is the population of the United States!

   Yes, we all know that obesity is a problem but how many of us really know how obesity is affecting everything from national economies to the environment? The cost of the U.S. health care system was 2.1 trillion dollars in 2006. The U.S. spends more on diabetes than the gross national product of New Zealand. To put it another way, it is $7,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. Other nations are experiencing the same problems. At this rate, many governments could be pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by their health care costs.

   And how about the environment? Currently 20% of the world's population consumes 80% of the world's annual resource production-things like fuel, energy, food, cars, and luxury items. At present levels of production this level of consumption is unsustainable. We are running out of fossil fuels, raw material, farm land, fish, and clean water. Take into consideration that the world's population will increase by 50% to 9.5 billion over the next 50 years and that approximately half of the current third world will move to first world consumer status and the implications are staggering. What will happen to the price and availability of gasoline when 500 million Chinese start to drive?

   We are straining to feed everyone on the planet now. In an effort to meet demand, we are over-farming, over-fertilizing, over-fishing, increasing live stock yield with steroids and inhumane breeding practices and experimenting with genetic altering. This is causing soil depletion, de-forestization, water pollution, depletion of fish populations to the point of extinction, and contamination of waterfowl and wildlife. As demand increases, these problems will only get worse.

   So, how does obesity play into all of this? First, if more people took responsibility for their own personal health and fitness, some of those trillions of dollars being spent on health care around the world could be redirected to things such as finding an alternative for fossil fuels, solving the global warming problem and improving the quality of the air we breathe. Second, if more people consumed less calories in an effort to reduce their weight, there would be less of a demand on our fishing industry, our farming system and other sources of food production like the cattle industry and the poultry industry. Finally, if more people maintained normal body weights, it would positively impact fossil fuel consumption. Airlines are finding that their fuel costs are increasing as more and more passengers are obese. Add to this the affect on automobile gasoline consumption and you have significantly more carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, contributing to the greenhouse affect blamed for global warming, not to mention the pollution factor.

   Obesity is everyone's problem. We not only owe it to the planet to maintain a healthy bodyweight, but we need to do everything we can to influence others to do the same. And "others" not only includes our circle of family and friends but anyone else we can. It may sound melodramatic, but the world really does depend on it.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY