How Obesity Can Be Reduced With Exercise?

Of recent interest, is the rash of various mechanical slenderizers advertised seductively in leading women's magazines.

Rolling pins wrapped in rubber will purportedly roll off the weight. Electrical vibrating devices can "literally melt away the pounds while you relax in your home."

This abrogation of intellectual honesty is at best suspect.

The federal government, fortunately, is slow to curtail free enterprise. But the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare warns us in frank talk that we are being "fleeced" to the tune of $500,000,000 a year.

"No enduring pill, gadget, cigarette, or chewing gum will help you safely lose weight," he says.
While any feeling human being naturally hopes for an easy panacea, many thinking human beings will go the route by themselves on their own, without risky crutches, and enjoy their just rewards.

A factual but depressing record of weight loss will reveal occasional plateaus. For days or weeks, even though caloric consumption remains steady so does the weight. No satisfactory medical explanation for this phenomenon is known, although a curtailment in activity is often suspected. Ride out the plateaus. You will again be on the downward path.

Obesity and over nutrition are more common among premature deaths than is lack of fitness. While physical immortality is unattainable, lean and fit individuals beat the odds!

Calorie Requirements For Various Activities

Calories per Hour*
1. Domestic and Artistic Occupations

• Standing relaxed 20
• Writing 20
• Reading aloud 20
• Sewing 25
• Dressing and undressing 33
• Singing 37
• Violin playing 46
• Ironing (with 5-lb. iron) 59
• Dishwashing 59
• Declaiming (without gestures) 85
• Sweeping the floor 100
• Dusting 100
• Polishing 174

2. Industrial Occupations

• Mental work 7
• Typing 30
• Shoemaking 80
• Bookbinding 85
• Painting 145
• Carpentering 155
• Laundry washing 230
• Riveting 276
• Stonemasonry 315
• Coal mining 320
• Sawing wood 400

3. Physical Exercise

• Sitting at lectures 13
• Drill without arms 83

* Caloric utilization beyond the needs required for sitting
motionless.

• Obesity and Fitness 105
• Walking slowly (2.6 mph) 150
• Walking moderately (3.75 mph) 215
• Marching 250
• Bicycling 180-300
• Rowing moderately 300-600
• Swimming 300-700
• Skating 300-700
• Climbing 400-900
• Walking very fast (5.3 mph) 565
• Skiing 500-900
• Rowing vigorously 1,240
• Running 1,242

The nutrition of exercise is remarkably simple.

So common and plentiful are the essential amino acids, fats, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins that a balanced diet can scarcely be avoided. The athlete at constant ideal weight who consumes three meals a day can be confident he is receiving an ample supply of calories, and he need not fear nutritional deficiencies.

While malnutrition is the rule rather than the exception in this country, the problem is over nutrition, not under nutrition.

A wide variety of foods capable of assuring a balanced diet is almost inescapable. Remember that athletes of all nationalities, from differing climates, and from varying dietary patterns win medals in the Olympics. The extremes of their eating habits attest unequivocally to the universality of good food. The first lesson in good nutrition is that no magic formula is available-or necessary.

Good food is good food no matter where you find it.

This is not to say, however, that athletes have not inherited fantastic and incredible nutritional notions. Perhaps the diet of an athlete has received more comment than any other area of his fitness program.

The serious athlete is involved in a twenty-four-hour-a-day curriculum. He watches his diet, plans his workouts, gets enough sleep, practices good hygiene habits, avoids excesses, and provides for his wife and children. What is true for the competing athlete is usually true for the serious non competitor, the fun and fitness enthusiast.

Competitor and non competitor alike are in constant search for methods to improve performance. Newer and better training systems are constantly being evolved. With these techniques, increasingly strenuous amounts of work can be compressed into shorter periods of exercise.