In a fun community challenge project, residents will try to lose 2,000 pounds of weight, drop unhealthy habits and “gain a ton of healthy knowledge.”

By MARK GILCHRIST

We have all heard that America is in an obesity crisis. Pick at random any six American adults and put them in your car and, on average, two will be obese and two more will be overweight – good luck squeezing in the last two. Yes, we are fat, but what concerns me is that we are getting fatter.

In your car only 20 years ago, according to Time magazine, only one of your passengers would be obese, and only two or three of them heavy. Also, if you do this with children today, you will pack in three times as many overweight ones as you did in 1984. Three times! We’re headed for a train wreck of bad health, folks, and we’re loaded up with lard.

Columbus County is no better off than the rest of the country. In fact, we’re worse. According to Deborah Albritton, director of Columbus County Healthy Carolinians, out of more than 800 Health Service Areas in the nation, our four-county area ranks seventh for coronary heart disease and ninth for strokes. No other area in the nation has such a strong pole position in this race to death.

How did that happen? Why are we even in the top 10? We don’t belong there!

These problems are sometimes hereditary, but lifestyle has a tremendous effect and that is something we can control, so let’s get out of the top-10. Let us be known not for the lot we are in, but for our efforts to get out of it. Let us be the county that wouldn’t give up, that decided to help itself.

Let us be the county that drops a ton.

In the next few months, you will hear a great deal about a project called Columbus County Drops A Ton, where hundreds of people will pledge to lose 2,000 pounds, and we can’t do it without you.

You’re not overweight? Good. This project is still for you. First of all, we are asking churches, businesses and organizations to form groups of participants who will pledge not only to lose a few pounds each, but also to take on other healthy habits. They can quit smoking or start eating better or exercise more. In fact, you can choose from 26 healthy “pledges” or organize a team for your friends. Find out more at:

www.dropaton.org.

This project is for you if you know how expensive obesity is. The national medical tab for this is $117 billion a year according to Time magazine. That’s just the bills, which we all end up paying in our health insurance premiums. $117 billion doesn’t buy what it used to, and it doesn’t count lost productivity and the financial, physical and emotional cost to families and friends of people who suffer these illnesses.

Everyone wants to live healthier lives and we all plan to get around to it, someday. Problem is, most of us have spent decades fine-tuning our bad habits and we’re not ready to just let them go. We need something to prod us, like a heart attack.

But unlike former President and quadruple-bypass survivor Bill Clinton, let’s not wait, because, as doctors will tell you, such surgery only takes care of symptoms. Lifestyle is the problem and lifestyle is the cure.

Is it our fault that we’re in the shape we’re in? Are we weak people who should be ashamed to be compared to our hale and hardy ancestors? No. In a special June 7 issue named Overcoming Obesity, Time magazine explains it well:

“Although our physiology has stayed pretty much the same for the past 50,000 years or so, we humans have utterly transformed our environment. Over the past century especially, technology has almost completely removed physical exercise from the day-to-day lives of most Americans. At the same time, it has filled supermarket shelves with cheap, mass-produced, good-tasting? food that is packed with calories. And finally, technology has allowed advertisers to deliver constant, virtually irresistible messages that say “Eat this now” to everyone old enough to watch TV.”

Our beautiful systems of democracy and capitalism have helped make America fat. There are countries less developed that have little or no obesity, and immigrants to the U.S. from those countries quickly learn the American Way and put on the pounds. People returning from trips to Europe have told me that the only overweight people they see are American tourists.

Two more facts from Time:

• Excess weight significantly increases the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, infertility, gall-bladder disease, osteoarthritis and many forms of cancer.

• The American Medical Association reported that poor diet and physical inactivity could soon overtake tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.

Help is here

We’re going to team up on this thing, folks, because good health should not be a solitary struggle – that just doesn’t work. For decades, our country has “seen obesity as a personal problem to be solved by each overweight individual waging a lonely war to trim pounds on the diet du jour,” states Time, “…in an environment that almost guaranteed an obese population.”

If you want to lose a few pounds or a lot of pounds, please know that you’re not alone. This and next year you will see efforts throughout the county to help you “thin-up.” We’ll create walking trails, hold special events and be at the major festivals. But we can’t do this alone. We will provide you with the knowledge and the opportunity, and you will need the motivation and desire. Get on a team and support the people you’re with, and let them support you. I’m not doing this for me, and I’m hardly doing anything directly for you, I’m just doing this so that you can help you.

Joining me and The News Reporter is Albritton with Columbus County Healthy Carolinians, Columbus County Hospital, the Columbus County Health Dept. and the Greater Whiteville Chamber of Commerce. The Columbus County commissioners passed a proclamation Tuesday showing their support, and I’m thrilled to have such a talented, energetic and enthusiastic team on my side, and on your side.

Valuable support also is coming from Project HEALTH, of CCH and Southeastern Regional Medical Center, funded by the N.C. Health and Wellness Trust Fund Commission.

We invite and encourage you to see 2005 as the year of good health for Columbus County, and to be “Fit in 2005” by joining in vigorously with fun and creative activities. If you have a healthy program of any sort or size, you can make it “Fit in Five Certified.”

Carrying extra pounds is not just uncomfortable, but it carries a deadly toll. According to Dr. David Katz of Yale University, who said that today’s children “may be the first generation in history whose life expectancy is projected to be less than that of their parents.”

We owe it to our children to break this cycle and to bring them up in a healthier environment, and we owe it to ourselves in beautiful Columbus County to be healthy. Our struggle to change our habits and lifestyles will be mostly psychological, and the result will be physically wonderful, if we each remember the beauty within us, and that we truly deserve good health. Let’s get off this train. Let’s improve our lot and let someone else be on the Top-10.

Friday is Healthy Family Fun Day at Columbus County Hospital, from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. at the main visitor entrance. Take a guided walk from the Courthouse at 7:30 a.m.. Get the official “song and dance” to kick off Columbus County Drops A Ton at 2:15 p.m. and sign up for a team. Questions? Call 642-1734 or visit www.dropaton.org