Holidays are enlarging events

Christmas is over, but the sweet, fattening remnants remain. Today, gyms and health clubs will be crowded with people trying to work off the extra calories they've consumed and vowing to live up to their new year's resolutions to lose weight. It will be hard to find an empty treadmill, stepper or elliptical trainer for the next month.

I'm no exception to the holiday expansions rule. As I step on the bathroom scales each morning, I've noticed the numbers edge upward. After a full year of increased physical activity and smarter eating, my weight had dipped into a leaner, healthier level, but now I see it creeping up again. Like almost everyone else, I've succumbed to the temptations of the season to consume more food and richer food over the holidays. That veer off the disciplined path takes its toll. But I'm convinced there's more to holiday weight gain than just more and richer food. We've just passed the winter solstice, when daylight dips to about nine hours in these latitudes. Shorter days make it more difficult to keep up with an exercise regimen, and longer nights make overeating more tempting. Something as simple as getting out for a walk after work is harder to do when night has spread its pall over the earth and winter temperatures make the outdoors less inviting. Strenuous yard work is abandoned in the darker seasons, and our entire body rhythms slow down to a hibernation-like level.

Darkness will linger for another three months, making it harder to keep that new year's resolution about exercising more and losing holiday pounds. It's the combination of tempting holiday food and the reduced opportunity (and motivation) for exercise that combines to make these holiday pounds so hard to shed.

Weight gain is not inevitable or uncontrollable

An op-ed column in today's News & Observer complains that the state health insurance plan's higher premiums for obese clients is unfair. It is, says the writer, "tantamount to charging employees for having a heart attack or needing chemotherapy." The writer assumes that people are powerless to control their weight, in the same way they might be powerless against a genetic anomaly that causes heart disease or a cancerous tumor.

It just ain't so. Although some people may be congenitally susceptible to putting on weight, they are not helpless against this predisposition. People who are naturally shy can overcome that tendency, and people who tend to gain weight can curtail their eating. Even if your body tends to convert calories into fat, it cannot do that unless those calories are consumed. People with weight-gaining tendencies can also counter this predisposition by burning calories through physical labor or exercise. As one ages, metabolism slows down. If you're eating as much at 40 as you did at 20, and haven't increased your exercise, you're going to gain lots of weight.

Among the hazards of unemployment, I was told recently, was weight gain. Jobless people tend to ease their frustrations and depression by snacking a lot. After a year of joblessness, I have had the opposite experience. I've actually lost about 10 pounds while unemployed — and not because I've quit eating.

What I have done is reduce consumption of prepared foods. When we both worked, my wife and I tended to eat instant meals more often — microwave dinners, fast food, hot dogs, etc. Since I have the time to cook, we've prepared more meals from scratch (or nearly scratch), and we've eaten healthier. We've also paid attention to portion size. I've also exercised more, by doing yard work, walking the dog and actually going to the gym (gym membership is one luxury I did not give up as we reduced our living expenses). As a result, I'm leaner and healthier and feel better (in part because job stress is gone).

Controlling weight is not easy. Fad diets won't do it. Intermittent starvation won't do it. A commitment to eat healthily, exercise regularly and avoid snacking as part of an overall lifestyle change will prevent the common pound or two or four a year weight gain over 30 years that most people experience as they age.

My challenge, when I get a job, will be to maintain my eating habits while working in sufficient exercise in a desk-job environment. It's not easy, but it's not impossible.