Diets: Calls to action go unheeded

United Press International surveyed 84 specialists for a 15-part series weighing in on the causes, consequences and costs of a global gain in girth and measures to curtail the corpulence. Part 6 tracks the resistance to mobilizing against a hefty threat to health and wealth.

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SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -- For a broad range of reasons and despite a wide array of incentives, most bulge battlers refuse to budge.

Some 75 percent of couch potatoes continue to favor the sofa over the jogging trail -- all the complaining, convincing and cajoling of the past two decades notwithstanding. For many, even sweet spoonfuls of health advantages have not helped the active ingredient in weight-control recipes go down.

"The key apart from any diet is physical activity," asserted Australian fitness guru and researcher Shane Bilsborough, who counsels some of his country's largest corporations on pound-pulverizing programs. "The food pyramid (which sets government standards for nutrition) needs to have a pair of walking shoes to encourage daily physical activity."

Such advice apparently is hard to swallow for most Americans, judging by the thinning numbers of those who follow it. The latest Time/ABC News poll shows only about a quarter of adults engage in at least an hour of exercise a week to drop pounds -- at a time when excess mass is bearing down on nearly two-thirds of the population.

"Even 100 years ago, when we were eating lots of fat and lard, we did not have the health problems we do today," said Dr. Linda Stern, an internist at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center. "Why? Because we were active then."

By some calculations, until the 1950s, the average U.S. woman consumed an estimated 3,000 calories to 5,000 calories per day. Today, she takes in fewer than 1,500 and subscribes to some type of weight-loss program. Yet, one in three modern-day Americans is considered obese, typically 30 pounds overweight, compared to one in four 30 years ago.

"We have seen some pretty big shifts in ... what we spend our time on nowadays, compared to what our days consisted of in the past," noted Linda Dong. Her recent research at the University of California, Berkeley, revealed once-popular sports, workouts and other physical activities have toppled to the bottom of the list of leisure pleasures.

The reasons run the gamut, from personal proclivities to professional priorities.

"We have learned that people who struggle with unhealthy weights often do other things while they are eating -- watch TV, drive or ride in a car, work at a computer, etc.," said dietitian Sylvia Moore, of the University of Washington in Seattle. She is principal investigator in a federally funded $4.3 million, four-year study of rural health behaviors, including "pleasurable eating."

"The lack of focus on eating removes both the social pleasure and some of the ability to take time to recognize satiety cues," said Moore, professor of family medicine and director of the Division of Medical Education and Public Health at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

Leon Rappoport, emeritus professor of psychology at Kansas State University in Manhattan, noted no one has ever joined him in ascending the four flights of stairs to his department nor in abstaining from the donuts the office staff purchases each morning.

"I'm convinced (the weight problem) is virtually all due to lifestyle," said Rappoport, author of "How We Eat: Appetite, Culture, and the Psychology of Food" (2003, ECW Press).

One that seems sedated by society's labor-limiting lures and entertainment-enhancing enticements.

"We have engineered physical activity completely out of our lifestyle with time-saving devices and conveniences," said Peter Katzmarzyk, professor of physical and health education at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

UC Berkeley nutritionist Joanne Ikeda agreed, lamenting the liabilities of lost locomotion.

"I remember a time when I had to actually get out of the chair to change the TV channels, and there were five channels and nothing to watch so I was forced to get up and go out," said Ikeda, who specializes in research on minority cultures and serves as scientific adviser to the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. "Now, it's a very different environment in which we're not getting our 30 minutes of physical activity a day or, for children, 60 minuets of active play."

Indeed, Dong's investigation, reported in March, showed in a typical day men and women devote nine times more time -- 170 minutes -- to watching television or movies than to engaging in pursuits requiring even a modest measure of mobility.

The sedentary shift spans all walks life.

"Fewer occupations require any sort of physical activity and our workdays have often become longer," said Dong, who is continuing her studies at the University of Washington. "A typical workday is no longer 9 to 5, and most of that day is spent sitting at a desk or behind the wheel of a car."

In a reversal from the early 1970s, when they were in the middle of the industrialized pack, Americans now vie with the Japanese -- who clocked 1,848 hours on the job in 2003 -- as the hardest workers in the developed world, logging in 1,815 annual hours, compared to 1,778 for their counterparts in Canada, 1,668 in Ireland, 1,625 in Sweden, 1,545 in France, 1,444 in Germany and 1,342 in Norway, reports the International Labor Organization of the United Nations.

"People are supposed to work in 60 minutes a day of moderate physical activity, but given the way our society is now, we don't have a lot of extra time on our hands to go out and jog," said Gladys Block, co-author of the Berkeley study and professor of epidemiology and public health nutrition at the School of Public Health.

The analysis of the diurnal habits of 7,515 men and women, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, serves as a wakeup call for a super-sized, immobilized nation teetering on the brink of a health disaster, Dong said.

Just last March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta released startling statistics showing fat within striking distance of replacing tobacco as the nation's No. 1 avoidable killer.

"Americans need to understand that overweight and obesity are literally killing us," warned Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. He announced the 2002 (the latest year for which figures are available) corpulence-related death toll of 400,000, just 35,000 shy of the number of lives cut short by smoking.

The government fingered poor eating habits and lack of exercise as the most likely suspects in inciting the epidemic that, at last report, had spread to 129.6 million men and women in the United States and an estimated 1.2 billion worldwide.

"We're eating a lot more calories and we're exercising a lot less; it's not a big mystery why we're getting fat," Gail Woodward-Lopez, a UC Berkeley expert on obesity and overweight prevention, said in a telephone interview.

Packing on the extra padding can increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, certain types of cancer, arthritis, breathing disorders and other ailments.

"Physical inactivity is already a major global health risk and is prevalent in both industrialized and developing countries, particularly among the urban poor in crowded mega cities," a panel of international experts stated in a draft joint advisory report of the World Health Organization and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

"To achieve best results in preventing nutrition-related chronic disease, strategies and policies should fully recognize the essential role of both diet and physical activity in determining good nutrition and optimal health," the group recommended.

In the United States, burdened by a particularly heavy rate of overweight, President George W. Bush urged the nation to mobilize as he declared May to be National Physical Fitness and Sports Month.

"Regular physical activity builds strength and aerobic fitness provides motivation, promotes relaxation and facilitates sleep for people of all ages and abilities," the president stated in his proclamation. "Regular exercise -- in some cases, simply walking for half an hour -- can help reduce the risk of many serious health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes."

The advice was echoed May 27 by a 13-member panel of experts commissioned to update, by January, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the government's tipsheet for healthful eating. The team urged the populace to switch off television sets and turn on to "30 minutes of at least moderate physical activity most days."

Although many adults need 60 minutes of a moderate-to-vigorous workout for optimal well-being and weight, even minimal exertion offers a wealth of benefits.

For example, in a study of 23,500 General Motors employees, published May 14 in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Feifei Wang of the University of Michigan and colleagues found the car company could save an estimated $7.1 million a year in healthcare costs if sedentary, obese workers engaged in as little as 20 minutes of activity to boost their heart rates once or twice a week -- even if they shed no pounds.

With so little pain for so much gain, specialists hope to see some movement afoot.

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Next: How to stand up to bullying bulk

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UPI Science News welcomes comments on this series. E-mail lwasowicz@upi.com