America's next crisis likely started around Halloween.
Many Americans buy more candy than they give away to children trick-or-treating. Since we want to be thrifty and most of us like candy, we keep it. We hold on to the candy to demonstrate that we are good stewards of money. We also hold on to it just to eat a piece, or two, or three, every day.
I've held on to Halloween candy before and eaten handfuls of it in a day. I normally gain weight if I eat more than 2,000 calories a day. This proves I'm not exercising enough, even though I might work off a couple of hundred calories at the gym — some days. I used to exercise 90 minutes or even two hours, and could still gain weight since I have the ability to eat more than I work off on a treadmill.
Next, comes Thanksgiving. I have a lot to be thankful for like most Americans. My wife has already been making and freezing cookies. The problem is I know that they are in the freezer — and I know where to find them in the freezer. I can take one out at a time and put it in the microwave. Occasionally, I have taken two out of the freezer. I hope we have some left by the time Thanksgiving is actually here.
For some reason, after Thanksgiving is over, we really begin to settle in to the holiday spirit, especially with Christmas programs, parades and festive songs begin on the radio.
I keep reading articles that Americans only gain about 1 pound during the holidays. However, if we only gain 1 pound each holiday season and never lose it, then after a few years we are in very sad shape. Let me quickly stop here and say, I think I gain 3 or 4 pounds around Christmas and then have to work all winter to lose it — and so far I have. However, losing weight just simply gets harder all the time.
We smile and know we all fight this battle of eating too much and exercising too little. Unfortunately, it's nothing to smile that much about. We kill ourselves eating too much and eating the wrong foods.
Too many Americans are obese. That only leads to serious health problems from heart issues to cancer and to diabetes. Diabetes is such a chronic problem in America. There are different numbers on diabetes. About 30 million people in our country are struggling with this health dilemma. Millions of people are undiagnosed. Diabetes leads to blindness, kidney failure and amputations of feet and legs.
We are in a crisis in America due to health care costs. We can't afford our medical insurance and it's almost always financially painful to go the doctor. The estimated annual health care cost of obesity-related illnesses is a staggering $190.2 billion or nearly 21 percent of annual medical spending in the United States. Childhood obesity alone is responsible for $14 billion in direct medical costs, according to healthcommunitieshealthfuture.org
My challenge is to try to get ahead of this and not let eating bad, inactivity and extra weight become a holiday crisis — again.
Glenn Mollette is an American syndicated columnist and author.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Stop the holiday cycle, prevent a health crisis