Solving the Obesity Crisis: This I Believe                           (download this editorial; Microsoft Word)
Steve Jefferies, publisher pelinks4u

(Ideas in this editorial were first shared at the 2007 PACE Conference at the University of Illinois)

If you’re a Public Radio listener you’ll be familiar with the “This I Believe” series of interviews in which numerous essayists - from the famous to the unknown - shared personal insights. I found the series title inspiring and have borrowed it to present TEN thoughts that I’ve had about the obesity crisis.

1. Do More + Eat Right = Stay Healthy
For the vast majority of children, the challenges we face in addressing worsening overweight and obesity can be summarized in this six-word header. It’s pretty simple: Children gain weight if they eat too much of the wrong kinds of food and are not active enough to burn off the calories they consume. While genetic differences between individuals may impact the rate of weight gain or loss, and controlling weight may be harder for some than others, children do not gain weight if they burn more calories than they consume.

2. Anything that children do throughout the day to increase their physical activity or eat better is good.
If “new” physical education results in more children becoming physically active - it’s worth supporting. The same can be said for “old” physical education. Team sports, individual sports, fitness and leisure activities are all fine if they work. Increased use of technology or learning to be active without technology - it’s all good if children become more active. Simply stated, the type of activity is less important than its effectiveness in getting the most students to be motivated to become regularly physically active.

However, based on this criterion some activities and PE programs are without doubt better than others. We need to be especially cautious about practices that promise change or change things temporarily, yet fail to lay a foundation for long-term, habitual lifestyle change. That’s why commercial diet or fitness plans routinely fail. Most have positive short-term results but fail in the long-term because individuals revert to previous unhealthy practices.

Physical educators and advocates of any type of activity program need to ask themselves if what they are doing is changing long-term behaviors. This is the hallmark of a truly effective program. Clark Hetherington, one of the pioneer physical educators reminded us of this more than 80 years ago in what we might consider physical education’s Golden Rule: It’s not what students do when they are with us that is important, but what they do when we aren’t there, and there’s no compulsion from us for them to do anything.

3. Habitual physical activity and good nutritional practices must be the goal.
We need to sustain or change behaviors so that children want - indeed feel compelled - to include physical activity into their lives every day. For many of us, daily physical activity is a habitual part of our lives, not an addition or an occasional treat. We have to have it or we feel less energetic, less productive, and less happy. That’s exactly the way all young people should feel. Sadly, too many children have learned to be habitually physically inactive. Worse still, it doesn’t bother them.

We also need to recognize that habitual movers and healthy eaters are not constrained by time and place. They seek out opportunities and will find an alternative if what they usually do is unavailable. If they can’t run they walk, dance, lift weights, ride, swim, anything: They just need to move. They need their movement “fix” regardless of the type. The habit is so strong it remains with them regardless of location, facilities, equipment, and time.

Kids habituated to physical activity want to walk or ride their bikes to school. They are anxious to get on the school playground and play. They anticipate recess and the chance to get out of their chairs and move. They love Physical Education and its movement experiences. They look forward to after school activity time. And for snacks and lunch they choose to bring nutritious foods and drink. They only eat food in quantities they need rather than in excess At home these students choose physical activity over continuous TV and videogames. They, like us, have been raised to feel a need for physical activity. Like us, it’s not so much a choice but a compulsion, an addiction – but fortunately a healthy one.

4. Good health habits are best learned from birth.
If we wait to develop healthy habits until children begin school, most students are going to be left behind and never catch up. We know this from research on learning how to read. Children who begin school behind in reading rarely catch up. Why should health skills be any different?

Changing bad habits is much harder than sustaining good habits. If our society is ever to solve obesity, we need to recognize that the years before students enter school are the MOST important years to develop desirable physical activity and eating habits. It’s going to be an uphill and probably impossible fight to reduce obesity if we don’t focus more attention on teaching good health habits and preventing bad ones with babies and infants.

5. Sustaining good health habits is different from changing bad ones.
The needs of children who are inactive, overweight, or on bad diets are different from those of children who are for the most part pretty healthy. As educators, we need to give more thought to the different needs of these two groups. Kids not used to being physically active can’t be expected to embrace a swift immersion into the kinds of movement experiences that active kids enjoy.

Anyone, (but especially television celebrities!) who thinks they know how to get overweight kids to become physically active should first be required to do the program they are advocating while carrying the same amount of excess weight of the kids they propose to condition. Have them wear a 20 or 40-pound scuba weight belt! Calisthenics and running are torturous for overweight students. What better way to turn students off of physical activity!

In today’s society and especially in developing nations we continue to face an HIV/AIDS epidemic. Significantly, what we see are different efforts to combat the crisis: Some focused on the needs of those already infected with the disease, and others on preventing the spread of the disease. The same is true with obesity. Reluctantly no doubt, sometime not too far away, we may need to face the question of where best to concentrate most of our limited resources?

6. Improving student health poses ethical questions
I just mentioned the dilemma of deciding whether to focus resources on helping those already overweight, or on preventing excessive weight gain. But there are many more questions that must be asked. Americans are fiercely resistant when their rights are threatened. But we need to ask ourselves whether we have a right to be unhealthy when the consequences of our choice must be born by others?

We know that declining student health threatens horrendous financial consequences? Do we have a right to expect others to pay for our poor health choices? And with children it becomes even more complex because surely they have a right to some protection from harmful practices. We need to discuss whether parents have a right to raise unhealthy children. Is this morally defensible? Do students need protection from the actions of irresponsible parents? We so frequently hear opinions voiced that children’s health is a parental responsibility, but what if children have irresponsible parents? Is it worse to impose negative consequences on parents who raise unhealthy children, or to allow young people to grow up with life threatening, debilitating, but preventable diseases?

7. Legislation will be needed to overcome today’s health threats.
The global scale of the obesity crisis cannot be solved with quick fixes. Expecting voluntary, wholesale national behavioral change will not work. No one likes legislation, but throughout our history it’s proven necessary in countless instances to change societal behaviors. Slavery, women’s rights, civil rights, handicapped rights, seat belt use, smoking, cell phone use while driving - behaviors that at one time were commonly accepted, have now been changed or are being changed through legislation. Change had to be forced on us through laws, and most people would probably agree that these changes have been for the good.

Trying to turn back the epidemic decline in student health will demand the combination of all available resources and legislation is likely to be one of them. Because the consequences of poor health are long term they are easily ignored. But everyone should be concerned about worsening student health because ultimately it will affect all of us. As we age it will be harder for us to access medical resources. And more likely than not, instead of enjoying retirement, a majority of today’s adults can look forward to a future of caring for their unhealthy children.
Currently, there is no coordinated effort to address childhood obesity. But sometime soon, the federal government will feel compelled to become involved because this health crisis threatens our national security as well as the national budget. If the majority of tomorrow’s adults are not healthy who will serve in our military or police services? How efforts to improve children’s health can succeed while simultaneously sustaining the current focus on raising our students’ academic performance remains to be seen.

8. School Physical Education needs to be reconceptualized.
As long as physical educators continue to perceive themselves solely as teachers of movement skills and sports, they are likely to become increasingly marginalized. Even if all students participated in daily physical education, by itself it still wouldn’t be enough physical activity to turn back the obesity tide.

There are many opportunities before, during, and after the school day to impact student health. These need to be seized. Physical educators are ideally located to become the primary coordinators in changing student lifestyle health habits because children spend the majority of their lives in the public school environment.

Currently, we are so often referred to as “gym” instructors because that’s where we do what we do. Today, we have a wonderful opportunity to expand our vision to encompass the many ways students can be healthy. In today’s world of health threats, this will also make the physical education profession truly important in our schools and in our students’ lives.

9. Plan for tomorrow not just today.
We need to ask ourselves what will happen if we are successful? It’s not going to be much good to convince students to be physically active if they don’t live in an environment that supports physically active lifestyles. It’s not much good persuading students of the value of eating more vegetables and decreasing fatty foods if school lunch programs continue to serve up pizza and hamburgers.

We face questions here about the built environment in which children live and the socially constructed environment that educators are creating. Schools have many opportunities for creating or denying students’ access to physical activity. After school programs could significantly increase regular student participation in physical activity. And interscholastic athletics - re-conceptualized to be inclusive rather than exclusive - could become one of the greatest single contributors to solving the decline in student health.

10. Adequate physical activity must become a core value in children’s lives
It is a sad reflection on our 21st century lifestyle, and certainly evidence of a misunderstanding of children’s health, that we attempt to prescribe how much physical activity is enough for our students. I borrow again from the thoughts of Hetherington who in relation to the amount of exercise that children need more than 80 years ago wrote the following:

This time problem has to do with the time that is necessary for big-muscle activities, if children are to reach maturity with that fundamental development of the emotional, nervous, and organic powers which seem essential to stand the strain of the functions of modern life. It does not involve a question of conflict in interests with other activities of the school curriculum. The solution is merely a matter of the intelligent organization of the relationships between within-school activities and out-of-school activities.

In other words, children’s bodies dictate how much physical activity is needed for healthy growth and development. National physical activity guidelines suggesting that students need 60 minutes of daily physical activity may help to ensure kids get at least some daily physical activity, but let’s recognize that adults can’t dictate what children’s bodies need. If we are to solve obesity, the adult imposed lifestyle that children are forced to experience today is going to need some serious revision.