Why are there so many overweight people in the United States and abroad? Could there be a link between obesity in America and the fact that we, as a nation, have gone through some lifestyle changes in the past couple of decades? For instance, if you look around, less Americans are out actually doing "hard labor". Instead, there are more people nowadays who are working desk jobs behind computers or who are choosing, instead to work from home. Even children aren't nearly as active as they used to be.

When I was younger, I can remember adhering to the strict rule of getting my homework done as soon as I got off the bus. Only after my school work was done could I then go out and play with friends. Television was restricted in our house. I didn't have a TV in my room until I was in high school. But even when I was in high school, I wasn't allowed to leave the television on past bedtime. So, what about these kids nowadays? They lead a more sedentary lifestyle. With the increased usage of the Internet as well as the fact that there are all of these gadgets and gizmos out there, it makes it a little more tricky to coax a youngster outside. These children see how their parents' lives are, and they tend to transition into the same lifestyle as their parents (not always but more frequently than not).

There is a saying that idle hands are the devil's playground. In other words, we tend to get into trouble when we have too much time on our hands. Could there then be a correlation between this and the number of people who are overweight in our country? How about the number of people who use drugs? It seems that there is a vicious cycle whereas as children being raised in the 21st century, you now are faced with both parents working full time jobs, which means less interaction, which transitions into more time spent doing sedentary activities (ie. Watching television, playing video games, downloading music for your ipod), and less time getting outdoors playing. Because of the sedentary lifestyle as well as the breakdown of the nuclear family, there is less emphasis placed on eating healthy versus eating whatever can be whipped up in under 30 minutes (which usually translates into fast food binging).

Our parents are no longer the greatest role models for fitness because they work long hours and come home too exhausted to cook, exercise or help out with homework, etc. So, what to do? What's the remedy to the problem we face? Does more emphasis need to be placed on the parents to do a better job at parenting so that they may serve as better role models to children in terms of what adulthood should look like? Or do we need to figure out a way to get these children up and out of the house so that they can move around and experience what it should fee like to be a kid?

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