When someone asks me how I've kept from adding on weight as I've aged I usually mention 3 things: heredity, diet and exercise. I might mention how my Mom has tried unsuccessfully to gain weight all her life. I might say that I haven't tried it but I think because of hereditary influence, I couldn't be obese if I wanted to. If they seem still interested, I might mention how a diet high in fiber and low on the food chain is great for keeping a healthy weight and that finding ways to incorporate activity into my life has been important for me as well.
This week on the 8th anniversary of Pappy's death, I think I should add a 4th one: environment. Pappy grew up in an environment where no one "exercised" - movement and activity was just a part of life. In fact I remember his saying that Grammy's father John Kennel saw Pappy running up a stairs or some such rigorous activity and Papa (as we called my grandfather Kennel) admonished him to slow down. Papa's philosophy seemed to be that you were only awarded a certain amount of activity in life and the sooner you used it up the sooner you wore out.
In spite of growing up with that influence Pappy somewhere came across and read Kenneth Cooper's book Aerobics published in 1968 (review here) the year Pappy turned 50. To Pappy's credit, he was convinced and started jogging. I don't know if I would call Pappy obsessed with it but he talked about it a lot and did things like keeping track of his aerobic points, taking his resting pulse and writing down how much he jogged. In the winter when it was too cold to exercise outside in the track he made in the woods behind the house in Cochranville, he used to run round and round the basement. It was not a large basement so he used a handful of sticks that he would put down and then pick back up to keep track of his laps.
The reason this all came to my mind this week was because of a sad situation at work. My cubicle is not far from a person who is 63 and just had barometric surgery of some kind. She has probably lost 30 pounds but my guess is she still is obese. This week a coworker and I found her on the floor in the copy center. She had slipped some how on the linoleum and couldn't get up. We brought her a sturdy chair and we each held it down while she tried to use it to get up. She literally didn't have the strength to get up off the floor at first. She tried hard and got so out of breath she had to stop for a few minutes. Then she was able to get herself up on to it. Then we brought her an office chair that she pushed in front of herself to get back to her cubicle.
I found myself being very judgmental. How could she let herself get to this point in her life? Wouldn't the bypass surgery she had some 6 years ago have given her a clue that her lifestyle needed a major adjustment? Then's when the thought occurred to me that environment and specifically Pappy's influence helped motivate me to exercise.
And that brings me to Thanksgiving. I'm so glad I grew up in the environment I did for many reasons and just one of them is the encouragement to live healthily.
Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone.
John
