On Thu, 06 Nov 2014 17:10:46 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 11/6/2014 4:23 PM, Phil W Lee wrote:
Frank Krygowski considered Tue, 04 Nov 2014
18:23:30 -0500 the perfect time to write:

On 11/4/2014 12:11 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, November 4, 2014 7:36:30 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
Can you
remember people pushing un-powered lawn mowers? Clipping hedges with
big manual clippers? Walking to the store to buy some groceries?
Lifting garage doors by using their muscles? Raking leaves using an
actual rake? Shoveling snow using an actual shovel? Washing dishes by
hand.

I don't think there has been a tremendous drop in physical activity over the past few
decades -- not if you look at how urban adults actually lived in the
'50s and '60s.
Most adults smoked like chimneys and drank like fish. Scotch and water
were drunk
in equal proportions around many homes. Fathers were handy, but the yard
work was
done by the kids. That's what kids were for. People drove big, heavy
cars and didn't
walk or ride bikes. We Californians did not shovel snow. Ward Clever sat
around in
a Cardigan and smoked a pipe, and he worked at a desk all week. Ward
was trim --
and good looking!

By my memories, there was a lot more physical work back then. In the
'50s, we lived on a small city lot; about 1960 we moved to a much larger
suburban lot. My dad pushed a reel-type mower on the small lot. On the
new lot, he (and we kids) put the entire lawn in by hand, shoveling
dirt, sifting out stones, seeding and weeding. It was a couple years
before he caved in and bought his first powered rotary mower. Dad was
also an avid gardener, but never owned a roto-tiller; he spaded and
forked his large gardens, and yes, we helped. We also helped care for
and harvest and preserve apples from six overgrown trees.

Dad never had a snow blower until he was in his '60s. He and we
shoveled snow by hand. We also went around the neighborhood offering to
shovel drives for a couple bucks. Screwdrivers and saws were entirely
manual, and nails were driven by a hammer, not a nail gun. That
included when we built our garage.

Beyond all that work, it seems to me that recreation was more active.
Touch football (in the street, telephone pole to telephone pole) was an
almost daily activity for the neighborhood teens, and Dad sometimes
played "steady quarterback." Family gatherings involved softball or
wiffle ball, badminton and volleyball and sometimes swimming. Adults
made sure that kids of all ages were somehow included. Indoors in the
winter, we played table tennis several times a week for years and years,
at an activity level that left me and everyone else dripping.

And my brothers and I had the second largest paper route for the metro
area newspaper. Delivered by bike, of course, unless the snow was too
deep and we had to walk.

It's possible that we were unusually active - above average, so to
speak. But the family next door to us now has two teenage boys. Nice,
kids, but they are nowhere near as active as we were. And you can tell
that by looking at them.


Kidding aside, the obesity issue is complicated, particularly with kids.
My personal belief is that in adults, it is a function of diet, stress
and to a lesser extent exercise.

I do suspect that diet is a bigger influence. Exercise of almost any
type just doesn't consume that many calories, and food can pump calories
back in very easily. From
http://www.bicycling.com/training-nu...mighty-calorie
:

"Cyclists notoriously overestimate how many calories they're burning,"
says Leslie Bonci, MPH, RD, director of sports nutrition at University
of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "If you eat an energy bar and drink a
sports drink on a moderate ride, you've effectively cancelled out any
calorie burn."

IIRC, there's evidence that regular exercise boosts your basal metabolic
rate, at least partly because muscle burns more energy than fat; so
there may be benefits to exercise beyond the simplest calorie counts.
But I think that if a person wants to lose weight, eating less (i.e.
portion control) is the place to start.

I wonder how much difference central heating has made?
When I was young, heating was something that you worked to provide.
Therefore you didn't waste heat by heating a house more than was
necessary, and burned quite a few calories just keeping warm.
Now, with central heating being commonplace, people keep their homes
warmer, and that discourages exercise, instead of encouraging it, as a
cooler home did.


Indeed.
One mid-January week in northern Wisconsin in a cabin with a
fireplace cured me of any romance in wood heat. At around
0F, it's four solid hours of cutting/splitting/hauling wood.
Every day.

That was 35 years ago and I am not ready for a redux.

The great benefit of heating with wood is that it warms you twice.
Once when you cut it and once when you burn it.
--
Cheers,

John B.