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Fat times - Editor's Letter - Editorial

Men's Fitness, Feb, 2004 by Peter Sikowitz

WE'RE A BIG country, stretching from sea to shining sea, as the song says. But it's not just our country that's big-we're big. Our national borders may no longer be expanding, but our waistlines are. Some incredible fat facts:

* According to the Centers for Disease Control, 65% of adults are overweight or obese, and 31% qualify as obese.

* Obesity kills 300,000 people each year in our country and costs us $117 billion in medical bills and lost productivity.

* An Indiana coffin manufacturer is selling four or five triple-wides a month compared with one per year in the late 1980s.

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Blame it on too much bad food, too little nutrition education, and too much television and/or too little exercise. Shame on us for being Chub Nation. Of course, I don't mean you personally. As an MF reader, you're one of the relatively few Americans actually doing something about the obesity epidemic (and feeling and looking good in the bargain, too). Pat yourself on the back--you deserve it!

It's not for nothing we're running the sixth-annual "America's Fattest Cities" (see page 76). The story, which looks at the 25 fattest and 25 fittest cities in America, is a way of tracking the trend, seeing how the cities compare, and what can be done to fix the big problem.

"When we first started doing the Special Report for MF, people had a hard time accepting how much television time and consumption of fast food impacted obesity" says the article's co-author Jeff Lucia, a principal at KGB Media, a research and marketing agency specializing in health and public safety. "Now when we talked to people as we prepared the article, they couldn't wait to tell us what they were doing to try to make their cities fitter. Who would have thought that a fitness magazine could end up making such waves--and a difference?"

This month's cover story on L.A. Laker Karl Malone ("M," page 64) has its share of positivism as well. While interviewing Malone, writer Jon Finkel got a real sense of the NBA star as a person and what he means to his new team. "He has a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the game" says Finkel, "which you'd expect to see in a rookie, but not necessarily a future Hall of Famer. At the same time, he works harder than any other player on the team. He's both the wise man and the young buck trying to prove himself. All the guys on the team admire how hard he works out, and they want to work out with him. But they keep telling him, 'Next year!'"

This issue is certainly filled with a lot of great information. But please don't forget to take the time to relax with it as well. I recommend that you spend some quiet moments with our Sauna Girls on page 30. All 10 of them! There you can be a fly on the wall (or a towel on the floor) and listen in on the conversations that men are rarely privy to. Trust me--I'm sure you'll find it stimulating.

Fat times - Editor's Letter - Editorial

Men's Fitness, Feb, 2004 by Peter Sikowitz

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