Yes, we are fat.

I was in Zurich a year or so ago. I had only one meeting Friday morning and it ended early. So, I took a long walk around town. First a stroll on Bahnhofstrasse then along the river Limat, around the lake, over the bridge into the old town and back to the hotel. In all, a walk of several hours. After a while I noticed, I do not know why, a lack in my surroundings.

Where were all the corpulent people? Not one did I encounter. Not one. It was early in the year, before the time to see many tourists, but even the foreigners were thin, at least, by my standards. Once planted in my brain, the difference was startling. Why was everybody so not overweight? A few rotund women, nothing more and even they were not fat.

Online I went. Was there a major difference between countries? Had I noticed something?

The answer was a resounding yes. Some of the statistics available online are a little out of date, but the overall result is the same. We in the US are the gold medalists, with some 30% plus of the population classified as obese. The Swiss come in at the bottom of the pile with 8%, only ahead of Japan and Korea, both of which must have poor diets, by our standards. Japan and Korea have some 3% of their population classified as obese.

John Oram

3D virtual tennis anyone?

There are so many opportunities to be fitter. Forget about the benefits of living longer, it’s a nice side effect, but not the objective, at least not mine. A real purpose, I feel, is not to be a burden to others and being healthier is the way to achieve that goal. Avoiding the need for help is the objective. Not all of us will succeed, an illness is an illness and we cannot avoid all illnesses. We should, however, try to avoid the avoidable. And to do this, exercise and weight control are top of the list.

My wife exercisers several days a week, walks and watches what she eats. I bought her a Wii a short while ago and she uses it in her program. Now we hear that the, seemingly advanced, Wii controller is on its way out. New game consoles will sense body movement and there will be no need for the Wii controller or any other hand held device. When they arrive, I am going to get on line.

Some of us find independent exercise very trying, but if you give us something to chase, you can run us to exhaustion and, from time to time, into the surrounding furniture. I hope the new systems will give me that option. I look forward to playing virtual tennis or squash, with a need to cover the whole court. A virtual tennis court is now in my plans. May be I can set one up on the grass outside and use a real racket. Are these systems going to be 3D?

These games could change the nation.

John Oram
OurFHP