Back in my day . . .

Thankfully, after a long, hard, and sick winter, Dave and I are finally walking every day again. Getting back to our routine is wonderful, but it also reminded us recently of how different our childhoods were from the lives of kids today.

And that's because almost every time we walk through Kereiakes Park, we pass the playground on the far side of the park where kids play on the jungle gym, ride the swings, and—wait for it—eat fast food.

I am not kidding when I say that almost every single time we see a family at the playground, we also see a mom or dad cleaning up the fast food meal they just served their children.

We had seen it so many times that, after a while, we stopped noticing. But being away from the walking trail for weeks this year made us look at this now familiar scene with fresh eyes.

Four kids, two adults, six sets of hamburger wrappers, french fry cartons, and to-go cups.

What's wrong with this picture?

I think we all know.

"Did you ever take fast food to the park when you were little?" Dave asked me the other day. "When I was young, there was only one McDonald's on the entire west side of Cincinnati. And going there was a big deal, like going out to a fancy meal or something."

And he's right. When we were kids, going out to eat—fast food or otherwise—was a big deal. Sure, on a special occasion or holiday, our families took homemade picnics to the park, but now, for too many American kids fast food is a daily occurrence.

Though this is partly the fault of parents, it's hard to blame parents alone for this problem when there's a McDonald's on over corner. When you have to drive right past one on the way to the park, it's easy to wonder why you shouldn't stop and feed the kids while you're out?

(There is, in fact, a McDonald's, a Wendy's, a Rally's, and now even a Dairy Queen all within four blocks of Kereiakes Park.)

It's also hard to blame parents when it costs about two dollars to feed each kid at a McDonald's.

What's weird is that I really think a happy meal used to cost more when we were kids than it does now. Am I wrong or didn't a happy meal in the seventies used to cost three dollars and now they're just two bucks? Or maybe they're three now, I'm not sure.

Either way, that doesn't make any sense! We have had forty years of inflation, but prices at McDonald's have gone down, not up. How is that possible???

It's possible because technology is always making it easier to make our food even more processed, meaning that fast food is cheaper today because it's less real. It's also possible because the main ingredient in almost all American fast food is corn and/or corn syrup, and corn is heavily subsidized by the federal government in our country, which means that fast food restaurants can sell products made with corn byproducts cheaper than ever before.

Translation: our kids get fatter every time they eat fake, er, I mean fast food.

The real reason our country is getting bigger

194.5 pounds

We were on our daily walk tonight when we encountered a sea of cars and trucks sitting directly across the path for walkers and bikers in Kereiakes Park.

Because the path sits right next to the football practice area, parents use that space to pull their gas guzzlers up to the edge of the field. There is a parking lot about one hundred feet away (and half a dozen others nearby), but these people don't park in the parking lots because it would require them to walk that incredibly long distance.

So once fall rolls around, Dave and I have to contend with a maze of SUVs and pick-up trucks every time we try to go on a walk.

Tonight, these people were parked so close to each other and packed in so tight, that we had to turn to the side to get through the row of vehicles, and if I had been on a bike, I would have had no choice but to abandon the path and go a different route. It was nerve-wracking.

So it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that as soon as I got past the grid of cars, I stepped on some random piece of plastic--a football apparatus or child's toy, I'm not sure which--and fell face forward into the pavement. For a split second, I worried about being embarrassed, but then the searing pain in my left knee and the strange feeling in my right ankle forced my face to turn from red to tear-covered.

When I fell, Dave crouched by my side, but though there were about one hundred parents standing around doing basically nothing, not one of them asked if I was okay or if they could help. It was still light enough out that everyone who walked by and gawked at me—and there were plenty—could see the blood oozing out of my wound and covering my knee in crimson rivers. But again none of them asked if I was okay. I guess they were too busy worrying about their ten-year-olds' football practice.

When one of the offending drivers returned to his pick-up and looked at me with disgust, I asked him if he would mind not parking on the path in the future. Rather than express any empathy, he said, "Maybe it's not where I parked. Maybe you're just clumsy."

And to think sometimes I wonder why our country has such a problem with universal health care—it's because far too often people don't care about anyone besides themselves . . . or their ten-year-old son who's probably never going to play football again after the age of thirteen.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post—we all sit around wondering why our country is getting fatter, wondering why our kids are lazy and entitled. Well, this is why—because so many parents watch their kids practice playing football, sending the message that it doesn't matter if you're good at something or just show up because the world revolves around you no matter what you do.

And that's why these kids end up in my college classes wondering why they have to be able to write a grammatically correct sentence to pass the course—never before have they had to do anything well to get the attention of their parents . . . or a trophy. Why would college be any different?

And they certainly don't understand that they have to exercise and eat a balanced diet to be healthy—that would require discipline. Something you don't learn when your parents drive up to the edge of the practice field and sit there watching you run tackling drills every night of your childhood.

And, of course, then there are the parents.

The people who can't park one hundred feet away from their kids' practice field.

Why can't they park that far? I'm not sure, but I think it's because it would require a modicum of effort. What I do know is that's another reason we're all getting fatter—people won't walk across a parking lot, much less the four miles I cover on that same path every day.

To make matters worse, not only will people not move their butts—hurting themselves and their health care industry—but they also have no respect for or awareness about the people who do move them.

That's why they park on a walking trail, that's why they honk at bikers in the roadway, that's why every year joggers are killed by passing vehicles.

No, we are not concerned about the well being of the people who try to maintain their health. Hell, we don't even see them.

We are far too concerned with having all of our things—our SUVs, our iPhones, our Starbucks coffee cups, our children—within arm's reach to even consider worrying about anyone else.

Pretty soon we'll probably all have one of those floating chairs from Wall-e too.

Thankfully you never forget how to do it . . .

198 pounds

This week The New York Times published an article about how biking is a more effective way to lose weight than "slow" walking.

First of all, I'm THRILLED to have this information.

I always have the sense there are things other people know that I don't—like which foods burn more calories when you eat them or what time of day you should exercise for maximum effect. In my weakest moments, I suspect that super thin people keep this information locked up in their closet full of skinny jeans and mini-skirts.

Also, as some of you may know, I am a BIG walker. Dave and I make it a point to walk 50-70 minutes every day. This doesn't always happen seven days a week during the school year, but it does happen about 90% of the time.

For this reason, it's been really frustrating to me that even though I do this pretty regularly, I haven't lose any weight lately—meaning over the past six months.

And this is unusual for me.

In the past, if I was walking and eating pretty well, I was losing weight. Maybe only a pound a year, but I was losing. The first year I started walking every day, I only walked thirty minutes a day, but the pounds still came off. But not anymore.

So when I heard about this new study about biking, I was intrigued.

I absolutely love biking, though I really only get on my bike once every other week or so. But if it's going to help me drop a few pounds, I'm more than happy to do it more often.

I'm not going to lie though--I have to wonder about this study. It says that biking helps women lose weight more than slow walking. Well, my first question is what exactly do they mean by "slow"? They also mention that brisk walking is as good as biking.

So let me get this straight. . . slow walking doesn't help you lose weight, but brisk walking and biking do? What are they reallly trying to say? That if you move like a turtle, you'll also be a little tubby? Come on! Tell us something we don't know. What I can't believe that is that people get PAID to do this kind of research. I think I could have figured this out myself, and I certainly didn't need a bunch of Harvard researchers to tell me.

But, okay, I'll play along and get my bike out, hoping that what I normally do is too slow to make a difference.