How to be Skinny Again

"The Thin Man" (MGM)

Looking through old photos and videos it becomes painfully obvious: We used to be a lot thinner. In the 1960s only about 13 percent of us were obese. Now it's closing in on one-half.

Why?

It's too simple to blame only fast food. Although it was not the part of our lives that it is today, burgers and fries existed back in the 1960s, and we ate them.

But we've changed so much in other ways since then that we may as well be an alien species. We simply don't live life the way we did 50 or more years ago. And it's about more than just portion sizes. Although it is about portion sizes.

"Gas a**!"

When I was growing up, when Gerry and then Jimmy was president and gas was around 60 cents a gallon, we had a neighbor down the street my mother called a—pardon it—"gas ass." Her name was Marie. Marie would hop into the car to mail a letter at the corner or go to the grocery store for milk. Aside from that she didn't get out much. She sat home and watched TV.

Marie didn't know this, but she was ahead of her time. But back then, people from previous generations, like my mother, who grew up before everyone had cars, still walked or took the bus, which meant at least walking to the bus stop. When I was little many people still had just one car, and most teens certainly didn't have their own wheels; they borrowed dad's when they could. Or they rode bikes.

In fairness to Marie, the move to the suburbs in the 1960s largely caused this dependency on the car, as is now well-acknowledged. The 'burbs and the chain of highways that led us to them accustomed us to the automobile. Go to Europe and you are struck by all the bicyclists, the walkers, and all the wonderful pedestrian spaces. There are great open squares everywhere! By contrast so much of America is housing complexes linked by highways that lead primarily to gas stations, fast food places and strip malls. Not only does this discourage walking, it encourages crime and blight. (And overeating surely: So many modern settlements seem to be designed specifically to funnel people to junk food outlets.)

Dinner at eight. Or five. Or six-thirty.

Today most people eat on the run, and whenever they can. The family meal, which took place at a set time in a set location, is largely a thing of the past. The same is true in the workplace, where there used to be "lunch hours" that were obeyed by everyone from worker bees to the executives. People stopped what they were doing, put down their tools or hung up their phones, and marched off to the cafeteria. You weren't expected to work through lunch while chugging a protein drink or eating a quick packaged meal from the supermarket containing ingredients requiring a dictionary to understand.

Mom generally cooked the meals, and they consisted of a protein, a starch, and fresh vegetables (although sadly sometimes they came from a can, a sad by-product of the World War II infatuation with canned goods); today we grab wraps, stuff from the supermarket deli, energy bars, microwavable meals, and we don't sit down together as often as we did, where we would eat slower because we had nowhere to go and were engaged in conversation. No one started eating until everyone was served. Meals lasted maybe 45 minutes to an hour; all this talk today about "mindful eating" is simply the way we used to eat naturally. As a bonus, you're less likely to shove food in your mouth when you're eating on real plates with real silverware at a "set" table. Regular meals created in-between fasting periods, where your body could re-calibrate and adjust, preparing for the next meal. The alliance of circadian rhythms with scheduled meal times probably led to better sleeping, too.

The same nutritious formula of home-cooked meals made from (mostly) wholesome ingredients applied to children's lunches for school as well, so kids were getting more of a balanced diet compared to today. School lunches may seem like a good idea on paper. But you can't eat paper.

Sure there was "fast" (unhealthy) food. McDonald's existed, though fewer of them dotted the landscape. But do you know what? The original concept was for it to be a place people engaging in our newly-emerging car culture would grab a small bit after a long afternoon of travel. To that end, the founding brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald, placed their early restaurants close to freeway exits. It wasn't until many years later that Mickey Dee's became constant food for everyone from paupers to presidents. Not coincidentally, around the same time, our waistlines began to balloon and our a1c began to rise.

And speaking of McDonald's, that first hamburger was 1.5 ounces!

Supersize me? What did that mean? The first burgers were closer to today's sliders, and fries came in one size—what today would be a small. Big Macs and Quarter Pounders—the favored cuisine of several presidents—evolved later, as did the giant servings of fries and sodas big enough to swim in. And free refills—that's a U.S. thing, mostly. (Parts of Canada engage as well.) They're rarely found in Europe or Asia, and in France they've actually been illegal since 2017 due to health concerns.

Coke bottles used to be one size, and that size was 6.5 ounces. Compare that to what we have today. (And it's true of all sodas; we're not just picking on Coke here.) Oreos didn't come in enormous packages, with "double stuff," "triple stuff," "triple-double stuff," "the most stuff," and so on. And sweets were treats, not food staples. In Horton Foote's 1953 play, The Trip to Bountiful, the character Mrs. Watts thinks the height of living is to drink two Coca-Colas per day. She means those 6.5 oz ones.

Foods were "real," not packaged.

There's been a movement lately back to "real" or "whole" or "clean" foods, although some of these offerings are hardly wholesome according to their own ingredient labels. Once upon a time no one would have understood why there would be a need for a "real" foods movement. All food was real. Now we have packages in supermarkets with milk in one compartment and cereal in the other, because it's too hard pair these two yourself.

It's no secret that most of these highly-processed foods have less nutritional value than their wholesome counterparts, and they leave us hungry and craving more...highly-processed foods. It's akin to a drug-hit: quick satisfaction, then a fast drop...lather, rinse, repeat.

In the past we would sit down, as described above, and eat real, full meals as a matter of course. There was nothing "whole" or "real" about it. And there was little snacking—filling up on empty calories—between meals. Most snack foods didn't appear until the 1970s, and since then we've seen them break out from their place as snacks to become key ingredients in our meals. For one example of many, Taco Bell partnered with Frito-Lay o create a taco shell flavored like Doritos Nacho Cheese chips. It proved a smah hit, and was followed by other flavors, including Cool Ranch and Fiery Doritos Locos Tacos. Because our fast food isn't unhealthy enough. and I'm not just ragging on Taco Bell...All the fast food companies are doing it.

A cuppa joe used to be just a cuppa joe.

Sure everyone put cream and sugar in it back in the day. And that was not a good thing in itself.

But now so many people can't start their day without a triple shakeuccino piled high with caramel, blended crème, whipped cream, made of uber-fructose pumpkin-flavored liquid that bears almost no relation to anything coffee and could send a horse into diabetic shock.

As with the carbonated sugary drinks, it's a combination of larger sizes and frequency. These empty calorie nightmares have become staples for so many on-the-go movers and shakers in our world. One probably has as many calories as you're supposed to ingest in a whole afternoon.

Lance Anderson

Eating out used to be a treat, not a lifestyle.

This one hurts, because I'm guilty. But we have to face facts: Eating out is on the whole not as healthy as home cooking. Most restaurants don't use the healthiest oils, or buy organic produce, or serve the leanest cuts of meat, for the very simple reason that they are interested in the cheapest options possible to maximize profits. The restaurant business generally runs on razor-thin margins.

Growing up, my family and I ate out on Saturdays only. Anything else was a treat, such as while on vacation (once a year to the Jersey shore) or a celebration of some sort. Now I confess I eat out probably 40 percent of the time. I do enjoy the variety it affords me—cuisines I never sampled as a kid. I have my favorites at every restaurant, where I know half the servers by name.

I've learned to study menus carefully, to decipher what's healthy and what likely is not. The finer restaurants tend to avoid excess salt and fat, serve smaller portions, balance starches and vegetables, and generally leave you feeling satisfied but not bloated. But with prices rising as they are, quality eating out may soon be an occasional treat once again. That will either make more people healthier by making them stay home the way we used to, or drive them to "casual dining," where generally everything packs a ton of calories and saturated fat. We'll see how this goes.

Remote controls, automatic garage-door openers, digital assistants, labor-saving appliances...Even the Jetsons weren't this automated.

Imagine getting out of your car to open the garage. Imagine getting out of the chair to change the TV channel. Imagine getting hanging lines and lines of laundry in the backyard. You have to imagine them, because we don't do those things anymore. We don't even have to walk to the window to see if it's raining or step outside to know the temperature—we ask Siri, Alexa or Google to tell us.

Unless we trained for something, we didn't used to have (or need) gym memberships, and growing up I avoided them because I thought they were for muscular hulks and their sweaty bulks, not us ordinary folks. I had no idea the mail man, soccer mom, the guy down the block who ran a convenience store, were members of gyms, where they got the same workouts my parents used to get just by living. My mother hung clothes on a line, and did housecleaning by using elbow grease. There was one phone in our house, and my mother would have to walk up or down steps to the kitchen to answer it.

Yard work, frisbee tossing, playing sandlot baseball, and climbing trees, and not computer games, texting and doom-scrolling, were our fun activities. Sure we watched too much TV—the beginnings of bad habits were setting in—but on weekends the whole family did things together, even if it was just go to a mall and walk around.

Once upon a time we didn't need to measure our distance and count our steps. Today—if we commute to work in the first place—we don't even walk over to a colleague's desk. We simply message them. We can sit in our office all day and have our lunch brought right to us, our reports researched, written and printed, our questions answered. I'm amazed office furniture companies haven't invented a chair that tends to your bodily functions, so you can eliminate that one mandatory trip of the day—the rest room visit.

We can be skinny again.

Take heart. We can turn the clock back to when obesity was relatively uncommon.

But it isn't going to be easy.

It's an uphill battle, and in this world we have so many ways of getting up almost any hill without effort. And that's the problem.

Fad diets and exercise blasts won't do it. Gradual, natural lifestyle changes will. Look to the past, not to the trends.

California Nutritionist Autumn Bates estimates that 70 percent of Americans' diet consists of ultra-processed foods, and watching what sails by me in restaurants on their way to other tables, I believe it.

My wife has dropped considerable weight recently, and all she has done is eat more sensibly and take walks at lunch (and other times when she can). No trendy diets, no surgery, no high-intensity training. Just living life more meaningfully and sensibly.

Walk! It's the best form of exercise, and it's free. Take the long way around. If your trip is under two miles, walk the distance, and leave the car in the garage. (This will not only prolong your life, but the life of your car as well.)

Although you can't just up and sell your house if you live in a congested, strip-mall infested suburb where the saying is "You have to have a car to live here," (Google "Breezewood, Pennsylvania"), the next time you do plan a move, research public spaces, parks, walkable downtowns. If more people make this a priority, it will become a priority for builders and city planners as well. It's starting to happen in some areas, but we can definitely do better.

And while this doesn't keep the car in the garage, find spots near you on Google maps and drive to them, park the car, and take a walk that's 3 or 4 miles.

Plan regular meals and stick to them. One serving. Talk during your meal (unless you're alone; that would look weird). No phones, no videos. If everyone has a schedule where no two people are in the house at the same time, change that schedule. If you're single try to plan meals with friends.

Kick the sugary drinks, and that includes "diet" versions, which really don't help you lose weight. Drink wholesome fruit juices. Cut them with water to double the quantity and half the cost, and if you can't pronounce half the ingredients on the container drink something else.

No more killer coffee drinks. Try experimenting with the various exotic coffees readily available today, black, no sugar, or maybe a touch of cream if you have stomach issues to lessen the acidity. (Talk to your doctor.) If you make it at home be sure to use a paper filter. Taste the delicate nuances of various blends, treat it the way sommeliers treat wine. Learn what makes an Indo-Pacific different from an African or South American coffee bean. You can do the same with various teas, too.

Cut the snacking. (A little dark chocolate is okay). Mixed nuts are a great substitute for sweets, but read the packages carefully: Many "trail mixes" add salt, sugars and include candies or sugary dried fruits in the mix. Try to avoid those.

Do things manually again. Wash some dishes. Clean the bathroom—bathrooms always seem to need cleaning. Donate that robot vacuum to the Goodwill. It's spying on you anyway. Walk to the supermarket and carry home your groceries.

You don't need expensive solutions like standing desks or or home gyms or smart wearables to get fit. A combination of the suburban lifestyle, car culture, lust for convenience and fast-fast-faster food (and big-big-bigger portions) has made many of us drastically increase our size over the last 40 years. But there's absolutely no reason we can't be skinny again. The future is in the past. It really is that simple.