One Common Sense Way To Prevent Obesity

As I was reading this article yesterday illustrating the fact that 40 percent of women in America are obese, and that overall, 38 percent of adults and 17 percent of teenagers are obese, I thought of my life growing up on a farm back in the 1940's.

Every morning my grandfather and I would get up at 4:00 a.m. in the morning and go feed the pigs, slop the hogs, feed the one horse that we had, and milk the cow. There were many other chores to perform on the farm that kept us physically lean and trim. There was no time to get overweight, because we were physically always on the move.

Beloved, the human body was designed by God to be exercised (Genesis 3:19; 1 Thessalonians 4:11; 2 Thessalonians 3:10 NET). It's interesting to note that the word "work" in Paul's letter to the Thessalonian brethren, comes from the Greek verb ergazomai (Strongs 2038) which indicates physical labor on our part.

With today's technology, the only part of our bodies that many folks exercise, are our thumbs as we text friends on our smart phones. We sit at a computer for hours at a time without any exercise at all. Teenagers sit and play video games for hours on end without getting up from the computer or watch endless television. It's no wonder then that people in our country are obese (see video).

One common sense way to prevent obesity is simply to physically exercise and walk (even run when we are 103). The use of hand and arm weights while walking is a way of keeping your arms, shoulders, and back in tip-top shape. There are other benefits in walking (see video) as well (also see here, here, here, here, here, and here). Sad to say, I am the only person who daily walks on my block, and I observe very few folks walking anywhere on my daily walking route.

I personally walk twice a day for approximately an hour (sometimes 2 hours) when I'm not working for our local school district in the mail room. And even when I do work in the mail room, I do a lot of walking delivering mail to various departments within our administrative complex. There's very little sitting in the mail room. Beloved, walking is one way of drawing closer to God.

—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets