OVERPLUS OBESITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 239, 6 October 1923, Page 17

OVERPLUS OBESITY.

A COMMON AFFLICTION. ■WHY BE FAT ?

(By A. G. SAINSBURY.)

It is rare to find a person of spare I build fretful of hie slimnesa; it is ex--1 ceptional to find a stout person compla- '■ cent of it. The truth is that most of us like to be slim; many of us, alas! fear fatness like poison. Fatness becomes an 1 obsession. It follows you about the i town. Like mortgages and other impedimenta of the twentieth century, it I clings with octopusian tenacity.' Seeing, i then, that it has come to stay, one may us well make the best of it. Hence these analytical notes. Corpulence lias many causes. With some of us, we are born predestined. It is " in the family." Our family art galI lery, so to speak, is one long array of martyrs. Uncles, aunts, grandparents — all fat! The best thing to do in such evil case is to adopt the ponderosity as a treasured family trait —a sort of marque distingue—or something to dwell on with pride. There is comfort in company, and with a family tree sufficiently long and sufficiently broad, mutual conj solation may be an, all-sufficing redeemI ing feature. I It may comfort the 'ladies to know they are not alone in the predicament they carry. Men are at times prostrated with the dismal apprehension. Wnat they fear is not so much the disfigurement of their architectural bearrty—the departure from true sculptural lines, bo to epeak—as a loss of agility. The nightmare of dependence is perpetually gnawing. They fear the day when they will cot be able to " do for themselves" —to lace their own boots, for example. A man hates horribly to be dependent. With a woman, per contra, the case is somewhat different. She loves to be petted and to be assisted. Her propen- , sities, therefore, drag her all the more swiftly to her ultimate dimensions. Ease, Tucker, and Tubbinees. In the case of men, ease appears to be a most prolific breeder of trouble. The first fat man who ever obtruded into my life was a postmaster. I remember, , as a little post office cadet, being summoned into his room to unlace and pull off his boots. Not long ago the com.panion of my breakfast table was a postmaster, and his fear of the corporation which was creeping over him like a tidal -wave, was pathetic. Bread and butter barred. Potatoes barred. Rice, sago, tapioca, sugar barred. Fat meat barred. (Fat bacon was deeply lamented.) For him the rweets of life ' -were stampeding before the impending demise of his agility. He played golf ,' assiduously on Sundays; but still he grew. Just recently I met Mr. , the affluent head of a Government Department, a. member of a slim strain. His chief lament was that his " chest : was slipping down." It was obvious. j Another friend, a prosperous tradesman whose physical exercise is almost nil, is j making a great fight against his be- ! setting dread. He is half-starving him- ; self, eliminates all tit-bits, complains that he leaves the table as hungry as when he came to it—and still goes on • growing. i Having so unfeelingly displayed the innermost secrets of my personal i friends, let mc, out of sheer fairness, , turn the X rays upon myself. I remem- \ ber my first arrival in New Zealand, ! many years ago, I came —like all sincere immigrants —to develop the agricultural resources of the country, and, therefore, sought wisdom from the agricultural editor of a certain periodical. 1 What he told mc about the land I have ■ long since forgotten, but I remember with startling freshness his warning that ; with a figure like mine, I was bound to grow stout. He may have been right, but (as fortune decreed) life gave mc a good share of anxiety and activity, and I remained thin for over twenty years. Latterly I assumed a slight change of occupation, which involves desk work, and now within a space of six months there has arisen a rotundity which is I disquieting. The One Heroic Remedy. The observations of a lifetime convinced mc that for bigness there is only one preventive and only one cure. That i is exercise, violent exercise, striving, I sweat. Walking may be healthful, but ! it is not violent. Golfing may be exhilarating and romantic; I hear that the I players worry. But do they peri spire in riverfuls? For men I suggest , tennis, I recommend football, I prescribe cricket (especially at long-field); but gardening, with violence, I absolutely guarantee. For apprehensive women I order tennis, hockey, basketball, and vehement mountaineering. Croquet and bowls are mild apologies of medicine, permitted only to those who can take no other. In the spirit of the scientists, I submit this problem. Do women often grow stout until the well-earned day when their children begin to wait upon them? Do men's chests slip before they capture a fat billet or marry a devoted wife? I Nature, it seems to mc, is very methodi-

cal. Stie does what is fittest. The bird nests in the bush that is least inspected. The rat makes her bed in the heap of sacks that are not disturbed. So man's or woman's corporeal economy, by instinct, deposits its stores of surplus fat among the tissues that are least used. Man (and doubtless woman) is endowed with a great system of muscles over and through the stomach. They are used when a man carries a sack of grain on his shoulders or a woman lifts a tub on washing day. They are in utter dieuetude when we sit at a desk or go motoring. And Nature abhore the vacuum of idleness. She fills it with fat. The white races are speeding, with their galaxy of follies, to the precipice of extinction. In 100 years hence how can we white races —the queer, fat-bellied, thewless creatures we shall then be— hold down the teeming Easterners whom the benign nurse of necessity has kept SO fit?