Word: weightness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...when scientists finally put a representative sampling of Americans on the scale, the decade's secret scandal was uncovered: rather than getting healthy in the health-conscious '80s, Americans actually plumped out. It's not just that individuals got heavier as they got older, although they did: the average weight gain between ages 30 and 39 is 4 lbs. for men and 9 lbs. for women. It's that fortysomethings are now heavier than fortysomethings were 10 years ago, thirtysomethings now are heavier than thirtysomethings then, and so on down the demographic ladder...
...years at about a quarter of the population, jumped to one-third in the 1980s, an increase of more than 30%. According to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, some 58 million people in the U.S. weigh at least 20% more than their ideal body weight -- making them, in the unforgiving terminology of dietary science, obese...
...resolutions. But this year the situation may be worse than ever. According to a CNN Prevention magazine poll of 771 Americans taken just before the holidays, nearly 70% said they planned to go ahead and eat whatever they wanted. Most took it for granted that they would put on weight -- nearly 5 lbs. on average. Fully 40% also said they expected to take it off in the New Year, but that may not be as easy as they think. As many a thickening boomer can attest, those pounds just get harder and harder to lose...
...could this happen? How could the health movement, which seemed to be chugging along so energetically, have backfired? There is no shortage of theories. Weight-loss tycoon Jenny Craig blames the news media. "They pushed one diet, then the other," she says. "Now they broadcast that diets don't work." Exercise guru Richard Simmons fingers TV advertising. "It's crazy," he says. "The ads say 'eat, eat, eat!' but show a girl who's so thin she clearly never eats." Julia Child, TV's French chef (no caloric slouch herself), cites sedentary life-styles. "Maybe they're not doing enough...
...labor-saving devices. It pits a frenetic workaday pace against the understandable temptation to put one's feet up at the end of the day, turn on the tube and just veg out. It may even turn out that the best-intentioned resolutions made in the '80s -- to lose weight, to eat "lite," to plunge headlong into heart-pounding aerobics -- ended up doing more harm than good...