Op-Ed - Here's to your health

I laugh at inappropriate times, curse like a sailor, wear torn clothing because it’s comfortable and enjoy gory movies and loud, offensive music.

Last week though, I spent an hour staring at rows and rows of skin care products. Not exactly the apex of manliness.

About two months ago, I decided to switch from bar soap to body wash after speaking with a number of people who said there was no comparison between the two. So far, I’d have to agree.

Buying body wash was easy. There’s a whole aisle of different ones to choose from, but it seems to come down to which brand you favor or what scent you want to smell like.

It was a whole different ballgame with the skin care products. There were facial cleansers, moisturizers and astringents as well as a variety of things I’d either never heard of or couldn’t even pronounce the names of.

My roommate Rick tried to explain the difference between the products, but some of them even stumped him. I felt like I needed a tutorial.

I wound up buying the same cleanser as Rick and one of the cheaper moisturizers, which was still $8. Apparently, it’s pretty expensive to keep your skin healthy.

As baffling and exasperating as I found the shopping experience to be, I know I still have it easy. I don’t envy the amount of cosmetics, lotions, corrective creams and other products women regularly deal with.

While shopping for skin care products, I also purchased a scale for my bathroom since no one in my apartment owned one. There had always been a scale in my house growing up and my previous roommate had an electronic one. The room seemed kind of naked without it.

Based on something I read Wednesday, July 18, maybe more people should pick up a scale. Or put down the potato chips.

According to www.jhsph.edu, a study conducted by a team at Johns Hopkins University predicts that continued weight gain at the current rate will lead to 75 percent of adults and nearly a quarter of children and adolescents in the United States being overweight or obese by 2015.

Dr. Youfa Wang, who led the study, called obesity “a public health crisis.” Wang believes the obesity rate in America has increased at “an alarming rate” in the last 30 years and said every group across the board is steadily getting heavier.

May A. Beydoun, coauthor of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of International Health, believes obesity is likely to continue to increase. If the problem isn’t tackled, she said “it will soon become the leading preventable cause of death in the United States.”

The study’s key findings included:

The U.S. obesity prevalence increased from 13 percent to 32 percent between the 1960s and 2004.

66 percent of U.S. adults were overweight or obese in 2003-2004.

16 percent of children and adolescents were overweight and 34 percent were at risk of becoming overweight in 2003-2004.

Women 20–34 years-old had the fastest increase rate of obesity and overweight.

Less educated people have a higher prevalence of obesity than their counterparts, with the exception of black women.

States in the southeast have higher prevalence than states on the West Coast, the Midwest and the Northeast.

This dilemma facing the nation makes my quandary over which moisturizer to choose seem pretty silly and insignificant. It is though another motivator for me to keep at my weight loss program.

Resolution update:

Weight: 148 (-12)