Carbs and cars
Ellen Goodman
Washington Post Writers Group

02.05.04 - BOSTON -- Remember when everybody wanted to live in Fat City? Remember when Fat City was the imaginary slang capital of the land of plenty? This was the place where your cup runneth over. Well, nobody seems to regard it as a compliment anymore.

In case you missed it, Detroit was given the dubious honor this year of being named the fattest city in America. The title was awarded by Men's Fitness, a magazine of pecs and abs. How did it portray the winner? As a beer-bellied, blue-shirted slob eating a bucket of donuts against a backdrop of -- ta da -- hub caps.

Not a very pretty picture, to put it mildly. Kwame Kilpatrick, the 6-foot-4, 300-pound mayor of Detroit, wasn't exactly thrilled at being No. 1. But it's an image that has stuck. Motown as Fat City? This just may be the moment when we acknowledge that the culprit in the battle of the bulge has more than a giant maw. It has four wheels.

What did Mayor Kilpatrick say when he heard that the city had maxed out? "We love our cars." He said it as sheepishly as the mayor of Philadelphia might say, "we love our cheesesteaks." Now the auto industry is rolling out a car called Titan while we are driving ourselves to Obesity.

The Detroit Moment must delight the public health gurus who agree that the car is a major ingredient in the incredible growing American, on an enemies list right beside Big Macs. Indeed, one of the reasons Motown moved from third to first place in the heavyweight division was an increase in commuting time.

Of course in fairness, rather than in fitness magazines, we wouldn't be crowning Fat City. We'd be crowning fat suburb or fat exurb. Last fall we were treated to a sheaf of studies showing that the waistline expands with the distance you live from neighbors or from work or from the market. The farther out you live the less you walk, the more you drive, the more you weigh.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation redefined sprawl itself as a public health menace. It's not just the landscape that disappears with each cul-de-sac subdivision, it's the body shape. Urbanites are, on average, six pounds thinner than their suburban cousins.

The number of miles an American drives has doubled since 1963 and the number of overweight children between 6 and 11 has doubled since 1973. Kids today spend about an hour a day in cars, not counting the school bus. One of life's great ironies is that so many families move to the exurbs for a better lifestyle for the kids. Whereupon parents turn into chauffeurs and kids get strapped into car seats whenever we need a bottle of milk.

The only one I've found who thinks the automobile can be a diet aid is an imaginative Connecticut inventor named Yefim Kriger, who won a patent for a gizmo that can weigh drivers -- and harass them when they've overeaten with admonitions like: "You ate too much! Don't do it next time!"

For a long time, scientists have told us that the car is to the environment as the cigarette is to the human body. Today smoking is down but gas guzzling is up. They've had little luck getting Americans to slim down their fuel intake. Instead they've bulked up their cars.

If we don't care that every gallon of gas puts 20 pounds of carbon dioxide in the air, maybe we'll care that it puts those pounds on the hips. Americans may have a love affair with the car, but we have an obsession with weight loss. We go from the Zone Diets to South Beach and follow Atkins beyond his grave. We go high and low, carb and fat. At any given moment 45 percent of American women and 30 percent of American men are trying to lose weight.

Instead of lecturing Americans to ease up their driving for the sake of the environment, we could market it as a weight loss activity. Instead of slapping stickers on SUVs impugning the politics of the owners, we could slap warning labels on cars saying: This Vehicle Will Make You Fat. We could form Gas Watchers; instead of weighing in on a scale once a week, we'd have to report our odometer.

Want to lose six ugly pounds, reduce sprawl and make sidewalks our most important protect? Put aside your Safari, park your Defender, trade in your Explorer for walking shoes. Now that's Phat City.

(c) 2004, Washington Post Writers Group

Walking is the last bastion of "natural" excercise. Excercise that doesn't require a gym, equipement, a shedule or really that isn't really even considered excercise. I walked because that's how I got around. If I wanted some groceries, I walked. If I wanted to go shopping, I walked. If i just wanted to get some air, I walked. Having no car gave me no other alternatives (except public transport) and I, for one, was glad for it.

My boyfriend and I are in the process of moving. This is factoring heavily in our decision of where to live. We do NOT want to live in Suburbia Land for exactly that reason. We don't want to have to jump in a car just to get a pint of milk

When I lived in the city I walked everywhere, now that I am a bit further out there I walk much less. The nearest store is 1.5 miles away and the closest major supermarket is over 3 miles away. No more walking to gt groceries anymore.

I find that in the Fall and Spring I walk much more due to the weather being nicer and a walk to the store or even the supermarket for groceries wont bother me one bit and I enjoy it. Carrying the bags is an added plus (as long as I am getting just a few small things)

In the Winter time (my favorite for weather) the roads tend to get too icy and the sidewalks arent cleaned as well so I go running late at night around a track or even walking sometimes but thats it. (then again I am a freak that will wear a T shirt and shorts in 30 degrees and feel great!) In the summer its too hot and humid to move! I sit indoors with my AC blasting. Home to Car to work to car to somewhere indoors with AC. I hate the heat!

I'd probably ride my bike more often, except there really is nowhere near my Apartment I can do it safely. Directly behind is a dry lake, which is fenced off. To the West is some other apartments. I used to cut through there to get to an area with sidewalks. But, they put up a Barbed Wire fence. If you go further to the west, you reach a road, but houses block your path to the south. Eventually, if you go a couple miles west, you can get out to a road with a side walk and travel south, but you'll be a good distance west of most of the Stores. So, you'll have to ride East again. But, at least you have parking lots you can go through. The other option is to go about 1/4 mile east until you hit the main road. But, then you'd have to ride west on a Heavily Trafficked road with no sidewalk or Bike lane and nothing but high, thick grass on the sides...which means you end up walking the bike most of the way. Once you get to the southbound road, you have to wait until there's a break in traffic and then run across. But, at least for half of the way after that there is a small sidewalk. Not exactly Pedestrian Friendly.

Going west is alot easier than going south, because then I can just get down in the Concrete River [the one they use for Drainage] and ride most of the way. Actually, you could ride the whole way, but the last part is overgrown with Brush [with thorns.] I learned that one the hard way. Nothing like hitting what you think is just some leaves/brush at full-speed, then having to spend an hour pulling all the thorns out of your clothes and arms. Unfortuantely, there's not much to the west, except one Grochery Store, which is the 2nd most expensive in the area. The cheapest 2 are to the south which isn't a very pedestrian friendly route.