Taken from Eclectic Gardener @ http://www.teachinggarden.org/
Written by Alan Hickman

According to the time log, the last work in the garden was at the beginning of December, and that was only for an hour planting a few tulips.
Since then, apart from an occasional walk with the dogs, exercise has been practically zero. Just how sedentary life has become was evident when my self-winding watch stopped - twice.
Sitting in front of a computer screen all day doesn’t generate enough movement to even wind a watch spring.

So, weeks of inactivity plus a holiday consuming turkey slathered in olive oil, bread stuffing, sweet potatoes mashed in maple syrup and butter, and later, the St Steven’s Day pie of leftovers, with more butter, 35% cream and egg yolks, and all the good intentions of maintaining a healthy weight are gone? Well, actually, no.

At the beginning of January 2008, the old bathroom spring-scale registered 146 pounds and, three days in to January 2009, the new - $9.50-on-special - digital-scale, indicated 145.8 pounds.

Did I mention the 7.5% velvety-smooth stout, brewed in Kingston, Jamaica, or the box of mint chocolates or the Scottish shortbread cookies?

To get things to go as planned in the garden, it helps if you understanding the fundamental principles, and, if you take heed of what nature does, it helps a lot.

The same applies with weight control. The underlying facts of weight control are 1. Energy in equals energy out; and, 2. Human digestive systems are built to cope with cycles of feast and famine and with rather more of the latter than the former.

Our digestion process has served us and our ancestral species very well for millions of years. It brought us out of Africa, spread us across every continent into every habitat, and afforded us almost undisputed status as the planet’s top predator.

We can gain sustenance from virtually anything imprudent enough to get within arm’s length.

Having been adjusted and tweaked by aeons of environmental stress, our ability to extract energy, store it and retrieve it when needed, has become a system in beautiful balance, and it has allowed our species to survive every calamity that time has sent its way.

But, there is one thing that the system has no protection against, because it is something which nature has almost never provided: sustained excess.

When I started school in Britain during the Second World War, meat, fats, dairy, and sugar and sugar products, were all rationed and available only in minuscule amounts. Vegetables and fruit - in season - were to be had and, in addition, many if not most people with a garden grew as much of a crop as they were able.

Looking at the obligatory school class-photos from those years, the kids were certainly a scruffy looking lot but none looked thin or malnourished. However, there was only one visibly fat kid in the whole bunch and, appropriately enough, her father was a local pig farmer.

Over the intervening years, the populations of the developed - and parts of the developing - world may not have all turned to pig farming for survival but they certainly have been living very high on the hog.

According to Britain’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, when asked, only 6 per cent of people recognized that obesity was a serious health risk and was associated with the increased likelihood of cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and also with a reduced average life expectancy of about a decade. "Many see fat as a vanity issue, not a health issue." he said.

Compounding the problem, it seems that as more and more individuals have become visibly overweight or obese, people have forgotten what a healthy weight actually looks like.

Consistently, when asked what their ideal weight should be, given their height, females under-estimated and males over-estimated.

For health professionals the body mass index is a useful and - within broad limits - an accurate tool, but its lack of both simplicity and intuitive application makes it less than ideal for general use.

Tell most people to: divide their height in meters squared in to their weight in kilograms and if the answer is between 19 and 25, they are healthy, and their eyes will just glaze over.

What individuals need know is just what target weight they should aim for and, fortunately, there is a very simple way of doing that.

If you are 5 feet tall 111 pounds is the bulls-eye. For every one inch taller or shorter than 5 feet add or subtract 4 pounds. Someone six feet tall would aim at: 111 pounds plus 12 times 4 pounds, for 159 pounds as the centre point.

The latitude on each side of the bull’s-eye is 20 pounds. An adult - male or female -six feet tall could weigh from about 140 to 180 pounds and still be in the group shown to have the general benefits of a healthy weight.

For gardeners there’s the good news and the bad.

Digging trenches, planting spuds, pushing barrow-loads of compost from one end of the garden to the other, and unearthing the crop at the end of the season, will improve your muscle tone, and eating the fresh produce will improve your nutrition; but, neither will do much for your weight.

You can get just as fat eating boiled potatoes and turnips as by eating pans of fried bacon and eggs.

So, anyone for pecan pie and ice-cream? Yes please! But just a small piece.

Day -13 mostly cloudy Winds WNW11km/h P.O.P.24%
Night -18 cloudy Winds N9km/h P.O.P.31%