Extra weight can be costly in many ways

Our national propensity to overeat costs big bucks. Some of those big bucks are spent on soft drinks and cookies. But I just saw a statistic that put a new spin on the dollars wasted in becoming overweight. According to one authority, we burn more than $1 billion each year in extra gas as a result of being overweight. Huh? We waste that much gas driving to the store for ice cream?

COURTESY PHOTO According to one authority, we burn more than $1 billion each year in extra gas as a result of being overweight. Actually, your car burns more petroleum energy moving your extra overweight bulk. Think about that the next time you pump gas into your car, at over $2.65 per gallon.

I have no idea if that statistic is true but I do know that being overweight puts us at great personal risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, two of the top killers in this country. We hear that all the time, so it isn't news, but if we want to save healthcare dollars, we need to go beyond mere "weight management" to "health management" when we talk about weight-y issues. They are not at all the same thing.

As I said last week, a person can lose weight on virtually any weight loss program, as long as he just changes something. That can be either adding more protein or carbohydrates, or dropping a few calories. Unfortunately, most of the weight they lose is in lean tissue, not fat tissue. I recently spoke with a gal who embarked on a rigorous workout program and dropped about 15 pounds in a week. She was ecstatic, until she learned that most of the lost weight was water (she worked out in the hot Florida sun several hours per day). She may have lost a pound of fat, a pound or two of lean tissue, but the rest was water.

One of the most critical elements in any health program is maintaining lean tissue. Sarcopenia, the loss of lean tissue as a result of aging, is a major issue in the elderly because as the body's store of protein ebbs, the body is not able to withstand the rigors of illness. Since muscle and visceral tissue is metabolically active (burns more calories), the loss of lean tissue means the loss of vital energy. Sarcopenic elderly people feel tired, struggle with maintaining physical balance, have trouble getting out of chairs, and so on.

Carol Simontacchi is the owner of

the Island Nutrition Center on Sanibel.

She can be reached at 472-4499 or on the Web at www.islandnutritioncenter.metaehealth.

com. ¦