Editor,

This is in response to the Victor Murthy column published on Tuesday:
I agree with you that obesity and weight-related conditions are a current and future problem here at UNM, but I felt your column attacks the people who are overweight, and not the issue of obesity and weight-related issues directly. More specifically, your column highlights a dislike of overweight people for rather vain and selfish reasons — they offend your visual sensibilities. Indeed, you make a point by stating that, “The problem here isn’t really the health issue, but the aesthetic issue” in the third paragraph. You used the rather caustic term of “visual atrocities” to describe their choice of clothing options as well. Indeed the entire premise of your column was to highlight how other people’s fashion sense with relation to their weight offends you. Do you or did you ever consider the social, biological and emotional health of those individuals who are overweight or obese? Did it ever cross your mind to inform Daily Lobo readers of a few basic facts about obesity? You could have talked about how obesity increases the chances that a person will develop diabetes, hormone-related cancers and coronary artery disease. You could have also talked about how obesity increases the likelihood of developing chronic conditions related to weight like lower-back pain, acute stress and knee and other joint pain. Did you ever feel like mentioning that obesity increases the likelihood that a person will develop depression during the course of his or her lifetime?

So, instead of bemoaning the fact that some people are fat and that offends you, why don’t you propose a few solutions to that problem?  Instead of demeaning people who are overweight and go to the gym, why aren’t you congratulating or helping them? Indeed, isn’t the purpose of going to a gym to get healthy and to be social? Incorporating increased physical activity in an overweight person’s lifestyle can have immensely positive social, cognitive and biological changes in his or her life. Getting the bare minimum recommended by the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services (150 minutes per week of moderately intense activities) can decrease a person’s risk of getting most cancers, increase the ability to handle stress, increase the production of endorphins, decrease perceived feelings of fatigue, increase personal self-confidence, decrease the incidence of diabetes, increase cognitive function and increase both the quality and duration of life in general. To put it in simple terms, a quote from the New England Journal of Medicine in May 1997 said, “Exercise is the closest thing we’ll ever get to the miracle pill that everyone is seeking.”

Getting exercise and attempting to establish a healthy lifestyle should be a goal for all UNM students, faculty and administrators. So, instead of insulting those people who actually want to go to the gym to lose weight, wouldn’t it be more prudent to encourage gym participation? Heck, you might even find that encouraging more people to go to the gym might make it easier on your eyes — as more people will fit your version of ”sexy.”

Kevin Seeger
UNM student