My ex husband was career military. At some point while he was in the military, they changed the fitness requirement for younger members but not for him and this really pissed him off. They told him "You have been working out your whole life. You are in the best shape of your life." but after a workout or PT test, he was really winded and needed substantial recovery time that the young guys did not need. They were fine within minutes.
The change was really rooted in the fact that younger people coming in were less fit. Young people used to take summer construction jobs and from what I gather that no longer happens anywhere near as much as it used to, which leaves the construction industry struggling to fill those jobs.
Kids used to run and play outside and now they play video games at the TV or the computer and hardly leave the house compared to when I was growing up. And there are just a whole lot of factors there.
My father grew up on a farm, though my father was born in the 1920s. I grew up with a garden out back and we used to go on public lands and pick blue berries in summer and part of the meat on our table was squirrel and deer meat that my father hunted (or, one year, a friend of his gifted us half a buck to fill our freezer).
I grew up in the 'burbs. I am sure there are still people who hunt and gather as part of their way of life, but I mostly hear this about Native Americans, especially in Alaska which is relatively undeveloped. There seems to be a lot less of that sort of thing for people in cities or suburbs, but I have no actual data on that. That's just an impression and I don't know how much that impression is skewed by personal experience, which doesn't always align with aggregate statistics.
But I'm quite clear we generally have less physical jobs/lives overall and more citified lives overall than when I was growing up.
I'm sure that's a big factor, but I also think there are myriad other factors that get short shrift and we mostly don't bother to discuss them. As just one example: Urban planners used to take fitness into consideration when planning cities and my understanding is this is mostly a thing of the past.
I am not dismissing anything you are saying as they are all clearly part of the problem. I simply think the timelines for these big societal changes don't match the numbers from the obesity epidemic for them to be the primary factors.
No, sorry, I don't think you are dismissing anything. I think you've been really kind about the whole thing, characterizing it as "is that a typo?"
I'm just talking. There's a global pandemic and like most of the world right now, I don't get out much.
I'm trying to do other things and leave this conversation. I don't think I really have more to add. I'm not upset with you and I'm not feeling defensive. I'm just rambling.
The change was really rooted in the fact that younger people coming in were less fit. Young people used to take summer construction jobs and from what I gather that no longer happens anywhere near as much as it used to, which leaves the construction industry struggling to fill those jobs.
Kids used to run and play outside and now they play video games at the TV or the computer and hardly leave the house compared to when I was growing up. And there are just a whole lot of factors there.
My father grew up on a farm, though my father was born in the 1920s. I grew up with a garden out back and we used to go on public lands and pick blue berries in summer and part of the meat on our table was squirrel and deer meat that my father hunted (or, one year, a friend of his gifted us half a buck to fill our freezer).
I grew up in the 'burbs. I am sure there are still people who hunt and gather as part of their way of life, but I mostly hear this about Native Americans, especially in Alaska which is relatively undeveloped. There seems to be a lot less of that sort of thing for people in cities or suburbs, but I have no actual data on that. That's just an impression and I don't know how much that impression is skewed by personal experience, which doesn't always align with aggregate statistics.
But I'm quite clear we generally have less physical jobs/lives overall and more citified lives overall than when I was growing up.
I'm sure that's a big factor, but I also think there are myriad other factors that get short shrift and we mostly don't bother to discuss them. As just one example: Urban planners used to take fitness into consideration when planning cities and my understanding is this is mostly a thing of the past.