This past month I noticed three things that caught my attention about the fitness of this area. The first was an article in the San Antonio Express News that commented on the recent status of San Antonio being the second fattest city in the United States.

San Antonio was ranked 12th in 2006, and moved up to number two in 2007. While the ranking is highly unscientific, it still catches the media’s attention.

Claudia Zapata, the author of the article, called Men’s Fitness magazine editor Neil Boulton and asked him about the rankings. He said it isn’t that you slipped in fitness; it is that other cities have stepped up and have climbed above you. He referred to mayor Martin Chavez in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that was ranked as one of the fittest cities, and how he implemented a “Mayor’s Fit City Challenge” for citizens to sign up online and vow to improve health and enjoyment of life as a fit city.

Mayor Phil Hardberger of San Antonio, a lifelong fitness enthusiast, said the city needs to change as a community, adjust our eating patterns and get more exercise. The comment was that being fit is a twofold effort of eating less and exercising more. San Antonio needs to become proactive and creative to deal with the city’s obesity crisis, Zapata mentioned; but as of yet, no one is talking about a “Get Fit San Antonio” program. There are programs in place and others are planned, but it takes people to make them work.

The second thing that relates to this is that the Parks and Recreation Department here in San Marcos has hosted a “Fitness San Marcos” event for the past three years, where they would invite local fitness gyms, health care businesses, health food stores and anyone in the business of fitness. It was planned last month once again for the citizens of San Marcos to take advantage of this opportunity to learn what our city has to offer.

The event was cancelled because the vendors decided not to take part. The reason was that, from evidence of the past years, not enough citizens took advantage of the chance to learn about fitness; and many businesses decided it was just not worth the time and effort to take a day off work if nobody was going to come. It makes you wonder how close we are to San Antonio, and a ranking of being one of the fattest cities instead of one of the fittest. Our total population does not permit us to be figured in the rankings, but it seems evidence suggests we would not fare very well at being a fit city.

The third item was a talk given by Paul Carrozza, owner of RunTex in Austin, the Chair of the Texas Governor’s Council on Fitness and also a member of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness for the United States. Paul was invited to give a talk to the Exercise and Sports Science Club at Texas State University. He gave a very informative talk about how he started his business, and getting into promoting health and fitness for people. He mentioned several programs that his company supports for business, churches and corporations in the area. He says they do not sell running shoes as a primary reason for his store, but to sell running first. The sale of shoes will come after that.

One program has a group of individuals start a program where they would take one month of training to achieve a distance of one mile. After three months, the group was able to run three miles and enter a 5K run. His premise is that you need to get in shape first before you run, rather than the opposite view of you need to run to get in shape. Paul said that even recreation is not fun if you are not in shape. The farther you are from fitness, the more you need fitness.

One of his sayings with regard to fitness is that “you are in charge of your own house.” This has another version that goes, “if you don’t take care or your body, where will you live?”

He had one program where a group of 189 people exercised one day a week for a year and became more fit. The one factor that raised the attention of insurance companies about the value of fitness is that, after one year, these people had fewer medical problems and saved the companies over $31,000 in medical costs from one year to the next. If only 189 people can save that much, think about what a large company or organization or a city can do with their employees and citizens.

Another program is the Kid’s Marathon training program, where over a period of five months, kids will run a total of 26 miles and finish along with the Austin Marathon for the last mile. This year there were 45,000 kids participating in this program, with the incentive coming from RunTex with shoes, motivation and training tips.

The most unusual program in my view was the “One Ton of Fun” where individuals had to weigh over 300 pounds to be in the program. With six months of training, the average loss in weight was 50 pounds. After the program finished, the average weight gained back in the next six months was only 20 pounds. That was a very good return for only six months of training.

Where should the effort come from to get our nation fit? There are programs at the federal level, the state level and even the local level. Basically it comes down to groups of individuals who want to change their level of fitness, and may or may not use the programs of the different levels of support. I have a desk calendar that has a daily saying to take with you each day. The one that I think fits this topic reads, “Those who do not find time for exercise will have to find time for illness.”