Couch Potatoes, Arise!

By PRISCILLA PAINTON

Set aside the data for a moment and take a walk on any American beach. Casually, discreetly, observe the flesh (this is not a gender thing; we're talking every last, ever loving body on the sand). Now, don't you think that last summer, or the summer before, or especially back in the '80s, there were fewer paunches out there that jiggled like flan? And didn't we just go through a spell where the buttocks seemed hitched to a spot just a notch or two higher up the spine?

All right, all right -- it wasn't that insensitive! It was simply a matter of seizing seasonal imagery to make an obvious point: some of us seem to be letting ourselves go . . . just a touch, say . . . perhaps an almost imperceptible touch. No, that's bending backwards not to offend. Put it in the hands of, say, a headline writer for a British tabloid:

CLOSE-TO-THE-BONE FADDISTS

SEEN GIVING BONES THE BOOT

The thing is, never mind the old expression that you're digging your grave with your teeth; there is growing suspicion, not to mention evidence, that our national-fitness fixation has come off the hinge, that there are those among us who are guiltlessly, remorselessly, allowing themselves to kick off their Nikes, sink deep into a couch and stay there. "You used to be quite a dish," said a middle-aged wag upon meeting a former lover. "Now you're quite the tureen."

Such an uncharitable remark may address the heart of what is happening as much as the disturbing health surveys that began to emerge early in this decade. There are those who say, "We are getting older and letting go, naturally"; there are others who declare, "Nonsense! We have turned our backs on the no-pain no-gain '80s -- our lack of will is making us, uh, pillowy." Just go with the age theorists for a moment: unless you are the issue of Mick Jagger out of Twiggy, you will soften, droop and bulge with the years, as muscle gradually turns to fat. There is no argument there. The nation, with its glut of middle-aged baby boomers, is getting older. It is reaching again for baggy jeans (described as "comfortable fit" by some gentle-minded manufacturers). It is discovering "big girl" fashions.

Or look at it from the point of view of a veteran aerobics instructor facing a shrinking class: in the '80s, a time of exceeding passion for highly defined physiques (you could all but see the viscera on some specimens), even our old, prematurely dark-haired President, a man known as the Great Communicator, joined the crowd and pumped iron. In the '90s we are led by a young, prematurely gray-haired fellow who jogs, yes, but most days turns a deaf ear to those who would slow his knife and fork. Call him the Great Sweet Potater.

But cut to the stats that begat the debate. Just last week three of America's authorities on health, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American College of Sports Medicine and the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, joined together to point the finger at the nation's couch potatoes. You're not just lazy, they said from a podium in Washington, you're causing an "epidemic of physical inactivity" in America. A quarter of the adult population is still downright sedentary and another third is barely active, said the scientists -- and they knew exactly of whom they were speaking. "These are the ones who circle the parking lot to get a space close to the entrance. They wait in line for the down escalator, even when they're just going one floor," sniffed Steven Blair, an epidemiologist for the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas.

It's not that couch potatoes are proliferating -- their percentage has been constant for the past two decades. It's that the number of people taking up vigorous activity seems to have crested in the mid-'80s, according to, among other surveys, the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. No wonder there is revolt in the air. "The god Narcissus ruled in the '80s," says a middle-aged publicist in Los Angeles, a man who is sensitive about his 15-lb. , gain and would prefer to keep his name to himself. "He was the least powerful and most uninteresting god. In the '90s Narcissus will be dethroned."

It's always fun to blame the baby boomers for stalling the nation's progress. But the story is, sorry to say, more complicated than that. Part of it has to do with the influx of nearly 9 million immigrants into this country in the past decade -- folks for whom sweat means something different from working out to Jane Fonda's mellifluous commands. Another factor is poverty: a jog in some neighborhoods is more dangerous to your health than staying behind a barricaded door. Earlier this year the government reported that the health gap between affluent, well-educated people and poor and poorly educated people had widened greatly over the past three decades: by 1986, it said, Americans with a family income of less than $9,000 a year had a death rate more than three times as high as people with a family income of $25,000 or more. The study, which specifically omitted deaths from violence, accidents and occupational injuries and diseases, found that this disparity more than doubled between 1960 and 1986.

So last week the scientists and the aerobicists surrendered. To lure the couch potatoes and others into the fitness movement, they changed the rules of admission. "We made a mistake saying that exercise had to be intense and continuous," said Blair. "The focus has been too much on rigid, regimented physical activity that required wearing funny clothes in a special place and sweating. While that's fine, what about the young couple with the small kid? Between car pooling and soccer games, they don't have time to go to a gym."

Here's the good news, then: forget jumping up and down to bad music for 20 minutes three times a week. Your cardiovascular condition could benefit just as much if you accumulate half an hour of "moderate" activity each day. Garden, rake leaves, dance, climb steps, walk briskly to work. And don't fret about measuring your heart rate every time you think you've exercised. (That always looks pretentious anyway.) The American College of Sports Medicine's recommendation for the minimum target heart rate during exercise has been dropping for nearly 20 years. In 1975 the college said the pulse rate during exercise should be 80% of the heart's maximum capacity; in 1980 that goal fell to 70%, then 60% in 1986. Last year it was a modest 50%. Says Linda Webb, a Weight Watchers spokeswoman: "The problem in the 1980s was that exercise was ! seen as a chore, beyond the norm. Now we recognize that all we have to do is normal things like walking, but just do it a little faster. It's the difference between a craze and common sense."

Of course some Americans came to this conclusion well before last week's pronouncement from Washington. Gwen Grayson, a 34-year-old jewelry saleswoman from Dallas, used to hit the gym two hours a day for the weights and the aerobics, as if this regimen were a surefire lock on immortality. Now she has cut back to three workouts a week. Her conclusion: "Mental health suffers when you're in an obsessed state of mind."

But while some Americans seem to be gaining wisdom on the health front, there are troubling signs that others may be forgetting it. For one, the antismoking campaign is in a rut. The CDC reported that in 1991, the latest year for which numbers are available, 25.7% of the population smoked, about the same as in 1990; thus a 24-year annual decline in cigarette use seems to have leveled off.

Meantime, let's go back to where we came in this summer, walking among those greasy bodies frying on that skillet-flat beach. It does not take experts to know that a solid majority of Americans have a weight problem (66% in a recent Harris poll) and that the temptations to settle into a permanent slouch will only grow stronger. The electronic superhighway is on the way, with 500 channels of interactive broadcasting. Imagine this Leave It to Beaver update, circa 1997: after Wally and the Beaver rip through a few games of Return of Sonic the Hedgehog, after June finishes her home shopping and after Ward checks the closing stock quotes, they all settle down for the evening with a big bag of Fritos Lite and order up Home Alone IV.

With reporting by Janice M. Horowitz/New York, Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles, and Richard Woodbury/Dallas