How to become portly

From the presidential halls, the Surgeon General's office and from many leading doctors across the country, experts are calling it "the number one health problem" in America. These folks are talking about our overweight citizenry, recently reporting one out of every four adults are "obese," along with quite a high percentages of children.

Serious programs are pushing public schools to do away with high cholesterol foods and drinks. Places like McDonald's and Wendy's are cutting back on those offerings. This calorie business came home to me last week when Over the Hill Gang members questioned my casually eating two fresh maple bars at one sitting.

It wasn't always that way. Found that out by referring to something written on that exact subject in 1991, while I could still climb high mountains in Glacier Park. This is what was said:

In my 20s, at 5-foot10-inches and hitting the scales at 170, I felt positive about what I was, a normally proportioned specimen of the human male. Now it is different, the height has gone down an inch and a half while the girth has grown. When your favorite belt doesn't reach anymore, you wonder, "Where does ‘fit' end and ‘chubby' begin?" At what point does a man become pleasingly plump, or is it just women who can be pleasingly plump?

While it is unfair, I'm sure females claim exclusive rights to being "full-figured." Am I old enough now at 63 to be described as having a "mature" build? Is it covering up the truth to simply think of a small person of my dimensions and bulk as "huskier than average?" Have spent time wondering about mysterious things like, "At what point did they start calling him Minnesota Fats?"

A question as personal as "What am I?" eventually leads to self-examination, criticism and research. I did that as best I could. Psychology magazines were no help. Finally, last Saturday at the county library, I found a huge dictionary that breaks down common words for overweight classifications. Here's how it covered the topic:

Fat - always implies excessive weight and is generally unfavorable in its connotations.

Obese - is employed principally in medical usage with reference to extreme overweight to the point of affecting health.

Fleshy - implies an abundance of flesh that is not necessarily disfiguring.

Stout - is sometimes used as a polite term to describe fatness. Stout in strict application suggests a thick-set bulky person.

Portly - is another word that can be used by polite people who don't want to describe someone as fat, and in strict application designates one whose bulk is combined with an imposing bearing.

Pudgy - describes one who is thickset and dumpy. (Dumpy denotes "short and stout, from archaic ‘dump,' a shapeless mass.")

Rotund - suggests roundness of figure in a squat person. (Looked up squat and it means "short and thick; low and broad")

Plump - is applicable to a pleasing fullness of figure, especially in women.

Chubby - implies abundance of flesh, usually not to excess.

After carefully studying these official definitions, I was ready for self-classification. Because you can't undress at the library, I went home and then in my skivvies began turning slowly in front of a full-length mirror. On the seventh rotation, a realization came to me like a divine message from the heavens, "George, you are just barely a portly person ...using of course, the ‘strict application.'"

One final note on this subject, "Please! Don't ever call me dumpy."

So this is how the Trailwatcher columnist felt in 1991. And now? Having celebrated my 83rd birthday on July 24, ten days ago, I no longer seem to be emotionally concerned about my 180-pound "bod." In fact, maybe I'll go to the Over the Hill Gang coffee hour Friday and have ...three maple bars.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.