Column by Tim Riley

Simply stated, a synergy exists between things when their whole is greater than the sum of their parts. For instance, everyone would rather eat a well-prepared pizza than work their way through piles of its various ingredients. In order to maximize the quality of their life, people are constantly searching for synergies that can save them time or improve their usage of resources. Unfortunately, as our society continues to develop, it is becoming increasingly difficult to synergize the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle with the demands of a busy life.

For the average person, exercising means taking a chunk of time out of his or her day that could be used doing many other productive ways in order to lift heavy things or run really far, not exactly the most enjoyable activities on earth. As responsibilities in one’s life increase, the willingness of a person to take time to engage themselves in these strenuous pursuits obviously begins to wane. When there are only 24 hours in the day and people feel like they have 28 hours of work, they embrace synergies to bridge the gap. Unfortunately for physical fitness, there is often no synergy to be found.

While growing up, exercising had all the synergies one could ever want. In my elementary school, going outside to run laps around the bus lane was a standard activity. By doing this, one could stay out of trouble with the teacher, get some exercise, and attempt to embarrass others by dominating the races. Synergies abounded. Later in one’s pre-college years, there were always team sports to play where all the running and lifting we now use for exercise could actually be put to use in a fun activity with numerous other benefits. Now, outside of a few intramurals, staying physically fit means engaging in often tedious, non-synergistic actions.

These same problems can be seen in the choices of food people make. It is infinitely easier to consume a poor diet than to deal with the requirements and necessities of a healthy one. McDonald’s is cheap, fast and tastes good. There is no healthy alternative which can match all those criteria to the level that fast-food restaurants can. Seeking the healthy choice means expending more of one’s constrained time at many points with little synergy between that chore and any others in the course of the day. Eating healthy tends to be more time inefficient than other choices and presents no means of accomplishing other requirements simultaneously, so it logically falls by the wayside for most people.

While this issue can seem personal, our modern medical system makes each person’s health the concern of everyone. Obesity causes numerous, expensive problems for people, and that expense is felt in the wallets of every single American. An organization called Strategies to Overcome and Prevent Obesity Alliance (STOP) and two former U.S. Surgeons General recently issued a joint statement calling for national policy makers to recognize obesity as the largest driving force in the health crisis. While obesity harms the health system now, if the move toward socialized health care is made, it will become an even graver concern.

According to STOP, there is an additional $147 billion spent each year in health costs because of obesity. This is a cost that will have to be paid by everyone despite the fact that it is caused by the choices of individual people. Undoubtedly, some people are naturally very slim and others are a little big, but there is much within a person’s control in terms of his or her weight. As our health-care system evolves, being unwilling to manage one’s weight will put an additional burden on everyone else in the U.S.

There may not be any synergies for the average person for eating and exercising anymore, most jobs barely even require physical exertion; however, in order to keep a viable, fair health care system, no matter what happens in Congress soon, people must begin to either find an exercising synergy or simply deal with the fact none exists. Doing so will not only improve one’s own life because of the myriad of positive effects emanating from that choice, but it will stop burdens from being put on everyone else to pay for the poor choices. It’s not an ideal scenario, but it’s the one that exists. And unless America is prepared to deal with it properly, the personal and economic repercussions will be severe.