OUR VIEW: Fat went out with bellbottoms

I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know it’s OK to be fat.

This is a land where it’s perfectly acceptable to eat a 10,000 calorie hamburger with a name that is really just a combination of a killer movie and a smoked meat. It’s the Baconator, and it wants your freedom.

That’s really less of an exaggeration than you may think.

If a person was to eat an average of, say five Baconators a week, after a while they would probably lose the freedom to be able to say “Trim Spa, baby” without it being ironic, not breathe hard while bending over to tie their shoes, wear tube tops or leather pants, fit out the front door, be compared to less whale-like creatures, safely jump on a trampoline with small children and many other simple – but important – things in life.

But maybe it’s not just the extremely poor, gluttonous eating habits.

America’s bulging waistline may have something to do with another of the seven deadly sins – sloth.

Exercise is key to weight loss. And more than that, it’s the key to a healthier, longer life.

People who think exercise is a walk to get the second bucket of extra-crispy fried chicken from the fridge, don’t exactly raise the average life expectancy.

It’s not that hard to get real exercise in, is it? Has anyone walked up Old Main Hill lately? That feels kind of like exercise.

Walking instead of driving, or taking the bus, before it turns into the Arctic Circle – the cold place, not the fast food joint – outside is just one of literally thousands of ways to get exercise in a day.

You can frolic to and fro across the Quad doing an interpretive ribbon dance about the strife you feel over Britney Spears losing custody of her kids.

You could row around in extremely small circles in the fountain, if the fountain was in commission.

You can become a lumberjack and grow a beard. The beard has little to do with exercise, but everything to do with lumberjacking.

You can start a mosh pit at your next family home evening – moshing is probably a full body workout.

We don’t recommend this, but you can go around picking fights with random transients because boxing is good exercise.

You can do what everyone else does, go to the Fieldhouse and look at yourself in the mirror for an hour. Although, just putting on a sleeveless shirt isn’t really exercise.

Or just be a kid – run around, play ball or run from cops. Our kid years are waning.

What you do isn’t really important, it’s just the doing that matters.