Politics of the sedentary ?

At a basic physiological level whether or not people become overweight or obese simply depends on the balance between their energy intake and their energy expenditure. You need energy for growth and repair, to keep warm, to keep your neurons charged and to move around. Eat the same amount and do any of these things less and, if you weren't losing weight before, you'll put it on now. What's truly remarkable is how well we normally keep our intake and expenditure in balance. Over a year, adding just 25 g (about 1 oz) a day adds up to over 9kg.

The classic way of measuring someone's energy expenditure is to capture their breath and then measure the amount of CO₂ they produce. However, this can't tell what you've used the energy for only that you've used it. A more complete answer can be given by putting someone in a whole body calorimeter. Essentially just a big sealed and insulated box where you can measure the temperature, quantity and composition of the air that goes in and compare it to the temperature, quantity and composition of that which comes out - including the water vapour it contains - and you can determine not only how much energy the person in the box has been consuming but also how much they've been using to produce heat.

One of the experiments that was done with such a box was to see how much energy people used while they were doing a desk job. i.e something that doesn't necessarily involve a lot of moving around. It turned out that some people used twice as much as others. How could this be? Well, the simple answer is that some people are fidgets. Give them a problem to solve and they'll literally jiggle and squirm in their seats until they find an answer. Others will simply settle down and ponder. Guess which character types are likely to become overweight ?

It wouldn't surprise anyone that knows me that I'm a fidget and that I'm wriggling as I write. This general characteristic also seems to have a psychological counterpart in the way in which I solve problems. Give me a bit of maths to unravel and I'll harass it until it gives up a solution. 

Now, one of the side effects of being a fidget is that I'm not very good at sitting down and one of the things I dread about old age is the thought of getting stuck in a chair - besides, I've never found one that I can sit in for long without getting back ache -. You might say that if that's all I'm worried about then things are looking pretty good, and I can't really pretend not to agree, but in an increasingly sedentary society I do hope that I end up in the company of fellow fidgets so that we can at least discuss how everything is going wrong whilst wandering around rather than being stuck in one place.

A side effect of this character trait is that the urge to get up and move about is so strong that I'm a natural explorer. Find myself in a new town and I can't help but get out and wander around it. A few years ago I used to pay short visits to Johannesburg and was forever frustrated by the urge to get up and wander around in a city that white folk like me didn't wander around in. When I lived in Connecticut in the early 1980's I'd usually be the only person without a dog to use the side walks to walk along, as opposed to jogging or driving across at right angles - though I did sometimes get joined by young black men who'd chat with me in the security that they were now much less likely to get stopped by the police -.

As a result of all this, combined with a deep seated egalitarianism, I'm really fond of public space and over the past few years my politics have become focused on improving the spaces near where I live. However, one of the problems of the political process is that it involves a great deal of sitting down. All those committee meetings, selection panels, car journeys from one place to another, they all provide a selective environment that favours the sedentary, as well as the rich.

So, my challenge is how to get a naturally sedentary political class* to engage with issues relating to public space that they don't use because they're too busy sitting down.

*As a child I struggled with the idea of "the exception to the rule". If there's a rule then surely there shouldn't be any exceptions. I eventually realised that it was the identification of the exception that showed that there must be some sort of rule for it to be an exception to. In this case there will no doubt be many politicians who are natural fidgets but I'm confident that they'll be just such exceptions.