I’m two days late in my post for my weekly M-Powering Words article…but for good reason. I moved last week, and this week was my birthday (today, in fact), so a bit of a break was needed.

So, what do I do? I come back with the most mind-numbing, thought provoking concept I could think of. Frankly I don’t know how I even stumbled on the idea, but when I took out my calculator and spent the entire day (what a birthday!) researching this hunch of mine, the hairs on the back of my neck started to rise.

Trust me, I really do not care what your personal political agenda may be. It’s none of my business, and this is not a political forum. However, oil and war is hardly a political statement. They go together like bread and butter. The current situation in Iraq, in the view of many, is another “war for oil”. Others feel differently. You are entitled to your own view, be it left, right, or middle.

The fact remains that we have seen war for oil, money, land…you name it. Today I want to pick on oil. : )

Even if you feel that our place in Iraq has nothing whatsoever in the slightest to do with oil, you probably would admit that saving our natural resources would be a smart idea. Oil is not self-replenishing, now is it? Are there any more dinos left that I don’t know about? Good…just making sure Jurassic Park was indeed a work of fiction.

What if I told you that we could reduce our imported crude oil by 20% a year without so much as a political sanction or the “ride your bike more often” approach?

You’ve heard “shedding blood for oil”…well, I’m going to share my “agenda” with you:

Shedding fat for oil.

No, not as an alternative fuel source…although that would give the liposuction clinics and interesting selling spin. I’m referring to the simple matter of weight. Not the weight of our cars, although a billion Hummers is probably not a wise idea, but rather the weight of those driving the vehicle. Those riding in the front and back seat. The people who pay the loans and sell the Hummers.

I’m talking about you and me.

And, I’m talking about 10 pounds.

My personal blog just won Forbes Magazine’s Best of the Web 2005 Award. I was shocked and elated by this honor, so I’m starting another blog this weekend. This is my “10 in 10 Challenge”—10 pounds over the next 10 weeks. While the majority of Americans will gain 3-9 pounds between now and January 1st, I’d like you to join me (yes, I’ll be doing this as well) and decide, today, to shed 10 pounds of unwanted body fat by January 1st, 2006.

Damn the holidays. Damn the junk food and double desserts. Damn the torpedos. (Damn if I’m not swearing too much.) Sorry folks…just really emphatic about this.

10 in 10…you in?

That’s my slogan. Like it? Good.

Look for 10in10Challenge.com next week. This will be a free daily blog which will feature my journey to 10 pounds of decreased body fat, along with thoughts, training tips, nutrition tips…you name it. But I want you in this with me.

And here’s why:

If every American who needed to participate in this program did so, we would completely cease the need for importing oil from the Middle East. This is not a rag on the Middle East, but rather a step in the right direction to a more environmentally-friendly world. Plus, let’s face it—that stat is rather hard to believe.

Get your calculators out and prepare for some typical M-Powering responsibility time. This is for all of you who ‘do’ believe we’re at war for oil and who know they can shed 10 pounds of unwanted fat. Hey, you want to protest the war? Drop the fat like a bad habit.

For all of you who do not believe this, you’re not off the hook. Do you think we’ll be using more or less oil in the next 20 years? Unless we adopt an alternative source of fuel very quickly, we will be more and more reliant on importing fuel from some nations that contradict democratic values. Just a thought folks.

So here we go:

• Fact: Every 100 pounds of weight in your vehicle increases your miles per gallon of gasoline by 2%. (1) This means that ten pounds dropped would create a .2% surplus of miles per gallon per person in the vehicle.
• Fact: An estimated 65 percent of U.S. adults aged 20 years and older are either overweight or obese, defined as having a BMI of 25 or higher. Even worse, 2% of the population is severely obese (more than 100 pounds overweight)—a rate that has quadrupled over the past 25 years. (2)
• Fact: By age 55, the average American has added nearly 40 pounds of fat during the course of adulthood. (3)
• Fact: The US, with 5% of the world’s population, consumes 45% of the gasoline produced on earth. (4) 44% of gasoline production comes from crude oil. (5)
• Fact: The average driver clocks 12,000 mile per year and uses 462 gallons of gasoline. The average MPG (miles per gallon) is 26. (6)

So, what does all that mean to you and me?

If you do the math, you’ll find that for every 10 pounds of weight you decide to shed, you will end up increasing your miles per gallon of gas by a tad under half a gallon. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Well, let’s continue…

Knowing how far we drive in a year, that savings would decrease the amount of gas used in that year from an average of 462 gallons to 444 gallons to travel the exact same distance. The savings? Over 18 gallons of gas in a year and $40 for every driver.

So what, right? Wrong.

We know that 65% of Americans are technically overweight. But did you know that 76% of all Americans could and should discard 10 pounds of fat in order to be healthier? (7)

The numbers work out to about…get this…200,000,000 Americans. That’s how many ‘should’ discard 10 pounds of fat. Period.

In so doing, we would cut our gasoline consumption by 3,600,000,000 gallons per year and save over $8 billion! Putting that into perspective: The United States consumes 320,000,000 gallons of gas per day, so we just earned 11.25 days of “free gas” just by ditching 10 pounds of unwanted fat. Twenty-five pounds, as you’ll see is a far more realistic number, would give us a month of free gas.

Now, the oil connection: 18 gallons of gas equals 92% of 42-gallon standardized barrel of oil. (8) Therefore, our puny 10-pound fat loss saved us a staggering 184,000,000 barrels of oil as a nation.

The Middle East in its entirety is responsible for 19% of our imported oil. This comes to about 2,000,000 barrels per day. (9) So, discarding 10 pounds of fat would result in almost three months of zero-dollar oil purchases from the Middle East. It doesn’t have to be the Middle East (I’m not trying to pick on them…in fact, just the opposite.) It could be Canada or Mexico…or right here in Texas. The point is our fat is causing our oil needs to soar and our environment suffer.

Now, if that isn’t sobering enough:

Remember that 40 pounds of fat the average American gains from 20-55? That segment of our population accounts for a whopping 42% of the US, or roughly 125,000,000 people. (10) That’s 5 billion pounds of unwanted fat, or about 500,000,000 barrels of oil.

So, that’s 250 of the 365 days of Middle East oil…obliterated. Without sanction. Without peddling your cars. Without war.

Toss in the added 12 pounds from 55 to 70 and the rampant obesity of our children (11), and you have this conclusion:

Our body fat is directly responsible for over 20% of the oil we consume.

That’s more than we import from Kuwait, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia combined. That’s also more money than we spend on cancer research, AIDS research, and ALL medical research in an entire year. (12)

Are you getting the picture?

Are you ready to shed fat for oil? How about for cancer then? For AIDS research? For our economy as a whole? Our health care system?

It’s a lot bigger than a scale and a low-carb diet. We have a world and our own individual beliefs to consider when we just look at the 320% increase in childhood obesity since 1935, and the 200% increase in adult obesity in the past 30 years and do nothing about it.

Ironically, those figures are very close to the increase in…you guessed it. Oil demand.

Could it be that our appetite for food is causing an appetite for…. (you, my friend, must fill in the blank.) All I know is this: it’s ironic that our personal fuel is in a state of growth while, in most people’s view, our earthly fuel is quite the opposite. Two fuel sources; both perhaps more related than we might imagine.

Join me in “10 in 10”. Shed fat for oil. Shed fat for the economy if not the oil. Just shed it! Do it for yourself, and yes…do it for the sake of our country and our environment.

Who cares if this is ‘idealistic’. So was America a few hundred years ago.

1. Energy Information Administration, Washington, DC
2. Center for Disease Control Report, 2004
3. American Accreditation Health Care Commission Report, 2005
4. Energy Information Administration, Washington, DC
5. Energy Information Administration, Washington, DC
6. American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
7. US Department of Health Report, 2004
8. US Department of Energy
9. Energy Information Administration, Washington, DC
10. Social Science Data Analysis Network
11. “Metabolism”; June 2005
12. National Institute of Health report; 2005