Take a look at your childhood or teenage photos, or rewatch Soviet films. You will be surprised at how many fit and toned people there are in them. Many people think that it’s all about proper nutrition and amateur sports, allegedly developed during those years. In fact, there just weren’t as many food temptations back then as there are now. Aif.ru spoke to endocrinologist and dietitian Alexey Kalinchev about this.
Don’t idealize it – there was no such thing as proper nutrition back then. People ate little and infrequently, three times a day, with small portions – watch the movies of those times and look at the food on the tables.
A worker’s lunch – a carton of milk or a bottle of kefir with a loaf of bread. Nowadays, even guest workers eat better. You couldn’t buy food on the streets because there was no fast food. Sometimes pastries or turnovers were sold near metro stations, but not every day and there was a queue for them.
I finished school in 1990 and I remember those years well. I stayed at school until 6:00 pm. The food from the school’s menu was scarce. I wanted to eat all day, from morning till evening, even if I had money, which not all children had for these purposes.
Everyone’s parents worked, and grandparents too, usually working or living separately. Even if a child came home early, they only ate what their parents left for them.
After school, we would sometimes visit classmates’ homes. There were no cookies, biscuits, or candies at my home, and it seemed the same for others. Of course, some lived better and had more to eat, but in my circle, it was roughly the same.
And it’s not about the amount of sports. Back then, fewer people were involved in sports compared to now – because of a lack of sports sections and the difficulty of getting into them.
All my childhood I wanted to do wrestling, but there was no one to take me when I was little, and when I got older, they didn’t accept me due to no prospects. Now there are many children’s sections, no difficulties in enrollment, catering to all tastes and levels of training.
But the daily level of physical activity was significantly higher. In the USSR, there was practically no personal transport, and the public transportation system was poorly developed – you couldn’t catch a bus, and there were no minivans at all. Personally, I walked 2-3 hours a day, plus physical labor like cleaning classrooms, the area, and so on.
Nowadays, even people in working professions have very little physical labor. Work is mechanized to the maximum extent possible.
So, the reason for the fit look in the past was that there was little food in the USSR and a lot of physical activity. Most people had an energy deficit. Hence the dryness and lack of overweight people.
Now there is plenty of food and little physical activity. So the only way to get back in shape is to artificially restrict the amount of food and monitor its composition. It’s also necessary to artificially increase the level of physical activity. Come up with walking routines, for example. Get off public transport 1-2 stops earlier and walk the remaining distance. Use the stairs instead of the elevator. Be active on weekends and vacations.