The Real Reason People in the 1970s Were Thinner

Remote controls are a plot to fatten then kill us

I’ve been cobbling together a 1971-themed office.

It started when I bought a set of brown folding canvas chairs secondhand. They sit low to the ground and resemble camp chairs, but they were designed for a swingin’ rec room to be closer to that lucious shag carpet.

After I purchased a mushroom-themed tapestry, with no intention of going retro, I realized I was spiraling into an Austin Powers movie.

I knew I had no control and might as well surrender to orange and avocado and paisley and whatever else came my way.

I won’t go so far as to install the magic of electric blue long-haired carpeting, but the pre-tech era is where I’d rather be. It was inconvenient but we didn’t know it. We didn’t miss having remote controls and smartphones.

And we were thinner.

The furniture is low — I must get up from the floor. My electronics don’t have remotes — I have to sashay across the room to turn them on.

Remote controls have ruined this country. You know it, I know it, and the captains of industry who send us remotes we don’t even need are laughing all the way to the bank.

In my quest for cheap retro ambiance, I went to Amazon to find a lava lamp. The color choices were overwhelming and I drifted, buying instead a globe/orb that changes colors.

The orb was billed as the “perfect gift for the tween in your life” which I resented. Apparently, my decor sophistication is stuck at age 12, when I never got all the cool stuff I wanted at the mall.

When the orb arrived in the mail, I shrieked with glee. It was all I had hoped for and more.

This delightful creation isn’t an authentic 1970-era tchotchke by a long shot, as it comes with a charger and a remote. Did I mention it glows and pulses and changes into 12 colors!!

If I had to get off the low furniture and walk to the orb and switch it on, I’d burn seven more calories a day.

Math Doesn’t Lie

Remotes also ruined television, plus we get a crystal-clear TV picture now so there’s no futzing with an antenna and cursing as you try to get the infernal static and snow to disappear.

No one attends to their TV in the 21st century. Hell, my husband won’t even put the three remotes BACK next to the TV but leaves them next to his chair.

It’s too much effort to stand up and walk six steps, which would burn 3.5 calories.

Our garage door has a remote, the kind you keep inside the vehicle and hit before driving in. We don’t park in the garage but we hit the button anyway because — yes, we are pathetic. We walk into the house via the garage because we can open the door…

WITH A REMOTE!

Our garage door stopped working last week because it was built in 1985. It’s made of solid wood and too heavy for the controller.

Now we have to walk into the house through the front door, which burns eight more calories per trip.

So far, I am burning eight extra calories but if my mystical orb didn’t have a remote, I’d be burning 15 more daily!

If I had to change the TV channel manually, I think I could easily up my caloric burn to 20 or more extra calories per day.

I’d estimate in the old days, you would get up an average of three times per show because we have five channels so as soon as your half-hour was up, the channel needed fiddling with.

TV watching might’ve burned 20 calories, though it’s impossible to judge. I know one thing — it took more effort than it does now.

That’s a hypothetic extra 35 calories a day, and we’re not done yet!

The Ultimate Workout

All this clicking has led to a mentality that any effort is wrong because it feels uncomfortable.

Was wearing scratchy wool clothing wrong just because it was uncomfortable? Certainly not!

Was walking to the library wrong because the family only had one car and it wasn’t usually available for the likes of your candy ass?

I think we can all agree it was better to walk, yet we can’t go back in time.

We are closer than ever to merging forever with machines, and our kids can’t function without clicking on phones, remotes, and various screens.

The final remote I want to discuss has to do with music.

I play records on a turntable, primarily because where I live, records are about $1 each at estate sales. I pay a high price, however, in having to sift through the most horrendous record collections known to man.

Jim Nabors sings Christian ballads. Polka. Then, there are people reading the Bible.

Until I moved to the South, I had no idea there were so many 1950s albums of people reading directions for how to live a cleaner life.

So, I have to flip records, which means getting up frequently or having to listen to the creepy silence of the forest.

That’s another 25 calories a day, because I listen to music nearly every day, but ultimately calories are only part of the equation.

I’m already burning 60 more calories a day with my new 1970s lifestyle.

It Ain’t Just the Calories

Massive amounts of NASA research have revealed a fascinating fact about humans. Our bodies degrade in low gravity conditions.

This is true of everyone, even super fit astronauts and young people.

Old people tend to sit around a lot, for long periods and younger people are usually more active — but in this day and age whole generations are forced into sedentariness because of:

• work
• driving
• TV/computers
• remote control everything

Sedentariness mimics low gravity.

Getting up and down a lot is great for interacting with gravity. It’s part of our physical lineage as earthlings to move around often, not necessarily at sonic speeds, but throughout the day.

Yet we are also creatures of inertia, which is the tendency of a body in motion to stay in motion and a body at rest to stay on the couch.

The more we sit, the more natural it feels to keep sitting.

Final Retro Logic

Somewhere around the time Reagan took office, it all went to hell and I’m happy to blame the Gipper. Our diets shifted to more sugar and grains, we started eating more fast food, and then there were drive-thrus on every corner.

We took a wrong turn, people.

I say, dump your remotes down an old well or in that crawl space where you store old paint.

I know the 1970s had a lot of problems, like disco and unfortunate AMC cars such as the Pacer and Gremlin. Avocado green was a strange choice for appliances, and shag carpet — while hilarious and something tweens would love — was a cleaning nightmare and a health hazard.

I know life wasn’t perfect back then, but let’s admit it: we were thinner and sexier and didn’t have wearables so we could make sure we moved enough.

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Jean Campbell recently started her first Substack newsletter to laser focus on getting her book, City of Lies: A Street Hustler’s Omaha Journey published.