Tag: obesity

The Elephant in the Room

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[…] By any reasonable standard, I have won life’s lottery. I grew up with two loving parents in a peaceful house. I’ve spent my whole career doing work that thrills me—writing for newspapers and magazines. I married the best woman I’ve ever known, Alix Felsing, and I love her more now than when my heart first tumbled for her. We’re blessed with strong families and a deep bench of friends. Our lives are full of music and laughter. I wouldn’t swap with anyone.

Except on those mornings when I wake up and take a long, naked look in the mirror. […]

I weigh 460 pounds.Those are the hardest words I’ve ever had to write. Nobody knows that number—not my wife, not my doctor, not my closest friends. It feels like confessing a crime. The average American male weighs about 195 pounds; I’m two of those guys, with a 10-year-old left over. I’m the biggest human being most people who know me have ever met, or ever will. […]

What the hell is wrong with me? […]

“Eat less and exercise.”That’s what some of you are saying right now. That’s what some of you have said the whole time you’ve been reading. That’s what some of you say—maybe not out loud, but you say it—every time you see a fat person downing fried eggs in a diner, or overstuffing a bathing suit on the beach, or staring out from one of those good-lord-what-happened-to-her? stories in the gossip magazines.“Eat less and exercise.” […]

Losing weight is a fucking rock fight. The enemies come from all sides: The deluge of marketing telling us to eat worse and eat more. The culture that has turned food into one of the last acceptable vices. Our families and friends, who want us to share in their pleasure. Our own body chemistry, dragging us back to the table out of fear that we’ll starve.

On top of all that, some of us fight holes in our souls that a boxcar of donuts couldn’t fill.

My compulsion to eat comes from all those places. I’m almost never hungry in the physical sense. But I’m always craving an emotional high, the kind that comes from making love, or being in the crowd for great live music, or watching the sun come up over the ocean. And I’m always wanting something to counter the low, when I’m anxious about work or arguing with family or depressed for reasons I can’t understand. […]

There’s a flight I want the man inside me to take. It doesn’t matter where it goes, as long as I’m in the middle seat. I want to sit there without flooding the banks of the armrests. I want the seat belt to click around my waist with an inch or two to spare. After that, I can bitch about the middle seat like everybody else. But I’d like to sit there and feel good about it. Just once.

— Tommy Tomlinson, from “My 460-pound Self” (The Atlantic, January 10, 2019). This article has been adapted from Tommy Tomlinson’s book: “The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America.”

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Flying Over I-95 N. All Oversized. (Part III of III)

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airplane-seat-fly

6:31 am.

I’m walking, my oversized shoes slap on the industrial carpet. Mr. Dandy is somewhere behind me.  My crumpled and oversized J. Crew Chino’s uncomfortably sag off my a**.  And, I’m dragging this bitch of a carry-on with its shrieking left wheel ricocheting its echo up and down the jetway.

I catch a faint mix of Purell hand sanitizer and sweat. The Purell is me, no doubt – the other half, just can’t be me. I crane my neck down to confirm, and it’s confirmed.  As I lift my head back up, I catch another shot, must be from the winter coat two bodies ahead.

I’m undeterred by all of this, beaming with good fortune – a complimentary upgrade to first class.

She’s behind me, but I don’t see her.

I stuff my bag into the overhead bin, and step out of the aisle to let the traffic pass.  She points to the window: “I’m sorry, but that’s my seat.”

In the tight quarters of the aisle, we are separated by inches. She’s in her mid to late 20’s.   She’s wearing jeans, and a baggy red sweater.  She’s an inch or two shorter, but I’m dwarfed by her, by a minimum of 1.3x my body weight.  She settles in her seat. Continue reading “Flying Over I-95 N. All Oversized. (Part III of III)” →

SMWI*: We’re #1

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Wall Street Journal: Study Finds Nearly 29% of World Population is Overweight or Obese:

  • The obesity epidemic is global: 2.1 billion people or 29% of the worlds population.
  • Increases in overweight and obese people have been substantial, widespread and have arisen over a short time
  • 36.9% of the world’s men and 38% of women are overweight or obese.
  • No nation reported a significant decrease in obesity.
  • U.S. had the heftiest population, with 13% of the world’s obese
  • Factors: diet, physical inactivity and one that hasn’t gotten as much attention – changes in the gut micro biome that affect metabolism.

Read full article here: Study Finds Nearly 29% of World Population is Overweight or Obese

SMWI*=Saturday Morning Work-Out Inspiration
 

SMWI*: Endured Humiliation. But Never Gave Up.

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weight, diet, weight loss,exercise,food

  •  William Howard Taft, (1857-1930) was the 27th President of the United States.
  • The only massively obese man ever to be the president of the United States
  • He struggled mightily to control his weight
  • Endured humiliation from cartoonists who delighted in his corpulent figure
  • His weight-loss program was startlingly contemporary
  • His difficulties keeping the pounds off would be familiar to many Americans today
  • On advice of his doctor, he went on a low-fat, low-calorie diet. He avoided snacks.
  • Meals were to be eaten at certain times and meats were to be weighed. Taft was to eat a small portion of lean meat or fish at every meal, cooked vegetables at lunch and dinner (no butter), a plain salad, and stewed or baked fruit (unsweetened). He got a single glass of “unsweetened” wine at lunch.
  • He kept a careful diary of what he ate and weight himself daily.
  • The tale is strikingly modern…The self-monitoring — weighing himself daily, keeping a food diary — are “the fundamental tenets of changing behavior,” said Dr. Kimberly Gudzune, an obesity researcher at Johns Hopkins. “Keep yourself accountable.”
  • He hired a personal trainer and rode a horse to exercise
  • Like many dieters today, Taft lost weight and regained it, fluctuating from more than 350 to 255 lbs.
  • After he had lost 60 pounds…people told him he looked good, yet he was “continuously hungry.”
  • Researchers were struck by Taft’s persistent hunger pangs. Losing a substantial amount of weight and keeping it off amounts to telling the body it is starving…“One of the most important drives we have is to prevent starvation,” Dr. Hirsch said.
  • By the time Taft was inaugurated as president in 1909, he had regained all he had lost, and more, weighing 354 pounds. He became the butt of jokes, with many relishing a story that he had gotten stuck in a White House bathtub.
  • But Taft never gave up. When he died in 1930, he weighed 280 pounds.

Read full article in the New York Times: In a Struggle With Weight, Taft Used a Modern Diet

  • SMWI* = Saturday Morning Workout Inspiration
  • Image Source: Natemaas
  • Thank you Susan