Well as you can guess from the title, today we’re talking about the subject of weight in America. A sensitive topic? Well, our culture has successfully taught us to think so. So before I can go on and say what badly needs saying, I have two preliminaries. First, this isn’t aimed at any one person, so I don’t want to see angry comments about how I failed to take so and so’s situation into account. If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t try wearing it. On the other hand if the shoe does fit, step in and lace it up. All of this to say, because I know people get more defensive about their weight than they do about their sex lives, their money and even their religions. Moving on. Preliminary number 2. Who am I to talk about weight? A lot of overweight people have observed that the people most critical of our weighty situation are either skinny or extremely fit people who’ve never had an extra pound of flesh on their bodies in their lifetimes. I have two responses to this. First, that doesn’t mean that what such people say is factually wrong or unnecessary, even if you resent the person giving you the heads up about yourself. Secondly, I don’t fall into this category. I have always been overweight, and am still so today (6 ft 2 in, and 249 LBS which is down from 288 a year ago). That is to say, I’m doing something about it. So I am as qualified as any other fat person to talk about being fat. Alright. Let’s move on to what’s really important.
There are two phenomena that run in parallel in American society today. One of them is well-known. It’s true that Hollywood is still trying to convince young women that the more skin and bones they show, the better. No personally, I don’t think anorexia constitutes beauty, and a healthy human body shouldn’t be stick thin. There are cultures, in fact, where our supermodels would be considered sickly, since in certain places a healthy filled out figure is considered most suitable for childbearing and for dealing with harsh daily living conditions. So we’re not going to really talk about that side of things, the relationship between anorexia and the media, except to acknowledge that Hollywood, as usual, has got it wrong, and so too does any woman who takes her cue from the movies. Lest you think I’m letting obesity off the hook with those comments, read on.
Now, I have observed that our culture has done an excellent job at: A, sensitizing people to the matter of weight (we see it in some of the terminology surrounding the issue), and B, convincing people that wherever they are weightwise, they’re ok. I have some anecdotes to illustrate the point.
Let’s deal with the first issue. The word ‘fat’ is déclassé as far as a descriptor. Nobody in this country is ‘fat’ anymore. To borrow from a Hispanic comedian I rather like, you are by turns: healthy, hefty, husky, fluffy, etc. Those of you who know the skit will know what I’m talking about. ‘Healthy,’ ‘good-sized,’ ‘husky,’ ‘big-boned,’ ‘meat on their bones,’ and ‘persons of size’ are all words and/or phrases that I’ve both seen in writing and heard in speech ranging from formal lectures to chitchat that euphemistically refer to one concept, ‘fat.’ By the way, I’m not joking about ‘persons of size.’ If you fly on Southwest and get one of those colored pre-boarding passes, such as the kind you can get if you’re disabled and need assistance down to the plane, on the back of that envelope it lists the categories of passengers eligible to get that pre-boarding pass. Among the listings is this notation: “persons of size who may require more than one seat.” Also, when you’re on the plain, you have two options as far as your seatbelt goes. You’ve got the standard adjustable seatbelt that you can lengthen and wrap around yourself, or you can ask for a seatbelt extender. I’ve never seen one personally, but it’s a snap-on extension that lengthens the seatbelt strap and lets you buckle. Or, if you are a “person of size” and have two seats reserved, you can link the seatbelts together and create one seatbelt apparatus.
Now I know that seatbelts and seats for that matter are not of uniform size and dimension from airline to airline and among different models of aircraft, so let’s not have any rejoinders that aim to point out anything about CRJ’s or other smaller planes. My point here is this: it says something about this country as a whole if our airlines make these items and these concessions available. America is not a healthy nation, not by any means. Let me provide another example.
Our secretary of state recently came into possession of an army report that points out the fact that the army is having difficulties in recruiting fit young adults for service. Most recruits are not fit for service when they walk in and have to be slimmed down or toned up before they can enter basic training. Those who can’t lose the necessary poundage are discharged prior to or during the first couple of weeks of basic. Now again, what do we observe about our country when our military can’t find teenagers, some of the historically most fit youths in the nation, who aren’t already fat as hell? Yes, that’s something of a rhetorical question, sorry about that.
Is this not alarming? Do these things not say something about the nation we’ve become? I think they do. Now let’s move on to point B above. How do people see themselves? To all of you who are losing weight successfully, congratulations. To those of you who are genuinely (not halfheartedly) trying and failing, keep trying. I know it’s not easy. This doesn’t apply to you.
I have observed that, mostly due to the types of weight euphemisms mentioned above, and to the sensitivity and respect given to a person’s weight in our culture, a lot of extremely obese, massively fat people are perfectly ok being where they are weightwise, and any criticism of their lives is, of course, unconscionable. Who am I to attack someone else’s self-image, one might ask? Well let’s take a look at some of the self-image out there. I’ve got a buddy of mine who is 5 ft 11 or so and goes about 345 LBS last time we talked. Now, I don’t know how much you may know about height and weight, but 345 isn’t just a little overweight, it’s freakin ginormously over the top, ok? Let’s lay that on the table and face facts. My pal is morbidly obese, or to put it in layman’s terms, fat as hell. Now, he knows this. And he claims to want to lose weight. I sympathize. But where does he think himself to be. Take this quote, “Well, if I can get down to a good, solid 325, maybe 320, I’ll be doing good.” My response? “Well what about 300?” His response as he laughs, “oh come on Brad I ain’t gonna weigh no 300.”
And is my friend atypical? Well, let’s see. In the past three months alone, I’ve met four people who all fall into the 400 plus category. Now, 300 pounds is overweight; I don’t care what height we’re talking about. Nobody needs or ought to weigh 300 pounds, ever. How much less so do people need to be topping the scales at over 400 pounds? To put this in perspective, most home bathroom scales top out at 300 or 350. My buddy mentioned in the paragraph above actually broke my scale. We say that as a joke, but the man literally broke my bathroom scale, such that I’m out $60 for another talking scale! When you actually think about that, the humor goes out of the situation in a hurry, and I’m not making fun one bit. Now The people I mention here top the scales, wherever they can find scales sufficient for the task of weighing them, at 410, 415, 425 and, last I knew, 450 respectively. Now the American Medical Association has done an excellent job at warning people of the health risks of being overweight. That’s not what I’m here to do. But let’s look at the practical consequences. When you can no longer find clothes in any retail department store, but have to order your clothes from “big and tall” catalogs, there’s an issue there. When you sit down on your friend’s sofa and the bottom of the sofa collapses, you’ve got a problem. My uncle replaced the chairs on his boat last summer, because his most recent guests onboard both topped 400 pounds each and buckled the struts holding the chairs to the deck. My friend who is a social worker and works on a crisis hotline down south recently took a counseling call from a man who was complaining about how his family is critical of him because of his weight, which he claims to be 700 plus pounds. Now you might fairly say that people who weigh 600, 700, or 800 pounds aren’t that common and should be treated as rare cases. You’d be wrong. There are weight clinics, such as the one in New York City whose show airs every New Years, which specialize in treating people in the 600-1000 pound range. This clinic actually takes patients into its residential housing and puts them up for the duration. Most of them have to lose in excess of 3 to 500 pounds. It’s not the only one of its kind out there, and obesity, even that extreme of obesity, is more common than you or even I likely know.
Now America, and Americans, we’ve got a problem. And that problem is not helped when people in this weight class think they’re fine. One man who weighs in the 400’s recently told me, “yeah you know? The doctor said I was doing pretty good for my size, you know? Said I was in pretty good health.” Really? I don’t have a lot of experience with doctors, not compared with some, but from what I do know of their demeanors, if his doctor told him he was fine, his doc’s a quack. It’s likelier that he wasn’t being entirely truthful with me about the doctor visit. My own doctor, when seeing my original weight of 288, gave me a weight loss lecture, and when he saw the revised figure of 249, he was most complimentary of my progress, but I still got the weight loss talk. So I’m not about to sit here and believe my acquaintance, who claims his doctor thought all was in working order. But his, my acquaintance’s, attitude about his weight, his attitude, “yeah I’m a big fella but everything’s basically ok,” is killing him, and it’s killing our country.
And it’s not just adults. Our kids are fat too. I’ve met and have been told about a number of fat (not chubby, but fat) toddlers and a number of overweight babies. Our preadolescents aren’t exempt. I have a cousin, a boy I love dearly, who has been majorly overweight his whole life. Another young man, one I won’t name but who is also very dear to me, is borderline diabetic and majorly overweight at age 12! And oh yes, let’s not forget the famous case of the woman who sued MacDonalds a few years ago because she claimed her son had gotten fat from MacDonalds supersized French fries. She won her lawsuit, by the way, which is why supersizing has disappeared from MacDonalds.
Now let’s stop and think for one minute. What’s going on with our children? My guess? The computer age. When I was growing up in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I didn’t have the internet, a cell phone, a game gear, a Nintendo, an Xbox, etc et al. Now I have no complaints against any of these technologies. What I do have a problem with is parents who let their kids spend every waking moment glued to a TV screen or computer monitor rather than encouraging them to get outside, get dirty, climb trees, play little league, etc. Now again, in the ghetto this isn’t always possible, and little league’s gotten pricier (not that I played it), but there are still plenty of outdoor and quite a few indoor activities that will keep these youngsters as healthy and in shape as kids ought to be.
For our teenagers, what happened to basketball, football, wrestling, running, and outdoor energy-burning and calorie-burning activities? Teens used to have little difficulty being in, getting into or remaining in shape. Now, of course, the landscape has changed, and our armed services can’t find teens who aren’t verging on heart attacks.
For adults, stop blaming your weight on your damned genes! I’m sick unto death of people using medical maladies and genetic predisposition as an excuse for not losing the 300 pounds they desperately need to lose! Now, are there people whose genes predispose them towards weight gain? Yes. I’m one. My father’s side of the family, to a man, is massively overweight. My father is arguably the fittest person of his generation, and it was a lot of hard work for the man. I’m not as fit as I ought to be either; I’m not done. But these people who sit on their voluminous asses and complain about this condition or that condition or this set of genes or that relative whose existence in the family tree predisposes them towards the proportions they’ve currently attained, need to stand up and start doing some jumping jacks. They’re not hard. What’s required, above all, is a little motivation. Again, it’s not easy to lose weight. I know that. But it’s certainly not as impossible as most people have been led to believe. Diabetes kicked me into high gear, for example. I did not become, and am still not, a health nut. I don’t care for exercise, I still need to take more exercise, and you won’t catch me eating salads as a main meal. However, just that notion that my perpetual laxness regarding my own weight had actually triggered subsequent health issues—frankly, I was somewhat scared. Well, whatever it takes. For some it’s being rejected by a romantic interest because your body is so disgustingly out of proportion that there’s nothing physically or sexually appealing about you. Check. For some, it’s having a coronary while walking to work (assuming you bother to walk). Check. For some, it’s simply the realization that your pants size has gone beyond a size 50 (or 30 in women’s), and that your clothes shopping just got a lot harder. Got it. But whatever the motivation, people need to get kicked into gear. If this whole blog sounds stern and lacking in compassion, it’s not that I lack compassion. But compassion and tolerance about obesity have led us to the state we’re in. It’s time for a cold dose of reality. People are too damned fat. Time to start losing, and believe it or not, I say that with love.
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