Weight Walkers

don't expect much 

I frequently take an early morning bike ride for fun, sharing St. Pete’s beautiful waterfront city paths with dog walkers, joggers, other bikers, fishermen and castnetters, bird watchers, a few serious workout types doing pullups and burpees, and classes on the grass for groups of women led by fitness “experts” with stretch bands and complex poses to mimic.  Others walk along moving their arms in strange ways, as though simply walking is not enough and they know it.  

Another woman in her sixties, only thirty pounds overweight, practices race walking, not realizing how silly she looks there on the path.  One fine looking woman can sometimes be seen sproinging along on on special shoes with springs in them, which shows off her fit body perfectly.  Anyone sproinging knows they’re making an impression.  It’s a fun human parade, most of it.

This morning a few enormous fat women in tights focused my attention away from the butts of more fit runners.  I’m talking 250 pounders, sweating, carrying drinks in their hands, shuffling along in the sunshine.

They’ve bought into the myth of “getting started” to get in shape.  It goes like this, “Ok, I’m gonna get started today.  Got to get some of this weight off.  Here I go!  Going to walk every day, yessiree!  Walking’s good for you.  Those skinny ladies who do all that exercise, they can eat what they want, right?  I’m finally heading down that path.  Here I go!”  Your heart goes out to them.  You know the crap they eat to get that way, sitting there for years watching television.

Huge thighs rub together, making brisk walking impossible, so they waddle like enormous geese.  No one’s told them that it’s too late for walking to help.  Health professionals tell them to “get started.”  Oh, sure, it helps a little bit, burns a few calories, but not enough to balance the self deception.  It creates the illusion of real commitment because it is difficult to walk when you’re that fat and it takes a while to cover much distance.  Anyone seeing someone really fat out walking says to themselves, “At least they’re trying,” and they feel better about the extra few pounds they’re personally toting around.  I suck in my stomach more and peddle a little harder.  The truly obese ones are wasting their time, avoiding the hard work of weight loss and fitness, wanting a feel good minute or two.

Denial is the problem, and it’s nearly impossible to overcome on your own.  Honest self appraisal is rare. “I’m “heavy,” they say, “but I’m not hurting anyone else.”  Smokers say, “This next cigarette is going to be my last one... after this weekend I’ll quit... I can quit when I want to.  Leave me alone!”  They want to be alone with their madness, to rebuild their reasons why.  A drunk can say, “I should never have mixed vodka with rum last night.  That’s what made me crazy, that’s why I drove drunk with the kids in the car.  I won’t ever mix vodka and rum again.  Gonna cut way back on my drinking.”

Few addicts change unless there’s real pain and fear involved.  They’ve got to be desperate.  Alcoholics go to unimaginable efforts to convince themselves that they drink like normal people.

Meth, coke and heroin addiction are particularly problematic because they’re illegal to begin with and more costly than alcohol and food.  Being a criminal causes additional social and legal problems, but withdrawal is less dangerous than with booze, and they can get straight if they get desperate enough.  It isn’t easy, but it’s dirt simple.

Strange to see are the videos of 1,000 lb. people being craned out of their homes, but they’re really no different than the fatty on the path or your neighborhood drunk.   Ask one of them when it got to be a problem and they probably can’t give you a good answer.  Did they set out to become hopelessly obese?  Did the guy getting his third DUI think he’d end up in prison from his drinking?  After smoking thirty years people are surprised at a lung cancer diagnosis.  They say they “just got it,” like a passing flu bug.  Amazing, isn’t it?

Though they cry out in self-centered anguish, they usually they don’t want help, they just want out of the predicament their behavior has gotten them into at the moment.

I’ve watched a smoker in my family using a portable oxygen bottle due to lung cancer light up a series of cigarettes while coughing.  A friend once died vomiting blood because blood vessels burst in his esophagus due to advanced alcoholism.  I’ve know a couple of obese people who died early of “natural causes.”

At the bedside of the ill smoker, a friend left to go outside for a cigarette.  At the wake for the dead alcoholic his family members--including a son who’d tried to quit drinking--were all drunk.  

I see alcoholics frequently who want to do what the fat folks do-- the equivalent of a slow walk along a pretty path, hoping a solution to their life problems--nearly always brought on by their drinking--will magically appear without their even having to walk and wave their arms.

It’s simple to quit drinking or smoking or eating excessively, but it is not easy.  It takes total commitment to change, not just a morning walk.  It takes guts.  It’s this simple:  you quit one day at a time with help from other people walking the same path.  I learned how to quit drinking the simple way nearly thirty years ago.  Life is better since I quit.  Email me if you need help.