| Did you read about the Governor of a Southern state who has become kind of a folk hero because he lost about 100 pounds? He’s even supposed to be writing a book. He used to weigh about 280 and now he weighs about 180. However, I can’t imagine why anyone would think that anything he did was out of the ordinary. Let’s look at what happened. He used to weigh about 180 pounds. Then he began eating so much food that he gained about 100 pounds. What would you call that? Would you think he was just a big fat slob? After all, if he was really such a hero why did he permit himself to gain 100 pounds? That is self-destructive and for someone in the public eye all the time you would think he knew better. So how come he decided to lose 100 pounds. It’s because he was diagnosed with diabetes. That’s why. But that isn’t the whole story. He knew while he was gaining the 100 pounds that he knew he was increasing his risk of all sorts of illness, including diabetes. Yet he gained all that weight anyway. Why, you ask, would he do anything that stupid? The answer is because he couldn’t help it. Emotionally, it was more important for him to put food in his mouth and risk illness and disease than it was for him to weigh what he would have liked to weigh. O.K. So why was he able to lose 100 pounds? It’s fundamentally simple. When he learned that he had diabetes he became emotionally uncomfortable weighing 280. In other words, he got scared. Logically, he knew he shouldn’t weigh 280 pounds. However, emotionally he was unable to do anything about it until he learned that if he didn’t “lose weight” he would likely have a much shorter life expectancy. Now he’s a model for all of you to follow. Can you really believe it? This kind of thing isn’t unusual. A recently elected officer of the American Medical Association was grossly overweight and decided that he had to “lose weight”. What a surprise! Now everyone wants to give him a medal. That’s a joke. He should be held up to the public as an example of the real problem that no one (except us) is saying or doing anything about. What was he thinking when he was shoveling all that food into his mouth knowing he was going to become grossly overweight? That man is a doctor and he knows better and he couldn’t control himself. That, of course, is the real issue. |
