Your excuse is invalid

I was sitting in the parking lot of a WalMart in a relatively small town Saturday morning to let mom run in and grab something on the way to pick up our tractor to take it to get repaired. It saddened me to see the folks going in and out of the store. I'm not talking about the clothes they were wearing, although www.peopleofwalmart.com could've done a year's worth of postings on what I saw in that 10 minute period. I'm talking about how obese these folks were. I'm not talking pudgy, or saggy, or pot bellied, or husky. I'm talking about morbidly obese people streaming in and out, one after another. It's a terrible epidemic.

I understand how somebody can get that way. I've been pretty overweight myself. After I started using the chair, it took me a while to realize that I wasn't getting the exercise I had before, and I couldn't eat everything I wanted all the time. I hated pictures of me, not only due to the uncomfortability of seeing myself in the chair, but because I just looked fat. I would equate eating a small meal once a week as watching what I ate. Drinking 3 cokes a day and a gallon of sweet tea with my fried foods and desserts was not registering with me as being a problem.


Before

One day I'd had enough and downloaded an app to my phone to track my calories, and what I learned about my eating habits was eye opening. I set a calorie goal every day and stuck to it. I still ate what I wanted, but not as much as I wanted. I cut out all drinks with any calories at all. After a while, I cut my calorie goal and added healthier foods.

I have lost somewhere around 80 pounds over the last 2 years. That's 80 lbs with extremely minimal exercise. If I can lose weight without even walking around the house, I don't want to hear anybody's excuse why they are obese. Exercise is great and everybody physically capable, should do it. However, you can lose weight by putting the fork down. Even the laziest of lazy people can get on board with that. Just be too lazy to scoop the ice cream.

After

I'm not going to pin Mississippi's obesity problem on any one factor, but lack of education, culture, laziness, cost of healthy food, whatever it is needs to be addressed. Obesity leads to numerous health issues such as heart disease, diabetes, bone and joint problems, and a litany of other issues. When I was at my highest weight, my BP was 175/120. I could routinely feel my heart racing and would get light headed. I'm now at 115/75, sleep better, don't have regular stomach issues, am not always tired, and just generally feel better.

The obesity problem costs everybody whether financially, or personally. It's time everybody does something to get healthy or encourage someone else to get healthy. If you can't or won't exercise, at least put down the fork.