Glenn Reynolds says:
MEDPUNDIT SYDNEY SMITH WRITES on obesity hysteria, and public-health advocates’ focus on diet rather than exercise.
It’s obvious to me why this is: if you blame diet for obesity, you can shake down corporations that sell food. If you blame lack of exercise, a million couch potatoes pick up the remote, and you don’t get asked back on TV.
The problem with this is that I don’t see how it gets around the fact that personal responsibility (or lack thereof) is to blame for obesity more than corporations that sell food. If we postulate that gluttony is a sin, then who is the bigger sinner — the corporation that sells the food, or the person who buys it and eats it in full knowledge that they’re likely to get fat if they eat too much of it? And don’t tell me these people don’t know that overeating and being a couch potato to boot will make them fat.
I’m tired of this bullshit. Sally and I joined Weight Watchers five weeks ago this Saturday and I was down a total of 16 pounds last Saturday when we weighed in. I’ll probably be another pound or two down this Saturday, and I fully expect to reach my first 25 pounds in a few weeks. You CAN lose weight if you commit to a program of responsible eating. (And I’m not exercising any more than I was before we started. What I’m doing is eating correctly.)
The fact of the matter is that we’ve cheated every weekend after weigh-in, but have stuck to the program almost religiously during the week. We haven’t entirely quit eating fast food or going to restaurants, but we’ve learned that we have to order less and ask for foods that aren’t fried in fat. For instance:
- We both love Wendy’s. I used to eat a #2 combo and still be hungry (that’s a double with cheese plus biggie fries and a biggie soft drink). Now I eat a junior cheeseburger, the 99 cent fries, and (diet soft drinks being 0 points) I can still have a biggie drink, but I get a medium instead. And I’m satisfied when I finish.
- We have a weekly date night at Applebee’s. I usually get a Club House Grill, which is one of the greasiest things around, plus they serve it with a humongous order of fries. I used to push the plate away with at least a third of the fries left on it and I was stuffed. Now I order the sandwich cooked “dry”, ie, not in butter or lard or whatever it is they normally use to fry it, and I get a baked potato instead of fries. Much healthier, and damn it, it tastes better without all the grease.
I could probably go on but bottom line, I took responsibility for my weight and it’s paying off. I don’t need a sleazy trial lawyer to go sue Wendy’s or Applebee’s because “they made me fat”. I made me fat. And now I’m making me less fat.
Here endeth the lesson. It’s time to take it to the lawyers. Why doesn’t someone sue them for being assholes?
(PS: I know hamburgers are full of fat and fries are soaked in them. The point is that I don’t eat anywhere near as much of either as before, and in fact, at home we bake the fries and we eat veggie burgers (BocaBurgers are the best ones we’ve tried). WW doesn’t deny you fat, it simply says you need to watch how much of it you eat. This is another reason I prefer WW to something stupid like Atkins, which says “don’t eat ANY carbohydrates, period”. That works fine until you go off the wagon, at which point you balloon because your body is starved for carbs. Any diet that tells you to not eat something your body normally requires is ridiculous; you’d do a lot better — and do yourself a bigger favor — by simply EATING LESS.)