Morbidly Obese

 This past week I spent a couple of days in Atlanta with my wife, Kim.  I was just taking a couple of days off, she was actually going to Atlanta on business. She usually flies to these business trips, but I offered to drive her since it's only a few hours away. She was going to an office there to give some kind an informational presentation. 

Anyway after she was finished with her presentation, we went out for dinner. We went to Flemings Steakhouse and I'll tell you that the food was very good.  My wife and I split a big salad, before she had some sole and I had a medium rare New York strip.  We also shared some creamed spinach and some really tasty mashed potatoes.  About the same time that we sat down, a morbidly obese woman in a red dress sat down at a table by herself right next to us. That dress she was wearing was as bright red as a fire truck and damned near as big.   She was a big big woman. She was close enough to me that I could actually hear her order her food.  She ordered some kind of appetizer, steak and lobster, a baked potato and two other sides; and she also ordered the molten chocolate cake for dessert. The cake looked really good, so much so that I almost ordered it myself.

Between our salads and her appetizer we were all pretty much eating at the same time, but she finished her food long before we did. To say she ate her food is probably not a fair description, she actually devoured it.  She must have been hungry, because she ate quickly. It wasn't exactly quiet in there, but I could hear her fork hitting her plate and I could hear her eating her food.

And when I say she ate, it was as if a leopard had dragged a wild boar or a gazelle up a tree and started eating it.  I couldn't possibly describe the sound of that woman eating, but it was almost enough to turn my stomach. When we ordered coffee after dinner, she was finishing up her dessert.  Like I said, she ate quickly.  Although I didn't see her pay for her food, I saw her when she got up to leave.  When she got up to leave, her butt was so big that the chair came up with her ass.  She initially looked surprised, then she looked thoroughly embarrassed.  Her waiter then assisted her in detaching the chair from said ass, then she got up and hurriedly left.  There are those that would have laughed at her, all I felt was sorrow for her.

This isn't the first time I've seen something like this.
 

Once a couple of years ago I took my daughter to a Ryan's Steakhouse for the breakfast buffet.  I really didn't want to eat there, but my daughter was rather insistent so I took her.  After I paid for our food, we found a seat in a corner and went to the buffet.  After grabbing some food at the buffet, we headed back to our empty seats by the corner window.  A morbidly obese woman in a green dress sat down next to us.  She had already been to the buffet and had a plate full of bacon, sausage and eggs.  She had no concept of table manners whatsoever.  My daughter noticed it initially, but then I could hear her eating too.  She practically inhaled her food, as if she hadn't eaten in days.  The sounds she made were nauseating.  Truth be told, it looked like she had 12 or 13 eggs on her plate and a half a pig.  We had barely touched our food when both my daughter and I just stopped eating.  We just couldn't eat anymore, it's hard to describe exactly what I felt. We basically left after taking two or three bites of our food.  I don't think that I'll ever forget the sound of that woman eating her food.  It completely turned my stomach.

   

 On another note, my wife is completely fascinated by the growing number of television shows that deal with morbidly obese people losing weight. She's forever watching those types of shows and those shows on Discovery where people go and fix up dilapidated housing.  According to her, she likes the idea of fixing or shaping up something and making it beautiful. She also says that she finds it inspiring when people are able to leave their caterpillar behind and turn into a butterfly. So because of that she watches The Biggest Loser, Heavy, I used to be fat, I'm too fat for 16 and Discovery Body Challenge.

 My wife doesn't necessarily like the part where the extremely fit personal trainer yells and screams at their morbidly obese charges when they're encouraging them to work harder in their efforts to lose weight.  She's forever referring to these people as Nazis and heartless, mean spirited bastards.

 Last night as one of these shows was going off, it cited a statistic that took me by surprise.  It stated that our country, The United States, is home to the most obese people in the world. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity in American adults has increased by 60% within the past twenty years and obesity in children has tripled in the past thirty years. A staggering 33% of American adults are obese and obesity related deaths have climbed to more than 300,000 a year, second only to tobacco related deaths.

I don't doubt that there are plenty of reasons and/or excuses why there are 100,000,000 obese people in this country.  And the reality is that we live in a land of plenty, where technology has allowed for significant increases in the quality and quantity of food being produced. But 100,000,000 obese people?!? C'mon, we can do better than that.  Any damned fool can eat themselves to death.

I believe that universal health care would be a very good thing for our country, a very good thing indeed.  But unless we're all collectively willing to eat healthier and live more active lives; we're dooming ourselves to unhealthy, unnecessarily shortened, miserable lives.