Last weekend we went to a minor league baseball game. There is some lovely food at a baseball game, and I particularly enjoyed a hot dog with mustard and a real Coke (not diet). There are also so many other good snacks I was sort of tempted.
Then I looked at the people around me. Literally 1/2 of the people were morbidly obese, and 1/3 of the remaining were overweight. This is not an exaggeration. The obese woman next to me bragging to another obese woman in front of me that she had to keep buying snacks for her child because he was bored and it kept him in his seat. The child was not very overweight, yet. She was doing that because she didn't want to have get up and go look for him on the small field beside the outfield where other bored children were playing, because in 4 innings he was supposed to do one of the between-inning contests. The obese woman in front nodded and praised him for being a good eater. I must have dropped my jaw, because the obese woman next to me shot me an annoyed look. I didn't look at them for the rest of the game.
All around me the largest people were chewing chewing chewing like a gigantic herd. The only time they moved was to go get more food or to go to the bathroom.
I lost all temptation to eat beyond my hotdog and coke. The legions of obese people were a wonderful deterent to overeating--living examples of how it all happens. It is so mindless.
Presently I am on a weight loss vigil for myself, since slothful computer habits and a penchant for night time snacking have slowly packed on more pounds than my favorite clothes can handle. I do not want to become another barrel shaped Chicago woman. If I follow the lead of the suburbanite women around me at the ballpark, I will be become a cylindrical, stationary, depressed woman who will develop type 2 diabetes way before my time (it runs in my family, but usually not until getting into the 60s or 70s). This is a conformity I can do without.
I don't have an issue with people hanging on to more weight than is healthy because of genuine health issues, or a lack of resources for wholesome foods or safe exercise venues in their communities. Most of these people did not have those issues. They just weren't thinking. They weren't being mindful that what they were eating was not needed, just wanted. They were actually killing themselves and their children with mindless "good ol' American" overconsumerist greed. From their size, that is how they apparently live their lives.
How much weight could be lost if people were just made mindful of their eating habits? Why is it that one person can look at a group of obese people eating and be made more mindful, where another would take it as a cue to join in the food fest?
I don't have any solutions. Not for the people who are not thinking. Not for the people who are not interested in thinking. But for those who are interested in being more mindful, take a moment before each meal, before each snack, and ask yourself why you are eating and whether it is a need for nourishment, or a want to fill a void. Take a look at the people around you in a social situation--are you following their eating cues, and if so, do you want to look like them? If not, put your money back in your wallet. Your bank account, and eventually, your health care provider will thank you.
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