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Monday, March 9, 2009

Monday Morning

The downside to buying yourself a new TV is that you may actually be tempted to watch it every now and then. That's the case for me, as I spent over two hours yesterday watching a show on TLC about morbidly obese people who get gastric bypass surgery. I have to admit that I was fascinated by the show.

What did I learn?

...the weight problems they have (and I have, to a far lesser extent) are about 95% psychological, 5% physical. In the "you may think I'm full of crap" department, this is something Howard Stern says from time to time on his radio show, namely that people who are obese have unresolved mental issues.

...some of those folks have real courage, far more than I have. There was one gentleman who weighed nearly a thousand pounds who went in for the surgery and had all of these horribly intensive procedures done, all so that he could be around long enough to see his grand kids. While you can argue that it's a lack of discipline that got these people in to the conditions they are now in, it's hard to not have some admiration for someone who goes that far a-field but yet has the courage to say "enough is enough".

...it really show-cased the excesses that I think have been ruining our nation for decades. We are truly victims of our own success as a nation. Folks on one side of the planet are dying because they don't have enough to eat, but yet we have people here who are dying because they have too much to eat.

It does make you stop, pause and think.

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