No Easy Fixes for Obesity

Eugene Robinson has been getting some heat for his column in The Washington Post concerning Gov. Chris Christie’s (R-NJ) obesity — and deservedly so. I would like to think I would be appalled by Robinson’s position regardless of my own history with this issue, but as a formerly morbidly obese woman, I felt the sting of Robinson’s words.

I strongly disagree with Robinson’s assertion that Christie’s weight became a public matter when he was considering seeking the Republican presidential nomination (Christie has since announced that he has decided not to run.) Everyone has health issues, and it’s alarming to think how far the public could take a health inquiry.

Should we be concerned about a potential candidate who is diabetic? Arthritic? What about allergies? Where do we draw the line?

The cost of personal DNA profiling is relatively low, and can tell us with a high degree of accuracy the statistical chances of someone developing cancer and other ailments. It would be foolish and detrimental to require DNA mapping of candidates, but I think it is the logical conclusion if we let our concern with their health get out of control.

The central question is: is this person healthy enough to meet the routine duties of their job? Regardless of how you think he’s doing, Christie seems to be capable of carrying out his gubernatorial duties. That makes his weight a private matter.

However, what I found most galling in Robinson’s column was his snarky solution to Christie’s weight problem: “eat a salad and take a walk.” He seemed to be on the right path earlier when he acknowledged that it is not simple to get this problem under control, but then backpedalled to that pithy advice.

This brought me back to a doctor’s visit when I was in my early 20s when I weighed more than 200 pounds. At a visit for an infection, a patronizing physician gave me a pep talk promising I’d soon be thin if I would eat a baby carrot instead of an Oreo whenever I got the urge to snack. I knew then, and I know now —having lost 125 pounds — that wasn’t the answer. If it were, fewer people would be overweight.

Getting down to a normal weight has not been painless. I am fastidious about what I put in my mouth; I weigh all of my food and strictly follow a food plan customized for me by a registered dietician that omits my binge foods, including sugar. But that’s the easy part!

The hard part comes in the guise of the emotional and spiritual work I’ve had to do to resolve the issues that contributed to my compulsive eating. That work has been cumbersome and grueling, and is still ongoing. I don’t believe that most people get to be morbidly obese without some serious stuff going on in their lives that causes them to take refuge in excess food.

That’s why Robinson’s pithy advice to Christie to eat a salad and take a walk is useless, and why his suggestion that Christie pursue gastric bypass surgery was a poor one. People aren’t obese because of a problem in their digestive tracts; there’s something deeper going on, something that surgery can’t fix. The numerous ads for corrective gastric bypass surgery for patients who have previously had the procedure and then regained their weight is a testament to the limited success of that approach to long-term weight-management.

Obesity is a syndrome, meaning it is caused by a confluence of factors, not just one or two things. There are few obese people in America anymore who don’t know that vegetables and a hike are better bets than cookies and Playstation. Those struggling with morbid obesity will have a lifelong journey to find out what might be behind their eating, and more importantly, how to address it.

The answers are different for everyone. Dismissive, generic advice from newspaper columnists or anyone else is unlikely to do more than reinforce the sense of shame and frustration that comes with being morbidly obese.