Monday, June 7, 2010

Bravo Mr. Roker

I watch the Today Show just about every day. It takes me most of the day to do it since it is a four hour show. Just to be clear, I TIVO it, eliminate the commercials and just stop on the stories that look interesting. I probably end up watching about an hour of the program.

I did stop on the segment that profiled Al Roker, the weatherman. Al has fought a battle with his weight since he was a child. I have watched him balloon up and then drop some pounds repeatedly. At his heaviest, he says he weighed 340 pounds and that is when he went in for gastric bypass surgery.

He had made a promise to his dying father that he would lose weight and keep it off. This was the method he chose to do it. It worked…he lost 140 pounds. And then, it didn’t work anymore. He regained 40 pounds when he figured out that he needed to take the right path to losing weight. He ate less, exercised more and didn’t try any quick fix methods.

He made some really good points in the discussion he had on-air. He is back down to 204 pounds. He pointed out that nobody can convince you to lose weight until you are ready to do it. He actually yelled into the camera that people should leave overweight people alone and stop trying to get them to drop pounds. It doesn’t work until there is a reason inside of you to get you to believe that the time has come.

He also treats his overeating as an addiction and likened it to alcoholism. The difference that he pointed out is the obvious one. You can live without alcohol but you can’t live without food, so you need to be on top of the situation all day, every day, or you will fall back into bad habits.

Al has donated his “fat clothes” to charity. He wore a size 60 suit at his highest weight and now wears a size 40 suit. Just like the rest of us, it was hard to let go of the old clothes, but he knew he had to do it to move forward.

So, what did I take away from all of this TV viewing, you might wonder? I got the reinforcement of knowing that even when you have enough money at your disposal to afford the best food and the best trainers, you won’t lose weight until you are ready to lose weight.

Thanks, Al Roker. You’re one of my heroes.

Talk to you soon.

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