Weight Loss… Why?

It was over five years ago that I came to the realization that I had gotten too heavy. OK – actually it wasn’t originally my discovery. My mother had been telling Helaine I had gotten a “fat face.”

Hey, if your mother can’t tell you, who can?

So I worked hard, mostly with the Atkins diet, and shed the weight. Right now I’m 15+ pounds lighter than I was back then. I’m trying to lose another 10 pounds.

It is not easy. It demands willpower – something I am not loaded with. I now push away pasta. Cinnabon has become a sin. Bread is banished.

As I suffer and do without, I take solace in the fact that less Geoff is healthier for me. Well, I did until this morning.

New research indicates the government has overstated the danger of being overweight.

Based on new calculations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, excess weight would drop from the second-leading cause of preventable death to seventh.

Estimates released Tuesday by the CDC found that being overweight accounts for nearly 26,000 deaths a year in the United States. That’s

dramatically smaller than CDC numbers released as recently as January, when the agency estimated 365,000 deaths a year.

The new analysis confirmed that obesity is indisputably lethal, but like several recent smaller studies, it found that people who are

modestly overweight actually have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight.

The study analyzed mortality rates and body-mass index. It’s appears in tomorrow’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

Grrrrrrrr. Upset? Me? Yes!

So what’s next? I haven’t smoked cigarettes for over 20 years. Is that next? Maybe chocolate – specifically Hydrox Cookies – is the true fountain of youth?

Shoot me now.