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.
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.