And so did his daddy, and Bill Clinton, and Especially Ronald Reagan.
Every forkful of food you put into your mouth has political as well as nutritional content.
We've all heard it: America is in an obesity crisis; weight is going to be America's next plague.
We are certainly right to worry about Bird Flu, but cans of Coke, Big Macs, and a "supersize everything" mentality is already racking up a body count.
The truth is that weight issues in our country are a complex problem, despite this diary's tongue-in-cheek title, with equal tension in a triangle between personal choices & responsibilities, cultural & societal pressures, and governmental polices, regulations, & programs that help or harm.
I can speak here from personal experience, as someone who has tilted at the windmill of weight since childhood. I saw cute and chubby turn into just plain fat. I fought back with diets, pills, programs and plans, wrestling the scale back down from time to time for special occasions and then giving up again and watching the numbers--and dress sizes--climb, and climb high.
So what does W, or any president or governmental policy, have to do with my risk of diabetes? Or the numbers on my cholesterol report? Or even what I look like in a bathing suit?
Let's take that triangle apart:
Obesity is a personal issue because even though weight gain is complicated, most people will admit that no one puts a gun to their head to make them choose a double cheeseburger over a salad or choose an afternoon watching football instead of playing it out back with the kids.
It's a societal and cultural issue because our family and social lives often revolve around food. We use food to celebrate, food to reward, and food to comfort, calm, and console.
And it's a political issue because the government plays many roles in your food:
Agricultural politics determine what is grown and how it is grown. Political departments and committees help regulate your food, market your food, determine your food's nutritional content, label your food, and even take on the role of dietary advice provider. And school lunch programs, where the government actually controls and provides the food, are worth a whole `nother diary.
Some of these governmental programs are designed with your best interests in mind. They are benign efforts to educate and motivate. Others are outright malignancies, rooted in ways to help corporations make money and American waistlines--and health--be damned.
In his book Fatland, Andrew Critser provides one big example:
Fatland:
You reap what you sow. According to Critser, a leading journalist on health and obesity, America about 30 years ago went crazy sowing corn. Determined to satisfy an American public that "wanted what it wanted when it wanted it," agriculture secretary Earl Butz determined to lower American food prices by ending restrictions on trade and growing. The superabundance of cheap corn that resulted inspired Japanese scientists to invent a cheap sweetener called "high fructose corn syrup." This sweetener made food look and taste so great that it soon found its way into everything from bread to soda pop. Researchers ignored the way the stuff seemed to trigger fat storage. In his illuminating first book (which began life as a cover story for Harper's Magazine), Critser details what happened as this river of corn syrup (and cheap, lardlike palm oil) met with a fast-food marketing strategy that prized sales-via supersized "value" meals-over quality or conscience.
So who feels the physical and emotional suffering that comes from being fat?
Those Poor Fat People
...This weighty problem is not an equal opportunist; Crister points out...He shows how the poor become the fattest, victimized above all by the lack of awareness.
If you are poor, you are more likely to be overweight and less likely to be successful in beating it back.
And I know something about what it takes to beat back the pounds. Twenty years ago I lost fifty pounds and then gained it back, and it brought another fifty pounds along for the ride. Over the past 18 months, though, I've lost, and kept off, and god willing, will continue to keep off, 77 of those pounds.
I was a dairy princess-- one of my earliest memories is my grandfather feeding me bits of butter from the tip of his finger. I grew up with whole milk and American cheese served at practically every meal, along with potato products and breads of all kinds and lots and lots of ice cream. I was chunky as a kid; quite round with "baby fat." I had a brief time when I hit my adolescent growth spurt and did the whole cheerleader--beauty pageant routine, but I didn't even really fight back when the freshman ten turned into fifty.
And then my babies were born, and it wasn't even the pregnancy weight gain that was an issue so much as the mom-of-two, working-full-time-outside-the-home, never-a-break, live-in-your-car-and-on-fast-food lifestyle that took me from reasonably pleasingly plump into outright obese.
I've been through several weight loss phases. I was successful in losing weight before my wedding in 1987 with Nutra-Systems-- heck, I was even their poster child for awhile with my before-and-after pictures plastered in all the local newspapers. I've done Weight Watchers, spent a month on Fen-Phen, and resolved a thousand times that tomorrow, I will start eating right and exercising, and of course, there's always another tomorrow waiting for me to put down the pepperoni pizza.
All my previous weight loss successes and attempts ultimately failed, for lots of reasons that are obvious to me now, but mainly because I still bought into the idea that anyone can "diet" for awhile, lose some weight, the problem is solved.
Obesity is a condition that is managed, not solved. My success this past year is rooted in the idea that, as cliché as it sounds, this is not a diet, it's a lifestyle. So I began by looking at my soccer mom friends who could do a "Stacy's Mom" type role, and asked-- how do you do it? They don't go to Weight Watchers and they don't live on Slimfast. Instead they have incorporated some ideas about moderation and balance and movement that let them live a life with food, enjoying birthday cake and pizza after the soccer parties, but still staying in the same pair of jeans they wore ten years ago.
I needed help. I was 42, weighed 236 pounds, was developing knee problems, and had a huge road sign that said "Diabetes" clearly ahead on my life map.
But I'm on a different road now. Seventy five+ pounds have come off, slowly, and I have 20 or so to go. I've run two 5 k races and can (almost) beat anyone at arm wrestling. In my first group body-sculpt class I had to go get heavier weights because I was barely breaking a sweat keeping up with the 20-something lovelies around me. I'm strong, healthy, and damn, these new jeans--six sizes smaller than I was wearing last year-- look sweet.
So why can't everyone be like me?
Well, what did it cost me to be successful?
#1. I quit my job. Oh, I had planned to do the stay-at-home-mom routine for many years. My husband and I had long ago decided that if we could swing it financially, the time to have a parent at home for the children would be their middle school years.
But being home full time did a number of things. It gave me time to go to the gym and get out on the trails. It gave me time to plan meals, and to shop carefully, and to prepare them. It took away much of the stress and frantic pace of our lives so I could wean our family from fast food and eating out and the need to medicate my stress levels with a double bowl of cookie-dough ice cream in front of the TV each night.
Now contrast that with your average low to middle income mom. Chances are she's working, out of the house early to drop the kids off at daycare, or home and swamped with the demands of the kidlets. Try telling her to write out her shopping list ahead of time, planning a week's worth of nutritionally balanced meals and finding the time to prepare them.
#2. I joined a gym. Okay, so it's our local family YMCA, but it's still a luxury that's out of reach for many, many Americans. Not only did I join up, I even sprang for a half dozen sessions with a personal trainer so I could learn how to use the equipment and develop a routine that I could stick with and see some success.
But hey, you might say, you don't have to use fancy weights and personal trainers and aerobics studios-- anyone can take a walk! Now imagine you live in southeast LA. You already work two jobs just trying to make ends meet. Your neighborhood is not safe, your parks, if there are any, are not safe--certainly not for walking when you get home late at night, and you're exhausted from the stresses of your minimum wage job--or jobs. Exercise is an "easy" solution that is not always so easily implemented.
#3. I had plenty of money to choose healthful foods. Lean white-meat chicken is, even on sale, about $4.00 per pound. Ramen noodles are 5 for a dollar. Over and over again, if I'm hungry, or if my kids are hungry, high starch, high carb foods are going to be cheaper and more filling and more readily available than the lean meats, fish, and fresh produce that our government tells us (correctly) are the better choices to eat.
If comes down to a choice between putting any food on the table, or not enough food, I'm going to choose, as do millions of our poorer Americans, to fill up my kids' hungry bellies even if it means increasing those bellies' circumferences. Me, I know there are ways to make great food choices that don't involve doubling your food bill, but see #4 below:
#4. I have an education. Oh, I'm no nutritionist, but I'm well-read and I have this lovely home computer that puts a wealth of information at my fingertips, from diet and exercise tips to free food journals and tools. I personally credit at least part of my success to Fitday,first recommended to me by a Cheers & Jeers denizen over a year ago. But contrast those resources with the Hispanic family struggling to make ends meet, or the blue-collar worker who just wants to have a beer and watch the game, and has little exposure to the wonders of the World Wide Web.
So can I really blame good ol' W for my size 20 mom-jeans? Well, no. Despite maybe driving me to want to drink heavily and drown my political sorrows in cheesy poufs, I take responsibility for my personal choices.
But we need to recognize that Republican policies have contributed to creating a culture of poverty. Republican support of corporations has encouraged a push of marketing and advertising influences that are at odds with our citizens' best interests.
Government plays a role in sharing our days and our foods. We'll never solve this health crisis just by saying to people--"back away from the couch slowly and put down the potato chips."
I don't honestly know if I'll be able to keep up this success I've experienced, and I sill have some weight to lose before I can really even focus on maintenance. I plan to go back to full time teaching next fall, and I'm going to have to find tools and schedules that let me keep up the exercise program and the eating habits that gotten me close to single-digit dress sizes. And I know that very little in my work environment or state or federal legislature is likely to help me out.
Okay, you say, Mrs. Brown, this is all interesting reading, and I'm really happy for you and all that, but this is a political blog where I come to read about policy and elections and not a glossy women's magazine where I expect to find true-life stories and weight loss tips.
Fair enough. But if I haven't convinced you yet that weight and obesity are political issues, I have one name for you: Mike Huckabee.
In a June 5th interview with the Raleigh News and Observer's Rob Christensen, the Arkansas governor and potential Republican presidential candidate told a compelling story about his own 100 pound weight loss. His spin is a classic Republican meme: individuals have to do this work to become healthier; "we cannot spend our way out this." Can't you just see a debate between the Democratic nominee, arguing for universal health care, and this charming man, who stands up and says, why, no:
Americans are essentially killing themselves with chronic disease driven by three behaviors: overeating, under exercising, and smoking. Those three behaviors drive chronic disease, and chronic disease drives 75% of America's health care costs.
Yes, there's lots of truth in that statement. But leaving it there like that on the table is the same thing as saying to the unwed mom, "just get a job," or to the poor kid from the projects, "just stay in school." It recognizes none of the other obstacles and pressures that contribute to the problem.
So maybe George W. Bush didn't make me fat. But nothing he, nor anyone in his party, is doing is likely to help me get back to health, either. And like reports of an oncoming hurricane, the inconvenient truth of warmer days, or a memo stating something about some guy being determined to strike, this is a clear example of yet another time I don't want to hear my government claim that this was a crisis that "No one could have anticipated."
Watch for Part Two: George Bush Made My Kid Fat, posting sometime shortly after Yearly Kos.