Weigh to go!

Sep 29, 2008 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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For the past month or more, I have been concentrating on some very weighty matters.  I do have a major legal issue; but that, while weighty, has been left to my lawyers to carry, hopefully to the winning pole.  The weighty matters that have preoccupied my time and attention, placed on my broad shoulders, so to speak, as well as on my stomach, hips and other parts of my anatomy, consist almost entirely of fat.
Over the past two years, my weight increased at an alarming rate – almost like the murder rate in Trinidad — and that spells as much disaster for me as the unceasing and continuous upward spiral in mortality caused by violence portends for Trinidad and Tobago.  If I had continued along the same expanding lines, on my next visit to Trinidad I would probably have shown up on the radar.
The fact that I had to lose at least 20 pounds weighed as heavily on my mind as it did on my body, and that caused me to worry so much that I gained even more weight.
How come, you may ask, that an enlightened individual who once worked for the Pan American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO) in the Health Promotion Department finds himself in so unhealthy a predicament that it defies reason?  However, while not a justification or excuse, I have known since childhood that the shoemaker’s children went to school barefooted, and the mechanic’s car was always shutting down.  Even at PAHO/WHO, one of my associates, a Health Educator, smoked heavily.  I know some doctors who over-indulge in alcohol, and then tell their patients to stop drinking or it will kill them.
There are two issues here.  The first is that, in some matters, our intellect and emotions are separate.  One of the lessons I have learnt as a communicator is that I cannot solve emotional problems with an intellectual approach.  Sticks and stones may break bones, but facts and figures at the wrong time may be just as deadly.  For example, the research on Dengue shows that the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, which causes the disease, lives in or around our homes.  The research also demonstrates that the occasional visit to our communities of a vehicle belching out fumes and chemical smoke has no real effect on the mosquitoes that spread dengue.
Yet, whenever and wherever there is a dengue problem, instead of cleaning out their homes and environs, citizens demand that the Government send round the truck with the fumes.  The reason is that it makes them feel that something is being done, and it saves them from having to deal with the problem themselves.
In the same way, if people are overweight, you can provide them with as much information as possible about the health dangers, but if their problem is emotional, they will not listen to you.  If eating helps them deal with their issues and the world at large by being large, so be it.
The second concern is that knowledge does not necessarily change behaviour.  A certain amount of knowledge is important, but this varies with the individual.  For example, I love exercise machines.  I don’t need to know too much about its specifications to buy one.  Other people will take a long time to weigh the cost/benefit options; but me, once I have the money for a machine, or it is a bit of new technology, I get it — Ipod, you pod, my pod.
All smokers know that if they continue smoking, it will kill them eventually.  Yet, the majority never stops.  All drug addicts, all alcoholics, all substance-abusers know that what they are doing is dangerous and possibly fatal.  Yet, they continue.  Telling a smoker that “Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health” does nothing but waste money.
So what happened to me?  There are things that trigger compulsive behaviour.  In my case, it is stress.  Under stress, I put on weight rather than lift it.  Under stress, I do not see my exercise machine.  Under stress, I use the weights, if I see them at all, to lift the level of my bed-head to reduce the acid reflux that is the inevitable outcome of too much of the wrong type of food.  Under stress my stomach grows like the US national debt aided and abetted by the Republican government.
I beat around the Bush about doing something about my health.  Then, two weeks off the job, and reason begins to set in, together with vanity.  I have always been proud of my physical strength and muscular frame. More, being unemployed, I cannot afford to buy new clothes, and had I continued at the same rate of expansion, I would have needed a new wardrobe, not to hold my clothes, but to hold me.  Worse, the stress had caused my blood pressure and cholesterol levels to increase.
Weight a minute, I told myself.  Then that minute turned into an hour, sometimes more.  The old love of working out, the result of many hours as a young man in the gym and on the playing fields, is returning.  The old muscles are responding, albeit slowly, but it is good to know they are still there, and to feel the pain that all masochists believe is a pre-requisite for the gain.
The supportive environment that is absolutely essential for sustaining the health initiative is also very present.  Sometimes my son joins me, sometimes my wife watches me work out.  She insists on my eating healthy.  However, the day will soon come when my energy and enthusiasm will wane and I would need a new injection of support or motivation.
Knowing that it can only come from deep inside me, I am not anxious for the sticking point to happen, since I will have to battle the ever-lurking sweet tooth and love of fatty foods that are part of my West Indian upbringing.  Under stress, I flee to my culinary comfort zone – fatty food, bread and chocolate.
There are a few things I have learnt over the years, and they help. I cannot determine where I lose weight, I can only expend more calories than I take in, and nature will do the rest.  The more I exercise the more calories I burn, even when I am not exercising.  The moment I stop, I tend to reverse all the hard-earned gains.  I cannot depend on the scale, because I gain muscle and lose weight simultaneously.
What I do is use my waistline as my guide.  The more it shrinks, the better I feel.  In the meantime, I know there is no short-cut to good health.
There is a story about a lady who asked her doctor to prescribe something so she could get into the wonderful birthday gift her husband gave her.  The doctor indulged her, “Just come over tomorrow and I will give you a prescription so that you could fit into that new dress your husband gave you.”
“Who said anything about a dress?” the lady asked. “I am talking about a car.”
*  Tony Deyal was last seen saying that if you eat metal paper fastenings you are sure to be on a staple diet.

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