Who would have imagined that a blog series on weight and wellness could generate so much interest among legal professionals?
This thing is literally feeding itself.
One member writes in to compliment me on losing over 100 pounds and keeping it off for nearly 40 years. He adds that he is on a similar quest and is over halfway toward his goal.
Rumor has it the incidence of childhood and adolescent obesity has reached epidemic proportions in this country. That would stand to reason, considering the fact that obesity has also become rampant within the adult population.
In other words, the kids ain’t driving themselves to the grocery store.
I am neither a physician nor a psychologist, so nothing I would ever say about weight and wellness should ever be mistaken for professional advice, especially when it comes to childhood and adolescent obesity.
But I have lived through both, and although it has been nearly 40 years since I experienced my transformative weight loss, I will never forget what it was like to be young and overweight. I will never forget what it was like to be the “fat boy.”
My recent contribution to Long Leaf Law about losing weight and keeping it off left one reader hungry for more:
“I just thought it could be very valuable to dig into the specifics of how you lost weight and kept it off over the long term. I presume that you have come to enjoy and value your lifestyle, and some concrete examples of what you did and the mindset that you brought to it might inspire others.”
Such kind and insightful words merit a thoughtful response. Over the years, others who have heard my story about losing 140 pounds during my senior year of college have also asked how I lost the weight and how I’ve managed to keep it off.
Wellness was not a familiar term when I did something about mine in 1978. That was the year I lost 140 pounds and changed my life forever.
Whether that qualifies me to write on the subject of wellness remains to be seen. There’s certainly more to wellness than losing weight. On the other hand, wellness would be difficult to achieve without some semblance of weight control.
If there is any advantage to having been the fat kid in school all the way into my senior year of college, it would be my experience with weight. From gaining it to losing it, from living with it to keeping it off, I know weight, and it knows me.
