By: Jean Johnson for Reflux1“A year ago, I’d just as soon eat lawn clippings as eat asparagus,” said Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee (R) who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2003 and has since shed 110 pounds off his 5 foot 11 inch frame. “Walking a city block had me just about winded.” Besides getting winded from cruising around the block, Huckabee also had the scare of his life when his physician told the 48 year old that he’d be dead in 10 years if he didn’t change his ways. Huckabee did, and now tips the scales at a svelte 180 pounds.
| Take Action |
What They’ve Done in Arkansas
Huckabee’s home state, Arkansas, has become a national laboratory for activities geared toward stemming obesity. Efforts include:
Curbing soft drinks in schools.
Measuring children’s body mass index and keeping parents informed.
Making food stamps worth more when they are used to buy fruits and vegetables.
Instituting exercise breaks at work.
Implementing programs for preventative health.
Stress relievers to substitute for overeating:
Get some fresh air – walk around the block or throw the ball for the dog.
Jump rope if your knees will take it.
Turn the stereo up and dance.
Lie back on the floor and key into the breath.
Do a yoga posture.
And lastly, grandma’s advice: Take a deep breath and count to 10.
|
A Report From the End of the Tunnel
Huckabee has become the new poster child for weight loss success, not to mention new public policy in Arkansas that is geared toward helping his constituency address the nation’s larger obesity epidemic. Everyone from the secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, to Time Warner, who has signed a book contract with Huckabee, is courting the newly trim and toned governor. Perhaps that’s because instead of business as usual, Huckabee offers a new approach for solving an old problem; Take the focus off weight loss and zero in on improving health. At the same time, as an ex-chowhound and couch potato, he remembers all too well how terribly monumental and overwhelming the route to wellness can seem from the trenches.
“I try not to go around saying, ‘Well, you ought to do this because I did it,’” Huckabee said. Rather, he hopes his experiences will provide inspiration and motivation. “To be able to see my whole attitude change so radically gives me hope that other people can make adjustments and change too,” he said. “I am just one beggar telling other beggars where to find bread.”
“Where to find bread.” Short for ‘where to trade in the misery of lugging excess pounds around for a ticket to the joy that feeling comfortable in one’s own skin brings.’ The question is an age-old one of balance –the golden mean – of how to find the strength to forgo short-term pleasures for long-term gain.
Effects of Obesity on Personal and National Health
New York Times’ columnist Nicholas D. Kristof penned a piece on Huckabee’s success, adding the caveat that “I know all this sounds banal. Perhaps I should be using this journalistic real estate to thunder about war or Middle East peace or corruption in Congress.” Kristof excuses his dalliance into subject of the governor’s weight loss with the argument that “the New England Journal of Medicine reported last year that because of rising obesity, life expectancy in the U.S. might soon stop rising and could drop.”
While we at Reflux1.com agree that longevity is treasured, we’d like to add that even more critical is the quality of life we each enjoy while we are living. The U.S. government can do its utmost to ensure that American citizens are safe, but if the folks at home are plopped in front of televisions stuffing down fast food there’s not a whole lot of the American Dream left to protect. It goes without saying, that people carrying extra baggage wish it weren’t so.
Humiliation, guilt and shame are often the emotional consequences of eating one’s way into an oversized body. Indeed, everyone wants to live a happy and fulfilling life, but when there’s excess weight on one’s frame dogging every step of the way, things can seem all but hopeless.
That’s where Huckabee comes in. He not only sees the cause of taming the beast of obesity as a personal one, he also thinks it’s vital to the economic health of the country.
“I don’t want to be the sugar sheriff. I don’t want to be the grease police. That’s not my job,” said the governor of Arkansas. “But when I look at our state budget, and I see that every year our Medicaid budget is increasing by nine and 10 percent, and I look at state employees’ health plans and I see that those costs are escalating at double digits and twice the rate of inflation – as a fiscal manager, I have not only the right but frankly also the responsibility to see what can we do to improve this bottom-line cost.”
Huckabee goes on to cite chapter and verse on how so many Americans letting their own bodies go to ruin equates to a similarly precarious national economic health. “This year, GM will spend more on healthcare for employees and pensioners than on steel. Starbucks will spend more on healthcare than on coffee beans.”
How The Governor Found His Way Through the Obesity Maze
“My original thought was ‘Gee, I need to lose 30 or 40 pounds. And I needed to lose more, but I didn’t think that I could set myself up for a big failure. I just said if I could lose 40 pounds, I’d be in better health. I’d be better off. I just wanted to get healthier.
“I would have periods that I would call temporary success. What I really had to learn is that there is a difference between going on a diet and changing a lifestyle. Going on a diet is typically going to result in failure, for two reasons. First, because the person is focused on losing weight rather than getting healthy. And when the weight-loss program has been completed a person feels that the process is over. Well the process is not over. The process is a lifestyle, not a program. This thing will not work on autopilot. You can’t just sit in the front seat on the passenger side. You’ve got to be willing to drive.”
Huckabee’s empowering message just might bring new hope to people who have been stymied by their inability to change their eating and activity habits. After all, most folks want to sit in driver’s seat if the truth be known. Still, his easy-does-it approach is reminiscent of the stalwart turtle who, by placing one sure foot in front of the other, ultimately won the race against the rabbit.
Huckabee’s physician told him to go easy on exercise at first so he wouldn’t ruin his knees. “My first exercise was probably six minutes a day. Then one day [after he’d lost some weight and had increased his walks to a mile and a half] I was walking and I thought, ‘This is kind of slow. Let’s pick up the pace.’ And I was running. It just developed, you know. It wasn’t a planned thing. Every step became its own reward.”
On the answer to the question about finding time to work out, Huckabee’s all over the excuse makers. “There is no such thing as finding time, you make time. For 48 years I never found the time, but I have the same 168 hours in the week that everyone else does. So, do I have time to do it? Not if I find it, but I do if I make it.”
On the eats, Huckabee has dumped sugar and white flour along with any processed food that contains those culprits. And he carts his own food along when he’s away from home. “It’s easier for me to say, ‘no’ than ‘not much.’”
Finally, on evening eating that plagues so many, Huckabee has both insight and a solution. “The biggest battle for me is late at night. Everyone else has gone to bed, and I am catching up on the end of the day’s work and eating is kind of a stress reliever. I don’t drink alcohol, but I can always eat. Nobody minds,” he said. “What I find is that I just have to be very careful. I think the amazing thing is my changing appetite. I actually crave the apple more than I do a candy bar. And that is something that I thought I would never experience.”
Photo courtesy of http://www.arkansas.gov/governor/
