Hit Hard by the Obesity Epidemic in America

For those of you that know me well you know that my life and my teachings revolve around health, firing on all cylinders—mind, body and spirit.  In 2007 my first book, Losing Weight When Diets Fail, was published and the book takes into account all of the parts I just mentioned.  As you might imagine I happen to know a lot about the topic of weight: the causes, the controversies, the struggles and the solutions.

Did you know that 67% of Americans are either overweight or obese?  That’s what I said, 67 percent.  That’s 190 million of us and the medical burden from obesity related diseases is $147 billion a year.  In the last couple of years my focus has shifted a little bit from helping people lose weight to helping people relate.  That’s what I do on my new television series on A&E, Monster In-Laws.  I force families to relate, to get along and to respect one another.  And it’s also a lot of what I do at my private counseling practice.

Back to this obesity epidemic.  The reason I’m writing this blog is because I just returned last night from a trip to Disney World with my wife and children.  An interesting thing happened to me on the trip.  All of the research, writing, counseling, hypnosis and speeches I’ve given about weight loss came right back to me.  In fact, it slammed me right in the face.  Why?  Because I am absolutely flabbergasted at what I saw in all of the Disney parks.  The amount of overweight and obese people walking and scootering around made me want to shut down every food kios in the parks.  It made me want to reach-out to every overweight and obese person I saw and offer them help.  I swear that if I could afford to, I’d open my own kios and hand-out free copies of my book to everyone.

Folks, we have got to do something about this problem.  Way too many good people are dying by the fork and it doesn’t have to be this way.  I can’t do it alone people.  Help me out here.

Some quality family time

So I’m heading home from Disney on a flight next to my beautiful little daughter.  She’s in the middle seat doing a mosaic as I write and watch and praise her.  My wife and son are in the row in front of us.  Our trip to Disney began a little bit on a sour note.  When we boarded our flight from JFK last Tuesday night we realized that only two of our four seats were together.  Thankfully the two seats that weren’t together were a row apart.  The flight was full and I asked a lady if she wouldn’t mind switching seats so that I could sit next to my son or daughter.  The problem was that my seat was a middle seat and the lady wanted no part of it.  God forbid she was to sit in a middle row for 2 hours.  I was definitely a little pissed but I try not to judge others.  What would you have done?  I know what I would have done.  I was so tempted to sit my 5-year-old daughter next to the woman instead of sitting my 8-year-old son next to her.  You see my daughter can talk the ears off a donkey.

Anyway, our trip was wonderful.  The weather was perfect, my in-laws (not monster-n-laws) met us in Florida and we visited Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom and Epcot.  By the way, my daughter is right next to me in the middle seat and is talking the ear off the lady next to her at this very moment.

I’ll be home in a couple of hours and I am taking it all in on the last leg of my journey.  There is nothing more precious than spending time with the people I love.  I get sad at times thinking about my kids growing.  If you have kids, cherish every second you spend with them.  And if your too busy with work or other things in life, you better find a way to get less busy with that stuff and more busy with what matters most—your family.