March 19, 2012

The weight loss analogy

I've got a personal analogy to share with you that might not seem obvious right away.  By way of background, I've been dieting since December 30th, 2011.  I've dropped from 201 lbs. to 181 lbs. and for the last two weeks I've been stuck there.  I've hit a plateau for the time being.  Heading into my diet during the Christmas season I knew the time was coming that I'd have to change.  I wasn't terribly overweight at 201 lbs.  I'm 5'11" and I didn't look too bad.  I wasn't in heart attack territory or anything like that.  But I felt sluggish, less than energetic and not in certainly not in peak physical condition.  So I knew I had to do something.  I decided to eliminate certain foods from my diet: pasta, potatoes, rice and flour-based foods like breads.  Everything else was/is fair game*.

When I started the diet, did I ever feel hungry!  The first few days I was craving lasagna like you could not imagine.  But I knew that it would pass.  I'd done the diet back about eight years ago and I'd lost 33 lbs. in 6 weeks.  So I stuck to my constraints with a very firm resolve.  Eventually the cravings passed and so did the hungry feeling.  With it my energy level has started to return to previous levels.  And it has motivated me to start to exercise and do other healthy things with my life, like getting a physical from my doctor, which I'd neglected for years, and to cut back on salt and potential cholesterol-laden foods.  I'm not even sure I need to do so, but I'm motivated to be more health conscious.


That's a rather long-winded way of getting to my analogy point.  The United States government has steadfastly refused to diet over the past seven or so decades.  It's gotten fat, lazy and it cannot fathom giving up it's calorie-rich diet.  Instead of finding the resolve to make changes it has to make that can save its life, it has found excuses and reasons to continue to eat itself to death.  It does not see the danger of becoming morbidly obese because it doesn't believe that it fits into that category.  Many people actually think it's too lean.  It also doesn't see the upside potential of making those changes.

Liberals want to spend more and more money on various unsustainable government programs.  What they don't realize is that by doing so they are compounding the debt to the point where eventually there will only be money for debt repayment and none of their liberal pet projects.  The avarice extends to the lack of concern for future generations.  'As long as I get my cake, who cares what happens in 200 years?'

Or they might believe that someone will figure out down the road.  That's like waiting for that miracle diet pill that allows you to eat with abandon and not have to worry about your health because the miracle pill will fix it all.  That's rainbows and unicorns thinking.  It's not going to happen.

The reality is that everyone in the country is going to have to give up something because the government is going to have to give up a bunch of things before that coronary hits.  Fiscal hawks (like myself) will have to give up some military spending, just like liberals will have to give up some of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as some unnecessary departments (Commerce, Education and DHS for the security hawks).  It's called a diet.  The time has come.  Think about the benefits of removing that debt repayment from the national income statement.  There's a lot of potential in that.

Yes, diets suck.  But at some point in time, they are no longer an option.  You either start or die.  Once you are diet, a diet definitely is no longer an option.

*Full disclosure: I normally don't eat a lot of sugar (I drink diet cola for example) and I don't really drink alcohol. 

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