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Weight has been on my mind lately, as you might already know. As I struggle to get rid of the 18 pounds I somehow managed to gain last year, I’ve realized that all of a sudden weight is everywhere–everything I look at seems to have something to do with weight: yet another rise in childhood obesity, Americans are getting fatter, even the French are getting fat now, they’re promoting lap bands on network TV, and every website is papered with those hideous Google ads with the cellulite-ridden stomach and commands to “obey this one rule of weight loss,” whatever the fuck that means. Perhaps it has always been this way, and it’s just that now I’m becoming conscious of it. Weight is bleeding into everything these days, and the world of personal finance is no exception.
Weakonomics is a personal finance blog that I like and read regularly. It is written by a guy who is, I think, in his late twenties. That alone might explain some of the content of this post, including but not limited to the unapologetic use of the word “chunker.” Allow me to preface my critique of his post by stating that I’m not even really sure I disagree with his salient point–viz., that there may be some kind of correlation between weight problems and money problems, that overweight people are more likely to carry large amounts of debt as well (and vice versa). I feel like, barring the outliers–people who can eat whatever they want without getting fat, and people who can spend whatever they want without becoming debt-ridden or poor–there might well be a correlation. If nothing else, this would explain the proliferation of weight loss clubs among personal finance bloggers that have been clogging up my reader lately.
I digress.
In all honesty, it does seem like it should just be a simple math problem to stay in shape, in much the same way as a budget should be a simple math problem, but for countless reasons it is not. Isn’t that what Dave Ramsey’s program is all about? The fact that there is a psychological element to personal finance that does not strictly “obey this one rule” of sticking to a budget? And when I say that, I’m not just talking about the much maligned concept of will power, because–yes–you can get very far with a strong will, sure. But is that enough to get you the whole way? Shall we ask LeBron James if one man’s will power is enough? Are there not other, larger factors to consider? What about the game changing, larger-than-life things that come in from outside and wreck your budget? Like hurricanes and horrendous health problems? Sure, you can plan for those, but no plan is foolproof. Ultimately, even with our well-allocated emergency funds, aren’t we all are depending just a little bit on luck to keep us healthy and allow us to remain in good financial shape?
And with weight, there are similar game-changing factors, are there not? I suppose it would be hard for a guy in his twenties to imagine having a child–in effect having his body taken over by a host organism that then completely whittles down his metabolism to nothing, so that the sheer mechanics of calories-in vs. calories-out no longer has a direct relationship to what the scale reads for years (or lifetimes) after the baby is born. Nor does he know, yet, that each year you age your body becomes more and more efficient with its calorie burning, so that the diet that allowed you to lose weight two years ago is now not even going to let you maintain your already overweight frame. And then there are the socioeconomic factors that affect health and weight: healthy food costs more and is less available in different areas of the country and among different social strata. Try buying a green salad in Compton, for example. Cheap, easy food that is readily available to people who have to work two or more jobs to make ends meet is not likely to be healthy. That’s just the way it is, unfortunately.
And then there is this book, which kind of blows the whole debt and fat correlation out of the water. Basically, the author demonstrates that the link between obesity, gluttony and sloth has been way overblown in the past 50 years, and that genes, hormones and chemistry are just as much a part of weight gain as are the behavioral elements that everybody blames for weight gain. The theory is that charismatic personalities over the years have championed specific causes, and this is how some theories of weight loss have become more dominant than others. Anybody who has experienced a sugar addiction knows that there is something serious going on with your body chemistry based upon the foods that you choose–it stands to reason that these chemical reactions also have something to do with weight beyond a strict “calories in, calories out” theory of weight management.
But whatever. I don’t really want to become the champion of the fat people, to be perfectly honest. I’m as biased against fat as anyone you’ll ever meet. I guess I just took this as an opportunity to examine the moralistic tone we all seem to take (myself included) when looking at problems–specifically American problems. Americans are fat because they are lazy, slothful, have no self-control. Americans are in debt because they want everything now, whether or not they can afford it. Is it possible that our problems are a little more complex than that?
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