Fat Man Walking

Okay, a quick word about this guy.

I first heard him on the radio about a month ago. The makers of the insoles who are sponsoring him were having him do radio interviews to sponsor them.

Personally, I thought it was a terrible idea. And not just because he's going to walk right through New Mexico, a state which has driven even some who've attempted to drive through it insane.

And not just because, even though the six months is already half up, he's not even 1/6th of the way.

The fact is that, for all his talk of "No quick fixes for me!" on the website, this is still a quick fix. It's a long, slow, torturous quick fix, but it's a quick fix just the same.

A quick fix is a one-time "stunt" that is meant to make everything all better, but that is so far removed from your natural reality as to be ineffective in the long term. In this case, once he gets back home he's still going to have to go through the process of finding an exercise program, figuring out a healthy diet, and completely changing his life for the purpose of maintaining any weight he lost, or losing any weight he doesn't lose in these six months (or more).

And he'd have to spent six months (or more) of his life away from at least part of his family. Granted, this is the part of his story I know the least about, but that could easily be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Is it worth it to try to change your life, if your family goes to pot in your absence?

But now that I've seen the site, I see his kids are pretty young, and are kind of tagging along in the support van with Mom. Which turns this whole thing into a big six month long family vacation, which I've got no problem with at all. I wish this guy a ton of luck.

Of course, he really is still going to have to get down to the real business of changing his life, eating habits, and exercise patterns once he gets home. The temptation will be to say, "Alright, now a week off." The week will become a month, then a year, and then he'll be back where he started from. And pretty soon his kids will start saying to him, "Daddy, when are you going to walk across the country again," and he'll realize he's back where he started from.

But that doesn't have to be! And I must say, this is a heck of a way to kick off a turnaround.