A Couple You May Know

By Mark Young

Let me recount a story.

This is a story of a woman who has two young children.  She gets up each morning at the crack of dawn because her husband is heading off to work and she knows that attempts at grabbing 5 more minutes of sleep is futile because the alarm is going to go off in 4.  She gets up and wakes her children and gets the oldest fed and ready to go to school and puts the youngest in the stroller.  She walks the eldest to school and returns home only to have a busy day filled with more of the same chaos and by nightfall she’s physically and emotionally exhausted.

This is the story of her husband.  He wakes up early in the morning wishing for a few minutes more sleep, more time with his wife and children, and that he didn’t have to slave all day in a job he hates.  Instead, he stubles out the door, grabs a coffee and donut at the closest Tim Hortons, and heads to work.  By the time he comes home he’s beat, but he uses what remaining energy he has left to spend a few valuable minutes with the kids before he collapses on the couch beside his exhausted wife.

Both partners wish they had more time with each other and that they could share the intimacy that they once had.  They wish they had more money, more time, or more energy, but none of that feels remotely possible in the situation they’re in.  Neither is happy with their body, but they certainly don’t talk about it with each other.

She used to love shopping for clothes, but now she gradually buys larger clothes to cover herself up so hopefully nobody will notice as she slips into the background.  She doesn’t look in mirrors as she passes, she avoids intimacy with her husband because she fears his silent judgement, and she feels depressed.  She’s devasted that she doesn’t look or feel the way she should and that the compliments she used to get haven’t been heard in years.  She’s even gone to great lengths to try convince herself that this is just how things are supposed to be because she’s a mom.

At a glance you might even believe her husband is comfortable with being overweight and in the worst shape of his life.  He pats his tummy and jokingly refers to it as “a keg” instead of a six pack and he’ll flex it to demonstrate how hard it is saying “it’s all muscle”.  Among people that are more fit than him he’ll compensate for his insecurity by talking about days gone by when he “used to bench 300″ or how he “weighed 180 with a 28 inch waist”.  He wants everyone to think he’s comfortable in his own skin, but that’s the last thing from the truth.

As a couple, they’ve even made pacts in the past to start “eating better” or to “get more exercise”, but these attempts have rarely lasted more than a couple days.  Each failed attempt makes them feel increasingly less confident that it will ever happen and finally they just stop trying.

Neither is happy with how they look.  Both lack energy.  Independently they consider themselves a good couple, but imagine that things could be different if only they got in shape.  They secretly want it so bad they can each taste it, but it seems so far out of reach for so many reasons.

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If you haven’t guessed by now, this isn’t a story about a specific couple, but a story about so many people I’ve met over the years and probably tens of thousands that I’ll never even know.  It may even be a story about you.

Over the last while I’ve had the outstanding revelation that how people get overweight is no mystery.  The story above pretty much tells the tale.  Simply telling someone what to do and when to do it obviously doesn’t work and is the reason so many people fail.

Instead, I believe that the reason WHY people are overweight is the most important question.  More importantly, I believe that only once we know the answers to this question will we be able to identify the causes for previous failures and the path to success.  Only then will all the exercise and nutrition information that surrounds us be truly usable.

In the coming months I hope to help people identify some of their very own reasons WHY.  In the meantime, I invite you to start thinking about the reasons why you aren’t where you want to be.  This is the first step in getting there.

Add comment September 16th, 2009