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The Key

The Key to advertisers

in the Victoria Gazette.

Located at www.VictoriaGazette.com.

Some call it global warming. Others call it spring. I call it wonderful. No matter what you call it, it’s time to shed the shoes, peel the layers, and maybe drop a couple pounds here or there as part of the annual rite of spring.

Last week someone suggested to me that I do a story in the Gazette on people who have lost weight in these past months through membership and regular exercise at the Victoria Field House. The Field House just celebrated its fifth anniversary, and lots of people have become more fit in those five years.

Anyhow, she named at least three or four people -- all Victoria residents -- who, indeed, are looking more svelte since their workouts at the Field House.

I always appreciate story ideas for the Gazette, and at first glance this idea sounded okay to me, but as the days wore on I found myself hesitating and then trying to figure out why the hesitation. In the figuring, several thoughts worked themselves to the surface.

I asked myself if I’d like to be featured in the Gazette for losing weight. My answer was no. Tell me privately that you noticed, if you like, but don’t put it in print. It might not be permanent, for one thing. Look at Oprah. Weight is often a fluctuating thing. What happens, for example, if those same people put the pounds back on, and then some? Do I make a correction in a subsequent issue of the Gazette? Of course not.

Everyone knows you lose weight with regular exercise and cutting calories. Everyone knows you keep the weight off by continuing to exercise and reducing calories. There are not magic potions and formulas. It’s simple and difficult at the same time and that’s the long and short story.

Is there another reason I hesitate to give public notice or notoriety to people who lose some extra weight? Well, yes. Saying something glowing about people who lose weight necessarily says something about a lot of other people who don’t lose weight, and there’s the rub. Human frailties come in great variety and the Gazette doesn’t like to veer in their direction, even secondarily.

Parts of society are obsessed with looking and being physically fit. Obesity is an epidemic throughout the land, dontcha know! I too recognize that trying to be fit is worthy of effort, and success, but I’m still not inclined to put physical fitness or the better physique (whatever that is) on a public pedestal.

The Gazette is usually interested in the internal self, the guts, what makes people tick. I am interested in the things that are difficult to measure -- like character and conscience, motivations, intangible goals. You can also throw in truthfulness, friendliness, hospitality, integrity, and how all these things affect one’s happiness and movement through life.

Losing extra weight is a praiseworthy goal, and success in that area does speak to willpower and endurance, but it does not speak to good character. It speaks to good eating and exercise behavior, but it does not speak to goodness itself, although some people might equate the two.

As human frailties and flaws go, I’d say that being overweight is more serious than chewing your fingernails and less serious than smoking cigarettes. But I’d also say that those physical issues are nothing compared to poor behaviors of the mind and heart. For example, they are nothing compared to undermining the good work or intentions of another person. They are nothing compared to blurring the Ten Commandments and erasing the lines between right and wrong. Such offensive behaviors are more weighty than mere frailties, of course, and yet they are not outwardly imminent like a big belly or a wide waist or a fat rump-elstiltskin.

I didn’t mean to get so heavy here -- pun intended -- but I’m reminded of a letter I received a while back. Someone had written to me, telling me about a resident who lost many, many pounds through his efforts at the Victoria Field House; and the letter writer suggested a story in the Gazette. I didn’t tend to that story immediately due to other commitments, and -- this is almost unbelievable -- the day I called that family to ask about a possible story and interview for the Gazette -- on that very day the man who had lost all the weight died. It was his wife who answered the phone. The second shoe dropped when I received nastiness from the letter writer for not following through with her lead on the great weight-loss story of our time.

Oh, well. I don’t like wearing shoes anyhow, at least not from May to October.