Oh its definitely a statement about the futility of exercise as a means to prolong life. He goes along getting fatter and fatter, then whips himself into shape all self-congratulatory and dies young anyway. Like Jim Fixx.
Yeah, did you see the iPod strapped to his arm in the last "fat" panel? He's trying to work it off, finally achieves that svelte figure, and then dies.
However, I'd still like to have a svelte figure, even if I only get to prize it and strut my skinny ass around for a few days or weeks before my untimely Jim Fixx-esque demise. Also, it bears mentioning that Fixx died of heart disease that was unavoidable - all the other men in his family had died from it as well. It's not like all that running around killed him. Sitting on your ass and letting your arteries coagulate, muscles atrophy, and bones weaken is gonna kill you much faster.
One of my good friends in Alaska, Cheryl, went from overweight to grossly obese after a terrible betrayal and divorce. Once she was diagnosed as a diabetic, she went through massive lifestyle changes. She radically changed her diet to eating whole and unprocessed foods, and worked out like a champ six days a week. She felt and looked amazing.
Then she had a heart attack. It ran in her family.
When she saw the cardiologist, she was angry. She said, "What the fuck did I do all this diet and exercise for? It did not change a damned thing!" The cardiologist begged to differ. He showed her scans of her heart.
"Cheryl, do you see all these tiny vessels that surround your heart? Those are brand-new cardiac blood vessels that your body created because of all the strenuous cardiac exercise you were doing. When you were working out so hard, your body needed more oxygen, and so it made a new network of blood vessels." Then he pointed to the damaged area on her heart. He further explained, "Cheryl, when you had that heart attack, there was still blood that was able to move around your heart BECAUSE OF THOSE BLOOD VESSELS YOU BUILT FROM EXERCISE. There is damage on your heart, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that if you had not been exercising, you would have died from this heart attack. I am one hundred percent certain of that."
Needless to say, Cheryl got back on the diet and exercise wagon as soon as her doctors told her it was okay, and worked with a physical therapist to make sure that she did everything safely.
Every year she has to go back for comprehensive lab work and stress tests to view her heart. After one year had elapsed, the technician looked at her scans, puzzled. "When did you say you had your heart attack?? Because your heart has totally regenerated itself. There is no more dead tissue on your heart. Most patients who've had such a massive heart attack as yours, they continue to show damage to the heart. Your heart is perfect."
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Topic: October 02, 2007 - 2052 (Read 10844 times)