“My Dietitian: Comedian Bill Maher” Oct. 3, 2021 Dr. Roger Ray
by Matt Moore – August 2020
Bill Maher says you can scream at him all you want, but the Real Time host knows he’s right about one thing: obesity needs to be confronted. The late-night television host argued that America’s obesity problem is a major factor in the country’s fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The U.S. has become the epicenter of the pandemic. While other developed countries were able to flatten the curve, reduce transmissions, and get back to some semblance of normal life, the U.S. has seen the opposite across much of the country.
According to Bill Maher, much of the blame for that falls on American eating habits. Yes, the Real Time host has acknowledged the importance of social distancing and called out the rush to reopen. But according to Maher, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to address and confront obesity in America.
In Friday night’s “New Rule” segment, Maher pushed back against the “COVID 15” trend in weight gain during the quarantine. He called on the media to do its part in changing the narrative on obesity in what will surely be one of Maher’s more divisive commentaries.
https://lastnighton.com/2020/08/01/bill-maher-obesity-covid-19/
I am certain that there has been no small amount of apocryphal exaggeration, but there were at least a few examples, in those centuries before Television and media devices, when royalty and the wealthy kept a “court jester” in their household to entertain with songs, tricks, and storytelling, and sometimes to use humor to make political comments or to give the king and queen bad news. For example: In 1340, when the French fleet was destroyed at the Battle of Sluys by the English, Phillippe VI's jester told him the English sailors "don't even have the guts to jump into the water like our brave French".
It may not have been really safe for many court jesters in past centuries to make bold political observations as jokes but in the modern era we have often had comedians who have been able to just that. In the early part of this century, I think that Jon Stewart’s Daily Show commentaries were must see TV for many of us.
I have kept this autographed portrait of Jon Stewart by my keyboard for years because, in my opinion, he was the best preacher in America, and I aspired to be more like him.
With wit and intellect, he revealed both the absurdity and the hypocrisy of American politics in ways that no mere journalist ever came close to. By making us laugh, even when we were had to laugh at ourselves, I think we were able to change the way we thought about some things precisely because, before he punched us in the nose with the truth, he made us laugh and he made us want to agree with him.
And, honestly, I did agree with him. For me, Jon Stewart’s Daily Show was the only show I watched religiously in my life but I never had a significant disagreement with anything he said. However, when he retired from the show, the next generation of political comedy was not as easy to love and embrace.
I never miss at least the podcast version of Bill Maher’s “Real Time” programs, but he isn’t batting a thousand in my estimation, and may not be much more than 500. Bill Maher is irreverent, iconoclastic, controversial, and fearless in what he says, in short, obviously, my kind of guy! But he often talks about things he doesn’t understand and asserts things which, I believe, are demonstrably just not right . . . however, I recognize a kindred spirit in him because he is always stepping up to the plate and swinging for the fences. I don’t think that Bill Maher is always right, but I am confident that he always says what he believes is right, and I respect that.
During the pandemic, he has repeatedly called out the CDC and some of our most famous and reliable spokespersons for science and prevention of infection with Covid-19 for not talking about the one thing that many Americans really could do to prevent serious illness and possible death during the pandemic, and that is, lose weight, exercise, and eat a healthy diet.
And as much as I appreciate Dr. Anthony Fauci as a generally reliable witness to the best of scientific knowledge through this highly lethal pandemic, he has not always told us the truth. He initially told us not to wear masks; specifically, in March of 2020, in an interview on 60 Minutes, he said that masks were not especially effective in stemming the spread of the virus. He later explained that he was concerned about front line health care workers not having access to personal protective gear and he didn’t want the general public to be competing with hospitals for PPE that was needed by medical staff. I get that he had a reason for this spin, this public deception. His end goal was laudable, but, bottom line, he wasn’t honest. The first rule of psychology is: the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Once a public official tells a lie, even a lie that has noble motivations, anything else they say becomes somewhat suspect. We have to wonder, “Is this true or is this spinning the facts to manipulate the public.”
Don’t get me wrong, I still pay a lot of attention to what Fauci says, but I understand why his credibility took a hard hit in March of 2020. Comedians are rarely scientists, but they depend upon the disarming nature of humor to try to say something we don’t want to hear. And, speaking for obese people everywhere, we are all pretty sick of fat-shaming and the rude way that total strangers will comment on our size and eating habits.
So, it didn’t feel good to me when Bill Maher first said in those months before the vaccines were available that the best thing Americans could do to avoid dying from Covid was to lose weight, exercise, and eat a better diet.
Going into the pandemic, 80% of adult Americans were overweight with more than 40% being classified medically as being obese. And, as you might guess, I was one of them. And even more, I had, in the past couple of years, been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Again, that didn’t exactly put me into a rare position. About 10% of Americans have type 2 diabetes. So, when the medical experts were saying that Covid 19 was especially deadly to older people, particularly those with underlying conditions such as obesity and diabetes, I realized that they were talking about me.
But not just me, they were talking about me and way more than 100 million other people. But just as Bill Maher said, the experts talked about social distancing, hand washing, air filters, masks, and sanitizing surfaces but then never never never said, “Hey lard ass, push back from the table and lay off of the fried food and sweets.”
And, arguably, that is exactly what they should have said, if not first, at least on the list of helpful suggestions. I am speaking very personally today but this is not all about me, it is about me and more than a third of this nation.
People like me would try to follow the rules, keeping our distance, wearing masks, washing our hands, but we are surrounded everywhere we go by non-compliant folks who never even tried to avoid spreading the virus while millions of us were especially vulnerable to a potentially lethal case.
Over the years, I’ve tried almost all of the popular weight loss programs. I’ve seen more than a few physicians and worked with personal trainers and have eaten more lettuce than I care to discuss. I have taken prescription medications and I have taken over the counter supplements.
Obesity can be so disheartening because we often don’t feel like we are eating unhealthy foods. We don’t feel like we are overeating. And we can feel like the universe is just against us. It can make you depressed, it leaves you feeling ashamed, and hopeless. The desperation can lead people to wasting money on fad diets, exercise equipment, dangerous supplements, and absurd medical procedures that might work for a period of time, but for most people, the weight they lose only comes back and it brings friends with it.
Many of us have had successful diets, when we got into the zone of daily exercise and eating right, and then, something happens…. A job loss, a divorce, even a run of bad weather that keeps you from walking or jogging, and once the weight starts to come back, and all of your skinny friends start to give you their entirely uninformed opinions about what you are doing wrong and how you can drop the weight, disillusionment takes over and out comes the sweat pants and baggy shirts.
But then comes the pandemic quarantine . . . shut up in the house with Netflix and snack foods. And a national crisis of obesity only gets worse. Last summer, after a physical with all of my numbers on the wrong end of the scale, my long term, very smart, attractive and slender physician let me whine for a bit about how I had tried everything and nothing was working, she said, with a curtained exhausted sigh, “Have you thought about feeling hungry but still not eating?”
She has since denied having said it, especially after I sent her a framed cross-stitched wall hanging for her office that shared, over her name, “Have you thought about feeling hungry but still not eating?” It didn’t feel good to hear but, folks, seriously, have you ever considered feeling hungry but still deciding not to eat? If you have not, then there is a basic issue with dieting that you are missing.
Obesity is complicated. There are many reasons why people become overweight. Certainly, our food supply, full of unnecessary salt, sugar, and fat along with chemicals, preservatives, antibiotics, all served in portions that are two or three times too big, is partially to blame. Some people are blessed with a high metabolism and a kind of indifference towards food that I, quite frankly, envy.
But many of us have jobs that keep us sitting a keyboard for way too many hours in the day. For myself, I know that I am a stress eater, but I am also a boredom eater, and I have trouble sleeping at night which can almost always be cured with a bowl of granola…. Or ice cream, whichever is handy.
But folks, you have never seen a newsreel of people coming out of a concentration camp where some of them are skinny and some are fat. You don’t get fat without eating too much food. The more you get used to eating too much food, the more food it takes to feel full. The more you let stress get to you, working more hours sitting down and then getting fast food or processed foods to save time and energy, the more obesity becomes your closest friend.
Even when we have taken our turn working in the local food pantry, handing out food to the poor and hungry, I realize that all of this free food, in almost every case, is exactly what our clients should not be eating. Many of them don’t even know what to do with the fresh vegetables we sometimes have to offer because they have always eaten pop-tarts, donuts, cookies, and potato chips because they are cheap, universally available, and easy to prepare.
The pandemic has seen many who were already seriously overweight, gaining another 15 or 20 lbs, making them a bigger target for a virus that already seems to especially like to live in the lungs of the obese. As I saw my numbers going up, after the rather Zen comment made by my physician about getting tough enough to be hungry without eating, I accepted the offer of a physician friend to keep in daily contact with me, reporting my weight, glucose level, blood pressure, and pulse every single morning of the week until I had lost over 50 lbs. That was a huge gift of time from him and I will be forever grateful.
I am now trying to lose another 50 on my own….. without coaching or medications or surgery and certainly not wasting money on supplements and fads that we all know will not really work. I know a lot of people who have had Covid. I know more than a few people who have had it twice, many after they were vaccinated. I have known a few who have died. It isn’t over yet.
As we face the potential of new and more deadly variants, versions of Covid that might be able to easily get around our miraculous vaccinations, Bill Maher’s uncomfortable statement of truth remains. For nearly half of us in the second half of our lives, one of the best if not the best thing that we can do for ourselves is to lose weight, eat a more healthy diet, and exercise. And if I may add, exercise outside, in the sunlight, for 30 minutes to an hour every day, without exception.
Everyone can’t afford the kind of medical attention that I was simply given by a friend. Most people can’t afford to work out with a personal trainer. Many people can’t afford to shop in the Whole Foods and health food stores where produce can cost three or four times as much as it does in the less expensive places. I am relatively certain that the chicken I buy at the local box store has been fed more steroids than a member of the Russian Olympic weightlifting team.
Still, Covid-19 is still out there, killing more than 2000 Americans every day. It may begin to go away this fall but, then again, it may come back this winter in the company of an especially virulent strain of the flu and our death tolls could soar once again. But this much I know with absolute certainty, whether the pandemic is ending or just winding up for a new and more deadly surge, you will not be wasting your time if you begin right now, to work on getting your weight into the “normal” range, getting your blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure under control. In fact, even though none of us can become younger, almost any of us could feel ten years younger if we just dropped about 20% of our body weight.
Chances are, even if you have an excellent physician, if you turn to your doctor for help, they will be more likely to prescribe medications than to prescribe an hour long vigorous walk every day. My physician friends tell me that getting patients to change behaviors is nearly impossible, so they prescribe statin drugs to lower their cholesterol. They prescribe anti-depressants in the hope that if you are less depressed you might eat less. Some will even prescribe amphetamines to get you moving more. And these are good doctors who are trying their best to help you but what you seek will not come from the prescription window at the pharmacy.
If doctors thought that their patients would actually do it, they would almost always prescribe eating less, exercising more, and spending more time outside and less time in front of a television.
Sometimes I think that my daily 5 mile walk works in my weight loss program because, during most of that walk, I am more than a mile away from my kitchen cabinets where all of the breads, chips, and sweets are.
I am being personal today because I have reason to believe that at least half of my listeners are also in greater physical danger and are threatened with premature death due to obesity, with or without Covid-19. I hope that those of you who needed to hear what I have had to say today will find the energy and will to embark on your own journey towards a healthier and longer life.
My unsolicited advice is this: without spending an extra dollar on anything, find a friend or two who also want to become more healthy and hold one another accountable in a daily way, reporting to one another your basic health statistics. At first, maybe even challenge one another to a day of fasting once a week.
Fasting will help your stomach to shrink and it will take less food in the following days to feel full.
This is not easy but trust me, I’m a doctor, you are not going to starve. And, folks, like it or not, it is nearly impossible to lose weight while regularly consuming alcohol which is, basically, sugar. Try knocking it off for a month or two. If my saying that frightens you and you don’t think that you can do it, then, ladies and gentlemen, you may have issues beyond obesity. Seriously, if you can’t not drink for a couple of months to help save your health if not your very life, then there are meetings that take place regularly around you where you can get help and there is no shame in asking for help. There is shame in refusing help that is readily available and free.
Don’t break your heart with any drug store supplements or expensive workout equipment. At least at first, just walk, a lot, as fast as you comfortably can.
And, let your food be your medicine. Avoid canned and frozen foods. Avoid sugar and grains and potatoes and focus on fresh fruits and green vegetables. If you eat meat, eat more chicken and fish and less beef and pork. Rediscover the flavors and proteins found in beans, and the energy found in fresh fruit. Get used to reading labels. Don’t eat anything with ingredients you cannot pronounce and try your best to avoid added sugars.
Even most healthy sounding things like yogurt can be loaded with corn sweeteners, dehydrated cane, and every kind of disguise to add sugar to your diet. And remember, if they can hand it to you out of a drive through window, you probably shouldn’t put it in your mouth. Honestly, you really don’t want to know where that stuff has been.
Try to get the stress out of your life. Meditating, for at least 20 minutes a day, really does help. Avoid processed foods. Spend more time in nature and less inside. Stop watching the news all of the time. Eat more fresh fruit and vegetables and – people - clear your conscience by becoming a donor who supports this church and our online podcasts and videos. Trust me, you’ll feel better about yourself after just a few months.
