Thought Quotient

Have you heard of this guy? Steve Vaught? Steve who? Steve Vaught, a 400 pound man, is walking across America. I applaud him for this. In a society that looks for excuses, scapegoats, and anything to shun responsibility for their actions, this man is doing something about an issue affecting him — his weight.

Here’s some quotes from the Washington Post article:

This spring, as he neared his 40th birthday, Vaught had an epiphany: If he didn’t lose the weight, he would die before 50. But dieting would not work, he decided, and neither would normal exercise. He knew he was the kind of guy who could rationalize his way out of one three-mile walk after another. “My weakness,” he said, “is the easy way out.” So Vaught made it hard. On April 10, he left his home in San Diego — and his wife and two children — and started walking, alone, to New York.

There’s something about this nation’s geography that inspires this kind of journey — to hike the Appalachian Trail, to kayak the entire Mississippi River, or just to drive from Maine to Key West, and maybe make sense of things along the way. Which is how it has gone for Vaught, on the road mulling issues far beyond weight or willpower.

Fifteen years ago, he was the fun guy. A slew of girlfriends, a bunch of friends, a witty streak so hot he would gladly take the stage at a comedy club open-mike night. Then one evening in October 1990, driving too fast against the setting sun, he struck and killed an elderly couple crossing the street. The accident sent him to jail for 10 days, ruined him financially and dulled him emotionally. When he started to put on the weight, he just didn’t care. He remembers little about the next three years.

After the birth of their first child, he grudgingly went to therapy, just so April would know she had done everything she could in case he killed himself. Medication snapped him out of his depression. But life didn’t get any easier. A few businesses failed, and they went deep in debt on a house. And the weight, he realized, was bringing him down.

“It has nothing to do with weight anymore,” he says. “It’s about getting back to the person I was.”

Check out his personal website at www.thefatmanwalking.com .