While walking up and down Mill Avenue in Tempe to get my favorite Greek salad from Med Fresh Grill (no onions, light on the olives, dressing on the side), I listened to the audiobook of Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness. It’s a good book and I’ve no doubt listened to it at least twice before, but each time I take something different away from it.

This time, I thought of one particular book section in relation to my obesity. I know that the word “obesity” carries negative connotations and will no doubt cause overly sympathetic people to say, “Aww, you’re not obese!” so let me just say that as far as the Body Mass Index (BMI) is concerned, yes, I am currently obese at 260 pounds. At 185 pounds, I will just be “overweight” and at the magic number of 154 pounds, I will finally, finally be “normal.”

Stumbling on Happiness suggests what we can all assume: that different people have different levels of happy.  People might see me, an obese person, on the street and think, wow, that must suck to be so heavy. And yes, there are times when I wish I were thinner, though these times are relatively few and far between and usually have something to do with an airline seat or a glance at a Herve Leger dress that does not (and will not) ever come in my size, rightfully so.  But the rest of my days are just like most of anybody else’s.  I talk on the phone to family and friends, I do homework, I go grocery shopping and do laundry just like the rest of the world.  Still, though I often see people comment on other people’s weight: “How did she let it get so bad?”

The answers to this question are simple: weight gain is gradual, and weight loss is difficult. Because thin people look at heavy people and only consider the adverse effects of being or becoming overweight, they overlook the striking similarities between a thin person’s experience and an obese person’s. We both love our partners, hate traffic, and feel pangs of sadness when we can’t afford the new $500 purse on Net-a-Porter.  But just as some judgmental normal-sized people may overestimate our differences, we as obese people have a tendency to brush them aside.

It’s easy to avoid most sore points: just use the self-checkout so the clerk won’t judge you for buying the candy bar, cancel the subscription to US Weekly because you don’t want to see another Olsen Twin, and convince the person on the other end of a long-distance relationship to come visit you instead of the other way around.  But these moments, the moments that hinder us, must be our motivation to succeed and lose weight.  Though we can put the target way out there, like saying we want to lose weight so we live longer, we must remember that instant gratification is what got us into this mess in the first place, and it can be our salvation on the way out.

The final point I’ll make today is one of the most important points I’ve taken from Stumbling on Happiness.  When people are asked to imagine themselves locking a door tomorrow, they think very specifically about a key going into a lock on a door, or they envision turning the deadbolt from inside.  When the same people are asked to think of themselves locking a door a year from now, they describe much more abstract terms, like “securing the house.”  This drew a parallel for me between weight loss now and weight loss eventually.  Every day, we must wake up, eat our vegetables, exercise, and drink water, and these things must become routine.  It’s easy to get bogged down in the numbers, in the timeline, in the idea that a year from now, we must look a certain way in order to be happy.  The goal for my weight loss now is to continue putting the metaphorical key in the metaphorical lock, and to understand that this and only this will lead to the metaphorically secure house in the future.