Autumn Thoughts

I apologize for the delay with this post, but I had an article prepared about how nice it is to get out walking this time of year with all the rich autumn colours, and how to keep our weight loss going through the autumn and winter months, but then something happened. I was at my local hospital on a follow-up appointment when I got talking to this guy; it was obvious he had a serious weight problem, and I started telling him about this site and how it had helped me, then we were called in for our separate appointments, but we ended up leaving at the same time and continued our conversation over a cup of coffee.

He was in his late sixties, very easy to talk to, and only too willing to tell me what an unfair life he had led. He seemed to give me his whole life story, starting with his failed marriage after only a short period of time, because women are totally unreasonable, and lack any sort of understanding of men in general, and he was the innocent party. His working life wasn’t much better; he never reached his true potential because his manager had it in for him, and never gave him the promotions that he really deserved, but it was nothing that he had done to cause it. We then got into talking about his weight gain, which is something I am always interested in as it gives me more information for this site. I was quite surprised at what he told me, he firstly blamed the fact that a McDonalds opened very close to him, and they don’t make it clear that if you drink too many shakes, and eat too many burgers and chips it can cause you to put on weight. He then went on to say what made it worse was when a pizza shop opened opposite  the top of his road, only a few houses away, and he kept getting leaflets through his door advertising these pizza’s, again it was obvious it was not his fault he kept eating pizza’s.

Apart from his weight problem, and his type two diabetes, he had a serious liver condition, caused by alcohol, but again this was not his fault, this was down to a discount off-license opening at the corner of his road, only four doors away, so how could you resist. Sadly since our talk his liver finally let him down, but he didn’t even listen to his doctors when they told him he had to stop drinking, he actually told me that they could easily be wrong, and he would give up for nothing. One thing that did come across was that he was bitter at the way his life had panned out, because it was not his fault.

I know I have had things go badly wrong at times in my life, but it has always been down to bad decisions that I have made, and as such you have to take responsibility for your own mistakes. There is a growing line of thought these days, that when things go wrong it must be somebody or something else’s fault and definitely not ours, its fast becoming a ridiculous blame culture. When we are children there is someone there to make decisions for us, but when we are adults and of sound mind, we should all take responsibility for our own decisions and actions. I think a good Autumn Thought should be for us all to think about what it really means to take responsibility for our own lives, there is also an up side, because then not only are we responsible for the bad, but also all the good things that work out really well….