I used to be obese — my neighborhood changed that
By Richard Svinkin, Co-founder Jaywalk
I was always heavy. I was a husky kid who got bullied for it. I sort of grew out of it in high school when I got taller but when I moved back to New York after grad school to work on the Internet, the weight came back. Rich meals, lots of sitting, not a lot of movement. I took the subway to the office, rarely left my desk, and when I did leave it was for a meal or beers. If I walked it was to places that were basically in the same building. When I was home the same thing happened: I watched TV, went to nearby places, ordered delivery on the regular, drank a lot of soda and beers. The real disaster struck years later when I started to work from home full time. That’s when I got to be sixty pounds over my ideal weight. I was pre-diabetic. I was obese. At age 25.
What’s interesting is that I wasn’t born into all the typical American bad behavior. I’m a native New Yorker. Our people walk through all kinds of weather. My family didn’t even have a car growing up. If we needed something we walked to the store. But that’s OK out in Brooklyn where things are a bit more spread out. Trouble with Manhattan is you don’t even need to leave your block half the time to get whatever you want. New York’s mentality is not much different from the rest of the country’s. It’s about convenience, ostensibly because you’re too busy. You don’t run errands in New York, you get things done, no time wasted, quick and dirty. And all that efficiency adds up. By optimizing you just don’t get any steps in. I realized that making my life super-efficient and ultra-urban made me obese.
And I wasn’t alone. As I grew everyone else I knew grew. My cofounder John went from 185 to 285. He was like a different human. He’s working it off too, now. Many of my other friends slowed down, got into cars, and got bigger and bigger. It was like we were all in Willy Wonka’s factory and we ate the wrong kind of gum.
Image via Johan Mouchet/Unsplash
The Obesity Epidemic
What was happening? I had some ideas.
It’s easy to get heavy in a place like New York, but it’s easier in a place like Louisiana or Alabama where most drive from home to work to the store and then home, never setting foot on a sidewalk. We eat pizza and drink good beer in New York but in places like the midwest and southeast there are literal food deserts where largely processed or really fatty, and secretly sugary food is the only affordable alternative for many folks. What we’re dealing with is an epidemic of sedentarism combined with more excuses for just sitting around.
We spend as much time in front of computers gaming and working as we used to in front of the TV. The average American spends 75 hours a week in front of some kind of screen. Now we’ll even get lost for hours on our smartphones getting constant stimulation as we scroll endlessly through information full of empty calories.
Add in stress about finances, politics, terrorism, and whatever else we’re talking about that day and mix in the slow reversal of our metabolic systems and you’ve got a Mr. Stay Puft in the making.
This is all really bad
Nearly 10% of the US population has type 2 diabetes comorbid with obesity and almost 80 million are what experts call “prediabetic” basically on their way. It costs our system 250+ billion a year and it’s only getting worse. Should we blame the food? Should we blame our sedentarism? Should we blame being bullied as a child? Should we point to the impact of technology? To sugar? To a failed health education hamstrung by big business?
The answer to all of the above is obviously “Yeah, why not?” But complaining isn’t going to turn things around. Neither are extreme diets that fight against on our addicted nerves nor will attempting to run more miles or lift more weight. No. There are no magic bullets. There are no enchanted pills. The most effective — and most horrible — solution to most obesity is gastric bypass surgery but that invasive procedure is expensive and out of reach for most, especially as health care premiums and deductibles continue to rise.
So we’re sunk, right? I thought I was. But the real problem is in how we optimize our lives. I don’t mean this in a wishy-washy, “How Crossfit changed my life” kind of way where you simply say “I’m going to get this done” and hope for the best. We have entered a unique era of human development where, if you live in the US, most of our dietary needs are satiated and then some. We live in an era where leisure draws us inward and not outward.
Nearly 10% of the US population has type 2 diabetes comorbid with obesity and almost 80 million are what experts call “prediabetic” basically on their way. It costs our system 250+ billion a year and it’s only getting worse. Should we blame the food? Should we blame our sedentarism? Should we blame being bullied as a child? Should we point to the impact of technology? To sugar? To a failed health education hamstrung by big business?
We no longer walk to the cafe — we drink a latte in the car. We no longer spend long, happy hours at the bar with friends and walk home. We drink a beer on the couch because we got it delivered with our groceries. We’ve optimized the movement out of our lives and we’ve become addicted to the dream of optimization. It’s an addiction that is hidden and pernicious. The problem is that the optimizing voice in our heads whispers ideas to us just as we’re about to make decisions. Little decisions with big consequences.
“Oh there’s a spot right by the door.”
“Map the shortest distance between A and B and take me there.”
“I’m busy. I’ll go the gym tomorrow.”
“At least this cheap pizza is covered with tomatoes, right?”
“I don’t need to go all the way there, they have the same shit downstairs.”
We’re so distracted, overwhelmed and spent, that the voice has gotten a lot stronger in the last few decades and as smart phones get better, and VR becomes cheaper the situation will only get worse. So the solution has to be in our minds first and foremost. We have to trick our minds. We have to do what I did. But I can’t take much credit. It was largely an accident.
Image via Clem Onojeghuo/Unsplash
I got Lucky
Fast forward through the obese years. I was 31 and working from home full time. I was going stir crazy. I tried going to the gym, even tried getting a personal trainer for a spell but it didn’t really make a dent in my thought patterns and resultant behavior. Even with the gym I picked one that was really close to my apartment and again was driven by the urge to minimize distance to target to and from home. Then in a way, I got lucky.
The project that had consumed most of my time for the previous year came to an end. I got a gig working with a boutique consultancy with a major pharmaceutical/life sciences company and the office was in Manhattan. I lived way in the West 50’s. The office was in the East 40’s. It’s about 2 miles. I started out commuting the “logical” way — taking the 2 or 3 train down to 42nd and the 7 across to grand central.
After a couple of weeks I realized it was taking me a really long time to train it a short distance between inevitable delays and transfer time. Plus I was crammed in like a sardine sweating with and smelling every other straphanger. There were of course buses but a) midtown traffic is ridiculous in rush hour and b) I hate buses, like really hate buses. Taxis suffered in the same traffic and were expensive. So finally it dawned on me through the triage of options.
Why not walk?
People I knew thought I was nuts. And after that first morning I was really tired. I was cranky all day. But there was actually some cool stuff associated with this new, wild idea. First I could stop at a Starbucks of my choosing, say find one with a shorter line, there were several on the way, to get my coffee milkshake. Or I could go to one of those coffee trucks and engage in the great New York breakfast tradition of the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. And there were several of those too. Food was still a big part of the thought process and I had just opened up a world of opportunity for me to fill my face. I was pleased with that.
That’s mostly water and I’m mostly thin-ish now
The body can heal itself if you let it
As days turned into weeks and weeks into months I kept walking to and from work, something started happening. I started feeling less stir crazy and I started noticing things. Cool things. Like an awesome old wine shop, a funky sculpture in the lobby of a building. I would get bored with the same route so I would alter it, sometimes zig zagging one block south, one block east and reverse on the return trip. I saw different light, shadows, heard different sirens, car horns, and the beeping of all kinds of trucks. I walked by interesting restaurants, cool looking bars, diplomatic missions, police and fire stations, small parks, weird stores. I’d see people from all walks of life getting started with their days or eagerly awaiting the escape home. I eavesdropped on interesting conversations. I started feeling and experiencing my city in a new, de-optimized way. I also started noticing who had specials and when and what was worth going to, for me.
At first I ate as much as I used to largely the same way, got as many coffee milkshakes, beers and glasses of wine as before, but I started dropping a little weight anyway. The trick is healthy behavior begets more healthy behavior. I noticed that if I had a heavy meal on the walk or a lot of sugar in my coffee I would quickly tire and get into a bad mood at work or home. So I started making little changes, almost unconsciously, as if my body was taking over and healing. I started skipping the sugar in my coffee. I mixed in salad as a snack sometimes. I’d get a small cone instead of the beast sundae. And after a year or so, through all kinds of weather, 2 miles in the morning, 2 miles in the evening and a mile or so just walking around the office I was where most people should be — 5 miles a day. I had also dropped significant weight. I still enjoyed the cuisine of the world, had booze, got dessert. I just got less of it or mixed in healthier choices with the good stuff. But walking was the critical change agent, at least for me.
The Jaywalk approach was fermenting
In that first year I dropped about 30 lbs. The year after I went to Europe for a while. There everybody walked. And they ate awesome food from all over the world. I figured I’d blow up again. But I followed them as they walked and eventually I was walking 10 miles a day instead of five. I was seeing amazing new things, meeting amazing new people, and experiencing the world anew.
The food in Europe was somehow healthier, even the kabobs and french fries and bratwursts. They cooked better. They’d been doing what we’re only starting to do in this country in the hipster quarters — eating farm to table, requiring organics, cooking smart . The didn’t obsessively juice every ingredient on the sly with sugar and fat. They drank like we do, even more in some countries, but they never had the same deep obesity issues we do here in the States. When I got back I was actually 10 lbs underweight.
After a while, the miles reset themselves to 5 or so a day and I eventually left New York, lived in Portland, the Bay Area and now in Denver. Denver’s not New York, in some areas you really have to get creative to walk unless it’s in a designed park or commercial strip but I’m still keeping a 4 mile a day pace pretty easily and I’m near enough to my ideal weight. I will get it back over 5 I’m sure, my body is already complaining. I still keep to a “fit-ish” diet and I still indulge.
These cities, along with Austin, Seattle, even Dallas are becoming more and more walkable, bikeable, in many ways liveable and “indulgeable” (for those who can afford it). The restaurant scene has significantly changed in the last 10 years and the time is now to solve the obesity problem from the inside out. Not with pills or strict diets. But by putting the phone in your pocket, getting up from your desk or the couch and hitting the streets, even if for a few minutes at first. The best thing about it is it’s not some crazy diet or exercise machine or gadget you buy and stop using after a week. It’s a little decision.
That’s why we made Jaywalk. Our motto is “Walk, get $” and we’re working hard to get you deals if you walk to places. Right now we’re focusing on surfacing cool places nearby you — our app shows a few dozen places in many major US cities — and we’re going to be asking places near you — the yoga studio, the bar, the pool hall — to post unique deals. We also added Spot Share, a way to take pictures of deals you find and share them with folks in your area. We want to make it a lot easier to make the decision to leave the house and start walking. Hungry? Don’t order pizza, go and grab an amazing brick-oven calzone from the new place a few blocks away. Thirsty? Don’t raid the fridge, find a bar that serves amazing beer just over the park.
Jaywalk is designed to help make those little decisions every day and while we’re just getting started we’re headed in the right direction. Download it now and take a stroll, see what’s around. Get out of the house. Get out of the office. Get out there. Join us in figuring out how we can all lose weight, get happy, and fill our bellies and souls as we discover the world outside our doors.
