Additional Habit Advisories

New York Times wellness columnist and editor Tara Parker-Pope poses the question: “So why is it so hard to form new healthy habits?”

The previous Childhood Obesity News post mentioned the importance of the mind in any effort to improve habits. But like many issues, this one has two sides. For some of us, all the time, and for all of us some of the time, our minds do too much of the wrong thing. Parker-Pope writes,

We make bold resolutions to start exercising or lose weight, for example, without taking the steps needed to set ourselves up for success.

Motivation is all well and good, but often it simply isn’t enough to make something happen or guarantee that it will continue to happen. It is too easy to congratulate ourselves over good resolutions, and then sort of let the performance aspect slide. So here are five helpful hints, and don’t be surprised if they sound familiar.

1. Stack your habits

One idea is to “stack” your habits. Link something new and useful with something you already know you’re going to do, like having morning coffee. This can go along with another precept, which is to start small. (Again, it’s the “baby steps” paradigm.)

2. Start small

Parker-Pope cites the example of Dr. Fogg and his pushups. Most people enjoy their morning bladder-emptying, so there is a positive experience that a nascent habit can be stacked or linked with. In this case, it would be doing two pushups immediately after visiting the restroom. This was also starting small, because eventually he was doing at least 40, and sometimes as many as 80, pushups every morning.

3. Do it every day

Establishing a habit might take not many days, or it might require, as one study demonstrated, as many as 254 days. The median amount of time, 66 days, has been a convenient number for people to cite when discussing this subject.

4. Make it easy

Research psychologist Wendy Wood used this method to propel herself out the door in the morning, reasoning that if she slept in her running outfit, it should be very easy to wake up, put on her sneakers, and just head on out. Or, if you are the type who goes to a gym, have your gear packed up and stationed at the door, ready for you to grab it and hit the road. Parker-Pope summarizes a section of Dr. Wood’s book about habit formation:

In one study, researchers changed the timing of elevator doors so that workers had to wait nearly half a minute for the doors to close. (Normally the doors closed after 10 seconds.)

It was just enough of a delay that it convinced many people that taking the stairs was easier than waiting for the elevator. “It shows how sensitive we are to small friction in our environment,” said Dr. Wood. “Just slowing down the elevator got people to take the stairs, and they stuck with it even after the elevator went back to normal timing.”

5. Reward yourself

With some goals, like weight loss, positive reinforcement does not come along very quickly, so we reward ourselves as we go along. This is what some express as temptation bundling, or pairing the beneficial routine that you hope to reinforce, with an activity that is fun, or at least pleasant.

We will have a bit more to say about oft-repeated suggestions next time.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How to Build Healthy Habits,” NYTimes.com, 06/07/21
Image by Dean Jarvey/CC BY 2.0

More Deep Thoughts About Habits

The previous post reinforced the idea of improvement in small, steady increments (the “baby steps” method) and outlined the distinction between a habit and a routine. Establishing a routine takes conscious work, and the sooner we get over expecting it to be easy, the quicker we can transform the behavior into an unconscious habit. Some professionals have viable ideas about how to vanquish the mental roadblocks and stay on the road to building effortless habits.

Flexibility is needed, plus the willingness to reflect on goals, motives, values, priorities, limits, boundaries, and many other concepts. Like it or not, the mind is the source of pretty much all progress. Harvard Business Review writer Kristi DePaul’s thoughts continue here.

Pro tips

What, at this stage, should we ask the mind to do? For starters, we want it to take a good hard look at why we haven’t already taken a particular bit of behavior and turned it into a habit. This might require us to try something new, like learning better time management skills, or getting up earlier.

The nudge department

A nudge is some kind of event, incident, or symbolic object that reminds a person to do something. The author offers the example of someone who wants to advance in their career, and vows to read more industry-related news. DePaul writes,

What you can do: Create Google Alerts for topics directly related or even adjacent to your career interests, prompting you to click through and read at least one or two alerts every day.

She also endorses “temptation bundling,” as suggested by behavioral scientist and Professor Katy Milkman: “Take an activity you don’t like to do and something you do enjoy — now, bundle them together.” For instance, if you never have time to read, connect your device of choice to an audiobook and listen to it while running on a treadmill.

Like many other counselors, DePaul stresses the importance of having a “trusted manager, peer, friend, partner, or family member” as an accountability ally, to gently remind us when we stray off track. One popular comedian takes care of the accountability issue by viewing his own midsection in a mirror and cussing himself out.

The method is not recommended for everyone. According to DePaul and others in the helping professions,

[D]on’t forget to be compassionate with yourself as you embark on this journey toward more thoughtful routines, and hopefully, better habits. Any long-term change is going to take time. That’s just the reality. There will be ups and downs. But you are capable, and if you’ve made it this far, you are also prepared.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “What Does It Really Take to Build a New Habit?,” HBR.org, 02/02/21
Image by Nenad Stojkovic/CC BY 2.0

Deep Thoughts About Habits

Given the overwhelming prominence of habits in our lives, in a Harvard Business Review article, Kristi DePaul ponders what it takes to build a new one. She writes,

Our habits govern our lives, literally. Research shows that around half of our daily actions are driven by repetition.

[T]he neuroscience behind habit formation doesn’t offer shortcuts. Experts advocate for the old-fashioned approach: incremental progress. Dedicated commitment is what, time and again, has proven to lead to change.

Yes, it’s the old “Baby Steps” trope. And why not? Something that has worked for so many people will most likely continue to work for more of us.

DePaul takes a rather jaundiced view of some ideas discussed in recent Childhood Obesity News posts. She says that when someone wants to create long-term change, the first step is to build not habits, but routines. She draws a distinction between the two, and this is why:

Nir Eyal… told me that this is a common fallacy — one that tends to end in disappointment. “When we fail at forming new patterns of behavior, we often blame ourselves,” he said, “rather than the bad advice we read from someone who doesn’t really understand what can and cannot be a habit.”

So apparently, the ability of a behavior to become habitual is not without limits. A routine needs to have attention paid to the frequent and deliberate repetition of it. In other words, it requires intention, which is a product of conscious thought. Only when we get to the point of doing something without thinking does it become a habit. That process takes a while, and people want to skip that tedious “routine” phase, so they wind up being unsuccessful habit creators.

What is it about routine?

A routine is not only intentional and effortful, it can even be downright uncomfortable. So it comes as no surprise that DePaul’s habit-formation tips are actually routine-formation tips. Number one is “Set your intentions.” And be real. That means accepting the fact that it’s going to take some work. So, start by choosing realistically, and then summon up your reserves of patience, commitment, and (shudder) — self-discipline.

DePaul quotes habit expert Charles Duhigg as saying “There’s no such thing as 31 days to start a new habit.” Readers may recall that another authority puts the average time span as around 66 days — but even that might not be long enough. This applies to good habits, naturally. Forming a tiramisu habit may take only a couple of days.

Another person she quotes urges any aspiring habit-former to reflect on what they are trying to achieve, and why. The understanding of “why?” can serve as an explosive charge capable of blowing up roadblocks. This is reminiscent of the views expressed in MindTools.com article:

We’re also motivated by reflecting on our progress towards our goals. A 2010 study reinforced this: here, researchers monitored people who were trying to form better eating habits. They found that those who were encouraged to reflect on how they were doing, and who adjusted their habits accordingly, were ultimately more successful.

It cannot be repeated too often, the mind is the source of all progress. Next time, we learn more about how to demolish obstacles and stay on the habit-formation trail.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “What Does It Really Take to Build a New Habit?,” HBR.org, 02/02/21
Source: “The Power of Good Habits,” MindTools.com, 2023
Image by Natalie Maynor/CC BY 2.0

More Habit Advisories

So far, we have looked at lists of three or five useful tips, provided by helpful professionals, for establishing solid positive habits. This time, there are seven pieces of advice, courtesy of MasterClass. The introductory paragraph brings up two topics very worthy of discussion:

Habits aren’t always consciously formed — they can develop when you are operating on autopilot. For example, you might want a glass of wine after a particularly stressful day. At first, it’s just the stressful days that make you crave a glass of wine, but after a while, you have a glass of wine every time you get home from work, even on good days. You’ve formed a new habit without even realizing it.

The first sentence embodies a real paradox. Yes, a bad habit can certainly form “when you are operating on autopilot.” But as we have seen, to set a behavior on auto-pilot is also exactly what we strive to do — when it is a positive, beneficial, constructive behavior. For instance, a person might have an invincible habit of locking the door as soon as they have entered their house, apartment, or room.

For this person, locking up without expending conscious mental energy has become the default behavior, and it is a useful one. Ideally, all good intentions would be buttressed with such sturdy reinforcement. When the doctor says, “Take this pill every day,” we want it to become second nature. Making that happen is what these suggestions for good habit-formation mojo intend to empower.

A two-faced benefactor

Regarding the problem of patient non-compliance, Gérard Reach pointed out how helpful it is when a patient can be spared the cognitive effort of following a doctor’s orders every day. Hopefully, they will figure out how to automate the task. A solution might be, to keep the pill bottle on top of the denture container, which tethers the pill-swallowing to the absolutely necessary task of toothing up.

As Prof. Reach would say, “[T]he person doesn’t have to think about it.” So the auto-pilot tendency is definitely a double-edged sword. Because, as that quoted paragraph suggests, one of life’s strange mysteries is the astonishing speed with which a bad habit can materialize, compared to the much more leisurely pace set by good habit formation.

The MasterClass 7

These are, in brief, the seven habit-builders suggested by (and explained in much greater detail by) the MasterClass article.

1.”Write down your goals” — Exactly which bad habits do you want to drop, and which good ones will you cultivate? (A person might, like a detective in a movie, stick notes up all over the place.) It’s all about intention.
2. “Avoid triggers.” A trigger might be a person, a place, an activity, a scent, a song… and all must be assiduously avoided.
3. “Identify the root cause of your habits.” Again, the conscious mind is called upon to take an active part.
4. “Focus on making small changes.” Or, as many counselors choose to phrase this concept, take “baby steps,” like, for instance, a five-minute walk every day. The dailiness means more than the distance covered. The important part is to keep at it until the habit is so ingrained, it’s just part of life.
5. “Establish a daily routine.” Again, it’s all about consistency.
6. “Measure your progress.” Journal-keeping is recommended, and so is the use of a habit-tracking app.
7. “Find an accountability partner.” It is always good to have a friend along for the ride, and even better to have a group of like-minded seekers.

For more about goals, triggers, root causes, small changes, daily routines, progress measurement, and friends who share your commitment, please have a look at the BrainWeighve App User Manual.

Source: “How to Build a Habit: 7 Tips for Building Good Habits,” MasterClass.com. 08/02/22
Image by OKF Open Science/CC BY-SA 2.0

Habit Advisories — Another Group of Five

As Behavioral scientist and Professor Katy Milkman did in our previous post, MindTools.com also offers five tips for the establishment and maintenance of positive habits.

Of course, by now we know why they are important. A habit just becomes part of a person. There is no need to think about it or write it on the To-Do list. A good habit is simply another life function, as automatic as scratching an itch. Good habits can help enormously toward meeting our personal goals, and as mentioned here recently, they can really increase the odds that a person will be “compliant” or “adherent” when a doctor’s orders need to be followed. So, what are this article’s suggestions?

Five solid ones

First, identify what exactly it is that you hope to achieve. The road to that goal is paved with the good habits you develop, so knowing where you are headed is pretty important. A person who plans to drive from Milwaukee to New York has no use for a set of directions on how to get to California. So, where do you want to go? Once that is determined, figure out a daily action or practice that will help you get there. The dailiness is the key.

Good habits seem to thrive in the morning, because, for most people, that is their most productive time of day. Setting a regular time (and sticking with it) is one effective way to attach the habit to another aspect of life, so they will go together, as a beloved old song had it, “like a horse and carriage.” You wouldn’t dream of trying to take your carriage anywhere without first hitching the horse to it. Likewise, with a solid habit, it would not occur to you to let 7:00 AM go by without doing five push-ups because the two things are that intertwined.

The third pick is to get your brain involved:

As you progress with your new habit, reflect on how it’s working for you. If you’re struggling to stick to it, think about why this is. Were you too ambitious? If so, consider setting a more manageable short-term goal to re-motivate yourself.

Or, if your new habit isn’t delivering the change that you expected, reflect on what’s gone wrong. You may need to tweak your habit to make sure that it’s delivering real change.

Another winning strategy is to develop self-discipline, because it will probably come in handy. Psychologists have posited different lengths of time that it takes to solidly establish a new habit. The author’s source says, on average, it is 66 days, which is just over two months. He has suggestions about how to make it to the finish line.

“Get Support” is a very important aspect of positive habit formation. For instance, if you want to improve your agility, balance, and coordination, practicing the art of tai chi is helpful — and even more helpful is a group that meets every morning in a nearby park. If such a group does not exist, maybe you could start one. In a pinch, a videotape on the Internet provides a support group of a kind, which is better than no backup at all.

Even without a close friend to be the “accountability partner,” a person can join up with an online group whose mutual interest in improvement will help to keep everybody on track. But wait, there is more. The authors also present a bonus suggestion:

When you decide to establish new habits in your life, focus on one at a time. If you try to overhaul your entire schedule at once, you’ll likely get overwhelmed and quickly revert to old behaviors.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Power of Good Habits,” MindTools.com, 2023
Image by Michael Coghlan/CC BY-SA 2.0

Various Habit Advisories

Behavioral scientist and Professor Katy Milkman’s message is that in order to promote positive life changes, you don’t have to be a hyper-achiever with the willpower of steel. You just need to cultivate the habit of cultivating positive habits. Assigning various life activities to “autopilot” eliminates temptation. People who have pioneered this path are always ready to share their secrets. This author has five.

One is to set a specific goal. “I will do some walking every day” is a good start, but “I will at least walk around the block every day” has a better chance of turning into a solid habit. Another is to make a plan that is both detailed and tied to some other circumstance. For example,

A plan like “I’ll study Spanish for 30 minutes, five days a week” is OK. But a detailed, cue-based plan like “Every workday after my last meeting, I’ll spend 30 minutes studying Spanish in my office” is much more likely to stick as a habit. Making this kind of plan reduces the chances you’ll forget to follow through because the when and where in your plan will serve as cues to action that jog your memory.

Dr. Milkman’s third suggestion is to bring fun into the equation. “Regular exercise” is a bit broad. Solidifying it into one dance workout class per week plus one rock-climbing session per week is a promise of two enjoyable activities every seven days. And who doesn’t like fun? Then, there is “temptation-bundling”:

Consider only letting yourself enjoy an indulgence you crave while working toward your goal. For example, only let yourself binge-watch your favorite show while at the gym or enjoy a beloved podcast while cooking healthy meals. My own research shows that temptation bundling improves follow-through; it transforms goal pursuit into a source of pleasure, not pain.

Fourth, allow yourself some leeway at the start, and that flexibility can allow for addition as well as postponement. It may be necessary to put off your promised around-the-block walk until after lunch. But it can also mean doing a morning walk and then a bonus afternoon walk.

Suggestion number five is, “Find the right kind of social support”:

Good habits are contagious, so try to catch some by hanging out with people who are a little ahead of you on the learning curve… You’re probably better off joining an established running club, than asking a few friends who aren’t yet in the habit of jogging to get in shape with you. People in the running club have already built the habits you want.

Incidentally, the BrainWeighve program, the brainchild of Dr. Pretlow and his team, is big on specific planning, and the smartphone app guides the user through the process of making and solidifying plans. Check out the User Manual and see!

Source: “How to build a habit in 5 steps, according to science,” CNN.com, 11/29/21
Image by liveactionsports/CC BY 2.0

Some Habit Advisories

The most recent post, about non-compliance or non-adherence in a medical setting, stresses the crucial importance of habit formation because as Professor Gérard Reach phrased it, adherence then becomes non-intentional, “thereby sparing patients’ cognitive efforts.”

In other words, the person doesn’t have to think about it. Certain behaviors can be put on auto-pilot, which is only a problem when the behavior has negative effects. The secret is to make sure all our habits are positive ones. But first, how does a person even form a habit? In some cases, intentionally. Many seekers have discovered effective strategies.

Author and speaker James Clear names three simple methods for good habit-building. The first is to start with something “so easy you can’t say no.” The key is consistency. Even if you only exercise for one minute per day, the persistent dailiness of it will eventually take hold and blossom. Clear writes,

Prove to yourself that you can stick to something small for 30 days. Then, once you are on a roll and remaining consistent, you can worry about increasing the difficulty.

The second key is reflection. People being the complicated creatures that we are, there is often an emotionally-based roadblock in our way that doesn’t really need to be there. The example Clear gives is of a woman who realized the main reason she didn’t like to exercise was being looked at by other people.

One day her brain decided to expose the wonky thought process that kept her from working out, and her subconscious messaged her conscious brain and said the equivalent of, “Duh! I could get a video and do some yoga at home.” Committing to that, twice a week, became one of the foundations for positive habit-building.

The next one is, “Develop a plan for when you fail.” But wait — this is just basically assuming that failure is your destiny. Isn’t that terribly negative? Well, no, it’s just realistic. It is one of the built-in roadblocks, but it can be moved out of the way. Okay then, what would be a good plan for when you fail? Resolve that it will prove to be a lone instance. Clear writes,

Make this your new motto: “Never miss twice.” I find the “never miss twice” mindset to be particularly useful. Maybe I’ll miss one workout, but I’m not going to miss two in a row. Maybe I’ll eat an entire pizza, but I’ll follow it up with a healthy meal. Maybe I’ll forget to meditate today, but tomorrow morning I’ll be oozing with Zen.

The big message here is, our past is not our destiny. A simple, everyday thing — like a good habit — can make an enormous difference, and the only way to find out is to give it a try.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “3 Simple Things You Can Do Right Now to Build Better Habits,” JamesClear.com, undated
Image by Nenad Stojkovic/CC BY 2.0

Non-Adherence Is the Default Option

Non-adherence is the default option. So says Gérard Reach of the Sorbonne’s Education and Health Promotion Laboratory, who wants to know why patients sometimes will not do what their medical advisors have advised them to do for their own good.

What does default mean, exactly? A couple of things, but the applicable meaning here is, “a selection made usually automatically or without active consideration due to lack of a viable alternative.” Another dictionary puts it a different way: “What happens or appears if you do not make any other choice or change.”

Sadly, the default option for humans is usually to do nothing, rather than something. This is strangely true even when the person knows full well that she or he ought to be doing something.

Non-adherence is the same as non-compliance, and it happens a lot, increasing the severity of serious illnesses and the number of unnecessary deaths. Just like so many other factors, patient non-compliance needlessly bumps up healthcare costs.

So, what can bring about an increase in patient adherence? What can make it possible? As in so many cases of human behavior, it appears that studying the most successful performers would give some clues. This has been done,

[…] using concepts largely drawn from humanities, philosophy of mind, and behavioral economics and presents the findings of empirical studies supporting these hypotheses.

When someone brushes their teeth, they automatically rinse the toothpaste from their mouth. There is no need to consult the “to-do” list as a reminder. When a behavior is automatic, consciously remembering to do it is not a factor. Nor is it performed in order to dutifully check it off a list. Without reflection or debate, it just happens, as is the nature of a firmly ingrained habit.

How can that automatic quality be transferred to actions the doctor advises? Habit formation is crucial because it “allows adherence to become non-intentional, thereby sparing patients’ cognitive efforts.”

The author’s conclusions come from 20 years of observing patients with diabetes but, he says, “can be applied to all chronic diseases.” It seems that the relationship between the patient and the health professional is crucial. Two major factors are patient education, and shared medical decision-making.

The non-compliance problem was been officially recognized in academic literature for at least 40 years, although of course it is probably as old as time. It has been approached in various ways although, Reach says, “they fail to address its underlying mental mechanisms”:

Non-adherence may well be the default option, with only some patients managing, with considerable effort, to perform the unnatural action of practicing a treatment over the long term. The real question then becomes, how is patient adherence possible?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How is Patient Adherence Possible? A Novel Mechanistic Model of Adherence Based on Humanities,” Tandfonline.com, 07/18/23
Source: “Default,” Merriam-Webster.com, undated
Source: “Default,” OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com, undated
Image by 807th Medical Command/CC BY 2.0

Obesity and Comedy

What is it with comedians, obesity, and the compulsion to tell the public all about it? And here is a twist — two individuals in the entertainment business whose weight situations have proven interesting in ways that the public apparently never tires of.

Rebel Wilson gained 100 pounds in college because of polycystic ovarian syndrome, and still managed to launch a career as an actor and comedian. Another factor is a problem that most women will not face, but because of her role as a character called Fat Amy in a film series, she was contractually required to maintain her weight for five years.

Time goes on

Later on, approaching age 40, Wilson was compelled by the medical necessity of addressing the PCOS condition in hopes of being able to freeze some eggs. This led to declaring a “Year of Health” in which self-care would be her main mission. She switched to a high-protein diet and worked with a personal trainer, whose motto is “Weight loss is a marathon, not a sprint.” Then, though many people gained weight during the coronavirus pandemic, she found the lack of work-related demands helped her to ease up on the stress-related eating.

That same trainer also is in favor of progress photos. In Wilson’s case, these were shared widely along the way to an 80-pound weight loss. Her social media followers contributed lots of encouragement, although a subset of fans wanted her to remain the “funny fat girl.” She also found solace in the concept that if you love yourself as you are, it is much easier to change.

Comedian, pianist, and public speaker

As a child in a small, intolerant town, Owen Benjamin was abnormally tall and, in his own words, “super fat,” but not inclined to be combative. He endured quite a lot of bullying before discovering that he could get some relief by making people laugh. Thanks to his father’s professional connections, Benjamin was in the children’s chorus of an opera at age six, and knew from then on show business would be his life’s work.

As a grownup, he achieved a fair amount of success as a comedian, then decided to get back to the land and try farming and raising a family in a remote area of the country. But he keeps in touch with fans and critics through social media and podcasting. Some people love him; others, not so much. They just enjoy ragging on him and scoring points with other haters.

At some point in his adult life, Benjamin weighed 320 pounds, which is a lot even for a preternaturally tall human. He has at some point stated that “fat women are gross,” but with a professional comic, it’s hard to tell what is sincere and what is a bit. He has also publicly called former Confederate Alex Jones fat. And all along, weight has been a major issue. Only a couple of weeks ago, he posted a tweet saying,

I’m down 50 lbs in 3 months and want to report my findings. I gained a lot of weight homesteading because I figured nutrient and calorie rich food if it’s raw and unprocessed wouldn’t put on weight. I was very wrong.

Because of his provocative political opinions, which may be intentionally exaggerated for the purpose of keeping the public interested, Benjamin has a large number of followers who enjoy arguing about his true motives. A section of Reddit is devoted to him, where fans and foes love to bicker about how large he is/was/should be, and make fun of his selfie-jogging videos. They get all worked up, squabbling over their guesses about Benjamin’s BMI, which is a difficult call because his height is variously reported as 6’6″, 6’7″, and even 6’8″.

The bottom line is that this comedian seems to have segued into becoming a professional fat person, and may find out, as Rebel Wilson did, that it is not an easy role to escape from.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Here’s Exactly How Rebel Wilson Lost More Than 80 Pounds,” WomensHealthMag.com, 07/05/22
Source: “Girl on guy 116: owen benjamin,” GirlOnGuy.net, 12/03/13
Source: “Brainy Quote,” BrainyQuote.com, undated
Image by Carlos Pacheco/CC BY 2.0

Blake Hammond Brings on the Fat Jokes

It is always interesting to hear fat jokes from an obese comedian (others, not so much.) For anyone who works in the field of obesity prevention or alleviation, an overweight standup comic’s act might contain useful insights and even revelations.

For Blake Hammond, who bills himself as “Cincinnati’s premier fat comedian,” it all started when he was a small and “somewhat sickly” child, ditching first grade to stay home and watch Saturday Night Live reruns. He especially liked the Weekend Update segments, and later, after earning a degree in journalism, he became a freelance writer of reviews and features. But his reviews somehow tended to turn into roasts.

Accepting that he mainly wanted to write jokes, he started to dabble in live comedy by going up at open mics. At the same time, he was working intermittently at a restaurant, which enabled him to keep a finger on the pulse of what everyday people were thinking about, which is useful knowledge for anyone who puts together a comedy routine. With another comic, Jeremy Johnston, he co-hosts a podcast whose format is “two fat guys on a couch talking.”

Self-image and other issues

Hammond variously describes himself as a guy who looks like an Easter egg, a failed celebrity chef, or Jabba the Hutt. He talks about being picked on in grade school, “but I was fat, so I deserved it.” He recalls the marriage proposal he made: “I got down on my knee and my girlfriend called 911.”

He objects to the term “person of size” because it abbreviates to POS, the same initials as a very rude insult. (Sadly, his funniest fat jokes are not suitable for repetition here.) And there are dark hints. Hammond told an interviewer that he suffers from “crippling anxiety,” and he has referenced suicide. He talks about fat nightmares, which include shopping at the Big and Tall store and being weighed by the doctor.

Of course, if a certain type of crime occurs, there is an advantage to being fat, because “If they find a body on a hiking trail, they’re not going to come looking for me.”

For more on the intersection of obesity and comedy, see these posts:

“How Funny Is Obesity, Anyway?”
“A Strange Fellowship”
“Edutainment and Jim Gaffigan’s Books”
“Hefty Humor”
“Is Laughter Always Good Medicine?”
“Lisa Lampanelli and Stuffed”
“Mindy and Monica”
“‘Insatiable’ Revisited”

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Cincinnati Comedian Blake Hammond to Tape Amazon Prime Special at MOTR Pub,” Citybeat.com, 10/26/21
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