Holy crap, that’s exactly how I got fat. It’s also why I keep getting e-mails about kitty litter. When I register with sites online to redeem my Paw Points from boxes of kitty litter or to comment on message boards or just to read the stupid New York Times online, I have to fill out forms – forms with lots and lots of checkboxes. Sometimes the boxes are unchecked, but sometimes they are already checked for me, as if the webmaster wants to save me the dreaded exertion of clicking my mouse. But usually the webmaster just wants to subscribe me to their e-mail list and sell my address to third party advertisers. If I want to keep my in-box on its spam-free diet, I’ve got to move my mouse two centimeters to the right and one centimeter up and click to uncheck that box. Otherwise, I get e-mails advertising rolling pet carriers that look like camping gear.

Humans like routines. We all have checkboxes that are automatically checked in our lives. Back in 2004 here’s what the form of my average day looked like:

PastaQueen’s life in 2004

When I decided to change my lifestyle I had to actively start unchecking some of those boxes while I also worked hard to check the other ones. After several years, my default settings are now mostly healthy and active ones. It would be seriously strange for me to buy a pack of Mentos and eat all four rolls in a day, but back then it was not that odd at all.

I think one of the reasons the obesity epidemic is increasing is because the default settings of the world tend to make you fat. Most people don’t have to do a lot of exercise to survive. Deep-fried chicken wings are quick and easy to pick up from the drive-through and require less work than preparing something yourself. Habits and behaviors that tend to make you fat are the ones checked by default in our current ecosystem. For many people, if they want to be thinner or healthier they have to actively make a choice to uncheck those boxes. They have to make time to exercise or grill a chicken breast. They have to change the default setting.

But that’s really hard to do and I think it’s the reason why the obesity rate is just going to increase. I can just uncheck those boxes with my mouse, but actually making those changes in my life was very difficult. I couldn’t just click a link to unsubscribe myself from the “Unhealthy habits” mailing list. If I were to let things slide, I know my default settings could shift again. I’ve got to keep making that effort, every day, and make sure those boxes remain checked. I’ve also been living without cable television for over a year, so the dark suck of Law & Order marathons are no longer a problem.

I learned a lot about people. Some people were willing to lie to try to get into the group so they could get paid the participation fee. I went through about 3 pages of a diaper survey with a woman before I asked her what cartoon character was on the side of the brand name diapers she had supposedly bought, but she couldn’t give me the correct answer. Then I had to go back through 3 pages of answers and erase all the pencil marks circling her responses. Yeah, we were so low tech we didn’t even have computers. I was grateful we didn’t have rotary phones. When I did a grocery shopping survey I learned almost everyone bought cookies and typically at least once a week, which made me feel a lot less guilty about my then crappy eating habits.

By far the easiest survey I did was for the Indiana Lottery. Almost everyone I called played the lottery. Some people spent at least $100 a month on tickets. I was gobsmacked. If these people were to take that $100 a month and sock it away in an IRA or invest it wisely they actually would be millionaires in 30-40 years. But instead they were tossing away a lot of money each month in the hopes of getting rich quick.

When I read the overly hyped study recently that most diets don’t work, I thought about all those Midwesterners who pay their money to the state lottery every month. They’re looking for a quick fix to their financial situation with minimal work and cost, but in the long run they’d be better off doing something different with their money. The “dieting” referred to in the study is the same type of temporary fix, going on a plan for a little while and then going off of it so all the weight comes back. Most of these people would be better off if they applied their efforts and concentration to a sustainable long-term solution and not a quick and fast reward that is unlikely to give them a good return on their work.

But people still play the lottery and people still diet and they probably always will. Maybe this is just the way the human brain works. And sometimes people do win the lottery, though I hear it’s just as likely to screw up your life as make it better. I sometimes wonder if everyone who becomes thin finds it to be just as fabulous as they imagined or if they’re surprised that they still have everyday problems. You don’t get to blame things that go wrong on your fat anymore. Playing the lottery can be a fun diversion, but it seems unwise to stake your financial future on it. Sure, I’d still love to win the lottery and I’d always chose to be thin over fat. Just don’t expect to see me playing the scratch off games at Kroger anytime soon. I’ll be too busy analyzing the distribution of funds in my IRA.