Steve Vaught heaves his bulk over the guard rail on Route 40 and excitedly points to the fast food litter in the thin brown stream as though it is evidence of a lost civilisation. ”Look at this: birth and death, pollution and renewal.” Underfoot there is a dead raccoon cub. ”Sorry buddy,” he says.
That fatal entanglement with food was the story of Vaught’s life until, pushing 40 years of age and 186kg, he decided to walk across America to lose the fat that was slowly killing him, and to find his soul.
This is no tidy tale of redemption. Vaught’s trek along the clogged arteries of the American heartland has taken twice as long as expected, and with 300 miles (480km) to go he is heartily sick of walking. He is still overweight, weighing in above 127kg. His marriage is breaking up, and he misses his kids.
But he insists that the weight he has lost and the kilometres he has put on between here and his home in San Diego have made him a better person. Out on the road, his iPod set to hip-hop for the pace, he has travelled an inner journey that has changed his life far more than counting calories or stapling his stomach ever could.
For the first time in years, he says, he feels comfortable in his skin. And the imperfections of his quest for a better way of living have resonated with Americans. He has a book contract, a documentary crew following his footsteps, and a website. His Buddhist ruminations on food, weight and life in general on www.thefatmanwalking.com got nearly two million hits last month, and the site has spun off a hyperactive discussion group where members trade diet tips and suggestions for a better life. He’s grown used to getting recognised on the road, and the friendly honks from drivers rolling past.
”I’ve lost 130lb [58lg] — that’s a whole girlfriend,” he says. ”It’s a lot easier than it seemed a year ago when I thought it was much more complicated and beyond my control. That’s why people do things like call obesity a disease.
”I realise that it is definitely within someone’s control. It’s just a question of being mindful. Every day you have to re-evaluate. Every day you have to remind yourself of what’s important.”
Detours and setbacks
There have been detours — to the Grand Canyon and this week to the Pennsylvania field where flight 93 came down in the September 11 2001 terror attacks. Last month Vaught took a hiatus with a celebrity personal trainer in Los Angeles after his weight loss stubbornly stalled, returning to the road only after he shed 14kg.
Some days — but not very often — he sticks to the foil packets of healthful tuna and chicken he carries in his backpack. On others, like last week’s celebration to mark his year on the road, he sits down to steak and a chocolate cupcake. Some days, he walks as little as four of five kilometres and then skulks off to the woods for a snooze. ”There have been a lot of setbacks,” he says. ”There have been good days and bad days. I’ve lost weight, I’ve put on weight. I’ve got lost along the way. The walk is about weight, but what I am saying is that being overweight isn’t really about the weight.
”Doing my walk across the country would be absolutely useless if I concentrated solely on weight, and I realised early on that the best weight plan in the world was to cure your head, cure whatever the underlying issue is that causes such bad, destructive, behaviour.”
For Vaught, the product of a hardscrabble childhood and a former marine, the issue was guilt after a 1990 car crash in which he ran over and killed an elderly couple. ”After the accident, I lost my ability to put value on anything.” He piled on the kilograms and descended into a debilitating depression.
The state of numbness lifted only briefly at the beginning of last year when he got winded on his way to a checkout line in a discount store, and realised that the fat would probably kill him by the time he was 50. ”If I check out then my boy will be 13 and my girl will be 18 — the times when they need me in their lives individually over any other time and I would be checking out. Talk about a selfish bastard.”
Twelve weeks later Vaught was on the road, but he only began to emerge from the depression and self-loathing that had ruled his life somewhere between Albuquerque and Amarillo, when he threw away his meds.
”I was an absolute bear, just completely out of control, depressed, angry, striking out at people, threatening to beat up a cameraman.” It took until Elk City, in Oklahoma, for him to regain a measure of control, and to change his outlook on life.
He is still disgusted at America’s fixation with television and fast food — tutting at the McDonald’s cups we pass en route — and the fear that stunts people’s lives. But he is more kindly disposed to his fellow Americans now; most of those he has met on the road have been good people, he says.
Now, as he draws nearer to journey’s end in New York City, it would be easy to give way to anxiety. Will he make his book deadline? Will the story sell, or will he end up after all this effort back where he started, in the towtruck business? How can he protect his son and daughter as his marriage comes to an end?
Vaught says he isn’t thinking about any of that right now. What happens happens, he believes. His journey has been worth it. ”Everyone should find their walk across the country.” – Guardian Unlimited Â