Michael Moore, Kevin Smith, and Quentin Tarrantino started out either with no weight problem or with only a mild one. Moore and Smith are now morbidly obese. Tarrantino is still a skinny fellow, as can be seen from his cameo appearance in his movie Django Unchained.

In the extras for Tarrantino's movie Reservoir Dogs he talks about the making of the movie. At that time Tarrantino was an absolute nobody. He wanted to make it big, he was young and hungry. Harvey Keitel at that time became a supporter of the project. Harvey Keitel was already rich, or at least rich enough to always make the choice to ride first class on commercial aircraft. Tarrantino tells of a story where during the Reservoir Dog project they had to fly to New York or somewhere for some reason and Keitel volunteered to pay for the airfare. He was going on the trip too. He bought a 1st class ticket for himself but only cheap coach tickets for Tarrantino and I think one other fellow. He told Tarrantino, "When you're rich and successful you can pay your own way up here."

Tarrantino then says that's how it worked out. Now Tarrantino rides 1st class when he has to fly. Of course there is the next level of wealth up where you charter your own aircraft, and beyond that is where you own your own jet. Then when you own your fleet of jets... But nevermind. Tarrantino was young and hungry. He craved success. It was clear from the story he told that part of his concept of success was being able to ride 1st class all the time whenever flying on commercial jets. And he absolutely achieved that. There were probably other aspects of success that Tarrantino wanted to achieve in order to satisfy his personal goals. Keep in mind achieving fabulous monetary wealth is not always the only object people are trying to achieve, nor is it even a requirement. What constitutes success, in my opinion, is at the discretion of each individual.

Now, I have a theory as regards Michael Moore and Kevin Smith. We see from historical pictures that both these guys had weight problems pretty much forever. But in their early days, when they were young and hungry (hungry for success) they were just slightly overweight. Sort of, you can see that if they're not careful they're going to have real problems later. Now, my theory is those guys had some craving for expensive foods. Lobster tail, caviar, fine wines, expensive steaks. Rareties and delicacies in the food arena. Clearly eating was important to those guys, otherwise why would they have had weight problems even from early on? Skinny people don't really care about food, I think. Food to them is a means to an end, which is just not dying from starvation. For a lot of fat people eating itself is a pasttime, as in, an end in itself. For such people what one is eating becomes important.

Now suppose Moore and Smith had in their minds that when they've achieved success they'll be able to eat lobster tail (and etc. expensive foods) at every meal? That is, they craved these expensive foods all their lives and felt poor if they couldn't have them whenever they wanted. So part of their motivation for achieving success was to become wealthy enough that they could indulge their food cravings at every meal. To me it makes sense. For those guys there was a time when they wanted expensive, rich food but they could only afford it on rare occasions, so they felt deprived.

Then they achieved financial success, probably beyond their wildest dreams, and were able to indulge their food cravings at every meal. And so in order for the entire success thing to play out, they feel obligated to eat those expensive, rich foods at every single meal. Otherwise it calls into question their very concept of what success itself actually is.

The fact that Moore and Smith now are grossly obese, morbidly so, indicates to me (according to my theory, mind you) that having achieved success they now found themselves completely without the ability to come up with a new goal. All they were able to do was form the first concept of success, and having achieved it, they're rudderless. Now all they can think to do is play it out. And that implies eating rich, expensive foods so much that they become fat, disgusting slobs. "Woohoo! I'm rich and successful! Look at me!"

I don't crave those rich foods. Some of them I can enjoy, but eating them on the occasional basis, usually even less than once a year, is perfectly acceptable. I like chocolate. If it didn't make me sick I'd enjoy eating it all the time. I have enough financial resources to buy enough chocolate to induce a diabetic coma. That is, enough to pretty much destroy my health. Chocolate is a "delicacy" available so cheaply that if my goal was to have enough wealth to have as much chocolate as I want, I've already achieved it. I suspect anyone reading this has achieved that goal as well. And having achieved the option of eating unlimited chocolate, what do I do? Do I eat chocolate until I'm so sick I'm practically dead? No. I eat it just once in a while. I enjoy it while I'm eating it. But I'm not obsessed with it.

Moore and Smith are living examples of what happens when you can't adapt in life with a new and constantly evolving concept of success. Probably within 10 years one of both of them will be dead of a heart attack. There's that saying: "Be careful what you wish for." Makes sense. It seems to me that it's a good idea to be able to adjust your concept of success constantly as you go about living your life.