The pinch that won't save you an inch, or your life

Getting fat while standing in a meal line when you're homeless is a fact of life. Starches are the biggest problem, sometimes an entire plate being composed of them. It's survival and it can be deadly as well with the threat of diabetes being more real than ever within the homeless communities.

I've had the chance of talking to a number of service providers about how to address this issue, all of them only being able to look to the day when a person is out of the homeless cycle and able to prepare meals for themselves. At that point it's possible to prescribe or use over the counter diet pills, while attempting to adjust a person's learned behavior in regards to eating disorders.

Which is what most homeless transitioning out are experiencing that nobody talks about. Eating disorders are both for the heavy and skinny. When you're homeless you're more apt to overeat when foods available, knowing that it may not be there the next day.

See a nice muffin or piece of fruit with seconds available, and you're liable to see people trying to trade food for goods...not to stash it in bags, but to in most cases immediately ingest it. It's conditioning. It's sad. And it's a fact of life.

And in the end, it'll catch up on ya. No pun intended.