What The Death Of Elvis Presley Teaches Us About Obesity

Life is a classroom where we should all observe and learn and become better people. There is no better way to learn than learning from the practical experience of others.

Elvis Presley is a legend. A great singer who blazed many trails. However the cause of his death is still not conclusively known. Was it the drugs he was taking? Or his massive intake of food that finally killed him? The situation is further complicated by the fact that it is believed that he was taking some of the drugs to try and control his weight.


Did Elvis Presley’s Diet Kill Him?

We all need a minimum of 1,500 to 1,800 calories daily to stay alive. People doing heavy work and therefore burning lots of calories need even more calories, up to about 10,000 per day.
Elvis was consuming over 85,000 calories per day and was sitting around doing nothing more strenuous than reaching forward to flip the channels on his TV set. 85,000 calories is more than enough to keep an elephant alive. Presley’s favorite daily diet was a 30-cm long bread roll stuffed with bacon, peanut butter and strawberry jam. Each one had about 42,000 calories. Elvis would eat two every day together with other snacks like hamburgers and deep-fried white bread.
The answer to our question is, yes, Elvis who conquered the fickle and fiercely competitive music industry was no match to the alluring aroma and taste of food. He just ate himself to death.


Why Do Most Celebrities Have A Weight Problem?

The Elvis era ushered in a new era of super-rich celebrities. The new medium of TV helped create a new breed of super-rich entertainers. Elvis with his good looks and suggestive dancing was especially suited to it. Ever since two problems have been constantly and regularly associated with super-rich celebrities. Drugs and weight problems. For the purposes of this article, we will concentrate on weight problems.
It is useful to note that many of these big stars were literally starving and hard-up for cash just before their big break to celebrity status. Just like Elvis.

Suddenly they find themselves in a situation where they do not have to worry about money. Situations where they don’t have to retain a nine to five job to put food on the table. That’s where all the trouble seems to start.

Most of us seem to end up in a similar situation when we get comfortable jobs that we enjoy. A mildly successful junior executive or entrepreneur is bound to have a problem with obesity, no wonder it’s a national crisis.


What We Can Learn From Elvis

It is clear that had Elvis exercised, even a little, he would have lived much longer. Had he lived in this information age, he would also have had numerous other "less painful" ways of controlling his weight.

But the real danger zone, if we are to learn anything from Elvis, is in the mind. Presley had reached a situation where there was nothing left to achieve. There was no new challenge, even in the horizon, which interested him. That was the really dangerous point and that’s the really deadly place for anybody to be in. It happens to many celebrities these days with devastating consequences.

The lesson is that however successful you become, you need a constant supply of new challenges and new ventures and formidable tasks to take up all the time. It seems that it is true that when the mind goes to sleep, the body follows suite with devastating consequences.