Yale Daily News

Updated: Saturday, November 21, 2009 8:52 a.m.

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From ‘fat and poor’ to thin and thrifty

Staff Reporter
Published Tuesday, January 13, 2009

In the season of New Year’s resolutions and the country’s economic crunch, people may wish to start fresh — one calorie or dollar at a time.

Sam MacDonald ’95 took the initiative to do just that five years after he graduated from Yale. At the time, he weighed 340 pounds and found himself $15,000 in debt, paying to fix a broken-down Ford Taurus, and, of course, settling student loans. Somewhere between the Jonathan Edwards College Sextet and his six-days-a-week bar trips as a bouncer, MacDonald said his life was “completely unsustainable.”

“I was enormously fat and poor,”...

#1 By Hieronymus 8:20a.m. on January 13, 2009

I am having mixed reactions to this story:

1) How typically Yale: screw around, write it down (Hey! Pay that clown!).

2) Nice to hear a story where "rock bottom" means overfed and marginally indebted (versus the usual crack-addict-makes-good-at-Old-Blue type stories).

3) Whoopee crap: our military servicemembers make that "sacrifice" every day (i.e., cut out all essentials, get fit, get a life). Of course, they are fit only to be denigrated by denizens of Yale. Go Bulldogs!

4) Good advice: I especially liked the "pay the consequences" part, something most Yalies (and Americans, generally) deny/avoid/transfer.

5) Congrats! Your life was an abomination to your Creator ("I Am" or Darwin, irrelevant). Of course, you are now worthy of contempt for "judging" your body type: the campus office of the NSPCFP will be knocking shortly.

As I said: mixed reactions...

#2 By ... 11:07p.m. on January 13, 2009

whats?

#3 By Beth R. 12:05p.m. on January 14, 2009

Why is this a story? On the front page?

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