Posted on 02/23/2006 7:56:35 PM PST by NormsRevenge
The fat man's walk across the United States has taken him from Oceanside to Ohio, and now on a detour to North Hollywood.
The reason is simple: He isn't looking the part. Despite losing weight, Steve Vaught still has a prodigious gut.
Vaught's walk has attracted worldwide media attention that promises to intensify as he approaches his destination of New York City. His book chronicling his quest to regain control of his life by crossing America on foot is scheduled to be published soon.
Which he said means he needs to slim down – and fast.
“Visual impact is everything,” Vaught said. “If I get to New York and I'm round in the middle, people are going to say, 'What the hell?' ”
For the past two weeks, Vaught has been holed up in a motel off Lankershim Boulevard, two blocks from the Body Image gym. He's eating only prepared meals donated by a company associated with his trainer, and he works out three hours a day. He's walking backward in a city park, lifting weights, stick fighting and boxing.
Vaught, 40, of Valley Center, stopped walking east of Dayton, Ohio, after meeting with Eric the Trainer, a fitness guru whose clientele includes Hollywood's elite.
So the trainer, who charges members of the Saudi royal family $1,500 an hour, is two weeks into sculpting Vaught's upper body pro bono.
“I was introduced to Steve through a mutual friend and started giving him advice about diet and exercise over the phone and by e-mail,” said the trainer, Eric Fleishman. “Then on Feb. 3, I flew to Ohio to meet with him and found a much more complex guy than I thought I would.
“He was a guy that was reaching out for help. We talked for two hours and I told him if he ever wanted to come to L.A., I could help him. To my surprise, he said he wanted to do it now.”
Vaught, who had served in the Marine Corps, fell into a depression that has never really abated. He flitted from job to job, got married, had two kids, gained 175 pounds, but never conquered his demons.
The walk, and the media attention that Vaught said he never anticipated, complicated everything.
Back home, his life has eroded.
Vaught's wife, April, has always supported the idea of the walk, but the couple's relationship has been deteriorating for months.
“This walk has caused huge changes in the both of us,” Vaught said. “It's been just as much a journey for her as for me. Along the way, we discovered that we may not be as compatible as we thought we were. Family happiness is of paramount concern. But the question now is whether it's best for the family if April and I are together or not together.”
This weekend, Vaught is to visit with his children, but won't be spending time with April.
“This was always a journey for the entire family, and we signed up for wherever it took us, and this is where it's taken us,” April Vaught said yesterday.
“The journey has only highlighted and made more pronounced issues we've always had. I don't think that either one of us has changed, but for the fact that our individual happiness matters and has value.
“I think we agree that our family will be healthy if the individuals in it are not burdened with discontent.”
She said divorce papers have not yet been filed, but indicated that it is only a matter of time.
Media interest in Vaught's walk, meanwhile, shows no signs of abating.
Tuesday morning, during his upper-body weight workout, he got a call from a London Observer reporter who wanted to arrange an interview in Los Angeles next week. At the same moment, Fleishman, the trainer, was on the gym's phone talking to a New York Times reporter.
When Vaught began his walk April 10, he weighed more than 400 pounds. He has lost about 100.
But while his face is thinner, his legs and rear end noticeably smaller, his overall appearance could not be described as trim.
So after 2,200 miles of walking, Vaught has come to Los Angeles. He plans to pick up where he left off in Ohio early next month.
While the diversion is mostly about losing his stomach, he said, it's also about trying to control his “food issues,” primarily his inability to eat sensible portions.
“You're looking slighter today,” Fleishman told Vaught on Tuesday during a workout. “Can you tell he's calmer, happier?
“Steve will emerge from this as a more perfect person.”
When Vaught is not at the gym, where he combines weight lifting with martial-arts-type training, he works on his book, “Fat Man Walking.”
He and a ghost writer keep wrangling over chapters, sentences and words.
Originally, his contract with HarperCollins through Regan Books called for Vaught to complete his walk by the end of this month or face a financial penalty. That deadline no longer exists, Vaught said.
He hopes he'll be getting to New York in April. Before he stopped, he was walking between 11 and 14 miles a day along U.S. 40 through Illinois, Indiana and Ohio – a part of the trip he found dull.
“It was like there's a farm, there's a farmhouse, there's a tractor, there's a farm, there's a house . . . ”
When he does get to New York, his plan is to walk into Rockefeller Center, live on NBC's “Today” show. The program has featured Vaught three times and has scheduled more interviews.
Also, his on-again, off-again appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” is on again. A segment taped months ago is tentatively scheduled to air March 28.
That's one reason Vaught and his ghost writer have been at odds. The last thing Vaught wants, he said, is a situation like the one James Frey faced on Winfrey's show after it was revealed that portions of Frey's memoir had been fabricated. Vaught said he doesn't want to face defending his book's accuracy.
He also updates his journal at www.thefatmanwalking.com, which averages more than 700,000 views per month, Vaught said.
And he gives his publisher headaches.
“They like their dates and their schedules. I'm driving them crazy because there are no dates and there are no schedules. This has always been about me. I want to get back to being healthy.”
Ditto. But considering what's going on around us, it's preetty easy to succumb.
And as Mencken said, "The cynics are usually right."
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