I follow a few blogs on a regular basis. Some are daily posters, others are sporadic like me.
This morning one of my guys was writing about fat people, and how they are grasping at straws with a new study that says weight does not effect the length of your life. For the record they call themselves fat people. Here is the link to Gin and Tacos, and the article.
Remember when reading that this guy is a political science teacher. Statistics are his life. He knows how they work and how to manipulate them, or should I say how others manipulate them. Also, the interesting thing is the responses he has received.
Having been obese for quite sometime I don't get all the responses, nor do I get a group claiming that being overweight or obese does not effect your health. Are they living on a different planet than me? I am sorry, but a BIG motivator for me and my weight was when my knees began hurting so much some days that I had to limp when I walked. Seriously, that was when the light bulb in my brain went ding, you need to get more serious about losing weight. I am not sure why that was my big trigger, and not my inability to keep up with my kids, but we all have something that will eventually make us wake up (I hope).
The other thing that people need to accept is that when you are overweight you are more prone to certain diseases or conditions. That is just a statistical fact. Most doctors who saw me ASSUMED I was diabetic because of my weight. I did not need a support group for this, it was true, I was probably more likely to be diabetic than if I was at a healthy weight. Was it frustrating that they assumed? Yes, but I am a realist, I knew why and I knew that based on my family history the likelihood of diabetes developing was HIGH!
Is it easy to lose weight in our skinny obsessed culture? Heck no! It is cheap to buy junk. Junk is fast, and you don't have to prepare or THINK about what is going into your body. However, it CAN be done. Think about it people, do you really think that no one loses weight and keeps it off? I will say that the diet culture in our country is faulty. People think they can "diet" for a short period lose a ton of weight and then go back to eating the way they used to. That is UNHEALTHY!!!!! People do lose weight and keep it off though, when they decide they don't want to view food the way they used to. I have been on a strict diet for the last three months. I am a little cranky sometimes because of it, but the point of the diet is to lose the weight quick, and while losing the weight, and being unable to eat a variety of things, to learn to REEVALUATE how I think and feel about food. I have been doing this a lot. I have also been looking at what I could eat instead of the fat and calorie packed foods of my past. BTW, my doctor has a good success rate for keeping weight off patients. I have follow ups at various times for two years after finishing the diet.
Food is important. It sustains our bodies. Eating a whole pack of mini donuts does not sustain our bodies. Who even really knows what is in there? I have been a big proponent of teaching kids to eat healthier and reach for healthy snacks, but I never applied it to myself. I claimed to NOT have TIME. HAH! It takes me 5-10 minutes to make lunch for me and little l. Claiming I don't have that time is ridiculous. It may take a half hour to make dinner that we can all eat in the evening. I have that time (most nights). I am not sure what everyone thinks of food, but I began to think of it as a chore. Something I had to do. Something that was a pain because of everyone's different food allergies.
In reality, (you know back here on earth) the truth was that I was making it harder than it needed to be. There is NO reason I should be making four different dinners every night. The baby (who is turning two, so not really baby anymore) can eat what we eat, minus her allergies, and supplement with a veggie pack of toddler food. Big L can eat what I make. I have decided to make one meal for the three big people and you eat it or figure something else out on your own that is suitable. This is the ONLY way that I am going to eat healthy, because the one person whose meal would be rushed and unhealthy was me. When I am done with my diet and start my new system I will share it with you.
The other thing I have learned, that I have avoided up to now, is that I HAVE to count calories. For me, that is what opens my eyes. Did you know there is an app for that? It is called My Fitness Pal. It is great, my diet doctor recommended it for when I am on my own. I also purchased a heart rate monitor. What I have learned is that while Yoga is great for my pain issues it is not so great for aerobics, at least not since I lost so much weight. Now I am looking at how many calories I burn when I exercise and comparing that to what I am eating (though on this diet it is not fun).
We seem to be having a backlash in our culture to the skinny people. In my opinion, it has gone too far. Big is beautiful, if it is still healthy. Obese is not beautiful. Of course, that is my subjective opinion. Some of the comments on the blog state that the BMI is faulty, and it likely is, but each area has a range to take into account whether or not you are big boned and most people are NOT huge muscle bound people. I mean really.......can we come back down to reality here?
I read a lot, and I used to be a skinny person, so I know we have an unrealistic image spread in front of our girls (and boys) for how they should look. In fact we even talk about things in front of them that make them self-conscious in ways we don't mean to. Since starting my diet I have changed my terminology. I used to say I was fat, now I say I am unhealthy. I am working my way back to a healthy way of living. I would like to say that I have lived that way before and that was why I was skinny, but it wasn't. I ate a lot of junk, I was just lucky until I was about 20 and didn't gain weight. Now I do, so I have to change. My oldest daughter will likely be the same, so I want to teach her now how to eat right and healthy so that when she is the one making choices she understands why one choice is better than the other.
My Girl Scouts and I were talking about hunger, something none of them have truly experienced. We were talking about how healthy foods cost more than junk food and one of my more precocious girls said, "Why don't they pass a law that junk food has to be more expensive?" Why don't they? People who smoke pay more in taxes because it costs more to take care of their health care needs, they also pay higher premiums. People who drink know that it is not cheap. So why is that frozen pizza so cheap (you know which ones I am talking about); why does candy go on sale so often? Why do they have sales on cheap processed food that makes it easier to feed a family on those items than on fruits and veggies? Why do grocery stores in lower income neighborhoods contain MORE unhealthy options and less of the healthy options. We are screwed up as a nation when it comes to food and feeding people.
That is my rant for today. If you are overweight and happy and healthy, I love you and support your right to be that way. For most people though, large weight gains make us unhealthy, and causes more pain than being healthy.
Want to lose weight like I am? This is where I go: Chiro-Med Centers
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