Obesity~ The epidemic that is causing broken hearts and leaving dead bodies in it’s wake all across the world but more specifically in my own home country of the United States. It’s no wonder either. We are a people that live fast paced, on the go and high stress existences. We are always running to and fro and we are overworked and overwhelmed. We are a land of overachievers. In our quest for trying to be the best, we are dropping the ball in one particular area of our life, the most important area..our health. We are mindlessly stress eating too often, everything is super-sized while saturated in grease and we are so busy behind our computers or at our desks that we never get enough exercise. Even when we have the good intentions to work out, we have to beg, borrow and steal to find the time, energy and a babysitter. Sounds to me like obesity is the logical evolution of our current collective lifestyle. But I say NO more!
Just Say No to Obesity
Recently, the answer has been to make fat acceptable. That’s right, I just used the word FAT. Overweight. Obese. However you spin it. If your BMI is over 30 you are a victim, willing participant or whatever the case may be of the epidemic of obesity. Just because we are afraid to hurt one another’s feelings, feel the need to be politically correct and keep changing the size of clothing to pretend we are smaller than we actually are does not mean that we are healthy.It just means that we are packaging obesity in a different way, a prettier package. The only way to be healthy is to put down the fork, get up and get moving and make healthier choices all around. But first, we need to be honest with ourselves! Obesity is no joke. Just because we all pretend it’s cute,package it in fancy clothes and commiserate does not make it any less damaging to our health. That is the point, I am making. That is why the obesity epidemic gets my throat punch. I am fully aware that there are medical conditions that cause some people to be heavy and it’s beyond their control but I’d suspect that only accounts for about 1% of obesity cases. I know most of us don’t do it on purpose, though there are those rare cases of those who do. Most of us got fat the good old fashioned way…we ate too much.
What got me so fired up, you ask? This piece was posted on Facebook, apparently it is spreading like a grassroots fire. I have provided it here…
A while back, at the entrance of a gym, there was a picture of a very thin and beautiful woman. The caption was “This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?”
The story goes, a woman (of clothing size unknown) answered the following way:
“Dear people, whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, seals, curious humans), they are sexually active and raise their children with great tenderness.
They entertain like crazy with dolphins and eat lots of prawns. They swim all day and travel to fantastic places like Patagonia, the Barents Sea or the coral reefs of Polynesia.
They sing incredibly well and sometimes even are on cds. They are impressive and dearly loved animals, which everyone defends and admires.
Is this how Obesity is protected by vilifying the Alternative?
Mermaids do not exist.
But if they existed, they would line up to see a psychologist because of a problem of split personality: woman or fish?
They would have no sex life and could not bear children.
Yes, they would be lovely, but lonely and sad.
And, who wants a girl that smells like fish by his side?
Without a doubt, I’d rather be a whale.
At a time when the media tells us that only thin is beautiful, I prefer to eat ice cream with my kids, to have dinner with my husband, to eat and drink and have fun with my friends.
We women, we gain weight because we accumulate so much wisdom and knowledge that there isn’t enough space in our heads, and it spreads all over our bodies.
We are not fat, we are greatly cultivated.
Every time I see my curves in the mirror, I tell myself: “How amazing am I ?! “
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People can say that it is awesome that Tara Lynn is on the cover of a magazine. She is beautiful. Kudos can be given because they see a woman who may look a bit more like who they see in the mirror versus a Adriana Lima. I get that. But I also get that it is NOT healthy. To be honest, if I wanted to see chunky on display, I’d look in the mirror. There has to be healthy sizes in between, maybe something in the 8-14 spectrum. What I would consider to be the average sizes, or what I have been lead to believe is average by what I see around me. Pretending that heavy is healthy is a white lie that may seem innocuous when being said to your best friend, your sister or yourself but think of the ripple effect. One person tells another person who tells another person that unhealthy is acceptable. We spare hurting feelings but we are literally killing one another with kindness. Obesity is an epidemic…like the plague the only difference is that we pretend that it’s not deadly. We treat it as a social disease rather than an honest to goodness medical threat. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to be a damn whale or a mermaid, I want to be a healthy human. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be healthy. Why do we have to accept obesity as the status quo? What are your thoughts on the obesity epidemic?
Unhealthiness, Thy Name is Obesity
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