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Obesity, Tara Lynn

Throat Punch Thursday~ Unhealthiness, Thy Name is Obesity

by Deborah Cruz

 

Throat Punch Thursday~ Obesity, Tara Lynn

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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Obesity, Tara Lynn

Tara Lynn

 

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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15 comments

Vinobaby 2011/10/06 - 3:18 pm

Oh this can get me in so much trouble. First, I will admit, I am considered thin. I work to be that way though–not to be skinny, but to be HEALTHY. I started going to the gym to get stronger and improve my heart (and actually gained a few pounds of muscle), I eat healthy not so much because I don’t want it on my hips, but I don’t want the diabetes and heart disease eating crap can give you. I actually had a convo with someone this morning who couldn’t believe I could actually have an open box of cookies in my house and not eat the entire box in a sitting. It would never occur to me to do so–too many people have forgotten the difference between ‘treats’ and ‘nutrition/meals.’

Now yes, some people are naturally smaller framed or bigger boned or come from bigger families. We all do not need to be a size 2. That is not healthy either. But no one needs to weigh 400 lbs.

Too many of us have forgotten self-control and how to move. We have become lazy. We need to fix it before we doom our kids.

Off my soapbox. Now I’m going to walk to pick up my kid from the bus stop…then maybe we’ll have A cookie. CHeers

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Truthful Mommy 2011/10/06 - 11:59 pm

No one needs to eat an entire box of cookies. That is a sickness. I agree we are all different sizes and shapes but at the core we need to be healthy. We all need to get up, move around, do a little dance and watch our food intake, make healthier choices. I want to be not only be alive to see my grand kids, I want to be in good enough shape,have a healthy heart and have knees good enough to carry me and be able to play with them.

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Kate, aka guavalicious 2011/10/06 - 6:15 pm

I get what you are saying but I think the Facebook thing is more about putting value only in appearance. If the sign had said do you want to sit on the sidelines and drink a coke or do you want to swim all summer it would be a different thing.

I drink wine, eat ice cream, and am still a size eight (though that’s really more of a ten realistically.) I don’t think we should be celebrating fat but I also don’t think we should be glorfying thiness.

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melissa 2011/10/06 - 8:18 pm

yes, yes, yes!!

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Truthful Mommy 2011/10/07 - 12:01 am

I am not glorifying thinness, I think either extreme is unhealthy, honestly. I think we all need to get up off our asses, stop making excuses, and make healthier lifestyle choices. I;m all for people being mentally comfortable in their own skin. I really am. But I think we need to be physically healthy in our bodies too.

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Kate, aka guavalicious 2011/10/07 - 12:06 am

I didn’t mean that was your opinion about thinness, more that it was suggested by the mermaid image and the contrast of the two. We all need to be healthy but that’s not what that sign was getting across. I do think you can look “overweight” and be healthy. The range on weights is high. Obesity is a different animal but the woman in the photo you posted isn’t obese.

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Krysta MacGray 2011/10/06 - 6:48 pm

Kudos to you for taking on such a subject. It seems so taboo right now to address weight. I totally understand what you are saying with “killing each other with kindness” It is true. I also understand Ms. Kellogg’s perspective as well. And I love the point the other woman made about people being amazed that she doesn’t eat the whole box of cookies in one sitting. We have forgotten what treats are. Eating dessert every night is NOT healthy. Eating it once and a while is fine. Eating pizza 4 nights week is not healthy. Eating it once in a while is ok. This is where I think people have become confused.

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Truthful Mommy 2011/10/07 - 12:04 am

I agree with you 100%. Apparently, I have taken the unpopular stance but it is my honest opinion. I am not talking about being thin, I am talking about being healthy. I think everything in life is good in moderation. It’s all the gluttonous eating, the up size and biggie size. If we keep super sizing our food, it stands to reason that we are going to super size our bodies and that, my friend, is not super on out hearts, lungs, joints,etc. I’m not saying that a larger person can’t be healthy but generally the case is that because of carrying the weight around they are not in their peak condition but I am sure there are exceptions to the rule.

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Kalley C 2011/10/06 - 8:14 pm

Such a difficult topic to talk about. From my personal experience, you cannot shame a person into losing weight, they have to be happy with themselves first.

I don’t agree with the Fat is beautiful thing, but perhaps if it translates into you are beautiful then some people would take that extra step to make sure that their health is good.

Too much is given in personal appearances, that we sometimes forget that the goal is to be healthy, not pretty than today. So when I see ads and things about a “sexy” woman sporting a two piece (that I know my stretched out stomach cannot get away with), I remind myself that I don’t need to look like that, I just need to be a healthy weight.

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Truthful Mommy 2011/10/07 - 12:05 am

AMEN! HEALTHY!HEALTHY IS the goal. That is exactly what I am talking about.

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Nona 2011/10/08 - 12:09 pm

Hello! Long time Twitter follower, first time commenter here on your blog.

I have seen this particular meme all over Facebook. I think the point was not so much to glorify being obese, but to say that comparing a woman to either a whale or a mermaid is condescending. As others have commented, that implies that we should swim to be prettier in our swimsuits, not improve our health.

I am obese. I am one of those people that struggles with the open box of cookies. While all my numbers –blood sugar, etc.– are good, my weight has resulted in arthritis. I am trying to solve this with healthy eating and more exercise.

However, shame about my appearance is not a way to motivate me to lose weight. It has the opposite effect, in fact. So if this memo was indeed posted at a gym, it is a cruel way to “inspire” exercise. Also, since the comparison is a mermaid, it is clearly aimed at women, when men have just as much struggle with obesity these days.

Overall, I agree with what you are saying — we do need to be healthier. But women shouldn’t be ashamed of having a curvy figure. If I lose all the weight I need to lose, I will still have a J-Lo butt. And I like that about me.

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Melissa 2011/10/17 - 3:48 am

Having a descipline to ourselves on what we do and what we eat make us healthy.

Reply
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