My Obesity Rant
I posted this on The Gear Page (aka ‘TGP’)and it sparked a pretty interesting conversation. I present it here to again, spark conversation.
Disclaimer: this is not a hater post. I am not out to shame fat people or belittle them or make fun of them. I am an Administrator here and can and will shut down any nonsense on this discussion. That’s not my intent, not the direction of what I am trying to say.
My point, right up front was that I read an article today that strikes me personally. Here’s the article: Click Here
I got fat in the early 2000′s. I was in my mid to late 30′s and stopped working out, was eating fast food a lot and drinking Mt. Dew like it was from the fountain of youth (I discovered that it… was not.) I was 205 lbs. at 5’10″. I felt sluggish, got out of breath easily, had a bad back and hurt a lot from just daily living. I never went outside if I could help it. I felt terrible.
I’ve gotten my diet and my fitness in MUCH better control since age 37 and documented it well here on TGP. (I am 41 now). I have been back to 160lbs (where I was in college and my 20′s when I was a gym rat) since then and am in better all-around shape now than I’ve ever been. (I currently do the P90X program you’ve might have seen on infomercials and I’ve done threads along the way as I’ve done it and play competitive indoor soccer).
I live in Michigan, mid-west America. I see and know a lot of people, and have lived in this area my entire life. To paraphrase the kid from “The Sixth Sense”, “I see fat people.” Everywhere. Not just overweight, but dangerously and uncomfortably fat. At the beach, at the store, in restaurants, at my kid’s school, at church, everywhere.
According to that article, if current trends keep up, well, read the first few paragraphs yourself:
By Amy Norton
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – If the trends of the past three decades continue, it’s possible that every American adult could be overweight 40 years from now, a government-funded study projects.
The figure might sound alarming, or impossible, but researchers say that even if the actual rate never reaches the 100-percent mark, any upward movement is worrying; two-thirds of the population is already overweight.
“Genetically and physiologically, it should be impossible” for all U.S. adults to become overweight, said Dr. Lan Liang of the federal government’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, one of the researchers on the study.
However, she told Reuters Health, the data suggest that if the trends of the past 30 years persist, “that is the direction we’re going.”
Now that’s alarmist and the article is created to generate a buzz with hyperbole… sure.
But look around. I personally know three people that have had gastric bypass surgery. Two of them ended up 300+ lbs again after 3 years because they simply would not learn how to eat right or eat sensibly.
I have a theory about this. I am aware of the high fructose corn syrup theories and all the fast food insanity (“Fastfood Nation”); I think we have forgotten how to eat. At least properly. We’ve gotten so accustomed and used to and entrenched in ‘more, better, faster’ food that we’ve forgotten how to eat correctly. There is no such thing as portion control. Calorie intake? My 11 year old skinny as a rail son will go to Wendy’s and order a Baconator (and it’s disgusting, IMHO). Or a 10 piece McNuggets from McDonalds. When I was a kid and McDonald’s had McNuggests, you got six in an order. Now they have 10 as a ‘standard’ order. Even past the evils of fast food, that’s a massive serving of fried whatever it is. (**Note, we allow the kids fast food every now and then, it is NOT a staple of what we allow our kids in my house to eat.) I grew up with the ‘finish your plate, there are starving children in….’ line. I never finished my plate anyway, I wasn’t hungry anymore. Sometime in my thirties, I started finishing my plate…. and eating more and more. ‘Comfort food’ became my norm and I forgot how to eat.
I don’t want laws to tell us how to eat. Don’t drop politics into this, please. As a species, the parents need to slow down for a few minutes of their work-a-day lives and actually learn about what to eat, when to eat, how to (cook) and eat, why you eat and how MUCH you eat at a time. It’s gotten insane. Figure out what you are doing to yourself and then what it’s doing to your kids. Help your kids to learn, so they can teach themselves.
A special pet peeve of mine is sit-down restaurants “Kid’s Menus”. Always the same things. Always some sort of chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, mac-and-cheese, etc.. At ALL of them. Why not smaller portions of real food? My oldest (skinny as a rail) 11 year old son loves Salmon. But ordering that costs me $18.99 at a lot of restaurants and it’s such a waste of food and money. Why not a smaller portion for kids? Why? Ahahghghag!!
And my other very personal ‘beef’ with this issue is exercise. As a species, we’ve forgotten how to move. You see athletes who retire in fantastic shape turn up as big as houses just a few years later (Charles Barkley or Brett Hull anyone?) It’s like they have no control. They ‘let go’ because they feel they’ve ‘earned’ the right to indulge a little with their diet (and it ends up spiraling like mad) and stop training at any level. Now that’s just a microcasm of what happens to adults when they marry and get careers going… they just stop anything related to exercise and sensable diet and…. get overweight. Fast.
Now, some folks are big folks no matter what they eat, exercise or anything else. This is not some treatise on hating on fat people. It’s simply an opinion about the practice of using food as a means and not as an end. Food is fuel. If you over fuel your car or mower, it won’t run. You need to turn on the ‘choke’ to ‘lean’ it out. It’s my opinion that we need to turn on the choke and lean out society. If you don’t run the motor hard on a frequent basis, it stops working. Your body is a machine, the same principles apply.
My challenge is for you to focus, for one week, on what you actually are eating and how much. Keep a food diary. I dare you. Go to www.myplate.com or www.fitday.com (both are free) and figure out a) how much are eating and b) the balance of carbs/protein/fats. You’ll be stunned if you have never paid attention. What I’ve come to learn as a ‘serving’ or ‘portion’ of a given dish would (and does) make a lot of folks chuckle and a LOT of folks peer pressure me that I’m not eating enough. I counter, politely, that I know exactly how much I am eating and that’s enough, thank you.
My other challenge is to go outside today and run a 100 yard dash. Full tilt. If it feels good, wonderful. If you feel like hell within 20 yards, look at the machine you call your body and think about what you’ve let it become. We’ve got to move people, we owe it to those that want to use their machines but can’t. My uncle (RIP) lost his legs in the Korean War. I owe it to him to get up and work out everyday; he’d have given anything to just walk on his own legs again. He spent the final 40+ years of his life in a wheelchair. My excuse for not exercising is pretty lame compared to that IMHO.
Failing that, try pull-ups. Many folks, even he-man bad-assed dudes, can hardly do one. Or two. It’s sad and it’s wrong.
That’s my tirade and rant of the day.
Discuss. (And I am serious about my challenges; it’d be fascinating for folks to chime in that tried them. I’d bet there would be a heck of a lot of surprised and alarmed folks).