Fat again II
(Continued from here:)
Being fat, you're subject to public scrutiny. Everybody can 'be concerned about your health' and tell you to lose weight, "just eat more and exercise less," or be generally impolite ("Yeah, shove another one in, why dontcha?") because being fat is perceived as your own damn fault. A minute on the lips, forever on the hips apparently also goes for medication, because there are a lot of people who are fat because of meds they have to take.
Although I admit that I am of course more than a little bit responsible for my weight, there are more factors to it than just being a lazy glutton who's too stupid to realise that eating less, exercising more will make her thin.
The problem of eating less is that for some people (including me) food is a comfort. Bored, tired or sad, I know a sugar rush will get me up and running in no time. I bring chocolate to examinations as an easily available, legal study drug. When I am down, I chew away my sorrows.
The problem of exercising more for people of my weight has many factors, including shame, fear of failure and something as practical as having trouble finding sports' clothes. If you've been told close to all your life how being fat is something to be ashamed about, something you should be working on, you don't want to start exercising and then stop because you can't keep it up.
The psychological effect of starting an exercise program, then stopping is different from not starting and telling yourself that one day you'll start working out. The first makes you despair, the second keeps you hopeful while not doing anything. In the first case, people around you will be disappointed you couldn't keep up (or so you might think), in the second, everytime people try and discuss this with you you can tell them you were just thinking of starting.
When there is anything on the news about rising obesity numbers, it seems as though the obese people are doing something wrong and by doing so are a burden to society. Do people choose to be obese? Some might not care, but others have severe trouble losing weight. When you think there's nothing you can do about it, that you're doomed to spend the rest of your life worrying about which foods you can or cannot take, when being fat has become so much part of your life that you can't imagine being slim, comments along the line of "exercise more, eat less" aren't going to solve it. Starting a diet, making a change in your daily amount of exercise, that's the hardest part; negative publicity on for example the news isn't going to make that easier.
So much talking about obesity, but does anyone ever ask the affected people themselves?
Being fat, you're subject to public scrutiny. Everybody can 'be concerned about your health' and tell you to lose weight, "just eat more and exercise less," or be generally impolite ("Yeah, shove another one in, why dontcha?") because being fat is perceived as your own damn fault. A minute on the lips, forever on the hips apparently also goes for medication, because there are a lot of people who are fat because of meds they have to take.
Although I admit that I am of course more than a little bit responsible for my weight, there are more factors to it than just being a lazy glutton who's too stupid to realise that eating less, exercising more will make her thin.
The problem of eating less is that for some people (including me) food is a comfort. Bored, tired or sad, I know a sugar rush will get me up and running in no time. I bring chocolate to examinations as an easily available, legal study drug. When I am down, I chew away my sorrows.
The problem of exercising more for people of my weight has many factors, including shame, fear of failure and something as practical as having trouble finding sports' clothes. If you've been told close to all your life how being fat is something to be ashamed about, something you should be working on, you don't want to start exercising and then stop because you can't keep it up.
The psychological effect of starting an exercise program, then stopping is different from not starting and telling yourself that one day you'll start working out. The first makes you despair, the second keeps you hopeful while not doing anything. In the first case, people around you will be disappointed you couldn't keep up (or so you might think), in the second, everytime people try and discuss this with you you can tell them you were just thinking of starting.
When there is anything on the news about rising obesity numbers, it seems as though the obese people are doing something wrong and by doing so are a burden to society. Do people choose to be obese? Some might not care, but others have severe trouble losing weight. When you think there's nothing you can do about it, that you're doomed to spend the rest of your life worrying about which foods you can or cannot take, when being fat has become so much part of your life that you can't imagine being slim, comments along the line of "exercise more, eat less" aren't going to solve it. Starting a diet, making a change in your daily amount of exercise, that's the hardest part; negative publicity on for example the news isn't going to make that easier.
So much talking about obesity, but does anyone ever ask the affected people themselves?