more processing about weight and health
This is my longer and more honest thoughts on the matter, compared to my blogger journal...
don't want to scare away people who think ministers shouldn't be human and all....
One of my dear friends from seminary has been a fat acceptance advocate for quite a while. She shared this article with me. It really shows the difference between being a fat hater and wanting to be healthy. Two different things I promise. Read "
America’s War on the Overweight " and let me know what you think.
In particularly I appreciated the explanations of why there's so much animosity.
So why don't we have more compassion for people struggling to lose the first 50,
60, or 100? Some of it has to do with the psychological phenomenon known as the
fundamental attribution error, a basic belief that whatever problems befall us
personally are the result of difficult circumstances, while the same problems in
other people are the result of their bad choices. Miss a goal at work? It's
because the vendor was unreliable, and because your manager isn't giving you
enough support, and because the power outage last week cut into premium sales
time. That jerk next to you? He blew his quota because he's a bad planner, and
because he spent too much time taking personal calls.
I've been struggling with this concept for a few months, because I have found out there are medical reasons why the last 5 years I've been gaining weight rapidly and unable to lose more than just a few pounds. I am hypothyroid and have insulin resistance... which means that without treatment, I'm not burning carbs when I eat them but storing them and I'm also unable to burn stored fat when I exercise or reduce calories.
Maintaining my weight +/- 10# was all I was able to do. Slowly my cardio endurance has been reduced, my blood pressure increased, cholesterol increased, my joints and muscles giving out under strain. I've learned that insulin resistance will harden my arteries faster and destroy my heart faster. The lack of thyroid hormone affects fertility and causes miscarriages as well as all his stuff i have wrong... the female problems, fatigue, mental health problems, and joint pain mimicing the fibromyalgia I was misdiagnosed with. These are all medical problems that most doctors say happened because I'm "morbildy obese" despite healthy eating and exercise.
There really ARE reasons this happened to me and reasons why only really restricted diets prevent me from gaining weight let alone losing any ponds added since being an adult. So now that I REALLY DO have reasons (beyond the typical too much caloric intake problem) why this has happened to me, I'm not about to say that fat people need to be skinny. *rolls eyes* whatever. But what I do think (instead of this "fundamental attribution error" and feeling like an exception to the rule) is that there are more people out there who have hidden thyroid problems (esp. women) and hidden insulin problems.
In the article, the authors go on to talk about the catch 22 of weight ridicule... mock us too much and we don't care anymore about healthy eating and exercise. who cares to try to change if i'll be chastised and condescendingly mocked even if i try. And I know that I have had periods in my life where that has happened, where I did not care what I put into my body and did not care about the benefits of exercise. BUT 95% of my life has NOT been the case.
I've always been larger than the acceptable size. I laughed reading the part about a size 12 being a plus size model. I was size 12 at 12 years old. However, with my height and bone structure and rapidly maturing body shape, I also looked 20 when I was 12. Looking back, I think "Talk about stunning". But then I only felt shame and despair from knowing I would NEVER be size two. For goodness sakes,my hip bones alone were wider than a size 8 at least. This despair has followed me all my life. I've worked past it and ignored it most of my life, but I have had periods of depression and with that was not caring that I have eaten poorly and ignored exercise that would make me feel better. I have had periods where I drastically increase my caloric intake by eating a second dessert and lathering on rich foods and condiments because of some sort of psychological (and biological) comfort from eating. I have had periods where I felt it just didn't matter if I tried, because I will always be fat in other people's eyes.
So, I recognize that there may have been better choices made at different intervals, but not enough to be twice my high school weight. Seriously, my weight has doubled since high school. I struggled so much with the internal ridicule as well as external. I remember one redneck party with an ex-boyfriend's friends who mocked my weight openly like it was a game. The irony is that they were the ones smoking and drinking excessively every night, eating McDonalds and fried chicken all the time, and relying on hard labor jobs as their only form of exercise. Whereas I was walking, doing yoga and belly dancing, eating healthy 95% of the time and didn't smoke and rarely drank. And to be even more snarky, I might add that my sex life was way better than those critical skinny bitches who probably wouldn't know an orgasm if it bit their bony ass.... okay now that's my shadow side coming out and being resentful. Sorry about that, even it bears some truth. Still some rage issues.
I also know that there are plenty of hypothyroid people who never will get as large as I am now. Not sure about insulin resistance... that disorder has this chicken/egg thing going for it. The more one gains weight, the more insulin resistant one gets. Is it because of the fat or is the fat just the easiest sign of increasing resistance to burning carbs correctly? I tend to think the latter, but don't let most doctors hear that. Some of that miseducation I think stems from the fact that surgical weight loss can eliminate type 2 diabetes. The thing is, surgical weight loss drastically decreases caloric intake, right? So since most people's calories come from carbs, it drastically decreases carb intake.... therefore a reduction in diabetc reactions to food. DON'T even get me started on the evils of surgical weight loss. It may work for some for a while, but I've seen too many people with horrible complications. Enough said on that tangent.
What my doctor (who's helping me with the thyroid and insulin stuff) has told me is basically summed up as "I'm up shit creek without a paddle" when it comes to maintaing a healthy weight. If you think about it, if my hypothyroidism never showed up in the tests and no one ever checked my insulin levels with my glucose, I'd continue down this road until I got diabetes, my heart and arterial problems increased, my female problems got worse and probably leading to infertility and I'd just keep getting fatter which would compromise my joints even more.
What a lovely thought.
If I had not pestered doctors for 2 years about this, none of my problems would have been discovered. So, while I am ALL about fat acceptance for psychological and spiritual reasons... I hope that larger people, who are twice the weight of their high school weight like me, never give up on being healthy.