I'm just not going to kill myself writing some piece of crap blog post just so I can say I posted every day.
I thought about it. I thought about trying to pass of some piece of brain dead drivel as a "blog post" and simply opted out. That's not the way I like to do things.
After I spent the day finishing up repainting my dining room and doing a few minor bits of housework (and inadvertently going "WHOOF" every time I tried to sit down and my thighs reminded me about all the posting in my dressage lesson) I went and I got a haircut and I came home and I sat down and drank a glass of wine and I completely lost the will to move or talk or even think. I was that kind of tired where your body just wants to curl up in bed and maybe you'll be able to sleep and maybe you won't but every second you insist on staying past horizontal your skin and your eyes and your hair and your feet all scream at you to just crawl between the covers already because you're DONE.
And so I did.
---------
So this stupid sprained ankle has me struggling with feelings of guilt every time I put something in my mouth. If I'm not running I shouldn't be eating says my shameful self. Riding your horse and painting your living room don't exactly qualify as "sitting around," interjects my healthy self.
Those two continue at war, and I continue to watch the battle being waged across magazines and news stories and blogs, the battle over whether being overweight is dangerous or healthy. I commented on a recent blog post at Jessica Gottlieb's blog wherein Jessica took exception with a photo of a beautiful, albeit very curvy young woman. Many commenters agreed with her contention that this woman was obese and therefore completely unhealthy. I disagreed.
Looking at someone's picture tells you virtually nothing about their level of health or fitness. There are plenty of active people who are also overweight, just as there are a great deal of thin people who are sedentary.
There was a great interview with author and PhD Linda Bacon in the recent issue of MORE. Bacon is a physiologist and the author of Health at Every Size.
In the interview, Bacon contends that the term "obesity epidemic" is misleading. While it is true that as a whole people in our society are heavier than they have been (at least in the years since we started tracking factors like weight), it is not an "epidemic" by any means, nor is there evidence that being heavier actually poses deadly risk.
She points out that while there is indeed a link between being overweight and developing Type II diabetes, its not a proven fact that being overweight actually causes the diabetes. Scientifically it is well-known that being insulin resistant causes a person to gain weight. It is more likely that the insulin resistance, which can have genetic and environmental factors, causes the diabetes and the state of being overweight. Even so, those leading the charge in the anti-fat movement love to tell everyone how being overweight is causing everyone to become diabetic. Similary there are associations between other illnesses and weight, but because there is an association between the two doesn't necessarly prove that one causes the other.
Bacon posits that the most dangerous and unhealthy condition is not that of being obese, but that of being sedentary. In study after study, people who are overweight but active are healthier and live longer. A 2008 Harvard study found that overweight women who exercised at least 4 days a week have a significantly lower risk of heart disease than people who don't exercise (regardless of weight). Bacon also refers to studies that show that obese people with cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, hypertension and type 2 diabetes actually live longer than thin people with the same conditions.
Dieting doesn't work. People who restrict their calories and lose a lot of weight gain it back when they start eating normally again. It is only a very small percentage of dieters who actually succeed, and the negative emotional effect of failing at weight loss is causing people to feel disproportionately unhappy. And for what reason? Because they don't look like someone else thinks they should? That's no reason to feel bad.
I'm not advocating being unhealthy, not by any means. I see no redeeming value in loading yourself up with junk food and spending all of your time sitting on the couch watching TV or in front of the computer playing games. But nowhere is it proven that all overweight people are sitting on the sofa twenty-four-seven gorging themselves on potato chips.
What I AM saying is that the shaming of fat people needs to stop. Nothing is gained by insisting that fat people are unhealthy. Trying to get people to feel bad about themselves accomplishes nothing except to make the finger-pointers look like judgemental so-and-sos. I've never been a small person. I'm tall, for one, and genetically built on the...er..."sturdy" side. I've been heavy, I've been thin, but at any size, I've felt my very best when I've been physically active. I can stack two tons of hay, I can cut my own wood, build a chicken coop from scratch and I can carry a 90 pound dog into the vet's office. I can make a 1500 pound animal back the hell off by simply looking at him and lifting my hand. I am powerful. I can polish my toes and put makeup on my face and wear a killer dress and look fabulous. I am beautiful. I can do all of this despite the fact that you probably can't count my ribs and I'm inching past the "halfway" mark in my 40's.
I refuse to feel bad about myself because I don't fit a magazine definition of what beauty is supposed to look like.
Don't let them fool you into it, either.
