This last installment of this blog series is being put forth with two purposes in mind. First and foremost I want to try to give some encouragement to other guys that are struggling with being overweight. Being overweight isn't easy but it shouldn't keep you from being able to enjoy life either. Secondly, while I don't want anyone’s pity or sympathy I hope that in explaining the plights of being an overweight male it can maybe help to encourage a little more respect and understanding from those who do not struggle with weight issues.
The overweight are the one minority that it is still socially acceptable, in most situations, to openly discriminate against. Just a few examples of this in the last 24 hours alone I've seen at least 2 jokes posted on Facebook making cracks at fat people. One posed the question, "If bars can turn away drunk people, why can't McDonalds turn away fat people?"
While the general consensus is mostly correct that being overweight can be corrected by a change of lifestyle, the notions that fat people just sit around all day constantly eating junk food or raiding McDonalds is not just incorrect it is stupidly wrong.
A prime example of this came to light in a high school health class during a lecture about nutrition. I was one of 3 kids in the class that kept being called on by the teacher, not to single us out particularly but to show the rest of the class how their eating habits were just as bad if not worse than the fat kids in the class. The biggest surprise to everyone was one short wiry kid with a giant felt top-hat about as tall as himself (Yes this was the 90’s) who admitted that pretty much any time he had some extra money he would get a half gallon of ice cream and an 8 piece fried chicken dinner and eat it all in one sitting. The kid also spent probably 12 hours a day on his skateboard so it probably evened out, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it all caught up with him as he got older. At the end of the lecture we learned that the fat kids in the class weren’t eating what could be considered healthy food or the right amount of food, but neither was anyone else.
So the irony here is that the people who sit around on Facebook posting jokes about fat people are just as likely to be sitting around , eating crap food and posting on Facebook as a fat person would be likely to be sitting around, eating crap food and posting on Facebook.
It gets better though,
About 2 years ago we decided we were going to make a significant investment in trying to hire a personal trainer from Gold’s Gym, as my wife and I decided we were going to get into shape come hell or high water. (We got hosed)
We had a really good trainer for a little while but got stuck with some real idiots when we had to change the location we were frequenting. Though it was more Gold’s horrible billing issues that I took issue with than the idiot trainers. That’s another story though.
This would be the beginning of finding out how little I actually knew about nutrition and exercise.
My eating and exercise habits were admittedly complete crap, particularly during my teenage years and into early adult hood my diet was largely 7-11 nachos and Mt. Dew. As I got older I had to learn to listen to my body more and I could no longer eat greasy and sugary crap without paying for it in the middle of the night.
When we started seeing the trainer he wanted us to keep track of everything we were putting into our mouths for a week. (Now I try and often fail to keep track of everything I eat via Fatsecret.com and their calorie counter app for android) I was taken back when he immediately looked over what I had been eating and said, “You’re not eating enough.”
WHAT? Isn’t everyone always saying that staying in shape is just as simple as “eat less, exercise more?”
Here is where I learned of a vicious cycle that can actually make you gain more weight. When you aren’t eating enough or eating regularly your metabolism slows down holding onto everything you put into it. Apparently this is the trick behind that whole HCG craze is to pump you full of hormones that tell your body not to hold onto the various fats and nutrients you consume while you are starving yourself to death. Sure you lose weight but I am sure the side effects are not fully known to this point and it will probably be similar to the whole phen-phen craze. People that are seriously overweight often times will resort to starvation diets thinking that the less they eat the faster they will lose the weight. Once the metabolism slows down and they see they are not losing weight the tendency is to go on a binge once giving up on the starvation diet, thus adding more weight.
So the trainer puts down a number that looks ridiculous to me and states that this is how many calories I should be consuming in a day. How am I supposed to eat that much in a day? The answer I was given didn’t inspire much confidence. “Well we aren’t nutrition experts.”
Thus began an even more vicious cycle with trying to consume whatever I could with a high caloric intake so that I could meet my daily quota. Though I still haven’t found a way to consume this many calories via healthy food, I am pretty sure that when over 50% of your daily caloric intake are calories from fat then you are just going to get more fat.
The idea here wasn’t to go off on a huge lecture about exercise and nutrition, but if you don’t struggle with maintaining a healthy weight, and you don’t ever count your calories or worry about things like proper nutrition and have never whipped yourself in the nuts with one of those stupid pink Pilates rubber bands then the next time you go off on fat people I will personally strip naked, sit on your face and EAT YOUR DREAMS!
The obsession with body image and hatred for the overweight is one of those mind bogglingly illogical things that gives me the urge to head-butt a table saw at times. It’s not like an army of fat people ever marched on Poland eating everyone’s parents. At the absolute worst maybe you’ve had to deal with the inconvenience of sitting next to a fat person on the bus or on an airplane, but trust me, they are just as uncomfortable with the fact that they are being forced to make physical contact with a stranger as you are. In the end people don’t like fat people and make fun of fat people because society says that it’s ok to make fun of fat people and hate fat people because “they did it to themselves.” We give more reverence and respect to alcoholics and drug addicts than we do to the overweight. Didn’t they “do it to themselves” as well?
For those that are overweight you already understand how pointless and cruel people can be and how people will instantly invalidate you any time you try to put forth a serious effort on anything simply because of your appearance.
I could fill your head with 12 step psychobabble all day long to try to make you feel better about your situation but in the end there is only one thing that I have found that will give you the determination and the confidence to be able to go forth defiantly in the face of the brainless hordes and that is to find a purpose to fight for. It doesn’t matter what your purpose is so long as you have some sort of driving goal that is more important than anything else in the world. And once you’ve accomplished that goal, move on to the next one. Now I admit that I am trying to make something really complicated sound really simple but the bottom line is that you can either try to find the things that will make you happy and succeed, or spend the rest of your life trying to make other people happy and always fail.
When you have a purpose, nothing else really matters. Other people can say what they want and do what they will and while I can’t say that you’ll never be hurt or offended you will be able to get over those hurtful words much faster the more you realize that those other people’s opinions do not matter and they themselves do not matter.
I forget who it was that said this but I try to live by these words, “I don’t care what you think of me, I don’t think of you at all.” This kind of attitude can only be accomplished once you’ve determined what is it that you want and refuse to let anyone stop you from obtaining it.
A good way to start is to make a bucket list. Make 3 different categories: Things you want to do before you die things you want to own before you die, things you want people to say about you when you die.
Rank each item in each list until you’ve determined you’re number one item in each category and turn this into your personal mantra and write it on your bathroom mirror so you can see it every day when you wake up:
“I will do ____, I will have____, I will be____.”
Now take each one of these and break it up into steps that would be required in order to accomplish each one.
Break each one of these steps down further into the steps that are required to meet each one of the aforementioned steps. Keep doing this until you have a good checklist of all of the minor components required broken up into tasks that you can schedule on a week by week basis. Put an appointment down on your calendar for each task you are going to try to complete. If you don’t know exactly what day and time you are going to work on said task, you will put it off forever.
That is the super condensed version.
Now I admit I haven’t fully mastered this technique myself. Part of the reasons why I am overweight is because of the chaotic and disorganized lifestyle that I am trying to break myself of. Stress makes you fat, it’s a scientific fact. Now I just need to give myself a good kick in the butt to quit putting off action items for my “I will have an action hero body” goal.
I hope someone out there will get some sort of help out of reading this. As always, your comments are appreciated.
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