A Rant on a Fat Rant

First, watch this video:



No, stop reading and finish watching the video. Yes, the whole thing. Oh give me a break, it's less than eight minutes. Okay, finished? Now you can read.

Then, let me just say that I love this girl. I love her attitude, I love her confidence. She's smart, witty, talented and gorgeous through and through.

But, I do have several rather large bones to pick with her argument.

One of the first things she opens with is this statement: "I'm fat, and it's okay."

I tend to not agree with that. But before you get in a huff, hear the rest of what I have to say. I do agree with her next statement: "It doesn't mean I'm stupid, ugly, lazy or selfish." Obesity has no reflection on a person's personality. I've got nothing to argue about with her there.

What I have a problem with is that she is saying that being fat is normal. That it's something we are simply born with. It's natural. Like race, height, age, sexual orientation, whatever. They're all the same.

This is a dangerous assumption to make, and it's unfortunate that the obesity rates in this country have become so outrageous that being fat really is, well, normal. After all, one in three people you pass on the street are going to be overweight.

This is not normal, and this is not okay.

You may be wanting to fire a few questions at me, such as "Well, are you fat?" No. I've always been a tall, gangly bean pole. Have I always been in shape and healthy? Absolutely not. My diet up until a couple of years ago was your run-of-the-mill Standard American Diet. My exercise habits were nonexistant. If you asked me to take a jog around the block or try to touch my toes, I would have scoffed at the suggestion and made you take me out for ice cream to make up for it. I was just like one of those one in three overweight people, just without actually being fat. I have a fast metabolism, or maybe it's genes, who knows. Doesn't matter. The point is, I was a sheep in wolf's clothing. Being thin, exclusively, has absolutely nothing to do with vitality and well-being.

When I realized that I wanted to be responsible for my own health, I did my own research and discovered a hidden passion for the true meaning of "diet and exercise." I knew that eventually I wasn't going to be able to keep eating pizza and french fries every day and stay skinny forever. But it wasn't just about staying thin. It was about feeling healthy, the way our bodies were originally intended to feel.

Joy gives a modest nod to good eating habits next in the video; "Obviously, diet and exercise are vital. I'm saying that if you do those things, eat right and exercise, and you still aren't thin, your life is not over." I'm glad she mentions this because it seems that more often than not, people who are obese will diet and exercise only for the sake of losing weight. They don't necessarily want to be healthy. They just want to be skinny, no matter what it takes. So when they do their time at the gym every day and choke down a Slim-Fast for lunch but don't see a difference on the scale, of course it's going to be disappointing and maybe even devastating.

That's because dieting and exercising for the wrong reasons will not make everything right. Living every day hating yourself now and striving towards a commercialized "ideal" glamour shot of what every perfect man or woman's body should look like will get you nowhere.

Eat well because it makes you feel better. Because it gives you more energy. Exercise because that new energy makes you crave it. Don't eat Jenny Craig's processed, nutrient-depleted prepackaged meals just because she told you to on a commercial. Don't kill yourself every day with an hour in the gym because someone told you that in order to be skinny you have to feel like shit first. It's not about that. Because guess what? When you eat well, and I mean truly well, not the media's idea of well, the pounds will naturally fall off. If you decide to commit to transforming your lifestyle into what should be the norm but is sadly, in America, is the opposite, your body will automatically fall to its own natural, comfortable weight. The weight you were designed to have, whether it's 100 pounds or 200 pounds. There is no standard healthy weight number.

The part of Joy's video that really made me cringe was when she started addressing "dieting." I knew there was trouble coming when she spit that word out like it was a question, then let out an uproarious cackle. What follows are a bunch of statistics on obese people who go on diets and almost 100% of them fail or gain the weight back.

Obviously the "dieting" that Joy is talking about is the Jenny Craig kind of dieting. The fake, nutrient-depleted food. The kind of food you eat to get skinny, not to get healthy. But I don't know if Joy realizes this is what she's talking about, nor do I know if her viewers do either. What concerns me is that she and those who watch her video will interpret her depressing statistics on dieting as this: Eating "healthy" will not make me skinny. It doesn't matter what I eat. Being fat is normal and I have no reason to do anything about it and I should just embrace it instead of embrace a healthy lifestyle.

A diet, by definition, is simply the food a person eats. If your diet changes depending on whether or not you're trying to lose weight, you might want to rethink why you're trying to lose weight. Healthy, wholesome foods aren't supposed to only be eaten when we feel too fat and think we should "punish" ourselves with a celery stalk. Wholesome foods are intended to be gifts to us as a natural, permanent diet(with, of course, the totally allowed occasional not-so-wholesome treat). You don't see Slim-Fasts growing on trees. That's not normal, and it's not right for the human body.

I'm not saying that embracing a healthy lifestyle is easy. I'm not saying that accepting your obesity and being confident about it is easy either. Neither Joy's nor my proposals are quick, easy fixes. (And guess what, skinny people get picked on for their weight too, often by fat people. Looks like everyone is insecure about themselves. Seems like a vicious, petty circle doesn't it?) You may be thinking, "Easy for you to say since you're skinny and automatically look healthier than a fat person." I suppose that's true. Some people aren't so "lucky" (although I'd hardly call it that) by having bodies that more quickly reflect a poor diet by easily putting on weight. But my diet wasn't good for my health either. There were several years where I felt that I was too skinny, and terribly insecure about it too. My butt was too flat, my wrists were too bony, my face was too thin, my legs were too gangly. It wasn't until I started educating myself on eating right that I gained and achieved a healthy and normal weight for my height, not to mention learned to love and accept my body and bone structure.

Joy's advice for staying thin? "Choose two thin parents; ideally choose four thin grandparents as well." What is she saying? That you can't be thin unless you are genetically lucky enough? Here we go again with the "being fat is normal" thing. Obesity is not an ethnicity for crying out loud. Who's the one making excuses here?

Whether or not you're too skinny or too fat, if you're going to obsess over it, try shifting that focus to the quality of your life instead of the size of your body. Stop watching TV and reading weight-loss magazines. Those media mongers are there to make a profit and they don't give two shits about whether or not you succeed after taking their advice. It's a success to them either way after they've deposited your check. Spend that TV and magazine time to instead read up on how important a diet of fresh fruits and vegetables are. Do your own research on the fact that an incredibly large percentage of excess body fat is actually bowel back up, and that your digestive system is pretty much the "decider" on your overall health. Learn about alkalizing your body, cleansing, drinking water, breathing, stretching, walking. Nothing that is really truly an important factor in human health can possibly be endorsed by any company, and don't let anyone try to tell or sell you otherwise. Be your own doctor, personal trainer, teacher. Learn and be enlightened. Then go out and live it.

The thing I liked most about Joy's video (yes, there are many things in it that I like) is at the end when she gives examples of a typical fat person's excuses for not fully enjoying their life: "I'll go dancing when I can wear this dress again," and "I'll go to the Bahamas when I look good in a bathing suit," and "I'll get my wedding dress fitted as soon as I lose 30 pounds." To which Joy vigorously responds, "No! Now!"

Yes, enjoy your life now, not when you're skinnier. Lead a life towards well-being and the weight will soon become a co-factor, maybe eventually something not even of much importance at all.

Joy then positively proclaims, "It's all you've got!" I disagree, but we can work on that. We've got a lot more than the fat between our skin and bones.