Yesterday I was visiting with my Dad, and he told me about a young NBA player. The kid’s name is Jeremy Lin. He plays for the New York Knicks. I have not had a chance to watch Lin play (on tv) yet. I just read on the internet that ESPN made a racial slur when the Knicks lost a game. My comment is this: WTF ESPN? This is 2012 for Goodness sake!
Go Knicks and f— ESPN.
Stupid Relapse
I try to accept my body the way it is every day. However, sometimes I have mental relapses into the state of body dissatisfaction that I used to live in. For instance, yesterday I bought a scale and weighed myself again. I won’t tell you what I weighed, but it was more than society says I should.
Now, I know now, thanks to several books I’ve read and blogs I’ve read that body dissatisfaction is taught to women in this culture. Perhaps it’s just a way for some people to make easy money. I mean, if most women do not look like the women the media uses as models to sell stuff, and this is a consumer culture, as it surely is, most women will be unhappy with their bodies and seek to change them so that they will look more like what the media says women’s bodies should look like.
One of the other effects of having women in the media look different than most women is that men in this culture are taught by the media that only women who look like the ones they see in the media are okay. There are a few that somehow resist the constant brainwashing of the television, movies, music videos and so on and are not that picky about what women look like. They are the smart ones. (especially the one I’m lucky enough to be married to)
Anyway, I am going to try to quit weighing myself again and try to watch less television. I will also try to remember that I am more than the body I’ve been given. Our bodies are vehicles for us to enjoy our lives in, and we should enjoy them, but they are not the most important part of us. It really is what is on the inside that counts.
Do Not Give Up
The Health at Every Size movement cannot give up. The weight loss paradigm is not working. 95% of dieters regain the weight they lose dieting. (Bacon, 2008, 143-144) Size acceptance which is also known as Fat acceptance is the best idea for the health of humanity because weight loss has not been proven to improve human health. (Bacon, 2008, 140)
The obesity problem is mostly an invention of an employee of a well known insurance company. (Gaesser, 1996, 39, 40, 41) Overweight or obesity has never been proven to actually cause many of the health problems that the medical establishment associates with it. (Bacon, 2008, 131-137)
The diet industry alone makes between 40 billion and 100 billion dollars per year alone. (BBC News World Edition, Feb 5, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2 hi/business/2725943.stm) We keep wasting our money on this dieting thing even though, as I stated above, most diets eventually fail. (Bacon, 2008, 143)
When I turn on my television I still see endless weight loss product advertisements. There are still many talk shows that seem to devote a great deal of their programming to the idea of improving their guest’s lives by showing the guests how to lose weight. And I have read about, but never actually watched that one famous, (or infamous depending on how you look at it), show that is focused on an actual weight loss contest.
The businesses that keep us concentrating on making our bodies small enough to be fashionable still cannot keep those of us trying to spread the word of Fat/Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size quiet. They are trying. Don’t be discouraged Dr. Bacon. More people are learning the truth every day. Those of us that know the truth need to stop spending our money on products that are part of the problem, (by this I mean especially diet or weight loss products in particular). If we all say that are bodies are okay looking as they look today and stop listening to those making money by making us feel bad about our bodies, eventually the whole dieting money making scam will disappear, and become an oddity of the past, kind of like the now departed practice of bleeding someone to rid that person of a disease.
Comfortable Shopping
We all deserve attractive comfortable clothing. I happen to prefer the ultra comfortable jeans, tee shirt and sneakers look, except for special occasions. Isn’t it cool that we can now shop without going shopping via the internet?
I gotta quit dieting!
Today my thing to write about is how I like to eat. I found out about this thing called intuitive from this other book I bought called Lessons From The Fat-O-Sphere (Quit Dieting And Declare A Truce With Your Body) by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby. Chapter four in their book explains about what that kind of eating is. It’s basically eating when you’re hungry, eating what you want, and stopping when you’re full. (Page 28)
I personally have decided not to diet anymore in order to try to make my body look right. I think everyone has the right to eat as they wish, but I personally have never known anyone who has lost weight on some kind of diet or new way of eating that has been able to keep the weight off for good. I think enjoying today, including whatever I want to eat, sounds like a lot more fun.
That’s it for now. Have a nice day.
Fit and Fat!
Hello again. I enjoy riding my stationary bicycle. It is a Schwinn 213. Some kind of exercise always helps me feel a little less stressed. I understand it’s good for our health too. Some times I jog a little too. Very slowly. Have a nice day.
My favorite blogs and books…
My favorite blogs are all about fat acceptance, which can also be called size acceptance. I am about Health At Every Size. I am not about dieting or reducing.
My favorite books include: The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos, Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon, PhD., When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies by Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter, Lessons From the Fat-O-Sphere by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby, Big Fat Lies by Glenn A. Gaesser, Ph.D., Bountiful Women by Bonnie Bernell, Losing It by Laura Fraser, and, for now, last but not least, Body Wars, by Margo Maine, Ph. D.
I enjoyed the books above. You might too.
