What the devil is going on here?!

I’ve wanted to say this for a long time.

Someone’s going to hate me for this and let me be clear that I’m pro body confidence and anti body shaming - just as I am against any reductive stereotyping used to box people up and tell them how to live and what they can do.

However, being overweight/obese is unhealthy. That’s not a lie that a marketing team came up with. It’s science fact. And there are very few people in the world who can truthfully claim their weight is so out of their control that they can’t help being overweight. 

Yes you can be big and beautiful, yes who you are is not what you look like, and yes society treats fat like it’s worth its weight in guilt.

But there are a myriad of health problems and complications that result from being overweight and eating badly. Diet is actually a huge problem in our culture. And these things literally decrease your life-expectancy. I think we get so caught up in fighting society’s perception of big people that we forget we also need to promote healthy living in a positive way. It’s not enough or actually right to tell people that if they’re overweight/obese that they should just stay that way and society should adapt to that. Why should society have to do anything if you aren’t willing to help yourself in the most essential way? Society isn’t kind.

This is the controversial part: It’s a very Western idea that we should just accept being overweight even though it’s also a very Western idea that it’s gross. I don’t doubt there are genuine people who are earnestly fighting for realistic and healthy body expectations and I support them 100%. But there is an element to this acceptance that has to do with justifying the excess of our cultures. We have so much and we have it so readily. We have TOO much. Obesity is a growing issue in Western society going on right now and you probably don’t realise how screwed up our diets are. And for the VAST MAJORITY of overweight/obese people that is a lifestyle choice they have made. Some people are made curvy, not overweight and obese. I’ll reiterate that there are very few who have such limited control over their weight.

And it’s a very hard line to find but while we should be encouraging positive body image and the breaking down of expectations forced on people, we have to recognise what is unhealthy and also a problem.

Truer words have nought been spoken. I mean, let’s be perfectly honest, being healthy would be cool but my interest in health is intrinsically tied to my interest in looking good when I take my clothes off. And I do have quite an interest in health - I’ve made a personal study of it many times in my life - but, again, the motivation is pretty shallow. And why shouldn’t that be my motivation? It’s really the best one I could have if it’s making me research health. Where it goes south is when people let the ends justify the means and resort to extreme dieting and such. And I guess also when people expect too much of their body (i.e. to look like photoshopped celebrities). Ok, so maybe there is a fairly fine line here but it’s still good motivation if you’re committed to doing it right.

And I’d just really like to feel comfortable with taking my shirt off in front of people. Not that I think I would or would want to but I will probably need to at some stage.

Actually excellent advice.

thedailywhat:

Loading Artist

[pleatedjeans.]

THIS IS THE MOST ACCURATE THING I HAVE EVER SEEN! THIS PERSON IS ME! I am convinced someone has been studying me to make this cartoon.

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One of the biggest problems in Western society are the MASSIVE portions of food we assign ourselves. You may have seen diagrams such as the one below showing our steady increase in serving size over the years.

Though your first reaction may be “pfft look at their tiny meals! What a rip off!” you may change your tune when you read the fine print. The fact is we in the first world live with such excess that we have lavish amounts of everything and the commercial world has capitalised on that by increasing the average portion size. We eat more, we buy more.

Weight-loss and even maintaining weight is, at it’s core, the difference between the calories you put into your body and the calories you expend in the space of a day. It’s why exercise works - burns more calories - and it’s why, if you’re eating these massive portions you can gain weight even with healthy food. Your plate should never be full (except on special occasions…).

candidlycara:

loveineverything:

I cut out coffee from my morning routine and replaced it with decaff green tea. Best life choice ever <3

*Sidenote: But if you are consuming pre-packaged tea (like Arizona, Nestea, or the bottled Lipton) you are consuming HUGE amounts of high-fructose corn syrup (the equivalent of NINE tablespoons of sugar per serving).

I switched over from soda to bottled tea, and have since stopped consuming bottled tea, and (for the most part) prepackaged beverages because they contain DISGUSTING amounts of high fructose corn syrup.

HFCS has been linked to higher levels of kidney damage according to this study and to fatty liver disease in this study.

-Some HFCS has also been found to contain detectable levels of mercury (17 out of 55 products containing HFCS tested high on the charts for mercury). There are NO safe levels of mercury for women of childbearing age or children.

-It’s bad for our environment. “Most corn is grown as a monoculture, meaning that the land is used solely for corn, not rotated among crops. This maximizes yields, but at a price: It depletes soil nutrients, requiring more pesticides and fertilizer while weakening topsoil.”

-It is suggested that diabetics avoid it because they body doesn’t process it like sugar (glucose) which can wreak havoc on blood sugar levels.

-HFCS makes us fat. Long story short is that fructose, the sugar in HFCS, doesn’t stimulate leptin, a hormone which tells your body it’s full. So you’ve consumed a bunch of processed sugar-like calories, but your body doesn’t get the message, leading you to eat more calories. Fructose is also “an unregulated source of “acetyl CoA,” or the starting material for fatty acid synthesis. This, coupled with unstimulated leptin levels, is like opening the flood gates of fat deposition.”

So drink tea, but make it at home and sweeten it with 1tbsp of brown cane sugar or honey. :)

All the things Cara says are true, especially this point:

-It is suggested that diabetics avoid it because they body doesn’t process it like sugar (glucose) which can wreak havoc on blood sugar levels.

and this point:

-HFCS makes us fat. […]

Three members of my family have all read a book about how the body can’t recognise and filter fructose sugar when it has been extracted and processed - as in, when it isn’t in a fibrous fruit or vegetable. There was more about the dangers of sugar in it too but as a result all three have them have stopped consuming fructose sugar (though, to be honest I’m fairly certain my younger brother stopped consuming fructose because the book told him it would give him erectile dysfunction).

This doesn’t just go for teas though - there are dangerous levels of fructose and/or HFCS in a majority of products nowadays.

(Source: lovveruby)

How I went from daily exercise to never exercising for the last two weeks can only be explained by busyness.

Just feeling a bit like this:

…and it’s not because I was just watching that movie…