Looking out of the window

Try and broach a conversation about food and fitness. Its like chanting to the open skies and begging them to run you down you with a torrential storm.  To the average human with the average sense of ethics, its like standing in the middle of an Aladdin like bazaar, where people are shouting at you from all corners, urging you to buy their point of view.  Everybody’s showing you their stats, coming up with ostensibly solid arguments and telling you what the right line of thinking is, and also with no pretence of subtlety pointing out that you’re an idiot if you’re actually going to consider the other side of it.

  Trying to make sense of any of it and arrive at your point of view is a difficult task. There’s every conceivable shade of argument thrown into the mix and your head will probably hurt by the end of it. It’s the worst time to be objective and the temptation to go with the one that’s the glossiest or vouched for by Oprah is strong. But being a no-fun, rational person is a curse apparently.

   There are simply too many conflicting ideas about fitness and food for anyone to not have an opinion. I happen to have one. Its not the most scientific, or the most politically correct or the most extreme, but its what it is. It works for me and I plan on keeping it that way. 

   Its presumptuous to think that one person’s experience can be used to generalize for everybody. But I also think, there are a lot of people like me out there, who’re tired of figuring their place out in this web of opinions. I think at this point, I am finally ready to stop figuring it out and letting it be.

    The fat acceptance movement is not something I necessarily agree with in its entirety. But it’s a very progressive and much needed bent of thinking to the question of obesity and weight .Before you can ask, no I am not obese or overweight or plus sized. I’ve never been any of those things anytime in my life. So you’re right, I‘ll never understand completely the frustrations and the agony of someone who is. I don’t get it because I don’t get shunned, or judged or sniggered or frowned upon by the shallow and the plastic. I don’t have to settle for baggy, biscuit colored shirts because I can’t a find a size that fits me in anything remotely fashionable or flattering. But that doesn’t make me blind to the fact that it happens. It doesn’t make me ignorant of the shocking levels of unrealism and cruelty that gets pushed into our faces in the name of beauty. Fat is not the same as unhealthy always and health is not simply about thin curves and its time we understand that.

     But having said that I also wish to point out that being thin or wanting to be thin doesn’t always make you stupid or insecure or shallow or neurotic. Its something that a few proponents of this thinking seem to unfairly assume. Add some leftist feminism to the mix, and you’re suddenly this poor, empty headed girl hopped up on diet pills and fed on diet book propaganda, failing to see how the big bad pharmaceutical companies are just preying upon your weak, gullible mind by publishing pages after pages of dubious info on the lethalness of over weight. But how can you possibly understand that? Your judgment is already clouded by your insecurities that stem from the skinny and the evil fashionistas always tsk tsking at you for looking the way you do.

    My respect to the feminists (I’m almost one of you, if it weren’t for your whole no bra rule because no way in hell am I furthering gravity’s assault on my breasts) But sometimes they really underestimate their own kind. The obesity myth is a big economic conspiracy. No shit! I would never be able to see through that had that not been pointed out to me, because I couldn’t even for argument’s sake be a thinking individual right?

   Give us a little more credit than that please. Its not like one doesn’t catch up with that little fact. I understand that and plenty more. Like the fact that the sugar and wheat lobbies exercise enormous amounts of control over government policies that try to promote healthy eating. How’s that for a little economic agenda of the corporate machine? Do I sound like a desperate person willing to clutch at anything to prove my point?  Maybe I do, but I what I am trying to say is that it works both ways and we should be way past gasping over how profit drives everything by now. Of course it does. Marx told us that two centuries ago remember.

     The question is do you see and understand all of it and then make your choice? Why can it never be that a woman chooses to get thin because it’s the choice she makes? If there’s nothing wrong with being fat, why should there be anything wrong with being thin or aspiring towards it?

     I don’t buy any diet book or video that comes my way and I have never followed any celebrity regime or believed any fads. But that doesn’t stop me from watching what I eat, or counting my calories or staying away from junk food. It doesn’t stop me from working out everyday or losing the extra weight when I gain it. It also doesn’t automatically make me a self-tortured, borderline eating disorder case. I’ve read up on a lot of diverse, sensible literature and worked with a lot of different routines before I narrowed down on something that worked for me in terms of what I eat and how I burn it. I want to keep my figure and I work hard towards it. I love the fact that my arms are shapely from all those weights or that my curves are tight from crunches. I happen to like the fact that I can wear skinny jeans and that they look good on my legs.

       I’ve been a vegetarian way before it became popular and the term Vegan was simply a superhero name you’d assume in games. Generations before me in my family have been vegetarian. It’s the way I was raised and it had nothing to do with animal cruelty or carbon emissions though I am glad it serves that purpose too. The reasons were religious and mostly logistical. Nobody eats meat in my family except my dad who enjoys it occasionally. Its never cooked or brought home. I tried it my childhood, decided I didn’t like it and have never since tried again to eat it. Recently, I’ve begun to read up quite a lot on the vegan and the raw food movement and incorporate some of the things that I like into my own diet. I’ve never asked anyone to give meat up or espoused vegetarianism as a healthier alternative. I don’t eat any sugar or butter and generally stay away from sweet and creamy things. But I’ve never asked anyone to do the same.

       However,  I am not going to think its okay to indulge in fatty foods heavily and celebrate that as some misguided tenet of fat acceptance which its not. It’s a stupid and unhealthy way of living and it’s a stupid argument to make.  It’s also a little self-delusional. For all the agenda driven, pharmaceutical sponsored, ‘thinspirational’ media, there is also a significant amount of credible data that tells us respectfully and with consideration, that we can’t treat our bodies like a dumping ground for anything. We can’t deny that certain eating and lifestyle practices are unhealthy and need to be changed. It’s what’s good for us, and the environment. It’s very detrimental to hide behind a progressive thought process and deny that there’s anything wrong with the choices we’re making. It’s also a little childish to point fingers at all those who make the right choices and tell them they’re skinny bitches or bimbos who are being sucked into a trap of artificial beauty.

     I am not making any claims to being self-assured or comfortable in my skin. There are very many times when I don’t. I get insecure all the time. I can constantly obsess over my weight, and feel ugly when I look in the mirror. But its harmless for the most part. It doesn’t mean I’ll spiral into anorexia or value all my life’s worth over my BMI. It simply means that I care, probably a lot more than the carefree person who’ll eat guilt free and a lot less than someone who will starve themselves to get that weight off. I doubt there’s any such thing as an actual healthy body image. You can be a size zero or a plus size and there’s a good chance you’re both worried that your thighs are too big. The only thing that you need to ask yourself is how large is that anxiety. Is it big enough for you to ruin your life and lose all sense of your self or is it just the right amount of motivation to live active and eat healthy?