Values

The word ‘diet’ does not really mean what people use it for. People use the word ‘diet’ when they mean changing their eating habits (usually for a somewhat short period of time) to meet certain goals. Then after the goals are met, the diet is over. The word ‘diet’ actually refers to the food you normally eat, so when you ‘go on a diet’ you are actually just changing your diet. There are two kinds of people that go on a diet, people that know they need to and people that think they do.

Society has put more and more pressure on people to be the perfect shape, and then it defines that shape as skinnier and skinnier each year. A super model today is so skinny that it is amazing she doesn’t just fall apart. These people diet because they are told they must meet certain weight goals to keep their jobs. This in turn causes the general public to strive for the super model perfection by also dieting. They are often so obsessed with being model skinny that they will go to any lengths to get there, including starvation, laxatives, vomiting, etc. I don’t have a lot to say on this form of dieting, because unfortunately, I’m fat.

When you are fat, life is hard. It seems that there is no shortage of people that don’t seem to realize that a fat person likely already knows they are overweight. A fat person has issues that a skinny person would not even begin to comprehend. The bigger and more visible issues are things like having knee, back and heart problems. What people don’t see is things like a person having trouble tying their shoe laces, or having trouble wiping after sitting on the toilet. Most fat people really do not want to be fat. I hear the comments all the time though, from people who really don’t understand, and think they are helping. “Just go on a diet or you’ll get a heart attack and die. You don’t want to put your children through that, do you?". Like it’s so easy. There is a perception that all a person has to do is eat less and better for a while, and then all their problems will be solved. It will cause you no stress. Just do it and it will be done.

The sad truth is that it just doesn’t work that way. Most people that are fat, especially the people that are really fat, are that way for a reason, and also, want to get into better shape. It is not simply dropping a few pounds here and there. The honest truth is that I can very easily drop a few pounds. It is just not easy to continue to do so continuously. There are several things that get in people’s way. The most common one is will power. People really want to loose weight, but after doing it for a short while, the stress of not getting to eat the way you like, and the inconvenience of it pushes some people over the edge, and then they fail. Another one that I think is more common than people realize, is addiction. Then there is the fact that yes, exercise helps people loose weight, but the heavier you are, the harder it is to exercise.

When your will power is not up to the task of loosing enough weight, the person can get quite depressed. This leads to lots of problems, including making it even harder to start loosing weight again, confirming the failure. When people don’t really understand what a person is going through, they often say the wrong things and make the person feel worse rather than better. I think that the proper thing to say to a person that is suffering from will power problems is that taking a break is OK. Instead of telling yourself you failed when you stop dieting, tell yourself, you will start up again when you get your head straight, or when you are ready. Don’t EVER use the word fail, or you won’t start up again and so, will have defeated yourself. A person in this position needs support from the people around them when they stop, to help them realize they can actually start up again. It is only a set back, not the end.

Lack of will power is a tough problem to tackle. Addiction is MUCH harder. You have to still deal with the will power issue, but it is now magnified by the addiction. Yes, the addiction thing is real. People actually get addicted to certain types of food. When you quite smoking, it is really hard, but cold turkey is something that people can do. They do not have to spend too much time in a smokey environment. Society as a whole is moving away from smoking being acceptable, so it is getting easier for the addicted person to remove himself from a bad environment so that he can work on controlling it without constant external reminders. Without those reminders, the smoker still has to deal with internal reminders. The smoker is going to remember what it tastes like, and crave that taste. The smoker is going to get triggered by events like coffee break, etc, that will remind him of smoking and cause a craving, and so on. The smoker can do things like not buy cigarettes, not hang out with people that smoke, while they are smoking, etc. This is REALLY hard, and many people fail to quit.

Addictions to food are even harder to break than quitting smoking or drinking alcohol. The reason is that it is almost impossible to escape the external reminders. You have to eat to live. You do not have to smoke to live. As for drinking, it is easier to draw the distinction between whiskey and milk than it is between cola and milk. You can not quit food cold turkey. This will cause external triggers galore. Also, with smoking, you are only quitting one thing, cigarettes. With food, you are quitting cola, doughnuts, greasy burgers, and so on, and so on. It makes you feel like you are giving up so much that can’t possibly do it. What is worse is that most people do not recognize a trigger for what it is because it is hard to get past the emotions involved, which makes it harder to control themselves by stepping out of the situation.

A really big trigger that causes fat people grief is the television. I don’t care what channel you are watching, you can not go past even one commercial break without getting inundated with food advertisements. It wouldn’t be so bad if the advertisement was for good vegetables, or meat. Most of the adds are for junk food. For example, there is a ‘Ring Pop’ thing now that is a ball of sugar on a ring, so you can stuff it in your face at any opportunity. You get so many of these types of ads that even people that are not addicted to sugar have trouble fighting the triggers. For someone who is, you may as well quit watching television at the same time as quitting the foods you can’t live without.

I guess what I am trying to say is that dieting is really hard, so if you know someone that is overweight, try to be more understanding with them, rather than critical, and if you are the one needing to loose weight, don’t give up. If you get to a hurdle, deal with it without beating yourself up for stopping the diet, and then try to get back on the diet as soon as you can. Life happens, and sometimes other issues truly are more important than your weight. If you do not allow yourself to prioritize them, then you are going to become very depressed.