8.22.2010

It starts when you're little

just like anything else, kids learn young. and if you never teach them, chances are they'll never learn... or, it will be extremely difficult for them to changer their ways.

i have brought this truth up on many an occasion in regards to religious dogma and fantastical bullshit thrown on kids at an early age, killing their freedom to think for themselves. but let us not forget that it's valid in other arenas as well.

like health. nutrition. food.

i was never taught anything about food. probably because my parents weren't taught anything about it either because their parents weren't taught anything about it. y'see how this works?

and sure, that was fine and dandy back in my grandparents' day, where the kids were out working the farm, doing housework, chores, being physically active and burning calories all the time. but now, in our sedentary lives filled with t.v. and processed foods that didn't even exist 50 years ago, shit is goin' down and people are gettin' big.

and it ain't healthy.

like religion, obesity has negatively affected my family in a major way... and just like religion, it's hard for me to sit back and keep my mouth shut about it.

starving yourself doesn't work. sure, you will lose a few pounds in the short run, but you will gain it back once you stop starving yourself. there's only one way to lose weight and that is by finding the correct balance of caloric intake versus physical activity.

assuming you're eating good foods (not junk), then the more you exercise, the more you can eat. why doesn't anyone ever market that as a diet incentive?

(image via ihmp)

2 comments:

  1. imagine that. first you have to invent a symptom. then you have to convince people they have it. then you can sell them the solution to their problem. there is no money in the cure. the real money is in keeping people sick. think of all the resulting unemployment if every one was "healthy". C'mon...and the FDA isn't in on it? pffft. No one wants to work for anything anymore. push a button or pop a pill society. Gee I hope the Mayans are right.

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  2. My family has a lot of obese people, although I am not one of them. I don't nag, but I get awfully tired of hearing the health complaints when the solution is right under their noses.

    The health problems just keep coming, yet they all say it "can't be" their weight. "You don't know that's what causes it." The correlation is pretty convincing, even if not conclusive.

    The "big bones" excuse used to be used until I finally said I didn't want to hear that anymore until they could show me a fat skeleton. I haven't heard that one since.

    I did gain a few pounds (30!) a few years ago. It was right after a time where I was basically homeless and eating wild stuff from the woods for a few months ("You can live on it, but it tastes like $#&%"). When I finally got to eat actual food again I overdid it for a while, I suppose. Or perhaps my body had gone into starvation mode and was trying to store fat for the next famine. After the a while, the weight went away.

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