I work at a homeless hospital and we often entertain medical experts in our area. We tell them about what we do, hear about what they do and hope that they can help make this little non-profit a better place for our clients. A few weeks ago, a big shot (I mean that in a good way – she was excellent) came in from a local university, took the tour of our facility and told us of the wonderful advances in medicine in technology coming from the university. It was all pretty inspiring until this, “…we have the leading obesity experts in the country…. We are breaking ground in causes of obesity.”
Think about it… It must not be as simple as, if you eat a lot of crap and sit on the couch or at a computer all day, you will get fat.
Experts in obesity - what do you think they talk about? Do you think they compare what processed foods make people unhealthy or do they just look at the genes and internal factors of a person to see why they can’t meet society’s definition of “healthy?” I’m a big girl. I have never been a petite girl and for many years, I fought and fought to try to find happiness through weight loss. I have 2 petite sisters and a petite mama and guess what, I look exactly like my dad. My dad is a studly man but he is built like a man and I have his genes. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t look like a man, but I also don’t have the natural slim limbs of my beautiful sister-friends.
So I can wallow in this. And, truth be told, I sometimes do. I complain about my genes and the internal reasons for my uneasy weight loss and super easy weight gain. In the past I have blamed my sister’s for getting the good genes and I have spent hours asking “why me?” After years of yo-yo dieting and learning to hate myself and my body from failed attempts at losing and succeeding only in gaining, I decided to become my own “obesity expert.”
I started working with Betsy Moore of Bmoore Healthy (read her blog here: Have Your Pierogies… and Eat Them Too!) and have changed my views on health, weight loss, success and happiness. Truth is, while I may be a bigger girl and I fully understand the need to get to a healthy weight, I workout 4-5 days a week and eat fruits and veggies every day. I’ve cut out a lot of processed food from my diet and I have learned to listen to my body. I know that my genes play a huge role in what I look like but my genes do not define my choices or how I feel.
In short, I’m a self-proclaimed ”obesity expert” and while I can’t get back the thousands of dollars that I have paid into the diet industry, I can realize that as a country, we don’t need to spend millions of dollars on obesity research to know that if you eat more foods that come from the earth and take your dog for a few walks, you will live longer and healthier.
Sweet baby niece, Madi, told me she likes me just the way that I am!
