#104 - The Effort of Being Fat!

Let's face it; being fat takes A LOT of effort! Being fat takes much more than the normal amount of effort, on both physical and psychological levels. When I'm fat it takes so much out of me! Let me describe this in more detail... a list within in a list if you will.

1. Dieting. It seems that fat people are always on a diet, or at least attempting to be on a diet! Think of all the time and effort that goes into following all the programs, portioning out just the right amount of food, planning meals, shopping for the right ingredients, and frankly all the effort of feeling guilty when you eat something that you're not supposed to. I think fat people spend WAY more time thinking about food and food preparation than thinner people. Have you ever found yourself planning your next meal just as you took the last bite of your current meal? I know I have! I'm always planning (and not always in a good way - sometimes I'm planning when I'll have my next brownie)!

2. Physical. Being fat is hard work! Now I'm 5'6" with a stocky frame, so by my doctor's calculations I should weigh roughly in the 160 pound neighborhood. I'm currently 280, so that means I'm carrying an excess of about 120 pounds! Wow that's a hefty load! I mean imagine a 160 pound person having to carry around a 120 backpack all day long. Geesh, that would take a lot of effort. It takes a lot of work to lug around all that extra weight! Even walking up a flight of stairs can seem like a major task if you are carrying that much weight. By the end of the day, I'm exhausted, even if I've only done a few things around the house! Think of all of the other physical limitations of being fat. If you were healthier, you could play longer with your kids, you could enjoy physical activities like sport more, hell, even sex would be better!

3. Psychological. I think being fat adds so much undue stress to a person's life. Fat people have so many worries about being fat. We worry about what other people think about us, we worry about our diets, we worry about our health, we worry about getting dates, we worry about everything! That takes so much effort to constantly worry about stuff. And it's not just worrying. There are many other taxing emotions that face the fat afflicted. Many fat people suffer from depression and loneliness, though this may be a case of the chicken and egg. Which came first? The fat or the depression? Some would argue that being depressed leads to overeating and then obesity, but others would argue that being obese in itself is depressing and leads to further depression. I'm not sure on this one. Was I depressed when I was thinner and got then fat, or was I fat and then got depressed? The jury is still out on this one. I'm sure it's different for everyone, regardless, dealing with depression takes effort. You find yourself constantly having to give yourself pep talks to keep your spirits up or talk yourself out of yet another neurosis.

4. Health. Being fat is clinically proven to be bad for your health. Many people who are fat have to deal with medical conditions brought on by their obesity. It could be diabetes, high blood pressure, a heart condition, or even bad knees; they all take a lot of effort to deal with. With all of these afflictions there are numerous doctor visits, medications, and regimens that must be followed, all of which take a ton of effort. Imagine all the extra time you would have if you didn't need to keep popping pills or going to the doctor!

5. Work place. It's been shown that obese people are less likely to be hired than their thinner counterparts, mostly due to overly simplified stereotypes of the obese as being thought of as lazy and stupid. Now if you're one of the lucky ones and have a job, it's also been shown that obese people earn less money in the same jobs than skinner folks. So in the work place the obese person needs to make more of an effort to shine above the rest and prove their worth as a good employee. Who woulda thunk it? Being fat even affects the amount of effort you need to put into a job.

So what am I getting at with all of this? Well clearly being fat sucks. Not only does it carry awful social stigmas and health risks, it takes a lot of work! We always bitch and moan that losing weight is so hard and takes too much time and effort, but really it's so much harder being fat! Stay fat and spend a lifetime of hard work and effort to maintain (or should I say deal with) your fat body, or spend a few weeks, months, or years of effort losing weight and getting fit and healthy. It's our choice. Now by nature I'm kind of a lazy person. I always look at losing weight as such a major task, like it just TOO hard. But really when you put it into perspective, being fat is much harder. The amount of effort I mentioned above is just hitting the tip of the iceberg. It just takes so much effort to be fat. Wouldn't it be nice to not have to work so hard on all of the things we need to do being fat? I think the time is now to put in the effort and get healthy. All your efforts today will pay off for a lifetime!


Update: I know a lot of you have been wondering where I've been. I'm here, just trying to deal with life. As you see by my stats my weight hasn't budged! Yup, I'm still 280. So why the slow down? I'd been doing so well, consistently losing about 0.5-1 pound per week. Well let's face it; I haven't been putting in the effort into getting healthy. I've been letting the fat weigh me down (pun intended). Sometimes life throws you curve balls, and I got a whopper. Now I'm not trying to make any excuses. I know I'm not putting in the effort and it's reflected in my lack of weight loss, but I thought I'd fill you in on what's been up. In May I got laid off. :( Woo hoo, gotta love the economy! So I've been coping with being an unemployed person. Truth be told, I've been holding a pity party for myself. We you're unemployed for a while you really start to doubt your own self worth. I have a PhD and I can't even find a job, so I keep wondering what's wrong with me. Then I keep going back to that statistic about how it's harder for an obese person to find a job and I wonder if that's part of it, which in turn, makes me feel even worse and leads me yet again to that wonderful pan of brownies... yeah I know, I should know better. These walls on my pit of despair are steep, but I keep trying to claw my way out! I'm not going to get stuck in that rut of feeling sorry for myself and turning to food as a way to cope. I just have to keep reminding myself that's just the economy; so many others are in the exact same boat as me. I really need to remind myself of the big picture, that getting healthy NOW is important and will make me feel much better for the rest of my life. Hard times are no excuse. We'll be dealt a bad hand in life now and again. Learning how to deal with the tough times the right way is so important. Many people turn to their vices during the rocky times, whether it be drinking, drugs, or in my case food. But all of those things merely mask the pain. They don't solve your problems, only you can do that by facing them head on. That's why I say now that I'll always be a recovering fat-a-holic. The temptation to slide back into old habits is so easy. Sure I may have fallen off the wagon for a bit, but I'm not quitting