This past week’s discussions on obesity and weight problems has really brought to life the idea of “obesity” to me. Before these discussions, I associated the word with, pardon the stupidity of my language, gigantic, humungous, sick, 800 pound people who were trapped in their houses and unable to walk. I never associated the word with BMIs or so. I figured that fat was evidently fat and skinny was obviously skinny. I didn’t think that there was so much science involved with the classification. I guess this is partly due to the media influence on my life. I grew up wondering why I didn’t look like the celebrities on tv and such. While I was stick skinny, I was still very unhappy because it seemed that while I got that down, my proportions were off. I never seemed to be “perfect” or rather, “celebrity-like”. That website we looked at in class really opened my eyes. But personally, I think that it is extremely hard to classify someone’s weight. What exactly is the “correct” weight? If we go by the official nutritional scale, our “obesity” problem is larger, no pun intended, than we ever suspected. And when it comes down to it, I think that obesity is an emotional, physical, and ethical problem.
When it comes to analyzing the causes of this problem, Chapter 10 really provides insight. It explains how casual arguments are never simple. They are complex and go to many levels. It is not simply what’s on the surface. You can not blame obesity on just the intake of calories. Could peer pressure, lifestyle, and metabolism contribute to it too? I think all of these things play a part in the cause of obesity. What causes us to eat more calories? Why defines obesity? As you can see, nothing about this “casual” argument is casual.
Another subject that caught my attention was that of the fad diets and workouts. I think the reason this topic caught my eye was because I probably have heard or tried many of these before in hopes of obtaining that unreachable “perfection”. These things offer the easy way out. You get to eat the stuff that tastes so good, while growing closer to that desired look. Using this diet, I can look like this celebrity or by doing this workout plan I can resemble this celebrity. I think that the media contributes a lot to the making of these diets into fads. But personally, I think it comes down to self-evaluation. How you view yourself contributes to how you define obesity and diets, etc. For me, While Im content with my body image, there is no way I have totally come to terms with myself. I have days where the body demons rise through my self-imposed barriers and cause me to criticize myself. So I ask the question: is it ever possible to be completely and totally happy with your body in today’s society?
