{"id":376,"date":"2013-01-07T08:59:19","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T14:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.powerfulhunger.com\/powerful_hunger_blog\/?p=376"},"modified":"2014-01-18T14:15:21","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T20:15:21","slug":"weight-fat-contradictions-in-correctness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powerfulhunger.com\/powerful_hunger_blog\/weight-fat-contradictions-in-correctness\/","title":{"rendered":"Weight & Fat: Contradictions in Correctness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"michelle-obama\"<\/a>I love the First Lady. I really do. But I read an interview in which she joins in doing something that I think creates an aspect of denial to the difficulty some of us endure in managing our weight. It’s a contradiction with roots in political correctness.<\/p>\n

In an interview in Women’s Health<\/em> magazine, Michelle Obama opened with this statement:<\/p>\n

As women, we’re used to hearing about fitness in terms of inches and dress sizes. We may know better, but we’re up against near-constant reminders and pressures to look good and take shortcuts to get there.<\/p>\n

The truth is, being a healthy woman isn’t about getting on a scale or measuring your waistline\u2014and we can’t afford to think that way. Instead, we need to start focusing on what matters\u2014on how we feel, and how we feel about ourselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This sort of statement is VERY common. It doesn’t matter what you weigh! What’s important is that you feel good about yourself! Forget that number on the scale! You’re not defined by a number! But Mrs. Obama goes on to talk about how she works out with weights and cardio every morning and how we should all “push\u00a0ourselves a little harder at the gym.” Click here to read the article.<\/span><\/a><\/strong> When I read it, Women’s Health<\/em>\u00a0helpfully included a link to an article titled “15 Minutes to a Sexy Body.”<\/p>\n

Essentially, it’s politically incorrect to admit that anyone is overweight or to say that weight matters. But this contradicts that OTHER national dialogue on our obesogenic culture and the impact of the obesity crisis on the health of our nation. The distinct difference is that the obesity crisis is usually discussed in the media in news reports. As news, it’s described in broad statistics, often accompanied by familiar images of fat people from the neck down, with the finger pointed at no one in particular.<\/p>\n

The politically correct attitude is used in entertainment media and advertising. After all, offending consumers won’t sell anything. So a breakfast cereal runs a commercial where happy women stand on scales that display compliments instead of their weight. BUT another commercial for that same cereal recommends eating it twice a day for a few weeks to drop weight. Which is it? Just be happy and don’t worry about that number on the scale? Or work to lower that number? Either way, the idea is to sell cereal with one approach or the other, not bolster your self-image.<\/p>\n

There’s a very persuasive mindset that’s been intensely promoted to women—the idea that if you love and accept yourself (and your fat body and your eating habits) that you’ll somehow make peace with food and you’ll lose weight. Or you won’t care about losing weight. It’s actually all quite nebulous and clearly aimed at political correctness. I see it as just the opposite. This “logic” assumes that you are fat because you hate yourself, you’re broken, and out of control and you won’t be “fixed” until you believe a mind trick and convince yourself you’re happy “just the way you are.” But women who turn to this are unhappy because they are fat. So how does this actually “fix” anything? It sells books and seminars because it’s designed to make people feel better about themselves but the results can only be temporary. This approach is based first on insulting and assigning a label to you (as self-loathing) and convincing you the answer is playing a mind trick on yourself. With wholly ineffectual “methods” like this, no wonder we are making little to no progress in taking control of our weight!<\/p>\n

All this politically correct happy talk is a form of denial and it’s also unnecessary. We free ourselves from self-criticism when we separate our self-image and self-worth from this temporal condition of weight. Your weight is NOT who you are so why connect it to your self-worth? It’s an odd contradiction within a contradiction when you’re told to connect your happiness to an acceptance of your weight while also being told that your weight does not define you. Yeah, like WHAT???<\/p>\n

Would you rather convince yourself you’re happy the way you are? Or would you like to lose some weight? Would losing weight make you feel genuinely good about yourself? Or would you rather look into the mirror and tell yourself you’re beautiful as you are until you sorta kinda believe it?<\/p>\n

Many of us fail at losing weight because we buy into all the ineffectual methods that are marketed to us. We find ourselves trapped in cycles of failure that drive negative attitudes we use to direct blame inward. If you’re like me and you have a brain that loves to think about food and connects food to everything in your life, getting your weight under control is a tough job. Your adversary is no less than your own nature. No one does you any favors by telling you there’s some easy diet or quick results exercise program. Or that you’ll solve a lifelong weight problem by smiling into a mirror every day. It does not take accepting your body, it takes accepting your own behaviors and habits and working with them. Doing what it takes to start getting the weight off will change your thinking in a genuine way, not the least being the positive ways your body will respond physically.<\/p>\n

Real change does not come from what you think and the deceptions we want to believe. Real change comes from what you do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love the First Lady. I really do. But I read an interview in which she joins in doing something that I think creates an aspect of denial to the difficulty some of us endure in managing our weight. It’s a contradiction with roots in political correctness. In an interview in Women’s Health magazine, Michelle … <\/p>\n

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