Two of my friends are currently trying to lose weight. One of them is on a regimen, has cut meat out of her diet, eats loads of fruit and bread, and exercises regularly. The other just doesnt eat. Ok...he eats maybe once a day and goes to the gym, but Ive walked around campus on an empty stomach before and I know what torture that can be. So I cant imagine how it must feel after working out. Surely suffering through headaches and fatigue in order to lose some inches from his waist. Naturaly, I expressed my concern but he insists that he's done it before and it will work again.
Of course he will lose weight, but there are better ways. Like the route that the other is taking. It takes more work but I think thats the positive aspect of it. I know it feels rewarding to start something and stick to it, work through it until reaching your goal. I havent experienced that with losing weight, but in other areas of my life. I just wouldnt want to attain something so passively. Sure the gym is providing exercise but that's not going to make anyone any smaller, that's just going to turn the fat into muscle. Which brings up an interesting item that two of my other friends were discussing.
One mentioned how he read that a large percentage of Black women were overweight. The other countered that we have to ask "What is considered overweight?" She pointed out that the organization who did the study did not take into account athleticism. Which means there are women who are considered overweight becasue they are not the ideal weight for their height, but who are actually quite healthy because they are not fat but muscular. Women who engage in sports like boxing or rugby fall into this category.
Its important to put information in perspective when we hear the results of these studies that bounce around on tv or in magazine articles. If a study shows that 70% of Black women are overweight but leaves out that 25% of those women are athletic and actually relatively healthy, it skews the truth to an extreme. The problem of Black women being overweight is still there, but 45% doesnt sound as compelling if you're trying to sell something, or scare someone. So they leave out some facts and put some things in small print. Nobody reads that.
What people are reading are things that give them the desire to be less heavy rather than more healthy. Some people take up more space than others, and thats not a bad thing as long as both groups have the same amount of space in their arteries.
1 comment:
Cool blog, yo!
I hate how for whatever reason weight = *the* sign of how healthy one is. My mother is pretty small, but her cholesterol is out of control! And I know, sometimes weight really does matter. But I have a feeling that most of the time weight loss isn't primarily about health at all. It's about the perception that others have about our health/lifestyles/whatever.
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