Then they tell you that they have had bariatric surgery, and my heart just freezes up.
I've always had a curious attraction/repulsion towards the idea of weight loss surgery, because, while the results in so many women are obvious, I can't help but think that there's something really scary to me about the idea of not being able to eat more than 2 oz of food at a time without being sick.
And then, this morning, I read this.
I can't even begin to imagine.
I can't.
And as greedy as I know doctors are, I'm still outraged at the idea that a doctor would mutilate and debilitate women, and do this kind of harm, for the price of a surgery.
I'll eat my salad. I'll do my workout. I'll pay attention to my health.
And when a doctor tries to tell me that it's healthier to be thin than to be fat, I'll laugh and tell him that sometimes thin has too high a price.
Don't do it.
Please--don't do it.
- Mood:
distressed
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Comments
Because this is just a horror of gargantuan proportions.
I can't even begin to imagine what would possess a woman with a perfectly healthy albeit larger body to do this--and make herself a cripple for the rest of her life.
We are always told to eat healthy but no one comes up and Says, "Hey you look healthy, how do you do it?"
Start the trend, compliment people on how healthy they look. If someone at your work place looks ill say so, in the nice way!
But if you can be healthy and big, I can't see risking being ill and small.
The trouble is the media is focused on shape. Not how well someone looks. It's a vicious cycle we need to break out of.
That's not quite true, but I went through a period between the time I was five and about 9 when I had a "nervous stomach"--when eating made me feel sick, and so I didn't do a lot of it.
And yes, it was not healthy. I remember my mother literally WEEPING when she helped me with my bath, because she could count all my bones...
All I can remember about that time was feeling sick all the time. So yes, I imagine that, if I went back in that direction, I would feel very much the same way.
And yeah, the media does it a lot, in the way of setting trends. But I think that its possible that our own Western sense of competition mixed with inferiority just feeds their influence.
doctors are paid according to the work they do... which means if they want more money, they have to do more work, which leads to them doing unnecessary work. Which means there is pressure to invent or exaggerate diseases and syndromes etc.
It's the same problem we have with dentists in the UK.
But you know, there are actually PARENTS out there who are sufficiently brainwashed as to push their daughters in this direction as well.
Lately, I've found myself thinking more and more like you...
Shaved apes.
But yeah, shaved apes, not really thinking at all.
By his definition, I should probably be flipping burgers or packing shopping bags somewhere, because there's no way in hell I could do ANY of those things he was describing. And you know, the odd thing is that it's the YOUNGER people in society who are so rigid and judgmental--managers of my generation are happy when people show up! ;-)
But really--I look around me and more and more I'm convinced that we're DE-evolving more than we're moving forward.
any wonder they are easy to stampede into conforming?
And yes, we're sliding into a sort of technological barbarism, becoming more tribal minded and intolerant of difference, clinging to any illusion of certainty in a rapidly changing, ever more complex world...
basically, the shaved apes are frightened and want to climb back into the trees.
They get really upset when you shake their trees.
Mariel is lanky, nearly skinny, and part of the problem is the food that affects her behavior is the stuff she will eat the most of - so we have to sneak fats and calories into her (hot cocoa with a raw egg white and straight coconut milk being her most frequent breakfast these days.)
Sorta large - I was that. This culture does not teach moderation, merely suggests it at the end of beer commercials. I had to learn moderation and real food enjoyment on my own.
What do people need to eat to be healthy? Less nutrition and more food. Look up an article, NYTimes Sunday from a week or two ago, called "Unhappy Meals." It's by the author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma."
BTW, if you get a chance, pick up some arugula plants for your garden. The leaves taste like spicy peanuts, and they're great to snack on while you weed.
And weed barefoot, especially if it's raining. No point in shoes.
I dunno--the whole food thing...it's just insane. I mean, yeah, there are foods on which you function best and foods on which you don't. And it changes, with me, with the seasons. I know that by and large I do better on lean proteins and vegetables--in the summer. In the winter, I find myself looking longingly at the potato that I turned my nose up at in July.
Am I wrong to listen to what my body wants? Somehow, I don't think it's a terrible strategy.
My HPS used to say, "Nothing is poisonous."
Keeping that in my mind is probably the thing that keeps me from having a paranoia induced eating disorder.
Arugula is da bomb diggety.
How much you eat is only a symptom. If somebody thinks food equals love and thinks nobody loves them, they will eat every single time they feel bad, because food is love and comfort and a great big hug. I did this myself for many years.
I have a belief that with AIDS, more deathly forms of TB, and other diseases running rampant in the near future, that being a few pounds overweight will suddenly be looked upon as healthy and good and wonderful. Or maybe it's just a vain hope.
But considering the fact that the fashion industry tried to make heroin addiction look glamorous, I'm not holding my breath.
I, too, have noticed this. I didn't see one woman for four months, when I did, it was shocking scary - she was half her original size. Before I thought she was beautiful, now she looks sick.
Where I am, the popular method is "Dr. Brenstein", which is just expensive starvation with vitamin shots. There's a complicated program, they won't even let you use hand cream because the fats will be absorbed through your skin and sabotage the program.
I worry whenever I see it happening.
That's just nuts.
The body NEEDS fat--the body needs to consume fat in order to metabolize sugars. It needs to be good fat, to be sure, but if you don't consume fat, you're going to get sick.
Hence the people you know looking unwell.
I know that there is a lot of pressure, on women in particular but on men as well, to be lean. That's such common knowledge as to be almost cliche. But while we all talk about what a burden it is, and how unfair it is, and how ridiculous it is for people to do the things they do in order to be slender, and how we should all love our bodies just the way they are....the diet industry and the weight-loss docs all manage to get very rich.
It's like we know in our minds that it's wrong to feel that way about ourselves, and to be dictated to by the media as to how our bodies should look. We KNOW it--
We just don't know it when we look in the mirror and wish that we were someone we're not, and when we can't see the infinite helping of beauty we've been given, no matter who is looking back at us from that shiny surface.
I don't know what can be done to get women to feel that delight in their own bodies, but it breaks my heart to see that we can't seem to get free of the mind-poison we've been spoon-fed from the time we're little--in fact, it only seems to be getting worse.
But I cannot sit here and think about people I love doing this to themselves without saying SOMETHING.
Thanks for stopping by!
The thing I object to is the idea of women having this done because they saw an ad on TV, or mothers take their overweight daughters to have it done because the girls themselves are too young to consent, without those appended health concerns.
And the fact that nobody talks about what it actually means to have to live with the ramifications of that decision. Nobody advertises a lifetime of supplements, or "dumping", or what happens if your craving attempts to override your physical capability. And it's rare that anyone talks about how one's relationships with nourishment change, or the psychological ramifications of this procedure, or how this will not reverse an eating disorder.
Everyone's decisions are their own, to be sure. But I believe, very strongly, in informed consent to a surgical procedure, and I believe that there are too many people doing this who, unlike you, are completely unprepared for what comes after. And I don't hold the people who have the procedure responsible for that, necessarily--I hold the medical community responsible.