What caught my eye today...

It's easy to get sidetracked and end up following link after link after link when you SHOULD be doing homework! I had the best of intentions on finishing an entire presentation on avoiding the "Freshman Fifteen" / eating healthy at University (for my communications class) but I did let myself surf around the internet when I got caught up in a couple of stories!

It all started with this...

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/39868583/ns/today-today_health

Basically, if you're not in the mood to read it... Maura Kelly (who I'd never heard of before) wrote a blog about the CBS show "Mike and Molly," which is about a couple who met at Overeaters Anonymous (I'll admit I've never seen the show, either, but it sounds funny). In Kelly's blog for Marie Claire, she said that she would be "grossed out if she had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other." She went on to compare overweight people walking across a room to an alcoholic stumbling in a bar. Kelly's insensitive post has received thousands of responses, both supportive and appalled.

The Today show story has a link to the blog and to Marie Claire's website, where I got off on a tangent. I was a little angry at the whole situation -- someone blogging for Marie Claire should certainly be sensitive to weight issues! I bought an issue last month and was impressed to see a column written by a plus size woman in the industry. I was actually impressed with the issue and I intended to buy the next issue until I found the Today show story! However, I did poke around the Marie Claire cite and found myself reading an interesting article that kind of redeemed the magazine in my mind.
http://www.marieclaire.com/health-fitness/news/articles/health-blogger-controversy
This one is about a bunch of bloggers (see a trend here, this is a good first post for me) who keep tabs on their own healthy lifestyles and who have developed quite an extensive following. This would be good if their lifestyles were in fact healthy, balanced, and worth aspiring to. Turns out, they are borderline obsessive and when I read some of the things that the women do, I immediately realized just how easy it is to fall into the trap of always wanting to be "healthier." There are obvious benefits to being active and eating well, but there is a fine line between doing a good job and driving yourself crazy.

What both of these little things did for me was to make me think. I really had to look at myself -- while I definitely would never say things like Kelly did about overweight people, I am guilty of being prejudiced against obese individuals. At the same time, I've gained an appreciation of the need to approach the problem from a different perspective. Individuals who are severely overweight are not disgusting, incapable, or less than human. In fact, they could be suffering from the same issues as we are and just using food in an unhealthy way. The only way to address this is to approach the problem from it's root. Fat burners, diets, surgery, even extreme workout plans won't help them. Sure, in the short term, a trainer yelling in their face and someone telling them what to eat will help them lose the pounds but not the weight of their issues. Weight loss needs to be a process that is far more than just a physical transformation!

The second article made me realize that I am guilty of the same things that these women are. As much as I hate to admit it, I am proud of myself when I eat vegetables and I feel guilty when I eat cake. At one point, accidentally receiving a sandwich on white bread might have sent me into a tailspin. However, I`ve learned to ease up about these kinds of things and to take on a new outlook. Life is too short to spend trying to make every choice the healthiest. There needs to be a new definition of what really makes something `healthy` and the media needs to promote it. If we can`t stop competing to see who is the healthiest (synonymous with the most obsessive, restrictive, etc.), we are going to be worse off than if we`d never put in the effort to get healthy in the first place! I realize now that `bragging` about the number of workouts I put in or about the sheer amount of fibre I consume on the average day (menu planning assignments and foods and nutrition assessments are a surefire way to bring out our competitive instincts -- about eating the fewest calories, the most omega 3s, the most organic foods) is not helping anyone get healthy.

With this being my first blog post and both of the things I `noticed`being online blogs, I think it`s only fitting that I chose to write about them! Apparently I`m getting the reminder to watch what I say and to be honest from the get go...so hold me to it! Let me know what you think and if something makes you curious, let`s hear about it!


PS: The Freshman Fifteen speech is coming along well. When it`s done I`ll try to get a version of it up on here so you have another reason to KEEP CHECKING THIS BLOG OUT! I`ll keep ya posted! :)