Weight loss and our image

Let’s face it.  Our culture is obsessed with our image.  We’re fortunate enough to live in a time and a place (well, most of us do, I hope my readers in less fortunate countries will be lenient on me for making this assumption) that provides ample convenience and comfort, so much so that we have a lot of free time to worry about our appearances.

One of the biggest (ahah, ahah…) and most obvious factors in one’s appearance is weight.

Weight is a peculiar double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it does not necessarily scale with beauty or desirability.  Even in ignoring the case of the so-called “chubby chasers” or others who tend to prefer larger than average partners, the number that is your weight means different things for different people.  There are a myriad of factors – frame, height, and build being among them – that determine how your weight affects your appearance.  It would not be inconceivable to find two people of the same sex, height, and weight that look very different from each other.  Slimmer frames with naturally less muscular builds will find that having as much weight as a person of a larger frame with a tendency towards more muscle mass will not be as flattering.  Seems obvious enough, right?

And yet, on the other hand, our culture seems absolutely obsessed with obtaining the lowest number possible.

There are a number of reasons that this irks me.  I am absolutely in favor of everyone aiming to achieve healthy weights, and to improve their eating habits and lifestyles.  This is a goal that I believe is both admirable and necessary.  In many ways, however, it seems that our culture is schizophrenic about achieving this goal.  We worship junk food.  We find new ways to market crap that isn’t good for you to make it look innocent, unassuming, and most importantly delicious.  And then, when we lament about being overweight, we’re told of a plethora of scams solutions that will solve our problems.  Diet and exercise?  Didn’t you get the memo?  That stuff doesn’t work.  You just need <insert name of scam legitimate product>!

And in any of these commercials, weight is always… always… tied to how good a person looks.  “I lost 15 pounds!” the woman on the advertisement says, who remarkably enough seems to have suddenly developed defined abs and thighs.  They never mention that you have to work out regularly to obtain a physically fit body.  Just by planting the idea in your head, by showing you the lady who lost 15 lbs. and is smiling and obviously much happier than in the ‘before’ picture, you associate the change with weight loss, instead of weight loss in tandem with exercise.

I’ve struggled with my weight since I was young.  I ramped up to my highest weight at about 15, and from there I lost weight until 17, when I reached my lowest weight ever.  And then at 18 I started my long climb upward, until I ballooned up to a much higher weight than I ever was.  Allow me to highlight some of the changes I’ve recently gone through.

This was me nearly 2 years ago.  I was around 275-280 lbs., and that’s where I stayed until about 8 months ago.

And this is me as of today.  I’m around the 230 mark and still losing.

Now, as someone who has fluctuated dramatically in weight over the years, I can tell you that it does terrible things to your self-image.  Even though the lower picture is more representative of what I look like today, I still feel like I resemble the top picture more closely.  As a teenager, when I lost about 80 pounds in the span of a few months, the mental image that I had of myself did not change.  And then when I finally started feeling like I was thin, I started gaining again, so even though I became 20-30-40-50 pounds overweight and going, I still felt like I was thin.  My brain seems to be stuck in the past when it comes to realizing what I look like, and I believe that this is the case with a lot of people out there.

My point is this – as humans, our minds like to play tricks on us.  It’s very easy to develop a self-image that isn’t entirely representative of reality.  Our obsession with weight, as a culture, can encourage unhealthy habits in the name of obtaining an image that seems to be healthy.  We strive to reach that elusive special number and feel that we aren’t attractive unless we attain it.  We gorge ourselves on diet food that isn’t even that good for us, pop weight loss pills, and starve ourselves in the name of this sacred task.  I believe that what we need in this society is less emphasis on the “perfect” body we’re constantly being told we have to acquire and more emphasis on losing weight because it will help us avoid health problems in the long term.  We should be embracing good habits and shunning bad ones.  We should be forcing giant food corporations to take responsibility for the products they produce.  And we should get back to the basics – healthy living.

Healthy living means exercise and diet control.  Controlling the types of foods you eat and the amount you consume.  Getting a modest amount of physical activity.  Yes, it really is that simple.  Maybe not easy, but simple.  And yet, it’s something we aren’t taught well enough from school or our parents.  Kids seem to get raised into a diet of junk food, and unless the kid is overweight, parents won’t really think anything of it.  I can only reiterate my first point – people view weight as the end-all-be-all of health and beauty.  Just because someone is not overweight does not mean that unhealthy eating habits have not damaged them in some less obvious way.  Cholesterol doesn’t care if you’re skinny or fat – eat a heavy diet of nothing but high-fat/high-sodium/high-cholesterol food for 30 years and I’d be very surprised if you didn’t give yourself heart disease or hypertension, regardless of if you actually get fat or not.

Even if you do lose weight quickly from some diet scam or unsavory method, the odds of you keeping it off aren’t good.  I know from experience.  I lost 80 pounds when I was a teenager, and I did it the wrong way – I pretty much quit eating regularly and only ate enough to get by.  This time, instead of getting impatient and losing weight as quickly as possible, I’m attempting to go about it the proper way, the way that will ensure I stay at a healthy weight in the long run.

I wish I could offer some insight into how to start losing weight.  The cause of weight-loss is very simple – consume fewer calories than you spend.  That’s it.  That’s the magic secret of weight loss.  And yet we’re constantly told in advertisements that we can’t do it without <product X> because it’s simply so difficult, and not being able to find the will isn’t our fault.  And I know why this advertising works.  In the past, when I wanted to try losing weight, it seemed like an insurmountable task.  It can be very, very, very difficult to find the will to go through with a weight-loss plan.  I do not disparage anyone for not being able to successfully do it, because there are tons of factors that can stack against us.  But this advertising works because we want to believe that we can’t do it alone.  We want to be able to blame our inability to lose weight on factors beyond our control.  It’s a very tempting proposition, and we’re typically too eager to accept it.  Now, if that’s not a shameless, terrible manipulation technique, I don’t know what is.

For me, something recently just… clicked.  A switch in my brain flipped.  The best way I can describe it is this – for the first time, I feel like I actually want to lose weight.  Yeah, maybe I wanted to before, but I didn’t want it enough… part of me was content as I was, and I didn’t feel like a change was necessary enough for the effort that would have to go into it.  Special exceptions (medications, glandular problems, etc.) aside, I believe that if you actually want to lose weight – really, truly, unwaveringly want to – you can make yourself do it.

I suppose that’s all I have to say for now… I’m sure this came off as a rant, but that’s fine.

tl;dr – losing weight isn’t easy but you can do it. =)