Mixed Messages Eat...don't eat

I come from two lines of heavy people...which makes me cursed. My dad's side of the family is filled with Native Americans (which leads to addictions to sweets and alcohol) and Germans...stout people who love to eat. My mom is from more delicate stock...English, Irish and Scottish, but my great grandmother was a very large woman. And my grandmother weighed over 200 pounds before going on a starvation diet (which included becoming addicted to laxatives) and she stayed in her 120s for the rest of her life. My mom got as high as 175 before going on a sensible diet and losing down to 135, but even so she has crept back up a few pounds as age has crept up on her and even though she eats very reasonably, the weight is still there.

So...I am fighting heredity, a natural bent towards loving sweets and enjoying eating and a depression mechanism that leads me to eat when I am bored or upset. Needless to say, it is an uphill battle for me all the way. And while I am no longer losing ground, I am just walking in place. In fact last year I lost 10 pounds and kept it off. I hope to do the same this year and every year in the future until I get to the weight I want to be. I would prefer to lose it all in a year, but I am working on being more realistic... I hate the years I have lost due to being overweight. The times that I have stepped back from doing things I wanted to do for fear I would look incredibly stupid (such as floating on inner tubes in the lazy river) or from the fear that I wouldn't have the stamina to see it through.

Now, enough about me...on to the mixed messages. We live in a world where being fat is one of the last things left for people to say ugly things about and it is deemed okay. They make seats in planes and theaters smaller and smaller forcing larger people to either endure in discomfort, buy a second ticket or just skip those events all together. People who are fat are continously pointed out by the media, by kids on the play ground and all the while, incredibly skinny models are held up as the people we should look up to and admire and strive to be like. How many of us have wasted time and energy trying to match those vitually impossible goals? How many of us have cried, been embarrassed, been left out of events because we aren't considered to be pleasing to the eye and because we are thought to be unable to rustle up self-control, we are thought somehow to be less worthy of our thin counterparts? We have a harder time getting jobs and a harder time getting decent clothing that is attractive instead of resemlbing a circus tent. Even well meaning friends can be hurtful when they offer to help do things for us that we are capable of doing for ourselves, but that they think due to our weight, we cannot.

So...society nowadays says...BE SKINNY! Remember that not so long ago, the larger woman was preferred...it showed wealth and good breeding. Go back even further to fertility goddess statues...big hips, big bossoms...these added up to great child bearers! But this is not thought to be the case any longer, so now to the mixed message.

We are all told to be skinny, meanwhile everywhere we go, advertisers and restaurants are thrusting oversized meals into our faces! When I was a child, a small drink was probably 8 or 10 ounces, now a small drink is more like 16 ounces! We have king sized candy bars, king sized fries, meals at sit down restaurants are big enough that you could take at least half home and enjoy another meal! Drinks are getting larger and larger and there are more and more drinks that pretend to be healthy for you, but are packed with calories! You hear commercials like...live large...doesn't that go in the very face of eating lighter? A large Blizzard at DQ is enough for 3 people really....and then there is the move to specialty ice cream in pint sizes...very easy to finish off in one sitting (I know...).

So is the diet industry paying off the food industry somehow? I mean, it certainly is a vicious cycle and even foods that are supposed to be good for us (like these fast food salads) are full of hidden evils...So just think of it...a company owns a restaurant and a diet food manufacturer. The restaurants are set up to provide larger portions which people think of as normal, then the company touts its great diet product...it makes me think. How about you?

BTW, an interesting side note. My son and I recently read a book on diseases that have occured through the years and Tuberculosis was the beginning of when being skinny became more fashionable. TB occured during the Romantic era and people thought that people who had TB were passionate and creative...so to be skinny, pale and have red cheeks was seen as a sign of being creative and passionate and from there the move to being skinny was born....