So thinking about and trying to decide where I wanted to go in this week's post, I decided to talk about something that I have a little (well ninety + pounds worth) of experience with....and that's losing weight. In our American society, we are consistently seeing more and more folks being classified in the obese category. Even more troubling is the amount of children that are overweight and obese. Obviously there isn't one single cause that's contributing to our ever-expanding waist lines. Many factors are often involved including socio-economic status, education levels, personal values, psychological factors such as self-esteem and percetions of self- image. Genetics can play a role, although I think that this has become a scape-goat (well maybe the more Punk Rock way of putting it would be cop-out) for many. I can buy into that some of us can be predisposed to a slower metabolism, have different body shapes and genetic abilities to either gain or not gain muscleat a given rate, and have a higher risk of developing things such as high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease, yet all of these things are not not certainties simply because you have a family history of such. Case in point, my brother is over 400 pounds, has high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and issues with his joints. My mother is overweight, has had a stroke, 2 mild heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure and had to have a kidney removed. My father suffers from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. I would also consider my father to be somewhat overweight. I will spare you the list of relatives that have health issues, but I'd say that all-in-all, I come from a pretty unhealthy family. With all this being said, I realize that there are risks that I have based on my family history, but instead of "folding" and resigning to some dismal fate of having cardiovacsular disease and being obese like my most of my family members, I use this as a motivation to get out and get healthy! I have always considered myself completely different from my family :) so I guess in order to be true to myself and Punk Rock ways, I'd better go against the family norm and be a health freak!
There is also another point to my writing all of this about weight loss and family history. There was a point in my life about 5-6 years ago that I really let myself go. Looking back on it and given my educational background in psychology, I can see that depression had a large part of it. Coming out of college I was in great shape. I'd played lots of soccer and football, and was a gym rat! Yet once the "party" was over and I was faced with thinks like family and working full time, my workout became shorter and shorter. If I only would have learned more about priorotizing and time management, I would have more easily been able to fit workouts into my life. I was very unhappy and depressed in my family life and work, so the downward spiral began. Food became a comfrt and my obsession. As my health declined, my need to rest and desire to eat increased. So if I would have stayed in shape, I could have used all that time I wasted eating and napping to improve my health and stay active. Ugh....youth! I guess that's why they say ignorance is bliss? I didn't realize what I was doing to my body at the time. Well ignorance can also be unhealthy and eventually life-threatening. Anyway I began to see and feel the impact that being around 90 pounds overweight was having on my body. I felt terrible, I looked ridiculous, and I was facing being put on blood pressure medication at 25 years of age, so I said enough to this..... I made the commitment to get HEALTHY, and that's the key here....getting HEALTHY. That's the point of this post. You see there is a monumental difference in losing weight or getting healthy. Getting healthy in many cases encompasses losing weight, but losing weight certainly does't equate getting healthy in all cases. Diet pills (which I have another story about these that I'll touch on later), ridiculous pieces of "fitness" equipment, hot towel wraps, too hard to follow diet plans, and endless other "As Seen on TV" routes to weight loss, drive into our brains that its all about weight loss. If you just lose weight, you've found a ticket to join an elite social group of the beautiful and enlightened....right? Well of course that isn't the case at all. We buy these things, we take the pills, we cook the bland boring foods that were promised to cause rapid weight loss, and all we end up with is a higher credit card bill and increasing frustration because it didn't work. Here's a Punk Rock Triathlete reality check: IT TAKES WORK TO GET HEALTHY, and IF YOU PUT IN THE WORK TO GET HEALTHY...YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT! I swear to god promise you will lose weight if you focus on getting healthy (meaning exercise, eating right, kicking heath declining habits like smoking and overconsumption of alcohol, etc. and paying attention to spiritual and emotional growth). It's easy to be fat.....it is not as easy to be fit and in shape, but it can be fun and its certainly rewarding! The journey from a fat guy to a realtively competitive age-group triathlete has been incredible for me! If getting into shape and getting healthy were easy, our society wouldn't continue seeing the rise in obesity statistics. It requires dedication, planning, paying more for foods, being open to preparing your own meals, getting down and dirty, sweating, being sore in places you didn't know you could be sore in....yet when you change your lifestyle and you make a commitment to live the healthy life, you will find a sense of inner peace and a rock solid willpower that gives you the courage to go out an conquer whatever it is that seems unattainable at the beginning to you! You'll have the energy to work, be a parent and spouse, maintain your household, be active in the community and also workout and train! I promise you that. Trust me if I can do it and so many other folks out there with even more "life" responsibilites that I have can do it, so can YOU!
Now back to the promised Diet Pills story: Just to drive home the point of how unsafe diet pills and weight loss aides can be, I want to share a personal experience that involves my deceased sister-in-law. 12 years ago this October, she passed away at the age of 29. She was a life-long sufferer of asthma and on the night of her death, she had a severe asthma attack that eventually led to her stopping breathing and having to have CPR performed on her to get her to the hospital, where she was then immediately placed on life-support. When the doctor met with the family, he presented a very interesting and troubling question..... had she ever taken Phen-Phen or any other diet pills containing ephederine? Immediately my brother agreed that she had taken Phen-Phen, along with other ephederine-based weight loss and "alertness" pills for quite some time. The doctor then went on to explain that her heart was severely weakened by the use of these drugs over the years, to the point that it could not handel the stress that this, what would be her last, asthma attack placed on it. He stated that because these drugs speed up the heart (which indeed does cause the metabolism to speed up, albeit in the most unhealthy of ways) it over-works the heart and can cause irreversable damage. Even being on life-support, her body shut down only a few hours after the attack and she passed away.......at 29 years old. She had just finished her nursing degree and began working as an RN, yet even with her knowledge of biology, pharmaceuticals, and the human body, it never seemingly occurred to her that these pills were dangerous. This doesn't occur to most people that buy and take them. Diet pills and the like were DIRECTLY linked to her death.
To think that so many people out there continue to use these "Fat Burnring" pills that have ephedrine-like ingredients in them is scary if not stupid. Commercials even have supposed doctors and health professionals claiming their safety. I just have to wonder about anything that you'd need a doctor telling you that it's safe and reccommended. If its safe, why try to fool me with a fake doctor telling me so? Reminds me of the old cigarette ad where it says "More doctors smoke Salems than any other cigarettes"!!!!! Just something to think about!
So just some final points to consider....not all skinny folks are healthy! Many measures that folks take to lose weight are dangerous and unhealthy. Lastly, make losing weight a sub-goal of getting healthy! Let health and having a healthy lifestyle be your goal!
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