Why Another Blog?

I've had a lifelong struggle with weight and eating disorders. This is not about fighting with my weight. I weigh what I weigh, currently 270 pounds. I am not going to bring my weight up a lot. If it goes up or goes down, so it goes. This is instead about learning to make peace with being a big person in a society that glorifies thinness and about learning to be healthy at whatever size. Most of all, it is about learning to like myself, which has been a tough row to hoe because by nature I despise myself.

Weight is not a cut and dry "eat less and exercise more" issue. If it were, everyone would be thin. I'm one of those people who even looks at food and I gain a pound. I am often hungry even after eating a full meal. In order to go with the "eat less and exercise more" system I would have to eat only 1000 calories a day and work out for 3 hours a day, I shit you not. I can't do that. Starving does not work for me and at my age and with my physical issues, that much exercise would probably kill me.

I am not simply some lazy "couch potato." I am often very busy. I do work, and I'm going to school. Plus I'm too stupid to stop pursuing my dream of one day being recognized for my writing. And I'm renovating my house, by myself. So, lazy, I don't think so.

What a person weighs also depends on their genetics. Yes. It does. You can fight your genetics. You can starve yourself skinny or exercise yourself ripped, but your genetics will still want you to be a certain way. It is what is.

Your endocrine system plays a factor in your weight. I have hypothyroidism. I can't tolerate the medications that doctors prescribe for it. Synthroid threw me into a state of artificially induced hyperthyroidism. My thyroid is only about a quart low, so to speak. I would much rather deal with mild hypothyroidism than with hyperthyroidism. I thought I was going to die during that time period. My blood pressure shot up, my heart raced, I was having terrible panic attacks. NOT FUN! I currently take a natural supplement called Metabolic Advantage by Enzymatic Therapy. My TSH now reads normal. 

My thyroid may not even be the real culprit. I may have secondary hypothyroidism rather than primary hypothyroidism, because my pituitary reads abnormal. This means that the pituitary is not properly stimulating the thyroid. The Metabolic Advantage is cuing the thyroid to make the proper amount of hormone because the pancreas is slacking.

Guess what--the pituitary is part of the whole weight picture as well. As are the adrenals. Both control production of cortisol. The idea that being heavy is simply due to laziness is a fallacy. Many very busy people are heavy not because they are lazy but because they are STRESSED! Stress causes overproduction of cortisol. Cortisol causes the body to gain and hold on to weight because our body believes it needs to have this extra weight stored for fuel. Stress may be a bigger culprit in weight gain than overeating.

Certain medications play a factor in your weight. I gained 15 pounds in a month without doing anything different when I started taking Lithium. I did not stop taking the Lithium because it was an acceptable trade-off to the irritability and paranoia that I lived with pre-Lithium.

I am also convinced that many of the food additives in the modern diet are highly toxic and cause the body to gain weight. Two of the biggest offenders and two of the most oft-used among these are monosodium glutamate and high fructose corn syrup. Monosodium glutamate has no flavor of its own. It is what is known as an excitotoxin. It causes the brain to believe the flavor of whatever food is being consumed is much stronger than it actually is. Monosodium glutamate has a myriad of bad side effects and many people are very intolerant of it. I believe that use of this substance should be banned.

High fructose corn syrup is another often-used offender. In this article, Dr. Joseph Mercola excplains how high fructose corn syrup is much more readily metabolized into fat than glucose. In the 1980's, high fructose corn syrup replaced cane sugar as the most-used sweetener in products such as soda. 

I believe that these two food additives are cornerstones in the so-called obesity epidemic. I say this because there have always been people of all sizes, but never before have there been so many individuals with morbid obesity. The obesity epidemic came about following many years of these substances being added to our diets. Granted, people are also more sedentary in today's society, but I still don't believe there would be as many morbidly obese individuals were these additives not in our diets. There might be more fat people but not a significantly increased number of extremely fat people.

Instead of shaming individuals who are morbidly obese--and instead of creating eating disorders in people who are normal weight but who do not conform to what the media and the multi-billion dollar diet industry make us believe we "should" look like, it is time to take a look at HEALTH! We need to look at our nutrition--not just calories in, but what is in those calories. 

Most of all, we need to be kind to ourselves and to each other. There really are worse things in this world than being fat. Being an intolerant asshat is definitely in the top five things that are worse than carrying around a few--or even a lot--of extra pounds.

Peace be yours,

Faycin