Fear and Loathing in Phoenix

Have you ever had one of those days—termed "Internet Research" where you proceed to look up all your risk factors and ailments and scare the living daylights out of yourself? Here is a brief log of my day:

11:00 AM—Read Facebook. Get into various debates with friends, check Blogger, check Twitter, check email, drink coffee.
12:00 NOON—Look up personal ailments. Check for statistics. Look up risk factors. Take BMI. Compare BMI to chart of obesity and stroke and heart attack risk. Read about how current existing health conditions are risk factors for more heinous life-threatening ones. Drink more coffee.
1:00 PM—Panic.
2:00 PM—Have random confrontations with family members. Decide dogs are being aloof. Drink more coffee.
3:00PM—Find an article that says women who drink coffee have less statistical chance of stroke than those who do not. Calm down slightly.
4:00 PM—Look for positive, goal-oriented solution. Find one.

Clearly my penchant for Hysterical Internet Diagnosis is its own disease. The advent of the Interwebs has made it extremely easy for me to be a hypochondriac in the comfort of my own home. It's a handy way for me to up my blood pressure, increase my negativity, and escalate my fear to the point where all I need is a tiny little push to fall out of my office chair in a dead faint, hit my head on the router and die (spilling coffee on the way down, of course).

Falling over and dying through self-imposed hysteria doesn't appeal to me. I have planned my demise—and it's in a program I have invented in my own mind called "Seniors in Space." This program will debut when I am 101 years old and chosen to attend as Blogger Laureate to Mars. I will venture into space with a few of my healthy and ancient friends, we will toast the good times with Tang, and succumb quietly among the stars. (I would go at 99, but I am waiting for the handwritten card from the President of the United States.)

Seniors in Space
So who wants to join me in the Seniors in Space program? We have plenty of prep time—and they say 100 will surely be the new 85. To make this happen we will have to get practical. Getting practical for me includes actually setting some goals, both short and long term. In the short term I have a new commitment—a 12-week heart-healthy eating and exercise program. Twelve weeks is so doable. It doesn't stretch ahead into the months and years in some far reaching and unattainable fashion, and the Internet is chock full of all sorts of get-healthy, cool websites developed by all kinds of cool organizations just waiting for you to use for free.

Go Red
I have decided to use the web-based tool of a very reliable organization—the American Heart Associationâ. In 2010 they had a big media blitz for the Go RedÔ program. I am usually a little behind the times (in fact, I am just watching Seinfeld all the way through at the moment), so it makes sense that I would participate in the Go RedÔ program in 2011. I like to schedule my procrastination. The web tools are all right there waiting to be used and for the most part things I already know. But, for me, the value is my own accountability. Short-term goals are really just that—deciding something and making a practical plan.

Sometimes practical things work like magic. Their simplicity is the key.

Practical Magic
So starting this Friday there will be a new theme—Practical Magic. For the next twelve weeks I will be accountable on Friday. I may be in Vegas on a bender on Thursday night, but come hell or high water on Friday I will be accountable here twelve whole times. I hope you will join me as I write about how I am improving my heart health by doing these things:

·        Lowering my BMI

·        Reducing my waist measurement

·        Charting and increasing my overall fitness

·        Eating heart healthy and calorie aware meals

·        And hopefully dropping the 20 pounds I need to attain 100 pounds of weight loss!

I could use a little cheering section and I hope some of my readers will join in for any part of the program that makes sense. I hope Fridays on “BatB” (Beauty and the Blog) will be lighthearted and fun as well as little steps toward a real achievement. Consider it our training program for Seniors In Space. Who will join me?

Go RED! And Hellllllloooooooooo!

http://www.goredforwomen.org/
http://www.heart.org/

So You Hate Me Because I'm Fat?

There is something weird about being fat that people don't talk about. It's that hush-hush world of size bias. "Size bias" (the polite term for those engaged in intellectual discussion on the subject) is really just hating fat people and treating them poorly--publicly.

I am reminded of that Lifetime for Womenâ movie from a few months ago, “To Be Fat Like Me.” In this movie a young and very attractive high school girl dons a fat suit and enters another high school to film her experience for a documentary. In her previous life she was popular and attractive and had a lot of friends—basically leading a charmed high school life. As soon as she took that same pretty face and nice personality and added a hundred pounds to it her experience became extremely negative. She experienced size bias.

This movie pointed out an important truth: People just don't like fat people.

For some reason our society allows size bias. It's an acceptable form of bias. It's culturally acceptable to treat fat people as second-class citizens--to mock them, to stare at them, to not hire them, to treat them with malice and disdain, or to treat them like they don't exist. Bigotry and hatred are complicated. It's a huge subject that I don't feel like handling here today, but what I do often wonder about is why people think fat people are fair game.

I have experienced the phenomenon myself. At various times in my "fat life" I have heard things said when I entered a room of strangers or a public place. I have been laughed at and ridiculed and treated meanly. I can't decide if this sort of public harassment is overt anger toward fat people, if it's just people being unbelievably rude, or if people find the spectacle of a fat person so exceptional that they have to say something aloud (really loud) to their friends. No clue.

To be fair, I notice morbidly obese people myself. When I was 80 pounds heavier I played the "Is she fatter than me?" game and now I still notice but it's with a greater sense of empathy and understanding about what their experience must be like. I think as humans it is natural to react to anyone who is different. However, I do think that people could use more empathy when they deal with those around them who are fat or are limited in any way.

I think a reason people feel fat people are fair game is the belief that a fat person chooses to be fat. While it's true that my life has been a series of choices and some very negative choices fueled my weight gain, I would offer to anyone thinking about a fat person's accountability that it is far more complicated than that.

I feel the same way about a homeless person on the street. That person is standing there not necessarily because they are irresponsible or bad but because of a series of reactions and decisions to their life--things that happened to them, misfortune, lack of coping skills, even tragedy.

My mother used to say every time she saw someone whose plight she pitied, "There but for fortune go I."  Each of us comes with his or her own set of life experiences and coping skills. I am pretty sure we shouldn't judge and convinced we should really ramp up the kindness with which we treat others--no matter what predicament they find themselves in.

One benefit of losing weight and something I have seen change with each pound of weight loss is that people are nicer to me. I am sure it's a combination of things--and trust me I have thought long and hard about this: First, people are nicer to people who are more attractive. That sounds like a generalization, but I am convinced of it. Secondly, people who feel good about themselves expect to be and are treated better than those who do not.

So no matter what your personal situation--thin, average, overweight or obese--think about a few things the next time you see a fat person. What are they facing? What sort of personal challenges do they deal with daily? How can you be a little kinder to them? How can you level their playing field in that moment and help them to feel like it's okay for them to be there?

Who knows, they may have just lost 80 pounds and are well on their way toward personal success.