
The documentary opened with a TWELVE YEAR OLD GIRL getting liposuction. TWELVE. YEARS. OLD. How sick is that? I can't decide what's worse, the fact that her parents let her get it or the fact that she needed it so badly in the first place. At 12 years old she was 218 pounds. I am 22 years old and she weighed more than I do now.
She later gained back 40 pounds and went to get a lapband. Surgery is clearly not the answer, despite what the media and celebrities portray.
This generation is the heaviest in American history. It's entirely possible that our life expectancies are going to be lower than the generation before us, which hasn't happened before.
It goes back to what the last documentary I wrote about spoke to: in our past, we were hunter gatherers. The food that we ate naturally was low fat and low calories, such as fruits and veggies. When we found something that had a high caloric/fat content, we ate a lot of it because we didn't have a lot of calories available to us. We were heavily active and had to struggle to survive; everyday was about finding that day's food. We are programmed to eat calorie dense food because it's not abundant in nature.
That instinct is still in us. It's one of the causes of obesity. The cheapest and most heavily advertised foods are the highest in calories/fat and the lowest in nutrition. Our bodies are geared towards consuming as much fat and calories as we possibly can. Everyone makes a big deal about exercising more and being more active, but we can't get healthier or lose weight simply by moving more. We have to change the way that we eat. The country itself has to change to save us all.
Did you know that corn is in almost everything you eat? Even things that you wouldn't suspect. Corn itself is good for you; high fructose corn syrup is not. It's refined corn sugar that is highly addictive and causes you to gain weight. The sugar in pop causes your brain to release cortisol (stress does big time too, which is another cause of obesity) which causes you to maintain more fat. It tells your brain to eat more and your stomach to store more fat.
Some of the big causes of obesity are:
- Stress
- Genetics
- Social Factors- Junk food is cheaper, so the more poor you are, the higher the probablitly of you being obese.
- Lack of Sleep
- Depression
- Calorie Dense Foods
- Fast Foods
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Unregulated Food Marketing
- Food Additives
- Sedentary Lifestyles
- Food Addiction
- "Feel Good Factor"- people eat food to "feel good" (It's part of the addiction aspect. It takes more and more sugar to get the same high.)
We're an obese society that's obsessed with being thin, which can be just as unhealthy when taken to extremes. Anorexia and bulimia are extremely dangerous. You have to eat to lose weight. If you don't eat enough, your body stores even more fat and lowers your metabolism. That and you can die. These sorts of eating disorders are addressed far more than obesity.
Obesity can be described as a closeted epidemic. People don't want to face what they are: obese. Based on my BMI, I am obese. I am a part of the problem. I didn't choose the name CFC by accident- I am a fat chick. I am working right now to change my lifestyle so that I can be healthier and thinner and when I have children one day, I will try to provide that life for them- something I never got. The movie talked a lot about childhood obesity. It use to be that children were active and relatively disease free. Now they just sit there and develop diabetes.
I'm blogging about this because I think that it's very important to change our lifestyles. I love my curves, but I want to have curves AND be healthy. I want to be a part of the solution, not the problem. If we each just take the time and put forth the effort, we can make a better life for ourselves and for the next generation.
<3 - CFC