Health Doesn’t Accept Excuses

You don’t have to look very far to see someone who will say anything to avoid being responsible for their own actions.

Brad had heard that disrupted patterns are slimming. Right now Hawaiian shirt owners across the nation are facepalming.

In some cases it’s that person ordering a supersized meal at a fast food restaurant as part of their dialy routine, who claims “genetics” are responsible for their weight problem. In some cases it’s a friend or loved one who announces diets or New Year’s weight loss resolutions, but drops these good intentions like bad habits after a few months or a few weeks.

In some cases it’s that person in the mirror. Which in my case would be me.

As I’ve mentioned on this site before, I was a chubby teen. I was a muscular soldier in good shape, but still not lean. The latter I was okay with, as the extra 20 lbs or so of fat came in handy during long stretches outside, where a scrawnier troop might shiver like a chihuahua in a chest freezer.

After I left the military, where I’d been doing five mile runs every morning and lugging around heavy kit on a regular basis, I didn’t successfully adjust my food intake when my life changed to one of writing screenplays at a computer and dragging my butt to the gym when I felt like it.

This lead to a slow but steady weight gain – not uncommon for people in their 30s who are less active than their 20s. A slowing lifestyle and slowing metabolism meet in back rooms and whisper together in the shadows, conspiring to overthrow your youthful physique (for those of you that had one) and replace it with an inflated version of yourself.

As with any regime under assault, your body tries to defend itself. Unfortunately this often results in barricading the self esteem and battoning down the hatches of reality perception. We suck in our gut a little more, or blame the now-snug pants on “the dryer must be shrinking them”.

This isn’t unique to weight gain (or unhealthy weight loss, on the other end of the spectrum). Heck, I’ve heard a friend of mine rationalize her 2 pack per day smoking habit by pointing out that a smoking chimp lived 10 years longer than his associates – nevermind that we’ve seen the opposite being true in humans. If cyanide made a certain species of slug live longer, would that mean we should start taking it as a daily supplement? I vote no.

Here’s the problem; while there are people who legitimately have gland problems, and others who really are big boned, they’re a tiny percentage of the population. In an era where 2/3rds of adults are overweight, and half of those obese, clearly the majority of us put on the pounds not due to being a victim of unfortunate genes, but due to cheap and abundant food combined with less physical activity.

A few extra lbs are no big deal – sure you can’t fit into certain fashionable cuts of cloth, but who is to say that being ultralean is healthier than having a few visible pounds of fat? In fact, if you’re beating yourself up over a perceived extra 5 or 10 lbs, you can rest assured that you’re well within healthy range, and the only meaningful ill effects come from your worry over it.

The problem comes in when people outside of normal body fat ranges tell themselves that the extra girth is still just a ‘few extra pounds’. From the elite athletic to the high end of normal body fat ranges, male adults should be between 10% and 20% whereas females should be between 17% and 25%. Above that and there’s no two ways about it. You’re overweight.

When overweight, we can make excuses to those around us for our condition, and we can even make excuses to ourselves – or even lie to ourselves and pretend it isn’t happening.

But our own health just plugs its ears, refuses to listen to excuses, and carries on packing on the extra fat. With more people being overweight our eyes tell us these body shapes are the new normal, and acceptable, but political correctness doesn’t stop organs from drowning in internal fat buildup, or joints from failing early under the strain of the extra weight.

I was recently told about a woman who was 5’0″ and about 280 lbs. who took time off work for ‘fainting spells’. She was given paid leave for what is arguably as self-inflicted a condition as, say, a really bad hangover – only longer. Yeesh.

But there is good news. Our bodies don’t want to be fat. Eating 3,500 extra calories in a given time period can, in theory, lead to gaining a pound of body fat; however, in real terms, it leads to about a .35 pound weight gain.

If you’re overweight your body is looking for reasons to drop that fat. Cutting that same 3,500 calories from your diet (that’s only one caramel frappe per day for about a week, BTW) you will lose a pound. Pretty cool, hmm?

To track this properly, make sure you weigh yourself at the same time of day, under the same conditions. For example, after getting up and taking your morning whiz, and wearing the same pyjamas (or birthday suit). That takes out some of the usual fluctuations.

If you’re overweight it can often seem that you’re stuck that way, but you can make changes and get down to a healthy weight. The first change is to admit there’s a problem.