Rant #1

[feldman]

sophia_helix wrote something brave this morning about size and self-perception that not only hit close to home, it also made me think that perhaps I might have something to add.

I've been that person (and sometimes I still am); ashamed of my body, disgusted with what it says about my life history, seeing the flesh I'm in as the accumulated evidence of failure and weakness. I'm still there in some respects, having only traveled halfway toward the body I'd like to live in. I remember that disconnect whenever I saw myself in a photo and was forced to see my body from the outside, forced to acknowledge that the dark hot embarrassed thoughts I had when I looked down at my rolls and my infant-soft proportions were based in truth: I was burying the familiar lines of my body underneath material evidence of how much I sucked.

Right now, halfway between my heaviest and my goal, I've maybe gained some perspective on the situation that I couldn't see before. I'm sure it will still be a confusing jumble, but maybe I'll say something that clicks.

I don't have answers, because those answers are always going to be personal. But I can at least tell you how I started walking away from that place.


First and foremost you must realize that America is set up for the manufacture of human veal.

This is nothing more than the best available expression of the body's desires for rich food and rest. These are premium luxuries for the human body, and in the environments we were forged in by evolution, there was no way to overindulge in them. Hence, there are no brakes on these desires other than what we establish consciously. And like any survival desire, it's best to work out an indulgence plan that satisfies both the primal and the civilized mind: if you deny the primal, it will eventually break you. This is why traditional diet plans do not work, and in fact, can make you lose ground in the long run.

We're built to rest, and to eat all the things we find yummy. We're also built to use our bodies during the day. All of these things are important and necessary; what makes the difference between lifestyle-induced health and lifestyle-induced illness is the balance between these things.

If you forage or farm, if you hunt or run a household in the traditional sense of keeping a family and their homestead fed, clothed and clean, you can take every available opportunity for leisure and still get plenty of exercise; you can eat all the fat and salt and sugar you can get your hands on and it will only help fuel you better. You can eat all the butter you want if you're keeping the cows, milking them, and churning the stuff yourself (or doing laundry for the lady who keeps the dairy).

Most Americans live in a very different environment, where rest and high-calorie foods are the norm and not a spice. The shape of our cities means that we drive nearly everywhere; the shape of our economy means we tend to sit or stand still at work; the shape of our food distribution means that what is available is what sells. What sells are the things that appeal to our primal desires for salt, fat and sugar, foods that give the most satisfactory bang for the buck (especially when we're eating on the go, eating distracted so that the food must clamor for our attention like a movie trailer). These foods are also cheaper to make and easier to store.

It takes effort and planning to add exercise to a typical American's day. It must be added back in because our bodies were built to need it, they just were never in an environment where it was optional, and so never developed a desire in order to obtain it. But we know from experience now that if you do not demand work from the body it will deteriorate to the point where it will not function; first the muscles and bones, then the fundamental systems of the body will begin to show the ravages of sitting still. Add high-calorie low nutrition food to the picture and you get where our country is heading in the next few decades.

Veal are killed young, but the typical veal-lifestyle American will ride those consequences out to the bitter end. The smart cynics are investing in diabetes therapies: it's gonna be huge.

So the first suggestion is twofold: recognize that your current lifestyle is making you into human veal and understand that it will take daily effort to break out of the pen and live differently. That every day you wander out and about and nibble the grass in the fields, you do yourself a favor.

You have a great advantage over veal. You are in control of your own body. You decide what to put into it, where it goes and what it does. The accumulated effect of these choices is what shapes your body's look and function. You don't have to be veal; you can choose to be anything else.



Up next: rants on the Zen of human body maintenance, and the lack of mirroring images for women in media (note to self: lack of Tara-sized women; tall or muscular women, cushy women in non-mom roles, Firefly as a (sad) standout with Zoe and Kaylee as healthy body-types; standard commercial pairing of doughy man and slim wife; commercially-perpetuated myth that only slim women can have fun in public or sex in private (we don't think that only white women in chinos clean their houses, do we? then why do we buy this?) maybe wrap up with the fact that BMI is a sick joke that feeds into the perception that the only 'healthy' woman is a thin weedy one).