This is a subject that gets brought up in the media every
year – are we putting too much emphasis on how we look or not enough? What are
these ideals doing to our children? There are other questions that get brought
up but these 2 questions are the main questions that get brought up each and
every year. When they do appear on the news and other programs, I believe it
gets brought up because it MUST be a slow news day.
Yes, some people have more self-esteem problems than others
do. We all like or dislike something about our bodies. However, people intend
to forget our bodies are a living human being and they can be change or molded
into whatever we want them to be. It can be hard or easy depending on what we
want to have changed on our bodies, but it can be done.
Are we putting too
much emphasis on how we look?
When I was growing
up, this is what everyone talked about - was someone too thin, too fat, too
tall, too short – and that’s how we were judged. As someone that went into the
too fat column, at first it saddened me that this was the only thing people
could see of me. As time went on, I got angry and upset because there was and
is more to me than this. Finally, I had acceptance of myself. Screw what
everyone else thought, this is my body and if they didn’t like it then there’s
the door and don’t let it hit you on the way out. Just to let you know, that is
the PG rating of what I’ve told some of my doctors.
I think I must have heard all of the types of ideas for
weight loss over my years – don’t eat so much, what ARE you eating, you have to
eat only salads, to you need to have your stomach stapled so you can lose
weight and don’t come back in here until you do. If this wasn’t enough, I have been on many
diets over the years – Slim fast (until I started getting sick each time I had
to eat), only vegetables (until I was so hungry that my stomach kept grumbling
and I wasn’t losing any weight), to salads with chicken breasts only (again I
was so hungry that I couldn’t stop eating and again I wasn’t losing any
weight), and then someone suggested a dietitian because I told them where they
could stick the dieting. The doctor that suggested that was stunned when I told
her where should could stick the idea of another diet as each time I tried to
lose the weight, I always stacked on more. This doctor told me to please go and
see the dietitian because she knows what I’m going through with losing weight. I finally relented and went to see her. I made
it clear to her that I wasn’t going to bed hungry, but I would listen to her
and see what we could come up with. Over the next 2 months, I saw her a few times
and I started to lose weight AND stayed hungry. I now know it is possible to do
this.
I’m not saying that everyone is willing to do this. I know
of people that have done the drastic weight loss ideas such as stomach stapling,
gastric sleeve, bypass and lap band surgery. Each person has had different results
from the great to the not so great. Does it work you might be asking and I can
tell you again it depends on how much one person is willing to do or not. This
willingness is where the weight is either gained, maintained or lost.
The bigger question, and one of the questions of this blog,
is but why do we do this to ourselves? Is it because of our perceptions of how
we look or is it how people think we look?
How others perceive
on how we look
I honestly think we do these types of weight loss that I’ve
described above, generally, because of either how we were told we look growing
up or how people have stated to us since we were teenagers. I think depending
upon the type of person you are, is how you’ve acted upon it.
This video above, is what
I felt like during my weight struggles – I didn’t want my picture taken.
There were many times growing up, I was called lazy, fat,
and, yes, a cow. I’ve even had the nickname Moo Cow. This was all due to my
weight issues. It pushed me to going on diet after diet and my self-esteem went
down because of what others were telling me. By the time I graduated from high
school, I was in the angry stage and told others where they could shove their
opinions. Within 5 or so years of graduating, I was going between the angry
stage and the who cares stage. By the time I got married, I was at the who
cares stage and this is me and if you don’t like it tough – there’s the door.
The who cares stage is me becoming comfortable with what I
am and what I look like. This is what I’ve had handed to me, and it’s a continuous
work in progress but it’s my work in progress.
Since then there have been times when I’ve gone back and
forth between these stages, and usually it’s around fertility and the doctors
there trying to get me to lose the weight.
That being said, I have also mellowed in my growing older. I can concede
that I need to lose weight because of diseases like diabetes but doctors have
to understand my medical history and that it’s not easy as that. They can
understand and usually we come to an agreement.
How I perceive how I
look
Once I reached this stage, life was happier and lighter. I
felt I could once again enjoy myself and life. It wasn’t until I talked to the dietitian
and thought about the subjects and topics we discussed that I came to these
conclusions.
We all have to come to the conclusions to what we will
accept and what we won’t in life. Our bodies are like that. If we don’t like
what we see, then we should go to change it and get on with and enjoy life.
If you take a look at this year’s Dove commercial where
people were asked to describe themselves as to what they see and you can see
the amazing differences between the two perceptions.
Cost is usually a really big factor when people decide to
change their bodies. It doesn’t have to be. You need to tone up your arms? Then
use a canned good as a weight. You need to tone up your legs? Then you can use
books to simulate stairs or walk in place for a set time. You don’t like either
of these options? Then how about put on your favourite songs and dance around
the house? Or dance while doing house cleaning? These will all burn calories and
tone you up and will cost you basically nothing. These are all nice to do, but
realize that if you ARE doing them, the reason why – because you love yourself
and want to change something about you.
Some of us come to these revelations earlier in
life than others. In 2012, Dustin Hoffman actually brought
this topic up in an interview where he realized that if someone wasn’t
attractive, he would never think of talking to them – he wouldn’t talk to them
just because he didn’t find them attractive. You could tell, he was very
ashamed of this, but I hate to tell him this but he’s not the only one who does
this. It’s in everyone’s everyday life – from employers, to acquaintances, to
customers. I still get this in today’s
world.
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| My husband and I April 2013 |
Two personal examples are of my husband and I which are both
youthful looking. You cannot believe, unless you’ve had it done to you, what it
feels like to go in to purchase a mattress set and was told that once you can
afford it to come back because they know it would take you awhile to save for
it (we were in our late 30’s) or not to be even talked by a house building
representative until you approached them, and were told that this was too
expensive for us and to come back once we had a job for an amount of time and
had savings (we were in our late 20’s and had been married for a few years).
As uncomfortable as this makes some of us, it is a fact of
life that some people are this narrow minded. Some of them will change upon
growing older and some people won’t. It’s all in how people act and how we
intend to act when this is thrust upon us. In the incident with the house
building representative did that to us, my temper gauge went zero to 60 in
about .05 of a second. However, I just stated that he better get his head out
of his butt because to say that to people almost 30 years old with stable
employment would cost him income and its age discrimination and walked out. I
could have screamed, rant and raved which would have gotten the angry factor
out of me, but I then wouldn’t have had the pleasure to see the colour drain
from the guy’s face after I told him about us and walked out.
Looking at the topic, it’s a bit of how others see us but it’s
also how we see and act ourselves. You must be comfortable in your own body and
life and that will come out in how you look. Depending on someone’s worthiness
either as an acquaintance, employer or friend, will depend upon if they really
see the real you or just the outside. As many of my real friends know, a real
friend will accept you both inside and out no matter what life throws at either
of you.
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| My friends and I in 2012. Most of them I had been friends with for over 30 years! |
