2 - My Take on Fatness, Health, and Self-esteem/Confidence
Putting the context, evidence and citations here on Substack so the book can remain a bare-bones, easy-to-follow "how to" with zero fluff.
Yes, I don’t particularly like fat
Why big is not beautiful
Why comparisons with “perfect bodies” are completely useless
Why every human being should feel great about themselves, regardless of shape
I called this program “WeightChoicetm” because I want you to choose a weight that suits you and your preferred lifestyle, and that is realistic and healthy.
But in developing and offering a weight loss program, can I be accused of being “fat phobic” or of having false concern about issues of overweight and obesity and what’s really going on is that I secretly really don’t like is fat people? Please make up your own mind on that one, but let me tell you what I really think/feel.
First up I don’t think that “big is beautiful”. Every person is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean that their fat deposits are beautiful, any more than it means that their cold or flu is beautiful. And if you’ve sat on an airplane with an obese person’s body not only in your personal space but on your actual person, you’ve probably had a visceral reaction to that which is far from “beautiful”. And if you’ve been that obese person, it’s likely been very unpleasant for you also, forced to be in full-on contact with another stranger’s body for hours at a time, and well aware of their discomfort as well as your own.
But quite apart from personal aesthetics and personal space, the stunningly massive impact on our communities due to costs of overweight and obesity is a disaster on many levels. The latest comprehensive PWC report (Australia only - Weighing the Cost of Obesity – 2021) gave a costing of $3.8 billion in direct medical costs, and a further $4.8 billion in indirect costs to business and the community, totalling $8.6 billion per annum. And that’s not even counting lost wages and reduced wellbeing. On current projections PWC see this getting worse, not better.
It's up to every single one of us to take responsibility for this disaster and do whatever is within our ability to turn this around, for ourselves, our families, our communities, our entire health system.
Which doesn’t mean we need to turn into zero-sized stick figures like the recent “Ozempic Oscars”. It doesn’t even mean we need to be on the lower end of “normal” for our BMI, because even fat reductions of 5-10% are recognised as having significant health benefits, even potentially reversing type II diabetes, which is a growing epidemic leading to heart disease, stroke, nerve damage, amputation, blindness, and death. This is not a minor matter.
So what about you? What weight would you choose if it were actually a choice and not something you were helpless to control? This question is critical because it’s time to divorce fantasy from reality.
For example if you have some idealised image of what a “perfect” body would be, what does it take to have that “perfect” body, if “perfect” means very little body fat, toned and with defined musculature?
I’ll tell you what that means. It means eating in a very restricted way and working out very hard, the equivalent of at least an hour or two every day at the gym doing a combination of weights and aerobic activity. No-one gets a body like that by accident. If that’s what you want, go for it, but for most of us it’s utterly unrealistic unless we’re an elite athlete whose performance depends upon it, or a celebrity whose income depends upon it. And for most of us there are far more important things in life than being so intensely focussed on our own flesh. Most of us just want to look and feel healthy and be able to wear nice clothes, don’t we …
All people, including elite athletes and supermodels, have cellulite (elite athletes have more on average than ordinary people like you and me). We have rounded bits, unsymmetrical bits, scars, lumps and bumps, hairy bits and bare bits, big bits and little bits, wrinkles and sags, and even missing bits. Even elite athletes who try to maintain strong bodies as they age, get fat deposits and sags. We are made of human stuff, not marble, and our lives and our ancestors’ lives are written on our bodies.
If we’re proud of who we are, this shouldn’t be about our bodies, it should be about what kind of person we are, how we treat others, what knowledge or wisdom we’ve managed to gather, how we contribute to our families, our communities, and the world. That’s what matters and that’s what should be most satisfying, and what we’re most appreciated and respected for, far beyond what shape we are.
So trying to put all unrealistic judgement aside, what would your own “perfect body” look like if you felt good in your own skin, if you knew you were in a healthy range, if you could wear what you wanted and feel really comfortable? That’s a unique decision for you, without comparing yourself to others. I hope you’ll do that, and we’ll get more into the nitty-gritty of that later.