We Are Not Machines

Weight loss, boiled down, is not rocket science. Eat less, lose weight. Simple. There is no magic pill or shake or food. Weight loss is simply a matter of eating less and moving more. Where it becomes difficult is with the less tangible aspects. Anyone can look in the mirror or step on a scale and decide if they truly need to lose weight. They can spend a day on the Internet and come up with a perfect meal plan to fit their lifestyle. They can join a gym.Those are the easy parts. The hard part is the doing. The really hard part is understanding. The impossible part is the caring.

And that is why I believe so many of us are fat.

I have theories about why other people try to lose weight. It would be rude of me to share my theories even though I really want to get them off my chest. I'll only say this - the term 'weight loss' should only be used for weight loss needed for physical health reasons. I've struggled with my weight my entire life and weight loss talk used to be about losing a significant amount of weight. What I see now is talk more in the realm of vanity weight loss. I listen to my perfectly thin and muscled colleagues at school obsess about this diet or that workout and put themselves down for imperfections I can't see. It makes me feel horrible about myself because my imperfection clearly can be seen and I beat myself down over this. The obesity problem in America is not about a handful of pounds to fit a skewed societal belief. It is about losing the many extra pounds that are effecting our physical health.

Those two views are getting more and more fuzzy and crossed and the focus seems not to be on being physically healthy but on being visually healthy. I truly believe these views should not be combined or spoken about together. Those striving for visual weight loss should be separated from those desperate for physical weight loss. I can only speak for myself but the visual weight loss aspects do not help me. The striving for a perfect body is nearly impossible when I just want to be healthy and healthy does not mean sculpted or a minuscule clothing size.

The visual weight loss tips and tricks do not even come close to addressing the emotional issues people like me, the morbidly obese, often deal with and drives us towards overeating. I feel this is the biggest brick wall to break in trying to lose weight. The fad diet trends don't address this issue which makes them purely about the almighty dollar. Emotional support is what matters the most and very few weight loss gurus or companies deal with that and it's obvious why - no one wants to deal with the human aspect of weight loss. No one wants to deal with the emotions because emotions make us uncomfortable. It's much easier to push a product (and thus a bottom line) than to inquire how a person feels or to delve down deep to try and figure out why we reach for a donut when upset.

Our bodies can be machines but we must not forget that we are human first and within each human is a soul that should not be ignored. Inside every fat person, like me, is a damaged soul that aches to be fixed but because we are fat, few people want to truly help us where it matters the most. The belief is that we don't care and that's wrong. We care. It's just that we need more support to help us, to guide us, to show us that we matter. We are hurting and need understanding and words to lift us. The most perfect weight loss scheme is nothing but junk if a person's soul is ignored.

We are humans, after all.