Lose weight easily. Anyone who feels fat and flabby yearns for an easy weight loss solution. And actually the very acknowledgment that you are fat may indeed be the key which unlocks the door to weight loss.
People don’t like to be called fat. There is a definite stigma attached to being called fat. Somehow we have learned as a society that we should remove the label “fat” from our day to day vocabulary. We have been trained to know that it is OK to be called “obese” but not to be called “fat”. But does this ultimately help us to lose weight, or does it in fact provide a mental barrier to weight loss?
What I mean is that the word obese or obesity conjures up the concept of a medical condition, one which you cannot control but rather you are subjected to; it follows that the word obesity implies that it’s not your fault, and that you can do nothing about your excess weight. The obesity label can in fact make you feel even more out of control of your eating habits than you were before, thereby making you feel that you just cannot lose weight, that you haven’t got the power to lose weight. You feel helpless.
Fat, on the other hand, is just fat. The “fat” word implies that it is your fault, your eating habits which are to blame. Thus this is why I mentioned before that to acknowledge that you are fat may just be the thing which motivates you to start losing weight. You no longer feel that you are subjected to a disease which you can do nothing about; rather you are admitting to yourself that you have the power to control your eating habits and your weight. By acknowledging that you are fat as opposed to obese you empower yourself to take control and set about losing weight.
The fat versus obesity distinction is similar to that between having a cold and suffering from the flu. How often do you hear someone say that they have the flu when in fact all they have is the common cold? Why do so many of us prefer to feel helpless and powerless instead of feeling in control? Why do we prefer to suffer from something dramatic instead of something common and mundane?
I suspect that there are a few reasons. Perhaps we don’t want to take responsibility for how we are; we don’t like to feel that we are at fault or have caused our own issues, be they being over-weight or having caught a cold. Perhaps we choose to seek the easiest solution than to have to work at something; it’s easier to go to the doctor and take a pill (be it diet pill or anti-biotic) than it is to exert our own effort in getting better or losing weight. Or maybe we just follow the crowd and use these terms of obesity or flu because that’s what we are used to hearing, and we do not really think about their hidden implications.
Whatever the underlying reasons are, fat is fat. I have to second what our UK minister of public health was quoted as saying in a recent edition of the Sunday Times. Anne Milton said that calling people fat instead of obese was more likely to motivate them to lose weight.
Yes, some people do suffer from a medical condition which results in obesity and prevents them from losing weight. But I am sure that this does not apply to all of the nearly 25% of adults and 14% of children in the UK who are labeled “obese”.
If you want to lose weight then it does help to acknowledge to yourself that you are fat. When you feel fat and flabby and acknowledge that this weighty issue is due to your own eating habits and lifestyle choices as opposed to a metabolic issue or disease you then realize that you can do something about it. You can take control and adjust your eating so as to lose weight, be it in terms of eating different types of food, choosing smaller portions or exercising so as to burn calories more quickly. The first step to losing weight easily lies in getting your mind around the matter.
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