You didn't think I'd given up after 5 days, did you? It's Saturday and I didn't mind sleeping in one bit. I wouldn't want to make a habit of it, though. Like I wrote last time, the key to getting enough sleep is never catching up on the weekends, but getting to bed early enough.
Another welcome relief of a workout. I've really put my body through the paces this last week, and after that the cardio and ballistic stretching of the Kenpo X routine is almost restorative.
I've talked a lot the last few years about my "before body" and my "after body." While my starting position for this round of P90X is nowhere near the "before body," it does perhaps merit a label, which I'll borrow from one or two years ago: the "dad bod." Normally I would hate such a label, but check this out: this means I'll be going from dad bod...to rad bod.
I'll keep my day job, thank you.
In mid-June of this year This American Life had a show about fat people "coming out" as fat. It's called "Tell Me I'm Fat," and you can listen to it at thisamericanlife.org. The show is about fat people accepting themselves as fat and embracing it as part of their identity. There is one woman who loses over 100 pounds and keeps it off, but is then disgusted that her husband wouldn't have shown interest had they met before her change. Her story ends with the reveal (spoiler alert) that she still occasionally takes speed to stay thin and has problems sleeping at night.
These stories are heartbreaking, and editing them together is disgusting. The show seems to be pushing a point of view that obesity is a part of a person's identity. That is true if you are Santa Claus. For everybody else (even Penn Jillette [before/after]), that's not the case. It's not something that changes quickly about a person, and it doesn't entitle anybody to mistreat someone who is overweight, but to accept it as something that is unchangeable...I can't think of anything the 1/3 of obese Americans [source: CDC] need to hear less than that it's part of who people are and on its way to becoming a protected characteristic.
The fact is that obesity does cause you to miss out on so much of life. As somebody who has been on both sides, let me assure you: it makes a big difference. This can be either good news or bad news, depending on the following: If you believe that obesity is a fixed state, something that is part of you, from which there is no escape, even in spite of what we've learned even in the last 10 years about diet and exercise (paleo + Power 90 + get enough sleep), then that's terrible news.
If you believe your obesity is a part of you, then saying that there is an unavoidable price to being obese and inevitable benefits to achieving a healthy weight hurts deeply. I know. But it's the truth, and building the plan for your life on a foundation of lies is far more cruel than heeding the truth. And there is another truth: obesity is not part of you. It is not who you are. It is hiding you from so much of the world. It is not something to accept. It is not something to celebrate. By all means, enjoy life, and enjoy the present to the fullest, but don't be fooled by skinny, kind-hearted platitude peddlers [source: TAL's host, Ira Glass, is not obese] into trivializing a condition that robs you of so much happiness.
This post is too long. I'm hungry.
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