Let's call a spade a spade.

This came up recently in a facebook conversation.....a blog article on supermarkets and their marketing ploys geared towards over processed fatty, sugary foods made mention of the fact the check out attendant was obese.  What hope does she have? wondered the writer.

https://medium.com/health-the-future/918b3d08f21f


And while some of my friends raised a valid point, the attendant's weight may be due to other health issues,  it was their statement this is too "judgemental" on the person.

So the following is my opinion....

Why has it become such a sin to say if someone is overweight?

Statistics and studies have shown that Australia is now the most overweight nation in the world. Surely we can't ALL be suffering medical issues or hormonal imbalances that cause this?

Over the years, I see noone has had any hesitation in frowning upon smoking and changing laws to reflect this.  SMOKING KILLS yell the posters and ads.  Well so does excess fat.

It is important to point out here, that a person's size is no indication to their body fat. A 45kg woman may have more body fat percentage than a 70 kg woman. Size or weight is not an indicator of harmful body fat.

It is time people accepted responsibility for their own health. Regardless of what we tell ourselves, we choose what we eat. We choose how to spend our money. I COULD spend $2 on a cheeseburger at Maccas....or I could spend $1 and get 2 apples, or a couple of bananas.

 This is American but you get the idea!

We have handed over our choices to the food companies and the supermarkets. We have chosen instant gratification with food over preparing meals. If we had to take the time to bake tim tams, would we eat the whole batch in a sitting?  Or would we pace it out?

How easy is it to roll up to a drive through and order dinner, and receive it in less than 5 minutes?  As opposed to going home and chopping vegetables and cooking?

Which leads me to another  spade.....we have become LAZY.

Nobody moves much anymore, or exercises. Nobody wants the bother of cooking and the resulting cleaning up. It takes up too much 'free time' which we spend doing what?  Facebooking?  Watching TV?

I cook dinner at home after work, as do many of my friends. Most of our meals involve a prep time of approximately 5-10 minutes and a cooking time of about the same. Literally, within about 20 minutes to half an hour of walking in my door, I can have dinner on the table. That's not so hard....it's fresh, it's hot, it's delicious. Sure I have washing up to do, but then I'm not contributing so much to landfill with all my packaging...(tick smug environmental box here LOL) and really, if I timed myself doing the dishes, it would be 15 minutes or less.

It's time for us all to wake up and THINK for ourselves. To take the time to educate ourselves on buying and eating fresh unprocessed foods, and moving and doing more. It's not rocket science....and it's not hard. I've used every excuse under the sun myself....I have no time, I don't like it, it's too hard, it's too expensive but when I started I found all those were just that ...excuses.

I do have time, I just thought I didn't. I do like it, I was just not used to it so thought I wouldn't like it. It's not too hard, I just thought cooking would be hard (because I watch too much Masterchef), besides there is a HUGE amount of information to tell me how to cook something. It's not expensive, it is quite often cheaper than buying fast food and over processed meals from the supermarket, plus the savings in medical costs (commonly treating high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc)

You also don't need a gym to exercise, go out and walk, even if its a few laps around the back yard. Do pushups/situps/burpees in the ad breaks of television, just MOVE more.

Hiding behind the 'judgemental' card is not going to change the situation. We make value judgements about people, including ourselves, all the time, whether we are conscious of it or not.

 I'm not advocating going out and calling people fat. But I AM saying, let's not hide our heads in the sand. Deep down we know what we are doing to ourselves, it's time to take responsibility for it. It's not good enough to expect others to have the responsibility for our health, or to blame the fast food companies for making us ill and obese. Noone is forcing us to eat what we put in our mouths or to cave in constantly to the children who have seen one too many kids meal ads on TV.

It's time to wake up and face what is real.