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Causes of Obesity: It’s Not Your Fault
By admin | August 4, 2008
WARNING: This Obesity Post Could Be Found To Be Offensive.
If you are easily offended, you might want to skip this post. I’m in a mood.
Did you catch the “groundbreaking” study from Harvard Medical School that was recently purchased in The New England Journal of Medicine? What a load of bs.
Apparently, being fat isn’t your fault. It’s the fault of your fat friends. Yep, being fat seems to be contagious.
And you don’t even have to hang out with them.
If you keep in contact with fat friends via phone, text, email, MySpace, Facebook, whatever, they can make you fat.
How dare they! You should sue them! That was sarcasm, by the way.
Look, I’m always telling people that they need to hang around with successful people, positive people, fit people.
You WILL achieve more by hanging around achievers.
Yes, it’s more difficult to lose weight if you hang out with people that don’t exercise, eat crap, go to bars and live at happy hour.
BUT, and this is a big but (like the one’s your friends apparently gave to you), the choices YOU make are still YOUR choices, NOT the choices of your friends!
Being fat is NOT contagious!
It’s up to you.
If you’re obese and want to lose weight, get in shape and be healthy, YOU can decide to do it.
Look, I’m not saying some people don’t really struggle with their weight and that others seem to be able to eat anything and stay thing.
That’s life.
You may struggle to lose weight. I’m on the other end of the spectrum and struggle to build muscle.
But everyone can lose weight, build muscle, transform their body and be the best they can be.
We’re not all going to be a Victoria Secretss Supermodel or on the cover of Men’s Fitness but we can still be a heck of a lot better than we are now.
However, if you allow all control to be taken out of your hands and truly believe that your obesity isn’t your fault, it’s unlikely that you’ll make the right decisions regarding your weight and health.
Which really shouldn’t be surprising considering we are living in a society that more and more tells you that nothing is your fault and you should never take responsibility for your own actions.
I don’t care what kind of friends I have.
If I eat crap all day, sit my ass down on the couch each night and down potato chips and beer while watching six hours of television each night, guess what?
I’m gonna get fat! And those friends of mine didn’t make those choices for me. I made them!
Yes, if you struggle with the discipline to stick to a good nutrition and exercise program, you may want to avoid socializing with people at odds with what you are trying to do.
It’s tough to sit at happy hour while everybody else chows down on crappy food and drinks beer while you abstain.
Here’s an idea. Don’t go to happy hour!
If you go, it was YOUR decision!
If you let your friends talk you into drinking and eating crap, that’s YOUR decision, too!
Let me make this very clear. Your fat friends aren’t making you fat. You are.
Your ass is huge because YOU made the choices that led to a huge ass.
You have a pot belly because YOU made the choices that led to a pot belly.
Yes, it’s tough to rise above your associations, which is why I’m always saying to surround yourself with positive and successful people.
Get a personal trainer. Have a workout partner. Stay away from negative people.
Change is difficult and sometimes your friends and family are the one’s most likely to sabotage your weight loss efforts or other positive changes you are trying to make in life.
They’d rather you stay miserable with them. That sucks and it’s a difficult situation.
But it’s still not their fault, which is how this study is framed.
As Napoleon Hill once said, “tell me about the books you read, the TV programs you watch, and the people you associate with and I can predict your future.”
So I have two problems with this so-called study.
The first is that successful people have known forever that the people you surround yourself with is a good indication of your own successes or failures.
And the second is that successful people also know that the ultimate choices you make are yours and yours alone and that you can disassociate yourself from a negative situation and become a success, whether it’s business or weight loss, because the power of those choices is left to you.
But instead, the study frames it by saying obesity isn’t your fault, absolving you of any responsibility for your own choices.
I wonder if the Harvard study decided to look at whether thin friends made you thin. I doubt it.
Look, I get that a lot of people really struggle with their weight.
I get that genetics plays a role in how you look and how easy or difficult it is for you to lose weight.
I get that bad things happen to us that we just can’t control.
And it can be damn frustrating when you try your best but still struggle because of these things.
But we can control how we react to those bad things.
You still control the power over the choices you make.
And YOU can still become the best you that you can be.
This is true whether it’s losing weight, going back to school for your degree, starting a business, getting a promotion, or whatever else you decide to pursue in your life.
Don’t give other people that kind of power over you.
Your life is your life.
It doesn’t belong to them. You have to live with the choices you make.
Don’t let anyone take away the power you have over the choices you make.
Once you allow others to control the choices you make, you might as well call it quits.
Topics: Motivation |