However, Americans really are terrible eaters, consuming great quantities of fat and cholesterol. Huge numbers of Americans do not exercise, and the combination of these two factors is indeed deadly. We know it leads to heart disease, and we have reason to believe it creates a propensity toward getting certain types of cancer.

The “slim” woman who doesn’t exercise may not be healthier than the bigger woman who does. Many factors come into play, including heredity. The problem is that people want to lose weight for reasons of attractiveness rather than for reasons of health; thus, the stupid diet plans and the crash diets.

If every girl and woman exercised adequately and ate reasonably–given her hereditary factors, of course–there would be a significant reduction in heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, and chronic pain. But then, if these healthy women then strive to lose the 5, 10, or 15 pounds that stand in the way of their “happiness,” they are not only buying a bunch of garbage sold to them by Madison Avenue, they are endangering the very health they have achieved.

You know you’re talking about an illness, not a case of the grumps, right? One simply cannot, by definition, “pick oneself up from” depression.

The rest of your comments make that seem like an incidental remark made in illustration of your larger point (with which I agree) about replacing dysfunctional eating habits with healthier lifestyle choices. I point it out only because people with depression hear “just pick yourself up” or “pull yourself together” rather too often.

I’m currently working to end the isolation and get more active/involved, so we’ll see what happens.

However, America is fat. America is overweight. Food is presented as entertainment to American youth by such demons as MacDonald’s where a child is given a toy, a playland, and the implied presence of a clown while consuming a meal made of cheap, low-grade meat, fried potato, and refined bread (aka simple carbohydrates) under the guise of healthy appetite appreasement. The increasing popularity of fast food in the US is a fact. More families “eat out” more often than ever before. The consequences of this trend are just now being felt in terms of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease in youth.

When I see an overweight individual eating a balanced meal, I feel good for that person. Even if such meals are eaten on irregularly I like to assume the person of attention is behaving in this way because s/he knows that such meals are beneficial. When I see an overweight person eating fast food, I look at them with the same pity I reserve for “thin” people doing the same. I attribute their activities to ignorance or carelessness. A close parallel is the relationship between smokers and non-smokers. Both groups know the hazards of smoking, but one group chooses to ignore the risk.

I know I might sound like a bigot, but Ive seen for myself real lifestyle changes in those close to me. Health has improved. Diabetics progressed from insulin-regulated regimes to diet-regulated ones. Hell, I grew up in a small town and watched as the average Wal-Mart customer ballooned from mere middle class blue-collar nobody to scooter-toting, unthinking fashion victim. In the end, dont we all become corporate prey only when we choose to stop fighting?

Nothing worth a damn is ever easy. My own health regimine can at times seem grueling. Yet, when I think about it, we are animals that spent the majority of our evolutionary history struggling for everything. The bulk of our existence was in the wilds of nature where life was especially brutal. This being fact, wouldnt it naturally follow that a smattering of decades during which our livelihood is made in sedentiary states a fit person does not make?

Humans have never had it this easy. We drive instead of walking and shop instead of farming. We evolved living very meagerly. Look at the hunter gatherer societies. Our bodies don’t know what to do with so many calories fed in and so little energy expended. Of course we become sick.

Then we have genetics that give us the desire to seek out sweet and fatty foods as a hedge against famine, a suburban population that has no way to travel except by car, the presence of corn syrup in everything (govt subsidies again), and the fact that eating healthily is more expensive and time-consuming than not. It’s not really surprising that we are as fat as we are, or that whole industries are now devoted to treating the symptoms.

The only way we will ever combat both these attitudes and the real medical problems is by improving the quality of our food supply (get rid of corn syrup, transfats, hormones in meat; encourage local growers of fresh food) and increasing incentives for activity by building parks, putting in sidewalks, having more after-school programs, and encouraging mixed-use areas so that more people can live nearer to where they work.

One reason that there are so many antibiotics used in meat production is that the cattle are fed corn (subsidized, so the cheapest thing), which their bodies don’t digest well and they become sick.

Agh, yeah. I recently went through a very financially tight time and had to do my grocery shopping at the Dollar General. Even the plain canned beans had corn syrup in them. Foods that didn’t even need sweetening had corn syrup in them. It was really disturbing.

We’ve expanded that to the assumption that weight is an accurate barometer of health, too. It makes people less likely to stick to healthy habits for the sake of health or plain old fun, makes us more likely to drop a movement or nutritional regime if it doesn’t deliver “results” - that is, weight lost. Getting away from the thin = happy and healthy paradigm probably won’t result in weight loss for most people, but it would certainly result in healthier people.

Obviously, I am not saying that the 50s were a time of enlightenment. But it demonstrates how extreme our standards on how women should look have become. Back then, Marilyn was seen as the most beautiful woman in the world; today she would have trouble getting work in the movies.

Depression is a different beast for different people, and I do still stand by my: eat right, exercise, get some friends and some hobbies, and if you’re still laid out, talk to a doctor; philosophy of depression. But that’s just opinion.

I do also want to come back to the issue of exercise, as many people have jumped on the food wagon problem and only a few pegged the exercise one.

One of the big reasons I decided to post this was because I came back to my parents’ place here in the sticks after a year in Chicago, and in Chicago, I walk everywhere. I walk the five or six blocks to the grocery store, I walk to rent movies, I walk to the bookstore, I walk to the train and walk off the train to my destination. At lunch, I walk for thirty or forty minutes at the nature preserve. I walk and walk (this, in addition to my exercise regime, but I’m more interested in the walking right now).

And out here, I haven’t had to walk *anywhere*. You can’t, really. You have to drive. We’re in the backwoods, which means there aren’t any sidewalks, “town” is a fifteen minute drive away and “the city” is about forty-five minutes, and very few people would even dream of parking at the far end of the parking lot and walking into the mall. That’s the way the culture, the city planning, etc. is set up.

So when you do have to go upstairs, or you park and walk around downtown Portland, the people beside you can be out of breath pretty quickly.

My brother figured out a 3-mile jogging route out here that’s not the most jogger-friendly of routes, but he does it every day, and I’ve been doing it since I got here, because… there’s just no other physical activity that I get all day. It makes me worry about the state of my family’s health.

It’s not just the consumption of food culture (which, yes, I admit, is extreme: coming back from South Africa and walking into Costco was enough to boggle my mind). It’s the way we view physical movement as being something you’re *forced* to do, and if you can get away with not doing it, then you believe you’re more affluent than those who have to walk somewhere (this is changing, of course: fit vs. not-fit also has to do with being able to afford a gym membership and “good” foods, as opposed to cheap crap).

And, yes, I believe that there’s a frustration with many people and exercising because they believe it’s all about losing weight, and especially in the short term (unless you’re crash dieting), you won’t see the sorts of “results” you’re looking for if you’re just looking for weight loss. It’s why fad diets are so popular, and why I’ve gained and lost the same 80lbs since the 6th grade. It’s easier to crash diet for six months than change your whole conception of what “success,” “happiness,” and “results” mean. Do I blame some of this on the media? Sure. If you treat people like they’re 12, they’ll act like they’re 12.

I remember making a conscious decision, when I started kickboxing classes, that I was doing this to be strong and healthy, not to lose weight (and, in fact, I was already doing mild, sporadic exercise, just not enough to notice any difference, and I knew I was unhappy, and there was something missing, so I made the change). And believe me, if I would have been weighing myself those first six weeks, I likely would have quit. I had to tell myself every day, “I’m not doing this to lose weight. I’m doing this so I can kick ass.” Cause I may have been shedding fat, but I was gaining muscle mass. The change that was most noticeable was that after two weeks, I suddenly had defined arm muscles, and that slow realization came over me, “Holy crap. I’m getting buff.”

I think that one of my associations with being thin has been being weak: I’ve seen so many women concentrate so intently on food and calories that they waste away into stick people who have just as much trouble walking upstairs as a heavier person who doesn’t exercise. There’s a part of me that mourned getting denser this year, because I like being big and intimidating.

But, you know, I’m more intimidating now that I can run up stairs and work a punching bag.

Anyhow, that’s a personal journey. I think there’s also a tendency for “health” buffs to go the other way: to become so obsessed with diet and exercise that it *becomes* their lives (again: we’re banged on the head so much about it and have such a huge fear of being “fat & disgusting” as portrayed on television and in the movies that there’s a possibility to go totally the other way). And I was really conscious that I didn’t want to do *that*, either. Learning how to fight, being fitter, was great, but I didn’t want it to consume my life. I didn’t want to become an obsessive eater who hated herself on weekends for going out for Thai food. And I think obsessions on both ends are possible, and dangerous, because it takes a lot of energy away from things I could be doing: writing, reading, socializing, all of which are - for me - important parts of my life and things that I know contribute to my overall health.

It is still fascist, but probably not as physically damaging as the thin standard. Trying to meet the Marilyn standard, you would probably need to either stuff your bra or get implants, and then waste hours of your life on makeup and hair styling. No self-induced retching required (for most people).

In short, I exercise at least 5 days a week for at least an hour — lifting weights with enough intensity to give me a good challenge, or doing Dance Dance Revolution (my favorite game, and the only game I play) at a challenging level (currently 6 — go to any arcade and try a game at that level). Since last year, I’ve picked up jewelry making and went into sewing and crocheting. Before that, I was drawing and playing music. Oh, and I’ve joined a choir and a social change group. I work full time and still have room for a social life, and devote at least an hour a day to said hobbies outside of exercise. I’ve chucked cable/satellite tv and the tv antenna. I’ve improved my eating habits by adopting Ayurveda (the latest in my attempts to be a better eater; previously it was Atkins, and previous to that by going straight vegan and adding lots of vegetables), and cooking all my own meals. Guess what! I’m still obese and depressed.

Just so everyone knows, I’m not soliciting any suggestions for improvement. I’m just here to say that while I appreciate the thought that went into the post, “they just need a hobby” is not always the case.

My family also is of the genetically obese variety, each member being frequently depressed at some level for varying periods of time, and I don’t know a single one of them that doesn’t have at least one hobby that they enjoy doing on a regular basis. Granted they’re not as scatterbrained in their hobbies as I am, and often there are long breaks (choir doesn’t rehearse during the summer), but I don’t notice any significant changes in their attitude or weight as a result of adopting these hobbies. Sure, they enjoy what they’re doing while they’re doing it; in that same vein, those who snort coke can be really happy while they’re high.

Short version: hobbies are wonderful but not a solution.

That all aside, Kameron, I’m enjoying your posts so far.

I *used* to believe that diet, activity, and willpower could solve this problem, but now when I see a morbidly obese person, the 1st thought that comes to my mind is “that’s a surgical problem.”

Though not for everybody, and certainly not for cosmetic losses of only a few dozen pounds, I believe bariatric surgery is the only way some genetically-predisposed people can get off the fat pounds, overcome the adult-onset diabetes, lower their blood pressure, and relieve their accompanying depression.

At present, we have no medical treatment for morbid obesity; no pill, no injections, so a proper surgical treatment has been developed.

Of course, the good bariatric programs provide (and insist their patients participate in,) psychological, physiological, dietary, and peer support.

I think of morbid obesity sort of the way I think about, say, gall-bladder or hiatal hernia problems. Diet and food choices, activity, and medicines can help a little, for awhile, but really, these are conditions that require surgery.