Here is a quote from a national Canadian newspaper article today: “We know that within the past 30 years, the prevalence of obesity doubled among those ages 40 to 69 and tripled among those 20 to 39,”

You're not Broken (as some fitness marketers would have you believe)

Can you see what the obvious implication of this quote is?

It’s that there is nothing wrong with you or your metabolism but rather our lifestyles, society and food supply/access has changed.

We haven’t undergone any evolutionary change in the past 30 years…but our food supply has.

Our daily activity levels have also dropped in this time. And stress levels in general are on the rise. So it’s pretty obvious where the root of our overeating problems come from.

But supplement/diet/fitness marketers will always try to sell you a story of how YOU are broken and their magical cure can fix you. Don’t believe it.

Eat less and you’ll lose weight.

John

In yesterdays word association game there was one word that seem to get the most negative associations to it. The word was OBESE.

This guy looks happy to me!

It seems that you definitely don’t have a positive view of that word and whatever that word means to you.

Words like ‘sad’ and ‘horrific’ came out for this one. None of the other words seem to invoke quite this level of response.

For almost any other word there were at least some responses that fell on both the positive or negative side of the spectrum ie: sugar was called sweet and poison.

But the word “obese” got negative words associated with it across the board.

So in light of my previous post from a few weeks about excess body fat being repulsive I’m trying to get to the bottom of each persons response to this particular word.

Can you elaborate on your responses to the word ‘obese’. Why did you respond the way you did, can you think about it for a minute and write me a description (if you don’t mind sparing the time).

John