Maybe My Fat Is Killing Me

Day 10: Setbacks

I’ve been sick over the last couple of days. Nothing serious, just a simple cold.

It’s the second one I’ve had in the last three months, which is ironic because I don’t think I’ve had one for years before that.

Since I’m in a process of challenging my beliefs about weight and health I’ve spent some time reflecting on those feelings and yeah, I have become increasingly worried about my health. To the point that it preoccupies me.

This is somewhat of a recent thing since I’ve always considered myself to be “healthy as a horse” and as a result I have been very healthy. I’ve never had surgery or a serious injury, though I have broken a couple of bones and sprained my ankle. I had the full set of childhood diseases – chicken pox, mumps, measles – but nothing since my childhood.

Lately though, I’ve been having a lot of negative thoughts about my health. I’ve been worrying.

I have a prolapsed disc in my lower back and late onset asthma. Both have happened in the last year and its left me feeling fragile.

I wonder about my physical strength, now that the back injury has compromised it, and whether or not I can recover.

I wonder about the asthma and whether or not it’s controllable.

And I wonder about my size and if maybe popular media is right and I’m suddenly going to get diabetes or heart disease. Are the colds an indicator of something larger?

Increasingly I’ve even been having thoughts of impending mortality, which is enormously disconcerting and in some cases even frightening.

My well-being is not as well as it could be and I really don’t like it. I understand that negative thoughts about health come up as we age, and the constant bombardment of studies advising do this, don’t do that, eat this, don’t eat that, and blah blah fat, fat, fatty fat, is just really not helping at all.

I just want to get on with my life and eat what I want to eat when I want to eat it. Enter HAES and this journey.

And part of that is going to be facing what I’m really feeling without smothering those feelings with sugar and carbs, yummy though that is. Not that I’m planning on giving up sugar or carbohydrates on this journey, because restricting anything is contradictory to the whole idea of HAES, but I am wanting to face my feelings and feel them, scary though they are, without medicating with food.

Right now I’m scared that all those messages are right. That being fat is doing me harm.

Scared though I am, I’m not scared enough to go on a diet. When you really start delving into what’s being said about obesity, food and health, much of it is complete rubbish and some of it is just flat out dangerous.

And for all the “fat is bad” messages out there some sensible, helpful advice making itself heard. A recent study found that four simple habits will keep you healthy, regardless of your size (sorry for no link but I can’t find one that isn’t on a diet or otherwise naff site).

Those habits are:

1. Don’t smoke
2. Drink moderately
3. Exercise regularly
4. Eat 5 helpings of fruit and vegetables per day

The study further found that following even two or three of these habits will make a lot of difference.

I follow all these habits, with varying degrees of success, so I should pretty much be OK. Now I just need to convince my subconscious mind to stop worrying about it.