- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Like Jeanette D., I persuaded *myself* to lose weight. I topped out at a cool 149, and on my frame that's BIG. I have little bird bones so I didn't carry it very well at all. Finally after purchasing a size 11 pair of jeans I decided enough was enough. I joined the gym through work (discount as part of employee bennies) and stopped eating so much crap. I dropped down to 129 in a little over a year. I'd love to shave off another 5 from where I am now, but mostly I'd like to be more toned and fit rather than physically smaller.
What absolutely baffles me is how people can eat heavy, fatty, food all the time and go about their business as usual. I can tell the next day (sometimes within the hour, if I've eaten something like fast food, which makes me fall asleep at my desk) just how bad for me a given meal was. For example, on Tuesday night I ate whole wheat pasta shells with veggies and some diced sausage tossed with tomato sauce. The next day I went for a 2.5 mile run and felt great. That night I ate Chinese takeout and my run yesterday had me gasping for air the whole time and my leg muscles nearly giving out before I was halfway done.
Don't people who eat badly just feel sluggish and sick and tired *all the time*? Why would you do that to yourself if it makes you feels so bad, or do people just not realize that it's the food making them feel like that because that's the only kind of food they eat and they've never felt the difference?
I know I probably come off as all smug and what-have-you, but this just really astonishes me. Why would you be content to live your life like that?
Also, in answer to a few 'what do you propose we do about it' regarding getting people to lose weight (although, see above, it can be done with out too much hardship at least for some), I think the real answer to that is "don't gain it in the first place" and that's where all the directives regarding eating well and keeping active are pointing. It's a lot easier to stay slender when you start out that way than it is when you have to lose all the weight and keep it off.
