When I visited the USA with my parents in the late seventies of the last century, I was astonished about the number of people I saw who were decidedly obese. People who were lumbering instead of walking, people who were looking like fifty-year-olds(or what sixteen-year old me thought fifty would look like), but probably were not even thirty. People who were chewing on junk food or inhaling liquid junk food. People who, on top of being fat, were dressed in absolutely tasteless gaudy-colored polyester garments that accentuated their fatness.
Back home in Europe, at that time, true obesity was rare. There were some people who were overweight, mostly older ones, but very few were obese. The kind of obesity I saw in the US was, to us, an American thing.
But then, in Europe, most people lived mainly off unprocessed foods. Most meals were cooked from scratch at home. Fast food restaurants in the American style were few and far between, and visiting them was a rare occurence.
Today, there's at least one of the "American specialty eateries" in every city. Supermarkets have shelves and shelves of processed and prepared food-like substances.Many young people would not know how to cook a meal from scratch if their lives depended on it.
Which they probably do.
When I go to the mall today, or wait at the tram stop, a sizable number of the people I encounter are morbidly obese. The most shocking part being how many of them are relatively young. Sixteen-year olds with quadruple chins that make them look like forty, and who are carrying packages of fast food.
Fifty-year olds who are barely able to walk, or use crutches or electric carts. Women who look as wide as they are tall. Men who take up a whole two-seater bench on the bus.
I cannot help comparing their lumbering, painful gait to that of the normal-weighted persons next to them, or their drawn, downturned mouths to the smiles of their slimmer counterparts.
Been there, been that.
Don't anybody tell me these people are completely happy with what they are.
Because they are not. Not even if they try to hypnotize themselves into it with so-called fat acceptance.
I'm feeling sorry for them. Sorry, and thankful that I have been allowed to find a way out of that prison.
But for fortune, that woman on the cart might have been me. But for fortune, I might still be that woman on crutches.
The most tragic part being that the key to the prison door is within everybody's reach.
Watch your portions.
Don't eat crap.
Eat for fuel not for entertainment.
Don't eat your feelings.
Move your ass.
For most of the obese, following these might mean freedom.
As simple as that.
But, of course, that would require them to own up to the fact that their obesity is not a mysterious curse fallen on them, but mostly the direct result of their own actions.
Owning up to that was the first step for me on the road back to being normal-weighted.
I still have quite a distance to go until there. But the actions that brought me below morbid obesity already should get me there, too. It's just a matter of time and perseverance.
Julia
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