Diary of a plus size blogger - Obesity

There has been a lot of talk the past few days about obesity in the world being the “scourge” of governments and a pandemic equal to the bird flu that has been in the news over the past year.True enough the world is getting larger and there are some diseases that can be attributed to weight, but I don’t think for one minute that there is a problem of epic proportions going on in relation to obesity.

Advances in food technology combined with the way society is today is the reason that people are larger. Food is easier to get and can be stored for longer periods of time. With this in mind my generation unlike my grandparents can get anything that we want to eat at anytime and if we don’t want. If we don’t want to eat it at that time advances allow us to preserve foods longer. Society itself today, especially in the United States, have no need to be as active as in generations past. Jobs that require manual labor have been phased out mostly, office jobs of all types are more prevalent and overall require less physical exertion.

New housing communities are being built all over the country. In times past schools, stores, hospitals where located inside neighborhoods. Today those same communities are being built without sidewalks and the businesses that used to be the cornerstone of these communities are being moved to areas that require transportation to get to thusly requiring less activity to accomplish.

All these different factors have lead to people being larger but just becasue a person is obese, according to the BMI index doesn’t mean that they are not healthy. Even the CDC had egg on its face last year when they stated then back peddled on there statement that smaller people have a shorter lifespan than larger people. With conflicting statements coming from an agency like this then its a natural step in the direction that people will simply draw there own conclusions based on there own experiences with weight and nothing more.

I have been big all my life. According to the latest studies I am morbidly obese and need to lose at least eighty pounds. Looking closer at my health there are some things that I don’t have at the age of forty that every other member of my family has:

1. High Blood Pressure
2. Diabetes
3. Heart Disease

The last time I went to the doctor not only did I get a clean bill of health, but the only thing that my doctor recommended was that I incorporate some moderate exercise into my daily routine. So I guess being two-hundred and fifty-two pounds is not a bad thing, at least not in my case.Obesity is something that is here and not going anywhere. Those that think that obese individuals are a disease to be dealt with like a common virus is the reason that size acceptance and size discrimination groups exist to make sure that a person is not denied anything based on there size.