Entry for August 16, 2008
Diet Sabotage
I have been thinking about this a lot recently. There are different kinds of sabotage.
1. Sabotage from family/friends- This is the hardest to understand. Why do certain people feel the need to sabotage your weight loss plan? A few do not even realize they do it and some do know what they are doing but do not stop themselves. A few know exactly what they are doing. No matter which reason it is, it is wrong. I see it as something cruel and mean. I won't go into my many horror stories of my weightloss sabotage but the worst part for me is when I do "fall off the wagon" I blame myself and end up beating myself up for "cheating". I also delay the time it will take to reach my goal. I guess my point is, it was not ALWAYS my fault when I cheated. No, they didn't hold me down and shove cake into my mouth but when you have a weakness for sweeets or an addition to sweets, just putting a cake on the table in front of me can be forceful enough. I can not be strong 24 hours a day, 7 days a week 12 months a year... Sabotage by family or friends is the hardest to deal with. These people KNOW you and love you but sabotaging your weight loss efforts is not love. Maybe they are threatened by your weight-loss or threatened by the change that will occur when you have reached your goal? In any case , to me there is no reason and no excuse to justify sabotaging someones weight loss. I have a friend who is diabetic and always sick. She was even getting boils or skin lesions. I convinced her to try low carb and she got her sugar under control, got better and her skin healed. Her co-workers made a big effort to sabotage her efforts and they got their way. My friend finally gave in and gave up. To me it is sick what they did to her. My friend was very ILL, she risks blindness and amputation and she needed to eat low carb for her health. I think a lot of it has to do with control, when she finally gained control of her health they sabataged her because they wanted her to eat cookies or cake with them because they had to control her that way they sabotaged her or maybe they felt bad because they were eating things they knew was not healthy well it would make anyone feel guilty seeing someone resist temptation.Why do they do that? It is no different than hiding insulin from a diabetic or hiding medicine from from someone thats sick and needs it. In any case there is no excuse.
2Sabotage from Society- We live in a society that rejects overweight people but that same society is making us overweight. Sure they are beginning to ban trans fat and ban opening up more fast food places but when will they ban all the ads for food? When will people stop serving the "goodies" at the office meeting or the birthday cake for a co-worker? What about the mountain of donuts I have been served in Sunday school? I dare you to walk 1 city block without seeing one vending machine or one place not selling food. You can not turn on the TV without seeing food ads and even in the shows they are usually eating. TV, radio, billboards, magazines, newspapers and even the internet there is food! What a mixed message it is, Lose weight and look like the supermodel thats in the ad trying to sell you the burger, cake, ice cream etc that she doesn't eat.... But stop eating all that food, and lose weight. It is another form of abuse. Many of us will do anything to lose weight and be accepted by society but it seems we are sabotaged in almost every direction. I hold society 80% responsible for people being overweight. Food is everywhere. Food is associated with happiness, love, fullfilment, success and family.
3. Sabotage from the commercial market. Many people make a lot of money if a lot of people were overweight. Food and beverage industry, the Medical industry diet pills, weightloss surgery and al the health complication such as diabetes. Food retailers such as restaurants and lets not forget the diet industry. Lets face it a lot of people would lose a lot of money if our society was not overweight.
Okay enough of my ranting...
