The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Sunday, February 14, 2010

Director Kevin Smith 'Too Fat' To Fly Southwest


I think it is ignorance to blame obesity on "laziness." I don't believe in lazy people. I believe in people who don't see a clear path to happiness and health, or don't believe they can or should pursue such a path. Any worm or ant moves toward pleasure and away from pain--so it isn't a matter of intelligence, either. The issue is that many of us store our painful emotions in our bodies. To lose the weight requires greater clarity, support, and sheer faith than many can muster. Also, there is such confusion about what is necessary: which diets, which exercises? So many frauds. And so many judgmental individuals masking their own inadequacy by pointing the finger at others. No one is perfect. The obese can be much like alcoholics...only you can't go "cold turkey" from cold turkey if you know what I mean. And you can't hide the effects with a minty mouthwash. So fleeing the pain can lead to more pain, in a descending spiral of depression, lost energy and loneliness. We can and must help people deal with these things...but the best thing we can do is be healthy ourselves...healthy enough to admit our own fear and loneliness, and extend compassion to others. We're all in this alone, together.



www.realherosjourney.com
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

50 comments:

Unknown said...

Steve,

Thank you for this beautiful post. I read one of your very early posts that was along the same lines, and it brought tears to my eyes. I have always thought I was "too fat," even when I wasn't (only somewhat pudgy as a 10-year-old, and not even that when I was in high school). However, ever since then I have undergone a steady but slow weight gain overall; although did intermittent "successful" dieting off and on. I was chronically depressed and had pretty serious ADD (undiagnosed), which drastically and negatively affected my whole life. Almost everything I did, both for fun (reading, art, computer stuff when that came around) and for work (office, computers) was sedentary.

I'm saying all this because of reminiscing I did as I read your post. You know, there came a time when I worked very hard at accepting myself,which did make me feel happier overall, but sometimes I just can't do it. It is what I have been encouraged to do by other "big beautiful women," god bless 'em.

But you are from the "other side," i.e. the not fat, the very accomplished, although you have described enough of your experience as a young man for me to know you understand about pain and feelings of inadequacy. The words of your current post so obviously come from your heart, and you have posted them in a blog which is read most obviously by very fit, smart, high-functioning people. You are not just saying it comfort the obese, you are saying it to everybody, and this makes me feel good!

All of a sudden I feel kinder and more compassionate to myself that I think I ever have. Not only that, after following an intermittent fasting regimen for two months (and not even all that strictly) I have lost 14 pounds. Easy as pie. A piece of cake. Both of which I can still eat. :-D

Love ya'
Jan

Angie said...

The obese can be much like alcoholics...only you can't go "cold turkey" from cold turkey if you know what I mean.

Exactly. And that's why the intermittent fasting works for me. I did a blog post a little while ago about fasting and said:

I've been thinking about it as being like an addiction. Figure, if someone's an alcoholic, and you said to them, "Okay, you have to have one beer in the morning, and one glass of wine at noon, and a shot of vodka in the evening. You can't skip any of them but you can't have any more than that either," wouldn't you expect them to fail? We expect that the only way for an alcoholic to control the addiction is to have no alcohol, period, and that any slip is likely to lead to a binge.

But if someone's addiction is for food, they can't just go cold turkey, or even work up to never eating again. It's exactly like the program above, only with food instead of alcohol, where they have to indulge the addiction just a little bit, but then are expected to back off through sheer will power, multiple times per day. That's not how addictions work, or rather, that's not an addiction control strategy which is at all likely to be successful. It makes a lot of sense to me that it just doesn't work for most people who have this issue. The intermittent fasting lets me go cold turkey a day at a time, every other day. It's not quite the same thing, but it's close, and it works.

Angie

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