The Battle: Thin vs. Healthy

I recently asked this question to my members in one of my Weight Watchers meetings, "Do most people want to be "thin" or "healthy?" The overwhelming response was healthy. However, I had to disagree with them. I believe that most people, if they're being honest with themselves, just want to be thin and if "healthy" happens, it happens.

Being healthy takes work, commitment, time and it is continuous. This is not something that you can just take a pill for or do a 14-day cleanse to become. Healthy is a lifestyle. This requires the breaking of old habits and forming new ones.

On the flip side, being "thin" is a condition. Conditions can be temporary. There are many things that you can do to be thin. Most of which would not be considered healthy. Let's just look at some of the things people in our culture are doing just to become "thin." You can eat pre-packaged food that is sent to you in the mail, you can stick a feeding tube up your nose and live without solid foods for 10 days, you can take pills, you can cut out carbs, you can cut out fat or any other macro nutrient of your choice, you can drink shakes, you can have surgery, you can take laxatives and the list goes on and on. I will agree that doing the majority of these things will probably make you thin, but how long will you stay that way? What message are you sending to your body?

Some of the things I listed that people are willing to do to become thin may sound rather surprising or extreme. However, people ARE doing these things. LOTS of people. Why? Why are we willing to sacrifice our health for a temporary condition? The answer: It's EASY. Most people, if they are honest, will tell you that they want to take the easiest path possible to be thin. I heard a recent report that said more people would rather be thin than be wealthy. WOW that says a whole lot. It also says a lot about our culture that being "thin" is so glorified that the extreme measures that people are willing to take to become thin are now becoming the norm.

People, I urge you to reconsider these extreme measures and seriously contemplate what it really means to long for this "quick-fix" for weight-loss. Those of us, myself included, who have/had a weight problem, had the problem due to other issues in our lives. We chose food as a way to handle them. Whether you use food to celebrate, soothe your pain or relieve boredom, it's all the same. Learning how to manage food and make the best food choices is key. Adding in activity into our daily lives, instead of watching others be active on reality TV will make a huge impact on our health. Understanding that losing 20 pounds in a month is not a healthy rate of weight-loss will help considerably.

I understand that what I am saying may be hard to hear for lots of people. We want results and we want them FAST. I am here to tell you that if you adopt a healthy lifestyle, it may not happen over night, but the weight will come off and it will STAY off. After all, isn't maintaining your weight-loss more of a WIN than how long it took you to lose the weight?