Welcome to my home country DAUFINation where all the definitions are daufinitions.
I am so relieved that First Lady Michelle Obama’s plan to work on childhood obesity is focusing NOT on weight loss dieting but instead on getting more and better grocery stores in low income neighborhoods. She’s also promoting financial support for schools to get rid of their deep fryers, start organic school gardens, cook more nutritious food, as well as have it available in school vending machines. Still, I wish the messages I see about her “war on childhood obesity” focused more on increasing activity for ALL CHILDREN rather than creating a “Biggest Loser – Kiddy Version” for only the queen and king sized kids. In her nationally televised PSAs we should see smiling active big children with her, not just the slim ones.
I beg the First Lady to be mindful that street crime and school yard teasing also make it difficult for inner city kids to be active. I was a fat kid and not only did my dangerous Brooklyn neighborhood make every venture outside a risky proposition, but verbal and physical harassment, much like what we saw the large leading character in the award winning film Precious version of the novel Push endure.
We all should focus on more activity and better health rather than weight loss diets. Weight loss diets actually make you fatter. They also increase depression because repeated, desperate effort and failure as well as the notion that there’s nothing too horrible to subject yourself to if it makes you lose weight or at least claims it will is more than disheartening. I ask the First Lady as well as anyone supporting ending childhood (or any) obesity, to also realize that following Mrs. Obama’s good initiatives will increase muscle (which weights more than fat) and MAYBE decrease weight a little but some of us, at any age, will never be as thin as she and her daughters are, or the media and medical doctors lead us to believe we should be.
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