Just to specify, my highest BMI was 26.
My parents tried to raise me right by cooking healthy, discouraging snacking and exercising portion control. I would say perhaps they were too strict, as they cooked the exact same meals every week, which were many times too half-assed, over-cooked or undercooked. Of course it was the complete opposite at grandma's house, where I ate with no restriction, snacked all the time and ate whenever I wanted. This wasn't really a problem as I was active enough to retain a normal weight.
The problems started when my physical activity reduced, when I started having my own money, and when my parents started buying more junk. I had a lot of stress in my life and would get judged a lot for everything I did, which made me eat and binge in secret. In recent years I was also unknowingly suffering from moderate vitamin deficiencies which made me incredibly tired and not go out much. It was so bad at times that I would get out of breath just using the stairs in the house (at a BMI of 25 mind you).
Things really got out of hand when I spent a few months working in a hotel. My vitamin deficiencies made me want to eat more, as did the stress of the job. Combine that with the free leftover food around me for the entire work day and I had the most rapid weight gain in my life. And I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but I would literally think: "Fuck my health right now. I'm working as many hours as I can and I don't care what I have to do to cope with that'.
When I left that job and tried to get back into healthy habits again, I found it nearly impossible with the amount of food in the house. My parents kept telling me that I was the problem, not the food. But by this point in time, even my parents and very active brother were starting to suffer from weight gain which they didn't in the past. In recent years even my grandma and my uncle suddenly started suffering from major weight gain which they didn't in the past because of how much cheap food they were buying and storing in the house. My personal problems with food eventually made my parents realise that their purchasing of foods was contributing to my weight problem and now their weight problem as well.
My main problem is when there's too much food at home, because it's in sight, and there's the problem of food wastage, which is basically wasting our money. My dad still has trouble acknowledging that he has a problem with buying too much junk food. He used junk food to try and make us and himself happy. Pre-2013 the most he would buy was a box of pastries on Sunday. But in recent years every week he'd go to the store and buy a massive cupboard's-worth of cheap chocolates and snack foods, which would totally not last the week. So he's had to bar himself from even entering large supermarkets. My mother also has a problem of cooking too much regular and healthy food.
What I'm really getting at are the questions: Don't food companies, food stores and doctors deserve some blame for the obesity epidemic? Doesn't the person's physical and family environment have some blame for their food choices? Experts have said that since obesity has reached all corners of the planet, all cultures and peoples, even our pets, then it's not about personal willpower. From the stuff going on in certain forums, it looks like eating-disordered behaviours, both on the part of binge-eating and anorexia/bulimia/orthorexia are literally affecting entire families simultaneously.
My country is currently proposing a tax on all junk foods. While I think that would help make a little dent in the problem, I agree with the criticisms that if there should be a junk food tax then the prices of healthy foods needs to come down too. Because it's ridiculous that a pastry worth 500 calories can be as cheap as 30c when the cheapest that a small salad can get is 6.80.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/qucec7/i_know_this_sounds_like_denial_but_am_i_solely_to/
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