I've been larger than average my entire life. From the age of eight I remember being made fun of for being significantly larger than most of the kids in my class.
Now mind you this has varied, I have been nearly spherical, heavy, and just a tad over average.
At one point I was what you would describe as thin but that was only because I had limited my caloric intake to around ~700 calories a day.
This was not sustainable, though once I lost the weight I was able to keep it off for around a year, but then covid happened and being stationary for long stretches
isn't known for being the best physical exercise.
What I'm trying to say is that I know what it's like being fat. I know it sucks being made fun of. I know the hopelessness that comes when you're eating the same food as the rest of your skinny friends, or better food than your skinny friends, but for whatever reason you end up gaining a pound and they shrug it off like it's nothing.
It's unfair, the genetic lottery didn't roll in your favor and you can't change how quickly excess energy is stored in your body.
However, I recently discovered, or really rediscovered, that physical exercise is actually really good at making you less fat.
I know! crazy! who would have thought?!
But really, losing fat is really only a cool side effect that comes with working out. After only a few days of regular exercise I felt a tremendous sense of contentment, I wasn't bogged down with sadness whenever I was alone like I was prior, and I felt like I had more energy at the start of each day.
Falling asleep at night was so much easier and I slept deeper, feeling rested when I woke up.
It's been a few weeks now and I can see and feel real differences in my body. My legs feel tighter, my stomach feels smaller, my love-handles are less grippy, my arms are growing, and when I look in the mirror I don't hate myself.
And best of all, a lot of the depressive thoughts that have been plaguing me especially hard for some time now are going away.
There was one night where I had been bawling every few hours after a particularly painful rejection. It had been a busy few days where I hadn't had the chance to
work out and that night I had the house to myself so I decided to not wallow in my self pity and just do a few sets.
In the span of an hour it went from contemplating hurting myself, with no intent to act, to feeling completely in control of my emotions.
It's truly amazing how just getting the blood pumping and the endorphins rushing makes emotional problems fade away.
Or fade away isn't quite right, it just makes them feel manageable.
But this made me wonder, why isn't exercise talked about more as a way of treating depression?
Sure every web article on depression makes some short statement about exercise being something that helps but it isn't emphasized.
I know when I was at my lowest point in high school, when I ended up getting professional help, not once was I encouraged to be more active.
In fact they never even asked me if I was active, they just got me on their anti-depressants and talking to a therapist.
So then when I was reading Industrial Society and its Future, this particular passage stuck out too me:
Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society ... Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.
Before modern society, one was required to be somewhat physically active and capable in order to live. People had to walk everywhere they went (or be on horseback which is also active), had to carry everything they needed with them, and actually had to work in the production of what they ate.
In comparison we live extremely sedentary lives.
With the proliferation of ideas from the "fat-acceptance" movement I'm worried for the future of mental health.
There is, or maybe was, a problem of ludicrous thinness standards, especially for women, and what is called overweight in the bmi scale is mostly completely compatible with a healthy life.
But with truly obese people, should we really accept that we must accommodate and aide people in their self-destructive behavior?
Is it fair to them to continually make larger and larger clothes?
Do we accept coke-heads and stoners as having an alternative but totally acceptable lifestyle?
We should be educating these people about both the mental and physical benefits of exercise and aide them with finding exercises that works for them.
Walking is great for you and pretty much anyone can do it, that's how I got started.
Not to mention yoga, which can pretty quickly take you from relaxing stretches to difficult poses.
I could go on for ages about the inner peace that comes from a good yoga session.
Exercising, or maintaining a reasonable level of physical fitness, is mandatory living a fulfilling life, Not only for the physical benefits, but mentally, and to a certain extent spiritually.