Fat

Not to be funny, but this is a big topic. What with rising levels of obesity and size zero models wasting away, famine and starvation, and problems with waste disposal from grocery stores, sometimes making headline news together on the same day, I’d say it’s a big fat subject to think on. Maybe even too big for me to tackle head on, in all its glory and splendour.

I’ll take the personal route. When I was younger, I didn’t mind about my weight—I was never what people would call fat, but I wasn’t a hottie either. And I just didn’t mind. But about when I turned 20, I started caring, and being bothered by my physical imperfections. And I could recognize a pattern: the happier I was, the thinner I would become, and the more unhappy times corresponded to a gain in weight. I do believe that the relationship went in this direction, rather than the opposite, and it was not a shift in weight that triggered a change in emotional wellbeing, but the correlation is there.

The physical and the mental are so intricately linked. So its no surprise that if we feel good we look good, and vice versa. We have so many distractions in our lives, however, that sometimes its difficult to tell if we feel good, or look good—even if that’s our main pursuit—until it becomes glaringly obvious. Maybe the lesson is that if we would slow down—slow down our lives, our thoughts, our goals, our eating, or drinking, then we might be able to find the right sized life, and body, for ourselves.