there are no quick fixes...

in today's world full of fast fixes, convenience, and excess, people take little or no responsibility for what we do to and put into our bodies. when we finally have to confront the consequences of bad decisions, more often than not we tend to look for the easist way. in my personal opinion all the diet fads, surgeries and what all just seem like the latest crop of quick fixes to avoid feeling at all responsible for our own bad habits. it frustrates me so bad that as a whole society we take so little responsibility for our actions and then take advantage of a big problem to make beaucoup bank with the latest diet trick or fad. making changes that you can stick with for life is the only way to truly make an effective difference.

just for the record, i'm not putting down bypass or plastic surgery or dieting for other people. if it's something someone wants to do, i say go for it. just to be aware of the possibilities. personally, i've tried my fair share of stupid diets and shit and seen what they can and can't do and have thus developed an opinion. any one person can have any one opinion. i'm just sharing my point of view.

when i was twelve, my mother sat me down and told me i should think seriously about weight loss surgery. at the time i was doing weight watchers and trying so hard to please everyone but me. i was just...crushed. i was confused and seriously low in the self-esteem department. that experience has kind of colored my opinion about gastric bypass and weight loss surgeries. in a bad way. that and the major trend i've seen in that industry over the years haven't helped it out much.

i see the gaunt faces and sagging bodies of post-bypass patients and can't help but think that they look so sad and unsatisfied. they think that if they could only be thin, they'd be happy. but i just can't see it. they fix the physical issue but do nothing to deal with the psychological and emotional issues that go along with every weight problem. i've known a few people that have had it done, and usually something like two out of three gain it all back, often and then some. the only thing that gets changed is amount of food that can be crammed in at the time. it doesn't teach a person how to understand the connection between mind and heart and body and hunger. i once knew a chick who had gastric bypass, and within six months she was bingeing like no one's business. the difference? because of the size of her stomach it took her three times as long to get it over with. which only prolonged the problem and made it bigger and harder to see at the same time. when she suddenly looked in the mirror and saw that she'd gained more than half the wieght she'd lost back, she was devastated and really couldn't understand how it happened.

plastic surgery can have the same song and dance. lipo, for example, sucks out the offending fat cells, but what it doesn't suck out are the feelings and stressors that trigger shitty eating and drinking habits. Dr. David Haslam, chairman of the national obesity forum, said liposuction is not an obesity treatment, rather a purely cosmetic procedure. "All it does is take away the subcutaneous fat under the skin, whereas the dangerous fat is deep under the skin around our abdomens and waists." (for more about liposuction click here)

crash dieting can bring more disaster than success, too. in high school i went through this major diet phase. i lost and gained probably something like 100 lbs. fed up with constantly restriciting and depriving myself, fed up with being hungry all the time and not loving myself or being able to even notice what success i did make, i just started eating. and eating and eating. everything and anything, all the time.

by the time i graduated i weighed 300 lbs. i was insane with hating myself. so i just decided to stop. stop dieting forever. and i haven't dieted since. i gained plenty of weight, but i also learned a lot about myself. i learned that when i focus on more in my life than just the way i looked, i actually accomplished things.

quick fixes offer a path of least resistance and the least amount of effort. and this is not to say i don't dream sometimes of waking up one morning and suddenly being a size 10, but it's just not plausible. happiness and a healthy self image (on the inside and outside) take hard work and the long long road.