Throw away your fucking scale!

You've all been to Wal-Mart and I work there (Not for long, but at the present time, I work at Wal-mart). Unless you are completely oblivious, you know that there are always these cheap women's magazines at the front checkout and invariably they all promise some brand new grand scheme which will enable the reader to lose fat, gain muscle, and get sexy. The cover models on these magazines are "success stories" of women who lost 500 pounds!!! Every week there's a new success and a new diet.

Then there are the statistics. 95% of everyone who manages to lose weight in the first place gains it back and then some, and those are the ones who manage to lose the weight! Basically, if your ass is fat now, it's gonna be fat, and there's nothing that you can do about it. You can try, but you will fail.

Think of your fat ass as an evolutionary success story.

Anyhow, I'm sick of thousands of diets being thrown in my face on a daily basis. When people are fat, it's predominantly a genetic issue. Most of the skinny people I've met can eat any fat person under the table and never exercises to boot, so to those who think that being overweight is indicative of an unhealthy lifestyle (see sensitivity and fat people), go fuck yourselves. Yeah, in some cases, but not in the majority. And to those who are overweight because they do overeat, maybe that's just a product of being told not to eat for years and years and years. My best friend from childhood was always being put on a diet. We went to the same babysitter and after lunch, my little sister and I would always get some cookies or a candy bar or something, and my friend had to watch us eat it. Guess what? She's now 18 and the years of being deprived of candy have done absolutely no good because she's quite overweight. The only thing that her diets ever did for her was lower her opinion of herself and give her a guilt complex every time she eats something fatty. So what was the point?

My point is that we should all stop caring. I'm personally sick of reading how I should eat or what I should look like all the damn time, and I'm extremely sick of getting the urge to throw up every time I eat something that I feel I "shouldn't have". I'm actually sick of caring. Food tastes good, dammit, and if I want to have those cookies, I'm damn well going to eat them. Because tomorrow morning, no matter if I ate the cookies or not, I'm still going to look the same and still am going to be the same. It doesn't fucking matter.

And to everyone else who wants to lose weight/gain weight, whatever, throw your fucking scale away, and eat something dammit, because life is short, you only get one (supposedly), and you're going to have a fat ass. Get over it.

In response to some of the comments and followups to this writeup, I'm not advocating people to take up a life dedicated to obesity and unhealthiness, I'm just saying that for many people, weight is a number that is not necessarily an indicator of health and causes many people more angst than is necessary. If a person needs to have a barometer of their health, periodic body fat testing several times a year would fill this need and in a much more accurate manner. There have been studies that show that an "overweight" person who eats right and exercises moderately and maintains that weight is just as healthy as a "thin" person, perhaps more so since said thin person is possibly lulled into apathy by the low number on a scale and not as active and healthy as they should be. It is possible to have dangerously high body fat percentages on an underweight frame, while it is equally possible to have a very healthy range on an overweight one. However, obsession with any one number isn't going to solve anything for the vast majority, which was the entire point of this node.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with Psydereal on the point that people should be less uptight about weight, as well as other features. Throwing out your scale and living for the moment is not a solution, it is a good way to kill yourself faster.

Food recommendations (real, medically tested recommendations, not from tabloids) are there to ensure that you get the proper amounts of all the essential nutrients you need to remain healthy. If your diet consists of nothing but junk, not only will you become obese, but your skin, teeth, breath, fingernails, and hair (and that's just the outside) will start to deteriorate.

Life is short, but eating constantly will only make it shorter. Go look up some data on heart disease and failure related to weight, okay?

The 95% statistic mentioned in the preceding writeup is only relevant to those who practice fad diets, which usually involve starving the body so it consumes the stored fat (while lowering metabolism). This lowered metabolism does not rise when the dieter starts eating normally again, so the fat comes back.

Saying that eating cookies will make no difference is the same as saying that a few grains of sand in a box make no difference to the weight of the box. Add enough sand...

There is little to be done for fat caused by genes, but the inclination towards fat that is passed down through families can be dealt with. This is however, more an issue of exercise than of eating. I know several fat people, (with fat parents, fat aunts and uncles, and fat grandparents) who have lost a fair deal of weight with some simple daily exercise. I also know three thin people, that for various reasons, gained a great deal of weight.

It is not right to stop caring entirely about weight. Weight is a valid medical concern as well as a direct factor on your personality (optimism, energy, confidence, sociability, etc.). While it would be nice to live in a society less uptight about physical features in general, and certainly nice not to have to worry about appearance, there are other (more substantial) reasons for wanting to lose weight.

Get some exercise into your daily routine, it's the only way to lose weight. Use some willpower, and don't worry too much if nothing happens at first.

Keep your fucking scale, but don't starve yourself.

For the record, I know what I'm talking about. Since last December, I have lost 35 pounds with virtually no dietary change, and it's not coming back.

My twin brother and I are nothing alike. He's a deranged genius with no sense of social responsibility. I'm no angel, but you really have to consider the possible repercussions of your actions.

For example - I dropped by his apartment one evening to borrow a few tools, and I found him sitting in rapt contemplation of a fallen picture. It was one of his favorites but it was lying face-down on the floor. Still, he was staring at it and muttering something. The only bit I caught was "...piezoelectric..." You can't deal with him when he's like that, so I just grabbed what I needed and took off. I'd come back in sixty or seventy hours and make sure he'd slept or at least had some water. Little did I know how many hearts would be broken before the end.

The genius of the thing was how cheap and simple it was. The small mat measured force. The free software could easily calculate frequency via the timestamps on the force readings. The plans were available online - you could but it pre-made or put together your own. It would attach either directly to a computer, or to a "mobility pack" that allowed it to operate by itself. Later, an interface with most common GPS units, so you could prove not just how hard and fast, but precisely where.

It swept over America like a blanket. You can still go back and see the dips and jumps in various graphs, most of them where you'd expect. Productivity, down. Pregnancies, up. Sales of flameproof sheets, way up. Towards the end, even he realized the deleterious effect it was having on society. The obsession, the endless striving to beat your buddy's high score. Obscene exercise equipment at obscene prices. Truly spectacular 911 calls. He sent out a five word e-mail to all of his customers, but the only responses were complaints on word selection by hippies. Everyone else was too busy to pay attention.

When they finally caught up with him, the charges were numerous. Affront to public decency, marketing unsafe electronics, possession of a stolen shovel. But it's OK. I know exactly how we're going to pay for his legal defense. I had this great idea at a party. It's perfectly safe. Here's the plan. Imagine a little device that updates twitter with your BAC every 15 minutes...