A while back one of my coworkers approached my sister and me about healthy eating and living. It all boiled down to the fact that he was selling a well known weightloss/nutritional shake. He talked to us about it and mentioned a 90 day challenge. He did the whole pitch about how inexpensive it was especially compared to eating out everyday. First of all, he was obviously under the misguided impression that we both were eating out everyday. We both cook and normally bring in something for lunch. When we want to eat out, then we do. He also mentioned the obesity epidemic and wanting to help fight it. I didn’t mind purchasing the shakes because I figured it would be fine for me to replace at least breakfast with one of them. I am a person who loves to cook and loves to eat a nice meal, not a shake, and so is my sister, but we both decided that we would try these meal replacement shakes anyway and at least do the 90 day challenge. I think during the first couple of weeks he gave me some free supplements, which I did not want because I hate taking pills. I already have a few prescriptions, and that’s pretty much the only pills that I will take. He was checking up on me to see how things were going and said that if there was anything he could do to help to let him know.
In the meantime, he had added us on facebook and added us to his challenge group. One of his other “business partners” also contacted me and asked me how things were going. I thought these people were genuinely interested in helping people, but then it was revealed to me that all they were/are in this for is to make money. They put other people down who are not interested in selling the products. They should realize that not everyone wants to be a salesperson.
Now I have a problem with people who have never had a weight problem or any type of health problems trying to tell me how easy it is to lose weight. First of all, a lot of people are unable to identify with the actual struggles that go along with it, so they really cannot empathize. Secondly, some people have this preconceived notion that if you aren’t losing weight it’s because you’re just lazy. They don’t think that food addiction is real. They don’t know about the limitations that excess weight puts on people’s bodies or that they may not be able to push their bodies any further because they have already abused them too much. To me if the only thing you have to do in the gym to meet your goal is to tone and not lose weight, then you really cannot identify with someone who needs to lose 100+ pounds. They would have to work significantly different from you just trying to tone.
This guy put a status up on Facebook yesterday saying that if someone is in the gym and they look more out of shape than he does, then that person doesn’t need to say anything to him about fitness because he can’t hear it. This really irritated me because looks can be deceiving. Just because someone looks out of shape, that does not mean that that person is out of shape. It made me think about Drew Manning from http://fit2fat2fit.com/. He is a personal trainer who wanted to be able to empathize with the people he would be working with, so he put his health in jeopardy by going from fit to fat to fit again. He now knows some of the struggles and realizes that things are not as easy as he once thought they were. I just imagined what if he would have been in the gym next to this guy we bought the products from and offered him some advice. This guy might have been too close minded to receive it because he would have been looking at the outward appearance instead of listening to his words and figuring out if there was any truth to it. There are a lot of us unfit people in the world who have a lot of knowledge to offer the world about weightloss. Just because we have seemingly not been able to get it together, that doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t believe what we have to say. It’s just a little irritating.
The next time you see someone who is seemingly unfit, please don’t be so quick to judge them because for all you know, this person could be on a fitness journey where they have already lost a significant amount of weight.
Until next time,
It’s Me
