Go Fish!

Picture a fish lying on the shore, its gills flaring, its mouth gasping, while well-intentioned onlookers shake their heads and wonder why the poor creature can’t seem to breathe. Someone recommends putting the animal in an oxygen tent. Others wonder what previous trauma prompted it to jump out of the lake. It is suggested that perhaps surgery to modify its gills is in order.

If you have any wits about you at all, you will ignore these morons and toss the fish back into the water.

It’s not so different for those of us who struggle with weight. We agonize over how to best motivate ourselves to eat less and exercise more. We scrutinize our screwed up psyches in the quest for a healthy weight through emotional healing. We dream of a magic pill or surgery that will provide the answer that has eluded us. And will continue to elude us because…

We are like fish out of water.

In other words, we live in a fat-and-sugar-drenched environment that is the antithesis of what would support us in maintaining a healthy weight. Yet rather than confront an eco-system so poisonous to the weight-challenged, we blame ourselves for our inability to adapt to it. Is it any wonder that so many of us fail in our battle with obesity?

The world tells us that the reason people become overweight is because they’re broken and need to be fixed. In that scenario, it’s our own fault we’re fat. But what if it’s the other way around? That people become overweight because the world is broken and needs to be fixed? That the problem is not that you ate the Baconater, but that the Baconater exists at all?

I know. Nothing but a big fish story.