Health doesn’t only have one main branch growing from it, but several.
Of course being physically healthy is important, but what about remaining mentally healthy?
If you don’t get anything else from this article, just take this with you – please encourage others. Spread love.
Recently, I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw a post with a photo and caption. I didn’t think much of it until I saw the content of the photo. The photo showed a back view of a morbidly obese woman sitting in stadium seating at a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game, taking up the majority of the chairs next to her due to her large size.
The caption reads: “Although this person has every right to be whatever size she wants….the person who sat next to her deserves the full seat they rented for the game. After three innings, they requested to be moved because she had to sit sideways in a seat. Unhealthy is NEVER okay. Over the course of the game, this woman ate two plates of nachos, two pretzels and three sodas. That is conservatively speaking… 4200 calories. One pound of fat is 3500. At the end of the night, she entered her calories into “My Fitness Pal” for reasons I cannot imagine since she clearly cares so little about her health. This is very sad.”
This post, one that went viral almost instantly, was issued by a personal trainer from Shark Fitness out of the St. Louis area who has been known as a “fat shamer.” According to the Merriam–Webster dictionary, the word “shame” means a feeling of guilt, regret or sadness that you have because you know you have done something wrong.
To shame someone that is struggling–that’s equivalent to kicking someone when they’re down. When I saw this post, there is only one way to describe how I felt – utterly disgusted.
When did people become so cruel? Why has society decided that it is their job to tell others what they are doing wrong in life? Why is a health guru shaming an obese woman?
You don’t need anyone to tell you, “Hey, you’re fat.” You already know. And when people point it out? That doesn’t support you or inform you of anything that you didn’t already realize for yourself.
He wasn’t the only one that took the opportunity to pull the trigger at this woman. There was a huge response from the community regarding her weight and eating decisions on this post. The numbers were in the thousands.
I would like to take this opportunity to make a statement to this Fitness Guru: Without overweight people, you wouldn’t have a job.
Until you know what it feels like to be severely overweight, you won’t understand. I sympathize with this woman, who has been blasted all over social media this past month. That is the last thing she needed in her life. How can you keep an encouraged mindset when you are being made fun of, being laughed at?
If you didn’t know, readers, My fitness Pal, which was mentioned in the trainers comment earlier, is an app that can be used to track calorie intake and help set goals. Personally, I never used this app, though I know people who have had great success by simply plugging in the food they’ve consumed and allowing the app to work it’s magic.
There can be nothing more discouraging than trying to lose weight and watching people judge and shame you because you’re still overweight.
Words hurt. I don’t know if many people believe that anymore or even think before they open their mouths and spew hate all over someone.
This fitness trainer issued an “apology” in St. Louis Today saying:
“I would like to take a moment to express my apologies to the individual in the photograph I posted and those it upset. One of the things I have learned quite painfully over the last couple of days is how sometimes something that is well intentioned can be executed poorly.”
In response, I’m not so sure how his original words could be something well intended. To me, it’s a lot like opening a phrase saying, “Hey (insert some rude statement here), no offense.” And we usually reply back “none taken,” though that is probably a lie.
Everything I have written I feel very strongly about, but I can’t quite supply the reply that the woman shamed wrote to this “bully.” She issued an open letter to this fitness trainer, part of it reading:
“You made it clear that you want to fight obesity through shaming me and that I cared very little about my health. Well, let me tell you a little about myself. It was not that long ago that I was over 400 pounds. I struggled with eating and my weight for a long time. I was unable to do many of the functions that others could. I could not put on my pants one leg at a time. I could not cross my legs. Being over 400 pounds was hard. Then I lost close to 70 pounds. I started to get my life back. The more weight I lost, the more I got back. I was able to walk over a mile. I was able to do 30 minutes at the gym. I was able to have my significant other give me a true hug.”
The woman goes on to say that for the first time ever she was able to fit into the seat at the stadium. That was also the day she was fat shamed on social media. Can you imagine going out to celebrate losing a significant amount of weight, and being able to fit into a seat for the first time, then being crushed by the realization that people were taking notice of your size and calling you out in front of the public for being fat?
“That was the first game I was able to go to,” she wrote. “That was the first time I was able to fit into that seat. And as much as you wanted to “track” my food and tell me how horrible it was, I can tell you by MyFitnessPal app, which I love, I had 1400 calories. I also worked out that morning, and when I went on the scale today, I was down three pounds from last week.”
So, readers, before you judge someone and mentally abuse them, choose love. Choose to put others before yourself. Choose to care. And choose to support those who have big ambitions and goals.
You never know where someone has come from and where they are planning on going.
This reminds me of a quote from the great Vince Lombardi. Take this with you.
“It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever – the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.”
Kaitlyn Tolleson is the county reporter at the News-Times. Email her at [email protected].