I'm taking a public health class, and the topic of our first paper was "connecting a personal health experience to public health." TL;DR I argued that unlike many poor people, my family had the ABILITY to eat healthy but chose not to. My connection to public health is that we need resources (including healthier school lunches) for kids whose parents can't or won't provide NUTRITIOUS food.
As I was writing, I constantly started typing very angry and personal opinions about the situation, and had to backspace and reword it in a less emotionally-charged way. I guess I'm only now realizing how much I resent my parents for making me spend my entire childhood overweight, sedentary and miserable. I don't want to rewrite the whole story, but I thought you guys might enjoy a few excerpts:
By far, my father’s favorite indulgence was food. He was a man of simple tastes, very literally a “meat and potatoes” kind of person (apparently, potatoes didn’t count as a vegetable because they tasted good, which gives one an idea of his attitude toward healthy eating). He couldn’t even stand to have produce in the house—allegedly it took up room in the refrigerator, it smelled bad when cooked, it attracted fruit flies.
He much rather preferred to send my mom for takeout—anything from a simple burger and fries to a full rib dinner. That’s fine every once in awhile, but not several times a week. Especially for a growing child. Family dinner wasn’t exactly something you could opt out of in our house. There was no “I’ll just make myself something” or “I’m not in the mood for that.” I remember being around 10-12 years old and feeling a tightness in my chest as I unwrapped my second double cheeseburger. I also remember being scolded for being “wasteful” before my dad grabbed it and finished it for me.
My mother did her best to counteract his irresponsible spending habits. If there was a corner to be cut or a penny to be pinched, she could find it. Eventually, this led to an obsession with couponing. She would drive around to recycling bins looking for discarded bales of sale papers, then tear them out page by page and clip the same coupon by the stack. This often meant that instead of a proper balance of groceries—produce, meat, dairy—she would come home with bags and bags of chips, crackers, candy bars, frozen desserts. Anything but an actual ingredient or meal. She would brag “there was a sale, so that plus this coupon meant I got each of these for 25 cents!” To be fair, that was impressive…but having something better than Wheat Thins for dinner would have been more impressive.
Matters didn’t improve when I tried to lose weight at 15. My parents had never thought I had a weight problem. My pediatrician could never convince them that my breathing problems were due to weighing 100 lbs at the age of 8, and not “asthma.” The fact that I had to start borrowing my mother’s size 16 jeans in middle school didn’t convince them. The fact that most of my classmates and friends were half my size didn’t convince them. So when I started exercising a little and eating healthier (when I could get away with it), they were horrified at my “drastic” 10 lb weight loss. My BMI was still hovering around the line between overweight and obese, and my own father was calling me “anorexic,” “Ethiopian” and “Holocaust victim.” He was genuinely convinced I had an eating disorder because my pant size was now in the single digits. My family’s idea of a “healthy” body weight was a bit skewed. Calorie-counting and exercise were so alien to them that, as far as they were concerned, nobody in their right mind would do it.
I would eventually reach a healthier weight, but not before spending my entire childhood overweight and sedentary and my young adulthood being bullied by my own family for being “crazy” and “disgustingly skinny.” I don’t have fond memories of climbing trees and running around the playground. I remember watching a lot of television and reading a lot of books. I couldn’t actively play in the house because it bothered the adults, I couldn’t play outside unsupervised, and the adults never wanted to go outside. The only thing left to do was sit quietly (usually with a stash of snack cakes) and keep myself occupied.
“Agency” is defined as “the ability to act on one’s own behalf, or to improve one’s own and/or others’ lives." As a teenager, I had the knowledge and education to make good choices concerning diet and exercise, but not the agency to act on that knowledge. I lived in a household tightly controlled by someone who not only lacked knowledge, but seemed to actively reject the notion of healthy habits altogether. My choices were not constrained by any outside force such as lack of funds, but my parents’ arbitrary rules about and unhealthy attitudes toward food and weight. It was frustrating not having the “luxury” of choosing what I ate (or refusing to eat food that made me unhealthy). My choices were constrained to highly processed food with little nutritional value, and healthier alternatives were often simply not allowed. The only time I got to choose what I ate was school lunch, and even that was a choice between chicken nuggets and pizza. Healthier school lunch initiatives obviously benefit children who don’t have anything to eat at home, but consider the added bonus of helping children who don’t have anything healthy to eat at home. The text points out that using the term “disease of affluence” to describe obesity is misleading because socioeconomically disadvantaged people are more likely to be overweight or obese than those who are more affluent. A low-income family’s cupboards might either be bare, or full of snacks and convenience foods—neither is ideal.
My parents didn’t allow me to become overweight because they were ignorant, or lacked the resources to keep me healthy. They simply lacked any interest in matters of health and nutrition. As an adult, I’m not substantially wealthier than I was, but my lifestyle has improved. I can buy my own groceries, cook what I want, exercise whenever and wherever I want. I have the luxury of “indulging” in vegetarian and vegan food. As a child, I associated health with socioeconomic status. Vegetable gardens, cooking from scratch, jogging—those were things my middle-class friends and relatives did, not poor fat peasants like us. Now I realize that these “luxuries” were always available to me.
I guess my point in posting this is, if you or someone you know is letting your kids' weight get out of hand, there's a good chance they'll suffer the consequences throughout their life and grow up to resent you for it.
I basically turned in a really long, APA-formatted FPS for a college assignment.
(Still waiting to see what my grade is).
Submitted October 13, 2017 at 08:04PM by Iv0ryTower http://ift.tt/2kLYaGD fatpeoplestories
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