So Where Does the Fat GO When you Diet???

As I sit here watching load after load of dirt piled into a dump-truck being carted off from the construction site I can see out the window I find myself pondering where they GO to dump the dirt.  I mean it LOOKS like just one truck keeps coming and going; but I don’t know WHERE nearby there would be any suitable place to PUT the dirt.  Yet the truck keeps coming back very quickly so if it IS only one truck; it wouldn’t have TIME to get too far away.  Hmmm.  Maybe there is some sort of dimensional portal just around that bend that I can’t see and the truck is dumping the dirt there.  Or maybe the truck is really a fleet of the SAME EXACT trucks that are taking much longer treks to some unknown dirt-dumping locale.  Whatever the truth may be it is still amazing to watch those trucks just take the dirt, drive away and then POOF come back empty; dirt all gone.  I used to wish dieting worked as effectively on fat as those trucks do on dirt.

When I was younger and first started the well-familiar cycle of self-loathing about fat and diets to rectify the “problem”; I used to cry myself to sleep some nights; wishing that somehow I could just take a turkey baster to siphon off all of my offensive adipose tissue and throw it away.  Yet, that never happened.  No magical fat-sucking device came to me to instantly render me thinner (and thereby happier)once I had mentally and physically abused myself enough.  No fatty saving dump-trucks ever lined up, fire brigade style, to take away my fat once I reached a certain level of eating much less and exercising vigorously.  My fat didn’t just up and wander out the door by itself during the night while I slept the sleep of the perpetually hungry and weary.  There was no nifty montage of fat-loss magics to get me from fat to thin.

But that was the point, wasn’t it?  That’s what you find out after your first few attempts.  The tripe that is touted no matter where you go in that vain effort of “Losing Weight”:  It ISN’T easy.  It is a struggle, a battle, a war against your body’s natural strangle-hold grip on its adipose tissue.  Your newest diet scheme is the next stratagem that will lead you to victory on your body’s battlefield.  Everyone KNOWS that there is no fast and easy way to permanently alter your body’s size and/or shape.  But that is what “diets” and “life-style changes” are supposed to be for, right?  Once you work hard enough; suffer long enough; the FAT (and only fat, not muscle or other tissue, despite the fact that fat is the LAST tissue that your body seeks to burn for energy aside from organ proteins when you don’t enough food to fuel your own system) will all GO AWAY!  It is supposed to be a puritanically hard lesson in self-control; denial of wants; hard work that will pay off in the end.  Only it never really does, does it?  You work your ass off (maybe even literally) and then; shortly after those before and after pics have gotten you compliments and glory for all your self-sacrifice and “hard work”; that same ass comes right back.  It is like the dump-trucks full of fat are waiting around the bend for that moment you look away and BAM they bring your fat right back (along with one other truck who happened to sneak into the line too).

Watch out for the Red One!

Those sneaky bastard fat-trucks.  They didn’t REALLY go anywhere, did they?  You worked and slaved and starved and for what?  To “lose fat”?  Right.  Well sorry to say but that weight isn’t “Lost”.  It hasn’t actually GONE anywhere.  It is just hiding around the corner like a kid in time-out; waiting for you to give up the latest battle tactics and let it come back home until the next skirmish breaks out between you and your fat in the name of “Healthy-ism”.

If you want to actually “get healthy” then give up the mentality that such “health” MUST come with an associated weight loss or fat loss.  Stop waging war on your body.  It isn’t good for your psyche any more than for your body.  No amount of magic diet pills or “hard work” is going to make your body’s set amount of fat just “Go Away” so stop punishing yourself.  Accept the truth of who you are and the shape you have.  Love yourself just a bit more every day by giving your body the acceptance and respect it needs to get you through the day without praying for that magic truck to whisk away your fat.  Break free of the cycle.  There are enough falsely based wars going on in the world today without adding the fight against your body’s natural components to the list.