Being fat is a trap

Summary

This has been a difficult article to write. Partly because this is a painful topic for many, and partly because I have to be completely open and vulnerable to write about it. I only write this in the hope it can help others in similar situations. Nothing in this article is meant to judge you. If someone judges you for being or feeling fat, they should go f…figure out themselves. Judging people inside the fat trap just intensifies their misery and reduces the odds they can get out of it. Let’s start with my story. I have been overweight (occasionally bordering on obese) from about age 8 to 23. At 23 I found out I was pre-diabetic and went on a strict three month diet that put me back on a healthy weight. I’ve maintained a healthy weight since then till the present (I’m 40 now). However, I’ve spent most of that time focused (sometimes obsessed) with not becoming fat again and generally struggling with food. It is only in the past couple of years that I am finally starting to trust myself with food and giving up the feelings of worry and insecurity about how my body looks and feels. The notion of two traps, a physical trap and a mental trap, comes from Allen Carr’s fantastic Easy Way To Stop Smoking. He states, quite convincingly, that there is a physical aspect to smoking (nicotine addiction) and a mental aspect to smoking (feeling that you need it). I believe that the fat trap is also physical and mental. Let’s start with the physical, which is the easiest to understand. There is a range of body fat percentage that is healthy. If you are outside (probably above) this percentage, you are damaging your health. The science is unequivocal on this. What the range is is a bit harder to ascertain, but, from what I’ve read, it is about 10-20% for men and 15-25% for women. The physical trap of being fat is being physically laden with just too much fat. Besides the overall damage to your health, it is less fun to be in an overweight body: you have less energy; you have more ac...