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A friend shared this e-card with me via my Facebook. It made me laugh and I shared it amongst my friends.

Tongue in cheek but it's easy to use excuses when trying to lose weight

Then I got thinking …. losing weight is not easy, and maintaining a healthy weight is even harder. It’s all too convenient to use excuses as to why it’s not necessary to lose weight, why we can’t lose weight or why we can’t seem to maintain a healthy weight. I recall using lots of the standard excuses myself: “I have a large frame”, “I’m big-boned”, “my metabolism is slower than most people’s”, “I don’t eat much at all so not sure why I’m not losing weight” etc. What this light-hearted e-card does is provides yet another excuse as to why we shouldn’t worry about our weight.

There is an unhealthy obesession with being ‘thin’ often fuelled by the fashion world. I’m not advocating being ‘thin’ but being a healthy weight in order to live a fuller, longer life and stay out of hospital. Being fat, overweight, obese or whatever label you want to put on it is burdening the NHS. I read an article via the Mail Online and was shocked that Britain has its very first FAT ward where patients weighing as much as 47-stone are treated with reinforced wheelchairs and industrial weighing scales. How on earth have we come to this? This is one of the UK’s first dedicated weight loss wards, where last year four surgeons performed more than 600 operations to try and help clinically obese patients. Based at the Sunderland Royal Hospital, the ward is at the heart of one of the fattest places in the country, where more than 40 per cent of adults are overweight.

With obesity and its related illnesses expected to cost the NHS £50 billion each year by 2050, it’s thought many more units will open across the country going forward. Surely it’s time to stop the excuses and time to change?!

I had my groceries delivered last night and the driver told me that he’d been in the job only 4 weeks and had already lost a stone in weight. And he was 60 last week but I have to say didn’t look it at all – which is what I told him. He told me that since he’d started his new job he felt fitter, healthier and better for it. He’d not lost weight by dieting, but by eating more healthily and exercising purely by default as a result of his job!

Writing this blog is making me feel guilty as I didn’t go for a run this morning. I’ve not run since Sunday and it’s been due to a number of excuses. So tomorrow I WILL run as I know I will feel more physically and mentally fulfilled.

BACK TO THE E-CARD …. we all want to be seen to be intelligent, good looking, funny and awesome, but I strongly believe if we are a healthy weight we will feel far more good looking, funny and awesome than if we were fat!

More information about Britain’s first FAT ward

  

Deborah

Hi - I am Deborah, and was the founding director of talkhealth My blog is generally focused around my own personal story about weight loss, running, exercise and generally trying to get and stay fit, as well as what's been in the news that's topical. Any views expressed are my own.

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