July 26, 2001

on vices and reasons therefore

Gym, arms. Forgot to log my damned erging again (in case I ever remember to look
back for it, I did 6000m Sunday in 30:54, 1000m Tuesday, and 1000m
today.)

I find myself censoring what I post on my main list lately,
and I don't like that. I used to feel able to talk about almost everything there,
but we've had some issue lately with people being easily offended and then
proceeding to insult everyone else. I thought about taking the tidbit I mentioned
here yesterday on North Carolina's "retroactive" execution law over to
misc.writers instead, where everybody mortally insults each other constantly and
seems to get over it just as habitually, but decided that the list friends I have
come to respect over the last few years needed to see that one.

I was
afraid it would spark acrimony over the whole death penalty issue, which is not
what happened. Rather, it sparked a discussion on stupid sales-tax laws, which led
to whether governments should tax high-calorie food at a higher rate. That led to
discussion of whether government should enforce declarations of the nutritional
value of food in restaurants, which led to acrimony over whether people just don't
want to know what they're eating.

It's pretty clear by now that
anyone who is fat, or who smokes, knows it's bad for them. Anyone with working
brain cells, anyhow; there are still people who feed their kids at McDonalds every
night, but those people are stupid because they are stupid, not because they are
fat, and that problem is way beyond me. So why do people still do things that are
bad for them? Well, probably not out of ignorance.

So at least one
person managed to imply it's out of laziness, and thereby upset every overweight
person on our list. (Did I say being thin doesn't mean being smart, either?) But
it's got to be more complicated than that. My Dad has smoked for about 50 years,
and he's not stupid, and I don't think laziness is a factor. I can think of any
number of reasons to do things that are bad for you, and I do think of them, every
time I do something that's bad for me. Dad will say, if you ask him, that he gets
pleasure out of smoking and that he doesn't want to live forever
anyhow.

I have had one person, exactly one, ever, tell me that to
her, the problem with dieting is that you have so little energy. To me though, and
from my own experience, this would be a huge factor. If I don't eat enough, my
blood sugar goes down, and I'm dead tired and miserably crabby. I don't think I'd
want to do that on purpose. I also don't eat as well as I should, because of pure
lack of time to plan and prepare good meals. We do eat a lot of green salads, but
that gets unutterably boring. Rudder puts beef or chicken or fish on his, but I
just don't generally like meat on my salads, so I also probably get too little
protein. Sometimes for variety, I'll have with almost equally exciting baked
potatoes or ramen noodles -- I try hard to eat something that won't be gurgling in
my stomach and trying to escape during rowing practice the next
morning.

I can also imagine being overweight simply because losing
weight is, by all accounts, so bloody damned hard, or smoking because it's the
only moment of peace in an otherwise killer day, or not working out because of too
many other higher priorities. Or drinking too much through a sheer need to numb
your brain after a brutal week. No, wait, I don't have to imagine that one; memory
will do fine. Or insulting someone through sheer lack of thought, as I have also
done, and seen done, far too frequently lately.

Posted by dichroic at July 26, 2001 04:59 PM
Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?