Misconceptions

(Warning – post contains conversation about poo.  We’re all adults here and I’m going to try to be as discreet as possible, but you’ve been warned.)

Everybody’s got misconceptions about everybody else.  I’m most acquainted with the ones that go along with being a bigger girl because that’s what I am – but I know that we as human beings pretty much judge everybody badly when given a chance.

Girl in a short skirt?  Must be slutty.

Super slender?  Anorexic.

Drive a Hummer?  Tool.

Plus sized?  Fast food scarfing piggy.

Got money?  Must have hurt someone else to get it.
Poor?  Lazy.

Older?  Out of touch.

Younger?  Annoying and possibly dangerous.

Tattoos and piercings?  Criminal.

Gun owner?  Definitely criminal.

Etcetera etcetera ad infinitum.

They’re all unfortunate and I doubt anyone has escaped getting hit by one at least once (but most likely much more than that) in their lifetime.  My husband thinks I’m paranoid but I believe I’ve been turned down for jobs on more than one occasion because the person doing the interview took one look at me and did the following equation in their head:

Lazy + Undisciplined = Fat.  End result?  No job offer.

There’s no way to prove whether he’s right or I am.

I digress.  Today I was exposed to a fat assumption (or misconception) that I’d honestly never heard before.  Fat people must poop bigger than average sized people.

I need to stop listening to trash morning radio shows.  I’m not even going to mention which one was having this conversation because at this point I don’t want to promote them.  However, this is the second time these yahoos have managed to offend me when all I’m trying to do is get a laugh while attempting to not die on the PA turnpike in the morning.

And this one is just… ridiculous.  The justification behind it is that fat people must be gobbling down so much food so frequently that it’s amazing we don’t have to stay in the bathroom all the time as it re-emerges.

Sweet merciful crap.  Literally.

If anyone out there is suffering under this particular ludicrous (and offensive in a way I cannot really explain) delusion, allow me to explain something.

Waste volume is largely determined by how much fiber your diet contains.  What this means is, that healthy people eating those high fiber diets are going to be the ones leaving a larger deposit at the porcelain bank.  People eating a lot of fast food with its high saturated fat and salt content are, ironically, a lot likelier to be constipated.

In addition to that, many overweight people do not necessarily have a problem with consuming too much food but rather they are consuming the wrong kinds of food.  Which is why it’s easy to by mystified over why you’re heavier than the people around you when you feel as though you’re eating the same volume as everybody else (or possibly even less).

Here’s an example.  At Christmastime the Oreo company releases a white chocolate covered Oreo cookie.  They are very slightly larger than the regular cookie.  I absolutely love these things.  One of them (one!) contains 110 calories and 6 grams of saturated fat.

This means that a person only has to consume a few of these cookies to start drifting over the red zone for how much fat should be consumed in a single day (let alone a single sitting).

Allow me to reiterate – it does NOT take a huge quantity of food consumed to be overweight.  Some people are overweight and / or type 2 diabetic entirely because of drinking sugar filled soda.  That alone is enough to do the trick.

Yes, many overweight people are so because they consume a high volume of food, but I believe most overweight people are so simply because their diets are too rich in pre-processed garbage and restaurant meals.  Processed foods are made as cheaply as possible (thus the cheap cost) and many restaurants basically dip each entrée in butter before sending it out.  Many people are sadly unaware of how badly this stuff can be hurting them.

Your best friends are fresh ingredients and your kitchen.  Know them, love them, learn how to use them.

And please, ditch the silly misconceptions.