I really dislike the phrase, “pack on the pounds.”
It crops up often in news media.
Gossip magazines will squeal with delight over celebrities who have
gained a little weight, possibly because they’ve had a baby or some other silly
little life altering event, screaming out headlines like: “so-and-so is visibly
fatter, they’ve really packed on the pounds!”
The other place I frequently notice it buried is in articles about the
obesity “epidemic” or how life changes and the passage of time can cause our
body weight to increase. For example
articles that say things like, “women over 40 can really pack on the pounds,”
or, “after women get married, they really let themselves go and pack on the
pounds.”
The phrase itself brings to mind something I used to do on the beach as
a child. I would sit in the sand and
pack it all around me until my legs and the lower half of my body was encased
in it. Then if I’d struck water in one
of the holes I had dug, I’d make dribble castles all over my thighs. I did this because the sand felt cool and
good and because it was fun – I was packing on the sand all around myself.
Here’s why I have a problem with it in regards to weight gain: “packing
on the pounds” implies an intentional, deliberate action. I was deliberately packing sand around my
body because it was fun, and using the phrase with regards to weight says that
the person doing it is trying as hard as they can to gain as much weight as
they can. It brings to mind mental
images of people gleefully grabbing up globby, greasy handfuls of fat and
smacking them onto their own thighs and stomach in an effort to see just how
big they can intentionally make themselves.
With very few exceptions, people don’t gain weight on purpose. Most of us don’t even fully realize when it’s
happening.
I got up to 290 lbs. very gradually over the course of thirty-some
years. Even though I’ve been suffering
from binge eating disorder since I was around twelve or thirteen (I think it
began around the time I began my first calorie restrictive dieting effort) I
have never put on weight very quickly.
Since I journal everything I eat I now have a good working knowledge of
how many calories a lot of foods contain, but I believe that most people do
not. A single tablespoon of butter or
mayonnaise contains 100. A tablespoon of
olive oil is 120. On top of that, when
someone is eyeballing a portion instead of measuring, they don’t really have a
clear understanding of just how small a tablespoon or even a cup of something
actually is. It is not difficult to gain
weight in a culture of convenience food and vehicular travel, and you don’t
have to be a lazy glutton to make it happen. A few high energy food choices or
a single cup of full fat hot chocolate a day is more than adequate to do the
trick.
Pervasive and negative language choices like this are another facet
that I believe contributes to fat hatred and bias in the United States. Much like my previous post about the way
overweight actors are used and portrayed, this is another subtle negativity
that works its insidious way into people’s brains. It teaches us to see a fat stranger or even a
friend who’s gained some weight and automatically think, “woah – they’ve really
packed on the pounds!”
It implies deliberate self-neglect, a slovenly nature, and lack of care
for personal health that is in most cases both unfair and untrue.
