Rant Alert!

   
     By the way guys, I didn't just forget about days 24 and 25 of my blog challenge. Those days...really really sucked as far as topics go. Definitely not worth me trying to come up with something for them y'all probably wouldn't enjoy reading!

     Today I just really need to vent a little steam about something that has been getting on my nerves for a good while. I've been a good, tolerant little girl and kept my mouth shut, but it's just gotta come out today.

     I don't know about y'all, but my Facebook lately has been taken over by the skinny-crazy people. The people who are obsessed with losing weight, working out, anything they can do to make their bodies more pleasing to themselves.
     I've got people doing Zumba classes, people on every diet imaginable, people promoting this or that amazing new gym with cheap membership, people going group walking two or three nights a week, people running 5ks and marathons. It's basically the Fit Network, all relocated to my Facebook!
     There's this one new thing going around the FB world...Advocare. It's a pyramid-scheme company based on selling weight loss/energy/health supplements and promoting short-term plans for losing weight using Advocare products. Out of my friends, first a core group of several people started using this product, then selling it on the side. They were hooked, and they hooked their husbands and wives, their friends, and their families along with them. All of a sudden all of they quit having personal lives on Facebook. Every single post was 100% focused on promoting and selling Advocare, recruiting more sellers to be in their sales team, nothing but Advocare. No more posts about their kids antics, their husbands sarcastic comments, their crazy days at work...just Advocare.
     There are several things I'd like to fix with this picture. Facebook is a social network, not the place to conduct regular business. I realize it's probably a well-paying, rewarding job that you really love, but if you want to tie your business into Facebook, make a group or a separate page for it. Don't spam everyone on your friends list with your every post. A group or a separate page will allow you to post all you want, and everyone that actually wants to see it will. You can invite whoever you want to your group/page, and if they say no, you say okay and move along. Making the occasional comment or shout-out is great, but spam about a product I didn't want in the first place doesn't make me change my mind about it.

     Next, and this is a much bigger issue than just Advocare spam on Facebook, but it is connected. I realize I live in Mississippi, the obese state. I realize that our country as a whole has more and more overweight people each year. I realize that's a serious health concern that people need to be educated on dealing with. However...I am not obese. I am not overweight. Just because many people out there are dealing with this issue, it doesn't mean I have to deal with it also. I don't think it's fair to me, or to anyone out there who is already healthy, to basically be told to get healthier now because we'll probably be overweight one day.
     Schools no longer allow kids to choose whether to eat healthy snacks or to eat ice cream with lunch, whether they can pick between water and diet drinks or whether they can drink a Coke. Even high schoolers, who are by most people's definition old enough to make their own decisions about their food, have their choice taken away from them. My opinion - if you don't offer any choice at school, they'll just bring what they want from home, so what good are you doing?
     And it goes farther. The first lady recently announced that if her husband is reelected this fall, one of the things she's planning on tackling in the next term is cutting sugars, fats, and sodium from grocery store products. Now, as an adult and an American, I know that I have the right to choose whatever the heck I want to eat, no matter how horrible or how healthy it may be. I don't need the government making that choice for me. The way I see it, now you have the choice between Oreos or 100 Calorie pack cookies, whole or skim milk, Cheeto puffs or baked Doritos...you already have the option to pick your 'healthy' level.

     To be honest, sometimes I honestly feel discriminated against in that I'm NOT obese, on a diet, a member of a gym, or otherwise on the 'Get Healthy' kick. I'm a small person, always have been. I've always been active, doing band in high school and walking when I was at college. In the last five or six years, I've had health problems (ie mono, twice) that caused me to lose a lot of weight I really didn't need to lose in the first place, and then I had to work at gaining all of it back. I'm still working on getting back to my normal weight from the last time I was sick, in December of last year. It's very hard for me personally to gain weight, and made harder to do in this lose-lose-lose world. I'm sure there are people who have thought I was anorexic or something, when all of a sudden I dropped 20 pounds from my normal weight and took over a year to gain it back. I know there are people that hate the fact that I can eat whatever I want and it doesn't show. I know it's something lots of people would love to do, but honestly it's something I get tired of. When I get ugly looks just because I order a milkshake, it's time for people to take a reality check. Sometimes the grass isn't greener on the skinny side.
     Please don't get me wrong, I'm in no way knocking people for being healthy or for trying to get fit. I am always on the cheering team for anyone who wants to start a new diet, or train for their first 5k, or just have fun with the Wii Fit Plus. I have so many friends that have changed their lives completely by joining Weight Watchers or by starting training to run, and I know how much a difference it's made for them. I love that they all had that much will-power and strength of commitment to see their goals through. I may make jokes about me never going running unless something chases me, but I really do admire the people I know that can get up every day and just go run and feel amazing when they finish. They're absolutely a special people. I just want to make it clear that I think it's all about our choice, our free will, to decide when and if we want to take that step for ourselves.