Hey Guys, happy Tuesday! This past week has been a bit rocky because I have had the cold everyone seems to be passing around. It’s hard to stay motivated when you don’t feel well. I haven’t had much of an appetite while sick, so my goal to focus on consuming the appropriate nutrients has not been met as well as I had hoped. I’ve been eating healthy foods for the most part but have not eaten enough protein especially. As for working out, this week was a FLOP. I have spent most of my free time in bed with a box of tissues. Today is my first day I woke up and could breathe out of my nose, and writing this blog is a wake up call to get back to it! This week I plan on focusing on getting back on track with my proper nutrients and exercising more. As for my weight loss goal, I am down 5 pounds from my start weight. I am happy with my weight loss, however I have been feeling a bit weak because my diet while low in calories hasn’t been sufficient in providing my body with the energy it needs.
This weeks chapter focused on weight management and body image. Both of these concepts are important when focusing on my health and wellness journey. There are important concepts to consider when achieving my goals. While our nation is divided these days, I learned from the chapter that we have one thing in common; we are fatter than previous generations. This made me cringe! The chapter also discussed how being an overweight child makes you much more likely to become an obese adult. This proves that lifestyles create habits even at a young age! I’m glad growing up my parents monitored my eating and stressed the importance of playing outside because this leads me less susceptible to obesity. There are several health effects that can result from being overweight. I was aware of the health effects to the body like increased risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but I was unaware of the mental health side effects of being overweight. A person who is overweight or obese according to the reading has an increased risk of becoming depressed or anxious. This could potentially be due to a negative body image. There are several factors that can lead us to become overweight or obese. These include genetic disposition, environmental factors and lifestyle choices. I learned about the FTO gene that some people may carry leading them to be more susceptible to obesity. Environmental factors like driving a car every day impacts us as well because by driving everywhere we are missing out on the opportunity to get in our steps. Lifestyle choices is the factor we have the most control over. We must chose to live healthy lives by eating healthy and moving regularly to prevent weight gain excessively. I’ve used the terms obesity and overweight in my blog so I figured I would describe the difference between the two since they are not interchangeable. Being overweight is typically being 10 percent over a healthy body weight, whereas obese is 20 percent over. It is important that the chapter touched on the health effects and concept of being underweight too because this can be just as unhealthy and it often is overlooked. BMI or body mass index is a description of body weight according to height. I found out from the chapter that I am at a normal weight based for my height on the BMI chart. This was reassuring as I’ve been feeling extra self conscious about my size lately. We learned in the chapter several ways to assess body weight. The one that was new to be was the “bod pod.” The bod pod uses air displacement to determine body mass. The book has discussed the concept of mindful eating in previous chapters and again it delves into his concept. I have been particularly careful of eating in front of the TV. Eating in front of the TV can cause us to eat way more calories than we would un-distracted. Body image is how we see, believe, feel and act on our thoughts and feelings about our bodies. We can have a negative body image or a positive body image depending on the “truth” to our perception of our own appearance. I learned from the chart in the book I am “body preoccupied,” which is middle of the road. Media and expectations can have negative effects on our body image since we are sort of expected to look a certain way. Like the book says, how you look is NOT more important than who you are. Body image negativity can lead to an array of eating disorders discussed in the book. It is so unfortunate the expectations of our society often lead to people becoming sick.
I am glad that this week we read about body image. I have been trying to become more conscious of how I treat myself and I haven’t acknowledged that this really should be a highlight of my health journey.The chapter opened my eyes to how I am awfully hard on myself and have some serious work to do when it comes to body image. As the book says, this can take time but I am willing. Each week as we read I find myself pulling in more objectives for my health journey and this is certainly one of them. It is important to give ourselves some credit. While my body may not look exactly the way I want it to I am trying hard to love myself besides the fact and focus on making myself strong and healthy.
I hope you all have a great week!
Tori'sHealthJourney 