Easington in Durham apparently is the best place to live in Britain if you would like to get nice and chubby and fat. This morning, in the news as they were covering a report on obesity trends, this place has its share of obese people and then some. The news report argues that it being a mining town and the mining industry moving away it gave rise to unemployment and boredom which was probably the cause of most people there sitting on their couch and stuffing the food in their mouths. I thought that could be a good plausible reason; until I heard this local complain on TV that they are fat because their town has no health shops or any such thing to help them keep healthy.
This is exactly the attitude according to me that gets people fat. What psychologists would probably call the external locus of control? How will the things that depend on your activity ever be sorted by addition of a few shops? Time and time again I have heard these excuses from many people when they ask me what a good way to lose weight is, and when I tell them “lifestyle choices” invariably they start complaining about the lack of facilities. If they have the facilities then their families are not helpful. If their families are supportive then the work pressure just kills them. If the workplace has conducive policies for health then an old injury nags… and I could go on and on and on.
I am the most controversial person in my office who thinks people on a general basis are obese today because they are lazy, bored and undisciplined. But that’s not what you ought to say. You ought to encourage people and tell them positive things, like make 10mins in your day for exercise, park your car 100 yards away, pick diet coke. Come on seriously does anyone really think that going from a BMI of 40 to 22 is a matter of drinking diet coke over regular coke?
Let’s do another survey nationwide and count the health shops in every town; I bet the ones that have the most branches of Holland and Barrett’s are still not the healthiest towns.
This is exactly the attitude according to me that gets people fat. What psychologists would probably call the external locus of control? How will the things that depend on your activity ever be sorted by addition of a few shops? Time and time again I have heard these excuses from many people when they ask me what a good way to lose weight is, and when I tell them “lifestyle choices” invariably they start complaining about the lack of facilities. If they have the facilities then their families are not helpful. If their families are supportive then the work pressure just kills them. If the workplace has conducive policies for health then an old injury nags… and I could go on and on and on.
I am the most controversial person in my office who thinks people on a general basis are obese today because they are lazy, bored and undisciplined. But that’s not what you ought to say. You ought to encourage people and tell them positive things, like make 10mins in your day for exercise, park your car 100 yards away, pick diet coke. Come on seriously does anyone really think that going from a BMI of 40 to 22 is a matter of drinking diet coke over regular coke?
Let’s do another survey nationwide and count the health shops in every town; I bet the ones that have the most branches of Holland and Barrett’s are still not the healthiest towns.
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