Speaking of Health...

I read about this today and found it to be disturbing on many, many levels.

Woman Determined to Become the World's Heaviest

It's one thing to see someone in your family slowly deteriorate in front of you due to a chronic illness (something I deal with), but it's something else when they are consciously doing it to themselves.

Oh, and please spare me the "fat is beautiful" and assorted other nonsense. This has nothing to do with beauty and everything to do with someone slowly committing suicide in front of her family, including a three year old daughter (a child who, due to the 530lbs of her mother, required 30 people to deliver...talk about health care costs). What is happening in this case is an example of mental illness taken to an almost bizarre extreme. While eating herself to death, this lady's husband is apparently cheering her on, which makes me wonder which of the two is more sick. Interestingly enough, hubby apparently has no interest in joining her in the "future bed-bound of America" club.

This riles me up even more when I think about the lengths others go all the time to lose weight and be healthy. I have a dear friend who literally went through hell with weight loss surgery, and every single moment of every single day has to watch what she eats, all in the name of being healthy. I myself am not a thin person. I'll declare it now: at 6'3.5" tall, my 232lbs is not what anyone would consider thin, and eating well is day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour struggle for me. My choice, I know. I also understand that this is a personal choice on the part of the individual in question, but in my mind it's of the same caliber as, say, huffing modeling glue. Funny, but the Guinness people apparently doesn't have a category for "most tubes of modeling glue huffed in a sitting". Gee I wonder why?

We all make choices...some good, some bad...and some of us, namely me, probably make more bad than good. So be it. However I try my best to acknowledge my mistakes and learn from them, not celebrate them as if they were some kind of sick red badge of courage. Yes, I suppose that this lady has some kind of strange "right" to eat herself to death in front of her family, but for God's sake let's not celebrate it.