This post starts rather innocently and ends with me in full Staff Sergeant mode. If your sensibilities are easily hurt, you may want to skip this article.

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My weight is around the average for people my age, or so I’m told. This is great! Or is it?

We know how averages work: Take all the values and add them together and then divide the sum by the number of values. The problem is that what we really should be looking at is the mode: the most commonly occurring number in the set. What is the mode average weight of people my age? I don’t have the answer, but it’s much higher than what I weigh. How do I know this? Because I’m now considered “thin” in comparison to most people my age, and I am most definitely not thin. I’m average, at best. Heck, by BMI standards, I’m still overweight.

I bring this up because it’s common and accepted for people to gain some weight as they age. It’s even biological for us to put some weight on in the midsection as we get older. What is not biological nor should be common and accepted is being obese. I don’t mean that it’s okay to shame people for it; that never is. However, being obese or fat is a condition that is within our power. Skin color, genetic conditions, and gender are examples of things we cannot easily change, but our weight is something within our power.

I have been told by a few people that their being overweight is caused by a thyroid condition. If that’s true, then we need to look into thyroid technology that can take 1000 calories and turn it into 5000 calories in the bodies of those people with this condition. I don’t doubt the condition: I doubt the honesty of these people in dealing with what they are putting into their bodies. This is not shaming: this is observation. Hyperthyroidism doesn’t make you eat Big Macs, Pizza Hut, or Taco Bell. Hyperthyroidism doesn’t take 1000 calories and bloat you. Eating too much bloats you.

If you’re not going to be honest with yourself, then you are wasting your time. I say that over and over again; so much, in fact, that I feel like a broken record. Stop wasting time. I don’t say that to inspire you to give up; I’m hoping for the exact opposite. We hate wasting time and effort. Make your effort count! Make the time you spend more efficacious. Find a diet that works for you, and STICK TO IT AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT (because it does!).Losing weight is not hard. Beating cancer is hard. A combat veteran running a marathon with one leg is hard. An orphaned child in a third world country raising her brothers and sisters in poverty is hard. Losing weight is a first world problem. Stop lying to yourself and being weak and giving into cravings and eating like crap. You have no excuses, and nobody to blame for your being fat but yourself.