Recently one of my closest friends died suddenly and unexpectedly…. I find it harder to respect people who are very overweight.
We can’t perform well in any of our roles in business and life if we don’t have our health.
We can’t be great CEOs, parents, partners or community members if we are unhealthy. And if we look unhealthy we have less chance of positively impacting on the lives of others.
Now what I am going to say next may cause some of you to feel I have a prejudice, and I admit I have. I find it harder to respect people who are very overweight without a medical reason!
Now I have said that, I will explain why. Being overweight to me is a sign of lack of self-esteem, a lack of self care, and it just does not make sense to me that human beings don’t take care of themselves!
We all have the knowledge: we know what to eat, we know how important it is to exercise. The media carries stories every day on these issues – diet and exercise – so please, no excuses!!!
Many people in the world do not have the resources or knowledge to really guard their health, but we in Australia do. We have access to the knowledge, the sporting facilities, clean air, best fresh food and clean water … at this point, anyway!
And yet our society is getting fatter and fatter!
Every time I attend a public event, I am overwhelmed by the number of overweight people. We know that so many deadly diseases are associated with poor health habits: diabetes, heart disease and cancer, according to the latest information, can be associated with size!!!
I feel passionately about a daily discipline regarding exercise and restrained eating because it has helped me in times of great stress .I know that most of us at some stage in our lives have to deal with stress, and healthy habits really cut in at this time.
I know we are surrounded by unhealthy fast food but we need to have the discipline to say no. Like we do to so many other harmful elements in our environment.
Please pay attention to your health. We are all going to die but living well should be a prime aim!
As Deepak Chopra says, every living cell in your body is eavesdropping on your mind so to have a healthy body we need to have healthy positive thoughts in our heads!
To read more Marcia Griffin blogs, click here.
Aaron from smartoption.com.au writes: While I don’t totally disagree with what you are saying, I do disagree with the generalisation you are making. On top of this I think this type of article leads people to think that is okay or socially exceptable to make these types of judgements.
I can say from personal experience that genetics plays a major part in our body types, and we all know people with terrible diets and a complete lack of any physical activity that still can remain thin and actually find it impossible to gain weight.
When I was a teenager I studied martial arts under an instructor who to any casual observer would of appeared overweight and as you say lazy. I can state with no uncertainty that he was extremely fit and even when I was training everyday and running 5km each morning he could still run rings around me.
You are obviously one of the fortunate ones that has a type of body shape that with the right diet and excercise can look “healthy” according to popular belief. Judge people on who they are and what they do, not on appearance.
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