Am I a Fat Hater?

As a personal trainer, health & fitness consultant, blogger and social media nerd obsessed with health, fitness, exercise and obesity…I spend almost all of my waking hours trying to help people transform their bodies, health & lives.

• I design training programs.
• I design nutrition programs.
• I help my little guinea-pigs re-organize their lives.
• And most importantly, I try to help them to change their thought patterns, habits & emotions that led to them falling out of shape in the first place.

A big part of successfully changing those obesogenic thoughts, habits and emotions is my liberal use of unvarnished truth concerning the realities of obesity, weight loss and all the ways my clients have been sabotaging their health goals.

I remind them that life is full of choices…and that we don’t always make the best choices. But if they want to change their bodies, they have to start making those better choices.

I also tell them that during our time together, they’re not always going to make the right choice…and that’s okay. That’s life. We make mistakes…and hopefully we learn from those mistakes. No shame. No blame. Just dust yourself off, and do better next time. Over time, we start building up more and more good choices and their bodies respond in kind.

However, when it comes to my online readers, just about every day I get a comment or tweet complaining about how a picture I posted, or an article I wrote is hurtful to overweight people.

Almost every time, they tell me how obese individuals are victims of their genetics/environment/income level and that most of them eat just as healthfully and exercise just as diligently as their skinny friends…and that I am a mean, mean man who should be ashamed of himself.

To this I respond…

We all have challenges in our lives. Some we are born with. Some we acquire along the way. And quite often, those challenges make achieving our goals very, very difficult.

But that doesn't mean we have to stop striving to achieve these goals.

If one of your goals is to have a healthy, fit, strong, lean body and you were…born with “chubby” genetics and don’t have money for organic vegetables, grass-fed beef and a fancy gym membership…you don’t have to quit striving to reach that goal.

• You can choose to cancel your cable package, watch less tv and spend your time and money on getting fit & healthy
• You can choose to stop buying processed food and learn how to cook healthy meals
• You can choose to never eat junk food
• You can choose to soothe your raw emotions with meditation or prayer or biofeedback instead of eating junk food
• You can choose to get your doctor to run a series of tests to look for metabolic abnormalities
• You can choose to do a hundred other things that will help you transform your body from fat to fit
• Or you can choose to not do those things and instead choose to blame outside forces for your inability to achieve your goals

So, what do you think…am I a fat hater?