Fat Filibuster

Filibuster: a delay/ diversionary tactic.. keep talking but don't really say anything, and of course, avoid addressing the real issue.

For windbag politicians the filibuster seems to be part of their genetic code, but are we guilty of the same technique to avoid addressing our obesogenic culture?

Filibuster: Boy am I busy!  Time is not my own, I simply don't have time to eat healthy.. between work, the kids, keeping up the house and everything else I do, I just don't have time to think about eating a stupid salad, I have to eat, and go.  Besides, you have to live sometimes and I'm not going to live my life eating dried grass and nuts!

So.. eating a donut takes less time than eating a banana or an apple?

Eating a banana is such a huge cerebral challenge that it slows brain function?  Is that why there is no time to think about healthy eating?  Monkeys don't seem to have trouble deciding to eat banana's.. are we not as smart as monkeys?

Ordering an appetizer, main plate, and dessert takes less time than ordering less food?

Eating all that food in one sitting, typically over 1500 calories, takes less time than eating 400-700 calories?

Eating healthy is factually reduced to eating dried grass?  That's not an extreme and phoney claim meant to portray healthy choices as unpalatable in order to justify eating fat-bombs?

Even when faced with obvious truth we'll spiral down into denial and spew out an essays worth of diatribe in order to justify our unhealthy habits that cause weight gain, leave us feeling tired and out of energy much of the time, and causes us to have more frequent colds, sick days, and ill-health in general.

Every defence from "right to choose", to "it's my genetics, hormones, big bones", is regurgitated over and over again each time espoused as novel and defensible reasoning.  Really though it's all a diversion from having a real conversation about eating too much and how to overcome overeating.

I know this topic has a tendency to be viewed as an us and them confrontation, with the unhealthy on one side and the healthier on the other, both somehow perceived as having righteous indignation towards each other, but really that perception is simply another contrived diversion away from the real issue.

Most have a terribly difficult time talking straight about overeating and lack of exercise. Equally there are a great many people who exercise too much causing harm to themselves, who also follow weird fad diets with cult like tenacity, and they have just as much trouble talking about how they harm themselves with their actions.

The common thread here is that it's part of human behaviour to go into denial about bad decisions we make, and part of facilitating that denial is talking up a storm of diversionary irrelevant anecdotes.

When I used to eat 10 oz steaks (it's now closer to 3 oz), and sit on the couch bad-mouthing those crazy runners, I'd light up a smoke and berate the do-gooders who's healthy choices seemed to insult my personal autonomy and think defensively, "those people think they're better than me, who the hell are they to judge me?"

Into the filibuster I'd go.. but objectively what is the endpoint?

For me now the endpoint is this.. I haven't had a cold in years, I'm closing in on age 50 and I feel great, I'm strong, I'm not overweight and I rarely feel tired.

When I was a smoker I had smokers cough.. I couldn't enjoy the release of laughter without coughing.. is that fun?  I hated feeling tied to the chain of addiction.  Was that exercising my personal autonomy? I would feel lethargic and have indigestion after eating too much.. is that really enjoying a meal?

Am I wrong to believe that I'm better off now compared to what my health status would have been after overeating, inactivity, and smoking for the past 30 years?  Is it worth working so hard to defend unhealthy choices?