The "Ya know what I hate?" Rant

My office has a very informal and functional exercise of venting our hostility. In the less hectic days, it was a daily occurrence. Now that we're headed full steam into our busiest time of the year, we don't have as much time for it. This practice was the "Ya know what I hate?" rant. Every rant would start with "Ya know what I hate?" and you just vent. About pretty much anything... bad drivers, office politics, figures of speech that just don't resonant well with you... anything. Because everyone seems pretty absorbed in their work right now, I'm not going to break their flow. Instead, I'll rant now. Here goes.

Ya know what I hate? When people upbraid others for leading (or wanting to lead) a healthy lifestyle. I think this is an element of America's "obesity crisis" that doesn't get a lot of attention. It may not effect people to the magnitude as the availability and cost factors of unhealthy foods do, but I can see how it manipulates a person's behavior. People don't need to be alienated for being healthy and responsible. Being on a diet, avoiding unhealthy behavior, exercising and the like are not pretentious unless you go about it in an evangelistic way. Recognizing that gorging yourself with pizza isn't a healthy practice and should be a limited occurrence, or eating fruit and salads should not warrant implications of eating disorders. The assimilation of someone who is health conscious to someone with a serious and unhealthy problem is especially repugnant to me. How does anyone rationalize such a blatant contradiction in their mind? Even people who aren't especially thin are assaulted with roundly accusations when trying to improve their eating habits, regardless whether their reason may be high blood pressure running in the family or wanting to shed a few pounds.

It's an odd phenomenon in my mind. I've witnessed this with others and experienced it myself. I try to be at least somewhat health conscious for a number of reasons. In terms of weight I'm rather average. I'm certainly not heavy, I may even be on the thin side, but I by no means look emaciated. My behavior doesn't betoken me having some kind of problem, and yet I still find myself having to defend my lifestyle choices, especially when it comes to what I eat and how often I exercise. It doesn't leave a lot of incentive for people to try to lead a healthier life when faced with constant alienation and ridicule from their peers. It's a contrary thing to demoralize someone for being conscientious of their own well-being. It's senseless to mock a thin person for choosing vegetables over cookies, last I knew, thin people can have heart attacks too.

I will leave you with my utterly untested, unscientific rational for this phenomenon. If you are one who is so obtusely offended by healthy choices and the people who make them, maybe it's a personal problem... try insecurity or perhaps a flagrant lack of understanding of health and nutrition.