As I walked into the bathroom in Health Services, I noticed a poster on the wall. "Does she say she'll do anything to lose weight?" it read, "Do you feel like you're losing [your friend] to an obsession?" Other quotes of a similar nature could be found all over it. At the bottom was a contact number for people who suspect their friends might be suffering from an eating disorder. Posters like this are all over the Tufts health and athletics facilities, and I am confident that they can be found in similar locations on campuses all across the country.
There is a widespread focus at institutions of learning and in the media on the prevention of eating disorders. This focus is extremely important, and the problems of anorexia and bulimia should never be trivialized. However, some of the concepts that accompany the prevention of eating disorders can serve as an excuse for people to be overly accepting of their own issues with being overweight or obese.
I recently saw an interview on CNN about a woman who had written a book about celebrating her body in its entire overweight splendor. In the book, she encouraged overweight and obese women everywhere to do the same. Her rhetoric was based on being comfortable with one's own body and not working to change it. She apparently refuses to acknowledge that there is something wrong with the United States having the highest obesity rate of any nation in the world.
In most states, at least one quarter of the population is clinically obese. In some, that fraction is as much as one third. Heart disease, often stemming from obesity and improper nutrition, is the number one cause of death in the country. As frequently as statistics like these are reported, they are ignored to an even greater extent. This is because they have not received the same kind of cultural stigma attached to disorders like anorexia and bulimia. The problems of being overweight and obese can often stem from eating disorders as well, but of a different kind. The prevalence of these disorders and the detrimental effects of obesity need to receive the same kind of attention currently afforded to the more well-known disorders.
Tufts could certainly do more to encourage awareness of this issue. While posters like the one I described earlier adorn our health facilities and provide a sense of emotional guidance, our dining halls are filled with pizza, burgers, and fried food. If the main entr?©e is bad, and the vegetarian option looks no better, what do you do? I know that for the past six months (the extent of my residence here at Tufts), my friends and I have headed straight for a few slices of that oh-so-delicious but toxically fatal white-cheese-and-tomato pizza, accompanied by a plateful of shoestring or Cajun fries.
It is not enough to simply provide students with the healthy option at Dewick, or to have an adequate (though by no means spectacular) athletics facility. The University needs to take a more active role in improving awareness of the epidemic proportions and intensely dangerous effects of a lifestyle that results in being overweight or obese.
Perhaps if Surgeon Generals' warnings were placed in front of the piles of fries, burgers, and pizza, or if taxes were levied on those unhealthy culprits, then people might be more aware of the detrimental nature of consumption. These are of course, facetious examples. It is not my duty, but that of a responsible collegiate administration, to decide what policies would best serve this end.
When I arrived at Tufts, I took part in the F.I.T. pre-orientation program. I learned what to eat, what not to eat, how much to exercise, and many of the basic tenets of a healthy lifestyle. However, since leaving that program, I have had no additional guidance. Any such service is one that I would have to seek out, and my busy schedule has left little time for that.
Instead, the culture that has so recently endorsed the idea of being accepting of one's own body has made it easy for me to neglect those insights.
I am not saying that every overweight person should have a deep sense of self-loathing and inadequacy, and I am aware that in some situations no amount of exercise or healthy eating can solve what may be a genetic or biological problem. However, people should be told that while it is all well and good to be comfortable with one's overweight body, one should not simply accept it, but try to improve it.
Work out, eat well, and get lots of sleep. Both are clich?© and easier said than done, but essential to maintaining a healthy state of both the body and the mind. I have gained 15 pounds since I reached Tufts last September. While I am still comfortable with myself, this article is my pledge not to accept my newly acquired poundage, but to fight to get my body to a place where I am not only comfortable, but fit and healthy as well.
