{"id":139,"date":"2013-01-28T07:34:14","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T07:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hownothavingweightlosssurgerysavedmylife.com\/?p=139"},"modified":"2023-08-25T09:08:22","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T09:08:22","slug":"who-says-life-should-be-easy-it-is-called-hard-work-for-a-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/?p=139","title":{"rendered":"Who says life should be easy? It is called Hard Work for a reason."},"content":{"rendered":"

Obesity is being blamed, according to a report out of Davos, for 2.8 million deaths a year.\u00a0 The report is from Sapa-AFP and published online by Times Live http:\/\/bit.ly\/Uwih65<\/a>. \u00a0It claims that 1.4 billion of us are overweight and that it is likely to increase to 60% of the world\u2019s adults in two decades. \u00a0Among the reasons cited for what is being considered by Linda Fried of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University as a pandemic, are the ease of availability and the relative cheapness of high-calorie foods.<\/p>\n

I think it also points to a deeper problem that may also explain why divorce rates continue to climb. Somewhere in our recent history we were told, perhaps by Madison Avenue or as a response to post-war life, that things should be easy. I think we must fundamentally change the way we think about this: if we believe life ought to be easy and that if it is easy we are somehow rewarded, I think we believe that when things are hard that they shouldn\u2019t be. Have we lost our ability to tolerate discomfort?<\/p>\n

Losing weight, especially for those of us who have been obese all our lives, cannot be remotely considered easy and, yet, I believed it should have been and that experiencing difficulty and discomfort was a signal that it wasn\u2019t meant to be.<\/p>\n

Do you think this is why we end relationships as quickly as we do, rather than work hard at them to find a resolution? I get a lot of fulfilment from the challenge of leading a healthy lifestyle and refusing to eat something that I\u2019d like to eat but isn\u2019t good for me. I\u2019ve come to like that it is difficult because it means that I achieve more than maintaining a healthy weight \u2013 I achieve a solid sense of being hardworking and achieving something in challenging circumstances.<\/p>\n

What spurs me on to increase my fitness now is the affirming feeling of getting better at something. I like the feeling of being stronger and the discomfort in my muscles tells me I\u2019ve worked hard and will be rewarded.<\/p>\n

Perhaps if we thought that life ought not to be easy, we might better tolerate the effort and time that it requires to do a good job of it. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obesity is being blamed, according to a report out of Davos, for 2.8 million deaths a year.\u00a0 The report is from Sapa-AFP and published online by Times Live http:\/\/bit.ly\/Uwih65. \u00a0It claims that 1.4 billion of us are overweight and that it is likely to increase …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[21,37,78,92],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weight_loss","tag-brian-berkman","tag-davos","tag-mailman-school-of-public-health-at-columbia-university","tag-obesity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2417,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/2417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianberkman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}