"Mediocrity or even laziness is now pushed to the forefront... so that everyone can feel good about themselves."

Laughing/crying tears of joy.  So beautiful.   LIFT-RUN-BANG: Fuck your body positivity voice, and fuck your millennial heroes: "People keep saying shit like "who cares?" or that "this is not a big deal." On the surface, I'd agree.  But the fact is, we've been heading down this road for quite some time and it has a far reaching impact than people want to really acknowledge. And what road is that I'm speaking of? The one where the minority essentially shames the majority into acceptance of mediocrity, scorns discipline, hates winners (participation trophies anyone?), and believes that equality is some kind of utopia that everyone must be forced to live in..."

LIFT-RUN-BANG: Fuck your body positivity voice, and fuck your millennial heroes: "Let's actually call this Sports Illustrated shit for what it really is. Attention. It worked too, didn't it?  I mean, here I sit writing about this bullshit. Either people lined up to support an overweight chick as a cover model, or people scorned them for the exact same reason.  There wasn't much room for middle ground here.  So let's get past the fact that this was some kind of real support movement for fatties.  This was all about publicity...

It's also a massive setback in regards to the on going problem of obesity we're facing in this country.  One that continues to gain traction with phrases like "fat shaming" and such and the pushing of plus sized women onto to us ("STOP!  I CAN'T BREATHE!") as something we MUST ACCEPT, is sexy. 

It's not.  I don't.  Sorry not sorry. 

Mind you, despite the fact that I'm using words like "fattie" in this article, I don't support fat shaming. Yes I get that thus far, this whole piece reads....feels down deep in your gender neutral soul, like fat shaming from hell.  But me pointing out that someone is obese, or overweight, is just stating the obvious.  If I make an observation that a blue Prius is blue, I'm doing nothing more than making a factual statement.  If I say that only smug fucks who think they are making a difference in the environment drive a Prius, well that's an opinion.  Mostly based in fact, but it's still an opinion. 

I'm not shaming anyone, regardless of how offended you are right now. I do have a point in all of this, which will take a long time to get to, because I can't condense my writing to save my fucking life, and this is my god damn blog, so I don't have to. Where was I? Oh yeah.  Fatties. However, I do not endorse "health at any size" or support obesity acceptance.  But I've blogged about that in the past and SHOWED MEDICAL STUDIES THAT HEALTH AT ANY SIZE IS A GOD DAMN MYTH!!!  So before you claim it's possible, or that you're fat and healthy, it's a lie. Stop.  I mean, on the SURFACE, you should know this is a lie. "Health at any size." ANY size.  See, when you use absolutes like that, it's going to be false. Health at any size.  That means you can be healthy at 55 pounds as an adult of normal height, or healthy at 900 pounds as an adult of normal height. "You're being extreme, Paul!" HEALTH AT ANY FUCKING SIZE!  It's become the tribal chant for those who have no investment in obesity control.  So I'm taking it for what it is.  And what it is, is wrong..."

You Can’t Be Obese and Healthy in the Long Run, Study Says - Health News and Views - Health.com: "“Healthy obesity is something that’s a phase rather than something that’s enduring over time,” Bell said. “It’s important to have a long-term view of healthy obesity, and to bear in mind the long-term tendencies. As long as obesity persists, health tends to decline. It does seem to be a high-risk state.”
The obesity paradox springs from research involving people who are overweight but do not suffer from obesity-related problems such as high blood pressure, bad cholesterol and elevated blood sugar...  No one can say how the obesity paradox works, but some have speculated that people with extra weight might have extra energy stores they can draw upon if they become acutely ill, Freeman said. To test this theory, University College London researchers tracked the health of 2,521 men and women between the ages of 39 and 62...
But over time, this group began to develop risk factors for chronic disease. After 10 years about 40 percent had become unhealthy obese, and by the 20-year mark 51 percent had fallen into the unhealthy category, the study found. Healthy non-obese people also slipped into poor health over time, but at a slower rate. After two decades, 22 percent had become unhealthy but were still trim, and about 10 percent more had become either healthy or unhealthy obese. Only 11 percent of the people who started out as healthy obese lost weight and become healthy and non-obese, the researchers found.
This study suggests that obese people will eventually develop risk factors such as high blood sugar and bad cholesterol that lead to chronic illness and death, Bell and Freeman said. “The longer one is obese, the more likely they are to induce damage,” Freeman said. “I have very seldom seen people who are obese for the long-term not have a condition that requires treatment.” Bell said these findings make the case that people who are obese should try to lose weight, even if they currently don’t have any risk factors. “All types of obesity warrant treatment, even those which appear to be healthy, because they carry a high risk of future decline,” he said. The findings are published Jan. 5 in a letter in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology."

LIFT-RUN-BANG: Fuck your body positivity voice, and fuck your millennial heroes: "But listen, let's get to my real issue here. I'm not going to support the furtherment of mediocrity or endorsing a complete lack of discipline in regards to someone's health when I'm opposed to those very things (if you hang in here long enough I'll contradict myself on that stance in just a bit) and this the path we're headed down.  As a country. Yes, we fucking are. 

How in the hell do we get to a place where for decades past, what we celebrated were people who went above and beyond to accomplish incredible things, that may have seemed borderline impossible, to celebrating that of putting an overweight chick in a swimsuit on a magazine cover and acting as if she's brave because of it? So I'm going to BOLD this next part, because this is my MAIN point in all of this. This isn't about fat shaming.  This is about the representation of something we used to stand against.  

Which was that we applauded people who were exceptional, instead of applauding the norm, or average.  We applauded the near unattainable by those who dared to risk everything to achieve it.  Not the "I woke up like this" bullshit. A few years ago, a woman who got into incredible shape after having a few kids, blogged or wrote about how she trained really hard, and dieted really hard after the birth of her children, to get back into shape as quickly as possible. 

Instead of admiring the level of discipline and effort that went into her caring about how she looked and felt, she was ridiculed by women all over the net who were too god damn lazy to do anything but stay fat as fuck post pregnancy and lean on it as an excuse. The contrast here is striking. People who go above and beyond, to accomplish something worth admiring are shamed due to the obscene degree of insecurity by those who lack the effort, willpower, and courage to follow suit...

Hard work and effort is now frowned upon.  Mediocrity or even laziness is now pushed to the forefront and shoved in our faces that we need to be accepting of it so that everyone can feel good about themselves. Well fuck your feelings.  And fuck your body positivity voice. 

Truly, the lazy excuse makers are winning the social war of what is to be accepted, and what is not.  And what cannot be accepted is anyone who dare go above and beyond what the lazy are capable of, and receive accolades for it...

We have watered down the words "brave" and "courageous" so much that we're at a point where women get called brave for posting pics of themselves out of shape.  It used to be reserved for medal of honor winners, firefighters, or anyone who put their lives at risk for the sake of others with no personal gain involved. I saw some shitty article a while back about fitness women who put up pics of themselves "out of shape" and read a comment in regards to it "I see nothing but strong women."  They were called brave for doing so. You posted a pic of you out of shape.  Clearly, the pinnacle of bravery...

Christ, you can't write "I like vanilla ice cream" somewhere on the net without someone calling you a piece of shit for it.  The net has made it so that every picture, opinion, article, video, etc has open season on it for criticism across the board.  Since that's the case, we sort of need to reevaluate the fact that we've let the words "bravery" and "courage" get dumbed down to include overweight people in swimsuits making millions of dollars for having some pictures taken of them. 

I'm speaking from experience here.  As a guy who was too fat for too long, and in retrospect became far too lazy and undisciplined, I worked my fucking nuts off to get into single digit bodyfat now.  There was nothing difficult about eating 20 doughnuts and pounds and pounds of candy every weekend for years on end.  It took virtually no effort at all.  Level of effort was literally fucking ZERO.  It was fun.  Courage and bravery not required. 

What took effort, hard work, discipline, and willpower? Losing all of that god damn fat and training harder than I had in the last decade.  And I'm not saying I need accolades for it.  I had a huge wake up call over a year ago about my blood work and the first thing I thought was "I don't want to die young, and leave my kids grieving because their father was an undisciplined, lazy fuck." And I had been.  There.  That's ME owning it.  My own lack of discipline, and my own lack of effort.  And guess what?  It caught up to me...

We keep devolving into the acceptance of mediocrity as a "great standard".  And we keep creating these paradigms and situations so that people who don't want to work really hard to achieve something exceptional, can be exceptional at being really average. "You're the best mediocre person of this bunch!  Well done!""