Recently, I was looking at a YouTube Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-XEZDG0mtU of a morbidly obese Latina woman and her small sized friend doing "yoga" for free in her living room sitting on an area rug. I was looking at some of the comments left by previous viewers, and while I applaud this marine mammal's effort to stretch her blubber, I offer some words of advice. Of course, people never listen. They never believe that foul smell is their own goose cooking until it is too late.
The first time that I heard of the Fat Acceptance Movement, I felt a deep sense of fraud in my heart. When I was a small child growing up in suburban Los Angeles in the 1970's, it was a rarity to see a morbidly obese person in public. I remember seeing one at the Eagle Rock Plaza that was far lighter and leaner than that big woman-cow in the yoga video. Me and my siblings gawked at her girth. It was evident that it took a great deal of mass consumption to maintain that obscene and unhealthy weight. Morbid obesity is no longer a novelty but something that we are supposed to look at squarely in the double chinned face and somehow acknowledge that it is normal behavior to maintain such a huge mass.
Most Mestizo and women of African descent are fat because they eat the white man's diet and do not exercise. If Mexicans ate an indigenous diet, obesity would only exist among the ruling and priest classes. Same with the brothers and the sisters. You are fat because you should be eating chapulines, carne de venado, tortillas de maize, frijol, chili, calabazaz, huitlacoche, small organic birds and fish, water spinach, tomatoes, fresh fruit and nopal. If you are so raza, then why do you eat food produced by multi-death corporations and then buy their diabetes medications? Why do you drink firewater? If Africans were eating fufu, groundnuts, bushmeat, yams, and fresh fruit instead of Popeye's Fried Chicken and the McDonalds value meal, the race would be experiencing far fewer health problems and the obesity rate would plummet.
The Orca in the video takes a jab at the yoga classes and studios she claims to have been to, and takes a jab at women who wear a particular brand of yoga pants. She clearly states that Mexican women do not attend yoga studios nor do other people of color. What a fat pile of horse shit! I regularly attend yoga studios where the most beautiful people of color perform yoga daily. People of color who love their bodies and don't eat a whole roast pig for dinner every night. Just because Mexicans are the fattest people in the world does not give license to fat opinionated pigs to make blanket statements about all Mexicans. You are not the Raza police. There are plenty of Mexicans that regularly do real yoga in an integrated studio. The particular school I attend does not charge an up front fee. It is by donation only and therefore completely accessible to low income people of all colors (and sizes).
If you truly love yourself as you profess than why do you place yourself in dire peril by maintaining and defending a lifestyle that it going to kill you? Now for those words of advice:
Go to the doctor and have him test your heart and organs out. The size that you are means that all of your internal organs are encased in fat. Go to a real doctor who has no stake in your health insurance and ask them for their frank but professional prognosis. Find out if it is safe to exercise vigorously. It may not be too late if you are still in your 20's and your arteries have not yet hardened.
Do over 45 minutes of cardio every day. Cardio means working more than your sandwich muscles. Everything over 45 minutes counts. Anything less is a failure.
Lift your body weight. Everyone should be able to lift their bodyweight. That means a pull up, a chin up, or a dip. Whale pose does not count.
Stop eating the white man's food. If you are really a Chicana, than you should probably be eating the Native American diet. And much less to boot.
Four things that will help you live. If you believe you are not harming yourself by feeding your illness, you should probably be institutionalized.
