Fail System

Last Sunday, I was able to attend church with my family since I had the day off from my usual Aspen Grove responsibilities. While there, I was able to listen to a friend speak about her experiences overcoming military fitness and physical criteria tests. She stated that, "...(the tests) are a fail system...especially for women with real bodies." As I listened to her continue her story, I began to think about the times when I felt frustrated with my body due to the  societal "fail system" that we constantly subject ourselves to.

It has taken me years to realize that I'm not the problem, society is.
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Did you know that the U.S. weight loss market was worth $61 billion 2010 or that gym, health, and fitness clubs are currently worth $27 billion?

Apparently, making people feel inadequate is a lucrative industry.

Here are some statistics from NEDA:

1. 42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner.

2. In elementary school fewer than 25% of girls diet regularly. Yet those who do know what dieting involves and can talk about calorie restriction and food choices for weight loss fairly effectively.

3. 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat.

4. 46% of 9-11 year-olds are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets, and 82% of their families are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets.

5. Over one-half of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives.

6. 35-57% of adolescent girls engage in crash dieting, fasting, self-induced vomiting, diet pills, or laxatives. Overweight girls are more likely than normal weight girls to engage in such extreme dieting.

7. Even among clearly non-overweight girls, over 1/3 report dieting (Wertheim et al., 2009).

Girls who diet frequently are 12 times as likely to binge as girls who don’t diet.

8. The average American woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 165 pounds. The average Miss America winner is 5’7” and weighs 121 pounds.

9. The average BMI of Miss America winners has decreased from around 22 in the 1920s to 16.9 in the 2000s. The World Health Organization classifies a normal BMI as falling between 18.5 and 24.9.

10. 95% of all dieters will regain their lost weight in 1-5 years.



"Biggest Loser" contestant, Ali Vincent.
 “After I won ‘The Biggest Loser,’ I weighed 122 pounds for about 2.2 seconds,” she said.
“It’s been five years since I won and I’ve seen myself gain at least five pounds a year.”

11. 35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting. Of those, 20-25% progress to partial or full-syndrome eating disorders.

12. Of American, elementary school girls who read magazines, 69% say that the pictures influence their concept of the ideal body shape. 47% say the pictures make them want to lose weight.

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When I started writing this post two hours ago, I had no idea that I would end up going in this direction. Maybe I researched this information for selfish reasons. But then again, it's always good to be reminded of reality rather than the fantasy that is forced down our throats on a daily basis.  I've decided that society constantly seeks to make the 1% seem like the majority in order to take advantage of the remaining 99%.

I wonder what the first step would be to changing a thought process that is so engrained into the modern human psyche... How is it that we can prevent future generations from feeling the pain of our own? How can we beat the "fail system" that has permeated into almost every aspect of our daily lives?

Honestly, I have no idea.

I guess a good start would be to become the change that we want to see in the world through loving ourselves and accepting that our best will always be good enough.

We need to stop fearing numbers, and start living life.

Ultimately, we need to adjust how we see the world (and ourselves) in order to make it a better one.