LOL! I'll look into having it removed and then maybe having a turtle dinner.

Craig

I don't think you're being judgmental, just truthful. I'm weary of befores and afters of sites that are selling anything. I'm in it for health and weight loss but looking better is a nice side-effect. In the link I posted, it's only used as a motivator, just as the rest of the testimonials themselves.

As for physical beauty, I totally agree. What I find attractive now is completely different from what I was attracted to as a teenager, which is a very good thing. I tend to become attracted to people once I get to know them no matter what they look like. It's the people who make you feel good to be around.

Craig

Bear says he figures most of what we call ageing is caused by insulin damage to the collagen. It makes sense: less insulin, less damage, less ageing.

Here is what Dr. Eades has to say about the topic in his blog.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/...er-2/#more-1224

Well said! Thank you for the reminder.

While I won't be speaking for god or government, I agree with the gist of what you're saying. I would add that beauty is not only skin deep, but may be very subtle as well. I find that "attractiveness" has much more to do with factors other than just having a pretty face or fit body - and all of these factors have everything to do with health (posture, gait, mobility, comfort with one's self, confidence, and ATTITUDE [or lack thereof in the case of a bad one]...).

If vanity should go to hell, who made the peacock? The devil?

Beauty is not vanity. Vanity is born out of envy, which is born out of a deep-rooted lack of self-love, a rotten self-image that spurs you to try to prop up your ego, desperately trying to convince everyone (including yourself) how beautiful you are.

The peacock isn't really vain. The envious human mind assigns that idea to this beautiful bird, whose only crime is that he wants a mate...





.... to find a mate, so he can let himself go, get a beer gut, put his feet up on the ottoman and eat chips out of a bag on his swollen belly as he watches Lost and Heroes, an occasional hypocritical diet-soda belch escaping into the musty atmosphere of suburbia.

(Yeesh, I really must do something about my cynicism... LOL)

Okay, but why shouldn't a peacock want to look like a peacock? Why shouldn't we want to look more the way we were designed to look? The way people eating more natural diets all their lives look? The vanity you describe is indeed a disorder, or a sickness, or a vice. I agree that we shouldn't pin our self-worth on looks. But you can turn it around and say that you are worth working on, even physically. That you're worth the time in the gym. That your worth dressing up in nice clothes, worth the nice haircut, etc. Anyone watch The Biggest Loser? See the dejected looks going in? See the positive changes mentally by the end of the season? See the young guy (was his name Danny?) strutting around toward's the season's end? He got downright arrogant. Some people aren't arrogant enough. Some people have trouble raising their eyes when they order a coffee. (I'd put myself solidly within this group of people.) I admire bodybuilders who can put on a pair of speedos, grease themselves up and stand on a stage in front of a bunch of judges. Good for them.
If you tend your garden, and your tomatoes or roses come up nicely, you have every right to be happy. I see bodybuilding, and physical culture in general, in the same light. There's lots of jerks with washboard abs, but there's lots of jerky gardeners out there, too. And lots of people whose sense of self-worth depends on the nice house with the nicely manicured garden and beautiful garden and the nice car in the driveway. But who writes articles about how Home and Garden is giving people unrealistic ideas about what their home should look like, giving people gardening disorders?

Well, he doesn't want to, he has a brain about the size of an acorn. But really he has no choice, his body was fairly well given to him and to be proud of it he would really have to have been in on the design phase.

The only thing I see wrong with being proud of the work you have done to build your body shape is that it is transitory at best. As I found out, it can be taken from you with the misplacement of a pencil. If your self worth depends on any of the things you mentioned, your self worth is illusory. The only lasting things are the character you build and the relationships you make. And you can be proud of them because you are on the design team. Oddly these are precisely the things our culture tells us we should not be proud of, that "no one is better than anyone else".

I've read them, but I still haven't seen the one I want to see, unless Erma Bombeck wrote it and I've forgetten it.

I wouldn't argue that you shouldn't be happy about who you are. But that is a world of difference from claiming that a peacock has human emotion and thoughts.

I don't think we want to look the way we were designed to look, we want to look the way that is accepted in whichever society we live in. If society desired people to be heavier and you were slim, you still might lower your eyes while ordering a cup of coffee. I do agree that it is good that a body builder feels confident to show his/her body to others. So why shouldn't a heavy person feel confident? A body builders physique is no more 'natural' than being overweight. I hardly think our ancestors were wasting time on building unnecessary muscle which in turn they just had to find more food to sustain.

I hardly see a comparison in receiving criticism on your yard that doesn't look like Home & Garden and your overweight body. Generally, people don't really give a crap if your yard doesn't look like a magazine article ideal. They DO notice when you are obese, and there is a certain stigma attached to that which can make people feel poorly about themselves.

This is certainly true, and I wonder how much of the "Powdered wig" era was based upon wanting to look "mature" or "venerable" - or in other words "Aged".

Certainly not a look that would be in style today.

Precisely - most of it is about fashion ie what's fashionable to a particular society at a particular time. This is something that's fluid and constantly changing.

It takes an enormously strong-willed person to resist this.

Quite true. The 18th century zeitgeist would have also scoffed at the very notion of dieting, as it was fashionable then to be fat. Those who were fat were well fed and being well fed was a symbol of affluence. Today, it's a symbol of ill health, sloth and ignorance.

Gary