four-letter word: healthy? what is that?

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the hard things we sometimes have to do to be healthy, or clear our clutter, or finish a project, or whatever.  That post has generated more traffic than any other one I've written in the eight years I've been blogging.  None of the newcomers have commented, so I'm not sure what the attraction is-- are they agreeing? finding it inspiring? pointing it out as an example of the kind of thinking that leads to capitalist materialist world dominance? who knows.

But I'm feeling the need to explain myself a little better, from both sides of the thin-ness issue, because it's a fairly contentious one around the web.  On the one hand, you have the socially-acceptable opinion that thin is good, thin is healthy, thin is desirable, everyone should be thin.  But there is growing evidence that "fat" is not always the cause of poor health (correlation is not the same thing as cause), and-- especially for certain body types-- being over the limits of BMI or physician-waiting-room charts is not necessarily unhealthy. 

I think you can go too far either way-- 'I only eat 800 calories a day but I'm a size zero! it's so worth it!' on the one hand, 'unbridled splurging until you can't get out of your chair' on the other.  It's clear to me that our society is overly-obsessed with thin-ness.  I have no desire to participate in that.  I want a middle ground between I-can-only-have-two-bites-of-food-for-lunch, and I-just-ate-that-entire-bag-of-whole-grain-baked-tortilla-chips. 

For me, with my body type and the active life our family leads, I'm unhealthier than I want to be, and that is in large part due to the 25 pounds I've gained in the past ten years (including ten during my first year back at school last year).  And more important than that (to me), my cholesterol is way too high (since I already wrote an entire post about that, I'll skip it here).

So I'm trying to ignore the larger controversy, which I can feel practically pressing down on my head as people read that last post, and just navigate my way to my own version of healthy.  It will probably not be the same as your version of healthy.  That's one thing that is becoming clear not only to me but to medical science-- at one time the fact that some particular treatment worked for 80% of white males meant that it became standard treatment for everyone.  But now there is much higher recognition that the one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work.  There is no single version of healthy.

Ha.  I still haven't made it to the Beck diet.  Another setup post.  You're going to be so disappointed when I finally get there because it's not all that interesting.

Oh! and Happy Valentine's Day!  If you don't have a sweetheart, I'm adopting you for the day.  Go for a walk, enjoy some fresh air, and know that I am grateful you stopped by today to read my drivel.