I didn’t make any. I work out regularly and watch my diet. It was the fat girl who said her body was perfect FYI.
You could try being secure enough to not have it bother you so much either way.
With a .22 match rifle, I can hit a dime 100 times in a row, at 50 feet. What’s your excuse if you can’t?
I can program a computer to control a car engine or route packets in the Internet. If you can’t, what’s your excuse?
I can sail just about anything that sails after giving it a quick look, alone if it isn’t big enough require two people to carry and fit the sails. If you can’t, what’s your excuse?
I can play keyboards and guitar well enough to do it on stage in front of an audience. If you can’t, what’s your excuse?
Maybe your excuse is that you’ve had other priorities. It’s a good excuse.
I agree with those above who say that what she did is laudable, but how she put it lacks empathy. Hopefully she’ll learn the lesson that empathy is a crucial part of motivating people.
Good point. Still, empathy works better.
“Just do it” doesn’t lack empathy. It’s challenging in a positive way, not a negative way.
Nevertheless, I agree that it’s a teapot tempest.
I think I just noticed she was indeed obese and making a lot of excuses for it. I do judge people for being fat. I consider them to be weak willed and/or less intelligent on average.
It is unhealthy and unattractive and I was sincere when I said that.
She promoted her website on facebook? Ghastly.
I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, but I tend to take things at face value until proven otherwise. I saw the picture on a media outlet a few days before this post showed up. I am maintaining at about 25 pounds overweight right now. Not the heaviest I’ve ever been but not the lightest, either. My first thought was “My excuse is that I take in about the same amount of calories than I burn and, right now, I’m OK with that.” I COULD be thinner. I COULD be more toned. I DO have excuses not to be.
FWIW, I could be richer, own more stuff, do more for others, be a better father, get more work done, be more famous - the list is endless. Most of the time, things being finite as they are, being more of one thing requires being less of another. For example, more time at the gym (or work) means less time with the familiy. We can, and have, gone to the gym together but really working out is not conducive to good conversation. It’s all about balance. She choses to invest heavily in her body. Good for her. In order to do that, she must be doing less of something else. If that works for her family, cool! But I don’t take offense.
IIRC you are an IRL medical doctor. If you don’t mind my asking do doctors judge or comment on each other’s physical fitness being in full awareness of the dangers of obesity, or is it something that’s not commented on or paid attention to. Will being an overweight doctor cost a doctor professional advancement opportunities?
bolding mine.
PRECISELY. And that is why people are complaining, again NOT about her obvious, and attractive physical accomplishment but about her attitude that anyone can have everything (not so, and not having / being everything has REASONS, not excuses). I’d wager that there are some areas in her life that are NOT as fit as her body…so what’s HER excuse for those areas which are lacking in her life?
I think the reading into part is over the word excuse. Very seldom, if ever, does it have anything but negative connotations.
Well it does bring about an image of someone lazily spitting watermelon seeds off the front porch.
She’d make a lousy Admin. 
“What’s your excuse” is mostly meant to be an inspirational statement. I’ve seen several of these kinds of pictures make the rounds on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
One I remember was of a veteran who was burned over most of his body when an IED set the vehicle on fire. He was doing some kind of long-distance run. The picture deliberately focused the worst of his burns, and showed him on a road in the middle of nowhere.
Another was a guy in his 80s weight training. He was shirtless and looked like 30–40 from the neck down.
Yet another showed a group of guys — probably somewhere in Africa, judging from the reddish arid landscape — using barbells made from tree branches and carved rocks.
The implication is: these people train when they’re facing obstacles greater than anything the average person will. So if they can do it, what’s your excuse?
You can make all kinds of excuses, but the only valid one is that fitness is not a priority for you. If you accept and acknowledge that, then you should not be outraged by a statement like this. The outrage is displaced self-recrimination.
I was a high school athlete who got fat in his mid-20s from a combination of an accidental injury (not training related; I was a budding coach potato at the time) depression, related laziness, and eating too much of the wrong kind of food. I gained close to 40 pounds over the course of just a few years and was well on the way to being a serious fat-ass.
I had my epiphany / crisis at about age 30 and started the process of getting back into some semblance of shape. It is a process. It takes time. It does not take an enormous commitment, it just takes consistency.
I’m pushing 40. I am lucky if I can get 2–3 sessions for a real workout in a week. I work minimum 50 hour weeks, mandatory “short” Saturdays, and sometimes without any weekend at all (I’ve got another 13 day week this week). I live in Japan where gyms don’t open until 10:00 and shut at 22:00, and most people don’t even get off work until after 19:00. I’ve got a wife and a kid, too.
I make time to work out. It doesn’t take hours and hours; most of my workouts are done in an hour, including warm up and stretching. Long ones might push to an hour and a half if I include some skill work pre- or post-workout. So I spend maybe 6 hours a week working out, whenever I can shoehorn in time between work and home, or in the evenings, or lunch breaks, or whatever.
I’d often like to do more, but I can’t without sacrificing something else that I value. Sometimes, working out takes a back seat to spending time with my wife and son, but sometimes it’s something trivial. I read, watch movies, or play video games occasionally. If I didn’t have a job that required ridiculous (and often pointless) hours, I’d be able to do all of the things I like and value, and still have time to work out every day if I wanted to. But I don’t, so I do the best I can.
My priorities include not being fat and unhealthy ever again. I take the necessary amount of time to work on that. I balance other commitments and leisure activities. If your priorities don’t include time for health and fitness, then they don’t. But you have to acknowledge and accept that that is a choice you are making, and not give excuses for why you won’t commit to maintaining your body.
Well said.
I think that’s another reason people are bristling at this. Her comment assumes that everyone is out there whining “I could look like that, but I can’t, I have too many things to do”.
There is already a perfectly good word that describes all of the people who are, in fact, NOT whining in that way. It is “reason”. As in, (like you say) there are reasons I don’t look like the young lady, and that is, being in perfect physical shape is less of a priority in my life than other things.
Her posting assumes that looks and physical shape should always be the top priority for everyone and anyone not doing it must have some loser excuse for not being there, rather than, they’ve chosen other things to put their energy into. And as others have said, there are many more inspirational and positive ways to say that.
Shaming WRT fat, very rarely ever works to change a person’s ways.
Like eating McDonalds and watching TV? It’s not like eating less takes a lot of time in the day. Travel to Europe and people are not working out hours per day, but they aren’t fat like Americans (except maybe England).
You missed my point. They very well MAY be doing just that, and yeah, they may be overweight, but she’s acting as if all of these people are wandering around whining about it “waaaaah, I wanna be a size 4 too, it’s not fair, I just can’t”! For those people who DO act like that? Yeah, I have the same reaction, it’s their actions that have made them fat and they have no right to whine about how “unfair” it is. But the majority of people aren’t making excuses, they’re like “yup, I’m not as fit as I’d like, or yup, I’m overweight, and I know why, there are more important things in life than spending my life in the gym”.
And again, as I said upthread, it must be so terribly time-consuming to keep fit when it’s your 9-5 JOB to do so. :rolleyes: Sheesh, all I did was field work which entailed some hiking in the woods, some bending and stretching, and some lifting of heavy objects and just that alone kept me fit. But I didn’t have to work a regular job, being away from home for 10 hours and then come home and try to fit in the sorts of workouts that are required to look like the young lady in question, and I sure as hell didn’t go around gloating “hey, what’s wrong with the rest of you”?
If she’s working out AS her job/personally owned company for 8 hours a day it’s HARDLY comparable to a single mom trying to work in effective workouts in between her three jobs and deal with the lack of funds to buy appropriately healthful foods. Her life is far and away more conducive to fitness (including as she herself admits a husband who [paraphrased] “Helps out a TON”) than many people’s. Can it be done? Yes of course, but it’s not as simple as her statement bitchily assumes.
As someone said a few posts ago, there are things in her life that aren’t getting attention because her number one focus is on her looks and size. So unless she’s the world’s first perfect person and every area of her life is in perfect order, what’s HER excuse for lacking in those other areas? Some people choose physical perfection, some people choose perfection in other areas of their life. Bottom line, no you really can NOT “have it all”. Something’s gotta give.
The majority of people on the yahoo article and here in this thread applaud her accomplishments, it’s her snarky bitchy attitude that is the problem, not that she’s physically gorgeous. So yeah, she has a perfect BODY, or at least a perfectly FIT body, but that doesn’t mean she’s Perfect.
Last thought. And some others have mentioned this upthread as well. Even at my most fit size and lowest body fat, it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to have her type of body perfection. Why? Not only the aforementioned badonkadonk (and I don’t WANT to lose that tyvm), but I am whiter than Wonderbread and every stretch mark shows like a neon lightbulb (also not a problem to me, I earned them and bore two great kids). I have some cellulite. Neither of those things can be cured by workouts or diet. She was either one of the lucky ones who didn’t get stretch marks during pregnancy, or she had the fixed I dunno, but if she ever did have them, they weren’t taken care of via exercise or diet.
Bolding to be sure Kable sees it.
Ah, she just made a quick slogan. You all are reading way too much into it.
I’m guessing she’s a personal trainer or something? Personal trainers don’t work out all day. They tell others to work out all day and on average maybe workout an hour a day themselves.
Think about it. What personally owned company would pay you any money to work out all day? You just don’t know what you are talking about. Seems a lot of unfit people are trying to make fitness seem a lot harder than it is. I guess it makes you all feel better about not partaking in it. Heck I know a lot of thin people who don’t work out at all, they just don’t eat crap all day.
She’s bitchy now? Raaayyyyyerrrr, catty!
Your assuming she’s lacking in other areas. Does that make you feel better about yourself?
“You CAN have it all” would insult me a hell of a lot more than “what’s your excuse”
I lost about 20’ between October 2011 and October 2012 (yes it took me that long) - and just recently did my first half marathon (although I didn’t run the full distance, or hit my target)
The weight was lost through exercise (no diet changes)
And no matter what - for EVERY run I had an “excuse” for not doing it. Time with the kids, the letter I hadn’t written, the book I wanted to read…there was always something calling my name and enticing me away from a run.
I’m not an athlete, I not near the top of my age class for anything, I am proud of what I have been able to done and happy with my results. Even though they are nothing special and on the scale of what others have achieved don’t even make a ripple.
Point to be made though - even with this, I wouldn’t have achieved anything at all if I made excuses. So “What’s your excuse” seems to fit - you may not ever look like her, but if you keep making excuses then nothing is ever going to change. And naturally, if you’re happy where you are - you don’t need excuses.
Besides - she’s a personal trainer - aren’t they supposed to inspire you and tell you there are no excuses?
Here is the problem. Words DO matter. The word “excuse” is a word with negative connotations, and whether you’re talking weight loss or what have you, it’s not going to be one that will be effective. Her claim is that she was trying to be inspirational. At best, she’s sadly lacking in understanding human nature and psychology, at worst (as most of us suspect) she is being bitchy and accusatory, NOT trying to be inspirational. Calling her on her meanness isn’t then “catty” by turn.
If she’d have posted this same pic and said something like “Hey girls! I know it’s hard, but look, it can be done, and here’s how”. This would be a WHOLE different ballgame. The issue isn’t her body, it’s her poor choice of words. Maybe it was an honest mistake. But if that were the case, if she had any brains at all, she wouldn’t be digging a deeper hole for herself “oh no, I was being inspirational…really”, she’d be honest about it. Along the lines of “gosh, I didn’t realize how it would come across, but now that I look at it and see what people are saying (by the thousands), you’re right, it’s not a very effective way of making my point”.
THAT would get a hell of a lot of respect from people. Unlike her weak excuses (heh…) and nonsense.
The point is, she’s in a gym atmosphere for her entire work day with ample opportunity to be working out and otherwise have complete immersion in fitness facts, activities, learning opportunities and so on, other people have to do that AFTER a full workday and caring for kids, ailing parents, shopping, commuting, and housework.
Um, my previous job did, if you’d read my ENTIRE post and not just selected the things you wanted to disagree with. I was pretty much “working out” all day, and getting paid for it. And as you yourself said above, obviously HER job does since it’s as a personal trainer or some such. At any rate, same answer as what I posted above.
No one is arguing that there aren’t too many overweight Americans. We’re arguing that messages of the type posted by Ms. Kang are ineffective, as well as not inspirational, as she claims she was trying to be.
Where do you get the idea that I personally don’t partake in working out? My posts have concentrated specifically on the effects her poor word choice has on overweight people, not on me personally. Do I look like her? Hell no, I’m an ancient granny and I got to have my time to be hot when I was younger and as I’ve been explaining over and over, as with many other people, having a perfect body isn’t my top priority… That doesn’t then equal “never works out or eats right”. I am much too old to ever be “hot” again no matter how slim I get, so my interest in fitness is solely in the pain relief it provides these days. I"m not her target audience, but I still care how her nastiness is affecting those that are.
At any rate, once again you’re missing the point, which is that MOST people who were commenting in the Yahoo article, and here, even if they’re overweight aren’t all going around whining about 'oh, it’s so unfair, I can’t possibly be fit like her", they understand that they’ve chosen other priorities in their lives and are fine with it. People’s comments and outrage aren’t from being jealous of her accomplishments, they’re from understandable irritation at her very bad choice of words.
She IS lacking in other areas, it’s a mathematic certainty. There’s not a human on the planet that is perfect in all things in their life. We ALL are lacking in some areas of our lives. The reason it has been brought up (by me and others in this thread and the Yahoo comments), is that her implication IS that you can have it all, and what’s wrong with you if you’re not perfect, hot, fit, supermom, super businesswoman and so on? “Having it all” or being “supermom” is a myth.
Bottom line is she’s claiming to have been trying to be “inspirational”. But her message was a HUGE fail if that was really her intent. Again, nastiness and shaming do not work to change people’s behaviour, particularly regarding fat.
What’s her excuse for overbreeding?