Today I’d like to share with you both a link I enjoyed and a link that troubled me.

The Happiness Project writes about Six tips for designing your happiness commandments. As they occur to me I’ve been adding my own happiness commandments to a list. I’m afraid mine suffer from a lack of brevity, and I’m not 100% sure I haven’t confused them with her “Secrets of Adulthood.” So far mine are:

  • Be Lise
  • If people dislike you for being Lise, they’re not worth your time
  • Move
  • Start for just 30 minutes now
  • Personal appearance reflects inner confidence
  • Always bring a book

The Digerati Life hosted a guest post this week, The Cost of Being Overweight. I will give SVB majors kudos to taking care of my biggest objection to this post, which was the headless picture of an overweight person. Ever notice how every article about “the obesity epidemic” is scattered with these? Way to dehumanize the overweight, folks.

I’m not against losing weight, per se, and I applaud Weight Ladder’s (the guest poster’s) tremendous efforts, but my major objection to this article is: why are we not instead outraged the overweight go through life paying by the pound? I have a friend who loves roller coasters, and I am pissed off that he can’t enjoy them because of his weight. It would never occur to me to say, “By the way, if you lost weight, you could fit on more roller coasters!” Why is it okay to say such a thing on a blog, but not to a friend?

I know the guest poster means well, but the posts reads like so many articles already out there about obesity, and again operates from the faulty assumption that the overweight don’t know they’re fat even though the fact is shoved down their throat day after day. Can we put aside the assumption that fat = unhealthy for a moment and applaud any effort to be healthy at any size?

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