Allie’s Comments

Often times I talk about how obesity causes low self-esteem. However, many times low self-esteem causes obesity. Many people are emotional eaters. They eat when they feel sad, depressed, stressed or angry. Perhaps the individual is young and have a little bit of baby fat on them, but someone calls them Fatty Cathy. This could cause them to eat more. The more he or she eats, the more weight he or she gains, the more people make fun of him or her and then they have lower self-esteem and continue to eat for comfort.

It is a very sad process that many people go through. It is most common to start the process as a toddler, pre-teen or teenager. It is no doubt that obesity has become an epidemic in the United States.

In England there is a device called the mandometer. The device talks and encourages one to eat slowly. Maybe they should bring this into the United States. However, the problem is if a person has low self-esteem, and the low esteem is causing him or her to eat does this device fix the problem?

There is also a new video game that is supposed to turn your frown upside down. The video game has you find smiley faces. The goal of the game is to help your mind make a habit of thinking positively. However, what if your obesity has caused your low self-esteem? Does sitting in front of a television help the problem?

Everyday, experts are trying to come up with a solution to comfort eating problems and also low self-esteem issues. Do you have any solutions, advice or ideas to fixing the problems?

I look forward to your comments on this issue.

Everyone goes through stressful times. It seems to have become a major problem in the United States. School, work, and personal lives are just too many balls to juggle with. Stress can cause major health problems. It often leads to heart attacks or mental breakdowns. In other words, it affects us both physically and mentally.

Recently, the wives of the 2008 presidential hopefuls got together and chatted about how life was going. These ladies have many duties. They are wives, many are mothers and a couple of them a struggling with health issues. The ladies are also trying to support their husband, while the election process is going on. Also they are under the spotlight of the media. The wives are so busy that sometimes they forget to take care of themselves.

I must stress on how important it is for you to take care of you. Everyone has things they need to get done, but don’t forget that your body and mind need constant care in order to work well. When stressed it is so easy to not put on makeup in the morning, or where sweatpants in public, or forget to take your vitamins. Being stressed can cause a major possibility of having low self-esteem. Please, no matter how much you have to get done in a day try your best to take 30 minutes for yourself. Your body and mind will greatly appreciate it.

My father shared a thought with me the other day.

“When one sees a mountain, he must decide to either climb it or stay in the valley and dream about it.”

-Ronald Fair

I thought about this for a whole day. There are times where I talk about doing things, but never do them. There are times where I could climb the mountain, but am too lazy. However, every mountain we have the opportunity to climb, I think we should. Keep trying and trying, if you don’t get to the top one way you will climb to the top another way. Life is way too short to stay in the valley, looking up at the mountain and wondering what it is like up there. Let’s all climb the mountain to its highest peak, and then look down at our accomplishments.

A friend of mine sent me an article yesterday on short people. He or she sent the article as a joke to make fun of my height. I personally am only 5 feet 2 inches tall, and I will admit at times I have low self-esteem about my height. I feel like everyone around me has longer legs, a longer torso and nicer hips. When I was a teenager I used to beg my parents to find a way to make me grow. I hated being shorter than everyone in my class. However, it just was not possible. My parents used to try to encourage me by saying things like, “You still have two eyes, two hands and two legs, be grateful you’re healthy.”

In the last few years I have learned to be happy with my height. There are many people who are short. But, just because you’re short it doesn’t mean you are less capable of success. Sure, you might not get to be in the NBA, but there are many other areas that you can succeed in. The best advice I can give you is to feel comfortable with your height. Shortly after you do you will stop realizing people’s heights and look into their hearts. This way us short people can prove the article wrong; just because we are short does not mean we have a chip on our shoulder. Be positive this week, think healthy and be healthy. And of course encourage others around you.

As much as I want you to be confident and believe in yourself, I don’t want you to be overly confident. Please don’t walk around nude in New York, because you may end up in the nearest hospital being evaluated.

When I say to be confident, I just want you to be comfortable and happy with yourself.

When I say the word school and education what do you think of?

Do you think of HIV/AIDS, diet, exercise, teen pregnancy and illegal drug and alcohol abuse?

I personally don’t. However, it seems schools are becoming more and more involved in educating students on these subjects.

Recently, a young girl or preteen got sent home a health notice from her school saying that she was overweight.

A school in the Virgin Islands is having students write haiku poetry about these types of subjects.

This type of education I think belongs to the parents. This is kind of like parents using the television as a babysitter. Now parents are going to let the schools parent their kids.

First of all I highly doubt that a teacher, even with a health degree, should teach a student about diet. First of all a health degree does not mean you are a guru on diet. Secondly, the teacher does not know the circumstances at home.

I also thought that Flaurette Martinez had a good point saying that her daughter reading that, or perhaps another student getting a hold of that could have consequences to her daughter’s self-esteem.

HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy and illegal drug and alcohol abuse are serious subjects.
If the school talks poorly about teens being pregnant, they could say it in front of a teen that is pregnant and then that teen might not end up telling anyone about her circumstances. This could result in major harm, to her and the baby. Or perhaps, one of the students has HIV from one of his or her parents. There are so many things that can go wrong with educating students on these subjects and not knowing their circumstances at home.

In my opinion it is the parent’s responsibility to tell their kids about these topics. It would be so nice to be able to hand over these serious subjects to the school and not have to worry about it. However, with each student having different parents and different levels of esteem I think it could be dangerous to let schools educate students on these topics.
We must handle each child, preteen and teenager with great care. What we tell them now, will affect what they do and how they feel in the future.

Everyone hates rejection. It makes a person feel bad being rejected from a job or a person of the opposite sex. It is a feeling that all of us have gone through during some time in our life. However, can we control our brain to forget about rejection and not let it lower our self-esteem? In a new study done by the University of California Berkley it has been discovered that perhaps an individual can learn how to control their concentration and focusing abilities. If an individual can be trained to do this, it could stop the negative cycle of self-destruction.  If the study is put to practice, it could stop the negative effects of rejection.

On many levels I agree with this study. However, the first problem I have is that they still don’t know how to go about training or teaching individuals to learn the skill of controlling one’s thoughts.

I think the only way to fix an individual’s self-esteem is to actually believe and think highly of him or herself. This takes practice. I believe rejection is one of the hardest circumstances for us to deal with. It hurts our feelings. However, I believe we can overcome rejection by brushing it off our shoulders and moving on.

As much as I would like to advise you to give Berkley’s study a try, they still don’t have any solutions. But, when they do, I will let you know.

Big, small, perky or saggy boobs, it does not matter, all exist in our society.

The breasts image in our society is a hard one to match. Many of the people we see in movies, Victoria’s Secret magazines, fashion magazines and fashion shows, have these beautiful C cups that are perky, and that make some of us feel a bit inadequate in comparison.

It seems like there is no way to be perfect. Those who do have big breasts complain they feel fat rather than “curvy.”

Those with small breasts feel less womanly.

Those with saggy breasts feel old and unattractive.

I have a 20 year old friend who felt like her breasts were to big so decided to get a breast reduction. She went from a DD cup to a B cup.

However, it seems to be more common for women to get breasts implants instead of reductions. It seems that implants don’t just enhance your bust, they also enhance your self-esteem. Breast augmentation seems to be getting more and more popular. Women decide on implants for multiple reasons. To make them feel better about themselves, others get it because they had breast cancer and so want to rebuild their post-cancer self-esteem.

However, is breast implants the solution? To be honest with you I don’t know. I know that breast implants are a trend, I know that many women get them for reasons that I can not call good or bad. But, I do know that I understand why women get them when I see these advertisements that say to get implants so you don’t have to feel embarrassed about your small breasts.

I don’t encourage breast implants. I believe you are beautiful the way you are. Breasts are beautiful both big and small.

However, what are your thoughts about breast implants? Why do you feel this way? Please share, and I look forward to your comments.