 Final Word Editorial By ISAA Founder Allen Steadham  After reading this special issue of WOM, I hope you can better appreciate the theme of this year's International Size Acceptance Day (ISA Day) being "Drop The Surgery, Regain Your Health." WOM is an integral part of ISAA and believe me, we'd love nothing more than to put on a glitzy, incredibly happy ISA Day Gala Edition trumpeting how incredible size acceptance is for people of all sizes (because it is incredible). Doing this, however, would gloss over another very serious reason why size acceptance is so important: there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who are considering weight loss surgery as their "last best hope" to be thinner, healthier and most importantly, socially acceptable. ISAA's (and thus WOM's) aim is to educate the public to the now clearly overhyped "dangers of obesity" that doctors and weight loss specialists have been drowning the public in, unchallenged, for years. But it wasn't enough for WOM to tell you what ISAA believes. We wanted you to read first-person accounts spanning over 25 years to illustrate how WLS not only destroys lives, it kills. This is especially troubling when considering that teens and younger children are either being considered for these procedures or have already had them. It seems that, all too often, the public is somehow shielded from the awful consequences of WLS, even when hospitals begin to refuse the procedures and insurance companies refuse to cover WLS because the risks are so high for life-threatening complications. If you are an adult, you can make decisions for yourself but you also are entitled to know all the facts when weighing your decisions. In addition to the facts, you deserve to hear about alternatives. "Respect Fitness Health" (RFH) is not a diet, does not have pre-packaged food for sale, scorecards or any kind of points system. RFH is a common sense approach that places equal emphasis on self-esteem, maintainable fitness and education about how to make healthy food choices. WOM's Editor, Grace Moredock, is living proof that RFH works. She began RFH over a year ago and has more energy, better health and happens to have lost over 100 pounds without even meaning to. Everyone's body is different, so some may lose some weight and others may stay the same or even gain some muscle weight. Ultimately, it's a person's overall health that matters, not what they weigh or how they look. Thank you for reading this and for being a part of ISA Day. If you have questions about RFH or comments concerning this special issue of WOM, please e-mail us at this address: womeasure@gmail.com
Sincerely, |