Cane and Able: #3 Fat Free

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Society places a lot of value on healthy eating and there is always a pressure to lose weight, do more excersize, stop being lazy and get out and about.

That's all well and good. I'm not bashing that at all, it's understandable and reasonable to expect a population to take care of itself.

But what if you can't? The UK government reccomends 10,000 steps a day. Which is awesome if you can walk, BBCs Ouch did a section on 'Disabled Fat Nation' where someone reccomended 10,000 pushes a day if you're in a chair, which is awesome if you can push yourself. In actuality the BBC section does more harm than good. It features plenty of disabled athletes in peak condition saying how hard they worked and how now they're amazing at such and such and can do this, that, and the other. But the reccomendations are pretty much 'get involved with a sport just like you were able bodied' to 'roll around on the floor to burn some energy' and I wish I was joking about the latter reccomendation.

The heart of the matter lies in weight loss and maintaining a healthy body rely on being able to unify healthy activities with healthy eating. If you cannot consolidate one or the other it leads to all sorts of hassle. Carers, bless them, they mostly do what they can to help people around the house - but depending on how they are allocated time between the people they care for it can sometimes leave less than half an hour in each persons house to help clean, dress, medicate and cook - and what sort of meals are going to be readily available? There simply isn't always time to go shopping to examine all the nutritional values and find healthy alternatives to standard ready meals or there isn't always the funding available to provide for people stuck at home.

The other side of the argument is people who have mobility difficulties are told to do gentler excersizes for a longer time (2 or 3 times longer - as suggested). So according to some online calculations, there are roughly 2,000 steps in a mile. So five miles a day is what people should aim for. On a good day, five years ago, I could perhaps manage a mile in an hour and be knackered afterwards. Also would be in a lot of pain from strain on my joints, but that's besides the point currently. So doing something more gentle for equivalent time would be five hours. The suggestions are two or three times longer though, so between ten and fifteen hours a day I'm supposed to be doing gentle excersizes? Then there is about six hours sleep, which takes up sixteen and twenty-one hours, then there would be the breaks I would require which would add up very quickly presuming I remain uninjured.

There is an inherent presumption in disability that it is the elimination of a specific use of a body part - such as being blind, deaf, paraplegic, an amputee. Discarding anything contrary because it's just too outlandish to include in calculations. I used to do sports and dance and was generally rather active once I managed to finally start walking (I could read, write, speak fluently and hold debates before I could stay upright more than five minutes!) and more often than not someone in government, the media or the health profession will throw this shiny example of an 'inspiring disabled hero' someone who has overcome adversity to win tournaments in a sport only popular in countries where the population of bears exceed the population of sentient humanoids. Then they look at you expectantly. I wouldn't dream of discussing health and excersize with an able bodied person and throw a magazine at them on the top ten sprinters in the world and expect to see them in the next annual edition of the publication.