Mental health is no joke. I have seen people go from happy to depressed after just one small incident. I would term these as “healthy disabled”. “Healthy disabled” are whose impairments “are relatively stable and predictable for the foreseeable future” (Davis, 2013). Mental health tends to be visually shown through people’s emotions, but it can also be completely visible where a fake smile is made, yet they are depressed. Mental health can have consequences such as gray hair, stress which can lead to heart attack, physical health, and more.

I have suffered from mental health before and it was not great. What was weird was that something that seemed so trivial could become big and cause you to become depressed. The time I suffered from mental health was when I got called out for something that was not my problem. If you were told you were able to do something and you do it, you would think there would be no issues later on, but that was not the case. I kept thinking it was a trivial matter, but I kept thinking about it which led me to become straight up sad for a while. In this case, I considered myself as “healthy disabled” since I was not physically disabled. Next time you suffer from mental health, definitely do some meditation or some praying as both definitely helps a lot!

Why is chronic illness a bad thing? But first, let us get a broad idea of what chronic illnesses are. Chronic illnesses are those with conditions that can last a long time such as 2 months or longer and require ongoing medical attention. This also limits the person from doing daily activities due to something such as back pain, sleeplessness, and more. I would say a lot of people have some type of chronic illness and it shows. At my workplace I see a lot of accommodated items in different desks such as some type of foot stool, special work chair to help with their back pain, odd looking keyboard, and an odd looking mouse to help with their wrist issues.

So back to the question on why people think it is a bad thing, specifically companies. In the article of, “Unhealthy Disabled: Treating Chronic Illnesses as Disabilities” by Susan Wendell, she says, “Most workers feel put-upon and frustrated by their working conditions and the demands of their employers on their time and energy. They have to stand up all day, or have few bathroom breaks, or work overtime or at night, and their employer refuses to accommodate to their aching backs, their family pressures, their sleeplessness or difficulty in concentrating. Many workers, that is, find the demands placed on them next to over whelming at times, and they feel barely able to cope. Rarely do they get a sympathetic ear to voice their frustrations, however, and the only agents they are allowed to blame for their difficulties are themselves” (Wendell, 2001). If people have chronic illness, then the company is forced to meet their demands and needs because of the law placed so they can work normally like others. If they don’t get what they want, then they would just simply leave. If a company did not heed my request, I would leave as well because I can only do my work so well if I am actually working comfortably. If I cannot get what I need, why work there in the first place? Before you start going into that job, make sure you do some research on how the company treats their employees. Otherwise, be that person to make some change which will impact the community in a good way.

Am I skinny or are you just fat? I see quite often on social media on body shaming or just people looking for shortcuts on how to become skinny or fit. All of these “tips” I see come directly from Instagram for the most part. So whenever you do one search, more searches appear quite often with what you searched previously, so those recommendations will keep appearing until you search something completely different. From these searches, I see videos on how to lose fat easily which is through intense dieting which never works because it is more work than going to the gym and it makes you miserable. In a podcast, I listened to “Is Being Fat Bad for You?” and around 1:17:00 mark, one of the speakers says, “There is not a single method of weight loss that is non-surgical that meets the standards of being evidence-based treatment”. They mention that there are people that are like 250 pounds and are on a heavily strict diet, yet there is barely any progress to their weight loss. People get their weight loss done through surgical means, but it is costly. At this point, you are better off just going to the gym which helps you lose weight faster if you have a personal trainer to get you to the right path. That way, you won’t need to do intense dieting nor surgery. There are videos that show the same food you eat, but with less macros. I am skinny, so I am bulking which makes me eat whatever I want in order to grow. So, if you think you are not where you want to be, ask a doctor for meaningful advice or ask a personal trainer that can help you get on the right path whether you are skinny or fat!

Everyone’s body is different. We could be short and skinny, short and fat, tall and skinny, or even tall and fat. I consider myself short and skinny. I have been going to the gym recently to improve my body so I can be in good shape and to also improve my health. I always get called skinny because I was not eating and underweight, but no matter how much I ate, my weight never increased. I guess you could say my stomach is a black hole. You could be born with good genes or bad genes where you could have a fast metabolism and eat more again, or end up with a slow metabolism where you are still full after a few hours and not be able to eat.

My eating habits have been bad, so I took it upon myself to try and eat more protein in order to bulk and be able to physically improve my body. I took a shortcut and started to use protein powder to get my daily protein in. So far I have been to the gym since march 2022 and my body has been getting more lean which has improved my weight along with the amount of exercise I am doing. I did not start to go to the gym due to body shame, but rather to improve myself and become a better man. It was interesting to see this quote in the article of “Made by the Work”, by Ed Slavishak when he said, “From long-haul truckers with chronic back pain and hemorrhoids to data-entry clerks with carpal tunnel syndrome, laboring bodies experience ailments and annoyances that are often hidden because they are experienced in isolation” (148). People may not realize that physical labor can either improve your body or damage it. I have seen people body shame because of how they looked such as a man having a curled body which made them look like a “troll”, but in reality, they had back problems due to work. Next time you see someone that has a “lesser” body than you, stop and think before you say something as they know what you do not.