I was reading this thing this morning about Jared Leto doing yoga before heading off to a class myself.

The article was about how his yoga and diet have kept him young, how it’s changed his view on drastically altering weight for roles, etc. It included links about the disparities in poundage, and mostly included the actor’s actual ruminations about his roles, diet, life (versus author opinion).

You can read the actual article yourself, but here’s my watered-down-from-what-I-wanted-to-say comment:

letofb

Yeah. I stand by this.

When a story is made up namely of quotes, it’s hard to call it biased. The author even included a link so that readers could see the details about the actor’s other weight transformation. They didn’t make up those medical infirmities Mr. Leto realized after packing on pizza pounds. The tranny transformation chopped off about 30 lbs – he went from his usual 146 lbs down to 116 lbs.

But for the role of Chapman double-chin, it was double that.

He surfed through snack foods and grease until he’d gained 67 lbs, saying, “I just ate giant pizzas and everything you know you’re not supposed to eat. That’s what you eat to gain weight like that. If you’re a young actor reading this, you should never do that.”

Sure, it wasn’t the longest article. I get what the commenters are saying – yoga is about equanimity. But in this case, the yo-yo extremes weren’t equal and we only have Mr. Leto’s quotes to go on. Could they have added an “extreme weight loss is just as bad” bit with a snappy of Christian Bale in the Machinist? Yeah. Sure. But not every author wants (or is allowed) to inject their own opinion into their articles.

As a writer, I know how hard it can be to try and tell a story in an ethical light, telling some universal truth, without either sounding biased or coming off like a soap box douche nozzle:

asshole

It’s not the author’s fault that Leto landed ambulatory foot pain from playing a fatso. Homeboy had to roll around in a wheelchair because of that and took a year to bring back some semblance of normalcy.

Now that’s fodder for some real mental nomming.

Let’s go back to the main point of the article: Jared looks radiant (not just Hollywood young and hot and great for his age – but like that whole glowy thing hardcore yogis have).

For him – a dude whose baseline is balanced and healthy – it took a whole year to get back to that default setting.

Fat, skinny fat, whatever – for people who’ve been punishing themselves with diet extremes their whole life (like I have), imagine how much longer that’d take? If you’re patient, it’s eventually totally worth it.

In the meantime, do some hippie stretches (actually it’s an eleventy-billion year old practice from a faraway majestic land – but let’s not get technical), get the eff outside, and maybe occasionally let the old ipod be a zero-headphones, full blast, “nature shuffle” surround-sound experience.

Says I, from my couch, cursing the cold.

And for my controversial super-biased takeaway message: nunna these’re good:
letodiff

And stop complaining about an author’s writing. People complain when it’s biased. People complain when it’s nothing but quotes. The internet is vast – look up the rest of the story if you doubt what you’re reading (which you always should – read with a critical eye, that is). And if you don’t trust any of it, close your eyes, drown out distractions, and find rurrrl truth.

Can’t show you what that’s like. Just hafta find out yourself.

I love you all like Karen Carpenter loved her ego-finger after lunch.