I was just perusing a diary from yesterday......The author decided that fat people should just pay extra for everything....DAMMIT!
On his own blog, he stated that the "fatties" were all over it. Sheer laziness.....BAD BAD fat people.
In the comments! Anecdotal evidence from one commenter, that her neighbours were fat and so obviously doing it to themselves, so A+B=ALL overweight people?
I have something to say about this, and I can only go by my own experience. First, I have a secret.
I was 200 pounds by the age of 12.
Ya, I weighed more than the average man, not even a teenager yet.
I think it was a few factors that were responsible for this, I was genetically wired, depressed.....abused.
Mixed messages. EAT EVERYTHING on your plate! (My dad who placed MASSIVE adult sized portions on our plates)
It wasn't that we wouldn't get dessert for not eating all of it, my mum only made dessert very rarely. It was the fact that if we didn't eat everything we got the belt.
And then we got sent to our rooms.
We had an outdoor life, farm kids. NO TV. (Dad banned it in the house) We were always looking for excuses to get outside anyway. Less under the watchful eye of my father.
I was overweight starting by the age of 7 or 8. Pictures of me show that.
Dad then used that against me even. FAT PIG! He would say.
My mum, bless her heart, she tried to protect us the best she could. But she was an abused woman. When I was four, she was very ill for some time. Fell down the stairs everyone said.
Cracked jaw, broken teeth, fractured ribs, black eyes and a concussion. It wasn't the stairs.
My house was like a war zone, dad was always kind of sadistic, fly off the handle, mean sense of humour.
They split up when I was 11. Mum was also by then a raging alcoholic.
School was......I cannot even think of school. My locker was vandalized, with the words "miss piggy". Taunted, poked. The girls change rooms at school was like a gauntlet for me. I never made it through school, had the worst attendance record in the district the Principal said.
By 14, I was puking anything up that I ate, exercising constantly. I got down to 95 pounds by age 16. Wheee. For some reason I was able to stop. I have very little enamel on my back teeth though. I am a dental nightmare, and I think that is part and parcel with the binging and purging.
Self destructive tendencies do not stop there of course, but that would be a topic for another day. I was always fortunate that I never tried any hard drugs....Never got pregnant until I wanted to.
Babies came. So did the weight. Bad marriage. Back to 220 pounds......in the 2x category.
I have had to look harder for clothes, clothes that don’t scream "IM FAT!" There isn’t much out there when you get to a size XXX. There’s a whole lot of polyester out there in the world, in mostly large patterns. It could be a cruel joke on the part of the manufacturers, I'm not quite sure. I always went for long flowing cotton dresses, with an empire waist if possible. Or basic black, huge sweaters and leggings.
I was taking aspirin for all my aches and pains brought on by my weight, and that caused a tummy hemorrhage that just about brought my early demise at the tender age of 35. I had to relearn how to eat, and lose almost half my body weight in order to get my life back. I had to get back in the world, and exercise and tone my body so that the pain would go away without using medication.
My last marriage was not able to survive this major life change, as my now ex husband went off the deep end with every pound that was lost. He liked me fat, and looking back I think that it was a subconscious conspiracy on his part to keep me that way. I have to take most of the responsibility for my fatness though, what is easier is not always what is best. He feeds his current wife the same way, I have heard this through friends.
New marriage. We decided to have a baby. I also am prone to gestational diabetes, so I was referred to the dietitian for food counselling and the diabetes clinic to learn to use the sugar monitor.
Did I mention I am food obsessed? Fat, calories......That information always lives in the back of my brain.
The dietitian looked me in the eye and told me I sound like someone with an eating disorder.
No sh*t eh?
I still eat almost like a diabetic. I have found that is the best way to stay at least at a reasonable weight.
But I also have a couple anxiety disorders.
The last baby was pretty hard on me, It took a year to recover from complications, Osteo Arthritis is setting in. I was far more sedentary for sure.
Late last year, I shed the last 40 pounds on what I call the "mortgage diet". (Can we pay the mortgage?) Now when I am stressed, I do not need to force myself to puke. It just happens all on its own. It is disturbing for my kids, I do the best I can not to.
My husband recently asked....Your not doing anything "funny" are you?
Up and down like a yo yo. Always trying. Always with other things going on. I consider myself to be a fat lady in a thin ladies body, and probably always will. I am a size six by my clothes, my "inner" size is much larger. I envision myself that way.
We do not have a scale in our home, its very deliberate, and makes it much harder for me to perseverate on all of this.
Now, that is just my story, sorry for the nitty gritty.
There are so many other reasons that people are overweight. For some? Sure.
It's just a bad habit and no excercise.
For many others it can be a medical issue. Then there are probably many women like me.
Many, many have died, or are right now killing themselves slowly by self starvation.
Ana
I do think that we as a society have a bizarrely unfair view of "fat". The average woman is a size 14, and really, that looks pretty normal to me. only if its someone else.
In Canada, we have a new rule, that the airlines must give larger sized people two seats, for the price of one. It has been a source of derision, who decides?
The diarist from yesterday and all his recommenders? Walk a mile in my shoes. Some of us have almost died to be thin. Your discrimination and hateful language, how does that help?
Update: It was amazing to get all this wonderful support! Thanks so much. A long road, I'm right now on the even keel of the weight battle. Holding steady.
But some of the commenters seem to take this diary as a venue to hold forth their 'suck it up! You are fat because you are lazy!' view on the world. And you know? We have all heard this before. So, it would be ever so nice, if you would maybe just write your own diary and tell everyone how to do it, how to feel and to just suck it up.
We live in a complex world, the food is even different than it was in the past.
My story that I told above, is my battle to be thin. I am there right now. But it also shows that taunting and belittliing is very damaging to many of us. It's just not helpful or constructive.
And it's just mean. Some have proved my point only too well I am afraid.