wow, this has been a fascinating read. to be honest, i think everybody here is speaking honestly and courageously, and i think that any hurt caused/offence given/taken has been through misunderstanding. i don't want to get into that, although i would like to voice my respect for joanee's eloquence, and for krissy's honesty and commitment.
i want to add my 2 cents to the original question. i don't know why i don't post that often in the TDC, because i'm definitely a TDCer. maybe because when i first joined the board i'd lost my first 50 pounds or so. But yes, I have experienced pretty much all the miserable things that the various TDCers have given as examples of what the very obese have to suffer. The reason I started low carbing in 2001 was because i was at rock bottom. i was turning into a hermit, i was so miserable about the way i looked, and the way i was treated or feared being treated because of that. i was terrified that it would just end up like every other diet and even if i did manage to succeed temporarily ultimately i'd just put the weight back on and more, and i'd end up even heavier, but i had to try something because life was becoming unliveable. that was when i was 240 pounds (and i'm short). But you know something? I didn't feel *all* that different when I was a few years younger and weighed 180 pounds. Heck, I was sure I was fat and unacceptable when I was 11 and I was 100 pounds! Because of the way I was treated, because of the way my parents pushed me to lose weight even before I needed to. That, combined with bullying at school convinced me I was unworthy even though to the outside world I wasn't actually fat (yet).
Three years ago, four years ago, before I lost any weight at all, I was living with a friend. Now this girl had the most fantastic figure you can imagine. Before we lived together we were friends, but not close friends. Once we started living together we got much closer, and even now, after she's got married and we no longer live together, we're very close. It used to cut me up inside when she would finish a meal and express her feeling that she'd eaten too much by saying "I feel obese." When she used to complain about feeling fat. I was literally double her size; how was I supposed to feel about that? BUT. In the process of us becoming closer friends, I discovered that she is a recovered anorexic. In our discussions of body image, I came to realise that even people who look stunning on the outside might have body image issues as serious as my own. Oh, she never had to face the cruelty and rejection I had to face. She had to deal with her own psychological demons but would never have to face the ordeal of looking at a weight loss journey that seemed so long it was almost not worth starting. But I grew to respect the fact that the unlikeliest people might really have serious issues about themselves, even if to me I'd give almost anything to have their bodies.
My friend can, in a weird way, relate to my body issues, even though she's never experienced them. Although I do agree with Joannee on the mutuality thing; she still can't really give mutual support to me as she hasn't been where I've had to go. She has just had her first baby and she was scared to death of the weight gain, and losing weight afterwards, and whether she'd be able to without dieting - because if she tries to diet the anorexic mentality starts to take over so she has to avoid it. She has a different road to mine, but we can sympathise with each others roads.
I *do* find it hard to relate to someone on here who wants to lose 10 pounds, although I wish them luck with it. But in a way, it's impossible to know how much pain those 10 pounds has caused that person.
And as someone who is at the tail-end of their journey and has already lost the majority of the weight needed, thank you all for your support
I think it would be a dream come true for someone to ask me "but why are you watching what you eat" as if to say, you're a thin person. I'll be the thin person (if I"m *ever* a thin person) who has spent the majority of her life obese.
I'm not sure if there were many points in that ramble, or none, so I'll stop now, because I could go on forever, and then you'd all get bored
Deborah