First of all, who do you determine which it is? I mean, REALLY know? And then, what business is it of yours anyway?

And then Leemack said it far better than I did....



Except that I'm now reading a book (The Obesity Myth - Paul Campos) where the author asserts, among other things, that once you remove confounding variables like diet, exercise and other lifestyle and environment issues overweight is NOT correlated with health except in extreme cases. Further, statistics show that people who are 50 lbs overweight have LOWER mortality than those who are 5 lbs underweight. He provides a lot of studies and stats to demonstrate that the health issue is a red herring, that the "war on fat" is pure and simple discrimination, often with social status/racial angles, because it's politically incorrect to discriminate against anyone else and a society needs it's pariahs to look down upon. He states that fitness/activity level and a healthy diet are far more important to health and longevity than what a person weighs. He also states that people who lose weight (usually to regain) are less healthy than those who simply maintain a high weight. Interesting book, even if it is 10 years old.

And you just found one of my "buttons"... The judgmental and humiliating label of "gluttonous". I don't wish ill-will on anyone, but I would love to waive a magic wand that puts everyone that thinks that way into my shoes. I'd love for you to experience what it is like to have intense cravings for food -- to eat something and within 30 minutes be even hungrier than before. You do not experience this when you eat, yet you judge other people by your own measuring stick. Son, I have lost the equivalent of your entire body weight at least 3 fold in the past 30 years. At your age, I was your weight. Every time I lost the weight, I'd turn around and gain more back. Each time it became harder and harder. As I've aged, the carb cravings have only gotten worse and it has become increasingly more difficult to stick to a diet long enough for all the excess weight to come off. On two separate occasions (and two different doctors) I asked for help. What I got was a 1 page photo copy of a standard low-calorie starvation diet that may work for someone like you - but is completely worthless to someone like me. The truth is, I had no idea how to lose weight and keep it off. Most obese people don't -- and neither does our society as a whole. I would imagine that most every obese person has struggled trying to lose or maintain weight their entire lives. We put so much effort into this you cannot even imagine -- and yet we are spinning our wheels because the solutions offered by doctor's and nutritionists do not and cannot work for us. The stats are that only around 2% of the obese will lose the weight and keep it off over a period of years. So in your book, the other 98% are just gluttons making a willing choice to be disgustingly fat. With enough repeated failure, some do just give up. I know I have a couple of times. You see a fat person eat a donut and you cringe, shake your head, and pass judgment. If you only knew what most of us have gone through -- you would not be so quick to judge.

It took me 50 years to figure out what I was doing wrong. I can't eat what most people consider regular food and simply "cut back" on the calories. It is like holding your breath. It gets harder the longer you go and eventually you cannot do it anymore. I now know that sugary/starchy high carb foods are the source of my intense cravings. I have a higher than normal blood sugar spike and crash when I eat them and it is that rapid drop in blood sugar that makes me crave more high carb food. I didn't know that a slice of bread was no different than a candy bar when it comes to my blood sugar and carb craving. Now that I have figured it out, I know that I should never eat high carb food again -- which is about 95% of what is out there for us to eat. Low carb is the solution for me and for the first time in my life, I am craving free and I now have control over what I put in my mouth. This way of eating is probably the only long-term solution for all the obese carb cravers of the world. But unfortunately, this is still considered a fringe diet by most so the obese are not getting the message. I hope the worm turns one day and the LC way of eating becomes the standard approach to address obesity. It would sure make life easier for all of us.

And by the way, I don't like the idea of labeling obesity a disability in and of itself. Just like everything else when the government gets involved, it will just make a complicated mess out of the issue and some people will use it as a crutch to get free money. This kind of thing always leads to abuse. But inability to walk a great distance is a disability, no matter how it is that you got there.

A few have said, how can you tell the difference? Something I've tried to express here, don't know if I've done a good job of it or not, so I'll say it straight out. Apparent gluttony and sloth can themselves be medical conditions. Taubes wrote about a laundress in the '20s who had some sort of metabolic disorder, gained an inordinate amount of weight in a short time. She couldn't stop eating laundry starch of all things. What if instead of a laundress, she'd been a baker? More likely, then, people would have seen her eating bread or pastries. In the first case--something is clearly wrong, pure hedonic value of the food is a ridiculous explanation for her behaviour. In the second case? Same woman, different situation--but the available source of carbohydrate is more obviously pleasurable. She may be eating for pleasure no more than she was in the first situation. Certainly her experience may be more pleasurable, at least at certain time points, than her binges on pure starch. But the actual underlying causes of the binges in these examples would be the same. And unless you know this woman's reaction to pure starch--how can you tell her from a "glutton?"

The sloth thing--if a hundred pound woman never gets out of bed, but is physically capable of this, the most likely cause is some kind of depression. If it's a fat person, of course, the assumption is that they're lazy.

And just to reiterate what Ken said (and I've told this story before here) about what we go through, a typical event is that I was trying to lose weight - low fat of course and 350lbs at the time. I was sitting outdoors in the square on my lunchbreak eating a salad. A guy comes up to me and starts shouting at me about how disgusting I am and how it makes him want to vomit seeing someone my size eating, and how I should be ashamed of myself to be putting him and others through it. This is the type of abuse we get, and yet Ill informed people think we want to stay this way for the 'perks'..........utter idiocy.

I loved my job and was really good at it, yes even at over 400lbs. If other health problems hadn't got in the way I'd still be doing it.

Nobody knows what's going on with the disabled obese person (or non disabled for that matter) so stop judging. Save your judgement for people who ARE actually morally corrupt and not those mistakenly perceived that way.

In following this thread and conversation, I'm very sad.

I know what you mean, Judy

That man's behavior was completely unacceptable! And yet "fat shaming" is a popular thing. I'm not on Twitter, but I heard that someone had a "Fat Shaming Week" where people posted things making fun of and verbally thrashing overweight people. That is sick!

It just blows my mind that people actually feel comfortable in coming up to and destroying someone's world like that, leemack. I'm sorry you went through that. I've had my share of things like that as well but not to that degree. Let's just say that I'm still traumatized from jr. High and high school in some ways.

Just remember that people who lash out at others are the ones who are sick, the ones who have something very wrong with them. They are putting you down to elevate themselves and IMO, they are just showing everyone how ugly they are.

It was difficult and I still hate eating in public - even just in front of family.
The point I was trying to get across is that even when an obese person is trying 'to do the right thing' the abuse, prejudice and discrimation continues. How easy would most people find it to continue with the long weight loss process with that type of constant feedback? At the beginning it might be motivating, but it takes a super strong person to continue to be motivated under that type of barrage.

There is a giant mountain to climb in going from super obese to slim or slimmer and dealing with the food is only part of the mountain.

Something similar happened to me years ago when I was about 50 pounds overweight (much less than I gained subsequently); I had the audacity to wear a two-piece bathing suit on a beach and eat at a picnic table. Some freak went off on me about how I shouldn't be seen in public.

While we struggle with metabolic imbalances, cravings, and possibly genetic predisposition, others who are "grossed out" by larger people are toxic and sick in their own way. But as others have said, it's socially sanctioned to hate fat people and tell them to their face to "do something about it."

To add to book suggestions, I recommend The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness by Kim Chernin, I think it's still in print.

Since I was vastly less overweight I've generally worn large dark baggy things to prevent traumatizing others by my mere existence in their presence...

I've more than once had someone take one look at me -- always a woman, always a woman who was wearing enough makeup for six people, I think it's related -- and act as if I were an actual enemy. I mean at banks, DMV, stuff like that. So rude and hostile, breathtakingly so, that strangers in line were actually exclaiming in my defense eventually.

Obesity is such an absolute TERROR for many people that they project everything they hate and despise upon it. And they feel quite comfortable in doing so because society seems to support that no matter how pathetic they are, if they are not fat, at least they have that. If it had been some decades ago I'd expect that to be accompanied by, "We don't serve YOUR KIND here so GTF out before we help you." or something.

I was decent sized even into young adulthood and I gained a ton of weight very fast, so when this stuff began happening, I actually was really confused for a long time. I never expected it and I couldn't figure out what was wrong, why anybody would be that way when they'd never seen me before in their lives and I was nothing but polite. It was really hard on my ego in my younger days. I mean I came from a life greatly on stage, and a fashion zombie, and I was in management and even executive work from very young, and to have someone who given their job role and actions likely had half what I had to offer and half my income but they were acting like I was pond scum because they were also half my size, was really tough. I would be thinking back then, Seriously? YOU, are treating ME like this?! It was a massive psychological adjustment on my part. I had a lot of judgmentalism myself in those days, even about other fat people, even people thinner than myself!, and it was hell to work through.

I still have to force myself to deal with the cultural bias we're all exposed to. I'll see someone 25# overweight with their stomach hanging over their jeans and think really? God that's so trashy, why are they doing that? And then I think good god PJ, are you really going to be in judgement about someone else's weight or clothing? How ridiculous. They are probably lovely people. My point is only that bias is everywhere, and everyone fights it, even the people in the position to suffer for it. I fight bias against women I grew up with (stupid and helpless and/or manipulative bimbos in the media didn't help -- "Duck, Magnum!" as she wails uselessly while he gets his ass kicked lol), I fight bias against fat people and I am sure there are others.

I'm pretty sure I have a bias against communists and I know several who are lovely people but it's a bias I grew up with. (I married a former communist who escaped from the Eastern Bloc once, although that was a lesson on many levels...)

I don't blame people for being subject to the bias all of us face. I simply hope that the opportunity of being around good people who are NOT the negative stereotypes will give others the chance to recognize and improve -- or at least learn a little more diplomacy, for their own good in the end, often. ;-)

PJ

I'm apparently going to get torn apart for sharing my opinion, which I'm totally entitled to as is anyone else, so I'll keep to myself from now on.

The response if you're an adult is, "I just generalized in an insulting fashion in the worst possible group of people for it." You could learn to be more diplomatic with it, or simply keep the more insulting stereotypes to yourself.

It doesn't mean you have to keep every opinion to yourself. You are certainly entitled (to give it publicly, and others are entitled to respond).

But chances are we all have far more in common than we have different and we would probably get along famously on any other topic. ;-)

PJ

I didn't mean to stereotype anyone, not trying to sound that way. I'm referring to people who meet the criteria I stated, I never said "all fat people are evil" or something screwed up like that. I simply said that I don't like when people abuse the fact that they're obese and listed some of the ways they do so. I'll just refrain from discussion, though- better safe than sorry. I have an unpopular viewpoint obviously.

You are being judgmental about a group of people you accuse of moral sins : sloth and gluttony.

For you, not being lazy and not overeating is a matter of will and if someone doesn't have this will, you don't respect him.

Except thin people can be lazy and eat poorly, if they have a good metabolism, it won't show on their bodies... and yet you don't judge them.

Here's your first comment on this thread. Does seem like a generalization. You didn't say "all" or "most," but you did say "often."

You're entitled to your opinion. On an open forum like this, people can question your opinion. Are we entitled to opinions about opinions? Where do we draw the line, exactly?

Your defense of this opinion is an anecdote about a single woman on a reality show. What else do you have? Have you read studies of obese people, showing the rate of disability fakery? On what basis did you use the qualifier "often?"