On that other site, I saw a lot of comments about sitting on our fat asses, eating McDonald’s, and how that’s causing our obesity–I do neither. My diet consists largely of fresh vegetables, grains, chicken breast two to three nights a week. And I get exercise. And I am still heavy–and there are a lot of people like me out there.

I wanted to address this too.

You see, I am just like you. Even when I was at my biggest size, I hated fast food. I haven’t had fast food in years. I ate a pretty good diet… it was HOW MUCH good food I was eating. Portion size is everything. You can get fat on healthy food! One of my favorite healthy foods used to be whole grain olive bread dipped in massive amounts of olive oil. LOL.

You must take in less calories than you expend. There is no other way.

I haven’t condoned anything. In fact, I went over to their site to correct some BS about how obesity is like “addiction” and one needs “willpower” and so forth.

And actually, I see that site as more of a rant space for spouses, so yeah, people are going to say “ranty” things there to blow off steam. I really don’t care about that.

I care about health. And I think the FA movement is totally misguided when it comes to health. The FA movement is right about namecalling and discrimination and totally wrong about fat people being “healthy.”

that’s all.

I’ll tell you a little secret: I’m NOT one of those Fat Acceptance people. I think that in the face of the knowledge we have about obesity, and what causes it, we should still be striving to be healthy individuals. On that other site, I saw a lot of comments about sitting on our fat asses, eating McDonald’s, and how that’s causing our obesity–I do neither. My diet consists largely of fresh vegetables, grains, chicken breast two to three nights a week. And I get exercise. And I am still heavy–and there are a lot of people like me out there.

What I do think it means for we obese is that we should be setting our goals for health reasons, not “I want to weigh x number of pounds” and then beating ourselves up when it doesn’t happen, and when we can’t maintain it, and then we say “f it” and spiral back into a place of self-loathing. I think that if certain people didn’t go around screaming that it’s because we’re lazy and we don’t love them, and if certain industries didn’t beat it into our heads that we’re not thin because we are bad people and can’t control our eating, we could work to find better solutions for a real cure for obesity–which, knowing what is known now about how the body sends hunger signals, is likely to involve hormone therapy. This makes more medical sense than “you’re just fat because you like to eat”–the endocrine system controls just about everything in our bodies, from our sex drive to our body temperature to growth to our activity level–and, hunger. It’s as easy to willfully control hunger as it is to, say, change your temperature a few degrees by the sheer power of your mind.

It also makes sense because most naturally thin people don’t consciously regulate their food. They might think that it’s because they have awesome willpower, but in truth, their bodies just know when to stop. (I’ve never seen a person who doesn’t struggle with his or her weight measuring and weighing every bit of food they eat, and counting calories, the way that we have to, to stay their weight–have you?) Our bodies, for whatever reason, don’t know when to stop, and I think that is what needs to be addressed before we can have a shot at curing obesity.