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.

I too am like you, obese, and every time i would see a doctor the first thing they wanted to do were the diabetes and blood pressure tests, because they were always sure, always soooo sure, that i had something wrong. And each and every time when my sugar and blood pressure came back normal, the look on the dr’s faces was always so classic… lol…. Jaw hitting floor kind of thing. Because, in their mind, me being 120lbs overweight, I should have something really wrong with me. Last time I saw the doc, before I started losing weight, she said to me, “my goodness, you are heavy but you have the blood pressure of someone that gets exercise, you must be getting exercise!?!?” Oh hell no doc. I sit on my ass all day. She couldn’t understand, and even checked my blood pressure and blood sugar a second time. LOL!!!

So in fact you are correct, some obese people never get the standard co-morbids of diabetes and high blood pressure.

But I am not free of co-morbids…. just the ones the doctors seem to get the most excited about. I have had severe GERD, digestive issues and arthritis related to my weight that are sometimes totally debilitating (before I started losing weight).

I think you are in denial if you are as heavy as you say you are, and believe that you are healthy. I mean to say that with love and respect.

And yes, I do believe in personal choice, although, obesity is not a personal choice, no one sets out to gain weight and become obese, it happens because obesity is an illness. Now, if an adult has cancer, and they choose not to get medical treatment for it, that doesn’t mean they don’t have cancer.

I don’t think that anyone should be discriminated against for an illness or disability. My objections to the “fat acceptance” movement are not the anti-discrimination activities, but the fact that they do not acknowledge obesity as an illness, something science has done for a long time.

I’m a healthy fat person. I exercise and I eat well and take care of myself and go to the doctor and all of my test results are normal. I weigh upwards of 350 pounds. How do you explain this? I know many other fatties who have similar stories.

I’ve been fat all my life and I totally get how ridiculously hard it is to live in the world as a fat person. Of course when the world is telling you there is something wrong with your body, you have two options. You can choose to change your body to go along with what the world is saying or you can chose to tell the world to F off and make your own decisions about the value of your own body. Obviously I chose to do the latter and, you know, it’s a process. Choosing to accept and love and take care of my body doesn’t mean I’m always comfortable with it or never feel too fat for the room or never have nagging thoughts about how I should change myself to fit into the world better. And I don’t have all the answers about this stuff either. It’s a personal choice and it helps to have people around you to help support that choice, just like dieting works better when you have people around you to help you stick with it.

So I guess my point is, fat acceptance is a choice that is working for me. I’m not saying it should work for everybody. What a person chooses to do with is or her fat body is his or her own decision, nobody else’s. Does the fat acceptance movement have to be wrong for your choices to be correct? If not, then why spend time and energy arguing against us?