How disgusting is this...
I choose to be fat
Doctors have bullied me about my weight for years, but obesity has given me the armor I needed to survive
By Laura Bogart
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/25/i_choose_to_be_fat/
The doctor glances up from the first page of my chart — the only page he actually looks at — with the condescending smile that men in bars will flash me, the fat chick, when they edge past me to chat up my friend. As if merely acknowledging me is an expression of great tolerance.
I’m at the clinic at my therapist’s behest. My therapist is a petite woman with opinions as sharp as her suits. She has told me that she will stop treating me if I don’t begin a weight loss program. I am 23 at the time, and I don’t know that I can say no to her. She’s wept when I’ve shared stories of my father’s rages; she’s asked to see my scars. And she says that, by not forcing me to confront this horrible hindrance that is my body, she is “enabling” me, allowing me to deny myself my brightest, happiest life.
I might as well tell you now that this essay won’t end with a scene from that brighter, happier life: an image of a newly svelte me out hiking or auditioning a red dress for a hot date, reflecting that I’d never known the beauty of the world — and of myself — until I’d lost the weight. This is not that kind of essay. It’s an explanation and a celebration of a single decision: Even if I never lost a single pound, I’d be just fine. I’d be better than fine.
But this decision is still a seedling in frozen soil back when I am 23 years old and sitting in front of a doctor who is more interested in my chart than in resuming eye contact. He says something to me, but I don’t hear him over the bloodrush thumping between my ears. My last time on an exam table, a year or so earlier, a gynecologist as tiny and wizened as my Sicilian grandmother began extolling the virtues of bariatric surgery while I was in the stirrups.
“The weight just flies right off,” she’d chirped, jabbing in the speculum. I’d played off my tears as an effect of that quick pinch, but I’m still leveled by her words every time my hands sweep my hips in the shower or I look into my rearview mirror to smooth on lipstick.
Back at the new doctor’s office, five of his cohorts crowd the doorway: They are my “treatment team.” They talk of weigh-ins and biometrics, nutritional planning and low-impact exercise eventually ramping up to “intensive cardio.”
As soon as they leave to let me get undressed, I escape like a fat girl Jason Bourne. Just like that seedling knows how to muscle up from the earth, I know that I will not be measured and weighed and found wanting. My only choices seem to be getting caught in the wheel of the weight loss bandwagon and dragged through the dirt, or standing up and dusting myself off to say “enough.” I’m going to be OK as I am — even if what I am is obese.
*****
The arc of my life has been defined by my waistline: Shop clerks give me the side-eye, direct me to accessories; the arms of chairs pinch my hips; an old woman sitting next to me on the bus yells aloud that I’m crowding her off her seat. It never stops being painful, but as I’ve gotten older, it’s become like that sore spot on my heel, now tombed in callus. Still, that moment with my “treatment team” remains raw: It distills my experiences into an inescapable truth — that I am not my accomplishments. I am a problem to be solved.
There have never been so many ways to lose weight. As always, there are ye olde fad diets dressed in the chic new threads of scientific research. There are so many shades to the bariatric surgery rainbow: lap-bands and sleeve gastrectomies and gastric bypasses, oh my! Everything is gluten-free and nothing has carbs.
If I’d stayed with my “treatment team,” I’d be as exuberant and fit as one of those “after” models in a Jenny Craig ad, crowing about all the energy I have now and all the cute clothes I can wear. I defiantly remain a “before.” I am 250 pounds. I wear a size 24. Whenever the women around me talk about how great so-and-so looks now that she’s joined that pricey gym or gone under the knife (even if so-and-so is still sort of a *****), I remember purging and popping pills and eating three well-balanced meals a day; binging and starving and reading “Anna Karenina” on a StairMaster. But none of it left me happier or healthier. Just hungry.
*****
I’d packed on the pounds as a neglected child whose father passed out when his rage was spent, whose mother was petrified to move, to wake him. I was a little girl whose dinners always went cold. So I enacted a kid’s version of nourishment, swallowing fistfuls of Cheese-Its and pulling the cheese off left-over pizza. I took that lead-bellied feeling of fullness for actual satisfaction. I binged because I was frenzied with need. If I didn’t sink my teeth into something — anything — I wouldn’t know I was alive. “Food is not love” may have usurped “nothing tastes as good as thin feels” as the diet evangelist’s koan du jour, but I will never begrudge that little girl anything she had to do to survive.
Gaining weight opened me up for heartache in all the expected ways; it also armored me. I was never going to fit in with girls who could hold slumber parties at their houses, girls whose fathers ran out for pizza and sodas (then disappeared to the den), girls who’d expect to be invited back to my house in return. My body sheathed me in distance.
Losing weight may be as simple as joining a walking after work Meetup or forgoing the homemade cupcakes a co-worker brings in on Monday, but I’m not interested in sacrifices. Not anymore. I’ve spent my whole life capitulating to other people’s expectations: to always walk on tiptoe when Daddy was drunk, to know what would set him off when guessing his triggers was like playing Whack-A-Mole; to swallow my mother’s secrets and keep racking up A’s; to become the perfect girlfriend — always down to ****, then make breakfast in bed; always ready to talk about whatever you want to talk about, honey, to go wherever you want to go — just so I’d never be left alone.
This realization didn’t come easily, or even consciously. It was a current that first started swirling inside my therapy sessions. I’d listen to my therapist fret about how unhealthy I must be, how my weight reflected my (supposed) belief that I didn’t deserve to be happy, and I’d hear my father’s voice telling me that I was clumsy and stupid, and lucky that he knew what was best for me. I’d hear my mother tell me that he was right, that it was best to appease him, to make myself quiet and small.
*****
When you’re obese, you are your body. Every decision you make is viewed through the prism of your weight. Do you order the salad at lunch? Good for you! You’re taking control of your health. Do your order the pasta primavera? You don’t love yourself enough. Are you sitting alone on a park bench? You’re alone and lonely: Nobody can really love you until you love yourself. You couldn’t possibly just prefer solitude.
Recently, I was outside walking sans dog and a woman in a hatchback rolled down her window to flash me a thumbs up and call out (quite sincerely): “Good for you, honey!” She assumed that, as a fat woman walking, I was trying to lose weight. I was, in fact, trying to puzzle out a particularly tricky section of the novel I’m writing.
If you don’t conform to the norm, you’re expected to sweat yourself into a headline: “How One Woman Went from Obesity to a Bikini Body.” As if the two are mutually exclusive. But if you choose, as I have chosen, to stop the presses, to throw out all the “inspirational” sizes in your closet, that your weekly meals don’t have to be more meticulously planned than the raid that killed Bin Laden, you aren’t just flipping off cultural expectations; you’re upending other people’s hopes for you.
I remember meeting with my thesis advisor in my final week of college. I was the thinnest I’d ever been, a size 12. Starvation shrank my stomach into a fist. I felt dizzy, but I felt light, and that was all that mattered. Still, I was quietly devastated when, instead of complimenting my research and writing, my advisor praised my weight loss. “You’ve really taken control,” he said, as if my weight were some Sasquatch I’d wrestled back to its cave.
I wonder what my advisor would think of me now that I’m fatter than I’ve ever been. Perhaps he’d say I was out of control, though I have a full-time gig and a robust byline. I contain multitudes (some might say literally). I eat grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches sometimes, and sometimes I eat kale. I walk my dog for a mile a day but I will never board a StairMaster again.
This is why the Dr. Oz-approved narrative on weight loss disturbs me. Every story is a straight line from Point I’m Such a Fat Failure to Point Look at Me Now! Given that an estimated 80-90 percent of people who lose weight will gain it back within five years that straight line is made of tinsel — shimmering and pretty, but easily severed.
In every special episode about weight loss, tearful brides lament how big they look in wedding photos, as if the 26-inch waist they have now negates the husbands who’ve always loved them. Fathers choke up remembering the day they knew they “had to make a change,” the day their toddlers randomly called them fat, as if that observational indictment means more than all those “I love you’s.” There’s always a former Miss Lonelyheart, a thirtysomething virgin who — after a gastric bypass or militant adherence to the Paleo diet — has shed half her body weight and is finally ready for Mr. Right. I’ve no doubt that they really do feel healthier and happier, and honestly (truly) good for them. I just wish that the entirety of their lives weren’t reduced to a single achievement.
Now, I’m more concerned with what my blood work reveals than what the number on the scale says. Any physician who partners with me must understand this; I want a doctor who sits across from me, not a squadron that blocks the door. And once I found a new therapist, I felt lighter than I had in years.
Some argue that classifying obesity as a disease — as the American Medical Association has recently done — destigmatizes it, but the language of disease is unremittingly aggressive: We say “**** Cancer” and “Beat Diabetes.” We speak of people in treatment as “fighting a battle.”
I have fought against myself for so very long, against everything I’d internalized: everything my father told me I was, everything my mother told me I couldn’t do; everything the kids at school told me I looked like, everything my (supposed) care providers swore I should be. I’ve laid down my arms. I will simply be.
I am not a pathology. I am breasts and belly that bounce softly with my every step, thighs that sweep each other, and a rear end that rolls along behind me like that final note after a song has ended.
Whenever I doubt myself, whenever I feel ugly, I turn to the one photo I have of myself as a child. I’m seven years old, and I’m beginning to plump up. My belly strains the fabric of my footie pajamas, but I am all smiles, fists at my hips in a Superman pose, a baby blanket cape around my neck. I’m starting to be teased at school, and the lunch ladies give me smaller spoonfuls of mashed potatoes, but I’m not ashamed (not yet). I don’t care about being beautiful or fitting in. In this moment, I know that no matter what happens to me, no matter what I’ll endure, I am powerful.
Doctors have bullied me about my weight for years, but obesity has given me the armor I needed to survive
By Laura Bogart
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/25/i_choose_to_be_fat/
The doctor glances up from the first page of my chart — the only page he actually looks at — with the condescending smile that men in bars will flash me, the fat chick, when they edge past me to chat up my friend. As if merely acknowledging me is an expression of great tolerance.
I’m at the clinic at my therapist’s behest. My therapist is a petite woman with opinions as sharp as her suits. She has told me that she will stop treating me if I don’t begin a weight loss program. I am 23 at the time, and I don’t know that I can say no to her. She’s wept when I’ve shared stories of my father’s rages; she’s asked to see my scars. And she says that, by not forcing me to confront this horrible hindrance that is my body, she is “enabling” me, allowing me to deny myself my brightest, happiest life.
I might as well tell you now that this essay won’t end with a scene from that brighter, happier life: an image of a newly svelte me out hiking or auditioning a red dress for a hot date, reflecting that I’d never known the beauty of the world — and of myself — until I’d lost the weight. This is not that kind of essay. It’s an explanation and a celebration of a single decision: Even if I never lost a single pound, I’d be just fine. I’d be better than fine.
But this decision is still a seedling in frozen soil back when I am 23 years old and sitting in front of a doctor who is more interested in my chart than in resuming eye contact. He says something to me, but I don’t hear him over the bloodrush thumping between my ears. My last time on an exam table, a year or so earlier, a gynecologist as tiny and wizened as my Sicilian grandmother began extolling the virtues of bariatric surgery while I was in the stirrups.
“The weight just flies right off,” she’d chirped, jabbing in the speculum. I’d played off my tears as an effect of that quick pinch, but I’m still leveled by her words every time my hands sweep my hips in the shower or I look into my rearview mirror to smooth on lipstick.
Back at the new doctor’s office, five of his cohorts crowd the doorway: They are my “treatment team.” They talk of weigh-ins and biometrics, nutritional planning and low-impact exercise eventually ramping up to “intensive cardio.”
As soon as they leave to let me get undressed, I escape like a fat girl Jason Bourne. Just like that seedling knows how to muscle up from the earth, I know that I will not be measured and weighed and found wanting. My only choices seem to be getting caught in the wheel of the weight loss bandwagon and dragged through the dirt, or standing up and dusting myself off to say “enough.” I’m going to be OK as I am — even if what I am is obese.
*****
The arc of my life has been defined by my waistline: Shop clerks give me the side-eye, direct me to accessories; the arms of chairs pinch my hips; an old woman sitting next to me on the bus yells aloud that I’m crowding her off her seat. It never stops being painful, but as I’ve gotten older, it’s become like that sore spot on my heel, now tombed in callus. Still, that moment with my “treatment team” remains raw: It distills my experiences into an inescapable truth — that I am not my accomplishments. I am a problem to be solved.
There have never been so many ways to lose weight. As always, there are ye olde fad diets dressed in the chic new threads of scientific research. There are so many shades to the bariatric surgery rainbow: lap-bands and sleeve gastrectomies and gastric bypasses, oh my! Everything is gluten-free and nothing has carbs.
If I’d stayed with my “treatment team,” I’d be as exuberant and fit as one of those “after” models in a Jenny Craig ad, crowing about all the energy I have now and all the cute clothes I can wear. I defiantly remain a “before.” I am 250 pounds. I wear a size 24. Whenever the women around me talk about how great so-and-so looks now that she’s joined that pricey gym or gone under the knife (even if so-and-so is still sort of a *****), I remember purging and popping pills and eating three well-balanced meals a day; binging and starving and reading “Anna Karenina” on a StairMaster. But none of it left me happier or healthier. Just hungry.
*****
I’d packed on the pounds as a neglected child whose father passed out when his rage was spent, whose mother was petrified to move, to wake him. I was a little girl whose dinners always went cold. So I enacted a kid’s version of nourishment, swallowing fistfuls of Cheese-Its and pulling the cheese off left-over pizza. I took that lead-bellied feeling of fullness for actual satisfaction. I binged because I was frenzied with need. If I didn’t sink my teeth into something — anything — I wouldn’t know I was alive. “Food is not love” may have usurped “nothing tastes as good as thin feels” as the diet evangelist’s koan du jour, but I will never begrudge that little girl anything she had to do to survive.
Gaining weight opened me up for heartache in all the expected ways; it also armored me. I was never going to fit in with girls who could hold slumber parties at their houses, girls whose fathers ran out for pizza and sodas (then disappeared to the den), girls who’d expect to be invited back to my house in return. My body sheathed me in distance.
Losing weight may be as simple as joining a walking after work Meetup or forgoing the homemade cupcakes a co-worker brings in on Monday, but I’m not interested in sacrifices. Not anymore. I’ve spent my whole life capitulating to other people’s expectations: to always walk on tiptoe when Daddy was drunk, to know what would set him off when guessing his triggers was like playing Whack-A-Mole; to swallow my mother’s secrets and keep racking up A’s; to become the perfect girlfriend — always down to ****, then make breakfast in bed; always ready to talk about whatever you want to talk about, honey, to go wherever you want to go — just so I’d never be left alone.
This realization didn’t come easily, or even consciously. It was a current that first started swirling inside my therapy sessions. I’d listen to my therapist fret about how unhealthy I must be, how my weight reflected my (supposed) belief that I didn’t deserve to be happy, and I’d hear my father’s voice telling me that I was clumsy and stupid, and lucky that he knew what was best for me. I’d hear my mother tell me that he was right, that it was best to appease him, to make myself quiet and small.
*****
When you’re obese, you are your body. Every decision you make is viewed through the prism of your weight. Do you order the salad at lunch? Good for you! You’re taking control of your health. Do your order the pasta primavera? You don’t love yourself enough. Are you sitting alone on a park bench? You’re alone and lonely: Nobody can really love you until you love yourself. You couldn’t possibly just prefer solitude.
Recently, I was outside walking sans dog and a woman in a hatchback rolled down her window to flash me a thumbs up and call out (quite sincerely): “Good for you, honey!” She assumed that, as a fat woman walking, I was trying to lose weight. I was, in fact, trying to puzzle out a particularly tricky section of the novel I’m writing.
If you don’t conform to the norm, you’re expected to sweat yourself into a headline: “How One Woman Went from Obesity to a Bikini Body.” As if the two are mutually exclusive. But if you choose, as I have chosen, to stop the presses, to throw out all the “inspirational” sizes in your closet, that your weekly meals don’t have to be more meticulously planned than the raid that killed Bin Laden, you aren’t just flipping off cultural expectations; you’re upending other people’s hopes for you.
I remember meeting with my thesis advisor in my final week of college. I was the thinnest I’d ever been, a size 12. Starvation shrank my stomach into a fist. I felt dizzy, but I felt light, and that was all that mattered. Still, I was quietly devastated when, instead of complimenting my research and writing, my advisor praised my weight loss. “You’ve really taken control,” he said, as if my weight were some Sasquatch I’d wrestled back to its cave.
I wonder what my advisor would think of me now that I’m fatter than I’ve ever been. Perhaps he’d say I was out of control, though I have a full-time gig and a robust byline. I contain multitudes (some might say literally). I eat grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches sometimes, and sometimes I eat kale. I walk my dog for a mile a day but I will never board a StairMaster again.
This is why the Dr. Oz-approved narrative on weight loss disturbs me. Every story is a straight line from Point I’m Such a Fat Failure to Point Look at Me Now! Given that an estimated 80-90 percent of people who lose weight will gain it back within five years that straight line is made of tinsel — shimmering and pretty, but easily severed.
In every special episode about weight loss, tearful brides lament how big they look in wedding photos, as if the 26-inch waist they have now negates the husbands who’ve always loved them. Fathers choke up remembering the day they knew they “had to make a change,” the day their toddlers randomly called them fat, as if that observational indictment means more than all those “I love you’s.” There’s always a former Miss Lonelyheart, a thirtysomething virgin who — after a gastric bypass or militant adherence to the Paleo diet — has shed half her body weight and is finally ready for Mr. Right. I’ve no doubt that they really do feel healthier and happier, and honestly (truly) good for them. I just wish that the entirety of their lives weren’t reduced to a single achievement.
Now, I’m more concerned with what my blood work reveals than what the number on the scale says. Any physician who partners with me must understand this; I want a doctor who sits across from me, not a squadron that blocks the door. And once I found a new therapist, I felt lighter than I had in years.
Some argue that classifying obesity as a disease — as the American Medical Association has recently done — destigmatizes it, but the language of disease is unremittingly aggressive: We say “**** Cancer” and “Beat Diabetes.” We speak of people in treatment as “fighting a battle.”
I have fought against myself for so very long, against everything I’d internalized: everything my father told me I was, everything my mother told me I couldn’t do; everything the kids at school told me I looked like, everything my (supposed) care providers swore I should be. I’ve laid down my arms. I will simply be.
I am not a pathology. I am breasts and belly that bounce softly with my every step, thighs that sweep each other, and a rear end that rolls along behind me like that final note after a song has ended.
Whenever I doubt myself, whenever I feel ugly, I turn to the one photo I have of myself as a child. I’m seven years old, and I’m beginning to plump up. My belly strains the fabric of my footie pajamas, but I am all smiles, fists at my hips in a Superman pose, a baby blanket cape around my neck. I’m starting to be teased at school, and the lunch ladies give me smaller spoonfuls of mashed potatoes, but I’m not ashamed (not yet). I don’t care about being beautiful or fitting in. In this moment, I know that no matter what happens to me, no matter what I’ll endure, I am powerful.
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Replies
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Why do you think it is disgusting? its her choice.0
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Honestly this sounds like one very long excuse to eat whatever and ignore the consequences. But if that's her decision, good for her. Different strokes for different folks.0
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Why do you think it is disgusting? its her choice.
You're kidding... right?0 -
Why is she disgusting?0
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I suggest you head to the library or book store and pick up a copy of She's Come Undone.Why do you think it is disgusting? its her choice.
You're kidding... right?0 -
What a beautifully written, heart breaking story. She can choose whatever she wants. Not sure why anyone else would care?0
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the girl is 23. it's very easy to feel strong and defiant against something in your late teens and early twenties.
i doubt she'll feel the same in twenty years. and one day she'll probably look back at all she's missed because she is overweight.0 -
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Author has some serious issues0
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Why is she disgusting?
He's not saying she is disgusting, he's saying what she deliberately is choosing to do is disgusting.0 -
Why do you think it is disgusting? its her choice.
You're kidding... right?
It is her choice, even though she is just slowly killing herself. People who don't care about themselves can find ways to be content with all sorts of bad behavior: be it overeating, not exercising, doing drugs, sex addiction...you name it. She obviously has deep seated self esteem issues, and she's fighting against one thing she shouldn't be: her health. Still like another poster said, it is her choice, and she's not hurting ANYONE except for herself.0 -
OP, you're training to be a PA? I feel sorry for your patients. Empathy is an important quality in a health care professional.0
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I suggest you head to the library or book store and pick up a copy of She's Come Undone.Why do you think it is disgusting? its her choice.
You're kidding... right?
The book is selling disinformation to dieters that don't want to take responsibility for their bad decisions. They don't have an innate genetic disposition to be hungrier than others. Their continued overeating has changed their urge to eat (google epigenetics if you want to learn more). So technically they do have more urges to eat, but that's only because they have consistently overate throughout their life. Habits, good and bad are formed and can be undone. She just doesnt want to.
I just looked through the author's other articles and saw one called "My best relationship is with my dog". I'm not surprised.0 -
Based on whose standards? Someone makes a personal choice not to live the ideal another person deems correct and that person is then "disgusting"?Why is she disgusting?
He's not saying she is disgusting, he's saying what she deliberately is choosing to do is disgusting.0 -
OP, you're training to be a PA? I feel sorry for your patients. Empathy is an important quality in a health care professional.
first off... stop.
secondly. i just went from 231 to 186 pounds since feb. I know what it is to be obese. so take your protest sign elsewhere.0 -
bump0
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OP, you're training to be a PA? I feel sorry for your patients. Empathy is an important quality in a health care professional.
first off... stop.
secondly. i just went from 231 to 186 pounds since feb. I know what it is to be obese. so take your protest sign elsewhere.
^this0 -
Why do you think it is disgusting? its her choice.
You're kidding... right?
It is her choice, even though she is just slowly killing herself. People who don't care about themselves can find ways to be content with all sorts of bad behavior: be it overeating, not exercising, doing drugs, sex addiction...you name it. She obviously has deep seated self esteem issues, and she's fighting against one thing she shouldn't be: her health. Still like another poster said, it is her choice, and she's not hurting ANYONE except for herself.
her family... her community... oh yea and the burden of the healthcare system0 -
Seriously, read the book I suggested. It's fiction, but it may give you some much-needed insight into the psychology of this woman and some of your future patients.
I suggest you head to the library or book store and pick up a copy of She's Come Undone.Why do you think it is disgusting? its her choice.
You're kidding... right?
The book is selling disinformation to dieters that don't want to take responsibility for their bad decisions. They don't have an innate genetic disposition to be hungrier than others. Their continued overeating has changed their urge to eat (google epigenetics if you want to learn more). So technically they do have more urges to eat, but that's only because they have consistently overate throughout their life. Habits, good and bad are formed and can be undone. She just doesnt want to.
I just looked through the author's other articles and saw one called "My best relationship is with my dog". I'm not surprised.0 -
It's her choice but she should understand that actions come with consequences whether you like them or not.0
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Knowing what it is to be obese is not the same as understanding this woman. I don't have a protest sign. I have had bad doctors.OP, you're training to be a PA? I feel sorry for your patients. Empathy is an important quality in a health care professional.
first off... stop.
secondly. i just went from 231 to 186 pounds since feb. I know what it is to be obese. so take your protest sign elsewhere.0 -
its the same as someone who is anorexic. its horrible what they are doing to themselves and its likely the result of some mental disorder.
we should look on these people with sadness and try to get them help.0 -
Short sighted is more like it. Perhaps it does have to do with age and the fact that, at 23, she has no major health problems from her weight. This clearly won't be the case forever.0
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this article is the best thing i've read all day. thanks!
(and to answer your question: not disgusting at all.)0 -
my add kicked in after the first paragraph0
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Why do you think it is disgusting? its her choice.
You're kidding... right?
It is her choice, even though she is just slowly killing herself. People who don't care about themselves can find ways to be content with all sorts of bad behavior: be it overeating, not exercising, doing drugs, sex addiction...you name it. She obviously has deep seated self esteem issues, and she's fighting against one thing she shouldn't be: her health. Still like another poster said, it is her choice, and she's not hurting ANYONE except for herself.
her family... her community... oh yea and the burden of the healthcare system
Burden on the healthcare system? her Community? REALLY? Thank you Mr.Marx, FOR THE GREATER GOOD , I know.0 -
this article is the best thing i've read all day. thanks!
(and to answer your question: not disgusting at all.)
would you feel the same way if it was an anorexic person who was just skin and bones? they are both destroying their health, bodies, future...0 -
Why do you think it is disgusting? its her choice.
You're kidding... right?
It is her choice, even though she is just slowly killing herself. People who don't care about themselves can find ways to be content with all sorts of bad behavior: be it overeating, not exercising, doing drugs, sex addiction...you name it. She obviously has deep seated self esteem issues, and she's fighting against one thing she shouldn't be: her health. Still like another poster said, it is her choice, and she's not hurting ANYONE except for herself.
her family... her community... oh yea and the burden of the healthcare system
^^Yes, true, but have you ever been pressured to make a change? Does it work? I pressured my husband to stop smoking for 10 years, and it didn't work. All it did was ruin our relationship. He finally did stop smoking, but it took him having a SERIOUS health consequence. Some people think they are invincible and that all the statistics don't apply to them, and they don't realize they do until it's almost too late. She has to realize that what she is doing is hurting herself, and decide in her heart to change...not for anyone else, but herself. Only then will she be able to do it (as I'm sure you realized on your weight loss journey).0 -
I think that she really means is that her weight doesn't define her as a person but everyone chooses to see her as a person who needs to lose weight period.
And even though I don't think that remaining obese is the best way to stick it up to the Man, I kinda get that.
I've never been really fat, just 10-20lbs overweight. That's all my family could see.
Last year I lost 20lbs in a little less than 3.5months, and that's all I could hear about. Nothing about the internship I got as a Law student or being a straight-A student or anything about my other accomplishments. It is and always was about weight and it's painful and maddening. It feels like one's persona doesn't really matter as long as they go along with everyone else's expectation.
But I must insist, remaining obese is certainly not the way to prove your point. But I kinda understand her.0 -
Why do you think it is disgusting? its her choice.
You're kidding... right?
It is her choice, even though she is just slowly killing herself. People who don't care about themselves can find ways to be content with all sorts of bad behavior: be it overeating, not exercising, doing drugs, sex addiction...you name it. She obviously has deep seated self esteem issues, and she's fighting against one thing she shouldn't be: her health. Still like another poster said, it is her choice, and she's not hurting ANYONE except for herself.
her family... her community... oh yea and the burden of the healthcare system
Burden on the healthcare system? her Community? REALLY? Thank you Mr.Marx, FOR THE GREATER GOOD , I know.
yes ma'am. Her unwillingness to get health is a burden. It affects her performance at wok, in relationships, with her family. And yes.... we all pay into the health care system. Obesity is the major cause of all CVD and cancers.0
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