I don’t really consider myself a fat basher, some may say otherwise, but what drives me batty is when some overweight people state that I just don’t understand because I’m skinny…they explain to me how hard or impossible it is to lose weight. But they have ** no idea ** how freakin hard I have to work now to stay the same size and not gain weight. I do understand, I do battle with it every day too. Why assume that it’s easier for me to do it?
But that really neither here nor there with respect to the OP. Altough I have passed the same judgment before…while it may not necessarily be true of that woman, I think we all know at least one overweight person who bitches and moans and complains about being overweight and regularly eats very very bad food choices…and maybe it spills over to overweight people in general…especially when I see them blithely eating a donut…
Along with what gobear has said, let me add to it.
I’ve just lost 36.6 pounds over the past two months through attending Weight Watchers and following their program.
Looking at a picture of me from last September and this past Sunday when I took a picture are night and day.
I am working on it because I want to do it for myself. When some assholes attempted to shame or guilt me into it, I got depressed and angry, felt that no matter what I did I was destined to fail, so why bother?
I have multiple sclerosis, so my mobility is decreased, as is my energy level. I really did not see that weight loss was even possible because of the variables of a lesser ability to move about and to increase my metabolic process via exercise.
Add to this some incredible DICKWEEDS who give me looks of condesention and disapproval when I’ve had to use a motorized cart while shopping because I was too physically tired to walk around a large store to shop. Even after the weight loss, I’ve generally been too damn tired to walk around a huge store to get my essential shopping done. I still get the looks from some arrogant people who think I’m in the cart because I’m some lazy slob.
Judgment upon judgement.
I am now looking completely proportional to my height(6’4"). I will get looks from people when I buy a Smart Ones(Weight Watchers brand) desserts or fat free ice cream as a treat.
I do not need your judgement or looks of scorn.
I am 40 pounds away from weighing what I did when I was 20. Even with my circumstances, I’m doing it. How dare you give me looks because you presume in your arrogance that you know what my circumstances are?
As I have lost 36.6 pounds in two months, I can concievably lose the rest in about 2.5 months. I don’t need any bullshit from assholes who think they have the right to put their narrow views on me.
All of this is much worse from the behaviour of gay men.
Men in the bear community act like in my weightloss I have become a traitor, and other gay men act as if I am Shamu for not looking like Kate Moss.
This is no reflection on gobear or what he had to say, but is an augmentation in agreement.
Bingo! And I, as a disliker of cheap-Libertarianisms will now say, the last thing we can do is solve this problem with more government regulation!
I love Big Macs, I love Fast Food. Its yummy and tasty. But guess what, I don’t eat checks that my ass can’t burn. (World’s worst mixed metaphor)
Plenty of times I’ve been in a Fast Food place and made my order when someone behind me comments about how I must be supremely lucky to be able to eat like that and stay thin. Invariable this person is going towards the Wide side of Load. All I can say is “luck got nothing to do with it”. Perhaps the bike clothing should have tipped them off. I’m car free and my every move around town is paid with burned calories. On busy days I’ve been known to have four, even five meals. I can afford to do that.
Not everyone can do what I’m doing, of course. But there are more alternatives than you might think. The person behind me laments their weight, then orders a SUPERSIZED MEAL, (with a diet coke of course, because that makes up for everything). When I’ve talked to some people who have a problem with weight about this kind of habit, they complain that there’s no alternative. To which I say “Bullshit”, every damn fast food chain in this world has some kind of lighter fare on their menu. Those foods probably never break the top ten in sales, but there still there. Why? Because despite the claims of lawuist happy lawyers, there is some sense of providing options for the diner in most restaraunt facilities. (There is also some profit to be had to covering a small market). Personally, I’ve never had a salad at Mickey D’s, but I’ve never had to. Just because someone else can’t be bothered to order a salad there doesn’t mean I should have to pay extra tax for the tasty (and fatty) foods that I enjoy?
Me too. It’s definitely harder to be thin than to be fat. I have to say “no” to my food cravings all the time. I want a candy bar. No. I want another slice of pizza. No. I want a bag of chips. No. Part of it is realizing the desires come from the body just wanting salty, fatty, sweet things all the time. So the desire is not because I have a nutritional need to eat something. It’s still hard to say no all the time, but in the long run it’s worth it.
I’m back to my college weight and I feel great. I can easily buy clothes and they all fit well. I don’t get stared at when shopping. It’s so easy to walk around. So it’s worth it to deal with the short-term denial of the food cravings to have a much enhanced quality of life.
Hell, if there were no consequences, I’d eat donuts all day. But unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.
Well, Mockingbird, if we were boyfriends, this is what I’d say:
Shaming obese people, mocking them, making them feel bad for thae way they look is not only bad morality, but it is counter productive to the goal of encouraging weight loss. What you have to do with the heavy people in your life is to love them no matter what and encourage them to love themselves. While I think all people need to improve their fitness, the important thing to do is to let folks know that they are loved always for who they are, not what they look like.
Shaming is bad, but a certain level of confrontation is going to be needed for the problematic obese to confront things. Enabling is certainly not going to help (“Im fat because of glands/society/diebetes”). Confrontation must be metered with positive support
In an ironic twist, as I mentioned above, I’m getting a little tired of some obese people who have been giving me some grief for being healthy. Acting as if my physique was handed to me on a silver platter as an unearned priveledge they were cruelly denied. I may explode at the next comment I hear about how “its not fair” that I’m so fit compared to them. (Never mind what is invovled in keeping myself this way.)
On the other hand, maybe its my fault for eating where the fat people eat…
Mockingbird - I’m sorry, I know I’m missing the point but it seems to me that if you can lose 36 lbs in 2 months with multiple sclerosis then there’s no excuse for anyone to get out of shape**
Sure there may be some morbidly obese people who just don’t want to get thin, for whatever reason, but (and this is sheer conjecture but it’s so commonsensical that I’d need a lot of convincing to change my mind on this assertion) I’d bet dollars to, umm…donuts that the percentage of morbidly obese people who want to change but just can’t muster the willpower easily outnumber those whose ego’s are so strong and have such high self esteem that they can let the comments of people like the OP and the pressure to be thin exerted by the Media. I believe this simply because carrying round enough weight to be medically classified as morbidly obese has so many negative health impacts (such as increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, lethargy and fatigue and deep vein thrombosis to name but a few) and makes it so much harder to sustain high self esteem.
In light of this, I see little problem with the generalisation “The majority of fat people are fat because they just cannot be bothered to take the time and trouble (as you have done) to reach a healthy weight” provided that it is recognised as a generalisation and not an accurate assessment of all fat people.
As such, I choose not to waste any time pitying or coddling fat people until I know that they either have a medical condition or are happy with the way they are.
I’m not asking them to ‘prove themselves’ to me or anything, I’m just trying to put my view of fat people into context.
When I see a fat person scoffing donuts my gut reaction is “You weakling!”
I guess that makes me a bad person.
Anyone except people with hyperthyroidism and other similar conditions
P.S. - People who tease other people because they’re overweight, or too thin, or too short or too tall or have bright red hair or a breast on their foreheads or whatever need to be thrown in a hole and beaten. I’ve known two people who have attempted suicide because they have been the victim of cruel comments about their appearance on a regular basis (both failed). One of these people was, and still is, extremely fat. He constantly bemoans his weight but still eats at McDonalds and KFC. He doesn’t even go for Diet Coke fer cryin’ out loud. He has a heart of gold and I love him like a brother, but everytime he talks about losing weight or 'feeling like a blimp" (his words) I inwardly curse his lack of willpower. I do consider him weak.
I didn’t finish this sentence. It should read "they can let the comments of people like the OP and the pressure to be thin exerted by the Media like water off a ducks back."
Hey, filmore, it sounds to me like you might share my addiction to white carbs. Have you ever considered cutting them out completely? I swear to you, once I got past the withdrawals (which lasted a few days, and thanks to an amino acid supplement were not as bad as I had feared they may be), I don’t have these cravings anymore! I don’t want a donut. Or a slice of pizza (when we do order pizza, we get the kind with lots of toppings, which I scrape off and eat with a knife and fork), and when I do get an occasional hankering for a candy bar, I get a sugar-free one (just one), enjoy it, and that’s that. It’s so much easier to give the stuff up all together (IMHO) than struggle with the cravings!
There might not be any excuse to get out of shape in the first place, but it happens all the time. As I said earlier, I was even fat as a little kid. It really wasn’t my fault that I got fat, I blame my mother for that; now that I’m an adult, it’s my decision whether or not to do something about it. I am not working on losing weight because my physical appearance offends some people! I’m doing it for me and the people I love! Also, I did want to point out to you that Mockingbird has lost an extraordinary amount of weight for the time period he’s been dieting. A lot of factors come into play, but for most physically healthy people (who, unlike our Mockingbird can follow a regular exercise program) , following a balanced diet, the most they can really hope for is 6-8 pounds a month. Your implication seems to be that if Mockingbird can lose weight that fast, anyone could lose it that fast; this just doesn’t seem to be true.
Mockingbird, congrats on your weight loss! Have you tried any of those exercise videos that are made for disabled people and can be done sitting down?
I feel the need to address those posters who think that eating and exercise is soley individual choice.
From a societal perspective, a bottom line is economic rationalism. Companies spend a great deal of money to find out how to get people to eat/use their products. This includes both healthy and non-healthy options.
Macdonalds employ psychologists to tell them what will hook small children into eating their products and shopping malls employ psychologists to find out how to get people to shop there.
They are not concerned with individuals, they are concerned with making money.
If we want a healthy nation, then yes, people’s health is a societal issue as well as a personal one, because a nation’s health is does not necessarily have anything to do with making money. There needs to be community measures to counterbalance the poor food/exercise choices that many people make.
I have been amazed to find many places in the States where you cannot easily walk between shops or cross roads - encouraging people to never leave their cars or where roadside stops only offer greasy fastfood. There are ofcourse some enlightened places like Canberra in Australia that promote physical activity by making bike riding lanes and courses as part of their town planning or in Holland where exercise courses are included in park areas.
People are however, not public property. It is not your right to tell a stranger that they are obese, anymore than it is your right to wolf whistle at a women with bit tits.
Its called “Market Research” and usually allowed. As long as no one forces Burgers down someone’s throat then there is still the human choice of deciding which food to eat. I refuse utterly to blame McD’s marketing for someone being unable to eat in a healthy manner.
To an extent, yes. Extra taxation and blaming corporations is not part of that solution. Its merely blame game.
It’s not surprising that so many of these smug assertions about people who are overweight are in the pit. That way, the simple-minded don’t have to provide documentation for their claims.
You’re right – it’s not rocket science. It’s bariatric science and you appear to know next to nothing about it. Why don’t you do a little reading on current research?
BTW, I think that lying to make your point shows how weak your argument is.
Would anyone care to speculate what would happen if you placed vast amounts of food before the Sudanese people – and then told them it was poison? Would they eat it or not?
People adrift at sea long enough drink salt water – even though they know it will kill them. Are they lacking in will power?
How about people who resort to cannabalism when there is nothing else to eat? Are they lacking in will power? Their bodies are sending them chemical signals that they are starving and so they eat. Some people get those same starvation signals when they are actually not starving at all. Are they lacking in will power?
Is someone who loses 240 pounds by diet and exercise lacking in will power? Of course not! That is, until they gain it back because their body chemistry compels them to.
Tarantula, what do you know about fat storage and how it varies from person to person? What do you know about obsessive-compulsive behavior?
I also think that it is okay to talk about these things in a message board. But don’t kid yourself that these comments here are exactly “behind their backs.” Overweight people still have the choice of not reading, of course. Maybe they just have a compulsion to fight ignorance.
But I am left scratching my head when some here complain that they are sick of hearing overweight people talk about their problems and then read and post here!
Exactly! I like the idea, but I think the compulsion to bash people may be an indication of a lack of self-discipline and will power. Really! Some people become physically addicted to the chemical rush they get from verbal abuse.
There are ways of discussing these issues without the use of verbal abuse and some of you do that. If the bashers really wanted to fight their own ignorance, they would have to overcome this compulsion.
Believe me, they already know they are overweight.
When I have the energy, I get out my yoga mat and my DVD of Basic Yoga for Dummies.
I haven’t been able to afford it, but I do go to water aerobics for MS when I can.
Mostly, the slow process of cleaning my house has been the sum total of my regular workout.
One thing that augments my weightloss is that I am a type 2 diabetic and am on metformin and glipizide. Those boost the weightloss considerably with the Weight Watchers plan and working out as possible.
Ok. That is a different story. And, I don’t mean to take anything away from the difficulty of a genuine addiction but it still is a choice that these people are making.
People beat addictions because they choose to defeat them. Alcolholics do it, Smokers do it, drug addicts do it. Etc.
I say that not to be judgemental just that the element of choice is not absent simply because someone is addicted or troubled.
No question. I find myself annoyed by people with self-destructive and bad habits specifically because I have a propensity in that direction myself, so such things have an aspect of self-loathing in them, no question.
I try to recognize and compensate for it, and when I do that I am still left with the conviction that people that engage in self-destructive behavior are making bad choices.
Worse are the parents of children who are obviously on the path to obesity who tell tehmselves that their child isn’t fat and that he’ll “grow into it”. It was such a problem that the AMA said for pediatricians to actually start being more confrontational with the parents of obses kids.
Overweight people still have the choice of not reading, of course. Maybe they just have a compulsion to fight ignorance.