Yeah, but some of them are dead-on right.
I will readily admit that some folks out there have a slow metabolism. Some of these folks may indeed have a tougher time losing weight than other folks. Tougher, but not impossible.
I have only anecdotal evidence to support that. But some of us minimize the amount we say we eat, either through good-faith mistake or hard-core denial. Been there, done that.
Nothing like a duet.
Just my own little semi-paranoid rant here:
The airlines, as a business, are of course there to make money. The best way for them to make money is to cram as many human beings as possible on an airplane, ergo, they make seats as small as possible so they can get more onto the plane. I find it pretty damn clever, at least in the US, that as the average weight / size of the population goes up, they’ve managed to encourage hostility towards fellow passangers, instead of themselves, when someone doesn’t fit in a seat. Making them buy extra seating space (which some airlines do) and still shrinking seat space further only makes people who are overwieght look like the ‘bad guys’, while the airlines look like the long-suffering company who’s only trying to be… I don’t know? Polite? Kind? Patronizing?
I dunno. I don’t like the way that this has become the passengers’ (who paid to use the service) problem / fault, instead of the airlines (which are doing things that make the problem worse, not better).
Ha! Beautiful shot Jackmannii, in all sincerity well done 
Feel free to actually have a point at some stage in the discussion however.
No, I challenged him on the claim that calories in minus calories “out” equals weight gained. At the very least he needs to define “calories in” and “calories out” a lot better than he has (which is to say, not at all).
To deny food is a factor in the cause of obesity is like denying tobacco is a factor in causing lung cancer. People who do that are fooling themselves. But, again, the complaint in the OP was not that the person was fat but that the fat was spilling over into their seat. Big difference. You can be as fat as you like, but just not on top of me.
I’m still waiting for KellyM to explain how another passenger sitting a seat away infringes her personal space in the same way as having someone overflow into your seat?
My point is that you have no right to expect your personal space to be unimpinged when you’re being crammed as tight as humanly possible onboard a tube with wings. I don’t like people touching me, but part of using mass transit is putting up with the possibility of having someone incidentially contact you from time to time. If you don’t like that, don’t use mass transit.
>> dunno. I don’t like the way that this has become the passengers’ (who paid to use the service) problem / fault, instead of the airlines (which are doing things that make the problem worse, not better).
Except the passengers are choosing to buy that kind of seat and service. If they bought more business and first class seats then the airlines would provide more business and first class seats. The airlines respond to demand. Or is it often that you request a first class seat and they tell you “sorry sir, first class is fully booked, you’ll have to go in economy”?
She flopped over into the vacant seat and slept. While she slept she squirmed and wiggled, and occasionally her hands or, once, her head, hit into my elbow on the armrest, or my thigh below it. Nothing like being felt up in the middle of a long flight by the sleeping wench in the seat one over.
I consider this mild discomfort part of the price of getting from Tampa to Chicago in four hours.
>> My point is that you have no right to expect your personal space to be unimpinged when you’re being crammed as tight as humanly possible onboard a tube with wings.
Sorry I paid for my entire seat and you do not get to use part of my seat just like I do not get to use part of yours. Very simple. If you need a bigger seat then you should pay for a bigger seat just like when you order a double burger you pay more than when I order a miniburger. What’s so difficult to understand?
Seat configurations vary per airline: I’d much rather fly transatlantic in a British Airways 747 than in an Air France one. More. Friggin’. Room. Hell, I’m even willing to pay a premium for flying BA over other airlines. And when I do pay $700 for an Amsterdam to Los Angeles ticket, you’re damn straight it’s my right to use the full extent of my seat. I paid for it. The 400 lb guy sitting next to me has paid for his seat too, but not for 25% of mine. Ergo, if his body occupies 25% of my seat, he’s violating my right to that chair. I don’t hate him for it: I just wish he’d be somewhere else, preferably in a seat that offers both him and the adjacent passengers comfort.
Sure, I’ll live with the occasional elbow brushes, knee brushes, and what have you. That’s a far cry from your sides or legs spilling into the adjacent seat 100% of the time, though.
So you tap the women on the shoulder and ask her to get up? Somewhat different to having a person sitting next to you whose body is of such dimensions that they physically will always be in contact with you.
Man, there really are some sorry excuses being given here.
Indeed, how the hell would you know? You have no idea why a person is obese. But a lot of people are willing to make the moral claim that an obese person is not “eating responsibly” or is “secretly eating” (which I know is not the case in the case of my girlfriend as any “secret eating” would show up on her four-times-a-day blood sugar measurements) or any of a number of other moral failings, rather than even entertain the possiblity that their weight is just the consequence of their genetics and metabolism and not readily subject to change.
No matter how little my girlfriend eats, her weight will never drop below the level considered “obese” by current standards. She’d die first. We know this because it nearly happened. Twice. Once as a result of a deliberate diet to lose weight, the other as a result of starvation induced by poverty.
It would be much more humane of people to stop assuming that all obese people are morally deficient. I see a lot of that in this and other fat-bashing threads. Being obese is not de facto proof of immorality (the Catholics sins of sloth and gluttony notwithstanding).
At least that’d be more entertaining than the inflight tv.
Why should I do that? It’s not like she’s trying to be offensive to me. I see no reason why I should disrupt her slumber. It’s not like her contact is causing me pain or anything like that.
I would be offended if a fat and stinky person sat down next to me and lapped over onto my seat. But if the individual is well-laundered and appears to be making a reasonable effort to confine themselves as much as they are able to their alloted space, I am not going to begrudge unavoidable overflow. It’s not their fault the airline chose to provide them with an inadequate seat. Besides, I know that they’re at least as uncomfortable as I am, if not more.
I am far more annoyed by people who cross their legs in flight and stick their heels into my shin. Had that happen several times now.
Of what?
This. Is. NOT. A. Fat. Bashing. Thread.
Carry on.
Sorry, I cut the above quote short:
What would she die of?
Gary Kumquat: I believe the common term is “starvation”. Also known as malnutrition. Happens when you don’t get enough food and your organs start to shut down.
And, Coldfire, yes, it is. Your insistence that it is not does not make the obvious fatbashing go away.