This whole blog-thing is so strange. Seeing your name was like seeing someone from the old neighborhood that you haven’t talked to in ages, OMG! How are you! And as I said, not even being sure I’d ever even commented on your blog.

Anyway, I hope you’re doing well and that life is being kind. Thanks for all your good work.

Oh wait, McDonald’s still exists, right?

I can’t imagine what it would be like if these people just kept ignoring me and denying my experiences as an autistic person as they do with overweight people. I probably would not be as calm or as nice as you are. 🙂

Great post – Thanks!

Ha, I get told that by my mom.

At Easter service this year, I was trying to explain to the Church Busybody why I don’t have a man in my life, and why it’s not really a priority for me. She pulled me closer by my shoulder, and widened her eyes and looked intently into mine, imparting this fearsome secret: “Honey, I would never want to hurt you, but don’t you think the reason you can’t find a nice man is that you’re overweight? Have you ever thought about losing weight? You know Charlotte, my daughter, is a nutritionist, and she could teach you lots of things. You could eat healthy, fresh food, in controlled portions, and I bet in a year or so you’d be able to find yourself a fella.”

Yeah. The assumptions. The assumption of ignorance. The assumption of poor health and poor choices. The assumption that I must shovel enormous quantities of McNuggets and donuts into my fat maw every waking hour. The assumption that I’m seeking advice about nutrition or reducing my body size, just because if you’re fat, you automatically must desire thinness. The assumption that I need or want to attract a partner even after I’ve clearly stated that’s not among my plans. Hoo boy, all the assumptions you can make about people just from the size of their body.

FWIW, I have depression and I am a trauma survivor with PTSD. My greatest struggle with those conditions is the feeling of being “broken”, “flawed” or of weak character because I cannot simply will myself “normal.” I do not hate myself because I have depression but sometimes my depression makes me hate myself. So I hate my depression right back.
I cannot separate myself from my fat, so I must learn to accept it so I can accept myself. If other people cannot accept my fat that is their problem in addition to being none of their fucking business.

One of my brothers thinks he might have hemochromatosis, based on an off hand comment about abnormal iron levels he heard from a physician during an emergency room visit. He’s in the process of applying for Medicaid so he can get that checked along with getting checked for celiac disease since two of our other siblings have been definitively diagnosed with that. I find it an interesting coincidence that you would mention those two diseases in the post.

I think to some extent the desire to have condescending feelings towards other people is innate to humans. If we can’t find people to look down upon because of their skin color we’ll look down on them because of their religion. If we can’t look down on them because of their religion we’ll look down on them because of their sex or their sexual orientation. If we can’t look down on them for their sex or sexual orientation, we’ll look down on them for using tobacco. If we can’t look down on them because of tobacco we’ll look down on them because they eat meat (or maybe because they don’t eat meat). And now we’ll look down on them for being fat. I have no idea what the solution is, but I think heightened fat discrimination is partly a result of the fact that discrimination based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and vegetarianism or non-vegetarianism is becoming less socially acceptable. (I’m not trying to say any of those forms of discrimination are gone or even dramatically better than they were two generations back, but they are all at least a little better.)

I don’t know who the new scapegoats will be when discrimination against fat people is finally lumped among the other forms of unacceptable behavior.

Oh, definitely. But I have to think that in many cases, even with continuous access to care, a lot of practitioners don’t think to test or look for certain things, especially if they’re relatively rare conditions or they’ve been conditioned to think “x kind of people don’t have that.” Better access and better clinician education are needed here in the U.S.

And, yes, when we need it, we should ALL have access to caring, competent, unbiased health care. That is a nice dream, one I wish would come true. Unfortunately, that dream is far from reality in countries with nationalized health care either, so I am not sure what the answer.

Meowser, I am glad that you seem to have evolved a lifestyle & an eating style which works for you. I wish you years of happiness & whatever health means to & is possible to you. We also place far too much emphasis on BEING “healthy” & being able to prove we are ‘healthy’ in order to be treated with respect & deemed worthy of the good things in life in this culture. Keep on keeping on in the way that works for you.

Your questions are intriguing to think about, and, AcceptanceWoman, I’d love to see that flowchart. I suffer from both depression and anxiety, and my pathways would be different for each: I suspect the world in general would find my depression more ‘inconvenient’, but the anxiety is, for me, personally, the one I’d go further to fix.

Along the lines of breaking things to fix them, I heard a radio program today which discussed the use of psychosurgery to ‘treat’ mental illness (or sometimes just inconvenient personality traits) in the 30s and 40s. Someone asked a modern surgeon what he’d say might be the treatment on which we’ll look back in fifty years and go ‘What were we thinking?’. He said chemo for cancer might be seen in that light. I’d unreservedly say WLS is a far more likely candidate.

People who appear thin can engage in any number of life-shortening habits (smoking, drugging, drinking, having unsafe sex) but are not scolded to the degree Paula Deen has been for “promoting unhealthy habits.” She keeps cooking and eating foods that are labeled unhealthy, but how is that worse than Bourdain’s smoking — you think his doctor hasn’t advised him to quit smoking?

I am really struggling right now with all of this — I’m having sleep problems that came on after some recent weight gain, and I’m hesitating to explore options because I know I didn’t have the problems to this degree when I weighed somewhat less. Sigh.

Me? I hate depression. I think it sucks sweaty donkey balls. I would do a hell of a lot to save both my brothers from the suffering it causes. But I (a) do not hate either one of them due to depression, and (b) absolutely respect their individual choices in how to handle the condition.

I’ve also known people with various cancers. Some chose to fight by any means at their disposal. Others by conventional means only. One or two have decided to forego treatment and just do their best to enjoy what time they had left. In every case, I hated the cancer. It sucked. But whatever they chose, I did my level best to support them no matter what I personally thought of their choices.

Now, if more people would show me the same respect in regard to my waistline, I’d be a much happier person.