Why Do People Hate Fat People?

It looks like he agrees with me about HAES, I think some of it's health denials are helping to cause some of the backlash. I am sick too, though in my case severe lipedema and endocrine problems affected my weight problems. Of course most of you will remember my two sides of the coin theories in how in a society where so much money is made off the misery of fat people, they don't want real answers or honesty or the fact people don't have as much control as they think over weight to be known. He is right to that it helps to love yourself. All the fat hatred is not helping anyone to lose weight or be healthier. I agree the fat hatred is growing worse. "You know you're not helping anybody". No, they are not. We will stay in the dark ages of obesity until this crap is over with. I do not agree with him that most obese people are addicted to food, I believe definitely SOME are, but this is more complicated, I will admit that my extreme experiences do influence my thinking on this, but I have seen too many even smaller fat people who eat the same amounts as thin ones. He is right about us deserving respect and learning to love yourself.

Fat People Are Told They Smell

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-obesity-smells-foul-20150320-story.html

Smell-a-phobes can make people's lives hell, because it is so often used to abuse people. Sure there are street people or those who become mentally ill and can't wash, don't wash or are unable to, but no person on this earth was helped by being told "You stink!"

At one job, there was incredible bias and harassment shown to me. The me of today would pursue a lawsuit, but more often then not while at this job I was told "I smelled". I under went so much harassment and abuse at this job it was disgusting. Because of these experiences, I am paranoid about smelling, never miss a shower, sometimes shower twice in a day during the summer and never re-wear a piece of clothing ever. This means my laundry bills are incredibly high. We spend easily 120 dollars a month on laundry. Bullies and narcissists often will use "smell" because it can't be proven and only discerned to attack people and often for the fat person this will be a source of incredible abuse. When it happens in the work place it is the worse.

When I was at my residential job, there were probably some days, I got sweaty cleaning and moving around during the16-24 hour shifts in an overly heated house. We weren't allowed to take showers there. I showered everyday but today I know the co-worker who complained most about my smelling and got others including the clients to join in, was participating in extreme fat bigotry. It is a technique that works. Be caught on a 105 degree day with a little bit of sweat and weighting 400lbs and they will treat you like you are scum of the earth and feel smug while doing it.

This is one un-spoken thing fat people don't talk about too much.  I have to overcompensate to manage in society, while some people may run out to the grocery store in the morning without a shower, I would never dare. I would never dare re-wear a piece of clothing either.  This is what helps sell the idea of spraying chemicals on everything to cover smells. Frebreze is definitely helped out.

When I was in extreme poverty, in the ghetto, this was after I was disabled but the year before I escaped, there was one woman from the size acceptance community who visited me and told me, that I and my apartment smelled. She was so ignorant that she didn't realize I was screaming to the landlord on the phone everyday about the mice taking over the apartment and the fact they had poison in the walls and more probably dead mice in them. I know most people probably would have ditched that apartment and left, but for me it was living there or in the streets at the time. Water in the ghetto is not as clean as water elsewhere. Every time our rickety bathtub backed up, the water would turn black. Our bathtub has backed up a few times here and I have never seen that happen. It still scares me wondering what was in that water. Anyhow this was the water I was forced to wash my clothes in. Was there an odor I was no longer detecting? It was possible. My furniture was ugly, stained and used to the falling apart point.  While this lady was midsized, she was also upper middle class and had a job as a system analyst. While she pled that she was a liberal at the time, she didn't have one clue about what it meant to live in severe poverty.

She sent me a letter telling me, "You and your apartment stink!".

So back then I was getting it coming and going.

A reality about poverty, it's harder to keep things clean, my walls need painted in this apartment, but I can't afford to get it done, I need money to get the carpet ripped out, I bleach what I can, when I can, and hope it does not smell. It costs 100 bucks a pop to get the carpet steamed cleaned. I had it done last November. Money makes it easier for things to smell prettier. In my case being a severe asthmatic means no trash is allowed to fester more then 24 hours in here, and any mildew or mold has to be immediately stamped out.

I almost get flashbacks when everyone starts sniffing their nose around me. Unless someone is a close friend or my husband I keep a 3 feet away rule. My mother was a smellaphobe, she crinkle her nose up and one huge part of my abuse growing up was being told, "You smell!", "You have B.O!", "You're disgusting!". This never ended and continued into adulthood. I am sure there was a huge amount of fat bigotry involved. According to her, her own poo didn't even stink. Her constant offense at way-ward smells was never ending.

What gets me I have Aspie sensory stuff that makes me live in the shower and wash up more then other people. When I am sick, I will stand in a shower to comfort myself, I may need husband to help me if I am ill enough that day, but the heat helps take away pain. I will wash my hands even if I just touch pennies or money or feel something sticky and they are washed at least 20 times a day. I wash under my belly around 2-3 times a day.  I took a daily shower every day from the time I was eleven years old. During the summer I can easily be in there twice. In hospitals I have broke the rules and gotten myself into a shower even with an IV hooked into my hand. Oh I wash my hair every single day too.

Finding out about this smell and bigotry study was very interesting to me. How much of it is bias? Some may claim maybe fat people do have a different scent producing a very different metabolism? I don't know, they could study that. There could be health problems causing problems too. PCOS is known to cause grooming challenges. I know my sense of my own smell changed even when I was forced off a testosterone lowering drug [spironolactone] which I had been on for 15 years. However this said, wouldn't thin people even have some health conditions that affect them too?

I do agree there is massive bias towards fat people and the "fat people stink", is one major prejudice, that fat people are suffering under.

Anyhow I am glad the researchers are challenging some of this stuff.

Weight by Occupation

Not sure what to make of this. I thought maybe some occupations are more stressful, but the EMT's and nurses have a lower weight rate. But then don't some of these fields openly discriminate against the obese to keep them out so it would make the number of overweight people lower? Are the cops supposedly stopping for too much fast food and donuts while on shift? The firefighters really cooking too much chili down at the firehouse? It is a strange chart. I wonder where they get their numbers.

"Too Fat To Work" Anti-Fat People Propaganda

In the USA, you can't just be fat to get disability, but often over a certain size the co-morbidities are disabling enough. It looks like England is fattening up as much as America, though our problem here is worse. I do believe they are fattening up the populations worldwide, the so called obesity conspiracy and it goes far beyond just people becoming lazy sloths.

With the fat people healthy enough to work, most of them simply cannot be hired. I remember the hell I went through trying to get jobs when I was merely in the 200s and very active, this during the time when I walked three miles for FUN. I still was gaining weight though.

I do wish the show had some captions, I have a hard time hearing accents, but did the best I could, there are some ad interruptions.

I have noticed with this show new fat hatred growing in England where they produced this show and smug announcers express an less than under-stated disgust for the obese who are on the dole or the English version of disability. I fear a growing movement in America and Europe to throw the disabled in the gutter. Obviously it is horrifying to note that they see all obesity by choice. Sadly these opinions are growing here too.

The powers that be are increasing the BLAME THE POOR AND DISABLED rhetoric, and it is worsening. Sadly most normal people are buying the propaganda. This show I believe was produced to increase this in England and around the world. As more countries head into banker and politician caused economic troubles, the disabled and poor will be the first on the chopping block. It will happen here too.

I swelled up A LOT yesterday, I went to the eye doctor and then shopping at a Mexican market buying real food for 50 bucks that would last for some days and walking through a Lowe's to find something to unplug the drains. I cooked when I was home too. I can walk more then I used to be able to but it swells me up like a giant balloon. This is the hell I live, desiring activity but the body rebelling against it.  I am in pain today from the swelling, my legs were wrapped and Flexitouched so they are holding out but I will have to lay down more of the day to "recover". No one could even imagine. I am still coping with the fact that this is "forever" for me and this disease is not curable. I am constantly frustrated with hunger pain and trying to balance activity levels with a body that can't take much.

Being fat and disabled can be a scary world. The condemnation is severe. "Why don't you just lose weight fatty?" I realized after going no contact that one of my mother's smear campaigns was telling people I was a disability malingerer and if I was really "disabled" instead of fat and lazy, that I'd already be dead. I realized to my horror, given even words of other relatives, this is how they have seen me for years. As a lazy "fat bum" who won't help herself. They didn't give a crap about me having severe PCOS or thyroid conditions or COPD or even the later lipedema diagnosis. Hey my mother pointed to my swelling legs circa 1998 and said, "You should do something about that!" as if I sat around and willed my legs to grow bigger. This is why that one cousin used my being disabled to attack me. I have no worries, my medical documentation is high and doctors support my disability but it shows the depth of the hatred I faced. I do fear it from strangers too. While I have lived in mostly polite small towns the last 15 years of my life, I know this growing hatred against the disabled, is something people in my position have to be mindful of.

While we had tens of thousands of centers for the drug addicts and alcoholics, there's only 5-6 rehabs in the entire nation for the severely obese and some of those are more nursing homes then rehabilitative. This tells me they know their treatment of obesity fails far more then it does for the drug addicts. Does this mean only a few of the fat are food addicts and something more is going on? Otherwise why 10s of thousands of centers for the addicts to controlled substances and so few for the obese? I almost put myself in a center in 2008, but realized one was more nursing home and also was told because I could still "walk", I'd be long down the waiting list.

That's an admission of some sort isn't it?

Some of the fat people want to work on the video and are healthy enough to do so.

On the video above, they show a woman with pet rats [6:15] that is more midsized obese where she admits that she has applied for more then 100 jobs. It bothers me that this is not questioned, as I wrote on another article, our jobs system is broken here and it looks like there too as anyone with a small difference now is thrown out of the running in the never ending "weed out" process. I was saddened to see someone who is less then 100lbs overweight seeing dangerous WLS as her only option.

Notice something about Amy the 18 year old? [8:00] She's taking the dog for walk. I walked all over until the weight stopped me and bet she does too. I tend to think while they mention eating some snack foods she has some neglected medical problem. Her breathing sounds horrible for someone for her age and even her size. I have terrible lung problems so not judging her but when she climbed the stairs, [19:48]I know something is wrong. I think she needs tested for sleep apnea. [21:10]

One thing I was thinking of this morning, is, in the old days did people gain weight so easily? Did it take so much time and effort not to be fat? People just lived and their bodies didn't turn on them the extent they do today. People's bodies didn't swell like they do now. Remember the thin people eat too. They don't have their bodies do that.

We see the engaged couple going to a weight loss meeting. We know how that goes. Weight Watchers massively failed me. I followed it and went out of my mind with cabbage soup. As I have talked about before I have so much INVOLUNTARY food reduction as of late with tons of accompanying painful hunger pain, why isn't it working to take weight off?  I ate an apple for breakfast and its 10:10 am and hunger pain may force me to add some oatmeal to the apple.

Later I ate some cooked oatmeal--half a cup while writing this.  I plan to eat a falafel sandwich with tomato and onion for lunch midafternoon. I seriously worrying about gaining weight when our food is too low which I know is irony of ironies, but when you are poor, and know food has to last a certain period of time, there is little for snacks or any free eating. You have to measure every bit of food. You have to plan. One chicken piece has to be used for vegetable and hominy soup on Saturday.  I made burritos for dinner with black beans from scratch with cilantro and some avocado and took meat off a chicken leg and thigh to share between our burritos saving the other chicken piece for tonight. I saved rice for another meal. It takes a lot of energy.

While they make a big deal of the fat couple [Steve and Michelle] eating the gyro take away, one of the things I think about is how for the poor especially the limited income poor, meals out really is the only avenue of recreation open to them. Maybe I will post on this about how obesity is worsened by lack of recreational activities, because it does impact my life greatly.  That said the judgments in Britain especially for fat people eating out is usually beyond the pale. How dare they! Sorry but thin people are eating gyros too. I think gyros are to be avoided. It is a food I had to give up, I used to allow myself a sandwich-gyro once every two months but it's kidney stone territory for me. Skinny people are eating them too and not dying of an occasional gyro.

I supposed if you are disabled and fat, you are not allowed to eat out.

The woman at the 14:16 mark, is the lady getting a gastric bypass's daughter but she is already worried about her weight. Remember thin is far thinner in Europe. Sadly both believe the false promises about weight loss surgery

Do you notice something about Michelle? She has to walk quiet extensively even to shop for one meal. All that exercise and she is still overweight? This reminds me when I was in Chicago still having my weight gain walking, walking between endless bus stops and just trying to shop. While I understand how this happened with lipedema today back then it brought me endless confusion. I had no car and literally had to move around all the time even just to survive. Even to just use a phone, since we didn't have one, I had to walk at least a quarter of a block. Back then I had to walk a whole Save-A Lot at near 700lbs. I like when Steve talks about how hard it is to afford clothes [26:56]. In Britain this would be even more difficult.

I notice with the lady getting the gastric bypass her fridge is nearly empty. It makes me wonder if her obesity was impacted with food insecurity as well. I am worried for her, the special foods and pureed stuff for weight loss surgery is expensive. I knew when I was investigating weight loss surgery I could not afford or manage all that. With Rutabaga, pumpkin, and chicken breasts in her fridge, she looks like she already eats healthy.

One stat stands out to me, they say 1 in 5 people in Scotland are unemployed. Think something may be wrong with the jobs system? I sure do. Not just there but here. Soon good jobs will become a thing for the upper classes while the lower live in one room flats or tiny-houses in America and Europe on the dole or welfare or low wage work. The suburbs will be the ghettos of tomorrow. What is 32 stone? 600lbs? Oh a stone is 14lbs. Amy is 448lbs.

When they show Steve walking downtown, [31:40] it shows the breathlessness that can happen to fat people when trying to do all that exercise we are told to do. Many thin people if they had to breathe that hard and have all the pain would be crying their eyes out. Steve does seem to have very affected stamina and other health conditions as well since earlier in the video they said he had a stroke.

Mrs. Johnson is right about benefits being too small to put the right food on the table. [34:21] Amy is very fat but eating what appears to be a normal portioned lunch of ONE sandwich and some chips. Her mother talks about having toast and a cheese sandwich. I often believe that obesity is a disease of malnutrition more and more. Our food has less nutrients in it. There were days I was eating a cheese sandwich--not grilled in my case and vegan cheese slices at 40 calories for meals because there was nothing else to eat.

Why is everyone sitting in the back at the wedding at Steve and Michelle's wedding? The relatives all look thin, angry and annoyed, one flashes daggers out of her eyes. [40:41]. I had relatives get snotty about me daring to marry at an advanced weight.  Sadly as I watch Steve wheeze and get sick at his own wedding, I think of my ER visit on the night of my own for a leg infection which put me in the hospital for two weeks. I am beyond irritated by the relative who goes on about him losing weight. Look the man gets sicker as he pushes himself, how is weight loss supposed to come so naturally when to even to try and burn it off you'd be on the floor? He has other issues, he ended up with a blood clot on his lung and hospitalized for 9 days. I hope they can enjoy their marriage despite these challenges.

As I watched this show, I thought, WE ARE IN THE DARK AGES WHEN IT COMES TO OBESITY. They push weight loss that doesn't work. They don't assess different levels of hunger. They ignore the fact that exercise too affects overweight people differently. They ignore serious health problems such as respiratory disorders, blood clots and people who exercise and still do not lose weight.  They see obesity as a CHOICE and it's that fact alone, that STUPIDITY REIGNS and people who are disabled and fat are even more oppressed.

An Interview with a Friend About Life, Fat, and Supersized People.

INTERVIEW WITH PAM

Pam was a friend of mine now deceased. I miss her very much. She did endure a lot of what I have and at one point was near 700lbs as well. She knew what it was to face severe weight issues into her 60s. She was a very funny, kind and loving woman. We shared many struggles and she was a life line to me for very years. It was a blessing to know her.  I remembered I was interviewing her in future hope of writing about weight, which I obviously did on this blog. :) I still own the tape and transcript typed out back then, and decided I'd share it here. At the time she gave me permission to use this for any writing. I am happy to share her words here. The conversation brings back fond memories for me not for what we went through but that that we were there to support one another. Of course since 2004, some of my views have changed which is the year this interview was done.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: How old are you?

PAM: How old, or how moldy?

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: [laughing] No, how old?

PAM: Old enough to know better, but too young to resist.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP [laughs]: That’s funny. What’s the highest weight you’ve ever been?

PAM: Boy, this is a personal interview – is this gonna be on “20/20”?


FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: No.

PAM: My highest weight was 600-plus in 1980, but they weren’t sure…one doctor said, as far as an actual weight, closer to 700 [pounds], and congestive heart failure, and they’d mainline Lacix – which drew a lot of water off of me in one week’s period of time.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: OK – yeah, you said you got lots of water taken off of you.

PAM: Uh-huh. I didn’t know I had congeestive heart failure. I was 33, at that time.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: OK. OK. And what’s the lowest weight you’ve ever been?

PAM: You mean, birth weight, or adult weight?

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP:  I was two pounds in the womb! I was born weighing 200 pounds [laughs] – that’s what I’d tell people!

PAM: As an adult – I think when I was 19, 18 ½, I was going to a doctor that was giving everybody all these – you know, it was like a diet clinic, and I got down to 123 pounds.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Wow, you’ve been smaller than I ever have…

PAM: Very, very…I was skinny, but I got pregnant, and I gained 60 pounds with the pregnancy…that was with my son, and, after that, I just kept going up. I was at Weight Watchers, and Overeaters Anonymous, to try to – you know, stay around 250 [pounds], because I was selling ads, and you have to make a fairly decent appearance, plus, you’re on the go all the time.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Yeah, that makes sense…what have been some of the challenges to you, in terms of being overweight?

PAM: Well, employment, housing – now, because I’m in a wheelchair. I don’t have to be in it all the time, but – getting older, disabilities are harder to deal with, as you age.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: That’s true.

PAM: That’s a big challenge, aging; I’m facing that now – I’ve outlived a lot of people that are in a similar situation, that I knew. I’ve watched people just dwindle down, you know, under a system that’s not too kind. There’s not a lot of help for women in my age group, in the 50s – you know, if you’re disabled, if you don’t have a spouse with a good job, or a family that can help…and a lot of people don’t…or they have ‘em, but they’re not willing to get involved…so that can be quite a challenge to be in this age group, before retirement age.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Kind of like, you fall through the cracks, right?

PAM: Right, and fall through the cracks of what’s happening now…I just read an article about a county out here in rural [state] – the waiting list for people that are of retirement age, that are on Social Security, and not because of disability, but need services because they’re aging…they have medical needs…the waiting lists are getting longer and longer, because of the aging population. So, by the time I get into the next age group, if I live that long, I’ll be just one of those people on the waiting list [laughs] – so, I don’t know what it [the solution] is.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Let me ask this question – what would you say are the special challenges of the supersized, the 200- to 300-pound person? {I consider supersized to be 350lbs and above today}

PAM: That’s supersized?

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Yeah, the supersized, the people who are on the upper end of the scale, like me?

PAM: You mean, 200 to 300 pounds?

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Yeah, people who aren’t 200 to 300 [pounds]?

PAM: People that have lived at 600, 700, 800 pounds? I don’t weigh that now, but that could happen again in five minutes – you know, once you’ve been that big, you could go back there, because of medical conditions, food-related things, whatever…I’m not real clear on that question. Do that one more time.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: OK. What would you say are the special challenges that the supersized fat people have to deal with…

PAM: That the moderately overweight don’t have to deal with?

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Yeah, that the moderately overweight don’t have to deal with. PAM: Well, I mean, like we’ve talked about – personal things, personal hygiene. It’s amazingly hard for moderate overweight people to realize that people, once they get up over 400, 500, 600 pounds, that there are landlords – if they see the person, they’re gonna assume that they’re not gonna pay their rent, that they probably don’t keep their apartments clean, because they’re too big to run a vacuum, or whatever…

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: That’s true; they won’t rent to you. {I was refused an apartment once due to weight}

PAM: There’s rental discrimination…there’s people that are supersized, and they keep their apartments immaculate. You know, I’m not supersized – well, I’m borderline supersized – I consider anybody over 200 pounds to be supersized. But, super-super-sized people…it was a struggle to do some of the things thin people take for granted, when they clean, or bathe, or have a bowel movement. You know, we talked about the toilet paper sponges, for the reach, and the bidets, for the overweight – even umbrellas. An umbrella for an average person won’t keep a supersized person dry.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP [laughs]: Yeah, you’re right, I was thinking about that – you’re right, it won’t.

PAM: Yeah, when it rains, and you use a regular umbrella, all it does is bring the rain down on your shoulders, and it drips down on your body.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: That’s true. That’s actually something that frustrated me. I didn’t know anybody else that noticed that.

PAM: There’s all kinds of different things…thank God that people challenged it, and there’s more big people now – there’s money to be made off of us, so the fashion industry opened up, but it still has a long way to go -- there’s things that I need, that I can’t from Roman’s, and Lane Bryant’s. They don’t seem to carry pantyhose, and brassieres, and girdles that’ll fit real big women -- or women, even my size, with the loose skin. I still need a gigantic girdle, if it’s gonna be on me, and support me, but you can’t buy them.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I know, they just don’t have them – I had to give up wearing bras long ago. Do you think discrimination against overweight people is getting worse?

PAM: I think, because there’s so many overweight kids and adults – you would think it would be getting better, but I think it’s an unpopular group to be associated with. People, even if they are heavy, or supersized – they may find friends in that weight range, they can relate – but I think the discrimination is still there. You know, if we walked in on an interview, and had degrees, and a thin woman that had the experience, and [only] some degrees, based on appearance, they’d pick the thin one. I mean, it’s been proven.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Yeah, they have done studies on that – they have done studies on that, and they’ve definitely have always picked the thin one.

PAM: Well, they did a study, too, with little children – five-year-olds – and they used dolls. One doll was disfigured facially, like a burn patient; the other one was without limbs. I forget the others. You know, there’s different disabilities that can come upon a human being…and then one was just huge, just a big fat doll baby. Of all these disfigured dolls, even though the obese wasn’t burned, or limbless – the one that none of ‘em wanted to be was the obese doll.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Oh, wow…

PAM: They would rather be without arms and legs, facially disfigured, whatever, than to be obese.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Hm – that’s probably because of some of the messages they hear about how bad fat people are, over and over…

PAM: Oh, sure. And then, all this stuff about the restaurants downsizing food portions – I don’t see any of that stuff happening. I don’t know what the answer is.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Actually, it’s not happening – did you know Hardee’s actually released a 1,400-calorie burger?

PAM: Oh, mercy!

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?

PAM: Especially when they’re hyping all this, “Oh, we’re gonna try to help,” you know, especially with the next generation – which I do see some improvement. But there again, there’s gonna have to be more support groups – and God forbid, maybe even the only way that people would ever cut back, if all this stuff is gonna continue to be available, and so many people are insulin resistant from eating this way for so many generations – that it might take, whether it’d be a famine or something, for a couple generations to get back to where they’d have to plant, and harvest. Like the Bible says: “You work by the sweat of your brow.” I mean, people don’t have to do anything!

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I know, that’s kind of why we’re all getting messed up…’cause, then, you burned it all off.

PAM: Everybody’s at the TV, or computer…yeah, you see some people jogging, and walking, but – you know, once you get to a certain point – whether it’s just the natural aging process, or you’re obese along with it…I mean, you’re limited how much of that you can do safely.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I actually have the belief that if you don’t exercise enough as a kid, and your life’s sedentary, you never can get to the good part. Does that make sense?

PAM: Yeah. Well, and I think, too, some people are heavy because of illness, even, from birth on – they don’t ever feel well enough to exercise. And there’s the other side, too – the other side of the coin with people – where getting that habit ingrained in your mind [is difficult]. Once you feel better, I think if you can keep with it, maybe get some support, get involved in a sport, or something – if that’s even possible – it’s just not even possible for a segment of this society. They’re not mobile enough to do it. But there’s decent exercises – there’s depression in there, too, people are battling that. A lot of times, obese people are isolated, alone in apartments, where even the most optimistic person – over the long haul, day in and day out – would be wore down.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Well, here’s the thing, too – I almost think, when there were more people around, they were a more closer-knit society. That actually gives you a chance for more movement. Does that make sense? ‘Cause you’re moving around…

PAM: Before the automobile? You know, I mean, it’s not been that long ago, maybe there weren’t even bicycles…I don’t know what the history is on bikes, or things with wheels, but you know – basically speaking, it was the only wealthy that had things like this. Your feet got you there, and maybe somebody might have an old wheel, but I don’t think they really rode ‘em – they used ‘em for farming, or transporting goods.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I think they walked.

PAM: They walked! And women lived and died within a mile of their house – I’ve read that over and over. People were born in a village, and if they maybe went to town once a year, there’d be a homecoming, or something – that was as far as most women went. A lot of ‘em didn’t know how to read, a lot of people didn’t know how to read. Maybe the priest, or the pastor, or a lawyer in town would do all the documents – poor people, especially, just the average man on the street was not that educated.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: That’s true. You’re right. OK, let me ask you a new question…there’s some good stuff. Let me – I was gonna ask you about size acceptance. What do you think of the size acceptance movement?

PAM: Over the last 30 or 40 years, whenever it started – I think it’s probably getting close to 40 now, but…

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Wait a minute, just a second, whoops…my microphone fell off, just a minute.

[FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEPstops to get another piece of tape to hold her microphone in place.] [break and off subject conversation]

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I always wonder, though, if both of us worked – all these errands, and crap, and cooking, and stuff –

PAM: Well, what happens if people don’t work on their marriage, and take time for themselves? That’s what it becomes.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I know – I don’t know how these people have any time.

PAM: They don’t.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP [laughs]:’Cause, I’ll tell you what, Pam – during the day, paying the bills, making the food, making sure there’s groceries, laundry, all the medical stuff, that takes up enough time, where I’m like: “What if I had a job? We’d never see each other.”

PAM: Yeah, you know, you have to be real mobile to do that, and some people do get way behind. Their kids suffer. A lot of women that are out there working are not making any money, if they’re paying babysitters…

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I know – I actually think they should be allowed at home. You know what I've said about the two for one deal the corporations got, when one income used to support a family.

PAM: There are ways to have what you need, and still stay home, and be a mom to your kids – and it’s too much, ‘cause it’s the woman that ends up paying ‘em [babysitters, daycare, etc.].

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I know. I think feminism screwed us [laughs], I do!

PAM: OK – you take a situation, if a woman can handle all that – of course, if you wanna get yourself into that, a person should be allowed. I don’t think there should be any restrictions set on it. But I just think a lot of women didn’t realize what they were getting into, and once they got into it…

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: They can’t get out.

PAM: Yeah, it’s like an addiction – it can be more fun to go to work, than taking care of two- and three-year-olds – preschoolers, you know? It’s hard work. [(337 feet): Discussion turns to difference between modern life, and level of activity in older, agrarian-based society.]

PAM: Today, if you use a towel, then it goes in the laundry, instead of hanging it up, and using it for a week – because it was clean when you use it. Unless it’s like a hand towel…

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I know – I do too much laundry, ‘cause I always have to wear different clothes – I smell really easily, so I can’t even repeat a wearing of anything.

PAM: They say it’s the foods we eat, and if you take medicine, and have illness, you’ll have a body odor difference, sometimes.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Actually, I believe PCOS makes you stink, especially if it’s uncontrolled. It makes you smell lot. It really does.

PAM: Huh! I don’t perspire, or anything – sometimes, because you’re round yourself… [Of subject conversation PAM says. “Some of these people are so competitive, even if it’s to advance the cause…”

PAM is more enthusiastic about nominating MICHAEL MOORE: “He’s a tub! He’s one of our brothers in fat. I tell you what – that man could help us.” PAM and FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP then briefly talk about merits/demerits of weight loss surgery, before going back to list of interviewees.] PAM [after suggesting Ricki Lake, who’s gotten heavy again:] There are people, believe it or not – I know a couple of ‘em – they’ve finally got a handle on it, finally got some kind of exercise in their life…


FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I think if people have an eating disorder, and just eat too much, and they don’t have the metabolic issues – if they get treatment and are able to quit eating too much, and they exercise, they can get at least some of the weight off. But if it's metabolic it's far far harder.

PAM: Yeah, I think so, but if there’s a lot of medical history – and also, if you get to a certain point where you lose mobility, it’s hard to ever get it back, or keep it.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I know. Look at me, with all the breathing problems, and stuff – how am I gonna go burn it all off?

PAM: Yeah, if you don’t move around – I mean, can you imagine how many calories you burn, just walking to get out of your apartment?

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: Probably a lot.

PAM: Yeah, you do. My doctor told me, just to be alive – when you’re over a certain amount of weight, the tremendous amount of calories [needed] just to keep this machinery going – the breathing, the digesting of the food, all of it, any movement at all…like, say, when a thin person gets up off of a chair, it’s nothing.

FIVEHUNDREDPOUNDPEEP: I know – I do move around a lot for someone [my size]. I’ve been told that by people at offices. I’m kind of a fidgety person – like, even now, I got my leg hanging over the end of the bed, going back and forth.

PAM: Yeah, well, you probably have a lot of energy trapped inside of you, you know, where…

Does Fat Mean Being Stared At?

Overweight woman photographs strangers staring at her

An obese woman has captured the cruel looks and stares she attracts in public by photographing herself in different social settings. Haley Morris-Cafiero, 37, an artist from Memphis, Tennessee, is seen sitting in restaurants, out shopping and strolling around bustling tourist attractions such as Times Square while curious passers-by are captured in the background. 

Talking about the revealing collection of images she writes on her website: 'I have always been aware of people making faces, commenting and laughing at me about my size.' She admits that her weight has been a constant battle and growing up she often felt 'left out and awkward'. Instead of talking about her body she refers to 'my uncontrollable exterior'. 

On the subject of her eating habits she told MailOnline: 'My biggest temptation has to be donuts. They contain all of the caloric evils in one round, portable container: fried, bread and sugar,' Explaining what inspired her picture series titled Wait Watchers, she said: 'I decided to photograph myself sitting alone on the Times Square stairs to capture my solitude in a busy crowd.

I'm not so sure about this. What if the people were looking at her getting her picture taken? Was the camera even hidden? If it wasn't you are not going to get a fair look, people are going to wonder why the camera is there? In my area of the country, she is not that fat, she is not exceptional, she would blur into the background mostly. Even in the picture above, the woman in the plaid coat is near her size.

She does seem kind of awkward, that alone can attract people's attention. Don't take this wrong, I think fat people have the right to dress badly as everyone else and be left in peace, but I found myself thinking, if I was that size and with the wide variety of clothes in size 18-20, the size I am guessing she wears, I'd be dressed a whole lot better. Clothing comes near and dear for us super-sized folks. She seems to dress "young" for her age. Hope folks don't get upset with me for saying that, maybe I have this personal bugaboo about fat women who dress so down almost reinforcing the role they are expected to play. Rebel a bit, and allow yourself some style.

That may be more about "me", but I found myself thinking and feeling guilty about it, "Why are you dressed so badly, why are you wearing red shoes with the primary colors blue and green!- Fashion alert!" Remember I am poor myself and probably break endless fashion rules, but that one bugged me. She dresses like she is still a teen. Clinton and Stacy could have a field day on "What Not To Wear". I wish she would buy herself a pretty dress and a nice necklace to wear or even something that she is COMFORTABLE in wearing.

Anyhow, one other thing I thought, is "YOU ARE BARELY FAT!" Ok, she isn't svelte, but I could go to the local Wal-mart and find 10 people who outweigh her by at least 150lbs within 20 minutes. Does she expect people to stare being that weight? Isn't this setting one's self up as a victim? And how is someone like myself to feel who is 500lbs who this woman would be functional and "thin" in comparison to?

People stared at me. When I was near 700lbs, I lived in a big city, and well they looked, I was so unique, it was like the circus came to town as I bumbled down the sidewalk at a huge weight. I had to learn to get used to it, and had the attitude "Give them something to look at!" I know today if I am "new" somewhere, I can get the CURIOSITY looks and yes I even get the RUDE looks, every supersized fat person knows. Today I weigh less, but I am still hugely fat and I am tromping around with a hearing aid, a leg double the size of the other and either a cane or a walker. When I go without the walker, I trumble around from side to side with the cane, because my balance is gone so I do not have a normal gait. One thing being an artist myself, my dress style is different, and well I do stand out, and do not wear what people consider "average fashion", think "hippie art teacher" in long dresses. I dress for myself. Yes I sure do, I wear what is comfortable to me and what I LIKE.

She is young, well 7 years younger then me, one thing when you grow old enough, there is less gawking. There is a lot of older and fatter people out there. Past a certain age, it just doesn't matter. Once you enter "grandma" territory, even if you are childless, there does seem to be less judgment out there based on your looks. That said however why walk around in pain from people judging your looks?

My balding head, skin sores, and almost 700lb body was a trial by fire, that allowed me to bust open the locks on the beauty prison and escape for good. I wonder if I walk around now imparting the viewpoint it doesn't matter. Look all you want if you want. Some may say, hey you've left your mug off your own blog for over three years. I posted one picture of my body on here. But isn't that the point? Why should EVERYTHING be about our looks? I want my looks to take backseat to what I have to say. Now what would I say to this lady if I ever met her?  I would say, "you are healthy, you are only mildly overweight, you have a good career as an art professor, life's not that bad!"

Maybe life for me has been easier having spent my life living in two smaller towns, the last one quite small and this one just a bit larger. If a place is small enough, you do ebb into the background with time, everyone's seen you so you are no longer a "shock" or a "curiosity".

I went around my last town and this one, not really even thinking about anyone looking at me. The last time anyone made fun of me overtly, was two times in the last five years. I had this woman at the library give me this horrified look of disgust who turned giggling to her friend next to her, and this woman at a health class for the elderly and disabled say mean things to me for being fat. So it's going to happen. What do you do? Try and stand up for yourself and move to the nice people. There is always going to be someone who doesn't like someone for the way they look or even are.

I just don't buy this idea that a size 18 woman in American society is being stared at for being fat when the AVERAGE American woman is only 3 sizes off.  Take pictures of me walking around, let's see what happens, people in small towns smile at each other. I'd like to catch pictures of people SMILING at me. Am I crazy? The auto shop man smiled at me, the waitress did, the people at book club, when I last got out and around.

Could I make an art show of that? Look I know fat discrimination exists but looks aren't everything. Be someone beyond your looks. Does anyone understand what I mean here? Those other people in the crowd even if they are not fat they have troubles too.

My response to Marily Wann's Latest: "You Can Be Fat and Fit!"

[cite for picture above]

Big Deal: You Can Be Fat and Fit

I am going to start this with the caveat that there can be people of large sizes and large proportions who certainly can be in great shape, aerobically and otherwise. The large sized weight lifter that made it to the Olympics is probably in better shape then most large people. There are football players, wrestlers and others who play sports at heavier and larger sizes. There are many midsized people who do enjoy sports, dancing and active living. All the best to them. Stay as active as you can and enjoy life as much as you can no matter your size. A lot of people MY size are totally bedbound, the housebound doctors have told me, so I even say by the grace of God go I. So enjoy but now I must address yet another article that just adds to the pile of confusion out there. Are there Healthy smaller fat people? Sure. Are the scientists finding proof, that one doesn't have to be a skinny-minny to be "healthy" and when it comes to some problems like pneumonia that it actually may be a detriment...Sure.

But newsflash....this is up to a certain point. In most cases dependent on height, up to the mid-200s line.

Over 300lbs for most people, the breathing is affected, movement is affected and more. I mean how far does the delusion have to go and the active denials? Sad to say this one even made it to mainstream media on CNN

Marilyn Wann states in the article...

"Another recent study found people who were "metabolically healthy" and overweight or obese had no higher death risk than metabolically healthy "normal" weight people."

How many fat people are "metabolically healthy"? That would be an interesting question to ask especially for the supersized given the very idea of metabolism has been set aside by the diet industry. I obviously am NOT metabolically healthy. Though would they say someone at a supersized weight who suffers from eating disorders which has led them to a high weight is? I am a bit confused by that study and doubt it applies to those in the super-sized weight categories.

Wann continues:

"I take an interest in the topic because I'm fat and because I don't have a death wish. I'm also interested because, like so many fat people, I've encountered weight discrimination when I seek routine medical care. I was 26 years old when I was denied the right to purchase health insurance. I had no significant history of illness or injury. I was just fat. That day, I became a fat rights activist."

What is this talk about a "death wish"? I often have pondered what if Wann did get ill? It is strange to me I am still hearing the same lines written in the mid 1990s. Most women her age, she is two years older then me which makes her 46, are starting to face some health problems, that includes THIN women. Most of my friends who have hit the age of 40 or over have dealt with at least ONE health issue that took some degree of comprehensive health care. She seems to have a very strong Baby Boomer ethos rather then that of a Generation Xer with a whole "we are going to live forever" theme to it.

Does illness as a fat person mean having a "death wish" or that you did something wrong? This is the "healthism" stuff I've mentioned in passing.  One ponders this. And who cares if she had some history of injury or illness? Should anyone who hasn't been there think anything less of anyone who has? Should one give out medals to those blessed with good genetics and good fortune in avoiding car accidents, thyroid issues, some arthritis,  a hole in the snow to trip in, or a cup of too hot of coffee spilling on the leg? She is right about weight discrimination in the medical arena, I certainly have explored that issue myself. She is also correct about the non availability of medical equipment but should the response of the fat be an enforced smiles, "we aren't that sick anyhow" response? Or demanding that some changes be made to the above? Yes too much blaming the fat happens and weight loss techniques like WLS that fail and maim and all the biases!  But what if I said to Marilyn Wann, fat is often the RESULT of illness a symptom in itself, that is where size activists who believe the way she does, refuse to get on board. She continues in the article to praise HAES which I of course disagree with. She talks about those living to 65. Long-lived society?, actually the lifespans in America are dropping.

"Here's a finding from the recent research that didn't make the headlines: For people over 65, being fat wasn't associated with increased risk, not even for the fattest old people. When do most people die, in our increasingly long-lived society? Over age 65, perhaps?"

This part of her article really disturbed me though....

"I also learned this week that a highly accurate way to predict a person's risk of dying is to see how easily they can get up from the floor. I'm trying to imagine how different our health care system would be if, instead of focusing on weight and weight loss, caregivers did the sitting-rising test instead."

How many supersized especially extremely super-sized people can get off the floor? I fail this test massively. Why? I fell down twice and know I cannot get off the floor. I was stuck and it was terrifying both times, and in one case, needed three grown men to help get me up to the place where I could finish the job in getting up all the way. Wann seems to have this edge to her articles where someone being sick, is enough to prove them wrong or "bad". That one would be an interesting sociological study and essay. We live in a society now where sick equals someone is "bad", instead of just with the admittance of the natural flow of things on this earth. Why must caregivers do the sitting-rising test? That one confused me. Okay my thin doctor gets down on the ground and gets up? So what? They probably can go camping and other things I miss. What does that prove? Did she think this one through?

With my failures to get off the floor, at least I was saved the medical bills from calling the paramedics to bring me to a standing position. My first fall I wrote about and the second one I had only weeks later, and at that point switched to a walker due to my balance issues. Since this summer there hasn't been any more falls. For years, due to youth, and after my initial weight loss from the massive weight gain, I did practice getting on the floor and then getting up, to make sure I still "could" but I lost the ability with time anyway, and remember in my case, I am not bedbound and tried to stay as active as I could including physical therapy. So what does that test say to fat people but hey you midsized people who can still get down on the floor and play with your puppy or your kids or scrub a spot on the floor are okay and those of you whose weight has become too heavy for you to lift off the floor are not? Is she living in reality here?

Hey I could take some of these edicts from on high if she did admit, "OK I am talking for smaller sized fat people here, I know you supersized or in my case extreme super-sized folks have other concerns" but she does not, she expects the HAES formula to work, and issues a blanket edict of "You Can be Fat and Fit!" Um no..... I am even facing battling a leg infection over the last month, I am not sure what has brought on the reaffirmed battles with leg infections, this time with huge fevers to go along with them, once I hit near 104. Trust me I am sad because I struggled with this for years, having 6-7 of these a year for so long and many times in the hospital, and recently I went almost an entire year without a leg infection in my lymphedema leg and being thrown back into the infection merry-go-round obviously is very frightening to me. I almost have lost my life to this stuff before. What brought it on? I am not sure, and even have the worrying feeling that my intense commitment to a physical therapy and walking program brought these latest infections on despite improved sugars.
Hey I write this blog knowing I live in a society where the prevailing ethos is unless you are healthy and well, [and wealthy in a lot of cases] you aren't worth listening too, but since it's an ethos I reject, I speak out anyway.


Wann continues:

"How much healthier would we be? How much more would we actually enjoy healthy living, free from weight judgment? How much time and money would we save? How much discrimination and human tragedy could we avoid? I'm guessing it'd be tons."

How about just some reality? How about some understanding? How about some size activists admitting that people like me exist? How about telling the truth about weight while at the same time demanding good treatment for fat people and good medical care without shame and hatred even if we are indeed stuck on the floor when we fall down? How about admitting what is going on? 

See:

Health At Every Size? And Healthism in the Size Acceptance Movement"

"Seeing Through the Obesity Lies"

South Park and Super Fat People on Scooters

I saw part of this show the other day when channel surfing but did not watch the whole thing. I consider South Park a raunchy show but catching a glance of this show mocking fat people on scooters was troubling. I often have thought about how superfat people are viewed in our culture and the blame and more is always there, as if someone would chose to be in a scooter and fat.

Who would choose not being able to walk? I found this article too commenting on the superfat in scooters:

 DECLINE, DECAY, DENIAL, DELUSION & DESPAIR

"If I wanted to be politically correct, I’d call the fat asses cruising on their “free” rascal scooters, the weight challenged disabled on their powered mobility enhancement vehicles. You know a trend has become a massive scam, when South Park dedicates an entire show to the shame of obesity and the scooter brigade. The majority of the scooter squad jamming up the boardwalk was less than 50 years old. They weren’t disabled. They were just too obese and lazy to wobble down the boardwalk to the next junk food joint. They were certainly in the right place. The Wildwood boardwalk is home to pizza topped with cheese fries, chocolate covered bacon, fried Oreos, funnel cake topped with powdered sugar, and 64 ounce sugar laced lemonade. The place would make Nanny Bloomberg’s head explode." 

This author is right about many aspects of our declining society, but sadly he goes along with the "lazy" fat people meme eating everything in sight. You know the one the diet industrial complex shoves down our throats every minute? Aren't the thin people too eating while on vacation at the board walk? At least he admits given America's obesity rates that something SINISTER is going on, and I left a comment and agreed I know using a scooter myself, only in large grocery stores in my case which provide them since both husband and I are too weak to lift a over 100lb scooter into the back of our van now and cannot afford a lift, that having shows like this only make my life more difficult where judgments abound. If only that "lazy" fat person would walk, people think. When I was even heavier and used my scooter, the scooter meant MORE ACTIVITY then sitting at home but such a thing is lost on most. I also got off my scooter using it to go from POINT A and B, to walk around shorter distances. If I tried to walk in a store the size of Wal-mart, I'd collapse, I could not buy things. At least now I know I could walk slowly from the back and not die, if the scooter broke down which has happened before. I use a walker, in my case making up for vertigo and balance issues that are Meniere's related. It looks like this but wider.  

The sad thing even with this mobility device, one where I still have to walk and burn up all the calories these people think I should be burning, I can see some of these guardians of what is proper snarkily wondering why someone my age is using a device usually used by the advanced geriactric set.

The world already makes fun of those who have to use scooters. Check this site out "Fat People Riding Scooters" Here they especially focus on fat people getting fast food in drive-throughs. Don't they realize most of these people aren't driving and the scooter is serving as their "car"? I would say stay as far as possible from the poison called fast food but why is it a crime for fat person to eat lunch? What about all the thin people eating there?

What do these shows say about fat people? Fat people are presented as lazy blobs who eat everything in sight. To be frank with my readership, there is nothing more frightening then losing the ability to walk. One's heavy body then is source of untold suffering. When I hurt my leg some months ago, my immobility frightened me, after being fat this long, I've learned to take pain dragging myself along. Who would choose being chained to a scooter just to make it across a store? Most places too, are NOT scooter accessible either. The fat people stuck on the scooters, most wish they could walk like the thin people. I walked for fun for miles before my weight gain. I miss it.

Anyhow sad to say TV land just added to the burden of us all.

A Fat Hating Commercial

I see tons of thin people putting garbage into their carts. Actually I wish I could take pictures but then that would treating people in an undignified matter they have the right to eat what they want, but I hate this commercial because it just helps advance the stereotypes that fat people are fat because they eat nothing but garbage and IT'S ALL THEIR FAULT. I feel frustration at the grocery store for all the non-food I have to dig through to find the real stuff. I agree that one should eat better then the mother and daughter shown in this commercial but did we really need more fat hatred advanced at the same time?

Dr. Phil Show: World's Biggest Bride: Confessions of an 800-Pound Woman

I have posted about Susanne Eman before...

see:

"Dying to the Fattest Woman on Dr. Oz"

I have to admit, I tried to watch this show, but got too disgusted dealing with some of my own issues and health problems, didn't feel like listening to Dr. Phil castigate fat people for "committing slow suicide" which he kept repeating over and over. The thing that is so sad about this, is this lady who has participated in this circus side show, will help perpetuate stereotypes about the overweight that we all overeat, and that we have chosen our fate, through her would be feederism participation. Here we see the false notion that most people choose to be ultra-obese advanced.Also I saw the part where she showed utter delusion about her obesity as if she was "healthy", I thought to myself here is more of the Obesity Hegelian Dialectic! I think even having the sister claim she eats healthy, was to help to add to the confusion and to help silence us fat people who are trying to get help beyond the EAT LESS mantras.

I tried to write on the Dr. Phil message boards, a response and sticking up for people in my position but they censored it and would not post it. Guess I am not surprised.

Hospital Makes Weight Discrimination Official

To be honest, I would kind of scared to be a patient in a place that refused to hire anyone over a certain weight. If they treat would be employees with a bit of plumpness so horribly, how will they treat someone like me?

Hospital Won't Hire Obese Workers

Is it OK to discriminate against obese people?

(MoneyWatch) COMMENTARY Victoria Hospital in Texas has stated they will no longer hire anyone with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 35 or higher. To put that in perspective, that's 210 pounds for someone 5', 5".

We already are in a society where the young and good-looking are hired first while others lose out. Even those who end up jobless over a certain age, know how financially dangerous that can be.

I hate stories like this

"Eating Herself to Death"

"It’s a barely fathomable number, and one which now affords Brenda the dubious distinction of being Britain’s fattest woman. 

It’s a title previously held by Sharon Mevsimler, who weighed in at 45st before her death two years ago of a heart attack, aged 41. She had, effectively, eaten herself to death. 

So now we have Brenda, a year older, but weighing much the same and heading the same way — an extreme case even in a country battling growing levels of obesity. 

Brenda’s weight is so limiting that she has not been outside her overheated two-bedroomed bungalow home in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, for four years, and she requires a team of carers seven days a week to help her with basic functions such as washing and eating. 

Most days, she barely leaves her bed, eking out her hours watching television amid piles of clutter, playing on her laptop and, of course, consuming the chocolate bars and pop that make up the lion’s share of her 6,000 calorie-a-day diet. 

With its commode, safety rail and buzzers to call for help, her bungalow looks as if it has been equipped for a frail pensioner, not a woman who should be in the prime of her life.

It is a profoundly depressing situation — not least if you are a taxpayer and therefore footing the bill for Brenda’s care. She receives £300 in weekly benefits and it costs her local council an additional £400 a week to fund the twice-daily visits by her carers. 

But Brenda’s plight is also highly distressing, and baffling too.

Ok it's the Mail Online known as being tabloidish even in England.

I hate stories like this....Maybe this woman truly is overweight from eating addiction but you wonder if women like this get offered money to pose with a bunch of food like a modern circus side show? If she has all those carers why aren't they cooking decent food for her? Whose buying all that soda and chocolate? My weight is close to this woman but add a half of foot of height.

What is scary to me about this story is the people all clamoring against her getting aides and help. Even if she has an eating disorder what is their solution toss her into the streets to die? Why isn't that being dealt with? Are the aides buying the soda? As society grows more impoverished and governments short on cash, trust me I fear even my own future. Social workers and the like also share fat prejudice, trust me on that one. They don't care about what they consider "your excuses".

If anything if that is this lady's true diet and not the circus side show stunt, if anything she has gained weight via malnutrition outside of endless fats and sugars. What is on the mind of someone portraying themselves this way? For the money? Just saying this is my reality? One wants to grimace even at the indignity of it all.

That apartment of hers, don't know if she is in a home, looks boring, put a picture on the wall for goodness sakes! Get her some books!

Poor woman. Of course I could tell you that I think even Diet Pop [yeah notice it says DIET COKE] fattens people up. That stuff is poison.

What A Weird Picture!

Found this online today, what a weird picture! Well we all know the "thin person" fighting to get out of the fat 'cage" senario. I am of the opinion that the fat bodies do not operate properly as a whole. Even the higher levels of hunger are not normal. Exercise also HELPS the thin buff guy get better. Even when I was young, exercise often made me sick, and throw up and never seemed to be a fun exercise, the intense stuff just made me ill. I always wondered if I had some type of hormonal-adrenal problem that messed up the whole process. Panic attacks would ensue most of the time and this during times when I was far from very obese.

Of course they show the fat guy guzzling pop which I didn't like. The trainer physical ed types probably will use this for motivation in "us" fat people as their greatest fear, but I wish they would realize their bodies work properly and ours do not. I still think of the days where I could walk 4 miles and enjoy it but I still ended up fat. How does that make sense? My fat brother constantly works out, and maybe he keeps from turning into me, from doing so, but he seems to hover pernamently in the high 300s no matter what he does. It's like fighting a monster that is your own body. I have more stamina, I had to go up a flight of stairs yesterday, it was a bit scary, but I noticed I didn't feel like I was going to die at the top, that is the first time that has happened in years where I didn't feel death knocking on the door, from going up a flight of stairs, of course I had to walk up them slowly using a 4 point cane and the balance thing was scary. I took a risk there you know, wanting to see a friend. I did make it down. I often had worried I could not make it out of a building in a fire down any stairs. Now it looks like I could though there is some fear involved.  I have always dreamed of being thin for the freedom but the skinny guy with the buff muscles and thin limbs, could never even dream of what it is like to be the fat guy. Things just do not work the same.

Fat Doctor Makes Fun of Fat Patients

"Penn doctor endures fallout over fat jokes"

I am glad this guy got confronted and he backed down. It is time people say "This ends now!" He never would dare make fun of any other medical problem. Even with the apology, I never would take him for a doctor. Who wants someone who looks down on you? Sadly these humor articles by doctors trashing the fat are nothing new. I wrote about another article I saw.....

I loved this quote:

"The last place an obese person should feel scared to go is a doctor's office, yet that's one of the top places where obesity bias is prevalent," said James Zervios, communications director for Obesity Action Coalition, the Florida-based advocacy group that marshaled protest last week after learning of Kelly's column.

Physician David L. Katz, a nutrition expert who founded Turn the Tide Foundation in 2007 to fight the obesity epidemic, has taken his colleagues to task for blaming weight struggles on the strugglers.

"Have you noticed that two-thirds of American adults and a rapidly rising proportion of the global population are overweight or obese?" Katz wrote in a recent Huffington Post column. "Has it not occurred to you that something larger than the will power or motivation of an individual might be in play?"

I believe doctor hatred of fat people is a risk to us. I am facing some issues lately where a doctor is not listening, and it's a specialist, who even ignored my parathyroid issues. He is the only specialist of his type in town, so now I may be forced to figure out a way to travel an hour, to see another doctor. He is good in treating one illness but ignores everything else. This is the guy that constantly berates me to get weight loss surgery. I really think some of these doctors do not see fat people as human. Some are not that smart in my opinion because they keep stupidly blaming the fat people which really is what accounts for the horrible failure in treating obesity.

I am actually getting scared for my wellbeing, thinking I may be now facing something really bad, that is not being dealt with [it involves intermittant severe abdominal pain, digestive issues and now kidney stones], because they just want to push me off as another supposedly overeating fat woman. I thought about doing a blog post on this, but will just mention it here, because it's scary and I do not know what is wrong. It could be nothing but then it could be something. It is sad when you have to read the Merck manual to figure out what is wrong with you while doctors sit around and drool. I have found my own doctor anxiety getting pretty high lately. I did get transfered to a new general doctor but do not know him yet to know how that will pan out. I am hoping he is smart and not prejudiced, and that he will be one of the good ones. I really need a good one right now.

Trust me even if you have already been diagnosed with endocrine issues, many of them do not want to listen to you. They act like auto mechanics, this one because my diabetic A1c score got back down to 6.7 has ignored other serious medical complaints. They knock you down to the lowest common denominator. I have to make phone calls today looking for a new specialist. My own father died being undiagnosed by them. Watching the guy from Philadelphia yuck it up is offensive beyond belief to me. I am at the point, I will have to order all my medical records and try to put the puzzle pieces together MYSELF, AGAIN.

Sometimes I ask myself: What is wrong with these people? Maybe medical school means money now and not intelligence for many of them. [Sorry to the few good doctors I have seen in this life time, but I am tired of the stupid ones]

See too "Fat Hating Doctor"

What is wrong with a FAT CURE?

I am not talking about turning everyone anorexic, but the size acceptance and fat acceptance crowd seem to be angry at me for desiring a fat cure that works. In fact it infuriates them.

As they hit their block buttons or erase my posts or tell me to go away, I have seen that complaint time and time again, "Five Hundred Pound Peep, wants a fat cure! How dare she!".

Hey the world of the midsized where fatness means having to buy your cute clothes at a special store and maybe getting a bit huffy on the third set of stairs, really can't relate to my world.

IF they came up with a fat cure, one that worked and didn't kill, maim, include torture, severe hunger, and worked in the long term, I'd be on it like a mouse on the biggest piece of cheddar cheese. Who could blame me?

They are crazy if they think someone at my weight and who has been near 700lbs, is going to sing the praises of fat

So wonder fat people have it so hard now.....caught between these two ends...

Squeezed Out of the Job Market For Your Body

"Fat Chance: It's Not Easy For Obese Workers"

Only the luckiest fat person, perferably with a Kennedy Surname attached to his background ever escapes the weight discrimination of the job hunt. While any job search is fraught with rejection, a fat person's experience is radically different. Many end up in jobs well below their educational or intellectual level. While I managed to get a few professional positions in teaching and social work, I had to take the ones few others wanted, and apply for hundreds of positions to get even those. After a teaching lay-off, staring out over the Arby's counter and barely able to stand the hours required, my future grew scarier and scarier.

Looking back, my inability to economically survive did impact my health very badly. Raised to be upper middle class but becoming a member of the welfare class with none of the skills to survive, I was sunk. Life became a series of milk crates, broken down cars, illnesses where the ER had to suffice, embarrassing rags for clothing that were always outgrown. The year I was unemployed and on the cusp of homelessness, with nothing to eat in the fridge ironically was when the weight gain began.

My later job where I moved to a behemoth metro city all alone knowing no one there, of being a low paid residential counselor to violent youth from the ghetto while I lived in a bad neigborhood in a roach infested apartment is the job that capped the acceleration of the destruction of my health. Daily abuse and scary confrontations just to get a paycheck. I wrote an essay back in the 90s about that job, and will share it here soon.

It does something very bad to someone's mind, when they worked hard to get through college, working in the dorm cafeteria 20 hours a week, with 21 hour credit loads, who doubled up on jobs to keep the bills paid, to see it all crash, and come crumbling to the ground. Your dreams of finding a niche in the world, where your mind and talents are honored smashed into multiple shards. While one art teaching job gave me a taste of being able to use creativity and do some good, even with a student of mine winning a national award, the time was too short, as it was grant based and the money ran out after three and half years.

To state that obesity equals poverty belabors the obvious, how many fat people have spoken to an enthusiastic potential employer over to the phone only to be crushed the minute they walk in the room? There was one time when inquiring about a regular teaching job, I asked "Why did you not hire me?" and they told me, "You never could be volleyball coach!". At that job I had failed the state medical exam too.

No place is more hard on fat then the work-world and now with the employers shaking thier heads over out of bounds health care costs with fat hating greedy insurance companies included, it's only going to make things harder. Even thin women feel the pressure to take in their lunch of rice cakes, or a yogurt cup, while saving more heavy food for the return home. Diet programs like Weight Watchers infiltrate the workplace pressuring even people ten pounds overweight to lose. Those who get fat are derided for "not taking care of themselves". During my weight gain at the residential counselor job, no one told me to "go to a doctor', I was yelled at for not hiding the bald spots on my head good enough and for gaining weight and demoted to night shift.

More subtle forms of discrimination can take the form of under-handed comments, lack of promotion, placement away from fellow workers and customers or having responsiblities peeled away by top managers. It all underlines a reverse pecking order of who's fired, hired, noticed and promoted. After all runs the prevailing logic, aren't the corpulent good-for nothing masses lazier, slower and stupider then their normal sized counter-parts. Aren't they unacceptable health insurance risks?

There have been many studies out there detailing how fat literally costs people money, and if they are now discriminating against older workers and other's in the work world how much harder should it be now? With the new depression economy, it's got to be worse. Even in the 90s, scores of lean as racing dogs people with new cars in the parking lot and "more professional appearances" then my own with nails and hair-dos I could never afford stared down at me, like a worm, while slamming the door shut that led to middle class stability.

I grew up upper middle class, clueless that my mid-sized fat father's extreme mathematical skills and computer genius is what kept him employed at higher levels and that my more humanities and artistic mind was not as valued. For me the work world, turned out to be hell on earth, and 60-70 hour work weeks of piecing endless too low paying jobs together--2 and 3 jobs even overlapping at a time to keep the bills paid, got tougher and tougher. When I listed everything I did for a living pre-disability life, one of my friends was in shock, it ranged from Arby's counter person, salad bar prep and cook, factory worker, home health aide, substitute teacher for 5 years--this one combined with other jobs, day care worker, art teacher in an alternative school, part time legal secretary to the last three year's stint as residential counselor with violent teens. Just reading over the list, I got exhausted.

My favorite jobs? Being the salad girl, and the art teacher, both jobs, I got to make something up that was new, the salad girl job I made up recipes in the halcyon 80s and was bright eyed and busy-tailed about my future, the art teacher job, lesson plans and art lessons.

Looking back, I realized, I lacked self care skills, just being told to be the most hard working bee was not enough. Work hard, but not working smart. The pressures never let up, and well like any other human being, especially given none of these jobs offered real health insurance, my health started to crack. When I think back on my days, of throwing up on the way to work due to anxiety, fear and breathing problems, and hiding asthma nebulizers in my car under my teaching desks hoping no one would discover how really sick I felt all the time, looking back at this, sometimes I am incredulous. Who can blame the employers for desiring a healthy employee but what other options did I have at the time?

I found out fast, good grades and intelligence didn't matter, social skills and looks did. Perhaps life would have been easier if I had chosen work, that was less socially demanding, where focusing on something more paper oriented and less people oriented would have been useful for my life. Before I was disabled, I went to paralegal school [this was post-bachelor's] but was unable to finish due to illness, I wanted to be put in front of a desk and given mountains of paper work where mind would matter over personality and looks. Getting a job teaching with too many health problems just wasn't going to happen.

Even when I worked in temp agencies, with college degree in hand and the ability to type, they shunted me off without fail to the factories, never the office. This was not my imagination.

Fat really is a class marker today, and often times, the fat alone is enough for them to shut you out. If you are a fat person reading this, go to vocational school and find something where you can work for yourself. Pave a path where you are not dependent on the system. Also realize there are places more friendly to the fat, working class and rural areas, are more open to you then conform or else corporation land. The challenges out there are real.

"Why We Need Size Acceptance" [Violence on The Fat]

"Why We Need Size Acceptance"

Hey, I do not disagree with EVERYTHING having to do with size acceptance. While I have some giant beefs about the movement, standing up against abuse of fat people is a GOOD thing.

I think if fat people weren't so hated, and we weren't being used as a vehicle to be profited from or to be exploited, there would be SOME REAL HELP and change out there, but she is on to something with this one:

We are all participants, willing or no, in a culture that promotes and glorifies this kind of violence against ourselves, and which revels in that violence’s effects. Even the language we use in discussing our body fat is steeped in violence; our fat parts are to be burned, blasted, destroyed, dissolved, eliminated, eradicated, or otherwise abolished. Let’s think for a moment about the broader effects of regarding our bodies—even an aspect of our bodies—with such language and imagery. This thinking divorces us from ourselves, and from the wonderful mechanism which enables us to experience the world. It creates a divide where none should exist. It turns our bodies into enemies, or antagonists, or discrete objects to be controlled and restrained. It denies us healthful connections between the thoughts in our heads, our interactions with the world around us, and the physical form that enables us to connect and communicate. It does us harm.

Sometimes I think about all the 'answers' they give to the fat, and it always incorporates pain and suffering. Nothing about wellness, joy and happiness. I don't have to go smack myself around for having thyroid disease or have some crazed trainer scream at me like the TV show "Heavy" but supposedly for being fat, I should be groveling on the ground, and prepared to suffer.....

Would some of you be offended if I told you that sometimes I wonder in my mind if weight loss surgery is more about torture?

Let me talk this one out, the other day, I was reading a book about "footbinding" in young Chinese girls, as I sat there getting grossed out as the fictional author Lisa See, described the breaking of foot bones and the rest to give Chinese women of some hundreds of years ago [footbinding lasted 1000 years], teeny feet, I thought what else is weight loss surgery, but more pain and "suffering" to get a "good" look, and most of the time it doesn't even work, even in this book, they admit 1 out of 10 girls died from footbinding and infections, gangrene and the rest plagued the rest. So human beings have done really screwed up things with their bodies for centuries.

So when they tell you to go under the knife and tell you, hey we will shrink your stomach down and make you "thin", they couldn't have thought of a worse way of torture. Trust me as a person with severe digestive problems where I projectile vomit for literally 18 hours with severe bowel pain [dry-heaves are no fun] if I accidentally eat some MSG or some high fat item [it took me 6 months to figure things out], one does not want to go to the land of digestive organs that do not work.

I think about the VIOLENCE of that....

and how fat people are so hated....

and how no one wants us to get any REAL HELP, because we are considered NOTHING to them.

I still am NOT going to LOVE fat [because of what it has done to me], but I know when things are seriously screwed up, and looking at a society that is so messed up in so many ways. All the "wars" on obesity, are about violence, instead of actual HELP and HEALING.

Man Stands Up For Fat Women!

I was happy to see this....glad someone had courage to say something. If you see fat people or anyone else being insulted or bullied stand up for them!

"Fashion stylist Phillip Bloch came to the defense of two apparently overweight guests at the Standard hotel in Manhattan recently. Bloch was riding in an elevator with one of the members of the Village People — as you do — and when the doors opened, a stranger who was also in the lift with announced loudly to the waiting crowd, "No fat people allowed in the elevator! Only people who threw up their dinner can fit." While the Village Person laughed nervously, Bloch turned to the stranger and insisted that he apologize to the women he'd just insulted. The elevator operator concurred, and the man apologized. Given fashion's issues with body image — which are legion — this practically qualifies Bloch for Humanitarian of the Year"

I was defended MAJORLY once. I don't put up with any verbal abuse, but once, even when I was not present, people even walked out of the room, to hear me being insulted and made fun of, that was nice to hear about, and those folks earned my life long loyalty!