Interesting that there is another generalization here. Are folks assuming that it's only large women that get the short end of social situations?

I've had my share of cold glares from the person next to me on the airplane, or in the theater, or in line at the store. Now I'm not going to lay all of life's woes at the feet of my weight problem, but there have been enough incidents in my own past to assure me that the prejudice described above is all too real. A prejudice that is not helped by latest round of media attention given to "the obesity epidemic" and the associated editorials that lump everyone over a certain BMI as "whiners who made the conscious choice to be fat" (words I actually saw in a national publication...)

All of us on the forum have made a conscious choice, in fact, to address our issues; whether biological, medical, psychological or other, we have all made the commitment to live healthier lives. Because we all have different origins for how we got this way, no one blanket statement or solution is going to solve it.