The only beings in our world that discriminate against 'overweight' people are human beings.

What if humans in our society were more compassionate towards people with this 'medical' condition? What if society was motivated to look at the medical reasons for obesity and wished to help ?

What if they encouraged us to participate in sport ? What if our food choices weren't judged by others ?

What if people spent their energy assisting our 'recovery', rather than focusing on blame and scorn and hate?

We wouldn't need a heaven, we would already be there!

I often think about this too Dave.

I wouldn't consider it a heaven - I'd still be fat. And even if everyone were accepting and nice about it, being fat sucks for a lot of other reasons. I'd still have to look at myself, I'd still be less healthy, I'd still be run-down and tired from all the extra weight.

I don't even care what society thinks of me at this point all that much. I understand that certain things -- okay, neverly everything -- goes better for thin people, but that there isn't a hell of a lot to be done about it and I don't want to waste any time or energy on changing it. That goes to changing me.

Don't get me wrong. I really dislike the hatred and scorn that's heaped on fat people. God knows, I experience it firsthand. But I can't give it much attention. At some point, the energy it has is what we give it ourselves, and I just refuse. I refuse to beat myself up over it, and I refuse to let anyone else do the same.

If society were nicer to fat people, I wouldn't have gotten so fat or metabolically sick to begin with.

If society were nicer to fat people, I could just eat lower carb healthy food, wear whatever size, and not care; truly really not care. I'm not talking about eating crap (or things I know to be crap for me) and drugging myself to apathy, I mean eating plentifully of healthy food and letting my body handle things, which is how it is supposed to work. It's hard to even imagine that as possible now.

I am not sure I understand. Did the scorn help you gain weight? Say all the other things were in place...and people weren't as mean as they are. You'd have gained less weight in that scenario? I consider it a neutral factor. It would have made life more tolerable, but would it have helped me stay thinner? Caused me to be fatter? I can't see it doing either. There we a lot of people who were nice to me during the years I was 350+. There were a few mean people as well, but the bulk weren't hateful.

I was uncomfortable all the time, whether people were good or awful to me. It was mental discomfort as well as physical. Maybe the mental discomfort came from knowing that people who were looking at me were thinking I was a slob, a fat-ass, a useless, lazy, pathetic fattie. Maybe the discomfort came from knowing that they saw my weakness and hated it. If that were removed, would I have been more or less likely to get as fat?

I believe that the strength to lose weight doesn't come from them, it comes from us. So if you follow that logic, why would they have caused me to be fatter?

I have a thought about this ugly aspect to humanity. We evolved to exist in bands of roving hunter/gatherers. Those with flaws were a danger to the group. This contempt they feel for us is an aspect of that survival mechanism. It's too common, too prevalant, to be some societal contrivance. It's got to be this buried need to make sure the tribe is strong by ostracizing what is percieved to be the "weak". I don't know how valid that is, but it is just so common and the hatred is so intense that there has to be something more than human meanness to it.

I understand to a degree the point you're making - that the disapproval of society drives people to strive for an appearance that isn't possible, and we might wreck our metabolisms or overreach. But in my case, my only serious attempt to ever lose weight was low carb, so I didn't face that issue.

Woo is certainly able to answer for herself, but I'm going to add my two cents. Psychologically, it's sort of the "in for a penny, in for a pound" syndrome, if you'll excuse the pun. Let's suppose you are already overweight, and taking abuse for it. You might try to slim down, but when that fails, just figure, "F--- it. I can't slim down, they won't stop harrassing me, I might as well eat." You are made to feel like a freak, and as is so often the case in such situations, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. You find yourself excluded from activities and so on -- food becomes a reliable "friend" in such circumstances. I know for a fact that as a child I was never as fat as I was made to feel, but I think at some point I lost the ability to think of myself as anything else but fat, which in turn, influenced my decision not to try to lose weight earlier than did. We are complex beings, Scott, and a large part of who we are and become is predicted on how other people see us and treat us, like it or not. I'm sure that the "personal responsibility" crowd will soon be making a chest beating appearance, talking about how "You've just got to... (do what I do)" and that certainly sounds nice and all, and it's even true to an extent -- but it doesn't change the reality of human nature, and how people relate to their environment. The environment for a fat person is a toxic one, and such things seldom lead to healthy people.

What's the old saw? Tell a dog it's bad often enough, and it will believe you?

I can understand it this way - and that's what I was looking for. I look at photos of myself as a child and I don't even see a fat kid. Not even that chubby. By today's standards, I might not have even been remarkable. But you'd have thought I was 300 pounds the way I was treated at the time. I never really turned to the food in the way you describe. In fact, it was maddening to me that I'd consciously eat less than my thin brothers and still gain weight.

I didn't get to the point where I said "F*** it, let's slam some Oreos" until my twenties. I definitely developed this godawful appetite during that time that still persists now. I don't know if that was physical, mental, or a bit of both. Like a rock gaining momentum as it rolled down the hill, I got more appetite as I got fatter.

I still dunno if a nicer society would have helped much. People don't hate smokers the same way they hate fat people, and it's very difficult to quit that, too. I know it isn't an exact parallel, but I'm groping trying to find one.

Figuring out why we became fat is important. Blame society, blame your mom, blame the low-fat propaganda, blame yourself. I agree that we can take personal responsibility too far if we don't acknowledge that those things play important roles in the creation of the problem.

But the solutions are always within ourselves. We can win over society's messages to look anorexic, mother's admonishments to clean our plate, and low-fat propaganda. Personal responsibility comes in when we realize that it doesn't matter how we got here, the only way out is for us to do it ourselves.

Lament the fact that society didn't love us enough. Lament the fact that your mom didn't have the love/education/money/time/whatever to feed us right. Lament the fact that we are still being fed the low-fat BS all day. But don't let that stop you from doing what you need to do fix the mess those things created in your life.

If you give up and say you "can't" because of society or whatever, that's when I think the personal responsibility has to come into play.

Val

Actually it's a pretty good example. Kind of makes you think. I dunno. I feel that a less judgmental and blaming society would get better results, not just in weight and health issues, but in a variety of ways. Laying blame and pointing fingers always make things worse in my experience. Looking back, I feel, based on certain memories and so on, that I wouldn't have gotten as big as I did if I hadn't lived in such a hostile environment. But feelings don't mean a whole lot. Maybe the hostility had a positive effect as well, but I resented it so much I refused to acknowledge it. Like I said, we're complex beings

the world would definitely be a better place but the problem would still persist.

we definitely have a unique viewpoint coming from a weightloss support group.

I myself, never chastised and would never chastise an obese individual, it was always extremely painful when people did that to me.

However, nowadays it's kinda a weird, but I sometimes feel very hurt and or sorry for obese people who continue with their unhealthy lifestyles. I mean, I feel genuinely sorrowed and saddened deep down when, for instance, at a social function, or any setting, where I see obese people stuffing themselves with very unhealthy food while being so ignorant as to what they are doing.

In effect, it reminds me of myself, and that is too hard to look at. I sometimes, even remorsefully become angered.

But I don't like those kinda feelings and realize everyone has to make their own choices, but I take that energy and utilize it towards my own healthy goals. And think about those times when I'm feeling like not exercising.

Absolutely.

As a very small child, I felt good about myself and peace with the world. I was used to tolerance, diversity. I anticipated things, people, normally and with excitement. Then I moved to a small town. I became "the fat girl". The rest is history. The social abuse I experienced was so intensely painful, I cannot even describe how I felt. I have a memory of being followed home from school, abused the whole way, and I remember thinking as some little 10 year old kid "I'm never going to forget this moment". I got home, cried. Happened like that pretty much all the time. I am certain I either sound like I"m being over dramatic, or I’m not fully expressing how painful it was (and I just think I am because remembering is overwhelming me with pain).

At about this time, my family life started to fall apart - mom became seriously depressed. My father was always an unpredictable abusive alcoholic but he became even worse (he, like my mother, does not tolerate stress such as change well - mom becomes depressed, dad becomes abusive). That only intensified my sense of being abandoned, isolated... without a family to say "No, you AREN'T a worthless person", I just went with it even more, and it only augmented my pain (especially my dad and his abuse which hurt me deeply).

So here we have my family life going to crap (no support system, plus my father is actively adding to my sense of being abused and worthless), right at the time when I'm being told by my peers I'm fat, I'm a "beast", I'm disgusting, I'm stupid, I'm ugly and worthless every day, all day.
You bet that made me fatter.

What do people often do when they want to hide and not feel pain? Assuming they don't have access to drugs, they usually eat, since carbohydrate is a sedative that drugs us and makes the intolerable more tolerable.

The way society treats fat people is a major reason I suffered so intensely, and suffering intensely lead to a series of actions that made me morbidly obese. I admit if other variables weren't present (personality, carb sensitivity, home life) it probably wouldn't have happened. Still, it doesn't change the fact it DID happen, and the abuse I received for my weight was the major source of unhappiness that lead to a cycle of fear & pain -> withdrawal/escape -> eating -> fatness & metabolic problems -> abuse, over and over.


Consider yourself lucky.
I'm trying to be fair, but honestly, for every kind person there were so many more cruel ones. I don't know how your life went, but if I left my house it was a reasonable good chance someone would insult me for no reason. If i were stronger I could tell them to screw off, brush it off, but I didn't. I just kinda was like "yup, they're right", hid, and ate & played video games to try my hardest to not think or feel about the real world.

Yes my personality, the way I handled it, it was my fault; obviously not every fat person handles it as badly as I did. But for every fat girl (or person for that matter) who goes on to be a smashing success in spite of chronic abuse and adversity, there's another who kills themselves. I think it's fair to say most people who develop in any adverse, abusive environment typically do not handle it well; they often develop drug problems, alcoholism, and in my case, pretending the world wasn't there, drugging with food.
I would not have lived the way I lived and eaten the way I ate had I not been rejected for my weight.

My fat never bothered me.
What people would say about my fat bothered me. Having to sit with my fat, all day, every day, knowing what people were saying about it (even if they weren't around at the time)... that bothered me.

Ironically, my skinniness is at least as physically bothersome as fatness, if not more so. With fat the main problem was not being able to walk about much, which I really didn't care about, since I am not a physical person and still am not. Also, fat I was tired/sleepy all the time. Tiredness and sleepiness were major issues, I admit that.
As a skinny person, I'm freezing all the time, winters are *intolerable* (even right now in may my hands are cold and I am chilly often). To maintain weight, I am often hungry and have to sit with that hunger all the time. My body behaves way crazy with food - I never know what to expect. To top it off, I'm *still* often tired and I'm not as strong as I was.

Of course.
It is highly adaptive to make things automatically adverse for those who are different. This is because most differences are actually unproductive, defective, abortive. If the difference is adaptive and advantageous, it will thrive in spite of the adversity and eventually become the norm. Then when those norms are challenged again (by yet more difference) the cycle will repeat itself. That's evolution, that's life.

It doesn't change the fact this natural aversion to difference you talk about has caused some pretty horrible things. Not all differences are bad or inferior. Even if a difference is not productive, it doesn't mean that the pain that comes about is somehow okay.

My point is pain causes more pain.

When fat people feel bad for being fat, they are only more likely to kill themselves with food, because the process of killing yourself with food makes you lethargic, apathetic, and less feeling and aware.

Simple as that.

First I want to say Kwikdriver pretty much summed it up for me .

The problem with your smoking analogy is that people don't TURN to cigarettes to cope, the way they do with food. People start smoking by forcing themselves to do it - because someone told them it's cool. No one starts smoking and is instantly comforted. You create the addiction yourself, by forcing your body to depend on it, by forcing yourself to do it, all to be "cool".

Food is a little different. With food there is an instant comfort.
Everyone knows after you eat, you get this little "glaze of consciousness" where you can think less, feel less, you are tired and sluggish and sedated, a little more peaceful. Food is a sedative, especially carbohydrate. It is blood sugar that is responsible for these feelings, and carbohydrate raises that best.

It's actually not that pleasant of a feeling, over eating. A normal person cannot become addicted to the feeling of over eating, I don't think, since it's not truly a feeling of intense pleasure (like, for example, opiates).
It's more a feeling of distance, of being "less here".
It's a feeling of escape and unconsciousness, similar to sleeping. Being addicted to food high is like being addicted to sleeping; it is not a true addiction but more a way of coping with a problem that you don't know what else to do about.

One only seeks out that "less here" feeling when they are in pain or overwhelmed by something like stress. Guess what is a major source pain most fat people are overwhelmed by?
See the cycle?

edit: By the way, I didn't say societies treatment of fat people makes it hard to stop being fat; I mainly said it is a reason many of us get that big to begin with, by creating this cycle of pain and escape till one day you wake up 300 lbs.
With cigarette smoking society does come into play but it is more an active choice on behalf of the smoker. There is pressure to be "cool" and make yourself addicted to cigarettes, but it's not the same kind of "no other choice" situation that many fat people perceive themselves as being in.

I agree.
You can't change how things are, but ultimately, you have to just work with it and do your best to make yourself happy and overcome any problems. You're not doing anyone, least of all yourself, any favors by pretending otherwise. The existence of adversity does not justify giving up.

And I think we have a responsibility to try to make things better -- to change things. As soon as these issues are brought up, somebody pops up and starts talking about "personal responsibility" with the predictability of night following day. And it's always out of place. Of course I'm the only person who can dig my way out of the hole. It's a truism. But I also believe I have a responsibility to help other people avoid falling into a hole in the first place by stopping the digging of the holes, not wag my finger and say, "You just have to exercise personal responsibility like I did." We can change how things are, unless we throw up our hands and choose not to, while hiding behind a slogan.

I was not a fat kid. I would go through periods where I weighed more and then periods where I would starve myself. I believed that the only way my parents would love me was to be bone thin. In fact, to some degree I still believe thats partially true today.

Both my parents were very obsessive about weight and thinness all the time and if they were not commenting on my weight or anything I might be eating they were talking about other fat people and warning me never to become fat.

I remember as a child going off to summer camp and not eating for 3 weeks. In 3 weeks all I had was juice, half a turkey sandwich every few days and a bowl of cereal with skim milk once. I dropped 15 pounds in 3 weeks going from about 95 pounds to 80. Everyone at the camp was concerned that I wasnt eating. I was tired all the time and slept all the time. My parents blew it off and told me it was a good thing and bought me gifts for losing that much weight.

I developed a horrible relationship with food. I was afraid to eat and when I would I would eat alone and hide it so no one ever saw me eating. I would go through these phases as a kid where I would binge eat. I would tell my mother I needed money for school supplies and buy $20 worth of junk food and eat it all within an hour or so. I would hide the wrappers or take them to school and crumple them inside of papers and bags so no one would ever see them and then I would go through feelings of guilt and starve myself as punishment.

I honestly believe that if my parents and those around me werent so intolerant of fat people and being fat I wouldnt have developed my binge eating and emotional eating issues which hugely contributed to my getting fat and are still major issues for me.

It pains me to see my 10 year old sister talk about dieting and my family teasing her telling her she has a little belly or how she wanted to buy a bikini to wear for summer camp and my mother commented about how big her belly is and how it will stick out and she should be embarrassed. It pains me to see her at 90 pounds all she thinks about is dieting and losing weight. She keeps asking me how to do Atkins and I tell her she doesnt need to, but at such a young age all she wants to do is be thinner. I hate that I know how she is feeling and how uncomfortable she is or how horrible my mother feels because all my mother wants to do is to lose weight and all my mother and her friends talk about is dieting. Its a vicious cycle and perhaps if people were kinder there wouldnt be that same kind of pressure to be thin that makes people sick or that makes people diet in ways that messes up their metabolism, or that makes people binge or give up and eat and feel hopeless.