The issue is when we are overwhelmed by circumstances our bodies may try in part to meet those needs by raising our appetites, although I’m not convinced that it’s more likely to cause weight gain than any other kind of eating. There are people who’s appetite rises at the slightest discomfort and never become fat or more than plump. There are other factors going on that lead to weight gain regardless of what you eat and why.

Dude. Who, and where is he? Seriously.

I’m not going to just write his name here, because I certainly don’t have permission for that, but if you e-mail me, I’ll give you his name individually.

(click on my name, which will take you to my blog, which will have a link to email me).

I’d also like to say that, given that I had to have five (five!) needles stuck in me that day, I really never thought I’d be walking out with warm fuzzy feelings (blood test, TB test, tetanus booster, and, because I’m going to India in January, both a polio booster and a typhoid shot. fun).

Just a personal perspective. My sister was hit by the “you are too fat” nagging from early childhood. The effect of it was just a layer of emotional abuse that did nothing to help her deal with the problem. So on top of the health issues involving her weight, she has some fairly nasty problems with clinical depression.

And a lot of people are emotional eaters who are already in crappy, painful, stressful, or difficult situations in their lives. Those situations lead to emotional eating, which leads to weight gain, which often leads to yet again not feeling so great emotionally, and off we go again. And adding the stress of being nagged by family members and strangers really? Yeah, not so helpful. If they really “cared” they’d stop being abusive and avoid creating unnecessary emotional upsets.

Do you think he’d be alarmed if he was suddenly besieged with clients?

Especially since there are apparently only 2 sizes here in NYC – “Hollywood/UES” and ZOMGFAT!1!!1

p.s . Thank you, Zuzu. I eagerly await your new framing post.

there’s at least one doctor in NYC who gets it.

Dude. Who, and where is he? Seriously.

Preface – I’m definitely in the “fat” category. Hadn’t been to the doctor in a number of years, in part because of all of the judginess of the last doctor I went to. But I’m going to India in a few months, and needed shots and stuff, and it was high time that I just went and got a physical, so I went to a new MD, recommended by my folks.

The entire time, I’m bracing myself for the “inevitable” lecture, so that when he turns around, after doing all of the tests and looking over my chart, and says “Listen…” I immediately go on the defensive and start in with “I know I know, I see a trainer twice a week, I watch what I eat…”

And then he says “wait! just stop! That’s not what I was going to say!” Then he goes on – he’s only ever going to say this one time. Obviously, I know I’m overweight. That there’s absolutely nothing he can say that would be either particularly enlightening or helpful. And that he’s only even saying this because, I’m so accustomed to getting the lecture that if he said absolutely nothing, I’d think he was a quack. In addition, he didn’t want to get my health evaluations all “wrapped up” and overshadowed by this other thing, because they’re two different things, and if he started lecturing me about weight, then that would overshadow everything else, only to my detriment. If my blood tests came back, and, say, my cholesterol was high, then we’d work on treating my high cholesterol, which might include modifications to my diet. But if my tests came back normal, then, frankly, it was purely “cosmetic”, not medical, and none of his concern.

I’m obviously paraphrasing, and he said it with such a tone of genuine niceness that probably can’t be captured on screen, but I almost started crying at that point. Imagine! a doctor who understands that size is not inherently indicative of anything but…size! And I immediately thought of the thread zuzu is referring to above.

So again, I’m glad that this topic came up again, if only because I can point out that there’s at least one doctor in NYC who gets it.

Telling fat people how they can get thin via diet and exercise is like telling a clinically depressed person all he needs to do is just cheer up.

Yeah. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who do just that, on both counts.

It could also be that they’ve equated “fat” with the negative stereotypes of “lazy”, “dirty”, “slothful”, “stupid”, etc. in their minds, and clearly you’re not any of the latter things, so you couldn’t possibly be “fat.”

It’s not really that. I’ve had friends over the years who have hated themselves for being fat, and put themselves down for being fat, and engaged in dangerous eating habits in order to lose weight. I have a male friend who doesn’t have the greatest luck with women, and he gets really down on himself for being “fat and disgusting.” I think that’s why it makes me a little sad when people say it about themselves now. I want to say, “No, you don’t need to do anything scary to change your body, and there’s nothing wrong with you.” It’s hard to let that reaction go when someone says it matter-of-factly, and it doesn’t smack of self-hatred.

It might also be because it’s such a short, harsh, staccato little word. The Urdu word for fat is “moti,” and I don’t seem to have the same associations with it.

And that thread… GAAHHH. The worst part is that she went ON AND ON about how she was CONCERNED and it was UNHEALTHY, but this was a post about the Anti-Gym, right? I didn’t look at the site for a long time because I didn’t think I could deal with that much hatred, but when I did, I noticed that there’s all this stuff about how it’s a gym for people who want to look hot in bed but not give up any of their other bad habits, like drinking or smoking. It’s a gym that operates on the principle of fat hatred, and that people think better of you when you’re thin no matter how unhealthy and ill-advised your lifestyle is. It’s a gym that doesn’t value HEALTH at all, and that’s why it’s the Anti-Gym.

Once I looked at the site, I realised that her comments were disingenuous at best.