Obesity and Being Fat

One of my dear friends from seminary has been a fat acceptance advocate for quite a while. She shared this article with me. It really shows the difference between being a fat hater and wanting to be healthy. Two different things I promise. Read "
America’s War on the Overweight " and let me know what you think.

In particularly I appreciated the explanations of why there's so much animosity.

So why don't we have more compassion for people struggling to lose the first 50,
60, or 100? Some of it has to do with the psychological phenomenon known as the
fundamental attribution error, a basic belief that whatever problems befall us
personally are the result of difficult circumstances, while the same problems in
other people are the result of their bad choices. Miss a goal at work? It's
because the vendor was unreliable, and because your manager isn't giving you
enough support, and because the power outage last week cut into premium sales
time. That jerk next to you? He blew his quota because he's a bad planner, and
because he spent too much time taking personal calls.

I've been struggling with this concept for a few months, because I have found out there are medical reasons why the last 5 years I've been gaining weight rapidly and unable to lose more than just a few pounds. I am hypothyroid and have insulin resistance... which means that without treatment, I'm not burning carbs when I eat them but storing them and I'm also unable to burn stored fat when I exercise or reduce calories. Maintaining my weight +/- 10# was all I was able to do even with restricted diets.

So now I REALLY DO have reasons (beyond the typical too much caloric intake problem) why this has happened to me. But what I think (instead of this "fundamental attribution error" and feeling like an exception to the rule) is that there are more people out there who have hidden thyroid problems (esp. women) and hidden insulin problems.

The authors go on to talk about the catch 22 of weight ridicule... mock us too much and we don't care anymore about healthy eating and exercise. who cares if i'll be chastised and condescendingly mocked even if i try. While I have had periods where I felt it just didn't matter if I tried(because I will always be fat in other people's eyes) 95% of my life that has NOT been the case.

I also know that there are plenty of hypothyroid people who never will get as large as I am now. Not sure about insulin resistance... that disorder has this chicken/egg thing going for it. The more one gains weight, the more insulin resistant one gets. Is it because of the fat or is the fat just the easiest sign of increasing resistance to burning carbs correctly? I tend to think the latter, but don't let most doctors hear that.

What my doctor (who's helping me with the thyroid and insulin stuff) has told me is basically summed up as "I'm up shit creek without a paddle" when it comes to maintaing a healthy weight. If you think about it, if my hypothyroidism never showed up in the tests and no one ever checked my insulin levels with my glucose, I'd continue down this road until I got diabetes, my heart and arterial problems increased, my female problems got worse and probably leading to infertility and I'd just keep getting fatter which would compromise my joints even more. What a lovely thought.

If I had not pestered doctors for 2 years about this, none of my problems would have been discovered. So, while I am ALL about fat acceptance for psychological and spiritual reasons... I hope that larger people, who are twice the weight of their high school weight like me, never give up on being healthy.