Rant - Treatment of Obese people

I am sure I am not alone here but I am getting sick and tired of it being okay to be discriminated against for being obese.

It seems it must be human nature to have a group of people we make fun of and it is politically incorrect these days to make fun of anyone else so now the new group is anyone who is overweight.

In a single night's TV watching I can easily count 10 or more fat jokes.   It wouldn't be so bad if they were based on any facts at all.   If they, for instance, showed a fat person having problems running or climbing stairs. Those are pretty real.   But, inevitably they are showing or speaking about a fat person sitting around doing nothing stuffing their face with doughnuts and assume that all overweight people do nothing but eat all day long. 


I personally experience discrimination for being obese all the time:

• I have had sales clerks ignore me.
• I have had waiters give me the smaller portion (trying to help me I am sure).
• I have also had the opposite where when someone at the table turns down the free desert waiters assume I would want it and just scoot it over to my area.
• I often have teenage kids laugh, point or make snide remarks.  
• Just last night I went grocery shopping and had a group of kids behind me make mooing sounds.

I live with this all of the time.

When did this become acceptable???

The thing that irritates me about this ridicule is it in unfounded.

We don't all sit around all day eating.  I actually think I ate too little for the past decade or so and that was keeping me obese by messing up my metabolism.   I would skip breakfast and lunch most days.  I would then eat an unhealthy dinner full of carbs and eat it too late but overall I would still consume fewer calories in a given day than my thinner friends.

I also didn't just eat bon-bons or doughnuts. 

I actually was on a health kick a few years back where I didn't eat anything from a box or a can for almost a year.   I still try to limit my intake of chemicals.  That doesn't match the picture portrayed by Hollywood and being propagated by the general public of overweight people living on ice-cream and potato chips. 

The same rules we now live by in other discrimination / prejudice areas should apply to this area too.   Don't assume that someone who is overweight just sits around eating all day.  Don't assume they are lazy.   Basically, don't assume anything.   Get to know the individual.

Because of this type of treatment, I went through about 5 years where I suffered pretty severe anxiety. I even had a few out and out panic attacks.

I had a time where I left a party at a friends house and went running to the car to lock myself inside.  No one had said anything or done anything but I felt like they were all staring at the whale and judging so I freaked out and left.  My poor husband was so shocked and so was my friend, they had no idea what happened or what they should do.

Remember the golden rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you and remember to be kind. Your judgment may have an effect on people way beyond what you can imagine.

Where I am today.

As I stated in my introductory post, I have been trying to loose weight most of my life.

My highest weight was 402 lbs. Ironically this occurred after I started my pre-work toward Lap Band surgery.

One of my requirements for surgery preparation was to loose 10% of my weight. I weighed 385 so that would mean I would need to loose 38 lbs.

The reason they require you to loose weight is two fold:

• First, they need the extra room in your stomach cavity so weight loss gives them the room to do the surgery that weight loss would provide them.

• The other reason is to shrink the liver. The stomach sits under the liver and the fatter the liver is, the harder it is to see the stomach and the more difficult it is for them to do the surgery.

I think there is also a hidden agenda of them also seeing how willing you are to stick to a diet and how motivated you are. The bariatrician (weight loss doctor) doesn't give you this reason. Just my opinion.

Anyway, my insurance also had a requirement for me to do six months of a nationally recognized weight loss program under the care of my doctor. I chose Weight Watchers because I have had moderate levels of success with that in the past. However, because I weighed so much my daily points were set to 42. For those of you not familiar with how weight watchers works, every food has a point value and so this means I would need to eat 42 points worth of food. This is a TON of food, I felt like I was eating non stop and was forcing myself to make unhealthy choices (ice cream etc) to get to the 42 points. in just 3 weeks I ballooned up almost 20 lbs to my high of 402 because of this. Weight Watchers does provide healthy eating guidelines, but these are easy to ignore and there are no foods off limits so if your whole 42 points are in ice cream, you will gain weight.


I was frustrated and went back to my bariatrician and explained what was happening and he suggested a low carb diet.

Believe me, I know what you are thinking: "here we go again, didn't we already prove that Atkins didn't work?"

The reason I know what you are thinking is that is what I thought. In fact I had a frank discussion with my doctor about this. He said to just trust him, after all he is a weight loss expert and to try it again.

Well, I am here to tell you, he was right. I have been low carb for months and almost every day the scale moves. In doing research I found there is a right way and a wrong way to do this type of weight loss plan and I had done it the wrong way before like many others. Look forward to future posts about the low carb lifestyle including tips, tricks and recipes.

I am still following weight watchers to a degree too. I just am not eating all of my points and the points I am eating are low carb. I am mainly doing weight watchers simply because it is required for insurance for the surgery.

As of this morning I weighed 356 so that is 46 lbs from my highest weight.

Today, I am unsure about the surgery. My honest fear is that if I don't do it, I will end up gaining it all back again. We have all been there haven't we? Lost a ton and gained back 2 tons. I see the surgery as my mistake proofing device to keep the weight off.


By the way, today I had quiche for breakfast, I plan on having a Chicken Caesar salad for lunch and a homemade Greek seasoned lamb hamburger smothered in cheese for dinner.


Have a great day and God Bless you.

Karr