Last night Dave and I met friends for supper and I asked about their daughter. The wife told me her step-daughter was severely overweight and needed to lose a couple of hundred pounds.

She said the girl looked at her and said, "But I only weigh 250 pounds." My friend said, "baloney! I weigh 225 and you're bigger than me."

At which point my friend's husband and the girls father looked up and said, "heck. the shadow of her butt weighs that much!"

I laughed until I cried and people were looking at me. Don't care...I've been laughing recently and it feels GOOD!

Is that his daughter he's talking about? It's a funny expression, but dang...what a thing to say about your own daughter. That's if I'm reading this right.

[ January 16, 2005, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: Dotsie ]

wow , that had to hurt. Weather she , the daughter, reacted or not ,,,

But it's no different then the reaction my mom gave me when in 3rd grade and i weighed before dinner one night and went from 99lbs to 101 did she say " well get use to it your growing up" Growing up i get but getting bigger and being afraid no one will like me. No matter what age , that hurts and is in the minds of most people I know ..

But this is my opinion and is at the other end of the spectrim

Deb

I watched a show the other night on our channel 33, its a sort of a unsual health channel. They told the story of a very sweet, soft spoken and pretty faced women of about 40'ish that weighed in at 627 pounds. Thats right and its not a typo, she weighed 627. It showed her fears and how she was a prisoner in her own body. It showed her transformation from infancy to now. She was having a stomach staple proceedure which was shown, every gory detail of it and then for the a couple months after. How she had every complication possibe without actually dying. In one month she lost 200 pounds which wasn't good because she could not eat and was terribly dehydrated. I hope they will do a follow up later to see how she handled the rolls upon rolls of baggy, hangy loose skin, it was everywhere and horrible. I would rather eat seaweed than have that happen and believe it or not it didn't take that long for her weight to get out of control either. Made me stop and think...The next program was a 1000 pound man. Didn't watch that one, saw him and decided to take a nice long walk...Scary! Boy Ladybug you have the right idea.

[ September 28, 2005, 07:31 PM: Message edited by: chatty lady ]

I've purposely stayed away from any of the diet topics on the forums because I have some different views and haven't wanted to stir things up, but I have to respectfully put my two cents in here. First of all, that poor young woman's father should be ashamed of himself (and I suspect the stepmother isn't endearing herself to the girl either). Does he think horribly hurtful comments like that will help her in any way? It certainly won't cause her to lose weight and added to any other hurtful comments and meanness will probably make her emotional life difficult which could very likely add to her weight. There have even been a number of teen suicides in the U.S. recently because of the way those large-sized teens were treated. Yes, people can be cruel, but that doesn't mean they should be excused lightly for their cruelty. People are people no matter what size and we're all due some respect.
Simply being thin is not the height of health. We do come in all sizes and we can ruin our health trying to starve ourselves into shapes we're not meant to be. Obviously I'm not talking about 600 to 1,000 pounds, but there are a number of things in our society that compound problems for those people too.
There are a number of good books out there that say things way more eloquently and probably convincingly than I do, but I want to state (and I know this is the part that gets people stirred up) that you can be fit and large. I'm not saying that this is what everyone should do. I'm simply saying that in our society many fat people also lead lives that, for whatever reason, includes little exercise and unhealthy food choices. Some of it is economic and some of it is not having the right knowledge of how to stay healthy. There are many studies out there showing that fat people who eat right and exercise are healthier and live longer than thin people who do neither of those. In an article I wrote for a health magazine for large women (that is sadly no longer in publication) I talked about studies done many years ago on women in Somoa who are naturally heavier than what our culture thinks of as acceptable. These women were thought of as beautiful in their own culture and, until recently when they were introduced to Western thought and products, they had virtually no instances of heart disease.
The personal in all this? I was a child whose mother was so afraid of my being fat that she got a doctor to put me on diet pills when I was 8 years old. I know she was doing what she thought was best for me, but what a misguided thing to do! I spent the next thirty-some years on constant diet yo-yos until something drastic happened. About 15 years ago I had to have emergency surgery for a blockage from gall stones and had my gall bladder removed. When I asked the doctor after what caused it, his quick, flip reply was: "The 3 F's--forty, fat and eat fried foods. Now cut out the fried foods." I was flabergasted because I don't eat fried foods. I've been a vegetarian for well over 30 years (my kids have never had meat), and I don't eat sugar. Obviously there had to be something else besides his erroneous assumptions. I began doing some research (one of the advantages of being a librarian at the time) and discovered that the percentage of gall bladder problems in women particularly, who diet constantly is way beyond any other group. Not only that, I discovered that I had experienced many of the common symptoms of starvation when I was dieting and had only thought them normal occurences! I have never dieted from that day on and never will.
I wrote a play with another woman a few years ago about body image and size and was paid very well by a theater group for a 7 night run. Most nights the theater was full and people had to be turned away. We held discussions two nights after the performances and both times almost the entire audience stayed and participated. We were also amazed that, even though we had made it clear in the advertising that there was adult language and material in the play, several parents brought their pre-adolescent girls because they wanted to be able to discuss it with them.
A small irony in all this happened to me in the last year. I've always been very active and have been a swimmer almost every day for years, hike a great deal and can walk circles around most people. I never lost weight because of it. But last year, I gained access to a free gym and started using it because of a slight back problem from a bad chair. I started working out every day along with the swimming because it felt really good. My menopause symptoms all went away and so i've kept it up. I did not change my diet--I eat healthy but within the two restrictions I already mentioned I eat anything I want. At first I didn't realize I was losing weight. I figured working out would change my shape some and so when I went down a clothes size I thought that's what was happening. It wasn't until those clothes became too big that I realized and I ended up actually going down 5 sizes. Then it stopped and I've stayed at that size since.
Part of my point is that no one thing works for everyone. I am a strict vegetarian too, though I became one because I grew up on a farm and watched animals that I loved (and even the ones I didn't love) get killed for food and I hated it. I don't begrudge it to anyone else--I just can't eat meat. I do think some of our big farm practices make meat unhealthy, but that's another matter.
I realize this is a very long post and I have so much more I could say, but I'll end it here. Though I do like respectful discussion around the topic. And respect is very important to me--for everyone. Thanks for putting up with my views.

Dream of the Circle of Women
by Dahti Blanchard
published May 2004 by Spilled Candy Books
visit: www.dahtiblanchard.com

Dahti, I think your views are right on. Our society seems to treat obese people like they have just smelled something bad. My cousin in very obese but she's also one of the most wonderful women I've ever known. She eats junk food all the time but that's up to her. I don't judge her for it. It hurts me to hear people make jokes at the expense of fat people just like it bothers me to hear elderly people called old man or old woman. We dispose of so many wonderful people that way...by dismissing them as flawed.

Dahti,

Was does a day of "eating" in your household look like?

DH and I are moving in the direction of less meat more grains and veggies, I am curious as to how your daily diet looks like.

danita

ladybug,

I cannot speak for your overweight friends, but being overweight is not about what a woman puts in her mouth, it's more about what is in her head and heart that causes her to overeat. I'm not overweight, but could stand to lose a few lbs. However, when I'm lonely, bored, depressed, stressed out or whatever, I turn to food. I can eat an entire box of cookies within 24 hours, of course I don't eat anything else all day. I just don't buy food that's too easy to shovel in when I have one of those "poor me" days. I think a lot of women are like me (and Oprah).

You are very fortunate to have the willpower and mind-set to control your eating habits. It doesn't come that easy for everyone.

Daisygirl

Danita,
We aren't vegan so we do eat cheese, eggs and milk, though from personal choice I get these from farmer friends or the local co-op which gets them from small local farms which are organic. My favorite breakfast is a whole grain cereal with fruit and toast. I don't like eating before I swim and workout in the morning so I usually eat late in the morning. If I do eat another lunch it's a salad or veggie sandwich and at dinner we have all kinds of things--soups, quiches, veggie or tofu loafs (my family has always loved tofu and I have many wonderful recipes for using it), beans & rice, burritos--lots of choices. We eat a lot of salads and whole grain breads. My daughter got us into tea time a few years ago. She never misses it, but now that she's no longer living at home I don't get to it every day, but when I do I usually have fruit, cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches or some other kind of treat with it. In between those we always have lots of fruit, veggies and nuts to munch on and juice when we want it. Our traditional family holiday meal includes a vegetable lasagna and an incredibly wonderful stuffed pumpkin. My grown kids think those two things are as essential for holidays as other familes do turkey. I'm allergic to sucrose so I never eat anything with regular sugar and even honey and maple syrup are too hard for me to digest. I can use fruit juice sweetener so once in a while I'll make a pie or scones with that. I'm not a big eater--never have been except for the periods right after a weight loss diet when my body would crave things it hadn't had for a while.
People often do turn to food when we need comfort, but it should not be assumed that every large person you see overeats. Constant dieting can change metabolism and most (not all) people who diet regain the weight. There are several good books about the mechanics and social aspects of food and body size and image. I can recommend some to anyone who is interested.
Ladybug--I was feeling slightly uncomfortable with your tone until that last post to Daisygirl. Thank you for that. There were a couple of assumptions you made about what I said in my post that I didn't actually say. I didn't imply that you were starving yourself. I said that I discovered that that was what was happening to me when I was on weight-loss diets. And I'm talking established things like Weight Watchers. (Which is another whole can of worms. In my early 20's I took the training to be a WW counselor and that was quite an eye opener for me! Not one that made me admire the company much either.)
The uncomfortableness I felt had to do with the feeling that what you were saying was like someone declaring her religion to be the only right way for everyone. I have no doubt you're really healthy. So am I. I am no longer "overweight" but I was healthy before working out in the gym and still am. The gall bladder surgery was the only time I've ever been in the hospital (not even for the birth of my kids) and at 54--in 2 weeks--I can out walk, outswim and move faster than the teens and 20 year olds along with all the other ages I do those activities with. I also realize how lucky I am to have the time to do those things. I know from experience how difficult it is to be able to be physically active when you're working outside the home and, in my case, homeschooling kids at the same time. And I have a wonderfully supportive husband who's always done an equal amount of all of our kid and house duties. I can only imagine how much more difficult it is for single parents. Now that my kids have left the nest and I set up my own schedule as a writer and music teacher I can exercise as much as I want.
And actually--yes, the doctor did mean that literally about the fried foods. One thing we agree on, doctors are often clueless to what healthy eating entails.
As to your question: "If it's healthy to be over weight why does the U.S. have record numbers of people with heart disease, stroke, breast cancer, colon cancer and adult onset diabetes?"
Again, it's not the person's size, but more often nutrition and, for whatever reason, the amount and kind of exercise that have to do with those diseases. Not to mention some of the environmental causes. The studies that relate these to size alone do not differentiate between overweight people who smoke, or say, eat most of their meals at McDonalds, or get little to no exercise and those who don't.
I do take good care of myself and obviously so do you. I'd say everyone here is trying to do the same thing, we just all do it in different ways. And again (I'm big on this one-have you noticed?) no one way of doing things, either in religion, how we raise our children or how we feed our bodies, works for everyone.

Dream of the Circle of Women
by Dahti Blanchard
published May 2004 by Spilled Candy Books
visit: www.dahtiblanchard.com

Food is such an emotional issue.I haven't had a weight problem since I was a child but that was because I was called Fatty-Patty and instead of going the one way alot of women choose and eating myself fatter I became an exercise junkie and was once bulimic.
Words hurt. I know that even tho I may wear a size six there is that chubby little girl inside me- the one that last year could hardly walk but the day before my spinal decompression surgery was on the treadmill and lifting weights.
So I may not have a weight problem since the sixth grade but I will probably always have a problem with weight because of the words that hurt a little girl