Posted on 08/07/2004 10:23:23 PM PDT by familyop
The woman in the yellow shirt stood up and told of her life-long struggle against being fat, a fight that she had clearly lost. She was enormous.
'Every time I dieted I ended up larger,' she said as she broke into tears, 'If I were anorexic or bulimic, I would get sympathy. It is so frustrating.' She was applauded by 100 other very fat men and women.
'Here, you are in an island of sanity,' said Professor Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth and speaker at this annual meeting of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (Naafa) - activists spurring the backlash against America's obsession with weight.
Campos is their hero. His book has turned convention on its head, arguing that there is no obesity epidemic and fat does not have to mean unhealthy. His book has been a huge boost for association members who want an end to the obsession with weight and dieting and the marginalisation of fat people.
And fat people are finally starting to win a few battles: Campos's book is rising in the lists and generating a media buzz; the Atkins diet is waning in popularity after its founder's premature death; and former Cheers star Kirstie Alley, whose weight is a tabloid obsession, has landed her own reality TV show, Fat Actress, which sees her weight as a positive choice, not a reason for horror.
But Naafa is leading the charge. 'There are few more revolutionary groups in America today and revolution in this area is warranted,' said Campos.
Founded in 1969, it has several thousand members worldwide. At its annual conference in Newark last week some members had travelled from Canada and Europe. Delegates sported name tags emblazoned with the message: Dream Big.
Naafa hopes to provide a haven for very fat people away from the stresses of living in a thin society. At the conference were talks on how to lobby for fat rights, yoga classes, a pool party, a fashion show, a speed dating session, classes of beauty tips and fitness exercises. In short, they did most of the things that thinner people take for granted.
Marilyn Wann, a co-director of the association, symbolises its attitude of be healthy and happy with the body you have. Her T-shirt asks loudly: 'Fat!So?'. She says figures blaming obesity for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in America are wrong: 'Where are all the fat dead bodies?'
She is appalled by the growing practice among the very obese to have part of their stomach removed in a bid to lose weight: 'That sort of surgery is simply stomach theft. Why would any human being need to have a healthy organ cut out?'
Naafa encourages members to organise to lobby for legislation to fight discrimination against fat people. Carole Cullum, a Naafa director and lawyer said: 'It is up to us to fight. We are in a struggle.'
Wann is more blunt: 'We are in the middle of a witch hunt and we are the witches.' She says that, like most Naafa members, she eats healthily and exercises regularly - yet is still fat. 'I mean, seriously, why would anyone choose to be this size in a society that hates them every hour of every day?'
Doctors and healthcare professionals believe obesity has become a global epidemic - and America is at the heart of it. They point to evidence such as the rise in obesity-related diseases, like diabetes. Some studies have shown that 135 million Americans are overweight and the numbers classified as obese have risen 50 per cent over the past 10 years.
The result has been panic. Makeover shows advocating plastic surgery are the latest television hit and bookshelves groan with the latest best-selling diets. In the Eighties, newspaper articles on obesity ran at about 60 a year; last year there were more than 7,000.
Campos believes America, Britain and much of the developed world is in the grip of anti-fat hysteria. He blames much of this on how obesity is measured, claiming that the standards are unrealistic.
He also claims dieting is responsible for making people fat by triggering a 'starvation response' in the body which, when dieting stops, starts storing 'emergency' fat in increasing amounts, a pattern repeated after each failed diet. That was the experience of Mary Ray Worley, 48, who as a chubby child started dieting at the age of eight - but each one only ended with her putting on more weight. Since discovering the association three years ago, she has changed her attitude to her weight: 'I don't hate my body any more. I honour it.'
Being FAT is not GOOD. Being the STICK THIN WESTERN EUROPEAN HOMOSEXUAL HEROINE CHIC MODEL isn't either BUT being FAT is the WORST. Being FAT is unhealthy, being FAT dooms girls to being SINGLE SPINSTERS and gives men HEARTATTACKS and STROKES when they're thirty five and in their PRIME. I'm so sick of special interest groups excusing every single deviant lifestyle and behavior out the need to soothe someone's self esteem. No wonder why the islamonazis LAUGH at us.
LOL
I believe people in this nation have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Silly me.
And much of what was written a few years ago on the subject was totally useless for people suffering from carbohydrate addiction (probably the #1 cause of obesity).
It's easy to love my friends and family who are fat, but I do wish they would get into the habit of moving around more to play (tai chi, walks, etc.), get plenty of sleep to facilitate that, eat more varied things,...
Recognizing and dealing with carb addiction would probably help considerably as well.
But at the same time, I believe that we are a nation of hypersensitive people, and that prevents the flow of good and caring information. We all have our weaknesses, and it's time for a come-back in humor and discussion about those.
Carb addiction is much like any other sort; it is not an excuse for a behavior, but one must recognize it to manage a solution. I think recognizing it as an additiction would be very helpful in a lot of ways.
Well, it didn't keep my late wife single much past her 27th birthday, but it probably didn't help when she got a blood clot stuck in her lung before her 28th.
I'm all for people doing what they want to do ... and for feeling good about themselves. But being heavy is not healthy. I think they may not realize how much more comfortable they would feel if they were a normal weight.
How about their joints? Do they last as long?
Worked in nursing care and I can attest to the fact that they eventually end up in nursing homes or healthcare centers trying to get skinny people to carry them around. I would tell them I couldn't and they would come back with, "Oh come on now! Don't you have a strong male around here that can do it!" Yea right!
deepest sympathies for you :(
Being fat isn't healthy. It puts a person at risk for Type II diabetes and heart disease. Then there are the joint problems that come along with excess weight - hips, knees and back. Are these healthy things? "Diets" are no good - a person needs to learn to eat properly for life. When you "diet", you tend to go off your "diet", and then gain back all the weight you lost, and then some.
Even though she was warned, my daughter gained so much weight that she did develop type II diabetis. Now she has developed so many medical conditions I'm beginning to wonder if I will live longer then her. She now takes 22 medications and just found out her thyroid is bad. I told her she has all the ills of an elderly person.
Fat is 'fabulous' especially considering the FDA has now classified obesity a disease, eligible for government, grant, subsidy and handout...
"I feel pretty, oh so pretty..."
Here are some good older western lyrics. ...sang this to my boy. Now he's a young man who can run up and down the peaks.
Roly Poly
Recording: Bob Wills
Vocal: Tommy Duncan
by Fred Rose
Roly Poly, eatin' corn n' 'taters
Hungry ev'ry minute of the day
Roly Poly, gnawin' on a biscuit
Long as he can chew it, it's okay.
He can eat an apple pie
An' never even bat an eye
He likes everything from soup to hay
Roly Poly, daddy's little fattie
Bet he's gonna be a man some day.
Roly Poly, scrambled eggs for breakfast
Bread n' jelly twenty times a day
Roly Poly, eats a hardy dinner
It takes lots of strength to run and play.
Pulls up weeds and does the chores
And he runs both ways to all the stores
He works up an appetite that way
Roly Poly, daddy's little fattie
Bet he's gonna be a man someday.
That is very sad.
I need to lose weight, it is taking a long time. As you get older it gets harder. I just keep working on it. I do realize that less stress on the body is better.
We all need to be careful and watch things like those trans fats. Hydrogenated oils are very bad. Cottonseed oil is very bad, because it is not even a food, so it can be heavily sprayed with pesticides. Just read the labels, and listen to your body. It will tell you when you are in need of nutrition.
Not everyone's goal in life is to live to be 100, nor should it be. As to the insurance companys, your beef is with the system that foisted them on us, not fat people. There should be no insurance companies...socialism...in the first place. Everyone who participates in them understands that they are entering a socialist system where they will pay for the benefit of the whole, hoping it doesn't happen to them. It's not people's fault, but the faulty principle of socialism in the first place.
Not everyone's goal in life is to live to be 100, nor should it be. As to the insurance companys, your beef is with the system that foisted them on us, not fat people. There should be no insurance companies...socialism...in the first place. Everyone who participates in them understands that they are entering a socialist system where they will pay for the benefit of the whole, hoping it doesn't happen to them. It's not people's fault, but the faulty principle of socialism in the first place.
But the following is my favorite. ...might look a little off-topic, at first, but in the general sense, it has much to do with our country's tenets before people were so sensitive.
"Three Bells" (The Browns)
There's a village, hidden deep in the valley,
Among the pine trees, half forlorn.
And there, on a sunny morning,
Little Jimmy Brown was born.
All the chapel bells were ringing, in the little village town,
And the song that they were singing was for baby Jimmy Brown.
And the little congregation prayed for guidance from above:
"Lead us not into temptation, bless this hour of meditation.
Guide him with eternal love."
There's a village, hidden deep in the valley,
Beneath the mountains high above.
And there, twenty years thereafter,
Jimmy was to meet his love.
All the chapel bells were ringing, ‘Twas a great day in his life,
Cause the song that they were singing was for Jimmy and his wife.
And the little congregation prayed for guidance from above:
"Lead us not into temptation, bless, O Lord, this celebration.
May their lives be filled with love."
From the village, hidden deep in the valley,
One rainy morning dark and gray,
A soul winged its way to heaven.
Jimmy Brown had passed away.
Just one lonely bell was ringing, in the little village town,
‘Twas farewell that it was singing to our buddy Jimmy Brown.
And the little congregation prayed for guidance from above:
"Lead us not into temptation, may his soul find the salvation
Of thy great eternal love."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By the way, I also listen to Metal with kids. And we do backcountry snowboarding since the knees are working better.
Here we go again, turning something bad into a virtue. If you want to be obese, go for it, but don't try to make me think you are attractive, healthy, or happy. I've never met a happy obese person. We are not talking about people who are somewhat overweight or what we used to call chubby, we are talking about obesity. Chirsti Alley is a fat pig anyway you look at it. Ditto Michael Moore. Only with Michael Moore weight loss would not make any less of a despicable human being so he might as well be obese.
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