>> ^snoozedoctor:

By the way, I work on the morbidly obese every day. The place I work is designated a "Center of Excellence" for Bariatric surgery. Yes, doing bariatric surgery helps prevent a lot of complications down the road, like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. With the US struggling to provide even basic health care needs to the poor, do I get a little miffed with all the health care dollars consumed because of self-induced diseases, like smoking and over-eating? I freely admit I do.


And so you should, you have reason to feel like that. I cringe when I think how much obese people are costing the NHS and how if I'm not careful I will become one of those people whose weight will cause me health problems. I have on and off dieted most of my adult life, I am very much not content with my weight for a variety of reasons. And I am fully aware exactly what I have to do and what will work. The problem is and I imagine it's the same for most fat people, it's harder to give up on something you can't completely avoid. There is literally no way to take away the temptation when food is required to live.

And of course you work with it and you hear day after day, excuses as to why they can't lose weight, and you think there is NO such thing as can't. Well that's true, but it's like telling someone who has a smoking habit they can't quit, "well you shouldn't have started in the first place." It's too friggin late, the damage is done! And like we were saying, getting obese often isn't something you have had any control over, it started off in childhood. And then, you are stuck with the life long struggle of trying to beat an addiction. It's not like drugs, where if you stay away from it long enough and get it out of your system, you only have a mental addiction to contend with. You've got to eat. Willpower isn't something you can just switch on, if ONLY it was.

And then there's the exercise thing. Such a simple thing to do, burn off more calories than you're consuming. No one can argue that is the ONLY automatic guarantee you will lose weight. But consider that for someone fat and the bigger they are the worse it is, exercise is probably twice if not more times as difficult to do. It hurts, there's pressure on your joints, you're out of breath within a couple of minutes, you ache for hours afterwards because you aren't necessarily flexible enough to stretch out properly. Really we should all go swimming, it's the best thing, has always worked for me, but at certain weights I imagine getting into a swimming cossie is the last thing they want to do, people stare and pull faces. So yeah, it's very easy to give up when every solution is miles harder than for the people telling you what you should be doing. None of this is excuses, I hope you have garnered from what I've said that I entirely understand where thin people or health professionals are coming from. But without actually having had a weight problem themselves, that completely dismissive attitude and oversimplification is thoughtless at best and fucking arrogant at worst.

Reminds me of those bimbos when you go out who just assume everyone will like them cos they're pretty and blonde, but behind their back people are growling, hissing and pulling faces, haha