Fat Denial, Fat Codependency

Posted on May 9, 2005 in Crosstalk Sugar and Fat

This is in response to a brief post by Lauren and, more particularly, to some of her respondents, one of whom suggested that I be castrated for criticizing a woman as needing to lose weight. You can check my self-defense out there.

Fat’s a very real medical condition and some people choose to deny it. Occasionally it is caused by a hormonal imbalance. But this is rare. More often it occurs because the person in question is in denial about how much they eat and how little they exercise.

My hand is raised here. Partly thanks to some of the medications I am on, I am overweight. But I also snack frequently between meals and don’t walk as much as I should even though there are many fine places for a stroll nearby. My fat is my problem, my mistake. And I know plenty of others who are in the same place or worse than I am.

A friend of mine recently worried about the fifteen pounds she had gained on her anti-depression meds. She felt guilty about bringing it up when she saw a woman who was very much heavier than she was. How could she feel pity for herself when this other woman was suffering so much worse?

The same feeling passed over me. Then I drew an analogy to endodontia. I have had 19 root canals or so. Many of these were throbbing at the same time. Yet when someone comes to me, crying because one tooth aches, I don’t chide them for exagerrating the problem. It hurts, dammit.

Obesity is gross. A physical therapist friend of mine described going to a household where she was asked to improvise some kind of crane to hoist a particularly fat woman in and out of her bed. As she talked to the husband, the woman sat on a couch, eating chocolates, and watching television.

Medical ethics of the time forbade her from saying “You need to lose weight” to the woman. This despite the fact that the woman suffered from a host of obesity-spawned diseases that affected the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the pancreas, and the air passages. Even when this woman lay in bed, blood oozed from her calves. Shortly after the incident with the crane, she passed on.

If you love a person, do you really want to help them eat themselves into the grave? Do you really want to say “Oh, you look fine as you are?” One thing I hear is how fat people eat so little. This is true when they are in public, but out of our eyes, they have plenty stowed in the cupboard for binges. Overeaters have confirmed this to me. (An overeater, for the record, can include a bulemic.) The problem is that they are not managing their intake of food. It is not big bones: it is that they eat too much and exercise too little. In other words, they need to face the fact that they must lose weight.

I love my body just fine, but I need to carve at least thirty pounds off my belly. I’m overweight. And this isn’t a good thing for a man with a heart condition and diabetes. It’s not good for anyone.

So don’t show me pictures of men or women who have too much jelly packed over their muscles and bones and say “Love this body” or “Fat Rights”. The young who have never suffered the effects of a bad heart or Type II diabetes don’t have a clue. Fat can be a form of self murder as surely as anorexia or bulemia. Those who silence we who say “Lose some weight” might as well be shoveling spoonfuls of pure grease down the throats of obesity’s victims.

Thankfully, the medical establishment now recognizes obesity as a medical condition. For my part, I have put up a picture of myself on the refrigerator showing my enormous belly at a time about a year and a half ago. An arrow points at my navel and the caption reads “Beauty Beneath”.