The first time I saw a commercial for Mike & Molly, weeks before it's television debut, I cringed. I knew controversy was coming, and I was right. After a recent episode, where the obese couple finally finds the time and the place to "get down", a blogger posted about how disgusting it would be to watch fat people kiss. The online responses to the controversy fall, predictably, into two main themes, those against the blogger say hate is hate, and is inappropriate, those with the blogger say free speech is free speech and fat people are at fault for the ridiculous cost of healthcare.
There it is. Fat people are at fault for the ridiculous cost of healthcare. That's the new chant in the healthcare blame game. Now replace the words fat people with the word smokers. Sound familiar? In 2002, according to a publication by BCBS of MN, smoking was the #1 preventable cause of death, and should be targeted to reduce the cost of healthcare. Happily, thanks in part to rigorous anti-smoking campaigns headed by lawmakers, employers and healthcare professionals, the number of smokers in the US has been steadily declining for 40 years. 40 years! Isn't that amazing?!
Does anyone really believe that healthcare costs will go down if fat people quit being fat? Smokers quitting smoking resulted in fewer smoking related illnesses and deaths, but it did NOT cause healthcare costs to go down. I'm not saying obesity isn't a health problem. I am saying it's not the problem with healthcare. Smokers have basically been vilified into submission, fat people probably will be too, when the number of fat people is no longer enough to plausibly lay blame on, who's next?
Friday, November 12, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Traveling while Overweight - A Little Courtesy Please
Overweight traveling. It's a touchy and heated subject, and one I wasn't going to get into until I took a long, cramped, and uncomfortable bus trip earlier this month. First off, I have to say, I was able to contain myself to my own seat. I actually bought my ticket in person ahead of time to make sure that one seat would be adequate. If it had not been I would have either not traveled, or paid for the extra seat. I also let the bus company know that I have arthritic knees and they suggested that I stick to the aisle seats to accommodate my long legs and need to stretch every so often.
For the most part my trip was quiet and uneventful. The only trouble came when I was on my way back home and the bus filled up in Nashville. The window seat next to me was the last empty seat on the bus. I hadn't planned it that way and I wasn't trying to keep anyone from sitting there, it's just that no one wants to sit next the the "big gal" if they don't have to. After some time the last passenger boarded. A very large man made his way back to where I was and asked me to move. He was barely able to fit sideways down the aisle and it was obvious that he would not fit in a single seat. He took his seat, and more than half of mine. From Nashville, TN to Louisville, KY I had to sit on the hard plastic and metal edge of the seat. At one point the man took out a sandwich and soda from his backpack and then fell asleep while eating, dropping the sandwich and soda on my lap. By the time we reached Kentucky I was dirty, wet, cold, and had bruises on my ass. Not once, not even after the food incident, did the man offer any apology for depriving me of the space that I had paid for. Just to be clear, I had no issue with the man about his size or weight, my problem was with his inconsiderate attitude.
I imagine that you may have thought this would be a rant about my being treated poorly while I traveled. SURPRISE! The fact is, I'm quite realistic about most things, and traveling is one of them. I don't believe that I should get special accommodations that I haven't paid for. Nor should I, or anyone, be able to infringe on the paid space of another passenger. It's wrong and it's rude. Entitled and unapologetic behavior, such as the man on the bus, only reinforces the overweight stereotype.
With the obesity rate on the rise, overweight travelers are an issue that need to be addressed, both by travel providers and by travelers. Travel providers need to put forth clear, and strictly enforced, policies up front so the traveler knows what is expected before they ever board, eliminating the conflict of arbitrary decisions made by crew members. Travelers need to take the time to find out what the policies are and accept that they may require extra space and that space may cost more. They need to understand that if they aren't prepared to pay for it they have no right to take it from someone else.
For the most part my trip was quiet and uneventful. The only trouble came when I was on my way back home and the bus filled up in Nashville. The window seat next to me was the last empty seat on the bus. I hadn't planned it that way and I wasn't trying to keep anyone from sitting there, it's just that no one wants to sit next the the "big gal" if they don't have to. After some time the last passenger boarded. A very large man made his way back to where I was and asked me to move. He was barely able to fit sideways down the aisle and it was obvious that he would not fit in a single seat. He took his seat, and more than half of mine. From Nashville, TN to Louisville, KY I had to sit on the hard plastic and metal edge of the seat. At one point the man took out a sandwich and soda from his backpack and then fell asleep while eating, dropping the sandwich and soda on my lap. By the time we reached Kentucky I was dirty, wet, cold, and had bruises on my ass. Not once, not even after the food incident, did the man offer any apology for depriving me of the space that I had paid for. Just to be clear, I had no issue with the man about his size or weight, my problem was with his inconsiderate attitude.
I imagine that you may have thought this would be a rant about my being treated poorly while I traveled. SURPRISE! The fact is, I'm quite realistic about most things, and traveling is one of them. I don't believe that I should get special accommodations that I haven't paid for. Nor should I, or anyone, be able to infringe on the paid space of another passenger. It's wrong and it's rude. Entitled and unapologetic behavior, such as the man on the bus, only reinforces the overweight stereotype.
With the obesity rate on the rise, overweight travelers are an issue that need to be addressed, both by travel providers and by travelers. Travel providers need to put forth clear, and strictly enforced, policies up front so the traveler knows what is expected before they ever board, eliminating the conflict of arbitrary decisions made by crew members. Travelers need to take the time to find out what the policies are and accept that they may require extra space and that space may cost more. They need to understand that if they aren't prepared to pay for it they have no right to take it from someone else.
No one is too big to be courteous, but some are too little.
-Confucius-
-Confucius-
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Doctors are NOT my friends
I have a double whammy when it comes to seeking medical care. Besides being overweight I am also Bi-Polar, agoraphobic (not the extreme TV kind that never leaves the house), and I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and PTSD. Essentially, that means when I do go to the doctor for something they don't have to do much medical detecting at all, it's automatically an issue of weight or it's all in my crazy fucked up head. Lucky me.
I know that there are a lot of people out there that fervently believe that I'm just a lazy disgusting slob who does nothing but chain eat bacon cheeseburgers dipped in chocolate and that I should stop inconveniencing them by continuing to breathe (Google "Fat Hate" if you don't believe they exist). I've suffered great humiliation and physical and emotional pain at the hands of some of those mean spirited people, but in the end they're just strangers on the street, so they have no responsibility to get to know me before passing judgment. Medical "professionals", however, do have a responsibility to know something about me since they are being paid to provide me a service that cannot be performed adequately otherwise, yet the worst, most demeaning, devastating humiliations in my life have happened in a doctors office.
Several years back, before I was obese, but around the time I started to gain weight, I was at work when my hands and feet suddenly, and quickly started to swell. It got so severe that I was unable to use my computer keyboard and I had to remove my shoes because they had started to cut into my feet. I immediately went to urgent care. Once my doctor entered the room and saw that I had gained a few (less than 10) pounds in 3 months he just sat down, looked me in the eye and said "Marlo, you're just getting fat". No examination, not even a poke at my ballooned hands or feet. He wrote out a referral to see a dietitian and walked out.
I continued to have swelling problems, and started having digestive and bowel troubles, odder than normal menstruation and my hair started breaking off in large quantities. After a short period of loosing unhealthy increments of weight (4-5 pounds a week) I was gaining weight though my eating habits and physical routine had not changed significantly. I kept going in to the doctor for these issues and was farmed out to various and sundry high paid specialists. Over the course of 6 months several diagnoses were handed down and then changed when the treatments proved ineffective. Every one of those diagnoses were related to either my gaining weight, or the mental health issues or the meds I was taking for them. After a few blood tests at different offices I saw a pattern of fluctuating thyroid hormone levels, ranging between extremely low and normal . Each time I brought this up with doctors they dismissed it, patted me on my "wittle" head and sent me on my miserable way. I know that thyroid levels can fluctuate like this for a variety of reasons, but I also know that I told every one of those doctors that there was a family history of thyroid disease, which should have made them a little more motivated to investigate. Doctor visits became nothing more than draining, shameful exercises that left me in tears on a regular basis.
Time passed, I continued to get progressively sicker, and horribly depressed as well, and went on Short Term Disability. Without a real diagnosis and prognosis I was soon dropped. I much latter found out that my primary care physician told the Disability people that I had no physical illness and only included evidence of visits with him, a GP, and none of the information from visits and diagnoses by specialists, flawed as they may have been. By the time I had found that out it was well passed the alloted time that I could file an appeal. I already had a shit pile of medical expenses that I couldn't afford, so when I lost coverage I wasn't about to accrue more debt. I just quit going to the doctor.
It was 3 years before I would go back to see a doctor, this time for spontaneous bleeding from my breast. Instead of examining my breast, or even asking me any questions about it, the doctor lectured me on my weight. When I pushed him on the matter of the bleeding he told me to have an OBGYN nurse explain abnormal lactation to me and stop worrying needlessly about fictitious cancers. In the end, I actually did have some benign tumors removed, and that's when I decided that I would not seek medical care for anything that wasn't extremely obvious, like a broken bone, or a need for stitches. I STILL felt like crap on a good day, but I didn't return to a doctors office for another year.
At my husbands urging, I did finally go back again, when, after quitting smoking not only did I not feel any better physically, I actually started feeling so ill that I thought I may actually die. A nurse quickly, and properly, diagnosed me with Diabetes, and the new doctor, seeing the family history, list of symptoms, and past thyroid irregularities ordered a simple blood test that confirmed I did indeed suffer from hypothyroidism. That was 6 years after I first started feeling sick and gaining weight. In that 6 years I was dismissed, demoralized, and debased by so called professionals who took an oath to do no harm. I guess that doesn't include psychological harm.
I am now plagued by so many physical ailments that even a walk around the block or a rigorous session on an exercise bicycle is extremely difficult to accomplish. Diabetes has led to painful neuropathy in my feet and on some days even getting about the house is difficult. These are not excuses, these are facts, real issues that would compromise the mobility of even a fit person. Imagine going out for a jog or heading to the gym when it feels like someone is shoving skewers under your toenails. Try sticking cockle-burrs under your kneecaps and then hop on a treadmill. I don't have pain because I'm lazy, I'm lazy because I have real pain, pain that doesn't go away with a rush of exercise induced endorphins. Pain that does, in fact, get worse the more I move.
I didn't have a chance to address things early on, before they were so far out of control, because for six years, as I saw 15 different doctors, not one of them stepped up and did their job objectively. All it would have taken was one doctor to order a simple test and I could have been set on the right, healthy path a long time ago. If you want to rant about how me and people like me are stealing your tax dollars you better start also ranting at the doctors who think like you and don't provide unbiased medical care in the first place. I'm not asking for preferential treatment, I don't want obesity to become the social norm, nor do I believe that any mentally stable person would. If being treated with a basic level of decency and objectivity is too much to ask then this society has a bigger problem than me. (Pun intended)
There's extensive information on the net about the prejudice of the overweight by the medical community, and I was going to post a few links, but why? I'm not here on the side for or against fat acceptance. If you believe me and want to know more, do a web search. If you don't believe me you probably won't care to read studies in which doctors readily admit to their prejudice and how it affects the level of care they provide.
I know that there are a lot of people out there that fervently believe that I'm just a lazy disgusting slob who does nothing but chain eat bacon cheeseburgers dipped in chocolate and that I should stop inconveniencing them by continuing to breathe (Google "Fat Hate" if you don't believe they exist). I've suffered great humiliation and physical and emotional pain at the hands of some of those mean spirited people, but in the end they're just strangers on the street, so they have no responsibility to get to know me before passing judgment. Medical "professionals", however, do have a responsibility to know something about me since they are being paid to provide me a service that cannot be performed adequately otherwise, yet the worst, most demeaning, devastating humiliations in my life have happened in a doctors office.
Several years back, before I was obese, but around the time I started to gain weight, I was at work when my hands and feet suddenly, and quickly started to swell. It got so severe that I was unable to use my computer keyboard and I had to remove my shoes because they had started to cut into my feet. I immediately went to urgent care. Once my doctor entered the room and saw that I had gained a few (less than 10) pounds in 3 months he just sat down, looked me in the eye and said "Marlo, you're just getting fat". No examination, not even a poke at my ballooned hands or feet. He wrote out a referral to see a dietitian and walked out.
I continued to have swelling problems, and started having digestive and bowel troubles, odder than normal menstruation and my hair started breaking off in large quantities. After a short period of loosing unhealthy increments of weight (4-5 pounds a week) I was gaining weight though my eating habits and physical routine had not changed significantly. I kept going in to the doctor for these issues and was farmed out to various and sundry high paid specialists. Over the course of 6 months several diagnoses were handed down and then changed when the treatments proved ineffective. Every one of those diagnoses were related to either my gaining weight, or the mental health issues or the meds I was taking for them. After a few blood tests at different offices I saw a pattern of fluctuating thyroid hormone levels, ranging between extremely low and normal . Each time I brought this up with doctors they dismissed it, patted me on my "wittle" head and sent me on my miserable way. I know that thyroid levels can fluctuate like this for a variety of reasons, but I also know that I told every one of those doctors that there was a family history of thyroid disease, which should have made them a little more motivated to investigate. Doctor visits became nothing more than draining, shameful exercises that left me in tears on a regular basis.
Time passed, I continued to get progressively sicker, and horribly depressed as well, and went on Short Term Disability. Without a real diagnosis and prognosis I was soon dropped. I much latter found out that my primary care physician told the Disability people that I had no physical illness and only included evidence of visits with him, a GP, and none of the information from visits and diagnoses by specialists, flawed as they may have been. By the time I had found that out it was well passed the alloted time that I could file an appeal. I already had a shit pile of medical expenses that I couldn't afford, so when I lost coverage I wasn't about to accrue more debt. I just quit going to the doctor.
It was 3 years before I would go back to see a doctor, this time for spontaneous bleeding from my breast. Instead of examining my breast, or even asking me any questions about it, the doctor lectured me on my weight. When I pushed him on the matter of the bleeding he told me to have an OBGYN nurse explain abnormal lactation to me and stop worrying needlessly about fictitious cancers. In the end, I actually did have some benign tumors removed, and that's when I decided that I would not seek medical care for anything that wasn't extremely obvious, like a broken bone, or a need for stitches. I STILL felt like crap on a good day, but I didn't return to a doctors office for another year.
At my husbands urging, I did finally go back again, when, after quitting smoking not only did I not feel any better physically, I actually started feeling so ill that I thought I may actually die. A nurse quickly, and properly, diagnosed me with Diabetes, and the new doctor, seeing the family history, list of symptoms, and past thyroid irregularities ordered a simple blood test that confirmed I did indeed suffer from hypothyroidism. That was 6 years after I first started feeling sick and gaining weight. In that 6 years I was dismissed, demoralized, and debased by so called professionals who took an oath to do no harm. I guess that doesn't include psychological harm.
I am now plagued by so many physical ailments that even a walk around the block or a rigorous session on an exercise bicycle is extremely difficult to accomplish. Diabetes has led to painful neuropathy in my feet and on some days even getting about the house is difficult. These are not excuses, these are facts, real issues that would compromise the mobility of even a fit person. Imagine going out for a jog or heading to the gym when it feels like someone is shoving skewers under your toenails. Try sticking cockle-burrs under your kneecaps and then hop on a treadmill. I don't have pain because I'm lazy, I'm lazy because I have real pain, pain that doesn't go away with a rush of exercise induced endorphins. Pain that does, in fact, get worse the more I move.
I didn't have a chance to address things early on, before they were so far out of control, because for six years, as I saw 15 different doctors, not one of them stepped up and did their job objectively. All it would have taken was one doctor to order a simple test and I could have been set on the right, healthy path a long time ago. If you want to rant about how me and people like me are stealing your tax dollars you better start also ranting at the doctors who think like you and don't provide unbiased medical care in the first place. I'm not asking for preferential treatment, I don't want obesity to become the social norm, nor do I believe that any mentally stable person would. If being treated with a basic level of decency and objectivity is too much to ask then this society has a bigger problem than me. (Pun intended)
There's extensive information on the net about the prejudice of the overweight by the medical community, and I was going to post a few links, but why? I'm not here on the side for or against fat acceptance. If you believe me and want to know more, do a web search. If you don't believe me you probably won't care to read studies in which doctors readily admit to their prejudice and how it affects the level of care they provide.
It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.
-Confucius-
-Confucius-
Monday, March 15, 2010
I have a Bone to Pick Mrs. First Lady!
I'm all on board with upgrading the health of the nations children, and I certainly think that school meals could do with less tater tots and pizza. I applaud the First Lady for wanting to do something about those things, but I do not like the way she is going about it at all. Why focus on overweight children? Why not focus on healthy weight for all children, be they overweight or underweight? I understand that being underweight is not nearly as prevalent in our society as being overweight, but it can be just as harmful. Do we just forget about the health of those children and adolescents because they are the minority?
Shouldn't we take into consideration the countless stories of anorexics who started that dangerous journey because they had a poor body image and thought themselves overweight. Do we not run the risk of driving some children to the other extreme by focusing on their overweightness? Frankly, a 77 pound teen is going to be just as unhealthy as a 200 pound teen. An extremely underweight child or teen runs the risk of developing permanent heart problems, heart attacks, and osteoporosis, among other issues. Is there national outcry over that? Some, but not much, and it seems to be because being underweight fits better with what society finds aesthetically pleasing. Apparently the closer you are to the beautiful people "norm" the less society cares about your health.
Why, Mrs. First Lady, are you keeping the issue polarized by focusing on overweight children? Why stigmatize the children and subject them to the hate and ridicule that is torturous to handle as an adult? You speak of your experience with your own daughters, and being told they needed to loose some weight. Was that their fault, or were you making their food choices for them? Isn't it the same with children all over the country?
When do we stop being counter productive and focus on healthy weight for everyone? When do we start teaching children how to have a healthy relationship with food. Let's make nutritional counseling a regular and repeated preventative service that starts when our children first start solid food, instead of waiting until the weight problems (over OR under) are already there and more difficult to combat. Start by teaching the parents, and as the child grows, teach the child. Most importantly, let's teach children, in school, at home, and at the doctors office, that everyone will have a different body, and as long as that body is healthy it is beautiful and natural and worthy of love and respect.
I know the First Lady will never read this, and it's entirely possible that not many other people will either, but if you read this and it makes sense to you, tell someone about it.
Shouldn't we take into consideration the countless stories of anorexics who started that dangerous journey because they had a poor body image and thought themselves overweight. Do we not run the risk of driving some children to the other extreme by focusing on their overweightness? Frankly, a 77 pound teen is going to be just as unhealthy as a 200 pound teen. An extremely underweight child or teen runs the risk of developing permanent heart problems, heart attacks, and osteoporosis, among other issues. Is there national outcry over that? Some, but not much, and it seems to be because being underweight fits better with what society finds aesthetically pleasing. Apparently the closer you are to the beautiful people "norm" the less society cares about your health.
Why, Mrs. First Lady, are you keeping the issue polarized by focusing on overweight children? Why stigmatize the children and subject them to the hate and ridicule that is torturous to handle as an adult? You speak of your experience with your own daughters, and being told they needed to loose some weight. Was that their fault, or were you making their food choices for them? Isn't it the same with children all over the country?
When do we stop being counter productive and focus on healthy weight for everyone? When do we start teaching children how to have a healthy relationship with food. Let's make nutritional counseling a regular and repeated preventative service that starts when our children first start solid food, instead of waiting until the weight problems (over OR under) are already there and more difficult to combat. Start by teaching the parents, and as the child grows, teach the child. Most importantly, let's teach children, in school, at home, and at the doctors office, that everyone will have a different body, and as long as that body is healthy it is beautiful and natural and worthy of love and respect.
I know the First Lady will never read this, and it's entirely possible that not many other people will either, but if you read this and it makes sense to you, tell someone about it.
How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
- George Washington Carver -
Monday, March 8, 2010
I'm Marlo and I'm Fat
I'm not here to talk about being big and beautiful. That's covered in abundance all over the web, and while I applaud the sentiment, and have felt big and beautiful in the past, I'm about 100lbs past that now. These days I just want to be able to walk down the street without being physically and verbally attacked because of my size.
I'm not going to deny that much of my weight problem is because I've made some poor choices, but contrary to the propaganda many people spread as fact, there are other factors that lead to my weight gain that were out of my control. To deny those things would be equally as counter productive as denying my poor choices. The fact is I've gone from 125lbs to 320lbs because of my choices, genetics, a piss poor excuse for birth control, and 6 years of undiagnosed and untreated hypothyroidism.
Today I'm just introducing myself, which is, in itself, a terrifying thing given the growing trend of Fat Hate I see outside, on TV, on the internet, and even at the doctors office.
Hi! I'm Marlo and I'm fat.
I'm not going to deny that much of my weight problem is because I've made some poor choices, but contrary to the propaganda many people spread as fact, there are other factors that lead to my weight gain that were out of my control. To deny those things would be equally as counter productive as denying my poor choices. The fact is I've gone from 125lbs to 320lbs because of my choices, genetics, a piss poor excuse for birth control, and 6 years of undiagnosed and untreated hypothyroidism.
Today I'm just introducing myself, which is, in itself, a terrifying thing given the growing trend of Fat Hate I see outside, on TV, on the internet, and even at the doctors office.
Hi! I'm Marlo and I'm fat.
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
- John F. Kennedy -
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