anonemouse

I can wear them right now, but not very comfortably. Since I carry my weight on my stomach, if I get jeans that are comfortable around my waist, they are way too baggy on my butt, hips, and thighs. If I get them to fit those, the waist is too tight. Plus, most plus-size clothes are too long. I LOVE elastic-waist pants, but it's hard to find attractive ones (that, again, fit right on the rest of me).

Well, hell. I already look like that. I carry most of my weight on my stomach. I guess I better go ahead and get some larger shirts and some pants with elastic, then.

You decided that your appearance was more important to you than your addiction to food. That's my whole point. Yes, we're addicts, but we decided that something is more important to us than the "feel good" feeling we got when we would eat. It doesn't matter whether it is your appearance or my health, we both decided that we had something we wanted more than food. Exactly. It's possible to overcome any addiction, if you want to do it badly enough.

There really are great people out there.

I should change that last bit of paragraph to say that, "They have to have some rational explanation for why you have a certain opinion, or else I have very little respect for position of the person I am debating." I don't necessarily lose respect for the person themselves, just for the position they take.

You're exactly right. Most of the time, with any of my opinions, I have spent so much time analyzing them in my own head, I am 100% confident of them. I know they are right for me. I've analyzed the pros and the cons, the possible arguments for or against the position, everything. If I can't support it with a rational argument, it gets tossed by the wayside, so to speak. So it is very difficult in some situations to try and have a debate or discussion with someone with opposite beliefs, just because they can't give me (what I consider to be) a rational explanation and defense of their position. In many cases, they just argue that "they believe" or that "they have faith". To me, that's not a legitimate answer. They have to have some rational explanation for why you have a certain opinion, or else I have very little respect for the person I am debating. I'm guessing that INTJs are the Vulcans of the MBTI.

I'm sorry that you guys think I'm not empathetic to the addiction of smokers. I am. I just think that other people should come first. I think that smokers should have the right to kill themselves with their smoke as much as they want to, I just don't think they should have the right to take other people with them. And I think that Lizrbit points out something important in her post. As strong as your addiction may be, when something becomes much more important to you than feeding your addiction, you can break it. I think we're all evidence of that, attempting to break our food addictions, because we realize that our lives or our health or whatever it was that made us decide to have surgery is more important to us than the pleasure we get from eating a box of donuts or a loaf of steaming hot sourdough bread. We may need help to do it, but we do do it. It may be the hardest thing that you ever do, but when you have something that is so much more important to you, it's possible.

I don't see that they did it on his behalf. I think they saw that a genuinely nice request was denied, simply because the state "doesn't donate to charity," so they filled that request. Regardless of whether it was on his behalf or not, those homeless people were the recipients of tremendous charity. They were the ones that benefited, not Workman. He's still dead as a door nob.

I'm getting lots of error messages. The new posts page isn't there, and I got an error when I tried to send a PM.

And I never said you did! You IMPLY, though, that one addict can't complain about another person's addiction, because they are both addicts. I was simply pointing out that all addictions are not equal, either in severity or impact on the people around the addict. So to say that I, as a food addict, should understand what you, as a cigarette addict, are going through and be more understanding, is crap. My addiction only physically impacts myself. A smoker's addiction impacts every person they smoke around. So to say that one is as bad as the other is completely wrong.

That's why I said IF. It doesn't cause you to get fat or die of a heart attack, though, does it? It just makes you uncomfortable. Being around people smoking doesn't just make me uncomfortable. It makes me PHYSICALLY ILL.

Very cool! I think I've met only one other person with the same birthday as me!

I wasn't being serious! But, hey, I guess it made my point about the inconvenience of it. :heh:

Not all. Most smokers that I have been around don't care where their smoke winds up. Some, admittedly, do blow it away from people, but not all or even most. When there is a cloud of smoke hanging over the entrance to a building, I can't see the graciousness of smokers.

Green, it wasn't the cigarette smell of a regular smoker that I was talking about earlier. I have friends that smoke, and I don't mind being around them for the most part. It's the stale, smokey smell of chain smokers that bothers them. Not the smell that you can smell within a foot or two of someone, but the stench you can smell from literally 20 feet away. That smell's a little harder to tolerate. And to be honest, if it is strong enough to literally make someone sick, it's intolerable.

Yup. I made a thread in the suggestions, feedback, and questions forum.

Part of what delayed me was that I had to switch surgeons in January. I had been with one group and got everything submitted to insurance and then found out that they weren't covered. One of the other things that is delaying me is that my new surgeon is on maternity leave, so even if I do get my date moved up, the earliest it would be is sometime in July.

If you smoke around other people, you are forcing them to inhale your smoke. It isn't like they are wearing gas masks. People can't just stop breathing. When I said that I hate hearing people say that they are addicts, I meant that I hate hearing the excuse. Addicts think that just because they are addicts, their behavior is socially acceptable or somehow excusable. I don't care if a crack addict is an addict or not, I don't want them smoking crack next to me. And I don't go around forcing other people to eat, get fat, and die of a heart attack. All addictions are not equal. When I force someone to gain 20 pounds by just being around them, then you can talk to me about food addictions being the same as smoking. Yeah, they are both addictions. But one can kill the people around you, the other can't.

I don't hate smokers, I hate their habit. I'd be just as pissed off if a crack addict decided to smoke his crack pipe in my face as I am when a cigarette addict decides to smoke their cigarette in my face. What I am sick and tired of is people using the excuse, "But I'm an addict!" It pissed me off when Mel Gibson used it to excuse his antisemitism, and it pisses me off when smokers use it to excuse putting the health of other people at risk. Should I go around stuffing double cheeseburgers and milkshakes down people's throats just because I am a food addict? No. And smokers shouldn't be going around and forcing other people to inhale their smoke.

I could tell from the tone of her email that she was getting irritated by me, but I couldn't care less. If she hadn't lost my stuff in the first place, I probably wouldn't be in the position of having to nag her about it. And from my experiences with her, I learned that if I don't keep after her, she either doesn't get things done very quickly.

Okay, I heard back from the office manager. She's working on getting me moved up, because they don't want to have to resubmit my stuff. She said that I should hear something from them by next week.

Well, I just sent the office manager an email. I asked if I could be put on a cancellation list, so that if an appointment came open, I could get in earlier. I also mentioned how nervous I was about having to resubmit to insurance once the new policy takes effect, and how I will be starting classes again in mid-August.

I just don't want to have to change surgeons again. This is my second one. If I change again, I'll have to go with someone out of state, because the only other surgeon in this state that my insurance will pay for is very pro-RNY. The new policy is with the same company I am with now, and is exactly the same as the one I have now. I am just being forced to get my own policy (right now I am on my parents' policy) when I turn 24 on August 2nd. The company is really good about giving quick approvals (once they have all the materials, that is), so I doubt it would take very long to get reapproved, but I just don't want to wait that long.

The way I see it, RnR DOES appeal to the younger bandsters. Many of us aren't quite as conservative as the older ones.

Wait, so we're supposed to appeal to an audience that really isn't FDA approved, anyway? There is nothing in RnR that's above an R rating. And there are very few that I would give an R rating to. If someone is old enough to go to a PG-13 movie, they are old enough to read the posts in RnR.