Size acceptance movement

[Carlene 12]

Question: Have any of yal actually heard someone use this term (people of size).

It's what Southwest Airlines uses to distinguish passengers required to purchase two seats. They abbreviate it to "POS". The ticket counter people give a heads-up to the gate attendants by saying, "POS coming your way".

I loved that show (Airline)!

[skyeblu79 0]

It's what Southwest Airlines uses to distinguish passengers required to purchase two seats. They abbreviate it to "POS". The ticket counter people give a heads-up to the gate attendants by saying, "POS coming your way".

I loved that show (Airline)!

I like the Airline too...I never noticed though. The show is funny, but I wouldn't fly with them..

[anonemouse 1]

If you are a person of size you a) were not born that way, :girl_hug: do have a choice about it, and c) are not just like everyone else because you are willing to die young for the right to overeat.

That isn't necessarily true. There are people out there that were born heavy and stayed that way. Some people really don't have a choice about it, and if you think they do, you should really check out this website and message board: www.cushings-help.com. Not all fat people are fat because they overeat, and to say they are, IMO, makes you no different than the bigots that make our lives miserable by constantly telling us, "If you exercised and ate better, you'd lose the weight. You're just a fat, lazy pig.". I would think that a person that knows what we go through and has (or is getting) a lapband knows that isn't true.

[marjon9 6]

laurend, there may be a small number of people for whom obesity is an actual unavoidable medical issue, and obviously your points are valid for those people. Anyone with such medical issues has my complete sympathy.

But that is not really the topic of my post. The topic of my post is whether it makes sense for society to "accept" obesity in the same way society should "accept" someone's dark skin. I think that, as a general matter, there is no way that these two physical conditions are comparable. In the vast majority of cases people who are obese can do something about it. Whereas people with dark skin, even if they wanted to, cannot.

Perhaps there are a very small number of obese people who cannot do anything about their obesity for medical reasons. But that is really a very, very small percentage of the people out there who are obese. In almost every other case, obese people have the ability to change their lives. If an obese person has the ability to change his or her life, then "accepting" that person's obesity may, in certain ways, provide support to that person for not changing. To the extent acceptance of obesity provides that kind of support, I don't think it is helpful to anyone.

[Cat804 0]

I've been reading this thread and I think it is hitting a few of my hot buttons because I seem to be getting angry. So silly I know but I'll put in my two cents.

I think size acceptance has very little to do with ourselves and more to do with those outside. In that way I think People of size is the same as People of color. We know we are fat, we know there are concequences and we may be doing our darnedest to find an answer. For others, even perfect strangers, to say to us...you are fat that is disgusting....or you are fat, do you know that can cause health problems, that is an insult to our intelligence. For them to think that they do this "for our own good" or "it will help put us on the right track" is the height of bigotry. For them I can only equate this with the n-word.

It is the same as people who look at me and say "oh, I know how you feel, I really need to diet" and they are MAYBE a size 8. As far as the diet and exercise people who think that we have lived in a cave and maybe didn't know this pearl of wisdom, how do they know we haven't been doing just that for a year and still have one or two years to go to meet our goal weight.

Gee, guess I was a bit angry... What I'm really trying to say is if "people of size" makes people stop and think before they open thier mouths and hurt another human being with thier bigotry...I'm all for it.

hugs...cat

[anonemouse 1]

I wouldn't necessarily say that it is a small number of people. We all know the statistics about weightloss. It may be true that most overweight people can lose their excess weight, but once you become obese, it isn't likely. For most people, once you get to a certain point, there isn't any going back without medical intervention. Yes, most people could have avoided obesity if they took steps when they were simply overweight, but once they become obese, simple diet and exercise doesn't keep the weight off for most people.

But my point stands: The statement I quoted is simply not true. For overweight people, they might be able to lose weight and keep it off. For people that are truly obese, more than 90% can't maintain any significant weight loss. Saying that we, as a society, shouldn't accept it doesn't change that fact. Also, accepting obesity doesn't mean that we ignore the health problems that come with it. Accepting obesity only means that we aren't allowing our weight to limit our lives. It means that we don't blindly accept discrimination as our due. Accepting obesity means that we stop sheltering ourselves from the fact that the majority of the nation has weight problems and that we should actually do something to change it, not just sit around and say, "Well, diet and exercise will change everything." Obviously, that hasn't helped yet. Accepting obesity means doing research and developing more programs to change it, not just putting more and more quackery like OTC diet pills and herbal remedies out there.

[marjon9 6]

Let me just speak for myself, personally. I'm a 53 yo morbidly obese man. I've been fat most of my life. I consider this to be my responsibility. I don't blame anyone else for it, or any medical condition for it. Losing weight for me is unbelievably difficult, but that's my problem. I don't care what the statistics say, I know I can do what it takes to lose weight if I choose to. I don't ask society to "understand" how difficult it is for me to lose weight. I don't consider anyone a "bigot" if they don't like fat people. I know that I will pay a price for being fat, and I know that it is within my control to do something about it.

Fortunately, the lap band now exists. In fact, my surgery date is set for 1/16. That band is going to make things much easier for me. I'm so grateful for it. I don't feel like a cheater in any way for using it. It would be dumb not to use it. Human beings use tools, right? That's what makes us human. I mean, we have an opposable thumb and all that, right? This is just another tool.

Now, more than ever, there is no reason for society to "understand" why I'm fat. I have no interest in any "movement" designed to encourage society to "support" me in my condition of obesity. I don't want anyone calling me a "person of size" when I'm actually just a fat man who is perfectly capable of doing something about it.

And I also want to make clear that I don't expect to make other people view the world the way I do. I like to express my thoughts and views, but I don't expect to change anyone else. If other people generally feel that losing weight is realistically impossible for an obese person, and that society should learn to understand that and accept obese people, then that is fine with me.

It's just that I'm not able to look at the world that way. As I view the world, this is my life, I'm responsible for it, obesity is something I can do something about, and if I choose not to do it then I deserve the consequences, and I accept the consequences. But then, that's just me.

[Wheetsin 714]

Couple of thoughts, I'll probably go off topic (ya think?!), but I'll try to pull it back as well.

Diet and exercise will work for the people for whom losing the weight is more powerful than the drivers for keeping the weight on. This population isn't very large, and is generally on the younger side. A majority of obese people who are able to lose their weight through diet and exercise walk away from their weight having been "lucky" enough to shift the mental crutch they need from food to something else, so that while they no longer having an over-eating disorder, they have some other type of eating disorder, or have hopped their addiction over to exercise (usually accompanied by an eating disorder), or smoking, or... It's very difficult, very very difficult, to simply just up & change your behaviors without making some kind of substitution. Any of the people here still fighting "head hunger" can vouch for that.

An example - a lady in my building went from a size 24 to a size 6 in one year without exercise. She is in her 6th year of maintaining the loss and it appears she will be one of the few to have long term success. How does she do it? T & Th she doesn't eat anything. M, W, F she will only eat is her weight on those mornings is within a certain range of about 6 lbs. Once a week, generally on Monday (since Tuesday is a no eating day) she will gorge on whatever she wants. This works for her to maintain her weight, but it's certainly not something most people would consider "normal" behavior.

As for fat acceptance, I'm a bit on the fence about it. As someone who wasn't fat their entire life, or even a majority of my life, I've witnessed first-hand the difference, socially, between the two states. And they're like night and day. I'm not familiar with the sites referenced here, but I think a lot of it would have to do with "how far" they're trying to get. Is it wrong to make a POS buy a second seat? As someone who has flown at a normal size, next to a morbidly obese person, and had them taking up part of my seat, etc. - I can say probably not. In and of itself, anyway. It becomes a problem when one POS has to buy another seat and the other doesn't, because that boils it down to some arbitrary decision.

I think if people want to "accept" their weight, and are educated around the potential consequences, that's fine. But I've yet to meet the "fat and proud of it" person who truly, truly felt that way.

I've had people ask me if I got banded out of desperation - out of a sense that I wouldn't be able to overcome it any other way. To me, banding wasn't giving up. What would have been giving up would be if I'd sat there and tried to become "ok" with my size, and resigned to the fact that I would die that way.

As for actually using the term "people of size" - kind of. I've heard/seen people referred to as "POS" by airlines. Not that long ago I was at a ticketing counter and heard one clerk lean over to the other and say "he needs to be ticketed as a POS", referring to a very large gentleman who had just walked in the airport and was heading to her counter.

Can we compare obesity to skin color - I would say no, and then I would say only on the highest, most fundamental level of "difference". As someone who does not currently give credit to the "genetic link" of obesity, you're born into an ethnicity but you eat yourself into obesity. Yes, there are expections, and there are absolutely people out there who are obese due to legitiamte medical reasons, but they're not a majority, and for the sake of cohesive conversation (aka not having to recognize and explain the exceptions) I am looking at the majority right now.

For that majority, they can't do much about the color of their skin, hair, eyes, etc. But at some point in time there's something they or someone else could have done to help with the obesity. Who in that majority just "woke up" one day and found themselves fat? Doesn't happen that way. Obesity is a process they contributed to. The same isn't true for people with straight hair, or brown eyes, or olive complexions.

[anonemouse 1]

If other people generally feel that losing weight is realistically impossible for an obese person,

It isn't just that we feel this way, it is a proven FACT. More than 90% (somewhere around 94-96%, I believe) of morbidly obese people will regain whatever weight they lost with excercise and diet alone. I believe the numbers run around 70% or so for people who use medical weight loss programs other than surgery (pills, etc.). For people to say, "You got yourself this way, so you deserve everything that can or will happen to you," is just something that I can't even grasp. People don't deserve heart attacks. They don't deserve diabietes. Obese people don't deserve these diseases any more than a coal miner deserves lung cancer.

Like I said before, accepting obesity does not automatically mean that the side effects of obesity are ignored. It means that we acknowledge that we are not deserving of discrimination or bigotry because of our weight. You yourself have accepted your obesity. If you hadn't, you would still be trying in vain to lose weight in the more widely-accepted form of excercise and dieting. You aren't. You have accepted that you might need a little help. That is basically the whole point of size-acceptance. I think a large part of the movement is saying to yourself, "I might need some help. I can't do this on my own. Playing in to society's need to point out the flaws in everyone hasn't helped me so far. I need to do this for myself and no one else."

[Carlene 12]

I've been fat and I've been thin....and everything in between. I wouldn't choose fat if it came with a million dollars.

[anonemouse 1]

My feeling on being "ok" with your size is this:

You have to be "ok' with your size, in at least some sense, whether you weigh 120 pounds or 320 pounds. If you are trying to lose weight because you feel that you will be "happier" as a smaller person or because you think that losing weight will make your life incredibly better, you will probably be sorely disappointed. If you aren't happy with yourself as a person before losing weight, you probably won't be happy after. For most of us, we have other problems than our weight that are causing us to be unhappy, but we simply focus on the weight because it is the most visible.

Being "ok" with your weight doesn't necessarily mean becoming resigned to the fact that you might die of obesity-related problems. It can mean being satisfied with yourself as a person, knowing that you have a great personality, and that if you do lose (or gain) weight, you aren't going to lose yourself. To me, it simply means being well-adjusted, knowing that you will be a happy person whether or not you lose weight.

[marjon9 6]

You yourself have accepted your obesity. If you hadn't, you would still be trying in vain to lose weight in the more widely-accepted form of excercise and dieting. You aren't. You have accepted that you might need a little help.

Just for the record, I do not agree with this statement at all. I believe that it is entirely within my control to lose weight through diet and exercise. I do not agree that it is a proven fact that morbidly obese people can never lose weight through diet and exercise. Yes, it's "hard" to lose weight through diet and exercise, especially living in this country with a McDonalds on every corner. But the fact that it is hard does not make it impossible. I mean, to take an extreme example, if 10 morbidly obese people moved to North Korea, in 2 years they would all come back thin. Diet and exercise work, it's just that it is really hard to apply those remedies in this society. But it is still my choice.

And I will use the lap band for "a little help" as you put it, but I totally disagree that it is out of my control to do it any other way.

laurend, I'm not asking you to agree with me. I just refuse to feel like a victim of circumstances in relation to something I know I have the power to change.

[anonemouse 1]

I just refuse to feel like a victim of circumstances in relation to something I know I have the power to change.

That's great. But that is also part of size-acceptance. Accepting your size does not mean that you have to feel like a victim of circumstances, which is what I am trying to get at. I accept my size. I want to lose weight, but I would be fine mentally if I had to stay at this weight for the rest of my life. I accept that my weight does not define me. I won't let people use my weight as an excuse to snub me or discriminate against me. I accept that there are some things I can't do, but I can do a lot of things as well as or better than a thin person. I won't let someone tell me that I can't go out and have fun or hang out at the beach in a swimsuit because I weigh more than they do. THAT is size-acceptance. Sitting around and moping about how you know you will die of heart disease and diabetes is NOT size-acceptance.

[Wheetsin 714]

I accept that there are some things I can't do, but I can do a lot of things as well as or better than a thin person.

Just out of curiosity, what does being overweight enable you to do better than a person who is not overweight?

[anonemouse 1]

I am talking about my specific skills, rather than something my excess weight lets me do. I am great at identifying birds, better than many of the thinner biologists that I work with. I am better at teaching and explaining biology to my students than many of my friends and colleagues. There are a lot of skills that people have that weight doesn't factor into. My point is that I am not letting my weight limit my life. Thin people may be able to run a six-minute mile, but that doesn't make them a better person than me. IMO, that is the point of the size-acceptance movement. Weight does not define you as a person.