I understand your point blueangel. The unpopular point that I am making is that fat is not a terminal illness, or disfigurement so this degree of hand holding seems a little insane.
Also, this whole conversation doesn't even really exist for men, so you are really talking about a social sensitivity issue towards women. You can tell me they are fat without most of these considerations.
Also, its not hard to lose fat. In fact its almost insanely easy. However, it is mentally hard for a lot of people to make the lifestyle changes or the mental readjustments to lose the weight.
But most people are simply unwilling.
Remember, even with the gastric bypass patients, all the gastric bypass does is force people to do an extreme calorie restriction. Since they were unwilling to do it themselves, they opted to have their stomache cut apart.
And here is the kicker, I have dealt with a lot of bariatric patients, and most swore that they were genetically fat, it wasn't their fault.
And yet, as soon as the surgery forced them to do a low calorie diet, the fat dropped off them so fast it made their heads spin. Neat eh?
Whats funny is that some people are doing as well with the Band around their stomaches because they refuse to get it adguested enough to make them uncomfortable . . so they lose weight at the rate a relatively benign diet would do for them . . . amazing eh? They had to have invasive surgery to cut their calories by a mere 500 a day.
So the bottom line is sure, we should be extra sensitive to people that have things that are fixtures: Big ears, a lazy eye, crooked nose, disease, deformity etc . . .
But for people that are generally obese, without disabling injury, to place themselves is that type of protective category mocks people with problems they can't fix.
Now we aren't talking about making fun of our friends or strangers that are heavy, we are just talking about honest feedback to people we know that are referencing a topic affected by their weight.
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Originally Posted by blueangel
James:
The point of my post (and mentioning that episode of Dr. Phil-- plus the clips I included from iVillage and Dr. Phil) was that people know they're overweight, that it's very difficult to lose weight, and that the only person who can lose the weight is the person hit/herself. When you point out something like weight-- no matter how well intentioned you may be-- it cuts deep-- and causes more of a loss of self esteem to that person... which often causes the person to spiral downward into more overeating.
The best think you can do for someone who is overweight is to be their friend. Being their friend does not mean hurting their self esteem with comments about their weight.. but rather being there for them if they ASK for help or if THEY want to talk about their problem. If they don't-- then leave it's best to alone.
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