A 400lb woman writes about what it's like and how her life is & isn't affected by being very fat. Unlike most obese people, I actually look like the photos used to illustrate the "obesity epidemic" stories. 400 pounds, 400 lbs, 400 lb female, 400lbs female, 400lb fat woman, fat man, fat person, very fat, obese, obesity, morbidly obese, super obese, super obese fitness, super obese exercise, super obesity, very obese, death fat, supersize, BBW, BHM, Health at Every Size, HAES.
Some posts that may serve as an introduction:
The only thrill ride I considered that I couldn’t ride was a Raytheon item in Innoventions where you could plan your own thrill ride and then ride it in a simulator. I was not able to fit in the simulator seats. (The man of the house could and setup a ride based on a plane flight, complete with a loop.)
I also didn’t get to try the Space Mountain capsules, though the man of the house thinks (based on how well he fit) I would have been fine.
Disney World, if you’ve never been, is very much A Land of Much Walking. Especially spread-out is Epcot, my favorite part of Disney World. Just walking from my room to the resort’s bus stop was a quarter mile; at the parks it would routinely be a quarter- to half-mile walk from the bus to the actual park entrance. Now, I could do a quarter or half-mile with my cane, but then I’d be done walking for a while. What to do?
Well – I was fortunate: I was able to throw money at the problem. Read more »
These gents live near the pool, hot tub, and laundry of the resort we stayed at. The resort had a New Orleans theme, down to beignets and gumbo on the menu and loads of wrought iron.
1) The cold I had that kept me out of work for a week and low energy for another? Mostly gone!
2) Getting to be the able-bodied one this weekend. A friend was visiting who’d injured his back, so I was doing the lifting, opening doors, going into the grocery store for a scooter while he waited on the bench with his cane, and so forth. It felt good!
3) My walking speed may not be great, but I was able to do lots of walking without knee pain on Thursday and Friday. And the small amount I had Saturday and Sunday went away after … drumroll … 10 minutes’ steady walking. This is good because I spent most of the weekend at a conference.
4) The pain that developed in my hip Saturday and Sunday (while sleeping in the (very hard) hotel bed) has greatly diminished now that I’m home again.
5) Being told the work I’d done to pull off the conference was good :)
The other has had a dentist clean out some detritus near the periodontal ligament of the painful tooth; received prescriptions for Vicodin & Amoxicillian; and a written referral (with an x-ray) to a specialist for if this doesn’t improve in a few days.
I doubt it’s a coincidence that only one of them has health insurance.
Nor is insurance the only issue — the friend with health insurance also has a new dentist (mine) because he was so dissatisfied with his previous dentist he was considering not using his health insurance.
1) Walking more regularly has been improving my ability to walk. I walked a lot more today than usual, without pain.
2) Getting over the cold that kept me out of work last week. I may still cough, but I do have energy now.
3) I did let being sick keep me from walking a few days…but I also started back up when I felt able, so I’m thankful I didn’t lose more momentum than necessary.
4) Receiving compliments for a job well done.
5) Sharing laughter and hugs at the end of a long day.
[W]e are not in the midst of an obesity epidemic, as it is often claimed. We are in the midst of an epidemic of disordered eating. The solutions prescribed to combat obesity are often the same behaviours we as practitioners are diagnosing in those suffering from eating disorders.
The comments are a mix of good and bad, but don’t read them if you don’t feel up to the crazies.
Back in the US, Misleading claims about Safeway wellness incentivesblows a few holes in the claims of Safeway CEO Steven Burd that the company’s wellness incentives (reducing insurance premiums for those below a certain BMI, blood pressure measurement, and/or cholesterol measurement) enabled them to keep health costs constant for four years.
A review of Safeway documents and interviews with company officials show the company did not keep health-care costs flat for four years. Those costs did drop in 2006, by 12.5 percent. That was when the company overhauled its benefits, according to Safeway Senior Vice President Ken Shachmut.
The decline had nothing to do with tying employees’ premiums to test results. That element of Safeway’s benefits plan was not implemented until 2009, Shachmut said. [...] Today, costs are slightly higher than in 2005, Shachmut said.
So they cut benefits in 2006, had benefits increase through 2009, and they’re claiming it’s due to the wellness incentives introduced in 2009? There’s more, a lot more – for example, costs increased more than average during 2009 – you know, the year the incentives were rolled out – and the incentives plan is only available to the 28,000 nonunion office employees, which is a small part of Safeway’s 200,000 workers.
The fact that significant weight loss is nearly impossible to maintain poses yet another problem for outcome-based wellness plans. It’s a safe bet that any obese person who manages to score the Safeway discount in a given year will be back in the penalty a few years later. That means plan members are incentivized to enter a cycle of yo-yo dieting, which may actually increase their risks of cardiovascular disease (although not all researchers agree on the dangers of weight cycling).
Personally, I think Safeway’s been identifying too much with Catbert.
Wait – “experts urge screening for obesity in kids“? The tone of the article implies that this is new, that this is something that hasn’t already been done to death, as if kids weren’t being put on diets in grade school 35 years ago.
So…why is this a headline? Because it’s January? The United States Preventive Services Task Force placed a report in the February issue of the Pediatrics and somebody sent out a press release? Wanted to balance the downer footage from Haiti with something that says “Not to worry, nothing has changed in America, we’re all safe here”? What?
I came a bit late to the Barefoot Contessa party, but watching The Food Network meant it had to happen sooner or later.
Ina Garten was a White House policy analyst before buying a specialty food store and caterer called Barefoot Contessa. Eventually she sold the store and turned to writing cookbooks and magazine columns before eventually turning up on the Food Network.
I didn’t know all that when I first saw the show, of course. I think I saw the opening credits first, featuring a fairly typical montage of not just food and people eating, but also Ina walking in her garden and on the beach. Her husband, currently a professor at Yale, is frequently shown on the show as well.
If you watch the show, you’ll know that she’s also fat. This isn’t commented on, just present. Nor does she “cast around herself” and only feature other fat people on the show — she frequently has guests on the show.
Like many food shows, there are quirks that can drive you crazy: catchphrases (“so delicious”, “how good is that”, “with the volume turned up”); a distinct filming style; her unabashed Francophilia; even her standard uniform of slacks and an oversized button down shirt. But I love how she makes everything look easy. I’m glad that there’s a fat woman on TV who isn’t constantly talking about dieting and losing weight, who hangs out with friends and is happily married. I wonder how much of that has to do with her seeing the TV show as a small part of her life (as she mentions in the below news clip).
Now, I haven’t talked with Ina Garten about fat acceptance – for all I know she’s constantly dieting. But it’s nice to see a fat woman who has a life and isn’t ashamed of it!
1) Orange-mango-banana smoothies, or at least the one I had on the way home today. I seem to be coming down with something — headache, a bit of a sore throat, some coughing and sneezing, very little appetite. I left work a bit early because I was feeling worse. Partway home it occurred to me that a smoothie might make my throat feel better, so I swung through a Starbucks drive-thru. Wow. Not only did it make my throat feel better, but I apparently needed some calories. I followed it up with some shortbread when I got home — and dinner is in the oven.
2) I’m getting better at seizing sunbreaks to go for a walk. Still not necessarily walking very far – we’re talking a few blocks here – but I’m doing it consistently, which is my goal.
More weight-loss ads on TV. More gym promotions. More articles in the paper. In December, the local grocery had Stouffer’s cheaper than Lean Cuisine; this month, it’s reversed.
Some of my friends are upset that they gained weight in December. Most frame this in “I was doing so good on my diet but in December….” and, well, you know. I can’t help but wonder if this is a side affect of dieting and food restriction.
I actually weighed myself before Thanksgiving and again in January. 402, 399 – only a few pounds apart, which is well within the standard deviation for my scale.* I didn’t try to stay the same weight. Or to lose or gain. I just did. It reminds me of something Sassyblonde posted today:
For me, eating intuitively is basically “going back to eating the way nature intended in the first place.” Your body will naturally tell you when you’re hungry and when you’re full. [...] We as humans, with our constant desire to better things and sometimes go against nature to do it, are the ones that have screwed up the way we feel about food and weight.
I don’t mean this as a slam on people who do want to be stronger, more flexible, eat foods that taste great or feel good or are less expensive or whatever else. I’m working on a be-stronger thing myself.** But it’s surreal to see so many people expending so much effort trying to “maintain” their weight, when I do it without trying.
*My rough test was to put the scale in the kitchen and repeatedly weigh myself one morning. Weights varied by up to 5lbs, or a little over 1%. Some of this is the scale but some is probably due to stance and foot placement variations.
