anonemouse

I don't think any modern President has ever been "one of us." They have never been one of the little people. By the simple fact that they were able to be elected, they had to be rich and have rich buddies that were willing to fund their campaign. I guess I am just cynical, but I don't truly trust any politician or anyone with political ambitions. Most of the time, they will be out for themselves and for the people they sold their soul to for campaign funding. I think almost all of them are willing to screw over "the people."

Or no document, whichever they prefer.

Yeah, I hate my metabolism. Basically one of the things that kept me from getting super depressed when I lived with my former roommate was telling myself that her metabolism would shut down eventually, and then she would learn how it feels. Don't get me wrong, I know I am 100% the cause of my obesity. But I also feel that it could have been avoided when I was a child. I have been heavy all of my life, but up until I started menstruating, I wasn't obese. When I started my period when I was 10, I think I had just enough extra weight to cause my PCOS to kick in. Then it became this horrible cycle. The extra weight caused my PCOS to get worse, which then made it very easy to gain more weight. Factor in that I had untreated asthma for years that made it very uncomfortable to exercise and bad eating habits ingrained into me by my parents, and I couldn't get out of the cycle. When you haven't been fat all of your life, I think it is very easy for people to say that everyone has the ability to lose weight on their own. You have experienced being normal. It's different when you have lived with being overweight or obese your entire life. You don't know how to help yourself lose the weight. You don't have the motivation that folks who have been thinner do because you have never experienced what it was like to actually be a normal weight.

Being a Christian does not equal being a bigot. And Goode was obviously being a bigot.

This really made me resent my former roommate for a while. She literally sat around and had lots of fat and carbs for every meal (sugary cereals, pasta, cheese bread, sweets, etc.). There were many days where she literally ate a couple of bowls of sugary oatmeal or cereal for breakfast, a pasta meal with lots of bread for lunch, and pizza for dinner. If I ate like that, I would have looked like a 5'3" bowling ball. She didn't.

I finished all of my pre-approval appointments a few weeks ago, but my file has still not been sent off to insurance. Why? Apparently the pulmonologist faxed his report to the surgeon's office, when it is supposed to go to the financial counsellor handling my file. The surgeon's office apparently can't send the report to her, so I had to call the pulmonologist's office (for the second time) to have them fax the report directly to her. This is such a set-back. I had originally hoped to have surgery before the end of the year, but that obviously didn't happen. I would like to have surgery before my classes start again on the 18th, but it looks like that won't happen. If I get approved, I will probably wind up putting the surgery off until March, and having it during spring break.

I only have classes on Wednesdays this semester, but I will also be teaching a couple of labs and assisting in a few classes. My surgeon only does surgeries on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It looks like if I don't get to have surgery before classes start, I will have to have it during spring break if I don't want to miss class. I have no problem with missing one of my own classes, but I don't want to have to try to find someone to teach my labs for me.

I do have that option, but the problem is that the pulmonologist and the surgeon are about 3 1/2 hours away from each other. The pulmonologist is in Lexington, KY and the surgeon is in Nashville, TN.

Look, your weight does limit you, but it shouldn't define you. Obviously, a fat person can't run fast, can't do a lot of things. But it shouldn't change you as a person. You shouldn't define yourself as a fat person, but rather as a person who happens to be fat. Does that make sense? Define yourself as a person first, and as fat somewhere down the line. I think that is what size-acceptance is all about, not letting society define you as a "fat person" and nothing else. Yes, in this society, we let our weight define us as people and limit us. We let society tell us what we can or can't do, how we should look, how we should feel about ourselves. But the size-acceptance movement is saying that letting that continue isn't right. Ideally, it should lead to an acceptance of people of all sizes, whether you are underweight or overweight. Size-acceptance should be about not telling people what they should be doing, whether it is gaining weight or losing weight, and accepting people at the weight they are. Yes, we all know that being overweight has a lot of repercussions on your health. You would have to be an idiot not to. Having it constantly shoved in our faces does nothing to help us, and in many cases makes us feel even worse about ourselves. Like I said earlier, most of us have other problems, but weight is just the most visible.

You know that and I know that. Unfortunately, a lot of other people apparently don't. One of the major arguments I have heard whenever I have discussed Christianity versus Atheism is that whenever God is taken out of the equation, morality disappears. Most other atheists will probably say the same. It's one of those things that really gets under my skin.

No, I guess I worded it badly. I meant this: Joe is a Christian. Sam says Joe isn't a good Christian, but Joe believes he is. One other thought I had (and this isn't pointed at you, Carlene, just a thought I had about what some other people have said here and in the past): If good Christians and mediocre Christians both go to heaven, what's the incentive to be a good Christian? Many people say, "You should be a good Christian just to help others or for the sake of doing a good thing." What makes these people different from the atheists? I have heard a lot of people say that being a Christian = being a good person, and that morality goes out the window if you don't believe in God. If a Christian should be a good Christian just for the sake of it, what prevents an atheist from being a good, moral person just for the sake of it?

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.

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.

If you go up to most people at a church and ask them if they are a Christian, they don't say, "No, I am a believer." They say, "Yep." The point was that most, if not all, Christians think they are good Christians. Other people may say they aren't, but they themselves believe they are. I think there are very few Christians out there that would say no if you asked them if they believed they would be going to heaven.

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.

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."

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.

I am from Crossville, which is about 1 hour west of Knoxville. I am currently in Kentucky, though, about 2 1/2 hours north. I am pre-band, trying to get it approved by insurance.

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.

The problem is that all Christians think they are true Christians.

Yep, that would be you. To me, an unreasonable person is one who, when confronted with truth and facts, continues to deny something. It's like the people who continue to protest that there are WMDs in Iraq, when we know (even the President knows and has said this) that there are none there. Your circumstances do not determine whether our economy is good or bad or whether or not GWB has done a worthy job. You have to look at the overall picture. And the overall picture is that we are and have been screwed royally.

...if this is the right thing to do. I know it is, but it is just starting to seem real to me, since my surgeon is ready to send everything to insurance. Before, it was basically just an idea, something that would be great if it happened but just didn't seem real. Now it's real, alright. I am starting to think, "Holy cow, what am I getting myself into?" I know this is the right thing for me, but convincing everyone else is starting to take its toll.

Yeah, I kind of get a kick out of people telling me that I am going to hell for being an atheist, since I consider doing that to be against the Christian ideal of "love thy neighbor." I think to myself, "If there is a hell, I'll meet you there." I am an atheist, but I think that if I was completely wrong and there is a God, he would be compassionate instead of hard and grudge-bearing. I think that he would see into the hearts of people and judge them based on the type of person they currently are and the type of person they have been in the past. If that's the case, there are a lot of so-called Christians that wouldn't be going through the Pearly Gates. If you are a good person, you are good whether or not you believe in a higher power. I personally believe that child molesters, rapists, and murderers can't be reformed. If God is the sort of power that would allow them to reside in the same place as good, moral people, then I don't want to be in his heaven. Even if those rapists, murderers, and child molesters "repent" and believe in God, that doesn't change the fact that they are rapists, murderers, and child molesters.

A few of you have said that there are either no exceptions when it comes to abortion or that it should only be allowed in cases of rape and incest. To the folks who say that it should be allowed only in rape and incest cases: Who decides what is rape or what is incest? Are all types of rape covered, or is it just in cases where there was a conviction? Should the women who claim they were raped have the same access to an abortion as the women who were raped and the rapist is in prison? Not all rapes are reported. What happens if a woman who didn't report her rape got pregnant and wanted an abortion. How would you validify her claim? What about the women who agreed to have sex and then said no, or the women who were unable to say no because they were too drunk? The same holds for incest cases. Do you allow abortions only when incest has been proven or also when it is claimed? You see, allowing only some exceptions can become a slippery slope. You wind up either forcing some rape victims to bear their rapists' children or aborting the children of women who say they were raped or victims of incest just to get access to an abortion. A law that does this would never hold up in court, because it forces an undue hardship on the victim to prove that they were raped or a victim of incest. To those of you who say there should be no exceptions at all: You become a rapist yourself. I would imagine that if you asked a woman that was brutally raped how she would feel if she had to bear her rapist's child and feel it moving inside her, she would probably say that she would feel like she was being raped all over again. I know I would. You would turn women into nothing more than brood mares. If a husband wanted children but his wife didn't, all he would have to do is rape her or sabotage their birth control. She would have no other option than to have his child. Saying, "Well, she should have been sterilized if she didn't want children," doesn't cut it. There are very few reputable doctors out there that willingly sterilize a young woman who has never had children. Taking this stance makes you complicit in rape and incest, IMO. Whether or not you believe you are preventing murder, you would be forcing a woman to bear a child, literally transforming her into a brood mare. Do you really think Christ would approve?