Thanks again for this post. My heart needed it today.

” People frequently harass me for using a wheelchair, as if fat people never get disorders or diseases that require one. ”

I hate this attitude, and I’m not even visually heavy enough or disabled enough (yet, knock on wood) to get it myself. But, my mother has a combination of disabilities – previous damage to her spine from a fall, arthritis in her knees and elsewhere, and fibromyalgia – that make it physically hard for her to walk any sort of long distance, heck, make it hard some days for her to get out of bed. Even short distances, she needs canes (plural!) to walk. When she does any kind of long-distance “walking” such as in stores or at work (yes, she still works, because they “have a mortgage to pay”), she needs a motorized scooter to do it.

And there is this little section of our local newspaper that has this short-form rants from readers bit. And I saw someone in it complain about “Fat people in grocery stores” riding the electric carts, basically using the old “just stop eating so much” chestnut. Now, I have ADHD which makes my memory a crapshoot and my sense of time especially bad so I don’t know how long ago – weeks? months?? – this was, but it’s been bugging me ever since. It’s been like, festering inside me and I’m actually debating responding even though it’s probably been ages, because all I could think of when I read that, was my mother.

Because my mother? She’s “overweight”, you see. She’s heavyset and always has been, and would be called “fat” by most people on sight. But she gained the most weight AFTER her disabilities started piling up! She needs the scooter for the same REASON she’s “fat” – because she’s genuinely disabled! And since she always carries her canes with her even while riding the scooter, maybe, just maybe, people can tell she “really needs it”, but.

I always think about the people who assume all her problems must surely be because of her weight and not the other way around – the people who don’t know fibromyalgia affects people regardless of weight and causes pain that makes ANYTHING excruciating some days, the people who don’t realize arthritis has little if anything to do with weight, that it’s just inflammation which can affect anyone for zero reason and in her case it’s probably from age (she’s 65+ but because of the weight and dyeing her hair, looks younger than that), that the fall was a result of a chair rolling out from under her because it had wheels and she misjudged the distance and knocked it out of the way accidentally like anybody could, NOT because of any other reason – and those people, who don’t know her, probably assume all her health problems are “her own fault, because she just ate too much”.

When the opposite, if anything, is true – instead, she’s always been insecure about her weight, to the extent that she frequently diets and counts calories etc. When I, as MANY people do when they hit their 30s, managed to put on about 20 lbs over time, after the original Freshman 15 of course, she started trying to have unwanted “talks” with me about eating and exercise. Yes, really – she’s so insecure that she’s projecting it onto me, who weighs much less (155 was the most I’ve hit – I’ve always been petite – and I’ve dropped weight since then, due, *ding ding sound*, to a medical issue! Not one that’s as dramatic as the OP’s, thank goodness, just a spine thing that made it painful to sit for months, but. It was enough to drain my body’s fat reserves a little at the time. My mother complimented me on the “weight loss” of maybe 10 lbs, and all I could think was “yeah, thanks, but it’d be great if it was from actual normal increased activity like running or something, and not just that it HURT TO SIT DOWN, on account of my feet have been killin’ me for weeks! I’d much rather have the extra ten pounds and a spine that didn’t hurt!”)

It’s just…it’s so ugly. The worst part is the way the medical industry has become unhealthily complicit in it; for instance, their reliance on the original bullpucky BMI scale. According to the BMI scale, I was “overweight” for my height and sex when I hit 155 pounds…and yet, actual metastudies have shown that being “overweight” or even “obese” by the BMI scale, has ZERO negative impact on your health until you literally hit the “morbidly obese” category; in fact, it’s the opposite! People who are moderately overweight have BETTER health outcomes if they get hit with a serious illness (cancer, pneumonia etc) or injury (spine injuries, broken limbs, etc.). Why?

Because cases like that are exactly WHY we gain fat to begin with: to provide Emergency Fuel when we need it. And since there’s actually zero causation found between being “moderately overweight” or even slightly “obese”, and illness, especially given that the BMI scale DOES NOT differentiate between mass from fat and mass from muscle (muscle being twice as dense and therefore having twice as much mass!)…literally, there’s no dang reason we should be worried about being a little “overweight”. The whole idea that people like me – people who weigh all of 150 pounds as an adult – are “over” weight, itself, is false; rather, I’m exactly the kind of weight I probably should be as I hit lower-middle-age and start having the usual complications from aging that could require the excess fat reserves!

In other words, according to BMI, I am an “unhealthy” weight, I have “too much” weight…but according to actual SCIENCE, I’m perfectly fine weight-wise, even better off, because if I get hurt or sick like I did a few months back, it’s less immediately dangerous. But guess which one the culture, and therefore even a lot of doctors and nurses, zero in on? Yup: the outdated, inaccurate, and entirely useless BMI scale.

Yet if I weighed the supposedly “healthier” weight that I weighed in high school (110-115lbs and this is with a relatively generous bust adding on to that I might add), and then lost that ten pounds from the spinal thing? That would be alarming! Losing ten pounds when you weigh 155 is fine…well, I mean, it won’t kill you in and of itself (why you’re losing it would be of greater worry obviously). Losing ten pounds when you weigh 110 though? Is losing a whole eleventh of your body weight! That’s pretty dramatic, thanks.

And it sucks, because when I did lose that little bit of weight recently, and realized “oh! I can fit into/look better in some of my old clothing again!” I was happy!

And then I realized: the only reason I lost it is because I was SUFFERING, from an injury that caused me months of pain and discomfort doing a simple thing like sitting in a chair (and the reason I had first gained the weight was probably because I was less active…because when you live in a third-floor walk up for three years and have to leave it almost every day to work, you get home and you don’t exactly want to go for a run or a swim, do you?). If it had been from a decision to be more active for my own health, that’d be one thing, but it’s like…I don’t get to be “proud” of having stood for hours longer every day if the only reason was because sitting hurt worse than standing. >_>

So even though I had a change that society approves of (losing a bit of weight), the reason doesn’t get to help my self-esteem any, and if anything society’s reaction would probably be “well see? This just proves you should have been more active and regularly exercising, even though you were totally exhausted all the time and barely had the energy to cook healthy meals for your household, let alone the energy to exercise”. It’s such an ugly cultural construct. I’m glad for posts like this because we need to call out this crap, we really do. It’s created such a toxic, unhealthy culture that outright causes suffering, and even literal deaths.

Holy crap yeah losing 60 pounds that fast is never good. I lost about 75 total from the combination of gastroparesis and adrenal insufficiency. But then when I went on steroids I gained most of it back. Then lost 10 pounds, purely in fluids, overnight, when treated for lymphedema. Now on the steroids, I have almost a completely stable weight regardless of how much or how little food I get — I don’t gain weight and I don’t lose it even at extremes (like getting between 300-700 calories a day pretty consistently for at minimum most of a month, when I started forgetting to plug my feeding tube in — I didn’t lose much weight, although my fingernails and hair started breaking into pieces and I developed other signs of malnutrition). Weight change can be a sign of food issues but it’s not the only sign, it’s not always a sign in the obvious way (sometimes malnutrition can even lead to weight gain, including in gastroparesis), and it’s not always a sign of anything at all (sometimes you’re thin when you’re getting too much food, sometimes you’re fat when you’re getting too little). I find it really disturbing the way people’s weight is used against us in medical situations.

I found your blog while looking up j-tubes and am so thankful for all the information you’ve given. We’ve been considering one (yayyy gp) so it’s nice to see a day to day view of things.

Hope all is well :).

Since I was in a car wreck and have a back injury, my body changed as I was not able to move in the same ways as I used to be able to. The pain also dropped my activity level drastically during the first couple years after the injury so I gained 30-40lbs during that time. My weight has stabilized around 200lbs which seems to be my new set point. I have been smaller at times but when I lose weight it is because I am sick (I lost 30lbs before my gallbladder surgery because I couldn’t eat anything without becoming violently ill) or from depression which makes me lose my appetite entirely.

Instead of being concerned about my gall bladder or depression, the reaction was…well at least you’re losing weight. When people make that comment, every fiber of my being is screaming out “I’m losing weight because something is wrong dammit!”

Since then I have rediscovered yoga which has done wonders for my pain and mobility but I have not lost any weight despite becoming more physically active. In fact, in the past year of doing yoga regularly 4-5 times a week I’ve actually gained 20lbs (new muscles perhaps?). Doctors continue to believe that I must be eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or a Big Mac every day to keep gaining weight. Even though despite the weight gain, my cholesterol levels actually dropped significantly in the past year, my blood sugar is fine, my blood pressure is fine, etc…

My partner actually weighs about 135lbs, is pre diabetic, does not exercise, and eats fast food regularly. But since he is thin/normal, he doesn’t get the same kind of treatment even though I am ultimately more “healthy” (whatever that means)…It is incredibly frustrating.

But I will not starve myself to maintain what is someone else’s ideal of what size my body should be. I will continue to eat foods that nourish my body in whatever quantity my body needs, and I will not be made to feel guilty for doing so. I will continue to move in a way that makes my body feel good and helps keep my pain at bay.

I applaud you for the courage to put this out there, really. It’s necessary. It validates others who may be encountering similar obstacles and hopefully empowers them to demand change from health care providers who treat them poorly. My own father required a feeding tube after having multiple strokes that affected his swallowing ability (and yes he was fat). So. Thank you :)