response 86 of 378:

Mar 7 16:08 UTC 2006

re #68 I think some people see gastric bypass surgery as an easy solution.
It is a lot less work to have someone cut you up and reduce the size of your
stomach than it is to exercise hard and diet intensely and lose a hundred
pounds the old fashioned way.  Sadly I have read that since most doctors won't
perform the surgery unless a person is *at least* a hundred pounds overweight,
that many patients deliberately *gain* weight to be fat enough to qualify for
the surgery.  

response 88 of 378:

Mar 7 16:14 UTC 2006

Re 86  Believe me, when I want Pad Thai and can't have it (long noodles bother
me) or when I get reckless and eat it anyway and then have to go and make
myself sick to relieve the pain, I don't think it's easy.  Nor did I think
it was easy when I *had* the surgery.  

response 90 of 378:

Mar 7 16:19 UTC 2006

edina there are some doctors who don't advise that surgery unless your life
is in danger.  Was your life in danger?  Don't you think that some people just
obsess about their weight and all of a sudden some miracle surgery comes along
and they just *have* to have it?  I look at a guy like Al Roker of the Today
Show, who was overweight but clearly healthy and not dying, and it seems like
he had the surgery for vanity reasons.  He had the surgery because well...he
could, and then he could go on tv skinnier and boast about it over and over

response 92 of 378:

Mar 7 16:31 UTC 2006

I knew one woman who had the surgery, a co-worker at a past place of
employment.  She lost a great deal of weight, and looked like a different
person, and then her husband divorced her.  He liked her better fat
apparently, and felt that if she was so dissatisfied with her pre-surgery
life, that he must be part of that dissatisfaction.  How such surgery affects
your loved ones or will affect them and how they perceive you, is something
that needs studying.  

response 94 of 378:

Mar 7 16:49 UTC 2006

The other thing is that modern medicine may well come up with better, easier,
less invasive ways to lose weight fast in the near future.  Wouldn't it be
a bummer to have had your body cut up and then the next year they come out
with miracle diet pills or something?

response 96 of 378:

Mar 7 16:56 UTC 2006

Re 94  No, it wouldn't be a bummer.  

response 98 of 378:

Mar 7 17:24 UTC 2006

No.  Nor does that even make sense.

response 100 of 378:

Mar 7 17:30 UTC 2006

By the way:  The latest medical evidence spreads all sorts of doubt about
even moderately being beneficial rather than detrimental to your health.

Not that I'd get in the way of you having a few drinks!

response 102 of 378:

Mar 7 17:39 UTC 2006

Your mother.

response 104 of 378:

Mar 7 17:52 UTC 2006

jep is a vagina and todd (who is a penis) is fucking him.

response 106 of 378:

Mar 7 17:57 UTC 2006

re #104
Can I used that or did you copyright it?

response 108 of 378:

Mar 7 18:03 UTC 2006

resp:83 Perhaps fat people cost society money. But so what? Men (as a 
group) weigh more than women (as a group) but I dont see you bitching 
about men externalizing their jet fuel costs on to  women.. Why is that 
do you think? Is it because you are a man? Poor people probably cost 
society a lot of money, should we shame people for being poor?  There 
is no way that every group is going to cost the same as every other 
group. And there are people who save society money and people who cost 
society money. The truth is that you have no idea how much money fat 
people are costing you. You don t even know if there is a net cost. You 
give one example and it turns out to be a very small amount. For all 
you know, fat people might be saving you money in other ways. But even 
if it turned out that fat people cost thin people some money, so what? 
Do you really want to live in a world where people run around worrying 
about how much some other group is costing them? 

Resp:84 The main reason is that things like wearing seatbelts and 
wearing helmets and smoking, etc are all behaviors and not a state of 
being. Fat is a state of being. Eating a poor diet is a behavior. Now, 
granted most people who eat a poor diet end up being heavier than they 
otherwise would be. But that doesn t mean that every fat person eats a 
bad diet. There is natural size diversity in our species. If you take a 
group of people and feed them the exact same diet and make sure they 
get the exact same amount of exercise, there will still be a range of 
weights within that group. Now, if you are suggesting that we ban junk 
food, I might not agree with it but at least that is something similar 
to requiring someone to wear a seat belt. 

I think that a lot of people have a way of thinking about fat people 
that often is not based on fact. They think that fat people are lazy 
and weak and could be thin if they wanted to. All it takes is a little 
will power, right. I have yet to meet a person who says this who has 
any kind of facts to back it up other than anecdotal evidence  (Oprah 
did it, anyone can do it). I also have yet to meet a person who has 
actually lost a large amount of weight and kept it off who makes 
comments like  all it takes is a little will power  because those 
people know the effort that goes into sustained weight loss.  The same 
people who often believe that people are fat because of bad behavior 
usually seem to believe that obesity is a terminal illness and is 
costing everyone tons of money. Are there health risks associated with 
obesity? Yes. Are people s reactions to those probably out of 
proportion with the actual risks? Almost definitely.

The media feeds all of this by using scare terminology like  Obesity 
Epidemic  and writing articles like the one Cyklone linked to about how 
fat costs millions just in jet fuel alone. The article never mentions 
how much that cost is per airline ticket purchased because it simply 
wouldn t be as sensational. I get very frustrated with the media and 
their coverage on anything that has anything to do with obesity. They 
seldom include meaningful statistics. They use language designed to 
frame the issue in a way that scares people. 

Believe it or not, there is a lot of fat hatred in our culture. A lot 
of good people have a strong bias against fat people in the same way 
that a lot of good people are prejudiced against black people or gay 
people or whatever other group. I think that a lot of people use the 
health risks of obesity and any other costs they can dream up to 
justify discrimination against fat people in the same way that people 
use AIDS and the increased costs of that disease to justify 
discrimination against gay people.  

I am not saying that anyone on here is necessarily doing that but 
people do that all the time. I have read editorials that were published 
in major newspapers that said that things like having stores that sell 
fashionable clothes for fat people or having resorts that cater to fat 
people is wrong because it encourages people to be fat. Never mind the 
thousand comments a day that I hear just from people I know. Honestly, 
as a fat person, I am very thankful that I live in a city that bans 
discrimination against a person based on their weight and that I live 
in a state that considers weight a protected class of employment. 

response 110 of 378:

Mar 7 18:08 UTC 2006

Well, thank you scholar.