Reader Comments

So I thought today I would respond to a comment left by Ever Curious, who accused me of illegitimately attempting to "claim status in the protected group of weight challenged people.  You are the furthest thing from fat."  

I appreciate the comment, Ever Curious, and applaud your ability to look at the world through rose-colored glasses.  While I tend to agree with you that when you think of the phrase "fat person," I am probably not the image that comes to mind, I still have a lot of weight to lose.  So, I came up with a few reasons why I think I am fat.  Hopefully, you will like them.

1.  You have not lived in Boise (as evidenced by your comment that you would love to be out west breathing in the fresh air (which is, in fact, a totally awesome thing to do).  As my previous posts have indicated, I am contending with a new definition of skinny out here.

2. Unless the laws of physics have somehow turned on their heads, the scale doesn't lie, my friend.

3.  Perhaps you are right, but if you are, all of the mirrors in my new home must have been purchased directly from a carnival fun house and designed to make people look twice as wide as they are.

4.  Apparently the baggy clothes thing does work.  I apparently fooled you into thinking I was skinny!

5.  (And this is the serious, and most important, one) I believe that if you are once fat, you are always fat.  I don't mean that you can never be skinny, but I do mean that even after you lose all your weight, you will always be a recovering fat person.  Why?  I have strongly started to believe that being overweight is an addiction.  In school, we learn such a simplistic definition of what addiction is.  Teachers or D.A.R.E. officers tell us not to do drugs because we will get "addicted."  They talk about how bad addiction is, but they never recall anyone every asking why people might get addicted to these substances in the first place--that there could possibly be some underlying cause for these people's behavior.

People don't just get addicted to something because they think it will be fun.  I mean, there may be some people who do that, but the vast majority of us become addicted to something because we are trying to satiate a need or desire (even if we don't know exactly what that need or desire is).  This is simple as someone who "has" to have coffee every morning to stay awake or something as complex as someone who has convinced themselves that they must continue to take prescription pain medication long after injury to avoid pain.

So, the key to overcoming being fat (at least I think in my case), is to overcome the underlying reason for my addiction.  What is that underlying reason?  I have no idea.  (I am pretty sure it has something to do with my parents not letting me get a dog when I was a kid, but I have had dogs as an adult, and I still eat too much.)  Seriously, though, I am still not totally sure what I am dealing with mentally that causes me to want to eat crappy food all the time, but I have a feeling that when I do, I will be able to finally overcome my addiction to food.  Either way, we all tend to agree nowadays that once you are an alcoholic, you are always an alcoholic.  I think the same thing is true for fat people:  once your fat, your always fat.  The goal is to be in recovery.