Lesson in Self Loathing

No one likes being fat, then again, maybe I assuming too much. There are some out there who claim that they enjoy being overweight. Maybe they are telling the truth or maybe they are lying to themselves and the world around them. I don’t know, all I know is how I feel. Personally, I don’t care for it, never have, never will.
The problem is I’ve gone from being overweight to OBESE and not just obese but MORBIDLY OBESE and I’m miserable in my body. I know how people look at me and judge me. Its nothing that I haven’t done to myself or even to others. I can honestly admit I’ve looked at other obese people and judged them. Wondering how they can be comfortable at such a size. Judging how or what they have done in their lives to make themselves that size. In my mind I have justified this thinking I’m fat I have a right but in reality I don’t because I am no better than they are.

If truth be known I’m reflecting my own critical thoughts about myself onto these people. They are simply a mirror image of myself, which is fitting because none of the mirrors in my home show what I look like from mid chest down. This has made it easier to ignore my growing problem. The If-I-can’t-see-it-its-not-true mentality I’ve had obviously doesn’t work.

I have found myself in the past year changing the way I look at other overweight people. If I see another woman about my height and weight I find that I have started thinking, “Is that what I look like?” I honestly don’t know if this is really any better than what I was doing before but I would like to think it is a step in the right direction. Rather than judge others my goal is to simply understand what they are going through which is easier said than done.

I feel that most people assume that someone that is overweight is simply lazy, eats too much or just doesn’t care about themselves. That isn’t always the case because the problem could actually be something that has contributed to their physical issues. In my attempt to educate myself in dealing with my own health issues and how to deal with them. I have learned that there are a litany of illnesses that can cause a weight problem. In addition many medications can compound the problems of weight gain and loss.

After learning about these contributing factors I realized that there is so much more involved in a person’s weight other than being lazy or eating too much. This is where I feel that people need to stop and think before they judge the overweight person as they pass by. You don’t know if that person is on a medication that causes weight gain, if they have a disease that makes it hard for them to lose weight, or someone who was in an accident or something else that may have limited their mobility which contributed to their weight gain.
I am not giving a “get out of jail free” card to those that may have one of these issues. They are still responsible for taking the steps to find out if there is a health problem that needs to be addressed. I’m simply saying that we as a society shouldn’t judge every person that walks past simply because they don’t fit into the “size” that society has deemed to be the correct one.