My response to the article By Dr Sarah Burnett
Being morbidly obese is a choice. There, I’ve said it.
- Yes! I chose to be fat as I am happy as I am and do't want to continue on a path of yoyo dieting and depression for the rest of my life.
But to be honest I am still reeling in shock from having seen Plus Sized Wars on Channel 4 this week. I watched the documentary with a mounting sense of horror, as the so-called Plus Size Bloggers - young, obese women who flaunt their excess weight on Instagram and Twitter and have thousands of online followers - together with a host of fashionistas, retailers and shoppers lined up to insist that “fat is fabulous”.
- reeling that young woman are happy and living their lives as they want when millions of people are depressed and on medication for many reasons and not weight related!
I’m a radiologist and some people are so large that they can’t fit in a standard MRI scanner and the are open-sided scanners we can use instead but produce images of a much poorer quality.
- you are a radiologist and not these peoples Doctor. You do not know their situations and health problems.
Far from fat being fabulous, it is a public health time bomb. Forget the problems that the health system faces with an ageing population.
The harsh truth is these people are simply not going to reach old age.
- so if we all die young we solve your ageing population problem!
Complications associated with their obesity will get them first – after having cost the rest of us a fortune along the way in treating them just because they eat too much, and no-one seems prepared to tell them.
- fat people pay taxes and so pay for the treated they may or may not need. Everyone and everything tells fat fat people they eat too much!!!! You are not paying too much attention if you don't see that! All fat people don't eat too much. Some don't move enough and eat little. Not all fat peoples diets are the same just as not all slim peoples are the same!
Efforts to ‘‘normalise’’Fat bodies with aggressive marketing of high fashion plus sizes promoted by beautiful, but morbidly obese models, is utterly wrong.
- catwalk have been showing super slim models for years and it has not made people slim so why would showing fat models make people fat. No logic at all!
I am not talking about those women who are size 14 or 16. I am all for initiatives, such as the Dove campaign for Real Beauty,
-When I was a size 14 I was classed as obese on the BMI chart and told to lose weight by Doctors.
For the record, as a 52-year-old mother of two, I am a size 14 and I could probably do with losing a few pounds for health reasons rather than vanity.
- why then at 52 are you spouting this when you should be focused on your own health and be your ideal weight for health reasons?!
Here was a buch of folk who would never want to be fat themselves seeking to make money out of those who are by lying to them they looked great.
- not everyone sees beauty in the same things thankfully. The woman in the show feel beautiful and great and who are you to tell them or anyone that they should not.
It was akin to fat pornography for them. (And, by the way, that exploitation extended to the broadcaster interspersing the documentary with pizza commercials. That was downright irresponsible.)
- ridiculous statement! I did not notice the adverts but I would imagine that you eat pizza and mist people do. Showing an ad for one does not make me want to scoff down one. Just as seeing an ad for tampons does not make me want to go buy them!
I don’t have a heart of stone, so I can’t to be too critical of the morbidly obese young women in their late teens and early twenties who appeared.
- too late you already have. Also I am 35 and was featured.
Like many other viewers, I suspect, I could see the pain that lay just below their brittle exteriors as they assured the interviewer that they were happy and at ease with being a size 24
- no pain here! I love my body and so over the moon that at the age of 25 I realised that I don't have to fit a certain dress size to be happy and worthy of anything anyone else had.
Tess Munster, 29, who at 5ft 4in is a size 18/20 (and possibly then some). They are deluding themselves and it is desperately sad.
- the only delusions are that fat people are all unhealthy and will die young. Being happy and fat is better for my health than being depressed and smaller.
Tess inspires people of all sizes and genders to learn to respect others bodies and love themselves despite the hate that is thrown at them every day from people like yourself. You should take a leaf out of her book.
Some of the contributors had undeniably had pretty faces, great skin and hair and they dressed with style and panache. At the moment, they have youth on their side, but I will not be surprised if, by the age of 40, some of them are using mobility scooters. Indeed, some of them already appeared to be having problems with their knees as they struggled to stand up without support.
- again I am 35 and know many people over 40 who are obese and walk perfectly fine on their own two fat legs. Not all fat people have health problems!
In terms of life expectancy, the morbidly obese face a similar scenario to the lifelong smoker. Research shows that could cost them at least 10 years of life. With those youngsters already morbidly obese in their teens, I’d say 20 years would be more realistic.
- who really wants to live to be 100 these days?! Even 80 is not appealing to me. I am happy to due early and save the NHS some ££££. Like you said earlier people living longer is a problem.
And what will happen in the intervening years? Well, to start at the lower end of the scale, there will be the annoying niggles – backache and joint issues, chaffing etc, from carrying all that extra flesh. They will be especially prone to being knock-kneed, as the joint space is eroded by the weight bearing down on it.
I see plenty of women who come for scans because they have lower limb problems that I know would be eased if they weren’t so overweight, but no-one seems willing to confront them with that simple remedy. Instead, we treat the limb problems, and often end up listing the women as medically disabled.
- I am pretty sure the people you are talking about have all been told to lose weight many times! Telling someone to lose weight will not make them magically do it. There may be any number if reasons that they are fat and why the eat more or don't move more.
Another issue obese young women may face is impaired fertility, as their size impacts their hormones and periods become irregular. And let’s be brutally frank their partners may not be quite so willing to have sex with them. Being morbidly obese causes personal hygiene problems. I don’t call that fabulous.
- I had a baby at 34 and getting pregnant was no problem. Lets be brutally frank! Fat people have just as much sex as slim people! As a fat woman I have had more than my fair share of sexual partners and sex never been a problem for this fat body of mine! The fact that you think this really shows how little you really know about fat people and their lives. As for hygiene you I smell fabulous most of the time and you are basically saying all fat people are unfuckable, not worthy of a loving sexual relationship and smell. Aren't you a peach!
If these women then need infertility treatment, they will find most consultants demand that the first thing they do is lose weight. Even if they can get past this obstacle, morbidly obese mothers have higher than usual levels of foetal deaths and of complications when giving birth, not to mention the damage their over-eating does to their unborn child’s metabolism.
- my son was born at 29 weeks due to pre-exlampsia. A NON Fat related complication!!!! At a size 26 my pregnancy was not any worse than a slim persons. My problems were after having a c-section and not getting the aftercare I should have had.
As the years pass, they will face a much higher risk than the general population of diabetes, cardiovascular problems, strokes and heart attacks. There are also strong links with being morbidly obese and breast and endometrial cancer.
- cancer is the number one killer and it is likely more fat people will die from that than anything else. It kills slim people too. All the things you mention effect all sizes.
I am sorry if this litany of pain and suffering sounds extreme, but someone has to say it. Someone needs to tell these young women, bedazzled by the bloggers, big models and the high fashion advertisements, that they are killing themselves. If we allowed our pets to over-eat to this extent, the RSPCA would remove them from our homes.
- my advice to young people is don't let other shame you into losing weight. You can be happy at any size and you can be healthy if you choose to be. It is your body and you can live in it any way you choose. Health is not always a choice and if you are unhealthy that does not make you any less worthy of anything in this life. If seeing fat fabulous blogger woman makes you feel better about your size then great! If not thats ok too!
Your health is for you and your Doctor to work on and nobody else should comment on it.
