Being Fat is Fair Game, Part VII

I don't suggest reading Secrets From the Eating Lab (I'm almost finished). But if you're overweight or even obese, here's what you're in for:

1. Here's a real documented case for weight-based discrimination and stigma. Congrats. People judge you just because you weigh a little more, and think you are less intelligent and less hard working, and doctors are less likely to treat you properly, and on and on.

2. The odds are incredibly stacked against you if you ever want to lose enough weight to be within the BMI's idea of normal weight. According to one doctor, you have better odds of beating rare forms of cancer.

3. Weight loss companies build their business models on the idea that people will regain their weight that they loose, and therefore be repeat customers.

4. Most of us know most of the reasons why people can't lose weight to begin with. One of the additional reasons that I learned that I didn't know was that being on a diet actually causes stress, and as most of us know, stress causes weight gain. Perfect! Dieting also causes loss in executive function, you know, that part of the brain that helps you to stop yourself before you reach for that cookie at nine pm. Decreases. Why? According to the author, no one is quite sure. Oh! And yes! Dieting makes you temporarily less smart! Who knew?

5. Obesity won't kill you. Actually, people who are overweight live longer than people who are normal weight, and people who are underweight, well, it's suggested that they could live shorter lives. But does obesity give you disease? Maybe. What we know for sure is that inactivity gives you disease, and people with obesity are less active. But who cares, right? If the world looks down on you if you're fat, do you really care that you live another five, six years from the skinny sister you have?

6. Theoretically, it's impossible that I'm overweight. My parents, both biological and adoptive, are thin. Weight is 70% inherited. I'm a bit of a fat miracle. It was also said that the people around you influence your eating habits. My mother barely eats. What's wrong with me?

7. One good bit of information that men don't want you to know, they watch a lot of porn with fat women in it. True story. The experts at Google figured this out.

8. Reducing your caloric intake to 1,500 calories per day makes you obsess about food to the exclusion of all other things or needs, including sex. If you want to be thin, and you're not genetic predisposed, it will have to be your life's focus.

9. Anorexics have enormous amounts of focus and self-control, which most of us don't. But never mind.