WHEE (Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise) is a community support diary for Kossacks who are currently or planning to start losing, gaining or maintaining their weight through diet and exercise or fitness. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are working on your weight or fitness, please -- join us! You can also click the WHEE tag to view all diary posts.
This diary is one that is hard to write for me. It is about being a second-class citizen. Because in the United States of America, the weight-and-height-challenged, the BMI-deviant, for whatever cause or whatever condition, are deemed as defectives, and there is only one way to handle this: follow me over the fold, Turtles, in whatever conveyance delivers you, to talk about how to respond to disrespect - from your peers, from your bosses, and from society at large.
This diary will be brief today, mainly because I am attempting to deliver some of my novels to market and prepare for a convention at which, for the first time, I will be attending in person to market my fiction to the world in a direct, in-person manner. Why? Because it's time, and because I am not going to hide out anymore and pretend that the judgement of my person is an impediment to my artistic success. Soon, I will be preparing, after a good 18 years of picking away at it, to also drive forward to produce my music, and to sing. All vocations I have postponed due to overweight and oversize.
But why? Europeans reading this might be mystified; because I have lived in Germany, and I have to say there that when someone perceives you as fat, they see what is really there: a person. A large person, but a person nonetheless. No time when I was among the local population of the many German states I lived in, did anyone regard me with disaste, judgement or scorn; and no doctor I sought treatment from suggested I was suffering from obesity; and belatedly I realize - they were right. But back in America, I have suffered from wage discrimination (a part of why I was in Europe anyway - women and men DO get paid equivalently in Europe, at least in my profession), and the size-deviant do not get treated as discount resources.
But life is not quite like that here in America, and I can say this because I have been in, lived in, and worked in several Western countries. In Canada, obesity is deemed a classified disability, and employers and providers of both health care and consumer services (including airlines) may not discrimiate against them. But in America, weighty and oversized individuals are forced to pay extra for seating when necessary, and only those who CAN afford seats that fit them (in Business or Fist Class) will get a comfortable seat next to their smaller first-class citizens.
I have had disrespectful children march up to me, obviously imitating their parents (or saying aloud what their parents only muttered beyond my hearing) and announced "You are fat!" - well no duh, kid. What's it to ya? I paid for two seats to travel across the world (the flight cost was advanced, but I DID have to pay it back), but I also had to make special accommodation for my special diet, which at the time was not helping me lose weight but it sure did help me run into massive disrespect at Heathrow Airport where they have a "one carry-on" rule so strict that when I explained that I had two tickets and was entitled to two carry-ons, the security guard there said "You don't need THAT MUCH FOOD" - the food she forced me to discard was four bananas, a loaf of personally-prepared gluten-free bread, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. Real binge food right? It didn't matter to her - she haughtily humiliated me in a busy airport and if I wanted my flight to Australia i would throw away food that I would live without on a 27 hour flight, and no one would replace by selling to me so that i could get my nutrients. There was no 'gluten free' 'plain fruits only' option I could check for the 3/4 of the way around the world trip, even though I was paying $5,000 for the privilege. I had the presence of mind and fortitude, perhaps, to complain to a supervisor, who allowed me a portion of what had not been thrown away, and the supervisor relieved the security guard, assuring me as he escorted me personally through the terminal to my connecting flight that the security guard had been "inadequately trained."
No kidding. I didn't escalate the complaint, but I did say to the airline employees at the checkpoint, "Since when is it against the law to require to bring special food on an Australian flight?" and one of them said to me "It isn't.. they don't know what they are doing." If I had been slender and willowy, there is no doubt the guard would have graciously assisted me with my special diet to help fortify me on the long and exhausting flight.
The final example I will cite for you happened recently, when I sought a diagnosis of my condition, which I have had from birth, from an endocrinologist. I took potluck, my primary care doctor wrote up my notes, put my self-diagnosis of my adrenal condition into the computer which agreed with his formulary information, and showed up. But Dr. C, a young woman of east Asian background, did not listen to me at all during the course of the interview - for it was not an examination. Like most doctors who confront a round-shaped patient, she does not need diagnostic tools beyond her own cultural and personal biases, reinforced by the code that automatically pops up when you stand on the scale: if the scale is off on BMI, then you are "malnourished" on one end, and "obese" on the other. And she has a cure: gastric bypass surgery.
If the problem were a binging problem, I would have solved it through the behavior modification and support most binge eaters need to overcome coping with life stress through eating. Gastric bypass helps those whose problem is limited to binge overeating, making it physically impossible to fit food into the artificially-constructed pouch that will serve as a substitute stomach for the rest of their natural lives. It is not a cure for overeating, and it sure would do nothing for me, because I haven't got a stomach problem, or a binging problem.
But i did solve the problem of her disrespect, in that - when she made it clear that she was not interested in investigating and proving out my theory of my multiple medical conditions, I followed up with the Mayo Clinic, and now have a patient number there. My records are going to them, and by the time they receive them, a good two months of following my new diet will have passed, and I will have scientific proof that I am right, and that I have hypoalkemia secondary to adrenal insufficiency, severe edema and require a special diet and steroid helper therapy. That food the security guard at Heathrow forced me to discard, is now sitting on my table for me to use as a dosage to help me lose, not gain, weight.
Ha, I said this would be brief - but enjoy the rant, I am told it gets charming after a certain point! Who is going to fight for respect if it isn't the biggest turtle in the herd?
Housekeeping!!!!! Please sign up. You can't have been more profoundly humiliated than me, and I'm still forging ahead.
Please sign up for a block and write a diary about your experiences with health, fitness, and weight !
October 17
Sat PM - Edward Spurlock (Kessler, Ch. 15)
October 18
Sun AM - louisev (Turtle Diary)
Sun PM - jiffykeen
October 19
Mon AM - NC Dem
Mon PM - ???
October 20
Tues AM - ??
Tues PM - Clio2 (Kessler, Ch. 16)
October 21
Weds AM - ???
Weds PM - Edward Spurlock
October 22
Thurs AM - A DC Wonk
Thurs PM - ???
October 23
Fri AM -
Fri PM - Be Your Own Geneticist: Chapter 2: Experimentation and Wrong Diagnosis
October 24
Sat AM - ???
Sat PM - Edward Spurlock, Kessler Chapter 13
Oct 25
Sun AM - Turtle Diary
Sun PM - ???