Friday, June 04, 2004
I See Fat People
My eldest sister lives on the East Coast. For years, she has expressed shock at what she sees in getting off planes in the Midwest: She sees Fat People.
She says people on the East and West Coasts don't tolerate obesity the way we do in the Midwest.
Well, I will say it loud and say it proud -- I am from Detroit! I am Fat! And I live in The Number One Fat-City! The other night, we even made Ted Koppel's Nightline! He concluded Detroiters are poor and poor people are fatter because they have fewer choices. Yea, right, Ted. Life is so simple when you are a journalist.
Actually, the only times I have been thin and in good shape are the times when I was too poor to buy food or the times I worked in factories and was too busy to eat. (I really enjoyed my brief factory years, that athletic side of my self! The power to hit a tennis ball straight across the net. The confidence I could survive anything.) The trainer at the Y said that I would have to work out eight hours a day (like Cher) to return to that kind of condition. In another world, I would have to be mobile and active.
Unfortunately, I work in an office. Daily we discus diets in my world of aging women. It is a topic that comes up more than politics and wars, celebrity shenanigans, science, company policies, more than anything else. We talk about losing weight and how to do it.
Personally, I have tried in the following order: Calories, Grapefruit & baby food, Tops, Weight Watchers, 3-Day Diets, Dexatrim, Aerobics, Swimming, Walking, SlimFast, Total Gym, Hypnosis, Metabolift, Eight glasses of water, walking again, Atkins, Calories again, Swimming again, The Gazelle, Meridia (that's a drug that made me cry a lot), and I am just about to try South Beach Diet because I am too chicken to let them cut my stomach for that gastric bypass surgery. Telling you, all this -- it seems really stupid. Doesn't it?
I have heard that I have survivor genes that store fat for times of famine. I have read that I eat to replace love. I have read that there is a mysterious fat-factor in my cells. My doctor says I eat more calories then I burn and not to eat so much. I have watched the thin girls at work eat candy, french fries, potato chips & popcorn all day long everyday; while I eat celery and almonds and drink water.
I don't really know why I am fat. Or why you are thin. Why she is short. Nor why he's a prick. I don't know why they are bigots and we are tolerant. I don't know why some people have cute faces and some people have crooked faces. Why do some people have a natural love of all life and others hate everyone and everything? With six billion people and no two people the same, I guess someone has to be fat. Aren't you glad it's I, and not you?
My eldest sister lives on the East Coast. For years, she has expressed shock at what she sees in getting off planes in the Midwest: She sees Fat People.
She says people on the East and West Coasts don't tolerate obesity the way we do in the Midwest.
Well, I will say it loud and say it proud -- I am from Detroit! I am Fat! And I live in The Number One Fat-City! The other night, we even made Ted Koppel's Nightline! He concluded Detroiters are poor and poor people are fatter because they have fewer choices. Yea, right, Ted. Life is so simple when you are a journalist.
Actually, the only times I have been thin and in good shape are the times when I was too poor to buy food or the times I worked in factories and was too busy to eat. (I really enjoyed my brief factory years, that athletic side of my self! The power to hit a tennis ball straight across the net. The confidence I could survive anything.) The trainer at the Y said that I would have to work out eight hours a day (like Cher) to return to that kind of condition. In another world, I would have to be mobile and active.
Unfortunately, I work in an office. Daily we discus diets in my world of aging women. It is a topic that comes up more than politics and wars, celebrity shenanigans, science, company policies, more than anything else. We talk about losing weight and how to do it.
Personally, I have tried in the following order: Calories, Grapefruit & baby food, Tops, Weight Watchers, 3-Day Diets, Dexatrim, Aerobics, Swimming, Walking, SlimFast, Total Gym, Hypnosis, Metabolift, Eight glasses of water, walking again, Atkins, Calories again, Swimming again, The Gazelle, Meridia (that's a drug that made me cry a lot), and I am just about to try South Beach Diet because I am too chicken to let them cut my stomach for that gastric bypass surgery. Telling you, all this -- it seems really stupid. Doesn't it?
I have heard that I have survivor genes that store fat for times of famine. I have read that I eat to replace love. I have read that there is a mysterious fat-factor in my cells. My doctor says I eat more calories then I burn and not to eat so much. I have watched the thin girls at work eat candy, french fries, potato chips & popcorn all day long everyday; while I eat celery and almonds and drink water.
I don't really know why I am fat. Or why you are thin. Why she is short. Nor why he's a prick. I don't know why they are bigots and we are tolerant. I don't know why some people have cute faces and some people have crooked faces. Why do some people have a natural love of all life and others hate everyone and everything? With six billion people and no two people the same, I guess someone has to be fat. Aren't you glad it's I, and not you?
