Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

This secret from PostSecret isn’t the first time I’ve seen this phenomenon. I’ve had it said to me with a straight face in hushed tones. I’m part of the converted now, so the voice looked at the fat women across the room and whispered to me, “Don’t you find it harder to tolerate fat people now?” I clenched my jaw, crinkled my brow and shook my head at her. After suffering the torment of children and teens during my formative years, I have a hard time understanding what skinny people find they have to “tolerate.”

I truly believe that those thin people who resent fat people are the ones that got to their goal weight and maintain it using brute force. They never solved the issues that made them turn to food, so it is always a temptation to them. They never learned how to eat moderately with joy, so food is constantly a source of stress for them.

They imagine that fat people can just eat whatever they want whenever they want. They imagine that fat people never have to stress out about their clothes fitting. They imagine that fat people never have to break a sweat. In essence, they have completely forgotten what being fat is like.

When I was overweight, I constantly monitored my food. I was always on a diet or bingeing after one. It is actually easier for me to eat now than it was when I was fat. When I was overweight, I couldn’t find cute clothes to fit me, much less worrying whether my $300 jeans would still fit. Those designers never even considered that I might want to buy a pair of $300 jeans. Buying clothes and fitting into them is much easier now. When I was overweight, I exercised more than I do now. I would run HARD and be in pain for days afterward. Even climbing the stairs was a major feat for me. Exercise was just getting my body out of bed and showered, sometimes. I broke a sweat all the time. Now, I’m cold all the time and my exercise is much more moderate. Climbing the stairs doesn’t work me out anymore and when I go to the gym, I’m ignored instead of stared at.

If you find that you are intolerant of the obese, you better watch out. It’s the first step going back to the way you were. You imagine that fat people have a life that is easier. You think that they don’t need to work as hard as you did to get thin and forget how hard it was just to survive in this prejudiced world.

Of course, my reaction to fat people is just as bad. I want to take them aside and give them advice. I want to help them find the path just like I did. I kind of feel like I have found THE WAY, and I want to show them the small path I cut with a machete. I want to show them my before pictures. I want to tell them where to find me. My instincts are just as harmful as the people who detest the obese and I do my best to keep them in check.

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.