Last night when talking to my mother, she told me that her cousin “now weighs 300 pounds and is on oxygen.”
My mother is a fatphobe, so I decided to steer her away from that line of thought by concentrating on the “oxygen” part.
“Does she have congestive heart failure?” I asked.
“Well, it’s something cardiovascular, but it’s also the obesity.”
“Having congestive heart failure can cause people to retain fluid, which causes weight gain,” I said. “But after all, most large people are not on oxygen.”
Keep in mind that she was talking to a person who at her heaviest weighed over 300 pounds and was not on oxygen, and currently weighs around 275 pounds. Nope. Not on oxygen.
My mother doesn’t give a damn that I fight to keep my tendency to starve myself in check every day, or that I’m food insecure. Oh yes, she only hints at my need to lose weight because she “cares” about me so much. The fact that I was always miserable when I was dieting--and, further, the fact that it never worked in the long term and I always ended up gaining back more weight, means nothing.
Diets don’t work, and neither does fat shaming.
Don’t be That Person.
The Cheese Hath Grated It
