What I Learned This Weekend

Fat people might die at White Water.

That’s right. According to the recorded voice that drones on and on while you’re waiting in line, “extremely overweight or out of shape people are at increased risk for serious injury.” They don’t say, “letting your 5-year old run around the park unattended could result in said child being smacked by the adult he just crashed into with an inner tube…” or “skinny teenagers who run and jump into the slide on a 60-foot high ramp deserve to fly right off the slide and crash to their deaths…”

Nope. No such warnings. But the fat folk! We could die.

At no time did I see any signage elaborating on what “extremely overweight” involves, nor did I see a specified weight limit for any single-person rides (there were multiple-person rides on rafts that included a 1200 pound limit notice). And while I’m not exactly faulting the park for these announcements (I’m sure they are the result of a lawsuit or some such thing), it irritated me.

And yet, there was a lot of fat going on at White Water yesterday. And I’m not really sure what I want to say about that because I’m still mulling things over.

In Fred Anderson’s book, he talks about thinking like a person who is healthy and at a healthy weight, even before he became one. And I’ve been doing that to a certain extent. The more physically active I am, the more focused on exercise and health, the more I feel like a healthy, fit person, even though I’m not even close to any “goal weight” or milestone accomplishments.

I went to White Water feeling like a fit, active adult hoping to enjoy some of the goofy fun crap I did as a kid. I had a good time, despite the disconcerting reminders that my size, and the size of many around me, could kill me. And I guess that’s why it struck a nerve with me. Overweight people are reminded of health risks everywhere we go, 24/7. Even when we’re out burning calories and sweating in the sun.

Many of us have been chastised by friends or loved ones expressing concerns about our weight–as if they’re imparting some grand news to us that being overweight could kill us, and they love us and therefore, we should immediately shed 200 pounds. We know. How could we not?

Today’s article in the New York Times (requires registration) about weight-loss blogs touches on the attraction of anonymous, or limited audience weight loss journals for a lot of people. The stigma and the exhaustion associated with talking about weight with friends and family can be infuriating. Posting your weight and then subsequent losses or gains, along with before and after pictures, is a brave and ballsy thing to do. But it can be less painful when your audience isn’t someone you’re going to see at work tomorrow who will know you gained two-pounds, while disapprovingly staring as you eat a McMuffin. And even if that disapproving stare is all in your head, it’s still there.

I have a lot of friends and family reading here. I haven’t posted my weight or my fat pictures. You all know what I look like. And it’s true that I am not comfortable sharing those details with you (not that any of you have asked). At least not yet. And it’s nothing personal, of course, but it highlights exactly what other weight loss bloggers and the author of that article express, that “the online forum provides a rare opportunity to publicly unburden ourselves about a stigmatized subject that some are ashamed to share with family, friends and co-workers.”

I can feel and think as much like a thin, healthy person as I want to but that doesn’t mean I am one yet. I just have to believe I will be. Those links to the right, and several others I haven’t posted yet, are helping me believe that this healthy road I’m on leads somewhere other than back to the beginning. The Internet is a strange and wonderful thing.