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So I was reading a thread on Reddit about a surrogate who was told by her doctor that she was "tipping the scales" during her last appointment. She said that it was "too late to change doctors." I don't know where she is in the world, but this kind of size shaming bullshit is never appropriate. However, the fact that she is pregnant takes it one step beyond the pale. So, fuck this fatphobic shithead of a doctor. There are far too many of his kind.
However, along comes some champion of diet culture to defend his crappy ass. And they said:
"I understand that this woman should be able to switch doctors, but we also have no clue if she is dangerously overweight and should be keeping it off.
Being obese brings its own health risks and she could be putting herself in danger."
To which I replied:
Good god almighty. The whole BUT TEH OHBEESITEEEEEEEE nonsense benefits no-one except the multi-billion dollar diet industry. It is never appropriate to shame someone for their body type, but during pregnancy is an especially awful time to be telling someone to "LUZ TEH WATEZ AND KEEPZ IT OFF!"
Size shaming results in increased eating disorders and self-loathing. Only about five percent of people (who diet) lose weight long term. Further, chronic dieting slows the metabolism, and people wind up even heavier than they were before they started dieting.
What a doctor should be looking at with extreme weight gain during pregnancy is the possibility of toxemia. A sudden increase in fluid can be a sign of serious complications. I still have stretch marks on the backs of my calves because of the amount of fluid I gained when I developed toxemia. Fortunately, my doctor was not a fatphobic asshat. He realized that there was a serious problem.
In conclusion:
Seriously, fuck both of these assholes.
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Fat and Ornery
Free use image from Pixabay
Sigh.
ReplyDeleteAnd hiss and spit.
All of the fat shamers are 'of course' perfect. In every way. Not.
I tried multiple times over the course of 33 years to hate myself thin. Fortunately, I finally found some resources such as Health at Every Size and the Dances With Fat blog (danceswithfat.wordpress.com) that refuted the idea that the only way to be worthwhile or to be healthy is to be thin. Everyone has the potential to be worthwhile, and there are healthy and unhealthy people of all sizes. Besides, health is not a barometer of worth, and, let's face it, the push to make everyone thin and conventionally attractive is never about health in the first place.
DeleteWith my wreck of an endocrine system, it's unlikely that I'd ever be thin unless I became critically ill. However, I remember trying to tell the doctor about my overwhelming cravings for sugar and he just dismissed it, saying, "well, just don't eat that." Lo and behold, I presented with diabetes. I have since learned that insulin resistance can cause--you guessed it--insatiable cravings for sugar and for simple carbohydrates.
These days I no longer crave entire stacks of Ritz crackers and I don't eat dessert with every meal or eat an entire half of a cake all on my own. Sometimes when I make a cake, part of it ends up being thrown out because my son and I forget about it. I no longer binge eat. I still get cravings for salt (thyroid issues) but they aren't terribly unmanageable.
Guess what--even with no longer binge eating and with less consumption of simple carbohydrates, still fat.
And neither of these factors makes me a better person than someone who has such cravings or who has an issue with binge eating.
I may turn this comment into a post!