Fat shaming and dealing with obesity

Hello! I'd like to revisit a topic that I had talked about in the past: obesity. Now this has been talked about a lot on social media recently with two opposing sides addressing the argument of fat shaming. Bill Maher did a piece on fat shaming then James Corden responded - Corden is rather large himself (even though he has lot some weight over the years) and if you haven't seen the two videos, I would encourage you to watch them - this sparked quite a huge debate in America as well as on social media about the topic of fat shaming and obesity, so I thought I'd chip in and give you my take on the issue as well since I didn't like what I have seen online and would like to provide a more balanced argument on the topic. 

Before I begin, for those of you who haven't read my blog before - hi, I'm Alex in London, I'm 43 and the disclaimer I'm going to make here is that my BMI is normal. I'm 173 cm tall and weigh 71.5 kgs - so my body type would be classified as normal or average. Even though I do exercise regularly, I am not super fit or muscled but I am not fat either. As a teenager, I was extremely fit as I was on a former national champion gymnast but I went through a period became really quite fat very quickly when I started working - this was because I worked long hours, had become very inactive being desk-bound in an office environment and when I got bored at work, I snacked a lot. Lunch was often the highlight of the day, I'd get a big lunch then napped at my desk. I remember going on holiday to France in the year 2004 and noticed that I had this massive double chin in one of the photos. I did a double take when I realized just how fat my face looked in that photo and that was when I realized that I was truly fat. In my denial, I rushed to the nearest mirror to see if that big double chin was there and sure enough, there is was. Even my face was so fat. Thus I was indeed overweight from the period of 2001 to 2004 - why did I find it so hard to lose weight? It's not like I am not educated, in fact when I was competing gymnastics, I was acutely aware of my diet so I knew plenty about nutrition. My last gymnastics competition was in 2000 April and I only weighed about 65 kgs then - so how the hell did I become around 90 kgs by 2004? It's not like I didn't realize I was getting fat, I was so focused on work that I just didn't care how fat I had become - there was a huge element of denial. Each time I caught sight of myself in the mirror, my reaction would be, "yes I know I'm getting fat, I'll deal with that later - I'll exercise and go on a diet soon, but right now I have far more urgent stuff to deal with for work."

My overweight period lasted about 3 years but you'll be amazed how much weight you can put on in 3 years if you're eating way too much and not being active at all. For me, being fat was a symptom of just how unhappy I was in that job despite making good money - but if anyone asked me if I was happy or if I was alright, I would assure them that I was successful and great. But again, just because I was doing well in my job didn't mean that I was happy - I became really good at lying to myself about the whole situation until I suddenly decided to quit my job one day when I simply couldn't face going into work the next day. In hindsight, whilst I'm glad I did manage to make the right decision to leave that company which was the source of my unhappiness, I really should have handled my stress a lot better and the obesity was a sign of that stress. We really don't talk about the correlation between unhappiness and obesity enough: I lost so much weight after leaving that company as I was became so much happier once I was out of that toxic environment. I lost a lot of that weight after I left that job, I was able to adopt a far more active lifestyle after I removed myself from that environment. Over the next few years, I lost about 20% of my body weight - I would never quite be as thin as I would like to be, but at least I can see how increasing my physical activity can help me lose weight. So for example, I lost a lot of weight after my trip to South America because the food was crap and I did a lot of sightseeing everyday when I was on holiday - simply being on my feet all day and visiting tourist attractions was enough to make me burn up the calories I was consuming and it led to quite a substantial weight loss to my surprise. The challenge thus is to try to keep up that level of activity on a daily basis when I am back at work in London, given that I am still working in finance today. I want assure you that I'm not one of those skinny bitches judging fat people - I too have struggled with my weight as an adult.

Firstly, let's deal with what Bill Maher said about fat shaming: does he have a point? Could we shame fat people into losing weight? Can it be treated the same way as littering or smoking? I think this is a complex issue - I believe that if a person wants to be a chain smoker, that's a personal choice. You're not breaking any laws by smoking, it's your right to do what the hell you want even if it means harming your own body as long as you do not affect others around you. So this is why smoking is banned in public spaces like airports and restaurants - I have the right to breathe fresh air and not to be subjected to passive smoking by being too close to smokers; that's why we have designated smoking areas in airports. However, if a mother has a young baby and the mother is constantly smoking in close proximity to the baby at home, forcing the baby to breathe in a lot of second hand smoke, then even most smokers would say that the mother's actions are reprehensible as the baby is unable to get up and walk away from the smoke. But what about this: my mother likes to indulge in sugary treats, so she often serves my nephew very sweet tea which is bad for his health. Yes sweet tea tastes nicer than tea without sugar, but you should see how many heaped teaspoons of white sugar she puts in her tea. We have given up trying to tell my mother to cut down on her sugar, but like the smoking analogy above, we should hold parents (and grandparents) responsible when they feed young children unhealthy food because children often don't get a choice what they eat - they have to simply eat whatever they are served. Refusing the food often means going hungry or even being punished. Besides, kids often trust their parents and grandparents when it comes to such things.

But staying with that story about the (very) sweet tea - is my mother trying to make my nephew obese? Not deliberately, but the cups of very sweet tea are not helping him lose weight. I know that my mother dotes on my nephew and the act of feeding him sweet tea is based on a desire to please him by giving him a nice drink, but she lacks the basic knowledge about diet and nutrition to think about the effects of consuming that much white sugar. My mother is obese today because she grew up in extreme poverty - she was born during WW2 and was underweight and malnourished for most of her childhood. Photos of her from her younger days revealed a very thin woman but that was no surprise as even basics like white sugar were a luxury then. I remember this story from her childhood: my grandmother was given some cakes by a friend and the cakes were left in the kitchen. Cakes like that were a real treat back then and my mother was really looking forward to enjoying some cake - however, when my grandmother was talking to her friend, somebody (presumably one of my mother's siblings) sneaked into the kitchen and ate all the cakes so my mother didn't get any. So that taught her a lesson, when you see something delicious in the kitchen, make sure you eat it as soon as possible - if not, you won't get any. This mindset does account for why Chinese tourists behave so poorly in buffet situations because they probably grew up extremely poor so when there's some good food in front of them, they lose all self-control and give in to their inner instincts to grab the food as quickly as possible before someone else eats it all. Hence my mother is stuck in this 'survival mentality' despite the fact that my family are not poor today, yet for her, old habits are hard to break.

When my mother was young, there were no consequences for consuming sweet treats - after all, she was very thin and the family couldn't afford enough food. So if she indulged in a sugary treat every now and then, it didn't make her fat. Thus she associated sugary sweets with happy memories as that was one of the simple pleasures that brought a smile to her face even when life was very hard. However, when my parents started earning a steady income through their teaching jobs, they were then in a position to be able to afford all the food they wanted to eat and that was when the problem started. Previously, they didn't need to exercise any kind of self-control when it came to sugary treats because they couldn't afford those (not all the time anyway) and when they suddenly could, they over indulged. So that's the key reason why a lot of people end up putting on weight - their circumstances have changed but they refused to change or adapt their eating habits. I experienced this myself when I started working: as a student at university, I trained gymnastics about 4 to 5 times a week as I represented my university at various competitions. However, I stopped training that often when I started working as I was often too exhausted after work for sports and just didn't have the time - that was further compounded by a serious ankle injury the year I started working. So my lifestyle had become a lot more sedentary, stuck in an office for long hours but I didn't cut down the amount of calories I consumed, thus I became quite fat. Since then, I have reverted to doing sports 4 to 5 times a week now as my working hours are far shorter, thus my weight can be managed as long as I am constantly active. So, pardon the cliche, but you can't have your cake and eat it. 

I wrote a piece on smoking where I analyzed the patterns of which countries and communities smoked more heavily and the trend was clear: there seems to be a sweet spot which creates the perfect conditions for smoking. So the richest countries in the world don't smoke much because they tend to have the most draconian laws making smoking difficult, whilst the poorest countries just can't afford cigarettes when they can barely feed themselves. You then get the situation where relatively poor countries like Russia, Albania and Belarus are the heaviest smokers - so they are poor, but not so poor that they can't afford a pack of cigarettes and thus I have the image of someone like a miner or a farmer in Belarus who is struggling and miserable, but smoking is the one pleasure he can still enjoy so he ignores all medical advice and keeps on smoking. Whereas your average banker in Sweden or Canada would have plenty of money to enjoy life without resorting to tobacco or any other kind of substance abuse. The same pattern is replicated when you look at the smoking patterns across the USA, the poorest states are the heaviest smokers and the richest states smoke the least. The same pattern applies when it comes to obesity: the most destitute poor people in a country like Somalia or Mozambique are skinny because they can't even afford enough food. But that's not to say that life is any better for the poorest in the UK or US: it sucks to be poor in a country like the UK because when you walk into a shop, the prices are the same regardless of whether you're an unemployed single mother on benefits or an investment banker. Thus junk food then becomes the equivalent of tobacco - it is an affordable way to feel good: you can't afford to take your family on an exotic holiday, but you can eat a whole tub of ice cream and that big tub of ice cream is a lot more affordable than the flight to Montevideo.

This is why I have a problem with people who say "fat shaming is just wrong - fat people need compassion, understanding and empathy, don't make assumptions and most of all don't judge fat people. Fat shaming is a form of bullying." It's almost like saying, "leave me alone, don't look at me whilst I eat this massive tub of ice cream, look the other way and don't judge me for my choices." Thus assuming that these overweight people all have a 'valid' reason for being fat doesn't help them lose weight and perhaps it is because I do have a degree in the social sciences - well, that's exactly what we do! We look at a social phenomenon and we study it, we look at case studies, we look at the various factors involved and we try to gain a good understanding about the situation. Thus social scientists and medical professionals can indeed study obesity, just like any other form of human behaviour we observe in our societies. After all, we can all agree that being obese is very bad for one's health and that people who are overweight need to try to get down to a healthier weight - whilst we can take a stance against bullying fat people, to completely go the other way and preach fat acceptance as if being fat is perfectly okay is just wrong because even if you strip away society's standards of beauty and how we view people who are overweight, from a medical point of view, you're not healthy when you are overweight and it is the doctor's opinion that matters the most in this case - everyone else will have to listen to the medical professionals first before trying to voice their opinion as it's clear where doctors stand when it comes to obesity.

I watched a discussion on The View condemning Bill Maher for his fat shaming (see below) and the panelists in the show used the excuse that poor people make the wrong choices when it comes to food because high quality, nutritious food is expensive and poor people end up buying crap to feed their families because that is what is the cheapest when they go to a supermarket. Well I disagree with that - I am one of those people who enjoys going to the supermarket and doing my grocery shopping, so I do have a pretty good idea of what food costs. I have the choice of three supermarkets local to me in Camden: Sainsbury, Lidl and Aldi and I also have two Asian supermarkets to get the more exotic ingredients. My parents are working class, they're not poor but they can't break out of that working class mentality when it comes to their relationship with food - they are also not very educated so they lack very basic knowledge when it comes to nutrition and that's the problem: they're obese because they make poor choices out of ignorance. And believe you me, we have tried educating them but they just won't listen to us. I have an family friend who died of cancer a few years ago - his wife tried to delay the inevitable by forcing him to eat only very healthy food towards the end but my parents condemned her decision. "He's dying anyway, his cancer cannot be cured, his death cannot be prevented - so you may as well let him die happy by allowing him one of life's most simple pleasures: food. Let him eat whatever he wants for the last few weeks and months of his life, at least that will bring him some joy in his final days." Given that my father is now in his 80s, he's pretty much living by that same principle: he doesn't think that he will have more than a few more years left, so he may as well enjoy his meals and indulge whilst he can - unfortunately, that means my father is rather obese today as a result.

Furthermore, there has been a major change that has happened in the last few decades that has affected the working class: mechanization. Let me give you a simple example: in the past, factory workers had to carry a lot of the products and materials around by hand and it was an extremely tiring, labour intensive task that kept the workers thin and fit. However, today you're not even allowed to carry something that is very heavy because it would be deemed to hazardous to do so - the workers could hurt themselves carrying something that heavy and the company would not allow that to happen, so instead we have machines like forklifts, cranes, tractors, diggers, excavators and conveyor belts to ensure that the heavier items are moved safely from A to B without the workers having to actually carry them. So a forklift driver may be moving goods around the factory and the warehouse all day, but he is actually sitting down in a comfortable chair whilst operating the forklift. So what used to be a highly labour intensive task has suddenly become completely sedentary - this is simply an impact of technology making lives easier for everyone including the working class who used to do very labour intensive jobs. Working conditions have also improved for many such as postmen who used to have to walk very long distances to deliver all the mail on their route, but take a look at the video below of a US postman in a mail truck and see how obese he is - that is because he is not walking but driving around to deliver the letters and the mailboxes are even positioned in a way to ensure that the postmen who not even need to stand up to deliver the letters. I'm not against using machines to make life easier for workers but it's just that it now clearly makes them as sedentary as office workers.

Let's compare this situation in the West to India - a much poorer country where there is far less mechanisation for two reasons: firstly, labour is extremely cheap in India so they don't really have an incentive to invest in a machine like a forklift. Secondly, these forklifts are not cheap and India is not a rich country unlike the US or Canada, where factories owners are far richer and can afford such machines. Thus in a third-world country like India, the working class are not fat (unlike the West) and the obesity epidemic only affects the rich people. So even if the working class in India are stuffing their faces with potato chips, chocolates, sugary biscuits and other snacks, they are not getting fat because they are still leading very active lifestyles unlike their counterparts in their West. So you would never have a fat postman in India because the Indian postman would have to walk miles everyday to deliver the mail and would never get a mail truck like his American counterparts. The diet for working class people have always been very high in calories because these were designed to fill you up so you could work all the day without getting hungry before your next meal. Thus when I was traveling around poorer countries in Eastern Europe and South America this year, I found the food just awful because they were very much high in starch and fats, designed to keep you feeling full whilst doing a physically demanding job rather than the way richer people would focus on finer quality ingredients and presentation. So the lifestyle of the working class has changed given that their jobs have become more sedentary as a result of mechanisation but unfortunately, they have not changed their diets as well and that is a major contributing factor to obesity amongst the working class today.

So here's a very British example on the issue of diet: the full English breakfast was designed to keep you full as it was full of carbohydrates and protein. It contains fried eggs, bacon, sausages, baked beans, hash browns, black pudding, toasts and a few extras could include grilled mushrooms and tomatoes. I could never eat that first thing in the morning as I am not that hungry when I wake up, I usually am quite happy with just a cup of coffee (no sugar) followed by a second (and third) cup of coffee before lunch. The full English breakfast looks like more food than I could consume even at lunch or dinner, but that's quite common to eat that much food at breakfast here in the UK because it has become tradition. People here are so fat because they simply eat way more than they need. But imagine if you ate that mountain of food at breakfast along with a cup of sugary sweet tea, then you sat in a forklift truck all morning till lunch, only standing up to walk when you had to go to the toilet or get another snack, you're not burning up any of those calories - they are just going to be converted to fats. A lot of people think that I am running on empty most mornings as I am only drinking coffee (without sugar) till lunch, but then again as someone who works in finance, I am sitting on a chair for most of the day, why would I need that much calories anyway? The challenge thus is to convince working class people that because their jobs have become so much more sedentary, they have to radically change their diets - they cannot eat what their parents ate as their parents led far more active lifestyles in the absence of all these machines making our jobs and lives a lot easier. But try getting a whole nation to change their diet when their cuisine has become a big part of their culture and tradition.

Allow me to talk about a family friend I caught up with recently at my mother in law's funeral, let's call him Eddie (not his real name). When I first met Eddie, he was quite thin as he was working as an engineer and he spent days on work sites, leading a very active lifestyle. Even in his spare time, he did some sports and enjoyed a range of outdoor activities. Unfortunately, Eddie had a fall at work which resulted in a serious leg injury, the doctors operated on his leg but were unable to fix the problem. Over the next few years, Eddie saw his mobility reduced as a result of that injury - he took early retirement from work and as consequently he couldn't continue with any of the sports he used to enjoy. So instead, his bad leg meant leading an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. However, Eddie didn't change his diet at all in the meantime so that meant consuming way too many calories when he wasn't doing that much - hence his weight ballooned to the point where I was shocked at how fat he had become. That then became a vicious circle: Eddie already has a bad leg, it wasn't able to support his weight as he had become a lot heavier, so Eddie avoided walking as it was painful and difficult - however, the less he walked, the more inactive he became and the more he would gain weight. The only sensible solution would have been for him to go on a strict diet, where he would live on only salads and fresh fruit, in a drastic attempt to lose weight quickly - but no, Eddie simply wasn't prepared to do that. The rest of us weren't prepared to tell him what to do as he was a grown man in his 50s. Losing some weight would certainly take the strain off his bad leg, but the only way for him to lose weight is to consume less calories than he needs a day - thus creating a "calorie deficit".

This is a very simple and useful concept when it comes to losing weight: being in a calorie deficit is when you consume less calories from food and drink than you burn through activity. So if you are burning 2500 calories a day, then consuming only 1500 calories a day would create a calorie deficit and that would mean your body having to use up your reserves in order to meet that deficit, resulting in a weight loss. Someone like Eddie doesn't require that many calories a day because of situation, but given that Eddie is depressed about the problems with his leg, he is turning to food and alcohol and oh dear, that has made the problem far worse. After all, a pint of beer can have as much calories as a hamburger and it would be pretty rare for someone to have two hamburgers in a meal, but for someone like Eddie, it would be pretty normal for him to drink several pints of beer at one go - before you know it, he has consumed an insane amount of calories through just drinking beer. If someone ate 8 hamburger in one sitting, we would think that they have a serious eating disorder - but drinking 8 pints of beer in the UK is considered just a wild night out and wouldn't shock most people. And that is another problem we have to face: alcohol contains a lot of calories and we do have a drinking culture in the West where people consume way too much alcohol - leaving aside the other effects of alcohol can have on one's health, alcohol also contributes directly to the obesity problem. Instead of fat shaming, I actually feel that we should be drunk shaming and make the over-consumption of alcohol the enemy here. So unless they invent the diet coke equivalent of diet beer with absolutely zero calories at all - it still plays a major role in the obesity epidemic in the West.

The problem is quite simple: we're all eating far more than we need to and this is because there's a massive food industry pushing us to eat more, because if we think we need to eat more, then we will spend more money on their products when we are shopping for food. Let's deal with one such myth: good parents are constantly pushed to buy breakfast related food products like cornflakes and cereals for their children, but this was a marketing myth by Kellogg's who wanted Americans to buy more of their cornflakes. (I refer you to the Youtube video below.) I'm not just saying that because I'm one of those people who don't eat breakfast (I just drink coffee, no sugar but with just a tiny splash of skimmed milk). I start each day with a calorie deficit because my coffees don't add up to more than 40 to 50 calories but yet we've all been brainwashed into thinking that somehow we'll be hungry and unable to function without having had an insane amount of calories first thing in the morning. As for the myth that I'll overeat at lunch because I've not had breakfast - there's something called self-control and I can choose to have more salad rather than fried chicken because I am intelligent enough to make rational choices. Thus I will not to fall for the marketing and the propaganda about breakfast and as long as I have my coffee (that's caffeine for you), I am able to be productive in the mornings. Furthermore, how alert I feel depends far more on how well I have slept the night before rather than whether or not I've had a big breakfast - it is great to have a calorie deficit because it helps me lose weight and that's exactly what I want. But the supermarkets aren't going to make any money from me if I think that way, so they are trying to convince all of us to spend money on breakfast foods like Kellogg's cornflakes. This leads us to the next problem: who do we blame then?

Do we take responsibility for our own choices when it comes to our diets - such as consuming way too many calories? Or do you blame the food industry and expect the government to regulate the industry, to save us from those calories and our own stupidity? There is already a lot of regulation in the food industry already, that is why we can buy vegetables from our local supermarkets knowing that they are not sprayed with toxic pesticides that will make us sick or that the bread we buy doesn't contain any harmful additives to prolong its shelf life. So how much further do you want the regulation to go? Do you want the government to ban beer, so that people like Eddie would make healthier choices - why not stop there? How about chocolate and ice cream then? Or even butter and white sugar? Should we introduce a kind of calorie rationing where you're not allowed to buy more than your allocated quota of calories each time you shop for food? What about when we visit a restaurant then? Can you imagine the waiter said, "I'm sorry Sir, but because you've had the fried calamari as a main course, you can't have the cheesecake for desert as it would exceed your quota for dinner, but I can bring you a glass of sparkling water with a splash of fresh lime juice instead. Perhaps you can have the cheesecake the next time you visit." This is utterly ridiculous, you can't just tell the government to treat you like a young child and make them take responsibility for your bad choices! If you're an adult, then you have to take responsibility for the choices you make when it comes to food rather than play the victim and blame the food industry or the government.

The problem with the whole issue of losing weight is that people get very defensive when you start to criticize their weight - they start making excuses like, "I earn so little, I am overworked and underpaid - if my employer would pay me a fair wage, then maybe I can get out of work earlier and go do some exercise, blame my boss if you think I'm fat." Furthermore, there's the misconception that the key to weight loss is exercise - well, that's only a small part of it. Exercise will increase the amount of calories you burn, but if you are consuming even more calories as a result of the exercise, then you will not lose weight or even gain weight. There's something very fundamental about losing weight - short of going for liposuction or any other more drastic intervention like the gastric bypass surgery or sleeve gastrectomy, there will be an element of sacrifice when it comes to losing weight. Either you go hungry and put up with the pangs of hunger, or you sacrifice by eating a raw carrot instead of cheesy fries to fill your stomach up with something that contains far fewer calories. You'll be amazed how reluctant people can be to give up their favourite foods even though you can actually lose a lot of weight without doing any exercises, simply by drastically cutting back on your daily calorie intake thus creating a big caloric deficit. Some people imagine that they can only lose weight through a vigorous exercise regime, but they are wrong - it is shocking just how much misinformation there is out there about losing weight mostly because some fat people are reluctant to do the research on the matter. There is help out there but would they ask for it?

And of course, not everyone is fat, there are some thin people around even though they are in the minority - 62% of the people in the UK are overweight and in the US, that figure is 65.7%. Thus as a British citizen who isn't overweight, I'm in the minority. It's not like I spend a large amount of money on health foods to keep me from becoming fat - hardly, I have quite a healthy diet but I attribute my healthy weight to a good understanding on fitness and nutrition: knowledge is power. A lot of the information regarding good nutrition is free to access on the internet and perhaps in my parents' generation, I could forgive them for the bad choices they made as they were not educated and didn't have the knowledge but in this day and age, there's no excuse not to understand nutrition. But is this solely a matter of education - am I assuming that once I explain a concept like how a caloric deficit works, people will start making healthier choices that will lead to weight loss? Let's go back to Eddie whom we've talked about earlier - he is a highly educated person, he is certainly not stupid or ignorant like my parents when it comes to nutrition. However, just because Eddie is intelligent doesn't mean that he will make rational decisions - he is very depressed about being forced into early retirement because of his leg injury. In a few short years, he transformed from an active man with a successful career to a cripple who can barely walk - he can no longer enjoy the sports he used to and even basic tasks like going to the supermarket is a challenge for him on that bad leg. So under those circumstances, Eddie is making very irrational decisions when it comes to his diet, especially given how much beer he consumes. Thus he's not stupid or ignorant, no he's just very depressed.

During that segment on The View where the panelists wholly condemned Bill Maher for talking about fat shaming that way, they seemed to suggest that there was always a good reason why someone was overweight: it could be genetic, you're making bad choices because of your poverty, you could (like Eddie) have an injury or medical condition that has led to your obesity and of course, the panelists were asking for understanding and empathy for fat people. But that's easy for them to wax lyrical on the issue without having a real fat person in front of them like the way I did when we went out for dinner after the funeral - look, the family had already gone to the pub after the funeral (note this is an Irish family after all) where they had a lot of drinks and then at dinner, I sat across the table from Eddie where I witnessed him having no less than four pints of beer with his dinner. That's like eating four hamburgers on top of a full dinner and of course, I could see why he was putting on weight so quickly. There wasn't anything wrong with what he ate - in fact, we ordered the same main course from the menu, he had asked me for my recommendation as I had been to that restaurant before. I did think about saying something to Eddie like, "mate, I think you've had enough beer, can I get you a diet coke instead?" But no, I felt sorry for Eddie, I had seen him struggle up the stairs from the carpark to get into the restaurant with his bad leg. It was raining heavily and everyone else had ran into the restaurant to get out of the rain, but Eddie couldn't walk fast with that dodgy leg so he just hobbled along slowly and got very wet. So no, I'm afraid I just chickened out and chose not to say anything because I didn't want to make him feel any worse about the situation. So I was "nice" but I wasn't helpful.

Thus in this case, I thought I was being 'nice', I was showing empathy and sympathy. I could have said something, but I didn't know how Eddie would react even if I did say something. Besides, we were at a funeral - it just didn't feel like the right time or place to talk about his weight. After all, I didn't want to make Eddie feel bad but if everyone in his life did that, then who is going to help him lose weight? If everyone just stood back and said nothing, then Eddie's condition is just going to get worse until his leg can no longer support his weight and then he would be wheelchair bound. Yeah, so it is one thing for Whoopi Goldberg to bitch about Bill Maher not showing sympathy and empathy to fat people - but when you have someone like Eddie in front of you suffering because of his weight, he needs a lot more than empathy. He needs help from someone who is going to help him lose a lot of weight very quickly - if he manages to do that, then at least he will be able to enjoy many more activities, have a social life and retain his independence. If we did nothing, then he will end up in a wheelchair within a year or two as that bad leg is simply unable to support all that weight. I can understand why talk show hosts would preach empathy and sympathy towards fat people because it makes them come across as nice and kind - it would make them likable to the viewers and that's good for the ratings. But talk is cheap and right now, Eddie needs a lot more than empathy from a day time TV talk show host. And perhaps that's why Bill Maher has a point: yes he may have been rather blunt about it, but if Maher could say something that could make someone like Eddie want to do something about his weight, then that's a good thing even if the process 'fat shaming' has such negative connotations in our rather PC society. Everyone had been so nice to Eddie, perhaps he needs some tough love instead.

So there you go, that's it from me on this issue. What do you think? Is there a place for fat shaming in our society? How can we help someone like Eddie who clearly has health problems with his weight? Whilst I am sure fat people deserve dignity and kindness, are we helping them by simply accepting their obesity as normal when they are facing grave health consequences? How can we reduce obesity in our society - is this a matter for government intervention? Is education the answer or do we need more drastic measures? And what about your relationship with your weight - have you struggled the way I have with your weight in the past? Leave a comment below and let's talk about this. Many thanks for reading.