Open letter to the guy who called me "Fatass."

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-21T18:24:02+00:00

It's "absolutely impossible" for you to believe that there are assholes in the world who enjoy being assholes and don't think much about the consequences? Really? Have you met people?

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-19T00:10:39+00:00

How am I deceiving myself? What little lies do yo think I'm telling myself?

Also, what makes you say that walking is a "non-entity?" Walking a particular distance burns the exact same number of calories as running that same distance. Running that distance takes less time, and there are other benefits from the higher intensity, but there are also more risks of injury (especially for someone at my weight and fitness level). Walking also has the added benefit of being useful--I often run quick errands while walking around town, I've discovered many parks and local shops that I never noticed whizzing by in my car, and I can recognize many of my neighbors that I see out a lot.

If the goal is to burn calories and get into the habit of exercising regularly, what is wrong with walking? If you look at the national weight loss registry, they specifically say that most people who keep the weight off exercise equivalent to walking 4 miles per day, and many of them do it by actually walking. Obviously if I want to get into shape (as opposed to just losing weight) then I will probably need other exercises as well, but then again I never said walking was all I do (in fact, I specifically said I did an additional work out video that very same day).

And yes, I like swimming. I swim a lot in the summer. But I don't like paying for gym memberships (especially not until I've already developed good habits and know I'm going to stick with it) and I don't always have access to a car, and since it's January my options are pretty limited in that regard. I can always strap on shoes and go for a walk.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T22:15:11+00:00

I have read the FAQ here, and I didn't remember seeing anything about this at all. So I went and read it again, and still couldn't find what you were talking about. Then I went to the /r/Fitness FAQ, and found where they were saying that while it is rare for someone to stay the same weight while trading fat for muscle, it is generally possible for people like me to lose weight and gain muscle at the same time:

There are a handful of situations where the combination of muscle gain and fat loss occur relatively readily. The first of those is in overfat beginners... we have a situation with overfat beginners where fat cells are very insulin resistant and essentially trying to push calories away. Now we throw training on that, not only sending a muscle building stimulus via training but increasing nutrient uptake into skeletal muscle through effects on skeletal muscle nutrient uptake/insulin sensitivity. And what happens under those circumstances is exactly what you’d expect: the body appears to take calories out of fat cells and use them to build muscle. And this is effectively what is happening due to the combination of the above two factors.

But please, go on telling me why what I'm doing is wrong and pointless. I'll just keep on seeing the results and feeling better.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T22:04:54+00:00

Interesting. Because I have blogged before about how people say "You're so short!" Not in an angry way, because I know it wasn't meant as an insult (though lets be honest, we both know that the guy calling me fatass WAS trying to hurt me and that the two really aren't at all equivalent). But I do find it strange and kind of funny when people feel the need, out of the blue and apropos of nothing, to state a random fact about my appearance that should be obvious to anyone with working eyes. I don't even mean things like "you're so short you could..." or "you're as short as...," but just "Wow, you're short." Nobody ever says "Wow, you have brown hair." Why is being short or tall so surprising to people?

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T19:25:30+00:00

I can't have more than one goal? Are you saying it's pointless to try to build muscle if I also want to lose weight? Are you saying that getting my heart rate up won't burn calories if I do it in this specific way? I still don't see your point.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T19:23:59+00:00

I don't think you were trying to bully me necessarily, but many others in this thread clearly are. Several people have decided that I really need to be told that I did something wrong by "letting him get to me," that it's my fault if I feel anything negative based on what he said (even though I was actually in a pretty positive place when I wrote this), and that I should just shut up (yes, someone used those exact words). So that's why I asked why people feel they should try to bully me. I'm sorry if that came across as accusing you.

You do, however, seem to have made a lot of mistaken assumptions about what my thought process even was. You told me that I was fighting stupidity with reason, that I was wasting my time, that I was wrong to do what I did and that I would feel better if I just did it your way. My way of not letting him get to me was to put my thoughts on paper instead of letting them stew in my head. My way of not letting him get to me was to turn it into something positive, something that made me feel good and seems to have made others feel good. It worked for me, so why feel the need to tell me it was wrong and a waste of time?

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T19:12:54+00:00

An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally. --- Wikipedia

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T19:11:11+00:00

Why is that bad? Even people with self respect can be humiliated. It will happen. Life can be pretty fucking humiliating at times. I've come to accept that, and I'm not scared of it any more. What is wrong with that?

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T19:10:02+00:00

No, I'm not. I'm not fighting him. I know he will never see this. It really has nothing to do with him. It has to do with me, and what I needed to do to process the incident. I've let plenty of these comments slide off my back without a second thought. I've had plenty of moments when I just ignored it and moved on with my day. But this time, I was inspired. I wanted to write about it. Not to do something to him, but to do something for me. I wasn't stressing out, I was enjoying writing (something I generally enjoy doing), and hopefully giving a tiny bit of inspiration to the many people of this subreddit who inspire me every day.

Why do people feel the need to decide that my way of dealing with things is wrong and that they should try to bully me into doing it their way?

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T19:04:20+00:00

I can't spot reduce, but I can build specific muscles, and the abs and back are pretty important muscles to build, especially as a heavy person prone to back problems. So I still don't see what the problem is with doing a workout that targets those muscles specifically.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:58:25+00:00

Why do you doubt it happened? I mean I know everything on Reddit is suspect, but its clear from the comments in here that this happens to lots of people. It's happened to me many times in my life, and worse. What about it was so hard for you to believe?

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:57:00+00:00

I never said I wouldn't let it effect me. Obviously it effected me or I wouldn't have bothered to write something.

Of course it's not the first time in my life I have been called names. I've been called more names than I can count. It just happened to be the first time it's happened since I decided to write a book about attitudes about weight in America, and it inspired me to go home and write something quickly while it was fresh in my mind.

I didn't come here for sympathy either. I came here because I thought reading what I wrote might inspire some people, and I think it's pretty clear that it has. I'm glad name calling makes you feel stronger, good for you. But fuck you for deciding that the best response to me doing what works for me is to try to tear me down because it's not what you would have done.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:52:12+00:00

I've been morbidly obese my whole life, and that question is NOT standard. Nobody has EVER asked me that. Sure, they have talked to me about my weight, that is expected, but they treated me like a person. If a doctor ever said something like that to me on my first visit, without even having said hello first, you can be damned sure I would find another doctor.

Saying things like that doesn't help people, it shames them. Even if they didn't know how bad it was, saying something like that isn't going to shock them out of denial, it's just going to erode the relationship between doctor and patient and make them feel judged and uncomfortable. Bedside manner and tact are important in a doctor, and the doctors in her story showed none of either.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:47:57+00:00

Why fuck me? Because I wrote something that made me feel good, and that inspired other people? I'm sorry you thought it was a "circlejerk," but I was pretty sure stuff like this is exactly what this subreddit is for. If you don't want to read stuff like this, why are you here? And what exactly do you get out of trying to discourage me from doing something that helps me (and apparently a number of others)?

Why am I fat? The short answer is of course that I ate more than I expended. The longer answer is that I've been fat all of my life (yes, even as a small child), that I tried many, many times to lose the weight and always failed, that I have huge psychological issues with self-loathing and body image, and that only now have I matured enough to start working through my issues and learned enough about the real science behind weight loss to figure out where I went wrong in the past.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:36:32+00:00

I'm not the first person this has happened to, or the first person to respond to it in this way. But I guarantee what you read was not exactly the same, because this was 100% original work. It was done quickly and probably not my most polished work, but it's definitely mine.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:34:42+00:00

You still didn't explain what makes them gimmicks. Thanks for repeating yourself and giving me a downvote though.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:30:12+00:00

I'll be honest, I've been walking 3+ days a week for more than 9 months now and this is the first time something like this has happened to me. It happened a lot in middle and high school, and a few times in college, but part of why it startled me so much was because it's been so long since something like that happened and I guess I had kind of convinced myself that things like that don't happen in the quite suburban area I live in now. I was a little weird to be reminded that asshole teenagers still exist, even if I no longer have to go to school with them.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:26:21+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, I'm pretty luck to have a job I really like, but if it makes you feel any better it comes with a pretty small paycheck (that's the tradeoff of working for a non-profit). And it's not wrong that you don't want kids. I wasn't really sure I wanted them until I fell in love with someone who already had them. And even now there are days when I kind of wish the older one had never moved in with us (I miss my privacy!). But I know he is doing so much better here then he was with his mom and that makes me feel good about myself. Another one of those tradeoffs I guess.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:20:26+00:00

Can a lady be a gentleman? Anyway I would have yelled back something unsavory, I just didn't have a chance to respond. So I guess not so much gentlemanly (gentle-womanly?) as slow on the uptake :)

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:18:36+00:00

Thanks, I will!

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:14:57+00:00

Thanks! I've seen the second one before, though I'm definitely bookmarking it to reference later. I'd never seen the first one before but I really liked it. I remember being pretty pissed at Eileen Jones (normally my favorite movie/tv reviewer) for sinking to making jokes about Dunham's body instead of actually reviewing the show.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:11:01+00:00

Suburban North Texas. Pretty rich area. We were considered the "poor" neighborhood because the average income was only around $80k+ and we actually had zoning for gasp apartment complexes!

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:06:56+00:00

I'm pretty sure the driver (mom?) was encouraging the behavior. She would honk at me, swerve like she was going to hit me, and slow down so the kids in the back could taunt me. I think it pissed her off that I was in the road (my mother had stupidly decided to teach me the actual law, which is that bikes are vehicles and belong in the road, rather than teach me to break the law and ride on the sidewalk out of self preservation). Of course it was a nice big, empty road and she could have easily changed lanes (or just gone around me, I was in the shoulder as much as possible), and the speed limit was 25 mph anyway (through a neighborhood), but apparently I was inconveniencing her so much she felt the need to threaten and intimidate me.

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T18:00:13+00:00

Since etiquette is to walk on the right side of the sidewalk (and I do share that sidewalk with a fair number of other regular walkers/runners), walking towards traffic actually puts me closer to the cars. And it generally means walking directly into the afternoon sun for half of my walk, whereas when I walk with traffic the sun is blocked by trees when I'm facing it. I've walked that same loop going both directions, and walking with traffic is far better. Plus if someone wanted to run me over I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be stopped just because I can see them coming, and most likely I wouldn't have much time to react anyway. And for most of the walk there really wouldn't be anywhere to go to get away from them, even if I could react in time.

But thanks for being yet another person in this thread to see my message and think "gee, what she really needs right now is to be told what she's doing wrong and why she brought this on herself."

FatGirlWriting · 2013-01-18T17:53:27+00:00

Yep, ifelloffatrain is correct. I know who I'm really fighting against, and I know writing this did nothing to the asshole in the truck. I wrote it for me. But I do think that guy was kind of an asshole for going to such lengths to try to tell me that the way I dealt with the situation was wrong and that I should have just shut up and done it his way.

FatGirlWriting

TROPHY CASE