This is going to sound REALLY awful, but I just can't get over it. Okay, so I might be becoming a tad bit self conscious, but OMG, everywhere I look there are overweight people...EVERYWHERE. I really am starting to feel like a freak. I always thought I was the different one, because I was so big, but looking around everyone I see is overweight. I always knew our area had a high percentage of obesity, but for crying out loud it is an epidemic. Why did I always think I was the only one who had a problem? Seriously folks, it is a bad problem.

I was at Wal-mart yesterday and there was Halloween candy in every isle, and in every one's cart and chips and pop and crap. I wanted to start ripping the crap away from all the people and yelling at them to get off the sauce.

I feel like I need to save everyone. I wonder if it's legal to start a free weight loss support group? I want too so badly but feel like if I did someone would go nuts and become anorexic or something an I'd be thrown in jail. What can a person do to stop the madness? I feel so bad for these people, and I know it's not my problem, but I want to do something. It's been bugging me all day.

I so feel you. I was too busy being the fattest person in the room to realize that EVERYONE AROUND ME was fat too! And now that I am the most health conscious person that I know? It scares me what people eat. Like SCARES me. And even on here when I hear of people binging etc IT SCARES ME. We are doing irreparable damage to our bodies with this crap and we just KEEP ON DOING IT.

/rant

Yes my dear. I know exactly what you mean.

I definitely empathize with the "evangelical" feeling of wanting to share/save everyone. I wouldn't have appreciated it before I was ready.

That's the thing with weight loss - as much as I want to bottle my "a ha" moment and share it with everyone who is in pain, I just can't. We can't do it for anyone else, it is such an internal process.

I definitely know EXACTLY what are you are feeling though!

Lori, I feel the same exact way....

I don't know why I never noticed all the overweight people before either...

Oh and the intense desire to help them. They'll be times I'll see a very heavy person who is struggling to walk, and I'll just want to go over to them and tell them "you don't have to suffer like this. It doesn't have to be this way." I want to soooo badly reach out to them and HELP them. But alas, I can't do that. VERY frustrating.

It's like I want to scream it from the rooftops "you don't have to be fat. There IS a way out" I want to "save" each and every overweight person. But alas, I can't do that. VERY frustrating.

I thought it was just me.

I don't see it quite as much when I'm downtown. There are certainly plenty of overweight and obese people around, particularly in the non-business parts of town. But wow, head out to the burbs and wowza. Like y'all...I never really noticed until fairly recently. Like maybe first of this year or thereabouts. I don't remember it being this way back in the 70s and 80s, or even the 90s...do y'all? I mean, at a size 16/18 I was FAR AND AWAY the MOST ENORMOUS girl in my class...the only other girl who came close was probably a 12/14 and all the other girls were tiny...like, too skinny to give blood. And now half the kids I see are larger than I was.

Oh the wanting to help people...jeez I suffer that every single day. I will see super morbidly obese people on public transportation or where ever and all I want to do is just give them a BIG HUG. I wish there were something tangible I could do...but I know I would have been enraged and mortified if anyone had said or done anything to me when I was super morbidly obese. Sigh.

Edited to add:
I guess the one thing I do do is, if I see a super morbidly obese person on public transportation and there's any possible way to sit next to them (like they aren't so large that it would be a massively uncomfortable fit) I always go out of my way to take that seat, assuming there aren't any totally empty seats. I supposed I'm trying to educate the other riders that super morbidly obese people aren't "lepers" and there's no reason to avoid them.

You know, though, some people with significant weight issues NEVER come to any sort of realization. For some, their weight is not and will never be an issue. They are happy the way they are. They have modified furniture, remote controls to change the TV, physicians to medically treat their obesity-related conditions, clothing shops that specialize in appropriate-sized clothing, enablers/food buddies to eat with, two seats on airplanes for comfort, and money to purchase what they want whenever they want in a society that acknowledges the concept of free will and free choice. And in the grand scheme of things, people with weight issues haven't done anything wrong -- they just have a bit of extra padding, that's all. So really, until THEY choose to do something, should we just accept people as they are, padding and all?

I guess the best thing you can do is live by example, find peace within yourself, and let others come to their self-realizations as they come to them. And help when assistance is asked for, but other than that, what can one REALLY do? It is such a personal journey...

Kira

It's seems that income is a factor sadly...

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I honestly never noticed how many people were either overweight or obese until I lost weight.

Exactly. Check out the Houston area . . . when you start losing your own weight, it's amazing how many other people are overweight.

Ha! I've started feeling that way already, and I'm still FAR from thin.

I was already concerned about the number of obese children. My oldest and youngest are 14 years apart and what a change in 14 years. In my son's day care, in the 18months and younger room, he was the ONLY child who wasn't visibly chubby. The teachers commented on how my son was so light and easy to pick up, and how the lunches I packed were really different from what the other mothers were packing. Really? I thought. I was just packing what I thought was normal food-- cheese, fruit, bread, sometimes yogurt. My son is on the thin side and I told my pediatrician that people often commented that he looked thin. He said that he's in the 45% of weight-- very average. "It's just a matter of perspective," he said, since so many kids now are obese.

I can remember The Last Time, one day I had an overwhelming urge to run over to this woman and snatch the Mars Bar out of her hand and beat her with it. I resisted.

I'm not quite there this time but I do sigh (entirely inwardly) at some people's shopping baskets.....

I was in a supermarket cafe today, and my mother said, there's a man who could do lose weight or die. To him, I felt a kind of sympathy - he was eating what looked like a big meal but it was jacket potato and tuna salad, it could have been healthy; very big as he was, it could be the lightest he's been in years.

otoh, my younger brother, who is morbidly obese, has eventually eaten himself into diabetes. sorry if that's harsh but it's the truth. he is so pleased he's found a name for his symptoms, and that I can understand, but for years he's been at the I'm fat, what I can I do about it? stage, and the 'good for you, sis, I wish I could lose weight' phase that makes me want to hit him.

What I notice are the teenage girls, they can't be more 13 or 14 and I am sure some of them are well over 200 pounds, some of them pushing 300. How Sad !

Uber -- I often felt that way when my son was younger, too. I remember obsessing and feeling guilty that my lunches (on field trip days) may not have been nutritious enough, until the day I volunteered to help on a field trip. Almost all of the other kids had a can of soda for their drink, and I'm talking about a full caffiene, full corn syrup type! Some of them had full size candy bars as a treat. Almost no fruits or vegetables. I was horrified, but from that day on I've quit worrying that other moms might look down on my lunches. Ugh. But you can't say anything to others about their personal habits as long as they're not hurting anyone but themselves.

but then, when obesity is said to be so prevalent ~
my bmi is 32.7. That's obese, though beats the hoosit out of the 44.3 I started at.
According to halls bmi calculator, 32.7 puts me at the 70th percentile, i.e., I am heavier than 70% of Americans. When I get down to 161, I will be 'normal', if only just, at 24.9 - the 60th percentile.

So if I, who am approaching the foothills of normal, am still heavier than 70% of Americans, maybe there isn't more obesity around? are we just more aware of it? or is halls wrong?!