Ok, I would only post this in an anonymous forum so as not to hurt anyone's feelings, BUT, I had an epiphany today.
I had to go to a doctor's appointment that is a few miles outside of the close knit community I live in. As I was walking through the parking lot and into the building, I noticed a great number of skinny people.
Now, I know when I am feeling fat (which I am feeling at this point in time), I feel like Gulliver during his giant period among the Lilliputians. I thought maybe that was the mind-set I was in, and was ready to dismiss it, until I realized - I come from a community of fat people!
Ok, maybe not everyone is fat - in fact, there are always a few skinny-minis that had 10 babies and snapped back to a size 2 upon delivery. However, for the most part, many of the people I know (again, with some exceptions) fall into the obese or overweight category.
So, what's the revelation? It's that in my own community I am considered fit, and by some, even skinny. In fact, I often get totally unsolicited remarks from people about how thin I look, and what's my secret?
Therefore, when I go to a doctor who treats me like a 600lb morbidly obese woman, I chafe at the unwarranted fat shaming. I know my BMI falls into the overweight category, and I'm trying to change that, but I always feel like some of my doctors really see me in a distorted way.
Today, as I looked around at all of the thin people, where I was one of the biggest in the crowd, I wonder if my artificial environment of heavier people hasn't skewed my perspective of my own weight. I think I tend to think of myself as thinner, because I often am one of the thinner people in my community.
In one way that's kind of disheartening, but in another way eye opening.
I hope I don't sound like a total jerk - I don't mean to be - I think I am just putting on a sociologist's hat and trying to see how my community inadvertently supports being satisfied with a higher BMI.