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My grandmother, whom I loved dearly, was kept alive for agonizing weeks after she would have died naturally (and relatively painlessly) without family meddling and heroic medical intervention. I have known a number of others who struggled to hang on to their final shreds of life because family members couldn't accept their deaths.

In several of these cases, an equal application of medical intervention to assist their final exits, which were at any rate inevitiable, would have been a blessing. I wish to have that choice for myself and my husband, and am grateful that Oregon gives me that option. Just because it exists, doesn't mean I am required to choose it.

Peg in Canby

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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Dear arsmorriende,

Your assumptions about what fat people eat are not necessarily true. Research is now beginning to reveal a whole host of brain and cellular chemical reactions that mediate hunger, satiation, and the utilization/storage of food energy. Stay posted: the next generation may have new tools to work with physical genotypes that might allow nearly everyone to stay within a more average weight range, without severe deprivation.

And I can attest that severe deprivation, constant hunger, feeling cold, weak, tired or depressed, are what it takes for some people to maintain a weight that you would apparently approve of. I know this because it's the story of my life.

I'm currently clinically obese, a situation that has arisen gradually over the last 16 years or so of my 60-plus years. Before that I stayed slim to barely-plump, depending on whether I was starving or only nearly starving. My family body type is compact and heavy, and my grandmother, mother, three sisters and daughter are all constantly on a weight-loss treadmill, and all gradually losing the fight.

I still eat as I did in my 20's, very attentive to the latest understandings of what a well-balanced diet should look like. I currently eat 1200 to 1300 calories a day, carefully chosen. I avoid sugar, fat, and starches. I pretty much live on salad. I eat a "fast food" sandwich no more than 2 or 3 times a year, and never order the french fries. I exercise as much as I am able, though several cumulative injuries have made this much harder in recent years. I am almost always hungry. And yet I am slowly gaining weight. I now weigh near 200 lbs., most of it around my middle.

When I was younger, I took great pride in staying slimmer than my sisters, although it cost me a great deal of comfort (it is hard being hungry and always saying no to dessert). I believed it was simply a matter of will. Now that my genetic type has asserted itself, the only additional thing I have had to eat was my pride.

I hear tremendous pride in your attitudes about others' weight. If you are a naturally slender person, that is a gift that you should be grateful for, not proud of. I doubt very much that you eat as little or as carefully as I do.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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About 10 years ago, after my curves had begun to gain heft and yield to menopause and gravity, I went skydiving. I was approaching 50, and taking on the body type of my mother and grandmother. A young woman instructor called out to my young, sniggering male instructor in my hearing that she bet the "fat lady" would chicken out and not jump when the time came. Eye-rolling ensued.

I didn't say anything. I did jump, fulfilling a life-long wish. It was fabulous. My instructor walked away without a word of congratulations when we reached the earth again.

I wish I had told these confident youth that I had been as young and fit as they were in my 20's, but that I didn't have the resources to skydive then. I wish I had told them that I hoped people would treat them kindly if and when their bodies began to change. I wish I had told them that maintaining the contours of youth is impossible for most people. I wish I told them that I am a creative, kind and brave person in spite of the flesh I was carrying.

I've been a health nut for most of my adult life, when I was a young woman at 120 pounds, and now that I am a hefty matron nearly 200 pounds. I eat considerably less than my slim husband or many other slim people I know. A series of injuries over the past few years make exercise very difficult, so I compensate by eating even less ? most days about 1200 - 1300 calories. And yet I continue to gain weight, slowly but surely.

I appreciate what I have heard about self-acceptance.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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