Heavy health burden: Fat but not my fault

[Warpy]

Sharmyn McGraw knows what it’s like to have a body that people envy. For most of her adult life, the 5-foot, 4-inch former flight attendant was a lean size 2. No more. McGraw, 48, now weighs 189 pounds, down from a one-time high of 250 pounds.

It’s not like McGraw stuffed her face with super-size-me burgers and fries. She’s sick. In 2000, she was diagnosed with a rare condition called Cushing’s disease, caused by a benign pituitary tumor. One of the hallmarks of Cushing’s is massive weight gain, particularly in the trunk, face and back.
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McGraw knows all about indignities. She got dumped by a personal trainer after she couldn’t shed pounds fast enough. A doctor told her she could lose weight if she was locked in a closet for a week with only water to drink. Even well-meaning friends could be annoying as they told her about the latest-greatest diet.
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“There is some evidence that shows that for whatever reason weight bias is increasing,” says obesity researcher Robert Carels of Bowling Green University in Ohio. His own research published in the journal Eating and Weight Disorders shows a “strong level of contempt” for the obese, especially among people who believe the weight is highly controllable. “There’s a feeling of why should I have to pay for them (the obese), if they can do something about their weight,” says Carels. “As a society we have a strong, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstrap mentality, and the overweight are the targets.”

Much more at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37831468/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/

It's the last socially acceptable bigotry. Shame on all the bigots.

[Skittles]

1. plenty of fat bashers on DU

they absolutely disgust me - and I am a size 2/4

[hlthe2b]

2. Fat and age... last acceptable focus of bigotry..

And, I believe women suffer more bigotry for being either fat or older...

[ellenfl]

3. crap . . . i'm fat AND old! eom

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

4. Some medications can cause weight gain as well (anti-depressants, for example. I

was on them some years ago, and I gained about 40 lbs.). I wasn't eating any more or less, was exercising...still couldn't take off the lbs.

[BanzaiBonnie]

7. And birth control pills

There are some things we can do to stay healthy, but sometimes the decks are stacked against us. It makes it harder, but not impossible. I'm still working at it.

[Nay]

9. Crap...me too!!

[HockeyMom]

5. Waist/Hip Ratios

forget height/weight, or BMI points. The new "healthy" fad is the above. My wonderful private insurance is using THIS as their criteria. You are either apple or pear shaped and nothing else. If your waist is not 10 inches smaller than your hips, and they have nurses measuring all employees, you are at risk of a heart attack and need to lose weight and join a gym.

Want to know how absurd this is? I work with a woman who is 5 feet and weighs 90 lbs. She was told that according to these new standards. because she has 30 inch hips and a 23 inch waist, she is at increased risk of a heart attack because she is APPLE SHAPED. These people must be BLIND to think that somebody weighing 90 lbs can be apple shaped. The woman is FURIOUS. They didn't DARE tell her she needs to lose weight. She has to go to a gym to get lower her waist measurement --- AT HER OWN EXPENSE.

I recently read that they are now saying that SHORT people are at increased risk. Hmm. Wonder what the medical industry plans to do about THAT one. STRETCH people?

[K8-EEE]

6. THAT is wild!!!

I hadn't heard about the 'body shape police!' Crap....

[Warpy]

8. Some guy with a major bug up his ass about wasp waisted women

had to have come up with that idiocy. Some body types don't have pronounced waists no matter how thin they get and, while future research might tie it to some genetically linked disease process or other, it hasn't done so as yet.

Telling your friend to exercise to change her body type is the height of ignorance. It's just not going to work. If she packed another few pounds on, she might increase her hip measurement to suit the idiots, though.

Body Nazis are the worst. They're the reason for every horrible thing visited on women from corsets to spike heeled shoes to surgeries to conform to whatever idiot stereotype of beauty is in fashion at that time.

[hedgehog]

11. Another factor that gets ignored is ethnicity. Somehow we are all

supposed to be as tall as Swedish super models and as slender as the most delicate geisha! I know women who are just plain voluptuous. They come from a place where all the women are voluptuous. If they got thin, they'd be unhealthy.

Then there is the entire matter of frame. Years ago, I was 2" taller and 5 pounds heavier than my sister. She looked very petite and I didn't because she has my mother's light frame and I have my dad's heavy frame.I'm not making excuses; I am overweight now, but was probably underweight then, but I didn't look thin. I have a hard time finding a watch or bracelet that fits over my wrist. I have a daughter with the same build. She is considered underweight according to the BMI, but she doesn't look it.

[ellenfl]

10. in the days of marilyn monroe, a 10" difference was considered

ideal but that hourglass shape was hardly attainable by most. too bad they don't use the bust/waist ratio. all one would need to attain that is breast implants. B-)

ellen fl

[MorningGlow]

12. Jay-zus that sucks

What about women who simply are built "straight up and down"? Even when I was young and underweight (hyperthyroid although I didn't know it, anemic, and all the rest of it), I didn't have a narrow waist compared with my hips. I'm just built that way. I had to wear Levi's--couldn't fit into Wranglers. Would these crazy medical personnel recommend women like me have a few ribs removed in order to establish that waist to hip ratio?

[MorningGlow]

13. My story

I've posted frequently on this board that I have thyroid problems--here's a bit of my weight-gaining saga.

When I was undiagnosed and gaining weight like a sumbitch (while on a strict diet), my husband and I joined a gym. He has always been very well versed in the science of exercise, so he designed my workout routine and monitored my progress.

Even though I had only begun to gain weight at the time and was in my early 30s, I had a hell of a time just doing the cardio part of my workout, and by the time it was time to move on to the weight training, I was tapped out--didn't have any energy left. I'd go home and pass out on the couch (at only 8 p.m.), wrapped in a blanket even in summer because I was freezing cold. I was miserable, but I kept at it.

Although there was a scale in the hallway of the gym, Mr. MG told me not to check my weight every time we went to the gym. He said I should check it once a month. After a bit of whingeing on my part, he relented and let me check every two or three weeks.

No matter how much I was exercising and how little I was eating, I GAINED weight. I will never forget the moment he looked over my shoulder at the scale and said, "Okay, now you're defying the laws of physics."

It was a turning point for him, as up till then he thought I was just being lazy and a quitter. I wish my doctor could have also attended my workouts to see that what I was doing SHOULD have resulted in weight loss, because he was convinced that I was hiding in a closet and eating two boxes of Ding-Dongs every day (those crazy emotional chocolate-craving wimmins, yanno). But when something hormonal/glandular is going on, you do indeed start to defy the laws of physics.

[kdmorris]

15. And I've posted frequently how similar our stories are

Those years were just awful. I gained 85 lbs in 2 years and was told that it was because I was lying about my exercise and food intake (I was working my butt off, but never could lose weight).

It wasn't until I was put on Armour that thing got better though. Even on Synthroid, my T3 was below the bottom of the range. It took me 6 years, but I've lost the weight I gained during that time.

I hope you are also getting the help you need. No one should have to go through what most thyroid patients go through.

[MorningGlow]

16. Yeppers, it's the worst

I've always been on Armour (once I found a holistic m.d.)--and was on glucophage for a while as well because my blood sugar skyrocketed with the sudden weight gain (thanks to the idiot doctors I had before my holistic m.d. who let it go on so long without prescribing thyroid meds) and I also had polycystic ovarian syndrome (fun). About seven years ago I went on a hardcore low-carb diet and lost 12 lbs., got my PCOS under control, and promptly got pregnant. Then I had to start all over again! :banghead:

Congrats on losing all the weight! After slacking off for a while I went back on the low-carb diet a couple of months ago and have lost about 15 lbs. (yay) but I have about 20 lbs. more to go. And I sure never will be a size 8 again...

[mike_c]

14. I'm ambivalent about this, frankly....

First, full disclosure. I'm male, as my DU moniker suggests, 55 years old, 6'1" tall, 235 lbs butt nekkid. That's down from about 270 lbs this time last year. I weighed about 185 lbs when I was in my mid-30s, which I take as my "ideal" mass since I was healthy and athletic at that weight. I'm a big guy, always have been.

That said, it's clear that I've been struggling with my weight for several years now. For the last couple of years I've been a dedicated gym rat, working out 3-5 times weekly-- that, and some attention to diet are the reasons I've lost 35 or so pounds over the last couple of years, and that weight loss alone doesn't fully capture the changes I'm making-- at the same time, I've dramatically increased my lean muscle mass-- one of the "benefits" of being a big guy-- so I'm much stronger and healthier than my weight or my BMI alone would probably suggest. Still, it's obvious that I have some way to go still. Waist? Haven't seen one of those in years, LOL. My goal is to get my body mass under 200 lbs again and keep it there.

How did I get that way? Overeating and under-exercising. A sedentary job and lifestyle. I've never been a couch potato, but I inadvertently became a desk-rutabaga. Therein lies my ambivalence-- I KNOW, without a doubt, that decisions I made led to my becoming WAY overweight. It's not something I can dismiss responsibility for-- I have a normal metabolism of a man my age and health. I was just eating and sitting myself to death.

Now I'm struggling to fix the problems that accumulated as a result. I acquired a number of biomechanical injuries caused by stress on my bones and soft tissues, especially in my legs and feet. These became serious enough to put me on a cane and limit my mobility. I developed gout. Some early stage liver damage. Some arthritis. Carpel tunnel syndrome from all the time spent at a keyboard.

Still, I'm fixing it. I'm fixing it by acknowledging first that I am responsible for what I put into my mouth and for how active or inactive I allow myself to become. It's hard work, dammit-- my GF and I can be REALLY creative when it's time to make excuses for cutting back at the gym! But that too is a decision that we're responsible for.

I don't want to be fat. I just don't. It's not vanity, or at least not vanity alone-- I'll admit that I prefer looking at myself in the mirror when I'm strong and athletic rather than soft and obese, but mainly I don't want to grow old sitting in a chair. That really is the alternative.

It's easy to call distaste for being overweight "bigotry" but the truth is that accumulating too much fat is detrimental and we should strive to avoid it while we can, and correct it when we let things get out of hand. The alternative is lower quality of life-- at least as I define it for myself-- illness, and early death.

Like I said, speaking only for myself, I don't want to grow old sitting in a chair.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

17. Glandular problems are quite common.

Forty or fifty million Americans have either an underactive or overactive thyroid. Millions with adrenal fatigue from constant, unrelieved stress in their lives.

Every time I tell a doctor I have adrenal fatigue, they ignore me. You never hear people on TV or celebrities talk about their thyroid problems. And it's not just in middle aged women, either. It can happen often in pre-adolescent girls (This is what happened to both my mother and I).

Signs of adrenal exhaustion: Extreme drop in BP upon standing (postural hypotension).

Fluctuating body temps throughout the day. Lower than normal body temps usually indicate hypothyroidism.

Exhaustion with exercise (I spent ten minutes on a treadmill at 2 mph, and went home and SLEPT HARD, crashed for FOURTEEN HOURS STRAIGHT. That is not normal.

Exaggerated startle reflex. Before I went to a cell phone, I would jump several inches in the air when the phone rang.

Doctors do not want to give people hydrocortisone or prednisone because they are afraid it will shut down the adrenals. However, the adrenals are aready severely depleted in this condition, or the person would be able to deal with stress. I hit the "wall" many years ago where I had the attitude that I just could not cope iwth other people, a job, or anything else.

Read "Safe uses of Cortisol" below at the conscioushealing.com link.

Then there's low testosterone in both men and women, lack of growth hormone, lots of things that can go wrong.

Some people have bodies that convert their T4 into reverse T3 which is not bioactive, so they have to go on T3 (cytomel) only and get off T4 or Armour. Thyroid and adrenal problems are closely related.



More info: www.stopthethyroidmadness.com


http://thyroid.about.com


http://www.holtorfmed.com/index.php?section=downloads&file_id=12


http://thyroid-rt3.com/


http://www.conscioushealing.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=72&Itemid=57


Contrarian Endocrinology Part I: Testosterone for women, by Dr. Karlis Ullis, M.D.
http://www.thinkmuscle.com/articles/ullis/contrarian-01.htm


Contrarian Endocrinology Part II: Estrogen and Progesterone for Men:
http://www.thinkmuscle.com/articles/ullis/contrarian-02.htm



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Happy reading!! :D