Weight, Depression, Suicide

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I've never been suicidal enough to actually go beyond thinking of doing something drastic in the most hypothetical of senses. Thankfully, I have not had to deal with issues that affect overweight people, and hover at a good slightly under- to average weight. However, I have had other experiences dealing with physical appearance and health and people's expectations therefore, so I have a lot of sympathy for those who struggle with weight-related problems, both health-wise and socially.

And now, let me sorta go on a tangent here....

For those people who think that every single person's weight is all about effort and personal choice, I'll give you an example in contrasts.

My best friend and I are exact opposites. I'm a small thing, who only in recent years has not been a twig, and this has been as long as I can remember. She is very big, and from pictures I've seen of her and stories she's told me of her early years, she's always been that way. We both walk and/or use the buses as a mode of transportation, and we're both incurable sugar junkies to approximately the same degree (I might be the worst offender in that sense, actually). Neither of us are athletic, nor would we be found in a gym. Neither of us drink (and therefore supposedly gain weight) or smoke (and therefore supposedly lose weight), or use any other drugs that would affect our metabolism or calorie intake.

So how do you explain this? What vice does she practice that makes her overweight, and what virtue that I'm not even aware of allows me to remain at a constant, healthy weight? Or will you admit that some things, like family tendency towards a certain weight or build, thyroid conditions and other "natural" factors over which one has limited if any control over play a role?

It rather bothers me, especially since cases like this exist everywhere, that some people continue to see heaviness as a sign of a character defect the same way that leprosy was seen in the Middle Ages. Yes, some overweight people do fit the bill of lazy and gluttonous. But that's only some, and that doesn't even necessarily prove that the cause of their being overweight is that they are like this. It's really not fair to those many people whose eating and exercise patterns are just as healthy (or unhealthy), or more so, as a person thinner than themselves that they are somehow seen as less of a person if they aren't at that same weight.

Healthy is a subjective term.
There are many instances of overweight people who have always felt very healthy but "suddenly" drop dead in the street from a heart attack or stroke because their arteries got clogged up over the years.
Also there are many people who have always felt very healthy until they "all of sudden" develop an uncurable malignant cancer.

Feeling that you have strength is not the equivalent of actually being healthy in the sense that your body can last many more years without showing too many defects.

It is a fact that mice and rats who are fed a low calory diet and who are in fact at the brink of starvation, live much longer and remain healthy and active much longer than those who are given plenty of food to eat.

In naturopathy it is said that cancer is the disease which in most cases develops only at the very end of a long process of intoxication, when the body has failed to expell waste and toxins in all other manners.
If you fast regularly or eat a very light diet, your body has much better chances to rid itself of toxins and of keeping the liver and other vital tissues active and healthy.

yeah have these to a degree. nothing thats too terrible/debilitating though.
i did take care of the weight problem last year so that sorted some of the depreesion which lessoned the other thoughts somewhat.
the continueing lonliness and inabilty to fit in with society properly makes it all very difficult though and i dont htin k any of this will be ceared up completly until im no longer lonly. i think thats where it has all stemed from

Anorexia and Bulimia are not usually thought of as healthy states.

We are Aspies around here, and, confidentially, most of us don't do much of anything unless we obsess on it...

So that, MAYBE trying to talk some of us into obsessing on "thin (and only thin)=healthy" MAY not be the smartest idea anyone ever had?

M

I agree that most times health and weight are connected but it's not always that way. In fact you could be at a perfect weight and have all kinds of health problems, and even be diabetic (type 2 is what I mean). At the same time I have seen obese people in overall pretty good health.