menopausal fighter

Clothilde is 48 and menopausal. She operates a successful florist outlet in a mall and has become very outspoken about all the new laws and regulations governing everything we do – and right now she is in a fighting mood about proposed legislation to prohibit restaurants and food outlets from serving food to obese customers.

“I am totally accepting of my size and my personal power,” says Clothilde, “and if anyone prohibits me from being served my sex substitute (food) I’ll show them what menopausal fury is like!”

"I've had forty-eight good years (when I wasn't wasting my time and money dieting) and now that my hormone factory is shutting down I guess food is going to play a bigger part in my life than ever – totally substituting for sex," laughs Clothilde. "Let's face it, you gotta die of something, and thin people end up six feet under just like the rest of us, right?"

"Well, unlike the polite smokers who accepted their victimization without a squawk, I'm fighting back," asserts Clothilde. "It must be a menopausal thing – I'm so ‘over’ crazy diets, pills and exercises and caring what thin people, or anyone, thinks of me, that if the proposed fat laws ever get enacted they are going to be met with a sizeable resistance from me."

Read more of Clothilde's story:

pharma pushed fat laws

fat red tape

Health Nazis

Land of the free?

independence vs nanny states

obesity means social death

Coco's obesity has been classified as a disability and as such she is entitled to welfare payments but she steadfastly refuses to rot at home and continues to actively seek work even though the reception she receives from most job interviewers is a humiliating experience.

"I never even knew that people can die from obesity until I read an article about it," says Coco. "Sure, I know about my risk for heart disease but to be faced with a separate classification for death by obesity is very challenging and smacks, to me, of medical discrimination on top of all the other discrimination I face every day from everyone else."

"The article highlights alienation as the top cause of obesity death and that makes sense to me," says Coco. "If thin people faced as much cruel and humiliating discrimination as obese people do at job interviews -- and every other kind of human encounter -- I wonder if the medical establishment would come up with a new type of thin death classification (not anorexia) to account for the resultant spate of deaths?"

"That the article also highlighted a high Social Security expenditure (% of GDP) as a factor in obesity death also makes sense to me," says Coco. "Nations that are quick to classify obese people as disabled and pay them to rot at home are definitely contributing to obesity deaths."

"When you're pushed out of sight and mind, unloved and unwanted, with nothing better to do than stuff yourself with comfort food while watching soaps you're already suffering a social death, right?"

"Here's the article I read alienation causes obesity death?"

pharma pushed fat laws

Like many western women, Clothilde is overweight. She has tried a variety of diets since her teens – all of which resulted in her gaining more weight than ever –and now that she is 48, menopausal, and totally accepting of her size and personal power she is gobsmacked that legislation is being proposed prohibiting restaurants and food establishments from serving food to obese customers.

"It's happening in Mississippi," says Clothilde, "but don't heave a sigh of relief if you don't live there because it won't be long before it's happening where you live, too."

"Take a look at the background of the guys proposing this bill and you'll understand what it's really all about," explains Clothilde. "The three stooges are Representative W.T. Mayhall, Jr., a retired pharmaceutical salesman; Bobby Shows, a businessman; and John Read, a pharmacist."

"Don't tell me that these guys haven't got a financial motive for pushing this bill?" asks Clothilde. "A pharmacist, a businessman and a pharma salesman together have the requisite qualifications and experience needed to set up and run yet another pharmaceutical business aimed at forcing us fatties to ingest bitter pills rather than delicious food."

"What are these guys doing in government pushing their own barrow?" asks Clothilde. "Okay, we all know that some politicians are businessmen on the side, profiting from whatever self-serving law they manage to get enacted – or self-serving war they manage to foment – but it really sticks in your craw that such guys get elected in the first place."

"Hey, people of Mississippi, did these guys tell you what they had on their mind when you elected them?" asks Clothilde. "I'm not just appealing to all the obese voters in Mississippi but to all the restaurants and food establishments, too, because the proposal is that these businesses are going to be monitored for Fat Law compliance by the State Department of Health and violators will have their business permits revoked.”

“Nasty."

"I think most fat people are going to be thinking just like me,” laughs Clothilde. “Put us in prison for disobedience if you like – but you'd have a hard job finding a prison big enough for us big people!"

Read more of Clothilde's story:

fat red tape

menopausal fighter

Health Nazis

Land of the free?

independence vs nanny states

weight loss analysis

When she retired at 60 Gypsy was at her heaviest weight ever (80kg/176lbs) and with time at her disposal she tackled her weight problem with the same analytical skills that she once used at work.

"I made weight loss my full-time job," laughs Gypsy, "but it's no laughing matter really because my health was being seriously compromised by my weight."

"Because I approached weight loss with a professional accountant's eye," explains Gypsy, "my weight loss spreadsheet took into account everything about the food I ate."

"My base year comprised the contents of my last shopping cart when I weighed 80kg (176lbs)," says Gypsy. "I listed every item in the cart along with its weight and nutritional content."

"I rarely drink, eat junk food or obviously fattening things like ice cream, cake and chocolate," says Gypsy, "so I couldn't understand why my weight over ten years had ballooned from 60kg (132lbs) to
(80kg/176lbs)."

"It was pretty obvious even at that early stage of analysis that the main culprit was bread," sighs Gypsy. "It accounted for twice as much in calories or kilojoules as the next culprit, full cream milk."

"Just by cutting out bread and increasing my fruit intake -- and substituting full cream milk for skim milk -- I lost a huge chunk of weight within three months," says Gypsy, ''and I managed to continue to lose weight for the rest of the first year."

"By the end of the first year of this simple diet I weighed 69kg (152lbs) and looked and felt great," says Gypsy. "My gaol was to slim down to a healthy 60kg (132lbs) and I naively believed that by reducing my calorie/kilojoule intake I would achieve that goal by the end of the second year."

"My base year's average daily intake was 10,101kj, my first year's average daily intake was 7,472kj and my second year's average daily intake was 7,165kj," says Gypsy, "and guess what, I gained weight."

"I was so disappointed and couldn't believe that by literally starving myself for a year -- keeping my average daily intake well below the previous year -- I now weighed 72kg (159lbs)."

"In my third year I experimented with a variety of diets -- high protein and then a nut diet -- and because my weight didn't shift much I then reintroduced bread in moderation and at the end of the third year I weighed 73kg (161lbs) with an average daily intake of 9,621kj."

"Hello? What's going on here, I thought," laughs Gypsy. "In the base year my average daily intake was 10,101kj and I weighed 80kg (176lbs), in my first year my average daily intake was 7,472kj and I lost 11kg (25lbs), in my second year I reduced my average daily intake to 7,165kj and gained 3kg (7lb) and in my third year I increased my average daily intake to 9,621kj and I gained just 1kg (a few pounds)."

"On the basis of my calculations, with an average daily intake of 9,621kj I should have gained heaps and be almost back to my base weight," says Gypsy. "That I wasn't pleased me, but it just goes to show that there is much more to weight loss than counting calories."

"I then looked at the amount of food I was eating -- it's weight -- and took a simplistic view that if I was eating more I might weigh more," says Gypsy, but that didn't pan out either."

"In the base year my average daily intake was 1457g, in my first year my average daily intake was 1,575g (more!), in my second year my average daily intake was 1,483g (less) and in my third year my average daily intake was 1,882g -- which was far more than my base year!"

"Right now I'm in my fourth year and almost ready to give up," sighs Gypsy. "So far, my average daily intake is 8,710kj/1538g, I weigh 76kg (165lbs) and it looks like I am soon going to be back to 80kg (176lbs) despite watching everything I eat."

"My only ray of hope is a factor I have just discovered," confides Gypsy. "It's the kilojoule per gram ratio which you arrive at by dividing the average daily kilojoule intake by the average daily gram intake."

"In the base year my average kilojoule per gram ratio was 6.93, in my first year my average kilojoule per gram ratio was 4.74 (less), in my second year my average kilojoule per gram ratio was 4.83 (more), in my third year my average kilojoule per gram ratio was 5.11 (more) and right now it is 5.66 (more)."

"The kilojoule per gram ratio is the only factor which can explain why I have been gaining weight since my first year of dieting," says Gypsy. "I won't know until my fifth year of dieting whether or not it is going to be the magic bullet, but in the hope that it is I am now in the process of cutting out all food that has a high kilojoule per gram ratio and increasing all food that has a low kilojoule per gram ratio."

"And guess what?" laughs Gypsy. "The dietitians are right about eating more vegetables. By increasing my fruit intake -- especially grapes, melon and plums -- I was inadvertently increasing my kilojoule per gram ratio!"

"If a gram of mushrooms has a ratio of 1, a gram of grapes 5 and a gram of bread 10 then you don't have to be a mathematician to work out that you can eat the equivalence of a loaf of bread in mushrooms and feel full as well as losing weight."

"My initial weight loss was due entirely to substituting fruit for bread!"

"The only fly in this theory," sighs Gypsy, "is that when I weighed a healthy 60kg (132lbs) I ate a lot less vegetables and far more bread than I do now."

"At 76kg (165lbs) I may not look too good but I feel a lot better than I did at 80kg (176lbs) and everyone says I should be grateful for improved health," says Gypsy, "but I do want to look good as well."

"I'm now using my analytical spreadhseet skills to look at other factors in my life since I turned 50 that caused me to gain weight," says Gypsy. "I think stress was a huge factor in my last 10 years at work -- I literally worked, ate and slept -- but that's all behind me, now."

"If my weight gain since 50 was just a hormonal thing then there's not much I can do about it -- or want to do about it," says Gypsy, "but if it's a matter of eating more vegetables and starting a solid exercise regime at the same time then I can do it."

"I have to bear in mind that it took ten years to put on weight and might take another ten years to lose it."

smoking and lack-of-heart disease

Kirsten is 47, a smoker and a nurse who should be setting a good example for the community in regard to healthy living but she fumes at scare-mongering, heartless, anti-smoking propaganda and maintains that smokers are no more or less healthy than non-smokers.
"Smokers are being blamed unfairly for the rise of lung cancers, heart diseases and spiralling national health costs," sighs Kirsten, "but I'm seeing far less smokers on my wards than I did thirty years ago."

"What I am seeing more of in my wards is patients who are far more obese and a far lot older than before," says Kirsten, "and that's a fact that airlines, funeral parlors and all health-related industries are noticing."

"When airlines and funeral parlors have been forced to widen their seats and coffins to cater for rising obesity -- and the average age of air travellers and dearly departed has also risen -- you get to understand that all the hype about smoking is a smokescreen to hide the true facts about community health."

"Sure, lung cancer is on the rise but so is every other type of cancer and heart disease," laughs Kirsten, "and it's all because people are living longer these days."

"If disease incidence and death statistics were published by age rather than per capita, everyone would see that the vast majority fall into the older age groups where you'd expect people to be developing degeneration of their vital organs. And, where they don't, obesity is the prime causative factor, not smoking."

"When you're 88 years old does it really matter if you die of lung cancer, heart disease or a bee sting?" laughs Kirsten. "Of course not, so why should it bother anybody else?"

"Antibiotics and modern medicine have eradicated diseases that once wiped out millions of people are these diseases are being replaced on the death statistics with conditions like lung cancer and heart disease that most people once never lived long enough to develop."

"The number one cause of heart disease is aging," says Kirsten. "If you stop smoking or change your diet in middle age -- by which time the aging process has set in -- you're not going to improve your chances of avoiding heart disease. The clock is ticking away and will stop exactly when it is programmed to stop unless something intervenes to make it stop earlier."

"Get it?"

"What's more, medical opinion is divided as to how much cigarette smoking is directly responsible for the rise in lung cancer and heart disease," adds Kirsten. "Very few people die of one thing or another. There are always a myriad of factors involved in disease and death. If an old lady with osteoporosis dies from a fall while she's smoking is the cause of death an accidental fall, osteoporosis-related or smoking-related?"

"Doctors have carte blanche, almost, to record causes of death as they see fit," says Kirsten, "and believe me, I've seen some records that are plainly wrong. In relation to AIDS, I can accept that pneumonia might be a kinder cause of death for the sake of the relatives than the true cause -- but in relation to lung cancer and heart disease I object to smoking because listed as a primary cause just because the deceased was a smoker."

"Fanatical anti-smoking health workers are naturally prone to inflate the figures of smoking-related disease incidence and causes of death, but thankfully there are still many in the professions who are open to consider factors other than smoking."

"Apart from the obvious reason -- that we're living longer -- factors such as increasing air pollution (from carcinogens not known thirty years ago), the stresses of modern living (more people on the planet, and increasing daily), personal stressful circumstances and all manner of bugs need to be taken into consideration when assessing lung cancer and heart disease in smokers."

"Whenever I see a list of risk factors I feel like adding ridiculous things like 'wearing pink shirts'," laughs Kirsten, "because that's just about as true as everything else."

"If just one non-smoker -- such as Dana Reeve -- dies of lung cancer," says Kirsten, "then it's pretty obvious that cigarettes are not the primary cause of the disease and other factors have to betaken into consideration. Bearing in mind that it's only recently that a bacteria was found to cause stomach ulcers and a virus was found to cause cervical cancer, it's imperative to keep an open mind."

"I'm pretty sure, too, that anti-smoking propaganda has had a lot to do with the spiralling increase in obesity," says Kirsten. "I'm seeing less smokers on my wards than I did thirty years ago because so many people have quit and started stuffing their faces with food instead."

"Everyone I know who has quit smoking has put on a lot of weight," says Kirsten, "and because obesity is more a health risk than smoking I believe the medical profession has a duty to make this fact more well known."

"I am most certainly not going to come out as an advocate for the tobacco industry -- I hate their sly tactics to increase addiction as much as I hate the anti-smoking lobby for creating fear," says Kirsten."What I am saying is that people who are happy smokers should not be bombarded with lies, damn lies and statistics to scare them into quitting."

"There are plenty of doctors who smoke but they are too cowed by the system to publicly counteract the anti-smoking propaganda," says Kirsten. "Like me, they are supposed to set a good example for the community in relation to healthy living but unlike me they have more to lose from the exercise."

"They believe it's better to keep quiet, keep a low profile and in time -- like alcohol prohibition -- the focus will go off smoking onto something else," sighs Kirsten. "They are probably right -- it's just a fad -- but I still believe it's unfair to jerk smokers around and rip them off."

"Here in the public health system I don't see any of the extra taxes being ripped off smokers being spent to pay for the so-called costs of 'smoking-related diseases'," says Kirsten. "So, if you expect your smoking dollars to ensure good treatment in hospital should you develop lung cancer or copd in old age, forget it."

"I've known many smokers who lie about being smokers when they need to come to hospital for some minor treatment," says Kirsten. "It's medically unwise, but understandable within a punitive system fed by anti-smoking hysteria where you're treated badly if you admit to being a smoker. Would you freely admit to being a Jew in a Nazi German hospital with someone like Dr Mengeles likely to treat you?"

"Forget about heart disease in smokers, it's lack-of-heart disease that's the real problem with our society."

capitalize on beauty not obesity

Gaynor is 22, just out of college and newly married. She is well aware that men are hired on qualifications and women are employed on their physical appearance, and she's gearing her job search towards making sure that employers pay attention to her beautiful face rather than her overweight body.

"From the neck up I'm OK," laughs Gaynor, "and I'm not worried about my weight at all. It didn't stop me finding a great guy, and it won't stop me finding a great job."

Without her husband's support, though, Gaynor would be having a really bad time looking for work.

"He's an ace guy," explains Gaynor, "and says I don't have to work, but I really want to get the house paid off as quickly as possible so that we can start a family."

Gaynor has read just about every book on the market about job hunting, and all of them seem to say that it is not considered proper to include your photograph in your CV.

"Well, for men maybe that's good advice," says Gaynor, "but for women it's very bad advice as it's totally inconsistent with what employers really need to know about you."

"Let's face it," she says, "men are employed on credentials but women are employed on their physical appearance."

Gaynor has discovered that she's gained more opportunities for interviews since she's included an image of herself on her CV.

"You should never send a regular photograph," laughs Gaynor, "just a small digital image that you insert at the top left hand corner of your CV."

Gaynor would be the first person to admit that she's playing on her beautiful face to get a foot in the door, and it works. Before she got smart and changed her CV to include a picture of herself, she never got invited to interviews.

"Two out of three job applications I send with a photo-CV are acknowledged with an interview," says Gaynor. "And whether or not I get the job doesn't matter. It's getting a foot in the door that's important. They will remember my face and hopefully forget my body."

Prior to having her photograph professionally taken and included in her CV, Gaynor had relied on two basic CVs that she altered slightly for every job she applied for. And she had no luck whatsoever. Not one interview.

"When everyone's CV looks the same, with just a name on the top that distinguishes it from everyone else's," explains Gaynor, "you really need an edge and a photograph is the way to gain it - especially if your face is your one good asset like mine is."

Gaynor had a choice to go to one of those glamor studios and have an airbrushed photograph of herself taken, but she chose instead to go to a regular photographer and have a natural picture taken. Of twenty shots, she chose one that she liked - actually the photographer chose another one, but she felt more comfortable with the one she had chosen - and had it digitally sized to suit her CV.

Until she figured out how to embed her image in a text document Gaynor had a lot of hassles sending the image-CV by e-mail. She send two files - her CV in doc format and the image in jpg format.

"Mainly, I prefer to target employers directly by snail mail because the image-CV looks fantastic in printed format," says Gaynor. "I could have printed it in color, but chose to go black and white instead because I feel that black and white photographs are generally more attractive than colored ones."

"What employers want to know about women is not whether they're raving beauties," says Gaynor, "but whether they're reasonably attractive. And just about every woman can make herself look reasonably attractive in a photograph. Nobody will guess in a million years from my photograph that I'm overweight, and I'm just banking on the fact that my face will launch me into an interview and ultimately a good job."

Usually Gaynor wears glasses but she took them off for the photo shoot. Of course, if she gets a job she's going to have to wear glasses but the object of the CV is to gain the employer's attention and get an interview, not to expose all her faults.

"Because education doesn't count for much these days, anything you can do to improve your chances of getting a foot in the door is well worth trying," laughs Gaynor. "And I don't believe that being overweight is going to disqualify me."

"I got a husband, didn't I?"

stress eating

Margaret is single empty nester, 51, who threw herself into being a success at work when her daughter left home. She thought it was really odd that she developed headaches and started eating twice as much when Mike joined her department at work.

"He was such a nice guy," explains Margaret. "All became clear when I got laid off and he got my job."

"He had been angling for my job all along, but I was too blinded by his apparent niceness to see the connection between him and the headaches."

She will never discount her intuition again, or numb her headaches with painkillers. Those headaches were telling her something she needed to pay attention to.

Margaret's job wasn't fantastic, but it was better than Mike's, so she should have intuited that he coveted it.

The first thing we all need to do in order to guard ourselves against manipulators like Mike is to take stock of our assets and take steps to value them and protect them.

Margaret’s self-esteem was low due to obesity.

"I didn't feel good about myself because I was overweight," explains Margaret, "and because I didn't feel good about myself I was unable to see my job as being of any importance to anybody."

The first thing she learnt as a result of being manipulated out of her job was to become more aware of her worth and assets and more assertive in guarding them.

"Self-esteem is a vital asset," advises Margaret, "so I've been building it up every day. It's no great secret that high self-esteem women rarely if ever get screwed."

Margaret has used her between-job period to good use. She's paying attention to her health, particularly her weight.

"The second thing I've been doing," explains Margaret, "is honing my intuition and learning body language. Not only does the behavior of screwers offer clues, but ours as well."

Paying attention to her obesity and doing something about it is a good way to concentrate on body language.

Margaret believes that our behavior is something we have a responsibility to monitor at all times. We must learn to trust our intuition.

"No matter how much it conflicts with logic - or whatever other people are telling you - if your intuition is giving you the feeling that something is wrong and your behavior is becoming erratic as a result of the conflict between thoughts and feelings," says Margaret, "stop whatever you're doing and listen to your inner voice. It's a survival skill that's there for a very good purpose. Use it. Never, ever suppress it or deny it like I did."

Margaret says that we all have an erratic behavior pattern that's activated when our intuition is telling us that something is wrong about a seemingly normal situation or a seemingly normal person.

Do you start blinking? Twitching? Stammering? Or do you go cold? Develop a headache? Get butterflies or a knot in the stomach? Or do you just 'go funny'?

"I certainly never discounted hunger, thirst, tiredness or terror," says Margaret, "but it is amazing how many women like me can discount their intuition."

"That's just another reason why screwers like Mike can screw us so easily," explains Margaret. "They know that fat women - especially older fat women - have low self-esteem and that all women, fat or not, have been conditioned to discount intuition with rationalization."

"Losing weight and getting in tune with my intuition has certainly changed my life," smiles Margaret. "The next job I get is going to be much better than the one Mike took."