Hey, I'm obese

I know that's a big surprise, but after checking my weight today, I also decided to look at a few other measurements. Well, one -- BMI. If you have any reservations about your body fat percentage, the BMI is a shaky tool to use. Bodybuilders count as obese using the BMI because their muscle isn't considered. When you have no questions that fat makes up your weight, it's okay.

What I found out today is that I am no longer morbidly obese. I'm just obese. Let's celebrate! Woo-hoo! It's party time! Irony aside, there is part of my brain that is having to readjust to being less than 100 pounds overweight. Granted, I'm damn close to that, but I remember clearly the day a doctor told me that I was morbidly obese and the deep sense of shame and failure I felt. I was 27 years old. He told me that I'd be lucky to live until forty without major health complications, like diabetes or a heart attack. Well, I'm 47 and high blood pressure manageable by medication is the most serious health problem I have that can be related to my weight. We'll just not mention all the other things that it could be related to, like age, since blood pressure was never a problem until lately.

Those words, morbid obesity, are just so grim. They make it sound hopeless. Honestly, it sounds like a death sentence, and there are plenty of people out there who would say that it is. The unintended side effect of that for me was it helped lead me to thinking that there was no point in trying. I felt too far gone to salvage, and all I could do was deal with the wreckage.

What ticks me off is the vagueness of the definition of morbid obesity. After browsing website after website full of meandering medical language, I finally found two somewhat clear definitions. The first was morbid obesity exists when a person is 100 or more pounds overweight. That sounds clear enough but it still failed to list an appropriate weight that one could be over, and height and weight charts hold great variance. The second was easier for me to handle than the first. A BMI over 39 is considered morbidly obese if you accept the validity of the BMI. Personally, I think the best definition is you're morbidly obese when you're the fat person that makes other fat people feel good about their looks.

So, I've changed labels and degrees of fatness. Now, it's up to me to reject the labels. Morbid obesity wasn't a death sentence for me, even though I was told it would be. Being fat hasn't stopped me from being beautiful, sexy, wonderful, appealing, etc. -- all those things I was told I never would be. Buying into the labels just made it hard for me to enjoy all of the above. I think I'll really have this healthy living thing down when I quit checking what the "official" standards are and know just from my own body.

morbid obesity