Fat Woman is not a very good "morbidly obese" person. Fat Woman does not feel shame or find herself disgusting. Even worse, Fat Woman does not believe that her fat will bring about her certain death. Fat Woman agrees that her eventually death is a given, but if fat was an actual cause of death she would have been dead before she was ten years old. Certainly Fat Woman wouldn't have made it past 30 years if fat was an actual cause of dying.
Fat Woman also takes issue with the word "obese". Fat Woman considers its definition "excessively fat or fleshy" to be judgemental. What amount of flesh is excessive, and who decided that anyway? The root of the word "obese" is from the Latin "obesus". This means "to eat intensively" (ob- is "intensive", and "edere" is "to eat"). Fat Woman has done a fair amount of eating over the years but does not remember eating intensively for more than the occasional meal, or even for one extremely large meal that left her obese. Fat Woman ate until she was full. On calculating her rate of weight gain over 25 years Fat Woman ate an excess of just 134 calories per day. Fat Woman does not consider an extra 135 calories each day to be "eating intensively". 135 calories is a low fat Starbucks cappuccino.
Fat Woman has checked out the BMI (Body Mass Index) tables. Fat Woman is 5 feet 4 and a half inches tall, although she will claim 5'5" for the purposes of using the BMI tables. The highest "healthy" BMI is 24. To have a BMI of 24 Fat Woman would need to weigh 145lb (10 stone 5lb) or 65.9kg.
According to measurements of weight and body fat composition the lean mass of Fat Woman's body is 70kg. If Fat Woman has a body fat percentage of 30%, the highest healthy percentage for a woman her age, her weight would be be 220lb. Fat Woman's BMI would be 36 and she would still be classed as "obese".
Fat Woman thinks it is time to (1) stop pushing BMI as a measurement of body health and start pushing body fat composition instead and (2) find a better word than "obesity".
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