p0ink, I'm going to stop speaking with you.
It doesn't do any good at all.
Go on and hate people. You do anyway. If it weren't us, it would be someone else.
To the guy who posted about self acceptance, you are preaching to the choir. *I* feel better about myself these days, but it took me ten years to do that ... ten years I spent *listening to people put me down for this and that,* and getting fat on the side.
What I am trying to tell you is that not everybody is there yet in having a positive self image. People don't get where I am today by osmosis. It is pretty damn difficult to change your outlook on life when the entire world is as cruel as they can possibly be, your looks are all you are, and everyone thinks that is OK. Can't we please HELP people out with this, instead of blaming, shaming, and hurling more insults??? Is it THAT tough???
WHO CARES HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY! Is it so difficult to be kind to someone worse off than you? Must we go out of our way to make someone's life as miserable as it can possibly be? Must it be as hard as it can possibly be for people to find the right information to help themselves? And I can't believe, no, I just can't believe someone could come onto this board or anywhere else and say that someone suffering with a potentially fatal, miserable disease should be left to die just because "it's all their own damn fault, and they don't have any money." That is heartless. I work in veterinary medicine and we treat DOGS that way, not people. And from some of the posts here, some of you seem to have more empathy for the dogs. If it were you, say, with a drug problem or some such, would you want to be left for dead in a gutter somewhere, because "you did it to yourself??"
This sort of attitude reminds me of something that happened just last week where I live. A woman jumped off of a bridge at midday and killed herself. The policeman who spent over an hour with her out there on that bridge trying to talk her down reported that motorists, stopped on the bridge because of the incident, were yelling, "Jump, bitch!" and even worse things at this desperate, suffering person. Why? She was holding up traffic and they absolutely had to get somewhere!!!
I see echoes of that very attitude, man's inhumanity to man, right here.
It's all part of the same thing, folks. How are we ever going to get along and stop all the fighting in the world with attitudes like this?? For some people the hot button is religion, for some it's sexual orientation ... and for some it's plain old weight. Well, they're fat (they're Arabs, they're Muslims, they're Jews, they're gays), they don't deserve to live, let's just let them die. Who deserves to live??? ONLY THE PEOPLE WHO ARE JUST LIKE ME!!!!
p0ink, I hope that if you ever have some situation in your life where you are in some sort of mental or emotional trouble, you encounter more compassion from people than you've shown here. If everyone in the world acted like you we'd have blown ourselves into the nuclear winter back in the sixties.
In closing, may I please point out:
Maybe it is true that everyone can be thin. I don't know. But making it a pillar of my self esteem, such that I hated myself if I wasn't, has done nothing to help motivate me to eat right and exercise. I personally do much better with these things if I focus on the other benefits and don't have a goal for how I look. It makes sense that if we are trying to eat right and exercise and are having difficulty staying motivated, we do whatever works for us instead of what works against us.
Lastly, everyone is down on us for not actively pursuing The Holy Grail Of Weight Loss on that board. Why is it that, if we are fat, every place we gather has to be about weight loss?? Some of these people are involved in weight loss efforts elsewhere. We just don't bring it to THAT board. It isn't the place. That's all.
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