CAROLYN HAX

Adapted from a recent online discussion:

Dear Carolyn:

Oh, help. Please. I need to lose a lot of weight: 60 pounds for a healthy BMI, but honestly 30 is a goal I'd be thrilled to reach. I am doing many of the right things in terms of portion control and exercise and am working my way up to more. So far it's yay, go me.

Here's the problem: I have been told my whole life that I was fat. My mother spent her life beating herself up for having hips and breasts, and it's only in recent years that I've been able to see past this inherited self-loathing. I was told by family and peers that I was a pig long before I ever got fat -- pictures of me in high school show a pretty, miserably insecure teen who had no idea that she was STACKED, not a hippo! If I had really been able to see myself in the mirror, I don't think I ever would have put on the weight to begin with.

So between that, and all the weight-loss stories about size 8's dieting themselves down to size 2, and drivel like the scathing piece about the "fat" (size 12) would-be beauty queen on the Web, I feel like I'm doomed before I even start.

I know, objectively, that every little bit helps and that I need to do this for my own health and well-being, not in hopes that some jerk on the street will for once refrain from calling me a heifer. But what it feels like on the inside is: What's the point? People will always think I'm a pig. So how do I stay motivated when for me the big goal has to be a size 12 or 14, not a size 6?

I wish people would finally realize that publicly shaming and ridiculing the overweight isn't helping any of us.

Weight, Weight, Don't Tell Me

I sympathize, and agree that most public discussion about weight is useless -- and that's only when it's not actively counterproductive. It goes without saying, too, that people who call you a pig are the ones who belong in a sty.

Yes, we are in the midst of an obesity surge, and it's shaping up to be (sorry) a public health crisis. However, losing weight is about as private an issue as there is. You are at the store, you are stocking the pantry, you are holding the fork.