I am sick to death of hate mongers claiming that their fat-bashing is motivated by concern for their fellow humans' health. If they were truly concerned, they would not trot out venom and vitriol every time the subject arises. Even if their concern were as genuine as they tell themselves it is, the "facts" that they hold as though they were handed down on divinely-inscribed tablets are questionable, to say the least.

There are a dozens medical studies pretty much proving that most of the conventional wisdom about obesity is myth and that much of one's tendency to gain weight is hereditary. It was recently proven that a low-fat diet doesn't even protect women from disease.

I'm seriously considering suing Lucasfilm for royalties for basing the Jabba the Hutt character on my baby pictures. (OK, not seriously, but the resemblance is striking.)

Dieting is a multi-billion dollar business. Even most obesity researchers are funded by the diet industry.

What this means is that the studies are not scientific in the sense that they seek the truth. They are designed specifically to "prove" that fat is unhealthy. In any other discipline, that front-loaded conclusion would be laughed out of peer review as junk science.

Skinny <> Healthy. When was the last time you saw an obese junkie? How many people have you met in your life who eat garbage in huge quantities while lying around the house and who look all but skeletal? I've known several. They have the metabolisms of hummingbirds. Everyone accepts that their bodies just work like that. Why can't they accept the opposite? Some of us are Humvees, going half a block on a 1000 calorie and others are Priuses, and could walk 100 miles with the same 1000-calorie expenditure. (OK, slight hyperbole, but you get the analogy, nonetheless.) We don't all function the same way and shouldn't be expected to conform to an ideal that has no basis in our individual realities.

Don't bother with the "Law of Thermodynamics" argument. Even if humans were "closed systems," scientists have discovered that the human body has quirks that can't really be explained in the lab (yet).

Yes, as a nation, we are getting heavier, but we're also getting taller and possibly more muscular. (I'll bet you never saw Donna Reed hitting the gym.) As muscle is denser than fat, a taller, more muscular person will weigh more than shorter, fatter one. Even if there is more "fat" than "muscle" in the increase, if obesity is such a freakin' "epidemic," why are death rates dropping sharply even as we, as a nation, get heavier? Could it possibly be that fat is not the demon we've been led to believe?

In my case, Henry Ford himself called my grandfather "the biggest Ford dealer East of the Mississippi" - all 400 pounds of him. I have obesity on both sides of my family, so I'm fighting a losing battle out of the gate. I have been diagnosed with a "sluggish" thyroid, but it goes untreated because I don't want to have to go to the doctor every six weeks to get a new blood test and a prescription renewal. As for the claim that someone made that most doctors automatically test for hypothyroidism in obese patients, that's simply not true. If a patient presents with multiple symptoms (not just weight, but sleep disturbances, hair falling out, etc.) a doctor may grudgingly agree to the simpler of two known tests. This test does not detect sub-clinical hypothyroidism which is fairly common. Thyroid problems also become more common with age. Most heavy patients have had the experience of being told that losing weight will solve their medical problems, regardless of the problem presented. I was once told to go on a diabetic diet because there was "nothing but post-nasal drip" wrong with [me]." Well, when I banned the smokers at work from my work area and put in an air filter, I suddenly got better without losing an ounce! Overweight and obese people frequently receive sub-standard care because their doctors can't see beyond the number on the scale.

A Yale study on the stigmatization of obesity found that not only were the obese judged harshly, so were those who associated with them.

"On both implicit and explicit measures, health professionals associated the stereotypes lazy, stupid and worthless with obese people," said Dr Schwartz.

"The stigma of obesity is so strong that even those most knowledgeable about the condition infer that obese people have blameworthy behavioural characteristics that contribute to their problem, i.e. being lazy," she said.

"Furthermore, these biases extend to core characteristics of intelligence and personal worth."

In response to that study, Dr Ian Campbell of the UK's National Obesity Forum stated:

"It is disappointing but it is not surprising to see that health professionals have the same ingrained prejudice against obese people as the general public," he told BBC News Online.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that as much as 80% of people who are obese are predisposed genetically.

"Although it is very rare to find a case where obesity is purely genetic, there are many cases where it is not in the patient's control."

As for genetic predisposition of obesity, there are numerous studies of twins separated at birth whose weight is comparable regardless of the lifestyles of their adoptive families, even when corrected for social and economic factors. That is, both twins will be fat or slender, regardless of the financial status or the eating habits of their respective adoptive families. The most famous of twins studies was performed by Dr. Albert Stunkard at the University of Pennsylvania in 1990, and studied both separated twins and those raised together. It included both identical and fraternal twins.

They found that the identical twins, whose average age was 58 at the time of the study, had nearly identical body-mass indices, whether they were reared apart or together and that the fraternal twins varied much more, even if they were reared together. This means that ''almost all the differences in weight between members of a population are due to genetic differences,'' said Dr. Jennifer R. Harris, a researcher with the study who is from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

You may be able to convince yourself that that's coincidence. I don't buy it.

Recent studies show that being above the "recommended" BMI actually DECREASES one's chance of death in relation to being under or at a so-called "normal" weight. To me, that says that our national perception of "normal" and "healthy" are set too low. According to the "recommended BMI," the following celebrities should drop a few pounds:

OVERWEIGHT:
Barry Bonds: 6'2": 228 lbs: 29
David Boreanaz: 6'2": 218 lbs: 28
Tom Brady: 6'4": 225 lbs: 27
President Bush: 5'11": 191 lbs: 26
Nic Cage: 6'1": 210 lbs: 28
George Clooney: 5'11": 211 lbs: 29
Tom Cruise: 5'7": 170 lbs: 26
Matt Damon: 5'11": 187 lbs: 26
Johnny Depp: 5'7": 190 lbs: 27
David Duchovny: 6'0": 212 lbs: 29
Vin Diesel: 6'2": 200 lbs: 26
Cheryl Ford: 6'3": 215 lbs:27
Harrison Ford: 6'1": 218 lbs: 29
Brendan Fraser: 6'3": 234 lbs: 29
Richard Gere: 5'11": 187 lbs: 26
Ethan Hawke: 5'9": 172 lbs: 25
Hugh Jackman: 6'2": 210 lbs: 27
Lebron James: 6'8": 240 lbs: 26
Dale Jarrett: 6'2": 200 lbs: 26
Bobby Labonte: 5'9": 170 lbs: 25
Nick Lachey: 5'10": 180 lbs: 26
Karl Malone: 6'9": 259 lbs: 28
Dr. Phil McGraw: 6'4": 240 lbs: 29
Yao Ming: 7'6": 310 lbs: 27
Brad Pitt: 6'0": 203 lbs: 28
Keanu Reeves: 6'1": 223 lbs: 29
Cal Ripken: 6'4": 210 lbs: 27
Andy Roddick: 6'2": 197 lbs: 25
Will Smith: 6'2": 210 lbs: 27
Denzel Washington: 6'0": 199 lbs: 27
Bruce Willis: 6'0": 200 lbs: 29
Billy Zane: 6'2": 210 lbs: 27

OBESE:
Mel Gibson 5'9": 214 pounds: 32
Matt LeBlanc: 5'11": 218 lbs: 30
Mark McGuire (playing weight): 6'5": 250 lbs: 30
Donovan McNabb: 6'3": 240 lbs: 30
Steve McNair: 6'2": 235 lbs: 30
The Rock (Dwayne Johnson): 6'5": 275 lbs: 33
Arnold Schwarzenegger: 6'2": 257 lbs: 33
Sammy Sosa: 6'0": 220 lbs: 30
Sylvester Stallone: 5'9": 228 lbs: 34
Mike Tyson: 5'11 ½": fighting weight between 218-235: 30-32
Jesse "The Rock" Ventura 6'5": 255 lbs: 30.2

Mel Gibson obese? Please. I detest the man, but he's certainly not obese!

A famous study conducted in the 1960s in Roseto, Pennsylvania, a small town populated almost entirely by Italian immigrants, found that in spite of a high prevalence of smoking and a diet heavy in saturated fat, the town had a remarkably low incidence of heart disease. This fact was attributed to the closeness of the community and the persistence of communal rituals. "People are nourished by other people," wrote physician and co-author Stewart Wolf. Additionally, when younger members began to leave Roseto, those who were perceived as "overweight" by the general population started to have heart-related problems at approximately the same rate as other minority populations. So, were the heart problems a result of their weight or of being marginalized by society?

Anorexia and Bulimia cost the businesses $1.3 billion (that's with a "b") every year, yet people who suffer from those diseases are pitied, not vilified.

A great deal of the CDC's "societal health costs from obesity" figures were bogus. The CDC attributed any death of an overweight person to that person's weight, even if that person were 98 years old or hit by a bus. See The Emperor's New Crisis to see how the CDC manipulated the figures.

As for the "days of work lost," if I sprain my ankle, or catch the same bug that caused everyone else in the office to take time off, or have a baby, my lost time is attributed to my weight, where it wouldn't be if I were of a BMI under 25. For the past five years running, I, the "fatty" in the office, have clocked the highest number of hours worked in my company. My boss finally told me that I'm no longer allowed to work overtime, because those with families are taking advantage of my being single to foist all the crunch time work off on me. The slenderest person in the office is actually the one who has taken the most time off due to her health. I on the other hand, tend to be as healthy as a horse. I do have respiratory problems and fibromyalgia, but I had those when I was underweight, too. In fact, I had either strep or staph almost the entire time I was slender. I had to have a tonsillectomy at 22 to fix that problem.

What Everybody Knows About Being Fat is frequently wrong.

Until I see figures that say how much our national obsession with making everyone fit in the same (ectomorphic) mold costs the healthcare system related to anorexia, bulimia, malnutrition, depression, psychotherapy, and "healthy lifestyle" choices such as strains, sprains, broken bones, etc., I will not consider the "health care costs of obesity" a compelling argument for or against anything.

Besides, even if it were true that obesity were merely a matter of self-discipline, why should I have to obsess about food and exercise 8 to 12 hours a day (which is the only way I have ever maintained a socially-acceptable weight), making my life pretty much joyless just to conform to society's aesthetic preference? Why should I have to be miserable to look good just to avoid offending some stranger's sensibilities. I'm not killing kittens or bilking retirees out of their lives' savings. Why is it considered socially criminal to be aesthetically different? Should all ugly people be required to have plastic surgery? Who gets to make the call?

The last time there was such a national obsession with appearances, it was for blue-eyed blondes. That didn't work out too well for anybody

Of course, those who believe the hype will ignore all this and tell me that I and the (by their estimates) 188,424,911 Americans and who knows how many others worldwide are "delusional" because we insist that our experience doesn't match theirs.

I have decided that if my choices are to live emotionally starved or physically starved, I'll pich the former. I've done the latter and find that I'm happier alone and fed than starving and "acceptable" to strangers. As long as I feed them, my cats don't give a rat's ass about my BMI.