Fat Myth #6 - Fat People are Stupid

Many people mistakenly state that humans have instincts. Human beings do not have instincts; only animals have instincts. Instincts are complex genetically encoded behaviors like nest-building. Humans have drives such as the drive to eat, have sex, seek physical comfort, companionship, etc.

When I mentioned this distinction to someone once after he asserted our human "instinct", he said that it was basically a semantic difference, but that is not true. The difference between a drive and an instinct is that a healthy animal can't resist it's instincts and that it is behavior it did not learn. A drive can be resisted, and we learn how to deal with our drives from our respective cultures. We see this all the time in people who choose to be celibate, starve themselves to death, or isolate themselves from others. We see these activities as difficult and often abnormal because resisting a drive is not only hard, but generally antithetical to the continuation of the species.

The reason I'm bringing up the idea of instincts and drives is that there is another distinction between them which relates to the idea that people who are fat are stupid. That is the fact that the relationship we have with our drives is an emotional one, and the one that animals have with instincts is not. Animals don't think about enjoying copulation. They merely do it because they are driven to do so. Humans attach a wide variety of emotions to how they act (or don't act) on their drives.

Eating is one of the stronger drives because it is required that we do it in order to survive. Sex, on the other hand, can be resisted without the risk of death on the part of the individual who is abstaining. That means we face our emotional relationship with eating much more often and form a more complex relationship with it than other drives.

Many people who are not fat conclude that fat people are too stupid to exercise proper diligence over their eating habits or exercise, but eating isn't something which is governed by intellect. It is emotional. Just as a woman generally cannot make an intellectual decision to be sexually attracted to a man merely because his relationship resume is perfect for her, a fat person cannot decide to not eat based on her weight. Sex and food are both drives we act on emotionally, rather than with our intellects.

There has been some evidence that links lower intelligence with higher weights, but saying being fat makes you stupid is a conclusion based on a correlation and causation error. More poor people are fat, but they are also less educated. Being fat doesn't make you stupid. Poverty is the common cause of both lower test scores and obesity. There may even be some other factors such as poor nutrition during ones formative years causing impaired intellectual development, but there is no evidence currently to support that.

The myth that fat people are stupid is just another way of attempting to justify fat bashing. The correlation between weight and intelligence is being manipulated to make it look as though weight links directly to intelligence, when it simply does not. Those who assert otherwise have an agenda which has nothing to do with concern about the negative effects of being overweight.

Fat Myth #5 - fat people stink

Some myths about being overweight have a basis in truth and some are merely prejudice in action. One of the ones that has somewhat of a factual backing is that fat people smell bad. Of course, it's not really the fact that being fat makes you stink, but rather that there are particular hygiene issues and people don't talk about them.

One of the main issues that people need to deal with is the overlapping of folds of skin and how that causes biological interactions that thinner people don't have to deal with. Moisture-related issues and less than attentive care to cleaning and especially drying after a shower or bath are a big part of the problem. Many women with large breasts, for instance, develop yeast-related rashes and odors under their breasts, especially in the summer.

Frankly, there are also issues related to going to the bathroom and people having problems cleaning or wiping themselves properly as a result of their size. There was (is?) a device created for people with handicaps or weight issues which allows them to put a piece of toilet paper on a stick to reach their behinds after defecating. If you're overweight and don't apply extra care in the toilet, there can be odor issues as well.

There's also the point of perspiration and related odors. Overweight people supposedly sweat more than people of average weight because they have to make more effort and heat up more rapidly due to excess insulation. Personally, that has not been my experience as I sweat very little. I've read that obesity can actually make sweating less likely because the extra padding impedes the sweat glands ability to bring moisture to the surface of your skin.

All of that being said, anyone who is not attentive to the peculiarities of their own body chemistry or problems can smell bad. It's not really about being fat as it is about being less than careful about hygiene. I think overweight people may give up sometimes or not fully understand that their problems do not have to be inevitable. For instance, baby powder between any skin folds helps a lot with moisture and yeast problems. Also, being very careful to dry your body thoroughly and to clean every crevice eliminates many problems.

Also, frankly, overweight people sometimes believe that they smell in ways that thin people do not, when the truth is that everyone can have the same issue. There was a discussion on a popular weight loss forum about belly button odors and many women seemed to believe it only happened to overweight people. The truth is that it happens to everyone.

When I was around 12 years old, a good friend of mine and her sister had an exchange about this fact. My friend told her sister (both she and her sister were of normal weight) to put her finger in her belly button and then to smell it. She told her that it would smell like her (foul word for vagina). So, not only does it happen to people of normal weight, but also to relatively young people as well.

People don't talk about these things much though because it's considered too gross. There are web sites and products designed to help people of average weight handle particular hygiene problems like foot odors, bad breath, etc. (problems I have never had), but very little in the way of instruction or targeted products for handling issues related to having excess weight. The bottom line though is that being fat does make you smell bad; poor hygiene makes you smell bad and that can happen to anyone of any weight.

Fat Myth #4 - fat people are lazy

The general thinking about fat people is that they got that way because they were too lazy to move. I don't think that we can blame The Simpsons depiction of Homer as someone who spends his free time lazing on the sofa watching T.V. eating pork rinds or chips, but it sure isn't helping.

I can't speak for everyone who is overweight, but I rarely watch T.V., let alone do so while snacking on salty treats. Personally, I've known far more thin people who act like couch potatoes than fat ones. In terms of sloth, I have never witnessed a clear difference between people based on body weight. In fact, my husband is unabashedly a lazy person, and I rarely rest. That doesn't mean my activity is aerobic, but I'm always working on something. How can I be "lazy" if I never stop working?

The difference tends to come in when one looks at structured exercise. A lot of overweight people don't go out and jog, attend gyms, etc. Many people believe this is an indication of innate laziness and a lack of concern for one's well-being. That's a pat judgment which I believe rarely reflects reality. Most people who are overweight and sit around snacking at night have boring jobs that wear them out, kids to look after who tax their free time and energy, or, and this has been an issue for me, have a fear of going out in front of others and moving.

I've wanted for quite some time to just go out and walk for as long as I can everyday as a form of exercise which I can manage at this stage in my weight loss plan, but I had to work up a lot of courage to do so. If you can't guess why, then I'll tell you a little story from my youth that sums it up pretty well. One of my friends was a year or so younger than I and reported a situation that occurred in her class one day. They were in English class and my gym class was playing softball outside their window. When I came up to bat, the kids in her class had a high time making fun of me and how I was fat, slow, and not very good at playing. To his credit, her teacher defended me as someone who was smarter and harder studying than the lot that were mocking me (bless his heart and soul).

The point here is that any time a fat person tries to exercise in public, he or she has to face public judgment and mockery. Instead of people looking at the fat man out there trying to jog so he can lose weight and improve his health, they're tittering, whispering behind their hands or out and out making fun of him. If you knew that you were going to be belittled and humiliated every time you tried to engage in a physical activity, would you be out there engaging in it? In the end, one can exercise at home, but that requires a different sort of motivation. It isn't as healthy or enervating to jump on an exercise bike or elliptical trainer in your basement. Leaving the house is a cue for movement and gets you out of the environment which you are usually distracted in. Staying in it is a situation which requires you to cope with whatever else may interrupt your exercise like other people's demands, the phone, the doorbell, or nagging notions of what needs to be done around the house.

Fat people are not slothful. They work plenty and move plenty. If you don't see them exercising, then it probably has to do with society's attitudes toward watching them move. It's hard enough when your body is large and ungainly to exercise without the added notion that you're some sort of comedy floor show for the world.

Fat Myth #3 - fat people have (or will have) diabetes

These days, you hear a lot about diabetes, particularly type 2 which some people develop as they get older and their bodies change. This topic has been at the root of tasteless jokes about people having hands and feet chopped off due to continued sugar consumption in the face of diabetic problems. The Simpsons, for instance, created a character called "Diabetty".

Because weight does affect one's chances of developing type 2 diabetes, there's an assumption that any obese or overweight person is at serious risk of developing it. While it is certainly true that being overweight increases your risks of contracting a variety of diseases, it isn't a lock that you're going to be a diabetic if you are fat.

Every time I discuss health with a doctor or a thin person, they're absolutely shocked that I don't have diabetes because they believe fat = diabetic. If I've been fat most of my life, then of course I must have developed this problem. The truth is that there are a lot of people who are thin who develop it, too. In fact, I've known more moderately overweight to thin people with diabetes than very fat people.

My entire family is overweight and not one of them has diabetes. I'm not trying to undermine the seriousness of weight and type 2 diabetes, but it's wrong to think that every fat person will ultimately suffer from it. It's a myth that is perpetuated in large part to frighten fat people into losing weight. Trust me when I say if the daily humiliation, disgust and anger you experience as a fat person can't push you to lose weight, fear of developing diabetes isn't going to do the trick.

Fat Myth #2 - fat people eat constantly

On the T.V. show "Friends", the character of Monica Gellar used to be fat, but lost weight and kept it off in her late teens. Sometimes, the show does flashbacks where Courtney Cox puts on a fat suit and we see her as she supposedly was as a fat girl. They showed her eating all of the time and ordering food deliveries just for herself.

The idea that fat people eat all of the time is, at best, a half truth. The notion that they are eating a lot in front of other people is a complete lie. Most fat people are like alcoholics. They eat in secret and often in mindless binges which provide psychological comfort. The last thing a fat person wants to do is to be seen gorging because he or she will be seen as disgusting for having the audacity to eat while being fat.

In fact, when I was in high school, I wouldn't even eat lunch in front of the other students. In a move that I'm sure screwed me up good and proper on the metabolic front, I wouldn't eat all day and then binged from around 4:00 pm when I got home from school. To this day, I won't eat much in front of other people and I don't even want my husband to necessarily see how much I eat because it's humiliating to be seen as enjoying food. No matter how little or what I eat, I'm embarrassed about it because of the shame of being a fat person who actually eats.

So, the whole idea that fat people eat all of the time is just as wrong as the notion that an alcoholic keeps a flask of liquor in his pocket at all times for fortifying nips or a drug addict walks around with needles stuck in his arm. Of course, fat people eat too much, but they tend to do it all at once rather than in view of judging eyes or around the clock.

Fat Myth #1 - fat people eat junk food all the time

One of society's myths about fat people is that they got that way cramming their maws full of junk food. In particular, they think that we're sitting around eating McDonald's or donuts all day. The truth is that I didn't get fat from any such thing. In fact, even to this day, I rarely eat fast food of any kind and I definitely didn't grow from being a skinny kid to a fat one through such food.

My transition from skinny to fat kid came on the heels of a high refined carbohydrate diet and heavy consumption of full fat milk. We got milk cheaply directly from a local dairy. We took old milk jugs that we'd washed out and they'd fill them up from their vats. The milk was therefore completely unprocessed and so fresh that it was warm. There was no way my family could have purchased low fat milk, which would have to be processed, as cheaply as this full fat milk.

My mother used to make huge vats of mashed potatoes laced with margarine, homemade white bread, cheap store brand macaroni and cheese, noodles with biscuits, etc. We were far too poor to be eating out or having treats all of the time, so this is what got us all fat. In fact, one of the reasons poor people are often fat is that these refined carbs are cheaper than protein and whole grains. I know that's not what the judgmental sorts want to believe, but I have firsthand knowledge of what made me fat, and it wasn't fries, burgers, or Hostess cakes. My mother never bought any of those things.

The thing is that the more of those cheap, white carbs you eat, the hungrier you get. They screw with your blood sugar and insulin levels such that you just want to eat more and more. And my mother never met a meal which she wouldn't overcook for. Every meal for the 4 members of my family had enough carbs for 10 and enough cheap, overcooked meat for 6. That meant that when the blood sugar drop hit, there were plenty of leftovers in the refrigerator to re-carb up on for the rest of the evening. It didn't help that my mother thought that 5:00 pm was dinner time so you had the rest of the night to eat more as you went through waves of carb-induced lows and highs.

One of my favorite snacks as a kid was toasted white bread spread with mashed potatoes. Once when I was very hungry, I went for eating uncooked spaghetti over any type of food in the house. Such was the strength of my carbohydrate cravings that I'd crunch down a stick of spaghetti to feed my need.

So, I'd like to dispel the myth that people get fat on junk food. It often does not start out that way.