Sprangles

This is what obese looks like:

I know I’m fat, but I hadn’t checked my BMI (Body Mass Index) for a while. It turns out it’s 33, and anything over 30 is considered obese. So that’s me.

For reasons that’ll hopefully be clear later I’ve been hitting the exercise a bit more seriously over the last 4 weeks to try and get my weight heading in the correct direction. The intention of making this photo public is that it’ll galvanise my determination to get my weight back down and keep it down.

So. Yesterday at lunchtime I read that article about fat people on planes and decided to write some stuff about it here. I wanted to share my experience of sitting next to a really fat guy on a plane, but clearly I should’ve put some more thought into it.

I got a lot of comments, loads of email and regular instant messages throughout the day today expressing pretty much every opinion:

• I should delete that post
• I should edit that post
• I should un-edit that post
• I should delete my blog
• I was an insensitive dick
• I was right on the money
• my thoughts are stupid
• people should harden up and deal with being fat
• people should harden up and deal with sitting next to fat people

I ended up saying a lot to different people over email and IM, so I figure it’s best to clear the air and say it here so everyone has the same story. I’ll try and keep it short:

1. I wasn’t really serious about tape measures and weighing people at check-in. I wasn’t clear that I wasn’t serious, and it wasn’t that funny to begin with, so it was a mistake to say anything at all. I offended a couple of people, and I really regret that.
2. I didn’t enjoy sitting next to that fat guy on that flight, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me talking about that. He really did have clammy flesh that grossed me out, and I really couldn’t reach my controls because his fat was on it. He was really fat in a “I wash myself with a rag on a stick” way — I’d say at least 180kg, probably more. It wasn’t my fault that we were in that situation, and I’m really unclear on whether it’s okay to blame him. He knew he was going to be crowding me out of my own seat, but I guess there’s not much he could do about it if he couldn’t afford another seat. I’m not really clear on why it’s not okay for me to be upset about being in that situation.
3. I should definitely not have made any sweeping derogatory statements about fat people (”put down the cheeseburger”, etc). That’s totally unfair to people who can’t control their weight because of physical or mental illness. I do and have always understood that so I have no excuses. It was dumb.
4. However, for everyone else who’s fat because they’re lazy (and I really think that’s the majority) I have absolutely no qualms about saying put down the fucking cheeseburger, stop drinking 2 litres of Coke each day, and go out and walk around the block. I’m justified in saying that because I’m one of them.
5. It’s unfortunate that it’s not possible to easily tell who’s fat from sloth and who has a medical condition. We heavily tax and ostracize smokers, so I have absolutely no issue with doing the same for fat sloths. If it were as easy to identify a fat sloth as it is to identify smokers then I think it’s fair game to make them pay more for flights and to put them in a special section of the plane with wider seats. And no, that is nothing like segregating people based on race, religion or sexuality. You have a choice to be a fat sloth, and that choice shouldn’t inconvenience people who chose not to be.

That’ll do for now.