Fat bully police

By now, most of us have seen or heard of Kenneth Krause, the "man" who wrote a letter to an obese news anchor to tell her she is obese, and her response. Many people have many opinions on this but to me it comes down to this: Mr. Krause is an insecure loser who needs to bring down others to feed his own ego. Why would he write such as condescending letter, practically imply that   being fat equals not knowing you are possibly living an unhealthy lifestyle and he, as a buff bike rider, knows better and is here to help?

Trust me, Ms. Livingston knew she was obese just as I know I am currently overweight. And here is a dirty little secret -- fat people usually are very well informed about what foods are good for you and what are bad. We know how to count calories, and tricks to eat more food for our calorie buck such as chicken and fish over red meat and filling up on salads and vegetables. We know what foods are healthy and what aren't. And yet, we're over weight. That is our problem, not a complete stranger's problem.

We've all run into people like Krause whether it is the "do-gooder" offering unsolicited parenting advice, a person offering unsolicited advice to a stranger on how he or she can "fix" their appearance or speech pattern, telling a very thin woman she needs to gain weight or in this case, telling a fat person they are fat -- all as if the target is an idiot who does not already know the obvious. It is my experience that those type of people aren't being helpful, they are acting in such a way to make the recipient feel bad while giving themselves an ego boost, even if they don't see it in themselves. 

I still remember the time my wife and I took our son to a street fair 11 years ago, when he was 1 (it was a few weeks after 9/11) and, we were still learning the ins and outs of being parents (which we still haven't mastered but are much better at) and were still very nervous of whether we were making mistakes. Unknowingly to my wife and I, he had grabbed a clam shell from somewhere and was chewing on it. As he was much lower than our sight-line in his stroller, we didn't notice, but he couldn't have been doing this long as we usually looked down to see if her was OK every few minutes.  Anyway, a woman came up us to point this out. Now if she had been sincere she might have said something like, "Your son is chewing on a clam shell" to alert us, for which we would have been grateful. Instead, she asked me if a baby chewing on a shell was OK. When I mumbled a yes, trying to save face as my wife went for the shell, she replied "Well I'm a dental assistant and I know it is not." Really?! So why did you ask me the question in the first place? To make me feel bad as a failing parent and ruin our afternoon as she succeeded in doing? It was only later, when I rethought about the afternoon and noticed she had a smug look on her face (probably the same reason I don't like Romney, but that is another issue), that I realized she was the one with the problem.

Those who are confident in themselves would never make such a comment to a complete stranger but, as Mr. Krause is showing, and that dental assistant showed us over a decade ago, sometimes those with insecurities of their own look to beat on somebody weaker to make themselves feel better (which is probably something most people have done at some point in their lives). Maybe that type of intimidation doesn't fall directly under the definition of bullying but you can not convince me that deep down his behavior was not meant to hurt his target, just as the dental assistant did not want to hurt me. Maybe Mr. Krause, a "working-stiff" security guard, was being honest when he said he never meant to bully "a big media personality" like Ms. Livingston. And maybe the Pope isn't Catholic. Sorry Mr. Krause, but as anyone who has been bullied in the past could tell you, you know bullying when you see it and I sure saw it in your obnoxious letter. As one of my former professors constantly reminded us, "[i]f it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be a duck," even if it says it is not and your assertions that you want to help are as believable as Mitt Romney saying he was wrong when he made his 47% comment (I am of the opinion a politician really speaks the truth when he or she thinks that the cameras are not on, I'm sure President Obama has said some equally poor things when the cameras were off).

I have been on and off fat or obese most of my life. Even in my worst, denial days I knew I was eating unhealthy. It takes a lot of work to eat healthy and find the time to exercise, something very hard when you have small children. I'm not making excuses, just stating a fact. After a 12 hour day of commuting/working and helping your children with school work, it is much easier to just plop in front of the TV at night, or hit the snooze alarm in the morning, then to hit the treadmill for 30 minutes. It is so much easier to nuke some convenience food than to cook from scratch, even if all that cooking takes place over the weekend to be rewarmed during the work week as we do now. Again, no excuses. I chose a career with little physical movement and long hours that prevented me from finding time to exercise. We also chose to have children, taking more time away from ourselves. And, as many parents know, once you have children in the house, especially small children, that left over chicken nugget at 9PM, after a full day of work and child care, can be awfully tempting when you are exhausted and hungry. Again not an excuse, but also not the concern of a complete stranger.

Two years ago my weight was starting to get out of control. I'm talking NJ Governor Chris Christie out of control, almost to the point of no return without a surgical procedure, when I finally said enough is enough. Since then both my wife and I have taken off about 70 pounds each, changing our diet to mostly vegetarian and increasing our exercise time to (as of now) about 10 hours a week. It has taken a long time, and a lot of work but we feel better, which is what we want. We also look better, but it was what was inside that we wanted to improve. Our philosophy on food and exercise has changed for better, probably somewhat similar to Mr. Krause. We even look at fat people eating unhealthy with a bit of disgust, not because of their looks but because we see ourselves from not that long ago and know how we were poisoning ourselves.  Still, while I am happy to tell people I don't know, such as fellow obese gym members who have seen my weight loss, who ask me how I lost the weight, I would never walk up to somebody I did not know and offer unsolicited advice. The fat people know they are fat. They will deal with it, or not deal with it, as they please.

Staying fit is almost a second job, especially when you age and find yourself sitting behind a desk, a steering wheel or a bleacher at a child's sporting event most of the day. You start to find you don't have the time or energy to exercise like you did and it is easy to pack on the pounds before you realize you need to lower your calorie intake due to less movement (when my mother was initially confined to a wheelchair she quickly discovered how many calories you burn each day by simply walking). The only times in the last 20 years when we were fit were the years when we lived in Brooklyn, a childless couple, with plenty of time to walk and talk -- our happiest days were our mornings where we took a 20 minute walk over the Brooklyn Bridge to catch the subway in lower Manhattan instead of our corner,  a brief period between babies back in the aughts when we discovered we had a little extra time during the work week and the last few years, where we find we have the time and energy to once again take care of ourselves. It helps that this coincided with me being able to work at home more often. I find it ironic that just as we started eating better, my metabolism began the inevitable post 40 slowdown and wife, got breast cancer. 

Speaking of my wife, she is 5'6 and about 125 pounds. I can feel her bones when I hug her. She generally eats healthy and exercises about two hours a day, partially to deal with the stress of chemotherapy and partially because the exercise makes her feel better. She has become quite muscular the last few months. Yet, thanks to two children, she will always have a little belly. Guess what Mr. Krause, this is normal. You better learn to accept this otherwise I feel bad for whatever woman you sucker into mating with you.

Oh, by the way, the ability to store fat and not burn it off as fast would have been considered a major asset not that long ago, when most humans were not sure where or when their next heavy meal was coming. Fuel economy isn't just for cars, evolution has made sure humans can live on as few calories as possible and hasn't caught up to cheap food at 24/7 supermarkets. Those who can burn weight off just by thinking about it may have been the ones mocked as weaklings as their bodies  shut down due to lack of fuel.