Over the past few months I’ve noticed people being nicer to me.

It’s not as if I was the victim of any sort of cruel and unusual punishment or ridicule (at least not to my face) before I started losing weight, but I can discern a noticeable difference in how people react to my presence.

Several weeks ago I took my kids to the grocery store.  As we were going through the checkout line I noticed the cashier, who wasn’t bad looking, acting more friendly than usual.  She even sort of patted my hand, smiled very brightly and made deep eye contact as she gave me my receipt.  As we walked out of the store and through the parking lot to our car, the thought struck me, “Was that girl flirting with me?”

Yeah right, every middle-aged guy thinks/hopes an attractive twenty-something female will flirt with him.

Maybe I was just the victim of an over-active imagination or ego.  Perhaps that’s how that young lady interacts with all her customers.  Whichever is the case I do know this: People see and treat me differently now than they did eight month ago.

I’m not complaining.  Everyone wants to be treated with dignity and respect.  Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect.  And in a perfect world we all would be.

But we don’t live in that world.  (The sooner you come to terms with that the better off you’ll be.)

In this imperfect world obesity may be the most obvious yet unmentioned form of communication that is nonverbal.  Without saying a word or showing anyone your resume, being fat communicates to people that you don’t have any discipline, you’re lazy, you’ve let yourself go and you don’t care.

Whether or not any of that is true or kind is not the issue.  Whether or not people who think those thoughts are wrong to think those thoughts isn’t going to stop those thoughts from crossing their minds.  If you’re fat that’s what people think and they will treat you accordingly.

That sounds harsh, judgmental, cruel and mean – but that’s the way it is.

So, what are you going to do about it?

First of all, you’re not going to change anyone’s mind.  You’re not going to shame anyone into thinking any differently about you until you lose weight.  In this imperfect world that we live in you will be marginalized if you are obese.

Now, I’m not suggesting that conformity to society’s norms is the path to happiness for obese people or any other group that has been marginalized from the mainstream.  As a Christian I firmly believe that much of the call to follow Jesus is a call to go against the flow, to follow a path that is often countercultural and even counterintuitive.

There’s also plenty of evidence to suggest that our society’s ideal body type, especially for women, can be destructive and unrealistic.  God bless any woman who has or is struggling with an eating disorder.

So your answer to the question, “What are you going to do about it?” isn’t an invitation to lose weight or change any other self-destructive habit for the sake of fitting in.  I have this yet unproven theory of adult behavior that says we’re all still in high school – that adults still gravitate toward groups and treat people based on the mental template for social interaction most of us were given in adolescence – jocks, socials, freaks, geeks, etc., with the implied pecking order.  But there’s a lot more at stake here than being part of the in crowd at work, in your neighborhood or at church.

Most importantly, this is an issue of your physical health, of your quality of life and the length of that life on the planet.  If you are obese you are diminishing the quality of your life in ways that you are not even aware of and will not be aware of until you drop the weight.  I’m still a work in progress but I’m here to testify that life is better – so, so much better at 250 lbs. than it was at 365 lbs.

But my losing weight isn’t an exercise in narcissism.  It has improved the lives of my wife and kids.  Friends constantly tell me that I’m inspiring and challenging them.  Through this blog word is getting out to people I’ve never met and now they’re telling me that my journey is making a difference for them.

If you’ll lose weight there is a circle of influence you’ll have that will go way beyond the size of your waist.  You’ll have a lot more to give if you’ll just start losing.

So, I have to ask again, “What are you going to do about it?”  Will you play the role of the victim in an attempt to take the moral high ground against people who stereotype you because of your weight?  You may indeed capture that moral high ground but you may also be buried there because you died 20 years sooner than you should have.

You can’t kick the darkness and expect it to bleed daylight.  Regaining your health by losing weight or changing other self-destructive habits is much more satisfying than any sort of moral victory.  So quit trying to change people’s prejudices and change yourself instead.

You and the people you love will be much happier if you do.

Tim Adams

tim@timadams.net