Dear anti-obesity person

I am overweight, bordering on the obese. I am happy. I pay for my food, be it convenience food that’s allegedly bad for me, or maybe from restaurants where I am encouraged to get value for money by eating as much as I can for a fixed price. If I want your help, advice or guidance I know where I can get it. But at the moment I don’t want it, and I feel like a second-class citizen when I see posters, adverts, and news item, all going on about how much obesity is costing the country. In days off work, in doctors’ time, in many other areas.

But I go into work as much as I can, and if I have too many days off I’ll get fired. I pay for my doctor and health services through an insurance plan. I look after my kids and encourage them to be healthy, but also to be happy, have a great childhood, and as they get older, to make their own independent choice as to their dietary habits, their goals, and what they choose to believe and heed from experts, scientists, politicians, and others who believe they know best.

All you people got to me so much at one point, when after endless programmes about the evils of over-eating, I overheard people talking about me in the café. I was so embarrassed that I went on a diet. Did more exercise. I lost weight. I was miserable. I was moody. I refused to take happy prescription drugs to give me a false glow on the world. I actually got depressed and started having more days off work than I ever did when I was round and jolly. Sorry, I mean overweight and a burden on the country and everyone else who was normal size or smaller.

I gave up smoking a few years ago when the link between heart diseases and cancers and smoking became too much to ignore. That’s when I started putting on weight. So addresses of my open letter, what would you have me do? Lose weight and be less happy? Will that make you happy and stop crashing in on my life and those of work colleagues and others by making them point the finger and say that I am a burden on society? My family and my friends prefer me to be overweight and happy. I make them happy that way.

Well, that’s got that off my chest, but not my waistline. I know that there are some people who really do need your help, but please target them, and don’t throw out advice, views, and opinions on overweight people making out that you are trying to help them all, when you are actually humiliating and alienating some of them. Thank you for taking the time to read this.