Lisa Rapley responds to Dr Sarah Burnett's claim that being obese "is a choice". Her take on it? The doctor's wrong.

Last week Dr Sarah Burnett wrote a scathing piece deriding fat people. People like me.

It started like this, "Being morbidly obese is a choice. There, I've said it. I know it won't make me popular, that many will accuse me of "fat-shaming", while others will argue that being grossly overweight is a disability, and who chooses to be disabled?"

Quite frankly, I think this is horrendous, especially coming from someone who works in the health sector. On Friday when it appeared on Stuff.co.nz, her opinion piece made me so angry that I could hardly read it. Then I decided she shouldn't be allowed to speak into the vacuum without someone setting her straight.

So here it is: I do not choose to be morbidly obese. I am just fat.

I could detail everything I have done to lose weight since I was 14 to try and convince you that my weight is not a choice, but I'll give you the short version instead.

FROM DAY ONE

I have been told my entire life I am fat. I came out of my mother a whopping 11 pounds. Nurses at the hospital would offer to change me because putting nappies on me was easier than on the smaller babies.

As a teenager, society continued to tell me I was fat, that I was not normal, but mostly that I should lose weight.

I was 14. Are these appropriate things to be telling someone at such an impressionable age? No.

For the next decade, I went from diet to diet, trying to lose weight, trying to be smaller. I tried Atkins, Weight Watchers, juice diets and cleanses. I tried starving myself and I tried pushing myself so hard at the gym that I would almost collapse.

Yet the weight always stayed.

DEPRESSION FOLLOWED, BUT WHY?

When I finally gave up on trying to lose weight, I had just finished university, I was clinically depressed and felt that my life was going nowhere. I almost gave up.

A common belief by many was that my depression was caused by my being overweight. Obviously fat people can't be happy, can they?

Have you ever thought that maybe I was depressed because society was constantly telling me I was not normal? That essentially, me being me, was not okay.

Instead of giving up, I got help. Antidepressants and the pill helped my moods. However, the adverse effect of these two medications saw me put on even more weight. And for the first time in my life, I didn't care. If the weight was going to be there, it was going to be there.

THE THING THAT TURNED MY LIFE AROUND

Maybe it was the medication, or maybe it was just a general shift in my mentality, but life started to turn around. I got my first real job and met my now fiance.

When we moved to Australia in 2012, I came across the blogging challenge Aussie Curves. By participating in the outfit challenges and talking with other plus size women that blogged, I started to feel more confident in my body. I was not alone. I found I could wear nice clothes that made me look and feel good.

It was a revelation. I didn't need to lose weight to be happy, I needed to change how I thought about myself and be comfortable in the skin I was in.

That is the lesson to take away from this. Plus size bloggers are not glorifying obesity and saying it is okay to be fat. We are saying it is okay to be happy with who you are, no matter what size clothes you wear.

Society screaming at us that we should lose weight, and that we are not normal is bullying, plain and simple.

It's what the typical school-yard bullies do (and what I encountered at school).

Does society accept the criticism of someone who is different? That has a mental or physical disorder? No. So why bully fat people?

MY FITNESS & DIET ROUTINES

Additionally, obesity is not a disability. I am capable of doing many things "normal" people are capable of. And then some.

I recently bought a FitBit to measure how much exercise I was doing. The stats tell me I average 8000 steps per day. This is around 5km of walking and, being Wellington, obviously some of that is uphill.

My stair count averages 14 flights a day and I'm active for an average of 39 minutes a day. This is actual walking, FitBit doesn't include the short walk to the kitchen or bathroom in active minutes.

It is actual, physical, pounding the pavement activity. I know I could be doing more, but this is a work in progress.

I am not under the illusion my weight is going to start falling off. No matter how much exercise I do, no matter how little I eat my weight is going to stay with me. I can tell you that because I know MY body.

That's another point, it is MY BODY. It is not your body, you do not have a claim on it. It is my body and mine alone, so only I can dictate what I do with it. You, Joe Bloggs, are not allowed an opinion when it comes to my body.

THE LINES I HEAR TOO OFTEN

And if you are going to use the "my taxpayer dollars will pay for your obesity related illness" line, well, my taxpayer dollars are paying for it too. Oh, and my personal health insurance.

Another popular school of thought when it comes to people who are overweight is to tell them to exercise more and eat less. If it was that easy, don't you think that would have worked?

Also, at the size that I am, I am the happiest, fittest, healthiest I have ever been. Do I want to lose weight? Sure, who wouldn't? But I'm not going to beat myself up about it if I don't.

At one point, Burnett says, "...if any of these girls were my daughter, I would be telling her the truth about what lies ahead."

Do you think we are ignorant and stupid? No, we are smart, successful women who are well aware of what health issues could lie ahead for us.

I know exactly what my health may be like in the future, which is why I am trying to live a healthy life, not go from one diet to the next.

Which brings me to my next point - do people honestly think we sit around stuffing our faces with takeaways, lollies and chocolate all day? Um…. no.

I will say that there was a time in my life where the food I was eating was not healthy. But that has changed.

I'm not going to go into all the details about my diet, but I will say this - I eat like a normal person. Do you honestly think that I eat takeaways every night for dinner? That I'm constantly shoving my gob with chocolate and candy and everything deep-fried? No. It's not sustainable.

Do I eat takeaways? Yes, occasionally. Mostly our dinners consist of some form of meat, a carb and vegetables, all home cooked. Lunch will be something light, like a sandwich or wrap, while breakfast is usually a coffee and a bagel. Do I eat between meals? No. Do I have the occasional treat? Yes.

I am in no way saying that there is not an issue with obesity, it's well-documented that our body size has been getting bigger, but to assume that every fat person is ignorant and doesn't care about their health is just making the issue worse. Additionally, to call it an epidemic like Burnett does, is wrong.

Epidemic is defined as "the rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less."

You can't catch obesity and it definitely takes longer than two weeks to happen. Trust me, it's taken me a good 10 years to put on this weight.

My final issue with Burnett is that she has a go at the plus size fashion industry. It's expected of me that I wear clothes when I leave the house and go to work. Is it so much to ask that those clothes fit my body?

And as a woman in my 20s, I don't want to wear some ghastly floral muumuu. I want fashionable clothes that I feel comfortable in.

So, I'm not proud that I'm overweight, but I am proud that I've got the confidence to wear what I want, and that I am comfortable in my own skin.

Isn't that more important?

Lisa blogs about plus size fashion at lisarapley.com.