I feel as though I'm too jaded to participate in social discussions about obesity.

Fat people hurt my nurses. Lift teams are becoming mandatory on every inpatient floor because bariatrics has been over-capacity since it was opened.

Obese, frequent flyer CHF patients who just can't stay away from the ham and salty snack foods overburden cardiac care teams and emergency facilities across the board with issues that are entirely, 100% preventable. I know that they are entirely, 100% preventable because I have to take the same measures.

If a person has got so much visceral fat that it's intruding into their organs, can't sleep properly because fat is obstructing their neck and airways, then regardless of what else is going on with them physically, those issues have to be addressed because they affect everything else so drastically. Big people need more medication and more and more frequently anesthesiologists are refusing to do surgery on obese people because the line between 'adequate sedation' and 'overdose' is hair thin, if it exists at all.

I am currently heavier than I want to be. I have a complicated relationship with food and exercise.

Simultaneously there is no better example of personal responsibility than your own body. I can't run the miles for anyone else. I can't daily eat the veggie dish instead of the fried chicken and waffles for anyone else.

I do also want to say that there is a significant issue of classism involved in access to affordable, nutritious food. I say nutritious food and not calories because calories in all sorts of non-nutritious forms are abundant. Nutrition is harder to come by than raw kcal and is stratified by class to some degree.