Finally got a post at Rosie's

I've been reading Rosie O'Donnell's blog since she joined The View a couple years ago. Every once in a while I'd try to send her an "Ask Ro," but she gets thousands of questions and comments, and it was a bit like trying to win the lottery. I really thought I'd never ever get picked.

One thing has bothered me, and I don't know why this has happened. Somebody got to her. I don't know if it was the negative attention during her time at The View, or if some doctor has convinced her any "excess" weight is bad, but she has slipped over to the dark side of dieting. On her old show, she used to say stuff like, "I don't know what I weigh...I don't weigh myself. Sometimes my clothes get tight, sometimes they get loose." More recently she's been more concerned with the need to lose some weight. Never mind the fact that she does pilates, she's active with her kids, her wife cooks healthy meals for them all...that diet talk was slipping into her responses to her fans. The "if only I were a couple size smaller" kinds of things. Not too dark, she still seems to be pretty reasonable about her perception of her self. Still, it strikes a jarring note.

The other day, a woman named Lisa wrote, "If you were an obese person with high blood pressure, borderline diabetic, and sleep apnea, would you consider a bariatric bypass? I believe it's the only chance for me." Rosie's response seemed to suffer a technical difficulty, as it was only "h". I couldn't let that go. I had to try to get through to Lisa. For one thing, if Lisa gets her sleep apnea under control, it's sure to help with her high blood pressure and her metabolism, as well as the depressive negative self-talk. And just what does borderline diabetic mean? Could her experience be like mine, in which the doctor is labeling something as "pre-diabetes" which only a few short years ago was labelled "normal"? Even worse, did her doctor scare her into thinking bariatric surgery was her best option for better health? Ugh.

It actually took me several tries to get my note to Rosie submitted, the submit box kept getting hung up. I wasn't even sure if I got my message through. I wondered if she was actually reading emails at that moment, and that's how I got noticed.

And here it is, a screen shot of my lottery winning:
I got those links from reading Taking Up Space. There are truly some horror stories to be found at the Obesity Surgery Information Center. The so-called safer lap-band can leak, can block your esophagus, can deflate, can cause a bodily resistance to this foreign object. Of course you could die from surgery. Then, if the surgery happens without complications, you still have to live with the consequences of ill health caused by enforced starvation, such as anemia, wacked up blood sugar levels, fatigue, loss of teeth, acid reflux, and so on. One woman who once was healthy and fat now feels 20 years older than her 40 years, and has several of these complications.

I hoped the other website from Largely Postive would give Lisa, and Rosie, another view than that default of diet talk.

I really also wanted to point Lisa and Rosie to this article. As I learned from the series Unnatural Causes, stress due to oppressive conditions can cause all of these health issues that people like to blame obesity for: high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. I said that in the community meetings, and it says so in that article. I didn't have enough space though for a third link in my message.

It really is much better to be fat and healthy than to submit to a surgery that comes with a certain amount of risk, and leaves you with the necessity of limiting your food intake, that is, starving yourself, for the rest of your life, and vulnerable to anemia and vitamin deficiencies among other more nasty things. I brought my supposed pre-diabetes blood sugar level down to well into normal levels within a summer, and that was without eating less...it was simply by eating smarter and choosing more opportunities for exercise as part of my daily routine.