Karyn Traut: Weight a matter of health

Brava to Sarai Walker for her Feb. 15 column “Yes I’m fat. It’s OK. I said it.” In the 1950s and ’60s, 162 pounds at 5-feet-5-and-a-half was considered fat. I too received gratuitous insults from strangers on the street.

In 1970, I joined Weight Watchers and began my re-education on healthy eating. A half-gallon of ice cream as a snack was not a normal portion. Who knew?

More important, I learned about fat shaming of obese people. I knew people who’d never left their homes because of fear of ridicule simply for existing. How unfair!

People who smoked didn’t wear their black lungs on the outside of their chests. People who were addicted to spending could hide their baggage at home.

I am happy I lost the weight, but when people say to me, “You don’t look like you ever went to Weight Watchers,” I realize they are expressing an odd cultural bias. Could it be that they believe that somehow the inability to keep one’s weight “under control” will always be visible even when fat people become thin?

Weight is simply a matter of health. Whatever weight is healthy for one’s own body is all that matters.

This story was originally published February 22, 2016 at 5:15 PM with the headline "Karyn Traut: Weight a matter of health."