Do Other People Treat you like you're very unhealthy?

[RiverRunning]

I've been working out and eating better for the past year. I eat a diet with little white meat and entirely vegetarian days at least 1 - 3 days a week. Processed food is kept to a minimum. I'm coming out of a two-month long plateau, as the scale finally started to drop again last week....

 

Now that I'm 70ish pounds lighter than my heaviest, people treat me totally differently. I don't have perfect strangers coming up to me and telling me I need to eat a salad anymore, anyway.

 

A store pharmacy near my home does health clinics once every month. I went yesterday to get a full work-up of my cholesterol and my fasting glucose.

 

A young medical student was observing the woman doing the work. He annoyed the crap out of me. He kept asking me what I do to work out, what I eat, etc. There was an air of disbelief when I told him what I ate. By that point, I was already in the mood to knock his teeth out.

 

My fasting glucose came out to 91. He immediately followed up this news with, "You really should get a hemoglobin A1c test. You could be diabetic still." I grit my teeth. While I appreciated learning about a new test for glucose, I did not appreciate how he ended up undermining what came out to be good health news. I felt like he was just bringing it up because he couldn't piece together that an overweight woman could wind up not having diabetes.

 

From there, I had my cholesterol tested. My numbers were excellent - 86 for LDL, 58 for HDL, 99 for triglycerides and 164 for total cholesterol. Once again he started asking me about my work-out routine. I explained several times that I work out 5 - 10 hours a week. He just continued to give me the advice of, "Well, if you just walk half an hour a day, you could get those numbers lower."

 

It seemed to me like he just couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that an overweight woman could have very healthy numbers. To the total exclusion of everything I told him, he just decided in his mind that I needed exercise advice.

 

I am glad that after seeing my cholesterol, he did say, "I wish I had numbers like that." I was tempted to ask, "Need any pointers?"

 

The woman who was running the clinic gave him glances several times. I got the impression that he was annoying her too. He was one of those know-it-all types.

 

The sad thing is, I'm mostly focused on losing weight for the aesthetics. Right now, I'm very healthy. But I just feel like at this point I should lose weight to make myself happier about my appearance...and so I can get people like "that guy" to shut up.

 

I'm just tired of everyone treating me like I'm an idiot and a walking heart attack.

 

Do any of the rest of you get treated like that?

[eerie_reverie]

I dunno... I've done blood screenings in a similar setting, and have been treated almost exactly like you describe. I am not overweight and have excellent stats, so I assume it is their job to convey this advice.

[oldshirt]

You are a work in progress and that is something to be proud of and admired for.

 

People who haven't been in your shoes simply don't understand. They may mean well but they probably also have this fantasy that you are just going to slap your forehead and explain, "Really? You mean all I have to do is eat healthy and exercise and I will be skinny and healthy??? I've never heard that before!!!!"