Sadie B. King, a 62-year old retired school teacher, was taken aback.

A cancer specialist actually used the word “obese” in explaining why King might have developed uterine cancer.

“Of course I was offended,” King said. “I always considered myself pleasingly plump. I never considered myself obese. In my mind, I was still the slim person I had always been. It never dawned on me that I was obese.”

And that’s part of the problem with obesity: There is a significant gap between the medical definition and human perception. It all depends on who is in the mirror. “It’s hard to look at them [very heavy people] and think you’re in the same category,” King said. “I’m skinny compared to them.” Full story

A couple’s battle of the bulges

Dennis Johnson didn’t see it coming. At 6’5” tall, he knew he could carry a few extra pounds. “I had a little beer belly,” Johnson recalled. But when the scale neared 300 pounds, he was shocked to learn that he was considered obese.

Obese?

Johnson said he pictured obese people as “big fat guys with guts hanging over their belts.”

But he soon realized that he too had become one of those “big fat guys. “I’m obese,” he now admits.

As a diabetic, Johnson could ill afford to neglect his weight and diet. And that is precisely what he proceeded to do by having his “own” plan. He figured, wrongly, that he could eat more if he exercised more. He learned the hard way.
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