But when I saw the advertisements for A&E’s new show Heavy (in between advertisements for Hoarders and Intervention, in case you were wondering about the tenor of the show), I really wanted to watch it. And, this time, to avoid yelling at the television, I decided to yell at the internet instead.

Episode one, “Tom and Jodi,” opens with this quote:

And here’s our first fact-check, before the show even properly begins. While 1/3rd of Americans are “obese” by the BMI (BMI of 30 or greater), only 5.7% are considered “extremely obese” (BMI of 40 or greater. I’m one of them. Hi!) The people featured on Heavy are in this weight category — it’s the highest one. Tom weighs 638 pounds and has a BMI of around 94. Jodi weighs 367 pounds.

If your BMI is 30, do you consider yourself debilitated by your obesity?

At a BMI of well over 40, I may sometimes move and bend a bit differently than thinner people, but I don’t really feel debilitated.

The most limiting thing about being “extremely obese,” for me, is being afraid to exercise in public because I am likely to be harassed (and have been. Thanks, random lady joggers and dudes in cars! You have successfully encouraged me to exercise and get healthy!)

That, and certain seatbelts. But at least the seatbelts don’t call me names.

The people on the show are not only fatter than 94% of the population, they exhibit very obvious signs of compulsive or binge eating. (Which the show repeatedly refers to in terms of “addiction,” something I have a problem with.) Whether or not they meet the clinical criteria for an eating disorder, these are disordered eating patterns. Most fat people do not binge eat, and many binge eaters are not obese. Conflating compulsive overeating with fatness is not just inaccurate, it can be dangerous.

Fat people going to doctors for non-eating-related complaints may be told to stop binge eating, even if they don’t binge eat. (I have been.) And thinner people who do experience binge eating — which is a type of eating that is not exactly optional, voluntary, pleasant, and definitely not the result of gluttony, greed, or general immorality — may go undiagnosed and untreated.

None of this is to minimize OR marginalize what Jodi and Tom experience. My intent is only to put into perspective a serious condition that the show’s creators obviously have tried to render commonplace — perhaps epidemic? — by suggesting that fully one-third of the US population lives and suffers like this.

If anything, this attempt to make the exceptional seem typical diminishes the seriousness of what these people experience. An audience of (potentially) 100 million “obese” individuals is likely to try and relate their experience as relatively unimpaired fat people to those on the show. And since many of those fat people will not have experienced compulsive or binge eating, or the immobility and physical challenges of being extremely large, they may be unable to empathize with these issues, and the fact that recovery is more than a matter of “willpower.” And, let’s be frank — like Hoarders and Intervention, this is likely to become a point-and-pity affair, not something that the majority of the audience can truly relate to.

Jodi and Tom are clearly in pain, and their weight definitely appears to contribute to that pain, both emotionally and physically. Their eating habits likely to contribute to their weight — but “contribute” is not the same thing as “cause.” Furthermore, the drive to eat compulsively is not under one’s control, and may even be the result of an underlying physiological imbalance, not just a psychological one.

Much of the emotional suffering described on the show is not even directly caused by the physical reality of extreme obesity. Rather, the pain described is often the pain of discrimination, social ostracization, and prejudice. Jodi describes giving up her career as a singer in a rock band because of the discomfort of standing on stage, knowing that people in the audience were judging her. Tom hasn’t been to the doctor in fifteen years — anyone want to take a wild guess as to why?

The physical pain is another matter. Some of it, maybe a lot of it, is caused directly by weight, but there are other issues at play as well. Tom exhibits signs that look (to me) like exercise-induced asthma, a condition that weight can exacerbate but does not cause, and that discourages people from moving because, untreated, it can be life-threatening. He also has high blood pressure — again, a condition that can be exacerbated by weight, but is not caused by weight alone. Jodi has had a mini-stroke, and the same can be said for weight’s role in that condition.

So what other issues might be at play? Lack of fitness, as a result of finding movement uncomfortable or inaccessible (for either physical or social reasons), independently contributes to physical suffering and immobility. Emotional stress, such as that caused by living in a world that does not physically accommodate you or socially accept you, can also independently contribute to physical health problems like those described.

These are complex issues for which weight is only one factor.

Next time, maybe I’ll yell at the blog about the month-long weight loss program presented on Heavy.

Eating disorders prey on some of the most marginalized members of society: girls, women, gay men, as well as people who suffer from depression, OCD, or illnesses that make eating a pain in the ass to begin with. They prey on people of all skin colours and ethnicities. They prey on people who’ve been tormented into believing that fat is a fate worse than death. And they kill people who don’t have the money to get better.

I get riled up because I have a fifth-grader’s unreasonable expectation that the world should be fair. I understand that nature, in all her untamed glory, is the opposite of fair. But I persist in believing that the reason we went to all the trouble to build a civilization and a social contract and ethical systems and legal protections and declarations of human rights, and the reason we entered a grueling scientific cage-match against death and disease, is because we like the idea of fairness. And we will organize as a collective to fight for it, tooth and nail.

So it pisses me off when the bastard diseases that prey on people who are already experiencing a lot of unfairness are pretty much given free reign: they’re not covered by insurance. They’re not researched as rigorously as other bastard diseases. They’re considered a figment of one’s imagination, an unfortunate sign of stubbornness.

I’m here to say that eating disorders are real, and that they kill people. In many cases, they kill people who are already at a disadvantage. Eating disorders are the deadliest of all mental illnesses.

This is our fight, and we’re being picked off like flies.

But we, by and large, treat eating disorders like they don’t matter. Like they don’t kill important, valued, and deeply loved human beings.

Well, here’s what I think: Fuck. That. Shit.

Meet Sofia:

Sofia is important. She is valued. She is deeply loved. The world will be a poorer place without her.

She is engaged in a war whose outcome will determine whether she lives or dies. She’s been in heavy combat for the last four years, and she needs supplies, weapons, armour, relief forces.

Last year, she won a strategic battle at a treatment facility called Monte Nido, and the end of the long war seemed to be in sight…

It was as though all of these years I have been in a room with no doors or windows, and suddenly doors began to appear – and not only did they become visible, but I began to walk through them.

…until her crap insurance company fucked it all up.

After 3 weeks at Monte Nido, UBH stopped paying for my treatment and I had to leave. Since then I have tried, genuinely tried, to get well – and I have been unable to.

Monte Nido’s program director and all of my treating professionals were shocked…my medical state has declined significantly recently and it is clear that without appropriate treatment for my illness I will die…

So we’re gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way.

Sofia’s raising her own army, and she wants you.

Sofia’s battle is our battle. In the fight for equality, don’t let them starve us out.

Your artwork is incredible. Your Aunt Audrey arranged it, so it’s well displayed. Ironic that you get your own little exhibit. It tears me to pieces that this will be your only one.

[...] planning your funeral meant going back through old pictures and skimming your books and music, and it made me reconnect a bit to the Kelsey who was my daughter. I had, if I am being really honest, lost sight of that person. I saw Kelsey the Disease mostly this last year. But, I remembered who you really were over the last few days.

I remembered how you mentored a learning challenged child in your elementary class without anyone asking it of you. I remembered you getting tossed out of a friend’s house for cleaning his room (of course, I never forgot that one because I was upset with his mother). I remembered how when you were 9 or 10 we had to get gym shoes for you and you announced to me that you would not consider Nikes because they used child labor.

I remembered, painfully, I might add, how you held my head when I had morning sickness when I was pregnant with your sister. You gave me the biggest, warmest hug right before I went to the hospital to have her.

I saw all these pictures of you with your cousins. You loved them, it was so obvious. That is who you really were.

~Kelsey’s mom

I told her how she taught me so much about words and literature and the beauty of the written language…how she, almost single-handedly, made me want to be a writer.

I thanked her for always inspiring me, for teaching me all that she has, for sharing her knowledge and wisdom with me so that now I can go out in the world and be wonderful.

I told her I’m going to write a book about her some day…a book about sisters, about MY sister.

~Marissa, Kelsey’s sister

In an unprecedented show of concern, The Academy for Eating Disorders (AED), Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA), Eating Disorder Coalition (EDC), International Association for Eating Disorder Professionals (IADEP), and National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) have joined forces and are urging focus on health and lifestyle rather than weight as a measurement of well-being.

“There is concern that we have lost sight of avoiding harm in the process of addressing obesity,” AED President Susan Paxton, PhD, FAED states.

Eating disorders practitioners have long been, in my experience, proponents of body diversity and Health at Every Size approaches, since these philosophies are essential to helping people recover from eating disorders and body image crises. In fact, I often advise people who contact me looking for a dietitian or nutritionist to search for those who specialize in eating disorders. Why? Because they are more likely to be familiar with and supportive of Health at Every Size, and less apt to promote weight loss.

And because these organizations are well-known and respected, I am extremely pleased to see them coming out against programs like Lincoln University’s — which would require students with a BMI over 30 to either lose weight, or pass a “healthy lifestyle” class in order to graduate — and firmly in favour of valuing health over weight.

Five or six years ago, I spent a year volunteering at a local eating disorders community centre. As soon as I walked in the door and saw the murals on the walls, and the signs saying “Please don’t talk about your diet,” I felt right at home. It was the first time in my life I’d ever felt I was in an explictly size-friendly space. It was an experience that made a deep impression on me in my fledgling efforts at self-acceptance and activism.

Though I was surrounded mostly by thin people, I was never uncomfortable being the fat lady because I knew we all struggled with the same cultural pressures, the same messages, and we were rebelling against a common enemy — the forces in our society that tell us we are not worthy of food or self-love. There was a simultaneous feeling of subversiveness and support. We were in it together.

Make no mistake — these are our sisters and brothers, fighting a parallel battle.