So I'm talking to my mom today, and she feels the need to pass along "concerns" my grandmother apparently has about me being a lardass. This is the same grandmother who's smoked a pack a day for about forty years.

But I now have felt like shit most of the day. See, although I'm aware that fat can be a genetic issue, I don't actually think it is my case. I used to think so, because my mom was overweight for most of my life ... and then a few years ago she got super skinny. Now, the way she got super skinny was because she couldn't afford food sometimes. But she hasn't gotten fat again, and she eats normally. My dad has a beer gut, but otherwise has always been skinny. I have a cousin who's a little chubby; my grandmother thinks she's overweight but is at a pretty average weight for a sedentary seventy year old woman.

Basically nobody in my family is significantly fat except me. Which I've obviously known for a while, but sometimes it just really hits me and I start to wonder ....

No, I'm just scatterbrained and keep forgetting what I was going to write about!

So my textbook, which is totally anti-fat, naturally has all the standard suggestions of how to cut the evil fats out of your diet. The one I just ran across was that instead of butter, or cheese, or anything that sounds good .... cover your broccoli in lemon juice! Yeah!

Except, you know, the acids degrade the chlorophyll, turning it brown and nasty, and possibly causing magnesium loss. On, and it tastes like ass. But at least it's LOW FAT.

My textbook for my nutritional assessment class is full of fatphobia and obesity panic. Pretty much what I expected. What I didn't expect in a textbook for firmly entrenched in the party line is contradictions to their own stupid claims. I'm reading along and I suddenly come to ...

"No RDA or AI have been established for total fat because there are insufficient data available to determine a level of total fat intake associated with risk of inadequacy or prevention of chronic disease. There is no UL (upper limit, means toxicity) established for total fat because no level has been identified that is associated with averse effect."

Followed by more GLOBESITY boogaboogabogga crap.

Another gem from my asscrackofdawn nutritional assessment class. We're talking, much to my general disgust anyway, and BMI charts, specifically for children--because we've got to give those fat kiddos what for! In the course of talking about percentiles and distribution curves, the professor says (paraphrasing) "Some kids are born leaner and stay that way, and others have a little more fat, so we do see this curve naturally."

Hold your freaking horses! You mean .... people are different? People are born different sizes, and develop differently, almost like it's, I don't know genetic? Get the fuck out of town!

And three slides later, she did (get the fuck out of town, that is) when she made the pronouncement that women's waists shouldn't be bigger than 35 inches and men can be up to 40 inches around before they have the DEATHFAT.

This is why I hate going to this class. Everytime she says "diabeetus" or "obesity epidemic" I want to throw something at her. Like a chair. And my self-control isn't limitless.