Gainers

So it seems that while a whole bunch of us are diligently trying to maintain a healthy weight, get more exercise and eat better, there’s an entire movement afoot fighting to do the complete opposite.

First, certain restaurants rebelled against adding “low fat, low cal, low sodium, low appeal” items to their menus and added, instead, grotesque foods like Wendy’s Baconator Double and KFC’s new Double Down  (a bacon and 3 cheese sandwich which uses two hunks of fried chicken in place of the bun).

These sorts of novelty menu items are amusing, but then I read about people who are deliberately trying to get fat because they think….well, I actually don’t know what they’re thinking.

Like Donna Simpson, a 42-year-old New Jersey mother whose goal is to get to 1,000 pounds. To pay for her $750 per week grocery bill  (12,000 calories a day) she has a pay-per-view website where men pay to watch her eat.

And she’s not alone. There are a whole host of “gainer” blogs out there where people document their day-to-day adventures in gaining as much weight as possible, gainer dating sites and discussion forums (e.g.: Git-Bigger,  Fatness Follies,  BiggerCity,  or BellyBuilders )

I’m not even sure what to say about this.

Yes, there are plenty of healthy people who appear to be larger than average – people who exercise and have good blood pressure and good heart function and good cholesterol levels and live perfectly normal lives. But these people are not like that because they go out of their way to eat stuff like donuts and fast food and make a point of not exercising in order to gain weight. And Donna Simpson needs a motorized scooter to get around. By the time she’s 1,000 pounds, I reckon she won’t be able to get around at all.

And yes, there are plenty of overweight people who don’t get enough exercise and can’t seem to stop overeating, but these “gainers” are not like that either because they love being fat.

I always knew that outgrowing clothing and searching for stylish bigger clothing would be kind of a pain as I got bigger, but for some reason, I kind of like this side-effect of gaining. Something about how uncommon my body is becoming is kind of nice. Every time I pick up a bigger size, I think “This thing is huge! There’s no way I could fit into it.” But, lo and behold, the pair of shorts that I thought were big enough to use as a sail end up being too small for me –Git Bigger

Are these people mentally ill do you think? And if they are do we have some sort of obligation to save them from themselves? Or is this just a dangerous bid for attention like pretending to send your kid off in a hot air balloon?