Tell The Truth As Long As It Isn't The Fat Truth

I don't see the column that just ran in today's (Sunday) paper, but your advice on the "Fatty Patty" was rude, condescending, and a far cry from someone who calles herself an "advice goddess" should be doling out. YOUR opinion on the weight loss regime is that - your opinion. Who's to say it's more valid than someone else's? Next, you basically called the girl a fat loser with no self control. I'm not about advocating that people with 40 extra pounds go deluding themselves into thinking they're healthy, but your answers were rude, unprofessional, and smack of a self righteousness (as "haha you f'ing fat slob stop diving your pig snout into the haagen daaz and wondering why your man left you") is a mean girl trait that I've never heard come from you before (and that's saying something). You just lost a reader and a fan, and I will happily badmouth you to anyone who brings up "advice columnists" and certainly will never buy your book. I would not be friends with, or include anyone in my social circle who found it fine, as a public "advice doler" to call someone who came to you with a genuine problem that stmes far more than her inability to keep her "snout" out of the ice-cream, Fatty Patty and so on. With today's ease of access to unhealthy & CHEAPer foods, hectic lifestyles, and emphasis on being model-thin do women really need some self-righteous snot putting her nose in the air and looking down at all overweight people? I lost about 50 pounds after my child was born, and it was HARD. Encourage those people rather than validating that they're nothing more than fat losers who don't deserve to have their biologically inclined male show public affection because she's "put on the size of a tent". I see rude people indeed. Posted by: amy at February 21, 2010 11:20 AM That's a lot of venom, and off topic too. I didn't read the column you're referring to, but I think anyone who would write to Amy - assuming they've ever read her columns - wants the hard truth served to them straight up. Often, the truth hurts, but it can also be much more helpful than being coddled and told everything's not your fault and therefore not really under your control. And Amy isn't being rude since she was directly asked for this advice. It's not like she's running over and calling some stranger "fat". That would be rude, but when she's ASKED for advice, Amy will deliver it without mincing words or tip-toeing around the heart (or fat) of the issue. Posted by: lovelysoul at February 21, 2010 12:22 PM That column will be posted here in a few weeks, and lovelysoul is exactly right. I say the stuff nobody else will tell you -- tell you the truth, that while people believe men "should" like a woman for her personality, no matter how fat she gets, they will not. I also put out the evidence-based science on how easy it is to lose weight if you cut out flour, sugar, and starchy carbohydrates like potatoes. Nobody needs to be fat, or to pretend that fat is attractive to more than a few people with odd preferences. Women are judged by their looks -- it's in our genes -- same as men are judged by whether they have status and earning potential. You could say you "should" want to be with a guy simply because he has a good heart, but if he's lazy and unambitious, you, as a woman, have a genetic propensity to look elsewhere. Your friends will tell you "He should love you no matter what!" and they will be the ones keeping you company after your boyfriend or husband leaves you for a woman they find attractive. As I said in that column, male lust seems to have a weight limit. Sorry it does, but it does. As for not reading my column anymore, you've read me making fun of irrational people and people who behave stupidly for quite some time. Why are fat people off-limits, and are there other off-limits people? Somebody should tell women -- and it's me in this case -- that not doing the very best you can with what you have will likely mean that you diminish your chances with men, and with getting the best possible man. P.S. I make fun of myself plenty, and find it hilarious when my boyfriend asks me (referring to my ADHD, for which I take medication), "Do I have your divided attention?" My friend John Callahan, who is a quadriplegic cartoonist, frequently made fun of quadriplegics. He'd get angry letters from able-bodied people who had no idea he was a quad telling him he was horrible, and letters from quadriplegics thanking him for treating them like everybody else. And one final thing, I love that lovelysoul, who disagrees with me on more than a few issues, sets the record straight here. This is something people commenting here have in common, and I love it. While so many people are solidly right or left or partisan in some way, and just look to their group's manual to tell them what they believe, people here tend to be independent thinkers in a way that inspires me, when it's midnight and I'm all "Oh, crap, I forgot to blog and have to be up at 5 a.m." to get on the computer and get to work. Thanks, guys. You rock. Oh, and I forgot this bit and went and left another comment: YOUR opinion on the weight loss regime is that - your opinion. Who's to say it's more valid than someone else's? Regarding this above, my "opinion" on how to lose weight isn't worth a damn. What is is my opinion based on actual evidence-based science. As I pointed out in that column, Americans have been sold a bill of goods on diet by much of the medical and "research" establishment, based on hearsay-based rather than evidence-based dietary medicine. A friend of mine ate the way the science directs (per my recommendations in that column), and lost 17 lbs in a month, sans exercise, and had his blood pressure go from high to almost normal. He continues to lose weight eating almost no carbs. Go here -- http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ -- as directed in the column, and you won't have to maintain completely unrealistic beliefs so many women do (like that men will lust after you no matter what you weigh, simply because they "should"). As for what you "deserve," you can be the most wonderful woman in the universe, and spend your life repairing developing-world children's cleft palates, but that won't make a guy look across the room at you and want to fuck you. Sorry that it won't, but it won't. Use that information or ignore it, but it's the truth.