In a recent article by Daniel Costello of the LA Times, Employers are going to start forcing employees to either slim down or pay fines for being overweight.

In one of the boldest moves yet, an Indiana-based hospital chain last month said it decided on the stick rather than the carrot. Starting in 2009, Clarian Health Partners said it will charge employees up to $30 every two weeks unless they meet weight, cholesterol and blood pressure guidelines the company deems healthy.

Here is the full article.

Just another volley on the war against fat people. We need to find ways to have positive outlooks. This is NOT Nazi Germany although it does feel like it. People with disabilities were also rounded up and sent to the camps. Some people are obese because of lack of exercise and over eating but there are medical reasons for obesity.

I am a HEALTHY fat girl. My BP is 115/75 consistently. I eat healthy, I exercise and I drink plenty of water but I have accepted that no matter how much i deprive myself I will never be what society calls “slender”. How boring would it be if we all looked alike?

One good thing that I thought of with this article was, if the statistics are correct and 66% of the US is obese. Then 66% of employers must be obese as well. and 66% of insurance companies.

Isn’t it time we STOPPED buying into this??

A recent report from that always Fat-Phobic JAMA states that the obese breed obesity around them. The study was published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the National Institute on Aging.

Researchers think it’s more than just people with similar eating and exercise habits hanging out together. Instead, it may be that having relatives and friends who become obese changes one’s idea of what is an acceptable weight.

Read the full Article over Here.

Editorial Commentary from OMG: It’s not enough that there is such a stigma in school and work zones, but now they are trying to prevent our friends/family from being near us due to the “fact” that they might “catch” our disease? Full Story »

TORRANCE, CA, May 31, 2007 — “FAT GIRLS: THE MUSICAL,” the hit Los Angeles show that ran in 2002-2003 to rave reviews, is back for a short run this summer. Written and directed by Carla Drew (NAACP Theater Award nominee for best actress for the title role in William Blinn’s “Hattie,”), this musical comedy is the story of four plus-size women with powerful singing talent who form a successful group despite industry rejection. The show opens Saturday, July 14, 2007 at the Nakano Theater in Torrance, CA and runs through Sunday, August 12, 2007.

“I wrote “Fat Girls” after so many years of being rejected for parts because of my size,” says playwright Carla Drew, who also wrote all of the show’s music. “Even after I dropped from a size 28 to a size 14, I was still hearing the same old thing about my size being an issue. I was frustrated with the inability of the industry to see beyond that, and to see the talent and passion I had to give. The show’s theme centers on the idea that all of us are valuable; not just those who are lucky enough to match society’s idea of physical perfection.” Full Story »

After decades of believing that “you can never be too rich or too thin”, women are at last challenging the second half of that precept. And marketers are supporting them in turning their backs on the waif-like physical ideal that fashion and the movie industry have demanded of the female form since the 1920s. Bosses at Anglo-Dutch consumer goods conglomerate Unilever have announced their corporate determination to celebrate a more generously-proportioned body shape. This year the firm issued an edict to its marketers that the only models to be used in advertising its products would be those with a healthy Body Mass Index, calculated as the proportion of body fat to other tissue. Unilever is already boosting the self-esteem of bigger girls with its “Real Beauty” campaign for Dove soap and personal care products, whose sales seem to have benefited from spontaneous uplift even when their models didn’t. Sources: WARC Bulletin, Pi.

Dateline: Tampa Bay Florida

The local Renaissance Festival, Bay Area Ren Fest, kicked off with a beat this week. A drum beat that is. OMG resident photographer Ms. Chris attended and captured some awesome pictures of a St. Petersburg based dance troop called the Demzarah Gypsies

Belly dancing is a fun way to get moving. It’s like doing Cardio for fun.
Here she shakes it up while making her coins jingle.

Her costume she made herself with scraps of silk. The coin girdle was found in a thrift shop. Her fairy necklace she purchased from Ebay at Whimsical Notions.

In response to the overwhelming miscalculations of the CDC and the JAMA, that after a decade of gathering statistics — over 400,000 deaths were from diet and sedentary lifestyle. The revised figure is now 112,000. Not quite as many as first published.

Here is the original findings of the CDC/JAMA published in 2002: Full Story »