A Heavy Burden : Groups Counsel Fat People That It’s OK Not to Be Thin

She weighs 310 pounds.

But don’t dare call Kathleen Hook overweight . Don’t label her obese , large or plump either. And don’t even think about using the word heavy to describe her.

“I’m fat ,” says the Glendale woman. “Please be realistic. That’s what I am, and I feel fine about it.”

Hook, 50, is one of a growing number of Los Angeles residents who have decided that it is OK to be fat.

In private seminars, she counsels other fat people on how to deal with thin people who scorn them and with doctors who scold them.

Above all, she urges them to avoid diets. Fat won’t kill you, Hook says. Dieting might.

“There’s no disease caused by fatness, not even diabetes,” she said. “It’s stress that causes the things usually attributed to fatness.”

There’s more than enough stress to go around, according to others who have joined Hook in what they call “the Los Angeles fat subculture.”

Thin bodies are promoted by health spas, tanning parlors, beach-goers and the burgeoning local diet industry. Fat people say they face subtle discrimination in employment and housing. And not-so-subtle recrimination in supermarkets, restaurants and other public places.

“I was at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica the other day with my boyfriend and people were staring and making comments,” 328-pound Dee Davey said Thursday. “I think our society needs an attitude adjustment.”

Davey, a Long Beach sales manager, is a leader of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Assn. to Advance Fat Acceptance. The group lists nearly 150 active members; 2,500 more have utilized its services.

“The word fat is a word we’re trying to decriminalize,” said Sally Smith, executive director of the Sacramento-based association, which lists 3,500 members in 60 chapters nationwide. “Too many people think fat and ugly or fat and lazy are the same word. By using the word ourselves, we’re trying to take power back.”

Smith, who weighs 325 pounds, was in New Jersey for association meetings on Thursday. She said getting there wasn’t easy, either.

The airline she took required her to purchase tickets for two seats. But when the plane experienced mechanical problems and passengers had to switch aircraft, she was forced to stay overnight in Minneapolis because the airline could not find two seats together for her.

Fat people experience indignities and inconvenience every day, Hook said.

“Southern California is the worst place in the country,” she said. “It’s a very “looksist” society.

“Comments are common in supermarkets. You walk up to a clerk, he’ll say, ‘You must want to know where the diet section is’ when you actually want to ask where the pickles are.”

Other shoppers sometimes critique what fat people are putting in their grocery carts, Hook said. In restaurants, fat people are seated in the back, as far out of sight as possible, she said.

Hook said she was turned away from one house she was hoping to rent by a landlord who worried that she would “crack the floor” upstairs. Another refused her, fearing she would crush the toilet, she said.

Hook said she started her do-it-yourself fat acceptance crusade four years ago after she decided on her own to permanently give up dieting. A series of unsuccessful dieting attempts that began when she was 5 years old had caused her weight to fluctuate “like a yo-yo over the years,” she said. She topped out at 415 pounds in 1978.

“I’ve never met a fat person who wasn’t on diet after diet,” she said. “But most fat people do not have eating disorders. It’s genetics and dieting that makes you fat.

“I’ve learned that we all have a predetermined weight set point. Dieting just screws up your metabolism and moves up your set point”--in her case, adding an extra 100 pounds to what had been her base weight.

Although Los Angeles groups such as Mor 2 Luv and Big Difference stage frequent social events for fat people and Smith’s association offers moral support, many fat people still carry a lot of emotional baggage along with their weight.

Those who pay up to $480 for her eight-week sessions come with battered egos, Hook said. She refuses to let outsiders attend the meetings, fearful that fat people attending her classes will feel even more like outcasts.

During the sessions, however, she said she urges fat people to be skeptical of medical studies such as the one released last week by Tufts University.

It reported a link between being overweight during the teen-age years and having life-threatening chronic disease in adulthood. The study suggested reducing fat in the diet of teen-agers--and reducing the amount of time they sit in front of the TV set.

Some people don’t want to believe that it is possible to be fat and healthy, she said, shrugging.

Hers is a heavy burden.