Speaking for the "gravity challenged"

If you guys aren't careful, you might just polarize the site - those learning about fitness and those who have already "achieved" their weight goals. Sounds a little over the top, I know. There are a lot of people on this site who are not what some would call "in shape," (remember the site's name" beginningtriathlete?) but are making serious efforts to get INTO shape. As a person I'm sure some of you would consider fat, I find some of these threads a little disturbing and offputting, not to mention antanognistic and superficial at the expense of others.

In a couple threads going on right now we have swimmers lamenting that "fat" people have an unfair advantage in the swimming pool and that slim people are ostersized by a fat culture. (I'd like to see a lot of the "in shape" people motor 250+lbs for 1500 meters at the beginning leg of an olympic Tri). If a "fat" person is lapping you at the pool, it is not because the fat makes it easy, it is because that person is a far better swimmer, not only traveling faster than you, but doing it with more weight/mass to propell. If a "fat" person is asking you about recent dramatic weight loss, why not give that person the benefit of the doubt and assume it is because he/she might be genuinly concerned and losing too much weight too fast IS unhealthy.

Thomas