I hope this is hitting home for some of you who believe that we're fat because we don't know any better or don't have any self control. Some of the most intense self control I've seen in everyday life is exhibited by fat people--just think of all the liquid diets, grapefruit diets, cabbage soup diets, etc. I know you think we didn't do them, or didn't do them right, or snuck candy when no one was looking. I'm here on behalf of everyone on this thread and fat people everywhere to tell you you can kiss my fat &%*. We ALL went hungry for far longer than was sane.

Fat is a choice for some, sure. And some of us choose to be fatTER because we love it. But being fat is emphatically NOT a choice for most of us.

If you truly think you're into fat people, learn a little about us. Stop spreading the fat-hating garbage of the multibillion dollar diet and exercise industries. And start believing the people you profess to be attracted to.

Oh, my god. Thanks for looking more carefully than I, Ruby!

I read something on a site about bespoke/custom-made shoes making a comeback, with a chain of some kind, can't remember the name, and I think they mentioned boots, too. They were more expensive than I would normally spend, but not like thousands, either. I found them on some BBW site fashion links page, but now I can't remember the site, and I couldn't turn it up on Google. Not much help, huh? But they're out there.

I haven't tried them, but Widewiths.com has several calf sizes: wide, extra wide, and super wide. That sounds promising. And they ship here to the UK.

There used to be a Canadian company that made very wide calf boots. I guess they went out of business, because I haven't been able to find 'em for a few years.

While y'all are looking, if you see any *totally* flat boots with very wide calves, would you let me know? I can't wear any heel at all cuz of fibromyalgia pain, and I can't seem to find boots with very wide calves with less than a 1" heel.

So I've been various flavours of hurt/upset/angry/confused by a number of posts lately, in which members here (most of them apparently not fat, though I don't know that for sure) explain to the rest of us that fat is by choice.

This seems to me a very very complicated thing indeed. Of course, how fat I AM at this moment is by choice. And that's presumably true for most, if not all, the gainers here. But I thought it would be interesting to hear from people who have not been able to be thin in a reasonable, healthy, maintainable way.

I, for one, have never had a viable choice not to be fat. To lose weight in my 20s and 30s, I needed to eat ridiculously little--like no solid food for four months, or under 1000 cal/day kind of little--and exercise a lot, which manifested in a very unpleasant, very tired, very unproductive me. The minute I went back to what they told me was a 'maintenance' diet, i.e. 2000 cals and half an hour a day of exercise, I gained weight.

I would love to hear from other members who think of themselves as 'naturally' fat--what extremes did you have to go to to lose weight? How did you feel about yourself and your body? Or, alternatively, how did you get happy with your body without going through the Diet Madness Tunnel of Darkness?

Curious that you don't want to ask us what we want to hear, instead.