Classifications--who needs 'em?

In my previous post, I neglected to mention part of the conversation with my bariatric surgeon that remains stuck in my craw several days after the fact. I walked right into it, too, by asking him if I was still considered morbidly obese.

"No," he said, looking at his monitor. "Now you're considered 'severely obese'. Then comes 'obese', then 'overweight'."

"What would I be classified as if I reach 150 pounds?" I pressed, a glutton for punishment until the bitter end.

"You'd be considered 'overweight'," he said, adding a little eye roll that did not go unappreciated.

I wish this surprised me, but when I weighed 150 in my teens, people told me I was fat all the time. I'd love to go back in time and smack them all, and sometimes I actually do this in my head--kind of a Wile E. Coyote home movie--to lull me off to sleep instead of counting sheep. (I always sleep better than usual when I use this method of drifting off, too, but I digress.) I know a lot of adult women who would love to weigh 150, and when I look at pictures now, I looked good at that weight--curvy and healthy.

This kind of thing--the classifications of obesity--has historically been the kind of thing that can really trip me up if I let it. Well, I'm not going to let it. I don't know what made me ask the question. If you feel good, if you look good, if you're eating healthy and exercising, who cares what your classification is? I've always been shaped like a freakin' potato, even as a little kid. Such is life.

The more I think about it, the more I see that classifications of any kind aren't anyone's friend. Few are complimentary, much less insightful, in any way--they don't say squat about who a person really is. I could be classified as middle-aged, fat, barren, mentally ill, underemployed, and a host of other things that don't have a whole lot to do with who I really am.