This story has infuriated me, I apologize for my rant here, but I can’t sit by quietly while these humiliating injustices continue to happen.

I’m in good physical condition. I watch what I eat, I participate in very physical endeavors several times per year, and when the mood strikes me I will shave parts of my body to accentuate my strengths. This doesn’t mean I look like a Picasso statue or anything, it just means I’ve done quite well with the body I’ve been given. My doctor has advised me that I’m overweight and should get more exercise. I disagree. He’s based his opinion of how I should look on what he sees in movies and television. Maybe I don’t look like some homosexual with the flawlessly hairless body of a 18 year old who spends every waking moment at the gym sculpting his perfect, rippling muscles and even oiling down his washboard stomach and chest often, looking at himself in the mirror and knowing that he is the perfect specimen of masculinity, but my doctor’s assertion that I’m at high risk for heart disease and diabetes is completely alarmist.

Same with the girls, my oldest girl has a very healthy figure, and as such she requires more calories to move herself around. If you’re a larger person you need to eat more, it’s as simple as that. A Honda requires less fuel than a garbage truck. Nobody seems to question that, so when you see my daughter ordering more than one Big Mac do you look at her like she’s a criminal? My daughter is a garbage truck, not a Honda.

This is the reason we stopped taking our kids to the pediatrician. I can only hear how I’m endangering the longevity of my kids so many times before I decide that a doctor is a quack. Who knows better, a man who sees a child for half an hour every six months, or the man who sees the child with more regularity and is told by his wife what is happening in the child’s life almost weekly? No brainer.

I have a very flexible schedule, but my wife is not so lucky. In addition to her full time job, she has a house to clean and is responsible for our children and feeding us. Like many Americans, she doesn’t have the time to come home and make a home cooked meal. Maybe every day we don’t have all of the food groups in our diet, but over the course of the week, we usually get most of them—several nights each week we enjoy a home-cooked meal together in the family living room.

I’m tired of being treated like I’m killing my kids when we go on a family outing to McDonalds, or grab a quick dinner at 7-11 and my State’s Food Assistance card isn’t accepted. I’m tired of living in fear of having my kids taken away from me because some doctor from who-knows-where thinks they are morbidly obese. What gives a doctor the right to insult me or my children? Some award or degree on his wall? Well, I have plenty of awards on my wall, does that mean I can insult his family? I guess my “Sasquatch Researcher of the Year” award gives me that right too. But I won’t sink to his level.