And so, in a world that refuses to change, it is still up to every fat person, alone, to decide how to endure. Emily, the counselor in Eastern Washington, says she made a choice about three years ago to assert herself. The first time she asked for a table instead of a booth at a restaurant, she says, she was sweating, flushed, her chest heaving. It felt like saying the words—“I can’t fit”—would dry up in her mouth as she said them.

But now, she says, “It’s just something I do.” Last month, she was at a conference and asked one of the other participants if he would trade chairs because his didn’t have arms. Like most of these requests, it was no big deal. “A tall person wouldn’t feel weird asking that, so why should I?” she says. Her skinny friends have started to inquire about the seating at restaurants before Emily even gets the chance.

Hearing about Emily’s progress reminds me of a conversation I had with Ginette Lenham, the diet counselor. Her patients, she says, often live in the past or the future with their weight. They tell her they are waiting until they are smaller to go back to school or apply for a new job. They beg her to return them to their high school or wedding or first triathlon weight, the one that will bring back their former life.

And then Lenham must explain that these dreams are a trap. Because there is no magical cure. There is no time machine. There is only the revolutionary act of being fat and happy in a world that tells you that’s impossible.

“We all have to do our best with the body that we have,” she says. “And leave everyone else’s alone.”

Correction: A previous version of this story inaccurately calculated the chance a woman classified as obese could achieve a “normal” weight. It is 0.8 percent, not 0.008 percent.

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“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” -Albert Camus