First some background.

I am overweight, and have been almost my entire life since infancy. I was a fat baby because my mother, very young and not knowing any better, overfed me. Despite that, somehow I escaped being an obese child. From preschool to second grade, I was about average. Then I hit kind of an early puberty. From third grade to about eighth, when classmates started catching up to me, I was tall for my age. My weight was proportionate to my height and level of development, but because I was bigger than the average child my age, I was treated like I was fat. Diet advice, fat jokes, all that fun stuff.

I developed the habit of binge-eating, which never went to a full-blown eating disorder, but it remains something I have to watch out for. That cycle of starving myself (because I was ashamed to eat) until I built up so much hunger that I binged, put weight on me slowly until I was an overweight teenager. I lost down to normal weight after I graduated from high school (even though I was still told I was fat) but then I got pregnant. After three children, I never lost any of the pregnancy weight. I didn't even gain anything the third time, but after the baby was born, I still left the hospital weighing the same as I weighed when I went in to deliver. To this day, I cannot under any circumstances, no matter what I try, lose below that weight.

Almost 54 now, I am diabetic and menopausal. Complicating matters, about 20 years ago I was permanently injured in a car accident. I walk with a cane, and I will for the rest of my life. This limits my ability to exercise, which I can only do hard-core in a pool.

Today after a rather strenuous workout, I made the mistake of weighing myself. Not only am I not below that number I can never lose below, but I am 15 pounds above it. All of the other numbers are cooperating. Glucose, blood pressure, cholesterol, they're all right where they should be. But weight.... I just want to cry when I see it stubbornly refusing to go down.

The thing is, so many people don't believe me that I'm doing the very best I can. They assume I must be eating in secret, not being honest. I have been told by doctors, usually in a condescending voice with the kind of smile you give an idiot:

• The best exercise for weight loss is to puuuuuush yourself away from the table.
• You have to get to where you eat to live, not live to eat.
• Any weight loss plan comes down to the words, 'eat less, exercise more.'

It appears I am the body size and type that I am meant to be, and nothing I do will change it. No matter how well controlled my other numbers are, people are going to assume I'm just a lazy glutton who's too stupid to know I'm a lazy glutton.

I don't know what more I can do.