Absurd posing

I just caught a little bit of synchronised swimming on T.V. today. What a load of old pony. One of the great things about being a woman, is that you don't have to worry about being constrained by machismo, except of course, on the receiving end!

The area of 'artistic expression' is not so fraught with having to seem coolly self possessed or whatever. But please, synchronized swimming shows the downside of this. How on earth can anyone not think this gurning posing is not absurd, undignified even? It's perfectly feminine of course, plastered with make up bodies of a uniform and socially acceptable shape, grace, strength and beauty all on display.

These are the type of women that don't sweat but glow and yet the overall impression was of an ill conceived waste of energy. These women; there didn't appear to be any male involvement - wonder why, had gymnastic ability, real power and dynamism, yet it didn't satisfy on any level. How it counts as sport, even when you take into account things like ice dance( in the winter Olympics) or even gymnastics, I don't know, where was the excitement?

People who think that women have lost because we are no longer in the golden age of femininity should take a good look at this, in a small way it points to the frustration of being a lady, as opposed to a human being who happens to be a woman.

Why there must be a solution

If you believe that only scientists have the ultimate ability to define reality, then their failure with regards to calories in/ calories out, so far must be for you the definitive word on weight loss (WL).

If you think that this group are as capable of misjudgement and failure the same as the rest of us, then it follows that you don't believe that weight loss must necessarily consist of discomfort, pain and abject failure.

If you don't take them to always know everything, then you might have taken more note of the fact that the human body is perfectly capable of shedding weight whenever it feels like it, which unfortunately for lots of us, doesn't tend to coincide with our attempts to bludgeon it into submission.

If your instincts are not that they are as far as human knowledge could possibly go, then you do not think it's even close to impossible to put this whole sorry debacle behind us and simply move on, to better ways, chastened and perhaps more sanguine.

People want and need a way of lowering their weight, regardless of whether others like this or not. People at the higher end of the weight range, who've not allowed their weight to stop them mentally from doing things, but feel it does sometimes impede them physically, need a safe and effective way of reducing weight, and they cannot be shunned because some chose to make an ego issue out of it.

I also don't accept that the desire to be a certain size is purely down to the forces of oppression, obviously that has an effect, but moreso our innate sense of agency, desire for control and self-mastery.

Those who set their vanity against the desire for weight loss, regardless are playing a game of emotional blackmail that they will probably lose. Why should other people's desire to be slim or slimmer upset you if you're OK with yourself?

What I will add though is that wanting to be a lesser size is not necessarily a bad thing, how unhappy you decide to be about being fat, is your choice. If you are desperately unhappy about fat, then you are likely to have made this choice many many times.

That's also agency.

Conservative, with a small 'c'

There does seem to be an innate conservatism in FA. It's not so much that it comes from a political standpoint, but more from a behavioural one.

As fat people we have tended to be the accused. We have gotten used to defending ourselves from - the many- accusations levelled at us.

This can lead to a rather earnest intent on proving that we are good, nice whatever we are not said to be. For those of us who've been fat for a long time, this is especially ingrained, as I've said, the road from this to FA is a long one. So even though we are breaking away from this sense that we are ungenuine, and somehow have to constantly try harder to demonstrate that we are worthy of existence. We haven't let go of this us much as we could, how can we?

I think we could be more aware of that, not self conscious, but understand that we don't have to keep on with old strategies simply because we are used to that and the pattern is ingrained.

I also think that this can have an effect on our progress, personally and otherwise.

The issue though is not about whether FA is respectable, moderate and above all, nice to everybody regardless of provocation. If FA is just about crowbarring itself into current mores regardless of merit, because that is seen as not rocking the boat, then FA becomes rather impacted and self absorbed.

Instead of being a potential positive influence, nay a liberator for people of all weights -which already is has been to some degree- it becomes another lost opportunity to take forward our understanding of what it is to be human - yes we can do that even though we are just fatties- all our experience comes to nought and we become a group of people who just discovered how to fail over a very long period.

Not good enough.

Radical flim-flam

I define radical as the extent of which an idea or credo can go, ie radical Islam or an idea which is as far as thinking can go say eugenics.

Radical can be morally good or not, it depends on the idea itself. The reason why radical has acquired a good reputation is because so many ideas at the heart of society have been shown to be vile and nasty, and it turned out that the so called radicals were the real moderates, who didn't hold with being inferior because society said so.

At the time, I said that in reply to what I consider to be disgusting cynicism from diet ideologues, who pretend that all they want is moderation, when really their aim is clear to derail FA into yet another cul-de-sac.

Some of them have cottoned on that some people in FA have been and are involved in other movements that may be described as radical and are invoking that theme. They are trying disorientate us, if you are at the edge of a cliff, how do you behave compared to if you are not? The former, you tend to stop and tread very carefully, that's what they want.

I am not underestimating the journey from self hating fatty to FA, it is a long, in fact that shows how radical diet culture is from the norm and indicates how bankrupt it is, so many of us have travelled so far into it and not even looked like becoming slim.

It is restrictive eating that is truly radical. Calorie restriction, healthy eating less so, the latter is noun not adjective. It was ever thus, this is a case of an idea extrapolated from people who have to monitor their diet for reason of chronic ailments or things such as allergies etc,.

This is a practice that has to be treated with the utmost caution, and in this case especially, hasn't been. It is about as far as you can go with eating, it is radical. The reasons why people fear radicalism, is that it can be unnatural, restrictive, uncomfortable painful and costly. Leaving a trail of destruction that takes a huge amount of energy to undo.

Sounds like dieting culture to me.

Eating is not intuitive

It's a very precise mechanism. Like breathing it is necesssary to life. No-one talks of 'intuitive breathing' even though it is affected by all sorts of things such as movement, stress levels, etc., it has to both to compensate for and adapt to these things.

We can regulate and vary our breathing within certain limits.

Similarly with eating, only our conscious input is likely to be more not as much as we imagined though. The most obvious route to controlling our eating is through the conscious mind, but that doesn't mean that control must be direct calorie manipulation.

The obviousness and showiness of the conscious part of eating means that we have made the mistake of thinking this it is the be all and end all of eating, that, if you think about it, cannot be.

Right now, do you know how your liver's doing for energy and nutrient requirements? Neither do I. I leave that up to my nervous system. It has the advantage of being directly connected to both my liver and my brain, so the information can be delivered efffortlessly to the part of my mind I'm directly aware of.

This works so well that even when it appears to be misbehaving, we cannot do it any better.