Paranoia about macro-nutrients is so inevitable and predictable, it's hard to get worked up about. One can only stand back appalled watching people swinging in the corner they've made for themselves. The one that insists food is the absolute end of regulating seemingly every aspect of the human body.
Of course the overall sway of your emotions affects your appetite, digestion and your body's efficient use of them. How could it be anything else? We are not robots. Those emotions travel in something. Mostly the nervous system. That is the primary system running hunger and appetite mechanisms, d'uh.
Why do so many people feel the need to boast about not ingesting sugar as if it is some kind of a moral triumph? Most of our food has to be converted to sugar in order for our bodies to be able to use it. Which is why insulin the hormone which has a major role in our bodies being able to use that energy/sugar. Which is why diabetes, the condition where the pancreas either isn't making enough or the body is somehow 'resisting' the effects of insulin leads to a high level of sugar circulating in the blood. The body isn't using it up.
Memo to sucrophobes, due to the nature of our bodies, if you ingest sugar, it is easily usable and absorbable by the body. Can we not pretend this is sinister? Thanks.
It's also part of why our bodies can crave sugar under duress. Stress can be extraordinarily draining, physically and emotionally. We can crave a quick boost of energy. Also a factor in alcoholism.
Do we really think that hasn't been quite an enabler for the creepylicious obesity crock to slither into people's consciousness? Whether a soda tax would or would not affect me is irrelevant. Either it's wrong or it is right.
It is wrong, because it is a shame tax. It's wrong because it legitimizes the idea that food causes fat, it demonizes a perfectly natural foodstuff, rather than using intelligence to manage and deal with any issues. It's wrong, because the people running our governments already get enough of a proportion of income to run it decently enough.
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Boneheaded misandry
I've just heard via this that there is skepticism about the concept of misandry. Apparently there is no such thing. I find this hard to believe. When you lift up the hatred of women there seems to be a loathing of maleness lurking underneath.
Misanthropy rules in the end.
Our ability as humans to use one part of our minds to abstract ideas about how we should be seems to be a vehicle for being ashamed of ourselves the whole time. Our current abstraction of calories in/out is an example of how our conception of how we are supposed to work doesn't match the reality of how we work. Too often, instead of adjusting our thinking, we attempt to adjust ourselves to what cannot be.
Not sure why.
I find there is boneheaded misandry, around in circles that are supposedly 'traditional' and supposedly respectful of men. Treating men as if they are children and need women to civilize them and so on. In fact that seems to be required in order for men to fulfill their role in that scenario.
I agree though that a lot of the cry of man hater directed at feminists is in the main deeply disingenuous. You can see this especially when women who fit into the more desired models often get a free run to be far more insulting to men than most feminists usually are.
However women cannot be, nor should they have to be perfect. Some don't like men or their influence over us, whether you feel that is an understandable reaction to what men put down is another story.
Misanthropy rules in the end.
Our ability as humans to use one part of our minds to abstract ideas about how we should be seems to be a vehicle for being ashamed of ourselves the whole time. Our current abstraction of calories in/out is an example of how our conception of how we are supposed to work doesn't match the reality of how we work. Too often, instead of adjusting our thinking, we attempt to adjust ourselves to what cannot be.
Not sure why.
I find there is boneheaded misandry, around in circles that are supposedly 'traditional' and supposedly respectful of men. Treating men as if they are children and need women to civilize them and so on. In fact that seems to be required in order for men to fulfill their role in that scenario.
I agree though that a lot of the cry of man hater directed at feminists is in the main deeply disingenuous. You can see this especially when women who fit into the more desired models often get a free run to be far more insulting to men than most feminists usually are.
However women cannot be, nor should they have to be perfect. Some don't like men or their influence over us, whether you feel that is an understandable reaction to what men put down is another story.
Monday, 28 September 2009
Making self-abuse feel right
A while back I got into a little contretemps with a long term weight loss dieter, who claimed that if you want to lose weight and keep it off, you need to be positive about it.
I was reminded of a certain well known (in some circles) fat person, who had regained lost weight, after a number of years. This fattie was very down on himself and was told if he expected to regain his former status as WLD success. Then he should keep his chin up.
I said this was incorrect because this negativity, over and above disappointment of such a reversal, the process of weight loss and keeping it off often required the development of an extremely negative countenance. Because it is essentially a form of self assault and it requires that sort of mood to be a constant, in order for that to make sense.
I myself did not realise this until a force pause after diet burnout revealed to me, that WLD no longer made sense to my mind and body, because I'd had a few weeks off. I hadn't even realized I was doing it. I thought my reaction was a scrupulously honest, i.e. harsh, assessment of my failings regarding dieting. Which I believed was logical, doable and that I must be failing.
What this person didn't realise, probably because she had the relief of a body that yielded to weight loss dieting's imperative, is this man's negative mood, reflected what he needed to diet. It was not the other way around-needed to diet, so what angry/resentful/felt greedy.
Well what do you know, it is now being claimed in a survey that negativity is a requisite for weight loss. Now obviously I should be a little wary, just because it agrees with what I said, doesn't mean that it isn't the usual tripe obesity peddlers like to trot out. Mind you, the fact that it goes against the usual, you fatties are sooo negative makes it worth a look.
I was reminded of a certain well known (in some circles) fat person, who had regained lost weight, after a number of years. This fattie was very down on himself and was told if he expected to regain his former status as WLD success. Then he should keep his chin up.
I said this was incorrect because this negativity, over and above disappointment of such a reversal, the process of weight loss and keeping it off often required the development of an extremely negative countenance. Because it is essentially a form of self assault and it requires that sort of mood to be a constant, in order for that to make sense.
I myself did not realise this until a force pause after diet burnout revealed to me, that WLD no longer made sense to my mind and body, because I'd had a few weeks off. I hadn't even realized I was doing it. I thought my reaction was a scrupulously honest, i.e. harsh, assessment of my failings regarding dieting. Which I believed was logical, doable and that I must be failing.
What this person didn't realise, probably because she had the relief of a body that yielded to weight loss dieting's imperative, is this man's negative mood, reflected what he needed to diet. It was not the other way around-needed to diet, so what angry/resentful/felt greedy.
Well what do you know, it is now being claimed in a survey that negativity is a requisite for weight loss. Now obviously I should be a little wary, just because it agrees with what I said, doesn't mean that it isn't the usual tripe obesity peddlers like to trot out. Mind you, the fact that it goes against the usual, you fatties are sooo negative makes it worth a look.
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Fat Privilege
When Peggy MacIntosh decided to unpack what she calls the knapsack of white privilege, it was her knapsack. Twas an insider's view. That original inspiration has morphed into people unpacking other people's knapsacks. The results have sometimes not been pretty.
For the same reason that some emit the edict to "check your privilege", it's not just the 'privileged' who have to check themselves out. It's those who are calling it out. They too are as capable of being full of shit and plain wrong as anyone else. Being disadvantaged/oppressed doesn't purify your character or mind OK? Nor should be expected to.
Peggy Mac's version of the concept has some use. But like any there's a point when it disintegrates and is overly or misapplied. Then it serves to obscure more than it illuminates. As I have said before, I feel that "thin privilege" is a brilliant example of where that line occurs. Whatever you feel about this kind of privilege-that of unfair, unearned advantages (whatever that means) as opposed to the Derridan sense of it as a certain condition or state that is accorded certain status over and above others, I wondered what about fat people, do we have any unearned advantage over others?
Now please do not think I'm doing this merely to be mischievous. It is a legitimate thing to consider. And as so many are telling others, privilege is nothing to get the hump about. So, what could possibly be the point of such a seemingly absurd proposition as fat privilege? Well, it's occurred to me for a while, but I've struggled to find a way to express that despite or sometimes because of the way society dogs fat people, there are things about it and the experience of it that are worthwhile.
The underlying problem I have with putting the fat experience into the category marked, oppression is-apart from the fact that I don't believe that we are, yet- and I think they should be named in case we do.
The fat as oppressed, takes us down a road that I can tell is not a good idea. It doesn't represent us realistically and I think after succumbing so long to the convenient lies of others, we not only deserve better. I do not believe that fat people are the poorest of the poor, disproportionately, I think that we are more likely to be the working or aspirant poor and a bit more.
So, back to a prospective list of fat privilege; physically is its potentially stabilizing effects on mood. From alleviating depression to an anti-psychotic effect etc., weight gain seems to stop or slow you from sinking into a mire. Without the side effects of alcohol and drugs which mess up your chemical balance and ability to function. This might be part of the reason why we are less likely to commit suicide than other weight groups.
It also seems to have potentially stabilizing effect overall in terms of life in general, though this could be partly repression. That smothers bad as well as good behaviour.
Having had less access to the product of the labour of today's version of indentured servitude- i.e. sweat shops, we have less of a burden of guilt about that kind of capitalist exploitation. We are more likely to be seen as approachable and non threatening. Less likely to be seen as a threat in terms of looks, less likely to be a recipient of that kind of hostility. Our gender identity is more likely to be seen as distinct, therefore convincing than thin people's. We are more able to be seen as an experience sexually, due to our size. We can be perceived as more responsible, solid citizens, especially at a younger age, when it maybe counts more. Less prone to niggling ailments, such as colds etc., More likely to be seen as a nicer person.
More likely to know the futility of the weight loss diet canard, therefore more likely to be liberated from mindless obedience to authority. Less likely to be an alcoholic =less likely to be an illegal drug user, therefore, less likely to have trouble with the law, be in prison.
There's a quality about fatness that can be hard to replicate, hence the french saying that a woman should look thin, but feel fat.
More likely to be seen as a force to be reckoned with, more intimidating. By this I mean that if your body instinctively uses it's capacity to gain weight to either help stave off potential or actual mental crisis, those who can't call on this option may have to pay for it.
Now for the reverse I'm speculating from what I've managed to glean from less fat people themselves. So it's up to them to correct me on this. They think, we're freer, from being liked for ourselves. Freer to eat what we want (projection). Freedom's a theme here.
For the same reason that some emit the edict to "check your privilege", it's not just the 'privileged' who have to check themselves out. It's those who are calling it out. They too are as capable of being full of shit and plain wrong as anyone else. Being disadvantaged/oppressed doesn't purify your character or mind OK? Nor should be expected to.
Peggy Mac's version of the concept has some use. But like any there's a point when it disintegrates and is overly or misapplied. Then it serves to obscure more than it illuminates. As I have said before, I feel that "thin privilege" is a brilliant example of where that line occurs. Whatever you feel about this kind of privilege-that of unfair, unearned advantages (whatever that means) as opposed to the Derridan sense of it as a certain condition or state that is accorded certain status over and above others, I wondered what about fat people, do we have any unearned advantage over others?
Now please do not think I'm doing this merely to be mischievous. It is a legitimate thing to consider. And as so many are telling others, privilege is nothing to get the hump about. So, what could possibly be the point of such a seemingly absurd proposition as fat privilege? Well, it's occurred to me for a while, but I've struggled to find a way to express that despite or sometimes because of the way society dogs fat people, there are things about it and the experience of it that are worthwhile.
The underlying problem I have with putting the fat experience into the category marked, oppression is-apart from the fact that I don't believe that we are, yet- and I think they should be named in case we do.
The fat as oppressed, takes us down a road that I can tell is not a good idea. It doesn't represent us realistically and I think after succumbing so long to the convenient lies of others, we not only deserve better. I do not believe that fat people are the poorest of the poor, disproportionately, I think that we are more likely to be the working or aspirant poor and a bit more.
So, back to a prospective list of fat privilege; physically is its potentially stabilizing effects on mood. From alleviating depression to an anti-psychotic effect etc., weight gain seems to stop or slow you from sinking into a mire. Without the side effects of alcohol and drugs which mess up your chemical balance and ability to function. This might be part of the reason why we are less likely to commit suicide than other weight groups.
It also seems to have potentially stabilizing effect overall in terms of life in general, though this could be partly repression. That smothers bad as well as good behaviour.
Having had less access to the product of the labour of today's version of indentured servitude- i.e. sweat shops, we have less of a burden of guilt about that kind of capitalist exploitation. We are more likely to be seen as approachable and non threatening. Less likely to be seen as a threat in terms of looks, less likely to be a recipient of that kind of hostility. Our gender identity is more likely to be seen as distinct, therefore convincing than thin people's. We are more able to be seen as an experience sexually, due to our size. We can be perceived as more responsible, solid citizens, especially at a younger age, when it maybe counts more. Less prone to niggling ailments, such as colds etc., More likely to be seen as a nicer person.
More likely to know the futility of the weight loss diet canard, therefore more likely to be liberated from mindless obedience to authority. Less likely to be an alcoholic =less likely to be an illegal drug user, therefore, less likely to have trouble with the law, be in prison.
There's a quality about fatness that can be hard to replicate, hence the french saying that a woman should look thin, but feel fat.
More likely to be seen as a force to be reckoned with, more intimidating. By this I mean that if your body instinctively uses it's capacity to gain weight to either help stave off potential or actual mental crisis, those who can't call on this option may have to pay for it.
Now for the reverse I'm speculating from what I've managed to glean from less fat people themselves. So it's up to them to correct me on this. They think, we're freer, from being liked for ourselves. Freer to eat what we want (projection). Freedom's a theme here.
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Taxing people
Rather than a shame tax on foods, some fantasize there should be a tax on the fat body itself. On fat people effectively.
Not only does this man think fatness is different from 'obesity'. The latter being fat beyond his wildest dreams. He thinks that fat people are like objects, like cigarettes.
The purpose of taxing fat people is of course to avoid taxing food that slim people like to eat. Even though they're supposed to be slim due to eating so well. As they're only occasional and rare indulgers of this kind of food. If ever. You'd think they wouldn't miss it if it was unavailable.
Especially as he insists, fat people use up 42% more in health care costs compared to the normal weighted. You'd think they'd be able to make no sacrifice, shut all fast food, soft drinks and confectionery down.
Ensuring slimness for all.
Problem solved.
But no, though slim people are rarely seen but dead eating any of this as we know. They remain remarkably attached to it. Seeking to avoid any infraction on it, despite moaning about what they consider to be the costs of fulfilling their wishes.
I say theirs, because I'm sure fat people's views will be disregarded as usual. If it wasn't for the only views that count. Hey, why not tax the slim until they get out of their own way.
Let's end their suffering, that of having people fat at them.
Not only does this man think fatness is different from 'obesity'. The latter being fat beyond his wildest dreams. He thinks that fat people are like objects, like cigarettes.
The purpose of taxing fat people is of course to avoid taxing food that slim people like to eat. Even though they're supposed to be slim due to eating so well. As they're only occasional and rare indulgers of this kind of food. If ever. You'd think they wouldn't miss it if it was unavailable.
Especially as he insists, fat people use up 42% more in health care costs compared to the normal weighted. You'd think they'd be able to make no sacrifice, shut all fast food, soft drinks and confectionery down.
Ensuring slimness for all.
Problem solved.
But no, though slim people are rarely seen but dead eating any of this as we know. They remain remarkably attached to it. Seeking to avoid any infraction on it, despite moaning about what they consider to be the costs of fulfilling their wishes.
I say theirs, because I'm sure fat people's views will be disregarded as usual. If it wasn't for the only views that count. Hey, why not tax the slim until they get out of their own way.
Let's end their suffering, that of having people fat at them.
Friday, 25 September 2009
Inhabiting the norm
I want to pick up on a point sweet machine made in a post about gay and bisexual teens yesterday.
When we depathologize states of being that are considered abnormal, we can reveal the normative structures that propped up our pathologizing in the first place.
Or when we stop using our own states of being as the starting point from which all must be measured against. There is also a difference between abnormal and unusual. That which is rare or unusual is by no means bad, and this is a category that should be able to be accepted both by those that are in that category and those who aren't.
I have a problem with this fighting to be included into the category 'normal' as opposed to fighting for equal acceptance and understanding; or dismantling the neurosis of normalcy, which is often a source and creator of injustice. Fighting for normal seems to underline the norm as an ideal, and that can be counterproductive.
There is that which is normal to each of us; however rare or unusual a flower we are, and that which is possibly a/the norm in general; either the main body of people, or the largest minority which people fit in to.
When we accept that the categories we’re accustomed to are not best described as X and not-X (straight and not straight, thin and not-thin, etc.) but as X and Y and probably Z too, we see that X was only considered “normal” because it was important to people who are X to view it that way.
X could be anyone, it could be those who are fighting for their rights, they are just as capable of seeing their state as the one by which all others should not only be measured, against, but all others shaped around. Or all other states should be shaped wholly to be pressganged into giving shape to their state, because it cannot be defined as they would like without turning others into an extension of that state.Some people might say that is the hallmark of the fractiousnes of normal itself.
When we look from a standpoint of celebrating human diversity, it seems bizarre to think of Z as abnormal or the “opposite” of X: Z is its own way of being.
Agreed, but again, this is not always a divide between those who suffer social injustice v. those advantaged in general or by injustice, it is an attitude of mind, and those fighting against the norm use that 'bizarre' stance themselves at times, yet still critique that same stance because they eitehr feel it does or it actually does, go against them. This undermines their own outrage at this stance -if not at the injustice itself.
Thin people and straight people aren’t required to explain away their bodies and desires; they’re not asked “How do you know you’re straight?” or “Have you ever thought about trying not to be thin?”
In general terms, no they aren't required to justify themselves as much, but the neurosis that overspills into prejudice also puts it's own impositions on the X's, but it's not backed up by the mechanical weight of those who operate the levers of the societal machine. But plenty of those who aren't straight, feel exactly that straight = bullshit- and I'm sure it's not entirely wrong for straights to ask themselves these kinds of questions or be asked them. For instance, just how 'straight' can female sexuality be? Does it even really exist in it's own right in mainstream terms? It seems that the 'straight' is male heterosex and female het, is just an adjunct of that.
Witness how many women 'suffer' from female sexual dysfunction, or sorrily misused/ misunderstood/ semi existent female sexuality imploding under the weight of it's own hollowed outness. The term seems to be about men- gay talking about other men 'straight'. It's like in joke mockery than a category for women. Or thin shaming, hardly backed up by the sort of official power that gets behind the obesity crisis.
Social justice movements aren’t simply trying to flip things around and make it so that those questions do get asked of “normal” people, too; they’re trying to get rid of these demeaning, eliminationist questions in the first place.
Um, not necessarily, it depends on their requirements, but I think you'll find that plenty within social justice movements are just trying to flip things around, with them in the driving seat instead. They may feel that what they have is a better way and that others ought to have to answer to that way.
It's like Kera's mother, some people truly want to understand diversity, some do not, or are constutionally unable to, the lines don't divide. Those who fight for extention of rights versus those who enjoy them.
Thursday, 24 September 2009
The screaming neurosis of normal
I've been wanting to write about this for a while. It's been brought to my mind by sweet machine quoting a lady called Thea Hillman, who is intersex and identifies as female.
Ms Hillman talks about "normal as a weapon of mass destruction" in the context of it being aimed at the bodies of people who do not fit mainstream idealized notions of sexuality or gender.
Normal though imprisons us all. One of the more shocking things for me, and it seems to be very much an American thing to date, is the fight for normal. No one is allowed to describe themselves thus, no matter how conventional their experience. This is seen as a major infraction. An assault against those who are unusual or rare, because somewhere along the line, it was decided that normal must be for all.
There are different ways of seeing the norm. In terms of overall number and in terms of your own personal norm. They aren't the same thing. No one should oppress others with the idea that they do not fit in or are substandard due to not being what everyone's used to. Or is expected.
Yet, I cannot help seeing this need to be called normal when you aren't or the sense of threat toward those who are as an ominous sign. It feels like the wrong target for so much energy.
Embracing difference fully feels like the one. Coming to terms with the idea that it is as real and as vital as similarity. It is inevitable. To see that every person has a place and it isn't nor does it have to be the same as others. One sees in the cosmetic surgery, and even to an extent the fitness industry a slide towards an excessive uniformity that can be quite eerie.
Normal is itself a conglomeration of many things. It is a range even more than it is a specific person. Many are faking, playing normal and their neurosis about this often screams so loudly, showing at times even more distress than those deemed misfits. Fueling the aggression against aimed at others. Thus submerging the evidence of what they wish to hide in themselves.
Wishing to be included in the norm is probably an extension of that impulse. It is a part of us, but we should consider resisting its pull. Normal should not mean the same as accepted.
Ms Hillman talks about "normal as a weapon of mass destruction" in the context of it being aimed at the bodies of people who do not fit mainstream idealized notions of sexuality or gender.
Normal though imprisons us all. One of the more shocking things for me, and it seems to be very much an American thing to date, is the fight for normal. No one is allowed to describe themselves thus, no matter how conventional their experience. This is seen as a major infraction. An assault against those who are unusual or rare, because somewhere along the line, it was decided that normal must be for all.
There are different ways of seeing the norm. In terms of overall number and in terms of your own personal norm. They aren't the same thing. No one should oppress others with the idea that they do not fit in or are substandard due to not being what everyone's used to. Or is expected.
Yet, I cannot help seeing this need to be called normal when you aren't or the sense of threat toward those who are as an ominous sign. It feels like the wrong target for so much energy.
Embracing difference fully feels like the one. Coming to terms with the idea that it is as real and as vital as similarity. It is inevitable. To see that every person has a place and it isn't nor does it have to be the same as others. One sees in the cosmetic surgery, and even to an extent the fitness industry a slide towards an excessive uniformity that can be quite eerie.
Normal is itself a conglomeration of many things. It is a range even more than it is a specific person. Many are faking, playing normal and their neurosis about this often screams so loudly, showing at times even more distress than those deemed misfits. Fueling the aggression against aimed at others. Thus submerging the evidence of what they wish to hide in themselves.
Wishing to be included in the norm is probably an extension of that impulse. It is a part of us, but we should consider resisting its pull. Normal should not mean the same as accepted.
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Health for all
I define health as-facilitating your ability/capacity to function. I see this everywhere from everyone, my whole life. I've also seen people who for many reasons have become incapable of this, it's almost felt as an animal instinct, by those around them, that these people are in real trouble of the kind that could be terminal. The current healthist definition of health is more like a form of hypochondria.
If you get to know anyone, they will tell you what they do to get all kinds of outcomes that lead to the former definition. They do this from their own experience, on the advice of people they know and respect, on instinct and on their own initiative. Often delivered with a preamble of 'you'll never guess what I do...' or 'you won't believe what's good for that...' etc.
Where they fall down the world over, is when the definition of health becomes an elitist game, set up to ensure nobody really wins. That is the healthist game. The rejection that so hurts fat healthists, some of which is the motivation for their involvement in fat acceptance-to be included into what's defined in this form of health-is just a more obvious manifestation of the truth of this form of health; no one can truly achieve it because it's not actually tangible.
Just as no one can really be a living saint. You might think Mother Teresa, but trust me, if you took a good look at her, you'll find the truth on that score.
No matter what you do there will be some reason why you are failing, or falling down, fat is just one of them. If it's not what you eat, it's what you don't eat, if it's not your level of exercise, it's your types of exercise, frequency variety, etc. If you become ill, it's because you lacked X, you can never be right. It's always an aim that you can never fulfil except possibly temporarily, in extremes of endeavour that hardly add up to an ideal of health.
Because everything is seen in their terms, our concern and deep desire to be part of our healing and well being is erased, just like fat people's desire to be well is in general.
We are told to believe that we don't care about our health, because our bodies don't want to and don't like what healthists tell us to do. Any system of health would take this feedback seriously and adjust, using it to inform and direct. But healthism doesn't want that, it wants you to do what it wants you to do, above all and doesn't like spontaneity or personal initiative. even when we try to force ourselves, what healthist define as healthful. We must remember that we don't have to answer to this definition of health, anymore than we have to answer to religious or political.
Health is only useful if it's useful to us, if we can benefit from it in ways that actually help and not hurt us.
We have that right, regardless of what anyone says.
Responsibilities
Looking at this brought to mind the differences in the way I see the question of responsibility, regarding health matters.
I don't actually have a problem with the idea of personal responsibility with regards to health.
I doubt virtually anyone else really has either.
Our inherent desire to participate in our own healing and well being accounts for the success of complementary and alternative therapies. Even though these are much mocked by the medical establishment and scientists.
As I'm making this point, it occurs just how much we've been persuaded that we don't care just because some people wish to have a certain vision of health that sets out to deliberately exclude people. It's one of the more egregious aspects of the healthist mindwarp.
The way we've taken up the whole weight loss diet experiment, how difficult we find it to accept that there isn't much we can do to guarantee the weight adjustments we want. Shows we are so desperate to be in control, that the prospect of losing even the fantasy of control is enough to enrage us or bring us to despair or denial.
We have a profound and innate wish to be responsible and control our health, full stop.
What we however don't want is to be blamed or shamed because of any health problems we may face. We don't wish to be so burdened with feeling at fault, that it takes the energies we need to heal and becomes a sickness in itself. That instinctive common sense. We don't do well with blame at the best of times, so it's best for us to wear it as lightly as possible, unless our actions merit that burden.
Due to the heritage of beliefs that were behind the practice of medicine in the past, which dealt in all sorts of strange and darkly counterproductive ideas, such as illness and disease being one's sins manifest and so forth. It was seen as enlightened to remove all responsibility from those with illness or disability. 'Responsibility' became that of passively doing what one was told by medical professionals and receiving treatment without any fuss. This became the model of how to be ill and be a good patient. This suited both sides.
In exchange for relief of the burden of crushing negative type of 'responsibility' which was really blame. We were freed from the burden of scary hoodoo, and the professionals attained an ego flattering supremacy which they have become magnetically welded to.
Ironically the problems have been brought about by success, that of the disease model seeing off diseases of pathogenesis. This has lead to us living longer healthier lives. But what cannot be eradicated is individual genetic susceptibilities to potential chronic health issues, and for some reason, the professionals cannot seem to accept it. They have passed this non-acceptance on to us, and we now have become convinced that we can live forever if not for 'bad habits'.
Funny how ill equipped we can be when it comes to problems brought about by success, our kindergarten training that if you do good things, good things will come and if you do bad things, bad things will come, dies hard. In the kerfuffle, the professionals are trying to apply the disease model to these intrinsic susceptibilities we all have, and the results are showing the model is being overextended.
What they want is our help. They want us to participate in our own healing, but, they cannot tolerate the empowerment necessary to facilitate this exiting our agreed passivity, because it will affect their status.
What they are asking for is could be revolutionary, a personal index of our actions and thoughts, it is possible, it might even be desirable, as anyone who has gone from doctor to doctor not being able to find out what's wrong with them might know. The internet self diagnosis phenomenon, indicates our inclination on treatment. A lot of doctors resent this hugely.
People don't become fat or depressed or whatever because of an obesity or depression pathogen and trying to pretend so leads to the type of ludicrous food phobia and paranoia where people think syrup from corn is attacking their organs, not syrup for other plants though, that just creates diabetes or it is good if it is fermented bee vomit even though the component is similar or same to one another. People become those things due to innate biological or genetic susceptibility. Minimizing those requires different skills, it requires a level of self awareness that would lead us to refuse to allow a lot of liberties to be taken with us, and that won't do for those who feel it's their right to reign over us.
So what we have now is a half way house where they try to subdue us with shame and self-blame, hoping we won't notice that this isn't conducive to the awareness required of us, they want us to be clear eyed sleep walkers, obedient and yet independent and ruthlessly single minded if necessary. You see they won't get what they want. Question is, how much damage is going to be done, before this becomes to obvious to ignore?
Monday, 21 September 2009
Welfare dependency-endpoint not option
Looking at part of the quote explaining the taxpayers alliance mission statement and talking about the government.
They spend 48% of our income, yet fail to deliver decent services.
Indeed; and they're after more in the form of shame taxes or taxes-for what you may use to keep you sane.
But "shame taxes", more snappy.
They promise prosperity, yet tax and regulate our economy into stasis.
I'd say that if they replaced "prosperity" with 'education' and "economy" with 'mind's, that is what creates welfare dependency.
Those with well developed minds, don't tend to want to go on welfare; what for?People who like to convert their disillusion with the world of work as it is (and it's ethics) in an advanced capitalist society into a utopian vision of existing on welfare as a life free of cares, woes and adult responsibilities, need to get that chip off their shoulder. If it were the case people on the dole would be living the longest and healthiest of all lives. They don't because being unable to gain a foothold or repeatedly losing their grip, suggests things that don't tend to go with excellent long term health prognosis.
A young mind that has been developed to explore and understand both itself and the world, combined with the inexperience of not having yet failed should be full of plans, dreams and ambitions, it shouldn't be that tired quite yet. The fact that so many are spat out at the end of over a decade of 'education' only to land on government assistance is a definitive comment on that so-called system of 'education', not mere coincidence, or the innate uselessness of the initiative impaired, as a lot including many fauxgressives self servingly fancy.
Incidentally, it's largely they who run this mis-education system. One has to ask if a question such as what is the point of having a load of highly motivated working class populace, what are they going to do exactly? How will that affect those trained to feel a certain lifestyle is their birthright?
Potentially, messy.
Now you might feel that's a little harsh, these people are well-meaning (now where have I heard that before?), maybe, but meaning well meaning doesn't mean, well doing I'm sure even the most well meaning get the principle of being judged by results rather than purely by intent.
A lot of people feel that if you are working class, you must aspire 'upward'. But if say your father is a lawyer and your mother a teacher, and you wish to be a doctor, you're not really aspiring are you? You are in essence, wishing to remain, more or less in the strata you are born, you like it, you know it and it's rules and codes, your family is there, the people you love and grew up with.
Difference is, those instincts don't tend to be quite so pathologised, and you so obviously penalised for them. Either way, if WC's and others are allowed to develop their minds-from points that make sense to them. They will not be apathetic and listless.
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Blaming the hated for hurting
Kimdog over at BfB led me here . To another piece of blatant attempt at conscience salving by those who willingly choose to immerse themselves in the sewer of the obesity crisis. Honestly you'd think they had no damn choice at all. Let me give them a piece of advice, if by not blaming your quarry you find that your position is morally untenable to you, ABANDON IT, that my friends isn't rocket science.
Apparently a Canadian study has found that obesity is not the result of low self esteem but the cause.
One of the things I noted after years of unsuccessfully trying to turn healthy eating and exercise as a weight loss strategy to use the very same metabolism to outwit itself. Was how my chronic depression was bound up in it. The psychological element was pretty obvious, but what came as a real surprise was the physiological elements which seemed to be two fold.
First it was as metabolic adaptation, that is energy conservation. By that I mean that part of the way my metabolism adjusted to trying to lower calories, was either depression itself or it was a direct side effect of it.
Direct means, that if I want to become depressed right now, all I have to do is to think about thinking about reducing calories/going on a diet.
I am serious.
I didn't notice it until I stopped dieting because I was so deep in the mire, that I didn't have the subtlety of nuanced energy or moods to notice that kind of shift.
Secondly, the fatness itself might well have contained within it this "metabolic depression".
In essence, they are the same factors, but one is about the body deciding to gain weight for whatever reason; compensation, mood alteration, defence/coping mechanism et al. The other is about defending your weight, whatever it is, from self induced famine(s).
This doesn't even touch on the knock to one's esteem of being made to play the baddie, if you care about being seen as being a good person. The article quotes the study concluding that low self esteem doesn't cause fatness, is simply not credible in my experience.
It leaves out something else, that your metabolism itself might tune in to a constant state of low self esteem. In a sense your emotions are part of your personal energy equation, so it could one and the same, one part of your metabolic equation, affecting, pulling your energy and therefore your metabolism in a certain direction.
I would be surprised if this can be ruled out at this stage, it would be like saying that low self esteem doesn't cause depression, it's the other way round.
This is silly, it's circular, maybe " x causes y" is a paradigm straining to far, it's really, x is caused by x, or x is y.
Depression in overweight children begins as young as 10, with obese children nearly twice as likely to report feelings of low self-worth than their counterparts who are at a normal, age-appropriate weight.
This doesn't support their conclusions, if low self esteem is a trigger for metabolic change that could cause fatness-and for all I know in some, thinness- then low self esteem will be present.
They say it's tragic. It's always tragic when they can blame the individual or the parent, but never so when obesity wallahs are causing it by condemning children to a lifetime of second class social status.
Unsurprisingly, accepting the obesity mantle continues to bite during the flux of the teenage years, making them, "sad and anxious" and more susceptible to suicidal thoughts and drug use. The sad and anxious is correct, the evil that wo/men do is enough to sadden the heart of any young human.
Again none of this makes them question the branding of children this way, but the "failure" of parents to turn that branding into weight loss success, usually a non-sequitur if there ever was one.
It's one of the reasons why I get so irritated when we are told those who peddle this self serving shit at the expense of those least able to defend themselves are 'well meaning'.
I hope what any parents reading this will take is just how ruthless the crisis devotees are prepared to get. In a sense, the well meaning thing should really read, diminished responsibility, like those who go to the developing world where people have minimal access to birth control and preach abstinence, due to their deeply held convictions that this is the only moral course.
Parents must be take matters into their own hands, and teach especially their fat children to have a different more distant relationship to authority, even if that has to include their own. They must tell their children that they were born with self esteem and their innate worth is therefore their birthright and is not be be handed to them via those who feel it is their business to dispense it to them. This is a lesson a lot of groups in society have to reckon with, it's about time some parents of fat children woke up to this.
I suspect a lot of them have, which is why they've cause to complain about the lack of awareness and denial, for that read, not interested in killing their children (or themselves)spiritually from the inside out, due to the instructions of those who's interests or beliefs are totally served by this. As far as is possible children must be cautioned them against allowing society to dictate the worth, unchecked and unquestioned, on virtually any account.
Teaching them to think things through objectively, examine obesity ideology with them, encouraging them to question it and examine the consequences of it. Above all ask, who benefits from this point of view?
Friday, 18 September 2009
The difficulty of not being a troll
The fat chat feed's spitting up a whole lot of the fat nutritionists posts at the moment.
I think I saw this on her blog, or I just read it and didn't bother with the comments.
I did this time and after all that, it might explain in part why I couldn't quite manage to have a conversation about the intrinsic painfulness (or lack) of weight loss.
If I'd known, maybe I wouldn't have bothered at the time or at all. I think she saw me in the category of those commenter's. I think I realised then, that's how you're seen, I'd heard it before, but didn't take it seriously. But now I realise that just seems to be belligerence rather than commitment.
It along with other things have convinced me reluctantly that the discussions that revolve around fat, are not something I tend to slot into in a way that tends to be productive for either side.
I can't wholly blame or exempt myself, ditto others, it's just the way it is.
When I first got involved with the let's face it, US fatosphere, I had high hopes. To change the world, to cure cancer.....nah, I'm fibbing.
My overriding 'ambition' was to have a conversation about fat that had some fluency of mutual understanding. And to be part of a societal intervention in the form of personifying the elision marked 'fat people'. They can't keep on with this obese shit if we are just being too human at them.
My hubris has undone me, and I find that I set the bar too high on both counts.
So what's the plan now?
Oh I'm the wo-man with the plan.
To just find out what I think, to keep reading the 'sphere and in regard to other people's spaces, learn to keep my comments to myself.
I can't believe how hard the latter is.
I feel like I'm really primed to contribute, I never was before, so I was in a different state of mind. I was also not a joiner as I always found fundamental differences, whether I wanted to or not.
So, when I persuaded myself to overcome this reluctance, it didn't occur to me that I'd need practise or that I would need to withdraw, it feels strange to do this whilst still feeling a sense of commitment.
Anyhow, this post has not turned out to go the way it should have gone, so I'll end it here.
The role of allies
A while back on a forum, someone who wasn't fat asked what was her role in fat acceptance. I remember feeling surprised by this but found it difficult to state it in so many words at the time.
I was reminded of this whilst reading an interview with Diva editor Jane Czyselska and a plus-size model called, Kelli Jean Drinkwater (she's a size 26/28), a point was raised which reminded me of how I saw fat acceptance, for those who weren't fat.
Jane asks Kelli Jean to debunk myths around fat people, at one point she answers;
The point is not that FA be an exclusively fat thing, more that it's from fat people, to end the erasure from our own definition of self.
In that, I underestimated just how off putting the word "fat" was, even to those ready to understand what we were getting at. I have and never have had any desire to shame slim or thin women's bodies. I don't and never have felt realer than those not blessed with my largess. So it didn't occur that some of those wo/men would find that a barrier. That they would assume that the "fat" in FA would somehow be against them. If we want to accept our bodies, why would we not want you to accept yours?
Naive possibly, but I've never checked the weight of anyone to know how I feel about what they say, so I expected others would respond to what was said, rather than the fugue in the wake of "fat".
I sincerely hope FA continues to spread and liberate fat and thin alike (and those in between!) And that it gives something to those outside it who have instinctively, or from their experience come to eschew healthism.
I was reminded of this whilst reading an interview with Diva editor Jane Czyselska and a plus-size model called, Kelli Jean Drinkwater (she's a size 26/28), a point was raised which reminded me of how I saw fat acceptance, for those who weren't fat.
Jane asks Kelli Jean to debunk myths around fat people, at one point she answers;
...I've head lovers and friends tell me that because I'm so comfortable in my body it liberates them into being more free and unselfconscious in theirs.This for me is the role of fat acceptance for those who are fat and non fat alike. I would not consider myself to be a paragon of liberation physically. I retain too much inhibition for reasons not wholly due to weight (it's important to remember that a lot of slim people feel too feel estranged from their capacity for physical expression). I thought people would get that, and we would go on the journey together, egging each other on.
The point is not that FA be an exclusively fat thing, more that it's from fat people, to end the erasure from our own definition of self.
In that, I underestimated just how off putting the word "fat" was, even to those ready to understand what we were getting at. I have and never have had any desire to shame slim or thin women's bodies. I don't and never have felt realer than those not blessed with my largess. So it didn't occur that some of those wo/men would find that a barrier. That they would assume that the "fat" in FA would somehow be against them. If we want to accept our bodies, why would we not want you to accept yours?
Naive possibly, but I've never checked the weight of anyone to know how I feel about what they say, so I expected others would respond to what was said, rather than the fugue in the wake of "fat".
I sincerely hope FA continues to spread and liberate fat and thin alike (and those in between!) And that it gives something to those outside it who have instinctively, or from their experience come to eschew healthism.
Tuesday, 15 September 2009
We are all doomed, (if only the facts would co-operate)
Much to mirth to be gained from this article in the daily mail which tries it's usual, yegads we're all doomed mentality and fails due to mere facts getting in the way.
Using a study on women's bodies and measurement's from 60 years ago, comparing them to today.
We are taller on average by 2 inches and 7 pounds heavier, this means average BMI was 24.9 and is now 24.7
Yes that means BMI has gone down on average much to their chagrin I sense, they are chastened somewhat to be sure. We have bigger waists, by 7 inches, alhtough I suspect like one of the commenter's that the previous tradition of wearing girdles, which was as widespread as wearing a bra, women felt the same way about going out without one on, until they got old.
It was a tight band of material that went from under your bra to your hips, or was more like this .
Long term wearing definitely had the effect of training your tummy inward to some extent, although rather like the extra boobage you get with a too tight bra, there could sometimes be overspill.
Hips have only gone up 1 inch this means giving a more straight up and down than hourglass, clearly DM sees this as unfeminine and presents it as 'hormonally imbalanced', IOW, when women aren't trying to fake womanhood, social constructs mysteriously morph into biology.
As ever, they tell us the truth, without meaning to, if we're paying a bit of attention.
Our feet are also bigger, which they try gamely to make a problem, they say we need bigger feet for a taller frame, feet have gone from size 3 1/2 to size 6, but because it's due to the 7 pound weight gain-yes stay with me- it's a problem, they (hope)think. Yeah, makes sense to me too. That's why I say there's a tinge of the occult about this, the overspill of energy invested into obese=you die, it's become obese, please die. I hope we never have to invoke the antidote spell for that.
You see this with other beliefs we invest hugely in, we get to the point where we wish ill on others, to make ourselves right. We want so badly to be in the right and for things to go our way.
Happy reading!
DIVA magazine's FAT issue
Well done to all at DIVA magazine for a having a fat issue that doesn't descend into the usual nonsense. It features two very sassy fat divas on the cover looking very glam, articles, one on HAES (if you like that sort of thing), on modelling, interviews, a couple of opinion pieces and profiles.
It's wonderful to just read opinions about fat- as if we've returned to the age of reason- and actual thoughts, you know, the kind that involve actual engagement of brain power, from intelligent and engaged people, thank you.
The fact that I don't agree with all of what's said, doesn't matter a jot, because what's important is the exchange of thought energy.
We are all in this life together, however long we have the fortune to be here, let's have all hands on deck when it comes to doing the deepest thinking we can for the good of us all.
Whoah, I'm getting a bit excited. Probably because I'm glad to be saying thanks at last. What I hate is having hearing people thanked for regurgitating the same old bullshit, especially when they ought to know better. By that I mean they could be expected to fail better than that.
Again, it's not just about we agree, its' about, I respectfully and most vociferously disagree, or what about this or that?
Anyway, I want to repost, reply and respond to so many who've written I'll just post as many posts as I feel merit it.
N.B. The on-line edition doesn't allow full access so it might be worth getting hold of a copy in person.
Monday, 14 September 2009
Greed
In the context of eating, why greed?
If that sounds like a silly question perhaps you're taking that for granted.
The reason for being greedy is for the pleasure, right?
Pleasure is not just the icing on the cake, but the cake itself. The icing on and around it, plus the other frou frou decorations is the bit we are most conscious of so it's what we notice most and think of as the all of pleasure.
Without the underlying substance that we don't feel, because it basically just stops us feeling like kaka, we would not be able to scale heights of ecstasy and joy.
When life events press upon this basic everyday pleasure, our will to live can start to be lessened or eroded. Most normally in the form of what can become clinical depression. That can cause the body to use its available levers to stop or stem that drift.
Appetite, changing your tastes towards more sweet or fatty food and hunger can increase, energy seems to not only to have some kind of anti depressant or emotionally stabilizing, effect in terms of intake and reduced output, but also, fat tissue in your body seems to be part of that support too, something that is rarely alluded to.
The bit idea is eating lots is automatically about pleasure but it may be about making up for a lack of pleasure.
Another thing about pleasure is it's a bit like energy (maybe it is energy) there is only so much of it that can be had.You cannot go on eating and gaining more and more pleasure that doesn't make sense. So those who assume this have some explaining to do about why anyone would keep eating for increasingly lowering returns if pleasure is their drive and goal.
It also has cycles. Sex is the most obvious and clear example to look at, because it tends to be more distinct than most. There is the bit where you become aroused, like becoming hungry, the bit where you have sex or eat and the latter part where you have an orgasm or reach satiety.
There is some kind of limit, if there is an inability to reach that height, it is likely to be some kind of malfunction, rather than the "joy" of just carrying on until its uncomfortable, with a sense of something missing.
Far from being simple, eating more than you require "for pleasure" doesn't strike me as making all that much sense in the way it's been 'explained' to us.
Once you are satisfied, or achieve satiety the urge should cease, if you tried to carry on, if you could manage it, all you would normally gain is discomfort even outright pain. You might find yourself sweating profusely as your body desperately tries to use this unwarranted largesse, see Spurlock, PJ James and other media whore feeders.
Pleasure is not just the icing on the cake, but the cake itself. The icing on and around it, plus the other frou frou decorations is the bit we are most conscious of so it's what we notice most and think of as the all of pleasure.
Without the underlying substance that we don't feel, because it basically just stops us feeling like kaka, we would not be able to scale heights of ecstasy and joy.
When life events press upon this basic everyday pleasure, our will to live can start to be lessened or eroded. Most normally in the form of what can become clinical depression. That can cause the body to use its available levers to stop or stem that drift.
Appetite, changing your tastes towards more sweet or fatty food and hunger can increase, energy seems to not only to have some kind of anti depressant or emotionally stabilizing, effect in terms of intake and reduced output, but also, fat tissue in your body seems to be part of that support too, something that is rarely alluded to.
The bit idea is eating lots is automatically about pleasure but it may be about making up for a lack of pleasure.
Another thing about pleasure is it's a bit like energy (maybe it is energy) there is only so much of it that can be had.You cannot go on eating and gaining more and more pleasure that doesn't make sense. So those who assume this have some explaining to do about why anyone would keep eating for increasingly lowering returns if pleasure is their drive and goal.
It also has cycles. Sex is the most obvious and clear example to look at, because it tends to be more distinct than most. There is the bit where you become aroused, like becoming hungry, the bit where you have sex or eat and the latter part where you have an orgasm or reach satiety.
There is some kind of limit, if there is an inability to reach that height, it is likely to be some kind of malfunction, rather than the "joy" of just carrying on until its uncomfortable, with a sense of something missing.
Far from being simple, eating more than you require "for pleasure" doesn't strike me as making all that much sense in the way it's been 'explained' to us.
Once you are satisfied, or achieve satiety the urge should cease, if you tried to carry on, if you could manage it, all you would normally gain is discomfort even outright pain. You might find yourself sweating profusely as your body desperately tries to use this unwarranted largesse, see Spurlock, PJ James and other media whore feeders.
Eating our beliefs
Important post Sandy concerning the nerve wearing growth in describing deathly symptoms following eating food that the human body is perfectly capable of digesting easily-and has done for centuries.
These symptoms in short can be summed up as whenever I eat x I feel really really dirty, physically, mentally, and morally, the bad kind of dirty that is.
It doesn't really matter how many times you question this, you'll not get far, because what is happening, is often what they want. This food is bad, it makes me feel bad, hurrah!
This fact, makes me intrinsically a good person (in a moral sense), and often though not always, a person of innate discernment, someone who enjoys and responds well only to the finer things.
Those who eat that shit, because that is often what they call it (incidentally, try thinking of your salad as excrement and see if there's a difference in your 'enjoyment' of it), are as dirty as what they like to eat, not only that, they are further polluting themselves from within. Needless to say, fat people don't tend to come out of this very well, (it also puts fat healthists on the defensive), indeed that is the point, it's like a communion of like with like. The good people and the good food, come together to in some kind of psychic completion, and the same for the bad people/food.
Like within, draws like without, to itself.
So it turns out that this is part of our old friend the nocebo effect, which is just the placebo effect gone bad. Both are the same process, just one positive, one negative.
I've often wondered whether-if it possibly exists- the placebo dividend-of dieting is hiding out.
It is a mystery that I've pondered on, all but the most utterly useless, poisonous even-arsenic tinctures were once used as a pick me up in Victorian times- can somehow engage the mind to produce some kind of of positive effect. I know this must happen with dieting, but amongst the many bad, it's hard to ascertain, precisely what.
But this has always seemed the most likely suspect, our neurotic beliefs about food, that are spreading among us in our spoilt world of plenty. You know how they say we eat with our our eyes?
Well, not only do we eat with our beliefs; we eat them too. It's why I had to get off the healthy eating track. I could no longer stomach the effects of those beliefs. In a sense I had to 'do a detox', but it really it was more, mental de-programming.
Saturday, 12 September 2009
Do fat black women have it 'easier'?
Than say fat white women, or even more fat East and South east Asian women? In a sense the question ignores the context of female racial beauty hierarchy. Black women are seen as at the bottom. Not so much for how we look, but because ideas of femininity clash with what black people are supposed to be, which are the opposite of feminine as a whole.
Morally lax, rascally and sly, as opposed to puritan, upright and honest, wild and savage, rather than demure and placid and so on.
White people are supposed to personify the more prosaic traits and that is joined with the idea of womanhood.
That is why the stereotype of black men is "hyper masculine", blackness doesn't undermine masculine ideals, but it does undermine their self expression. Black men have been skillful in many ways to overcome that the degree that they have, through artistic expression and so forth.
As black people are poorer overall, there's a class element in this. Working class white people also have a different relationship with fatness and women, similarly it could be seen as "easier" than for middle class white women in that sense.
But of course would be out of context, more than scaled back by the way working class people are seen as inherently degenerate because they've failed to attain a higher class status. There is no reason for anyone to be WC unless there is something wrong with them.
Though lower middle class people stretched by aspiration and needing to fit into another class band can also be quite fat
It's not that its okay to be a fat black woman, its that black society just hasn't reached the pitch of hysteria about thinness that other races have.
It's simplistic to state there aren't grave penalties for a fat woman who is black because it comes at a price that overrides any advantage conferred by a less mentally unbalanced level of vitriol towards fat women. It is seen as a shame, as a personal failing as my experience shows, I took being fat very hard indeed, even the idea of it didn't sit well with me.
Yet, I don't have some of the hang ups that white women seem to have about being judged on that score, I have others. Having to develop a more internalized sense of self worth and being more aware that people actually loathe you on sight makes the idea of undermining seem more costly and pointless and not really an available choice.
Morally lax, rascally and sly, as opposed to puritan, upright and honest, wild and savage, rather than demure and placid and so on.
White people are supposed to personify the more prosaic traits and that is joined with the idea of womanhood.
That is why the stereotype of black men is "hyper masculine", blackness doesn't undermine masculine ideals, but it does undermine their self expression. Black men have been skillful in many ways to overcome that the degree that they have, through artistic expression and so forth.
As black people are poorer overall, there's a class element in this. Working class white people also have a different relationship with fatness and women, similarly it could be seen as "easier" than for middle class white women in that sense.
But of course would be out of context, more than scaled back by the way working class people are seen as inherently degenerate because they've failed to attain a higher class status. There is no reason for anyone to be WC unless there is something wrong with them.
Though lower middle class people stretched by aspiration and needing to fit into another class band can also be quite fat
It's not that its okay to be a fat black woman, its that black society just hasn't reached the pitch of hysteria about thinness that other races have.
It's simplistic to state there aren't grave penalties for a fat woman who is black because it comes at a price that overrides any advantage conferred by a less mentally unbalanced level of vitriol towards fat women. It is seen as a shame, as a personal failing as my experience shows, I took being fat very hard indeed, even the idea of it didn't sit well with me.
Yet, I don't have some of the hang ups that white women seem to have about being judged on that score, I have others. Having to develop a more internalized sense of self worth and being more aware that people actually loathe you on sight makes the idea of undermining seem more costly and pointless and not really an available choice.
Life is lighter
T/W; Extreme dieting.
The story of the death of Samantha Clowe offers an insight into how the pressure of weight can overwhelm things that are more important.
Well qualified and in a good profession, she still felt she didn't have the respect of her colleagues due to her weight. I suppose its easy to feel confusion, but it hints at how some intelligent people can get really odd about dieting. The pressure from the circles they move adds an edge to their need to be very pro dieting. The aura of scientific respectability helps.
The system she tried was called lighter life, which specializes in a kind of abstinence by VLCD. At 530 calories a day for three weeks we are talking starvation. It is described as controversial, even though I wonder how much less that is than the calories ingested by those who've had a gastric bypass operation.
Although the post-mortem could not establish a definite cause, the coroner deemed it cardiac arrhythmia, literally when the heartbeat becomes irregular.
The responsibility has been placed on Samantha, even though she went for a check up with her doctor beforehand and was pronounced fit enough. Indeed this is a policy of the company itself.
Even so, she was accused of doing it incorrectly-that old stand by to excuse diet dysfunction, apparently she did not re-introduce herself to eating in the correct manner.
Unbelievably, the fact that she was fat to begin with has been used to write off her underlying health; A Lighter Life spokesman said although Miss Clowe's BMI had reduced from 37 to 32 when she died, she was 'still clinically obese' and 'her health may have already been compromised.'
Seriously are they for real?
Although this is from the company itself, it just so happened to chime with the professional view;
None too convincing.
This is what Dr. Dee Dawson of the Rhodes Farm Clinicwhich specialises in treating people with eating disorders;
People think they are protected through being fat. They have so much stored, how can it be a problem? It trades on the fact that its easier for many to just stop eating rather than eat half rations, which is something no one seems interested in explaining.
Good old daily mail with its tsk, tsking about "quick fixes" and the harm these regimes do, yet they failing to question the deadliness of fat, that links being fat to risks greater than those of virtual starvation.
The story of the death of Samantha Clowe offers an insight into how the pressure of weight can overwhelm things that are more important.
Well qualified and in a good profession, she still felt she didn't have the respect of her colleagues due to her weight. I suppose its easy to feel confusion, but it hints at how some intelligent people can get really odd about dieting. The pressure from the circles they move adds an edge to their need to be very pro dieting. The aura of scientific respectability helps.
The system she tried was called lighter life, which specializes in a kind of abstinence by VLCD. At 530 calories a day for three weeks we are talking starvation. It is described as controversial, even though I wonder how much less that is than the calories ingested by those who've had a gastric bypass operation.
Although the post-mortem could not establish a definite cause, the coroner deemed it cardiac arrhythmia, literally when the heartbeat becomes irregular.
The responsibility has been placed on Samantha, even though she went for a check up with her doctor beforehand and was pronounced fit enough. Indeed this is a policy of the company itself.
Even so, she was accused of doing it incorrectly-that old stand by to excuse diet dysfunction, apparently she did not re-introduce herself to eating in the correct manner.
Unbelievably, the fact that she was fat to begin with has been used to write off her underlying health; A Lighter Life spokesman said although Miss Clowe's BMI had reduced from 37 to 32 when she died, she was 'still clinically obese' and 'her health may have already been compromised.'
Seriously are they for real?
Although this is from the company itself, it just so happened to chime with the professional view;
'It had been suggested that there was a possible link to the diet but the coroner said it was very difficult to make such a connection.'
None too convincing.
This is what Dr. Dee Dawson of the Rhodes Farm Clinicwhich specialises in treating people with eating disorders;
It happens to the anorexic girls we treat - they can have arrhythmias and I suspect that's what happened to the poor girl who died. Similarly, a low calorie diet like LighterLife will affect memory and general well-being.
People think they are protected through being fat. They have so much stored, how can it be a problem? It trades on the fact that its easier for many to just stop eating rather than eat half rations, which is something no one seems interested in explaining.
Good old daily mail with its tsk, tsking about "quick fixes" and the harm these regimes do, yet they failing to question the deadliness of fat, that links being fat to risks greater than those of virtual starvation.
Friday, 11 September 2009
Well meaning? Dare to dream!
One of the many things that gets on my nerves about the obesity chimera, is the insistence that its devotees are 'well meaning'. Bilge.
Why such a need to believe or assert it, isn't it clear? So many people including denizens of the fat acceptance movement, are just insulting fat people this way.
Basically they're saying, well meaning for you. What utter contempt.
Well meaning for us is well meaning for everyone and vice versa, if that makes anyone's head spin, sit down.
Someone comes up to me and asks for the time/directions. I answer. Do you know why? Because I am well meaning and that is one of the first rules of a gentlemanperson, listening (I can manage at least one).
Where have we been listened to?
On contrary we are deliberately not listened to because to do any thing else would dismantle the ill logic marbled through this stupid witch hunt and people don't want that. Not only have they decided not to listen to us, they bought into a way of thinking which could not survive it.
I'd say doubly not well meaning.
People forget, most of us have been treated well enough to know what well meaning is and it is not the crisis rhetoric or assumptions. Then there are things like seeking to exhaust us by making us feel we don't deserve the esteem of ourselves or others. Then ordering us to take that sapped energy and waste more than is left to 'lose weight'. Of course people want us to succeed.
As if all this is the only, let alone a desirable way to achieve anything. Is the potential damage considered what measures were put in play to deal with that?
When was the intent to call it a day or decide, it hasn't worked? It would have to be pretty quick because the more taxing the method, the more quickly it needs to be effective. Especially as its about health or else it could compromise health before it can save it.
But I don't need to say all this because the well meaning people have gone through this thoroughly I'm sure. They've certainly had plenty of time.
I've never doubted those supporting the crisis are mainly good people, in a way it is the nastiness of good people.
The problem is, this doesn't make it better, it makes it worse in many ways, which is why the denial compare with the relish the slimming industry and Big Pharma are called out, because they're filthy trade and therefore, bad.
The good people use the knowledge of their own goodness to convince themselves they mean well when they know full well they do not. Switching down their consciences to enable behaviour they would not wish to be subject to themselves, what do you appeal to?
It is the goodness of people that keeps you believing that you are hurting because you need to way past bad people saying it because nice people wouldn't knowingly steer you wrong. The confidence that gives!
The trust.
How clueless were we? Look at those fat people who are still in thrall to fat hating, it's like an even more abject form of masochism, without any of the usual charm.
There is a distinct whiff of self comforting about all this, a need to keep believing not in the goodness of people, we agree on that, but on their good intent. This is rather shown up by the fury directed at the slimming industry and anyone who trades in something were by definition, everyone is a troll.
If some are well meaning, all must be, even if they aren't, how can you tell?
I don't think we need it, what can be worse than some of what we have gone through? The blame, the isolation the sense of being stripped of defences, the sense of unreality, exactly why is it any worse than facing the fact that good people can knowingly do wrong?
Does it make us feel foolish? Duped, of course it does, so? Is it really such a shock to be treated with utter contempt?
We are all capable of it, we are all probably doing it to someone else, some other group.
Why such a need to believe or assert it, isn't it clear? So many people including denizens of the fat acceptance movement, are just insulting fat people this way.
Basically they're saying, well meaning for you. What utter contempt.
Well meaning for us is well meaning for everyone and vice versa, if that makes anyone's head spin, sit down.
Someone comes up to me and asks for the time/directions. I answer. Do you know why? Because I am well meaning and that is one of the first rules of a gentle
Where have we been listened to?
On contrary we are deliberately not listened to because to do any thing else would dismantle the ill logic marbled through this stupid witch hunt and people don't want that. Not only have they decided not to listen to us, they bought into a way of thinking which could not survive it.
I'd say doubly not well meaning.
People forget, most of us have been treated well enough to know what well meaning is and it is not the crisis rhetoric or assumptions. Then there are things like seeking to exhaust us by making us feel we don't deserve the esteem of ourselves or others. Then ordering us to take that sapped energy and waste more than is left to 'lose weight'. Of course people want us to succeed.
As if all this is the only, let alone a desirable way to achieve anything. Is the potential damage considered what measures were put in play to deal with that?
When was the intent to call it a day or decide, it hasn't worked? It would have to be pretty quick because the more taxing the method, the more quickly it needs to be effective. Especially as its about health or else it could compromise health before it can save it.
But I don't need to say all this because the well meaning people have gone through this thoroughly I'm sure. They've certainly had plenty of time.
I've never doubted those supporting the crisis are mainly good people, in a way it is the nastiness of good people.
The problem is, this doesn't make it better, it makes it worse in many ways, which is why the denial compare with the relish the slimming industry and Big Pharma are called out, because they're filthy trade and therefore, bad.
The good people use the knowledge of their own goodness to convince themselves they mean well when they know full well they do not. Switching down their consciences to enable behaviour they would not wish to be subject to themselves, what do you appeal to?
It is the goodness of people that keeps you believing that you are hurting because you need to way past bad people saying it because nice people wouldn't knowingly steer you wrong. The confidence that gives!
The trust.
How clueless were we? Look at those fat people who are still in thrall to fat hating, it's like an even more abject form of masochism, without any of the usual charm.
There is a distinct whiff of self comforting about all this, a need to keep believing not in the goodness of people, we agree on that, but on their good intent. This is rather shown up by the fury directed at the slimming industry and anyone who trades in something were by definition, everyone is a troll.
If some are well meaning, all must be, even if they aren't, how can you tell?
I don't think we need it, what can be worse than some of what we have gone through? The blame, the isolation the sense of being stripped of defences, the sense of unreality, exactly why is it any worse than facing the fact that good people can knowingly do wrong?
Does it make us feel foolish? Duped, of course it does, so? Is it really such a shock to be treated with utter contempt?
We are all capable of it, we are all probably doing it to someone else, some other group.
Yes with body and mind
Despite my scepticism about exercise, the context of which is enough to drain all joy and meaning out of any pleasurable movement. I do want to be a position to choose whether I want to move or not out of desire, rather than not feeling like it.
That isn't good enough.
So I will work my way to feeling like I'm refusing not being mugged by other feelings I don't particularly desire, if there's no reason for them. That sounds a little up itself, but I think everyone should have that, regardless of your state or conditioning or whether you have disabilities or not.
Within our own context of function and health, we ought to be able to say no with our bodies and yes with our minds in sync.
That isn't good enough.
So I will work my way to feeling like I'm refusing not being mugged by other feelings I don't particularly desire, if there's no reason for them. That sounds a little up itself, but I think everyone should have that, regardless of your state or conditioning or whether you have disabilities or not.
Within our own context of function and health, we ought to be able to say no with our bodies and yes with our minds in sync.
Thursday, 10 September 2009
K-Fed
A while back on her blog, Bree raised Kevin Federline's (babydaddy supreme and Britney Spears ex) more recent weight gain. K-Fed having come to our attention as in a slim incarnation, is now fat.
His erstwhile paramour Shar Jackson made the astute observation describing this gain as 'daddy weight'.
Now I know that most folk in the fatosphere hate speculation on weight gain, it's no one's biz and all that. Well I have to say my curiosity exceeds my ability to give way. The trouble with switching it off for "privacy's" sake is it tends to lead to disengagement and that is really the same as not caring.
That often hurts the most. What's reminded me of him, was this If you can't be bothered, it's short enough to quote in full (coming to us via Polly Hudson by the way);
It's as ridiculous as all heck, but I just can't stop thinking about partnerships where weight seems to become like a wave, rolling from one to the other. In this case PH is suggesting it's some kind of emotional marker. Is it really possible that some kind of transference goes on?
Her reference suggests Britney's mental discomfort was shock absorbed by K-Fed!
Now I know that most folk in the fatosphere hate speculation on weight gain, it's no one's biz and all that. Well I have to say my curiosity exceeds my ability to give way. The trouble with switching it off for "privacy's" sake is it tends to lead to disengagement and that is really the same as not caring.
That often hurts the most. What's reminded me of him, was this If you can't be bothered, it's short enough to quote in full (coming to us via Polly Hudson by the way);
When Britney was loopy, Kevin Federline was slim and trim. As soon as she started sorting herself out, he started putting on weight. Now, the saner she gets, the fatter he gets. She better pray he doesn't go on a diet any time soon just in case the mad/thin ratio works both ways...Loopy= (in) mental difficulties.
It's as ridiculous as all heck, but I just can't stop thinking about partnerships where weight seems to become like a wave, rolling from one to the other. In this case PH is suggesting it's some kind of emotional marker. Is it really possible that some kind of transference goes on?
Her reference suggests Britney's mental discomfort was shock absorbed by K-Fed!
Thanks Truman Capote!
h/t to Truman Capote.
Weight loss is not the same as weight loss dieting.
No way, they're the same, aren't they?
Nope. Weight loss dieting is a form of weight loss deduced from the theory that if you reduce the amount of energy you take in-in the form of food- and or expend through physical activity. Your body will revert to your fat stores, to make good that loss of energy and you will be able to lose any amount of weight that you want.
Sounds like a reasonable theory.
It is, on paper.
So what's the problem?
When you put all this into effect your body fights it like fury.
What do you mean by it, exactly?
Everything, all of it the reduction in your calorie intake, the increase in your calorie expenditure and the conversion of fat stores into energy.
Damn, so what does this mean?
It means that your weight tends to end up returning to more or less where it started.
Wait, that separation of weight loss and dieting feels weird they are the same, right?
No, this conflation is deliberate on the part of the weight loss diet industry so we don't compare weight loss dieting, with the body's ability to lose weight without any discomfort;
Oh them again, why?
Our bodies lose weight everyday as part of converting food into energy, it causes us no pain or discomfort whatsoever, we don't even notice. The constant comparison was thought to be dispiriting enough to undermine your resolve, to diet.
It would.
Truly. Enough of us colluded in this and we all forgot it was a conceit.Our bodies can lose weight as a side effect of other behaviour, as a result of a change of circumstance.
For instance?
Moving house, jobs, leaving home, falling in/out of love, change in class/economic status, fulfillment of a long term goal etc. No particular pattern, sometimes its a traumatic event.
So we can lose weight as a consequence of something else or by dieting, sometimes, but cannot become thin or stay thin long term?
Pretty much, though we are asked to be slim not just to lose weight. There's nothing to say we can't deliberately induce weight loss, in fact I've never doubted that we can.
Whoah! How can you say that?
If you can see people in a building you know you can get there. If you choose a route and you find it doesn't go there or the way is blocked, that doesn't mean you cannot get in it means you cannot get in that way.
So you're saying, we cannot get to thinness via weight loss dieting?
On the whole, we cannot get to permanent thinness through weight loss dieting.
So, what's the difference between a weight loss diet and a diet anyway?
Your diet is what you eat. A weight loss diet is a plan to make that calorie controlled.
So why is the latter called a diet?
Because weight loss dieting has become popular, it has been shortened to diet. People speak of "being on a diet". It is also what you eat too, so it meets the original definition of a diet being what you eat.
Weight loss is not the same as weight loss dieting.
No way, they're the same, aren't they?
Nope. Weight loss dieting is a form of weight loss deduced from the theory that if you reduce the amount of energy you take in-in the form of food- and or expend through physical activity. Your body will revert to your fat stores, to make good that loss of energy and you will be able to lose any amount of weight that you want.
Sounds like a reasonable theory.
It is, on paper.
So what's the problem?
When you put all this into effect your body fights it like fury.
What do you mean by it, exactly?
Everything, all of it the reduction in your calorie intake, the increase in your calorie expenditure and the conversion of fat stores into energy.
Damn, so what does this mean?
It means that your weight tends to end up returning to more or less where it started.
Wait, that separation of weight loss and dieting feels weird they are the same, right?
No, this conflation is deliberate on the part of the weight loss diet industry so we don't compare weight loss dieting, with the body's ability to lose weight without any discomfort;
Oh them again, why?
Our bodies lose weight everyday as part of converting food into energy, it causes us no pain or discomfort whatsoever, we don't even notice. The constant comparison was thought to be dispiriting enough to undermine your resolve, to diet.
It would.
Truly. Enough of us colluded in this and we all forgot it was a conceit.Our bodies can lose weight as a side effect of other behaviour, as a result of a change of circumstance.
For instance?
Moving house, jobs, leaving home, falling in/out of love, change in class/economic status, fulfillment of a long term goal etc. No particular pattern, sometimes its a traumatic event.
So we can lose weight as a consequence of something else or by dieting, sometimes, but cannot become thin or stay thin long term?
Pretty much, though we are asked to be slim not just to lose weight. There's nothing to say we can't deliberately induce weight loss, in fact I've never doubted that we can.
Whoah! How can you say that?
If you can see people in a building you know you can get there. If you choose a route and you find it doesn't go there or the way is blocked, that doesn't mean you cannot get in it means you cannot get in that way.
So you're saying, we cannot get to thinness via weight loss dieting?
On the whole, we cannot get to permanent thinness through weight loss dieting.
So, what's the difference between a weight loss diet and a diet anyway?
Your diet is what you eat. A weight loss diet is a plan to make that calorie controlled.
So why is the latter called a diet?
Because weight loss dieting has become popular, it has been shortened to diet. People speak of "being on a diet". It is also what you eat too, so it meets the original definition of a diet being what you eat.
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Fat self love does normals no favours
Same drivel straight out of the lucky country from one Susie O'Brien who should be ashamed to take the money.
Subtitled 'Big women the latest fashion craze'
This farticle proceeds to show yet again that the crisis is directed not at fat people, it merely uses and abuses us. It refers to Melbourne Fashion Week which used models of size 14-18 on the catwalk.
The writer uses the term 'stick insects' to describe thin models- this and other digs are supposed to convince us she is not relentlessly jealous of thin women because she projects on to them a moral purity they didn't ask to represent. Memo to fat haters who attack the thin, you are not fooling anyone there either.
This is about making the 'normals' feel better about themselves, whether they ask for it or not, because fat and slender alike exist to surround the accetable and sacrifice themselves to make the impossible happen. Making those who decided to make their self esteem weight based feel at peace. Piece of advice, base your self worth on your existence, not the number on the scale or the size of your butt if you want a chance at that. If you don't, we cannot save you by hating ourselves.
Many commentators have ably shot it to muck as it deserves, but I just had to pick up on a few points.
WHY are we suddenly lavishing love on the larger ladies
Sorry, but who's we?
Allow me to explain, we fat people are the ones who are deciding to fully reclaim what is our birthright and that of every citizen, self respect.
It's ours to to set aside or to nuture. We believed that we should succeed at insane weight loss schemes bandied about. When we did not, we thought we were in the wrong and as moral people, we felt badly toward ourselves about it.
We now know better.
Our self esteem is not yours to bestow.
Try hating people who increasingly doesn't give a rat arse, I think you'll find it hard work, something it wasn't before, because we were doing the work for you. Expect that to change.
While these women might make us feel better about our bulging butts and guts, the truth is, few women over a size 14 are in a healthy weight range.
Staggering, you think other people's bodies exist as a tool to regulate your own?This is the essense of the crisis, it was not designed to be directed straight at fat people, it merely uses and abuses us to keep people like Ms O'Brien in line, and they are too dimwitted to see it, because they think they are at the top of the hierarchy. Come alive Susie.
So much for her earlier asinine attempt at concern trolling, she and the rest are not remotely interested in fat people on any level except as part of their own agenda existing to serve her ends. Those of validating her position and serving her as a 'motivator' to avoid the horror that will occur if she ceased her self abuse. I use that term, because of this kind of thing;
Losing weight is hard work. It takes sacrifice and effort. As a mother of three in my late 30s with a new gym membership, I know this first-hand.You volunteered, you hate what you are doing to yourself and thing it entitles you to direct others to despise themselves. If you don't like what you're doing to yourself, stop. If you won't stop, stew in your own hate, don't look to void it on those who have no say in what you do to yourself.
It's much easier to accept the pro-fat manifesto than hit the treadmill.
If 'pro-fat' is a reference to FA, then I'd say is it really? Because I couldn't care less whether it's easier or harder to be an abject dupe of healthism or not.
From what I've seen of the poverty of intelligence or thoughtfulness from most phobes, they care only about representing things that serve their delusional fantasies of salvation and ever lasting life through the punitive impositions they inflict on themselves.
So easier from whichever vantage point?
Depends on your chosen beliefs.
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Why does the body return to the start?
Why does the body tend to return to it's previous size? I'm not convinced its due to pre-determination or genes. How else would people diet themselves (sometimes way) up the scale?
Our body's definitely fighting stubbornly to remain a certain size and to get back to it as quickly as possible if we manage to prise it away from their. Or rebound.
The theory is that we are all destined to weigh within a certain range of about 20-30 lbs set point theory, put v. simply I feel, makes the mistake of conflating rebound with genetic pre determination, they are seperate things. The rebound and genetic weight that is.
Our bodies return to our pre-weight loss diet weight, because they are programmed to, not because of our weight genes instructing them to. There are other process where the body behaves similarly. When you donate blood, it replenishes itself, you could even liken it to when you hold your breath you lungs seek to refill etc.,
In this case it may well be more related to whatever keeps many of us more or less the same weight, slim or fat year after year. The force stopping us from gaining, is the other side of what's stopping us from retaining deficit.
It's just no-body expected it to happen with fat cells. Why is fascinating. Far more so than a set point theory of genetic kismet.
Our body's definitely fighting stubbornly to remain a certain size and to get back to it as quickly as possible if we manage to prise it away from their. Or rebound.
The theory is that we are all destined to weigh within a certain range of about 20-30 lbs set point theory, put v. simply I feel, makes the mistake of conflating rebound with genetic pre determination, they are seperate things. The rebound and genetic weight that is.
Our bodies return to our pre-weight loss diet weight, because they are programmed to, not because of our weight genes instructing them to. There are other process where the body behaves similarly. When you donate blood, it replenishes itself, you could even liken it to when you hold your breath you lungs seek to refill etc.,
In this case it may well be more related to whatever keeps many of us more or less the same weight, slim or fat year after year. The force stopping us from gaining, is the other side of what's stopping us from retaining deficit.
It's just no-body expected it to happen with fat cells. Why is fascinating. Far more so than a set point theory of genetic kismet.
Sunday, 6 September 2009
Thin (thigh) shaming
The story that thin thighs purport to be a sign of poorer heart health has gained some traction over the week. I caught this particular version via bfb .
My first thought on hearing it was the same wariness that I've learned from the deluge of fat=degeneracy in all forms, stories that we're usually subjected to.
One of the things I bear in mind in all this, is the fact that healthism is a cult that seeks always to recruit.
Everyone.
Regardless.
To see it as fat against thin would be a mistake, it's as much against thin people, just in a different way.
It seeks to unsettle everyone and everyone must be on a diet, or a 'lifestyle' because dieting, fuels hatred of fat and fatness. Without it, people tend to remain unpredictably ambivalent to fatness as a hate category.
The key measurement to worry about, remember you should never consider when you can worry, is less than 60 cms about 23.6 ins.
“Typically a 23.6-inch thigh on a female would be a size 6 to 8,” said Greg Benson, president of the International Sports and Fitness Trainers Association. A woman with thighs that size might be 5-foot-1 and weigh about 135 pounds,
Really? Because 5ft 1ins 135 lbs gives you a bmi of 25.5, which would make you technically overweight.
So even though you are thin enough to compromise your heart, you aren't thin enough to be considered acceptably weighted.
But the point here is the original purpose of the obesity and the crisis, to recruit the 'worried well' into a belief system that venerates a proto anorexic lifestyle.
The point is to disrupt your peace, so that you can channel that psychic rage to a target.
Fat people.
Teaching you how to hate others, teaches you how to hate yourself. Training you to bully others into worry, teaches you how to do the same for yourself, it's like an overspill.
For similar reasons, I take no comfort in the fact that thin thighs might be something of concern, I don't look to reassurance or worry from health study findings in the popular press.
So do yourself and the rest of us a favour, look down at you skinny thighs with love, stroke them and caress them. And don't hate them.
Try thinking about how it would be, if your hips were joined straight to your knees.
Saturday, 5 September 2009
Eating is necessary
Are we all agreed on that?
Eating is a vital body process. Without food we will die. Why is it so hard for some people to just accept? In some ways its a victory over generations of want, but it is still disturbing the way people seem to resent the fact they have to eat. As if its a sign of weakness something they ought to rise above. Like it's the new sex or something.
Starvation is spiritual eating is earthy and of the flesh, bestial even. We have to be taking a very wrong turn when we seek to be ashamed of what we need to exist.
Eating is a vital body process. Without food we will die. Why is it so hard for some people to just accept? In some ways its a victory over generations of want, but it is still disturbing the way people seem to resent the fact they have to eat. As if its a sign of weakness something they ought to rise above. Like it's the new sex or something.
Starvation is spiritual eating is earthy and of the flesh, bestial even. We have to be taking a very wrong turn when we seek to be ashamed of what we need to exist.
Thursday, 3 September 2009
Walnut sized stomach
Reading this article called rather eerily, "full without food" I finally realised something that I'd not before crystallised clearly.
Gastric bypass surgery proves it is known that fat people are telling the truth. We are mostly lead to believe by the medical profession and others that being fat is about eating too much, more than your body needs. We are told that all fat people have to do is eat a little less over a period of time, the body will use up the excess and voila, fat becomes thin.
Eating too much means that our stomachs should be swollen and enlarged by this excess.
If so, why not gastric reduction? Reducing the size of the stomach to normal, or halve at most?
Because they know full well this won't work. It is also incidentally one of the reasons why so many go on crash diets, not solely to get the unpleasantness over and done with as quickly as possible-although, who could blame them if they did? It's because that is the only way a heck of a lot of people can see any weight loss of any kind or significance, such is the ability of the body to adjust to any calorie reduction less than palpable starvation.
Instead of gastric reduction, it is gastric bypass, the stomach is both reduced virtually bypassed by being reduced to the size of a walnut and "re plumbed" lower down the small intestine to induce malabsorption.
If what we are told is true or they believed it, this would kill a person, as they would starve to death. It's not as if its a twin op with a scheduled reversal after the required weight is lost.
And it's not as if this surgically induced crash diet is temporary, it is designed to be permanent, meaning that not only do they know the patient will not starve to death, they know this crash diet will maintain the patient in a state of semi starvation to try and retain any discernible weight loss.
It could be argued that they expect the stomach to stretch somewhat, but they warn people to keep their intake low, so they expect this intake level to be doable. The expectations of the operation are reflected in the quoted title, you are expected to transcend your hunger a bit like this .
Even though most people do not lose that much weight considering what has been done to them- Sue has a great post on this article including details about statistics and outcomes- this kind of operation is considered a success, which is funny because a fat person manages to lose weight using diet and exercise still remains fat. It would not be considered a success by many.
As usual, the authorities cannot judge themselves by the standards they set for us- seeing the results of such a drastic solution as crap would be too upsetting when its righteous surgeons, why, it might make them feel bad, why punish them like fat people?
We strong fatties can congratulate ourselves, we are made of sterner stuff so can take this level of judgement and deal with the 'pain', more so if we are children apparently.
Another thing I'm reminded of reading the chemical analysis of processes of eating and digestion described, is the comparison with observing brain chemistry/activity in say a MRI. Looking at the brains of depressed people and saying, we are seeing the chemical composition of the disease, depression. The unresolved question is are we seeing a manifestation of a brain malfunction or a mind's depressed mood in action?
There seems to be an element of this with observing eating;
Add to that the fact that eating 'too much' for your reduced organ would likely force vomiting and/or diarrhea, It certainly tries to protect itself similarly during bulimia. Appetite signals often goes on an upward trajectory, as it is a form of starvation by purging. When there is little room, the greater danger comes more from being unable to keep anything down.
Thing is, this kind of information is presented as if it somehow explains 'obesity' rather than merely observing metabolism in action. The truth about what is a virtual stomach amputation is that it is yet another tribute to the remarkable capacities of our bodies for self healing and recovery from the most outrageous abuses we inflict on it.
This whole thing is a case of taking the most drastic possible measures to enforce dieting on the body, and the body's attempts to slowly recover. It's really just the old weight loss diet induced weight loss, then in this case, the extent of healing needed just slows down rebound.
Gastric bypass surgery proves it is known that fat people are telling the truth. We are mostly lead to believe by the medical profession and others that being fat is about eating too much, more than your body needs. We are told that all fat people have to do is eat a little less over a period of time, the body will use up the excess and voila, fat becomes thin.
Eating too much means that our stomachs should be swollen and enlarged by this excess.
If so, why not gastric reduction? Reducing the size of the stomach to normal, or halve at most?
Because they know full well this won't work. It is also incidentally one of the reasons why so many go on crash diets, not solely to get the unpleasantness over and done with as quickly as possible-although, who could blame them if they did? It's because that is the only way a heck of a lot of people can see any weight loss of any kind or significance, such is the ability of the body to adjust to any calorie reduction less than palpable starvation.
Instead of gastric reduction, it is gastric bypass, the stomach is both reduced virtually bypassed by being reduced to the size of a walnut and "re plumbed" lower down the small intestine to induce malabsorption.
If what we are told is true or they believed it, this would kill a person, as they would starve to death. It's not as if its a twin op with a scheduled reversal after the required weight is lost.
And it's not as if this surgically induced crash diet is temporary, it is designed to be permanent, meaning that not only do they know the patient will not starve to death, they know this crash diet will maintain the patient in a state of semi starvation to try and retain any discernible weight loss.
It could be argued that they expect the stomach to stretch somewhat, but they warn people to keep their intake low, so they expect this intake level to be doable. The expectations of the operation are reflected in the quoted title, you are expected to transcend your hunger a bit like this .
Even though most people do not lose that much weight considering what has been done to them- Sue has a great post on this article including details about statistics and outcomes- this kind of operation is considered a success, which is funny because a fat person manages to lose weight using diet and exercise still remains fat. It would not be considered a success by many.
As usual, the authorities cannot judge themselves by the standards they set for us- seeing the results of such a drastic solution as crap would be too upsetting when its righteous surgeons, why, it might make them feel bad, why punish them like fat people?
We strong fatties can congratulate ourselves, we are made of sterner stuff so can take this level of judgement and deal with the 'pain', more so if we are children apparently.
Another thing I'm reminded of reading the chemical analysis of processes of eating and digestion described, is the comparison with observing brain chemistry/activity in say a MRI. Looking at the brains of depressed people and saying, we are seeing the chemical composition of the disease, depression. The unresolved question is are we seeing a manifestation of a brain malfunction or a mind's depressed mood in action?
There seems to be an element of this with observing eating;
It seems the gut normally secretes hormones that make us feel hungry or full, and bypass surgery ramps up production of the ones that make us feel full.I wouldn't be surprised would you? If you cut the organ which receives and digests food to the point incompatible with that purpose, your body will try to protect itself from starvation by purging using an emergency raising of satiety chemicals.
Add to that the fact that eating 'too much' for your reduced organ would likely force vomiting and/or diarrhea, It certainly tries to protect itself similarly during bulimia. Appetite signals often goes on an upward trajectory, as it is a form of starvation by purging. When there is little room, the greater danger comes more from being unable to keep anything down.
Thing is, this kind of information is presented as if it somehow explains 'obesity' rather than merely observing metabolism in action. The truth about what is a virtual stomach amputation is that it is yet another tribute to the remarkable capacities of our bodies for self healing and recovery from the most outrageous abuses we inflict on it.
This whole thing is a case of taking the most drastic possible measures to enforce dieting on the body, and the body's attempts to slowly recover. It's really just the old weight loss diet induced weight loss, then in this case, the extent of healing needed just slows down rebound.
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
Weight loss isn't intrinsically painful
Calorie manipulation does though. Weight loss and weight loss dieting are not interchangeable, this what is deemed a useful fiction. Those who promote and use restriction as the answer, feel that it is distracting to think of it as it really is, an assumption of how deliberate weight loss could be achieved.
It's also demoralizing to be enduring the distress and pain of your body, whilst comparing it to the body's painless weight loss.
That happens naturally as a by product of your body's use of energy to fuel itself, it is not a creation of the slimming industry, who do not wish to remind you how bad their theory is. By setting the bar so high on pain and discomfort, people are grateful for any relief a product gives them, no matter how costly.
We can see this with weight loss surgery, people are so relieved that they don't have to use their mind to reduce their stomach to nothing, along with fighting the urge to live (hunger) trying to force themselves to perform activities their body is screaming for them to stop, along with all the calorie counting, fear of rebound, all this means they are prepared to have the function of their organs reduced in exchange for a little less stress.
This shows dietary restriction can be as taxing mentally as it is physically and that's before you consider the addition of familial and societal stigma.
Insisting weight loss is painful encourages people to accept an excess of it, without complaint or question. Its far harder to accept pain and trauma if you see it as a product of the appalling incompetence of dieting, rather than c'est la vie.
We need to reserve the capacity to mentally separate weight loss from weight loss dieting whether we approve of either, or we are playing into the hands of those who insist that pain is necessary to lose weight, when it clearly isn't.
That's an addition of the crude hypothesis of calorie restriction, which lends itself to harshness and violence, it after all takes its inspiration from starvation, the slow excruciating death of a human being due to the absence of food.
Everything we have been taught and know about metabolism is through the distortion of being bent around the energy restriction hypothesis, solely for the purpose of shoring up its plausibility, it needs it as it is a false doctrine, not one built from constant observation of the true picture. It's a shallow reading, intended as a quick fix solution.
Losing weight should not be intrinsically painful. We have to understand the distress is more the body's response to restriction, not to losing weight which is the by product of what is causing the assault on it.
It's also demoralizing to be enduring the distress and pain of your body, whilst comparing it to the body's painless weight loss.
That happens naturally as a by product of your body's use of energy to fuel itself, it is not a creation of the slimming industry, who do not wish to remind you how bad their theory is. By setting the bar so high on pain and discomfort, people are grateful for any relief a product gives them, no matter how costly.
We can see this with weight loss surgery, people are so relieved that they don't have to use their mind to reduce their stomach to nothing, along with fighting the urge to live (hunger) trying to force themselves to perform activities their body is screaming for them to stop, along with all the calorie counting, fear of rebound, all this means they are prepared to have the function of their organs reduced in exchange for a little less stress.
This shows dietary restriction can be as taxing mentally as it is physically and that's before you consider the addition of familial and societal stigma.
Insisting weight loss is painful encourages people to accept an excess of it, without complaint or question. Its far harder to accept pain and trauma if you see it as a product of the appalling incompetence of dieting, rather than c'est la vie.
We need to reserve the capacity to mentally separate weight loss from weight loss dieting whether we approve of either, or we are playing into the hands of those who insist that pain is necessary to lose weight, when it clearly isn't.
That's an addition of the crude hypothesis of calorie restriction, which lends itself to harshness and violence, it after all takes its inspiration from starvation, the slow excruciating death of a human being due to the absence of food.
Everything we have been taught and know about metabolism is through the distortion of being bent around the energy restriction hypothesis, solely for the purpose of shoring up its plausibility, it needs it as it is a false doctrine, not one built from constant observation of the true picture. It's a shallow reading, intended as a quick fix solution.
Losing weight should not be intrinsically painful. We have to understand the distress is more the body's response to restriction, not to losing weight which is the by product of what is causing the assault on it.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Self-acceptance
I've never liked the term size acceptance. Fat acceptance is about self acceptance, if you are a fat person, because you are most definitely not supposed to accept yourself if you are a fat person.
Doing so is deemed intrinsically pathological in intent. FA tells the truth, fat people need self esteem the same as any other human.
The argument against that is that humans don't need self respect. Therefore, why should we seek to protect it in our children, and ourselves, hey, maybe we ought to actively disestablish it. Especially if it makes them better people, which it is supposed to in fat children and adults.
Because 'studies' have shown that there are racial and cultural differences in the measures of self esteem amongst especially black women, and black women are fatter some silly people have concluded that self esteem =greater levels of obesity.
Or being an uppity Negress = disease and death.
Therefore if you are a black woman you need to hate yourself more, or it'll be the death of you.
Yeah.
So rather than use terms such as body acceptance or size acceptance, I prefer, self-acceptance, because that's what it's all about.
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