Carrying no weight

The question is, why do our voices lack credibility? Referring especially to the fact that when we say certain things, for instance that eating a lot, is no more the cause of one's fatness than it is the cause of thinness-it appears drained of meaning or gains no purchase on the general conversation about weight and fatness.

Our statements have no respect, ironically, they carry no weight. It is as if only thin people speak or count in any way. The fantasy of being thin=fantasy of being fat, same reasons. When you wish to work toward a goal, anything that requires dedication, you have to suspend your disbelief, about more immediate results, in order to continue, to see it through to your hoped for conclusion.

This lie became the experience of being fat.

In that time of suspended disbelief, things changed around us. We were no longer seen as making an effort, this became accepted, demanded. And that acquired a permanence. It came to replace the actual truth. Now we are stuck with trying to feel at ease with the facts we saw but didn't see. 

It feels inauthentic and new to us in many ways, even though we know it isn't. More so to everyone else and they have the momentum to assert their code and impose it on us-as if we never happened.

No inspiration to spare for fattiez

I know little about the programme mentioned which is OK by me because my comment is about the laughable misapplication of the word inspiration. Apparently this usage refers to the idea that others should be constantly reminding fat peeps they are fat and this is part of 'getting us healthy'. Blerrugh. Fat youth must be subject to this message even when trying to seek relief in mind numbing entertainment.

Fat people being 'inspired' is us knowing our place in the order of things, submissive and accepting of our demoted status. Being second to the kind of people who pretend it's their duty to exhort you to get health, who are ashamed of just hating as freely as they want to, is an unfeasibly low standard as one can manage whilst still having a couple of functioning brain cells to rub together. No wonder believing in it too often boxes you into a kind of depression. It's not how inferior you are supposed to be in absolute terms, but who you are supposed to be inferior in comparison with. I'm intellectually inferior to Einstein and less brave than Yaa Asantewaa that's not a downer because those are high standards indeed. No it's being second class to bovine scraps of mediocrity that's lifeforce sapping.

Having this foisted upon your youthful mind and yielding to it, is an assault on your brain which does it's own comparison and asks: "Second to that this? After I showing my goods-such as keeping you alive, thinking brilliant thoughts etc., this is what I have to work with?" Then it goes on a work to rule in protest and bingo you've got a form of 'depression'. And who can blame, how would you feel?

Anyone who falls for the idea that removing their self esteem from the essence of themselves and shifting it to the weight of themselves and thinks this is a win-because it looks good in comparison to the hate directed at fatties-is being made an arse of and is definitely not being respected one little bit. They need to inspire themselves out of their stupor. Quick smart.

I still find it hard to believe that this useful idiocy is being parlayed into a 'missionary amongst the savages' (hate) face saving exercise. Nice try but no big fat cigar. Haters are refusing to sense that those working their strings have absolutely no reason to respect them anymore than they respect fatties, why would they? We are all just the public to them who they can divide and rule. Using one side for peer pressure against the other shows we are two sides of the same coin fighting each other whilst we both get turned over, even if that tends to happen to some more than others. You only have to look at the way that so many lifelong thin people almost destroy themselves merely out of fear of becoming fat to know that we are all being sucked into the mire.

If you don't have sense enough to realise that and to their credit some do, then you'd best save your inspiration for yourself, down the line you may find you need it more than us.

The deserving and the undeserving

Courtesy of this page I see the deserving fatties have now reached the mainstream.

Excellent.

Now it's important to say that it's the way the article is written that is the main offender here, rather than the fatties themselves. Still I certainly do hope they come up with some way of differentiating deserving fatties-those who have conditions associated with becoming fat, from the undeserving fatties whose rising weight co-coincided with a big appetite.

I wouldn't want to be bracketed with the kind of five minute fatties who feel they need to explain how they used to be thin and eat and exercise in strict accordance with healthist dictates.

Those not saying it to expose the deluded entitlement of healthist promises or to awaken the unwary, that universe will not necessarily blesses for your sweat and fast sacrifice with health so long as you do the "right thing". If indeed we are correct in our assumptions that we know what those right things are. It's rather like if you're a good person, good things happen and vice versa if you're bad. They're explaining how they've been good, and now they're sick and that's why their fat, they don't deserve ridicule.

Neither do any of the "undeserving" because their undeservingness is illusory.

I frankly don't know why anyone is supposed to care more because you got sick at the same time as you got fat, anymore than at the same time as being broken hearted/ abused or just eating of food in conjunction with becoming fat. I am so sick of this overemphasis of the calories in/out model-which is just not going to pay of the investment people- so if it turns out I'm on the wrong side of that tough. I'm happy for there to be a fuller examination of what tends to precede weight gain, I'm sure it's rebellious insouciance of the most outrageous kind.

If only.

Certainly when it comes to weight and following all the rules-just like the deserving fatties-could never possibly cause fatness, even though the rule usually is what precedes fatness is the cause it, only if that is bad behaviour, as opposed to good. Which is lucky because otherwise that model might be shot to poo.

It's also nice to see modern society's 'progression' back to it's more primitive roots-that's like circular(?) It's important for those of us who take for granted that our societies are way ahead in all areas of civilisation that even if that were true, historically speaking, it can and has been reversed at points and in ways that cannot be imagined, time and again.

Often those reversals are as much a product of them as that which produces their progress. Without this kind of thing, we might become complacent.

If these deserving fatties could be somehow separated from the undeserving, and sympathy can be cultivated by the haters and the authorities alike. We the more undeserving can-after a suitable lapse in time-advance. I reckon those with mental health issues should be next followed by those who do a lot in the community.

Then last, people like myself, who have no excuse and do sweet FA.

Yeah, softly softly catchee monkey.

Eating is emotional

And that’s a good thing without any shadow of a doubt. It should and has to be and on more than one level too.

One thing eating disorders advocates generally tend not to acknowledge-for mostly political reasons-is that eating is designed to be used as part of our bodies defence mechanism against mental as well as physical health crises If our emotions were divorced from our eating, it would be far worse, rather like if weight loss diets actually worked by that, it would mean they'd be little to stop us becoming anorexic.

Coining the term 'emotional eating'- trying to dissociate emotion from being a healthy and legitimate part of eating and turning it into a problem is a little like turning anti-depressants into a problem- no the real problem is the underlying depression, not what you are taking to enable you to function.

Then there are the emotional responses to satisfying your nutritional urges-I'm including the bodies premiere nutrient ENERGY (like it or not nutriphobes). When you are able to and all things are working well enough, you're likely to feel an uplift in mood, it's not just the physical intake of energy, it has an emotional re-energising effect too, which allows your mood to be elevated.

The element of taking care of business well of doing a good job at taking care of yourself- is sidelined. A healthy balance of moods is made up of some things like this that on their own may not appear much. But knowing that you have developed enough skill to match your needs well, makes you feel both competent and worthwhile, the opposite has the converse effect, the obesity personae that is sold to us convinces that we are incompetent when it comes to taking care of ourselves and furthering our existence. That is one of the things that actually helps to create depression in fat people.

The intake of energy is part of alcohol's overall effect and one of the reasons it is widely used. That (energy) is good in itself, it aids satiety, and digestion possibly as much for the relaxing effects of that pleasure as the sense of completion (achievement) as well as anything else that may be released during that spell of noticeable pleasantness. To turn this into emotional eating =disordered eating/eating disorder, to me is actually dare I say it, morally wrong, because it distances us from how we actually work, but obscures the goodness and wonder of our bodies, which aids our respect and good treatment of them, but creates a sense of mistrust of our bodies and from there ourselves.

It’s a bit like fatness and weight gain are almost always a record of the body seeing off some kinds of threat and/ or guarding against future ones, except in exceptional circumstances when metabolic processes seem to be compromised significantly.

This is what has enabled it to be framed negatively as the manifestation of regret, loss and disappointment, it's a bit like an unlikely charm kind of thing, superstitious. The re-frame could just as easily be, I’ve survived my body has made it, and this is the sign of what it took for me at this particular time in my life. It doesn’t state the seriousness or otherwise of those circumstances anymore than tells you about energy.

The interplay of the responses that lead to fatness or are fatness pass through our genetic mazes same as any basic metabolic tendencies. Eating is emotional and we should be wary of allowing some to determine this as "bad" anymore than being human, because it is our design.

We have the opportunity to embrace it and use it, that shouldn’t be lost to turning it into phobia.

Reduced obese

The reaction around the fatsphere to a study and which found that losing weight has been linked to a lower life expectancy has reminded me of one of the dysfunctions inherent in weight loss dieting. It doesn't alter underlying weight status-except so rarely that it can barely be predicted- it only interrupts it.

The technical term given to this reduced obese-that is a fat person who has lost weight, but metabolically is basically in a state of (energy) conservation. A bit like mammals at certain stages of hibernation. This means that they need a lot less energy in comparison with those of a similar weight who've not been fat.

This is what is being referred to when people talk about "keeping weight off"; they mean that you are fending off the body’s in-built drive to re-impose it's thwarted weight settings. I suppose the body becomes like a cell that is partially emptied and yet it's metabolism still functions similar to before and it's outer membrane shrinks or becomes slightly withered.

Just getting on with your life and not making the diet the absolute centre of your existence can be enough for a ball to drop and your dragged back to square one, with the runaway horse that is rebound. Even if you can stick with constantly interrupting your bodies desire to replace what you are losing, it exacts a toll. Those who last tend to burn out eventually, rather like a career of dieting overall when you just find you cannot do it anymore.

It’s the nervous energy that you use up not only keeping where your body wants to go at bay, but the fight that your body is putting up to reassert its plan. Then there’s the monitoring and counting of calories, the endless using up of energy in the form of physical exertion, not for pleasure or reward, but to waste energy.

This has the effect of making you feel like you are fighting with yourself and that feeling can increase over time and become intolerable, even if it abates, you can still find yourself sick and tired of the tyranny of being a servant to your calorie restriction regime.

It’s important to say that this is entirely normal and has absolutely nothing to do with self control, it is not about having a flawed character, exhaustion, physical, mental or spiritual is a way your body signals you’re using up a hell of a lot of energy and have had enough.

It isn't clear from the reports of this study, what is causing this weight loss - dieting or a side effect of some facet of the ageing process, so I'm not commenting directly on the study itself. It's more that it reminded me of a phrase you rarely hear and it should be in common parlance reduced obese. When we speak of fatness and weight because unlike things like "morbid/super morbid obesity" and other such nonsense, it's purpose to illuminate rather than to conform to bias, but to add to the barrage of scare tactics used by those who wish to undermine the peace of mind of fat people. and everyone else.

This reduced size pattern often goes for slimmer people too, they are merely interrupting their weight too, which is why so many of them repeatedly lose 10lbs etc., over and over again.

that's the truth about weight loss, mostly those for instance fat people reduce, they do not actually become slimmer in anything but appearance. If you bear that in mind, rebound weight gain makes a lot more sense.

There are numerous excuses as to why people re-gain weight that are deeply unconvincing. In say the case of someone who's made it to their goal, you have someone who's gone on a diet, often for at least months, has proven they can live that way, has gotten over the worst humps, earlier on, as gotten through often more than one period of plateau. And achieved their goal weight, usually ecstatically happy, only to re-gain the weight.

It makes no logical sense whatsoever, there is no reason for them to re-gain, they've often been on a diet long enough to forget what they used to eat and yet somehow, they apropos of all this, decide to start eating what they used to again, even though at that stage it's probably harder for them to do this, than to stick with their routine that has become ingrained.

Explanations given by the people themselves, in the light of the diet brainwashing of fault, they 'admit' they've returned to their old habits-why?- they took their eye off the ball-like a slim person? Etc., all signs of people who have no idea why they were dragging back inexplicably to a starting point they have proven they can leave. For no reason.

That is the body winning, as it's designed to do, like the casino, the owner wins, virtually always, and always overall. Do you hear that obesity hustlers?

So when people speak of returning to their old habits/weight, or even to some extent, returning to their set point, they are being mislead by the appearance of change which is very real, on the surface where we can see it, but not underneath, where we can't. Rather like our conscious input in eating and the unconscious making up of our appetites and hunger. We make the same mistake there too.

I'm often very harsh and condemnatory about 'obesity science' it's a lot to do with my profound disappointment about what has at times sought to actually investigate this, in many ways fascinating subject, without fear or favour. Only to be repeatedly subsumed in an ordure of extreme bias. It seems worse, now, as if it is regressing to an almost primitive level. It makes a mockery of science and should be looked at.

Seeing terms not cut out of the same cloth as "morbidly obese" and other terms motivated by things that shouldn't belong in science, the desire to control and manipulate behaviour, rather than answer questions and build up knowledge shows us what we are losing in this crusade. It shows what could be achieved without it's distortion.

Now I don't believe for one nanosecond that this is the only way it can be. If we look at slim people, we know that their weight is rarely if ever down to their conscious effort- if it was technically speaking they're probably not actually metabolically slim. As it is not conscious, then something else is doing the work and they are claiming that as the outcome of their will. That something is to do with the underlying metabolism.

It goes to show how easy it is to mistake the actions of one's body for one's will. Something that has enabled fat people, especially, to be mind warped to heck. We often make that mistake until we learn more. I'll never forget the story of an inmate of the Bedlam asylum a couple of hundred years ago. She was diagnosed as insane and she was certainly mentally disturbed. They retrospectively diagnosed her as guess what? Being diabetic. She had diabetes and her mental disturbance was the direct product of that, because in those days, there was no treatment for it.

Weight seems to be set mainly by the actions of one’s metabolism not mainly, even rigid conscious control, and if weight can be adjusted from the that end/point, that should set/re-set weight, up or down rather probably more than genes' or even environment. The fact that we are constantly told, not by fat acceptance-which itself accepts this-but by those in the know is a really intriguing question. I can't help but suspect that it is undesirable that we should have the ability to control our weight in ways that are viable and frankly, easy.

Make of that what you will

Hate maketh the mark

Reading this *warning contains usual obesity tripe. I was nevertheless struck by an unusual kind of admission from the fatphobe meatpuppet contingent;

For all that it is a modern plague, as well as a ticking time-bomb, a drain on the health service and a chastening metaphor for western greed, a lot of people would miss obesity.

Well even vomit usually has some nice carrotey bits in it.

It could have been better, I once admired Ms Bennett but she appears to have petered out along the way, sadly. This indicates how everything is there to elucidate an interesting get out of hate card for committed fat phobes, that doesn't require any compassion. ZOMG, we are being suckered now, not just the fatties.

You may have missed that bit because it's not referred to directly, it is the usual fat people as human shield. We PBF's (poor, benighted, fatties) are being exploited; made so miserable that we are fleeced by those who market ineffective and punitive "cures" for fatness, oh yes.

But so are haters and worse still rather than either deciding to stop to the hate, because it's too expensive they prefer to keep paying so they can justify sticking fat people with the bill! Suggesting of course that everyone knows at some level we aren't costing enough to match orthodoxies about our supposed costliness.

There is no point in critiquing the spending of National Health Service funds, paid for by direct taxation, being funnelled directly to some diet pirate- an ex merchant banker no less, (the term linked to means-someone who is prone to pleasuring themselves, excessively) but I'm digressing- because just reading it as is does a job I can't improve on right now.

It is still shocking how easy it is to get money for old rope, moth eaten useless rope at that. When all is said and done, this money could have been so much better spent, it actually hurts that it has come to this with the collusion and enabler that is the desire to hate. Making thin people exempt from this removes what little incentive the burden of the costs of hate could be, leaving them free to hate as they see fit. Giving direct incentive for them to hate harder and harder and for the authorities to continue to wind them up.

The thought, chills.

Usually it is caring too much that is associated with laying yourself open to life threatening suckerdom. This is a salutary lesson in hatred picking everyone's pocket.

What a lot of people don't get about the underlying disappointment of people's investment in this fat phobia, is not just how much it hurts, but that people wish to continue with -isms to the extent of replacing them with new opportunities, like this current age of lipophobia.

I wonder if it's possible to do an index of just how much waste is caused by our many hatreds.

Thrashing about

Whenever I look through this blog I'm constantly dogged by the sentiment, why do you bother? It's not about popularity and readers etc., It's that it's failures are so glaringly, sometimes painfully obvious that I think, surely not?

The temption is to start again, but that would only be a brief respite before more of the same.

See, it's like that last sentence, what the hell am I talking about? I don't think like this, not in my head; surely? And haven't I just added yet another superfluous comma. That started a few months ago and is so far sticking, continuing, whatev's.

Sometimes the only reason I continue is because it's sometimes feels so bad, I start to feel belligerent about it. Why am I owed a better blog if I can't manage it right now? Why do I expect to be able to say what I want to say, not miss my mark and so on ? I've just written something that just about makes sense, in fact it felt pretty good for me, then I realised, that it wasn't about what it was supposed to be about and hey, what was it about exactly?

It's not that I don't know what it's about, I just don't know how I got to the good sense I was making from my starting point, ah yes I remember now. It was about the beginning illustrating a general theme.

That realisation, which occurred whilst I was try to edit this, has meant I can delete the rest of it, and try and think of a title for my other mini opus.

Courage mon braves, I may get there yet.

Spectating

Before and following my last post, I've been doing a lot of thinking about why I don't really fit into the fat acceptance movement. Now let me say, I hope this is not going to become or be perceived as a whine, it's more in sorrow than in anger. I also know that I'm not the easiest person to get along with and I underestimated not only that, but how much of an issue that was going to be.

I don't feel deliberately excluded, well, not for it's own sake, it's a product of how we all are. I'll explain it by relating about how I used to be genuinely shocked and appalled by people who wished to stick narrowly to people who they perceived as being exactly like them. I just couldn't understand how they could be so parochial. Having been on the blogosphere I can now see exactly what they are avoiding and frankly, I can't blame them at all, not one bit. Although I have no greater love for hegemony than I did before.

Having to be endlessly misunderstood over what are effectively differences that have little to do with the matter at hand means you are either excluded, or if you try to observe the rules, end up losing sense of yourself. That's just the way it is, it's unconducive to mental flow and the one thing I feel I need after years of living under the stagnancy of lies is to let what I've learned come forth. But we are what we are, we have an intellectual and mental centre of gravity and I've yet to discover mine on the internet. Some barrier always presents, class, race, education, gender, tone, nationality, underlying precepts etc if it's not one thing it's another.

It's funny, but I've also schooled myself in why I've been so reluctant to get involved in things in the past. I assumed it was because I was too lazy etc, yep a lazy piece of self contempt, passing itself off as honesty and self analysis. It turns out there were actually good reasons for me not to involve myself in the general conversation a lot of the time. Now I have to counter the sense that I didn't have the right anymore to keep sitting back and letting others speak for me/in my favour and speak up myself. It doesn't feel morally right, but it feels like it has to be.

I realise now that sometimes you just have to trust it to the insiders and go your own way, because you've got no choice, not because you wish others to do your dirty work for you. I can say hand on heart, I no longer feel ashamed to say this because I no longer see it so much as a defeat, as I might have before. I truly understand the why of it now and I have nothing to be bitter about. I have been dis-illusioned in the best possible way. I now understand the "apathy" of others, they know when it's not their conversation and that trying to take part would be like trying to board a merry go round that only stops for certain people, not them. It's just futile. Yes maybe if I was a better nobler person or whatever I might be able to get around that, but to be honest, I doubt that.

I know that people in FA want diversity, or like the idea of it more than the reality, I genuinely believe they feel that way, however, in the same way that if things were more conducive to me they might not be for those who find it right for them now. There's no getting around that, not that I can think of.

So as far as most FA and other blogs, it's better for me to learn the role of spectator. I've been aware of this for such a long time, but had so committed myself, that I found it almost impossible to walk away. I've had, and am having to consciously detach myself. What's helping is that I don't think the environment and underlying basis of it is helping me at all, in the end, despite all the positives there undoubtedly are.

I have certain spheres I tend to identify with, but I feel this way about the whole of the fatosphere, not any particular viewpoint, nothing fits enough for me to be useful to myself or others. Again, I feel no need to point fingers and whine about a mythical council of FA that has fingered me for the boot or whatever, it's just how it is. I'm accepting that I am what I am and equally others are what they are too.

What I'll do better to concentrate on is what I actually think. Although I've improved, I've gone through a period of lacking the courage to say what I feel needs to be said, because it feels so against the tide. I felt like I should do whatever I can to fight against infringements of rights, however, I can only do it in ways that make sense to me and right now, the fatosphere doesn't really. It is someone else's conversation. It always was, but I overlooked this by determinedly focusing on what we could agree on. Now that feeling has overwhelmed me, I've been told it too many times, finally I've heeded it. My commitment, doesn't feel like that anymore, it feels a bit like I'm way up my own arse!

Other people lurk, why shouldn't I? I can learn to restrict my take and comments to my own blog. One of my prime motivations was to exchange and challenge each others idea, but I see that blogs are not the forum for this kind of exchange and internet space more designed for this is either inactive or doesn't want me as a member. So that's that.