Lifestyle panacea

One of the things I like to do is to see how attitudes to other states of being differ in comparison with those hung like a dead weight on fatness.

People might be wary of comparing fatness with states seen as "unhealthy" for obvious reasons. What I'm really noting reminding myself of is what it's like to be a real live human. For me it's a blessed relief to remind myself that having pretty minimal standards isn't extremist. That's something that can be surprisingly draining about being fat, you assigned artificial subhumanity.

It's like being in some kind of isolated bubble, where you have to watch the real people, who are of course your equals, acting like people in a way that is problematic for you. They let you know this with their endless taunting of "responsabilidad o muerte" fats!

If you are fat and are lucky to have precious little wrong with you, it can get easy to forget that it is normal to appraise things on their actual merits, and not behave as if they are worthy merely because they have been brought into existence by our supposed betters.

For a start, check out the figures the author of the study Dr Steve Ilardi uses to state his case that anti depressant drugs aren't working, feel free to bear in mind the absolute maximum efficacy of weight loss dieting is 12%.

"Because according to Ilardi, the drugs simply don't work. Meds have only around a 50% success rate," he says.

Yep, that's right the real people have standards, remember that the next time someone tries to obfuscate the utterly evident failure of calorie restriction by saying that barely a fifth of the above is worth beating up your body and mind over. Ilardi goes on;

"Moreover, of the people who do improve.....

Notice him making distinctions, how very humane. I've no idea what 12% means, is that probabilistic, each attempt has a 12% chance? Or is it 12% of fat people become thin for ever after dieting-how many times? No distinctions, practical nuance doesn't matter when it's all or nothing.

We certainly don't know how to slow, arrest or stop weight gain, we don't know the most efficient means to stabilize weight, why?

Because it doesn't matter worth a damn to those running the crusade, they'd rather you got fatter and died trying than make the best of yourself where you are. Once it was realised centuries ago probably that diets don't adjust underlying metabolism, the priority, if fatness is perceived to be a genuine issue, would be to do the best you can to minimize or stop any further gain.

......half experience a relapse. This lowers the recovery rate to only 25%.

No! What? You're telling me that one in four depressives get better and that's a FAIL? For a condition that can be fatal at it's higher end? You state boldly it doesn't work, as if you have the right? Shit, come around the fat way and see that virtually nothing is written off as just not good enough.

Low standards abound and none moreso than when certain fatties take it upon themselves to explain how grateful we should be for the toxic motherload at our disposal, how good it is, for us. It's truly pathetic and I'm sure emboldens fat hustlers and haters alike, seeing us as quisling and pathetic people who don't have enough self respect to draw boundaries. The former especially think they've died and gone to heaven, I'll bet.

To make matters worse, the side effects often include emotional numbing, sexual dysfunction and weight gain."

You even quantify side effects as if that matters!!!? Why aren't you just grateful for what you get, how come your behaving as if you matter as if the effects on you matter? How did it occur to blithely question medical science, don't you realise that because it exists, you cannot appraise them, you must worship them and assume they are worthwhile?

Wow, that is sooooo real!!!!!

It sounds so interesting, it's like progress can be made because information can be assessed. Rather than going round in endless circles to avoid challenging a weak basis. I'm almost drooling.

I digress.

Up to 20% of the UK population will have clinical depression at some point, he says – twice as many as 30 years ago. Where has this depression epidemic come from?

We know, it can't possibly be genetic. Being fat is nothing if not an education.

The answer, he suggests, lies in our lifestyle.

How did I know that was coming?

This consists of taking a daily multivitamin, not dwelling on negative thoughts, exercise for 90 minutes a week, expose yourself to 15-30 minutes of sunlight/ light box per day, be sociable, and get 8 hours sleep.

Yep that's it. Apart from any issues of time-piss easy, unless you are virtually catatonic. Try and visualize fat people complaining about that, heck, if that was our prescription for thinness and if it would be judged on it's real rather than imagined merits!!!???

OK, PANT. PANT deeeeep breath..........

I know that this kind of advice has been around for a while, I daresay things like CBT can be recommended for depressives, but it will be interesting to see whether this kind of lifestyle adjustment advice advances and replaces, talking therapies, pills and gradual de-stigmatization.

Human beings were not designed for this poorly nourished, sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially isolated, frenzied pace of life. So depression continues its relentless march."

Sound familiar? Yep, obesity, without the blameshame. It's fair to make a further connection. We have not properly/efficiently adapted to the on-going experiment that is our modern life, it's true.

But it's the direction of the analysis and the proposed answer, regression, into mythic past, rather than progression into a more successful, humane and intelligent adaptation to our circumstance where possible and a letting go of what which damages us. These kind of analysies lay the basis for interventionism and a rerouting of authority into saving us from ourselves. What they have been practising on us fatties they are itching to apply more widely. Those bullies who've stupidly bought into being tools because they thought it was playtime, may yet get a taste of it sometime soon.

Any aware fatty can spot the catch-22 they like to mess you up with. They say that humans who live a lifestyle that has been perfected over time (primitive), average 10 hours sleep, we 6.7. Questions like why, I doubt it's deliberate conscious choice rather than force of circumstance.

There seems little desire to find ways we can adapt more efficiently, because they seem most to lead in the direction of increasing the autonomy of the lay person. Take this whole preventative medicine rationale. That should have been changing the way we relate to the medical profession, instead, it's been worked so that we become even more dependant on consulting them for our "numbers" which we seem to live and die by almost as much as numbers on the scale at times. Even though there seems little evidence that those who do get the more prevalent ailments fit the model of risk.

No, we must somehow withdraw from modernity because we aren't "designed" for it and where do we think that will lead?

Oh and by the way, the good psychologist has never been depressed, but I'm sure that doesn't matter a jot does it? He's sure that if you just do as he says, exactly, you'll never walk alone.

I mean, be depressed.