Been fat for a comparatively short amount of time, five minutes, then think they know it all and can tell you and everyone else about it. Usually confirming what they want to hear.
Yesterday I stumbled upon a weight loss story that illustrated for me some of the untold stories that can come to the fore when you remove the obesity mask, eventually.
A woman was speaking about how she ate 4000 calories a day, halved the amount and lost nearly half her weight. She said, fat people really don't know how much they eat because we lose track of it eating a bit here and a bit there and voila, too much.
Once she 'kept track', she was able to take action and diet-slowly reducing from 4000 to 2000 over a couple of years (I kid you not) plus some exercising.
Pedantry aside, virtually no-one with any experience of weight loss dieting would describe such an amount as a diet, it's actually laughable.
And that's what struck me the idea that you can eat and become fat because you lose track of mouthfuls of food.What happened to being hungry and then eating? How can you just keep eating apropos of nothing? Putting aside the fact that your body measures your calories according to your energy needs. The assumption that follows from this premise that fat people are fat because they eat beyond the recommended daily amount, which although not that much, is enough to bear-in the absence of any underlying problems or pressingly greater need.
What I've finally realised is so alien to me is the idea of eating as a hobby that does not relate to hunger of any kind. Because hunger is what signals your body is prepared for you to eat. If that isn't there, how can the readiness be? Its a bit like having sex when you are not turned on. Dry. On the whole, it would be pretty intolerable and difficult. But even if it wasn't intolerable to eat, why wouldn't your body balance that with less desire to eat later on?
Its as if these people never consider the possibility that what they say may equally not be so. I have a few snapshots in my head of what it was like not to be concerned/aware of my eating and weight, from about the age of 5 or 6.
In the next year, I either became aware, or aware of a shift in my hunger and appetite and the way it felt too strong. It could have been relative to before though, when I don't particularly remember strong feelings of hunger. If things were said to me I don't remember them, but I do remember someone close being fat and there being comments directed at them and from them that it wasn't a good idea to be fat.
I was very strong in my desire not to become fat and the only reason I didn't restrict is I didn't want to stunt my growth! How did I know these things? Well kids are cleverer than we think. It felt like an inner initiative because at the time, I wasn't fat, it was only subsequently that comments were directed at me, before you could really say I was fat although I was not exactly thin either.
Realising that I actually barely can remember not thinking about how not to eat, what not to/what to eat how to be active and above all weight, makes me feel a bit perplexed by those who assume because they've never thought about it, others haven't either.
I'm not condemning them but due to the volume of weight loss diet participation there are enough of these people knocking about making a lot of noise about how they can tell the full story about fatness due to their particularly irrelevant experiences.
I'd have to put her in the category of basically slim person experiencing a metabolic blip or shift. The former happens when said slim starts to put on weight all of a sudden, often its quite a jump. They continue over time until they get worn down by internal and external fatphobia, plus usually there's an element of pain or fear involved. They get to a certain age, where they feel mortality loom realistically and/or they have a family history, basically some of them cack their panties.
Now, I'm not trying to mock but they do in a way that is real enough to them and not the kind of fear you can simulate. I know I've tried, oh you can become a fearful tremulous fatty alright, but your brain and nervous system knows the real story. That disparity giving you another avenue of self contempt.
Physical and mental tension heightens until a conjunction of one or more factors hits a sufficient tipping point to facilitate their 'restriction'.
The point is, it is sometimes because they start off slim, ergo they expected to eat more or loss what they felt like and continue indefinitely, then their metabolism adjusts itself. Its not necessarily that their metabolism is on a fat setting, it's more its no longer on the thin/slim one of before.
So when they reach this point and if they can manage to lose weight, they tell you their reduced calorie intake and it is often similar or the same as your own. And of course they tend to be vociferous in claiming this as general, probably because they are a little embarrassed about the fact that they can eat relatively well and be slim, just not as well as they did before taking a bit of exercise.
It's not so much that I'm judging them, its their attitude of not listening to any other experience even though there's is not the main experience. Many seem to experience a shift that isn't that receptive to reduction, or they find that intolerable to sustain.
No comments:
Post a Comment