Is weight complex?

Read 'complex' here as a euphemism for we don't know how to do it/ we are going about it the wrong way. The body gaining weight finds it so simple it doesn't require any conscious direction from us, ditto losing it, as long as the body takes the lead there too. That is because it knows what it is doing.

It is we who do not consciously know how to call up that information so we can do it at will. Scientific inspiration/instinct I think its called.

Don't get me wrong, I find weight and proper weight loss/ gain complex, that's because I don't know how to achieve it, i.e., I don't know how to extend the body's ability to shed/ gain weight at will as it does virtually every single day of our lives, to a conscious decision.

Luckily, we do know something, how not to do it, guess what though? We cannot accept it!  Why? Because we are stupid and that's something I rarely say.

This approach has overcomplicated it, really if it wasn't for that, we'd just be in the dark. Wait a minute, is that why? We are terrified of the void!

Having invested so heavily in being so sure that we know, we cannot mentally cope with the fact that we don't actually know very much, okay, correction above. Poor us, face has got to be saved. Despair has got to be kept at bay. Imagine people being told nothing can be done for what they weight. So even things that don't work will do, if we just pretend they do. The thing is to keep hope alive, if nothing else.

Excellent.

This means it will be even more complicated than it could or should be, because apparently its moral.WTH! Yeah, clearly that is bull, so you have to ask the obesity industry why it must happen a certain way, rather than the best way. That's of course assuming those in the know think the same way behind closed doors.

Luckily no one cares about those people fat and thin who are suffering or dying because we don't know how to manipulate weight up as well as down. Because guess what? How useful is expending energy to lose weight, the really fat who also struggle with mobility and the very thin, dying because they can't keep weight on to live another day?

Presumably the latter can keep still and live and eat fast food ( nobody can resist, its 'addictive') even though lack of appetite is usually implicated in why they are fading away.

Genius.

Thing is if they are able to reverse weight successfully to thinness and keep it there, by wasting energy, they will have discovered another way by dint of that fact. Because I cannot see how that route can pay off, without some *underlying change in metabolism preceding it, which would render that approach optional anyway.

* I'll bet that's the 'secret' of those bodies that 'keep weight off'.

The morality of adherence

It is intriguing to see someone turn away from a community (of ideas) with an ethical basis centered around what you eat. Reading that thread made me wonder if I was in a similar position to someone observing those who believe in healthism/ dieting and people with an FA perspective, go at it.

Overwhelmingly those who argue with FA just bring straw to burn. Some feel a strong aversion to it, but are aware that whenever they try to put this into words, it violates their own standards. They try to make that work by attempting to inveigle people into self hating, in their head their motive is sound so they throw a hissy and take the get out clause of FA is 'fanatical'.

Its also amazing to read so many things you've felt in an on the surface differing context, it makes me sad that in FA we struggle be as self caring as Tasha is of herself because of history and who we are up against. In a way her ability to maintain this partly epitomizes an element of the 'thin privilege' slipstream (not because she is thin!) I mean her sense of self even under such overwhelming duress and her doctors patient and kind reaction.  Compare.

People who apologize for doctors fat phobia-in the process insulting and infantalising them because that is the only way to try and make this make sense- should take note of how some of us expect them to behave. To observe their actual patients rather than sell them out for a self serving ideology. I don't by any means expect all to be any where near as understanding as this one, but when it is clearly destroying you? Come on! People who keep venerating doctors regardless are exhibiting their leftover default setting of contempt for fatness.

I've always suspected that suitability of any particular kind or balance of diet has an intrinsic bio chemical basis of some kind. The greater the imbalance and restriction the fewer are likely to be innately suited to it. That's just a fact of fitting on any spectrum of human categorisation balance is likely to be the most suitable for the most people. A vegan diet probably suits a core of people at best after that there are varying degrees of suitability for others until you get to people for whom it is ill advised to put it mildly. The problem as ever comes from the desire for that minority to be the majority.

For some unsuited, it can shorten their life palpably. In a sense the writer Tasha had a silver lining along with her cloud of ill health, the effects on her were dramatic enough to make up her mind about whether her health was more important than the vehicle for her ethics. That is something we should all find out before we do ourselves irreversible damage.

It's also something healthists and diet wallahs the latter especially refuse to come to terms with, since the advent of obesity hype. Whatever health prognosis placed upon fatness, calorie restriction is rarely 'healthy', that's one of the reasons fatness has to be unhealthier in comparison.

If Tasha was a fat person, trying to force and keep her body at semi starvation mode she would have to swim harder against the tide even if she could perceive it, not just a minority viewpoint. Veganism doesn't appear to have that much mainstream support-I've never heard few recommend it and only temporarily. Therefore even its adherents are aware of the possibility that it could be a problem. That has been overcome in the case of WLD, which the authorities like the more unforgiving vegans state, cannot fail.

She had to decide on her health and sanity first because the effects were too serious to be borne and could not be contained, even if they were. A lot like dieting, except rather than vitamin deficiencies, which are often made up at least to some extent by the rebounding it creates is the mental and physical energy it draws, which is then not available for other things.

Even without reading between the lines of her strong need to justify herself (due to fears of internal and external judgement), no one with a heart could truly blame her. But I'll bet there are some-who's effects are more manageable possibly-who decide that a shortened life and worse health is a price they are willing to pay for their beliefs. They have that choice. Some of them even have the decency to admit this, in fact she herself recognised and was outraged about this and so she should be, that is a decision that must be made by the individual.

It may sound shocking that some are prepared to sacrifice themselves for their beliefs, given the way idealism about perfect health have taken hold of current moralizing, but not everyone would sell their mother for the mere promise of a little more time on this earth or to lose five pounds or whatever. In the end we all die for our beliefs in some way, from that to people who believe they are 'addicted' to various habits or behaviours that compromise their health or even die as a result of that kind of framing to those who decide there are certain things they are not prepared to keep in optimum health.

I'm not casting aspersions, although I'm not in sympathy with vegan fundamentalism, I did agree with some of her detractors that going from "veganism is the best for all, but oh wait, its killing me, perhaps not, I'll try meat again, oh, that's the ethical high point of all etc.," Was a little hard to swallow, as hard as a soaked nut pate, ummmm. Even though I cannot say she's wrong, its just she knows she ignored this going in, so now it seems a little convenient regardless of the truth of it.

It was a bit hard not to snigger reading how bad veganism (now) is for the earth and how great meat eating is (now) for the same, some people have got to believe they are the most moral the most goody goodest of all. I guess that's the micro nutrient they need most. And I can't help feeling that for her, that was the real draw of veganism, often the danger when you are proselytized at from an overly emotive stance rather than being trusted as much to reason.

Mind you that is the point, those spreading the word don't trust it to get past reason and deliberately target this urge to pander to it and attract those who are highly competitive in this way. We've seen that PeTa and others appeal directly to that on numerous occasions, in fact they will try to appeal to some quite unsavoury urges which is possibly why they assumed repeating the playground trauma of many fat kids i.e being called "whale" and traded on the promise of calorie inefficiency some experience with vegetarianism to entice fatz desperate not to be insult by being compared to large beautiful mamals.

This from an animal rights charity which should consider the insult, contemptable. 

It only makes it all the more galling when those people recover from the thrall of whatever urge or impulse you are manipulating. It reminds you of what you are trying to escape, minority status.

The power you invest in these urges tends to get in the way of staying in touch with your own needs which is why that is an avenue in the first place. There is clearly some underlying, possibly not wholly conscious realisation among those who are chemically inclined towards veganism etc., that maybe if you were inclined to towards veganism, you'd have had a bit more of a clue about it before. They stoke that fervour precisely because they hope others can become like them in reverse hooked mentally first with the body following suit.

The fury unleashed when you step off, is not with you as such, although that doesn't matter it will be aimed at you, but underneath it's with your differing biochemistry and is a bit like being averse, threatened or hating people because merely they are different from you. Whats more interesting though is what that tells us about the motivations of spreading modish dietary restriction it's supposed to be ethics or health, but its clearly no different than any other life force, the urge to make the world more like what you think will be most hospitable for you.

Again, the rage is prospect of denying that. Its a dream we all have to some extent some even go so far as to wish their minority status will subsume the majority through coercion and internalized recrimination. Tasha's struggle to come to terms with her reality of her diet's effects on her sounds a lot like ours, certainly mine, except with me, it was "scientists/doctors wouldn't lie", they wouldn't insist I keep trying unless it was possible unless there was something in the unhealthiness of fat over and above the reality of this. In the end I never resolved that, I just comprehensively burn out, like hanging over the edge of the precipice, I got to the point where my fingers couldn't grip anymore. So I had to drop.....

I never was able to say, they decided that dieting must be recommended at all costs and not give a damn to monitor the effects of that insistence. Full stop. Rather like the enraged vegans who felt 'she did veganism wrong', like I said the issue is not weight loss dieting or fatness but the construct that ignores reality to keep itself going and has nowhere to go.

It's not about veganism or WLD its about universalist coercion.

What's also evident is how morality rather than always being an essentialist truth of human ethics sometimes has other functions. It is the centrality of ethics to the human psyche which leads us to give respect to a presentation of something as ethical, which may be undeserved. In this case ethics act as a tool to help structure adherence to a set of principles as much as being purely an abstract or objective concern.

The hating healthist eaters are the same and it is the similarity of attitudes between them and many vegetarians, vegans, weight loss dieters those who use eating disorders as a lifestyle template, religious dietary laws, government guidelines et al that make me realise the more strictured your eating, the more it tends to become and contain your whole philosophy of existence, including your personal morality-which may include and increase wanting to be holier than thou. The two come out of one another as there is probably an ethical aspect in every decision and action, it cannot really be avoided.

That's why the FA saying that 'eating is not a moral issue' has always seemed to make FA ethics on eating, invisible. The  choice is which moral guidelines you consider the best and most inclusive and flexible.

I don't know if I've ever said this before but normal eating or what some people feel comes under intuitive eating felt intensely moral to me after spending years trying to ignore my body, even when it showed levels of distress that are quite appalling and caused me a lot of problems.

Even if it is your own choice, you are doing someone an injustice and that willing choice doesn't mean diddly squat when its hurting you. Yes it might be worse if someone else was doing it to you, but that does not invalidate or erase your abuse of yourself.

Any thing else shows a contempt for human beings that I can tell is a very bad idea indeed, regardless of how freedom loving you think that is, there comes a point when this mentality undermines the very freedom is supposed to liberate.

I'm sure the poster Tasha didn't feel free even though the choice to be and stay vegan, was her own. The damage done to her was not less because it was her choice.

I'm glad to say....

I can stop feeling badly disposed to raging bully du fatz * LINK WARNING: weight loss hokum masquerading as healthy lifestyles( or vice versa) Gillian Mckeith, she appears to be suffering for her misdemeanours.

Whatever possessed her to put herself at the mercy of the public in this way? Though they may enjoy fat hating themselves, tend have a strong urge to see if those who can dish it, can take it themselves.

And they can be as merciless as Mz.M is with uz fatz when they come upon someone who clearly cannot.

That's the problem with folks who spend time uncovering the purportedly unique reactions of fattiez to demeaning and invasive assaults on our sense of self, those reactions, are no different than any other humans. The central thesis that fat people are in some way lesser than others, is utterly false, attacking that falsehood means attacking the person.

All this may well lull the more underlyingly decent and earnest hater into a false sense of their own stoicism because they read the reaction of fat people to being mis-used as not the reacting like any one would to that but as the inner degeneracy that got us fat rearing it's ugly head.

In that sense they tend to be at a disadvantage to bona fide trolls who are likely to have less need to pretend this fat hating power trip is out of selfless concern for fat people. No they're aware that its just quarry and they do not give a damn about any such thing as 'morality' or the whys and wherefores, it's just (blood) sport to them. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't make them admirable, just that a more compromised moral centre doesn't always make you the most amoral.

I came upon the reality TV fluff she was involved in just at the right time. I've ignored it so I have to put it down to serendipity that I happened upon it yesterday and didn't switch over fast enough to avoid the preamble, which sold it for me.

I saw her give way to a swoon when given none of the room for manoeuvre that just an ounce of fellow feeling-from your tormentors-can give. Good for her, when you've taken all you can take, time for a strategic exit, hopefully on your feet, but hey, on your knees if necessary.

Sorry if I sound unsympathetic, but I've endured a few hair straightening times myself ignoring my own signals of distress too persuaded by what she represents that distress was actually my own moral incontinence. Call it gallows indifference.


Good news for her is I was betraying myself, whereas Mz Mackeith has the comfort of knowing that it is others who are getting at her to fulfil their own needs. Something she is more than familiar with herself. In fact, I'd say she lives by it.

Never mind Gillian, you dry your tears with the money they pay you for it, even taking into account any PTSD therapy, your likely to be ahead. At least you are getting paid for it hopefully you learn a lesson and sin no more.

I wouldn't hold my breath though.

Fat perspectives

I think of a fat perspective as an open and objective (as possible) deciphering and definition of fatness from an accurate experiential point of view.

If your reading of being fat is an internalization of your community and/or society's lores about fat or fatness, or you consider yourself to be up on the science, until you are describing any aspect of fatness seeking to understand and explain it as accurately as possible above all else, you are not seeking a fat perspective.

Whether you are fat or not.

By seeking to fit fatness into a constraining model of disease, the obesity industry cannot rightly describe itself as objective, therefore cannot honestly portray itself in opposition to lay folks', (such as in FAetc.,) subjectivity, especially as they have even substituted that for their own ignorant and reductive version.

This cannot match the richness of actual experience once it emerges slow and blinking from under the light deprived layers of outer and inner repression.

It doesn't mean that no one but fat people can evince the experience of being fat, not at all, but in order for non fatz to do this they must fulfil a legitimate rendering of the outside perspective, the same in essence as that of a fat person who seeks honest accuracy rather than to craft and validate pre-destined ideology.

The one who is not experiencing a state of being must jettison any agenda to degrade others to aggrandize themselves or to pursue a sense of self identity, even more than those experiencing said state, to engage honestly with what they perceive and observe in others. They must question their own feelings and assumptions as much if not more than the object of their study, if they cannot or do not wish then that disqualifies them from a fat perspective.

They are only of interest in relaying the unfolding story of their own fantasy or ideology of fatness. For instance, it may be interesting to note the concept of having 'fat days'. 

I don't say this won't touch upon any truths, maybe numerous ones although they will have to be deciphered carefully according to those biases. The writer Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie described stereotypes as problematic not because they are necessarily untrue, but because they are incomplete.



Unless you can be open to interpreting what you see freely, you can be as useless as if you'd seen nothing. The issue is not observing fat people openly and comparing notes to achieve mutual communication and understanding. It's the dominant motive of a conclusion that doesn't value actual truth, but the construction of it to fit a pre determined model of pathology and disease. That and the desire to make fat people continue to submit to this regardless is all important.

After spending years passively internalizing this model, your mental input becomes a choice between how far you can go with it before it exhausts your capacities or to protect yourself from it and survive it. Either will lead to rejection eventually, it was inevitable that falsehood would eventually be rejected  by some for your own actual experience.

The subtlety of this effect can be amazing, I've mentioned the way fat people (and others) can suddenly look at photos, sometimes very familiar ones and 'see' themselves for the first time. Rather than through the lens of fat loathing.

Clearly, I don't expect everyone fat or thin to feel as jaded by falsehood, we can see from observation what a thrilling joy it is for many. I can see, perceive, even sense the rush of pleasure it gives them to continue with constructs which demean others, often themselves.

I'm not even that upset about that more bored by it because, I do pity someone for needing to get pleasure that way, for counting themselves so cheaply, when they are supposed to be winning. When I'm aware of an opportunity to do similar on the whole I find it unnerving to succumb aware that pushing someone down doesn't make you go anywhere but merely makes in look so in comparison to them. It's partly a weird kind of pride, if I cannot raise myself, I cannot lower others to appear to do so, how embarrassing, how desperate!

Subjective, is often defined in opposition to objective as a biased and overly skewered personal vision.

taking place within the mind and modified by individual bias;

"a subjective judgment"

immanent: of a mental act performed entirely within the mind;

"a cognition is an immanent act of mind"

It of course can be, ditto objectivity, it too happens "entirely" inside the mind of someone, the observer. Clearly this vantage point is supposed to make observation objective, but it doesn't necessarily certainly not if overwhelmed by it's own agenda.

Both this and the base ignorance of an agenda formed from the outside to serve itself have made an actual truthful fat experience objective in comparison, even sometimes a partial and biased one.

That is what can happen when you set such a low standard of 'objectivity'.

Leaving the children out of it

If you think about the times when weight change is most predictable overall, changing balance of hormones often has a palpable influence.

As hormones act on the nervous system, I wonder whether that is a key link with emotional and stress triggers which go through that system, by that affect the endocrinal glands especially.

I get this sense from my own body and others that too many overwhelming emotions can seem to pressure even ‘swell’ the nerves, due to the volume of messages flowing through them. I wonder how much this has in common with other times when the nervous system has extra demands on it, such as in periods of growth.

That's what was so funny about those who fancy themselves to be experts on 'obesity' telling us that it seems fatness creates inflammation in the body. It would be too cute if there was some kind of connection, or overlap.

There is a difference between extra messages swelling its carrier and chemicals released which cause swelling through irritation. As we know stretching can sensitize too. Thing is, it could be one then the other (sometimes) and so on. Not forgetting the extra tissue that can accrue with a cluster of fat tissue to increase the messages due to that growth.

I could ask if there is a connection, if there could be a separation, but experts rarely answer those sorts of questions. You aren't supposed/allowed to ask them, even if they could actually answer. Your supposed to play as dumb as your 'diagnosis'.

The overall point I'm making is the possibility should be allowed for, that this is merely observing how fatness tends to occur, rather than an opportunity to mis-use adult authority over children. We have not shown a reversal of child weight, in various interventions.

Wave after wave of certain processes; can affect your physical predilections and underpinnings more. A bit like as we age, we are more likely to plump up over time, putting it simply, the waves of life breech thinness, it happens for some earlier than others. For some not at all, because they've either always been fat or never so.

Even if he's right, do you know what? Manipulating input and output, sucks big time. Look at the hate fuelled politics of bullying it has lead to, its ugly vile and mean and has cheapened the worth of people before our eyes. Just because it’s not happening to the real people, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.......... to people.

I wouldn't care if forcing children to diet 'works' because the end doesn't justify the means.

So leave the children alone and find something humane and effective that is the direction modern societies are moving in. Punishing the youngest of people for existing does not go with progressive innovation and imagination. What the societies of the future will major in.

Any reverser of weight or anything else must go in that direction or drag us back to an authoritarian past in another guise. Do people really choose to read books on the basis of how many calories they use up doing so, rather than what the text means to them?  How degrading would that be of experience? Endlessly direct your body to burn calories, rather than participate willingly is a sure recipe for burnout. The younger you start, the sooner it happens.

Allow children to be brought up to be encouraged to choose their activities on the basis of their own desires and yes trying new things in the face of reluctance, but not to shape their acceptability or existence, unless they choose it.

Children need to be allowed to develop a sense of their own physical boundaries.

As a young fat child, your boundaries are often infringed mentally and physically, your body objectified and pointed out and at. Your are repeatedly devalued and encouraged to devalue yourself, thereby sticking you with a sense of guilt about your own self betrayal.

I’m sorry if this is at all disturbing or disgusting, but I’m fed up of the silence about what we’ve had to put up with and the effects on us. And in many respects, adults of today had it better.

I actually feel hurt inside to imagine what some children are going through now.

Try to understand this is not the way to go for any of us, regardless of age. If you wish to reverse weight or prevent fatness, you must find holistic and gentle and effective ways to achieve this. Allow children to express their physical natures in keeping with their own inner rhythms and desires. Let's build upon this to teach them more. Let's not mess them up in on the roulette wheel of diet fail. If we failed on this, sticking it children is not an option. They can't cover for this failure either, nor should they be asked to.

Let's leave the children out of this

Okay, I think I've managed to work out some of what this set off. The title was the initial hook; "dieting gets you nowhere". Congratulations Hercule Poirot, maybe we can get Miss Marple in to help work out why people or should I say, the menz of science, cannot accept this.

It's rare enough for anyone to state it that boldly-it still draws the eye. I'm interested in what makes others come to the same conclusion in the face of a tidal wave of heavily validated counter reality.

The basis of Amitai Etzioni's conclusion is simple observation. He noticed that as most people remain more or less the same weight over the years, dieting is clearly ineffectual.

That is how easy it should be people.

Yet, what turned out to interest me more is the almost inevitable failsafe of even the most direct WLD sceptic; let's take advantage of our power over children and their naivety to impose what doesn't work on them. So we can keep dreaming. Upshot, we can force it to work as we we can tolerate their distress, better than we can our own. Even if that was true, should we?

Can we not think of anything better? Like progress ..............?

He explained it using cement as a metaphor for weight and how it can be reformed when still wet-in childhood and youth- but later when dry, it can be re-shaped, only to reformulate itself back to its prior shape.

Actually no sorry, I got far more exercised than that.

The thing about the adult drag, adopting a tough and stern pose under the guise of "it's for their own good", is children grow up. And develop minds of their own. And the betrayal catches up with you. 

Little folk become more troublesome when they finally awaken as adults; eventually, to the tricks played on them. A lot of us in FA show that childhood programming can stay for a hell of a long time, but not for life.

According to a study by the Diabetes Center at Howard University, obesity in infants is only a 20 percent predictor of obesity in adulthood, but by the time children are 6 years old, it is 50 percent. By the time they are adolescents, it is 90 percent. Other data, though somewhat less dire, point in the same direction

Ignoring "other data" for the mo, this could reflect hormonal influence, which combines with genetics. Starting with pre-natal hormonal influence during development in the womb. Then next around the age of 7, give or take, there seems to be what may be the beginnings of the major hormonal flux in the lead up to puberty.

Puberty's often described as if it's a bit like an explosion, but there seems to be some kind of hormonal lead up to it-which starts around this time- which ends with that fast release of puberty. More like the action of a syringe. I wonder if that is part of the early puberty phenomenon. Either than pre stage is accelerated, or skipped.

Around that age comes up a lot when it comes to things that might seem to be related to some of the effects of this kind of activity, weight, sexuality, etc., A hell of a lot of realisations seem to happen around that age so it may also be related to a leap in brain and nervous system development.

I'm aware of course this is anecdotal and may increase with a bit of confirmation bias and the old Jesuit motto "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man," comes to mind. In spite of all that, I still think it's a significant period which can influence weight especially in those susceptible to this.

We are on the same page, aren't we?

I read a really good piece based on an interview with Christopher Hitchens at the weekend. I know a lot of folk cannot stand him, as it is I still retain a gratitude for his take down of  the Mother Teresa's sainthood. I've seen her work, seen her interviewed in India when she was still in the land of the living. And yet when I became aware of her name being used to denote sainthood, I was nonplussed to say the least.

The first couple of times didn't quite register, then it happened to be a woman inserted her name in place of saying someone was saintly, or not. There was that weird pause where you've heard and understand everything, yet realise there is a great big hole where those two should connect.

Finally, it dawned Mother Teresa was the embodiment of sainthood therefore could be used interchangeably with the term. I swear my first reaction was," you have got to be kidding". And do you know what? I'm not sure I could have told you exactly why. I just felt that was a mistake.

Then along comes Hitchens amongst others to puncture that balloon, although I do notice all her most prominent critics are men, I felt relieved, I wasn't just being funny. It's not that she didn't have admirable qualities that her achievement was not amazing, or that her work was worthless. I don't feel that. In spite of all that, I just felt there was something deeply unwholesome about her attitudes. Indeed this critique feels more balanced than others.

During the interview, he said something in reference to religious belief that really summed up the whole of my frustration with the way FA tends to point itself;

"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Aaaaaaaaaahhhh; that relieves some of the tension!

Time and time again I've thought we continually refer to the senselessness of fat hating tripe, of its profound  (to itself) necessary ignorance which it has little choice but to maintain, or be destroyed by the cold light of reality.

Yet, we keep treating it as if it has some logic. Why? When asked to 'prove' what is evident, we scuttle off to try and find what will often be dismissed rather than responding; "you prove reality is anything but what we are saying". A little like religion what they are asserting has not been backed up in real life, so why do we not have the confidence to make that clear, all of us, so that they are aware that they are on the back foot, as they should be.

Instead we are.

I've been guilty of getting caught up in this myself when maybe I should just keep quiet, I've been excluded from some discussions anyway. FA ends up pandering to what it dismisses and assumes that same level. I have to ask, do people in FA believe the obesity crisis is a lot of rot, or not? Are we all speaking on the same page on that?

If we are, when are we going to stop arguing as if we aren't? As opposed to saying why we are saying what we are saying? In a way that's far more of a derail that weight loss dieters who wish to turn FA into WW's bourgeois outreach.

For all I know it possibly encourages this impulse. I recognise the primacy of simplify, but even simplicity comes out of deep roots, shallow simplicity is hollow. It adds to the feeling that 'we are not taken seriously', which is sometimes code for we don't feel serious.

I'm going to have to drop my referencing of Ditchkins seeing as he's come out against the kind of proselytizing atheism, that is wearing my last nerve with Dawkins and his ilk. Tee hee, (to that last link). If you become merely the counterpoint to something, you will begin to assume the same level as that thing. Atheism has got nothing to do with religion, in essence it is something in its own right it is more than just 'irreligion' thanks. If you reduce it to that, it will become like (your idea of) religion.

There's another noteworthy thing he said, referring to religion, but very applicable to the crusade;

it's religion, he contests, that is "cosmically hopeless, as is all the related masochism that goes with it – you've got to spend your entire life making up for the vermin you are. What is that if not degrading? We don't do that to people.

Emphasis, mine.

This is what shocks me about all the non-deists and secularists on board with the crisis. I cannot understand how belief in it is compatible with humanism. If you claim that those you believe in are greedily suicidal indolent fools for the heck of it or without strong minded intrusive intervention, doesn't that pose questions about your own judgement and intellect?

* edited for something approaching clarity

Bulldog, greyhound

Talking about elephants and zebras or bulldogs and greyhounds, in terms of weight. Some of us are bigger and some smaller physically. Yes, but that is not the whole of why some of us are or become fat or thin, nor does it matter, but the issue of lack of alternative is important.

Now I know that such is the extent of investment in WLD, that it dies very hard indeed, harder than Bruce Willis it seems. But when it is said, diet's don't work, that's it. Yes, that means those in FA especially who say, " I can lose 20, 50 100lbs even at the drop of the hat, so I feel bad about saying ddw, because they do for me!"

Let me ask you a question. Are you fat? Yes, well, then it hasn't worked for you, your failure is just less acute and that's to do with body variance. What about those people who say, "diets work, look at the example of this or that person". Again, are you fat? Yes, then they've not worked for you. What about those folks who say, "I've lost x pounds" really? Has that made the obesity rate go down? No, then really, who cares?

Let's get away from the idea that the problem with diets is fat people just can't believe they could ever achieve semi starvation. I never doubted the underlying principle of diets, which is restricting calories to use up stored energy. I've said, the issue is not that, but the defenses that provokes.

It's like, the problem is not jumping off the building, so much as that gravity will act to make sure you land at speed. Which leads us to say, we cannot fly. I could say we can jump, or I could say, we can get into an aircraft, but I'd be laughed out of town, rightly so.

Since when does anything but quackery depend on belief? I'm not sure whether I 'believed' in kiddie aspirin-I didn't know any better- when it was first given. I'm thinking it worked or not regardless. Something that works, works, whether you believe in  it or not, or belief is the active ingredient.

But even if dieting did work, so what? Why would it have to be the only way to do things? Imagine if we demanded that everyone eats nuts because look they work for X, or everyone should take penicillin because it cured Y? Yes, that's nice for X/Y, but if I have a problem with nuts/penicillin, what does that have to do with me?

There are all the varieties of product under the sun for everything possible, no matter how unnecessary, but suddenly a supposed life or death matter must have only one solution that works for everyone. Right. Like God.

Until we have something to alter our weight, the greyhound/bulldog analogy can be used to explain variety, but not fatness in itself, if you are a fat greyhound or a fat bulldog, you are not fat because you are either.

If you're 300 lbs and couldn't get below 190, whilst exercising 4 hours a day on a starvation diet. This is not because you were or were not made to be fat, it's because you were not made to diet. What you are describing is the cul de sac effect of your metabolism responding to your own attempt at metabolic adjustment.

It doesn't mean you're not a Great Dane, it doesn't mean you are either. We can see some people are very big and tall, or small with big feet and hands, but we can still see whether they are fat or not-even though some look fatter than others, overall.

I have never looked as fat as I am, some don't, it's something to do with the way you're put together. What I'm saying is, the failure of dieting, does not indicate what you are meant to weigh, if even that's the right way of looking at it. It doesn't matter, but I think that the reasons for being fat and why we are fatter today are more than pre-determination.

Choice or not, no excuse

Shoshie makes a good point about excusing fat hate on the grounds of fatness being a choice being a bad faith argument. It makes me laugh now that people are saying discriminating on the grounds of race is beyond logic, as if that stopped it. As if discrimination is rational. 

And they don't get that point at all, it doesn't matter whether you 'choose' to be fat or not, hating fat people treating us like second class citizens is morally wrong and cannot be justified on any grounds of reason whatsoever.

The extent to which people are seeking to justify what they claim is right is truly pathetic. If its right to hate, don't justify just keep hating and don't complain when others hate you for some reason similarly (un)justified.

After all, anyone can say x or y state /stance/ behaviour is a choice, I'm now allowed to hate you.

The whole idea of fatness as a choice doesn't really hang together. Eating is said to be fully consciously decided, if so, why diet? Why not just stop deciding to eat things at source, rather than choosing and then interrupting that after the fact? Why have a plan to eat, when it is your elective and conscious choice in the first place.

Weight in general would be a totally different business, people wouldn't die from being thin. Being unable to keep on enough weight to allow their bodies to survive.

Its hard to see anorexia existing either. Starvation wouldn't develop into a momentum of its own which is really what anorexia is when you get down to it. Calorie restriction out of control, that would not happen if that was all a switching on and off of will.

When we think of choice we tend to go by the definition of cool elective choice from more than one option. Fatness is not much like that in the main.

Indirect choice is another matter. Choosing certain things and other things coming as a result of it, now that's another story.

Hate costs

 A pathetic convention  fuelled by the desire to justify what people have already decided to feel.

HATE.

Some may fool themselves on that, but at a cost we are all paying. The cost of obesity is the cost of being suckered by the crusade, you get what you pay for. I for one have no intention of taking any more of the bill than I have already.

Note costs are somethng that can be easily manipulated by those dealing this propaganda. Prescribing expensive butchery and its often expensive aftermath-physical, mental and financial for its victims-drugs and other 'treatments' clearly working to lower the rate of obesity (nope) and maximising profits for those who are in charge of propaganda and prescribing. Before anyone accuses fat people of draining the health care system follow the cash, it's not going into our bank accounts.

Nice work if you can create it and are conscience lite. Unlike stigmatized drug users who they may have borrowed this 'accusatory cost' technique from, they stay away from social costs, it's not so easy to throw more fat people in jail, take away more of their children for proper abuse (not the fake one of not starving your children), into mental health facilities or illicit drug use/addiction rehab centres etc., and all the other costs fat people don't seem to major in. Which is interesting, given that we are supposed to be so unwell, that it should be causing ripples elsewhere.

Do you hear endless griping about the costs of thin? I'm probably the only fatty around mean enough to point that out! And even I couldn't care less, what do I care to divide people by weight and whine about what they're costing moi? I'd be embarrassed to run myself so wrongly.

But you know what this 'debate' tends to miss? The personal, financial and social costs to fat people of this wretched crusade. I can say being 'obese' and by that I mean internalizing the obesity mandate, has cost many of us dearly in many things of value.

I’m not just talking of the haut morality of our fat hating 'betters' who tell us happily they would see us die in agony for the possibility of saving themselves pennies, no, I mean things that people who value life and being able to do your best for yourself and those around you.

I have been able to contribute less, because I was less in every way but the most important to the moral giants du nos jour, weight. And when I finally had enough sense to wake up, it's sometimes been taxing to disentangle myself from too. Made more so by the intransigent surround of fat hating. I have had to deal with the consequences, using only my own inner resources.

Not one penny have we received for this and we're still expected to pay for the policies of hatred as always, even though we don’t agree with them one little bit. I don’t whine endlessly to haters because ultimately, I have to take the reins on that one, I should have known better, mea culpa.

And that is exactly how haters should feel, they’ve got exactly what they've been trained to want, what they've put first above all else, us harrassed, hated and ridiculed. I doubt they are paying financially for it, but I wouldn't mind if they were they deserve the bill for their own nastiness. We've had to pay our own, why should we care any more about their possibly mythical payments, anymore than they care about our actual ones? I have absolutely no idea why they think that has to come for free it's all for the haters, it's all about them it's not serving fat people, better get brave on the phobia if its too dear chère. If you are not prepared to pay, are you really sure you want to have the e-meaushun?

When you lead with hate you are not leading with health, effectiveness or anything, but hate, if it's not effective that's because you didn't lead with effectiveness silly, the truth will out.

That has been a general consensus, hate first, second and third, deny it if you want but we have been told times without number "We want you to feel bad about being fat,  we want it to cost you peace of mind, self respect, anything and everything" and so on.

And whilst you're at it, take a good look at where everyone's money is actually going and look into what they are prepared to do to fat people. That’s what you are up against, so get wise, or they will bleed you dry , how else do you think they could have taken the health system for all they have, when the authorities whine on about limiting costs? They've managed to do this to a group that are despised as a group of 'self inflicters' protecting their source in case it becomes too much and we can all be taxed. They are not taxing fat people, they are taxing everyone, especially those on low incomes. That has nothing to do with being compassionate towards me or any other fat person.

It's to do with deciding whether haters hate fat people enough to be potentially drained dry and suckered. IOW, if you want to hate fat people you must understand you are foregoing some self respect. Again, that isn't so evident relative to what we are dealt but that doesn't change the fact of it though, it only obscures it.

How many times, you are being played.

Presumably, haters think 'thin privilege' will save them, maybe they think obesity operators really respect them and wouldn't treat them so mean "They'll call me, they won't just hump and go....." they only mishandle fatz right?

Think again, because the clock is ticking.

"You have to persuade me"

Apparently, fat people are supposed to dedicate themselves to persuading people who've clearly and consciously made up their minds to hate them. This reminds me of those prostitutes who say their clients insist they tell them how great it is for them and how big they are and so on.

Is it not enough that you're getting what you want, you now demand one should pretend this is the main focus of one's existence?

It seems to be a cry for validation. If fat people try to "persuade", they can pretend they came to their decision through a balance of argument, rather than the desire to hate. That opportunity must not pass. There can never be enough people to hate.

The ally ship

Despite the title, I don't feel I'm the one to ask about allyship. If that's even a word. When I got into FA, I assumed that because fat people had never begrudged the attention given to the bodily traumas thin people spoke about, they would feel the same. Given we'd been so silent for so long, I presumed people would get a sense that we were not doing it lightly or without thought.

That we'd gone through something to get to this point. I even figured that precisely because we'd listened so intently to people's attitudes about fatness, that they'd feel a sense that it was time to hear us.

I'll explain that before I proceed. In order to have certain conditions, you have to have a reasonably acceptable body. For instance, body dysmorphia requires you to have an acceptable body;

Patients with BDD believe they look ugly or deformed (thinking, for example, that they have a large and 'repulsive' nose, or severely scarred skin), when in reality they look normal.

This is how fat people are expected to feel. Not feeling this way is felt to be unbalanced.

So, I think we can stand to hear about things that have nothing to do with them and respond supportively. Though I must admit, I find it hard to take BDD that seriously. In the age of plastic surgery, it was predictable that pretty people would feel ugly and that would be seen as sobworthy. It's the prettiness that makes it so.

As a person who's part of what's deemed an "ugly class", it's hard to take seriously the pain of those not deemed such, being terrified that they might be.

Think about it.

I'm not entirely sure I expected any need for the role of allies. I expected most people would take time to accept any idea of change. I did think though that they'd be a rational minority who would realise we had reasonable things to say and would offer rational critiques of what's actually been said.

I had no idea that was so difficult and that the hostility would be so universal. Fat acceptance is such a small thing, being an ally seems rather clunky. Like it's been lifted from more serious battles. 

Premises, premises

This is from Friday 7th November 2008

Note: apparently blogger thinks I am unable to decide for myself when my posts should go out. So in it's wisdom it has decided to post it where it wants to post it. Due to this incompetence, I've had to tell you where it is supposed to be.

Premise logic a previous statement from which another is inferred. An underlying assumption.
Fat acceptance isn't widely recognised and people do not want to know about it, the truth spoils the delusions they want to shore up. What we have instead of fat acceptance versus whatever, is a fat haters monologue split into two. So our part is written by the fat haters and its basically whatever they think is the opposite of what their view.

We are treated (and sometimes treat ourselves) as if we have not grown up in the same society having been formed by the same influences regarding weight eating and so on. We are as saturated with dieting culture and its assumptions as much as anyone else. The difference is, we are trying to get away from it. We are escaping because we have broken ranks with the delusion.

That is an important distinction, we are not necessarily going towards something that we can clearly see, our momentum is away from something else. Our aim is not set in stone, although it is assumed and presumed to be. That impression comes from the nature of fat hating, it is seen as the only rational viable, or possible view. Disagreeing with it, becomes the opposite of it-when a view is drenched in moral goodness, it posits itself against the forces of badness, so FA has that mantle thrust upon it.

That is useful to shore up convention, what FA actually is, isn't. The greater dynamic of people in FA is that of fleeing something- internalized fat hating and all that triggers, supports and deepens it.

This is why many FA views and underlying assumptions come directly from what we are seeking to get away from. It's inevitable, due to the grip it has held over everyone and the lack of consistent powerful opposition. We share with the mainstream views in many instances; dieting fails because its hard-when its hard because its a failure-or weight loss and weight loss dieting are the same-they aren't or people on lower incomes are less active-they do physical jobs and so on. We could be more rigorous in our questioning of them, on general principle, that is even when they don't stand out as wrong, but as a matter of course.

I think some of the problem is our desire to stick with the mainstream, rather than to find our truths, what they mean and where they lead. Sometimes its as if it's enough to just get away from something horrible and that in and of itself creates something better. I've never encountered that mentality before and I feel it's over optimistic, to put it mildly.

Other people’s obsession

In the past, beyond my anarchistic appetite and hunger, I fancied cookery as a skill I should master to be an accomplished person. We have to eat, so we might as well do it well, being able to meet that need with skill and resource is admirable.

Later on, I was able to normalize those inner signals and instinctively I tested ideas as they came up, based on theories I had on logic and so forth, to unravel the hold negative food obsession had assumed over my life. Once I got out of the calorie restriction business, it didn’t feel like my own it wasn’t why I got into healthy eating.

I'd always had an honest relationship with food, it was the obesity persona and wanting to be thin that had made a liar out of me. Feeling I had to 'confess' to things I didn't feel, yet couldn't come up with an alternative explanation for, because of the tremendous pressure that is put on you to comply set that aside. In spite of that, I did not pretend that I enjoyed eating when I didn't, I said, I felt a constant drive to do it, not that I was addicted or getting a high. I said I was relieving the symptom of rising tension that would keep going until it overcame so much of my brain that other thoughts had little room to exist.

I'd have to go back to being to being a small child to think of a time when my awareness was not getting in the way of what I ate. I have a few pictures in my head where I remember eating or drinking things without any concern other than whether I liked or disliked them. Then around that age, I became conscious that my desire to eat seemed heightened for some reason. I could suggest many things but I don’t think it matters.

I reacted to that sense and only the threat to my height stopped me from trying to 'do something' immediately. I held off for a few years, at that point I just couldn't stand the tension and started my first experience in WLD fail. I don't remember a genuine and pure moment of pleasurable nor peaceful eating from then until a couple of decades later, when I crashed into WLD burnout. It was afterwards that I was lucky enough to be relieved of an overarchingly responsive hunger.

Now although that was good, it wasn't enough, I felt I needed to let go of anything I suspected burdened my eating in any way. I wanted to feel psychologically free of the debris of anti food propaganda and feelings left in my head.

I let go not only of this food is good/bad, I let go of as many personal feelings of I like this or that food as I could, trusting that whatever preferences I had would remain without the need for excessive fuss and fanfare. I didn't know it at the time, but I was instinctively moving to a more spontaneous feeling about food. I'm not talking about intuitive eating; I mean offloading as much stress surrounding and during eating as possible. IOW, how rational people eat.

You cannot avoid having ideas about it, but you can try and make those ideas supportive and protective of your own needs and your ability to decipher them accurately. More than that you make your mind get out of the damn way.

I wanted to help re-assert the sense of personal authority I had over myself, that I felt I'd given up to pursue an invasive and outer directed view of myself and how to eat. That had not in any way sympathetic to me on any level. What happened along the way was a bit of a surprise, whilst I can easily enjoy any cookery program I fancy, when I want. Or I can discuss food a bit my interest quickly palls.

I've found the way I feel about food does not suit the ostentatious variety of healthist or foodie preciousness which hangs around the place. Even more, I’m not even sure I care that much about food at all, at least, relative to that.

And that's just what it is and that's the way I like it. I got an inkling of this years ago, when listening to a group of women spend 10 minutes talking about things they didn’t eat but wanted to but couldn't because it was wrong etc., I found myself shouting "eat or don’t eat but SHUT UP!" at the radio.

I'll walk miles to get what I want if I want it enough-and have the time-and if I don't care, I'll eat later, or I'll make do, often just to deal with basic energy needs and eat something more desired later, it all depends on a mind boggling complex set of circumstances both inner and outer. But all is very easy in the end. I just do what I feel like doing, full stop.

I'm not an intuitive eater, I have no problem with thinking, I could use a bit of x or I'm getting into a bit of a rut with y, I'll seek something else and so on. That conscious kind of rational is as natural and instinctive to me as any strong inner preference for this or that; it's just another point to read my needs. I don't pathologize it because of WLD horror- this of course, caused a rise in appetite and fear of fat to erupt.

I’ve junked the nastiness and am using that part of my mind differently to enhance not to be overly directive and I hate it when people come along to give orders on what fat people should/shouldn't eat and how much. That time is passed.

To say that I beyond do not want to use my eating to regulate my weight, full stop, is an understatement of epic proportions. I'm actually, not interested in whether eating more of this or less of that leads to less weight here, because I actually can't relate to food anywhere near like that anymore, it doesn't make sense nor cause me to do anything but switch off. It’s made me fully aware that it is other people who are obsessed with what (fat) people are supposed to eat and they who will not let go of it.

Where's this Michelle Obama?

Just a little request from an outsider. Can US fat children have this Michelle Obama please?



Courtesy of Colorlines.

More reality points

warning; this post mentions slimming companies, but no links or puff.

I'm surprised that not much has been made of weight watchers latest wheeze it's called 'pro plus plan' (check their site if you feel to). I can't force the intricate details into my mind before my eyes glaze over.

Anyone who claims women are not naturally nerdy needs to check out the whole calorie counting whirl to know they don't know what they are talking about. Basically it deviates from its more recent points scheme, that assigned points to food-rather than caloric values and you had to fit those into your daily points allowance, they brought that in about 15 years ago.

So why the update? Well, when reality keeps piling up to a certain point, you have to reach an accommodation with at least part of it, or you get lost in silly. It's stuff that's been known before, but they've worked out a way to take it on board on their own terms. Have you noticed often its not the results, it's the being ready for them that so often counts?


So what is this 'new information'?

That calories don't quite count, straight out one for one, all the time as sure as eggs.

Get this, different foods are broken down in the body differently using up differing amounts of energy in doing so depending on a variety of variable influences and circumstance, which might make a teensy weensy difference to the enigma that is cals in/out.

Get out of town! And how long do you want to bet it will take them to catch on that enjoying what you eat can also make a difference too? I offer, not soon, after all how would they control and regulate that variable? It could not be incorporated into points-imagine trying to earn pleasure points! They stick with things they can control or appear to.

This new method is an attempt to incorporate this 'brand new information' (I'm sure someone researched it last week or something), in order to (desperately) try and squeeze more freedom for their clientele run ragged by the tyranny of their dietary regimes, to increase the sense they are people not directed by dietary restriction, for life. But free to enjoy being told what to do.

People might say "Oh, I'm never hungry on WW, it's fab/ I always feel free as a bird etc.," tell that to those who keep trying to wring a bit more room for manoeuvre from their self imposed famine allowance.

And no, they did not mention this must be the kind of thing so many fat people mention about calorie theory being a tad simplistic, that could make it seem like we actually experience reality in some way, ergo we have meaningful subjective experience that can be as accurate as anyone else's. That would spoil things.

Watching WW from this angle (from afar-like, g**gle earth far) can be amusing. If you look at it over the years, its gone from robotic rigidity to increasingly drawn to mimic normal eating, whilst trying to avoid derailing weight loss all together. Twisting and turning to try and make it's blessed hypothesis function.


Even way back I could see where this was going. It is hard not to laugh when one observes this unfolding, that as these plans become more 'normal' they become less and less effective. Which is saying something, lucky for them they have scale of numbers and unyielding hope of thinness on their side.

My feeling was, if you have normal eating at one end moving toward calorie restriction at the other, is there any point before the former crashes the latter where there is a chink of non rebound creating weight loss?

I'd venture a no (except by chance), research might be better off finding another way to use the conscious mind to monkey with metabolic function, or even not, maybe that's wrong too. Maybe the real answer is focusing elsewhere entirely. Will we ever know? Things would have to change a lot, that's what's in the way.

I have to say, bless all those WW alumni, past and present, you've been and continue to be the lab rats!

Pay to be a guinea pig? Don't tell Big Pharma!

The weight of work

A small story highlighted at kataphatic features a man who cleverly sued McDonald's (he had worked for them) got compensated for feeling he had to eat their stuff every day. He gained 65 lbs and became fat.

It's funny because they couldn't fight it and lost, both in essence due to fat phobia! It's hard not to laugh.

What's more interesting is the kind of tangled response that comes up a lot in FA;

I mean, I have no problem with people choosing to eat at McDonald’s but I think it’s pretty clear it’s not the healthiest choice, and no one should ever feel compelled by their job (or anything else) to eat it.

If I was to close in on the central issue it would be-leaving aside the fact that he felt he had to eat McD's everyday- the balance of needs, his versus his employers. Which is what kataphatic said, so why the need to introduce healthism into the response?

Why do people have to keep referring to the purported un/healthiness of food, as if they are avoiding cracks in the pavement? There is no conclusive evidence that the type of food we eat causes weight gain. Plenty of slim people eat the food associated with fatness and remain so; in fact some people can only remain slim on a normal or even high fat/sugar/carb/protein diet. We only hear about it the other way around fatter people becoming less so or thin, due to healthist eating. It seems some people tend to be thinner on an inefficient diet-healthist- and others on an efficient diet-normal.

It all relies too much on association, which to me is a sign of persuing the wrong direction. If someone's metabolism is responding and adapting to emotional, stress or other imbalances through altering the balance of the appetite, and/or hunger, you can associate that with the kind of foods that tend to get the job done best, high fat/carb/sugar/protein, but that starts the causal chain, towards its end point.

Why would one get a craving for cucumbers during a physically/emotionally draining time in one’s life or when our bodies or minds need support? People need to face up to the fact that whatever we’ve decided to think about water heavy produce, they are nature’s junk food.

The most compelling point is that the ex-manager was unable to respond to his own personal needs and had to (felt he had to) respond to those of his employers. The kind of equation that makes WLD so dependency inducing. If so that put him out of sync with them, which may or may not have unbalanced his metabolism making it less efficiently realised and having to adapt to that.

I personally don't get why that would necessarily make him eat more, you don’t have to or not much to start putting on weight if the conditions are affecting the right place. For instance, during pregnancy a woman’s rate of using up calories can stall, meaning that their weight can increase significantly, double even.

It may have been the stress of a McD's career that made its food more appealing to his palate, although that is not his argument. It seems difficult to eat what you don’t want to eat every day, and why could he just taste like a chef? He could also have spread the burden, all employees get a free lunch, unless no-one takes it up, he could have got their views too.

Perhaps his inflexibility and lack of creativity was a problem, or the reflection of the pressure he felt, perhaps. That level of fear makes demands on our bodies and minds, it can be very draining which may affect our energy needs.

What I find interesting is why we feel the need to make a point which suggests fatness is a sign of unhealthy eating when that is an assumption we often refute ourselves?

The truth is that the healthy/unhealthy eating argument contains so many false assertions that it is difficult to fully disentangle the worthwhile from the worthless but one of the more obvious ones is the pretence that eating certain foods makes you fat.

How can that be when just as many slim people eat that same food? The whole point about the crisis is that it fixates on food, because it is a way into people's consciousness really it seeks social control. I say that because the obvious failure has made no difference to this fixation, if anything, it's strengthened it.

Every religion seeks to monkey around with what you eat, as a vehicle for adherence, for you to express your devotion to the cause and make sure that when you do something you will probably do at least a few times a day on average, you are constantly underlining and reinforcing that code.

That is the purpose of it in a secular context; it takes that pattern, to remind you of whatever the secularist manifesto seeks to bind you to. I've often been surprised at the way many religions embrace it, but then they are maybe picking up on the underlying theme of observance they are used to.

Hard 8

Dear TIME,

 Allow me to respond,

Getting obese patients to lose weight is tricky to begin with,

I have to tell you straight, we fatz have grown up and interacted with slim people and I'm afraid we're on to the fact that despite being the weight you are, you probably don't know why nor can you replicate it in anyone else. We cannot be expected to keep humouring this pretence for much longer can we? I mean, we have done it for a long enough now. Try not to get upset.

Take up a hobby. I think crochet is excellent for breaking bad habits, it helps you focus and keep your mind off others, try making this lovely waistcoat, I just know it will help you to MYOB.

I've noticed that pretending you are superior to fat people and knowledgeable about weight only leads to frustration. Let me help soothe away those boo boos by explaining. When people pretend to be superior and aren't, they are saying to themselves "I am not good enough as I am". This leads to a gaping tear between the expectation of superiority and a secret sense of inferiority. This process can make people fractious and tend towards blaming fat people, as if we cheated you out of the expected windfall of self esteem in some way. So you fixate on any fat person who doesn't hate themselves. If only you spent more time working directly on your own self esteem and did less pretending we'd all be happier. We wouldn't have to support your draining high maintenance demands to lower ourselves to make you feel better. That is a fool's errand I can tell you;

About 165 people, or 8% of the group, chose ideal body shapes that were the same or bigger than their own, suggesting a misunderstanding of healthy weight ideal bodies.

That's 92% of fat people not feeling they look good are a healthy weight yet it just doesn't feel enough does it? That's how badly dependent you are on fat people having lowered self esteem. Is it really that 8% of 'hold outs' stopping the millions of diet attempts from working? Are they acting as a global stopper in the universe preventing all the adipose cells worldwide flowing into a universal furnace?

I think we would have heard about this hard eight by now, don't you? Why don't you try this book, I haven't read it, but borrowing a lesson from you, if you don't know what you are talking about, you must know what you are talking about. Please stop thinking we worship you and wish to touch the hem of your garment because you can't hear yourselves. Sometimes  we have to let you hector us on various things you want us to eat/do/think just to let you get some of it out of your system. Often you sulk if we don't allow you to try and 'save us' from nutritional apostasy, real or imagined.

many clinically obese men and women think they're already at a healthy weight look good.

Is it about looks or health? Oh well, I'm sure that I don't have the level of sophistication to make two contrasting and unrelated ideas seem like a conclusion. Oh, wait, maybe it's because my fat mind is a bit slow and your thin one is lightening fast and athletic.

Wow, your thin mind is just too fast for mere logic! Now that would be a disincentive for losing weight I must say, what if my mind ended up so fast that I made no sense and didn't notice? That would be embarrassing (mind you, not if I was oblivious to it eh?) I prefer the simple life of slowly trying to make sense of things and testing what logic I can, you don't think I'm a degenerate do you?

I'm not going to lie, I was one of those who pretended along that being slim meant you knew something about becoming slim. I never got the "go to the doctor and s/he has a few words with you about your weight and you will lose it". Maybe it was the witch doctor?

I am now thoroughly ashamed of this pretence it's clearly lead you a merry dance and gone to your head, it was to keep hope alive, what was I supposed to do, just accept being fat? I could not, so whatever it took, even when it made no sense, after all, being something doesn't give you mastery of biology does it? I ignored that, now it's hard to tell you because you get upset and say you're doing it to help me.

You aren't because you and I both know deep down, you aren't a doctor. Let's be honest it makes you feel good about being slimmer, yes it does, that's why you love talking about fat, you love it I know. But you can't hear how silly you sound strutting around like a bumptious school prefect talking about how to make fat people see the error of our ways. I just don't feel it's fair to pretend you don't sound like a bossy 5 year old who thinks they know everything! The kind everyone in the family laughs at until they realise suddenly, that everything revolves around them. Many of us can't keep playing along anymore, so please drop it, our indulgence can only go so far.

A healthy acceptance of one's own body is undoubtedly critical to good self-esteem.

Then why is it not working for you? Have you given up? I see the signs, when you're desperate to lower others around you, trying to look better in comparison. But you actually go nowhere, you stay the same. If you had hope, you'd be fine with others having self respect, because you'd be hopeful of raising your own. Don't give up, keep trying, keep pushing yourself. Take smoking, it's not easy to start, research shows that smokers try quite a lot of cigarettes before they stop coughing or vomiting. Yet they keep trying and look how many of them smoke now! I know you can do it.

But a lack of awareness of one's own obesity can lead to undiagnosed obesity-related conditions including sleep apnea, high blood pressure and diabetes.

They know they're fat don't they? They just thought they looked good with it, you can't have missed that. Hey, is that a hidden joke? Did you take bets on how many instances of nonsense you could get into this article without anyone noticing?

Well done! You had me going.

Wriggles.

H/T living400

Ha, ha Stephen Fry!

What larks, Fry, flogging some product or other, no doubt has deigned to reveal that (straight) women-sorry lesbians, you've been overlooked-are not as keen on straight sex as gay men appear to be on gay sex, if you take his rather compulsive standard.

Women it seems only permit males to sheath their swords in order to have a 'relationship' with them. That doesn't sound right to me, I've found that if a straight identified woman doesn't want to have sex with men, she doesn't tend to want a relationship with them either.

I used to hold Stephen Fry in some esteem through a fondness for the idealism he channelled into his alter ego Donald Trefusis. That eroded significantly over the years, but held steady at respect for his undoubted intelligence, until I ran smack into his base fat phobia of the “no fatties in concentration camps" kind on Nigella’s brief incarnation as a chat show host.

That would be bad enough on its own, but given that some of his relatives perished in the Holocaust, hard to believe. That point is not why I went off him it's just that I would have expected him to be disgusted by this kind of trivialisation. I thought he would add a rare intelligence and rationality to the discussion of weight. This was the end of my belief in his ‘genius’, he was utterly shown up in my eyes and I remembered the unpleasantness of that for a long time.

A lot of folk talk about fatness flushing out the objectionable, it also flushes out those who think for themselves, as opposed to those who merely absorb and parrot what they are told. Fat phobia exposes things about people that they're used to hiding. I cannot think of anyone who's ever not been lowered in my eyes by fat hating, and the greater the expectation, the greater that effect.

I can't find much kinship with feminists’ cries of; how could he? He's usually so nice. Oh sista(hood) puhr-lease, some of us could have alerted you to his act but you had to wait until he’s up in your face. I am a bit surprised by the easily released homophobia, rather than just making the case for or against. 

He didn't mention male negativity toward heterosex he said hetero guys think women feel disgusted by them, but men go along with the idea that a woman who has pranged more than a few of them is sullied and demeaned by it. Slut shaming degrades women, sure, but what does it say about men? That they despoil the clean and the good?

This is not a WATM; it’s that the rage about this injury can be taken out on others, including women. There is a definite tang of condescension towards straight men too which seems political, almost as if he's saying; "try gay men, we really love doing it with guys, women don't!" I’ve heard it before, I suppose there’s an inevitable subterranean rivalry between groups.

Instead of solidarity in the face of a heteronormative patriarchy that oppresses all of us, there remains a chasm of suspicion and misunderstanding that obstructs genuine solidarity between women and gay men.

I simply can’t feel that rationale, are gay men necessarily allies of women and vice versa anymore than straight men? It ignores the way lesbians are shunted aside within the gay community at times. I think that gay men can and have often shown themselves to be allies of many outsiders and marginalized people, through empathy, however some haven't, just like any other men. Plenty of straight men supported full female humanity and liberation throughout the ages, sexual attraction does not preclude the self respect not to wish or need to demean others, even if they are potential lovers. And if some or all of those who are complaining would bracket themselves 'pro-sex' we have to ask why they assume it does?

I know they’ve suffered and been persecuted hugely, however, I think their relationship with women is more ambivalent than is alluded to. Clearly that's the case for some women too, judging by their responses.

“female sexuality is still a mystery to many men, gay and straight”

Include some of us women in that because having been trained to be, excuse the French, f***bags. It can sometimes become obscured from us too, this misunderstanding can cause a libido to turn unexpectedly to ashes. It’s always supposed to be about shame or female trouble, but we ignore the possibility that it’s more about the way anatomy and sexuality is described to us.

Laurie Penny talks about lack of safety being an issue for women, but that’s supposed to be what sex is all about, risk and danger, certainly for some men that is part of the attraction of this kind of free range open air sex. That smacks of trying to inject some energy into something that is not as potent as its supposed to be. And really, just how convincing is this kind of enjoyment of sex? Some men seem to pursue the possibility of sex at every opportunity as an ideal, which they claim as their own and can get very defensive about. But honestly, it often seems too pat and unconvincing, a little too ideological.

The way that it no amount of access or availability ever seems to be enough, the scent underlying panic, seem to be more than about pleasure, which is not just about frequency or amount. Its a process with some kind of start and end. There's something about this picture that doesn't quite hang together, like a jigsaw with all the right pieces but some are jammed together meaning the whole view is skewered.

Compulsion is about pursuing a pleasure deficit or trying to pursue satisfaction and/or closure. If you cannot achieve this, you can end up chasing it and if that develops a momentum of its own you end up with much chasing, sometimes manically so.

If women had this level of compulsion they would be questioned, heck, they’d question themselves. Fry's offensiveness is his misogynistic assumption that all men as the standard for human sexuality and women the offcut which all problems reside, so old fashioned it is a joke.

It is clear that many women adore sex, I’d doubt that if men could end up potentially with a baby on board every time he had sex could manage more of the absolute abandon many women do. Don't assume men personify or set the standard for human sexuality Mr Fry.