Monday 1 November 2010

Modifying the body


When weight loss dieting is slotted into the category of body modification I find myself mystified by the way it never deals with its inability to deliver. Either it assumes it succeeds, or does not care. Wanting to be slim/mer, fat/ter is about fashioning your body, but that desire has to be realised by that actual body or it is little more than an ideal.

This leads WLD to seem like a kind of fetish, in this context, as it becomes the represenation of an idea and the investment of feelings desiring this and behaves as if this means it works. This refusal to contextualise dieting's actual efficacy, as opposed to what is claimed creates a false argument with those who point out the reality of calorie restriction. It makes them the deniers of your freedom to do what you wish with your body, when in fact that belongs to those who've cynically pretended that it's a viable option.

Weight loss dieting is far more about maintaining the viability of itself than it is about the person or the body concerned and is one of the reasons why people get sick of being pressed into it by establishment figures. They just become a servant of the process rather than meeting their own needs.

The irresistible force of desire to shape one's body meets the immovable object of WLD's uselessness and the force gets re-directed towards rancour towards those who are exploring the truth as if by this, they are denying you the right to modify your body weight.

Whether we argue that dieting is morally wrong- I think it is-or that it is morally wrong to alter one's body in certain ways, we are blamed for the failure of weight loss dieting. Which is really annoying, but stupid is as stupid does as they say, we should all have the intelligence to recognise why our desires are not being met rather than scapegoating in our disappointment of thwarted promise.

Above all, weight loss dieting is about the cult of weight loss dieting, it may have been intended to help people lose weight, but the fact that it keeps outliving it's failure shows that it has become more about the only thing it truly delivers on self perpetuation.

Not to mention the fact that it often produces much weight gain and fatness itself, feederism is often preceded by calorie and dietary restriction. This is no irony, shortfall leads often to surfeit and vice versa in cycle where causality can become obscure. Splitting the two is used a lot by religion which cleverly avoids responsibility for its more havoc inducing prohibitions by blaming the result of this on some or other designated demon. Thereby evading responsibility for its own re/actions. It explains the need, I notice that as scientific causality has gained ground, the 'devil' has receded as a force, even before the triumph of secularism among the reality setting classes.

The expected reward flowing from goodness instead becomes the tyranny of outer direction dissolving into self destruction, you've been doubly cheated, yet full awareness of how is trapped within the expectation of a righteous outcome.

This frustration is often diverted into abusing fat people to (why not? If you abuse yourself, why not others?) recover the sense of triumph you thought was in your grasp.

Weight loss is not indivisible/interchangeable with WLD, it is a biological fact
an automatic result of the correct conditions, i.e. lack of calories. Your weight fluctuates during the day, losing and gaining as you take in and use energy. WLD does not create this, it does not create anything, it merely attempts to elongate the original automatic process. Becoming a long and painful demonstration of the success of the body's ability to see off semi or actual starvation.

Actual success is ignored-it's your fault-and mythical success is shored up at every turn, leaving its quarry to pay the tab.

Those who wish to modify their bodies thin/ner should hate dieting more than anyone as it is cheating them out of what they may feel is their full self expression. They should be enraged that this painful uselessness is presented as a viable option, clearly de-railing and being used to shut out alternatives. If they don't want to be, don't take it out on FA or fat people.

If it's so important to them, they should be ready almost ready to riot by now. Clearly they are caught up in the fetish of weight loss/thinness, like everyone else and cannot don't want to see past the illusion. If so, just how much do they really wish to modify their bodies? I do not see how desire for body modification begats any lasting intrest in WLD, I really don't.

I'm fascinated as to why folks would raise this rationale for an approval of WLD, possibly because it carries the kudos of self worship ad absurdum that is so au courant. Or a hiding place for something that doesn't wish to express itself directly.

Without a constant and all consuming attention to it's own survival and as important the ravaging of anything which threatens it such as truth or facts, it unravels. That has been a peculiar source of its drive to dominate, and its an example of the dynamic that makes us fear extremism (often mislabelled radicalism) it needs to alter the world to be like it to survive, therefore it tends toward a ruthlessness and amorality. When dieters insist on destroying even the most tame and wishy washy FA with their (oc)cultism for instance, they are surfing that impulse.

Dieting cannot be denied or partial it has to take over and destroy or it dies, that is the extreme nature of it. It is too unbalanced to come to a harmonious co-existence with any fact other than people's free desire to engage with it. Although it is fear of relying on that, suggests that might well extinguish it via that means.

Its dynamic means it has little room to promote compromise with it, it's nature precludes this too because it is defined by not caring for one's feelings or those of others. It cultivates an inner distance within oneself, by riding roughshod over compelling messages we need to acknowledge, pain and discomfort. It trains us to do the same to others.

Those who've fashioned diets as we know them today have had ample chance to make dieting stem from a positive source. They've had the chance to go with: "Being fat is fine, but being thin is better" or whatever, selling thinness on its own (perceived) merits.

They've choose not to. Either they instinctively or consciously recognise that WLD is too self abusive for positivity to hold, to provide sufficient fuel to launch, therefore it has to come out of and be supported by its milieu, hate, disgust, negativity-be desperate to do anything to evade fatness as much as reach for thinness.

As Maura Kelly's example indicates, calorie restriction is often the cause carrier and generator of fat phobia and fat hate. Mass participation in this and dietary restriction is responsible for the public acquiescence to the hate fuelled rules of the obesity crusade.

Labelling dieting or its goal thinness as good or neutral is just odd, even those who sell it know it isn't. This helps to create an inner dissonance that is not consciously recognised-unless one develops disordered eating, or eating disorders which are actually what they are for- prompting bullying and venting on to designated targets.

Fatties as the personification of what you are trying to fight is the same pattern as blaming us for the WLD fail, as the brave soul trying to defeat the forces of eval fat, it is recast as the cause of your abuse. Your only trying to get away yet in order to do so, you have to suffer. How disgusting it must seem to see it 'flaunting' itself about the place (seemingly) unapologetic, when you were prepared to die to avoid it.

Even if this wanted to be about body artfully shaping your body and decorating it, it isn't by its very nature.

4 comments:

  1. You know, I'm mystified by your post. As someone who has dieted, lost weight, and kept it off for about 7 years now, not all dieting is doomed to fail.

    What you said about the physiology of weight loss doesn't make a lot of sense either.

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  2. You know, I'm mystified by your post.

    Yes, I can see that. Consider it mutual in a sense, because I can't for the life of me work out the relevance of this;

    not all dieting is doomed to fail.

    There is virtually no condition state of being etc., that is not subject to spontaneous reversal/remission, which may or may not co-incide or be revealed by an action or set of actions.

    That has got nothing to do with judging whether reliance on this spontenaiety in any given condition or state etc., is likely or not.

    I don't get your use of the expression "doomed to fail" either. That starts from the assumption that this is all so concrete.

    I'm saying that WLD is not a tangible thing in itself but a hypothesis that is a vehicle for belief invested in it and a whole lot of performance ritual that follows from that base. Hence the link to commodity fetishism.

    It doesn't create anything uniquely of its own, certainly not weight loss, what it does is seek to prolong an artificially induced state of calorie deficit.

    It's like bleeding. If I cut myself, I'll bleed. In days of yore they believed in bleeding folks to release bad energy (yep) and cure conditions. How did they carry out this 'medical procedure'?

    They cut people.

    Can you see the unique creation in the latter? And how much would you bet against folk swearing by it?

    Which brings up another rule of thumb, there is virtually no treatment so utterly bankrupt that at least some person or other will advocate fervently for it.

    I notice you've picked up on the newest fashion in WLD diet advocacy of talking about "weight loss" as opposed to making fat people slim which is what we are talking supposed to be talking about.

    A 500lb person mis laying 5lbs for any length of, does not cease to be 'obese'.

    As for the "physiology of weight loss" it's pretty straight forward. If you create a calorie deficit, you are creating an imbalance the body will seek to neutralize.

    Some bodies are more efficient at this than others, but overall the overwhelming majority of bodies are efficient enough to manage it with ease.

    If yours isn't, congratulations are in order apparently, but its neither here nor there to the rest of us.

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  3. Thanks Anonymous, I'm glad you're finding something to interest you.

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  4. That has got nothing to do with judging whether reliance on this spontenaiety in any given condition or state etc., is likely or not.

    Sorry, for 'likely' read 'viable'.

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