People as objects

Looking at the objectification of a fat male body is a reminder of how much slim bodies have been objectified too. That seems quite roundabout but the process is the same, it's the ends that are different.

It is not just fat people who have been turned from people in to objects, of disease-which is what 'obesity' alludes to. People as disease.

Slim people have become objects of health. The truth of their lives and who they are doesn't matter either and that is why other sometimes don't respond favourably to images of slim in certain contexts. Representation of their bodies has become associated with the extension of medical dictates.

Brian pointed out that he's supposed to feel bad looking at that image. So why is it that slim people, women mainly are supposed to feel so bad because of multiple positive images of themselves?

According to our detractors, self generated pictures of fat people based on how we'd like to see ourselves, promote 'obesity' by showing us as people rather than cautions, how come that doesn't seem to work for many slimz?

We are told they feel inadequate in comparison and that makes them feel bad affecting their behaviour. Yet societies have fattened during this barrage of images of thin.

Perhaps showing fat bodies everywhere is actually the key to reversal and fat fighters are missing a trick.

Reset

I was perusing Ragen's blog when a commenter, Anna tickled some brain cells -scroll 4 comments down, I can't find a way to link.

Right, so every body has a more or less “set point” weight that it is comfortable with maintaining, and diets, weight cycling etc mess this up, and potentially slow down your metabolism and artificially inflate this set point. That’s the main reason diets don’t work long term… Am I right so far?

Dieting is of course "weight cycling", maintaining is managing to keep the response part of the cycle at bay. They can and do reset the point where your body settles, sometimes to a substantial degree. She is not alone in being double the weight she started out at. It can also sensitize your hunger and appetite, increase them to a higher setting, create or heighten an eating disoder.

What my question is, is if my body had a natural “set weight” range that it was happy with, and if I have messed that up with diets, is there any way, within the philosophy of HAES, to…reset this, to some degree at least? Seeing as it was what was natural for my body in the first place?

Clever. If weight could be reset back to pre WLD weight could be reset full stop. If anyone could predictably show, to any statistically significant degree a reversal of weight past everyday variance, then you are at least on the road.

This shoud be the province of 'obesity' science.

Anna has pointed up why the idea of destined to be fat essentialism is as suspect as its progenitor "nobody is meant to be/has to be fat". Sometimes that's the case, in the sense that it would be unlikely that x person would avoid becoming fat. Though if you had a means of reversal, I'm not sure it wouldn't be effective on them too. It's important to say it  might not be one method for all, though I wouldn't rule that out.

She wishes to restore closer to her pre disordered eating/weight loss dieting size and everyone recognised the legitimacy of that wish-on their own terms. That of course doesn't make any difference to being able to do it, no-one can reliably do so.

But I'd say someone as bright as she seems should pursue that line herself, experiment do research and see what if anything she can find. FA should be directed in part by the needs of those interested in it. She should apply her own intelligence.

At this rate clever people, fat or otherwise who might be better off forming a network to try and find their own answers. As at least they have the right kind of genuine interest, unlike the hopeless field dominated by the hopelessly self interested.

Rather like HAES is sort of a physiotheraputic impulse that the professionals can barely be bothered with, from fat people's experiences with exercising and dieting to become slim.

Imagine waiting for mainstream professionals to get their act together on that score? Exactly.

This kind of WLD induced weight gain is also one of the many reasons why science or what's passing itself off as such should finally follow through and find answers, as so many have been set and kept on this course by those claiming to act under its ageis. It should also map out how our energy metabolism actually works, so we never have another round of this cals in/out lying.

Because this is hardly the first time. People ought to be able to look up a functional mapping out of how energy metabolism works, using what we actually know; like one can look up the limbic system which isn't a distinct contained system as such, but an illustration of how parts of the brain co-ordinate to produce human emotion.

Those who've led people astray ought to feel a sense of duty to offer remedy to those desiring it. That will teach them and anyone else to use their influence to manipulate others without due regard for consequences.


The clear handedness of Anna's recognition of her position suggests that she kept going like many of us out of positive tenacity, mis applied;

(Numerous diets, sensible ones, never fad diets, over the past 15 years, where I ended up weighing more at the end than I did at the start, resulting in my weight pretty much doubling from my original “comfortable area.”)

Exactly. The speed or make up of diet doesn't matter, they may vary in their effects on health, a lot of that is individual preferences and reactions, but in terms of weight loss though, so called good or slow WLD's makes no difference, the problem is the direct attack on fat stores. That causes the body's defence of them, obviously.

This doesn't mean of course that her body's settling place or point would have remained where it was if she hadn't dieted, not sure how that can be proven definitively either way. But what we can see is that overall, it has definitely been a weight gain strategy.

The reason why cal res is a hard strategy to start, continue, or "maintain" and rebounding past weight prior to that attempt is the same effect, at different stages/ phases.

Unfortunately I have no useful advice except to just continue to do positive things to recover from the WLD/dietary restriction experience, focusing on stabilising and normalizing your hunger-the desire to eat and your appetite-the make up of what you eat.

Weight will only reverse if a) you have an  heightened eating response and b) that heightened response is overall and includes your weight. If it doesn't one will reduce without the other, usually hunger rather than weight.

I was fascinated by some of the responses to Anna, this from Marylin Wann;

From Linda Bacon’s description of our current scientific understanding, in her “Health At Every Size” book, it’s the nature of our bodies to gain weight easily and defend intensely against weight loss (which generally means something dangerous and/or deadly, in body/survival logic).

I find this fascinating. I think the body defends against weight gain just as much as it does against weight loss. You only have to look at he fattest people to see that is what most people aren't.

Looking at it purely from the POV of slim upward, reflects the thincentric way we've been taught. It is misleading and has a distorting effect on the significance of levels of fatness/weight amonst fat people. If we are talking about fatness why do we not start from them and go down?

Thinsplaining

A couple of years ago (or so) "Mansplainer" was named word of the year. It's basis is the inability to believe in a full or whole female intelligence.

Speaking from that conviction becomes mansplaining-it can come from women as those of us fatz know to our cost. Though sometimes mis-applied, it's not just condescension, or telling you stuff you already know, but that's just product. It's the genesis that makes it more distinct. A person can assume you are incapable because of assumptions about who you are and what that represents in their mind, but may not be mansplaining.

They can be corrected, even if its slow, becuase they can hear what you are saying.

The thing about m/s is its convinced. This scrambles and erases the capacity to discern anything which contradicts that conviction and this causes the changes in the mansplainers brain function.

I am not kidding.

It's so odd, I think it ought to be studied by cognitive psychologists because there's something of the hypnotic phenomena about it.

Something to remember is that mansplainers are often oblivious. Often totally unaware or disconnected from this conviction and therefore may see themselves as supportive of women.

For example; a male collects a way or ways of seeing himself that overburden his self esteem. Perhaps unbeknownst to him, his mind surreptitiously uses the construct of male supremacy to shore up his mental viability.

Thus limiting his ability to unpick his sexism, without the threat of mental collapse. All probably out of his mindframe. Not least because he has the impression that he has a strong mind that can deal with these "faults" with equilibrium.

The effect on the brain can be quite startling, they hear you, but they can't hear you. A strong filtering keeps out what you are saying. It's not so much that you can't get through, it's that it becomes utterly distorted to the point where you are in a permanent open mouthed state and their "interpretation" of what you just said.

I'm talking beyond the creative differences in individual points of view, I'm talking about not recognising their report of what you are saying.

At times, you can see their every mental twist and turn not just because they don't get it and you do, but because they don't believe you can understand anything they don't, so are acting out that falsehood and dropping themselves in it.

Because it's all the way, that in the end doesn't  matter, you leave them as you found them.

I've been turning this over in the back of my mind for a few days, when I read a post about the term. It suggested a woman telling a househusband parent, how to do some chore that he already knows could be called "womansplaining".

When really that's condescension, in this case sexist. It's based on expectations of assigned roles, not the tuning out of a person's intelligence to match your insistence. IOW. the woman believes men must be novices at childcare, they don't believe men aren't intellectually capable of it.

Variants have appeared becuase of that factor, "whitesplaining" obviously and believe me, that is the default state of many. Then there's of course, "thinsplaining". The weird thing about that is the belief is not that fat people are less intelligent than slimz, its that fatz know nothing at all, about themselves. It's a peculiar combination of low/no expectation and 'splaining.

So virtually everyone talking about fatness is a thinsplainer virtually all the time.

The term 'obesity' is created from this essentially subhuman double whammy. Once anyone is talking to you from there, they often become so mentally dysfunctional that it is a waste of time talking to them. If you're quick you can feel them sailing far away as this conveyance of the elective disconnect and disassociation of this construct manifest.

Even if it wasn't unnerving, it is boring beyond words. Boredom is a weapon of war, believe it.

You're expected to enter a remedial mindset for their unspeakable questions of the "How do you exist?" "How are you human" variety and you can get no further sense out of them, yet aren't allowed to be understandably infuriated.

You have to pretend they are talking sense and are your equal, when they felt it was a good use of their minds, to no longer be so.

Even mansplainers, as tiresome as they are  believe women are conscious, just less intelligent than men as a group. Whereas to this, 'obesity' no intelligence at all, no consciousness of self, no inner direction. Yet they know this isn't true because they seek always to browbeat that very sentience into the admission that it doesn't exist. 

It's like me saying men know nothing about being men and I know everything specifically because I'm not a man and have read studies about men. When men speak, I dismiss them completely as "biased". Even though everything I say about men, reads as a complement to women and therefore myself and is largely disorted to the point of inaccuracy.

Agreeing to disagree

This Feministe thread on the Atlanta strong4life assault (not linking) has turned out to surpass my expectations. Alas, that is saying nothing when it comes to * human-as-disease, because the standard is so low that one can run out of air just thinking about it.

I appreciate the hint of exasperation in appealing to feminists/social justice enthusiasts;

Whether or not you feel that obesity should be targeted as a self-contained epidemic, however you feel about approaches to encourage healthy eating and activity, whether or not you believe that this “strong message” is one that needs to be sent, can we at least agree that the trauma of shaming children isn’t worth the message? Or are we expected to see kids as acceptable collateral damage in the War on Fatties?

That's a three part caveat lead up to a plea and we all know that we cannot agree even with all that, not by a long shot. I'm not mocking, its a wry amusement born of years of a grindingly consistent overall response from progressives/ feminists, basically, see fatz as human? No can do.

That is and has always been fine with me, in the sense that I don't care about people who 'think' that way. I just didn't expect them to. Yes, I'm feeling rather sheepish about that. But to be fair, I'd feel the same way about it if I was a conservative I mean, in our somewhat spoilt capatalist/ consumerist playground, who epitomise a readiness to pointlessly expend wreckless and punishing amounts of energy to often no reward and actual cost than fat people?

Conservatives should have a deep affection for us and what we represent.

Note the answer to the last question; in the quote is yes, we are expected to see kids whether they are fat or susceptible to anorexia as being expendable because it's not a crusade to increase well being and health, war is right, but its a war within the people who've latched on to it. Trouble is they've cited the "battle ground" outside themselves in other people-they wouldn't wish to be in receipt of the damage they seek to inflict on their targets.

If this sounds shocking, or like I'm making folks out to be too bad. It's in the nature of things that are important, to us, that we involve children. Look at religion. Now if you're against it, you could see that as 'brainwashing' or cruel. Though the vile obesity crusade/cal res worship is worse than a lot of religious people in general, think fundamentalist.

The extent to which people are on board with it, has to be fundamentalist, that is, the ideology or theology is more important than even good or bad effects, because it's in the nature of the central theme.

It must be performed and practiced for its own sake. In this case people must live by calorie restriction, therefore division of good and bad foods. Fatz must always be "in sin", always punished, like folks in hell who burn in the eternal fires of hades or some such.

Susceptability to anorexia, must be labelled "insane", marginalized and othered-with the collusion of many of them too-as they expose the truth about the cult of cal res.

Don't think all this is a complaint as such, I'm getting too resigned-again- for that. The emphasis of the issue falls, for me on allowing myself to feel I have to work within these parameters. I'm again running out of even the abstract once removed rationale as to why I'm supposed to force myself to care. I increasingly I just can't and therefore, don't.

Again, not so much world weary, just increasingly distanced and dissociated from the terms of "engagement". <-------LOL on this word.

* 'obesity'

Firendly fire

I remember a discussion at Harriet's blog. It touched on crusade fallout i.e. an increase in wasting (eating) disorders. A commenter said something rather chilly. He described this unintended overspill as "collateral damage".

It's taken a while to sink in that this primitive feeling is widespread.

There are two sides of the coin to consider when it comes to body image: the social pressure contributing to eating disorders and self esteem issues (especially in the young) versus the constructive aspect of encouraging people to stay fit and healthy. Where do we draw that finest of lines?

Why would "encouraging people to stay fit and healthy" cause them to have any problems whatsoever with their body image? There's a sense of recognition being denied in those words.

The former begets the latter because it's dominant mode attacks body integrity.

Note how the 'obesity' crusade becomes "social pressure." Always shifting blame; mea culpa's only for fatz apparently.

It boils down to what's more important, social politicking or saving those who fall foul of these disorders, many of whom are slim.

The answer thus far is the social inferiority of fat people and its about time we all stated that freely and clearly. That's people who like to but "...we have an 'obesity' epidemic.... something must be done", including many who whitter on about how important the fight against juvenile ED's. Pointing fingers at the rag trade, (role) models and everything else but their own rampant fat phobia.

How many times do children heard  "My goodness why don't they just. stop.eating" shouted at fat people who appear within eye shot? Yet when they actually do more or less that, it's somehow slips the mind.

And if you replace normal eating with an ugly view of food as the enemy plus call disordered eating "healthy", using the cover of 'obesity'. Then you are advancing disorder into those areas; full stop. Super obvious. You cannot reduce calorie manipulation disorders and advance that as the basis of all weight regulation.

Again, despite fat politics or prejudice the central problem here is the pursuing of that route. The means negativity comes out of it. If the approach was not fuelled by malice, it would either not generate that or the evidence of it would cause self correction.

I don't claim the end of the slimming cult will end anorexia et. al. I don't believe that. What it can do is to relieve the pressure, reversing the spread to those who do not have a stronger susceptibility towards AN -and some who do.

As the price of the 'obesity' crusade spreads outward to everyone, (supply your own pun) those on board are seeking to prevent this "friendly fire" whilst keeping the cause intact. They wish to reserve damage solely to fat people of whatever age. 

The trouble with making this all about fat people is it can sometimes obscure the costs to everyone. The lack of care for those who are caught up in the slipstream shows the extent of coldness against fat people is not likely to be contained there.

When good people suspend their usual ethics going heavily and emotionally with their baser urges, they rarely can stop themselves until something disastrous enough happens to those they can still summon up some fellow feeling for, jerking them out of their amoral stupor.

Those who want more treatment for wasting disorders like anorexia, or to halt their spread, but wish to exclude fat people or the issue of crusade ideology are kidding themselves.

They are showing their lack of will to address this, showing where the emphasis of their feelings lay. If compartmentalisation worked, this wouldn't be an issue in the first place.

Watching from the sidelines we are often relegated to feels like an incipient crash between two oncoming vehicles. Just how bad will it get before the cost of 'friendly fire' exhausts the worship of the calorie restriction route?

Sadly, we'll have to wait and see.

Sales patter

I love the parallel universe made from the erasure of fat people. Long before I got into a self accepting mindset, I fully expected a specialist physiotherapy for 'obesity' to be created and become prominent. This would be a source of information about fat bodies which could inform the overall discourse .This was of pre hype.

Didn't really happen like that. This is one of the many things that put doubt in my mind as to the intentions of 'obesity' related scholarship.When I got involved in FA I was moved to hear about self help efforts such as HAES which were a mix of lay and professional attempts to fill in those gaps.

Arya Sharma mentioned this not too long ago and I couldn't help but be amused. Anyway, it turns out that recently some physiotherapy organisations, in this case the Canadian Physiotherapy Association, think they too can become one of the ever growing professionals sucking up funds and charging it to "obesity costs".

Well why not? The ground has already been set.

This 2-page blurb appears to see the possibility of an opening for their skills, starting off by using one whole page to regurgitate the usual 'obesity' justifying propaganda about how it all is, so serious, that this is dated 2010. As an aside, have you noticed how defensive all this insistence of the seriousness of 'obesity' is? I don't know anyone who's not able to regurigate that at will.

What might undermine it is hate, I mean, think of someone you know whilst they were ill. What you do you feel, like tearing a strip off them, telling them what a worthless drain they are? How they brought it on themselves and should be allowed to die?

Exactly, so if you are doing/feeling that, you know you don't believe the person is actually sick. Though you might believe they deserve to be. 

Anyway, next much shorter page deals with "The role of physiotherapists" this is the extent of it;

Physiotherapists play a key role in the management of symptoms associated with osteoarthritis in weight bearing joints, the effects of other musculoskeletal injuries or conditions, and chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. 

 Yes, for everyone.

Obese individuals face major challenges in the management of associated conditions and in recovery from surgical interventions. Physiotherapists can design rehabilitation programs to help these individuals regain, maintain and improve function.

No evidence of the "major" challenges they're referring to are cited, even though they prioritized making plenty of room for justifying their desire to get involved.

Physiotherapists also play an important role in the ‘prehabilitation’ management of individuals prior to surgery such as hip or knee replacement with the underlying goal of supporting weight loss or obesity prevention to ensure optimal post operative recovery.

Play or could play? Examples would be nice, I'm genuinely interested in what specialist knowlege a physio brings to get a fat person to lose weight before surgery and how and the extent to which this knowledge is being employed.

Research
Physiotherapists participate in research that increases clinical understanding of the direct and indirect implications of obesity. In turn, this research assists in the development and implementation of innovative programs which are based on, and contribute to best practice in the management of obesity and associated conditions.

Uh, huh, what research is that, exactly?

Am I the only one having a sense of unreality about all this? A certain enclyclopedia would stamp weasel over this, though maybe not because this kind of extemporising fluff is too par for the 'obesity' course to be notable.

And did you note what's absent? Yes, any mention of the HAES efforts of those who actually give a damn about fat people's health and have a proven commitment to that. Anything about fat people's self help or even the fact that we exist at all, apart from the use of the laughable term "obese individual".

Why don't those wishing to catch a fish in the 'obesity' pond just state their case plainly and clearly so we can grasp what they've done, or could do? We x party, feel we have potentially something to offer are offering this to fat people who's nees are not being met in said area and so on. do you get any sense they're talking about actual people?

These are some issues where we've noted a prevalence, greater prevalence of a, b, c in fat people, cite something which points to what you are doing have done and educate us all. That's how you convince yourselves too.

Graphs based on general clinic/hospital inpatient admission would be good, including those of all other weight groupings, ie. to contextualize. Then we can see something for ourselves.

Otherwise it all just sounds like the incantation of an induction into some professional society.

These are our programmes, name them, describe, say where they are, duration, etc., This is what we've done/achieved with said programmes, we feel these should be rolled out, further researched/investigated. etc.,

Above all, do some freaking work with your fingers and find out what fat people are doing or have done to help ourselves and how that is one hell of a resource in itself. Fat people are not objects to foist your 'obesity' gravy train mode on. We've shown tenacity fortitude and above all, initiative.

We exist, we are inner directed and sentient, we have cared about ourselves even when we felt badly about ourselves, we have proven that we've endeavoured to take care of ourselves. Whether following ill conceived degenerate instructions or in the slow and painful realisation, seeking to repair the damage, in the face of erasure, derision and mockery. 

I would like to see that acknowledged without any baggage of condescension.

If anyone thinks they have something to add to that and they would be adding to that, then they should state it in plain and clear terms with genuineness and a sense of connection to actual, living, live people, if "obese individual" doesn't allow that, then I suggest you consider dropping it.

Whilst you're at it, nix the aggrandizing sales patter on what you're going to do or could do in your dreams.

Tell us, because we wouldn't know

I wondered why the lady in this picture looked so happy and at ease. I kept thinking, this doesn't look like the over enthusiasm of a new career. She has an ease, a sense of knowing (the score).

Only later in the (T/W) *comments was the mystery cleared up, they're married. 

Now I must say, I was barely engaged by the story itself something about the man concerned, Kim Schmitz, though he's more widely known as Kim Dotcom, also has been known as Kimble, Kim Jim Tim Vestor and perhaps even, Doctor Evil.

Yeah, I'll bet.

His erm computer downloading facilitation outfit, was shut down my New Zealand police in league with the Feds! He, caught by the fuzz (okay, I'll stop now) and denied bail as a potential flight risk. Apparently his bragging public relations efforts meant the law descended in Keystone Kop type numbers not commensurate with actual scale of the enterprise.

Though he's doing okay financially. Hence this rather unpalatable picture. I was actually digesting it whilst reading the comments and kind of lost interest because I was struck by the extent of the compulsion to remind everyone that slim people are the dogs cojones.

Healthy, intelligent above all, good looking. Regardless of the issues concerned, this cannot go without being insisted aggressively, for long.

And that's really the point isn't it? No-one including slimz or their "allies" can do without mentioning or referring it for long on the appearance of a fat person, because its clear that we cannot tell any of this by sight or interaction with actual slim people.

Don't doubt for a minute that this is in the end degrading and objectifying to slimz.

You can say "I prefer the slim aesthetic" and it's objective, but what if you don't? You have fetish that's what. Which I think makes you a perv. So if you're fat and your squeeze isn't, make sure and tell them the good news.

If you are fat and have a fat partner, you are a double fetishists in the house of perv and I hope you're thoroughly ashamed of yourself etc.,

So as we all know this is somewhat forced, what effect is it having on the psyche of slimz to be convincing themselves that they walk on water when we all know it isn't true? Certainly, it's a perfect archetype of low self through inflated self esteem (another is perfectionism).

When you lose self esteem because you keep talking yourself up and end up never being good enough as you are.

It cannot be good for the mood of those who indulge in this, which perhaps explains why it can get rather fractious and why wiser heads are shy of it. The implication is that slimz need the whole of medical, social and political approval, just to get by. They are apparently that pathetic and fat people are not.

If it wasn't explained to us how gorgeous, delightful, scintillating they are, it might slip our minds. Their actual character doesn't matter either, what matters is, they're slim. It is objectification, pure and simple, just as much as 'obesity' is for fatz, just a bit nicer. Not all that much, but then, who can tell when it's compared to fatz?