Wednesday 30 May 2012

Political Correctness

Who hasn't at some point thought, if only people would relent just a tad with the PC, identity politics get off the defensive and just see pee-paul. Remember our similarities are greater than our differences and so on.

Oh the power of memes to capture people's sly mental asides. It's the others who are too defensive we want just-ace.

Well guess who personifies that "rational" reasonable attitude, amenable to contemplating the possibility of your own imperfection? Why yes you've it, fat people.

In absence the absence of those willing to staple down their defences in the face of hostility, leaving them to wither on the vine. Many indulge the fancy that, if only we could just settle down a tad and stop "fighting" we could have a free exchange of ideas, no quarter taken nor given.

An exciting roust about joust about with a waterfall of ideas crashing against each other, leaving only the strongest forged in that ecstasy of ideas; left standing.

Phew!

Has it produced an explosion of positive energy, understanding, progress? Not quite.

Turns out, defence = self respect. I'm not talking the looking up to an elder of the clan with reverence type respect. I mean, I will never abandon myself even if I'm wrong type. The type were the grown up child turns out to be a major league criminal and ma and pa exclaim;

S/he's still ours! S/he's still our flesh.

That kind.

Turns out people are like "Don't you have any respect?" they mean, defence. Because when you will defend yourself when no one else will, even the hostile know they don't perhaps even can't own you. Well, at least there's doubt.

We were doing our best, being honourable rational, reasonable. We were open handed, open hearted and didn't want to be any trouble.

And now the fantasy of being fat shadow is more real than we are.


Let that be a lesson to us all.

Friday 25 May 2012

Georgia Davis update

T/W: actual weights and dieting referenced.

I've just clicked 'publish' for a post I completed yesterday. How bitterly ironic and so very predictable. It's just about the only kind of thing that is worse than "child obesity" epitomized by the wretched debacle of owned4life which thought it was appropriate to express their opinion of fat children by posing them as mug shots.

It's not unheard of for serial dieters to double their weight over the course of a long career of dieting, let alone a child who reached 33 stones (462 lbs: 1 stone=14 lbs) at age 15. Someone who's body has set itself on this course partly in reaction to life events. 

It's important to note Georgia's body is not a meter of distress nor of "addiction". It's about the strength of its response, the interplay of genes and environment. If her body didn't have this capacity it wouldn't have happened. I suppose you could say, it's like being able to throw a ball father than everyone.

In every spectrum of human function there must be outliers, at both ends.

A lot of people will use (ha!) the worthless "food addict" metaphor, but having had similar problems myself I know it is your body's functioning that alters under you, whilst you just respond to its signals (of hunger and appetite) same as always.

It's how we all eat.

It's basically to do with your body's mood and stress regulation. The key to resolving it lies it getting the body to reverse that reaction, for the nervous system to be able to unravel this configuration. Not to block the endpoint of it, eating.

Those who told her to "lose 20 stones or die" were utterly reckless, as they were ignorant. Rather than fixating on food, they need to train the nervous system to calm down enough over time to release the pattern. Then the eating will either lessen on its own, or with a little conscious prompting.

All that is seen is fat, disconnected from a person. i.e as "overweight" instead of a person. A whole system functioning as a unit, not as a slim person wearing "overweight" as an all body fat suit.

We forget a body is where roiling emotions actually can affect the body as a whole, via its brain central/ peripheral nervous system. Rather than being sealed off in our heads as we tend to think-as they probably are in the main. Then there's the intimate link between the "second brain" and the first one. When your emotional balance is upset, it can upset the functioning of the gut. Often those who reach this size are very big around the middle, even if they're pear shaped.

I truly believe weight loss dieting has made Georgia's situation worse, not just physically but psychologically. She's had to be freed from her house-it had to be partially demolished-in order to treat her after collapse from a seizure. 

Creating a culture of trying to stabilize weight and preserve mobility plus studying actual fat bodies could have actually helped prevent this. Instead the same do or die(t) rules are trotted out mechanically regardless of how utterly inappropriate it is.

It doesn't seem to matter how many people locked this open ended kind of metabolic state fall prey to this careless malpractice. No-one ever seems to learn enough to have the courage to put a stop to it.

If there was a culture of stabilization, physiotherapy, a holistic and humane attitude-what could Georgia have achieved with her life in the intervening years? The problem with people on the edge like this is they are stuck with no where to turn.

Their isolation and desperation is played upon by those who refuse to recognize that you cannot directly or predictably control your metabolic function. That's something that needs to be properly studied. So a map of options can be created.

And it's becoming clear to more and more people that those who've gotten used to knowing it all and giving orders like gods simply can't deal with the fact that in reality they know little and have got nothing. I would have thought was the norm for a lot of scientists until they do actual science.

That is the price of delusion and people like Georgia are the ones paying it. 

Though comments on this type of story are filled with the usual foul effluent, I notice increasingly dotted in there are glimpses of people realizing that all cannot be as we've been told.

Guidelines need to be formulated, to stop this 'advice' being given to anyone who's body has opened out in this way. If someone has has gained a lot over a short space of time then dieting should simply not be an option. Others can make up their own minds. But those in this state should be directed to improvement. Rather than the fantasy of being thin.

It literally destabilizes metabolism further even when it seems to "work" as we can see. Dieting is a metabolic derail.

In a way this story shows up what a lot of fat people who've become desperate to lose weight face and can't seem to grasp when they lash out at people like those in FA as negative. Though it might have seemed as if Georgia's weight was problematic at 33 stones how does that look now?

Better than how she has been left. The sad thing is no one was there to explain that possibility to her. That given her history and metabolic history, the thing to do was to appreciate her body for what it was and see if things could be settled down. If that had been combined with all the efforts she's made in the cause of weight loss had been put in an HAES framework, improving her mobility and strength. That could have assisted her mood and palliated her diabetes.

At the same time deal with things that could improve her situation.

And believe me, it's about time someone said clearly, the culture of cultivating desperation about weight has to end. I'll say that again in another way. Stop encouraging people to become "desperate" about their weight, full stop.

No one should be forced to like the fact that they are fat, nor forced to be "fat positive". That said the cultivation of "desperation" about one's weight as an intrinsic part of performing the 'obese' role because we are told, "You've ruined yourself".

Most 'desperation' is about proving that "I'm taking my weight seriously". Its more a debt of honour, something you feel you should fuel in order to show how badly you feel about things. Often, it  serves as the weight loss surgeon's number one ally.

I really wish Georgia well and hope she is able to know she doesn't have to feel bad about herself ever again.

* [I don't see the separate between appetite / hunger from metabolism, to me they are clearly part of it. Eating is usually a pleasure, but that isn't the point, it's a metabolic feature to ensure the maintenance of your existence]

Hollow

The stories of *Lu Hao, Jamaya Herron and George Sargent remind us once again of the strangely hollow nature of the current worldwide 'obesity' panic.

In their differing ways, these three represent the type of people who are being most royally screwed by the lack of will beyond fixating on the high stakes before and after weight loss poker.

This for me is always has been and will forever remain one if not the greatest obscenities of the crusade, that it can mess with the lives of millions with wanton disregard, based on a premise of "weight concern", yet those most in need of attention and help have got nothing more than what has failed those who have no discernible underlying issue.
 
People like these are the real victims of this paucity of interest.

When we hear about 'obesity' there are plenty who have something to say, those who specialize or seek to involve themselves yet are quiet when cases like this come to the fore. Have they designed a protocol to deal with people who have to be cut out of their homes? Has the death of Jamaya prompted them to establish how fatter people can be delivered safely from burning buildings?

Why do the media not ask for or about their comments? Do they just somehow know that they've nothing to offer or are not interested? Perhaps they too don't really recognise the difference between fat people who are just fat and those who have some underlying mental and/or physical crisis. A fatty is just a fatty, no matter what is going on.

Why are they themselves so silent? Is it because their lack of anything more than shallow notions and self advancement would become all too painfully exposed?

Even way before FA it has been patently obvious that the 'obesity' industry and its recent crusade over the last 30 years or so, has little discernible interest in discovering the structure and function of human metabolic function nor to resolve real metabolic conditions.

The big giveaway for me has always been the absence of fascination with weight outliers. That is the number one rule of interest in field dealing with any aspect of the human condition, a disproportionate interest in those who display the most acute symptoms of said problem.

It's not even limited to the professionals, whenever we show interest in any condition physical mental whatever, what's one of the first things we tend to ask? How bad can it get, what's the worst it got? Because there is the feeling that the more acute the manifestation, the easier it is to see what it is and more importantly, how it functions

That is the real connection between curiosity lay and professional alike, what exactly is going on? And guess who does totally have that reflex? The media with their fixation on headless fatz of a certain size. To the extent that it is they even more than the medico's who've defined many people's idea of what 'obesity' looks like.

"We aren't talking about fat, we're talking OBESE!!!"

No silly media dupe you're talking about what would surprise you. You may even be an 'obese', or close to it, without realizing it.

Prompted by the hype of those seeking funding, the sense has been created that they must be talking about really fat folks, because no way could say Jamie Oliver, when he's at his fattest possibly represent a life threatening illness.

Incidentally, have you noticed that Prada-Willi is a syndrome yet 'obesity' is purported to be a disease?

* Compare world's tallest toddler

Thursday 17 May 2012

Hurry up and Lose!

Yes it is true that Aishwarya Rai is known primarily for her outstanding beauty, but women like that are often criticized for seeking a return to their pre pregnancy weight at speed. Don't they know this puts pressure on all women, they are role models blah, blah, blah.

Take a look at this effort, from people admittedly seeking to live at the edge to see what just what they're avoiding;



Not fun.

She's said to be in no hurry to step on the diet merry go round wishing to "enjoy motherhood" instead. I wonder how much she's referring to WLD and how much to being seen as "the most beautiful woman in the world".

Sunday 13 May 2012

NICE

Someone at NICE appears to have caught up with the glaring error of casting people as disease. Once you begin to see it out there flapping in the breeze in front of everyone, it's hard not to cringe.

Like, what were we thinking?

This is what happens when everyone operates with the same one track mind and none can run a critical eye over it. Nor ask anyone who can to do so. Wait, what am I talking about? How you want human biology to function is incompatible with how it actually does if they deviate from one another. To adopt and continue the former, you have to defend against the latter that is the point you are investing in delusion. You are suspending your knowledge or potential knowledge of reality.

The very definition of the much misused "echo chamber".

Leaving aside the favoured fancy of returning common civility as a super human trial because we've decided to be rude to affect your "behaviour";
Nice officials concluded that while the term [obesity] was fine for health professionals to use among themselves, they should handle it with care in public.
We have lift off. If 'obese' is interchangeable with "fat" its hard to see the need to bandy it about with such abandon. It's clear that it's only being used for effect. To control the way everyone perceives people in the hands of the 'obese' wallahs.

An attempt to click  ((((panic))))) mode and ballast it by invoking Latin for a more sciency feel; yes.

There's also the usual conscience salving of trying to disconnect yourself from the fact that you are talking about people. Imagine that, an initiative which requires you to dehumanize others in order for you to be able to stand its inherent ethical failings. That's amusing when we are implored coldly to "toughen up" under its glare, the people dealing it aren't "tough" enough for it!

This again shows at the heart of the crusade is a knowledge of its wrong doing with a fiercer desire not to be stopped by that.What are we expected to make of a crusade that doesn't have the courage of it's conviction? It doesn't have any. 

Taking an impulse of those among the influential who are so slender that they consider even the merely slim to be "fat", compared with them, as the dominant view through which everyone must look. Not because it makes sense to everyone, more due to you being able to spread it on the back of said influence.

More than slender seems "overweight" including people who look slim let alone plump to the rest of the world. It's a case of anything more than me is oh my gosh if that fat was on me it would be like a disease mushrooming or should I say "ballooning" all over me, suffocating me, it would be so like zomg horrific.

Oh wait this is so obvious, shall we have a grown up discussion about size and all our fears with a view to discharging them? Nah. As 'science' is seen as the personal playground of certain classes, those among them who feel this way can memorialize their prissy fearful reactions in 'obesity'. So  nobody can forget for one minute that this is how they react to others who are fatter.

It can't be gotten over and we don't want to call attention to its irrationality.

This can only have gotten this far apart from the capacity of influence because fat/ter people also have mixed feelings about slender types.

There seems to be some feelings of guilt that our physical presence can intimidate. We feel the need to prove we are not out to "crush" or abuse others. We aren't scary honest we are nice, we are friendly bear no ill will nor wish to bend them to our will or bully and push others around.

We'll protect you, thinnikins! Like your big sis/bro!

Okay, but we've really heard enough from this. Far be it from me to get in the way of anyone and their much cherished reactions to others, but some of us have no interest in defining ourselves by it. Because you know what? Hang on to your hats, we too have reactions, feelings, thoughts to our own experience that are just as real and fascinating (almost) to us and often they'd serve as far better ways to define the reality of existence.

There are insider terms groups of people coin for others that should never become the way those people are forced to define themselves, unless they choose to. More than the names is the basis of understanding/ beliefs and interpretations defining them.

Friday 11 May 2012

Thursday 10 May 2012

I plea for nought

A good old fashioned plea for civility is fine and dandy, but somewhat inappropriate when it comes to the question of fat people. First off, fat people are perfectly civil in general towards slim people. I do not go around saying calling slimz wizened, eaten up, diseased, immoral, burdens on my fat back.

And its not because I have "sympathy" for them.

I don't insist they are sexless, ugly, strangely underdeveloped, nondescript folks who routinely insult my eyes, but not because I'm straining every pore.

I don't because I don't feel like it. I do not cultivate these feelings, then pretend they are "natural" to me. I've noticed that I am fat. I have noticed that not every body else is. I feel more fascinated and intrigued by the uniqueness of the human form. I do not define other body types or sizes as a failure to be my own.

I'd be embarrassed.

Even when other bodies shock or surprise me, catches me off guard. I do not seek to get my response as hyper-sensitized as I can manage as if is the pinnacle of an aesthetic sensibility, then insist that my targets are causing me pain. That would make me look like an idiot.

I would be aware that I was doing all this and blaming it on others. It would not feel real and that falseness would haunt me. I have more respect for my own mind, than to cultivate violent loathing of others for its own sake.

There are plenty of people who trigger genuine loathing, because of the way they actually behave. I try to reserve any "natural" loathing for them, to ensure there's enough left in the tank for all the assorted thieves and brigands currently tanking whole economies, for fun.

I do not require any "sympathy" from those currently engaged in the sport of fat hating. I do not require them to go out of their way to placate me, to euphemize me, to pussy foot around me. I require no special favours, nor to be stroked or coddled, I require nothing more than the common courtesy I extend to them, unless reason is given for me not to.

The trouble with fat hating is it's ugliness, stupidity and low standard has become normalized as acceptable for fat people. Therefore any deviance from that, is seen as a very great deal indeed and much harrumphing and tutting ensues. It is not the slightest bit convincing to those of us who know how to behave.

We insist our standards are matched, if they aren't that should be made clear at all times.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Trust

The casting of fat people in the cult of 'obesity' is as those who are intrinsically untrustworthy. This is itself an evasive assumption, if you believe energy restriction is the viable route to slimness you just can't trust fat people regardless of how you try to rationalize that.

Yet I note those on the receiving end of this comprehensive erm...... failure of strategy are expected to trust 'obesity' wallahs to represent the facts in a fair balanced and nuanced way. To know what they're doing, even though it's obvious they do not. It's as if we are supposed to pretend to trust in their office no matter how useless they actually are.

How nice, how very cosy and comfy; for them.

Where's the love for fatz though? Even if we were in the wrong where's the unconditional trust they expect for themselves, for us? Where's our assumption of good will?

What is really takes the biscuit is the lack of acknowledgement of their own failings, ever for those who never seem to be able to do anything but find endless fault with fatz, our health, our mental state, our ethics, our intelligence and so on.

This is remarkably piss poor of them.

One can criticise someone who's harsh, less so if they apply the same standards to themselves. 'Obesity' wallahs wouldn't and wisely so, because they know they'd sink under the pressure and that would be a pointless waste of their lives.

This chasm between their fault finding combined with a personal need to be stroked and soft soaped makes them lack moral accountability. Which is why their instructions are often so stiff and ridiculous, they don't have a clue as to what they're inflicting on others because they live in a bubble. I'm sure they think they don't. Professional competition and scrutiny. Having to strain really really hard to do good research etc.,

But how much harder would that be if they were permanently on trial with hostility from all sides, even those who'll usually put the case for almost anyone?

Those who insist on denying what we can all see- fatness has not been extinguished through the cult of dieting and exercise- must be trusted despite their own admission of their failure when they scream tirelessly about the 'obesity epidemic'.

Without any acknowledgement that this is their fail and it is indescribably epic.  

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Not your shame

Sometime in the 1980's the UK government headed by Margaret Thatcher stopped the teaching of cookery in schools run by the state. MT is one of those political figures who both put a decisive imprint on the psyche of a nation and was a reflection of it. Like her boon companion and political equivalent, Ronald Reagan.

In a way, this move summarizes much of the essential complaint from those who have trouble with her legacy, in general.

A group of concerned citizens have written a letter to the current Conservative-Liberal coalition government asking them to finally reverse this folly.

So far, so innocuous. Giving children a few cookery pointers is worthwhile in and of itself, which was why they were introduced in the first place. To have developed the ability to met your own needs and those of others in this way can only bolster self esteem, whether your inclined to use it or not.

The letter, feels in light of the UK's hosting of the Olympics this summer, these folks feel it is being; 
"tainted by the shameful fact that Britain is officially the fattest nation in Europe"
Consider some of their targets unmoved by their 'distress'.

After characterising other people's bodies-selves, pish to Cartesian dualism- as shameful, under the guise of health concern. They then bleat on about how they personally suffer over the actions of their own minds something which is of little interest to anyone but similarly challenged arseholes.  

Other people, their bodies exist for themselves, in their right. They are not a receptacle for the unsolicited emotions of others. Just how far is it possible to remain locked in the hell of your own inanity? To  consider only yourself and your own so called feelings?

As is usual with crusaders this is of course directed at children, teaching them how they should feel about themselves, disgusted, so they can invoke children's sense of ethics and play upon their survival instinct to be directed by and to please adults.

This letter was written and I assume read by each of its signatories, yet none of those under the influence of obestupidity managed to notice that feeling things because you've turned someone else's body into a symbol, is a process happening inside your own head and is nothing to do with them.

I was going to ask what it's going to take to get through to this kind of mentality, but that would be forgetting myself. This mindset is based on a suspension of reality and a continued unburdening of rationality. It's mean minded cultivation of ignorance alone is despicable.

That is what it's followers feel is necessary for it to continue, inserting its irrelevant and unwarranted disgust into anything and everything. Grading all aspects of human behaviour according to whether each facet is purportedly 'obesity' making or not. It either hides from even the most impotent criticism or steam rollers it with power of influence and its peculiar take on science and health.
"We need to act now but we will not win this fight alone. Parents, schools, healthcare professionals and the Government must take a united approach in order to combat this obesity crisis."
Who exactly is "we" in all this? As we fat people know, action doesn't start from our decades, generations even of "action", it starts from 'obesity' crusaders deciding to get into high dugeon about it. And [T/W; dieting] Zoe Harcombe;
"To reverse the obesity epidemic we need our fellow humans to be able to source and prepare real food, not to microwave fake food. 
Though it is tiresome to repeat, this assumes fat people do not do this and slim people do. I know for a personal fact that this isn't the case. And please, "Fake food"? That can be prepared, eaten, digested by the human body and most of all provide calories-the purpose of food- is not real?

Rather than hype why not concentrate on the delight of preparing and eating fresh food? The creativity involved in choosing and taking raw ingredients and turning them into something greater than the sum of its parts?

Its about time this anti food attitude with its prissy misanthropy and shame-that we are animals who have to eat to live, ceased to go unquestioned by the mainstream, or any other media. Even fat haters are getting sick and tired of its crude, unbalanced discourse.

That is plenty to be genuinely ashamed of if it's adherents want so desperately to feel that, while it can save its fat loathing affectation for the birds. Anyone can pick a weight and hate, it's just some of us choose not to. Not because we are being so kind to those in said group, but because we have more respect for our own minds.

These penpals should try it. 

Let's get back to talking to each other about what matters and why, without fat people being used as a pointless bogeyman to make a point that should be able to stand on its own merits.

Needless to say, fat people are not anyone's shame unless we choose to be and many of us aren't interested. If you don't have sense enough to be embarrassed about the fact that a so called civilized well off country can't manage to organize basic skills to its citizens, then you have no business seeking to feel ashamed about many who'd happily tell you where to go.

You can put your own shame with your own blame.