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]
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