Tuesday 26 March 2013

Almost Anorexia

When I have in the past mentioned proto or early stage anorexia or the bitterness of failed anorexics fuelling and shaping the inexplicably aggressive and now dominant form of fat phobia. I think some may have found me a bit too aggressive. Or unsympathetic.

I'll recap the first aspect. Weight loss dieting (WLD) or it's model, calorie restriction (CR) is a supremely unnatural and unbalanced way of eating, full stop. That isn't the same as saying that a person may be better off having lost weight.

If weight could be lost the right way, it would at least in part consist of being able to a use energy more efficiently. Or what a lot of the benefits of HAES are about. Think about it, the energy your body gets from food is used to fuel the operations of your body (that includes your mind).

This means the way your body is making use of energy affects every aspect not only of your matter or body mass, but of things like your ability to think or regulate your moods.

There is effectively no real argument. There mainly appears to be one due to the presumption that being able to use energy more optimally is the same as forms of starvation or having to endure them in order to attain what would seem to represent that more efficient use-slimness.That falls down because fatness and slimness are not opposite states.

Keep your eyes on CR. That is the heart of the matter. In the past, we all presumed adipose tissue was like savings in the bank. Spend it, through exercise or less calories than you needed (CR) mais voilĂ ; slimness.

Bad though that would still be, at least it would be TEMPORARY. Once the weight was 'spent' you could return to balance.

The flaw was the body's constant reassertion of its cycle of self regulation, spelt a big fat fail. However that wasn't accepted, instead the temporary was to become permanent. Groundhog WLD. That's really when it becomes practicing anorexia.

Again, the temporary is enough to cause a direct or domino effect, in some people. But the real cause of this is attempting to make the temporary, permanent

Nobody has noticed it, if you translate 'nobody' to mean many FA people and others not participating in the general delusion. Those who are haven't because FP's experience of being prescribed the practice of anorexia has been totally erased. Even the "thin/slim privileged with anorexia" routinely dismiss it.

The ideology amongst many of those active in the field-for that read anorexia and possibly bulimia-is to disconnect weight loss dieting from anorexia as that has been seen to "trivialize" the damage anorexia can do. And recently I've discovered that many thin/slim PWA feel they have to escape the overbearing assumption that AN is just about vanity and is in the control of PWA

The author of this book appears to underline what many of us have noted and that is that WLD can do so much damage that you don't even have to be a successful yo-yoer to have experienced it.

Even the mere threat of it-if that's ever present-can be enough to do a lot of psychological harm. It can even do physical harm too. So primeval is the design to resist and throw off the threat to life and limb.

A lot of you know someone who's never off a diet, yet always remains the same size as they always were or more.

This is an example of the extent of our erasure, we are 'nobody'. Even when that erasure hurts those who are deemed to be somebody.

Saturday 16 March 2013

Health Related Amnesia

It used to be understood that heart attacks are the biggest killer in western model countries full stop. Once infectious disease are vanquished by modern medicine, heart attacks are just waiting to ascend that throne.

Then came the 'obesity' crusade, along with its casting as leading player in "diseases of modern lifestyles". In reality that's the shift of survival and ageing. You can even get a sense of this in the list for developing countries. The first one after infectious conditions or caused by them is "Ischaemic heart disease". The number of deaths from diarrhea especially heartbreaking, often killing babies and young children.

Like it or not, progress in health does not necessarily go purely in a straight line. I sense some in the medical establishment are deeply disappointed with that and loathe to come to terms. Often risk shift around unpredictably alongside outright progress. We are undoubtedly better off without infectious disease, yet there's been a lot of talk about how we are unhealthier than ever, usually citing 'obesity' as the major source. 

The upshot of this distortion through hype is it keeps creating a form of amnesia as it copies a lie over truth. Like copy and paste on your computer. 

In that constructs such as 'obesity' and 'lifestyle disease' are inherently regressive in nature. 

I remember pointing out the true extent of argument made against fatness is that it's (supposedly) less healthy than being slim. This has travelled to fat="unhealthy" under the assault of framing fat and slim as opposite states. What fat people are, slim people are not, and vice versa.

This must be how anyone could have forgotten that the cardiovascular system can wear out like any other living tissue. The surprised reaction to Ancient Egyptian mummies being discovered to have plaque in their arteries? I never would have predicted it!

Wear and tear can dovetail with inborn genetic and/or epigentic susceptibilities to cause a crisis. Of course, we all hope we can seek to minimize that by the way we live. Including the way we approach life. This hope has assisted food as primary cause of arterial compromise to be oversold to the point where people have been encouraged to almost expect to be invincible through dietary means.

It reminds me of a similar erasure of reality that is in some ways deeper and that is "forgetting" that weight loss is a natural part of the process of our bodies maintaining a constant flow of energy. The idea that weight loss is calorie restriction is a contrivance of the slimming industries. They were looking to switch our connection from identifying weight loss with this aspect of our body's easeful quiet self regulation, to their often obscenely punishing route to achieving it.

Dieters were eager to go along with this, for the same reason. It was demoralizing to keep a mental link with the body's elegant ability and the WLD's dreadful inability.

Now everyone, including many fat conscious people still repeat this lie as if it's the truth. The harm this does is it enables people to be prepared to do far more torturous things to lose weight, because it provokes less dissonance with idea of weight loss as intrinsically hellish. 

With this story, the lie has not bedded down enough to be that unshakeable in the face of fact. Luckily proper science has the upper hand there.

One of the few things that have really scared me from the start of my realization about the crusade was the regression into forgetting truths for pathology generating falsehoods.

Friday 15 March 2013

Stigma Variations

The dull brained obesity cult is slowly working out that adults openly bullying fat children, even in an atmosphere of fat hating license, dislodges the mask of self-exalting piety.

Typically for it's regressive and brutish mentality, it's has now landed on it's twisted version an underlying truth of family therapy. No wo/man, let alone child is an island. This becomes fighting fat parents. This is defined as "fighting parental obesity" but we know 'obesity' is just a euphemism for "person or people". It's a shame because family therapy seeks to (be):
  • Inclusive and considerate of the needs of each member of the family and/or other key relationships (systems) in people’s lives
  • Recognise and build on peoples’ strengths and relational resources
  • Work in partnership ‘with’ families and others, not ‘on’ them
  • Sensitive to diverse family forms and relationships, beliefs and cultures
  • Enable people to talk, together or individually, often about difficult or distressing issues, in ways that respect their experiences, invite engagement and support recovery.
My emphasis (can you imagine things ever getting to that stage with fat people?) Sometimes that's what being fat is about. Walking into what people expect for themselves and each other and realizing that should be you too but somehow isn't.

This is what's deemed thin privilege. It's not that slim people get anything they don't deserve, it's that fat people are excluded and made the poor relations. Do I need to say calorie restriction has not be a successful slimming strategy? Yeah, some people can manage to become less fat-leaving aside those who become fatter-but that isn't going to stop 'obesity'. 

If people can go from fat to slim by just laying off having a competitive attitude to eating, I have to wonder if they are fat in the way many of us are. I never lost a significant amount of weight, even when my metabolism seemed to be using up a lot of energy. Are a minority like the reverse of the reduced obese, perhaps the enlarged slim? Probably. I often find caricatures are someone's story, just not the majority.

Assumptions of insufficient motivation though signal of a point blank refusal to acknowledge the efforts of most fat people has led us more or less where we are. Though picking on (fat) parents is a pretty obvious gambit, it has the potential to drift towards the unpleasant realities the crusade loves to avoid.

I caught sight of a show called The New Normal recently. In short, it's about a gay (male) couple expecting a baby through a surrogate. She usually appears with a girl in tow. This particular scene featured thanksgiving as they and some friends were about to tuck into a seasonal tofu substitute for turkey.

They all took their first bite and spat out more or less in unison. Turns out the intent was to be supportive of the little girl's foray into vegetarianism. It's just a more fancy example of the kind of supportive-all for one and one for all that has always been glaringly absent from weight loss dieting.

From the beginning, despite the health warnings, when you (weight loss) diet, you're on your own. It's nothing to sit at a table with your beloved family, gnawing hunger inside - trying to swallow the lump in your throat, along with some offensive tasting low calorie -shit whilst your family set about their communion.

It's not so much the deprivation as the isolation. Especially in plain sight of people's relaxed fulfillment of their own needs. To break bread with those you care about is one of the everyday things that binds us together, we take it for granted. Every religion has to get involved with what you eat, indeed, it's fair to say it's the other way around too, focus on food quickly becomes a system of faith.

Focusing on the parents of fat children, specifically fat parents-it could just as well be slim parents of fat children-may be fine and dandy in the sense that any distress is shared by all. Slimz would be the most ferocious resistor's of enforced WLD, hence their role as holier than thou. Whole families dieting points to the much evaded logic of whole societies dieting.

The avoidance of which has been the purpose of individualizing weight loss dieting in the first place.

To stop fat people's WLD getting in the way of those who aren't. Let's face it, if the logic of weight loss dieting had been followed, it would have stopped the advance of industrialized food and restaurant chains that have come to dominate the food environment during the crusade.

Not a co-incidence. The manufacturing base of certain countries has been dismantled/allowed to wither. Big Food as some are trying to call it-or what used to be classed as the "service sector"-was part of what stepped into that gap, often employing people from the classes that had been put out of work by said policies.

Hence the deluded insistence that fat people individually, against the environment and against societies economic imperative, and be part of a countervailing force to derail this. Whilst the majority wanted and liked this expansion! Unsurprisingly, yet another self comforting delusion that hasn't paid off given drastically controlling the environment in the way of reversing the last 30 years, is one of few examples of a different approach-to calorie restriction.

Beating up on fatz is just a displacement activity. A way to make people feel like they're doing something, when the outcome of it would be undesired. And oh, get this;
I also agree with West that we'll never conquer the obesity epidemic if we don't face some hard truths about grain subsidies and other economic (and marketing) factors that are contributing to it. Everyone should be able to afford healthy food -- and have access to safe and affordable exercise options. There are real social justice issues here, and we need a groundswell of indignation and action.
Yeah, I discounted that ages ago on the grounds that the only way for this "indignation" to build was to develop a high value on the lives of the poor and/or fat. And the primary vehicle for getting there was actually destroying that through a relentless campaign of social stigma. 

That's why I just figured, let's just get real and concentrate on the possibility of scientific advance. That way, if weight can be adjusted successfully, there's no need for unrealistic nonsense about interrupting capitalism etc.,

Thursday 14 March 2013

Weight judgement rebounds

Are people stuck in the land that hates fat ever capable of joining up their thinking? Gwyneth Paltrow has apparently decided to avoid feeding her children carbohydrates and this has amazingly caused consternation among some nutritionists, yawhn.

Before you lose the will to live, fat hating food activist (how many of them aren't?) Joanna Blythman isn't happy. It seems the weight shaming cemented in the public consciousness by a certain crusade is being applied to the wrong targets;
Paltrow is putting her children, aged eight and six, "at risk of nutrient deficiencies", warns one. Her children "won't be able to think straight as their brain won't be functioning", says another.
Now where have we heard that kind of thing before? Not that I'm dismissing or concurring just noting- the same points are made in the same partial and biased manner. Setting out to provoke, upset and manipulate reactions, rather than to illuminate

Why do those who are slim and/or their supporters think they can bang on ceaselessly, defining fat people's weight as a record of habits morals and character-as diagnosis-yet take for granted that this will somehow not be used on them?

The weight spectrum as risk factor is U-shaped

That's kind of how the concept of privilege works. It's not, the atmosphere's neutral and some have gold, silver, brass or nothing in their pockets to help them along. It's more that the atmosphere is unforgiving. Some get shielded from that, others less so.

The momentum of the attempt to classify and regulate fat bodies is already known to be rolling over everyone-to those who are looking at it the right way. The extent to which this use of weight has been re-inforced constantly, is too much to remain contained solely in fat people.

It's one of the reasons why FA people have been so shocked by the hostility of those who usually tend to promote the idea of united we stand, divided we fall. 

Disconnection from fat people puts empathy in a stupour. This means others fail to make the right connection between what they're going along with, when it starts on them. Often they react by pointing fingers at fatness. That always feels so right;
....it is even observed that Paltrow's children are thin – shock horror! – as if this was automatically cause for concern. So accustomed are we to the sight of overweight children, thin ones are beginning to look unusual.
Typically sophorific lack of insight. 
Casting Paltrow in the role of the neurotic celeb, selfishly inflicting her own faddy and dangerous eating habits on her poor starved offspring, has undeniable appeal, especially for those of us who aren't rich or pretty and who struggle daily with our own excess weight.
Right, if you replaced the relevant parts with fat or 'obese' would it make any difference? JB bemoans this critique of Paltrow's book;
"The book reads like the manifesto to some sort of creepy healthy-girl sorority."
The feeding of fat children is often portrayed in this kind of sinister way, it is frustrating, divisive and unnecessary. Though frankly, healthism can sometimes be quite odd if you look at it more objectively and I say that as someone who used to be very into that way of eating.

Many haven't noticed this because it rationale has had a free pass for a long time. Never has it been continually subject to its own critique  of diets it considers less than optimum.

As for carb free/low carb I agree with the sentiment that going without is unlikely to do to do any more harm won't than any other faddy diets. That is, the effects will eventually be seen no doubt, if they stick with it. I daresay it's the usual case of a different set of upsides and downsides in the end. 

Monday 11 March 2013

How to think progressively

The European Union is planning to vote tomorrow on a proposal brought by Dutch Euro politico Kartika Liotard. Its intent, reflected in the title is to "eliminate gender stereotyping in the media", it isn't legally binding;
whereas stereotypes still exist at all levels of society and in all age groups, affecting how we perceive each other through oversimplified assumptions based on socially constructed norms, practices and beliefs that are often cultural, and religion-based and -fostered, and which reflect and perpetuate underlying power relations
This move to ban pornography is seen by many progressives as an attack on civil liberties.

Okay, I'm sure you spotted a gap there. The document lists 69 points (oh sauce) aiming to improve the status and opportunities of women. Part of that focuses on the stereotypical portraits of girls and women relayed in various forms of media from advertising to the mainstream advance of pornography;
Calls on the EU to conduct research into the links between child pornography and adult pornography and the impacts on girls, women, boys and men, as well as the relationship between pornography and sexual violence. Calls on the Member States to establish independent regulation bodies with the aim of controlling the media and advertising industry and a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls
The latter is what seemed to most excite the sensibilities of progressive civil libertarians who see it as a slippery slope obviously, given it's supposed to be about ending the perpetuation of sexist stereotypes especially to supple minded youths.

Porn's okay because there's no evidence to prove it encourages sexual aggressiveness toward women. So phew, no cause for concern there. In fact, it would be a bad idea if that was being planned because apparently wanking, decreases the likelihood of sexual abuse. Convicted sex abusers say so. 

Pornography is not just the commercial proposition of anything for a toss, it's a social, nay feminist good. Keeping folk safe(r) from the more harmful elements in society. Free speech tends to go with it too.  

Large size sugary drinks on the other hand have a proven link with porn unfriendly obeastiness. Regulating these isn't any kind of attack on freedom. That's just some propaganda put about by cynical mega global food corporations. New research finally shows;
sugary drinks were found to interact with genes that affect weight, significantly amplifying any genetic risk for obesity
So there.

Could there be potential for agreement here?
whereas the alcohol industry, with its vast investment in the marketing of its products, strongly contributes to perpetuating gender stereotypes and the sexualisation of girls and women.
 Booze, drinking calories;
On any given day, about one-third of men and one-fifth of women consumed calories from beer, wine or liquor.
No way then, LOL!

Thursday 7 March 2013

What we have here is a dilemma

Well there's even more to this than I thought. In the discussion accompanying Lesley's post, the threat of a fat body becomes looming spectre haunting beauteous slimz.  Pressing their conscience into giving up tha pity sex. We are this way due to being denied sex on account of our looks. Forever yearning for undeserved shags, craving the beauty that so rejects us.

Obeasty is modern mythology.

This seems to be personifying the unspoken distress of all the people out there having sex with those they no longer desire that way.

It's touched in the talk about faking orgasms. It cross ones mind. Often it's volunteered apropos of very little from some men as "We don't want to be forced to find fat people attractive."

The extent of this distress and the determined characterization of fat people as angling for pity sex- something many feel is burdensome to resist-speaks to a need to express upset, without facing implications.

So much for fatness being caused by people using food to block or blunt emotion. If that's the case, it's unnecessary effort. Good news for "binge eaters" and "food addicts". You don't have to "eat your emotions" anymore, just hide from them like everyone else! I wonder if I can patent that as a cure? I'm guessing at no.

The easy prevalence of this theme displays the underlying rules of sexual exchange, or "rape culture" as it's evasively termed. If any who are seen as radical try to take this on, they're labelled fanatics or feminazi's, such is the extent of reluctance.

Despite the above, I still couldn't believe people were framing this was men v women. That was stink bomb distraction of sex-positive-prude Rowan Pelling ed. of "The Decadent Handbook: for the modern libertine". Hiding her own attitudes behind those associated solely with men. 

When for many fat people, men have been the ones who let them know they were desirable. In some cases women taught them they weren't. The amount of fat people who've been used and abused by that belief. Degrading self worth can be the quickest route to being fodder for those on the look out for damage they can turn to their advantage.

It wouldn't have made any difference if the positions were swapped (I know). If it was a wife speaking of her husband. The issue is a person being turned into an adjunct of someone's, everyone's ideology. You know what feminists famously complain about.

Being defined solely in terms of other people's feelings, an object dancing to their tune. Without reference to their experience of themselves. Only concerned with how they must obey their honourable overlord/ess. Even expected to respond to questioning on why they want none of this. How can this feel like self ownership? Which if I'm right is a primary underpinning of agency. 

Exactly why is a partner suddenly turning into an obesity crusade drone supposed to be such a turn on for the fat person? You have both become mere servants of that. The one  who loves you and who you love suddenly is distanced from you because this is now more real to them than all that you've shared.

Who is this person? And who is it they wish to connect with anyway? You or their idea of you? I'm actually not saying that anyone shouldn't feel free to tell me they find my body off putting. I'm saying that changes my view of them too. Something crusaders don't get because this couldn't be articulated before. It was all pressed down, disassociation and added to the general sense of malaise many fat people feel.

Fat phobes need to realise their eyes of god pose is dead. There person involved, who is learning to value themselves more than the value accorded them by society. The one you're so lovingly trying to work. Like someone in a mixed relationship explaining that according to white supremacy, you aren't shit.

Sorry, love! I'm "hardwired" to use every advantage for my own person gain. Isn't that kind of red in tooth and claw sexy for you?

The pointed reference to the way thin privilege is seen as having shut down reasonable debate is worth a mention. i.e. "Isn't there one place left where we can tell the truth?"

Don't think I'm judging slimz. Fat people are apparently the last place for the "truth" and look at all it's brought; huge scientific advance, greater humanism, penetrating sociology and a widespread increase in the depth of understanding about human biology, amirite?  

Are fat women really supposed to say, boo when slim women autonomy is held to be porous? But tally ho if it's their own? Because we sort of aren't women? That was about the last straw for me and feminists not something as (relatively) trivial as fat phobia.

Whatever fails, I at least expect them to manage to be in favour of the liberation of women. Sometimes it's not women who reject feminists, but they who withdraw from women. If fatness means feminism doesn't work, then acknowledge it and modify theory accordingly. That's how feminism, happens.

Nor is fatness like personal hygiene, grooming, having a certain kind of haircut, freely scratching your pubes. Each one of those behaviours is the direct cause and cure of themselves. So, if you stop washing yourself- you are unwashed. Washing yourself, causes you to be washed, I can't make it much simpler. 

The equivalent in terms of fatness would the capacity to direct fat or not fat. Instead, in order to cease fatting, you're required to reduce your intake of food and increase expenditure of energy, both are indirect actions, that are supposed to lead to lowered and indefinitely maintained weight.

A habit of dressing in formal attire does not battle your inbuilt instinct for survival, both of those do. One directly, the other less so.

As for the 'self care'/health angle;
Since your spouse protests she 'likes being curvy', I would concentrate on the health issues at stake. 
 Subtle.
Why don't you tell her you feel exercise and a better diet would keep her longer on this planet by your side? Lead the way by taking her for runs or to the gym and by ordering healthier groceries and cutting down on booze.
Like a little doggy? 

Sex is also good for you. Not sexing could therefore be framed as 'self harm' not taking care of yourself. Is that convincing or indeed, edifying? Perhaps she could "lead the way" by starting off on her own and encouraging him to join in if he feels up to it. And if he doesn't hey, some women don't get vaginal orgasms anyhow.

Hey, is that the solution? Masturbation!!! Independently or parallel. I'm surprised Mz Kinky Boots didn't suggest such herself.

I'm such a reliever of agony.

Tuesday 5 March 2013

Compassion Fatigue

We don't need to ask fat phobes if they've got any compassion, nothing so high falutin' is required. We are talking removing the deliberate suspension of common courtesy. I don't have one iota of compassion for a certain well known, repeated child sex abuser.

Yet when people started voicing their indifference to preserving his life, that it would be okay for him to be left to die, I instinctively drew the line. He is human and should be accorded the same rights to preserving his life as everyone else. As worthless as that life may be.

 Although it may sound a bit cheesy, there's a point where attempting to demean others demeans you in order to do it. In fact, it's quite possible that's pretty early on.

Knowing that requires no compassion whatsoever. Common decency or living up to your beliefs is not compassionate, it just feels too basic for that.

Such is the extent to which crude abuse of fat people is aired here, there and everywhere. Too often haters are flattered in appealing to their sympathetic side.When really they need to turn off their self elevating vitriol, that exists to advance themselves at the expense of someone else.

If this was one of those examples of pomposity about tax payers money BS. Then I'd say, they're plundering the mental wealth of others, leaving them to pick up the tab.

Monday 4 March 2013

Your body is someone's libido

There's always been a dubious trope that prudishness is all about this. When the pinch faced prudery of fat phobes is cringe inducing and ill judged. As seems to be the law with fat phobes, they can't hear themselves.

There's something peculiarly sexless about someone who requires another to meet some exacting standard of physique, they no longer have merely in order for their groinal area to erm, come to life. Isn't there such a thing as an appetite for sex? Or is that just an affectation?

Either you're game or not. There's no way it's going to be all about another person. That kind of projection is the basis for behaving as if your sexual appetites are the responsibility of others provocation. Or not.

Adults are not just objects onto which sex occurs.

Some stirrings are supposed to come from within. Our expectations of our sexual desires may not always match the day to day reality in the long term.

There's nothing wrong with not wanting sex all that so much-or at all. If you've not managed to marry a thin person from a long line of lifelong thinz, then you'd better consider the possibility that your partner may gain weight. Turning it into an offense against you, is emotional blackmail.  

This line too many slimz are airing about how fat bodies are uncaring the fat person is about their fee fees needs to be quietly put to sleep and treated as a folly of the previously unaware.

Many of us realise, no one really cares about fatness. Obesitality (that's obesity + fatality) didn't start to bite until it was made all about slimz-in the guise of being all about fatz, as a cover. And boy are some of them riding that pony into the dust.

Give it a rest with your offended by someone's gut, I'm offended by your invasive and entitled prudery. Especially this Rowan Pelling who's made a career out of being........

....you guessed it, sex positive, what I hear when I hear that term? Similar to "pro-life".

What is it with these fat phobic "sex positives"? Positive for a chosen few in their own image alone? Fatz should just twiddle their thumbs (not a euphemism)? Become celibate?

I've never gone along with the idea that being bothered by looks is "shallow". It's the cultivation of extreme distress about looks, as if this makes one some kind of precious aesthete that I have little patience for. Especially when you complain that distress is being caused by the other person, rather than your own thinking.

A person is supposed to run around half starved and probably not becoming slim or for long. Yet this person can't get the hell over themselves? They cannot find a way to just calm down and chill the fug out and see if they feel the same way?

Because guess what? That's a whole lot more in your power than declaring war on your instinct to survive in the stupidest way aka weight loss dieting.  How on earth has it come to seem like the other way around?

No one should be pressuring anyone to have sex with anyone else. Equally, no one should be forced to try and become a lifestyle anorexic for someone else's cultivated distaste either.

Obviously negotiation and compromise is part of relationships. Thinking about getting into fitness, without having to disorder their eating, might be worth discussing. At the same time, the partner could take some time to get over nurturing this;
The fact is we are hardwired to find certain physical attributes attractive, and human nature means it can be difficult to over-look the loss of those qualities in our spouses.
Nope, the body is hardwired to resist and overthrow weight loss diets. That truly is fact.
Any female readers who feel this man is being over-judgemental should ask themselves whether they'd want to make love to their husbands if they had raging halitosis or huge beer bellies.
What? Bigger than mine? Comparing a person to halitosis is also pretty typical of this mindset. For people who demand so much for so little reason. They don't like to trouble their brains unduly.