Put Down Your Booze Doughnuts

Here's a telling little spat concerning the findings of a study. It apparently showed the surprising fact that fat boozehounds have a greater risk of liver disease than slim lushes. Though;

More research is required to determine the exact thresholds for each risk factor that independently and in combination increase the risk of chronic liver disease but this is an important first step in the right direction."

I find it hard to believe there's no raised risk if you're a heavy drinker in the underweight category. But as is usual in anything connected to 'obesity' this aspect is obscure(d). Not to pick on them, but to make the point-again- that weight and risk is a U-shaped curve, like many a spectrum of human function.

Jezebel's Anna Breslaw seems to have been on a misguided mission to appeal to fatz. Which I find kind of sweet, appreciate the thought. It's bit like when the very mainstream abusing thin women on their tawdry assumption that everyone hates everyone else, but without such self reverential nastiness.

In this case she got it a bit wrong. Mind's drift when banality ensues. That tends to be central to the body of knowledge that appears under the aegis of the construct of 'obesity'.  If this is so, I sympathize. 

These kinds of mistakes happen when those who have a history of being excluded are being included. The process is not without hitch, I've seen it times without number. That's okay.

What I don't like is this provides yet another unneeded opportunity for certain so called feminists to dump misogynist stereotypes on those women they consider of lesser status, in this case, fat women. As well as taking a dreary dig at fat acceptance being the sinister enemy of science.

Please.

After all we have been put through because we refused to pretend the failure of calorie restriction induced slimness hasn't happened.

No feminist who has a remotely logical or scientific brain could take 'obesity' seriously, merely because men are still able to assert it grandly, on grounds unrelated to pure science endeavour. Someone pointed out the flaw in the construct, in that it fails to correctly sketch out the ways CVD and/or organ damage degeneration happens, using fatness as a proxy instead.

Why some of these whiners don't think that might be a problem for those who have these factors, but are not fat, I don't know. I'm sure they will when some sufficiently scienterific guy tells them.

And don't get me started on some of the rank matter that turns up in that increasing turd bath of 'eating disorders'. I'd like to hear some outrage from these types then. That jazz is increasingly not just harm inducing it is straight up ignorance promotion filled with more hot air than Formula 1. Oh and can I give a special mention to things under the banner of 'nutrition'?

Oh and what about all these toxic placebos we call 'mental health meds'. Don't take us on because um..........displacement.

All that needed to be said in this case was in this excellent comment from "ruby.s.chard"

I haven't read the actual study, but it sounds like they're looking for an interaction effect. If drinking causes your risk of liver disease to be 6, and obesity causes your risk of liver disease to be 2, does being an obese drinker make your risk of liver disease 6, 8, 12, or something else entirely?

Anyway, I agree that Jez needs a dedicated science writer. And then Jez could do what no other news outlet that covers science seems to manage: include the citation for the original damn article(s) at the bottom of their coverage!!! It's hard to get mad at Jez for this when the philly.com coverage doesn't tell us either. I don't have time to spend an hour scouring Google Scholar for this exact study, but if it were linked from here, I might go peek at the abstract* so I can engage in discussion about it a bit better informed.
*Unless they're using any cool statistical techniques that I can learn about. Which is rare, because medical research seems to stick with OLS regression

Sorry to crib the whole, but she says it so well. I also agree with Vidiya's sentiment, who if I'm not mistaken is a fat acceptance advocate.

I'm not a reader of Jezebel, but I might be if it did upped its science coverage-got a scientist on board and made that a selling point. Fat people are not afraid of science. We are afraid of what masquerades as science and 'evidence' based, which is being used increasingly to transfer resources from fat to slim, if you don't mind.

Remember we asserted an instinctive understanding of ourselves as whole functioning indivisible units-when it was still total currency amongst scientists that 'excess' weight/ fatness sits there like a separate detachable preventable load.

Scientists eventually caught up not only with the fact that fat cells are actually active cells, but also that fat tissue operates as part of the system as a whole. Just like we said, not like the 'obesity' construct still assumes, slim people with detachable fat units.

This isn't clear because when others find out something we already know, it is presented to us as an accusation, in a form acceptable to their view. So active fat tissue becomes an inner guerrilla launchpad attacking our organs and glands oestrogenically. 

Good definitions help to explain things. When you grasp that our bodies are as whole as everyone else's, you begin to get why the body perceives an attack on fat stores is seen as an attack on itself. They say science is often elegant.  

If all these sharpies are so scienterrific, why didn't they tell us this? Why don't they ever get how much we know, or want to? Why didn't their outside perspective help us to get there? Why don't they respect our experience? Why haven't they formed a sounding board for building on more of our insights?

You know like women who take for granted that science doesn't reside in men or something.

Imagine women just taking the ball and running with it, forcing others to catch us? Think of all the effort women put into calorie restricted weight loss. Imagine if we'd used that to try and manipulate human metabolic function?

But no instead, let's dump on those under attack from our masters and compete for the imagined light of most obedient girl. Not so much Jezebel as Pollyanna.

Whatever feminist misogynists keep on hollowing out what used to be an intellectual awakening for women, it's your era and you're welcome to it. 

So, not so much fat shaming as the usual inconclusive and predictable filler that we get from a bogus construct.

Outmanoeuvring Depression

I was amused to re-read a report of a study which found no difference in outcome between those depressed people who exercised and those who did not. Why (wryly) amusing?

That exercise is effective treatment for relieving depression has become a recent shibboleth. And it's proponents will not take this lying down.

When it comes to neuroses in particular and mental illness in general, many things recommended have not been conclusively established as particularly efficacious.

Something to do with the psychosomatic or placebo effect of intervention. Subjectivity is usually king and has been allowed to bleed senselessly (or been used) to establish an efficacy not borne out in the cold light of day.

So, if people say repeatedly banging their heads against a brick wall, makes them feel better then that is often taken as evidence of positive potency. Well, you can't argue with people insisting it is valuable, because it helped them, can you? Too often, personal advocacy borne of desperation, helps shield methods from rigourous scrutiny.

The amusing thing is how this got started. Exercise is not a particularly promising way of treating depression. One of the latter's most notorious symptoms is a compromise or even loss of one's instinct and desire to move.

This is not, as is easy to assume, because one has become lazy due a nervous system set on standby. It's more down the exhaustion of a permanently overwrought, therefore overworked system. Heavy emotions such as panic, anxiety, fear, trauma, loss, grief and so on tax your central nervous system especially, meaning less available energy.

It is a shock to learn the very thing you think you think is the problem, doing too little is actually the product of nervous overload. And that what you need to do is make your mere existence less like hard work and more like neutral.


Whether it's specific; bringing resolution to as many unresolved traumas and dramas of the past as you can manage. And/or general i.e. re-training our normal state to one which is less nerve wracked. Learning to get less het up about things.

Releasing more energy from your stores isn't without meaning. This is probably along the lines of craving calorie dense foods (appetite) or increased energy demand (hunger) when one's mood is lowered.

Energy is clearly a central fact of your body's attempts to keep your head above water. 

There is a possibility that for some, mindless repetitive motion revives not just your instincts to move, but some aspect of your nervous function. It can help to dispel nervous energy that may otherwise be part of tiring out your system. Moving can mean a break from endless negative cycles of thought.

It should be tested more. Not just exercise. For all we know, simple physical movements may involve parts of the brain in ways that break up negative cycles of thought. 

Trouble is, for many, by the time you are depressed, your body, i.e. your muscles, bones even have already collected so much stress which only at that point translates into depression. If you have this response, it can make exercising deeply unpleasant, if not shattering experience.

It's possible that if it were viewed more objectively, exercise or physical movements could assist in diagnosis as well treatment even. If exercise/movement feels alright or good, it could be a different, less entrenched depression.  This could be down to more recent or current thinking/circumstances.

If exercise is more like an invasive assault, it could that your depression is more long term and more to do with having to be out of touch with your feelings over a longer period.

I'm speculating. My point is we'd do well to examine this in terms of movement, rather than the fitness mindset which clouds the issue.

It would be interesting to test aerobic type against healing based movement regimes such as yoga, tai chi, walking meditation and so forth. I daresay the latter might have a better effect on those who have to use their bodies a lot, i.e. low socio economic groups. The favouring of aerobic type motion speaks to the more office based.

That may even be what's making some of them down in the mouth.

I also have my suspicions about the instigator of this enthusiasm for exercise;

Melanie Chalder, of the University of Bristol's School of Social and Community Medicine, said: "Numerous studies have reported the positive effects of physical activity for people suffering with depression but our intervention was not an effective strategy for reducing symptoms. "However, it is important to note that increased physical activity is beneficial for people with other medical conditions such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease and, of course, these conditions can affect people with depression."

Well, there you are. It's one thing to be depressed. It's quite another to lose status. Which would be depressing in itself, right?

Using Negativity

It's getting increasingly hard to ignore the fact that people cultivate negativity to use it to achieve their ends. Can we just lance that boil by saying this?

Good.

Because hiding behind the insistence that this is wholly enforced by the media/patriarchy etc., will no longer do as a convenient fiction.

It was okay as long as we all professed self loathing. But when some outrageously decided nuts to that. An unexpected backlash was unleashed.

"That's unfeminine". "Women must hate ourselves to be authentic, real, genuine". "It's not possible for a woman to like herself." "You'll totally fail". "It's an insult not to respect my self loathing, by not mentioning anything about appreciating ones body". Then there's, stating the intent to move in that direction means you are; a) boasting that you've achieved it perfectly.  And b) are now a hypocrite, as you are not matching my ideas of what self love is.
 
Even though I've said no woman possibly could.

And perhaps least favourite of all; "It's easy for you to like your body." Really? I hadn't noticed. But I am glad.

There's just no way this is for real.

Clearly folks have been taken by surprise by fat people's complete exhaustion with a self annihilating, self erasing, self disdain.

Being brought up to believe fat is bad means that it is something you don't have to make your mind up about. It just is. It's a rock. A comfort. Security. When that is challenged, everything changes. You become aware there's a choice. That is upsetting.  It feels like being unmasked. It was agreed, we have no choice. A sure sign of feeling ashamed of one's decision.

Not surprisingly, as doing yourself down goes against your survival code. Perhaps even your sense of personal honour to always keep the faith with yourself even if all doubt you. There's an expectation that you'll be a friend  to yourself, always. 

But if negativity is what you want, why not come to terms with that? Rather than adding shame to the mix?

"Accepting obesity"

The above turned up in search terms used to find this blog. Though I'm not particularly judgey about these terms, seeing them more as a means to get somewhere. [You should see some of the things I type in to get somewhere near a desired destination].

It just so happens that whether this was intended or not, this touched a nerve, whether the searcher intended it or not.  

I do not "accept obesity." And it is discourteous of people to use that term for fat acceptance. I reject not only the term's defunct explanation of fatness, but its impertinent assumption of bowing to authority.

The hardest thing for all of us to grasp is that the way we've come to see weight eating and food is a singular model of distinct extremism, masquerading as normal. That great conglomeration of neurosis.

'Obesity' is not how fact arranges itself. Fat acceptance is not 'obesity' acceptance because that would be the acceptance that this is a meaningful, useful and indeed viable term. It is none of those.

Obesity Related Phantom Addition/Deletion

.............speaking of that last link. Check out this part of the comment thread.

A commenter called "mikedee" [03 April 2013 2:56pm] quoted from Ally Fogg's piece;

Basic physics confirms that the weight of passengers does affect the fuel costs of flights,

But his mind read "does" as "does not".

This was spotted and a few people responded, eventually including Fogg. It was let go. But I'm sure FA aficionado's will clock this as an example of the phenomena where, under the influence of 'obesity' mal logic, people read anyone not fat hating as being in league with satanism 'obesity'.

It points to the nature of fat hating which is essentially extremist in nature, fundamentalist actually. Fundamentalists believe either you are within their narrow cult or you are with the forces of evil or whatever the name of their baddie is, in this case 'obesity'.

In this schema, 'liberals' or relaxed adherents to their view, are also seen as suspect backsliders. Fundamentalism is all or nothing.

'Obesity' is a hostile creation of what fatness is needed to be by others.  We've been lumbered with forcing what little experience we haven't repressed to oblivion into crude phrases, whether they are true for us or not. Or we're accused of lying or denial.

This ventriloquist dummy routine easily extends to whatever fat people who are no longer complying with this, must think. This happens time and again-any nuance confuses these basic and limited assumptions.

People read over what you've written, writing their opinion of what you must be saying, according to them. Rather like the surprise accusation of "promoting obesity", it's often just their own hateful bigotry flipped over. At other times it's how they'd respond to it, flipped over and assigned to you.

i.e. they hate fat people-I still find that funny-so fat people must hate slim people. They disparage fat bodies, fat people must be disparaging slim ones. They're jealous of thinner bodies than their own, so you must definitely be too. You can imagine how tiresome this can get.

They don't get that you have undergone the same processes that led them to their mental position, the complete disassociation from all things fat, internally. we've all been on the same fat hating side. There has been no mirroring, which would mean the complete disconnection from all things slim, whilst maintaining a connection with your body. 

In this case "physics" was the trigger word. As you know, fat haters have a real mastery of physics. Enough to tell you weight loss diets do work, despite scare evidence of real (long term) viability. But not enough to tell you how they could possibly fail. Or falsifiability. For the record, I'd be astounded if physics couldn't explain how diet's don't work, no one seems to have bothered.

For them, anyone who doesn't pretend dieting works is in denial of their curiously religious like version of physics. Hence "does" added a "not" after it.

{{{Happy Daze}}}

Shame as a means to Means

You may have heard Air Samoa has decided to start charging passengers by the kilo.Though it's also likely to affect those who are taller than average. Obviously part of the insidious opportunism generated by the establishment mandated 'obesity' crusade. Though it has been presented as "fair" by AS mouthpiece Chris Langton, the source is clear; 

Mr Langton also suggested that the move had helped promote health awareness in Samoa, which has one of the world's highest levels of obesity. "People generally are becoming much more weight conscious. That's a health issue in some areas,"

Hardly in the area of air travel. 

"Anyone who travels at times has felt they have been paying for half of the passenger next to them."

A more real sentiment, I think we can guess who "anyone" is. So make seats that fit your customers, but no;

Under the new model, Mr Langton described how some families with children were now paying cheaper fares. "There are no extra fees in terms of excess baggage or anything - it is just a kilo is a kilo is a kilo," he said.

Yeah that's right. People's bodies are now seen as excess baggage. Well, to be "fair", that's how 'obesity' is defined as "overweight".  The result is this coinage acts on and confuses the brains of people who come to think of fatness as in some way, detachable. So another example of money being distributed from fat to thin, on the basis of shame. Can that be defined as economic emotional blackmail?

There's an increasing whiff of organized extortion about it. All gang up to shame a certain group. Under the direction of those with influence who've contrived conditions where they can gain, without being seen as bad. Shame just became one wealth transference scheme.

Remember those innocent days when shame was supposed to be a genuine heartfelt feeling of recognizing your own failure to meet your own moral standards, especially, in front of your good peers?

When taught this by your conscientious caretakers, did you ever think it would become just a crude vehicle for your undoing by other folk as nice as you? Probably not, or I daresay you wouldn't have been able to take it that way, would you? 

That perhaps is one good thing. Maybe it's the excuse some fat people need to become positively shameless. If fat people are paying slim people for shame, they can surely dispense with it.

People generally are bigger, wider and taller than they were 50 years ago

So why not designing planes for today? What else expects to work on the standards of 50 years ago? Being gay was still illegal in the UK. Christianity was a dominant force western society, people stood for the national anthem before films in the cinema.

Apparently this kind of thing is "the concept of the future". That sounds ominous not only for fat people. If "anyone" thinks this kind of stops here other things portend differently;

The same people never march into pubs like a latter-day temperance evangelist and demand to know why the people there are drinking and whether they know they stink of Guinness and that they're destroying their liver. As I drag my own lanky frame down the street, nobody can tell whether my ectomorphic physique is a product of hours in the gym, 40 fags a day or a rampaging amphetamine habit. Only the obese must wear their unhealthy lifestyles as a cloak, and consequently only the obese reap the wrath of a cruelly judgemental minority.

Let me correct that, fat people are pre-judged, we don't wear our "lifestyles" healthy or otherwise, any more than anyone else. Which is a point to consider. That can be applied to "anyone" too, especially after softening themselves up for it through their participation in a culture of shaming fat people.

Other People's Misery

Here's a fascinating readers answer another readers query. A man is asking why his wife likes TV programmes featuring the hard life and times of others so much.

Seriously, WGAD? Except to say, at least the wife finds succour for this need in fiction, rather than fictionalizing the lives of real people.

The responses seem to alight on the way the misery crusade is fulfilling a similar need, based it seems mainly on "I may be [insert failing or shame] but at least I'm not like that". At the risk of seeming priggish, is that really much of a comfort? The looking down on others who are probably no worse than you is kind of telling though and not in a good way.

It does help explain the attraction of the 'obesity' saga.

The general sniffiness about the fiction some deem so utterly beneath them points to something long noted about why people have bought into this crusade. The way a certain mindset has gotten way ahead of it's own psychology. It defines itself as wholly rational at heart-whether that's actually a balanced way for humans to be doesn't seem to occur.

Due to this, it cannot find a way of expressing it's perfectly ordinary irrationality seeking instead to bend it into the appearance of its own precious self definition. Cloaking various bad logic and fantasy in terms it sees as epitomizing rationalism.