Wednesday 31 July 2013

Intent is not magic

This tends to be used when someone, who on being informed that they've caused offence, exclaims they did not intend to. Point being, ones intentions though worthy of consideration, in the end do not stop anyone being offensive.

I suppose it's similar to ignorance is no defence.

The lack of magic in ones intentions also works for the collapsing of intending to become slim, with the ability to become slim. i.e. Anyone who's slim intended to be so just as anyone not slim intended either, not to be slim or actively to be fat/ter.

This is another psychological tic produced by insisting weight is wholly in our direct control. As that always remains the same, the picture has to revolve around that, forcing any flexibility back onto the person.

An intention to become slim, however fanatical and long lasting is not the active agent in changing weight status.

Intent to lose weight cannot overcome biological design.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

No mirror image

Fat hating is a bad decision that makes people mean and wingnutty. Even those who are really nice, level headed, decent beyond reproach usually etc., succumb to this. It's the adoption of the 'thought' process, not the person that makes it so.

If you can think of an example where you think you know everything about someone you're ignorant about and they know nothing. Then you might be able to kid yourself that this is another example of that. But think about it, who knows less than you about themselves?

I'll give you a minute.

Such an extraordinary notion is so impertinence that it ought to invoke extreme reticence.  You'd be very watchful for any signs that you could be wrong. Not resting on a sense of infallibility.

People are popped out of this stupor whenever they're subject to scrutiny. And the urge then is to flip this script and just put fat people in this role instead. And then argue with that as if that must be our opinion.

The arrogance is the not infrequent notion of those who consider themselves oh so 'superior' is, they must know every thought that could possibly occur in the minds of the 'inferior'. Rather than admit, looking at themselves in this condition makes them feel wretched, they'd rather just claim we're all doing the same.

Well we're not.

I do not claim fat people are any better than anyone. Note saying we aren't worse isn't that, just because parity translates as superior from the inferior. 

No fat people are not defining you as disease. Claiming that your body is a toxic pile. I think you'll find.

"Only dogs like bones"isn't that you'll note. The only people I've heard say that are people who claim to be oppressed by it.

Turns out those who had no trouble with us being accused of being wrong from top to bottom, inside and out. Cannot tolerate their own actual wrong doing. They cannot say, "Mea culpa" that was wrong. I'll stop.

Nope, apparently, that's too hard.

Even though they have the comfort of knowing they have plenty of official company. 

Monday 29 July 2013

Phantom Wh"y"

Virtually all fat haters make this error at some point. Their minds add a phantom "y" to the end of "health" in the phrase "health at every size" or HAES. Changing it to "healthy" often "at every size". Which of course would not be HAES. 

Then they pull out the pin and go off into a sneering fury. Despite being wrong.

No change there.

This additional letter tells us a lot about the only way most people can manage to perceive fat people. As a figment of their imagination, to use as they please. The wish to cast us as wanting to believe we are 'healthy'. When that is clearly them. Most fat people believed it when we were told fatness was bad. For a long while.

Their denial, which is all too human, is then projected onto us, so these folks can tell themselves off by telling us off. This kind of self rejection, shame about one's true feelings, along side a self regard that insists no suffering, even if that ends up creating suffering. Like an excess of safety rules that starts to make things unsafe.

It is typical of the pattern of fat hate. Too much love of self and too little self acceptance at the same time. 

The not bothering to find out what we actually think is self defence. This can only disappoint. A bit like kids who don't want to find out Santa Claus doesn't really exist.

The Gift that keeps Giving

Fat people can't help being the gift that keeps on giving. Here we see volunteering to pay thousands for the privilege of having your digestive system messed up has proven to be serendipitous. It seems bypassing the stomach makes the intestines work harder. It's possibly a key to the reversing diabetes effect some experience after weight loss surgery, even before significant weight loss. 

The intestines have to adapt to the loss of the stomach as a viable intermediary, that also uses up  energy. As we have been saying, the body spontaneously, goes along this course to vary its own use of energy. The question is how to restore this to previous levels. No, it is not disease, this is about function and how to tweak or change it, to alter its course. Virtually any function can spontaneously alter its course.

That's why folk medicine is often overly concerned with tonics-to keep things on track-and restoratives, to get them back if derailed.

It may help point out to some fat activists why we must master human metabolic function and/or figure out how to manipulate it. This isn't just about weight loss/gain.

This hints at the prospect of further treatments for all sorts of conditions-both mental and physical. The way the body manages, uses and expends its energy is an avenue for progress in many directions. It can and should change the way medicine functions.

The key now is to find out how to promote/achieve this effect, without butchering people's systems for cash. If we are really lucky, someone might be able to work out how to do this, by using the mind as the the instigator of a chain reaction. Thereby cutting out or at least down on the middle men altogether.

That's the way to have more inclusive and affordable healthcare.

You'll note this is arse backwards for those with more valued bodies. Usually, the professionals are extremely conservative about preserving healthy function, seeking to intervene in the most direct and efficient way possible. The experimentation goes on before it result becomes product. It should go without saying that this is a good rule of thumb for all, despite their social status.

Like equal before the law.

There's getting to be quite a history of devalued bodies being used as part of medical experimentation. It's sometimes hard not to snigger when it is claimed certain experimentation could not be done today due to today's ethical constraints. Oh rilly?! I wouldn't lose hope 'experimenters'.

The tradition continues, albeit in a more improved voluntary form. Though one cannot discount the context of extreme medically induced devaluation of fat bodies. The lesson here is to be verrrry wary of the professionals ever stamping negative value on any body.

Saturday 27 July 2013

Hold the front page............

Here's a bit of "news".  Fat shaming has been discovered to increase the likelihood of remaining a fatty bum, bum.

I hope all those who've been ragging on fat acceptance acknowledge that this has now been "discovered", (again). Without getting out from under this stupid crusade. Folks either wouldn't be 'discovering' this. Or it would be buried.

My political sense is lacking. So I'll just go on a say, this is the principle operating beneath the surface. From children who are targeted for fatness by their families, to the crusade rationale.

i.e. they keep being told they're fat all the time, whether they are or not. To the way,  "You are fat because you're too comfortable with yourself. So the answer is to discomfort yourself beyond your endurance" was, oxymoronic.

Leaving aside qualms about the study and its interpretations. It's entirely logical that if stress can tend to increase the likelihood in weight, in the susceptible, that more stress will increase their weight. Under the guise of reducing weight, one can exploit biological tendencies.

Internalizing demarcations comes in the form of efforts to acquire slimness.

Fat people have become increasingly strictured into a discreet class. What's the point of that, if they can easily escape? It's not about conspiracy, so much as opportunism. I think we all expected slimness to be simple and easy to acquire. When it became clearer it was not, well....that's a different story, isn't it?

I mean why say it's moral that fatness should be ended by calorie restriction a punitive, costly and above all, inefficient means? Is it moral for your software to be really slow and buggy? Did people say, "Bill Gates, stop improving your S/W, its immoral?"

Did they heck.

It's the sense of security about that sentiment too.  So sure no change will occur that will make manipulating ones metabolism as easy as we all once thought.

Anyway, here's the new instructions fatz. Calm the hell down about everything. Stop taking anything seriously. Stop giving too much of a shit about what doesn't matter. Become independently centred, emotionally and psychologically self sufficient.

Do not obey, make up your own mind. Treat authority as your equal. Bow down to nobody.

Will this make you slim?

Who cares?

Let's "try" this as hard as we did weight loss dieting.

[By the way. Fatness was never stigmatize to motivate fatz. It was dirtied to repel chubbies and slimz from fattening.]

Food desert conundrum

I've struggled to grasp the food desert principle beyond the elementary. And for that matter, poor people's purported lack of nutritional knowledge versus middle class people supposed largesse of. This special knowledge is claimed to be responsible for a lesser 'obesity' rate amongst middle class people.

I'm not going to pretend I'm much the wiser, especially in a US context. Ironically the notion of  "nutritional superiority", has always struck me as indicative of the general dysfunctional relationship with food, often found in, for want of a better term, countries of Anglo Saxon origin/culture. Most people know SFA about nutrition, like an overriding disgust of calorie restriction that's the norm not a sign of pathology. 

Nutritional knowledge is not required to have a balanced diet. Indeed, there's a point where too much of it gets in the way of the culinary arts. What's required is a familiarity with fresh foods how to prepare, use and preferably grow them, though that's not strictly necessary. A family that cooks and eats the stuff is best. Supported by a school system that reenforces that knowledge, even better.Feeding children properly and if possible, teaching them to grow stuff. Getting their hands in the earth. If they can teach some basic preparation and cookery, even better. Time tested combinations that complement each other and go together are often a good guide to balance.

If you grew up being fed the 'magic' stuff, unless you're desperate for endless conformation of faux superiority, you'd know this.

The "nutritional knowledge" idea as the basis of a balanced diet, is a product of an environment that has already ceased to re-enforce this. And I suspect that's the real point being made. Status.

I've never been comfortable nor convinced weight disparities amongst income streams occur purely or even firstly due to diet. It's notable that rates of fatness vary all over the world between the sexes. Rarely are percentages among nations the same for men as women. It's been recently suggested that the more unequal the relationships between them equals a greater disparity in weights.

Usually with women's being higher.

This is true in the UK. Women on lower incomes have almost twice the likelihood of being fat as the richest women. With men, the picture is more even all through. There's little disparity.

This suggests to me an influence of the kind of stresses that tend toward invoking fatness as a response, along with that meeting innate susceptibilities obviously. Lack of license/ freedom in behaviour and self expression. Repression and overlooking of one's emotions and focus those of others. Feeling or being trapped, hemmed in and frustrated by multiple thankless responsibilities. Being less valued and acknowledged as a person. Having to make do with a consistent pattern of inadequate meeting of your needs and the like. 

In a context of a regular supply of at least subsistence energy intake, as opposed to balanced or adequate nutrition.  

I feel the primary influence of class is contained in the term "food insecurity". This refers to those on low incomes struggling with a cycle of expenses which leaves them often lacking enough money to sustain the right amount of food between paychecks.

It's really life insecurity, food is a part of that. Insecurity of employment, social and on the job status, income and so on. I don't want to build a sob story here. I'm just saying modern society is in worldwide transition from manual, rural labour to the labour of the brain and nervous system. A bit like the shift from meat to cyberspace.

We are right now in the process of adapting to all this, fattening across society is part of that. It's also about increased health and lifespan, despite the adipocalypse testeria. And those struggling to get off the bottom can find they have worst of all worlds, in some ways. Producing a constant heightened but not crisis level anxiety and dissatisfaction that is unrelieved for not being critical.

To me, being on a low income was not in any way associated with not eating fresh produce, until I got to the internet. Nor was being fat associated in my mind with not eating thus either. If it is, its difficult for you to understand what it is to grow up with people for whom cooking mainly from fresh is the norm. It's not that I don't know people who's diet isn't overwhelmed with magic. It's more that they cannot be particularly marked out particularly as fat or slim.

That shouldn't be too untoward if you think of France and even a country like Japan, who embrace both healthy eating and calorie dense fast foods. That is how a lot of people who consume produce eat.
.......the organizations intended to help them the most are ignoring them. They say the NYC Greenmarket – the city’s largest farmer’s market supplier — doesn’t make it out anywhere near East New York with a full market because of a common assumption about low-income Americans: They aren’t interested in healthy food. They can’t afford to be interested in it. They don’t care.
This is what has always puzzled me. My parents generation and those that came a bit before them, were prepared to travel to get the ingredients they wanted. That's one of the reasons for the abundance of fruit and veg-of varying quality, but it's there nonetheless;
And, do you expect me to ride two hours, back and forth, into the city for Whole Foods? Am I supposed to go grocery shopping with two kids, and carry those groceries home… with two kids?”
The older generation thought little of spending more hours than that, every weekend and in between. I sulkily accompanied my mother many times on these expeditions at times bored out of my ingrate skull. Indeed, my mother happened to tell us, apropos of nothing years later, how her and her country mates would pool resources in earlier years. Travelling up to wholesale importers in other cities-with varying mixes of Jewish, Greek, Cypriot, Caribbean, African, East Asian, communities to get to even more of the stuff they expected to cook the foods they wanted-over whole Saturday's or Sunday's. Before I was born. After a week of hard often shift work. Buying in bulk, sharing it out, taking turns to go as only someone had a car.

I'm not trying to judge others. I do wonder what the landscape would be like if it was up to my generation. But it does require some real sustained enthusiasm to get this kind of stuff in your locale, if its not there. And it doesn't happen overnight either.

The US's discourse on this is not my place to sit in judgement. It's a worthwhile idea that the means of a good life, should be on everyone's doorstep. I agree. I'm sure if it was, people would use it and appreciate it. There seemed to be a time when it was more often. Major supermarkets withdrew from low income urban centres and to open large superstores on the outskirts of town.

I live in the heart of the city. And it's not very far from here where provision can become surprisingly sparse. Location, i.e rural settings, social isolation and environmental problems also plays a part. The fall in giving working class kids skills and educational aspirations haven't helped. The out of touch bourgeoise left undoubtedly needs to get its act together on that. One suspects a certain instinctive, pulling up of the drawbridge on previously expanding middle class. Rather like the embrace of 'obesity' is an attack on the aspiration of certain people.

We must all face the fact that good food culture is that, its a culture. It's not individualistic and never has been.

There are always universally popular favourites, which rarely live up/down to extreme nutritional dictates despite fauxtesters who claim to be above everyone else. Even if they are, check out the proportions of some of their favourite restaurant dishes or favourite health food snacks.

There's a missing sense that partaking of the type of much critiqued fasts foods is somewhat about feelings of social inclusion. There's the question of the effects of food stamps and food banks too.

Then there's another factor, kids use pester power. Adults eat can try to eat what meets their needs as the only freedom or room for manoeuvre they have.

Friday 26 July 2013

If 'obesity' doesn't refer to fat as disease, what's the point of it?

See anything untoward about this title?
"Obesity is not a disease"
What is 'obesity' then? A construct that exists to pretend being fat is disease.....is wrong..... about its reason for existing. How clueless in their vindictiveness are fat phobes planning to be?

Take this one;
BUT eating shitty foods and not exercising and then blaming your obesity on what you like to call a 'disease' is disgusting.
Who likes to call what disease?

These people are so mind numbed from accepting such falsehood, they can't tell many fat activists, for want of a better term, are objecting. There's seems little clamour from the public for this-except from those who demand fat people pathologize ourselves for their so called 'compassion'. There's nothing too surprising about this except the reality of such a collapse of a person's ability to reason.

Over the years I recognized fat people are taught to have the same opinions about fatness as everyone else. Therefore we are deviating from a singular thought pattern, rather than having the experience of a fat centred consciousness.

I wondered about the assumption that fat people have "fat opinions". I thought it came from the idea that we are morally weak, lacking in will to the point of being 'sick' so we are all about defending our 'sickness'.

Then I thought it was that the mal-design of 'obesity' meant no distinction between us and our so called 'disease', meant, we were deemed the voice of disease.

I finally think it's due to fat people being defined by our bodies are supposed to mean. This becomes our supposed point of view.

The latter two are more or less alike. The nuance is being the voice of disease, means you can hope to change that. If you change what that voice is saying. i.e. parrot the "I'm a sorry fatty" spiel, eyes down cast, pronounced frown, lip trembling (follow through with wobbling flesh is even more disgust invoking  moving.)

But when your body's size is the opinion, what you actually say makes little impact. As there's no need to hear what you say. Even when you tell haters directly and volubly that you really do not wish to be seen as disease, honest.

Their brain doesn't know what to do with that. Hence Michael Tanner's pitiful attempt to grind his responsibility shirking axe. None to co-incidentally, he says;
At first glance, it’s a minor story, hardly worth mentioning, 
Why would defining human beings as disease to the "Individual enterprise crew" be hardly worth mentioning? Oh right, critical faculties have already been bypassed, numbed by the appeal to baser instincts. Interesting that this so easily trumps the nominal worship of the sanctity of the individual. So much for the vaunted detestation of "identity politics" (i.e. "political correctness gone mad".)
but in reality the AMA’s move is a symptom of a disease that is seriously troubling our society: the abdication of personal responsibility and an invitation to government meddling.
Oh really sucker? Well I think you'll find you're part of the "symptom". You didn't realise that because beating people down seems emotionally in keeping with what you consider politics.


Seriously, what do people who use the term 'obesity' think it has been disseminated for? Five minutes ago, no one knew how to call anyone 'obese'. Now, no one seems able to call fat people, people. We're the "epidemic".

How is anyone who goes around blabbing 'obesity' this and that going to shirk responsibility for breaking the ground for this decision? What if people had said phooey to calling people disease? What if they'd bothered to question the difference between fat body as and person. Or whether the idea of the body as the product of a pathological countenance?

No sense of consequence, only of pleasure. Of getting someone. Well, is it worth it? All people like this think about is instant gratification of being feeling special, merely because they exist. How bad must they feel most of the time.

Repeat an old cowcake axiom: Whatever fat phobes lecture you about, is what they're about to demonstrate.

Oh and here's another one. Fat people owe you nada

The med prof had this nasty absolutely pegged. Appeal to the urge to scorn, vent, displace unprocessed experience, punish, despise, feel superior to and you've got opportunity. And all thought goes out the window.

Mind you, given they're operating from baser urges themselves, that's no leap. 

Thursday 25 July 2013

The stigma of agency

Caricatures about fatness are myths arising from certain needs that have been submerged. One is the need to be able to discuss the possibility of change via human agency
The ability to discuss this with people has low status. And those with higher status have used the evasion of that as a method of self defence. More popularly with neuroses-imbalances of the brain and/nervous system. Despite many 'pleading poverty' i.e. protestations about stigmatization of these conditions. We know class makes huge difference in the way people are seen as volitional.

Yes, there's stigmatization of say neurosis i.e. "Why can't you just be positive/stop being lazy," but not in to the same extent as fat people.

There isn't that hegemony of everyone seeing things from the same direction. Seeing what you eat and your level of activity as pertinent. Some minds can accept that there are things between pure elective 'free' will and coercion from others.

And that sometimes it's not either do or don't exercise will. It can be that you want to but can't. Because some thing or things are in the way/stopping or halting either your will, or what flows from it from functioning.

Sometimes your agency is released in a wholly indirect manner, which is how many compulsions are created in the first place, indirectly.

Being able to resist the stigma agency can acquire, is perceived as indicating the social value and worth accorded you. A marker of your position and status. Plus the extent of support and protection you receive from others.

Thereby, how 'untouchable' or up the social rung you are. Though the primary complaint is fat people are evading responsibility.

In truth, our seeming inability to evade being dumped on in the way we are, marks us out as not being high enough in the social pecking order to avoid being lumbered in the first place.

There's a sense of anxiousness that we do not evade this as it feels to some as if its been squeezed out of out easy reference in other aspects of human experience.

This has caused such direct voicing of it to acquire a sense of taboo.

Hence the perplexing declarations of the courage and bravery of people who insist fat people are greedy and lazy. No one ever insists anything else. Emotionally, the aim of that sentiment is elsewhere. At those who are seen as having more kudos. But done through those who are seen as having less, fat people.

Awareness surrounding more crude prejudice is seen, rightly or wrongly, as a form of social favour, hence the presumption that the surface unacceptability of racism =BP are untouchable, attitude.

The main reason agency has been squeezed out elsewhere is understandable. Look at what's happened to fat people! It leaves you open and unguarded to take endless hits. It gets so you feel at on edge, even within yourself.

It makes you guileless and disconnected from yourself and your feelings. The endless micro aggressions bog down all but the most minute of conversations. You become a stranger to the people you identify with. The subject becomes traumatic to the point of feeling like self abuse. 

And little is achieved.What has 'obesity' achieved? Who comes to this for ideas on how to progress, what innovations has it come up with? How sophisticated is the discussion surrounding it? And what has happened to our ideas about food and eating?

This is exactly what people are seeking to avoid via the suspension of agency, to avoid that happening. With people who are say, actually ill neurotic or vulnerable, this would be a direct threat to their existence. With people who are as sane as anyone, it can begin to produce symptoms of neurosis. Which then become pointed to as evidence of "obese pathology."  Hence, agency is quashing is the lesser of evils.

Taking the blame has always been a lower status burden, the old music hall lyric;
It's the same the world over, it's the poor what gets the blame and the rich that get the pleasure.
As we see though, when you repress necessity, it's forced underground and comes up where the earth is constantly torn up and soft.

Fatness.

Thursday 18 July 2013

What not wanting scotty burgers looks like

* Apologies, I seem to have accidentally deleted a post. This is a re-write.

The small town of Tecoma in Australia is protesting the potential arrival of scotty burgers.

Unlike others who purport to be oh so vexed by both them and their supposed effect on upping the weight of nations.

Good luck to the residents of that small town who are taking on this giant. How unusual. But then, the residents really don't want 'em. 

Sunday 14 July 2013

Stumped

Still somewhat perplexed in the wake of this AMA ruling. What's more shocking to me than the decision itself, which just rubber stamped what many already pretend, is that it isn't wholly obvious, people simply cannot be re-defined as disease, full stop.

The things that caution one against defining people as disease are what you choose to overcome in order to state such in the first place. How people do not feel demeaned by the suggestion, irrespective of their size I really can't comprehend.  No one has the authority to force this on anyone else without consulting them or against their will.

I find this hard to argue, there's just nothing to argue about. This definition has no merit whatsoever. The notion that it should be considered on the grounds of it's purported effects, doesn't come close to being good enough.

i.e. that it will alleviate stigma, lead to research, get doctors paid is nonsense. Seriously, those things should be happening or are already happening. Doctors are already paid to treat their fat patients. What do they need any more cash for? We are told it's not their "problem." If it was their Sisyphean burden, what's their explanation for withholding of this heretounforseen 'treatment' thus far?

No inability to prescribe weight loss meds or operations has been perceived. According to that woman who works in a specialist bariatric butchery wholesalers, there's nothing comin' for big ole fatz.

Is she missing something? Pray tell us do AMA.

There's supposed to be "obesity science" already though no-one could work out the point of it. Now the docs have admitted how worthless this has been in, the last 20 or 30 years, what has that uselessness to do with how fatness is classified? What's the relationship between the two? 

One of the reason's why I have had contempt for the medical profession, when it comes to 'obesity' is they didn't bother to tell whoever is doing this 'work' to get their finger out. All their attentions instead centred on the easy targets, fat hoi polloi.

Just like any small minded cowardly bullies. Long before I ceased punishing myself, I realized that could not work. Progress was required to reverse weight. To imply our being mis-classed as is some kind of decisive factor requires greater explanation than they've bothered to provide.

Are they really suggesting their support of hate campaigning against fat people has put worthwhile people off studying fat and other people's metabolic function? Why would falsification of humanity draw any less bogus operators?

And if this decision stands and this does draw interest, sounds like anyone who's been hurt or harmed by those years of hate, has cause to consult their lawyers. 

Thursday 11 July 2013

Vanity

I must say I've not noticed any confusion between size and fit. (The writer seems to be talking about as if it means cut.) That would seem harder to do that to get it right. i.e. about something being either too big or too small to fit on your body. 
When we mix up size and fit, we expect mass-produced garments to fit our bodies perfectly, and get angry or upset when they don’t.
Nope. We get sad when we can't find clothes to wear and spend years of our lives looking at accessories. Simples.
The mainstream media only make the confusion worse.
 There's no confusion. Stuff isn't available in the breadth of sizing and style people want.
We regularly hear that skinny models promote eating disorders while plus-size models worsen an "obesity crisis". We hear a lot about the deceptive practice of "vanity sizing" and the need for standardised clothing sizes.
That's a differing mix of threads, coming from different quarters; using bodies as narrative, thin bodies=anorexia has been advanced by certain women who aspire to that size and wish to disassociate both from that desire and its negative fallout. Especially when its on their offspring. The plus size/ 'obesity' nonsense is a play on that from silly fat haters. And vanity sizing......
There’s no such thing as "vanity sizing". Instead, clothing brands arrange their sizing to minimise their costs and appeal to the majority of their customers. They make relatively few of the smallest and largest sizes in their ranges, because the medium size always sells best.
The majority of their customers are the ones they arrange their sizing around. So this is faking argument via tautology. Yet;
In turn, the brand will revise its sizing so that the most popular size is again the medium size.
That's the basis of vanity sizing. If it wasn't vanity, they'd just make more of their biggest selling size. She then goes on;
A decade ago, Rip Curl revised its women’s sizing after measuring its female customers aged 12-24. Its sales leapt by 86% the following year.
86%?!!! How so if they just make clothes for their customers? Why's she denying this phenomena? I've been told my whole life by size 10's that if they keep not being able to fit into what they see as their definitive size, they won't go a size up. Perhaps she has an different metaphysical frame unavailable to the rest of us (tee hee, I can talk!)

Though predictably demented brain scramble of fat hating makes people blame this on fat people. Like shouting at fat people for the AMA's recent decision, as we are assumed to be in agreement.

Vanity sizing is about this surprisingly tenacious sense of identity. And as the clothing industry revolves around this, there's a palpable loss of sales when the identity or "vanity" 'boycott' reaches a critical mass. Its deemed vain presumably because its seen about not accepting you're fatter, rather than how you define yourself. Even though, I've yet to know of a fat woman who's won't size up if she can get something she likes to actually wear. 

Too many of us are still have the feeling of just finding stuff that fits and appreciating that. As opposed to the joy of liking stuff and finding they have our size. I know vanity sizing exists because I monitored my size-measurements quite closely, in the past. I know I went up to size 22 by measurement. Yet when I finally had cash to buy some new threads. I was a consistent size 20.

At first I thought, maybe I'd held the tape a bit too loosely when measuring myself. It took me a bit to figure what was going on. This identity crisis is indicative of the mentality and attitude at the heart of the 'obesity epidemic'. Clinging to a sense of self, feeling "swamped" by the prospect of what's deemed foreign. The whole thrust of the crusade is for fatz is nominally, to become slim. Or preferably, angle ones life around aiming to.

I suppose you could call that a biological opportunity, rather like between races, sexes and sexualities.

Having lots of people try to be and fail does something to the perception value of slimness, to all concerned. Not trying to be slim offends for that reason. In and of itself, weight is pretty meaningless. Or at least, its differences are far more subtle and obscure than some want them to be.

Tuesday 9 July 2013

Evidence washing motive

Just happened upon someone who's put their finger somewhere near the cause of my fatigue with so called "evidenced based health policy." Though on different sides of the fence politically, he seems similarly underwhelmed;
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good piece of evidence as much as the next man or woman. And policy should be rooted in an understanding of the facts. Yet there are three good reasons why I’ve decided this phrase has lost all meaning in policy discussion.
First, evidence-based policy tells you nothing about the assumptions behind what you are trying to achieve.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/evidence-based-policy-most-meaningless-phrase-politics-today#sthash.igD6rbiU.tmkhygRd.dpuf
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good piece of evidence as much as the next man or woman. And policy should be rooted in an understanding of the facts. Yet there are three good reasons why I’ve decided this phrase has lost all meaning in policy discussion.
First, evidence-based policy tells you nothing about the assumptions behind what you are trying to achieve.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/evidence-based-policy-most-meaningless-phrase-politics-today#sthash.igD6rbiU.tmkhygRd.dpuf
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good piece of evidence as much as the next man or woman. And policy should be rooted in an understanding of the facts. Yet there are three good reasons why I’ve decided this phrase has lost all meaning in policy discussion.
First, evidence-based policy tells you nothing about the assumptions behind what you are trying to achieve.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/evidence-based-policy-most-meaningless-phrase-politics-today#sthash.igD6rbiU.tmkhygRd.dpuf
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good piece of evidence as much as the next man or woman. And policy should be rooted in an understanding of the facts. Yet there are three good reasons why I’ve decided this phrase has lost all meaning in policy discussion.
First, evidence-based policy tells you nothing about the assumptions behind what you are trying to achieve.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/evidence-based-policy-most-meaningless-phrase-politics-today#sthash.igD6rbiU.tmkhygRd.dpuf
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good piece of evidence as much as the next man or woman. And policy should be rooted in an understanding of the facts. Yet there are three good reasons why I’ve decided this phrase has lost all meaning in policy discussion.
First, evidence-based policy tells you nothing about the assumptions behind what you are trying to achieve.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/evidence-based-policy-most-meaningless-phrase-politics-today#sthash.igD6rbiU.tmkhygRd.dpuf
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good piece of evidence as much as the next man or woman. And policy should be rooted in an understanding of the facts. Yet there are three good reasons why I’ve decided this phrase has lost all meaning in policy discussion.
First, evidence-based policy tells you nothing about the assumptions behind what you are trying to achieve.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/evidence-based-policy-most-meaningless-phrase-politics-today#sthash.igD6rbiU.tmkhygRd.dpuf
...I like a good piece of evidence as much as the next man or woman. And policy should be rooted in an understanding of the facts. Yet there are three good reasons why I’ve decided this phrase has lost all meaning in policy discussion. First, evidence-based policy tells you nothing about the assumptions behind what you are trying to achieve.
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good piece of evidence as much as the next man or woman. And policy should be rooted in an understanding of the facts. Yet there are three good reasons why I’ve decided this phrase has lost all meaning in policy discussion.
First, evidence-based policy tells you nothing about the assumptions behind what you are trying to achieve.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/evidence-based-policy-most-meaningless-phrase-politics-today#sthash.igD6rbiU.tmkhygRd.dpuf
He's talking about politics, so am I in a way. Crusading against people in terms of their bodies, politicises health and medicine. Making it conform to a rigid ideology-defence of the status quo.

The assumptions, actually assertions behind so called evidenced based has quickly become more important than a rational basis of assessment. Whether it's supposedly for purportedly, the greater good, it's the case that fact is secondary, for some, to their overweening attempts at social engineering.

They use evidence to change the sense of their extent of manipulation. As if the (fading) air of objectivity cleans out their motive.

It has a side effect of inducing increasing ennui and cynicism when it comes to research findings.
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good piece of evidence as much as the next man or woman. And policy should be rooted in an understanding of the facts. Yet there are three good reasons why I’ve decided this phrase has lost all meaning in policy discussion.
First, evidence-based policy tells you nothing about the assumptions behind what you are trying to achieve.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/evidence-based-policy-most-meaningless-phrase-politics-today#sthash.igD6rbiU.tmkhygRd.dpuf

Saturday 6 July 2013

The queerness of fatness is still outside slimness

Some do need to reverse whatever underlying factors can accompany fattening (or indeed slimming).
Altering metabolic function also has the capacity to affect, relieve and shift mental and physical health in general, regardless of its effects-either way-on size.

The crusade's injustice isn't just pathologizing of humanness, it's the denial of potential routes of healing, preferably out of the hands of the professionals. 

That's hardly like sexual orientation. 

For "obesity related" read, human related. If weight causes health problems, then all weight causes the health problems anyone at that weight has. All weights get the same health problems, though perhaps in slightly different proportions, in the main. If fat people create this so do all humans. And that would make us all equally "guilty." Recrimination needless.

It's the shifting of all this onto fat people. The lack of this being extended to others shows this is deliberately and selectively punitive. Scapegoating of fat people for human frailty is at issue. The demands of gay people and fat people are rather different. We're under attack by the new order of medicine which is surreptitiously occupying the space being vacated, at least for some, by religion. In a way it's a hangover from the past, passing a potential foretelling of the future.

For the secular left of centre especially, but this influence is  everywhere. It's a modern concern. Fat people are slowly taking the place of gay people and others who are marginalized, demonized and/or pathologized in the collective mindset.
I am a thin woman, and my partner is fat. In the seven years I’ve loved her, I’ve been struck by a contrast: While many on the left have fought for equality for LGBTQ people, fat people are experiencing more stigmatization. This trend is puzzling, because anti-fat and anti-queer oppression are so similar.
I wouldn't say it's puzzling that gay people should feel the urge to try and download what's being perpetrated on them, onto fat people. Everyone else is trying it. Feminists offload misogyny onto fat women. Black people offload racism, onto Black fat people. Progressives and the bourgeoisie offload classism onto fat people. Working class people offload the prejudice against them, onto working class fatz and on it goes.

When something's seen to be good about being human, indeed, humanity itself, it's increasingly perceived through slim people. And when something's seen to be bad about being human, it's perceived through fat people. Sexual orientation wouldn't have any reason to stop anyone getting caught up in that.

To be fair, how many heterosexual fatz have not lost any sleep over what gay people have had go through and are still going through? Have fat hetero's been particularly prominent or disproportionate in assisting gay people?

There's a stereotype of fat bible thumping conservatives with virulent homophobia. Though this may or may not be unfair. Is fat acceptance going to call them off?
As queers, we’ve long been told there’s something wrong and disgusting about who we are; fatphobia may seem to save us from that pain by giving us a way to say that someone else is those things. But at what cost? Do we want a feminist queer movement that is lean, mean, and free of fat folks? Or do we want a movement for everyone?
Well if humanity is located primarily in slim people then a spoiled identity might become a tad irrelevant, possibly even harmful. It would seem harder for fat people to visually put across humanity when they represent that being undermined. Certain types of advocacy deal in total process, including image.

I don't say anyone's (obviously) throwing fat people out. Just um, know your place. The one assigned to you by the crusade. Fatness may well be undermining the value of fat people's advocacy in this way.

I'm also wondering how much of a vehicle queerness is for recovering a sense of fat people's autonomy. Fatness is too often overrun and submerged by slim people's confident assertion of the value of and sense of themselves. They tend to get very defensive about this, when fat people are perceived to be trying to re-gain ours. I find wherever slim people dominate, fat people's delicate attempts to restore or even acquire the same tends to falter and become distorted to mean different things. 

It's a shame because it would be great if there was some corner for an outside perspective. I don't wish to be discouraging. I welcome Anna Mollow's voice.

But a hostile erasing dominance and policing by slimz is not an atmosphere's conducive to fat people's restoration and re-centering of their sense of autonomy.

I should point out though to those who responded  to the article, a polite no to the proposition would have sufficed. And yes, I'm aware that a lot of the haters responding to the piece weren't gay people.

Regardless of sexuality though, slimz need to grasp that disregarding personal testimony as intrinsically valuable, invalidates their own. Don't expect to keep telling other people, they don't know their own lives and take for granted that you'll be taken to know your own. Your credibility is the same as fat people's and vice versa.

And seriously, you can get away with this divide for a time, but why would anyone presume that precedent will catch (back) up with you? No? That's not anything to do with the absolute overwhelming credibility of your personal testimony is it? You really feel the realness of that, in your heart, in your marrow, in your very soul, don't you?

Take a seat..............

Thursday 4 July 2013

Reblog: Food cannot be an Addiction

You cannot be "addicted" to what is necessary to your survival.

What addiction really is

Your body makes certain chemicals to-amongst other things- help animate you physically and mentally; an example of these is endogenous opiates.

If you take in a version of these artificially, i.e. use drugs from the opiate family; cocaine, crack, heroin. Your body reduces its internal production of these chemicals-in order to prevent your body overdosing. After your system has used up these drugs, your body restores its own production back to normal or near normal levels. The gap between this happening is what users refer to as "coming down". That down period indicates some of why the body makes these chemicals.

Addiction happens when your body doesn't or cannot quite restore its level of production back to normal. It is then under-functioning. This makes people dependent on the artificial supply to support their flagging system. It's the point when users say, they take drugs not to get high, but just tofeel normal." This can happen because the mechanism is sensitive (to being depressed) or inflexible in some people. Or it can be worn out through repeated intake of drugs.

Things required for a substance to be addictive

An intoxicant.

That means a substance that has the capacity to literally, poison and/or end your body's ability to continue functioning. It is the body's attempt to avoid destruction or death that is the basis of addiction. You cannot be addicted to anything that cannot poison or overwhelming your body's ability to function.

The substance makes you "high."

This refers to extreme mood elevation (not mere relief of urge or pleasant feelings). Changes in perception can occur; i.e. seeing things that aren't there, not seeing things that are there (hallucination) and so on.

Addictive substances, disassemble your functioning, i.e. you become physically and mentally uncoordinated.
Getting high is a by product of the intoxication process. It's literally the early stages of poisoning that's messing you up. This is an objective state. It can be observed by others. It does not need to be "discovered" through brain scans or misinterpretation of the workings of the nervous system.

As has been clearly demonstrated by the AMA's recent decision. Many people no longer use words for their meaning, but for their associations.

Addiction, in the minds of the ignorant- often those who stigmatize drug addicts-is associated with being out of control, not being able to stop some habit or other. So whenever they have a troublesome issue they think, "addiction". When in reality, genuine addiction is an issue of function.

The self dramatizing attempt to appropriate misunderstanding of drug addicts experience must stop. Addicts have already been put through enough; sacrificed by society, marginalized, hounded, demonized and pathologized. Their habit put into the hands of criminals in order to mash them up, acting as discouragement for others.

Anyone who wishes to describe their issues with food is welcome to do so accurately and put the effort in to understand and explain to others what they're going through. They also need to stop ignoring the fact that everyone eats.

We all get hungry, have appetites and eat. They do not own food, nor have the right to distort or pathologize it to gain what they feel is sufficient recognition for their pains. If they cannot do that by describing their experience as is. Then they have to question whether their feelings match that reality.

Their reprehensible linking of a natural self nurturing act to pathology, forgets this will condemn children for the first time to grow up perceiving self maintenance as an act of dependence. Rather like thinking of sex as a shameful act. The culture of anorexia as 'cure' for fatness is already lowering the onset of anorexia almost to toddlerhood, are we going to bookend this debacle with another disaster at the other end? We owe them more than that.

An excess of appetite and /or hunger is usually more along the lines of an obsessive compulsive disorder;
Don't get pleasure when performing the behaviors or rituals, but get brief relief from the anxiety the thoughts cause
Eating relieves the extreme build up of pressure coming from your (overwrought) hunger and appetite mechanisms. This is not getting high. Though experiences and interpretations may differ, I doubt getting high or drunk on cake would have gone unnoticed.

Obsessive compulsions and neuroses of any kind demand re-balancing of your overall nervous system not abstinence (which doesn't actually cure the cause of addiction. It deals with the symptom-drug use).

With obsessive compulsion- an essentially benign instinct has gotten to a way higher setting. You don't need to rid yourself of it totally, but to get it back into balance. If you have this problem you need to look at balancing your system as a whole. [I'm not recommending that particular book it is just an example of the overall approach. Seek out a version that speaks to you.]

Calm yourself and your system down as a whole. Some have found meditation helps to start that process. Stick with it as it can take a while. Stop any habits of self hatred or putting yourself down. A lot of people with this problem have a habit of taking disappointment in on themselves in order not to show aggression. This can act as a depressant on your system which then seeks additional energy to keep you from sinking into mental illness. It requires you to change the way you see yourself. To learn to trust yourself and your emotions.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

Stigma is not the Responsibility of the Stigmatized

Those who are demonized, debased or otherwise undermined by others, are not responsible for being in the sights of others. It's just not their responsibility. It is up to those who are participating in this  wrong doing to act in accord with their conscience. It is not for their targets to twist and turn to redefine themselves in order that others, including medical professionals may perhaps, condescend to behave properly and remember their manners.

Despite expecting little sense from the mental dessication that is fat hating, never did I expect to see any Black Person claiming dehumanization is a key to humanizing oneself. How's that worked out for Black People?

Alcoholism, that is not a person. Smoking, not a person, drug addiction, not people. 'Obesity' refers to a person. Not a habit, addiction nor thing. Body size, body weight, body mass, the whole of a person qualifies them as disease. And contrary to popular feeling, we are our bodies. 

That basic error, defining people disease, through their bodies, is not our fault either. Even the use of words for their effects should end there. Nor is it up to us to roll over for the sake of professional convenience. The vagaries of the US insurance industry does not constitute medical authority. Words mean things and they should be used to define things that match that definition. Not because use of them may generate such and such purported effect. That's a quick route to Babel.

Public health activists the medical profession scientists and researchers decided to invoke stigma to suppress weight. If they wish to make the greatest strides in ending they are free to explain clearly just how (un)likely permanent weight reduction via calorie restriction really is. They're free to state they made a mistake in blaming fat people for human design. We fat people, many of us as children did. We admitted freely that we/our bodies were wrong.

We had the calm quiet sense of honour to do that. Is everyone beginning to grasp what that meant now?

Then they can acknowledge the millions of fat people virtually everyone of us, who've spent lifetimes saying how high, when they said; "Jump!"

Whilst they're at it, they can also apologize unreservedly for using their influence to turn everyone around us into a bunch of nerve wearying nags. That they aren't doing any of this is indication enough that they have no interest in removing the stigma they're in large part responsible for.

And as for spurring research? What's "obesity research" been about up till now? For the link shy, that's two lists, one of 46443 and 85203 search results for "obesity research" respectively. Not sure of any duplications. What's this that been about? If this has all been so much pretty useless, how's the announcement going to alter its course? Getting paid more for the same old rope.............and you "hope" this will mean research into the body's underlying processes rather than how "deadly" fatness is do you? Just how will this be ensured?

Does anyone hear the distant sound of uproarious laughter? Plus kerrrching?

I should also point out that the AMA, despite trying to keep it apolitical with a small 'c' has made a scathing comment on their own country. No society that defines a third of its citizen's as disease is anything less than a degenerate, disease producing entity itself.