Saturday 28 September 2013

Never Run, not Running

There's a fat hating riposte to, "Fat runs in his/her family". It goes along the lines of. "The trouble is, nobody in his/her family runs!!!" Tee hee, hee, pfft.

Ever noticed with the "fight or flight" response- little is said about the fight part? What would that look like? If flight's job is to run off, and presumably get help, it makes sense that fight's job would be to look imposing. From a distance.... look, immovable, difficult to get past, to put off any potentially liberty takers. You're following my drift.

It's not about pugilistic ability per se, more the psychological impact, weaken the mindset of the opposition. 

Whilst the runners go off and get re-enforcements. The 'fighters' have to put the enemy off, absorb some blows, keep guard, above all, they must survive.

And not run.........away.

So, perhaps the eternally bad jokers have a notion after all. Because I say this to you, fat people have not run away. From culpability, blame or responsibility.

Ever.

Seeing weight as within one's personal ability to change is the hook for everyone. Whether thin anorexics or fat people. Though I never thought about it 'til relatively recently, that was the initial attraction for me. That I as a mere kid had the power to impose my will on events, to demonstrate I was capable of using agency to achieve. Instead of standing around uselessly, having to get instruction from adults, or so it felt at the time. 

That's at the heart of why many fatz and others continue to assert-my fault, that's the lever of control. If it isn't, what's to be done?

Fat people have always stepped up. Been out in the open with no shield or even a means to explain ourselves in ways that would fend off bullies. No fat person has ever personally told me, "It's my glands". We've spoken together about our trials, our fails. Our, what am I like with my falling off my diet or whatever. But never, it's a disease. It's an addiction.

And frankly, I've yet to here anyone ask for it. That was assumed because that's the kind of protection others demand. What people want is the "secret" to making what we were told work. The angle, the missing piece.......

Not a dodge. Not a gazebo made of dung to lounge in.

That's what those more favour by the establishment go in for. As an assertion of their ability to talk the most abject bollocks in plain sight and be supported by their puppet masters.

Well let 'em. Because all its brought them is jumping on fat people's backs, trying to drag us down. That's all their glory has brought them.

When any of us challenge the notion of fault in any way. We speak from the position of wholeheartedly asserting that it was our fault, over decades. We're way past having the right to say that without suspicion being cast by others from their citadels of the very thing they criticize in us.

We shown we aren't challenging that out of vanity or hubris, but out of the knowledge of our experience. If we can't meaningfully say this, I don't know who can really.

If it was "our fault" we'd be slim. Few tried harder than us with so very little.

As it is, I wouldn't really care if it was my fault. That's important to haters and they can rave on with their non arguments.

But I have to honour fat people because this is our lives and they, we matter.

We have always said; "Mea Culpa" "Mea Maxima Culpa". No one else. Not mater, pater, no one but us. We even felt guilty at the mere possibility of involving anyone else in our dieting ablutions and served our time in reluctant isolation, often in the midst of company.

That a reputation for the opposite has been imposed on us, is just another example of the way we've been used to project the deficiencies of other people's contrasting approach to their own issues.

Let's wait to see how long it takes for that penny to drop.


Friday 27 September 2013

BMI is you

I've never managed to work up any frenzy about body mass index. Yet it is one of the more prominent targets for reversing the standard operational fat hating diatribe.

For me, the issue has always been in the underlying proposition. That fatness or other weight category is something you can objectively measure, on paper, using numbers. When it is very much a judgement of the eye. In other words, most people see someone and in the main can see they're thin, slim, plump, fat.

I've never seen how that can be adequately replicated, to an objective standard. This means it isn't really a vehicle for science, which has to operate on that principle in order to be science.

Then there's the accompanying supposition, that weight can be usefully framed as illness. Nope. Risk, associated or real is a display of the functions underlying weight i.e. metabolism. This forms many arcs which are not meaningfully contained in size groupings.

i.e. Body shape, hour glass, pear shaped, V shape is not weight. Function,the last one seems to function differently to the prior one, regardless of the size of the person. How does it make sense to put a 300 pound pear shape with a 300 pound apple shape, if you wish to know what's going on with either?

Furthermore, that weight can be framed as illness in a gradated step by step, pound by pound progression.

Definitely not-obviously.

You could look at a slim, not even thin person. They could be dying of anorexia or some other condition. Have a congenital organ defect which may or may not reduce their lifespan, despite affecting their general health-or not. Most likely they'd be pretty healthy and robust. The dying anorexic could weigh more than the common or garden healthy slim.

Weight doesn't make much sense without context. And the point about disease is it does or should. Malaria in itself, does not tell you about the sex, age, class, race, sexuality of a infected person. It is its own story.

That aside, there's something glaringly obvious that's doesn't seem to be mentioned much if at all. Body mass index measures the whole of a person. That in itself should disqualify it from having any business defining disease of any kind.

This is something that should be taken for granted without any need for a moment's thought. That though we may be unfortunate to have disease, we are not and cannot ever be disease. If you do not understand that.

I can confidently state, you are stupid. And that includes the AMA. Dumb as mud, which is fine-if they don't have the power to press their contempt for their own intelligence on the rest of us.

God botherers may have a bit of an excuse for falling for this crap-though I wonder how defining yourself as in-your creator's-image sits with that image as disease. Sounds a tad blasphemous to me but whatev's. The idea that the physical being is not you is rooted in their faith(s). But if you have no religion, you have no business pretending, you-are-not-your-body is a biological fact.

Having made that error you should at least be able to recognize and quickly correct it after having been told. But no, "atheists" still don't get body mass index=human being. Its a person, it therefore cannot describe disease, full stop.

The end. 

Thursday 26 September 2013

Bandwidth

One way you can tell conscious will is not the place to locate the running of a function as vital as eating (the taking in of energy), is something that's being referred to as bandwidth;
[a] team of researchers.....wanted to test a hypothesis: "The state of worrying where your next meal is going to come from – you have uncertain income or you have more expenses than you can manage and you have to juggle all these things and constantly being pre-occupied about putting out these fires – takes up so much of your mental bandwidth, that you have less in terms of cognitive capacity to deal with things which may not be as urgent as your immediate emergency, but which are, nevertheless, important for your benefit in the medium or longer term.
[My emphasis] The interpretation, what it emphasizes is noteworthy. The research describes the design and therefore limits of the conscious mind. It gives an insight into why calorie restriction is so ill conceived, it demands being excessively pre-occupied with putting out fires, generated by its own attempt to locate an automatic cycle from a non automatic space.

Whilst the original action is still going on of course. So it clashes and we all know which one usually. 

Doing something with your conscious mind when it does not originate there drains bandwidth that is, your conscious function.

You only have so much conscious energy, it's a primary reason why automatic functions are not located there. They need a greater capacity than is on offer. Using it for stuff it wasn't designed for in this way quickly causes strain that produces, distress, pathology and at some that's likely to undermine balance. Destroying a person's overall ability to function-that is how diets unravel, they drain bandwidth like all get out and there's nothing to continue them. When the battery on your phone dies, there is pause. The false imposition of diet is false automatism, starve, starve, starve, starve, starve. And again, and again, and again. It has to be because it is artificial.

A break in instruction is the end of that attempt.

But we know all this don't we? Restriction is still promoted to this day for this particular effect, which is a way of keeping the wrong sort of aspirants in their place. Draining bandwidth means taking the edge of thinking about how to improve your situation.

What this research is really noting is this effect. That of stress on overall mental performance;
we examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. We found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before harvest, when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich.
Poverty is just the form they're observing it in. Though they disagree;
Nor can it be explained with stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does not account for diminished cognitive performance. Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest that this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks.
So not only multiple stresses, multiple levels and extents. Either one of those is bad. The latter a chain reaction that is not easily brought to heel-this is often what bourgies call "disease". The "poverty related" thing is probably the ultimate basis, as it is the stress of survival. The rich farmer's survival stress comes with how to dispense their largesse, because his survival is in terms of his class/income position. And that's depends on how resources are used, rather whether you'll have any or not.

I said years ago that I suspect the cause of much neurosis, especially depression boils down to too much conscious input displacing our mind's automatic self management. By dint of our mind's design this is imbalance. Some of this comes from the drift towards assuming logic, reason and intellect are the only required or worthwhile forms of thought.

Whilst I'm second to few in my admiration of how beautiful logic can be, that's just plain wrong. As wrong as insisting your weight is rooted in your conscious mind via control of eating. That is the same mistake twice. Your weight is mix of outcomes and your need to eat is as much an elective choice as your need to sleep. It can be influenced but is not mere habit or decision.

Thinking of human beings in terms of machines rather than what we are, animals makes it harder for us to learn how to manage ourselves. We run on dynamics. By that I mean self sustaining cycles of momentum, rather than computer binary, or push button mechanics.

Something else that struck me about this is interpretation;
Mani said previous research has found that poor people use less preventive health care, do not stick to drug regimens, are tardier and less likely to keep appointments, are less productive workers, less attentive parents, and worse managers of their finances. "The question we therefore wanted to address is, is that a cause of poverty or a consequence of poverty?"
Now even though this comes across as essentially humane and sympathetic, it is still derailed by class vanity. Again, this is about the impact of survival stress, that means that when you observe this in other classes, you'll get the same 'incompetence' and inadequacy. Most of what is being described is how class is a regulated microcosm. Those who are middle class live in a more regulated environment, we all know this.

So whilst the point is valid that survival stress exhausts intellectually, mentally, physically and psychologically, being trained to do as you're told in an environment shaped around benign intent towards you is not a basis of comparison when the environment is either indifferent or outright hostile in intent. Take a look at fat people doing as their told and paying with their health and lives.

This gives us a clue as to how stigma is introduced into proceedings. Those who have their hands on the levers of research, who interpret and therefore define human experience for all of us, cannot be held to be any more impartial than anyone else.

Tuesday 24 September 2013

Adjective does not necessarily = noun

Disabling, does not =disability. The adjective does not automatically become a noun.
For example, being poor could be seen as disabling, that's not enough to make it a disability. If you are going to use the economic system to decide this, don't complain about encroachment. Mental illness can become hugely disabling, to the point of almost being like the loss of a person.

But not all mental difficulty, neurosis, depression, anxiety, OCD is equally acute. A lot of it is situational. Dependent on adapting to your particular set of circumstances. Sometimes at particular periods of your life.

A dilemma, problem, conundrum or undesired effect, unsolved does not = a disease. Lack of solution, resolution does not mean an effect is a disease either.

So alcoholism and addiction are not diseases merely because no one has the means of predictably reversing them. Even when people's systems implode and they are held firmly in its grip, what your seeing is process, yes, it is like an illness, the person is likely to get very unwell. Again, calling that disease is an affectation. 

Ditto imperfection, perceived or real. 

Nor is drug dependence from your doctor any different or better morally speaking than addiction/dependence from an illegal source. The only differences are you don't break the law or get high on prescription (or aren't supposed to). Doesn't mean you are not an addict.

Nor is all shame about addiction 'ableism'. As with a lot of feelings of shame, it's root is in our sense of autonomy.

Saying, I have x neurosis i.e. anxiety and I take meds for it makes you a drug dependent, because no one should need medication to do things like calm down unless they've been through some seriously frightening conditions.

That doesn't make anyone a bad person, but it does mean they should be aware that this may play with their pride.

There's nothing wrong with deciding screw it, I can't deal with this right now, I'll take the pills, even if that =20 years. Because sometimes life is like that. The problem is when our vanity makes us invent, demand or go along with bullshit story-boarding of a poor me variety to try and cover up or turn off those feelings.

Everyone  bar none is showing their disgust for that particular habit, yes that includes those going in for it most noisily. What everyone's shouting at fat people reveals this starkly. The constant whining to fat people about "excuses" for instance is typical of letting this cat out of the bag. Insisting on these cover stories is the yielding to feelings of shame, not progressive categorisation and yielding to shame makes it your master. Increasing it deep down, whilst on the surface seeming to do the opposite.

iow, people's vanity is satisfied by claiming illness/disability/disease or whatever, but underneath that, they have shown they're ashamed to be dealing with it this way. That shame gets worse even through the relief of a little protection from the glare of scrutiny.

More importantly, it's not working. If it was people would not continually seek to re-connect with the feeling that this is a shameful falsehood, through fat people. That is their brain telling them they cannot outwit themselves this way.

It's not about any bootstrap bullshit, it's more that the urge to coin these things in these ways, is unexpectedly suppressive. That's why its coming up like this.

Instead of processing it and coming to terms with it not being the ideal solution, you've just suppressed that feeling and insisted nothing to see.

That would have been fine if folks could keep sch-tum. But as we see, they cannot.

Thursday 12 September 2013

Cutting up rough

Of the absurdities we've been expected to swallow from the 'obesity' canard, hopefully none exceeds the notion that damaging the function of healthy organs increase health. And as well as the also unconvincing, it lowers health costs.

So it was only a matter of time before this intelligence insulting obscenity was found out for what it was, once someone bothered to check. Which is none too often when it comes to what is a whirl of assertion.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Matching the abject hysteria surrounding fatness and matching that with the glorification of anorexia or proana to give it its informal name, is not any such like.

I don't have access to the original, but the report is quite detailed and seems quite balanced. The study by Jeanne M. Clark, MD, MPH, followed people who'd had bariatric surgery-as an aside, isn't it interesting that they don't link this practice to the 'obesity' they've branded human beings with?

These patients were followed for 6 years to assess the great claims made for it, increased health;
“Coupled with findings that bariatric surgery confers little to no long-term survival benefit, these observations show that bariatric surgery does not provide an overall societal benefit,”Livingston wrote. “In this era of tight finances and inevitable rationing of health care resources, bariatric surgery should be viewed as an expensive resource that can help some patients.” 
And healthcare savings;
People who undergo weight-loss surgery don’t reduce their costs as they take off pounds, as hospital stays for complications from the procedure exceed savings from obesity-related illnesses, a study found. 
Colour you surprised right?

Apparently, they need to re orientate their marketing to the benefits to the individual. That could be a hard sell given we're currently portrayed, by the same industry and it cohorts as money sucking parasites.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

Turning the Clock Back

Michelle Obama says her Let's Move campaign has "changed the conversation" on how Americans eat and live;
In remarks to teachers, parents and others, Mrs. Obama cited documented declines in childhood obesity rates in New York City, Philadelphia, California and Mississippi. She highlighted changes to kids' menus by national restaurant chains and new labels at Wal-Mart stores that promote foods with less sugar, salt and fat.
I'd let children decide whether they like egg yolks or not but whatever. Children's bodies serve to measure the progress of this initiative. I wonder what they'd use if it was the campaign to educate and feed children properly.

Better still;
Cities are building grocery stores in underserved neighborhoods and refurbishing playgrounds and bike paths for kids, Mrs. Obama said, and schools are planting vegetable gardens, installing salad bars and replacing food fryers with steamers.
I sincerely hope this happens. The neglect of children's needs, especially those born in LSEG's has been a scandal. One that made my heart ache over the course of seeing it happen in the UK.

The obvious change is from the individualization of the 'obesity' cult, to one that stops pretending, on some level, that eating is just a hobby done on a purely individualized basis. Appros of nothing to do with the environment.

Despite the fact that human beings have always drawn sustenance from their surrounds.

The crusade that was specifically fashioned to get the conclusion of its own logic out of the way of big business interests and the wishes of the general public.  Allowing industrial food to gain a hold over the eating environment. Whilst appearing to be totally against that.

Reversing this to something more in keeping with what was taken for granted before. Feed children properly and train them physically. Don't shape the environment solely around cars. I'm glad children will have a chance to grow vegetables. It's one of the best way to interested in eating them, which the ugly substitute of good food/bad food has failed to do. You are worthless if you don't eat veg has not been a success.

If I was actually a cynical person, I'd swear this whole thing was to save the bourgeoisie from the on coming onslaught. And it's only when they could no longer do that, plus fat people's own rejection of their use in the 'obesity' narrative that has led to a more reasoned stance.

There is nothing mentioned that is anything a lot of folks took for granted at the start of the crusade. Societies like the US and UK decided to pretend these things didn't matter. When it comes to those who run things though, we can see how they really felt from how they treated their own kids.

I hope they also remember things like learning about things like cooking and food/general budgeting. The kinds of skills that make a real difference to people's lives and health. The absence of those has not felt like co-incidence. They increase self confidence too.

The next part of the "conversation" that urgently needs to change is not predicating these reversals on children's bodies which plays into the narrative this clearly goes against. Then some real lessons might be in danger of being learnt. Don't shortchange poorer children its a penny-wise, pound foolish strategy, as well as cruel. 

Nothing to my mind will ever justify using bodies for this. And those who find that annoying should consider defining themselves and their children as disease. In fact, they can insist MO gets the medical profession to declare it.

Monday 9 September 2013

Sociopathic Creep

There was a quote on the blurb of Forrest Gump by flagrant neocon PJ O'Rourke;
Winston Groom has created the ideal citizen for the modern world- a perfect idiot
Not quite what I took from the book. It read to me more like poking fun at those of us who have supposed intellectual superiority, yet achieve little compared to the Candide like FG, because he's too "stupid" to know what he's not supposed to be able to do. It's just occurred that hits a note of poignancy, in reverse for fatz, put off doing certain things outside the remit of the construct we've lived.

But I digress.

I never agreed with O'Rourke because I did not feel that was today's ideal citizen, though I can't remember what if any I thought was at the time.

Yet years before this, I'd contemplated the on coming attractions of the sociopath. Having already spent so much time in the death by a thousand cuts that is social interaction whilst fat, I felt like I cared way too much and wished I couldn't care less. I'm taking for granted that you know this refers to a mental type, rather than KILLERZZZZ.

They keep telling us this but I worked that out when then, that it didn't make sense that they were by necessity, criminals and brigands. I'd observed at least a couple of suspects a child. I'm sure we all have. A boy who couldn't get why his sister cried out in pain when he applied pressure.

I could see it not computing. That it seemed as if her distress seemed kind of fake or unmoving. I remember being intrigued by that, it hadn't occurred to me that anyone could doubt another's genuine distress. It was like something was blocking that information from being absorbed. Like water that sits atop a sheet of rubber.

This has always drawn the popular imagination as a model of the anti hero. Culminating in a characters like Dexter and Hannibal. The dream of being liberated from untidy and draining emotions is very real. There's even our perhaps increasing identification with not fitting in and awareness of difference.

There's has been a distinct sense that this interest has intensified. To the point of using them for tips on how to live, though that's somewhat satiric I'm sure.

What's even more intriguing is how much is the sociopath a discrete type? Or is it more of a scale? How much sociopathy, if any, is there in us all? John Eden a psychology professor;
“saying someone is a psychopath or not is drawing a bit of an arbitrary line in the sand,”
Suggesting that all people likely possess a certain amount of sociopathic potential, some just more pronounced than others or balanced by other contrary traits.

I mean, I'm pretty sure you could trace all personality or mental types, mental disorders (yes I know they're not the same) to aspects of the human character and mental functioning, in extremis. We can see for example that all ED's probably make up the full variations of different aspects of eating, gone awry.

And there's no question the crusade has unleashed many people's inner sociopath;
Sociopathy is a personality disorder that manifests itself in such traits as dishonesty, charm, manipulation, narcissism, and a lack of both remorse and impulse control.

Sound familiar? No? Okay, what about;
[a]......favorite preferred sociopathic pastime is “ruining people.”

 Haven't you felt that?
...time she has spent going out of her way to toy with other people’s emotions.“I know my heart is blacker and colder than most people’s; maybe that’s why it’s tempting to break theirs,” she writes. [ME Thomas]
Yep, ME as in MeMe. We all know how much some people hate fat people's lack of unhappiness, considering especially the pressure we've been put under. There is not even hidden sense of people gunning not just for our unhappiness, but outright depression, sickness and suffering. This is in open view and is repellent.

I have felt a sense of being dragged down to the level of those doing the tugging, though they'd never admit that.
women are especially subject to misdiagnosis because of the lack of research on the disorder outside the prison system.
I reckon studying the way people cannot identify properly with how fat people feel could be a useful pointer.

First of all, find a reason where it is 'necessary' to disassociate yourself from what someone is or is associated with. i.e. Fat/fatness. On fear that you will enter this, to you, undesired state.

Then define them solely from the outside in, making sure they share this perception just as much. Having defined them as disease, silence them, by claiming everything they say is disease talking so must be dismissed as worthless.

Frame them solely as a costly drain and not contributing anything to the economy. See them as bad. Erase when they got it right and you got it wrong. Make sure any authentic self representation sounds fake by deciding exactly what that is, in your own head.

So their representation of reality sounds false.

This way, you can't relate to them, distance/disassociation. Cease to be able to grasp they have feelings and thoughts of their own, outside those you assign. Set yourself as the human standard which they must be seen by themselves and others as failing to meet.

I think we can see the romanticizing of sociopathy is BS right?

It'll pass.

Al fresco

Henry Porter says he's surprised by what he deems a lack of interest in defending privacy and wonders if it is he who's out of step with most other people. I think he probably is. I get his sense of privacy, but circumstances (seem to) have changed from the days when solitude was the model.

There's a bathing scene in the TV adaptation of Shogun. The main character Blackthorne-who's an English sailor shipwrecked in 17th century Japan-finds his lovely interpreter, Lady Mariko naked and bathing in her pool. He's stunned when she invites him to join her. She explains the crowded nature of Japan means they developed different forms of privacy.

Those who come from rural areas can find city folk unfriendly, its similar. All in regulating your gaze. When people post their pictures on-line, they at times object to those putting their images to uses they don't approve of. The criticism of that has been they've undermined their own privacy by publishing them in public spaces. The criticism has some validity, however, the objection also shows the shifting nature of privacy in cyberspace.

Those who administer and run things are always monitoring what the public will accept and how. 'Obesity' has already displayed that people don't object the idea of whole bodies and lives being submerged in what purports to be science. As long as that is in people they're distanced from through defining them as disease. That has been a surprise to many in authority. You can see how slow they have been to try and exploit such a comparatively open goal.

That defining people as a disease process and their lives as that unfolding, hasn't raised instinctive objections shows that people's sense of privacy as either having shifted, or being revealed as not important as it might have seemed, this time under the influence of what is and what purports to be science.

At least with your e-mails and such, the authorities are snooping on what you actually write of your own volition. Your internet footprint at least has the possibility of revealing something real about you. It is something you have some control over shaping.

The 'obesity' construct on the other hand hollows out real human existence and imposes on it a script it expects people to act out. Both 'obese' and the peer pressure chorus. I've said for a long time that you can see the desire through it. To be able to look at anyone person and see their own life.

Whether its the notion that our thoughts will soon be easy to read, our notions of privacy may soon be redundant in any case, that's the aim. The desire of those who run things to know us inside out has been evident forever.

People have willingly sold information on what they buy, for the prospect of "reward points", something akin to a coupon system.

Porter doesn't seem to have been cognisant of this, let alone its implications, just like everyone else.We notice things in our orbit that have meaning to us. The most obviously bad idea can hide in plain sight as long as it finds the right route, or targets.

Who knows, given human kind advanced from smaller tribes and villages where everyone knows everyone and most of the business, perhaps the real aberration was of privacy as based on a model of individuality and solitude. 

Saturday 7 September 2013

Fatness is the Last Stand of Free Will

Some are fond of stating fatness is the last acceptable prejudice, clueless and erroneous, but really, it misses something. Fatness for many feels like the last holdout of human free will. And if it goes [breathe deeply] it feels to them like we might forget what it means to be properly human. Perhaps we'll descend into anarchy.

Fat anarchy.

In everyone's mind to varying degrees, despite having trained ourselves to think otherwise, we've had to accept a lot of things we were told previously were our choice pure and simple. We've been told you cannot control; your thoughts, mood, who you love, find attractive, sexuality, drug and drink intake, pleasure intake, sexual appetite, shopping, dieting habits etc., etc.,

In a cultural mindset dependent on pure unadulterated free will-that speciously singular channel for human agency -that feels like an attack from all sides, on that very notion. Irony is, its very inadequacy in explaining the whole of human will is why we have rivalled Usain Bolt in running away from it.

That very singularity and the lack of clearly understood additions to it means getting away from it is like escaping a cherished monolith. Which makes us feel dishonest cowards who cannot face harsh reality. It is seen as the essence of what makes us human. That we can think and decide to act. Then act, purely of our own volition.

Rather than adding useful constructs that enlarge and fill out the picture of why and how we act. And therefore, how we regulate our actions and behaviour, for good or ill. Our defensive flight has left these incompatibly opposite feelings in uneasy stasis.

Something's waiting to hit the fan.

It's that oddness where a tyrannical overlord is much hated and feared, yet somehow has become central to our thinking. We hate living with "We are free to do or not do anything"- When we are on the wrong side of it.

The only way that can alter it is if we claim to be forced by something or someone greater than ourselves. But we still hold to it as the standard. Feeling guilty, shabby, slightly less human even, for evading its destructive glare.

Yet evade it we do and if we're lucky, a group of people will be left, who've been thrown out of their own humanness leaving a hollow shell that can be turned into a construct. This draws like a vacuum all our need to express our fidelity to pure-free-will.

To human agency absolute.

The one thing everyone bar none could guarantee, could count on, is that fat people choose to be fat. They use their elective free will to become fat, apropos of nothing. No "excuses" i.e. explanations of what's going on. It's just, through decisions to eat.

Doesn't matter that of all the things we've accepted as beyond our direct control, this makes the least sense by far. We simply do not design ourselves to be hungry. But we do have direct control over the thoughts in our head. Even in the case of some neuroses.

The point is, the ability to get away with this has been given from on high.

And if we somehow now have to accept that weight is not a conscious direct choice, in the main, then where can we express our disconnected yet oh so important tribute, to this so important you have to get away from it truth?

How can we keep alive and vital our sense that we are in total control and in it our hope of change, of progress? Our, we can any time we want, do anything we want, as long as we put our minds to it?

Howwwww?

* edited.

Fecal Transfer

An experiment on 8 people and some mice repeated the way fecal transfer reveals something about the mechanics of body weight-and possibly our underlying bio-chemistry.
Material is taken from a donor, mixed with water, filtered and passed down a tube into the stomach....as a way of restoring the balance of bacteria in the gut. It is thought to be successful in about 90% of cases.
Basically, four sets of twins-one fat, one slim-had their faeces put through the process. Matter from each was put into mice bred without gut bacteria of their own. The fat woman's microbes were put into slim mice and the slim woman's into fat ones. 

The fat mice lost weight and the slim ones gained it.

The usual-this could be a treatment for 'obesity'-talk ensues. That's cool, it's not to be sniffed at. It goes about weight change the right way, led by the body. It's the same process for loss as for gain is another pertinent trait. There's potential to be explored. One thinks also of implication for things like bowel cancer, said to be higher amongst fatter people.

This may be a way to deal with all cancers of the digestive system, whatever the weight of the person concerned.

The coda is as ever the holistic nature of weight. It's whole bodied and what has stopped weight from staying up or down-as required, is that any spanner in the works i.e. weight loss dieting/surgery, pills etc., has fallen at the same hurdle-homeostasis.

The body's designed to keep the circle of self regulation going along its own lines. Interrupt that and its just becomes something for it to throw off or overcome, sooner or later. If introducing differing strains of bacteria doesn't hitch a ride on that, then it will be susceptible to reverse.

In a way, the key is not so much to hijack metabolism, as to work with it and let it to get to the required destination. Another reason why this tedious pretense of disease is such an unnecessary obstacle to a clearer view. As I have always said, there's no doubt that weight can be changed and this gives some insight into that fact.

It also works, in theory, for the much forgotten, those who suffer and die because their weight will not allow them to hold on to life. Altering the gut bacteria could help them fight conditions that destroy appetite, like cancer.

The key in weight terms is whether this will be enough to bring fundamental long term change.

As usual, this is old news coming around again, so they need to get the hell on with it. It's important to say this, because we need to always keep in mind that this 30 + year campaign of fat hate has just been a way of keeping this sort of potential avenue at bay. To do nothing, whilst appearing not to. If this gives you the impression of waking up from a nightmare and starting more or less where you were before, then that's about right.

The question is why? Again, perhaps this helps to illustrate some suspicions. Do you see a role for Big Pharma in this? Or even much for the med profession? Possibly, but it's not like the usual rent back system they favour. Where they like your condition to remain whilst they sell you product to hold it at bay.

Perhaps that's a factor. 

Certainly, there's risk of it boding change. A new approach to well being, health and healing.

One that's forced to seek resolution, due to the very nature of biology. Amusingly, it's reminiscent of anti-biotics, like a precursor of them. Like the prequel coming out after the original film.

I've suspected this is part of the yearning for fat people not just to lose weight, but to lose it via the right channels i.e. calorie manipulation. The important thing about that, it its easier to parlay fatness into 'chronic disease'. Rather than just a contextual process that can signal anything; well-being, health, illness, or can just run onto being a problem with bulk.

No-one things of tallness as disease, but if a person didn't stop growing, its obvious that at some height, that becomes a problem. The issue is not being tall as such, more unchecked growth that does not stop, nor can be stopped.

It does not require someone who's 6ft to be defined as 'unhealthful' to illustrate the problems of gigantism or on the other end of the height spectrum, restricted growth. No one needs to be defined thus for these problems to be recognized. Nor to do proper scientific research. That's another agenda entirely.

Predicating research on people demeaning and dehumanizing themselves is disgusting and an intolerable abuse of power on the part of those demanding it.

The avoidance of the potential of real progress is shown by biological insights such as this. It also gives a lie to the suggestion that no useful research has been done in the past. It was obscured by the onslaught.

Because of this mess, weight has been purloined to fill in the self denuding morality play that is the post religious hangover. Hence this kind of thing, really pisses people off. Somehow, for them, it has come to be that unless fat people can be forced to be anorexic exercise bulimics....

The world will fall off its axis. 

It's even claimed that the mice only lost weight on a high fibre low fat diet and that fatty foods negate this effect. Forgive my wariness. The comments here got predictably ugly, spare yourself if you don't want to wade into the usual fat hating sewer of the entitled. It's as nasty as what's going on inside them.

It's important to know that this has nothing to do with fat people personally. We have no duty to try and counter it, putting across poor benighted fatty tropes, explaining how upsetting this all is. Appealing to pity.

This is some creepy arsed shit and way too personal to these people for that. Even if that's how you feel about being fat. We owe it to ourselves to leave them to get on with it and to stop allowing ourselves to be dragged into this mess. I'm more than guilty of that myself.

And when I say we, I don't mean fat people. I mean anyone who's had more than enough of this crap. Anyone who recognizes that no matter what they think/have been taught to think about "fat people" this is degrading and as worthless as hell.

Fat acceptance has put way too much pressure on fat people, making this derangement our responsibility. It is not, never has been, never should have been.

Friday 6 September 2013

Acknowledging Fat Health

A couple of studies have come out recently which are ceasing to pretend fatness is the same as ill health. A meta-analysis from the German Institute of Human Nutrition at the University of Tubingen and another one using data from an Irish study into, well, the report says heart disease. The study they link to says metabolic syndrome.

Fatness which meets this definition has been given a working title of "[metabolically] healthy obesity, referring of course to what us the much derided, anti-science kamakzes of FA have been saying, fatness is a size not the state of your health.

That isn't mentioned in reports, but some fatz in the public eye are quoted as having said similar. So, courage mes braves of the media, you're getting there

I'd like to see this as progress but "obesity science's" ideologically induced circularity mitigates against it. 'Tis is more of a throwback to about 15-20 years ago, before tide of elective delusion became wholly dominant, drowning out respect for acknowledging the patently obvious. So forgive my not being overly enthused.

Anyway, this subset of fat people do not have the metabolic markers which are deemed to raise risk of health crises. These factors are said to reflect inflammation which is currently thought to be at the heart of the fatty boo boo.
the [German] study found that lower levels of some inflammatory markers, including C-reactive protein (CRP), TNF-alpha, and IL-6 could still make someone metabolically healthy, even with an obese BMI — 35 percent of obese people don’t have metabolic health disorders, according to MedPageToday
Though others claim its lower, 1 in 4. One of these markers is central 'obesity' which is somewhat ill defined as it reflects a shape as well as a trait one's body can acquire. Now, there's nothing to say the mechanics of that shape aren't more riskier, in certain contexts, but it seems hardly useful to de-contextualize a shape and fuse it with an aspect of one's physique and label it problematic. It's more important to find out how that shape functions differently. And this need to be on warning mode forgets to see whether this is advantageous, that is part of filling in the overall picture. Is overall shape the same as it being a trait in another phenotype?

There's at times a conflation made of health-absence of sickness-and fitness-physical conditioning. You can be fit and have bad health and unfit and but healthy. It would also be interesting to know how much of this healthy fatness is down to the body having a good flow of energy. As promoted by HAES.

The sense that some fat people's energy is flowing well, yet they cannot sustainably, get much slimmer begs an intriguing question. It illustrates something of what I mean when I say, fatness is not a metabolic or phenotype as CI/CO has taught us to assume.

Selling this on the money saving possibilities of targeting interventions on those with actual issues, means someone's coming to terms with the obvious. You cannot carelessly turn millions people into sickness whilst complaining about cost. To be fair, that was probably on the assumption that dieting would make this irrelevant.

Ooops.

Doubts about context of these markers aside. There appears to be some potential conflation of signs of body growth/fat storage and differences in function of fatter bodies in comparison with slimmer ones. Especially if you use the latter as the default.

More investigation could lead to lead to help not only for fat people with 'risk' factors, but potentially others with them too.

Looking at inflammation;
They also had higher adiponectin levels — an anti-inflammatory hormone — and a lower white blood cell count, which is usually elevated in response to inflammation
A question occurs, what does that mean in the context of fatness? How is it judged? We know building muscles is about loading and straining them. When the muscle fibres repair, they're bulkier. That's deemed a form of inflammation

It does have an air of plausibility about it though. Targeting it could have real merit. Clearly, there are shared parallels between cardiovascular ill health amongst all weights.  Inflammation has the potential to form a conjunction with so many risk factors/health issues. Joining with various aspects of the human experience like LSES.  It says here that having a loving input, in this case from a mother can stave off some negative effect. So I'm guessing repairing ones esteem and anti stress measures may also be of help.

As usual there's the old arrow of causality to consider, e.g. asthma. I've wondered in the past about a possible link between inflammation in the lungs and the triggering of weight gain. Could be that the growth involved in fattening leaves those with a latent susceptibility at greater risk of developing it. Growth can tend to sensitize your system as a whole. And also vice versa. Incidences of asthma can seem to provoke some susceptibilities toward fattening.

Either way, finding ways to reduce inflammation could be of obvious benefit.The only caution being if that is a reflection of some kind of damage limitation.

The usual coda applies;
Schulze also said that individuals who fall into the obese category should still try to lose weight, because there could still be problems down the road.
Lol. Oh and note this part of the title of that link "...study says its possible to be overweight but not at-risk"!  Relative no absolute.

That's where slim = opposite to fat gets you.

Sunday 1 September 2013

*Tranquilliser, Amphetamine, Narcotic

I had to laugh out loud at a line of T-Shirts, featuring the brand names of some increasingly used drugs on the back. The advert is topped by the tagline, "Just what the doctor ordered".

The shirts, styled a bit like American football shirts with numbers on the back. Featured across the top one of the following; "Xanax, Adderall or Vicodin."

I got the point.

Apparently, this is sacrilege. It 'trivializes', note how that's often a harbinger of wrong-headedness, and glamourizes (equally nausea inducing), drug mis-use. According to a couple of hypocritically po-faced drug representatives who wish to sue the firm making these items.

When its clear, overly enthusiastic prescription does that. And not for the first time. Moreso marketing. Familiarity breeds indifference. You cannot be in a permanent state of shock about things you keep seeing.

That the designer didn't seem to realise these are brand names is indicative of the power of marketing to distance us from what things really are. Which is what said T-shirt maker was picking up on. Its typical of drug company reps to be twisting social justice activism to its own ends.

I have no issue with extent of sensitivity surrounding this particular issue. I don't think it's useful or productive, but that's for others to work out. What irks me is it suppresses a discussion the very people suppressing it clearly need to have.

These subterranean feelings turn up where there's little pressure. Projected onto a more expendable whipping crew. A bit like the real undercurrent of addiction transfer now I come to think of it.

By the time you get to the tortilla chip as a unit of 'addictiveness', mentally enslaving, via the efforts of sinister wo/men performing shadowy alchemy in laboratories. As opposed to say the equivalent of making your signature dish(es) tastier and tastier over time, then you have to know you are no longer talking about food. This increasing paranoia means you need to stop trying to run away from what's really on your mind.

For others, it reflects a need to reexamine the basis of belief that delivered them there. Which is of course, calorie restriction must be the answer, so when it obviously isn't, instead of adjusting to that, you go to, the food must have some bad maaagiccck.

Gettagrip.

Industrial food is bound to throw in dubious chemicals to achieve the same as any good cook you know does working on a dish over time, making it better. That's what they do, cut corners to maximize profits. The real problem is they don't give a shit about food, apart from making it look good enough to pass and okay tasting enough not to make everyone hurl. I'm not excusing this, but it is no voodoo prowess.

Nor is it a good idea to be telling people it is, because erm, that's how voodoo works. Diets fail because they disregard our design, not because our minds have been taken over by Mexican snack overlords.

You cannot affect unconcern about increasing narcotic, barbiturate and amphetamine use on the one hand. Yet be using this kind of language and framing to be talking about chemicals that are being ingested.

* Apologies.