Calories in/out bites both ends

Thin is not the new disease of being. Neither history nor the AMA has obliged. Thinness if seen as a health concern, is firmly the product of unhealth, not cause.

Calories in/out as a model for how weight is created turns body mass into an outcome of numerous eating/not eating decisions. It works both ways as they say. Those who complain about their thin travails don't seem concerned with that. They don't tend to subject their situation to objective analysis, well, that's unlikely to be their motive.

Defining people's eating habits via their bodies may be focused on fat people. Often, thin people are made exceptions either they're not mentioned or are cast differently. The mind still does its own work and defines thin bodies as the product of decisions too. You'd think that would have made thin people in the main, not cool with CI/CO.

Still, there's enough effects of the weight watching mess is in this article. The defensiveness about eating; "I eat more than my necessary amount of calories per day." (Like the way she takes for granted those around her will back this up.) Health fatigue; "Stop telling me what is unhealthy and what is healthy." Her body is not her decisions; "I may not be of normal “average” size, but that does not automatically mean I starve myself."

Feeling driven to disordered eating in this case, dieting up to prove oneself not a disordered eater;

It’s forced me over the years to feel the need to prove that I actually eat, to stuff myself until I feel so disgustingly full that I want to throw up — yeah, that’s a real healthy image, right?

Yeah, undesired and perhaps unwise behaviour in order to appear healthy. How many times have fat people wrestled with that one?! Apparently, she's real fed up of "stereotypes". Well, this purports to be scientific in basis.

The article is all about "making ourselves believe" out of the air "assumptions" no attempt is made to ground this in the context of the politics of weight.

We attached these assumptions, and make people feel ashamed of how they look and of their eating habits when in reality, it’s non of anyone’s business.

Actually, being forced to continually diet and not able to acknowledge the results-forcing you to become an idiot. Continually confessing, therefore betraying yourself and being made aware of your cowardice, being a bully and a shit to someone you can corner- yourself, when that may be the last thing you'd wish to be to anyone else. Believing that whilst trying everything to save yourself, be good, you still manage somehow to be bad and doing it wrong. Being surrounded by those you love who you can guarantee will agree with the most abusive and insulting rendering of your situation.

All this and more is what makes fat people feel bad, not remarks about one's fat arse, which can be shrugged off at some point because they're not backed up by anything.

Luckily, I love the way I look. I’ve come to accept that what I’ve been given is what I will have, and that above all, confidence is key.

Not so much confidence, as embodiment. The sense that this body is you and that is the centre of your experience of being and part of your consciousness. Something that to this day, fat people are simply not allowed to have uninterrupted and unmolested.'obesity' dis-embodies fat people referring to us as what isn't strictly human. We are consciousness interruptus, led into having this weird internal distance from ourselves.

But hey, you can't write about what you don't know.

This kind of phoned in whining which thinks its saying the same but in reverse of actual structural/social discrimination, epitomizes those who collude fully in that and yet still feel they're denied the benefit of being discriminated against. Like they have some weird kind of envy for those who try and take a stand against this.

We're repeatedly told this is what fat people are doing, moaning about what could at a stretch be called bullying. But it actually isn't. Though there are parallels based on a singular idea, that exposes the differences. It shows how it didn't need to be this bad for fat people. Plus revealing in its way, the ultimately self defeating nature of dumbing down fat experience in order to try and get slim people to grasp something.

It reads much like those men who complain about the anti-maleness of feminism. Yeah, the feminism that deems fat women "anti-science" because our ability to call out pseudo-science is not accord with those who think whatever level of stupidity and ignorance they sink to must set the standard. Because they have a penis.

And women must surrender and perform them being too brilliant for us to keep up with. Much criticized rap musicians only call women bitches 'n' ho's. They do not demand we destroy our intellect. 

It certainly has some cod genetic determinism ftl (for the loss);

Scientifically proven, women with a certain hip-to-waist ratio are seen as more attractive by nature because it signals fertility. So yes, women with certain figures are more suited to be models.

Your guess is as good as mine. Certainly, if attractiveness was as cut and dried as some want to be, all the harassment and social distinction would be such a waste of effort.

What's often telling about these kinds of reverse articles is how through their assumed superiority, they're convinced they understand the points being made by those they clearly consider beneath them.

When so often the failure to properly grasp what's being said is so evident. Meanwhile they're oblivious, insisting they are now oppressed.... by what or whom?

Slim women resenting thinz for being the size they suffer to attain but failed or couldn't sustain. Diets don't work is about metabolic function, not being fat. So, slimz rag on the fashion industry and "thin models", often to guiltily cover up own pro-ana mentality, especially when they see it in their children.

You can see I've always seen through that and detested it, trouble is, what can fatz do about it? We can't give personal testimony without being erased and derided. We are somewhat lacking in social currency to defend the honour of thinikins. 

Who don't tend to take on slim women directly. The strange dance between thin and slim women continues. Both feel the accessibility of fat people to be a receptacle to air grievance and to point fingers at, we're an easy target. An all purpose cushioner of impact. I'm not sure exactly where that's is going, but instinct tells me its going somewhere. Time will tell.

Eventually, though, I think thin and slim women will have to face each other and sort it out.

No Surrrender!

A man called Hiroo Onoda has just died. He was a solider from the second world war who was said not to have believed in surrender until 1974, 29 years later. That's when he was persuaded to surrender from his Philippine jungle hideout.

He was a man loyal to an ideal, to the end. And beyond.

When does persistence become fanaticism, derangement? It's admirable to persevere and necessary to achieve anything past the short term. But, when you refuse to see the signs that your effort is at an end, you can waste a whole heap of time just pressing on. Doing the same thing over and over again simply because it feels too bad to contemplate letting go.

What can add confusion is, a certain suspension of judgement is be required to keep the faith long enough to see an initiative through to success. But the moment will come when you just know against the weight of your internal dynamic that this is it; it's over. Anything more requires a willing state of delusion that can only be voluntary and heartfelt. And your heart isn't close to being in it anymore.

Mr Onoda went on to live to 91. He had other people to implore him sir, enough is enough. You've done your best, you've done your duty. In that way he was fortunate.

Sometimes you are the one that has to implore yourself to let it go, in the face of everyone insisting otherwise.

Constructing people as disease is intellectual and moral decline

“I don’t want to live in a world where being unhealthy and obese is the cultural norm. It speaks volumes about the decline of our social structure and our values.”

That's a bit dramatic love, think of those who love you!

This appeared on a feminist websites f**book page, according to Ragen and I must say it's another way out of your pain, if you find it all too much. Mind you, I think you'd be better off just calming the hell down.

I've given up resolutions, but if I hadn't, one would be not getting into arguments with slim people-or anyone else-on anything to do with weight matters, unless they have some grasp outside their own torrid minds.

Looking at it another way, there could be said to be some unintended truth in the statement though. The construction of "obesity" as having any meaning can tell us about "our" values and western model society's, possible or otherwise, intellectual decline-as much as anything.

That the idea of 'obesity' itself is absurd, it basically refers to a fat person as if they're a slim person wearing an adipose suit is undoubtedly unhinged, but the response to it is where the real dysfunction is showing.

Self absorption to the point of delusion

It seemed we had an age of learning about other folks through movements of self /group advocacy. Running alongside that have been moves toward self realization, secularism and the petering out of a long tradition of monotheism.

This was supposed to herald a new dawn of humanist rationality, instead it as much revealed why monotheism was once progress. It unleashed something more like the Balkans or Middle East, it was the tyrant that unified conflicting passions, in this case, the impulse toward god bothering. This suppressing human cultishness-by directing it to one end.

In some fundamental ways, what's happened is a shift. We're now expected to believe we are gods and that we create ourselves, blood, bone and sinew. No (other) body exists but, one.

Mis-use of "disease"

The word "disease" used to refer to either the product of infection by disease pathogen, or some kind of organ or system failure. Healthcare was built around the former and its treatment especially. Then it was decided that disease could be used for its supposed ability to bring about desired reactions and to insert it into said systems; rather than just doing the work to achieve both ends directly, (including changing the structure of healthcare). 

This mis-use meant the term lost its rational basis and could be used for things that aren't diseases. That has accelerated beyond all sense to define people. Despite the marketplace of ideas, it stands on the reputations of those backing it, so its lack of rationalism is irrelevant. And see above.

Emotive use of science

Similar to disease in some ways. Science's etymology is knowledge. Referring to not simply facts, but the reality of the laws governing the function of the universe and all things in it, including human beings. It could be said to be the means by which this is brought to light, of discovery.

Over time, as with all that has meaning, this has assumed a mystical aspect. A large enough chest of emotional associations have gathered in the minds of lay and professionals alike. It has become the voice of authority and its imposition, and a vehicle for solving all problems. It has replaced religion on that score to a significant degree.

Outsourcing

Work, jobs, whole professions have been outsourced-transplanted to other parts of the world. The use of fat people is the outsourcing of undesired feelings and traits;

A practice used by different companies to reduce costs by transferring portions of work to outside suppliers rather than completing it internally. 

Forgive my alterations, but it makes my point clearer. Weight gain (across society) has become a vehicle for suppressed feelings of doom about our level of gluttony for consumerism. We consume, consume,  consume and just don't give much of a shit. We don't really care how many children starve for the theft of their countries resources and the distortion of the world economy to serve bailed out banks, in western model countries. We don't care who gets shot up, so we can take drugs to escape our "pain" or prohibition of said drugs.

We can barely be roused to care about the impact on the very earth that sustains us. Above all, we don't want to feel any of this. It's upsetting and makes us feel immoral. So, let's suppress all this as if it isn't there, except through fat people.

Just like no woman says, "Urgh, look at my thin/slim body with a few visible pounds of fat on my rear, hips etc.," She says "Urgh, I'm so fat." Using fat people and their bodies to voice any unwanted feelings of any kind. To hell with the effects of that, actually no, that's their 'obesity', let's charge 'em for it! Let 'em die; yah boo sucks, hisssssss!

How many sweat shop clothes/shoes/nick nacks do any of us need? Rarely do we ask anymore, that might feel at least mildly uncomfortable. The disease of 'obesity' is really that.

So yeah, above all, 'obesity' smacks of a pathological sense of entitlement, within the pathologically entitled to never ever be discomforted; to exploit whom you please, do what you like and shield yourself from any consequence or possibility of 'payback' through any restoration of balance. To never be confronted with your own judgement of yourself, if its not the one you can bear and still to come up smelling of roses. Not just to be an ordinary common or garden flawed person; why should you have to tolerate such imperfection?! One's entitled to be deemed and to feel utterly good. 

About disease

Here's a deleted post from; 28/09/08, spot what's out of date.

Investing medicine with spirituality, viewing it as a spiritual practice rather than a tool to heal the sick.

It is often the people who feel themselves to be most rational and contemptuous of real human spirituality, who most invest things like medicine and science with a quasi spirituality and religious cultishness that misuses and abuses science. Rather than just admit that we are more than just machines, rather than explore our mystery, they desperately cling to the notion that we can all solve everything in a purely mechanistic way, whether it's calories in/out, or a pill for every ill.

When it comes to labelling human behaviour a disease or illness, I'm a skeptic I'm afraid. I recognise the term mental illness. A malfunction of the brain, it is an organ-sometimes that's hard to remember -just like the liver.  It is subject to the vagaries of how the body forms and grows, and isn't that a series of miracles in its way?

The problem I have is when what may well be an appropriate and apt response is labelled diseased because it's shocking, unexpected, tiresome, or even seemingly, impertinent.

What we have to remember is that the body is not necessarily mild in its responses, when we cut ourselves, we bleed, usually, in part to clear the wound of any potential germs, to protect from potential infection. It could presumably do this with a few drops, but it flows liberally, even a little after the breech is cleaned out, just to make sure.

It deals in making sure, and getting stuck in, this may not accord with our cultivated sensibilities and sensitivities, but that's the way it is, it's pretty full on.

The word disease is a bit of a miracle, even though it describes something deeply unpleasant, it is understood by medical professional and layman alike. We can give a little cheer that this collective moment of clarity has occurred, it so rarely does, that is one of the very good reasons why I cannot stand the mis-use of this word toward what some people fondly call social engineering.

I've never been able to swallow this, "alcoholism is a disease" thing even though I do understand what people are getting at. In part this is about removing stigma, in order that it doesn't get in the way of recovery. And I feel this instinct is vindicated by comparing the use here with that of obesity, same social engineering (read, fibbing) to the opposite intent.

* "disease is .......................understood by medical professional and layman alike."

Fatphobic Helmet

Fat suit wearing by slimmer people is quite awkward for fatter people. It explains exactly  the meaning invested in the 'obesity' construct. That to a slim(mer) person, being fat(ter) is like wearing an adipose suit of disease.

Rather like in torrid soap operas when a character refers to the community's malevolent nemesis as- being like a cancer. Don't let anyone kid on that this merits offense. Nor even that anyone could be so frigid with entitlement, that they cannot cope unless they insist everybody is like them, underneath.

The real offense is that this foolishness can be imposed on others by those who have the influence and kudos to do so. That show their gratitude for the privilege of being paid to pursue knowledge by using research as a route to bypass people's self awareness critical faculties. 
 
And no, none of this is made better by substituting 'bariatric' for 'obese' or especially 'fat'. (There is nothing wrong with being fat that hasn't been made wrong by this tedious self absorption.) The issue is not the wording, its the solipsistic defining of bodies that aren't like your own as disease that's the problem.

Underlying premise.

Peterborough hospital treats all comers, including those at the top of the weight spectrum. In the past, several staff have injured themselves trying to manoeuvre patients around. This is negligence on the part of their employers-who are supposed to ensure safe working conditions-is being rectified by using a £1,000 fat suit to help staff to practice safe handling/lifting. In the course of this, they've apparently learnt to empathize.

Repeat. Unlearning default arseholery is not 'compassion' or even 'empathy' is you emerging out a state of foolishness. If I keep stepping on your foot, I'm at fault. Getting off your foot is no kudos to me.

It's the norm not to be on your foot. It's the norm of hospital staff, or should be, to look after their patients. Whether professional or not, that requires you to become aware of their needs and be attentive to their requirements.

Having said that, I'm glad that this is happening, because it will hopefully be the beginning of movement towards finally usurping the mostly moribund non-science that is 'obesity', call it "bariatrics" if you wish but I warn you baria-trick. We tend to hear all about the great discoveries of medicine, but what can be neglected is medical progress is like a necklace with a pattern of small beads with intermittent large ones-the latter being the important discoveries. The smaller beads are made up of the information gleaned from caring for people, properly.

Caring for a person or group means you get to know and understand something of the workings of their condition or state of being, through catering to them. Courtesy and respect enables a better quality of communication and therefore insight. This is one of the many reasons "obesity science/medicine" has made little discernible progress in the last 3 or 4 decades is this carelessness. Willful ignorance likes to stop where it is.

You cannot tell what information with be key and what will be by the by. Often the things assumed to be important fall into the latter rather category. It is the small but sometimes significant beads of knowledge learned from patterns that emerge from the observation and thought that goes into looking after people, that is the basis of tomorrow's advance.

But rather than just something for the staff, I think the patients need something. A fatphobic helmet. This heretofore undiscovered thing, when put on, would manipulate brainwaves, plunging the wearer into the mindset of the typical ignorant slim fat phobe (self hating fatz just follow their thinking like obedient pets).

Only when fat people of all sizes get to hear just how messed up, bigoted, idiotic and willfully obtuse the noisier element of this faction are will they finally gain insight enough to stop feeling and acting remotely inferior to them.

That would hopefully finish off all pandering, which keeps their derangement hogging (yes) any discourse on weight. Enabling fat people to start addressing their remarks to the quieter and more thoughtful people.

I sense they're waiting.

Responses are defined by the terms of engagement

Here's a post complaining about lack of niceness forcing the author to abandon her deeply held belief in HAES-or fat people improving their health from where they are. I've never gotten used to the idea that this requires a mighty acronym.

It's a kind of complaint that usually sounds off-kilter, given people like this think nothing of telling fatz to piss away their whole lives in search of thinness through unlikely means; as if that's nothing. In contrast they're rather precious about their own fee fees. Some contact with someone they deem not nice and its over. They should try the "niceness" of a life being beaten up, inside and out, by weight loss diet fail.

The post links to another by the blogger himself tauntingly entitled; "Why HAES may never go mainstream." That being posed as the ultimate test of what's worthwhile is very revealling. The shame is fat people don't appear, popular. Again, the only real thing in this world. To shamelessly crash Godwin's; Hitler was elected the first time. Amusingly, he comments on "obesity research";

Fighting misinformation with misinformation, relevant omissions with relevant omissions, and logical fallacies with logical fallacies, is not the way to accredit your movement,

Get that! "Misinformation....... relevant omissions.....logical fallacies", indeed. This is what we should of heard from med profs long ago. So, appearing to do the same is not enough to acquire the holy grail of mainstream acceptance. Even though that's clearly worked for 'obesity'!

and if HAES has any hope of actually penetrating mainstream medicine, something I would dearly love to see happen, they're going to need to hold themselves up to at least the same, if not a higher level of scrutiny to which they hold others.

Yes, without the halo effect of slimness-what some refer to as "thin privilege", its own standard reflected in the response to it, looks reprehensible. Answering 'obesity' means taking it on its own often senseless terms plus devil's horns means its standards will be reflected and played up in your responses to it. What these people are complaining about is the scent of that hanging over fat people.

And as fat people are defined as intrinsically pathological, it makes sense that this must be all theirs.

People already know 'obesity' is BS, well, their minds have worked it out. Just because you suspend your moral and critical faculties, doesn't mean you stop them functioning. It's just BS they want to get on board with at all costs. Dealing with this can be hard work, these people have gained an insight into that and they assume that is down to fat people or those that support them.

Rather than what they're up against.

To set a better standard, you'd have to ignore 'obesity' all together. I've always been in favour of that. 'Obesity' is held up to so little sustained critical scrutiny and HAES or any kind of fat acceptance is rarely anything but. But then, ('obesity')  shouldn't need to be of course as it should be pursuing facts in the first place. It should be leading the pursuit for health at every size.

Serious

Someone spoke about fat people needing to be taken seriously, presumably by some counsel of slimness where all seriousness resides to be doled out to those who are granted this favour. Slim people possess it as a given of course. Whatever they say, can be dismissed, but not specifically because they're slim. That includes physical diagnosis, psychological evaluation of fat people-on sight.

That's a distinction between fat and slimmer people. Fat people take others seriously, more seriously than they take themselves. It's part of the mystery as to why we simply do not laugh our arses off at slim people, like they apparently do us. There are things slim people say about weight or fatness that I know objectively speaking are really stupid or plain hilarious. I mean, imagine seeing a fat person as a mountain of junk food and slim people as bodies made from "healthy" food?

Yet no one's really laughing. It's odd, like there's a huge chasm of emptiness where funny should be. Without perhaps knowing it consciously, the person was referencing this underlying credibility, and that people cannot be taken seriously without it. And fat people don't have it.  She felt this was the responsibility/fault of fat people. That we need to somehow correct it by making supplicant representations to slim people. [Yes, this is an example of real stupid/ funny, but somehow not.]

To an extent, this kudos seems something others agree to of their own volition.They back up your sense of taking yourself as read, they complete the circle. There's no reason fat people should take slim people any more seriously, we just do. I dunno, 'cos of the humanatee. There's also a lack of directly and strenuously undermining it, by defining a person as disease and therefore, everything they say as the voice of that.

This doesn't mean everything backed up by this credibility is taken as read though. One of the more glaring faults of the fat people are disease declaration, was the clear assumption that this would be welcomed by fat people. After all, it seemed to be by say alcoholics, drug addicts, people with eating disorders etc., Like it or not, society wishes to cast fat people in these modes, addict, substance abuser, neurotic, heretic etc.,

Fat people of course can be some or all of those things, but that's not their fatness.

I don't think many of us take this seriously or are indifferent. It was assumed we would because slimz seem to cleave to it which has given it a credibility which would be thought to enhance fat people, hence telling us it will remove stigma.That was the argument favoured by alcoholics when they wished to use disease to characterise their condition. 

Of course, what would remove a lot of stigma from fat people is to unemotionally tell the truth about metabolism and weight regulation as  given. Given the establishment is still resisting that, it cannot pretend-that was supposed to be a sop to sell it to fatz. We're thought to be so uniformly desperate that we'd cling to this life raft. 

Yes, there are fat people who will take to this. It's the learned default to believe anything slim people do is automatically imbued with the halo of slimness and in some way, better than it is.

Truth is, the idea of going around battling food addiction and the disease of 'obesity' is plain silly. It doesn't even feel right and feels like a lie. Moreso than when slimz do this because at least for them, it's heartfelt and often their idea. They look just as fake and stupid of course, but their earnestness about it, and our regard for them wins through. It's what they want. So, silence. It would feel a bit invasive to comment on how others see their condition.

Once you start applying those labels to the less than enthusiastic and worst still, critical. What advances on that silence can start to break down, when its finally subject to real critique. It's okay to voice these feelings, because this nonsense is now being applied to you.