Bricked In

Larry Evans is losing weight. He started his calorie restriction, exercise regime at 800lbs/362kgs. He's got down to at least 650lbs/254kgs. I wish him and his "team" the absolute best. May they get where they need to get, stay there and be healthy hale and hearty.

One thing I can't stand is the cheerleading chorus who are valorizing his situation and its sub-biggest loser style talk of jouneigh. Someone even claimed this was in some way heroic. Let's make something clear, this kind ofstruggle is the product of deliberate policy - trapping fat people into a the suffocating house arrest of calorie restriction with exercise bulimia- themselves too.

From the start of the 'obesity' crusade, if not before, fat people have been bricked-in to a calorie restriction/virtual starvation diet or die scenario, using contrived but acute discomfort, pain and anguish to hold us in.

Just as surely as a one strike and you're out life-sentence. And similarly, it doesn't give a damn about the costs to those unfortunate enough to be metabolic outliers. In fact, it has no problem seeing them perish if that's a part of what's going on with them.

It should be palpably disgusting that societies for the last 4 or more decades have openly said to fat people, "You're dying and that's okay." Luckily for us, it's not up to what society wants, still, that thought counts. Any nation that thinks people ought to die because of their weight or size is messed up. There's no one thin enough for me to declare their lives worthless and I cannot imagine what would get me to go along with such a notion.

It's the extent of conviction that if fat people just can't escape the relentless pursuit of everyone imposing lifestyle anorexia on us, or if it is too intolerable to be fat we will swap the stigma of fatness for the hunger of anorexia and exercise bulimia, our bodies will succumb and we'll all be okay.

We shouldn't have to be forced into "punishment" because of the displaced urges of others.  The urge to see a stocism in the face of any level of discomfort, others feel happy to shirk but not to let go of the idea of. Instead of looking to inflict pain on their own selves, they feel entitled to foist this repellent urge on those they feel its in their power and privilege to-fat people.

Hardly impressive.

Like an earthquake where the earth gives way beneath your feet, cue a manic scramble to climb out before it gives way again and you are lost to the world. That is what you are seeing, someone trying to claw their way out of a trap set by others.

It's not simply about size, it's  feeling trapped. It is well known that this can be a decisive factor in suicide. People dancing around the spectacle of this suffocation does not enoble them. Fat people are not inspirational porn.

There is nothing heroic inspiring or uplifting about witnessing the product of this mindwarp. Enjoyment here is, tawdry and shabby.  No-one, let alone a person of 800lbs should have to starve and lift weights purely to lose weight. If people wish to do those things, good luck to them, but it should be a choice for its own sake or other benefits like conditioning, not to expend energy as penitence at the imposition of fanaticism.

Calorie restricting your way to weight loss is a stupid embarrassment. The halo of slimness may be shining in these people's eyes, but your mind knows. Dieters often feel ashamed, guilty and silly. Dieting is stupid, self destructive and above all, utterly absurd. Unless you are honest enough to admit how risible it all is-even if you are going to do it inspite of that.

I say to metabolic researchers, it's long overdue that you get on and find a proper lever to reversing and advancing weight. You must be able to find at least one, there are probably many. Every day people like Larry have to take this route, risking the potential for their body to exhibit a powerful rebound manoeuvre that could leave them worse off than when they started, is a day you've failed.

Whether its people having tumours removed, or those losing their hunger, metabolic courses need to be altered in either direction and that should be obvious.

[And no, I don't see people like Larry as any less "deserving" of this than anyone else and nor should those who have the obviously low threshold for discomfort have anything to say about that.]