Weight has to be(come) a choice does it? Excellent, welcome aboard the noble idea that there must be a viable accessible way of adjusting weight at source, for whatever reason. More especially for those suffering function and health problems because of metabolic upset. They’re left aside because those invested in the crusade have an agenda that's never involved them either.
Any sense that the authorities want us to “lose weight” should treated with great suspicion and be answered by such as the efforts of someone like Naomi Cook to seek out actual science in hopes of some proper means of weight reversal for her beloved daughter, Hana.
Once the reality of that is available, those who really don’t want any part can reject it and will then be making a meaningful choice. Not wanting to change what is (or feeling like that), isn't the same as choosing to bring something into being.
Statistical insignificance is hardly relevant. Nor do I have any trouble with the idea of wanting to choose to be fat. I have a problem with pathology being advanced as a supposed means of "losing weight" and anything shielding the extent of its failure and dysfunction. There's nothing wrong with actual weight loss itself. That's just a natural metabolic phenomena our bodies produce on a daily basis, it's part of taking in, converting and using energy.
Ultimately, MM is railing against constriction of her own choosing. She’s one of those insisting fatness is integral to her being and any talk of weight change =eliminationism. You don’t have to choose a state to defend it. Lack of real choice doesn’t cheapen that defence nor the state itself. That's the kind of rot they tell fat people because we still choose to give a shit what fat phobes say.
This is the norm for most states such as race, gender, sexuality. Mostly these aren’t viewed as elective conscious choices.
Again, the difference with fatness is the lack of choice is contrived by those claiming to want people to unchose it. In short, they cannot be trusted to tell the truth about their intentions, they're that unedifying. What they definitely want is for us is to waste lots of time doing busy work. Having our minds preoccupied, engaging in futile fights with our own bodies. As with people in jail, to stop them getting into mischief.
Actively choosing any state, beleaguered or otherwise tends to change the whole character of your attitude to it. It would tend to lead to a completely different psychology. One that is so obviously not present in fat people, when it comes to their fatness.
One of the reasons (illegal) drug addicts have shown such incredible and sustained moxie, whilst being assaulted, marginalized, tortured and effectively sentenced to abstinence or death by the law, not doctors, the media, or family and friends- is the extent of choice involved in drug taking. Though, I emphasize, dependence is about susceptibility-after choice.
Choice gives you a completely different underlying mindset and awareness. Lack of choice is integral to why fat people are so continually abject and surrendered. And why so many are clueless about the assaults made on them even when ferocious.
There’s no way we would have struggled for so long against something we chose. Choice would have meant we would have negotiated the lack of social approval far better than this for one.
I don't object to the idea that I choose to be fat, it just doesn't feel right. The point about weight is its essential lack of meaning, means you have to have some feeling about it, to choose it. Which may explain why fat liberation makes a person feel in charge and like they're opting for fatness.
Also, defining something you had no conscious awareness of being an option, or meaning to you as choice, changes the terms of the word as we tend to refer to it-conscious elective rational opting for or even preferencing of something. This has nothing to do with the conventions of social justice. I not having any desire for something means its choice, how can you say other things you've had no desire for aren't also choice? I'm up for discussing that, I think the choice either/or dichotomy is often too rigid. But I'm guessing a lot of people would have trouble with that.
It is a sea change to go from wanting to diet, to slim to having no truck with that. However, that isn’t about weight, its about mindset, which is just as important perhaps more so.
You chose to change your mind in the face of opposition, some of it internal.
Framing fatness as a trait independent of the whole of you is a construct of calories in/out and a false one at that. Weight, is the whole of you and that’s kind of how metabolic function is, holistic. Weight is the outcome of the interplay going on in your whole body and whatever forces are acting on it.
To sum it up perhaps a bit crudely, fatness is not really a trait you can choose independent of its context within you, in the main. That’s an affectation of the delusion based ‘ob’ crusade. Ditto slimness.
It’s ultimately the reason “weight loss” actually calorie manipulation fails. Weight can only be properly changed at source, not after the fact, unless your defences fail or fall short. Equally, weight being multi-factorial and open-ended, means spontaneous reversals can affect homeostasis. Meaning weight, can reverse because something else has changed that has had this knock on effect/outcome.
For example, whether I’d personally “choose to be fat” or not, isn’t a question I can answer directly. What I want above all, is to function at an optimum level, in sustainable maximum balance. If fatness is needed for that, cool, if not, that’s equally okay with me. Weight doesn’t define me, either to dehumanize me, or to humanize me.
My humanity is in me, it is me, regardless of my body size, that’s the point for me of FA. All size is equally human, end of story. It doesn’t run, human starts at thin, then peters out as weight gets higher.
I’m not here to mirror fat hating idiocies. A fat identity is conformity. It comes of positioning FA as the opposite of the crusade. Mirroring what it does, as if that’s a guide for how to be. The whole of this mess of a construct and its crusade comes from slim people’s drive to turn slimness into an identity.
I’ve never had any interest in a fat identity due to weight not being a way to sum up a person. It’s more trait than an ID. It’s an aspect, not the whole. It’s not even your body; it’s the size of it. Everything you see that’s unbalanced about the pursuit of slimness, will be mirrored in any fat id-the blueprint is the problem, not the weight inserted into it.
Even if I for some reason felt an urge for such, I’d still resist because, whilst no-one is stronger in asserting fat people are as good as anyone-we are no better than anyone either.Look at what its done to so many slim people to defend their wretched creation. Is that what you want for yourself?
When, you insert fat into slim people’s weight ID blueprint, you end up in the same destination. Now where is that? Oh yes, dumping anything they do not wish to associate with themselves, death, disease, general badness, on fat people.
So I repeat the question, whom or what will be your dumping ground because that is intrinsic to the weight-as-id model?
Not slimz obviously. So who’s left? That’s right, YOU. Fat people. If you think that makes no sense, I give you, self-hating fatz. That’s pretty much their act. Ape what they think slim people are, fat phobes, then separate themselves from such an insult by dumping on any fat resistance.
All this aping of slimz shows they retain an aura of representing human authenticity. One fat people have yet to acquire even in the minds of fat people. If we wish to possess our own aura of credibility, we cannot get it this way. That is something that is inside us, even if its buried-there’s no way around that. We cannot get it from the outside in. Not from social justice strictures, not from approval of slimz or anyone else. Only ourselves.
You may say but how? Well, how did we get from living in terror of being called “fat” to forgetting that its supposed to be an insult? We made the decision and we improvised along the way. We created a route as we went along, making it up as we went.That is what creates social justice conventions.
Whether it was apologizing to the child we were, the one we didn’t believe in and wronged. Or saying the word “fat” over and over again.
Whether it was just hanging in there, keeping faith with our aim, knowing that one day we would reach a point where we neutralized and/or invested fatness with the real positive aura of our own humanity. We did that.
And we can do it again, and again- this time to completely restore the default that humanness that resides 100% within us and needs no confirmation, no borrowing, no aping from slimz, as much as we adore them.
Friday, 30 January 2015
Thursday, 29 January 2015
Ordinary
Didn't in the end watch Shut-Ins. Can't say I'm sorry. I just didn't feel up to yet another possibly sterile exercise in salvation of fat people via calorie restriction. This feeling of spiritual fatigue came over me unexpectedly.
Ever see a fat person who seems kind of passive about being fat? I don't mean they've never dieted, don't see fatness any differently than a slim person would slimness, don't operate on the terms of the 'obese' construct and haven't been marked by that.
Because upon my honour, I've yet to encounter such a person. You know what we should resolve to do in 2015? Be that person! [Hey, is that a resolution?! Better late than never]
Do know what I see when I see a fat person who hasn't wasted themselves dieting? Ordinary. I see most of us actually are like in most things related to a health or medical context. We are as passive as that fat person seems, but isn't. I see other things too obviously, but I want to concentrate on that.
This false sense of passivity is played up in fat people strangely because; a) there is a fat standard and that's way higher than the ordinary one. Say in things like; pro-activeness, initiative, responsibility etc., anything related to or seen in the framework of health/self management. So an ordinary standard in a fat person looks really baaad, buuutttt, you are catching a glimpse of yourselves people.
What it looks like when the niceties, courtesies and acknowledgement accorded the ordinary standard are withdrawn.
This is a bit of a tangle.
The modern doctor patient relationship, has been formed around the infectious pathology/magic bullet golden era of medicine. Progress has seen the sun is setting on that. Now, modern healthcare is being dominated by; the nervous system, managing decline, chronic conditions etc.,
This is threatening to derail healthcare budgets-including Big Pharma's charging policies-and placing exhaustive demands on medical professionals. We need to change that relationship. The patient must emerge from a position of docility and obedience to more of a partnership with professionals. Something that's a tough change for them and lay people alike.
The latter have been taught that the compassionate practice of medicine =illness is misfortune, nothing to do with you-which is fairly apt for infectious disease. Whereas the management of a chronic condition can at times turn you into your own doctor and practice nurse. It's not unusual for patients with chronic conditions to know more about them than their own doctors.
Preventative medicine requires something akin to that level of awareness. A more active engaged patient who actually expects to and does demonstrate initiative with their own self management. It's a sense of responsibility way beyond the scope of the current patient posture.
For the professionals, its tough because a lot of their status and power seems to many of them to lay in this abjectness.
Alas, the higher ups seem to have decided not to face this squarely and instead to pass the same passivity off as something else, a lack of "personal responsibility". Blaming the patient for their health and the failing of any quackery that's supposed to bring resolution. For some reason, medical systems have difficulty with saying they don't know.
Strange though it seems to say it, it's almost as if this new era has turned medics towards the psychiatric model. People trying to claim their categorizations are biologically defined, asserting disease by committee and other dubious practise.
'Obesity' has become the vehicle to pioneer this horribleness.
A lot of trying to be slim, happened outside medical aegis. It meant fat people ended up surreptitiously advancing (part of) this new relationship with medics. Alas, the nature of the pathologized and dehumanized 'obese' construct has meant we weren't allowed to really go for it.
Many fat people don't even notice how much initiative and independence they've shown in pursuit of slimness.
At times people misunderstand me. Much decorated medics and specialists in eating disorders, addiction, 'obesity', mental health, speak their piece and others listen, absorbing it as holy writ.
When I can seem incredibly dismissive, to the point of perchance seeming positively arrogant. Not so. It's just the fat standard in action.
Of course the fat standard is hardly comparable to the disabled standard, where people have to negotiate a difference in function in a world not designed to acknowledge those needs.
This seeming ambivalence towards experts is closer to a patient response we are going to have to move to, whether anyone likes it or not. We're going to have to move to a place where we no longer take personally the possibility of culpability in conditions that aren't like a broken leg, sprained ankle etc.,
We're gong to have to learn to view all sorts of conditions with the same equilibrium as we do those. In other words, we're gong to have to accept that say, neuroses can be as much our dong as a broken arm and that bothers us no more than a having broken arm would.
We will all have the have the potential to seem arrogant, scanning the utterances of highly qualified experts with the alacrity we might show a priest or a politician.
Explains the reluctance of the white coat mafia.........
Ever see a fat person who seems kind of passive about being fat? I don't mean they've never dieted, don't see fatness any differently than a slim person would slimness, don't operate on the terms of the 'obese' construct and haven't been marked by that.
Because upon my honour, I've yet to encounter such a person. You know what we should resolve to do in 2015? Be that person! [Hey, is that a resolution?! Better late than never]
Do know what I see when I see a fat person who hasn't wasted themselves dieting? Ordinary. I see most of us actually are like in most things related to a health or medical context. We are as passive as that fat person seems, but isn't. I see other things too obviously, but I want to concentrate on that.
This false sense of passivity is played up in fat people strangely because; a) there is a fat standard and that's way higher than the ordinary one. Say in things like; pro-activeness, initiative, responsibility etc., anything related to or seen in the framework of health/self management. So an ordinary standard in a fat person looks really baaad, buuutttt, you are catching a glimpse of yourselves people.
What it looks like when the niceties, courtesies and acknowledgement accorded the ordinary standard are withdrawn.
This is a bit of a tangle.
The modern doctor patient relationship, has been formed around the infectious pathology/magic bullet golden era of medicine. Progress has seen the sun is setting on that. Now, modern healthcare is being dominated by; the nervous system, managing decline, chronic conditions etc.,
This is threatening to derail healthcare budgets-including Big Pharma's charging policies-and placing exhaustive demands on medical professionals. We need to change that relationship. The patient must emerge from a position of docility and obedience to more of a partnership with professionals. Something that's a tough change for them and lay people alike.
The latter have been taught that the compassionate practice of medicine =illness is misfortune, nothing to do with you-which is fairly apt for infectious disease. Whereas the management of a chronic condition can at times turn you into your own doctor and practice nurse. It's not unusual for patients with chronic conditions to know more about them than their own doctors.
Preventative medicine requires something akin to that level of awareness. A more active engaged patient who actually expects to and does demonstrate initiative with their own self management. It's a sense of responsibility way beyond the scope of the current patient posture.
For the professionals, its tough because a lot of their status and power seems to many of them to lay in this abjectness.
Alas, the higher ups seem to have decided not to face this squarely and instead to pass the same passivity off as something else, a lack of "personal responsibility". Blaming the patient for their health and the failing of any quackery that's supposed to bring resolution. For some reason, medical systems have difficulty with saying they don't know.
Strange though it seems to say it, it's almost as if this new era has turned medics towards the psychiatric model. People trying to claim their categorizations are biologically defined, asserting disease by committee and other dubious practise.
'Obesity' has become the vehicle to pioneer this horribleness.
A lot of trying to be slim, happened outside medical aegis. It meant fat people ended up surreptitiously advancing (part of) this new relationship with medics. Alas, the nature of the pathologized and dehumanized 'obese' construct has meant we weren't allowed to really go for it.
Many fat people don't even notice how much initiative and independence they've shown in pursuit of slimness.
At times people misunderstand me. Much decorated medics and specialists in eating disorders, addiction, 'obesity', mental health, speak their piece and others listen, absorbing it as holy writ.
When I can seem incredibly dismissive, to the point of perchance seeming positively arrogant. Not so. It's just the fat standard in action.
Of course the fat standard is hardly comparable to the disabled standard, where people have to negotiate a difference in function in a world not designed to acknowledge those needs.
This seeming ambivalence towards experts is closer to a patient response we are going to have to move to, whether anyone likes it or not. We're going to have to move to a place where we no longer take personally the possibility of culpability in conditions that aren't like a broken leg, sprained ankle etc.,
We're gong to have to learn to view all sorts of conditions with the same equilibrium as we do those. In other words, we're gong to have to accept that say, neuroses can be as much our dong as a broken arm and that bothers us no more than a having broken arm would.
We will all have the have the potential to seem arrogant, scanning the utterances of highly qualified experts with the alacrity we might show a priest or a politician.
Explains the reluctance of the white coat mafia.........
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
Limited Horizon
Horizon, a pretty decent science series, overall, purported to explore if a scientific approach could make dieting work better. You mean it not been used up till now? *eyeroll.* I somehow expected the focus to be on the dieting approach in relation to human anatomy, how and why it fails.
Not so. It went a bit reality tv gathering some people carefully selected to fit eating categories coined by the programme-makers. Their "solutions" turned out not to be designed on some further scientific understanding-oxymoronic though that is.
Instead they were the fad diets du nos jours;
5:2 or intermittent fasting-when you eat normally 5 days a week and up to 600 calories a day for two.
A low-GI (glycemic index) diet-basically, low carb, sugar, protein and vegetable based; currently passing as paleo, stone age etc.,
And a low calorie diet.
As you'd expect, the group bore no reflection to the true make-up of those in the 'obese' categorization. They featured mainly people around or above BMI 40+.
There were some amusing shots composed of them assembled together, with the "experts in obesity" standing in a row ahead of them. They of course looked tiny-in comparison, you couldn't miss that visual humdinger. Not sure if it was me but, it seemed to be saying, wisdom, over here-slim, ignorance over there, fat.
The structure of the programme was created around the usual pre-determination conclusions about weight. It's designed for the comfort and satisfaction of those heading the process, to help fat people achieve the unlikely. Any sustained, objective rigour must fit around that, with a bit of resorting to the tediously predictable genetic determinism, behavioural psych plus some biochemical snow jobbery currently beloved of the slimstream.
I wasn't impressed by another appearance of "psychology" with an emphasis mainly on eating as if its a psychological not a physiological impulse. I don't know how much this borrows from ED's, but it's not a good sign.
Eating is not like mood. Analyzing the way (you think) someone eats isn't a form of psycho-analysis.
How much awareness there is of this extent of self fulfilling prophecy is hard to fathom. In the programme a couple of the experts claimed to have had their predictions confirmed, one exclaimed she was happy and reassured by this. What she was on about exactly, went over my head.
Greedy, lazy are giving way to more subtle inference-mentally below par, emotionally incontinent and/or incompetent. Unedifying though that is, it's movement from the sadistic humiliation and ripping apart of people.
Though mostly made to look stupid, bovine and infantile with liberal use of shot and brass heavy music when on the move, we were at least spared a masochistic parade of fat people abasing themselves, begging for absolution-one must remember to be thankful for small mercies.
The programme showed again why 'obesity' as a field is a self defeating ghetto-assuming that isn't the intent. Metabolic study should be based on anatomy, not size, it's an artificial divide, reducing the ability to perceive real similarity and difference. Creating confusion and false conclusions.
Imagine, not recognizing a slim person's "Hello," as the same as a fat person's "Hello". Falsely investing bodies/people with health and pathology, corrupts and distorts the interpretation of anything observed in either of them. Disconnecting people from commonality and indeed, universality. 'Obesity' is pointlessly divisive.
For instance diet failure being presented as a characteristic of deathfatz rather than everyone from thin to fat alike.
It would be going too far to say this is the opposite of science, but its up with directly altering the conditions of those you purport to study and reporting findings as intrinsic to your focus.
The three definitions of fat people's purported eating problems/types were;
Feasters - People who once they start eating can't stop. This was said to be down the failure of a gut hormone which signals you to stop.
Emotional Eaters -Those who "used" food to cope/ate in response to stress.
Constant Cravers - Those who felt like eating all the time.
Sounds reasonable. Its not as if what they say has no meaning, however-it would tend to mislead the unwary.
I'm in an interesting position to assess these given my experience with hyperactive hunger/appetite mechanisms. I experienced all three together and had to (re)solve them. Formulating your life and diet around this is repugnant to me and wouldn't have worked.
Looking at weight or even eating in terms of food cannot adequately represent the nature of eating whether normal or disordered. Eating disorders are basically dysfunctions of the hunger/appetite mechanisms, usually caused by trying to control weight via calorie restriction. Forget complex emeashuns for now.
Being fat isn't an ED, though that was the inference, i.e. throwing around the term "overeating", making that an inevitable component of being fat. Speaking as a person who's had an ED, is not necessarily representative of fat people, nor excludes many who aren't. Again, seek and ye shall find what you want to.
I'm sure many if not most of the rest of them could identify with these as well- at varying levels- so could most if not all slim and thin people too. Not only do these not necessarily signify ED's, they can also signify them too! ED's are a question of degree, they aren't special diseases. They're more imbalances. Like having a heightened temperature.
If they'd had representative sample of fat people as well as all weights with honest investigation, they'd have realised that. Of course, ob sci doesn't work like that.
There was some info to be had from this. I was strangely heartened to find that they explained something I learned years ago and have been banging on about. Your ready energy stores. We all know about fat stores on your body, but before you can get to those, you have a system in place to supply you with constant (ready) energy. Kind of like the change you have as everyday spending money.
If you didn't have this system, you'd be in danger of swooning or conking out every time an extra demand was made on your body-one that required any surge in energy. Your (fat) stores aren't that instantly accessible.
Something amused me, they first explained using the 5:2 diet/ intermittent fasting, that during the fast days of 600 cals or under, your body would resort to digging into your fat stores. They used an animated graphic of this and missed out the chump change (ready energy.) They then cut straight to Dr Giles Yeo, who explained it properly-that your body uses up this ready energy first, then goes for your stores-if it needs to make up for any deficit! He seemed a little ticked off and was keen to emphasis the missing point, not sure the presenter (a doctor himself) was getting his point.
He really seemed to know what he was talking about. So why he involved himself with this I'm not entirely sure.
Claiming, this is what makes fat people fat is unconvincing. There are plenty of slimz and thinz who'll tell you they feel hungry all the time, some or other of them are often found eating sweets , chocolates and desserts. Indeed, snacking. It struck me that their bodies too seem to have established this loop where the body seems to have said, "Hey, I can make more use of my chump change loop to cover more of my energy needs."
It doesn't just stabilize fatness, it stabilizes weight, including thin/slimness too. Quite a few people have told me they can only stay slim on a diet of calorie dense or junk food diet-(what you eat) with occasional veg thrown in. I must admit I find this loop interesting. I've no idea what it means or whether its a good/bad sign or neutral.
The emotional eaters category was misleading. It really meant with certain people, stress triggered their hunger and appetite mechanisms to fire in conjunction. The programme put a selection through a frustrating and therefore stressful driving test.
But that only changed the hunger and appetite (what they ate) levels for some. It was claimed there's a gut hormone, I think it might have been GLP-1, my bad, some times its hard to take it in with the distancing effect of extreme skepticism, interferes with the ability to stop eating.
That could have just been a feature of being in that state. In other words, your biochemistry as cause. So, if you are in a permanent state of anxiety and analysis of your blood shows the preponderance of certain chemicals, then that is assigned as cause, rather than effect, when it could be either. A feature of defining bodies/people as 'disease', their function becomes their 'disease' it's ridiculous.
Getting rid of the triggering of hunger due to my nervous system being in a state where hunger/appetite was being stimulated by (a certain level of) stimulus in my system, was the basis of ending my ED.
I was and still am ecstatic to be liberated from both the ED and being in that state.
Which raised something else which is hard to say even in an FA context, fat people are stuck in and limited by the standards slimz apply to themselves, but look really slack in fat people, seeming to confirm all the abuse we receive.
True.
The missing service ethic of service means the demand for people to cease to be fat, doesn't become an instigator of progress. The kind that would be progress for everyone.
This was part one of three, I've yet to see the others. They follow the group to see how they fare with the same old same old.
As if we can't guess.
Not so. It went a bit reality tv gathering some people carefully selected to fit eating categories coined by the programme-makers. Their "solutions" turned out not to be designed on some further scientific understanding-oxymoronic though that is.
Instead they were the fad diets du nos jours;
5:2 or intermittent fasting-when you eat normally 5 days a week and up to 600 calories a day for two.
A low-GI (glycemic index) diet-basically, low carb, sugar, protein and vegetable based; currently passing as paleo, stone age etc.,
And a low calorie diet.
As you'd expect, the group bore no reflection to the true make-up of those in the 'obese' categorization. They featured mainly people around or above BMI 40+.
There were some amusing shots composed of them assembled together, with the "experts in obesity" standing in a row ahead of them. They of course looked tiny-in comparison, you couldn't miss that visual humdinger. Not sure if it was me but, it seemed to be saying, wisdom, over here-slim, ignorance over there, fat.
The structure of the programme was created around the usual pre-determination conclusions about weight. It's designed for the comfort and satisfaction of those heading the process, to help fat people achieve the unlikely. Any sustained, objective rigour must fit around that, with a bit of resorting to the tediously predictable genetic determinism, behavioural psych plus some biochemical snow jobbery currently beloved of the slimstream.
I wasn't impressed by another appearance of "psychology" with an emphasis mainly on eating as if its a psychological not a physiological impulse. I don't know how much this borrows from ED's, but it's not a good sign.
Eating is not like mood. Analyzing the way (you think) someone eats isn't a form of psycho-analysis.
How much awareness there is of this extent of self fulfilling prophecy is hard to fathom. In the programme a couple of the experts claimed to have had their predictions confirmed, one exclaimed she was happy and reassured by this. What she was on about exactly, went over my head.
Greedy, lazy are giving way to more subtle inference-mentally below par, emotionally incontinent and/or incompetent. Unedifying though that is, it's movement from the sadistic humiliation and ripping apart of people.
Though mostly made to look stupid, bovine and infantile with liberal use of shot and brass heavy music when on the move, we were at least spared a masochistic parade of fat people abasing themselves, begging for absolution-one must remember to be thankful for small mercies.
The programme showed again why 'obesity' as a field is a self defeating ghetto-assuming that isn't the intent. Metabolic study should be based on anatomy, not size, it's an artificial divide, reducing the ability to perceive real similarity and difference. Creating confusion and false conclusions.
Imagine, not recognizing a slim person's "Hello," as the same as a fat person's "Hello". Falsely investing bodies/people with health and pathology, corrupts and distorts the interpretation of anything observed in either of them. Disconnecting people from commonality and indeed, universality. 'Obesity' is pointlessly divisive.
For instance diet failure being presented as a characteristic of deathfatz rather than everyone from thin to fat alike.
It would be going too far to say this is the opposite of science, but its up with directly altering the conditions of those you purport to study and reporting findings as intrinsic to your focus.
The three definitions of fat people's purported eating problems/types were;
Feasters - People who once they start eating can't stop. This was said to be down the failure of a gut hormone which signals you to stop.
Emotional Eaters -Those who "used" food to cope/ate in response to stress.
Constant Cravers - Those who felt like eating all the time.
Sounds reasonable. Its not as if what they say has no meaning, however-it would tend to mislead the unwary.
I'm in an interesting position to assess these given my experience with hyperactive hunger/appetite mechanisms. I experienced all three together and had to (re)solve them. Formulating your life and diet around this is repugnant to me and wouldn't have worked.
Looking at weight or even eating in terms of food cannot adequately represent the nature of eating whether normal or disordered. Eating disorders are basically dysfunctions of the hunger/appetite mechanisms, usually caused by trying to control weight via calorie restriction. Forget complex emeashuns for now.
Being fat isn't an ED, though that was the inference, i.e. throwing around the term "overeating", making that an inevitable component of being fat. Speaking as a person who's had an ED, is not necessarily representative of fat people, nor excludes many who aren't. Again, seek and ye shall find what you want to.
I'm sure many if not most of the rest of them could identify with these as well- at varying levels- so could most if not all slim and thin people too. Not only do these not necessarily signify ED's, they can also signify them too! ED's are a question of degree, they aren't special diseases. They're more imbalances. Like having a heightened temperature.
If they'd had representative sample of fat people as well as all weights with honest investigation, they'd have realised that. Of course, ob sci doesn't work like that.
There was some info to be had from this. I was strangely heartened to find that they explained something I learned years ago and have been banging on about. Your ready energy stores. We all know about fat stores on your body, but before you can get to those, you have a system in place to supply you with constant (ready) energy. Kind of like the change you have as everyday spending money.
If you didn't have this system, you'd be in danger of swooning or conking out every time an extra demand was made on your body-one that required any surge in energy. Your (fat) stores aren't that instantly accessible.
Something amused me, they first explained using the 5:2 diet/ intermittent fasting, that during the fast days of 600 cals or under, your body would resort to digging into your fat stores. They used an animated graphic of this and missed out the chump change (ready energy.) They then cut straight to Dr Giles Yeo, who explained it properly-that your body uses up this ready energy first, then goes for your stores-if it needs to make up for any deficit! He seemed a little ticked off and was keen to emphasis the missing point, not sure the presenter (a doctor himself) was getting his point.
He really seemed to know what he was talking about. So why he involved himself with this I'm not entirely sure.
Claiming, this is what makes fat people fat is unconvincing. There are plenty of slimz and thinz who'll tell you they feel hungry all the time, some or other of them are often found eating sweets , chocolates and desserts. Indeed, snacking. It struck me that their bodies too seem to have established this loop where the body seems to have said, "Hey, I can make more use of my chump change loop to cover more of my energy needs."
It doesn't just stabilize fatness, it stabilizes weight, including thin/slimness too. Quite a few people have told me they can only stay slim on a diet of calorie dense or junk food diet-(what you eat) with occasional veg thrown in. I must admit I find this loop interesting. I've no idea what it means or whether its a good/bad sign or neutral.
The emotional eaters category was misleading. It really meant with certain people, stress triggered their hunger and appetite mechanisms to fire in conjunction. The programme put a selection through a frustrating and therefore stressful driving test.
But that only changed the hunger and appetite (what they ate) levels for some. It was claimed there's a gut hormone, I think it might have been GLP-1, my bad, some times its hard to take it in with the distancing effect of extreme skepticism, interferes with the ability to stop eating.
That could have just been a feature of being in that state. In other words, your biochemistry as cause. So, if you are in a permanent state of anxiety and analysis of your blood shows the preponderance of certain chemicals, then that is assigned as cause, rather than effect, when it could be either. A feature of defining bodies/people as 'disease', their function becomes their 'disease' it's ridiculous.
Getting rid of the triggering of hunger due to my nervous system being in a state where hunger/appetite was being stimulated by (a certain level of) stimulus in my system, was the basis of ending my ED.
I was and still am ecstatic to be liberated from both the ED and being in that state.
Which raised something else which is hard to say even in an FA context, fat people are stuck in and limited by the standards slimz apply to themselves, but look really slack in fat people, seeming to confirm all the abuse we receive.
True.
The missing service ethic of service means the demand for people to cease to be fat, doesn't become an instigator of progress. The kind that would be progress for everyone.
This was part one of three, I've yet to see the others. They follow the group to see how they fare with the same old same old.
As if we can't guess.
Monday, 26 January 2015
Insert 'Obese'
Far be it for me to appear to pose as a grammar tyrant given my severe taxing of well, syntax, buuuut the other day I was reading a science paper, I neglected to note, and about the second word was 'obese'. It was just plunked there, in the wrong place. Ever just left your house in a flurry only to trip almost buttock over breast on some mis-laid obstacle?
Whaaaat happened? Did the earth turn?
That's the effect this particular use of 'obese' had on me. I've noticed this compulsive need to keep burping up said terms. There used to be a style rule, I think it's still in play, to avoid redundancy, use a term to establish the subject, then avoid further mention, unless needed as a reminder or if not doing so would cause confusion.
That's really gone out the window with 'obese'/'obesity' hasn't it?
It cannot be written or said enough. If there's a place where its not necessary to insert 'obese'/'obesity, it will be. It's developed the momentum of a compulsion, as in the case of a hygiene OCD.
This hints at perhaps to some, a surprising sense of desperation amongst fat phobes. That despite having virtually everything their own way, the obesers-those who wish to brand people 'obese' all the fracking time-cannot feel any real sense of security. Without continually reminding themselves what they're supposed to feel.
They can't trust that we or they will remember that people aren't simply people, they're 'obese', without continual repetition.
This is [neurotypical] stimming. It most resembles anchoring.
Yes, I can say stimming, because hand on heart, I noticed it before I knew of the term, and I'd noticed it in neurotypics-(that auto corrected to "neurotics" how very apt).
See, when I was in the young kid phase of trying to work out how things and even being a person worked. Just as you eventually grasp "Lying's always wrong" though fundamental, exceptions which have to be learned, i.e. in the case of sparing people's fee fees.
I noted that the general assumption that we think like taking a walk; start with the first step and keep going putting one foot in front of the other, in the main, didn't appear to tally with reality.
I was stunned to realise that thinking in such a flowing manner seems to be quite difficult, our brains do not appear to be organized in a manner to generate a such.
There are some who are mentally supple and responsive to new information, so whether we lose the ability to do this along the way, or whether that's just cleverness, I'm not sure.
We muddle along sticking our favourites from the vast array of stock phrasing we pick up to perpetuate an impression of said flowing river of thought.
Dontcha just love us humans? We are the most.
A lot of these stock phrases struck me as fulfilling some function not necessarily related to their meaning. I had to roll my eyes at some recent so called "research" which claimed anorexics have "autistic traits". As I understand it, autism has a set of human traits at the heart of it. Without this particular conjunction of traits, what you're looking at wouldn't be "autistic" as such.
That's so typical of the way we emotively assign certain perceived characteristics to people outside the pass-for-norms. Or others we pathologize then fail to recognize the same or similar functions we observe in them, in ourselves.
Some have inevitably wised up in this instance-stating the difference between autistic and neurotypic is a question of degree, but I wouldn't put money on that just yet.
I must admit though, I didn't recognize autistic stimming as what I'd observed. I hadn't even given it a name and put it to the back of my mind as it felt kind of frustrating to keep it permanently in view at the time. Even when I heard definitions of what autistic people were doing, the connection wasn't immediate.
As with autistic, neurotypical stimming fulfills many functions. Yes its true that autistic stims include physical movements. Neurotypics have those too, they're just called something else; "self comforting gestures" comes most readily to mind.
Verbal ones especially are to comfort/reassure self and others, transmit a sense of belonging, identity, hegemony, group think. They can be a grounding manoeuvre when you feel unsafe, insecure, unsure, and anchoring, that is a way of re-connecting with a certain desired state or feeling. i.e. if you're flustered and nervous, you may keep repeating something like "Get/pull yourself together" or somesuch.
I swear a lot of the time it seems like the majority of what we say or even think is mostly a rearrangement of stim phrases. If done as required, this is accepted as thinking, communication, learning.
A little like an actor repeating a writer's lines, investing it with their particular interpretation-no wonder we so often treat them as if they made it up. They seem like us, lol!
Oh stop.
Anyho, inserting 'obese'/'obesity'; is compulsive stimming and there are others, "personal responsibility's."
It's a compulsive urge to keep reconnecting a mind with whatever 'ob' is supposed to mean. So that you can (remember) to behave accordingly. Self management eh? Seems thinking in terms of this 'obesity' construct doesn't come naturally at all.
Whaaaat happened? Did the earth turn?
That's the effect this particular use of 'obese' had on me. I've noticed this compulsive need to keep burping up said terms. There used to be a style rule, I think it's still in play, to avoid redundancy, use a term to establish the subject, then avoid further mention, unless needed as a reminder or if not doing so would cause confusion.
That's really gone out the window with 'obese'/'obesity' hasn't it?
It cannot be written or said enough. If there's a place where its not necessary to insert 'obese'/'obesity, it will be. It's developed the momentum of a compulsion, as in the case of a hygiene OCD.
This hints at perhaps to some, a surprising sense of desperation amongst fat phobes. That despite having virtually everything their own way, the obesers-those who wish to brand people 'obese' all the fracking time-cannot feel any real sense of security. Without continually reminding themselves what they're supposed to feel.
They can't trust that we or they will remember that people aren't simply people, they're 'obese', without continual repetition.
This is [neurotypical] stimming. It most resembles anchoring.
Yes, I can say stimming, because hand on heart, I noticed it before I knew of the term, and I'd noticed it in neurotypics-(that auto corrected to "neurotics" how very apt).
See, when I was in the young kid phase of trying to work out how things and even being a person worked. Just as you eventually grasp "Lying's always wrong" though fundamental, exceptions which have to be learned, i.e. in the case of sparing people's fee fees.
I noted that the general assumption that we think like taking a walk; start with the first step and keep going putting one foot in front of the other, in the main, didn't appear to tally with reality.
I was stunned to realise that thinking in such a flowing manner seems to be quite difficult, our brains do not appear to be organized in a manner to generate a such.
There are some who are mentally supple and responsive to new information, so whether we lose the ability to do this along the way, or whether that's just cleverness, I'm not sure.
We muddle along sticking our favourites from the vast array of stock phrasing we pick up to perpetuate an impression of said flowing river of thought.
Dontcha just love us humans? We are the most.
A lot of these stock phrases struck me as fulfilling some function not necessarily related to their meaning. I had to roll my eyes at some recent so called "research" which claimed anorexics have "autistic traits". As I understand it, autism has a set of human traits at the heart of it. Without this particular conjunction of traits, what you're looking at wouldn't be "autistic" as such.
That's so typical of the way we emotively assign certain perceived characteristics to people outside the pass-for-norms. Or others we pathologize then fail to recognize the same or similar functions we observe in them, in ourselves.
Some have inevitably wised up in this instance-stating the difference between autistic and neurotypic is a question of degree, but I wouldn't put money on that just yet.
I must admit though, I didn't recognize autistic stimming as what I'd observed. I hadn't even given it a name and put it to the back of my mind as it felt kind of frustrating to keep it permanently in view at the time. Even when I heard definitions of what autistic people were doing, the connection wasn't immediate.
As with autistic, neurotypical stimming fulfills many functions. Yes its true that autistic stims include physical movements. Neurotypics have those too, they're just called something else; "self comforting gestures" comes most readily to mind.
Verbal ones especially are to comfort/reassure self and others, transmit a sense of belonging, identity, hegemony, group think. They can be a grounding manoeuvre when you feel unsafe, insecure, unsure, and anchoring, that is a way of re-connecting with a certain desired state or feeling. i.e. if you're flustered and nervous, you may keep repeating something like "Get/pull yourself together" or somesuch.
I swear a lot of the time it seems like the majority of what we say or even think is mostly a rearrangement of stim phrases. If done as required, this is accepted as thinking, communication, learning.
A little like an actor repeating a writer's lines, investing it with their particular interpretation-no wonder we so often treat them as if they made it up. They seem like us, lol!
Oh stop.
Anyho, inserting 'obese'/'obesity'; is compulsive stimming and there are others, "personal responsibility's."
It's a compulsive urge to keep reconnecting a mind with whatever 'ob' is supposed to mean. So that you can (remember) to behave accordingly. Self management eh? Seems thinking in terms of this 'obesity' construct doesn't come naturally at all.
Friday, 23 January 2015
No Point of Comparison
No one wants to let fat be what it is. From letting the process of its creation and actuality be described as is, to permitting people who are fat to be described and defined by themselves along with those able and willing to observe them and their experience objectively.
This sadly still too often includes fat people, activists included. Though in this, the problem comes more from the self estrangement and continued erasure of operating under the same basis of falsehood as everyone else.
The crudest sign of this lack of interest in the veracity of fatness is the ceaseless inept comparisons thrown around helter-skelter. Fatness is routinely dubbed/compared with: an eating disorder, neurosis, chronic disease, addiction (where addiction is being conflated with compulsion), smoking, opiate drug dependence, alcoholism, an audit of mental health, self harm, slow suicide etc.,
Usually, to urge to compare comes from a drive to illuminate through finding similarities with things that may be or have more familiar themes or characteristics. Nothing expresses more the extent to which fat people's self defense has been disengaged, by operating to the mainstream agenda, than these failures of comparison.
Let's start with; an eating disorder-fatness is body mass or size, an eating disorder refers to a dysfunctional pattern of eating or non-eating habits. A neurosis- is an imbalance of or in the functioning of the nervous system/ brain. Fatness is the physiology of higher body mass. A chronic disease- chronic disease is disorder of the body's function, that has no cure only treatment. Fatness is an outcome of a body's metabolic self regulation, it's function not dysfunction. An addiction-to mean-compulsion as in "obsessive compulsion" is a repetitive act or set of actions that have attained a self sustaining momentum that's unresponsive to conscious intent to halt it or them. Fatness is the action of physiology not the physiology of an action/ set of. Smoking-smoking is the habit of inhaling and exhaling lit tubers of tobacco through your mouth. Fatness is the continued existence of body weight, above a certain point.
Opiate drug addiction/dependence-the use of this and other intoxicants causes the body to reduce its own internal production of matching/similar chemicals, in this case opiates-to prevent overdose. After the drug exits the system, production is restored. Repeated use leads to breakdown in the the mechanisms that restore production-in those susceptible to this. The body becomes dependent on the external supply. Fatness happens when the body increases its own mass.
Alcoholism-.........er sorry, no idea of the underlying mechanism of alcohol dependence, above and beyond, the body adapts to the presence of alcohol. Fatness derives from cells the body produces, indeed, is born with.
Mental health audit-body-weight does not signal mental health any more than dents in the head signal criminal or other inclination. The best signal of mental health is of course patterns of behaviour. Self-harm-refers to acts that seek to damage the individual, such as the cutting of ones flesh or starving oneself. Once a tendency to self harm is activated, usually by a build up of negative stress, the drive seems to be triggering the release of chemicals the body uses to repair. This relieves the stress by providing feelings of relaxation, relief/ even up lift. Being fat is the outcome of the body's internal self-regulatory processes. Slow suicide- is an oxymoron. The one thing that most signals the urge to suicide is an imperative to haste. Any slowdown must reflect the will to live. The urge toward suicide is not usually a cause for opprobrium, but that's not really the point. Fatness is body led and does not express a wish to end life, more likely the opposite on body's part.
The purpose here is to press fatness into the agenda of those making comparisons. That mainly consists of a desire get fat people to accept the unacceptable. To re-formulate the way fat people perceive themselves and are perceived by others. And to quiet the person's own conscience.
The acute ineptness of all this reflects a switching off of internal critical faculties. It's easy to forget that our own minds are the first critic of our own thoughts. When we don't bother, we inevitably spout drivel. What's amazing is how even this level of unthink doesn't prompt laughter, but instead is pandered to and treated as if merits countering and is deserving a full explanation of its vacuousness.
That is what's dubbed, thin privilege. The leeway to be as stupid as you wish to be and have that treated as thoughtful and in good faith. That's the halo of slimness.
Those unembarrassed enough to assert the absence of a basic critique of their own thoughts are unlikely to respond honestly to your careful and earnest assessment of such.
This sadly still too often includes fat people, activists included. Though in this, the problem comes more from the self estrangement and continued erasure of operating under the same basis of falsehood as everyone else.
The crudest sign of this lack of interest in the veracity of fatness is the ceaseless inept comparisons thrown around helter-skelter. Fatness is routinely dubbed/compared with: an eating disorder, neurosis, chronic disease, addiction (where addiction is being conflated with compulsion), smoking, opiate drug dependence, alcoholism, an audit of mental health, self harm, slow suicide etc.,
Usually, to urge to compare comes from a drive to illuminate through finding similarities with things that may be or have more familiar themes or characteristics. Nothing expresses more the extent to which fat people's self defense has been disengaged, by operating to the mainstream agenda, than these failures of comparison.
Let's start with; an eating disorder-fatness is body mass or size, an eating disorder refers to a dysfunctional pattern of eating or non-eating habits. A neurosis- is an imbalance of or in the functioning of the nervous system/ brain. Fatness is the physiology of higher body mass. A chronic disease- chronic disease is disorder of the body's function, that has no cure only treatment. Fatness is an outcome of a body's metabolic self regulation, it's function not dysfunction. An addiction-to mean-compulsion as in "obsessive compulsion" is a repetitive act or set of actions that have attained a self sustaining momentum that's unresponsive to conscious intent to halt it or them. Fatness is the action of physiology not the physiology of an action/ set of. Smoking-smoking is the habit of inhaling and exhaling lit tubers of tobacco through your mouth. Fatness is the continued existence of body weight, above a certain point.
Opiate drug addiction/dependence-the use of this and other intoxicants causes the body to reduce its own internal production of matching/similar chemicals, in this case opiates-to prevent overdose. After the drug exits the system, production is restored. Repeated use leads to breakdown in the the mechanisms that restore production-in those susceptible to this. The body becomes dependent on the external supply. Fatness happens when the body increases its own mass.
Alcoholism-.........er sorry, no idea of the underlying mechanism of alcohol dependence, above and beyond, the body adapts to the presence of alcohol. Fatness derives from cells the body produces, indeed, is born with.
Mental health audit-body-weight does not signal mental health any more than dents in the head signal criminal or other inclination. The best signal of mental health is of course patterns of behaviour. Self-harm-refers to acts that seek to damage the individual, such as the cutting of ones flesh or starving oneself. Once a tendency to self harm is activated, usually by a build up of negative stress, the drive seems to be triggering the release of chemicals the body uses to repair. This relieves the stress by providing feelings of relaxation, relief/ even up lift. Being fat is the outcome of the body's internal self-regulatory processes. Slow suicide- is an oxymoron. The one thing that most signals the urge to suicide is an imperative to haste. Any slowdown must reflect the will to live. The urge toward suicide is not usually a cause for opprobrium, but that's not really the point. Fatness is body led and does not express a wish to end life, more likely the opposite on body's part.
The purpose here is to press fatness into the agenda of those making comparisons. That mainly consists of a desire get fat people to accept the unacceptable. To re-formulate the way fat people perceive themselves and are perceived by others. And to quiet the person's own conscience.
The acute ineptness of all this reflects a switching off of internal critical faculties. It's easy to forget that our own minds are the first critic of our own thoughts. When we don't bother, we inevitably spout drivel. What's amazing is how even this level of unthink doesn't prompt laughter, but instead is pandered to and treated as if merits countering and is deserving a full explanation of its vacuousness.
That is what's dubbed, thin privilege. The leeway to be as stupid as you wish to be and have that treated as thoughtful and in good faith. That's the halo of slimness.
Those unembarrassed enough to assert the absence of a basic critique of their own thoughts are unlikely to respond honestly to your careful and earnest assessment of such.
Britain's Fattest Woman
Has left the building. I've seen her before. Her name turns out to have been Brenda Flanagan-Davies. If you scroll down, you may recognize that picture of her with an open fridge and somewhat rascally gaze. It features heavily-take the pun if you want it-in FA spaces. It's a troll bomb fave par excellence. Someone adds a tagline that really tickles their insensibility: "My genes are in the fridge" or something of that sort.
I'm sure you feel the funny-fat people insist fatness is genetic, but really, it's because they eat too much from the fridge, geddit?
Unlike slim people who do not claim anything is genetic and rarely that they can't help themselves [it's an illness], which is why that's (not) funny. It's the contrast between stoical slim people and entitled, always blaming something else, never themselves, fat people.
Now I'm laughing.
Sadly, Brenda's another who's fallen foul of the extra-judicial death sentence that is having a body that excels at storing energy. Because when you get down to it, that seems to be the capital 'crime'.
You could say, she ate "too much", but hey, if she'd ate the same and her body had stored less/wasted more-I'm not even talking being slim, I'm talking say to the point of her being half the weight stated for her 40stones/254kg/560lbs. She mightn't have been quite so stuck in the trap laid out for her.
Again I have to ask, how much is the absence of any sense that an extraneous appetite is not just "being fat" but a disorder that can be rebalanced or at least reduced? All that's needed is some endeavour to try it out say at the "bariatric" wards/centres, not so much springing as creaking up here and there.
Gadzooks, there's even the remoteness possibility of them becoming slightly useful to some very marginalized fat people. Heaven forefend they not be little more than lipsmacking holding pens for the cutty men (they seem to be mainly) to cut a swathe.
It was said she was-"Britain's Fattest woman "- never quite understood why fatness brings out this type of competitive impulse. The fattest man, woman, child in so and so. "We're the fattest country" "No! We're the fattest country- if you measure it by body fat percentage/separate/amalgamate women from men/include/exclude other jiggery pokery etc., etc.,"
Rarely is there such competitiveness about who's the thinnest person country [is there?] You'd think that would be the point of competitive fevour, but fattest really is the prize fat phobes want-strange. Maybe it's like a sling shot-the bigger the takeback, the more forceful the shot.
Those reaching the highest weights usually have a conjunction of factors going on, often their bodies are outstanding in all of them. Their bodies store like fury, they have some factor, often in childhood that seems to dissemble/stretch any area of landing or set-point: bereavement/separation, abuse, neglect. Puberty or pregnancy can be added to that or be the entry point of this store like anything, occasionally menopause too. I've seen it happen, after a lifetime of slimness. Not to mention a period of ill health/health challenge, medication...
Some people's food environment is high on calorie density, though that's not always the case. And of course slim people exist there many of them not particularly small eaters-though it is always presented that way.
It's also worth mentioning that a few people may be displaying sub-clinical versions of certain fattening syndromes, like that identified as hypothalamic obesity. Hyperphagia obviously, but even things like a strangely disassociated/removed/spaced out countenance, a disproportionately distended belly-even before fat goes on top of that.
Not to mention again, rampant unchecked hyperphagia nervosa, which is classed in the anorexia dominated field as an eating disorder, when really its heightened and/or hyperactive hunger. It's an over function of that, like heightened temperature, the thing is to lower it. Not to talk nonsense about complexity and fee fees.
All this may or may not be down to funky wiring, hypothalamic lesion/malformation. Even leaving apart the more arcane problems, you'd think the ED would be an accessible target for even the most bovine ci/co wingnut.
That if nothing else was done, learning to turn down people's hunger-without drugs would be worthy of effort, to relieve the distress of excessive hunger on the person concerned. But no, that would require a sense of connection with the humanity of a person-a default impulse to try recognizing actually needs and trying to meet them.
That however isn't doesn't appear to be compatible with the targets of crusades. Even the more serious ones of history.
Even if medics can't be arsed, they could at least inform their people of this, to do some internet searching themselves. They could let go of policing people into extreme docility and ignorance. They could tell them to be more proactive, that they have nothing and aren't interested in them.
Those who tell people like Brenda to diet or die have little route nor incentive or inclination to try and help or change their ways because there's no come-backs on them. It's all on people like Brenda. She was never given a chance to have a clear sight of her state of being. To get a sense of whether her hunger was or wasn't functioning correctly.
That is why FA. It's about us all, no matter where we fit waking up to these brutal facts. That we will be left to suffer and die in total ignorance of ourselves- if we do not take our humanity and our care into our own hands.
Better for all, thin to fat alike, would be to acknowledge hunger as the generator of eating. If one cannot deal with a physiology overly bent towards storing energy. One can at least switch excessive hunger down-if its present.
A basis of HAES which can be built on with specialist physiotherapy, develop a culture of maintaining/increasing mobility. This of course would immediately humanize "the obese." Which isn't the point of the 'obesity' crusade.
I'm sure you feel the funny-fat people insist fatness is genetic, but really, it's because they eat too much from the fridge, geddit?
Unlike slim people who do not claim anything is genetic and rarely that they can't help themselves [it's an illness], which is why that's (not) funny. It's the contrast between stoical slim people and entitled, always blaming something else, never themselves, fat people.
Now I'm laughing.
Sadly, Brenda's another who's fallen foul of the extra-judicial death sentence that is having a body that excels at storing energy. Because when you get down to it, that seems to be the capital 'crime'.
You could say, she ate "too much", but hey, if she'd ate the same and her body had stored less/wasted more-I'm not even talking being slim, I'm talking say to the point of her being half the weight stated for her 40stones/254kg/560lbs. She mightn't have been quite so stuck in the trap laid out for her.
Again I have to ask, how much is the absence of any sense that an extraneous appetite is not just "being fat" but a disorder that can be rebalanced or at least reduced? All that's needed is some endeavour to try it out say at the "bariatric" wards/centres, not so much springing as creaking up here and there.
Gadzooks, there's even the remoteness possibility of them becoming slightly useful to some very marginalized fat people. Heaven forefend they not be little more than lipsmacking holding pens for the cutty men (they seem to be mainly) to cut a swathe.
It was said she was-"Britain's Fattest woman "- never quite understood why fatness brings out this type of competitive impulse. The fattest man, woman, child in so and so. "We're the fattest country" "No! We're the fattest country- if you measure it by body fat percentage/separate/amalgamate women from men/include/exclude other jiggery pokery etc., etc.,"
Rarely is there such competitiveness about who's the thinnest person country [is there?] You'd think that would be the point of competitive fevour, but fattest really is the prize fat phobes want-strange. Maybe it's like a sling shot-the bigger the takeback, the more forceful the shot.
Those reaching the highest weights usually have a conjunction of factors going on, often their bodies are outstanding in all of them. Their bodies store like fury, they have some factor, often in childhood that seems to dissemble/stretch any area of landing or set-point: bereavement/separation, abuse, neglect. Puberty or pregnancy can be added to that or be the entry point of this store like anything, occasionally menopause too. I've seen it happen, after a lifetime of slimness. Not to mention a period of ill health/health challenge, medication...
Some people's food environment is high on calorie density, though that's not always the case. And of course slim people exist there many of them not particularly small eaters-though it is always presented that way.
It's also worth mentioning that a few people may be displaying sub-clinical versions of certain fattening syndromes, like that identified as hypothalamic obesity. Hyperphagia obviously, but even things like a strangely disassociated/removed/spaced out countenance, a disproportionately distended belly-even before fat goes on top of that.
Not to mention again, rampant unchecked hyperphagia nervosa, which is classed in the anorexia dominated field as an eating disorder, when really its heightened and/or hyperactive hunger. It's an over function of that, like heightened temperature, the thing is to lower it. Not to talk nonsense about complexity and fee fees.
All this may or may not be down to funky wiring, hypothalamic lesion/malformation. Even leaving apart the more arcane problems, you'd think the ED would be an accessible target for even the most bovine ci/co wingnut.
That if nothing else was done, learning to turn down people's hunger-without drugs would be worthy of effort, to relieve the distress of excessive hunger on the person concerned. But no, that would require a sense of connection with the humanity of a person-a default impulse to try recognizing actually needs and trying to meet them.
That however isn't doesn't appear to be compatible with the targets of crusades. Even the more serious ones of history.
Even if medics can't be arsed, they could at least inform their people of this, to do some internet searching themselves. They could let go of policing people into extreme docility and ignorance. They could tell them to be more proactive, that they have nothing and aren't interested in them.
Those who tell people like Brenda to diet or die have little route nor incentive or inclination to try and help or change their ways because there's no come-backs on them. It's all on people like Brenda. She was never given a chance to have a clear sight of her state of being. To get a sense of whether her hunger was or wasn't functioning correctly.
That is why FA. It's about us all, no matter where we fit waking up to these brutal facts. That we will be left to suffer and die in total ignorance of ourselves- if we do not take our humanity and our care into our own hands.
Better for all, thin to fat alike, would be to acknowledge hunger as the generator of eating. If one cannot deal with a physiology overly bent towards storing energy. One can at least switch excessive hunger down-if its present.
A basis of HAES which can be built on with specialist physiotherapy, develop a culture of maintaining/increasing mobility. This of course would immediately humanize "the obese." Which isn't the point of the 'obesity' crusade.
Thursday, 22 January 2015
A Doctor's Advice on Treatment
Had no idea doctors were seen as particularly youthful, I suppose that's reference to the way some practice past the usual retirement age/s. Anyway, I enjoyed perusing this article-it confirmed so many of the things I've already thought or come across and I daresay you too.
Witness doctors apparent points of caution at the prospect of being patients themselves;
Then there's an excellent pointer to have in mind at all times-what matter's most to you?
What's bothering you the most? Is the doctor clear about what's bothering you most? Will the treatment not just treat the disease but deal with what is bothering you most? Are you well informed about the probabilities of benefit and harm?
How much more pertinent are these questions for fat people facing attempts to present "weight management" as a non-consensual imposition?
When considering treatment;
Apart from Stunkard/ MacLaren-Hume, I've never been able to locate an answer to this question re-weight loss interventions. They never tell you it in this form, assuming they can a lot of the time.
Imagine if all "overweights and obeses" asked doctors that question about "weight management interventions"? I think we should consider that our duty.
Witness doctors apparent points of caution at the prospect of being patients themselves;
- Usually, more scientific evidence is available about the benefit of a new treatment than its risks and limitations.
- Lab screening or radiological investigations often produce false positive results, suggesting a disease is present when it isn't.
- CT scanning raises the risk of cancer because of radiation.
- Any medical intervention - a test, operation or drug - will have harmful side-effects for some people, even when carried out by the best doctor in the country.
Then there's an excellent pointer to have in mind at all times-what matter's most to you?
What's bothering you the most? Is the doctor clear about what's bothering you most? Will the treatment not just treat the disease but deal with what is bothering you most? Are you well informed about the probabilities of benefit and harm?
How much more pertinent are these questions for fat people facing attempts to present "weight management" as a non-consensual imposition?
When considering treatment;
Are you really sure you want this treatment- and will you blame yourself if it does go wrong?!!!! And How urgently is the treatment needed?My personal favourite was;
You need absolute numbers, so here are two questions for your doctor:I knew it!
If 100 people have this test or treatment, how many of them will have a good result?
If 100 people have this test or treatment, how many will suffer some harmful consequence?
Apart from Stunkard/ MacLaren-Hume, I've never been able to locate an answer to this question re-weight loss interventions. They never tell you it in this form, assuming they can a lot of the time.
Imagine if all "overweights and obeses" asked doctors that question about "weight management interventions"? I think we should consider that our duty.
Thursday, 15 January 2015
Strange Taboo
It's unacceptable to say that a fat person can eat little compared to saying a slim person can eat a lot. But one rarely referred to taboo is that one can have an irresistible compulsion to eat, but not enjoy eating.
Again, there's little problem with saying that one can have a sexual compulsion-that is an overwhelming desire for sex, or to keep getting sexual relief-orgasm. Seeing as some seem to doubt sexual compulsion.
This experience is far more prevalent than one might think. For example those who say they "Hurt themselves with food." Seem at least in part to be relaying an irrepressible drive to eat without pleasure.
I had no idea this was so until I let it slip out. The reaction from one girl was so hysterical that I felt need to withdraw it so she'd calm down. Then much later on, I remember discussing this again, after preambling it with that very incident.
As if the word irony had no been invented, a similar thing happened and I was accused of not knowing what I was talking about. Because what I said didn't match the wrong descriptions of ignorant disinterested people, who call the ED shots.
The hot button seems to be food=pleasure. Anything else is somehow unacceptable. Yet my experience is that the pleasure of eating is generated by the correct workings of the mechanics used for eating and digestion.
If your body is out of song then it either isn't generated or felt.
What's even more intriguing is the issue of control.
It's presumed that ED's mirror each other. That they have the same issues and themes despite different context, behaviours and outcomes.
One thing that's most associated with anorexia is control. This is probably due to the worship and fetishization of anorexic behaviour as the only route to inducing deliberate weight loss. Hyperphagic disorder and anything associated with it, is seen as the opposite, out of control, though there are sometimes attempts to press it into the AN mould i.e. fatness is first defined as an ED, which it isn't, then described as trying to gain control by filling a void of despair, like anorexia.
But when it comes to genuinely having a hyperphagic disorder, I'd say the control bit is more likely to be showing through any insistence that one either eats purely out of elective conscious choice, for pleasure, or to "hurt" oneself.
Ask yourself how many times you hear a hyperphagic say anything but.
Again, there's little problem with saying that one can have a sexual compulsion-that is an overwhelming desire for sex, or to keep getting sexual relief-orgasm. Seeing as some seem to doubt sexual compulsion.
This experience is far more prevalent than one might think. For example those who say they "Hurt themselves with food." Seem at least in part to be relaying an irrepressible drive to eat without pleasure.
I had no idea this was so until I let it slip out. The reaction from one girl was so hysterical that I felt need to withdraw it so she'd calm down. Then much later on, I remember discussing this again, after preambling it with that very incident.
As if the word irony had no been invented, a similar thing happened and I was accused of not knowing what I was talking about. Because what I said didn't match the wrong descriptions of ignorant disinterested people, who call the ED shots.
The hot button seems to be food=pleasure. Anything else is somehow unacceptable. Yet my experience is that the pleasure of eating is generated by the correct workings of the mechanics used for eating and digestion.
If your body is out of song then it either isn't generated or felt.
What's even more intriguing is the issue of control.
It's presumed that ED's mirror each other. That they have the same issues and themes despite different context, behaviours and outcomes.
One thing that's most associated with anorexia is control. This is probably due to the worship and fetishization of anorexic behaviour as the only route to inducing deliberate weight loss. Hyperphagic disorder and anything associated with it, is seen as the opposite, out of control, though there are sometimes attempts to press it into the AN mould i.e. fatness is first defined as an ED, which it isn't, then described as trying to gain control by filling a void of despair, like anorexia.
But when it comes to genuinely having a hyperphagic disorder, I'd say the control bit is more likely to be showing through any insistence that one either eats purely out of elective conscious choice, for pleasure, or to "hurt" oneself.
Ask yourself how many times you hear a hyperphagic say anything but.
Tuesday, 13 January 2015
Not Tonight Irene
Fat people suffer as much from poor health as they do from poor image. They also die younger. My mother, always fat, died at 61. She suffered for years from carrying around an extra hundred pounds. She was intelligent, beautiful, loving, kind and industrious, but sadly I lost her too soon due to her being over weight. It is too bad we can't promote a healthier body along with a better image of our body. ~ IreneThis is the kind of comment caught me unawares from the get go. Here's someone stating that their beloved mother (father/partner/ or other loved one) died of something, yet couldn't seem to care less that there was nothing available to prevent this.
You'd think that would be of primary concern. Instead we get the insipid: "...too bad we can't promote a healthier body along with a better image of our body" and the like. What?
How would "promotion" have reversed her mother's weight by 100lbs? Is this a product launch or a matter of life and death? Perhaps most puzzling of all, why do these people direct the dead hand of their minds at lay people, when it is scientists that produce science?
Legislators/politicians local and national are the ones who influence and decide the allocation of funding for said science, don't you think writing to them might start concentrating minds? Why would a group advocating for the valuing of fat people-so absent from their minds attack said advocacy?
Have you ever heard the like of this elsewhere? Because I most definitely haven't.
Even when you come across people whose relatives have traumatized them through their behaviour under the influence. They still talk with feelings of sadness, regret and love. Even if they ultimately felt they had to disconnect from the person, due to their behaviour.
I know abstinence is bunk, people's assertions that there ought to be more provision for it at least focuses on trying to help the person concerned.
Not people like Irene. Too often, they're curiously disinterested in direct assistance to their loved ones. Nor am I yet to see convincing show of grief;
My mom is slowly killing herself. She won’t live to old age. How the fuck do you want me to feel? And she’s not enjoying herself, either. Her joints hurt, she has breathing problems, she can’t find clothes in her size, medications don’t work properly at her weight, and when she needs a surgery she will be at a considerably higher risk of complications. The FA movement would have me applaud her for this. Well no. Fuck that. She’s my mom, and when she hurts herself she hurts me too. You wouldn’t stand idly by while your friend committed suicide or spiraled into drug addiction, would you?”That's exactly what these people do, do, stand idly by, that's what is so shocking about them. Does this person really think their use of "fuck" hides the absence of real emotion? Her joints could be helped by changes the things going into her body. Her breathing might possibly be eased through exercises and her medications adjusted or other things tried.
I don't and wouldn't applaud the stasis of dieting or be damned. What for?
Why do they continue to draw attention to themselves? Presumably, they do not have a clue as to how they sound. I suspect that's partly down to the unnatural absence of response from fat people to anything fat haters say to us. This was due to the suppression of any remotely contrary feelings about dieting being an article of faith.
I'm sorry for the mother's suffering, but I'm most sorry of all that she has this unit for a child. What's amusing about this is clearly, this person has caught on that there is something profoundly wrong with how these people go on, using their often dead or dying (they say) relatives to concern troll. Or should we say, death troll? This is using the ill health/death of relatives, to tell fat people off for advocating self restoration, respect and care.
Do you feel he's gruff but with a heart of gold? I'm afraid I don't. Perhaps I've been too spoilt by hearing a lifetime of genuine expression of grief and sorrow for loved ones. It's not simply the absence of that, it's the lack of genuine feeling.
You'd have to be a bit if a brute, not to find his unconvincing straining for effect somewhat amusing. The fakeness and lack of humanity engendered by the 'obesity' crusade that seems to warp minds this way. Specifically, accepting the person is disease dehumanizes, not dehumanizing, I mean it removes the humanity from a person and the person who accepts it too.
To accept that, your critical faculties have to be switched off. And that must account for this out of tune reaction. There was controversy when the dsmv proposed enduring grief as a pathological condition to be treated with anti-depressants.
Here's a natural antidote. Get people to see their loved ones as self inflicted disease and voila, no grief. Maybe they could check out their brains to see what area's suppressed and come up with some way of replicating it for the illness of grief.
This is the outcome of avoidance of discomfort. Grief isn't nice, so you don't have to feel it, as long as you see people in the right way.
I was going to say that you cannot grieve a thing, but of course, you can. Come and see me the time when my computer locked and I couldn't use it! Looking up a way through, there was more honest show of grief in others experiencing the same fate, than any of these jokers.
One of the best things about landing on a site like Nurse Naomi's blog about her young daughter is to finally have the privilege of witnessing a person behaving as you'd expect under the circumstances.
Her daughter is a real person, not a cypher or a stick to try and beat someone else with.
She listens and relays what her daughter is experiencing. She describes Hana's feelings in subjective terms and her condition in objective terms.
She can't sit and wait for science, she's out there researching and scouring the earth for possibilities, leads, anything that might help. Her entreaties are directed at scientists, obviously because they do the science. And she talks of saving Hana.
She seeks to garner attention for the plight of her daughter Hana and others, you know she could not sit idly by.
And what doesn't she have time for-as far as I know? That's right, FA. Because we aren't the reason why the science in this area is so undeveloped. Hypothalamic obesity was apparently isolated in 1901.
Hana of course, has an actual condition. She's not just a person being defined as a condition so there's something to describe.
Trying to save the life of your loved ones with all your might is the least I'd expect you to feel moved to do, according to your abilities. Re-routing the course of metabolic function doesn't bring amateur to mind.
If the Irene's of this world made noise about the absence of any means to save their loved ones and aimed it at those with influence; politicians, medics, public healthists, scientists themselves, metabolic science would have become the worthwhile and important subject I've always suspected it is. That would help anyone reverse weight, whether triggered by tumours or not.
It would attract better minds, and they'd perhaps be an honest humane and progressive discourse, kicking into touch the debased hate-fest that passes for "debate" right now. People like Irene have had a part to play in allowing things to come to this and I can't for the life of me work out why.
So the question is, why do people like "Irene" not know how strange their behaviour is?
Monday, 12 January 2015
Well Meaning Fat People
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.~ Charles DarwinWhy do so many ignorant ideologues feel at such liberty to relentlessly question the practice, ethics and intelligence of fat people?
Let's reiterate, calories in/out, a lifestyle of proto-anorexia plus its bastard child the 'obesity' cult has an unprecedented hold over everyone's psyche. It still does. It's meant feminists advocating against bodily autonomy for women-if they're fat. Excoriating against advocates of the death penalty, advocate the death penalty for fat people. Anti-racists who tell Black people they should accept mal-treatment on the grounds of weight, they would fight on the grounds of race. People against anorexia think it "healthy" to tell a child their social problems will be solved if they control their food intake and train like an athlete.
Those who insist communism is evil, insist all people need the same diet of tasteless pap and the same amount of calories, the grip is total.
Despite the ci/co junkyard trashing all belief systems, ethics, professionalism before it, its failed utterly to achieve its own purported ends. Despite or perhaps because of this, its mentally dependent fanatical hagiographers remain hopelessly entranced by it. Which would be fine, if they weren't in positions to impose it on those who know better from bitter years of experience. Lived experience they delete at every turn.
So desperate are these wretched cranks, that they've been forced to concede the obvious, that dieting as a weight reversal strategy is a bust. Buuuut that's only because you give up too soon. Leaving aside that this (typically) makes no sense. What's too soon?
That's pretty much open-ended.
What other strategy would be given an indefinite amount of time to prove itself? Let's take the 7 years proposed here. At work, what task would you be expected to be given such time to complete? Complete a company report? Turn around a department into profit/productivity? How about a district, or establish your own business?
What about prime minister or president being given 7 year terms of office? How long would you stick with something before you declared it a fail? If you had a headache for 7 years, would you keep taking the same pill for it which didn't work? What if it came in different packaging and had different designs? After all, a headache is far more bearable than forcing yourself to block hunger, do activities, eat a diet dictated by someone else.
Maybe you'd give a destructive marriage 7 years, indeed advocates for sticking with proto-anorexia are similar to advocates for sticking with all marriage-I'll bet that's where that stupid phrase came from. It doesn't matter that you're being treated like shit, marriage is sacred, no divorce.
Funny thing is these fanatics are well able to acknowledge and assert the concept of failure when it suits them;
.......attempts to manipulate what we find beautiful have been crashingly unsuccessful. The Adipositivity Project – which uses artful photographs of morbidly obese half-naked models to reframe fatness as a thing of beauty – remains separatist and marginalised.Seeing as Substantia Jones's project was to photograph fat people artfully, I'd say she's succeeded in that 100%. But even if we take on the internal projection of a fat phobe that she's aiming to do what they do-manipulate taste. We can clearly see SJ has been declared a flop after what 5 years or so? And given her "failure" is "crashing" we are to infer that she'd have been expected to have succeeded long before that.
The truth about failure is, it's embarrassing. One of the things that makes a person stop doing what doesn't work is to recover their dignity. It's seen as admirable to learn from failure by seeking not to repeat it. When we aren't allowed to act on our good sense, we are turned into the village idiot, repeating failure as if we can't predict or accept that its happening.
Repeating failure and the insult to one's intelligence is what goes into fat people developing a tremendous burden of shame. That others feel no compunction about pressing us into this shows there's little care about the impact of this on us. It shows our co-operation with the process has brought us no grace, but only contempt. Because only people who are really craven and abject would subject themselves to this continual assault.
The truth is, whilst fat people keep dieting like it works, we'll never gain the respect of those telling us to do it.
The higher the expectation of success, the higher the cringe factor. Telling us now that we should take this continual failure in our stride is bunkum, that was discovered by dieters. It's only available as 'advice' because they contradicted the flow.
Being launched into a diet with shame, hate via assaults on your body, morals, health and integrity, is hardly conducive to not taking it to heart. You're doing it to relieve that burden, not for something to do. It's imperative that you escape the trap you've been placed in.
Taking this with pinch of salt would require the acknowledgement that this method is and always was crap. That it should not be expected to succeed, like a high odds bet.
No sign of that though, instead we're told its fat people's lack of stocism/endeavour. We want the "easy way out" oh really?
A cursory look around the fatsphere alone shows people have developed all manner of eating disorders, lost organs, been hospitalized and been taken to the edge of our sanity following these particular set of weight loss dictates. I was lost in this tunnel for while, 17 straight years dedicated to this worthless and sinister ideology. I unwittingly short changed people who genuinely care about me, in pursuit of what, apart from my own undoing?
And what prey is the easy way out? Taking a pill for back or any other ache, when you mis use your back with abandon, stand like a puppet held up by sagging strings? How about pills to calm down, to avoid finding out why you're so miserable in the head you helped to build and such?
For the easy way out read efficiency, effectiveness.
I remember hearing about a potent variety of a plant discovered growing in China. It was prized for its ability to treat and cure a murderous tropical disease. Though varieties grew elsewhere, this one created excitement because though other varieties worked, they were so slow acting that barely anyone could manage to keep taking it for long enough.
That was for a deadly disease. Death was not sufficient "motivation" to stick with it.
This was accepted because this normal behaviour, such that can be observed the world over. Realizing few can manage to take the 'cure' is a completely rational assessment of the efficacy of a remedy. That despite working, it in the end didn't, because it fell down on impliementation.
Dieting's a pathology. It's so far away from being close to as good as the defunct variety of that plant that it sounds like a joke. It has little potency in the first place. It cannot be tolerated by any system that reacts to it normally ,i.e fights the heck out of it.
That this risible and failed pathology still has such overweening currency is a tribute to the power and influence of the medical profession and the absolute chokehold ci/co ideology has got over the human psyche.
One of the things that disgusts me the most is the raving ahistoricism such extent of denial and delusion brings about. Supporters of "weight management" deny what fat people have done-what what we know we've done.
This is undoubtedly abusive. It's gaslighting maximus. Only people in relationships with possessive and controlling partners/relatives etc., have similar experience of such relentless suppression of their lived experience in order to control and direct their behaviour.
No one should have to put up with this, certainly not in conjunction with "improving health." Denying our actual efforts worst still, inserting false reasoning and narratives put a huge pressure of dissonance on fat people. I'm sick and tired of the fakeness we're expected to substitute for real experience that continues to go unheard.
I was never really able to face my ED squarely because that felt like I was copping out of my weight loss dieting campaign. That I was demotivating myself by letting myself off the hook. More than that, I didn't feel able to say what was actually happening. That I got no pleasure from being run ragged by overweening appetite and hunger.
How can any fat person not enjoy eating? How can a fat person who is a "glutton," not be driven by pleasure? I didn't feel able to say these things as they ran so counter to the narratives pressed on us. I felt like a liar when I faced the truth.
If anyone feels the urge to say I was "hurting/punishing myself with food" kindly suppress such fake arsed drivel.
When you are on your uppers physically and/or mentally, you shouldn't have to expend precious energy care-taking other people's delusional projected narratives. You should not be stymied at every turn by a culture of false information and slander, especially when you have only yourself to rely on precisely because of this distraction.
It turned out that this lack of enjoyment was a sign of other ingrained problems which needed to be dealt with, to some extent before I could unpick my ED. Indeed, the unpicking of the former turned out to be part of doing the same for the latter. If I had known this, it would have changed everything and saved a hell of a lot of years.
Fat people are never deemed well meaning are we? Never. Despite sticking with something no one else would put up with for so many years, often whilst deriding and underplaying our own efforts. Marginalized fatter people recognised that aspects of diet and exercise worked for them. So instead of being purely discouraged by lack of slimness, they turned this and other things to their advantage and used them to maintain and increase their function. They created HAES, also deemed ready for the bin, by Dr(s) Diet-Cannot-Fail and his ilk.
I spent years frustrated and failing, unwittingly deepening more than one eating disorder, yet at the same time, I learned to look at other avenues to increase my well-being. Avenues that ended up saving me from several neuroses endgames, eventually enabling me to reverse the numerous problems I either created or advanced following orders.
The people giving the orders were of absolutely no use for recovering from the numerous problems their intransigence leaves in other people.
Yet still we can be presented as always fucking up, so says a bunch of dozy self absorbed arseholes who cannot face up to themselves and are certainly in no position to judge us.
They can also do with stopping their "It takes years to get fat" too. It takes whatever nanosecond it takes for whatever takes weight upward to acquire its animating spark. Time just allows that exegesis to unfold.
It should take no time whatever to reverse that similarly if the correct means was found. Refuting obvious failure is a time wasting tactic bent on postponing the inevitable reckoning. The one they're dodging with all their might. Remember, all this means even those who's fatness they cannot condemn as "self inflicted" get done over the same, if not worse than a common or garden fat person, by this indulgence.
Never forget, because they do.
Friday, 9 January 2015
Touch Brain
Ever seen one of those old experiments where a surgeon probes an area of a person's brain via their opened up skull prompting them to feel, see vivid and visceral sensory experience?
When I first heard the definition of phobia as "an irrational fear" my mind rejected that as both wrong and unhelpful. The latter's a bit moot. I dislike lying definitions/diagnoses on the whole, but there are times when they can be false but contain useful insight. Like.... but in the main I'd say in the main, the truthtiest is most likely to be the most helpful in the long one.
Life is about extending your conceptual grasp.
That irrational fear label is misleading. It perhaps depends on a general conceptual basis about the nature of responses such as fear. We tend to presume what causes fear- the feeling invoked when facing a threat to life and limb- generates the feeling of it.
For example, being cornered with a roaring lion in front of you. Yes, but in the sense that the lion activates the parts of your system that produces and expresses that feeling. Where we seem to struggle is with the idea that this mechanism can be set in motion and produce the same or at least similar feelings-without a real threat being present. In other words, without a meaningfully fear-inducing stimulus.
Rather like that surgeon.
In the case of a phobia, the momentum is a particular trigger, association or experience; spiders, flying, buttons even. The fear is real, it's happening, like feelings are being experienced by the patient whose brain is being prodded.
Because our impulses, instincts, feelings and emotions have to have material to come into effect through. That is usually our nervous system, rather like the fibre optic cable the internet is beamed through.
Though we know our brain and nervous system function is anatomical, we seem to forgot feeling them almost as ethereal outerbody metaphors.
It's a bit like when you've tried in the past to explain the internet to someone unfamiliar with computers. They'll ask you things like; "Where's the internet?" Though that's kind of amusing, if you've gotten past your where's the i-net phase, it's a perfectly valid question. Turns out, it is somewhere. In fibre optic cables running through actual terrain and so on.
But that's not really what they're asking. They want to know, what the stuff coming to your computer is. Not being technically minded (that way) the best I have managed is the old comparing it to a telephone (landline) and wifi to a mobile.
I think we slip in and out of a similar issue with the brain/nervous system. And eating, well, that's also disappeared down a conceptual rabbit hole. Actually a cognitive error. Though we know on some level that eating is necessary and that hunger is generated by anatomy. We've gotten lost in the calories in/out (ci/co) hypothesis. Hunger has almost become by default something akin to a mere notion, unrelated to necessity. Like me right now deciding to consider the skyline outside this window.....
We know it isn't really, but ci/co exists to support a particular outlook, set of responses and behaviours. It supports calorie restriction as the method of weight regulation. Actually regulating weight requires undesired change. All this facilitates the compulsion to press fat people into various disordered behaviours.
In order to really progress beyond ci/co, to even understand a true eating disorder of for example, excess hunger, you have to start from the basis that hunger is a signal produced by your anatomy. It lands in your conscious brain or awareness yes more as an mid to endpoint in the process of maintaining energy. It is not created where it lands-in your conscious mind, anymore than feeling cold is created by your conscious awareness that you are cold.
And with hunger, just as the machinery of fear can be set in motion either by other triggers or even some internal self sustaining imbalance in the mechanism, so can the body can be provoked into producing and excess of hunger signalling.
When I first heard the definition of phobia as "an irrational fear" my mind rejected that as both wrong and unhelpful. The latter's a bit moot. I dislike lying definitions/diagnoses on the whole, but there are times when they can be false but contain useful insight. Like.... but in the main I'd say in the main, the truthtiest is most likely to be the most helpful in the long one.
Life is about extending your conceptual grasp.
That irrational fear label is misleading. It perhaps depends on a general conceptual basis about the nature of responses such as fear. We tend to presume what causes fear- the feeling invoked when facing a threat to life and limb- generates the feeling of it.
For example, being cornered with a roaring lion in front of you. Yes, but in the sense that the lion activates the parts of your system that produces and expresses that feeling. Where we seem to struggle is with the idea that this mechanism can be set in motion and produce the same or at least similar feelings-without a real threat being present. In other words, without a meaningfully fear-inducing stimulus.
Rather like that surgeon.
In the case of a phobia, the momentum is a particular trigger, association or experience; spiders, flying, buttons even. The fear is real, it's happening, like feelings are being experienced by the patient whose brain is being prodded.
Because our impulses, instincts, feelings and emotions have to have material to come into effect through. That is usually our nervous system, rather like the fibre optic cable the internet is beamed through.
Though we know our brain and nervous system function is anatomical, we seem to forgot feeling them almost as ethereal outerbody metaphors.
It's a bit like when you've tried in the past to explain the internet to someone unfamiliar with computers. They'll ask you things like; "Where's the internet?" Though that's kind of amusing, if you've gotten past your where's the i-net phase, it's a perfectly valid question. Turns out, it is somewhere. In fibre optic cables running through actual terrain and so on.
But that's not really what they're asking. They want to know, what the stuff coming to your computer is. Not being technically minded (that way) the best I have managed is the old comparing it to a telephone (landline) and wifi to a mobile.
I think we slip in and out of a similar issue with the brain/nervous system. And eating, well, that's also disappeared down a conceptual rabbit hole. Actually a cognitive error. Though we know on some level that eating is necessary and that hunger is generated by anatomy. We've gotten lost in the calories in/out (ci/co) hypothesis. Hunger has almost become by default something akin to a mere notion, unrelated to necessity. Like me right now deciding to consider the skyline outside this window.....
We know it isn't really, but ci/co exists to support a particular outlook, set of responses and behaviours. It supports calorie restriction as the method of weight regulation. Actually regulating weight requires undesired change. All this facilitates the compulsion to press fat people into various disordered behaviours.
In order to really progress beyond ci/co, to even understand a true eating disorder of for example, excess hunger, you have to start from the basis that hunger is a signal produced by your anatomy. It lands in your conscious brain or awareness yes more as an mid to endpoint in the process of maintaining energy. It is not created where it lands-in your conscious mind, anymore than feeling cold is created by your conscious awareness that you are cold.
And with hunger, just as the machinery of fear can be set in motion either by other triggers or even some internal self sustaining imbalance in the mechanism, so can the body can be provoked into producing and excess of hunger signalling.
Tuesday, 6 January 2015
Shut-In
I see our friends at channel 4, those who forgot themselves and brought you, my mad fat diary-are back to their usual mining of fatsploitation-[anorexia-by-proxy, agit-prop]. An upcoming one that sounds really edifying is called "Shut-Ins."Can you guess what that's referring to?
Permit me to give you a hint.
Here's me saying we've (all) been bricked into lifestyle anorexia/exercise bulimia. Actually, we're bricked in to wherever our bodies do or don't go, with one exit only marked the above. Then C4 goes ahead with this;
Those punters were easily pleased though, as I don't remember them demanding to get their full jollies seeing them being "treated." See, people don't have problems, they have fat. It's the old, there's nothing going on but my obsessions. They may think this is fat people being subjects, but I doubt it. If I see it though and I'm wrong, I'll write a corrective post.
The disinterest in actual people's actual problems gives the whole crusade a fake aura of people chasing a pretense of care they can't really feel. Amazing that seemingly opposite feelings produce no tension whatever. Such is the deadzone effect of a complete lack of integrity, curiosity or even professionalism.
This neglect of the person-sets a pattern that has entrenched this peculiar inability of fat people to mount an effective defense for so long.
There was a recent programme on about the representation of British spies on film. It spoke about a character who'd been scarred by this job- which consisted of him pretending to be other than he was in social as well as other settings.
They described this man as hollowed out by this. I thought *bingo*-that's it. Instead of being able to acknowledge your efforts-because the results are so universally refuted-you're forced up against pretense.
In the course of all this, you repress, deny even disconnect from your true feelings and experiences. Ending up bonding with a version of you that isn't in existence.
The refutation of repeated reality hollows some aspect of a person- dispossessing you of some part of your self knowledge, sometimes leaving an oddly childlike, deeply passive space in you.
Our capacity for adaptation kicks in so quickly, we adapt to this odd limbo that's invested with so much hope. Hope that can outlast reason and at times sanity.
This refusal to see a person and their actual problems is as imprisoning as being forced down one route to altering metabolic function. A lot of our experience is made up of solving or trying solve our own problems.
Indeed, some view life as a series of that. Imagine not being able to really focus on them somehow. That's as much why people disappear down this rabbit hole as anything.
Of course other people's hackneyed suffocating projection is everything. Aftab stays indoors and sometimes eats up to 12,000 calories. No wonder he's stuck indoors, right? Wrong.
I mentioned a woman presenter who said she heard about the reality show Ruby and wept when this very large woman spoke herself tearfully of eating thousands of calories a day. This particular woman said at the height of her hyperphagia, she considered 15,000 to be her having a "good day."
She weighed under 140lbs.
There's also a picture I remember from years ago of a kitchen stocked with food, four loaves of bread, vegetables, everything a family of four would need for a week. It was the replication of a teenager's last meal. She was bulimic, it killed her. She weighed even less than the presenter.
It's as much a mystery as to why more people don't achieve "shut-in" status, than it is why more aren't 140lbs/63.5kgs.
Intake and weight are as much about the luck of the draw than anything. And if Sharon, Aftab or anyone else's body wastes most of their intake, their weight would be unremarkable. If you ask fat people why they not fatter, you'll too often get the same bone headed vanity you tend to get from slim if you ask why they're slim.
Find a way to reverse the process. It's a whole process, but a set of interconnecting reactions. One key in the right place reverses the whole, just as smoothly and as holistically as it advanced. Appetite, hunger, weight, they're all just parts, they aren't cause.
I don't know if that term's as evocative for you as it is me. I keep thinking of the first Mrs Rochester who represented women losing their minds, repressing themselves into the feminine ideal, rather than, you know, being.
Until their mental springs went pop or they crossed some invisible (not blurred) line.
Who'd have thought, a person could end up this way, purely because its been decided that this the route to preserving the medical monopoly and its hierarchy?
Towards the end of last year, I happened upon an impressively upbeat woman named Mandy Sellars. She has an extremely rare disorder that's made her legs grown to a combined weight of 238lbs/108kgs.
Now what immediate approach do you think doctors took to try and help her? Yep, they sought to stop her legs increasing in size. Because containment is an obvious first goal in cases of excessive growth, not wastage. In doing that, you are potentially finding an active route to reversal of that growth, anyway.
The insistence on wastage or bust has always been a point of suspicion and is why people feel like hiding at home.
The 'obesity' crusade can get away with a lot with fat people. One thing it cannot do is stop you noticing what scientists/researchers medical professionals do when they truly mean well
Permit me to give you a hint.
Here's me saying we've (all) been bricked into lifestyle anorexia/exercise bulimia. Actually, we're bricked in to wherever our bodies do or don't go, with one exit only marked the above. Then C4 goes ahead with this;
.....with 2.5% of over 16’s now morbidly obese.........an increasingly large group of Brits are now unable to leave their homes due to their extreme weight gain. Many of them depend solely on their partners, parents or offspring to look after them, unable to take care of themselves sufficiently their family carers become a vital life-line and link to outside world.I feel like I've watched it in all but detail. Where's the money shot for research fat phobes-you know those who are so grateful to fat people for telling the truth about 'obesity'?
With lives on the brink The Shut-Ins will follow two such people and their loved ones, both of whom who are held hostage by a life devoted to food.That could be a life dominated by an excess of hunger but hey, nevermind;
Fixed rig cameras will be set up in their homes and a life-changing crack team including a GP, dietician, psychologist and bariatric surgeon will be enlisted to monitor both their relationships and their diets in a bid to turn everyone’s lives around.Ah, there we are. It's not just a prurient documentary taking full advantage of unnecessary and cynical marginalization, its got the weight loss porn tacked on for your erm..... explosion of catharsis. That must be the equivalent of the Bedlam going to see the crazy people.
Those punters were easily pleased though, as I don't remember them demanding to get their full jollies seeing them being "treated." See, people don't have problems, they have fat. It's the old, there's nothing going on but my obsessions. They may think this is fat people being subjects, but I doubt it. If I see it though and I'm wrong, I'll write a corrective post.
The disinterest in actual people's actual problems gives the whole crusade a fake aura of people chasing a pretense of care they can't really feel. Amazing that seemingly opposite feelings produce no tension whatever. Such is the deadzone effect of a complete lack of integrity, curiosity or even professionalism.
This neglect of the person-sets a pattern that has entrenched this peculiar inability of fat people to mount an effective defense for so long.
There was a recent programme on about the representation of British spies on film. It spoke about a character who'd been scarred by this job- which consisted of him pretending to be other than he was in social as well as other settings.
They described this man as hollowed out by this. I thought *bingo*-that's it. Instead of being able to acknowledge your efforts-because the results are so universally refuted-you're forced up against pretense.
In the course of all this, you repress, deny even disconnect from your true feelings and experiences. Ending up bonding with a version of you that isn't in existence.
The refutation of repeated reality hollows some aspect of a person- dispossessing you of some part of your self knowledge, sometimes leaving an oddly childlike, deeply passive space in you.
Our capacity for adaptation kicks in so quickly, we adapt to this odd limbo that's invested with so much hope. Hope that can outlast reason and at times sanity.
This refusal to see a person and their actual problems is as imprisoning as being forced down one route to altering metabolic function. A lot of our experience is made up of solving or trying solve our own problems.
Indeed, some view life as a series of that. Imagine not being able to really focus on them somehow. That's as much why people disappear down this rabbit hole as anything.
Of course other people's hackneyed suffocating projection is everything. Aftab stays indoors and sometimes eats up to 12,000 calories. No wonder he's stuck indoors, right? Wrong.
I mentioned a woman presenter who said she heard about the reality show Ruby and wept when this very large woman spoke herself tearfully of eating thousands of calories a day. This particular woman said at the height of her hyperphagia, she considered 15,000 to be her having a "good day."
She weighed under 140lbs.
There's also a picture I remember from years ago of a kitchen stocked with food, four loaves of bread, vegetables, everything a family of four would need for a week. It was the replication of a teenager's last meal. She was bulimic, it killed her. She weighed even less than the presenter.
It's as much a mystery as to why more people don't achieve "shut-in" status, than it is why more aren't 140lbs/63.5kgs.
Intake and weight are as much about the luck of the draw than anything. And if Sharon, Aftab or anyone else's body wastes most of their intake, their weight would be unremarkable. If you ask fat people why they not fatter, you'll too often get the same bone headed vanity you tend to get from slim if you ask why they're slim.
Find a way to reverse the process. It's a whole process, but a set of interconnecting reactions. One key in the right place reverses the whole, just as smoothly and as holistically as it advanced. Appetite, hunger, weight, they're all just parts, they aren't cause.
I don't know if that term's as evocative for you as it is me. I keep thinking of the first Mrs Rochester who represented women losing their minds, repressing themselves into the feminine ideal, rather than, you know, being.
Until their mental springs went pop or they crossed some invisible (not blurred) line.
Who'd have thought, a person could end up this way, purely because its been decided that this the route to preserving the medical monopoly and its hierarchy?
Towards the end of last year, I happened upon an impressively upbeat woman named Mandy Sellars. She has an extremely rare disorder that's made her legs grown to a combined weight of 238lbs/108kgs.
Now what immediate approach do you think doctors took to try and help her? Yep, they sought to stop her legs increasing in size. Because containment is an obvious first goal in cases of excessive growth, not wastage. In doing that, you are potentially finding an active route to reversal of that growth, anyway.
The insistence on wastage or bust has always been a point of suspicion and is why people feel like hiding at home.
The 'obesity' crusade can get away with a lot with fat people. One thing it cannot do is stop you noticing what scientists/researchers medical professionals do when they truly mean well
Monday, 5 January 2015
Out with the Old and in with the New
Happy New Year to one and all.
Oooh. Guess who didn't get her HNY message edited on time? Yes I do [attempt] to edit this believe me when I say that.
Anyway, in the end, who cares?
I hope this year brings you all the good things you desire. And in terms of the yahwn, weight wars, I hope fat people keep in mind. The real power's in our hands.
I don't care to hear any whimpering about "victim blaming" or sociedee ought not to blah de blah. In short, either we choose to wake up to this mess and throw it off, or we don't.
And its not just for us. I keep saying this. Though that seems laughably mock heroic, it's true. If we fatz continue to allow ourselves to be taken roughly in the unmentionable parts, we'll be used to take everyone else down with us.
And that's something that might be harder for most of us to live with.
Though I can come across somewhat gruff when it comes to slimz and their identity crisis related antics. I have to say, if I absolutely think about it, I don't actually like the idea of being used to take them down at all. Still not bitter, still not interested in returning fat hating fire.
It's still a complete joke. Slimz are better than this.
So do it for yourself, for others, or both. But do it. Re-inhabit yourself/your spirit, your soul. Recognize your humanity lies within and can be found there, not outside or from others and this year could be big fun.
I've got a feeling........
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