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.