Farewell Jean Nidetch

The death of Jean Nidetch founder of weight watchers has been announced. It's a timely reminder of just how much fat people have been in the forefront of participating and advancing the slimming cult. Rather than the more familiar delusional assertion that slim people need to introduce fat people to the idea.  Yes, if you cognitively erase the multi-billion $$$$ businesses that comprise the now worldwide slimming industry. 

Nidetch went on to found weight watchers in 1963 after intuiting that the kind of group therapy style environment, usually used to do such as support the traumatized or maintain alcoholics and addicts in a state of abstinence would be required to support something as demanding and unnatural as starving your body down to a desired size.

WW, in existence before, during and after the famous 'ob' spike/s of the 1970's despite cleaning up financially has done little to prevent, reverse the overall drift of the weight spectrum to the right of the weight graph. Some say its further aided it. The white coat mafia are well aware of its failure. And always have been.

That has been key to the advance of slimming, the fanatical cult like belief in slimming regardless of outcome. Something about it becomes rooted in the consciousness and requires quite a sustained effort of disciplined will to overcome its cognitive distortion.

In terms of business though, Jean, was a pioneer managing to effectively flog a product that's somewhat imperceptible, if indeed it exists at all, by selling around it.

Take that i-net profiteers.

That she started this tranche of the slimming cult rolling as a result of seeking to reduce her own weight via calorie restriction is a hint that epigenetics is not simply there to whine about 'obesity'. Amongst other things, our bodies are getting cleverer at seeing off these crude and stupid attempts to use energy to manage weight after its fact.

Perhaps also the desire for greater safety has helped dieting to become even more ineffectual than it already was. If Nidetch had been born 50 years later and she had used her own company, it's far more doubtful that her body would have succumbed to quite the extent that it did.

Nidetch sold WW to Heinz in 1978 for apparently 71 million smackeroos and this useless but profitable industry is still going strong with extensive support, including a couple of doughty rescue missions from its friends in the white coat mafia.

But that's all by the by now for Jean. Goodbye formerly fat warrior against obesity, your race is run.

6 Types Of Human Being

Following on from the blatant lie that fatness or being fat is "disease," this delusion keeps getting stupider.

And yeah, you are supposed to be overlooking this.

A posit has been tentatively advanced-that there are six types of 'obesity' i.e. people. That's one in the eye for self hating fatz pompous posturing about "not able to tell themselves from their obesity." You'll note from these media reports-that's because there can be no difference. Ob doesn't equal metabo.

Though I get the legacy of we are immaterial and the body is just a perishable shell to carry around our immortal souls etc.,

In the more secular assessment of homo sapiens 'obesity' and person/people becomes conflated. You can't separate the measure of a whole person, from that person. You can focus on the metabolic system as discrete from the whole human being, but then you'd have to stop pretending that metabolic function is regulated chiefly via conscious direction.

This conceptual flaw that should have been immediately spotted by the minds of those who decided all people above a certain size are the same person replicated, as if with a photocopier.

All they have to do is allow their minds to function properly again. Not to do so is their direct CONSCIOUS CHOICE.

The headline "Six types of obese individual" [not even sure how that one works grammatically]. "Obese individual" is supposed to counteract the de individualizing of fat people created by the 'obese' construct. Now there's six "individuals". Just end this nonsense and you won't have to bother with this tosh. 

Underscoring the stock photo of a headless fat person. "Study claims that targeted treatment will be much more effective at helping obese individuals." The first line;

Researchers have identified six ‘types’ of obese person, claiming that a tailor-made approach to each could save the NHS money.

What they're effectively saying is there are 6 types of human being;

• young healthy females – women who were obese, but generally had fewer human obesity-related complications, such as type 2 diabetes
• heavy-drinking males – as above, but with higher alcohol intake
• unhappy and anxious middle-aged – predominantly women with poor mental health and wellbeing
• affluent and healthy elderly – generally positive health, but defining characteristics of higher alcohol intake and high blood pressure
• physically sick but happy elderly – older people with more chronic diseases such as osteoarthritis, but good mental health
• poorest health – people who were the most economically deprived and had the greatest number of chronic diseases 

Young women, dipsomaniacs and alcoholics of indeterminate age, neurotic women, rich old bon viveurs with heightened blood pressure associated with advanced years, positive old people with various ailments associated with age, poor people some of whom have chronic disease.

I mean you can't even laugh.

I wonder if this will challenge astrological signs, there are twelve of them. Suffice to say, I'm not any of these six, are you? I include slim and thin people in this because this is about humanity as a whole. They just happen to be using fat people to illustrate their point.

As for the so called "targeted treatment" referred to, this is crudely borrowed from the idea of targeted treatment for real not fake disease. The idea being that instead of treating for example cancer according to the body part it shows up in. They're going to try treating it according to the type of cancer it is.

I don't know about you but its a surprise that they don't already, in fact despite that link, I'm not too sure about that. Mind you, I thought different body part equaled different cancer too.

The obvious flaws in this sad panto mimicry is that @besity is FAKE as disease and bankrupt as construct. The fundamental intellectual snag is no matter the marketing type or whatever categorization you prefer, the target is always the same-HUNGER.

No matter how you try to dress that up, its still the same rotting carcass.

Weight loss diet wallahs always think messing about with appetite will rescue calorie restriction. Its high protein, no paleo, no low-fat, no vegetarian, no vegan, no Mediterranean's that's best diet for "weight loss."

They keep failing to grasp the problems lie with restricting calories not with the way you mis-direct attention, bamboozle, create a kerfuffle whilst doing so. Nor does it matter what you call calorie restriction-the way the body reacts to it is where the problems lay, not with the side issues.

Repeat after me; if you wish to reverse weight, study and work out the body's own genesis and maintenance of its body mass. Then you can learn where you can manipulate or tweak this in order to change what is the outcome of function, not personality type or societal status.

Thank You "Morbidly Obese"

Though you are stupidly dubbed "morbid," you are life-enhancing characters. Size 14 which is really a size 16 of more recent times, would have been seen as fat. 

Now undercover 16 has become an acceptable size.

Why?

Because fatter people that's why.

I was going to say what morbid obesity is, but it's kind of an on-the-fly type deal. One day its at this point, the other day its at the other. It's not as if its scientific or anything.

Thanks to this concept, those who are actually quite well-covered can go on pretending to a slimness they've probably lost or never possessed in the first place. Those who are chubby or mildly fat, look at fatter folks and can feel societally acceptable, thanks to "morbid obesity." I wonder if that was always part of the rationale behind the term?

Such foresight.

It is astonishing that those within clear sight of slim even thinness don't want to set an example. That must be pure choice. Because dieting though it doesn't work would be so easy and painless for the none-too-slim/plump/mildly fat. It's easy to keep on doing it everyday for the rest of your life. Especially when you're that close.

It's probably easier to be slim than plump. They can at least try, because trying and failing looks different than not trying at all.

Think about it.

Despite this "morbidly obese" favour, barely slim/chubby/fattish ingrates actually seem to be trying to direct vilification at you, taking itoff themselves. How low is that? How shabby to sell out others just to take the heat off yourself. 

Some people will do anything to avoid the threat of negative scrutiny which is odd, given they tend to keep saying-its no big deal and isn't negative enough anyway, when they put it on others.

They must be mistaken about that if they're prepared to look this bad throwing people under the bus to avoid it.

A pity they don't feel any sense of solidarity for others and their feelings.

One has to wonder if that kind of shabby no-account venality is the key to having a BMI under whatever "morbid obesity" is this week. Could be, all avenues must be considered.

And anyway, proposing that much vilification ought to be directed at fatter people is not efficient. Logic would dictate that vilification should be directed at those nearest to weight acceptability, because they could so easily become truly stand-alone acceptable.

Let the tearing apart of them begin.

Tell Us Medics, What are your Real intentions Regarding the Obesity Crusade?

'Obesity' research/science has turned into a preposterous self-serving exercise in generating papers on how bad 'obesity' is, despite asserting this as already a given. But at least they're getting paid.

What's in it for doctors and other white coat professionals?

Being morbidly obese is a choice. There, I’ve said it. I know it won’t make me popular, that many will accuse me of "fat-shaming",

From an article entitled "The cynical lie that "fat is fabulous" and why plus size bloggers should never be considered role models for young women." It doesn't matter what doctor or says, it's what biology does. Or has the grip medical professionals have gained over fat people made some of them feel those are interchangeable?

Cynical adj.

• Believing or showing the belief that people are motivated chiefly by base or selfish concerns; skeptical of the motives of others: a cynical dismissal of the politician's promise to reform the campaign finance system.
• adj. Selfishly or callously calculating: showed a cynical disregard for the safety of his troops in his efforts to advance his reputation.
• adj. Negative or pessimistic, as from world-weariness: a cynical view of the average voter's intelligence.
• adj. Expressing jaded or scornful skepticism or negativity: cynical laughter. 

If anyone embodies the above, it would be a medical profession vis-a-vis fat/ness. Repeatedly claiming fat is a deadly threat to health yet rarely if ever querying the lack of efficient means of reversing said threat. This is too out of character to go unnoticed.

Usually when medics see a health problem they alert everyone, indicating what they feel is an effective remedy. If there's nothing effective, they tend to call for something to be found. They don't tend to fib about effectiveness, especially when it is this obvious. And they're usually clear on the difference between treatment and cure, the latter is usually mentioned. Along with the need for different if not better treatment, no matter how effective available treatment is felt to be.

The possibility of progress can be hard to envisage before it comes.

Rarely do they blatantly advance the acid test of quackery, that something is 100% effective, if it fails, you aren't doing it right. No doctor with any real judgement would expect anything to be done right by the whole of any group. Let alone something that takes on a force as powerful as human hunger.

Even if there was something anywhere near close to completely effective, i.e. certain birth control methods. They would not advocate that there should be one route and one route only. Usually, the more the options the merrier.

So they must have a motive in asserting it must be this way and this way only, what is that motive?

Doctors tend to be more aware than most about what does and doesn't work. Their position means they tend to meet consequences of any failings. Many's a time when hype has been punctured by a doctor's asides on the true merit of a much vaunted remedy. Prompting gasps as the air fizzes out of widespread expectations.

It therefore becomes rather obvious when they deviate from this. Advocating a purported solution they go out of their way not to implement themselves. Leading the insistence that something works when they know it does not. There's also a pronounced fiddling whilst Rome burns attitude that is out of keeping with their own desires, given medics primary objection to fatness is they feel it makes work for them.

Even if fatness failure of people-which it isn't- medics rarely seem interested in that. They happily dispense treatments for minor pains, neuroses and anxieties that can be solved by no one but the person concerned. I get the reasons for the departure, but not the lack of interest in getting the most effective solution for doctors!

That they're so prepared to use and lose their reputation for integrity to face down the prospect of getting beyond such continual and obvious failure, indicates promoting this failure is very important to them, to what end?

The cynicism is clear in that they obviously feel they can openly get away with predicting people will have health problems and die whilst showing an uncharacteristic disinclination for this to be arrested. That would be unsavoury behaviour in anyone, let alone a profession that sees itself as guided by the interests of its patients.

In lieu of that, what will act as a limit on their actions?

It seems distinctly cynical to be this confident that no one out of millions will perceive these differences. Including those who are being told they're about to perish with little to stop it. 

Very much an emperor's new clothes situation, with them being the emperor(s).  

The assertion of self inflicted "lifestyle" as a means of justifying this also rings a rather false note. Numerous medical conditions, states outcomes and conundrums are partly if not wholly inflicted by the person concerned. How many accidents and injuries could not be placed in that category? In many cases its the rule not the exception. Not only is that not an issue-except if its medically relevant-it's never conflated with them having a solution.

A loss of patience with that would necessitate a change in relationship between doctor and patient, with the latter being much more proactive and empowered. If that was desired, why didn't medics make better use of the opportunity afford by fat people's extreme willingness to keep trying weight loss dieting over so many years? This ready obedience is so out of keeping with usual behaviour, that it has led medics to lose sight of the humanity of fat people and see them as puppets who jump at their every beck and command. That has actually become an obstacle to progress in itself.

Dis-empowering and degrading people via social means just ends up having the opposite effect of taking the weight off medic's shoulders.

This makes the instigation of widespread calorie restriction more important than professional ethics and even the nature of the profession itself. There would seem to be a lot hanging on insisting on forcing people through the route of calorie restriction induced weight loss alone. Why is this?

Such fervent assertions of this and nothing else is possible, how can anyone assert something so utterly unconvincing?

The false set up and maintenance of either this or nothing.

Which in this case is the same as saying either nothing or nothing. Only the first nothing looks like something. The fervent assertion of nothing else is remotely possible. How can anyone claim something so utterly unconvincing?

I cannot say exactly what would reverse weight, but I've been able to reverse a chronically heightened state of hunger, via adjusting the overall state of my nervous system.

This is a form of manipulating metabolic function, as hunger is a metabolic feature. 'Tis clear that neither pills nor potions are needed to change the mechanics of metabolism function. Reversing weight is obviously achievable. Why be so keen to pretend otherwise? Why wouldn't finding proper means of altering metabolic function, to change outcomes be the overriding imperative?

Why do medics seem to feel that would be such a disaster for them, would it? How so?

Instead of getting angry with your failure to bully success into an inherently dysfunction method as in the above article.

Start explaining yourselves......

Starve 'n' Sweat Cannot Argue with Itself

Being dangerously overweight is all down to bad diet rather than a lack of exercise, according to a trio of doctors who have reopened the debate about whether food, sedentary lifestyles or both are responsible for the obesity epidemic.

Where to begin?

Best to deal with what I emphasized. You may not be surprised to learn, that is not a debate. That happens when two or more opposing views are aired. [Why's the @besity crusade either busy chasing or faking non-debates? Is there anything it isn't faking?] Calories in, calories out, or the diet-weight hypothesis refers to the construction of body size as the product of calorie intake minus calorie output.

They are both the same idea, calorie or energy manipulation, via opposing ends (of the same branch). Anything which deals with directly manipulating energy is just a different means to bring about said aim-that includes, stomach removal/gastric re-routing, gastric binding along with most slimming drugs.

They all advance on the same principle, reduce the amount of energy coming in and/or increase the amount going out.

What would be another idea? Theoretically, it'd have to be altering the mechanics that produce weight to change that outcome. In concrete terms, I'm not sure. Everything has been so centered on starve 'n' sweat deliberately, and our grasp of the interplay of metabolic systems so limited, that its hard to get in the mindset of other ideas.

Other routes have been gone down, which could signify other ideas.
 
Manipulating gut flora via bacterial transfer gut, obviously doesn't target fat tissue directly. It appears to have the same mechanical flaw as repeating energy manipulation-homeostasis unravels it, though there maybe a subset of people in whom its affective.

Seems that gut flora as well as acting "like an organ" is a cog in metabolic function, not a driver of metabolic outcomes.

An even further outsider is through something like meditation, yoga, or other practices that soothe/stimulate/refresh the nervous system. That pathway's a long shot because it doesn't promise any amount of weight reversal, though has the potential to if it can be directed at the right place. As usual exceptions apply.

Restorative therapies can lessen hunger and/or appetite because they target/affect/manipulate the nervous system. Cals in/out-starve 'n' sweat-targets fat tissue via suppressing hunger and appetite. Meditation and other restorative therapies affect the system that carries the various messaging and biochemically mediates the operations of metabolic function. Thus supporting greater integrity of function. 

The latter works with the body the former disrupts it. That's the "battle" as in "battle with my weight." Not your will, but your body's metabolic self regulation.

It could be comparable to taking on your immune system [starve 'n' sweat] versus supporting and improving its level of function [restorative therapies].

Starve versus sweat is a non-argument that has become sterile even to many committed fat phobes. It speaks of people who are stuck in a mental hole they refuse to get out of. It's back and forth, round and round is made from ideology above biology. Neither starving nor sweating is the route to reversing weight. Blame is not an issue, even if it mattered.

This is anatomy, not morality.

Pile-On Your Voice

Okay, enough of this Jamelia pile-on. This is later than it should have been and things have kind of moved on-in more ways than one- but I still felt the need to say it.

Jamelia was raring to go and didn't even catch the warning of the chair, Ruth Langsford when she mocked her suggesting segregating small and plus sizes out of the high street, into specialist backwaters. She felt otherwise was facilitating unhealthiness-if you are unhealthy, you should feel unhappy, said she.

I was enraged up to that. I'd imagined remonstrating with her and it wasn't nice. That last bit surprised me though, that's exactly what the @besity construct is for. To place and keep fat people in a state of permanent dis-ease. I usually dismiss whining about how difficult it is to broach this subject, but I'm begining to wonder whether there's too much of a contrast between the acceptance of medicalized notions of @besity and what that really means.

The social media pile-on changed the way I felt. It's one of those cases where you end up, not so much feeling sorry for the target, but recognizing they're taking too much flak for the wrong reasons, i.e. not a white coat.

That Jamelia could so accurately, however unwittingly depict the essence of a crusade, reminded me of the instigators and propagators of this whole canard. I'm not even sure I can say she's a bigot. A tool of the establishment, yes, but she did not stand on casting most of the usual aspersions about fat people being of bad character.

She even started with her belief that people should celebrate themselves, be able to look good etc., and yeah, I do believe that because it has a deep cultural underpinning, especially in resistance against racism's degradation of Black people's humanity. Along with meme of celebrating life.

Like everyone else though she ends up not being able to end the thought she started with and going back over it. That's caused by the inherent bankruptcy of the @besity construct. It's not compatible with humanism. When people eventually catch on that they're doing this. I doubt they'll be best pleased.

As I've spent a lot of time explaining how fat people are taking it for everyone's disappointment about the distance between their internalized abstraction of humanness and their actual humanness, you may get why my ire was stopped in its tracks.

To those who called her out I ask, where are you when all the usual bullshit is going down with so called 'scientific' findings? I don't ask that you take fat haters on directly, on the contrary, I see your reluctance/disinclination as a positive virtue. The exposure of their irrelevance is long overdue.

All I say is learn to keep making your presence felt and your voice heard in this way. Don't read comments that upset you. Just address your feelings to articles and do not be intimidated by any so-called bandying of science. Speak your mind, i.e. Where is my voice in this? Why am I continually shut down/ sidelined from my own life? How does this help me? When are you going to talk to actual people about how they feel/the effects of all this on them and their health? etc.,

I'm sure you can come up with waaaay better. Just whatever you feel you want to say or what you want to be heard. A couple of lines is more than good. Say something of your feelings. Maybe even how much those close to you are on at you.

How long they've been on and you. How long you've been on at yourself and what that has done to you.

Pile-on your real voices wherever cold dehumanizing @besity is banded about as if its some theoretical abstract. Make it impossible to forget this is an assault on real people. Make others hear from you. And try not to take @besity noise personally, or feel you have to answer any personal questions or justify yourself. Do not be on trial. You are not on the witness stand. You do not have to defend yourself. Say that if you want. "I'm not here to beg or plead or persuade you or any. Just to say my peace thank you, bye."

In fact, start asking other people questions. Ask them if they'd appreciate having to answer to everyone, justify their existence, whatever. Move it out of weight and on to other examples. And don't be discouraged if you run out of words or don't know what to say. Let go and come another time. Learn to put words to your feelings away from the heat, so that when its on, you can garner some thoughts.

For bit of context, here's virtually the whole conversation, ignited by this programme;



The whole discussion such as it was, was much of a muchness, consisting of participants repeatedly making points and going on to contradict them in the same breath/sentence that's a construct-related cognitive distortion -thought or sentence bending as I call it. 

i.e. "Diets don't work unless you keep on them." The end doesn't simply contradict, it jettisons the initial recognition that they don't actually work.

The slightly different tack here was to focus on "young girls" who were in their estimation, shockingly fat.  A grab-your-smelling-salts, size 20-22, as opposed to a size 14-16, so its not as if we're being unreasonable. 

On the one hand, it was recognized that this was about tapping an undeserved  market, on the other that the glamour images of beautiful women used to sell these clothes would hide the truth of 'obesity' which was physical infirmity and health breakdown years later on.
 
This may portend a slight shift in assault. That middle aged spread is one thing, but being fat at a young age is another. It's also increasing the concentration on the most visibility fat BMI 40 +. It's weird to see fat phobes trying to actually think. To recognize on some level that here are real human beings whom they have to attempt to persuade in some way.

Rather than their usual triumphalist rah, rah, rah obesitah. This represents a chink of vulnerability. A sense that things maybe slipping away from them. Now powerful forces, in the pursuit of lucre most filthy are threatening to bypass their tyranny of unthink.

They're not quite so cocky.

Sour Grapes

Well, the sour grapes about one little deviance from the de rigueur fat=bad folklore continues. I suspect some people put @verweight and @besity on their must view list, because it took fat haters a little while to catch onto an opportunity to vent their unhealthful spleens. 'Underweight' threw them.

All the study stumbled over, whilst reviewing GP's records was there were more diagnoses of dementia among people with the lowest weight;

Earlier this month, a major study in the Lancet seemed to suggest that obesity protects people against dementia. 

It did not "suggest" any such thing;

Our results contradict the hypothesis that obesity in middle age could increase the risk of dementia in old age. 

[My emphasis] That's pretty clear. Being fat in middle age is associated with decreased diagnosis of dementia. Anything more than that would come out of  describing how underlying metabolic function is causative of potential differences in health outcomes amongst weight classes (rather than individuals). That's beyond the scope of epidemiology.

And as we all know, correlation ibid.

I don't object to criticism of these findings, far from. It's nice to see some genuine rigour applied to weight-related epidemiology. Change 'under' for 'over' weight and you can hear missing critiques of 'obesity' hypothesizing fall like spring rain.

These findings don't alter the fact of contriving generalizing outcomes by category, partitioning these into individual units, claiming this determines health outcomes, has neither merit nor relevance.

Finding out how to alter metabolic outcomes, via tweaking metabolic function has nothing to do with using weight for the purposes of social larceny engineering.

Anyhow, back to the cause of all the sulking;

....this contradicts previous studies that show that if you are obese, you are more likely to have diabetes, high blood pressure and high levels of cholesterol, all of which contribute to the development and progression of dementia.

 Indulge my reiteration of the key flim-flam here;

Overweight and obesity in mid-life, measured by BMI, have been associated with a higher risk for late-onset dementias on the basis of epidemiological reports.

The use of "association", "risk" especially are weaselly and loose in the extreme. As is most @besity nonsense, built as it is on a stack of cards.

As one critic of this finding pointed out risk is not deterministic. The rest of that little summary goes;

Adipose tissue, the main contributor to overweight and obesity, lends biological plausibility to increased risk because it is the largest endocrine organ in the human body and because it increases vascular risk.

Ha, ha, ha, @besity wallahs are not only obsessed with food, they're fixated on fat cells as vandals. A reminder that @besity's a metaphor, with its villainous adipose cells, round, yellow with pencil moustaches to twirl the ends of as they wreak havoc on innocent organs-the ones @besity professionals haven't turned into offal. Because erm what? They just intrinsically baaad? No, that's silly. They turn baaad once your BMI passes 24.99999999999999........

Trez science.

And erm, no to this hypothesis lending "biological plausibility." Even if it did, proper standards of defining actual, rather than mythological causality, apply.

The most favoured scenario seems to be fat people die before we can get demented, of course without anything so tiresome as perusing the study. I've never heard thinnest sold so effectively;

....epidemiologist Deborah Gustafson of State University of New York has challenged this interpretation and says the study design is flawed. GPs diagnose dementia with varying degrees of accuracy, and the timeframe between the age at which the BMI was recorded and the date of onset of dementia is not clear.

 "Varying degrees of accuracy," eh? That's a euphemism and a half. As for the latter, she seems to be alluding to the possibility that what? A person could be diagnosed whilst fat and slim down under the influence? So weight isn't much use as a diagnostic tool? Even more obvious, the direct connection between spontaneous weight loss, ageing, pathology, disease and ultimately death? The one that's usually cut out of the frame?

Our cohort of 1 958 191 people from UK general practices had a median age at baseline of 55 years (IQR 45-66) and a median follow-up of 9.1 years (IQR 6.3-12.6). Dementia occurred in 45 507 people, at a rate of 2.4 cases per 1000 person-years. Compared with people of a healthy weight, underweight people (BMI - 20 kg/m²) had a 34% higher (95% CI 29-38) risk of dementia. Furthermore, the incidence of dementia continued to fall for every increasing BMI category, with very obese people (BMI 40 + kg/m²) having a 29% lower (95% CI 22-36) dementia risk than people of a healthy weight. These patterns persisted throughout two decades of follow-up, after adjustment for potential confounders and allowance for the J-shape association of BMI with mortality.

Clear enough? Or in short;

Very obese people, with a BMI over 40, were 29% less likely to get dementia 15 years later than those in the normal weight category.

I say the same thing about this that I say about other findings, find out how the body produces weight. Then in this case, find out how that over time affects the production of the brain's cells and anatomy. Indeed, the former might tell you the latter, if that is indeed relevant.

One thing I'm sure we can all sense is excessive, unyielding negative stress has its part to play in undermining mental and physical well-being, so when people try and dump all the ills of being human on you. Remember to be mindful. Step back from their thought- stream and let it flow by or through you....

Just let it go......

Parental Devotion

We're so used to ugly fakery and collusion with the 'obesity' crusade, even from decent and lovely people, that we've lost sight of a genuine response. Rameshbhai Nandwana who according the the UK press is proposing to sell one of his kidneys to fund specialist assessment and diagnosis for 3 of his 4 children. Yogita aged seven, Anisha aged 5 and little Harsh a boy of a year and a half. The eldest girl, Bhavika is six years old and unaffected.

Both Rameshbhai and his wife Pragna Ben look after these children with tender devotion and a civilized understanding way outside the league of western model weight rage. Despite effectively being in service to their children's severely heightened hunger.

And its not as if 'obesity' rot hasn't penetrated India;

"A few social workers have come forward to help but it’s not just about the food," he said. "If my kids continue to grow at this rapid rate they will have major health issues.

How astute of him. This is a medical problem, not another opportunity for diet fanatics to ventilate their irrelevant compulsions. These three children obviously have some kind of endocrinal disorder. They've gained weight at a phenomenal rate and suffer from rampaging hyperphagia-or excess of hunger, the non-neurotic kind.

Their bodies are primed by something to keep storing not using energy along with disturbed hunger out of kilter with their physical needs. The parents have sought treatment but this situation needs some specialist input in the form of diagnosis for one- though what specialists can do is anyone's guess. This is out of Nandwana's price range so he's proposing to sell one of his kidneys to fund, mere diagnosis.

Few people either know or can describe how unpleasant hyperphagia is. To most, food=pleasure so a high intake =hedonism. When in reality, the intake is caused by an excess of hunger, which is unpleasant to the point of being intolerable.

People assume this is just normal hunger, though it's an extension of it- like temperature, hunger is on a gradient- when it is way beyond anything like normal.

I'm not surprised these poor children scream and cry when they're not fed, that isn't being spoilt, that is piercing discomfort. The kind that is like that serious phase of depression where the agony is so intense that you feel you may have to end yourself just to stop it.

It's truly horrible to endure. That alone is worth getting rid of, before getting to whether weight can be reversed or not.  The erasure of hunger to reposition it as some kind of emotion or thought leaves it to go where it wants.

If that's normal great, if not, tough shit, if you hurt you hurt, if you die, you die.

How this can happen during a supposedly feverish global crusade that's supposed to be against weight, is evidence that the 'obesity' crusade is not about solutions or medical advance.

It still hasn't even penetrated the minds of many activists that it's not simply that those who are healthy are being attacked, their well being and health undermined, it's also that those who do actually have something wrong, are being shafted.

They're being denied the proper means of assessment, treatment and relief. Diet 'n' exercise pens everyone into the same. Solutions for the Nandwana children and others like them leads to progress for anyone and that's a big spanner in the works. So the Nandwana family have to pay the price for leveraging the threat of ill health to drive social engineering and the politicization of fatness.  

There's something bitter-sweet and telling about how those who still feel hunger as near foe can't bring themselves to starve those they love, even in this case borrowing money at times.

This is something nations whose memory is perhaps more dim actively clamour for. The further away from hunger you are, the more you discount the toll it takes. The more romance it acquires.

All those invested in 'obesity' should crowd fund this man, the least they can do for their indulgence is spare this devoted loving dad his kidney.

Sporting People

Something rarely if ever mentioned, but achingly obvious is;

There seems to be a world of difference between moderately overweight couch potatoes, who would sportingly accept their own culpability, as most do....

[My emphasis] Where this thought goes awry is Barbara Ellen's attempt to split fat people into 'morbid' i.e bmi 40+ and under that. [At last the much touted FA dichotomy of good/bad fatty finally makes some sense to me.]

She's wrong though.

ALL fat people are and have always been very sporting about mea culpa(bility). We've been on a continuous loop of, "We are fat because we eat too much and do too little." Or should I say, lazy 'n' greedy, as long as the crusade and before. That is all any fat person I've ever know has ever said about "why" they/we are fat.

I can't speak to interactions fat people may have with those who aren't fat though. Don't forget how much we pander to slimz, instead of setting them right or ignoring them, we respond to their rote interrogations, as if we're on trial. Which we are, due to being defined as guilty.

We can learn to say no to this though.  

One of the unintentionally comical things about the mainstream fat phobic mindset is its so psyched up to meet a resistance that rarely if ever comes. The sheer momentum of expecting resistance carries them on as if they are;

Despite my best efforts, Betty denied any personal contribution to her unhappy life situation. Oh yes, she could, on an intellectual level, agree that, if she stopped eating and lost weight, the world might treat her differently.....Besides she marshaled other responsibility-absolving arguments... 

She could agree that if she stopped eating and lost weight, the world would treat her differently, in what way is that "responsibility-absolving"? It's as if the frequency of our "confessional" has moved the idea of 'responsibility versus denial' onwards. Onto our bodies. Our words and actions mean nothing. Weight loss is everything.

Weight is deemed the sum total of actions ergo fat people must be "in denial" merely by being. Fat people must be refuting culpability due to our size.

The central reason we're in the dog house is because, ALL PEOPLE LOVE BASTARDY.

Permit me to explain.

Bear in mind, women are human beings. Yes, you're saying, you know. What I mean is, women are fully human. Meaning when you can perceive qualities in women, you are likely perceiving a quality of the human character, not some lesser category of.

M'kay?

Usually a form of that particular complaint, "Women love bastards" is issued by hetero-guys having erm.... less luck pursuing intimacies with women than they would like to explain their situation.

Their general thesis is that they're nice, i.e. helpful, respectful and responsive to women's needs, but are overlooked continually for what they call bastards. That's men who don't appear to give a damn about making nice.

I will not sally forth into the mire that is friendzone, nice guy syndrome et al. All I need to say is that any truth there is in that sentiment is that we all have ideas of qualities we desire from each other that when we meet those qualities in others, we absolutely loathe those who display them.

I remember a golden age Hollywood actress liked to give some snap about the more she saw of dogs the more she preferred them to men. I remembered thinking, if any man behaved like a dog, you'd despise him.

One of my pet hates [lol] used to be animal loving types who project noble savage/innocent onto other animals and then seek to surround themselves with them as if to say, they are transmitting the glory of their noble savagery/innocence onto moi. Which makes me better than you.

You could say fat people have been the ultimate nice guys when it comes to people's attitudes to their weight. We listened, avoided confrontation, put the demands of others first and that's exactly why we're loathed.

This is frequently missed, especially by fat people many of whom flat out state that our attitude upon awakening from this stupour of "niceness" is responsible for the aggression of others. And that we need to be courteous at all times, explain to the disingenuous and hostile, who will change their minds on presentation of compelling evidence.

They have some kind of Stockholm amnesia complex,  plus a mathematical fault-where they've forgot that we've been just as nice as its possible to be and if that has brought us here, it stands to reason that the answer does not lay there.

In a way you could say its heartening that people aren't so shallow that all you have to do is play like a pup and you'll win them over. They actually prefer you to be real, to inhabit yourself. To be there in person, rather than acting a part.

Things like this made me realize just how much human relations are ruined by our expectations of each other. And how the things we think we want from others, we actually detest when we get them.

"Everybody wants" [thinks they want] other people not to deny any [seemingly] obvious culpability or possibility of it. That kind of knee jerk defensiveness and avoidance of responsibility can be so wearying to the soul. It makes approaching people with their possible or otherwise wrong-doing ever more daunting. This tension has created many a misanthrope.

Yet....here's fat people fronting up, no defense, no fuss, "We did it gov'nur 'twas us, we're guilty as heck" etc., Instead of relief, cheers all round and like Barbara, "How sporting of you." We are utterly despised. And no, it's not for our so called "gluttony".

When individuals have more wealth than some sovereign nations, when the earth is being bled try then torn up to find every resource garnered by nature over thousands of years. Or if you prefer personal consumption, when what people snort up their nose so they can babble shite faster, causes people all over the world to get shot to hell, trying to go about their business.

When in some countries, booze is almost religion and getting drunk virtually a sacrament. I'd venture to suggest greed is hardly unspeakable.

Fat people are effortlessly loathed for doing what we all yearn for. So much so that people weary themselves making an effort to contain any of it.The truly nicest, generous most tender hearted souls manage to dredge up a fiery hatred of fat people, out of nowhere. It can be quite curious. 

To me this sportingness is one of the things that's great about being fat. I'm unmoved by the endless search for innocence that I see reflected in the construction of slimness as the signal of an unblemished character.

Trying to erase what is or is deemed negative about the human character is an understandable way to raise self-esteem, reduce stress and enhance well-being. But it is, dehumanizing in its way, positively so. We are not free of blemish and often a fault is the other side of a blessing and vice versa.

Orthorexia Nervosa

I heard about Orthorexia Nervosa and swatted it away as some kind of excessive affectation. I couldn't get to the bottom of what it meant. And anyway, how many narrow declensions of eating/hunger disorders do you need? It seemed infinitely self-absorbed.

This feeling went on for years until I happened to land on Steven Bratman's own site [the guy who coined the term]. I couldn't believe it, such a precise reading of what I'd experienced. I'm sure you've had quite wide ranging/long lasting experience that you notice, but somehow don't see clearly. The WHAM, you land on it.

I didn't think of myself as a dieter. My focus was sticking with the idea of what a healthy diet was then. Thinking what would make me healthy would make me slim and vice versa- many fat phobes don't appear to realise that we've thought all their main thoughts because we received the same mental conditioning about eating and weight as everyone else. 

Not only that, orthorexia for me became an atypical trigger that led to hyperphagia.

Okay, so what's Orthorexia Nervosa [ON]?

Basically, its when a conscious ideology of eating, in this case healthy/healthist unbalances the hunger/appetite mechanisms function. Basically healthy eating tips into compulsion.

People still have problems grasping the point about eating or hunger disorders. We seem to assume, they follow a behaviour. That someone has gone to an extreme. On the whole NO. What happens is- Same behaviour differing response.

A person is anorexic, bulimic, orthorexic because their system yields to behaviours others perform with nothing more than the demands of said acts. The reason why desisting from those behaviours may cure the problem totally, is that it removes pressure, not because those behaviours can cause that unbalancing in anyone.

Note I didn't say hyperphagic because I don't understand binge eating and I only know my own type of hyperphagia, which I know was a physiological imbalance, probably brought on by stressed nervous system.

The idea of a habit of "comfort eating" doesn't fit.

Looking through an i-net search the consensus description is-an obsession with healthy eating. This is typically facile and un-illuminating. 

With anorexia, the pressure is on hunger signalling. With orthorexia, the pressure on your hunger comes THROUGH the pressure you are putting on your APPETITE to conform to what you want it to be. Which ends up obscuring and distancing you from your body needs. Ironically, you do this because you believe your body needs your idea of "healthy foods."

Weird though it might seem, our idea that our bodies need  only food classed as "healthy", isn't backed up by experience.

An anorexic, reduces overall energy intake. This can be of any particular kind of diet-though that demand may skew the proportions and types of foods they will eat. Orthorexics get into trouble due to seeking to eat certain foods and exclude others, i.e. high protein, high intake of low calorie veg and fruit, low carb, low sugar, low-fat.

The body is threatened by this as it is energy reduction, just less so.  Whereas lack of energy threatens life, restriction of types of food threatens inadequate nutrition or balance of [for your requirements]. It could go as far to poisoning if one takes in too much of foods that have toxic substances. Like some leafy greens for example- caution; we're talking a probably unpalatably high amount.

The reason we don't tend to get to that level of intake is we have such an effective disgust reflex for certain foods because they contain small amounts of toxic substances. This, not greed or self destructiveness or "food addiction is why we don't tend to crave low density veg, like we do calorie dense foods.

Terms like that and "hyperpalatability" are mis-direction, calorie dense foods are just of more use to our bodies. We can sometimes feel we can eat any amount of so called "junk" calorie dense foods, because they do not contain such.

One of the ways ON slips beneath awareness, leading up to an anorexic or other conclusion is your focus is on eating, not starving yourself. Where it gets you is your focus becomes progressively narrower without you realising it. Again, you aren't "obsessed," you are seeking to eat totally healthily, which is what you're supposed to do. In my case, it was that I wasn't getting slim, so I kept trying harder. Isn't that supposed to be why we fat people fail to slim?

All this just happens to be enough to activate an unforeseen tendency.

You too may retain skeptism, I wouldn't blame you. Others have become incredibly anguished over the mere idea of ON, taking it as some kind of personal affront against healthist eating.

In order to grasp it and probably other ED's/neuroses, its best to consider more of the context for them.

Starting with our still crude notions of free will...............

Disappointed Researchers suggest Findings are Underweight

It's instructive to see weight research from another angle. Far more cautious, detailed and careful in  reporting. Its pronouncements, conclusions, assessments and speculations are a cut above bariatrics *ouch*.

It's refreshing. The study in question features 2 million people and uses GP's patient records of dementia diagnosis matched with BMI.

It found those with a bmi of under 20 [underweight is usually under 18.5] in middle age, have the greatest number of dementia diagnosis of all weight categories. That progressively lowers as you go up in size, the lowest have a bmi of 40 +.

Looking at the headline, "Underweight people face significantly higher risk of dementia, study suggests." Most if not all the familiar things occur, this time with an unusual distance. Comparative or relative rather than absolute risk, for each individual. 

You can't help noticing again what a blunt tool weight is as a way of assessing individual risk. Epidemiology is the start of science, not that itself, telling you what can look for, not necessarily what you're looking at.

What may be on your mind is the much touted previous insistence that fat people have the higher risk. That should tell you about the abuse of that term in this crusade. It continually uses theoretical risk collated from other theoretically heightened risk factors to produce its hypetastic endgame.

The use of research as thinspiration puts intolerable pressure on plain fact.

Authors responses should be noted by those usually snowed by @besity;

Prof Stuart Pocock, one of the authors, said: “Our results suggest that doctors, public health scientists, and policymakers need to rethink how to best identify who is at high risk of dementia. We also need to pay attention to the causes and public health consequences of the link between underweight and increased dementia risk which our research has established. 

The latter highlighted is especially telling, why not causes and treatments/cures? Public health consequences are fine, but that particular omission smacks of a pre-text to interfere in other people's lives. I hope that isn't the case. It does say this is an avenue for research, but what kind though?

When a frame is established, others can be framed by it. Precedent is used to legitimize.

On a lighter note, hur, hur, we're helpfully told this doesn't mean being fat is okay-we may not live long enough to avoid dementia given other risks. In addition, we're given an anti-dote to the logical fallacies we're usually expected to pretend aren't.

Some things you never hear- From lead author Dr Nawab Qizilbash;

We haven’t been able to find an explanation......We are left with this finding which overshadows all the previous studies put together. The question is whether there is another explanation for it. In epidemiology, you are always left with the question of whether there is another factor.

*Sob*

Usually that spot's filled with eat less, do more, healthy lifestyles blah, blah, blah.  Can you notice how stupid that makes them sound? In this they actually sound like they're thinking.

Dr Simon Ridley, from Alzheimer’s Research UK, said further work is needed. “This study doesn’t tell us that being underweight causes dementia, or that being overweight will prevent the condition,” he said.

The comments too are worth reading for the number of critiques of the same faulty logic usually advanced when the subject is fat. You'll see those same criticisms dismissed when we resume normal programming......

A Doctor/Patient Model Could Have Been

It has always been my contention that though doctors increasingly wax on about "personal responsibility" they simply don't want the reality that entails. One of those titles sums up, "It's difficult being a doctor in the age of the empowered patient."

Why if you wish patients to take more responsibility for themselves? That phrase "empowered patient" is somewhat redundant. Why should patient equal dis-empowered? Why should a patient be any less than the equal of any doctor they bring their body to? Who else but a patient has the potential to have a uniquely comprehensive insider view of the experience of being themselves? And how can this even be a thing when there are open assertions about sometimes, extreme lack of patient initiative?

Like all humans, medics wish to have their cake and eat it to. They want the abject docility, they've come to base their power on, without the burden that increasingly imposes on them, in an era of chronic health problems. As a profession overall, they've grown accustomed to used to the kind of passivity that serveed the contagion/magic bullet mode of disease.

Their power has to a large extent come from patient dis-empowerment, to put it bluntly.That exchange requires reformation.

They could have had this already, if they'd truly desired to. Fat people took it up themselves to follow their general prescription, to diet, diet and diet again-no matter what, and press repeat. Until our nervous systems burned out from that-because that's what happens if you keep at it long enough. Or simply wised up that these findings were consistent and repeatable. In other words, they were scientific, despite mainly going unacknowledged at best, or denied at worst by those charging themselves with that.

If instead the truth had been full recognized, our extensive co-operation and goodwill could have promoted a respectful mutual dialogue and illuminating interaction. A truly progressive exchange. As we were so committed to the experiment, it could have changed in nature being informed by our experience. That usually happens with research, progress.

Those of us that wanted to could have signed on-unofficially-for the shifts in focus that would have had to have been the product of greater intelligence collated from practice. Practice that illuminated physiological function e.g. the first thing that happens when you merely intend to start a restricting energy is hyperphagia-hunger and appetite activity goes right up.

This can be a trigger for hyperphagia nervosa [heightened appetite not knowingly related to hypothalamic compromise]. This could have been warned against, to this day, most people don't realise having restriction hanging over you long-term can have this effect. It would have acted as a break on the always be trying to lose weight culture. It would have meant switching off between attempts and that could have stopped some hunger/disordered/eating disorders from developing.

Not only reducing the number and extent of hyperphagia/cs, reducing the psychological harm that can occur when the nervous system gets repeatedly then becomes chronically overtaxed. That's simply one aspect. True acknowledgement of facts and reality, monitoring through genuine and meaningful study would have reduced stress immeasurably, giving people a sense of their own power, even if it didn't bring the desired results.

Not all of this is for medics obviously, but this would have informed communication between doctor and lay people-if not patient. All would have been ample evidence of the extent of people's efforts, that could then not be denied. It could also reassure doctors, reducing their weird sense of being victimized by their patients' weight.

When you find out that a person struggling to deny their body for years, finally somehow corners their body into reduction and finds their body loses weight from everywhere but their mountainous belly/their big arms, legs etc.,-me!!

You'll find it hard to shout, "Non-complaint" into a void made from ignorance. Indeed, there would be no void, instead a pool of facts and figures. There would be potential for progress and hope of more.

This filtering of on-going experience into an on-going real life experiment with human metabolic function would have altered the expectation of patient engagement without little duress, for either.

But of course, the medical profession as a whole didn't want that. Many still don't. Though I can grasp that, I'm still struggling with the depth of their desire to martyr themselves at the alter of fat people's supposedly refusnik will. I cannot fathom what they hoped or hope to achieve from penning us into a place where we cannot move forward, only press repeat ad infinitum often going backwards. Nor do I get how they are able to behave as if this hasn't happened.

Though I guess that's a feature of the denial of reality. 

They'll take some challenge from their social peers though as long as it's tightly within the conventional frame of boning up on acceptable available research;

Often our patients were well-informed scientists, teachers or university lecturers. They did extensive research on the unusual ailment or the latest groundbreaking medication. As a trainee GP with little experience, it was often daunting to manage these intense patient-led encounters. Whether prescribing a statin for high cholesterol or referring for investigations, everything involved negotiation with the patient. It was immaterial that there were 10-15 minutes allocated to each encounter: the consultation finished when a plan was reached.

This for me doesn't really come close to what might have been. That's about social position, not the future of medicine. We could have been part of moving the research process forward of directing it to more fruitful and useful grounds.

What a bloody waste.

Hunger is the Impulse, Eating the Response

Certain things immediately spike your attention, then fade to the back of your mind. They're so ubiquitous that though you keep tripping over them, you get into the habit of pressing on past them.

Going through a list of psychologists, one was quoted as expressing a widely held view-that eating is a behaviour. It's a sensibility straight from calorie/weight hypothesis: Weight as a direct product of your calorie intake minus your calorie output.

This comes from assuming hunger is some kind thought because we become aware of it via our conscious minds. This is an error of perception, as they say. A bit like assuming pain is a thought because you become aware of it in your head also.

Hunger is a collation of sensory data coming from all areas of your body, through its nervous circuits. That is what ends up in your brain. There's when you become aware of it. Hunger is an impulse, and I don't mean as in "impulse buy," I mean electrical activity transmitted through your nerves.

You know the music you hear from the radio doesn't come from inside the radio, don't you! That would be like the error we make with hunger, assuming its inside the box, when its mainly picking it up what is sent there.

Saying eating is a behaviour is not wholly inaccurate by strict definition, but it's misleading. It makes more sense to think of eating as a response [to hunger]. We can't feed ourselves through our own bodies. We are designed to run on energy extracted from food therefore our response to hunger has to be acted out. But that cannot be read completely as if its independent of that impulse. It is not useful and actually quite disruptive at times to cast eating as a personal decision apropos of emeaushun.

There might be a slight tangle in the difference between professional and layman's use of the term behaviour. "Manner of conducting oneself" is how we generally think of it. That fits in with the calories in/out which posits eating as acting out a whim. The psychological definition is more technical;

1. the aggregate of all the responses made by an organism in any situation
2. a specific response of a certain organism to a specific stimulus or group of stimuli

That's more like it, a bit different in emphasis to our notion of behaviour as some acting out of conscious will. It could apply just as easily to going to sleep, but no one thinks sleep is simply a conscious decision just because we have some angles for conscious regulation of it.

With something like breathing, you  respond to inhaling by exhaling, automatically. If you had to somehow act out exhalation part, would it make sense for you to see that as disconnected from inhaling?

Yes, it would be a behaviour in terms of response to stimuli, but you could not disconnect it from being a response triggered by inhalation. Whatever triggers or stems that. Could be the rhythm of your breathing, or in the case of those with certain allergies, pollen /some other nasal irritant, could be shock, anxiety, concentration, awe, pleasure, etc.,

Vital, inbuilt, anatomically generated impulses cannot be controlled in the way having abstract thoughts can. We attempt to regulate or should I say, re-regulate them. Because they are already regulating themselves. They have their own rhythm and self-sustaining momentum. Unless we're aiming to re-establish/reboot that, what we end up seeking to do is interrupt often disrupt this regulation trying to alter the outcome of it more to our liking.

Is important to grasp that with restrictive eating, we are disrupting something that's already designed to regulate itself.

'Obesity' Construct Fans are Not the Ones to Shape a Child's Sense of Self

Parents know instinctively that 'obesity' is some kind of attack on children's unworldliness. That it will mark them out for another kind of lesser, sidelined existence. Understandably, they're hardly drawn to this.

@besity fanatics aren't trying to give up though. Lindy West rightly encourages parents not to permit such infractions on those they love for sorties of cynical self-interest.

To protect and nurture a child's nascent self respect, trust and esteem, even if that means disobeying a largely unquestioned clique. Only in the case of the most worthless parents, do adults not have vivid memories of parents trying to shield them from the more painful realities of life.

Children trust their parents unblinkingly to steer them on the right course. To allow their degradation by those who don't matter is to slap that loving trust right back in their faces. There's no need to sell them out in this way. Not to those who's only interest is to justify their dubious attentions.  

These people are nothing if not solipsists. Parents failure to see their beloved progeny as an 'epidemic' is clearly a source of frustration for arrogant @besity wallahs who think anyone should do whatever they say, whenever they say it.  How we fat people have spoilt them.

The misapplied premise here is if you cannot recognize the "problem" you cannot put into place the(ir) solution. That only scans when either the diagnosis or solution are correct, can be implemented are functional and haven't already failed.

In this case, falling short on all counts is where its at. The issue is, folks feel weight needs to become reversible for anyone who needs or wants it. That mean metabolic function needs to be changed, in order to change the outcome it produces. We've tried assaulting that outcome, it hasn't worked because that very metabolic function regulates back to its norm.

So get on with pursuing that, through greater knowledge. Do you see how that doesn't involve imprisoning children in demeaning constructs?

And if you wish to feed children you have charge of properly-then do it as was stopped when government policy 'liberated' nutritional standards. If you wish to teach them to cook again, do it. Ditto, teaching them to grow things.

All and more were in place before and went during this very same 'obesity' crusade. That sums up its worth, aptly. The crusade has been useless in implementing its own strategy for children. It's had its chance-during it, school playing fields? Gone. The roads children used to play on? Taken over by private cars.

Even fast food etc., giants got into children's hospitals, all during the reign of @besity. No one in their right mind, let alone those in charge of children would let another round of this fantasy continue.

Branding their child @bese isn't going make up for that. People don't need to see their children through the crusade's ugly eyes. Those grifting on it themselves need to recognize they have neither the will, ability nor indeed, the inclination to implement a society based around restricting and pointless expenditure of calories -which doesn't even work anyway! Face the reality of who you are and what your society is and get on with a strategy that makes sense for that.

Aim for healthiness for all children, regardless of class, race etc., And separately, through objective endeavour, find genuine ways of affecting metabolic function for those who genuinely need help-who won't get that from social engineering.

Give people the knowledge they want and let them decide what they do and don't wish to eat.  And get out of damaging their children for your own ends.

One of the reasons why I never imagined things would come to this current state of barmy hysteria is I never thought people would be prepared to be this openly abusive to children, in what was supposedly an overly child-friendly atmosphere. By that I mean, child-friendliness had assumed some real social status.

Consider my surprise when the crusade was able to roll over that with its fetid air of pseudo-science. It took me a while to notice this had revealed that  beneath the"friendliness" lurked a real resentment, if not anger with children's blameless status.

Child @besity became a vehicle to through off the demands of child-friendliness without a loss of social kudos. Any excesses of which come out of adult vanity and its attendant parental competitiveness, in the first place.

Being able to finally blame children without quarter has been a real catharsis for many and not just the usual piss 'n' vinegar types who resent anyone and anything they feel is getting a more generous judgement than they.

The sheer aggression in  the child@besity and the determination nail children with it, is motivated by a sublimated anger towards children, a wish to topple them from their pedestal, often by those who did most to put them on there in the first place-for social kudos. Seems the demands of that has gone too far for them.

This ugliness is in stark contrast to the way high status children are valued, prompted and emboldened-anyone falling for this mess must be either very desperate or very defeated.

I'd add to LW's words, regardless of your child's size/weight-reverse your learned oversensitivity toward weight. Re-train your mind to become calm again around this area, use the way you feel about height as a marker. This de-sensitization is also a way of beginning to tackle an eating disorder. And no, that isn't co-incidence.

The first and enduring theme of @besity wallahs is to over-sensitize your nervous (system's) response to any mention of weight, by continually pushing it to a heightened response and you to maximum hysteria. Repeating that eventually leads that to become a more permanent reaction. Children especially can pick up on this from you, regardless of your words.

The great thing though is that you can use the same process in reverse.

• Get yourself into a state of calm first, then think of weight and seek to maintain that feeling. Don't worry if you aren't able to remain calm at first, keep repeating it.

• Drop all your own fat hating behaviours and thoughts, characterise all people as people. @besity blocks your ability to recognize you are talking about and attacking people. 

• Especially drop "child/hood @besity", its a worthless and disgraceful construct. And do not also, permit any unwise professionals to use it on your child/ren either. Make them address your child as a being, not as a mass.

Once you can remain calm and cool around the subject of weight, you'll probably be able to figure out what you want to say to your or someone else's child. Make sure you let them know they are whole beings. Teach them to be aware of and reject any attempt to compartmentalize themselves-for one thing it discourages ease of movement by for example; undermining a child's sense of self connection, their calm and confidence around the idea and reality of moving.

• Encourage/strengthen/preserve their sense of self connection, i.e. get them to express how they feel when they are show physical ability/enjoyment-from the trivial to important. Try and get them to retain those as memories to draw from, building up a store of positive feelings about their physical presence. 

In the end it comes down to a choice between your child and a crusade that's had its chance and failed.

Cancer!!!

Now I've got your attention......

Back in the day that'd be, "Seeeeex!!!!" Made you look. In these i-net days of jiggy at your fingertips, that's over. Now, it's the death part of sex 'n' death that really gets attention.

As I'm sure you've heard, @besity is erm- the terrible health threat/deadly disease-those raging loudest about it, don't wish to solve or cure. Remarkable. Oh they may pose otherwise, convincingly to some it seems. In action though, they can barely be arsed.

Insisting on a route that doesn't work, the mere implementation of which goes against their own highly favoured selves and their denied human impulses. Endless hypothesizing around a defunct ideology that refuses, no cannot-let's not mock the afflicted- generate any real progress.

Lies gives it away more than anything. If something is a disease that will be discovered because disease is a real entity, not a metaphor. The drive to fake disease, i.e. alcoholism, drug addiction etc., came from lay quacks. Not from actual professionals trained to deal in and uncover objective fact. 

Take cancer, no please do. Being fat is said to increase the risk of certain cancers. ....According to this, such knowledge has been uncovered in the last ten years.

Rather than admitting they don't know why. To account for this, the much adored go-to ideology is pressed into service;

• adipose tissue generates oestrogen, yet oestrogen in the form of contraceptive pills can't raise your weight, at all, no never.

There's some more;

• @beses often have more insulin. This could cause cancer in selective sites, rather than others of the same kind, because..... why....?

• Adipose cells produce (other) hormones which stimulate or inhibit cell growth [what like metabolic function or something?] ....i.e. leptin [aaahhh, leptin]. That's more abundant in @beses, so it must be up to no good. 

• @beses are inflammed. No not the state brought about by constant provocative accusations, endless threats of doom, social isolation, unemployment, plus death threats, but the "low-level inflammation" that @beses have, apparently. £tc.,

It's toxic adipose.  Adipose that decides to become toxic in fat bodies. Like you, its a baad fat.  Do you know they've named something called a "sick fat syndrome"? Yeah, that's where they want to go with this.

What annoys me about all this is not more of this or that chemical that is said to create this or that effect, it's the insistence on their pre-determined fix for no good reason but, who cares if they do? Adipose cells must be the baddies, because that's based on the almighty premise that adipose is iccccck. 

You'd think they'd have noticed all this long before. Where the body is affected to the good or ill is most likely to tell you something about the nature of your freely chosen focus of inquiry. Collectivizing fat people indiscriminately then individualizing from that is it gives an unrealistic picture to all fat people, regardless of their health status.

If you did the same thing to all under bmi 25, you'd have a similar kind of outcome. Sick people who are acceptably-weighted are sick people. It is not associated-with-weight even if they are the lightest on the size spectrum. It is defined by what's happening in their bodies, which is as it should be, it makes more sense. It's useful.

Fat people with or without disease are deemed the same, leading to the odd premise that all fat people would be healthy, if not for being fat. Illness and disease then have to be regarded nonsensically as "obesity-related," as they are both never absent nor present, but somehow, both. Yes, the paper below presents 'obesity-related' as above an estimated level of disease-we know all about @besity wallahs and their estimates.

Instead of clearing up this conceptual breakdown, we get "evidence" of how even if a fat person isn't sick, they are, because they will be in 5-20 years. Not meaning they'll actually be unwell but more will score on an index of associated-with risk factors.

Nor does this lead to where it should-let's move heaven and earth to resolve this scientifically. No, all this leads to, do what's already failed. Or let's change society. Oh you want to change society? Well you go ahead and do that, in the mean time. Save the lives you claim will be lost.

When I first saw this collection of cancers, apart from this I thought, what could possibly be the link between them? Mainly, parts of the digestive, excretory and reproductive systems?! Apart from oesophagus-which is connected to and has similar tissue to the stomach and post-menopausal breast that's mostly in the lower part of the trunk. Is there some underlying connection? If so, is it direct or theoretical like the link between those nerves and the brain?

In both men and women, body-mass index was also significantly associated with higher rates of death due to cancer of the esophagus, colon and rectum, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, and kidney; the same was true for death due to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and multiple myeloma. Significant trends of increasing risk with higher body-mass-index values were observed for death from cancers of the stomach and prostate in men and for death from cancers of the breast, uterus, cervix, and ovary in women.

[Breast is of course, post-menopause, pre-menopause it lowers the risk. Watch out, the latter appears to "promote obesity."]

I couldn't see anything obvious, I mean, reproductive and digestive? So I figured, whatev's. Till I happened to be reading a book I had little inclination toward.......Future Mind by Michio Kaku then BAM!

• The hypothalamus. This regulates body temperature, our circadian rhythm, hunger, thirst and aspects of reproduction and pleasure.

Now, I do not wish to jump to conclusions buuut, the hypothalamus has form when it comes to weight. Amongst fat people, there seem to more who may have some kind of compromised hypothalamic function, I know I have. Which is exactly the point-unusual function collects more among the outer reaches of either end of an active trait. 

So @besity wallahs love to keep it on greed and laziness. Actually finding stuff out makes this about something, the biggest danger of all is the risk of actually finding something out.

Lack of Vitamin D is more associated with Diabetes than being Fat

This is intriguing. Apparently those measured with low levels of Vitamin D are at greater risk of developing diabetes, regardless of their weight. It has the novelty of being an even greater risk for diabetes than those flung around 'obesity'.

The body uses exposure to sunlight-on the skin-to make vitamin D.

It reminds me of a guy who's done pretty well for himself. He grew up with sister's who made him stay in and do his homework, when he just wanted to go out and hang out in the streets with his friends. Some of them didn't do so well.

He went on to gain a degree and has a career in public doing things he likes.

He's also a fat diabetic, though he could by this token just as easily be a slim diabetic. The dilemmas of health and the sacrifices demanded to aspire to higher and to get there. As with life in general, we will all have to make some sacrifice to our health, to ourselves at some point, to get what we want.

Indeed, to prioritize health above all else would look very strange if not immoral. Who's to say, a feckless abandonner of a family is not preserving their mental or financial health? Who's not to say the incompetent have said on some level, this far and no farter? They don't always say the good die young for nothing.

In all this boneheaded @besity malarkey, we rarely touch on this. Because its comforting to have do this and go with health, do this and go against health.

Should this man's sister's have left him alone to hang out and maybe not so qualified, but perhaps more acceptable in weight and maybe not even diabetic [until perhaps later anyway]? What's the priority then?

I know a similar family where there seemed to be some tendency toward type 2. Some in the family had it. They too were a Black family whose parents had done menial jobs and worked very hard. The children turned out to be; social workers, teachers, lawyers and so forth. Success stories.

One of the undercover impulses driving the 'obesity' cult is blocking of aspiration. You see it in the way they attack celebrities who are fat and successful. The life-sucking calorie restriction dieting plus the ego desiccating 'obesity' branding promises to take the edge of what can be needed to fulfill potential. Though all the presentation is otherwise. What's needed to come up from outside, from underneath is belief and stamina. That comes from practice and application. Not running around half starved.

The old pulling up the ladder. Maybe that's part of the extent to which people succumbed so readily to the 1%. If they'd spent more time paying attention to what those above them in class were up to and less to keeping out others below them socially.....

I'm also not sure about the old arrow of causality, does susceptibility toward diabetes mean your body is less able to make Vit D? Or is it that less of it does something that undermines metabolic function? What I do know though is that what is deemed healthy for one area of your body contradicts healthy in others and that's rarely mentioned in the kindergarten level-simplistic calories in/out healthism.

Rape Culture

Now this is interesting. I do not find the OP remotely convincing-in context [scroll down comments] or out. Why? How long have you got? I'm not really in the mood to play gumshoe, the whole thing has a rather unpleasant air.

There's something in the tone and style, the way the 'husband' is described especially sounds like a he wrote it, to expound on his own feelings. "She" isn't really there. The one time "she" mentions any feeling of her own is: " I just cant help but feel like I am the one who should change?"

All this rapiness would be over, if you would just change [change back from the change you changed from] and stick to the rule book. We can't do anything about the misogynist patriarchy, but we can do something about @besity.

Unless this is from c.1860, few contemporary women would speak this way about anything, not their husband-no matter how wonderful. And the explosion is out of place too;

I exploded at him, and he promised he will try to start having sex with me again.  He is getting a prescription filled to ensure arousal and we are setting up some counseling sessions.

You "exploded" with your complete absence of feelings did you? "....he promised he will try to start having sex with me again." ? "ensure arousal." Ugh, no. Why would a person wish to force intimacy with someone who doesn't wish to be intimate with them? What possible joy could it give you to know someone doesn't feel that way about you?

It makes me feel queasy just thinking about the idea of it. Frankly, if this woman was real, she'd sack anyone's desire.

It ends more oddly with;

I should go dust off my book of rules, or I should find someone else who doesnt consider making love to me, a chore.

The "husband" doesn't find "making love" a chore, he doesn't consider it at all!  Stick to your theme son! Or should I say sons, sounds like more than one little mind +  help-went into this.

There's a persistent urge among a certain kind of internet dwelling (male) fat phobe to try infiltrate-they love ze cloak and dagger- any space inhabited mainly by fat women. In their minds this espionage is personally fulfilling and attacks a great threat. It supposedly attacks the credibility of FA which should demoralize those attached to it.

It's one of the reasons why it can feel unfriendly to those new to it. People can be wary.

I was thinking this morning about how sockpuppety/astroturfy many discussions of 'obesity' tend to be. Seriously, there's too often a real scent of contrivance about the same old tedious non-discussions and ritualistic ranting. Other times there's just as much hate as ever but there's a reality and life there and real things get said by real people.

Whenever there are some remotely interesting findings...... tumbleweed. No comments. There's little real interest in 'obesity', there's little to keep the attentions-it's an intellectual cul-de-sac, over bar the shouting.

@besity has always called itself a "Cinderella" subject because of its obsolescence and bankrupt constructs. What gets people excited is someone in the position of Aunt Sally, plus the fact that many people restrict/ feel they should be restricting their intake. This creates a psychological or real hangry rage that can be re-directed into attacking others. Until calorie restriction was generalized as a weight and health regulator for all, 'obesity' didn't pick up steam.

Suffice to say, I do not think anyone should be coerced into sexual relations, end of story. No one should be taking drugs to replace a desire they don't feel not for anybody. In real case of loss of desire, for someone you adore. Time can make the difference, if you love someone that much it maybe a question of a period of adjustment.

But that must be in an atmosphere of accepting the person's feelings, or lack of.