If you're overseas you may not know UK TV station Channel4 still thinks it has a bit of a reputation for edgy forward thinking television-out of the other big 5 terrestrial channels. Despite this, the furrow it ploughs with fatsploitation is brain dead standard issue at its most banal.
As with a lot of middle class metropolitan types, station honchos are on board with 'obesity' construct agit-prop. Tonight they're airing an episode of their long running 'Dispatches' series called "The Secret Plan to Save Fat Britain".
Indeed.
That could be read with an unfortunate-for them-literalism, as an assessment of the last 40 years of 'obesity' campaigning. To not only save fat people from not exiting fatness, but to add to and ballast their number. Think about it, if fat people had succeeded in their plans to 'lose weight' all these decades (centuries), this wouldn't be a thing.
The calorie restriction model has saved fatness from extinction-against the will of fat people themselves.
Anyhow, this programme is apparently an 'investigation' (plz) into how the current prime minister Teresa May has "watered down" the government's scattergun grand plan to regulate metabolic function from the outside in.
This grand stratagem is driven by increasing the encroachment of the organising principle of our era-lifestyle anorexia. Stuff like making restaurants include calorie counts on their menus, stopping supermarkets from offering certain promotion deals, getting them to remove sweets from checkout areas, reducing advertising an marketing calorie dense foods and other measures to reduce intake.
Anything but the most obvious and scientific, which would be to give people the ability to lower their hunger. And no, that doesn't require drugs, just more experimentation with using our thought processes to affect our function. An area of human capacity that's sorely underdeveloped.
It needs to happen for those who have an excess of hunger function. Contrary to assertion, its relatively rare, so people do not get how disturbing it is- including fat activists and some who claim to have something called-binge eating disorder. I'm not talking about binge eating, I'm talking about excessive hunger.
After finding efficient ways to bring this about, that can be applied to normal hunger. Whether that's a good idea or not I'll leave up to the individual, but that would be the best, easiest, healthiest way to reduce intake. However, this reducing of hunger, leaves control of what you eat with the individual, clearly that's an important target for those who feel everyone else's hunger/appetite is an extension of their own.
And should therefore be under their diktat.
The programme implies it will dig deep to uncover food industry machinations to expel policies from the lifestyle disorder manifesto. I'd be amazed if they hadn't lobbied their cause. Having been used to fat people the "obesity community" are struggling to deal with their own levels of cynicism and intransigence.
Its amusing to see the mainstream media-often bellyaching about social media's encroachment on the news agenda and how its a disaster not to leave the news agenda to metropolitan know-it-all classes.....- bending this into a conspiracyesque form.
The intimation is fat phobes would be "do something" about 'obese' if it wasn't for those pesky industrial food varmits and their underhand nefarious tactics.
In truth, this whole shebang depends on the inherent dysfunction of the calorie restriction model. The upshot of that being a success would decimate industrial food as we know it. Along with that, a lot of the transfer of employment from the heavy industries of yore.
Even this far into that process that bottom line hasn't slimmed down. Indeed, it would reverse what is keeping many millions going financially. Whether you insist fat ='overeat' or no more than anybody else, the permanent state of semi-starvation required by this method, would strike a massive blow to the food economy. Not to mention the cultural impact of a quarter, more or less of the adult population in a permanent state of hanger.
This doesn't tend to come up in these discussions. Instead you get repetition of the have cake and eat it too fantasy. Food needs to be restricted for the 'irresponsible' people who can't control themselves, but not for those who can.
It's been pointed out that if the latter are so sparing in their intake of popular calorie dense foods- they'd hardly miss them-especially given their massive self control.
The calorie restriction model is especially unsuited for liberal capitalist society. The nature of it requires a dictatorship like control/mismanagement of the food environment. Its invasive outer dictation, need to interfere with commerce and to dismantle a lot of what provide incomes for those who'd otherwise struggle gaining employment pits it against forces societies want to beat it. The almost complete lack of real opposition means no one has to face up to this. The failure of restriction is an integral part of sustaining most people's 'obesity' crusade delusions.
Monday, 31 October 2016
Tuesday, 18 October 2016
Settled Points
Whilst trawling for something else, I landed on a blog representing a notion that epitomises the divide between the fat standard and what the mainstream applies to itself.
This blog was going on about how set point theory was ultimately condescending and infantilizing to, in this case, women. Keeping them from taking responsibility for their weight (and this was part of why fat acceptance was losing its way).
Another one of her posts spoke about a certain neurotic condition, in the usual way, as if it was an illness.
That represents nervous imbalance as a set point. And that looks exactly as condescending, infantilizing, shifty and vanity serving as you think acknowledging CRIWL is not the right way to achieve weight loss does.
In case of any need of a reminder, as CRIWL is the only route to weight loss. Most people will have to accept the size they are.
If that's confusing, I'm saying that the idea that an imbalanced nervous system is some kind of an illness is in the main, vanity serving drivel. Remember, one of the chiefest foes of dealing with neurosis=vanity.
Yes, there are a minority of people who have functional disorders of some kind, that make them more likely to become mentally unbalanced in this way. Either in terms of the formation of their nervous system, or their organs.
Mainstream therapy culture has advancing this comforting gesture of a set point, for decades. Therapy's efficacy is, shall we say, someone moot [tact-c'est moi; today]. Ergo, someone has to explain why, someone goes into therapy, on the premise that they have an issue, therapy is supposed to solve this. It how shall we say, doesn't. How to explain that?
Therapy doesn't work?
The decision was made to define neurosis as something that is like an infectious disease. Things like depression etc., can make you feel very unwell, they can actually make you sick, but they aren't like illnesses. They aren't a set point, they're more a settled point.
It's often strange when others see in fat people how they themselves act all the time, but don't seem to notice, or remark on. Probably as they know they'd be challenged.
If anything, it was this attitude that was belatedly applied to fatness-which is why its named and why its so contested. Fat people are not subject to the rules applied to others. Whereas those rare people who have a neurosis based on internal fillips become the template for anyone diagnosed with that condition, no matter how far away they are from there.
Fat people are defined by people who are ill and fat, and they're defined as people who would be well, if they weren't fat.
And before those who are fat and neurotic and think this is an outrage get excited, you have already accepted what I'm saying, you just don't apply it to your neuroses-same as everyone else. Anyone accepting the notion that weight or health can be controlled by changing your thinking, eating and activity has accepted the idea that a settled point is not a set point. That your neurosis is open ended and can change in an instant and/or remain for a lifetime. Potentially by your own actions.
The biggest noise made about neuroses is not; just calm down is wrong, its that just calming down is real hard when your nerves are in that state. You do actually have to calm down, cheer up, stop checking, etc.,
You can be fat to thin for anything from a lifetime to a short or no time. Ditto your nervous/mental state. You've all already accepted this, via the fat standard.
This blog was going on about how set point theory was ultimately condescending and infantilizing to, in this case, women. Keeping them from taking responsibility for their weight (and this was part of why fat acceptance was losing its way).
Another one of her posts spoke about a certain neurotic condition, in the usual way, as if it was an illness.
That represents nervous imbalance as a set point. And that looks exactly as condescending, infantilizing, shifty and vanity serving as you think acknowledging CRIWL is not the right way to achieve weight loss does.
In case of any need of a reminder, as CRIWL is the only route to weight loss. Most people will have to accept the size they are.
If that's confusing, I'm saying that the idea that an imbalanced nervous system is some kind of an illness is in the main, vanity serving drivel. Remember, one of the chiefest foes of dealing with neurosis=vanity.
Yes, there are a minority of people who have functional disorders of some kind, that make them more likely to become mentally unbalanced in this way. Either in terms of the formation of their nervous system, or their organs.
Mainstream therapy culture has advancing this comforting gesture of a set point, for decades. Therapy's efficacy is, shall we say, someone moot [tact-c'est moi; today]. Ergo, someone has to explain why, someone goes into therapy, on the premise that they have an issue, therapy is supposed to solve this. It how shall we say, doesn't. How to explain that?
Therapy doesn't work?
The decision was made to define neurosis as something that is like an infectious disease. Things like depression etc., can make you feel very unwell, they can actually make you sick, but they aren't like illnesses. They aren't a set point, they're more a settled point.
It's often strange when others see in fat people how they themselves act all the time, but don't seem to notice, or remark on. Probably as they know they'd be challenged.
If anything, it was this attitude that was belatedly applied to fatness-which is why its named and why its so contested. Fat people are not subject to the rules applied to others. Whereas those rare people who have a neurosis based on internal fillips become the template for anyone diagnosed with that condition, no matter how far away they are from there.
Fat people are defined by people who are ill and fat, and they're defined as people who would be well, if they weren't fat.
And before those who are fat and neurotic and think this is an outrage get excited, you have already accepted what I'm saying, you just don't apply it to your neuroses-same as everyone else. Anyone accepting the notion that weight or health can be controlled by changing your thinking, eating and activity has accepted the idea that a settled point is not a set point. That your neurosis is open ended and can change in an instant and/or remain for a lifetime. Potentially by your own actions.
The biggest noise made about neuroses is not; just calm down is wrong, its that just calming down is real hard when your nerves are in that state. You do actually have to calm down, cheer up, stop checking, etc.,
You can be fat to thin for anything from a lifetime to a short or no time. Ditto your nervous/mental state. You've all already accepted this, via the fat standard.
Monday, 17 October 2016
BMI Reparations
Hands up if you think reparations-that's compensating Black people for the consistent open ended robbery that is systemic racism, colonialism, etc., is super unspeakably radical/militant? Well, in the words of our US bretheren, you can just sit your punk ass down.
I've just caught up with an attempt by certain outfits to construct another fatty reparations model.The inversion being fat people will end up paying to be discriminated against-discrimination is robbery- as usual. Few pay more for being than fat people. We've paid and continue to pay; mentally, psychologically, physically, financially, healthwise, socially, in terms of quality of our relationships, and with our own self esteem and so on and so on. We've enriched liars and grifters at every level of society, professional and charity, governmental and private sector to degrade, butcher, mutilate and starve and run us ragged, only then to be blamed for the failure of the noose around our necks.
That's not enough though, now we have the prospect of being traded as a sort of loss commodity through a proposed system of rating companies by certain purported health measures, majoring in BMI measurements. Specifically, how many employees are in the "at risk" category, given the agit-prop produced by "obesity researchers" associating fat/ter people with lowered productivity.
The consistency and unchallenged nature of this wretched cult and its complete failure of a strategy- CRIWL means increasing the avenues to monetise discrimination. A huffpo article states this move by the "wellness industry"-yet another industry created off our backs- taxes business but that will be passed on to fat people, it already has.
You get robbed, then you get taxed for being robbed because everyone supports the construct making this possible,
Furthermore, if you're interested, this target is being painted on all our backs using this as the entry wound. Those fat people who claim to adore slimz need to start thinking very carefully about allowing themselves to be an instrument in their downfall,
Anyhoo, reparations, eminently mainstream, until it comes to certain folk obvs......
I've just caught up with an attempt by certain outfits to construct another fatty reparations model.The inversion being fat people will end up paying to be discriminated against-discrimination is robbery- as usual. Few pay more for being than fat people. We've paid and continue to pay; mentally, psychologically, physically, financially, healthwise, socially, in terms of quality of our relationships, and with our own self esteem and so on and so on. We've enriched liars and grifters at every level of society, professional and charity, governmental and private sector to degrade, butcher, mutilate and starve and run us ragged, only then to be blamed for the failure of the noose around our necks.
That's not enough though, now we have the prospect of being traded as a sort of loss commodity through a proposed system of rating companies by certain purported health measures, majoring in BMI measurements. Specifically, how many employees are in the "at risk" category, given the agit-prop produced by "obesity researchers" associating fat/ter people with lowered productivity.
The consistency and unchallenged nature of this wretched cult and its complete failure of a strategy- CRIWL means increasing the avenues to monetise discrimination. A huffpo article states this move by the "wellness industry"-yet another industry created off our backs- taxes business but that will be passed on to fat people, it already has.
You get robbed, then you get taxed for being robbed because everyone supports the construct making this possible,
“It does inadvertently put a target on employees’s backs who are dealing with obesity,”Always accidental isn't it? In fact it is the 'obesity' construct which put not only a target but imprisons people in discrimination-full stop. I'm sure you can tell from the "dealing with obesity" where that's coming from. Those who also support the construct causing these problems. It's a tribute to the barely challenged nature of 'obese' that you can present yourself as on the side of fat people, whilst upholding the basis used to royally fleece them.
Furthermore, if you're interested, this target is being painted on all our backs using this as the entry wound. Those fat people who claim to adore slimz need to start thinking very carefully about allowing themselves to be an instrument in their downfall,
[The]....federal government is already taking the first step towards endorsing this Fat Tax by allowing companies to require employees to hand over genetic information as part of wellness programs.When I first got into the fatsphere, I made the observation that 'obesity' was a threat to all our civil liberties. Increasingly that poison is spreading. All fat people need to start taking this into account. It's not simply about you anymore. Similarly for slim people who feel immune to the discrimination they're supporting for others, its going to bite your acceptable behind too.
Anyhoo, reparations, eminently mainstream, until it comes to certain folk obvs......
Tuesday, 11 October 2016
The Beautiful Truth
I've had cause lately to consider again the difficulty of truth if you are a fat person. Whereas for other people telling the truth is mainly a question of reporting the facts as honestly as possible, the big, perhaps the biggest challenge of honesty for a fat person is to have the mettle to avoid telling the false truth dictated to you by others.
And to not be shamed by the avoidance of that.
I recognize that I may come across as a bit shifty in overly careful talk about fatness, weight etc., But I have to tame my vanity enough to press on regardless. I'm trying to reach for an elusive narrative of consciousness that's not only not available, it rarely appears except in glimpses.
I'm not sure I know what it would look like as a consistent force, as I've never knowingly come across a fat person who can speak about fatness unadulterated by the lifesapping falsehood that is the 'obesity narrative'.
Shaunta Grimes's piece is lovely, honest and everyday act of bravery in its way, but I feel the typical failure of nerve when it comes to claiming to be drunk on that which simply cannot make you drunk. It's a tribute to her skill as a writer that this doesn't deliver her tale into the usual pit of boredom waiting for the same old same. It doesn't break new ground available to a writer of her talent.
We always allow ourselves to submit to and be interrupted by others who are unworthy of such and are not fighting the same fight no matter what they assume. There comes a point when we have to ask ourselves what is our duty to the truth. How can any of us really complain when we decline to push ourselves beyond the trite handed to us merely because it means we connect through meanings that don't fit? If others hadn't done better than us, what would we have to crib and plunder?
Fat people need to take up the space of our own truth and stop waiting for permisson for that. No one will give it to us, I'm not even sure anyone can. So what if haters think our reaching is "useless" who are they to say what is useful to us or anyone else? Their talk is so dead and they don't even feel it. How would they know? They know nothing.
We understand clothes that don't fit, why do we settle for worthless ideas that don't fit? The title is "Here's how I got fat" and it delivers on its promise to tell the same old story expected and praise is given, moving, honest, well done in using your voice to tell our version of what honesty is for you etc.,
Having most of your stomach removed is no resolution of any things that shouldn't need to be said. What is so difficult about acknowledging that? Why do the need to pretend whatever this isn't a different pathology, a more acceptable one? What is blocking that, is it vanity? Is it the need to be seen as good or healthy? If you are prepared to state you did damage to yourself with food, why aren't you able to say you damaged yourself to try and escape the trap set for all of us?
You rightly said;
Why can't we screen out those who would give praise for repeat their tired talk? Who have been happy to lead us and leave us to our fate. Haters didn't pull us through or pull us out, they've no right to regard at our own expense. None at all.
If you wish to frame your situation as substance abuse, at least impersonate many of the more admirable amongst them and their capacity to state boldly, "These are my options, they're shit, but them's the breaks", rather than cowering under them-because they're my options, they are righteous, they aren't.
They are what is deemed worthy of you. Authorities have endeavoured to leave fat with nothing but brutality and mutilation. It's not the best they could do. It's not guided by healing, its guided by the opposite of that.
And to not be shamed by the avoidance of that.
I recognize that I may come across as a bit shifty in overly careful talk about fatness, weight etc., But I have to tame my vanity enough to press on regardless. I'm trying to reach for an elusive narrative of consciousness that's not only not available, it rarely appears except in glimpses.
I'm not sure I know what it would look like as a consistent force, as I've never knowingly come across a fat person who can speak about fatness unadulterated by the lifesapping falsehood that is the 'obesity narrative'.
Shaunta Grimes's piece is lovely, honest and everyday act of bravery in its way, but I feel the typical failure of nerve when it comes to claiming to be drunk on that which simply cannot make you drunk. It's a tribute to her skill as a writer that this doesn't deliver her tale into the usual pit of boredom waiting for the same old same. It doesn't break new ground available to a writer of her talent.
We always allow ourselves to submit to and be interrupted by others who are unworthy of such and are not fighting the same fight no matter what they assume. There comes a point when we have to ask ourselves what is our duty to the truth. How can any of us really complain when we decline to push ourselves beyond the trite handed to us merely because it means we connect through meanings that don't fit? If others hadn't done better than us, what would we have to crib and plunder?
Fat people need to take up the space of our own truth and stop waiting for permisson for that. No one will give it to us, I'm not even sure anyone can. So what if haters think our reaching is "useless" who are they to say what is useful to us or anyone else? Their talk is so dead and they don't even feel it. How would they know? They know nothing.
We understand clothes that don't fit, why do we settle for worthless ideas that don't fit? The title is "Here's how I got fat" and it delivers on its promise to tell the same old story expected and praise is given, moving, honest, well done in using your voice to tell our version of what honesty is for you etc.,
Having most of your stomach removed is no resolution of any things that shouldn't need to be said. What is so difficult about acknowledging that? Why do the need to pretend whatever this isn't a different pathology, a more acceptable one? What is blocking that, is it vanity? Is it the need to be seen as good or healthy? If you are prepared to state you did damage to yourself with food, why aren't you able to say you damaged yourself to try and escape the trap set for all of us?
You rightly said;
I wasn’t required to live forever with the physical consequences of what I did to survive those mean years.But it is not political consciousness that's trying to keep you stuck in what you call "physical consequences" its those waging a phony crusade. That's their trap. It's reminiscent of those who complain to activists that they want to lose weight. Activists did not create dieting. They did not promote its failed strategy as the only, the must be, the be all and end all.
Why can't we screen out those who would give praise for repeat their tired talk? Who have been happy to lead us and leave us to our fate. Haters didn't pull us through or pull us out, they've no right to regard at our own expense. None at all.
If you wish to frame your situation as substance abuse, at least impersonate many of the more admirable amongst them and their capacity to state boldly, "These are my options, they're shit, but them's the breaks", rather than cowering under them-because they're my options, they are righteous, they aren't.
They are what is deemed worthy of you. Authorities have endeavoured to leave fat with nothing but brutality and mutilation. It's not the best they could do. It's not guided by healing, its guided by the opposite of that.
Monday, 10 October 2016
Middle Class People-Have Your Long Overdue Examination of Your Own Drug Use Now Please
Ludicrous attempt at talking up the pretence of a gigantic plot by sinister agents of industrial food to addict the US, no the worldwide populace to 'sugar' in a sort of repeat of the Chinese Opium wars, except without the imperialism, bloodshed, or opiate drugs.
The b'stards!!!
And do you know what else they've probably done too? Yes, they've prevented anyone from coming up with a viable model of human metabolic function. These dastardly biscuit peddlers have made off with our ambition nay our ability to find ways to adjust our own bodily function.
Bring it back right now, cake wallahs*?!*
It's all too horrifying. I daren't look........but I must. For you dear reader, I'm prepared to sacrifice moi-meme.
"Put down the donut: When Americans became hooked on sugar instead of natural fat, obesity balloned," by someone called Michael Joseph." Originally printed at AlterNet,
That headline; "When Americans became hooked on sugar instead of natural fat, obesity balloned". Makes no real sense and has history backwards. MJ says as much himself "As we replaced natural sources of fat for sugar." That's the as low as low-fat diet, unnatural.
Low-fat diets were heavily (yes) promoted by the usual suspects; "obesity science," doctors, public health bureaucrats, busy body quangocrats, the meejah.
Heavily.
There might be a story around how this conclusion was arrived at-fat makes you fat and causes heart attacks. We were told that fat sticks to the insides of your cardiac vessels, leading them to infarct and such. Now we're told similar happens due to sugar. Back in the day it was refined starch.
Do people really still believe so fervently that diet is the key here? Really? Because I would have thought it was obvious that we have all just been chasing our tails on that one. The idea of low sugar/low carb is high-protein repackaged again and again. Diet is not a starting point. It's part of a process. It's what controls the process that is key to improving function and preserving, improving or repairing health.
Again I ask, why can't we just stop dodging that? What's the problem? That is the real story here. That is the real way we have all been sold out. Who's behind that? What do they want? What are their aims?
Dr David Katz said more recently that his expectation in promoting low-fat diets was that people would eat lots of vegetables, fruit and grains, emphasis on the latter-despite what he's implying now. In those days no one would dream of telling people to live on hundreds of portions of veg. No-one would have dreamt of the starvation calorie counts people are expected to live on permanently. Only when you were going on a crash diet.
It was clear early on that people wouldn't just drop the foods they liked to eat on the say-so of the likes of him. The idea of having your diet intimately dictated to as a matter of course-not say on a diet would have seemed laughable to most people. We have come to accept the idea that people should tell us how to eat and increasingly how to live. [Gives a clue of the motive behind all this.] In the meantime companies replaced in part with sugar, in order to brand foods "low-fat".
Its fair to point out this is a-letter rather than a spirit of the law-type finagle but that's how the food business attempted to marry irreconcilables with its profit motive. Were they expected to go into voluntary liquidation?
Any fault with current sugar overload lies squarely with those who peddle low-fat diets as a must. Their meddling constantly blows up in other people's faces. The most obvious being the lack of any real control people have other making adjustments to the way their bodies are using energy.
Now they and/or others are entering a new phase of their theatre of the absurd, pretending big biz acted nefariously to faddict people to sugar [what for?] The article recognises the weakness of that point though by citing your morning orange juice, whether concentrate based or freshly squeezed by your own hand, it contains a lot of sugar. More at times than their supposed bete noir-fizzy drinks (should include beer and wine).
No more of any of that for you. That's realistic isn't it?
Underneath the headless back fat(ty) photo used-which may not be down to Joseph is this caption;
As for diabetes charities, how dare they recommend this reckless mutilation, have they pushed for better investigation, or questioned the lack of progress in this area? There was a time when charities where the voice of reason or kept out when they had nothing useful to say. Now they are clearly becoming infested with agitants spreading the message of brutalising bodies with hack-happy-quackery.
That will also be required to tackle type 2 diabetes in a more effective manner. Not to mention weight for those who need or want it and mental health problems, up to and including eating/hunger disorders.
Alternet shows a predictable profile of bourgeoisie self-repression about their love of drugs, poking through the hole torn by their bigotry and fat phobia. "We're all being used: No, it's not immoral to use illegal drugs." Um yeah it is.
I've queried this myself in the past. How can people allow themselves to be complicit in the deaths of so many poor oppressed people in the Americas, just in order to get high? At the same time as casting fatness as evidence of immorality or addiction then coming down on people like a ton of maggot infested shit. Can they not see that's a description and judgement of their own behaviour? It's not how I feel about it, its about how they feel about it, no matter how obscure it is from them.
This time the point is made from the horses mouth, a Mexican business graduate [NYT link].
Stopping 'obesity' is like a living fable for the idea of being able to stop wrongs. There's an element of desperation about the need for us to believe we can and practise that on something. To others it feels like a safe space for our ability to right wrongs. The need to win at something simple is more valuable to others than any sense of what its doing to those its aimed at.
Note the way not bothering with coke is not seen as a reasonable ask. Instead of thinking about the damage Mario Berlanga speaks about firsthand, we're informed actually, this isn't about the blood in coke, its about the illegality of the drugs. You know they're illegal, so don't take them in the first place. If you do, own that. If you can't do either, don't use fat people to explore your repressed shame, it gives the game away that you know the score (lit.)
Food as drugs, eating only for pleasure, hunger is addiction is displacement. Its the pressing through the psyche that which is being heavily repressed.
So spare us your tedious symptomatic macro-nutrient paranoia. The only thing that has been hijacked is science-by pseudoscience. Increasingly, people are seeing that all too well.
The b'stards!!!
And do you know what else they've probably done too? Yes, they've prevented anyone from coming up with a viable model of human metabolic function. These dastardly biscuit peddlers have made off with our ambition nay our ability to find ways to adjust our own bodily function.
Bring it back right now, cake wallahs*?!*
It's all too horrifying. I daren't look........but I must. For you dear reader, I'm prepared to sacrifice moi-meme.
"Put down the donut: When Americans became hooked on sugar instead of natural fat, obesity balloned," by someone called Michael Joseph." Originally printed at AlterNet,
AlterNet’s aim is to inspire action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, health care issues, and moreYou have to wonder who exactly is behind these efforts and why such as AlterNet with their stated aims of giving voice to alternative sources of information- are keen to give this a platform. Mickey's breathless page shows what he's about, claiming his opinings are "backed by the latest science" ah if ever such a mighty term were not so debased as science is right now.
That headline; "When Americans became hooked on sugar instead of natural fat, obesity balloned". Makes no real sense and has history backwards. MJ says as much himself "As we replaced natural sources of fat for sugar." That's the as low as low-fat diet, unnatural.
Low-fat diets were heavily (yes) promoted by the usual suspects; "obesity science," doctors, public health bureaucrats, busy body quangocrats, the meejah.
Heavily.
There might be a story around how this conclusion was arrived at-fat makes you fat and causes heart attacks. We were told that fat sticks to the insides of your cardiac vessels, leading them to infarct and such. Now we're told similar happens due to sugar. Back in the day it was refined starch.
Do people really still believe so fervently that diet is the key here? Really? Because I would have thought it was obvious that we have all just been chasing our tails on that one. The idea of low sugar/low carb is high-protein repackaged again and again. Diet is not a starting point. It's part of a process. It's what controls the process that is key to improving function and preserving, improving or repairing health.
Again I ask, why can't we just stop dodging that? What's the problem? That is the real story here. That is the real way we have all been sold out. Who's behind that? What do they want? What are their aims?
Dr David Katz said more recently that his expectation in promoting low-fat diets was that people would eat lots of vegetables, fruit and grains, emphasis on the latter-despite what he's implying now. In those days no one would dream of telling people to live on hundreds of portions of veg. No-one would have dreamt of the starvation calorie counts people are expected to live on permanently. Only when you were going on a crash diet.
It was clear early on that people wouldn't just drop the foods they liked to eat on the say-so of the likes of him. The idea of having your diet intimately dictated to as a matter of course-not say on a diet would have seemed laughable to most people. We have come to accept the idea that people should tell us how to eat and increasingly how to live. [Gives a clue of the motive behind all this.] In the meantime companies replaced in part with sugar, in order to brand foods "low-fat".
Its fair to point out this is a-letter rather than a spirit of the law-type finagle but that's how the food business attempted to marry irreconcilables with its profit motive. Were they expected to go into voluntary liquidation?
Any fault with current sugar overload lies squarely with those who peddle low-fat diets as a must. Their meddling constantly blows up in other people's faces. The most obvious being the lack of any real control people have other making adjustments to the way their bodies are using energy.
Now they and/or others are entering a new phase of their theatre of the absurd, pretending big biz acted nefariously to faddict people to sugar [what for?] The article recognises the weakness of that point though by citing your morning orange juice, whether concentrate based or freshly squeezed by your own hand, it contains a lot of sugar. More at times than their supposed bete noir-fizzy drinks (should include beer and wine).
No more of any of that for you. That's realistic isn't it?
Underneath the headless back fat(ty) photo used-which may not be down to Joseph is this caption;
International diabetes organizations are calling for weight-loss surgery to become a more routine treatment option for diabetes, even for some patients who are only mildly obese. Obesity and Type 2 diabetes are a deadly pair, and numerous studies show stomach-shrinking operations can dramatically improve diabetes.That's right, an article on the perils of doughnuts is promoting the cutting out of healthy functioning organs, for the purposes of "stomach shrinking". Repeat; the stomach is a muscular organ.
It is a muscular, highly vascular bag-shaped organ that is distensible and may take varying shapes, depending on the build and posture of the person and the state of fullness of the organ (see the image below).Shrinking is a natural action of muscle, partial or full amputation isn't required for that.
As for diabetes charities, how dare they recommend this reckless mutilation, have they pushed for better investigation, or questioned the lack of progress in this area? There was a time when charities where the voice of reason or kept out when they had nothing useful to say. Now they are clearly becoming infested with agitants spreading the message of brutalising bodies with hack-happy-quackery.
Unfortunately, the American (and worldwide) public are experiencing the consequences. As we replaced natural sources of fat for sugar (and excess carbohydrate in general), soaring rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other conditions of the metabolic syndrome soon followed.In real terms cardiovascular health has improved in the West as societal weight gain has progressed-whether health lovers like that or not. As for "metabolic syndrome", the clue is in the name. It might benefit most from the ability to alter the way metabolism is functioning. More experimentation of a different kind is where we need to go. Get off the drugs or surgery tip.
That will also be required to tackle type 2 diabetes in a more effective manner. Not to mention weight for those who need or want it and mental health problems, up to and including eating/hunger disorders.
Alternet shows a predictable profile of bourgeoisie self-repression about their love of drugs, poking through the hole torn by their bigotry and fat phobia. "We're all being used: No, it's not immoral to use illegal drugs." Um yeah it is.
I've queried this myself in the past. How can people allow themselves to be complicit in the deaths of so many poor oppressed people in the Americas, just in order to get high? At the same time as casting fatness as evidence of immorality or addiction then coming down on people like a ton of maggot infested shit. Can they not see that's a description and judgement of their own behaviour? It's not how I feel about it, its about how they feel about it, no matter how obscure it is from them.
This time the point is made from the horses mouth, a Mexican business graduate [NYT link].
I was born and raised in a midsize town in northern Mexico. As a child, I biked and skated in the streets. But these days, kids aren’t allowed to play outside. Everyone has a heartbreaking story of how the drug trade has damaged his life.Folks prefer to talk about Mexican 'obesity' without too much mention of the effect of the drug wars tragedy and restraining of youthful impulses to move around. Another example of the way fatigue with serious structural problems migrates to 'obesity' which becomes a proxy for fixing life. I remember asking a fat phobe why he didn't know the health "costs" of paedophilia. He said; "We can stop obesity".
Stopping 'obesity' is like a living fable for the idea of being able to stop wrongs. There's an element of desperation about the need for us to believe we can and practise that on something. To others it feels like a safe space for our ability to right wrongs. The need to win at something simple is more valuable to others than any sense of what its doing to those its aimed at.
Note the way not bothering with coke is not seen as a reasonable ask. Instead of thinking about the damage Mario Berlanga speaks about firsthand, we're informed actually, this isn't about the blood in coke, its about the illegality of the drugs. You know they're illegal, so don't take them in the first place. If you do, own that. If you can't do either, don't use fat people to explore your repressed shame, it gives the game away that you know the score (lit.)
Violence — whether among cartels, or between cartels and government forces — plagues cities along drug trafficking routes. Shops and restaurants shut their doors, employees are laid off. Cartel members routinely steal cars at gunpoint. They take over houses and factories for shelter and fire automatic weapons in public spaces. My relatives have been forced to drop to the ground at home and at the supermarket to avoid being shot.Guessing its not a comfort to know someone's feeling better from all this.
Food as drugs, eating only for pleasure, hunger is addiction is displacement. Its the pressing through the psyche that which is being heavily repressed.
So spare us your tedious symptomatic macro-nutrient paranoia. The only thing that has been hijacked is science-by pseudoscience. Increasingly, people are seeing that all too well.
Friday, 7 October 2016
Weight Loss is Neutral, It's Dieting That's Toxic
Fat activism.
Still getting itself in a tizz about whether dieting is feminist, body positive etc., or not. The short answer is dieting is pathological. It is self-abuse. To a purpose yes, but it is everything weight is supposed to be, inherently unhealthy. Now folks have the right to get involved in it if they chose, but they cannot claim it is positive in anyway, shape or form.
It is so obviously not the way to deliberately invoke weight reversal/loss that it is barely worth arguing over.
Dieting however, is not the same as weight loss. Dieting is a means of bringing about weight loss. This is and always has been the root of this contretemps.
Never mind any nonsense about 'physics'. Calorie restriction induced weight loss-CRIWL is probably based on the observing the body wasting away from poverty, sickness and punishing hard work.
The problem with getting your body to consume itself is that it is basically a way the body dies. When you decide to starve yourself to become slim/mer, your body is not "making a mistake". That would be the small cluster of the brain we call conscious awareness.
Our bodies work without that as a necessary input, ergo it stands to reason that the conscious mind's assumptions on how the body regulates itself is somewhat of an irrelevance.
The problem with the FAM from naafa to the fat underground, fat feminism and the fatsphere is that all have accepted the widespread conflation of CRIWL with weight loss. Calorie restriction being an artificial and toxic way to "lose weight" requires a surround of such carefully managed fiction and it still crap. One of those is that weight loss is dieting, when its clear that the body loses weight of its own volition any time it pleases.
Both fat phobes and fat activists are right and wrong, for basing their understanding on that selfsame fib.
Fat phobes know the body can reverse its weight, as it does in the course of everyday. That's a no-brainer.
Fat activists are also right, they know CRIWL of which dieting is the major plan is untenable. That has got to be one of the greatest unacknowledged proven scientific facts.
Establishing a compelling philosophical question: if scientists do not unequivocally accept a scientific fact, does it cease to be science?
Where fat phobes are wrong is that they think they can hide behind the idea of CRIWL due to it being perceived as the same as weight loss.
Where fat activists get it wrong is via the same assumption. Concluding that as dieting clearly doesn't work, neither does "weight loss". Weight loss is not a technique, tactic or method, it's an aim, an outcome. It requires something to bring it about. Dieting is supposed to be that.
It's CRIWL that is everything you think weight loss is. Weight loss is well, neutral. Or should be. Wanting to reverse your weight is not unpositive, it is not self abuse, it is not classist, sexist or whatever, that is calories in/out. Reversal of weight is just a desire. Like, wanting to be able to pay your bills is fine but robbing a bank on that premise is not fine.
Dieting is a story of ends not justifying means.
There just is no other means available but CRIWL. Test that. Think of all the routes to weight loss that you think are different and ask yourself what is the means by which they bring about the desired effect (weight loss).
All either decrease/block energy input or increase output-(i.e. exercise, vomiting, other purging). ALL of them. Whatever anyone says about any special diets tricks or secrets which the body processes a different way-etc., they aim to cut your cals end of.
Wanting to lose weight is not a bad thing, dieting is.
The only exception is when some technique or other is used to affect the body in a way that leads the body to reverse either its weight or certain metabolic signals. i.e. When people re-train their body to be in a greater state of calm, that can and does alter appetite, hunger function at times significantly. Lessening intake due to differing signals is not dieting, the latter has always been the wrong way around. A fetishistic practise that has become an end in itself. Similar to sacrificial ritual of quais-spiritual cleansing.
It really is the most absurd practise. Dieters think others shame them, when really they obscure their shame behind the kind of falisity I'm talking about here. Only when they meet anyone or thing that doesn't uphold their false consciousness, does the facade come crashing down. They wrongly identify that as being shamed, when its really being acquainted with the stupidity of what they're doing.
It should be said that it's not self harming for example, to lower excessively functioning hunger. Or even to stop having too little sleep, if that then means the body to uses energy differently and that leads to weight reversal.
What we do affects our metabolic function. And this shows you dieting is not necessary.
These little glimpses show that reversal of weight is likely to be a gentle thing, a world away from the culture of CRIWL and everything that went into and comes out of the practise of it.
No calorie counting-a well known symptom of eating disorders- or enforced activity should be required. Fitness is not the same as wasting the body for weight loss. Metabolic function is designed to be plastic. It's incredibly adaptable.
Everything about dieting/criwl should be swept away. Whether people wish to "lose weight" or not.
Those desperate to lose weight need to learn to demand proper insight and means of inducing the body to reverse weight in a proper and humane manner, from the professionals and stop creating arguments amongst activists who've done them no end of favours.
Proper means of inducing weight loss will probably require ways of using our minds to alter our physiological function that are outside the culture of health care as we know it.
Still getting itself in a tizz about whether dieting is feminist, body positive etc., or not. The short answer is dieting is pathological. It is self-abuse. To a purpose yes, but it is everything weight is supposed to be, inherently unhealthy. Now folks have the right to get involved in it if they chose, but they cannot claim it is positive in anyway, shape or form.
It is so obviously not the way to deliberately invoke weight reversal/loss that it is barely worth arguing over.
Dieting however, is not the same as weight loss. Dieting is a means of bringing about weight loss. This is and always has been the root of this contretemps.
(Chanel Ambrose-speaking of her experience
with CRIWL)
The problem with getting your body to consume itself is that it is basically a way the body dies. When you decide to starve yourself to become slim/mer, your body is not "making a mistake". That would be the small cluster of the brain we call conscious awareness.
Our bodies work without that as a necessary input, ergo it stands to reason that the conscious mind's assumptions on how the body regulates itself is somewhat of an irrelevance.
The problem with the FAM from naafa to the fat underground, fat feminism and the fatsphere is that all have accepted the widespread conflation of CRIWL with weight loss. Calorie restriction being an artificial and toxic way to "lose weight" requires a surround of such carefully managed fiction and it still crap. One of those is that weight loss is dieting, when its clear that the body loses weight of its own volition any time it pleases.
Both fat phobes and fat activists are right and wrong, for basing their understanding on that selfsame fib.
Fat phobes know the body can reverse its weight, as it does in the course of everyday. That's a no-brainer.
Fat activists are also right, they know CRIWL of which dieting is the major plan is untenable. That has got to be one of the greatest unacknowledged proven scientific facts.
Establishing a compelling philosophical question: if scientists do not unequivocally accept a scientific fact, does it cease to be science?
Where fat phobes are wrong is that they think they can hide behind the idea of CRIWL due to it being perceived as the same as weight loss.
Where fat activists get it wrong is via the same assumption. Concluding that as dieting clearly doesn't work, neither does "weight loss". Weight loss is not a technique, tactic or method, it's an aim, an outcome. It requires something to bring it about. Dieting is supposed to be that.
It's CRIWL that is everything you think weight loss is. Weight loss is well, neutral. Or should be. Wanting to reverse your weight is not unpositive, it is not self abuse, it is not classist, sexist or whatever, that is calories in/out. Reversal of weight is just a desire. Like, wanting to be able to pay your bills is fine but robbing a bank on that premise is not fine.
Dieting is a story of ends not justifying means.
There just is no other means available but CRIWL. Test that. Think of all the routes to weight loss that you think are different and ask yourself what is the means by which they bring about the desired effect (weight loss).
All either decrease/block energy input or increase output-(i.e. exercise, vomiting, other purging). ALL of them. Whatever anyone says about any special diets tricks or secrets which the body processes a different way-etc., they aim to cut your cals end of.
Wanting to lose weight is not a bad thing, dieting is.
The only exception is when some technique or other is used to affect the body in a way that leads the body to reverse either its weight or certain metabolic signals. i.e. When people re-train their body to be in a greater state of calm, that can and does alter appetite, hunger function at times significantly. Lessening intake due to differing signals is not dieting, the latter has always been the wrong way around. A fetishistic practise that has become an end in itself. Similar to sacrificial ritual of quais-spiritual cleansing.
It really is the most absurd practise. Dieters think others shame them, when really they obscure their shame behind the kind of falisity I'm talking about here. Only when they meet anyone or thing that doesn't uphold their false consciousness, does the facade come crashing down. They wrongly identify that as being shamed, when its really being acquainted with the stupidity of what they're doing.
It should be said that it's not self harming for example, to lower excessively functioning hunger. Or even to stop having too little sleep, if that then means the body to uses energy differently and that leads to weight reversal.
What we do affects our metabolic function. And this shows you dieting is not necessary.
These little glimpses show that reversal of weight is likely to be a gentle thing, a world away from the culture of CRIWL and everything that went into and comes out of the practise of it.
No calorie counting-a well known symptom of eating disorders- or enforced activity should be required. Fitness is not the same as wasting the body for weight loss. Metabolic function is designed to be plastic. It's incredibly adaptable.
Everything about dieting/criwl should be swept away. Whether people wish to "lose weight" or not.
Those desperate to lose weight need to learn to demand proper insight and means of inducing the body to reverse weight in a proper and humane manner, from the professionals and stop creating arguments amongst activists who've done them no end of favours.
Proper means of inducing weight loss will probably require ways of using our minds to alter our physiological function that are outside the culture of health care as we know it.
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
The Size of You
An enjoyable article on Substantia Jones and her Adipositivity Project in New Zealand made me consider a subtle difference in attitude to weight and identity.
I'm glad she said that she wished to "demystify" fat bodies. I'm bored of others, especially the fat hating sisterhood, insisting TAP etc., are trying to force others to find fat people beautiful. Assuming they're covering their bitching with snooty sub-lectures about how they've appointed us miners of digging for women's value beyond beauty. As if they've they're too gorgeous for that.
Give. Me. Strength.
We've already been forced to find slim people beautiful or else, regardless. I'll have more time for this noise when it finds injustice in that. Not that pretending slim=beauty keeps me awake at night, just that slim people need to learn that the complaints they aim at fat people are usually more apt commentary on their own unresolved issues-such as this. Clearly slimz are contemptuous of their own demands. The consistency of this doesn't bode well for self-acceptance.
When SJ was young, she was thin/slim, as a child she said she was nicknamed "bones". Later;
Of the Adipositivity Project she says,
Both fat body and their bodies reference the same thing........at the same time, there can be a subtle difference between embracing yourself and your fatness as part of that. And embracing fatness as a defining characteristic of yourself. It means something to be aware of what you are signing on for when weight becomes you.
You are yourself, your size is an aspect of that.
SJ is no more inherently fat than she was inherently thin, what remained constant was herself. Same person, same life, same body-different stages, different sizes. That's how the body is. It changes. It adapts.
The point of FA is all bodies all people are always human. Always valuable, always the body you are going to do anything with.What is precious is you, not your girth. I honestly think that's what we are all avoiding.
Whatever your size, check your response to the reality that you are the value not your slimness or your valuation of fatness.
Before we plunge into defining ourselves as must-be-fat, we need to look at the mess of a crusade given life by must-be-slim and humbly ask ourselves why we'll make a better fist of weight as identity than slim people. What have we got that they haven't?
It's not the whole story, but if so many slim people did not struggle with the idea of not being slim, we would never have gotten in this mess.
Yes, if SJ woke up tomorrow as slim as she used to be, it might well be incredibly disconcerting, but you know what? She's already gotten over a far greater shock-the loss of a weight halo. She wouldn't stop being herself, even if it altered her character. She'd get over it, or get over not getting over it, same as any change.
As important as it is to value and as she says, demystify fat bodies, until we (re-)learn to really possess our thoughts, our perceptions our sentience, autonomy, agency, narratives and experience, size will not be enough.
I'm glad she said that she wished to "demystify" fat bodies. I'm bored of others, especially the fat hating sisterhood, insisting TAP etc., are trying to force others to find fat people beautiful. Assuming they're covering their bitching with snooty sub-lectures about how they've appointed us miners of digging for women's value beyond beauty. As if they've they're too gorgeous for that.
Give. Me. Strength.
We've already been forced to find slim people beautiful or else, regardless. I'll have more time for this noise when it finds injustice in that. Not that pretending slim=beauty keeps me awake at night, just that slim people need to learn that the complaints they aim at fat people are usually more apt commentary on their own unresolved issues-such as this. Clearly slimz are contemptuous of their own demands. The consistency of this doesn't bode well for self-acceptance.
When SJ was young, she was thin/slim, as a child she said she was nicknamed "bones". Later;
"I liked being thin. I freaked out about my body changing, and I started dieting very young."Indicative of many if not most thin/slim people;
As she went on one diet after another, her weight yo-yoed. It was only when she embraced her fat body that Jones actually felt happy with herself.Ummm, "fat body".
Of the Adipositivity Project she says,
"The primary goal is that I want people to love and respect their bodies.""Their bodies" is right.
Both fat body and their bodies reference the same thing........at the same time, there can be a subtle difference between embracing yourself and your fatness as part of that. And embracing fatness as a defining characteristic of yourself. It means something to be aware of what you are signing on for when weight becomes you.
I never have any desire anymore to be thin. It wouldn't be me."It's all in those last four words (the prior sentence is quoted for context). I'm not trying to catch SJ out or nitpick. Many people aim toward this. I'm querying the urge to identify indubitably with weight, whether thin or fat. Your weight is not you.
You are yourself, your size is an aspect of that.
SJ is no more inherently fat than she was inherently thin, what remained constant was herself. Same person, same life, same body-different stages, different sizes. That's how the body is. It changes. It adapts.
The point of FA is all bodies all people are always human. Always valuable, always the body you are going to do anything with.What is precious is you, not your girth. I honestly think that's what we are all avoiding.
Whatever your size, check your response to the reality that you are the value not your slimness or your valuation of fatness.
Before we plunge into defining ourselves as must-be-fat, we need to look at the mess of a crusade given life by must-be-slim and humbly ask ourselves why we'll make a better fist of weight as identity than slim people. What have we got that they haven't?
It's not the whole story, but if so many slim people did not struggle with the idea of not being slim, we would never have gotten in this mess.
Yes, if SJ woke up tomorrow as slim as she used to be, it might well be incredibly disconcerting, but you know what? She's already gotten over a far greater shock-the loss of a weight halo. She wouldn't stop being herself, even if it altered her character. She'd get over it, or get over not getting over it, same as any change.
As important as it is to value and as she says, demystify fat bodies, until we (re-)learn to really possess our thoughts, our perceptions our sentience, autonomy, agency, narratives and experience, size will not be enough.
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