Wednesday 26 August 2009

Sacrificial weight gain

Randomquorum has written previously about a friend to us poor benighted fatties one Paul James aka "PJ". Our supporter is sacrificing himself to do a supersize me style experiment, (don't they all?)

Here here's our fatmate again. He claims to wish to walk a mile in a fat man's shoes, though really, I can't help wondering if he's just a bit of a feeder. His excuse, reason for gaining is unconvincing. I feel that he's rebounding from his ultra healthy eating diet-read, highly tedious and restrictive. He's suffering from a form of burnout.

Also I note his sense of anticipation at losing the weight too. Binge and fast. There's a lot of joy for some at becoming as fat as they possibly can; hello Morgan Spurlock, then reversing it. Like taking a really pushing every last bit of breath from your lungs that you can, creating a powerful vacuum drawing a fuller than normal breath in.

It is not acceptable to just do this-like poisoning yourself with alcohol, sorry, getting drunk- so a rationale has to be provided for oneself and everyone else. Nor is a 'good diet' supposed to exhaust your tolerance for its restriction.

The excuse of walking a mile in a fat man's shoes is a bit like, walking a mile in a gay man's shoes; having lots of sex with men in order to better empathize and understand them.

Exactly.

Why not just ask them and listen objectively and well? Presumably this is more fun than extensive questionnaires, interviews or just listening more acutely to actual fat people. He's done admirably well on the gaining, possibly too well for his expectation, as he may be having a little trouble caging his temporarily liberated inner fatteh than he realises.  

Point of note PJ put on 88 pounds in six months. If you're a fat person and have been since some point in your childhood or teens, do a little test. Divide the amount of weight you would have to lose to be acceptable, (BMI 25 or under) by the intervening years.

I did similar-started off from when I became concerned about weight, up to date (then). It turned out I had an average gain of about 5lbs a year. I'm guessing that even if you are bigger than me, it's likely that except in cases of hormonal flux, puberty, pregnancy, mood disorder, ie. depression, psychosis, that you've not averaged 88 pounds every six months.

If I did that I'd double my weight in the next two years. Healthy living, pursued to an extent can have the similar unbalancing effects on one's weight regulation, as dieting, it's just less acute due to the absence of calorie restriction. I know this because it resembles what unbalanced my eating to the extent of a rampaging disorder far more than the weight loss diet-rebound pattern we more readily think of.

This can and does create a form of rebound of it's own that you are endlessly seeing off. This is perceived as our innate greediness playing up, rather than the body trying to evade the extent of stricture you're imposing on it. This is often waved in fat people's faces with people exclaiming thinness doesn't come naturally.

All this artificial manipulation whether its avoidance of types of (desired) foods or food itself can leave the body on this metabolic precipice and it only takes a fall off the wagon, usually something with emotional impact- a serious relationship ending a bereavement or change of circumstances to allow the state of metabolic conservation to express itself to fuller effect. Hence 88 pounds in 6 months.

When these ignorant fitness devotees stop exercising abruptly, voila, you have an explanation for quite a lot of their assumptions about weight gain, fatness and fat people. This kind of 'experiment' just reinforces that.

It doesn't occur that the rate of gain of this type of person at least suggests we are telling the truth when we say we have gained in the face of strenuous attempts not to. Easy come easy go though, that state does seem to be the same in reverse, because it is artificial and not a product of your metabolic function. We don't try to gain weight, we do that's the difference.

And is it me, but when you look at him posing with his new belly, is it me or is there some deep love there? Pride even?

He seems awfully fond of it, I could go further, but I'll spare you.

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