Knowing no Pain, Knowing no Pleasure

Courtesy of this is thin privilege,

I genuinely would like your thoughts on my experience: I am severely underweight. I get gawked at, my health brought up, and insulted because of my body by strangers, relentlessly. When I was obese, I never experienced any of that. I actually received way more compliments when i was overweight and when i was obese than i receive at my current weight. I have been respectful and made no negative comments - I'd appreciate if you could respond in the same manner. Thanks

Well, we can feel immediately, slim person's energy-I very much doubt s/the(y) is/are "severely underweight" [under what weight? People often have their own ideas about the starting point]. By slim energy, I mean, someone making the minuscule, maximo if it happens to a slim and makes anything negative that happens to a fat, nothing and anything falling short of base negativity, a "positive".

Calling yourself 'obese' and "overweight" like that, means you have experienced all of that-gawked at, health brought up, insulted because of your body- or you wouldn't applying said terms to yourself with such a sense of peace and comfort.

'Obesity' itself is degrading branding and an insult in any way you could define that. It erases your sentience-addressing it to do so- pathologises you, makes you common property, silences you, tells you you are "disease" and not human, whilst knowing full well that you are. That's just the beginning of it. Every time you apply it to yourself, you validate this, hence a lot of fat people's anxiousness, anguish and exhaustion.

"Overweight" is based on a slim centric metric, validating slimness as the only legitimate size. Here is one of those who don't hear any insult to fat people, due to, for example, perceiving that as legitimate critique. We were all like that at one time.

Probably our friend in struggle thought slenderness would render them immune to criticism. Unfortunately for them, back in the day, advocates for anorexics decided to raise awareness.

Up til then, people were very loathe to cross any boundary of enquiring whether a slender person might be so due to anorexia nervosa-were assured to press through that as PWA tended to deny vigorously that they're anorexic.

That broken boundary led to over-familiarity fuelled by that self-righteousness people get when they feel the changing of your body happens from what they say to you. On the heels of that came this angry contempt for someone "not going to get help". See the case of Eugenia Cooney to peep that atmosphere.

In other words, there is a similarity between the firepower aimed at anorexia and fatness, for pretty much the same reasons, coming from the same people, the difference is anorexia does kill. 

Surrender Manqué

"Tom Watson: how I lost seven stone and reversed my type 2 diabetes" This man is deputy leader of her Majesty's Opposition. 

....it has taken more than 25 years to gain control over his diet and exercise.

Taken on face value, a person has taken over a quarter of a century to "control" their diet and exercise. That's subject to conformation, by explaining the nature of the day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, decade by decade effort to arrive at this conclusion.

Or perhaps it is not a day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, decade by decade effort, maybe its just time and then suddenly, the moment.

Either way, the big question is why not just find a way of shortening such effort to say, 25 months, weeks, days, hours, or even minutes? What about this process takes so long and cannot be shrunk into a more scientific size?

Question: Why is it okay for this "control" to be randomly acquired over a long stretch, but not for it to be brought about in good time through concerted action?

In case anyone needs reminding, science is appropriately and contextually time-limited. If you cannot achieve an effect in a timely manner, then you cannot test it, it cannot be said to fail. Exceptions are things like observing an effect like an eclipse or w/e is different, that is a natural phenomena.

When it comes to bringing about an effect, it cannot go on indefinitely. Your computer won't load, the person at the computer repair shop says it takes up to 25 years to tell either way, that's clearly tripe.

You don't want me to go through what this is all about again do you? Nyaaaaah, okay. Once more from the top.

You have committed a crime-taken more than your (fair) share.

You must payback your debt to society-in the form of starvation and enforced labour.

This however is outside jurisprudence, it's sort of 'moral' socially enforced. So, there is a purpose, you are doing this to slim. That was only sufficient for a while, so professionals came back with, it's for your health.

It is "unhealthy" to be BMI 25+, ergo you must starve and sweat. Even if this was genuine and not contrived, it is of course an argument for science. But science won't deliver punishment, equally, punishment doesn't deliver slimness.

Answer: Everything is about shoring up the notion of your criminality/pathologisation-the 'obesity' construct, pressing you to bread 'n' water + the treadmill and trying to force that into the appearance of a perfectly rational way to regulate body mass and/or health.

That's why over 25 years of mysterious process cannot be edited. You need to get smacked up by being set up for failure.

If you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime. 

Currently, this pathologisation-punishment-metabolic derangement has moved from calories/ low-fat to sugar as arch villain. This enables the tired diet success stories we hear every day of our existence in the never-getting-slimmer-society, to be freshened up into-it succeeded this time because the problem is sugar.

I consider myself diabetic and a reformed sugar addict because I know that if I take sugar in again, the condition will come back.

You consider yourself to be something biologically insupportable. And in case you're wondering "reversing diabetes" means lessening the symptoms, not what is being implied.

And if you think after over 25 years of ______ this man had paid his debt to society, you'd of course be wrong.

It wasn’t a huge shock – there had been warning signs, such as his increasing weight and high blood pressure – for some time, but it was still a blow. The overwhelming emotion was shame,” he says. “I felt frightened and ashamed that I had come to this point, and guilty. I’ve only admitted it publicly now.......it was a combination of lack of knowledge and fear; for a year or two I was in denial.  ...he started exercising, which wasn’t easy because he was so heavy. “The first time I went up the steps, I felt I would probably need oxygen at the end of it. ......“The office would always laugh at me because I would cling to the wall when I got to the top.   ........he would attempt press-ups. “It was incredibly humiliating to start with. I looked pathetic.

Even that's not enough, he still has to serve his life sentence,

He now does two cardio workouts a week, such as running on the treadmill or doing 5km outdoors, or a boxing session; does weight-training a couple of times a week; and walks a lot. “I hate going to bed at night not having done 10,000 steps.”

...with poss an amputation down the line [I'll leave you to speculate on which kind], if it all falls down.

On top of that, he has to embarrass himself by publicly revealing just what a craven whipped pup he is. He is a forelock tugger, a knee-bender a lickspittle. And he wants to spread this good news to others.

Righty-o.

Though this is supposed to represent the left of UK politics. Someone who has so little respect for his own humanity.

One thing amputating the stomach has confirmed is that both hunger and appetite for certain foods can be altering via metabolic function- without buggering up, therefore altering the digestion.

It often leads to astonishing changes in the way things taste, making cravings for a rich slice of chocolate cake or a bag of White Castle hamburgers simply vanish. In contrast, patients who had bypass and sleeve operations reported that they were not particularly hungry afterward, and that their incessant urges to eat vanished. Even more surprising, their taste for food often changed. Dr. Lee Kaplan, an obesity researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, recalled a patient who asked him: “Are you sure they didn’t operate on my brain? Food does not call out to me anymore.” Another, who used to seek fatty and sugary foods, said, “I crave salads now.”

Ignore Kolata's 'hive-body' stance. It has been known for ages that your hunger levels and appetite-including your tastes and the balance of them, are defined by the external pressures and internal needs acting on and within you. By doing such as adjusting the activity in your nervous system, in the right way, you can reduce hunger and alter your appetite.

That's the way round it ought to be. It should not require suffering. Physical conditioning is one thing, but it should not be the way weight or health are regulated.

All this rigmarole is a product of punishment and mutilation is a product of trying to make punishment do what is demanded. How will everybody, health care professionals especially, be made to get over urges that defy all reason, yet find so little opposition?

Ministering to Bodies does not Equal Ownership of People

A few weeks ago a certain health authority announced that it will breathalyse smokers to make sure they've stopped smoking for 8 weeks before they can be referred for assessment for "non-urgent surgery".

They said the changes were being brought in after 85% of people who responded to a public consultation agreed that smokers should be required to quit before being referred. 

This transparent attempt at buck passing shows the architects of this know they are in the wrong, they don't want to own it. Instead they try to stick it on the usual targets, the public.

Smoking is a habit. It is not addictive, it's is not even particularly faddictive-folks still woefully underestimate the power of the human mind in real life.

Smoking has never been more self-selecting than it is today, so if anyone wants to truly make further inroads into the numbers remaining, they need to come up with techniques that actually work for those who smoke and resist urges to indulge in power games expressions punitive fee fees or crackpot vigilante justice.

To use that brilliant-as-it-is-skewif expression, check the optics: anti-smoking professionals targeting people for; reaching for a cigarette-reaching for a cigarette-reaching for a cigarette, by reaching for self righteous shock tactics-reaching for self righteous shock tactics-reaching for self righteous shock tactics.

If phoned in anti-ism equalled expertise in the formation and cessation of habits, that wouldn't have happened now would it?

If health professionals and bureaucrats wish to truly engage in public health, they need to engage with healthy behaviours to bring about that end. They can do their; "Bad for you, bad for you act, in an emergency, in the initial stages of any real or perceived health crisis- if they've not thought of anything better. After the initial loosely aligned are shaken off though, they'd better put some effort into how to actually alter what compelling about what they're complaining about.

With real demonstrations of efficacy, that can be repeated, not assertion or pseudo-science statistically massaged 'studies', or other so called "evidence-based" hocus-poci. No stupid chewing gum or horrible-as-they-are ineffectual drugs "support" either. If you are criticising using material things, why is that all you've got? If you think the answer to problems is things, what are you looking down your nose at?

Why aren't you more concerned about how to alter the behaviour and performance of your mind/body, using your mind/body? That is a real anti-thesis of habitual consumption of material objects.

If that sounds like a tall order, that's the sort of feeling you invoke in your targets.

In the past Public health was honourable and progressive. It improved society and was led by knowledge such as an understanding of the true value of hygiene and of the nature and transmission of disease.

Public health must again be about raising the health of the populace, not a pretext to assaulting mental health, inducing self hatred, creating social/moral hierarchies, or a cover for weird politics/ morality social engineering and the vaunting of one's own personal hatreds. 

Incidentally, no cure-all but smokers or trying to be ex-smokers should consider making a practise of yogic style or other breathing exercises. Even that famous warm up stretch where you take deep breaths as you raise your arms from your sides into the air- really open your chest [it's famous but I can't find a link.] And when you lower your arms whilst exhaling, really empty your lungs-without strain- and pause before taking another breath.

This won't suit everyone but it's worth a try. If your body knows its going to get some invigorating breaths, that might weaken that aspect of the attraction of fags, just don't bring that to smoking!

I can hardly finish without mentioning;

The CCGs also require obese patients to reduce their weight by 10% over nine months or reduce their BMI (body mass index) to less than 30, whichever is greater, before being referred for non-urgent surgery.

Again, whomever wrote; "reduce their weight" knows the only means made available for that-CRIWL is harmful and doesn't work. Euphemise away, you are not even fooling yourselves. Effectively this is seeking to force people to starve off weight against their will. It's seeking to mandate the ceaseless repetition of self harm and self abuse.  

Let's refresh on medical ethics;

• Respect for autonomy – the patient has the right to refuse or choose their treatment. (Voluntas aegroti suprema lex.)
• Beneficence – a practitioner should act in the best interest of the patient. (Salus aegroti suprema lex.)
• Non-maleficence – to not be the cause of harm. Also, "Utility" - to promote more good than harm
• Justice – concerns the distribution of scarce health resources, and the decision of who gets what treatment (fairness and equality). (Iustitia.)

That's a fail on all four and more.

Fat people have taken the initiative, we have done the dieting, that's how we know the results are not satisfactory to anyone.

Patronising nonsense about how people need 'support' to impersonate anorexia, be damned, this is a medical dispute.

There's an obvious vacancy here for science that seeks only to properly understand and manipulate metabolic function. That doesn't concentrate on pointless categorising of people by weight as if being above or below their arbitrary lines makes your bodily functions unrelated to each other.

Look at what that has produced. 

If medical professionals et al want to continue their blocking of real science that actually works, and promotion of pseudo-science that doesn't, they need to explain their motivation for this. They need to become accountable for the outcome.

Either way, doctors don't own fat or any other people. They can't tell us black is white and white is black or try to press us to support their science fiction.

I repeat, fat people have always wanted to slim, we have been prevented by the lack of proper method. Medics et al can only continue to bypass that for so long.

"Obesity scientists" as others choose the area of knowledge they wish to pursue, which is their right. That doesn't co-incide with the needs of those they treat as their personal quarry. No-one signed up to be their puppets, we signed on for altering weight/metabolic function in good faith. That has not been provided and is not on offer so that is that.

Neither they nor medics nor society is owed anything by fat people. We've done what we can with what we've been given.

Nor for the record, is mutilation of the stomach any more a viable option than smoking yourself slim.