Starvation: "Not Too Arduous", says Jesting Boffin

With narrow ideology holding all in its rictus grip, the only direction is round and round the same circle. The slimming industry has been routinely propped up, supported and rescued by medics and scientists etc., connected with the 'obesity' industry. Over the decades, doctors have routinely sent their patients to slimming companies, "They're the experts".

Doctors have been behind virtually every kind of diet there is. Name any form of dieting; low-fat, low carb, whole grain, high protein, partial or actual fasting, there's a doctor selling it. With the recent announcement of a slimming industry mainstay, weight watchers, moving away from at least, associating loudly with starvation induced weight loss.

Weight Watchers will now be known as “WW.” The 55-year-old company* just announced that it is rebranding to focus more on overall health. Its new tagline: “Wellness that works.” 

It's about time for the usual suspects to stage an intervention to stop the starvation punishment from becoming recherche. "NHS should prescribe crash diet replacing meals with shakes and nutrition bars to tackle obesity, scientists say", by "prescription", they mean, tell you-you are doing all the work. They are doing nothing.

Partnership with commercial weight loss firms should be extended nationwide to allow GPs to prescribe, scientists add

They don't routinely "prescribe" (very low calorie) VLCD liquid diets due to past experience "Liquid Protein Mayhem", From July 14 1978, an abstract;

...Singh et al (p 115) and Brown et al (p 120) report a total of three deaths of female patients who had adhered faithfully to a liquid protein diet (providing about 300 kcal/day in the form of protein hydrolysate) for five to six months. The immediate cause of death in every case was refractory ventricular tachycardia and fibrillation. A fourth patient experienced repeated episodes of ventricular tachycardia, but, after a stormy course, her condition was controlled with phenytoin sodium. The patient subsequently recovered. The ECGs of all four patients showed gross abnormalities of repolarization characterized by prominent U waves and QT_c prolongation. All of the patients were relatively young women aged 27 to 35 years, and, except for their obesity, all had been in good health before undergoing supplemented fasting. 

Do note "had been in good health". That's being written out of reality so harms done by "starvation induced weight loss" can be filed under "obesity-related"-strictly speaking that isn't wrong, it is related to a construct and its morbid crusade.  It shows even this dubious area has degenerated under the duress of trying to enforce starvation as some kind of end in itself.

Dieting used to be all about the low cal. Folks tended to lose larger amounts of weight than in more recent years-if you insist on starving off weight, the closer to starvation dying and death, the better the thinning.

It [VCLD] is not an easy diet to follow. Apart from feeling hungry and low on energy, other side effects can include: dry mouth constipation or diarrhoea, headache, dizziness, cramps, hair thinning

Too much association with destruction and death was doing for the slimming industry, as well as evident failure of the starvation strategy, until doctors stepped in with "health". A healthy diet produced health, window-dressing dieting away from its morbidity [a proper use of that term]. This lending of medical/science legitimacy saved the on its arse grift from a descent into oblivion.

It meant people stopped losing the amounts of weight as before.

Eating shakes, soups and meal replacement bars for three meals a day helped obese patients lose nearly four times as much weight as those told to eat healthily and cut calories, a study has found. Oxford University researchers have reported “total meal replacement” diets, which restrict participants to just 810 calories per day for eight weeks, safely enabled more patients to lose more weight – and keep it off for a year with diet support.

These are the wrong wrong academics/researchers/scientists, obviously. We need ones who are actually interested in finding out how we can use our body's own abilities to regulate its own mass. So we are no longer at the mercy of this increasingly institutionalised iatrogenesis.

I hope this helps to illustrate why until this area is done and dusted, this cycle will continue, with or without self-acceptance. That is a start, a means to an end, not an end in itself. It's an attempt to begin to reverse damage done by this crusade, but it is not enough. Society needs closure and that will only come with finding out how to use our bodies abilities properly. There is nothing wrong with that and there never has been.

The survey results fly in the face of long standing criticism of “crash dieting”, amid fears it can lead to a yo-yo effect where people lose weight but immediately put it back on.

Seeing as professionals are happy to mutilate people into perma-starvation, the acceptance of that's rehabilitating starvation without mutilation.

.....the Oxford University report’s authors argue there is ample evidence such regimes can help combat a growing obesity crisis which is costing the health service billions of pounds to treat complications such as type 2 diabetes

The current message is still out there though. "Fitness guru Joe Wicks cautions against 'beach body' crash diets"

Social media health pro Joe Wicks has urged people to stay healthy and avoid “beach body” crash diets in the lead-up to the summer holidays.

It'll be interesting to see how people like Wicks incorporate this into their spiel. Probably the usual, one law for the subjects another for the objects. 

Professor Paul Aveyard, a co-author of the paper, said: “This study shows that GP referral to a total diet replacement programme in the community is an effective intervention which GPs can confidently recommend, knowing that it leads to sustainable weight loss and lowers the risk of heart disease and diabetes.”

What "intervention"? This is an imposition,  a sentence, a punishment. The targets have to endure this, the people starving them get paid.

After 12 months, the participants had lost an average 10.7kg. That compared to an average weight loss of 3.5kg for those who received their GP’s standard weight loss programme, including advice and support from a nurse and written information.

In other words, be confident docs, you now have the go-ahead, sorry. That's what 'studies' are used for nowadays.

Independent experts said it was striking virtually all participants stayed on the programme for the entire 12 months, and suggested sticking with meal replacement is not too arduous.

Independent of what? When there's only one ideology, there's only one way of thinking, unless we're talking about such as; "Marco Rubio condemns 'weirdo Salt Bae' after Venezuela president Nicolas Maduro dines at his restaurant"

Incident sparks outrage among Venezuelans, millions of whom struggle to eat three meals a day.“He is actually the overweight dictator of a nation where 30% of the people eat only once a day & infants are suffering from malnutrition.” Footage showed Mr Maduro dining on expensive steak at the Istanbul restaurant during a stop-off returning from a visit to China, drawing furore back home where millions struggle to get enough to eat and red meat is a rare luxury. Almost two-thirds of Venezuelans surveyed in a university study published in February said they had lost on average 11kg in body weight last year. 

Not too arduous**, leading to sustained weight loss and lowers the risk of heart disease, say scientists. How much has Venezuela's diabetes risk fallen by?

*  predates the "obesity crisis" yet somehow managed not to prevent it.
** I'd pay money to see & hear them tell Maduro's critics this.

Hunger for a Change

Extracts from Roxane Gay's book Hunger featured in the guardian the other day. I admit I wasn't looking forward, I'm not her type of reader. "My body is a cage of my own making" turned out to be a different kettle of fish all together.

Beautifully written-so say those who know about these things. I'm kidding, even I could tell! At first I was wound up by that title-I doubt its anything of the sort, her own making that is. After some time I remembered the book is called Hunger. I began to sense a certain aggression-"I'm saying, I did it to myself, now you can stfu and listen for once."

Someone used to crowd control. 

I even began to wonder whether I've been at fault for not being more prepared to accommodate what's required. For me though, it wouldn't be true. I know weight isn't conscious choice. I know a body demanding more energy than is about function not emotion.

Is weight an unconscious choice choice though? I've always tried to leave that open, but the more people claim it is, the less convincing that feels, esp. given their explanations. Why is the big question, why go to all that trouble?

And where does this wellspring of what-ob-means come from? Is it genetically influenced?

It's a case of only when proper means of reversing body mass is available, will it be easier to perceive just how mechanical this all is.

In some sense, the reaction of the readers was most peculiar. Never have so many 'nice' middle class people been so relieved and joyous about such monstrous violation. As long as you're working within the current favoured ob trope for those who think they're nice-Nice Guys [I'm using that pansexually]-"Food addiction", that is.

Though more rigorously moderated-to minimise the, "I was raped and still managed to maintain a hell-thay wait" type comments, the extent of collapse of the usual impenetrable gabble, you know it, I'm not even going to mention it, was quite alarming. As if the biggest problem people have with fat metaphysics is the lack of (perceived) brokenness on offer- that complaint undermined only by self-pitying whines about "self-pity".

Like, this is how to be a woman/ finally-a fat woman.

Slimness signifies woman in some way, the absence of it seems to equate to the absence of womanhood, with the knowledge that it is there. Which lends a sense of impertinence. The criticisms of fat activists are tendentious and strained.

Fat women it seems are perceived as impinging on the space usually assigned to masculinity- without the qualifications for it. Therefore we come across something like aggressive, but low (very) low status males. Notable are the reaction of women, who were just as relieved/happy that finally fatz had joined them and they could get behind a fatty-joy of joys.

Nothing new, but I'm still surprised it makes this much difference especially to the sort of women informed by feminism. 

Though it is 2017 and not 18 or even 1717, it seems women cannot advocate through argument, or rely on reason they must emote, from a place of being breached. The more 'unsympathetic' the greater the impact needed to crack through the hard carapace of favoured delusion.

----------------------------

Four aspects spoke to me. How these types require you to talk about being, i.e. "I chose fat, using food" to do x. How people treat you as a fat person. The impotence imposed on any fat person who's ever tried to be slim/lose weight-the latter goal replaced the former when it became clear that this route had turned that into a pipe dream.

And the parts I enjoyed most, about playing your duty,

I am, perhaps, self-obsessed beyond measure. No matter where I am, I wonder about where I stand and how I look. I think, I am the fattest person in this apartment building. I am the fattest person in this class. I am the fattest person at this university. I am the fattest person in this theatre. I am the fattest person on this aeroplane. I am the fattest person in this airport. I am the fattest person in this city. I am the fattest person at this conference. I am the fattest person in this restaurant. I am the fattest person in this shopping mall. I am the fattest person on this panel. I am the fattest person in this casino.

The self absorption of neurosis, in this case imposed neurosis of the 'obese' characterisation, so true. It's this kind of crap that drove me to step out of dutiful portrayal of the 'obese' role, remembering you are doing baad.  I know the comment is more about Roxane's awareness of her size, but its what you're supposed to say to yourself, remember you are fat.

It's motivational.

Being multiply-raped at the age of 12 is so unthinkable that it was just as much so after I read it as before. Nothing can make that fit in my head, my imagination runs out. Yet I recognised parts;

...no one but those boys could hear me scream.....the surprising strength in their limbs. I remember that they laughed a lot. I remember that they had nothing but disdain for me.

At that moment I thought, how little has changed, I couldn't help myself. So much of being abused in general is like what people want the experience of fat to be. Not for their own personal satisfaction you understand, for the good of health. Of society.

If folks want a mythos about why people "choose" to be fat, why not that when you have a trauma or shock, your nervous system assumes the construction of that trauma, the head becomes dissonant. Being an ob thing is a good alignment.

Is that true? Not the point, its better than the ones made up by others.

As it is those assaults-and this is why the Internet feels strangely old-fashioned a lot of the time-seemed to reshape RG's nervous system, straining it. Around that goes gain, over time, especially if that doesn't retreat sufficiently. It depends on tendency as always.

Eating is taking in energy. It is the response to hunger and hunger increases when the systems that regulate and colate it are disturbed, and/or the body needs more energy. Few can sit and just eat and eat without hunger or energy misalignment. 

She also seems to be a metabolic outlier. At the end of an interview she said that she'd grow 12 or so inches at around age 16, which seems extraordinary to me. Though not all tall people are fat obviously, it shows real potential toward growth.

Her top weight was 577lbs and if you still have to ask why she had to hit that, the answer is of course, no reason whatever....except, if you can stop a person's body from hitting 577, then you can stop them from hitting 200 or less.

The first rule of medicine is to stabilise. We are still waiting for the industry/field to manage that rather conservative target after all these decades due to it not being found in how much sugar is in digestive buscuits. All that despite their sniffiness at our lack of anorexia talent. Not to mention the increasing ability of others to stop all sorts of cells from proliferating.

I wish I had known I could talk to my parents and get help, and turn to something other than food.

I must say I laughed out loud at the mention of "help" out there that would have stopped Roxane's body in its tracks. If proper investigation had lent itself to inducing a neural realignment, that would have taken something out of the trauma, make her more able to discuss it.

Why would a girl want to tell the parents she has so much compassion for what had happened to their young daughter? Children often feel for their parents. For the responsibilities they have, their emotional/mental states, and what it would mean to them if they knew. Why should a child so utterly betrayed have go through another unthinkable thing? Another loss?

Many people cope by not telling those they love. They're hanging on to the view of themselves before.

She has so many symptoms of the kind of souped up traumatised system and if mercifully that could be made to return to a rest state, the relief she'd have gotten and would still get would probably be appreciable.

That's supposed to motivate research. 

The fact that she loses a bit of weight every time she goes on a dietary regime is a possible sign that her body might respond rather readily to this in a way that would aid the reversal she desires.

We are told constantly we are sick, yet people are expressing surprise that Roxane is in pain, really? So they do know they're lying. Certainly 'obesity' wallahs know some are in pain, they just don't give a damn, they want to tell you you deserve it and there all, "We don't know nuttin' about nuttin'."

I have been wracking my brains for years as to why they've developed this hang 'em and flog 'em mentality when it comes to fat people. I don't claim to be perfect, but over and above umm ethics, the idea of other people's suffering doesn't interest. I don't get what makes this so compelling.

I doubt we'll find out any time soon, they don't want to be that in touch with their fee fees.

Getting people like Roxane's systems to return to a more normalised state would would be grand, but that would also interrupt the ob narrative of distress and sickness. So, many of those involved are just going to keep fucking around with nonsense like "food/eating addiction", whilst pretending to be doing science.

A reminder of what certain establishment scientists and medics wanted to do to gay men and AIDS, under the cover of science. One shudders to think what would have happened there if they'd got their way. 

The thing that's saved fat people is that being fat is not disease or inherently a pathology in and of itself, though if it was, the sort of body count of the various opiate crises ironically would have jerked people out of this ugly stupor.

That doesn't mean there isn't a job to be done. I've made it plain that scientists/researchers owe people a debt of honour in this affair. And, that would open up a portal to greater achievement in various fields of physical and mental health.

Slander and lies have been told to hurt people who simply haven't deserved it. Whatever anyone thinks or says, the phony baloney attempts to cast weight as addiction/eating disorder/mental health problem won't work. The buck for this culture of false disease must stop somewhere and it has to be here.

This is going to have to be solved properly, nothing less will do.

Presumably that's the underlying source of rage.

Metabolic-Based Depression?

A sad story about a man's brother and electroconvulsive therapy reminded me of why I've always struggled to respond to queries framed as; "Would you be slim if you could?" The short answer is that weight can't be separated from the state of your metabolic function and your body's use of energy.

Consider Stephen Mayers-the writer's brother. The article tells the story of how he developed a deep and intractable form of depression ten years before the end of his life. In the end his cause of death was a heart attack. Certain things leapt out, 

A life that had been little more than an extended stupor, enlivened only by the gobbling of stodge...

Insatiable appetite for carbohydrates-ready energy.

The article itself is defending the revival of ECT-electroconvulsive therapy, where electrodes deliver electric shocks to the brain to induce seizures. This supposedly can relieve the deepest of depressions, presumably by destroying certain functions of the brain,

The addiction to discomfort eating, which brought only self-hatred, was ousted by a renewed passion for cycling.

Something was wrong with his body's use of energy and a signal of this prompted feelings of self loathing, well done 'obesity' crusade.

As the writer and professor of clinical psychology Andrew Solomon has sagely noted, the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality.

For "vitality" we can read, flow as well as presence of energy. Once ECT broke through depression, the brother felt a restored urge to really stimulate his flow of energy via activity.

It's possible that heart trouble was the cause of what was perceived solely as his state of mind. It could also have been something else that eventually caused his heart to succumb, perhaps something about the workings of his digestive system.

How ECT works is not fully understood. The damage from these induced seizures seem to have the effect of separating certain functions in the brain associated with depressions' circular thinking, this undermines depression.

Our results show that ECT has lasting effects on the functional architecture of the brain. A comparison of pre- and posttreatment functional connectivity data in a group of nine patients revealed a significant cluster of voxels in and around the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortical region (Brodmann areas 44, 45, and 46), where the average global functional connectivity was considerably decreased after ECT treatment (P < 0.05, family-wise error-corrected). This decrease in functional connectivity was accompanied by a significant improvement (P < 0.001) in depressive symptoms;

[My emphasis] It's possible that it affects functioning in the gut, sort of reversing the effect of gastric mutilation.

One thing that has revealed to more people is the intimate connection between that area, the brain and the heart/circulatory system.