oac ABOLISH the 'obesity' construct instead

You're going to lurrrve this.

An organisation calling itself the "obesity action coalition" (oac) launched a campaign on the 6th of July this year to "Ban the F word", not the one that rhymes with yuck, they mean "fat". Why says you? It is purportedly to end "fat shaming." Or "weight bias".

 Fat shaming being the term for the referencing of fat people's lowered social status-caused by the 'obesity' construct, heavily sold by its wallahs-via insults developed on the theme of the insulting and dehumanizing 'obese' caricature.

Something neither (real) scientists nor medics have any business involving themselves in the creation of.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you how cheeky these industry grifters are. If they do not like that, I'm sure they can take action. The oac claims as one of its victories, the taking down of the video put up by Kevin MD "Healthcare not fair-Dr. Sorry Ms Fatty." According to reports, they and 'the obesity society' (toc) had a word, which probably explains its prompt removal. Another one they claim is the seeing off of a rule to IQ test bariatric patients pre-surgery.

I don't have enough capacity to look that up, but I'm guessing it refers to an attempt by the bariatric industry itself, to stop people with intellectual disabilities from being butchered by bariatrick cutty men* was removed by their "advocacy". They're so helpful to fatz.

Though that could come back to haunt someone.

What intrigues is why KMD didn't bother to mention this advocacy, indeed, he lead us all to believe that it was down to more general complaints.

Physicians needed to hear from patients on this issue, and their voices came through loud and clear.

It would be overly coy to ask why front organisations featuring professionals can get heard with the speed of light. So I won't bother. It does illustrate something I've been pointing out for years, that the support of the white coat mafia is the reason for the windchill factor level of abandonment and hazing fat people have endured (and still do albeit to a vaguely lesser extent). Not the (slim) fat phobic public, nor your family, school yard bullies or even the slimming industry.

Anyhow, this ban the fat word mess is an obvious and crude attempt to co-opt fat acceptance, note the fat fist thrust into a militant salute (they know where that can go). The cheeky blighters deserve to have that nicked for thorough subversion. This organisation who states is purpose is "giving a voice to the individuals affected by the disease of obesity" wants to erase the word "fat" to give 'obesity' a clearer run. They insist weight is disease.

It is 'obesity' that needs abolishing. The actual underlying construct needs to go. It's not the word its the conceptualization it conveys.

Its existence is a cynical agenda laden ideological construct made for the benefit of professionals and people who wish to sell you things. Whilst weight outliers who often have something seriously awry are permitted to perish in the margins. Unheralded by these beneficent "voice givers." People who do not need "support" in their "journey", they need an actual scientific grasp of how to deal with the metabolic dysfunction erased by the existence of 'obesity' and its bullshit.

The cause of "weight stigma" is this misdirection and the measures taken to attempt to interest people in what would otherwise have no earthly interest to them. How much do you care about slim people's weight, now you've withdrawn from the imposition? No really, how often do you spend looking at slim people and thinking, "Your weight, your weight?"

No one is interested in weight, people are interested in being able to regulate and control the functioning of their bodies. Diet and exercise is the opposite of that. It is not only ineffective, regularly creating and/or increasing the "problem" its supposed to be solving/preventing. But it also makes you a servant of it. Your so called 'journey' is a life based around it.

Only people with serious malfunctioning of organs are expected to piss away so much mindspace, spirit and energy on a dishonest abstraction. And they at least have the prospect of imminent death to "motivate" them. By that I mean, they can die within the day without certain interventions.

If you look at a set of weighing scales, the ones for instance where a balance slides from one end to the other to measure a person's weight. That's  the same the breadth of human weight. Now imagine that a line was drawn at a certain point on that scale rule and it is announced that past this line is something different from what has come before.

You'd be incredulous. You can see with your own eyes, its a question of what point on the same scale. The mechanics that produce weight are rather like that, its a question of finding out how/where to alter that to stop weight from increasing or decreasing at a certain point.

Weight, as in "weight bias" is not " disease" at any point, though forces pushing it up or down the scale may well be. Like fertility before birth control, the issue with weight is there is no known effective means of stopping it unless your body does instinctively. Or it yields to starvation/forced eating.

In any other aspect of human functioning, finding out how to achieve that directly and efficiently would be recognized as the overriding aim. Instead 'obesity' an obsolete creation lost in the mists of time, an artificial derail has rooted itself in place like a useless stinky weed that keeps re-sprouting to cause confusion even to those below the Maginot Line of weight respectability, wishes only to perpetuate its own outrageously useless existence.

Its long since outlived any imagined usefulness.

ABOLISH THE 'OBESITY' CONSTRUCT

Replace it with proper wholly objective investigation into the anatomy and functioning of human metabolism and homoeostasis. This bitty-birth order, Internet use, ice cream fancying gives "greater risk for obesity" bollocks needs to end. This 'obesity', puts you at greater risk of x, y, or z illness-as if that does anything, needs to cease. By finding out what something is all about, you find out how good/bad or indifferent it is or can be. All is required for understanding. No-one understands any condition/state etc., via trying to make it an unimpeachable villain.

Instead, we need to be concerned with a sense of what parts are involved in recreating our cells and tissue, our meat and marrow and a sense of its physiological dynamics. That in and of itself would decimate "weight bias" more than any laws on the statue, pleading, social justice efforts or janus faced "advocacy".

I'll repeat, the issue is not the words used, it is the concepts they're transmitting. Defining fat people's bodies as slim ones suffocating in an adipose suit that is their own bodies, is not only stupid, mindless and pathological, it is and can only be a hopelessly biased dead end that will continue to go nowhere slowly.

Think of those thin people who think everyone fatter than they ="fat", including slim people. Now imagine these thin people insisting that slim people define themselves as thin people wearing a padded onesie.

Exactly.

Altogether again,

ABOLISH THE 'OBESITY' CONSTRUCT

  

Plus its attendant pseudo-science. Fat people are not an employment scheme for the lumpen bourgeoisie.

* Interestingly, obesity and its associated co-morbid conditions are prevalent in patients with cognitive impairment, but the risks and benefits of bariatric surgery in this complex group are not well known.

Studies examining outcomes have been limited to case reports, and thus most bariatric programs do not consider patients with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities to be surgical candidates. At more severe levels of impairment (Intelligence Quotient [IQ] 50-70), only 6.2% of programs do not consider this a contraindication. Furthermore, published guidelines, such as the 2013 AACE/TOS/ASMBS guidelines on perioperative management of the bariatric patient [2009 version], note the importance of a clear understanding of the risks, benefits, outcomes, and alternatives to surgery, and this ability to consent may be compromised in those with cognitive impairments.

 NB A study of 169 prospective bariatric surgery patients

Morbidly obese individuals seeking bariatric surgery were similar in education, income status, and IQ compared with normative data.

Not Tonight Irene

Fat people suffer as much from poor health as they do from poor image. They also die younger. My mother, always fat, died at 61. She suffered for years from carrying around an extra hundred pounds. She was intelligent, beautiful, loving, kind and industrious, but sadly I lost her too soon due to her being over weight. It is too bad we can't promote a healthier body along with a better image of our body.  ~ Irene

This is the kind of comment caught me unawares from the get go. Here's someone stating that their beloved mother (father/partner/ or other loved one) died of something, yet couldn't seem to care less that there was nothing available to prevent this.

You'd think that would be of primary concern. Instead we get the insipid: "...too bad we can't promote a healthier body along with a better image of our body" and the like. What?

How would "promotion" have reversed her mother's weight by 100lbs? Is this a product launch or a matter of life and death? Perhaps most puzzling of all, why do these people direct the dead hand of their minds at lay people, when it is scientists that produce science?

Legislators/politicians local and national are the ones who influence and decide the allocation of funding for said science, don't you think writing to them might start concentrating minds? Why would a group advocating for the valuing of fat people-so absent from their minds attack said advocacy?

Have you ever heard the like of this elsewhere? Because I most definitely haven't.

Even when you come across people whose relatives have traumatized them through their behaviour under the influence. They still talk with feelings of sadness, regret and love. Even if they ultimately felt they had to disconnect from the person, due to their behaviour.

I know abstinence is bunk, people's assertions that there ought to be more provision for it at least focuses on trying to help the person concerned.

Not people like Irene. Too often, they're curiously disinterested in direct assistance to their loved ones. Nor am I yet to see convincing show of grief;

My mom is slowly killing herself.  She won’t live to old age. How the fuck do you want me to feel?  And she’s not enjoying herself, either. Her joints hurt, she has breathing problems, she can’t find clothes in her size, medications don’t work properly at her weight, and when she needs a surgery she will be at a considerably higher risk of complications.  The FA movement would have me applaud her for this.  Well no.  Fuck that.  She’s my mom, and when she hurts herself she hurts me too.  You wouldn’t stand idly by while your friend committed suicide or spiraled into drug addiction, would you?”

That's exactly what these people do, do, stand idly by, that's what is so shocking about them. Does this person really think their use of "fuck" hides the absence of real emotion?  Her joints could be helped by changes the things going into her body. Her breathing might possibly be eased through exercises and her medications adjusted or other things tried.

I don't and wouldn't applaud the stasis of dieting or be damned. What for?

Why do they continue to draw attention to themselves? Presumably, they do not have a clue as to how they sound. I suspect that's partly down to the unnatural absence of response from fat people to anything fat haters say to us. This was due to the suppression of any remotely contrary feelings about dieting being an article of faith.

I'm sorry for the mother's suffering, but I'm most sorry of all that she has this unit for a child. What's amusing about this is clearly, this person has caught on that there is something profoundly wrong with how these people go on, using their often dead or dying (they say) relatives to concern troll. Or should we say, death troll? This is using the ill health/death of relatives, to tell fat people off for advocating self restoration, respect and care.

Do you feel he's gruff but with a heart of gold? I'm afraid I don't. Perhaps I've been too spoilt by hearing a lifetime of genuine expression of grief and sorrow for loved ones. It's not simply the absence of that, it's the lack of genuine feeling.

You'd have to be a bit if a brute, not to find his unconvincing straining for effect somewhat amusing. The fakeness and lack of humanity engendered by the 'obesity' crusade that seems to warp minds this way. Specifically, accepting the person is disease dehumanizes, not dehumanizing, I mean it removes the humanity from a person and the person who accepts it too.

To accept that, your critical faculties have to be switched off. And that must account for this out of tune reaction. There was controversy when the dsmv proposed enduring grief as a pathological condition to be treated with anti-depressants.

Here's a natural antidote. Get people to see their loved ones as self inflicted disease and voila, no grief. Maybe they could check out their brains to see what area's suppressed and come up with some way of replicating it for the illness of grief.

This is the outcome of avoidance of discomfort. Grief isn't nice, so you don't have to feel it, as long as you see people in the right way.

I was going to say that you cannot grieve a thing, but of course, you can. Come and see me the time when my computer locked and I couldn't use it! Looking up a way through, there was more honest show of grief in others experiencing the same fate, than any of these jokers.

One of the best things about landing on a site like Nurse Naomi's blog about her young daughter is to finally have the privilege of witnessing a person behaving as you'd expect under the circumstances.

Her daughter is a real person, not a cypher or a stick to try and beat someone else with.

She listens and relays what her daughter is experiencing. She describes Hana's feelings in subjective terms and her condition in objective terms. 

She can't sit and wait for science, she's out there researching and scouring the earth for possibilities, leads, anything that might help. Her entreaties are directed at scientists, obviously because they do the science. And she talks of saving Hana.

She seeks to garner attention for the plight of her daughter Hana and others, you know she could not sit idly by. 

And what doesn't she have time for-as far as I know? That's right, FA. Because we aren't the reason why the science in this area is so undeveloped. Hypothalamic obesity was apparently isolated in 1901.
 
Hana of course, has an actual condition. She's not just a person being defined as a condition so there's something to describe.

Trying to save the life of your loved ones with all your might is the least I'd expect you to feel moved to do, according to your abilities. Re-routing the course of metabolic function doesn't bring amateur to mind.

If the Irene's of this world made noise about the absence of any means to save their loved ones and aimed it at those with influence; politicians, medics, public healthists, scientists themselves, metabolic science would have become the worthwhile and important subject I've always suspected it is. That would help anyone reverse weight, whether triggered by tumours or not.

It would attract better minds, and they'd perhaps be an honest humane and progressive discourse, kicking into touch the debased hate-fest that passes for "debate" right now. People like Irene have had a part to play in allowing things to come to this and I can't for the life of me work out why.

So the question is, why do people like "Irene" not know how strange their behaviour is?

Weight has Purpose

Looking at this rather predictable effect of increased alcoholism after surgically induced weight loss (or should that be thought of that as tissue loss?) One has to wonder how much restricted access to scientific findings-too many paywalls-is affecting scientific knowledge amongst scientists;

A small group of scientists gathered last week at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study to share ideas about a medical mystery: the increasing evidence that some types of weight loss surgery affect not just the stomach, but the brain as well.

That last line is a bit of a doozy. The stomach area has the second highest concentration of nerve cells outside the brain. So what "increasing evidence" would that be when this has been well known for aeons? And indeed that last link reflects the fact that it's been known of in far Eastern and Ayurvedic medicine. It even affects their attitude to posture, you can still see this.

I also get a bit agitated when clear leads are given by human anatomy. If you scroll down to the third square, you'll see a simplified illustration of how the spinal nerves are connected to organs and to the brain. Is that unconvincing?

If you take the blinkers off and recognise fatness cannot be understood in terms of pathology, any more than slimness could, you'll attain a better grasp of the situation. As I've been trying to point out since I got to the fatsphere, one of the reasons people fatten is to buoy up your mood and stop it from sinking (and you with it). I think of this effect as like a lifejacket stopping you from sinking.

It can use appetite, hunger and/or weight itself to achieve this effect, whatever's necessary. If a change of eating isn't, then your eating will hardly change, if at all. This is an adaptation to keep you afloat whilst you resolve whatever is pressuring you. Often that is a matter of circumstance, environment, upbringing and so many other factors. Your body often stabilizes at a certain point. What folks think of as their setpoint. It's intriguing.

Don't think of this as either/or. Some people are just genetically predisposed to fatness full stop. In some, they're predisposed to this particular kind of physical adaptation. Sometimes it's really anticipatory or hair-trigger as I used to call it. Before you even feel remotely stressed, it has anticipated potential trouble. For others it's more when you are under palpable strain. There are also some who have more than one of these factors, sometimes to the upper most degree. Those are probably amongst those who reach the highest weights.

For others, it doesn't seem to come into effect, they remain slim or even go the other way and lose weight. If their situation isn't resolved, or doesn't spontaneously resolve itself-which let's face it we all count on hugely-then their system may go on another stage which could be anything from an acute neurosis, to some kind of substance abuse.

If you deflate the "lifejacket" then some people's system will continue on the above course. Genetic links between fatness and alcoholism have already been noted. Alcohol is digested, it is partly a food so it can play a role similar to having fat stores because its so readily converted into energy, it removes the need for energy backup!

It's not unheard of for some families to have fatter members alongside slimmer alcoholics. It's interesting that fat people seem more likely to be teetotal. Though I've had a few go's, I've never taken to booze. I've had the feeling that I would have been a prime candidate for heavy drinking if I hadn't been fat. But who knows?

Anyhow, fatness can be a dam or barrier mechanism, in some people. If dieting wasn't so ineffective, this would probably be more clearly the reason why some are dietproof. Finding it even harder than most to lower their (food) intake at all. Regardless of how much/little that is.

And this is part of what gets crudely posited by a fat phobic mindset as 'addiction'. As I used to say, if you're in battle and someone's trying to take your shield, you're bound to instinctively tighten your grip. Because people don't recognise fat people's humanity hidden under their fatuous disease assignation. This kind of nuance doesn't appear to matter. The impulse is to crowbar it into what's gone before, even if that's mythical too.

It is fascinating. But it is not 'addiction transfer'. It's more getting rid of a barrier to going to to possibly develop some kind of substance dependence. The difference is fatness is spontaneous. The body does it itself, a bit like a magnetic field drawing iron filings. The magnetic field is the conditions your body finds conducive to altering weight.

It's interesting that when you're able to see beyond obesity dogma, even a bit, you begin to grasp this;

We don't, for instance, label drowning a disease. It is, clearly, a legitimate medical condition—worthy of treatment and insurance coverage. But the fault lies with the situation, not with ourselves—in the sense that human bodies are simply not adapted to spend too much time under water. Obesity is the same.

 Now, whilst I wouldn't make that comparison, you can see David L. Katz has reached for a similar metaphor. For me, fatness of this kind happens to keep you buoyant and when it's deflated, that's when you start to drown, or at least, require other means.

In a way you could replace "human bodies are simply not adapted to spend too much time under water." With "spend too much time under certain levels of pressure." Or with overall mood under a certain level.

This could have been looked out for, if people weren't busy insisting fatness is all bad and has no positive use. That it is merely the outcome of excess eating, that the body could not have its own plan to alter it's own function to use fatness for a purpose.

Not sympathetic

So it's a belated Happy New Year from me.

Better late than never.

I must admit that I feel a lot different from this time last year and not necessarily in a good way. It feels such a long time ago!

I feel strangely cantankerous about this but I feel like fresh change is afoot and that is to the good. So I'll accept it though it feels a bit cheesy, didn't last year.

One of the things I used to say way back when I started getting involved in the internet FA scene was, "Fat people just aren't sympathetic." Usually followed by, we're going to have to do for ourselves.

That's a bit like for the "party for one" thing Oprah used to go on about. Like some of her ideas, one cheered at the chutzpah, followed by an equal sense of doubt. That idea by the way was throw a spontaneous party for yourself, with music and dancing etc., Not the Bridget Jones weekend alcohol oblivion type for goodness sake.

Nevertheless, this must be overcome, fatz would sorta haveta throw a party for fatz and try to whoop it up. Rather than calling all allies, "We're oppressed/repressed". Basically we'll have to be our own allies.

What I meant was, not just did we not look sympathetic, for what that looks like, see Les Mis, we also did not behave"sympathetic" i.e. despite the fervent yearnings of some fat activists and along with everyone else, fat people simply are not committing suicide, having nervous breakdowns, getting strung out on hard drugs to the extent that would be expected from our status drop.

It should not need saying to those in the know that this is deeply offensive. Rather like a fat person engaging in physical activity without any interest in "weight loss", or not caring about being called fat.

Babbling aside, most of all, we are not sympa because...... well, we look grotesque (even to ourselves) behaving in ways that are perfectly understandable and would garner empathy if we we weren't fat.  

This poses a few possibilities.

We can just behave at a normal human level and look highly provocative, giving haters a chance to kick off wildly, not our fault, but we have to face it. We can behave ourselves i.e. behave better/repress ourselves.  Which plays into the hands of what we are trying to throw off. It keeps our consciousness under wraps and makes it hard to reconnect with that.

Or we can try something else altogether.

We can find a way to detoxify blame and try to lift the burden of it. Rather like we did and are doing with the meaning of the word "fat". Change the way we react to being held culpable, for our bodies, our health and so on. And just find ways to flagrantly not care whether we are blamed or not.

Bodies as cause and effect

A study recently garnered some results which found the prevalence of fatness increased with the degree of physical/sexual abuse experienced in childhood.

The information was from Black women, matching the information from a 2005 study, with measurements taken more recently.

'Obesity' was defined by the usual BMI of 30 plus a measurement of at least 35 inches around the waist-which was deemed "central obesity". Both measurements showed the increase which lessened slightly after modifications were included for variables such as; diet, physical activity, reproductive history etc.,

Its findings are in keeping with other research done in this area.

My view on fatness/weight and trauma in general is unchanged. Eating is designed to nourish and replenish your body, primarily. It also can have a secondary function based on its ability to replenish your physical energy, which lifts mood. It's one of the reasons alcohol can do the same, energy (from calories).

The body can open up channels to spontaneously recruit this effect, helping to support the regulation of your mood when you're under some sustained level of duress. It can be brought into play by the stress and trauma of abuse, emotional torment as that is often a case of luck as to whether any trauma resolves itself of its own accord. Humans mostly depend on that.

Dealing with that that won't heal is not one of our strong points.

So though people often describe themselves as "using food to cope" because they feel it in a conscious way. It seems to be more often to be about ones susceptibility towards this plus trigger. People aren't always very good at locating the cause of some of their actions. Look how many people were able to be convinced that they deliberately decided to become fat because they didn't give damn about how much they ate. Now some of them are saying that wasn't the case. 

We should be wary of the extent of suggestibility when it comes to deliberate intent and eating, because that is the dominant ideological perception of eating. It's also false, eating is not primarily a consciously directed process. 

The body can use to this mood regulation, when it feels the necessity (which can vary hugely) to help stave off neurosis. To stop it culminating to becoming an ingrained condition which itself threatens your existence.

The issue here is this is supposed to be temporary, giving you a bit of time to deal with and resolve the source of stress and/ its aftermath, without sinking into a debilitating state which would mitigate against this.

If that doesn't happen it can keep going and cause side effects of its own. That is part of what has been mangled as "food addiction" or a chronic eating disorder. When actually, we've never come to terms with dealing with old trauma. We just keep going until it fells us. If it doesn't we can pretend we got over it with our own inner resources. Riiiight.

It must be said though that what is usually left out is there seems to be some kind of chemical effect from the physicality of fatness itself, on mood regulation and support. Perhaps the body even works it out on a percentage basis, which may be part of why the overwhelming majority of bodies put on a certain amount. This can be an adaptation to environment, i.e. likely necessity. Just like food insecurity there's mood insecurity? Tending to retain reserves in case of additional trauma. Being fatter in itself may have some kind of palliative effect. Rather like what underlies this aspect of 'obesity' paradox-which is just a way of saying pathologizing fatness is the wrong way to define it.

The body doesn't always have to use the lever of increased intake at all or alone, it can just shift its rate of storage or energy conservation. Depending on the individual capacity and flexibility in this area.

It sometimes seems to go the other way i.e. the same can lead some people to shed weight, which may or may not also have another kind of palliative effect as well as any alteration of physical function triggered by the trauma in itself.

The tradition is here is to fixate on eating rather than the underlying state of the nervous system, so its almost always put down to that.Yet eating is merely a metabolic function, it is intimately affected by the demands made on you.

Isolated kinship

It's often said that fat people feel no kinship or identification with each other but that isn't so. Fat people often spontaneously commiserate with one another.

I remember this starting as a child. In more recent years way before fat acceptance, it was in confusion and puzzlement. There must be more to this, something just isn't right, it just can't be like just they're saying. What are they missing from the picture?

Fat people's situation seems to show that a kinship based solely around the kind of negative tropes wrought on us all, doesn't make for feelings of deep connection.

Although they say, misery loves company, it often seems more to imbue people with a sense of being isolated in their own private hell. When you feel in the wrong it's as if you're the only or worst one in the world.

That must be in the nature of intense negativity, it repels. Only when there is some positive spark does any real sense of connection or togetherness occur. Feeling in sympathy and in sync with others makes you feel blended in, you are no longer just one but part of a greater whole which has it's own dynamic and that can become an entity in itself. More than the sum of its parts.

When you are artificially lessened and reduced.You shrink inward and away from others. That process of a connected extra dimension doesn't occur. You do share that sense of disconnection though.

I was a bit surprised by those who say they don't know how to raise fat acceptance with fat people, now they've seen the light. I was raising it and others were raising it to me as a matter of course. At some point if anyone said something like "Oh, my diet's hard" I'd respond, "More than usual?"

That's usually all it takes for it all to come pouring out, the things so often unsaid. People say what they feel they're expected to say and if they know they don't have to, they can make it a choice for once. I don't know if I ever met anyone who hasn't chosen to discuss the facts, even some who've lost a lot of weight and are still in the "honeymoon phase".
  
With any aim or ambition you have to work for doubts are inevitable, despite those who succeed against the odds with their "I never doubted it for a minute". I rarely have no doubts. You set them aside in order to pursue your designated course. It's an act of will(power).

It's only after time when you see how things pan out and aren't working the way you assumed, that those questions creep back in. I say questions rather than doubts, because it's true. An extreme suspension of disbelief is required. It is therefore seen as a meter of good faith, so that was one of the last things to go. Doubt is the enemy.

Extreme negativity finds fellow feeling mostly in an individuated loneliness rather than connection beyond the self to a larger corp or group. Even when you get together that is carried with you until you rid yourselves of that extent of negativity.

Kindly STHU with your "overweight"

The promiscuous throwing around of this term is getting really tired.

Just how hard is it to get over the fact that some people are bigger size thin? Some people are greater than others. They are more than, just how dimwitted do you have to be to name someone else after you not to be able to get over that?

Imagine if you will; failweight, scanty, stopshort, underfat FGS?

Can I get a lightweight, storm tossed, insubstantial, flighty?

Miserweight?

Or what about small, minceur, sucked out, eaten up, already devoured-whats the Latin for the last one? It could be the antithesis to obese which has its root in the Latin "to devour".

We are the weight we are. We've told you what we are,  fat, we are something. We are not what we are not; got that?

We are not some thin person's self important prissy take on us-"What, some people are over me, they're past moi? Must your shock be our label?

Must it be an endless memorial to someone else's tedious fee fees?

I get the sensory impact of fatness on thinz who've not gotten over the baby thing of  I am the defining principle of what all humanity should be. Many of us, of all weights are living testament to the fact that this can be overcome

We do not expect you to be our size equally, you are not our defining principle of our substance.

Now its time to stop looking stupid and like your head is permanently stuck up your anal passage and recognise that not everyone looks to you, is in reference to you, okay? Become a sophisticat.

We define ourselves by the integrity of our own bodies, regardless of our plans. We are too precious to live in an ever dangling future possible, whilst ignoring the present. Where we here.

And that is fat.

So get that.

Curiosity

Is it essentialist to be interested in the reasons people are fat or any other weight? It feels more like curiosity and the negative way the subject has been approached whilst chastening should not make these questions verboten. Humane curiosity should not take second place to the cynicism and self interest of certain groups.

I'm not seeking to blame, the context of my interest is not defined by that kind of parameter which seem to be a direct graft of religious moral constructs. Blame and shame seems to be more about the emotional reaction of the medical/science establishments to the way fatness exposes-by its very nature-the kind of patterns they have established which do not stand up to objective and rigorous scrutiny. Or to put it more crudely the fact that fatness will not succumb to quackery, threatens to expose it. If that doesn't make sense now, it will do in time.

Being interested in cause or what starts chain reactions that lead us from a to b, is fascinating for the promise of revealing our humanness to us, bypassing some of our funny ideas about how we think we should function as opposed to how we actually do. I wouldn't like to fall into the trap that some do of behaving as if conducting studies reveals the underlying truth always, its as likely to reveal our underlying assumptions and worldviews as much as anything else.

It is part of the patchwork of different ways of understanding ourselves.

I was once accused of claiming thinness as the default setting, I was surprised because I did not actually see it that way-more that those of us who haven't always been fat must pass through being thinner to get to fatter, however briefly. There is no default setting for weight, if your metabolism has gone to fat then even if you lose weight, it tends to reassert the underlying pattern and ditto if you are slim. If you gain weight, your metabolism tends to reassert that, which accounts for a lot of "before and after" weight loss 'success' stories.

However, I feel I could just as easily have been fat as thin, although I'm not sure exactly why I became fat at a young age. I don't necessarily see my fatness as any different in terms of calorie restriction than someone who has always been fat. The uselessness of calorie restriction has seen to that. That can only be tested by something that doesn't provoke the body's defences to violently unseat it.

There are many people fatter than me who's bodies can respond far less horribly than mine to calorific deficits, in that their bodies-and minds- do not react in the extreme manner mine does.

What it does when confronted with it is far worse than being fat in every way. It is extraordinarily efficient at seeing it off, no matter how gentle or 'sensible' or good and noble the restriction is deemed to be.It of course should not be an issue. No matter how potent a treatment is, it is fully accepted that there are always people for whom it doesn't and can't work, by those who can maintain rationality.

But then remedies are not usually seen as being a test of morality, that is because that is bunkum and exists to hide something those concerned do not wish to face, it's either us or them and they've decided that as they are in a position to make it us, that's who its going to be. Exploiting our trust in them to get away with a self indulgence far more egregious than any they whine about.

My curiosity has been awaken by this outstanding capacity to see off conscious strictures, what is it and what is it made up of? As well as the experience of others that are both unique to them and show threads of similarity sometimes unexpected ones. Not because I need to excuse myself or escape. I have an interest that has been lit by all this and the realisation that we know surprisingly little about such a vital need. Curiosity about this is something to celebrate, not to ascribe rank motives of others.

I'm not talking about nosiness!

I'm actually shocked at the way the motives of people who have nothing to do with me and don't give a damn what I think feel or have gone through is allowed to define the agenda of curiosity itself. The arrogance of it is staggering, the malicious do not own it. People who are most sure that interest is verboten often come from the same or similar backgrounds to the cynical they are angry with and it seems as if their blanket condemnation conforms to an overall agenda of shoring up that group.

There are other people and motives on planet earth that are not defined by the same borders.

The honesty of fatness

There's more than one reason why trying to use the addiction model to describe fatness is a bad idea. I was reminded of one the most important ones by this quote;

My relationship with food has been on the rocks for years, but I can’t file for divorce. I’ve got to fight a good fight and get it back on track.

Well said Nick.

It illustrates an evasion that has helped to cheat so many addicts of a return to health, their lives even. the refusal to take on reversing addiction, as opposed to abstaining from the addictive substance. Like many of us fat people have discovered, guilt lies heavy on people and can pressure them into accepting lesser treatment than they deserve because they need to hurt to show how sorry they are. To be able to bear intolerable guilt, pain acts as a ‘paid my debt to society’ impulse.

This has helped a bogus moral element to enter drug rehabilitation that IMHO simply doesn’t belong there. It would if it worked fine; it doesn’t, so I judge it on that. If ideally a pain free as possible way of removing the addiction could be found, that is best. If guilt persisted I’m sure that could be better directed than the hurt of withdrawal.

Those involved in the ‘abstinence’ industry would be wise to keep out of involving themselves in fatness, even including eating disorders more readily associated with it. They may think buoyed up by the respectability and acceptance of the whole rehab boondoggle, that they can expand into fatness bringing a cachet to PBF (poor benighted fatties). But I warn them, even they may struggle to come out intact from this due to the fact that fatness is way too honest not to expose this nonsense.

Not only is any cause or trigger for fatness not directly that of the conscious will, mostly. Any attempt to deal with it has to tackle the one loophole allowed by the nature of those substances, they are not necessary to human existence.

The necessity of food makes a nonsense of abstinence. A fact that has not stopped those bereft of ideas and common sense from trying regardless. Thinking as they do that the perceived ‘cachet’ of the addict persona will uplift fatties who are not taken seriously. They fail to take account that abstinence hardly has any better result than trying to make fat people thin, especially considering the great advantage that non-necessity would theoretically give. In reality, no-one expects to be cured of conditions or diseases merely by pretending to be what they are not, in this case an addict.

If you can abstain, you are hardly an addict. If you have trouble with that, then that’s your problem. Not that you can’t imagine how to method act your way out of the situation.

If weight is seen as imbalanced, it must be rebalanced somehow at source (even if the process is not started from there), ditto eating and appetite. You can wing this effect better with drugs and alcohol but not so well with food. You have to re balance. You have to deal with things as they are, no matter how dysfunctional they are, or seem. There is no get out clause of “giving up eating forever”.

Abstinence wallahs although confronted about this in the past have seen this challenge off. Fat could revive that question by its very nature, even in spite of the current lowly status of fat subjectivity.

Which is one of the reasons why some fat people think the addict definition will recover their subjectivity. They must realise that the greater ‘recognition’ given to drug addicts self representation (at least what seems the appearance of it) is down to the greater promise of effectiveness, not because addicts are respected more than fat people.

It would be far better if the honesty of fatness acted as a spur to revive interest in re-balancing addicts and alcoholic’s bodies as a way of ending their dependence.

Who's pride?

There's an enjoyable article in Australia's Sunday magazine about fat acceptance in Australia. Apart from a few minor gripes, it's well worth taking a look at. I find terms like 'fatism' and 'weightism' silly.

Even more importantly defining the absence of shame that is pointless and irrational as pride is something that I usually resist.

I don't object to people insisting they have fat pride, pride in their race/culture/sexuality or whatever. I'm just not particularly enamoured of feeling proud about something for the sake of asserting a lack of shame. I feel neither proud nor ashamed to be fat.

Describing a divergence with your expectations as arrogance, haughtiness or pride is itself vainglorious and solipsistic assuming that you are the authority on how people should feel about themselves and can set the standard by which they should measure themselves, regardless of the merits of your case.

There are many reasons to feel ashamed or proud of yourself at the same time as being a fat person. The mere fact of being fat isn't necessarily one of them.

Self consideration

Fatuousity's enthusiasm for Kathleen Le Besco's book makes it seem rather attractive!

It enabled me to see, to say, after all those years in classes about ‘the body’, that fat mattered.  That fatness was an embodied difference.  A socially dis-empowered identity.  And that it was a valid object of scholarly enquiry.

The self always should be in some way or another. It feels as if fat people are only just discovering that we are worthy of thought, whether inside or out of academe. It's a notion that sadly hasn't gone very deep. A lot of people try to shame fat people out of it, trying to keep us in the position of stepping over ourselves to hear about anyone but us.

The essentialist position on fatness is the same as the mainstream one, in reverse, that's understandable. Fat acceptance is not a radical movement and doesn't particularly want to be despite its claims. It's too centred around the desire to fit to get much beyond the narratives we already know.

I have to say though, I am curious about the causes of weight if you like. I'm interested in how our bodies work. I find metabolism's to be like some people think of computers, somehow unreal and yet material.

That especially holds a lot of promise when it comes to changing other aspects of our being. 

Fatness, to me anyway, is a mystery, more than that of thinness. In the same way, tallness is in some ways more of a mystery than shortness. I don't really get why people question curiosity itself, rather than the form curiousity takes.

I'm not sure of any difference between creation of meaning and causal factors. Concentrating on the first one is a bit like insisting on focusing on liberal feminism. Without radical feminism, feminism would be incomplete, whatever you  think of either. The latter tends to come from the former.

In terms of bodies, it's just different ballparks, one science, one sociopolitical.  I don't feel fat as kismet either. I don't believe I was either born to be fat or not, never have. I believe this doesn't make my fatness any less real and that's what's so tricky.

It also to a certain extent invites curiousity as it flits between fat as destiny and cause. It says, fat is not my destiny, but I am, and I'm interested in why. This disdain for cause seems to follow gay people's irritation, but they too are deluding themselves if they think no one will seek to change sexuality for reasons other than for gay people. 
 
Ditto fat people. I don't bother to ignore it, because it's part of a puzzle. And if you find out about slim people, you often find out about fat people and vice versa.

Fat is treated as volitional..........so the tendency when dealing with this regressive attitude is to suggest that fatness cannot be helped.  I wonder what would happen if, instead of giving up our volition, we worked to alter the terms of the choice, to emphasize that subjectivity mustn’t be predicated on perception of innocence.

Ummm, I've explained that fatness is not a choice, but I wasn't so much saying that it "can't be helped", because that is the truth as I see it. Or more accurately, the level of choice that would be assigned to me to have chosen to be fat, goes way beyond our accepted norms. i.e. it would easily eclipse things about the shape of our noses or the tone of our skin. Things like neuroses and certain illnesses would also fall under "choice."

That isn't to say I'm denying any hand in being fat, that seems unlikely.  Just that it would be so indirect that I would not be able to connect action with result. How much of a choice-as we understand it-can that be? We can challenge the terms of choice, which I think obesity does, unwittingly. But that would be deeply unpopular, if it wasn't, fatness would not be such a vehicle for the need to insist we choose.

I agree about innocence, that's a problem replete through the general purview of a polarity of either being knowing or naive.

I always think we should have created our own discourse, not bothered to engage with answering so called science that isn't. Refused to answer any so called 'questions' i.e. prejudice ill logic framed as if its a question. Define fatness as it is, not through the lens of other self advocacy movements and then compare and contrast.

Fat canaries

Mining is a difficult and dangerous job. One hazard is it can be hard to tell if there's a lethal build up of gas up ahead, until you get there, and expire!

To get round this they at one time used canaries, sending them ahead to sniff things out so to speak. If they came back alive, it was safe, if not. Not.

One of the things noted by fat people, is the way we're a group that is being singled out. At times, this leads some fatties to mistake this for, "everyone else is better off". Not so. But they are referring to something that is there.
 
The reason why it is rarely articulated outwardly is that, still feeling battered and bruised, sometimes deeply by having been taught to loath and despise ourselves, whilst our minds were taking shape. We just cannot believe that people can possibly do anything close to look up to us in some ways.

I grant you, as I'm writing this, I'm feel kind of strange, and yet I know it to be true, by listening and trying to hear what's being said, to, or rather at us. Like it or not, there is a sense that we can take this, that we can cope, with having to face up to things others shrink from.

There's a recognition-whether indirectly or by default, that we are surprisingly and frankly not a little bit mysteriously robust. We are told that people would rather endure the fire of hades than be fat, and yet here we are, not exactly throwing ourselves out of windows.

No matter how fiercely that is denied when posed directly. The implication is, we are taking and putting up with, what others tell us they cannot take. Even the thought that some might be fat, rather than actually are, is enough to make some, especially young ones, feel suicidal.

Well, I have to say, even when I was in the depths of despair about my weight during my later childhood and youth. I never once even considered committing suicide because of it. That's one thing I could acknowledge even then, the fact that I was actually fat disproved the idea that it was a fate worse than death.

I realized then, that sometimes the terror of anticipation of an "awful event", is worse than the reality of it.  They single us out for a lot of things. Responsibility for our state of health, control of our emotions and moods. They want us to go forth first and see if it kills us before venturing their selves, maybe. Whilst they continue to suffer misfortune and unfortunate events.

We can live with it, we always have.

What unrequited dreams set a course

Reading Ivan's post brought to mind some of the less talked about costs of our investment in calorie manipulation and weight loss dieting as the solution to weight control.

Those who really need help have nothing much available to them. They just don't seem to matter to those who use the obesity canard to service their own needs. What he says about his experiences is fascinating, he speaks of his current health struggles and how that brings thoughts of wanting to be thin to his mind. And no, it's not a sin to acknowledge your feelings about being thin.

The issue is what it takes out of you when you can't get there. There is a here and now and that's swallowed up in wishing.

What I would like, in lieu of a real answer for people like Ivan is a route out of that longing, to making the most of where he is now. Making that better, without that seeming as thin as his dream.

Fat Privilege

When Peggy MacIntosh decided to unpack what she calls the knapsack of white privilege, it was her knapsack. Twas an insider's view. That original inspiration has morphed into people unpacking other people's knapsacks. The results have sometimes not been pretty.

For the same reason that some emit the edict to "check your privilege", it's not just the 'privileged' who have to check themselves out. It's those who are calling it out. They too are as capable of being full of shit and plain wrong as anyone else. Being disadvantaged/oppressed doesn't purify your character or mind OK? Nor should be expected to.

Peggy Mac's version of the concept has some use. But like any there's a point when it disintegrates and is overly or misapplied. Then it serves to obscure more than it illuminates. As I have said before, I feel that "thin privilege" is a brilliant example of where that line occurs. Whatever you feel about this kind of privilege-that of unfair, unearned advantages (whatever that means) as opposed to the Derridan sense of it as a certain condition or state that is accorded certain status over and above others, I wondered what about fat people, do we have any unearned advantage over others?

Now please do not think I'm doing this merely to be mischievous. It is a legitimate thing to consider. And as so many are telling others, privilege is nothing to get the hump about. So, what could possibly be the point of such a seemingly absurd proposition as fat privilege? Well, it's occurred to me for a while, but I've struggled to find a way to express that despite or sometimes because of  the way society dogs fat people, there are things about it and the experience of it that are worthwhile.

The underlying problem I have with putting the fat experience into the category marked, oppression is-apart from the fact that I don't believe that we are, yet- and I think they should be named in case we do.

The fat as oppressed, takes us down a road that I can tell is not a good idea. It doesn't represent us realistically and I think after succumbing so long to the convenient lies of others, we not only deserve better. I do not believe that fat people are the poorest of the poor, disproportionately, I think that we are more likely to be the working or aspirant poor and a bit more.

So, back to a prospective list of fat privilege; physically is its potentially stabilizing effects on mood. From alleviating depression to an anti-psychotic effect etc., weight gain seems to stop or slow you from sinking into a mire. Without the side effects of alcohol and drugs which mess up your chemical balance and ability to function. This might be part of the reason why we are less likely to commit suicide than other weight groups.

It also seems to have potentially stabilizing effect overall in terms of life in general, though this could be partly repression. That smothers bad as well as good behaviour.

Having had less access to the product of the labour of today's version of indentured servitude- i.e. sweat shops, we have less of a burden of guilt about that kind of capitalist exploitation. We are more likely to be seen as approachable and non threatening. Less likely to be seen as a threat in terms of looks, less likely to be a recipient of that kind of hostility. Our gender identity is more likely to be seen as distinct, therefore convincing than thin people's. We are more able to be seen as an experience sexually, due to our size. We can be perceived as more responsible, solid citizens, especially at a younger age, when it maybe counts more. Less prone to niggling ailments, such as colds etc., More likely to be seen as a nicer person.

More likely to know the futility of the weight loss diet canard, therefore more likely to be liberated from mindless obedience to authority. Less likely to be an alcoholic =less likely to be an illegal drug user, therefore, less likely to have trouble with the law, be in prison.

There's a quality about fatness that can be hard to replicate, hence the french saying that a woman should look thin, but feel fat.

More likely to be seen as a force to be reckoned with, more intimidating. By this I mean that if your body instinctively uses it's capacity to gain weight to either help stave off potential or actual mental crisis, those who can't call on this option may have to pay for it.

Now for the reverse I'm speculating from what I've managed to glean from less fat people themselves. So it's up to them to correct me on this. They think, we're freer, from being liked for ourselves. Freer to eat what we want (projection). Freedom's a theme here.

Fat not likely to be a choice

Perusing this I've toyed with this line myself, but it really doesn't work.

The rejection of unreasonable demands cannot be seen as a choice in the same sense as deciding on what you want to do, or rejecting the possible. A big fallacy that operates even amongst those who should know better, is that pain is the reason why diets and exercising yourself to slimness falter so badly That's simply is not correct. This falsely misrepresents not only the character of fat people, but of human beings in general.

Numerous are the times that this myth of why diets fail has been used to discredit not only fat people, but people in general, and it's time we put a stop to it.

I'm cannot disagree with the fact that we human beings have our moments, but as they are so plentiful, we invent them at our peril sticking with our actual sins is more than enough to be going on with, lets not get greedy.

The reasons why dieting and exercise fail stems from the fact that the body is designed to resist them, it uses all means it can to achieve this. Such is the strain of this herculean effort is that it seems to run out of space to hold thoughts that aren't deeply ingrained. It's a bit like the way group therapy becomes extra brain space for you, when you are trying to .

Time after time, people find perfectly rational approaches to weight loss, that don't hurt them in any tangible way. Things appear to be going to plan and then phhfftt! Just as suddenly as you thought you had found the way, you find you can no longer seem to do what you have just been doing. Discovering this can be almost eerie, you reach a certain point, sometimes it's a certain amount that has been lost. It's as if the body's said, OK, now I'm going to get serious with you. You just find that you've suddenly run out of road.

The choice thing doesn't work for me, because for me, like most fat people I think, it is not a direct choice, weight gain is mostly much like weight loss. It's orgins are hard to trace. The extra eating lack of exercise thing is likely to be symptom as cause. If I'd chosen to be fat I'd say so, I didn't, it doesn't make any difference to whether it is blameworthy or not. I've always felt responsible about it, it's just that what was supposed to remove weight, is unlikely to and deeply unplesant. One thing I can choose to be glad about, is that diets have failed, they deserve to.