I Don't Care How Much You Love Your Son, Your Fat phobia Will Curdle It

NB, if you are feeling delicate, you might want to give this a miss, frankly though, Giles Coren is not a person who is taken seriously so any anger is just missing the pointlessness. "I don't care what my son becomes as long as he's not overweight".

I've been at pains to point out that in spite of appearances, the 'obesity' industry are the ones blocking  the most efficient and effective means of altering weight. Science should deliver proper means of inducing weight loss for those who need or want it-and is free to, as it is to pursue any other methods or solutions it, or its paymasters decide.

It just chooses not to and will continue not to, as long as its under zero pressure to explain this decision. I recommend-as I always have-taking it up with them. If enough people do, that'll put some heat under their feet.

What's just as odd as that reluctance is the way fat phobes have followed the 'obesity' industry's lead in promoting failure ahead of that, no matter how desperate they claim to be or are for the same clear effective resolution fat people desire/d.

The suspense [lols] is seeing how long it's going to take for this penny to drop, amongst fat phobes and activists alike.

That's pretty much how I'm reading this offering for signs of mental fatigue. The article itself concerns Coren's attitude to his little son meeting those who wish to be the dis-ease of other people, like for instance, himself;

It's all very well to say that it's puppy fat.......but what if… IT DOESN'T GO AWAY?

Acknowledging the lack of proper method or approach, along with angst of knowing what we have is a whole lot of nothing- from someone who likes pretending otherwise. Home is where the heart is,

Adele's parents probably thought it was puppy fat too. And Paul Hollywood's. And Russell Grant's. No doubt Diane Abbott's family assumed that she would change shape when she was out of nappies. But the change never came. 

Wishing and hoping, oh the impotence, yet he still ventilates the trap people like him like to collude with;

It's reasonable to assume that the parents took their eyes off the ball, let their porky pups feast on a shitty diet and do fuck-all exercise into adolescence and now look at them: ostensibly successful, yes, but laughable to behold with their untucked shirts and stretched, shiny faces. The sort of people you want to follow down the street playing "Flight of the Valkyries" on a tuba.

Your eyes?

I'm worried as fuck that my little Sam could go the same way. Not only because of how it will ruin his life but because of how it will reflect on me.

I'll bet you are, you know the score. And ruin his life? That's a strong statement of the effects of being constantly surrounded by your mindset.

Unsurprisingly Coren doesn't hold back on the usual brain dead fat phobe memes, one thing that is a surprise is the rank paedo-gaze I thought people had finally let up on,

You're looking at that picture of my son and you're thinking, "Fat little bastard". Sure, he's cute. He's got a nice little face. Except he's fat. Arse on him like Vanessa Feltz and a full frontal presentation at bath time that puts one in mind of a Gavin and Stacey-era James Corden or a well-waxed Christopher Biggins, all giggly on too much rosé.

Yeucch. I was thinking cute Giles. Cute. When does the average parent speak of their infant child in these terms? This and various other inappropriateness dogs people their whole lives. 

....each actual fat person is blatantly just a badly brought-up, greedy little son of a bitch committing the unforgivable sin of gluttony in a world where there is not enough food to go round. I'd kill them all and render them down for candles.

Capitalist goes revolutionary with their crude and crudely misplaced anti-capitalism critique, [along with upper-mid parental inadequacy fears]. Your frustration is aimed at the wrong target you airhead. And unforgivable compared with what? Cold-blooded murder? Paedophilia?

As for that last line, it may help to know Coren is Jewish. It feels like something spit up (somewhere) from his cognitive basement. If other Jewish people don't object to it, I don't really see why anyone else should take it to heart. He's desperate for the attention,

But it's hard to know what to do about it. 

Say what?

...it's hard to know what to do about it.  

What about the usual starvation and hard labour you usually recommend? Does it feel less doable when looking into the eyes of a little mite trusting you not to hurt him?

How very normal.

I'd put him on a strict diet and buy him a hamster wheel but my wife is not the moral absolutist that I am and she is the one who does the Ocado orders. And cooks most of the food. But is a bit of a lazy tart. Sorry — a busy working mother with many other important things to think about, who knows her way down the path of least resistance.

Hiding behind your wife? Isn't that major league cuck in your world? Moral absolutist, proto-anorexia + exercise purging = morality, rather than standing up for your boy against disingenuous fanaticism?

And come on Giles, the path of least resistance has a heck of a lot of overlap with the greatest efficiency. I see your laptop isn't a windup one, do you feel morally sullied by its efficiency?

I say, "Can't you give him a carrot instead?"

And my wife says, "If you want him to eat carrots, you try feeding him a fucking carrot!"

So I let it go. And I feel ashamed. But then I see these middle-class kids with their weekday screen bans and their steamed fish and vegetables and no chocolate or sweeties and 10 hours' oboe practice a day and it makes me want to puke. 

I'm glad he said this because fat and/or working class people aren't allowed to feel this way by middle class 'obesity' upholders. Either they're failing to be nutritionally educated, dupes of the food industry or are criminally negligent, anything but disinterested in someone else prescribing their way of eating (and life).

This is a culture clash. The 'obesity' cult is about dictating the way you live, feel and increasingly, think. You aren't allowed to choose that on the pretext that you must surrender yourself for thinness-through-calorie-restriction-induced-weight-loss. And the way they want people to live, and the things they want others to prioritise isn't attractive.

The focus on scare stories rather than the usual understanding dynamics and how to direct them is supposed to scare us into living their way and evidence of the lack of interest in the purported subject. They're like others who don't feel they need to take "no" for an answer.

Weight change should have nothing to do with dictating diets, or sequestering huge amounts of your time and mental bandwidth- that's up to the individual. The issue is functional dynamics and the alteration of them. 

I try to look on the positive side. Such as the possibility that having a fat adult son — who I will unquestionably continue to love with all my heart no matter what — might help me to lay aside my prejudices regarding fat people and bring me to a more respectful place vis-à-vis the fat and ever fatter future we unquestionably face as a race.

Fantastic, you do that, because if you continue with such cultivated loathing, it could infuse the deep well of love you feel and you wouldn't like the possible consequences,

.....being grotesquely flabby, sweaty, knock-kneed and impotent would mean that Sam was unlikely ever to have a girlfriend or any mates or be invited to parties

How would you feel about love if it was mixed up with the feelings expressed here? Exactly.
 Time to do what fat phobes rarely have to do, choose which is most important to you. Your fat phobia, or your son.

Children Seen as the Weakest Link

So the burgeoning 'obesity' industry continues to target the softer route of using children to advance its increasingly profit-dredging soulless cult,

These types of interventions were often delivered by multidisciplinary teams, including pediatricians, exercise physiologists or physical therapists, dietitians or diet assistants, psychologists or social workers, or other behavioral specialists.

I'll bet, a veritable bonanza for middle/upper class professionals. Well, we owe them a living don't we? And so do children, donating their minds and bodies for the effort.

Ob industrialists are wont to tell us of the purported percentage increase in this or that version of their stupid term 'obesity' so they shouldn't be shy about the percentage increase in the diversion of funds into this money-for-nothing slush pile. I'll bet its epitastic.

In order to collar more unwilling vics, the industry wishes to "screen" children from ages 6 years upwards to see how many it can requisition for what it dubs, "Comprehensive, intensive, behavioural interventions".

Don't all rush at once.

Basically it's,

...individual sessions (both family and group); provided information about healthy eating, safe exercising, and reading food labels; encouraged the use of stimulus control (eg, limiting access to tempting foods and limiting screen time), goal setting, self-monitoring, contingent rewards, and problem solving; and included supervised physical activity sessions.

"Reading food labels" demands a serious education. And stimulus control is not "limiting access" to anything, it's altering your ability to switch off or curtail your response to stimuli. That suggestion is about removing the stimulus, without addressing the potential for response. You'd rather get rid of say a phobia that just remove or avoid the trigger/stimulus.

This is all too familiar, like 'obesity' cults favourite attack the response to hunger, but not the hunger itself.

The reason they give for insisting on a minimum of at least 26 + billable hours is their "evidence" [lols] shows any less is even more useless than the minimal effects they have the effrontery to claim make this all worthwhile.

The proper response to this would be come up with stuff that actually works, but if they were interested in that, they wouldn't be in this.

That's not all though, the real jam in the doughnut is turning your kid on to drug abuse or "phramacotherapy" as they prefer. Clearly shy of their own actions. The prospect of targeting ethnic minority children is something folks need to pay attention too.

Pass that on to the unsuspecting.

I don't know about you but six years old was around the time I was beginning to become aware of eating and weight. The notion of me being put on drugs at that age is staggering to me. There are two aspects to falling prey to drug abuse, now or in the future. One is susceptibility the other is the worship of pills as something to take as some kind of holy sacrament regardless.

Drugs are introduced in any instance possible just for the sake of it.

Drugs impose strain on the liver. Their wild mis-use sets people's minds to that direction and is a long-term risk factor for organ damage. 'Obesity' wallahs are fond of invoking 'addiction', they seem desperate to make manifest their favoured legends about fat people-as they always do.

Weight is an issue of anatomical function, neural and endocrinal. The real answers lie in altering metabolic processes through pathways we can create/connect/exploit through conscious access. The focus is on physiology not 'behaviour', character or intangibles.

This is an idea that is still in advance of our current expectations.

So alternatives?

Well, teaching children to meditate is a good idea, for their general neural and physical health. Teach them to clear their minds of all thought, pick a spot on the wall/ceiling and focus on it. The key is to return attention to that spot when it drifts, without force or frustration. A couple of minutes a day to start off with is fine-if they are jittery.

Up to 20 minutes is fine. Meditation is not a treatment by the way, its a practice that tends to help support health, its a form of mental hygiene.

Gaining control of your mind is good for resisting definitions others may seek to impose for their own gain. It also can help with lifting and resisting excessive demands on your child's energy, something that can distort hunger, especially at times of hormonal flux.

Do not under any circumstances identify your child as 'obese' or 'with obese'. Your child is always a child. A little human person, never, ever, ever a disease or "person with their own body mass." If you feel up to it, make that clear to any professionals that you do not wish to support or be involved in such terms or pathologising your child in any way- whether you use their help or not. 

When it comes to hunger teach children to respect theirs by not forcing them to override or cheat theirs. Encourage them to try various things in a spirit of adventure, but don't bribe or make them eat things they really don't want to. If its about things like veg, make them tastier.

Keep a relaxed and positive attitude around eating and food. Explain that it supports the greatness that is them *grin*. You don't have to be a godbotherer to say some form of grace-expressing gratitude for your food before you eat it. And do not get them involved in this good/bad food or talk about food as 'junk' or 'shit'. Some food is fun, silly food for snacks other food is more nourishing sustaining food.

Still other food is about celebrating occasions or seasons. 

Explain to them in terms of useful, appropriate times to eat this or that kind of food. Tell them about where food comes from, about things growing from the earth, point to plants you see around, even weeds in the pavement/sidewalk, to help explain.

Talk about how food gets turned into the state you buy it in. 

Check out people like Ellen Satter, food justice folks who work with children and urban (and rural) gardening. Most of the good ones don't harp on 'obesity' its irrelevant to people who care about real things. Put food into context, its ultimately just food, fuel, it's not physiology. It's certainly nothing to fear. Altering the body shouldn't depend on it.

If a child genuinely seems to have excessive hunger-check by observing them and gently questioning how their hunger feels before, during and after eating. How do they feel about being and not being hungry?

Explain that some people's hunger function is more excitable than others, and that you will work together to help their body bring it down to a proper rhythm. 

Don't label them 'eating disordered' or pathologise them or anything like that. Talk about their fears and reassure them that you support them in finding ways to check it. Dispel anxiety, don't create it.

Teach them to calm themselves before, during and after they eat-on top of in general, even if its just something like counting down from 10-1.

Deal with other anxieties or worries they may have about themselves and life in general help them achieve a better state overall.

In case it needs saying, don't allow your child to be turned into a little pill popper on the orders of those who are clearly no longer in charge of themselves on this issue. Be prepared to be the voice of reason, defending your child against fanaticism.

I genuinely cannot see how they will get away with this sort of quackery without being sued at some point, but that's a risk factor they need to consider. 

Remember, all any of us signed on for was to become slim nothing more and, many fat adults are ex-childhood 'obesity' cases. It didn't work then and it won't now. 

"The Economy Must Take Priority"

The current Prime Minister Theresa May recently released a paper on her government's policy on "childhood obesity". It was much criticised as weak and she was effectively said to have bowed to the pressure of big fud rather than to the plucky quangocrat public health grifters.

That's suppose to be choosing ill over good if you're unsure.

I simply cannot make myself give a fleck about that mess, but I was mildly diverted by her comments. I decided to read them in context, to get a feel of what made her back peddle even on plans already deemed by 'obesity' wallahs to fall short of their demands.

I can't pretend to have a secure sense of what Theresa May's about, but one thing I do get from her is she appears to be nobody's fool.

I trotted off, still ropey search skills in hand and was justifiably taken aback. I could find no further comment from the UK Prime Minister in any of the numerous farticles I had to hold my nose through.

Found a deluge of Jamie Oliver though. The sorority might want to consider the potential for knicker-twisting, revealed by journalistic standards.

Every article, at least the early on in a story's life-cycle should quote the PM's comments on her own government's policy before responding to them with opinion and editorial. No-one needs the whinging of mostly male "experts"who had nothing of any real value to say.

Especially as this fragment rose above the senseless dirge as an actual cogent response-share it or not. The economy comes before "childhood obesity". Now maybe the context was more conciliatory, I wouldn't know.

Does she know what a lot of child hating shit 'childhood obesity' is? Or is it just her pro biz instincts speaking? Either way, she's giving voice to what people call "real talk".

It's a bit like gyms who have more subscribers than they could accommodate if they all turned up at once. Continuation of the 'obesity' contrivance depends on not acknowledging the unviability of its failure of a 'cure'- that failure being defined as the failure of the individual.

Even the astute Gina Kolata's recent interesting piece on that biggest loser study was framed as "...why so many people fail to keep off the weight they lose."

May's response is why even if you saw things only in the mainstream way fat people are and have always been set up to fail and blamed for both that and the failure of the means of regulating weight.

Usually what appears to be sides of 'obesity' debating are phony polarities. In this case, those who demand calorie restriction comes about through "individual responsibility" and those who demand the regulation of business.

It's a faulty distinction, regardless all the real toxic stress falls on the individual. It's just anything less than 100% assault on the mind's and bodies of people, including children, is deemed soft. An unacceptable let up on the unconscionable. Like complaints about criminal justice; prison's are too much like holiday camps, if they do not grind the person down with systemic punishment.

May like others of her political cast responds to entreaties to regulate business as they would an assault on a person. I cannot say the reverse is true of those who are seeking to curtail business, they're too disconnected by their use of the de or should I say, unhumanizing 'obesity' moniker.

They just feel it might be more effective to price people into starvation rather than persuade them that anorexia performance isn't the acme of personal and parental achievement.

Neither are bothered by the notion of a life of battling self induced starvation.

May is correct in letting that cat out of its bag. The food and restaurant industry replaced heavy industry. Dismantling the former to replace with the expanding service industry has been the policy of many governments. Without it, it is hard to imagine how many even well off economies could have embarked on this course.

That is why no government, Labour or Conservative is stupid enough to go down that road. They're happy to talk the talk though.

Setting pathologized bodies, devalued bodies against these odds explains a lot of why fat people cannot get out from under being pathologized in the style of rage or phony pity. Blaming fat people holds this together.

It's called having your cake and eating it too. Keep the (de)industrial strategy encourage its replacement, yet insist on something that would require a curtailment of its replacement that would be economically speaking an unknown quantity. Whilst I know beyond doubt few give a damn about fat people, young or not, I doubt the economy could have stood it at any point. Even now, what seems doable only seems that way due to allowing food-commerce to get the hold it has. 

That is what Theresa May means when she says, the economy comes before any pretence of concern about child welfare. It always has and it always will. Forcing that into capitulating to business interests convinces only those who want to kid themselves that they don't know this.

There's not and has never been any reason why children need to be exposed to the psychological conditioning of scotty burger inc. That was about selling the children for the economy, stupid.

Pro-biz or more pro-prospect of employment for people who would otherwise be even more employment-challenged than they are?

Keeping society together right now depends on what the 'obesity' activists are attacking, precisely because they know neither fat children nor adults matter.

That my friends is the class angle on 'obesity' and the food industry.

Fat phobes dream of people under eating in a thriving food sector, through "willpower" or "discipline". Public healthists think they can have both if the calories get stripped out of prepared foods. Ironically the business friendly right are too dizzy on punishing someone to even make that airy-fairy concession to reality.

The economy will always take priority.

Britain's nuclear weapon system recently came up for review. Arguments where openly made that not renewing nuclear weapons would cost jobs. Never mind any other consideration of having those weapons.

On the one side fat people are boxed in by the desire of white coat brigade to evade what will have to be a professional reckoning. On the other, by people who've developed a neurotic compulsion to starve fat people, of any age.

Fat Finger

After yesterday's awfulness, which I shall be returning to at some point, here's a real laugh for the fat cognoscenti especially. Straight in,

a presentation by researchers in Liverpool and Florida at the European Obesity Summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, has found that, no matter what the child’s weight at the age of four or five, if the parent perceives them to be too heavy, they will on average put on more weight, not less, than other children. That was the case whether the parent was right or wrong in thinking they were overweight.

Please my sides......pick me up off the floor.....

You'll not be surprised to know, that WE KNOW THIS. So why, some may ask, do we not say this when this sort of thing is being said?

It has been assumed that parents who realise they have an overweight child will help them exercise and follow a healthier diet.  

Oh sorry, you must be a clueless person who thinks fat people can tell the 'obesity' cult anything such as our real as opposed to imagined experience.

Wrong.

Until reality is stumbled upon and then its all a great shock.....

There's a back up of certain themes that were unloaded into the fatsphere and this was one of them. Along with other fatz, it puzzled me for a long time.

To put things in the right perspective, this study with its grinding obesideology thought branding children "fat" would lead parents to impose an obesopunishment of thin gruel and hard labour.....that sort of thing. And the research would seem to go against that.

That's not where we were coming from at all. Nooooo.

What we noted is that there is some strange hudu shit flying around, with some parents who for want of a better way of putting it. Put the fat finger on their child/ren.

I don't know what's going on!!!

I'm saying that some children seem to be marked out as fat before any visible signs of fatness or even chubbiness are present. Now, don't think this is about comparison, as in; "I thought I was sooo fat when I was 6/8/10/13 etc., Looking back at pictures of myself, I realise, I wasn't."

Though that isn't necessarily untrue, it can be removed from the context of past times. I truly mean that even in that context, certain children are told, "You're fat", before that could possibly be known and its often a big laugh-to others. It's been said to those who (were) stick thin. It's almost like being told, you're the pretty/clever/cheeky one or whatever.

One time this was touched on. A slim woman piped up, to the effect of "Yes!" You're supposed to shrug it off and be like, "No way." Show character. 

Thanks for the tip, too late. Lols. It was apparently 'done' to her.

The point is, I have no idea what its about. Whether its part of the dark arts of the family, where people love each other and yet do all kinds of strange things to one another.

But there's something going on. Is it prescience? Or is it like that woman said a sort of test of gumption? Or is it like being marked as the family sin eater, one to be kicked around? For me the most interesting question is is it something about you? I don't mean that you are fat, but something about you that lends itself to a greater possibility of?

I don't know. But it is nothing to do with health or warning you or observation or anything like that. It's almost like being assigned a role. Like back in the day when kids were picked out to be eunuchs or something.

This probably underpins the charge 'fat' has acquired. And why fat people are always accused of not knowing we're fat. And why people are desperate to tell us.

I know there's more knowledge of why people get fat than everyone's letting on. Unless its about  prediction which cannot be ruled out in some cases, but by no means all, it suggests an instinctive knowledge of how you can test the fatness of certain people.

Sadly we're stuck with the shallow tedium of obesology. Probably to stop from talking about stuff like this.

And now I can say how I feel about duty of health. It's not simply we do or don't owe society 'health', its one of those bogus arguments only used on fat people anyway. I'll say though that people often reject what purports to be "health" through instincts that often cannot be voiced. The owe health assumes health is always known or being advanced. A lot of the time, neither are true. The crusade is about promoting 'obesity' [repeat, that 'accusation' is one of many crusade confessions].

Back to McLuhan's "The Medium is the message". I wonder if he isn't talking about us, or to make it clearer, our brains. The medium-our bodies (their design) transmits itself to its own conscious aspect in dribs and drabs, by the very act of its [our] continued existence. 

And to those of you activists who keep on with this line about the crusade is all aimed at making fat people slim. I beg to differ.

Media Clamour for "Obesity Science" to Start Managing Metabolic Function

Riiiight.

I'm reminded of what still isn't happening amid the clamour to monitor metabolic outliers. In this case children. If only a modicum of such attention was paid to the useful outcomes of "obesity science", well, I was going to say we wouldn't be here. But I know that we are here because people want that. This may have slipped notice if the extent of self kidology falls at the 'morbid' end.

The infinitesimal number of children concerned should give a clue that this is probably about functional issues in these children. 11 yes, eleven children have achieved an outstanding BMI of 40 and 475, 35+, well done them. It's hard to really stand out nowadays unless you are a chosen piñata for stupid adult reality-reality games.

They don't want to free you children because they still want to carrying on playing-you know how that is. 

Those children are out of a bit under 13 million people aged under 19. Together they are not even a respectable fraction of one percent.

They complain about it to (partially) convince themselves that they're against this. The idea of using fat people to achieve whatever ends others think they (ought to) want but in reality aren't necessarily so keen as they want to be, still seems to be a droit de seigneur.

That feeling is part of the attraction, feeling righteous without the consequence of having to spoil it by following through or not, with action. That same stasis to preserve a cherished fantasy applies to the whole crusade proper.

Flaccid ritual blame flaps around like a deflated balloon; "Parental irresponsibility", "How can parents allow their children's weight to go there?" Stale. Plus the more ominous,"It's bordering on the criminal." The determination to maintain this contrived state of "obesity crisis" is palpable.

A nutritionist was interviewed about this enervating click bait, who agreed this was the parents fault,  admitted that this actually incorrect blame is pointless and "gets us nowhere." The weariness with which she said this is good news, sorry, no one should feel the defeat of the trap all fat people are in than the wretched gatekeepers of it.

She switched aim to the current 'obese' cult modality, the 'obesogenic' society. This posits (ultimately) that weight must be controlled from without-the same as abusing fat people regulates/contains our weight. Headaches are trivial compared to 'obesity' zomg death propaganda, yet, imagine being told, no more painkillers, instead, we will seek reduce the [head]ache-o-genic aspects of society?

In utopian terms, one cannot say that's a bad desire or wish. But it is brutally inefficient at meeting your needs for control of how you feel. It effectively leaves people powerless-if you believe that one cannot do anything about headaches which of course I don't.  This lack of anything efficient, direct and useful to the individual is no accident.

The nutritionist had the nerve to state that vested interests perpetuate this obesogenic society. Clearly illustrating that these children's bodies-along with other fat people's-are being held ransom to in this instance the desire to dictate what people should eat.

Can you believe this is really happening?

A watch should be kept on the question of what the individual can directly do to stabilise any aspect of their metabolic function, wrt weight. And the answer remains little to nothing. Impersonating anorexia whilst training like a professional athlete does not manage metabolic function. It seeks to deprive the body of energy in order to get it to raid your fat stores. What I did was not direct.

Weight loss dieting/exercise as well as being pretty worthless in the main, are not direct either.

It's sort of the difference between being able to turn a tap on and off, varying its flow and having to have it left on at whatever rate it is flowing and arrange your life around scooping out water to stop your sink/bath from flooding your home.

This has the meanness of the truly stupid.

The complete lack of content should be obvious and it should offend the intelligence of everybody. Not simply a lack of symptomatology or aetiology but genuine context. These children often require investigation. Some of them will have been born with undiagnosed hypothalamic/brain function problems that show up at an early age [strangely enough the age of 3 keeps coming up-is that a metabolic developmental milestone?]

The unusual extent and/or duration of distress on the prospect of withdrawal of relief from hunger. The ferocity and consistency of gain is even more of a signal, which is of course, what they're actually reporting on.

There is no management of weight without techniques to alter/manage metabolic function. That would be altering something fundamental about the (dys)function going on here. The rate at which the body stores and/or spends energy. Hunger/appetite is a metabolic function, not a habit of thought, altering that, turning it down, if only to relieve the distress of excess hunger/appetite would be a start.

I say this again to "obesity science" even if you can't care about adults, for goodness sake [literally] can't you care something for these children?

Parental Devotion

We're so used to ugly fakery and collusion with the 'obesity' crusade, even from decent and lovely people, that we've lost sight of a genuine response. Rameshbhai Nandwana who according the the UK press is proposing to sell one of his kidneys to fund specialist assessment and diagnosis for 3 of his 4 children. Yogita aged seven, Anisha aged 5 and little Harsh a boy of a year and a half. The eldest girl, Bhavika is six years old and unaffected.

Both Rameshbhai and his wife Pragna Ben look after these children with tender devotion and a civilized understanding way outside the league of western model weight rage. Despite effectively being in service to their children's severely heightened hunger.

And its not as if 'obesity' rot hasn't penetrated India;

"A few social workers have come forward to help but it’s not just about the food," he said. "If my kids continue to grow at this rapid rate they will have major health issues.

How astute of him. This is a medical problem, not another opportunity for diet fanatics to ventilate their irrelevant compulsions. These three children obviously have some kind of endocrinal disorder. They've gained weight at a phenomenal rate and suffer from rampaging hyperphagia-or excess of hunger, the non-neurotic kind.

Their bodies are primed by something to keep storing not using energy along with disturbed hunger out of kilter with their physical needs. The parents have sought treatment but this situation needs some specialist input in the form of diagnosis for one- though what specialists can do is anyone's guess. This is out of Nandwana's price range so he's proposing to sell one of his kidneys to fund, mere diagnosis.

Few people either know or can describe how unpleasant hyperphagia is. To most, food=pleasure so a high intake =hedonism. When in reality, the intake is caused by an excess of hunger, which is unpleasant to the point of being intolerable.

People assume this is just normal hunger, though it's an extension of it- like temperature, hunger is on a gradient- when it is way beyond anything like normal.

I'm not surprised these poor children scream and cry when they're not fed, that isn't being spoilt, that is piercing discomfort. The kind that is like that serious phase of depression where the agony is so intense that you feel you may have to end yourself just to stop it.

It's truly horrible to endure. That alone is worth getting rid of, before getting to whether weight can be reversed or not.  The erasure of hunger to reposition it as some kind of emotion or thought leaves it to go where it wants.

If that's normal great, if not, tough shit, if you hurt you hurt, if you die, you die.

How this can happen during a supposedly feverish global crusade that's supposed to be against weight, is evidence that the 'obesity' crusade is not about solutions or medical advance.

It still hasn't even penetrated the minds of many activists that it's not simply that those who are healthy are being attacked, their well being and health undermined, it's also that those who do actually have something wrong, are being shafted.

They're being denied the proper means of assessment, treatment and relief. Diet 'n' exercise pens everyone into the same. Solutions for the Nandwana children and others like them leads to progress for anyone and that's a big spanner in the works. So the Nandwana family have to pay the price for leveraging the threat of ill health to drive social engineering and the politicization of fatness.  

There's something bitter-sweet and telling about how those who still feel hunger as near foe can't bring themselves to starve those they love, even in this case borrowing money at times.

This is something nations whose memory is perhaps more dim actively clamour for. The further away from hunger you are, the more you discount the toll it takes. The more romance it acquires.

All those invested in 'obesity' should crowd fund this man, the least they can do for their indulgence is spare this devoted loving dad his kidney.

'Obesity' Construct Fans are Not the Ones to Shape a Child's Sense of Self

Parents know instinctively that 'obesity' is some kind of attack on children's unworldliness. That it will mark them out for another kind of lesser, sidelined existence. Understandably, they're hardly drawn to this.

@besity fanatics aren't trying to give up though. Lindy West rightly encourages parents not to permit such infractions on those they love for sorties of cynical self-interest.

To protect and nurture a child's nascent self respect, trust and esteem, even if that means disobeying a largely unquestioned clique. Only in the case of the most worthless parents, do adults not have vivid memories of parents trying to shield them from the more painful realities of life.

Children trust their parents unblinkingly to steer them on the right course. To allow their degradation by those who don't matter is to slap that loving trust right back in their faces. There's no need to sell them out in this way. Not to those who's only interest is to justify their dubious attentions.  

These people are nothing if not solipsists. Parents failure to see their beloved progeny as an 'epidemic' is clearly a source of frustration for arrogant @besity wallahs who think anyone should do whatever they say, whenever they say it.  How we fat people have spoilt them.

The misapplied premise here is if you cannot recognize the "problem" you cannot put into place the(ir) solution. That only scans when either the diagnosis or solution are correct, can be implemented are functional and haven't already failed.

In this case, falling short on all counts is where its at. The issue is, folks feel weight needs to become reversible for anyone who needs or wants it. That mean metabolic function needs to be changed, in order to change the outcome it produces. We've tried assaulting that outcome, it hasn't worked because that very metabolic function regulates back to its norm.

So get on with pursuing that, through greater knowledge. Do you see how that doesn't involve imprisoning children in demeaning constructs?

And if you wish to feed children you have charge of properly-then do it as was stopped when government policy 'liberated' nutritional standards. If you wish to teach them to cook again, do it. Ditto, teaching them to grow things.

All and more were in place before and went during this very same 'obesity' crusade. That sums up its worth, aptly. The crusade has been useless in implementing its own strategy for children. It's had its chance-during it, school playing fields? Gone. The roads children used to play on? Taken over by private cars.

Even fast food etc., giants got into children's hospitals, all during the reign of @besity. No one in their right mind, let alone those in charge of children would let another round of this fantasy continue.

Branding their child @bese isn't going make up for that. People don't need to see their children through the crusade's ugly eyes. Those grifting on it themselves need to recognize they have neither the will, ability nor indeed, the inclination to implement a society based around restricting and pointless expenditure of calories -which doesn't even work anyway! Face the reality of who you are and what your society is and get on with a strategy that makes sense for that.

Aim for healthiness for all children, regardless of class, race etc., And separately, through objective endeavour, find genuine ways of affecting metabolic function for those who genuinely need help-who won't get that from social engineering.

Give people the knowledge they want and let them decide what they do and don't wish to eat.  And get out of damaging their children for your own ends.

One of the reasons why I never imagined things would come to this current state of barmy hysteria is I never thought people would be prepared to be this openly abusive to children, in what was supposedly an overly child-friendly atmosphere. By that I mean, child-friendliness had assumed some real social status.

Consider my surprise when the crusade was able to roll over that with its fetid air of pseudo-science. It took me a while to notice this had revealed that  beneath the"friendliness" lurked a real resentment, if not anger with children's blameless status.

Child @besity became a vehicle to through off the demands of child-friendliness without a loss of social kudos. Any excesses of which come out of adult vanity and its attendant parental competitiveness, in the first place.

Being able to finally blame children without quarter has been a real catharsis for many and not just the usual piss 'n' vinegar types who resent anyone and anything they feel is getting a more generous judgement than they.

The sheer aggression in  the child@besity and the determination nail children with it, is motivated by a sublimated anger towards children, a wish to topple them from their pedestal, often by those who did most to put them on there in the first place-for social kudos. Seems the demands of that has gone too far for them.

This ugliness is in stark contrast to the way high status children are valued, prompted and emboldened-anyone falling for this mess must be either very desperate or very defeated.

I'd add to LW's words, regardless of your child's size/weight-reverse your learned oversensitivity toward weight. Re-train your mind to become calm again around this area, use the way you feel about height as a marker. This de-sensitization is also a way of beginning to tackle an eating disorder. And no, that isn't co-incidence.

The first and enduring theme of @besity wallahs is to over-sensitize your nervous (system's) response to any mention of weight, by continually pushing it to a heightened response and you to maximum hysteria. Repeating that eventually leads that to become a more permanent reaction. Children especially can pick up on this from you, regardless of your words.

The great thing though is that you can use the same process in reverse.

• Get yourself into a state of calm first, then think of weight and seek to maintain that feeling. Don't worry if you aren't able to remain calm at first, keep repeating it.

• Drop all your own fat hating behaviours and thoughts, characterise all people as people. @besity blocks your ability to recognize you are talking about and attacking people. 

• Especially drop "child/hood @besity", its a worthless and disgraceful construct. And do not also, permit any unwise professionals to use it on your child/ren either. Make them address your child as a being, not as a mass.

Once you can remain calm and cool around the subject of weight, you'll probably be able to figure out what you want to say to your or someone else's child. Make sure you let them know they are whole beings. Teach them to be aware of and reject any attempt to compartmentalize themselves-for one thing it discourages ease of movement by for example; undermining a child's sense of self connection, their calm and confidence around the idea and reality of moving.

• Encourage/strengthen/preserve their sense of self connection, i.e. get them to express how they feel when they are show physical ability/enjoyment-from the trivial to important. Try and get them to retain those as memories to draw from, building up a store of positive feelings about their physical presence. 

In the end it comes down to a choice between your child and a crusade that's had its chance and failed.

Babyfat

Did you know they're branding  babies 'obese'? I didn't. It's been happening for years, the numbers classed as such are even being monitored by the government. In the past larger babies were called- macrosomic-"big bodied." More recently, its been decided that above 9lbs 15oz or 4500g are to be dubbed "medically obese" as if putting a meaningless "medically" in front of that will somehow legitimize the continued indulgence of pathologization and weight tribalism to babies;

"Despite these so-called risk factors for macrosomia, much of the variation in birth weights remains unexplained. Most infants who weigh more than 4,500 grams [9 pounds, 15 ounces] have no identifiable risk factors," says Allahyar Jazayeri, M.D., medical director of Perinatal Services and High Risk Pregnancy at Bellin Health Hospital Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin. 

Those above 8lbs 13oz [3997grams] are also being dubbed "overweight."

And yeah, this is in utero too. Babies are monitored for size as ever, but now they'll be able to be pathologized before they even exit the womb. What comes next? Low calorie/high protein baby milk? A breast feeding diet/regime in order to water down the milk produced, make it low fat? What about baby aerobics? Though infants have been shown to use up an outstanding amount of energy pound for pound/gram for gram-perhaps they can develop equipment to help them go for the burn. Leave them in cold rooms to encourage their brown fat?

Or how's about putting drugs into their milk? And if they're "morbidly obese"-if that hasn't arrived, I'm sure that's coming-they can have their little stomach's removed. Babies sicking up milk will no longer be a hazard of wind. It will be desired part of the "tool" that is gastrectomy as starvation aide.

Goodness knows, babies need those who hold and surround them to be transmitting the un-ease and disgust of 'obesity' to them. That's called m-o-t-i-v-a-t-i-o-n right?

What a triumph of "public health" that promises.

Another notable tack, picked up in the comments is how this is set to add more layers of panic to the experience of pregnancy and childbirth. Not only do mothers have to worry about their weight, their weight gain during pregnancy, now they must worry about their babies weight being seen as too high. Another area of variance is now to be caricatured and descend into the ever hungry orgy of blame.When will that ever suffice?

You'd think advancing on self control that those indulging in this could control themselves in just one area. That they could leave the children out of it but no, they have lost any real control over their damn selves. They wish to pit their foul malodourous assaults against babes.That's such a fair fight for these quisling cowards.

Public health politicos as usual don't seem to be considering the cumulative impact of this endless pile up of anxiety around pregnancy. They take responsibility for nothing, feeling only the liberation of all power and little consequence. Any part this pressure plays in increasing the risk of birth trauma, will no doubt be blamed on 'obesity.' Something has to create what they've talked up. 

Thinking of any thing like the levels of anxiety many of us have experience about being fat, having to find ways to get your body to accept starvation.....thinking about that being introduced into pregnancy makes my blood run cold.

The press are quick to find out how many, but don't bother to scrutinize "obesity science." How much money has been pissed away put into that, to so little use? No go on tell me DM or Sunday Mirror how much has the UK government spent on "obesity research" in the last 4 or even 2 decades? Ever fancy putting in a request for that? Why do the press have no interest in its utter uselessness, irrelevance and rank absence of vocation?

Why don't they challenge their hysterical pronouncements with even the most primitive of reasoning?

And how about mentioning the children (and adults) with hypothalamic obesity and how they need actual answers, rather than agit-prop? And that due to the absence of a progressive objective scientific approach, they have to rely on the same punishment as those they're able to set up as "at fault"? Or do they not count either? Does science or medicine not matter to you blasted hacks?

Hopefully, the sensitivity of fat haters to what attacks even them, will increase people's resistance, defiance and decrease the respect they accord those who show such a reckless disregard for the health of those who depend on us for everything-babies.

It only seems like yesterday when people were people, children were children and babies were babies.

Now, 'obese' is inserted in front of that at every possible opportunity. This has become so divisive that people find it harder and harder to recognize the same characteristics fat and slim people share. At first this was fake, this was pretense. With time, fake it till you make it is now making it. The constancy of pathology of fatness distorts everything from ordinariness to eccentricity, health to pathology turning all into accusation.

Presumably that's why babies cannot be left out of this crap. There must be no chance for the jarring of contrast. It could wake people up to the madness of all this. 

There's no way this is about health. This has become a drive to use biology to divide people into groups, turning weight into an identity-setting people against each other rather than looking at the hand that's working the strings. It's divide and rule. And the free press seeks to collaborate with this like an adjunct.

Branding babes in the womb is a way distorting owning them mentally from the get go. Before they can even begin to defend themselves, they're smothered in inferiority and self loathing, so they know no other way and cannot change their mindset-or "depression" as it's condescendingly cast. It's not "depression" if you're aware of a messed up situation that stays messed up you dimwits.

Depression is a nervous system imbalance/dysfunction, not the realization that people are gunning for your physical and mental health from all sides, for no good reason. Well done self serving public health warriors.

Children Need Wisdom not Mindwarps

An FA blog featured a submission about a children's book "Don't call me Fat!" The book itself is a newer tranche of 'obesity' propaganda assaults on fat children. On its face it pretends to play nice, but it polices both fat and slim children into their accepted roles. Instead of interrupting and overthrowing the 'obesity' discourse, making it clear that fat hate is the fault of fat haters, it seeks to justify it.

If that sounds harsh, try comparing it with the author's book on bullying, where it's made clear other people's bullying is down to them, not you;

A bully can make you feel like its your fault that they are picking on you, even though this isn’t true.

Too right. The book on fat says;

It doesn’t matter whether you are a child or an adult, weighing more than is healthy can stop you from doing fun things like running, jumping, swimming, and climbing as far and as fast as others.

That's the point where you say people expect this, but it's not up to them to tell you what your body can or can't do. You're allowed to find out. That's really a lot of the point of childhood and it can last a lifetime. Remember when, children=potential? It abruptly says at one point that there's no excuse for this;

Sometimes when you are overweight, people will try to make you feel bad about it or tease or bully you because you are not the same as them. Teasing or bullying people for how they look is mean and is never the right thing to do. 

This tired lip service isn't good enough. You need to break it down and state categorically that people are seeking to undermine you. To change your feelings of yourself to the precise 'obese' trope mentioned. And here's a way not to fall for it. i.e. Remember that your body is you and it is you that is living it, not anyone else. Not even your mum or dad.

It's the new thing, to mix some phoned in unconvincing stab at "sympathy." It gives the impression that fat phobia is as nice as the tone its impersonating. It should include that too, that people can bully whilst seeming to be nice. If you feel a bit confused after someone has spoken to you this way. You've probably just had an experience of it.

Its playing on the urge of people to see their abuse of fat children and adults as doing good, the other fat phobes who don't "sugarcoat" their vindictiveness are the bullies, not them. Remember, this is "a first introduction to...";

Anyone can be a bully. It could be a boy or a girl a person on their own or in a gang. It can even be an adult. A bully can pick on you and leave you out of games.

Indubitably. Back to the fat book;

It can make it hard to find clothes that feel comfortable. and it can make you feel as if you are very different from others and that you don’t fit in.

People feel self conscious about their size if it is greater than the norm, ask tall children-or anyone who was about that. See them slouching in embarrassment. The key is reassurance, not to stick the knife in.

I'm sure it helps that they aren't cast as a disease and relentlessly told that they'll never be able to gain control of limbs that long. That they'll never move them as fast as shorter limbed people. And how they feel so awful about that.

I think you'll find fat children feel as human as other children, until they're taught otherwise- ceaselessly branded obese this and obesity that.

Expect lots of lot's of lovely anklebiters earnestly regurgitating this kind of bollocks in the near future. Without wishing to overstate the point (moi?) this really is an abuse of their trust and intelligence before you even get to the effects on a fat child. This aggression is so hard to deal with. What is wrong with these people? Can they really be this incapable of controlling this urge?

What's more, this tripe is written by an alfalfa sprouting, quinoa exhausting eco-twit psychotherapist. When the mind police are on the case, its time to say eh-oh.

There's no need for the fat book if she can't do any better than this. If its too hard to see a living breathing child rather than 'obesity'. Then she should have just used her bully book and inserted references to fat/ness. Give fat children the bully book-the "how to use this book" part is especially instructive for parents of bullied children. It even gives a list of others on that subject.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Hypothalamic Obesity

Things have been rather eerie lately. Turning a corner and walking into some unseen land that has uncannily familiar themes.

I've found it strangely chastening to read experiences I know many can relate to outside the straitjacketing imposition of the 'obesity' narrative. Like, this is what we are not hearing, despite never hearing anything but "obesity, obesity, obesity."

The haunting feeling partly comes from the suffering of children. It feels a little like gatecrashing someone else's crisis. Reporting the shock of fellow feeling and identification feels like I'm subverting their desperate situations to my own purpose. These stories are undoubtedly worth reading in and of themselves. 

It started by reading an article by Robert Lustig-yep the sugar is poison and responsible for teh "obesity epidemic" guy. It's about something called "Hypothalamic Obesity." Things got a bit too real in a different way, when I also tripped over a parent blogging of her young daughter's experience with this condition.

I don't doubt many others will relate to some of it too, despite not having had hyperphagic mayhem having a prize fight in your brain. I'm sure despair in the face of upward gain, in the face of trying so hard to prevent and reverse weight will strike a chord with many. 

Hypothalamic obesity is when a tumour on the hypothalamus-an endocrinal gland located on the underside of the brain-is removed and this trauma to the hypothalamus provokes aggressive and speedy weight gain and fatness. We're talking relentless weekly if not daily gain.

The difference between this 'obesity' and common or garden kind is, it's accepted as real. It has a distinct and objectively observable trigger or starting point, so though it wouldn't be impossible to deny, it would be harder to.

It cannot be cast as an elective choice of the individual and that its accompanying hyperphagia-heightened and/or excessive hunger signalling, is an actual imbalance in the body, rather than subject to being twisted into such as "food addiction", emotional disturbance, neurosis etc.,

There is an insistence that this hypothalamic obesity [HyOb] is marked out from other 'obesity' by being resistant to weight loss diet and exercise. Now anyone in tune with reality will note that this is not only unconvincing on its face its not true in reality either.  

It's marked by its trigger-tumour removal (occasionally the tumour itself) and speed of gain. That speed is probably a sign of what makes it even more intractable that just being fat. The hyperphagia that accompanies it isn't felt to be commensurate with fuelling such speed of gain. The body is storing energy at a high rate.

When Hunger Isn't Working

I hesitate to use this experience for the purposes of illustration. But, in view of the lack of real representation of what its like to have hyperphagia nervosa-HN, also called compulsive eating disorder-CED. I felt moved to point to a rare occasion where something like it appears.

What stunned me most in the story of 12 year old Landon Jones and his year long loss of hunger and thirst was this;

The soundtrack of daily life in the Jones household is a persistent mantra that Michael and Debbie intone for their 12-year-old son, Landon.
Take a bite.
Take a bite.
Take a bite.
Take a drink.
Take a drink.
Take a bite.
These parents have been forced to jabber away like this in the last year because of their son's mysterious illness: He lacks all impulse to eat or drink. And he might be the only person in the world burdened with this bizarre medical condition.
Michael, 43, who prods most often, is a desperate father. He's become a verbal robot in a grim campaign to keep his boy fed.
Take a bite.
Take a bite.
Take a drink.

That was the exact nature of the mantra in my head, when I had HN, except it was to remind myself not to eat. It's basically, the conscious mind replacing stop or in Landon's case, his parents (conscious) direction to start eating. And it is of the things I most remember about having a faulty hunger drive.

Again, I apologize if this seems crass but it leapt out at me more than any representation of having an hyperphagic disorder, ever remotely has. Certainly, nothing I've heard formalized by the eating disorders crowd has felt this real ever.

I remember once trying to compare this to when Lisa and Bart nagging and begging their parents for something the; please, please, please, please....... Except that endless nagging is an impulse inside your head. You have to counter that with the more conscious part of your mind. And at other times, you actively have to almost remind yourself not to eat, or you'll find yourself eating, because your hunger is open-ended.

In the hunger mechanism has shifted outside little Landon's as he has the problem in reverse. His hunger mechanism has either ceased to function, or is being blocked or overcome by something. He not only doesn't feel like eating, it feels almost like an assault. Just as being prevented from eating can feel like an assault to someone who's hunger is hyperactive.

His parents have become the conscious directive replacing the lack of inner drive. His father tells how they've taken it upon themselves to research and study the problem as he is said to be the only known case.

He said he's narrowed it down to the hypothalamus as the only part of the body that can take away thirst [which he's also lost]- as many things can undermine/block hunger.

Beasted by Them or Us

Seems its easy to say beasting fat children at a harsh military inspired fat camp in China is in preparation for their economy. Sounds like a headline written the wake of cod Chinese inflected Chinglish Susie Wong style.

As if that's not exactly the same difference elsewhere.

*What you see in the tears of a little boy forced into regimented exercise through his tear stained pain and distress. Is exactly the position fat people are in.

That's your fat hate, it's either them or us.

The Misconception:  You do nice things for the people you like and bad things to the people you hate. The Truth: You grow to like the people for whom you do good things and hate the people you harm.

A while back I happened to read in a book that quoted Marx saying capitalism set the interests of children against their parents. Not sure if I got the finer details, though I immediately thought of many showbiz biogs. Where talented performers started as children and ended up making more than their parents and how that messed with child-adult relationships and the family hierarchy in general.

Calories in/out is like that.

It automatically sets the interests of those who are, for whatever reasons more prone to gaining weight, against the interests of those who, for whatever reason are less so.

Indeed, if it wasn't fat children, in this case sweating it out, or adults cutting their organs out and everything in between, it would have to be those less prone to retain who had to struggle. That's dictated by the approach.

If society followed its logic of demanding calorie restriction induced weight loss, it would create a society around that. Those less energy efficient would be engaged in just as constant a struggle to get enough calories as virtually all fatz have struggled trying to dodge and expend them all these years.

Maybe they'd have fattening camps for some, though that seems unlikely from here. 

Fat people's individuated energy restriction plan was supposed to somehow do both. Though they're incompatible. You'll recognize that kind of delusion of incompatibles, which defaults to prolonging attrition, is typical of the crusade mindset.

Currently, the rub is society's fattened and sufficiently fat phobic -because the 'crisis' is about everyone fattening, not simply fat people-for the threat of fatness to have invaded the thoughts of those who previously felt at remove.

* Link added!

How not to promote educational attainment: Have an obesity crusade

Predictably enough this story about lower educational attainment of fat girls is making some noise. Its of course very important that this awful effect of 'obesity' galvanizes more effort to harass fat children/adults and hopefully help the boys join the girls/deal with this terrible scourge.

Only so that fat children/adults can do something about themselves of course, for the motivation, honest. The fanaticism of these people who cannot stop believing in lifestyle anorexia, seems to know, no bounds. Trying to present this as something to do with the (purported) biochemical effects of their 'obese' construct;

"Further work is needed to understand why obesity is negatively related to academic attainment, but it is clear that teenagers, parents, and policymakers in education and public health should be aware of the lifelong educational and economic impact of obesity."

In a way it is. And yes, everyone should know the price fat children/people are paying for being the target of an unethical and reckless crusade which polices some of the sense right out of them. Maybe this can help a few of them to get a hold of themselves, you know, exercise some self discipline. Show us how that's done.

This research obfuscates laughably, "Associations between obesity and academic attainment were less clear in boys."

"Less clear" eh? You can bet if it was good news for them in that, it would be in the conclusions. I'm going to come right out and say, educational attainment in fat boys is not affect by them being fat, in contrast with girls. And this type of finding is not unique;

Obese girls were less likely to enter college after high school than were their nonobese peers, especially when they attended schools in which obesity was relatively uncommon........Obese boys, on the other hand, did not differ from their peers- no matter what their school context-in college enrollment. 

Nor are the shifts in the purported effects of weight over time. 

Over 17 years, low SES has become associated with higher BMI and odds of overweight among Chinese women, whereas high SES remains a risk factor for overweight among Chinese men.

It started off the same for girls as boys, but over that time, those girls from families of higher socioeconomic status diverged markedly from girls from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds.

The fusing of looks with weight and the importance that still plays in girls and women's life chances would be a pretty strong candidate.

Excessive negative stress can play a major role in undermining the ability to learn. It can literally stop the brain from functioning properly especially when combined with added stress on top of that, such as having to take in and process information quickly for sitting exams to settle a young person's future.

I have always said the reason FA is dominated by women is girls and women still diet tend to diet more than boys and from younger ages. The reality of attempts at restriction over years, derails the cultivation of belief in it that can linger more readily in those not so exposed. 

Dieting is a failed strategy. Its rate of failure is so unspeakably bad-in terms of medium to long term change, let alone short-that the likelihood of long term weight change of a significant amount is barely of statistical significance. Even if we take Stunkard's 95%, that means every attempt has about a 1 in 20 chance of reaching a slim(ish) goal weight.

Every time.

Now I know you know this, I'm not going to bore you for the millionth time. My point is if you like so many fat women started dieting in childhood, in my case 11, then by the time you get to the latter secondary school years, you are already a proven failure. To yourself.

The extent to which this undermines a girl's educational attainment will wary, it depends on how much there is to interrupt this pretty key fail.

Then there's the fact that doing something over and over again, without making a proper assessment of the true result of your actions, that is basically defines the actions of an idiot.

To remain positive about dieting, requires you to unwittingly fool yourself. This does not go unnoticed by the part of your mind that you are not wholly the ruler of. Often imperceptibly adding to your burden of shame.

The idea that if you think positive you can alter probability is mathematically unsound. Though counting calories may help maintain a suppleness with basic maths. Though it didn't with me. I think the sense of crippling inadequacy and anxiety outstripped that benefit.

Something I've never seen elsewhere is the rejection of your body, the suppression of your feelings about what's happening and the inability to acknowledge the true results, undermines the basis of many people's intellectual attainment.

Self analysis.

The ability to feel your feelings and to categorize and describe them. To assess what is happening to you and to think about what it means, teaches you to understand things about others. It extends gives your store of deep meaning and understanding of things that are unsaid, or seemingly unsayable.

The need to deny the true effects of your actions, to put a positive spin on it can add a strangely stiff, unbending aspect to your mind. Like one grown middle aged and safe before its time.

I can't pretend I don't feel this is yet another attempt to use 'research' to tell fat people and children, who are what they are. I've seen it all before. This is how it works.

It's great that more people are doing some serious analysis of this kind of thing, I hope they know just how urgent it's becoming, to not allow fat children to be dragged down further by this crusade. And to rescue those who have.

Turning the Clock Back

Michelle Obama says her Let's Move campaign has "changed the conversation" on how Americans eat and live;

In remarks to teachers, parents and others, Mrs. Obama cited documented declines in childhood obesity rates in New York City, Philadelphia, California and Mississippi. She highlighted changes to kids' menus by national restaurant chains and new labels at Wal-Mart stores that promote foods with less sugar, salt and fat.

I'd let children decide whether they like egg yolks or not but whatever. Children's bodies serve to measure the progress of this initiative. I wonder what they'd use if it was the campaign to educate and feed children properly.

Better still;

Cities are building grocery stores in underserved neighborhoods and refurbishing playgrounds and bike paths for kids, Mrs. Obama said, and schools are planting vegetable gardens, installing salad bars and replacing food fryers with steamers.

I sincerely hope this happens. The neglect of children's needs, especially those born in LSEG's has been a scandal. One that made my heart ache over the course of seeing it happen in the UK.

The obvious change is from the individualization of the 'obesity' cult, to one that stops pretending, on some level, that eating is just a hobby done on a purely individualized basis. Appros of nothing to do with the environment.

Despite the fact that human beings have always drawn sustenance from their surrounds.

The crusade that was specifically fashioned to get the conclusion of its own logic out of the way of big business interests and the wishes of the general public.  Allowing industrial food to gain a hold over the eating environment. Whilst appearing to be totally against that.

Reversing this to something more in keeping with what was taken for granted before. Feed children properly and train them physically. Don't shape the environment solely around cars. I'm glad children will have a chance to grow vegetables. It's one of the best way to interested in eating them, which the ugly substitute of good food/bad food has failed to do. You are worthless if you don't eat veg has not been a success.

If I was actually a cynical person, I'd swear this whole thing was to save the bourgeoisie from the on coming onslaught. And it's only when they could no longer do that, plus fat people's own rejection of their use in the 'obesity' narrative that has led to a more reasoned stance.

There is nothing mentioned that is anything a lot of folks took for granted at the start of the crusade. Societies like the US and UK decided to pretend these things didn't matter. When it comes to those who run things though, we can see how they really felt from how they treated their own kids.

I hope they also remember things like learning about things like cooking and food/general budgeting. The kinds of skills that make a real difference to people's lives and health. The absence of those has not felt like co-incidence. They increase self confidence too.

The next part of the "conversation" that urgently needs to change is not predicating these reversals on children's bodies which plays into the narrative this clearly goes against. Then some real lessons might be in danger of being learnt. Don't shortchange poorer children its a penny-wise, pound foolish strategy, as well as cruel. 

Nothing to my mind will ever justify using bodies for this. And those who find that annoying should consider defining themselves and their children as disease. In fact, they can insist MO gets the medical profession to declare it.

No Questions asked, No answers to give

'Obesity treatment' continues to be even more scant than long term weight loss dieting "success." To illustrate what this means for those looking for real answers. See the story of Falicia and her mother Earlene Johnson. Who just wanted to find out why her eleven year old daughter is 400 pounds.

You'd think that would be a reasonable request. Concerned mother who's been following the rules since 2007 wants further inquiry, resolution and probably reassurance from specialists. Unsurprisingly, beyond the usual diet and exercise. Nothing doing. Ms Johnson and Falicia were referred by the child's paediatrician to the ironically named Children's Mercy Hospital. Where they offered her succinct but utterly useless white coat fat phobia.

They believed Falicia was eating too much and that her mother could stop it. Trans. we have nothing and we're going to make someone else feel bad about that.  I have to commend the mother on her calm approach, it's a priceless gift for her daughter.



The hospital effectively failed child and mother. Refusing to do any blood work-though Falicia has had plenty and has been well monitored-to try and find a cause once and for all. Now the story becomes odd as next day, the mother was met by Missouri's child services. The hospital had apparently "hotlined" her claiming her daughter had a disease called "blout"(?)

Something that doesn't appear to exist in humans.

Either way, they'd effectively refused to investigate. A later one showed the child's blood sugar and cholesterol to be in the acceptable range.

The point of this sorry little tale is we cannot get beyond ELDM even for the sake of the children. What's worse of course is that this hypothesis is unfalsifiable. Once accused it is virtually impossible to refute. Which is supposed to take it outside the realms of evidenced based.

[I'm so diplomatic today!]

Even if that assumption has validity, you're not out of the woods. Excuse the usual inflammatory reporting here, it is unpleasant.

Now it's clear seven year old Jessica has both the issue of speedy weight gain/high weight and dysfunctional appetite and hunger signals-which simply aren't switching off despite being responded to. That is incidentally, how we all eat. We respond to our hunger and appetite signals, that's what they are for. If there are too many, or they're constant and unresponsive to eating, that is what needs to be addressed. If only to relieve perpetual torment.

If you haven't experienced this, do not imagine the rubbish you hear about 'food addiction' or binge eating describes this properly, or just how unbearable it is. It is some kind of imbalance in the brain and/or nervous system.

Jessica was taken into a paediatric hospital and put on a strict calorie controlled diet and exercise programme. Under the aegis of child services. 

Here's a follow up to that intervention at an 'obesity' clinic.

So problem solved.

Except it isn't. All that happened is one symptom has been removed-weight. Though relieving the weight on her body. It also leaves behind 20 pounds of loose skin-which she will be operated on to remove. It is assumed that's a product of weight loss after the stretch of higher weight.  It's more a sign of the shock low energy weight loss dieting is to the system. Making it an apt metaphor. What has shrunk the body has left the underlying equation the same. Just taking up less space, within its larger creation. 

Leaving the poor person to do a whole lot of teeth gritting. Forcing herself to exercise 5 days a week, forcing herself to eat less and to not eat certain things. Walking through a ceaseless mental forest of an ever present urge.

Her malfunctioning high appetite and hunger are left intact. How to convey this, ever tried to stay up all night? Ever get to the point where it becomes excruciating to remain awake and it's second by second effort of concentration and will? Imagine feeling an urge that strong all. the. time.

Would you deem that 'addiction'? No, it's an actual imperative to do something, not a deficiency. A basic visceral urge like, a phobia-which isn't a normal fear, but sometimes kind of worse and more pressing.

Addiction is a craving for something your body lacks. Not drugs, but the pleasure or reward chemicals your body reduced the function of, when they were being taken in an artificial or outside source habitually. To stop you overdosing. People want the drugs because their system isn't recovering.

The reasons behind seeing this malfunction as 'addiction' are why poor Jessica has nothing but some pills-yet another junked up child courtesy of  'healthcare'- to try and battle through a constant pressure. It's the kind of pain that doesn't hurt like a cut, but that takes you to the edge of your emotional endurance nonetheless.

That's why she cries out. You can see what her mother was responding to. Luckily the people at the clinic remained strong and set her straight, by the admirable 'discipline' of not giving a shit.

I cringe at the thought that these kinds of pills will do anything to deal with the problem. You can cheat neuroses like depression to some degree, but not a mechanical failing like this. Where real understanding i.e. science is required.

This is why I get angry, because children like these get caught up by this mindless zombie cult of the obesity void. They should have been able to depend on us grown ups getting our act together by now, instead they have to inherit this fiasco. What has to happen, what do these children have to go through, before it is enough?

By now, there should have been major investigation into how to switch these signals down. If they had, Jessica and others like her would never have reached the point she did.

By now there should have been a thorough mapping out of how human metabolism functions.

If the desire to help was there it would have produced something by now. To do that you have to recognize what you don't have. Many eyes are stuck on the magic bullet legend. But it's the caring for people, continually trying to meet their needs, that has so often given medicine direction and ideas.

Without that there's what? The hatred of fat adults, is one thing, but transferring that to children is unconscionable. The indulgence ought to be put aside for them. But the health establishment simply will not. Instead of reporting parents to child services, they should be reporting "obesity science" to some authority for being uselessly irrelevant and out of touch with actual needs.

Look at what other fields have achieved in the time wasted on one punitive, ineffectual strategy. How long will this go on?

In my case, which wasn't as serious as Jessica's appears to be. I was lucky to stumble upon an answer by mistake. After I took up meditation and other calming techniques for symptoms of anxiety that were threatening to overwhelm me.

I do not extrapolate for the heck of it, but I'm pretty sure this strongly suggests that it is possible to find some predictable, repeatable, in other words scientific way to reduce excess hunger and appetite signals significantly. Without drugs.This is systemic imbalance, not acquired habit. It is not caused by food. It is the mechanics of the nervous system and it's affect on metabolism. There is hope, there are answers.

But only if science actually bothers to look.

One Vision

Fat people have no place in 'obesity' except as mute objects. The theory of our dismissal is that we are the voice that is our (definition as) intrinsic pathology.There is no separation between us as people and the pathology that is us.

This ends up closely referencing madness and/or neurosis. When that takes over a person's mind, it can begin to speak through them,becoming their voice. At least with madness, there's some recognition that this is a process, not a starting place.

We have become like someone dispossessed by an invader. In that case, it is obesity and fat haters that have invaded and are giving us lines in place of our thoughts and voices.

Mostly say 'obesity' hype is unnecessary, inaccurate and bad policy regardless of the actual "risks" or otherwise of being a fat person.

Any dispensing of that hype is seen as "denialist."Of what though? This is our bodies, our lives, our experience, the denial is of our sentience by those who wish to repress that and keep us all with one vision, theirs.

One of the things I've only really noted latterly, is the extent to which fat people do not appear in fat science. The study of 'obesity' is the study of the abstraction of fat people as pathology, rather than the conclusions written by the study of actual people. If everyone's so confident they know fat, why don't they show that?

Some studies suggest that the connection between body mass index and premature death follows a U-shaped curve. This would mean that weighing too much—or too little—isn't as healthy as some middle weight. The main problem with this idea is that most of these studies included smokers and individuals with early but as-yet undetected chronic and fatal diseases.

But that is exactly what is done for fat people! No matter what health challenges a fat person may face, they're deemed related to 'obesity'. This is rightly seen as a distortion of the 'risks' associated with thinness. Many fat people agree with this, they have a consistent line across the spectrum;

Potentially deadly chronic diseases such as cancer, emphysema, kidney failure, and heart failure can cause weight loss even before they cause symptoms and have been diagnosed. So low weights don’t necessarily cause early death. Instead, low weight is often the result of illnesses or habits that may be fatal.

 [my emphasis]

Exactly. But its "extreme" if you say the same thing about the other side of that U.

It reports that slimmer people are more likely to smoke, this does seem to be the case. In abstract that adjustment may have merit. However people aren't abstract and in real life, slimmer people are more likely to smoke which impacts on their mortality. Weight prognosis on paper, cannot form the basis of what's going on off paper, in real life.

Note too the laughable, query about as undetected chronic and fatal diseases. Are they kidding, how could you possibly separate that in fat people, when the whole point of 'obesity' is it is a palpable/immediate threat to life.

Meanwhile,the prevention and control of obesity has become a major public health priority for chronic disease prevention.

How does this differ from the chronic pre-diagnosis conditions of thin people?

There is one vision about how to see weight, its already there, its just for some reason, 'obesity' adherents wish to heavier weight into something it it's not.

Cutting children

Over at BFB This story.

The teen, who became obese after surgery to remove a brain tumour, cringes as she recalls the humiliation she felt when she couldn't fit into the chair attached to the desk in her Grade 9 classroom.

The girl in question, Stephanie Atwood, was 9 years old when she had surgery to remove her pituitary gland which had been damaged by a tumour. The article says her body no longer signalled fullness and she became hungry moments after eating. If that's the case, and that's the whole of the problem- she weighed 348 pounds by the age of 15-why would baratric surgery be the preferred treatment? Why's there nothing to resolve that particular issue?

Cutting people can relieve a burden of weight. Indeed Stephanie says after losing 100 she feels as if she "got her life back", but what about that symptoms? People get to the point where they just have to rid themselves of some weight as the effects on their mind are becoming intolerable. She is now 18, and spoke of how she was ostracized and her social circle shrank due to her fatness.

When she should have been able to enjoy feeling glad to be alive, like a survivor, she had energy drained through feeling abandoned.  Equally though, what if this symptom cannot be tamed by cutting? And why is this an acceptable standard for children?

A group has been formed to cope with 'demand' from children. It's called, STOMP which stands for SickKids Team Obesity Management Program. Yep, you did just read that. A good doctor involved understands just how we might feel about it. He says that those against cutting children into thinness, haven't met them.

They have to understand that obesity is a disease like any other. No, Dr Langer, that's just where you are wrong, for many reasons, but the number one being that with other 'diseases' science and medicine are  focused around finding things that 'cure' or reverse those diseases.  Rather than what fits into a rigid ideology of what kind of solution that must be.

I have said times without number that I don't have a problem with weight loss, so provide it. Instead, you provide a variation on the failed energy manipulation. And that's why you're cutting up sick kids and I don't know why not even that moves you.

Their care will be overseen by an interdisciplinary team made up of a dietitian, psychologist, exercise therapist, nurse practitioner and endocrinologist.

That's five types of professional. Excluding surgeons, doctors, etc., Rest assured that this will be offered as a last resort;

Surgery will be offered as a last resort only to severely obese adolescents who can't drop pounds despite counselling, diet, exercise and medication.

So after all this, we'll just cut you into it. Dr Jill Hamilton the director of the programme says;

"We really stress that the surgery is a tool, it's not a fix,".......patients are expected to stay in the program for about two years during which time they must attend support groups.

Well, support is a good thing, I daresay these teens will need as much as they can get.

"I was at a dead end before the surgery ... For me it was a life-or-death situation," 

Can't argue with that. It's the adults who need to do better than this.