Fat isn't a Time Thing, its a Function Thing

I couldn't for the life of me tell you why I became fat-accepting that question only makes sense within the construct of 'obesity', which I've no time for. People are obsessed with their Holmesian search for the original culprit, it's more projected fiction because I couldn't tell you any why for sure. Nor do I know why that's supposed to matter.

Like 'obesity' construct in general, its largely irrelevant.

I can't even tell you for sure when I became fat. Others assert they cannot grasp why fat people don't notice pound upon pound building like brick upon brick of a wall. I started to think of dieting at 7. I was not what you'd call fat, but I certainly felt like I wasn't thin either. That feeling was relative to my experience of my size up to then.

Was it then? No.

When I was 11, I imposed a rigid diet plan proper-as opposed to "watching what I ate". Was it then? In the sense that I felt in the intervening years I'd reached a point where I had to go total wl diet. So I became fat at 11? So when was the actual moment? Was I fat at 10? Nope.

Somewhere between then and 11, I felt I became fat enough. I crossed a line, when was the moment though, when was the day? Why had I not noticed?

I had, but I was concerned about stunting my growth-seriously. So I concentrated on avoidance. For all I know, that saved me from even greater metabolic mayhem.

I'm not simply extrapolating from my own experience, I doubt becoming fat is a gradual day by day process for many-though those who fatten in adulthood may have a different experience. Either way, its more about the nature of your function. Its the moment when the arrangement of that, the posture of your function gets to a certain configuration.

What is day by day is the time for it to play out, from that moment. At times that process is elongated or condensed, often varying within the same person.

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.

Nothing About Us

I've got more to say on the subject of this churnalism. For now though, I wanted to make a point about the nature of fat acceptance and its relationship to the mis-labelled "obesity debate." It might address those who talk about fat people "segregating" themselves and about it being an "echo chamber."

I say might, because it wasn't particularly prompted by that. What I have to say centers on BTL below the line, that is the comments section. There is no real point of entry for a fat person with consistent level of self awareness. It's narrow binds cannot stretch to include knowledge beyond its own constructs.

Any thoughtful appraisal of fat people's experience is at cross purposes with it.

It reminds me of when "Nihil de nobis, sine nobis"-nothing about us without us-was invoked, in conjunction with Michelle Obama's "child obesity" fandango. I instinctively burst out laughing when I hearing this. The continually off-centered way others as well as myself kept experiencing a certain kind of FA thought-stream.

It's not so much that it was wrong more oddly naive if that doesn't appear condescending. Its in no way meant to. The butting of mindsets between between people who consider others in a way those others simply are not considering them and vice versa, without either seeming to realise it.

Peering closer, you realise FA simply views others in the same way others view them. Not as what they are or how they are behaving, but as their (defined) idea of them. That is, fat phobes talk to their construct 'obese' and project that onto any fat person-and increasingly any person who doesn't fully uphold their fundamentalist emoting.

And many FA's talk to their idea of slim people as superior, realer and more credible and project that onto fat phobes, going so far that their minds instinctively construct a reason they simply do not possess.

That, reminds me of the famous effect of when a person pressures themselves into an anorexia corner, not listening to their body's numerous protests, ending up with their mind editing what they eat to fit the restrictions they place on themselves. Predictably, that is then pointed to as the cause of "their obesity" rather than a product of forcing their mind into a place where it cannot produce the desired effect.

Paying any attention to this can be cast as soft, but really, not paying attention to your own mind is just undermines it. Also explained as caused by 'obesity'.

When I got to FA, I used to say, "I've been trying to have a conversation about fat for most of my life." I'm still not sure I've really managed it since. By conversation, I mean a free exchange of views with mutual understanding-including of what is not understood by either.

I had no interest in having rows. I wanted to feel the liberation of talking freely, examining experience. It's fat phobes who want what they've got, endless hatefests, because that's all they've got. Fat people have experience, memories, unprocessed thoughts, learning curves, rising to incredible challenges, saying mea culpa in a world withdrawing from it, being accused, self betrayal, but above all, self rescue.

No body rescued us.  No body told us to have some self respect. We decided, because that's in keeping with our overdeveloped sense of responsibility.

This so called mainstream "debate" has nothing to do with fat people and possibly never will as then it would not be this kerfuffle, it would actually be interesting. Haters don't know how boring it is due to them getting off on it. But some of us do.

The 'obesity' construct involves a willful and continued suspension of disbelief. Actually, of thought. Of even the most primitive critical faculties. The kind that rejects the idea that the sun is a wax candle before you finish thinking it as a sentence.

A slow reversal seems to be happening. People are beginning to talk themselves out of auto-tuned hate. In the past, fat hate was a minority thing, it became a sealed up everyone thing due to 'obesity' propagandizers, i.e. researchers and the medical profession.

As far as I can tell none of this wall-to-wall lipophobia could have happened with us having anything to say.  If you are dehumanizing a group and let me clarify as that can happen in many ways. I mean, if you are casting people as disease not only will that curtail your communication with them to nothing, (when's the last time you felt like speaking to disease-as if it was human?)

Conversing with disease, even if such a thing isn't odd, would humanize it. Talking to things, i.e. a car or a boat, anthropomorphizes them.

Fat people's sentient experience of our fatness our bodies, has been as unreal to ourselves as we are to other people. That I'd say is pretty unique. It's also why its so hard to explain, especially in the face of a continued onslaught of outlandish stream of ad hominem that tends to provoke a defensive survival instinct. That this mismatch is not obvious shows a narrative that has not been interrupted. A "debate", no matter how disparate the views, develops lines of communication.

Despite the fact that below the line, something approaching a reason is breaking. out-questions are being asked It's no easier to participate than the usual show of rage.

The only echo chamber is the mindless assumption we've all shared.

FINALLY....................................again

Yep, finally......again.....and yet again it's being suggested that the weight loss dieting pretence is no longer sustainable.

I'm waiting for the international press conference where they announce this unequivocally, without rancour or emotionality, for good this time.

Not to mention apologizing to all fat people unreservedly, for deliberately choosing to make us look like liars who felt we couldn't even trust ourselves to report what was happening in our own bodies.

What's prompting this particular outbreak of reality is an example of the great saying;

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Typical rampaging hubris, this is pretended to be some kind of favour to the "public" who may be confused, by the imposition of falsehoods by those they trust to define absolute fact, the poor lambs;

the time has come to end the pursuit of the “ideal” diet for weight loss and disease prevention. 

Congratulations! You're taking the first step in breaking your chronic dependence nay *addiction to futile calorie deficits. We've been waiting.

I say beginning, because that of course would exclude the whole of "bariatric" surgery which cuts or ties off fat people's stomachs to a capacity of  2 or 3 tablespoons, or 45 mls (x 2 or 3). And sometimes throws in re-routing the intestines to induce mal absorption.

Or anorexia + bulimia as the rest of us know it.

The dietary debate in the scientific community 

Oooh, I'm going to have to add "debate" to the list of words that have been drained of meaning through continuous misuse. There has been no damn "debate". We have been told in no uncertain terms by boffins and quacks alike that weight loss dieting works. Don't even try to deny that. 

We have been lied to. Because those who think we are their puppets, felt that the truth would stop us trying to do something that doesn't work. Because like faith healing, homeopathy and putting your last penny in a fruit machine, it occasionally appears to work.

In a statistically insignificant sense. 

There have been whole swathes of what purported to be 'science' taking the workingness of diets as their starting conviction. It's still the basis of implying that fat people are mentally suspect and/or 'addicted'. 

The rationale is; it's simple, just stop eating. Still fat? Then you must have some kind of mental problem.

The only consistent finding among the trials is that adherence—the degree to which participants continued in the program or met program goals for diet and physical activity—was most strongly associated with weight loss and improvement in disease-related outcomes. 

 Puh-leazzzzze. 

If you continue to short change yourself on sleep, for the rest of your life, you too can prove sleeping your full allotment is a choice. Except it only is, if you do not mind sending your body's rhythms out of whack in the short term. In the medium to long term, pressurizing your mental and physical health to implosion;

“the brain literally keeps track of how long we’ve been asleep and awake—for weeks,” says Harvard Medical School (HMS) neurology instructor Daniel A. Cohen, M.D

Want to guess another balance of input/output your brain/body keeps full tabs on?

Progress in obesity management will require greater understanding of the biological, behavioral, and environmental factors associated with adherence to lifestyle changes including both diet and physical activity.

No, progress in understanding human biology will require boffins to quit their desire for religion level prescriptive interference in other people's lives and understand how human metabolism manages weight on an integrated level. Through this, finding ways to altering its underlying re-production of said weight, to either a lower or higher level. 

It would help if you deigned to finally truly acknowledge fat people as capable of observing their own lives, pointing out that this is what we've been trying to point out all these years.  

Apparently, noble lying means never having to say you're sorry. 

That's something only we fatz seem to have the stones to do. 

 *BS meaningless invocation of buzzword

Never Run, not Running

There's a fat hating riposte to, "Fat runs in his/her family". It goes along the lines of. "The trouble is, nobody in his/her family runs!!!" Tee hee, hee, pfft.

Ever noticed with the "fight or flight" response- little is said about the fight part? What would that look like? If flight's job is to run off, and presumably get help, it makes sense that fight's job would be to look imposing. From a distance.... look, immovable, difficult to get past, to put off any potentially liberty takers. You're following my drift.

It's not about pugilistic ability per se, more the psychological impact, weaken the mindset of the opposition. 

Whilst the runners go off and get re-enforcements. The 'fighters' have to put the enemy off, absorb some blows, keep guard, above all, they must survive.

And not run.........away.

So, perhaps the eternally bad jokers have a notion after all. Because I say this to you, fat people have not run away. From culpability, blame or responsibility.

Ever.

Seeing weight as within one's personal ability to change is the hook for everyone. Whether thin anorexics or fat people. Though I never thought about it 'til relatively recently, that was the initial attraction for me. That I as a mere kid had the power to impose my will on events, to demonstrate I was capable of using agency to achieve. Instead of standing around uselessly, having to get instruction from adults, or so it felt at the time. 

That's at the heart of why many fatz and others continue to assert-my fault, that's the lever of control. If it isn't, what's to be done?

Fat people have always stepped up. Been out in the open with no shield or even a means to explain ourselves in ways that would fend off bullies. No fat person has ever personally told me, "It's my glands". We've spoken together about our trials, our fails. Our, what am I like with my falling off my diet or whatever. But never, it's a disease. It's an addiction.

And frankly, I've yet to here anyone ask for it. That was assumed because that's the kind of protection others demand. What people want is the "secret" to making what we were told work. The angle, the missing piece.......

Not a dodge. Not a gazebo made of dung to lounge in.

That's what those more favour by the establishment go in for. As an assertion of their ability to talk the most abject bollocks in plain sight and be supported by their puppet masters.

Well let 'em. Because all its brought them is jumping on fat people's backs, trying to drag us down. That's all their glory has brought them.

When any of us challenge the notion of fault in any way. We speak from the position of wholeheartedly asserting that it was our fault, over decades. We're way past having the right to say that without suspicion being cast by others from their citadels of the very thing they criticize in us.

We shown we aren't challenging that out of vanity or hubris, but out of the knowledge of our experience. If we can't meaningfully say this, I don't know who can really.

If it was "our fault" we'd be slim. Few tried harder than us with so very little.

As it is, I wouldn't really care if it was my fault. That's important to haters and they can rave on with their non arguments.

But I have to honour fat people because this is our lives and they, we matter.

We have always said; "Mea Culpa" "Mea Maxima Culpa". No one else. Not mater, pater, no one but us. We even felt guilty at the mere possibility of involving anyone else in our dieting ablutions and served our time in reluctant isolation, often in the midst of company.

That a reputation for the opposite has been imposed on us, is just another example of the way we've been used to project the deficiencies of other people's contrasting approach to their own issues.

Let's wait to see how long it takes for that penny to drop.