D-I-Y Stomach Shrinking

"Demoted or dismissed because of your weight?" Well don't worry, sympathy is at hand in the form of "stomach shrinking".

Stomach shrinking? (I hear you cry) How interesting, the stomach is a essentially a bag made up of [amongst other things], a couple of tiers of muscle. And what tissue is more [[[[contractible]]]] and elastic than muscle?!!!

the human stomach walls consist of an outer mucosa, and inner submucosa, muscularis externa, and serosa. The gastric mucosa....consists of the epithelium and the lamina propria (composed of loose connective tissue), with a thin layer of smooth muscle called the muscularis mucosae separating it from the submucosa beneath. The submucosa lies under the mucosa and consists of fibrous connective tissue, separating the mucosa from the next layer. Meissner's plexus is in this layer. The muscularis externa lies beneath the submucosa, and is unique from other organs of the gastrointestinal tract, consisting of three layers: ...[it] also possesses a serosa, consisting of layers of connective tissue continuous with the peritoneum.

Wow.

So how does one bring this shrinkage about? I'll bet it's willpower right? Course it is. And, after all the years fatz have spent trying to stay starved whilst forcing themselves to run about, just applying a little of that power of attention to the stomach would be easy-peasy.

We are indubtably suited to exercising extensive willpower. 

Just gently [we don't want to scare it] will the stomach to get smaller and smaller. Imagine it, like a bag, getting smaller and smaller bit by bit, if not day by day, then week by week, right? Let's take it easy!

Fantastic. And after all, we are in complete charge of our bodies right? We created them the size they are. So, no doubt we have full control of our stomachs.

We have the [will]power!!!

So ladies gents, before you engage in any mutilating gastrectomy-having your healthy functioning stomach amputated merely because it is functioning.

Surgical removal of the stomach is called a gastrectomy ....Sleeve gastrectomy is a surgical weight-loss procedure in which the stomach is reduced to about 15% of its original size, by surgical removal of a large portion of the stomach along the greater curvature.

Try instead using your mind [willpower] to shirk this eminently shrinkable organ. If the experimenters won't do the relevant experiments, do them yourselves. You owe it to your society to save your healthcare systems from "bankruptcy".

Spread the word!!!

[Seriously, relax your body shrink your own stomach. How hard can it be? Clinical trials will tell us.. D'OH!]

Release the Hump

Discovered something the other day, especially for those given the useless orders to "lose weight" i.e. starve to deal with sleep apnoea/snoring.

I was doing a bit of [physical] stress release and later found to my surprise that I felt as if someone had opened my throat with a friendly crowbar. It actually stopped me from immediate sleep because I couldn't get over the feeling of having an open jaw and throat and the fresh feeling of air travelling freely as it should.

Can you guess what was the key point of release?

The hump.

Specifically, the dowager's hump.

That's the curve/bump many of us have at the base of our necks.

It seems allowing the release of tension in that area, along with gentle stretching - no force whatsoever and only go as far as that part will allow- opens  the throat and jaw.

The dowager's hump is said to be a product of holding your head too far forward. This leaves your head less than properly supported. This can increase the natural curve until it becomes more hump-like. Fatz can get padding over that area too, depending on tendency and size. Don't worry about that, you can improve your alignment just the same.

If you can manage to remember to keep your head over your chest lump, rather than hanging forward over it, that can make quite a difference to your overall energy. You'd be amazed at how draining that head-jutting forward pose can be.

Do not stress about it though. Just learn to gently correct yourself, whenever you remember to. You'll find over time the situation improves, don't try to be perfect or chastise yourself.

Recall the old imagining your spine is a rope continuing out of the top of your head, being pulled upward...

Sweet dreams, chilli beans!

Rehabilitating Your Urge to Move

We are born moving and have instincts to move that are rhythmic. At certain times it feels better for us to move than others. Like at times it feels better and easier to get to sleep than others.


This article, "Lack of Exercise can disrupt the body's rhythms" is talking about exercise helping us to know optimal times to move. It feels like its conflating exercise with movement, which sometimes happens. They aren't the same. The peaks of your natural instinct toward movement is something you should be able to pick up on at any state. If anything, I'd say exercise isn't a good way to achieve this for most people. Especially if you aren't in to it.

It's a bit like demand feeding/normal eating/intuitive eating. You have to clear psychological obstacles out of your mind-like identifying your body as inherently incompetent or yourself as forever physically incapable. Adopt a new more neutral open-minded stance, if positivity is too much of stretch.

Put your mind on alert for optimal times to feel the urge move at its most strongest, then above all, respond to those feelings/urges, freely. Act on them, no matter how short in duration-seconds even!
Follow through with that impulse as long as it feels good to you, stop promptly when it ceases to- at least at first, until you get into the swing of things, later you'll gain more flexibility.

With consistent practice and patience these urges should become stronger and more distinct, longer lasting and more satisfying to engage with.

The key is learning to perceive and go with rise in your instincts to move, synchronize impulse with a positive response. Avoid overburdening them with excess desire, guilt or shame about seeing yourself as inactive, or needing to make up for lost time.

Now's the time to learn patience and love for yourself. Go at your own pace.

You can do this outside the movement you need to make to go about your normal affairs. It will feed into that at some point.

Make a point of shifting your consciousness away from any negative or forcing to a more coaxing wait and see what you can do, type stance.

If at first you can't feel any sense of an urge to move, then try for least disinclined/most easeful of all. And take it from there.......

Farewell Jean Nidetch

The death of Jean Nidetch founder of weight watchers has been announced. It's a timely reminder of just how much fat people have been in the forefront of participating and advancing the slimming cult. Rather than the more familiar delusional assertion that slim people need to introduce fat people to the idea.  Yes, if you cognitively erase the multi-billion $$$$ businesses that comprise the now worldwide slimming industry. 

Nidetch went on to found weight watchers in 1963 after intuiting that the kind of group therapy style environment, usually used to do such as support the traumatized or maintain alcoholics and addicts in a state of abstinence would be required to support something as demanding and unnatural as starving your body down to a desired size.

WW, in existence before, during and after the famous 'ob' spike/s of the 1970's despite cleaning up financially has done little to prevent, reverse the overall drift of the weight spectrum to the right of the weight graph. Some say its further aided it. The white coat mafia are well aware of its failure. And always have been.

That has been key to the advance of slimming, the fanatical cult like belief in slimming regardless of outcome. Something about it becomes rooted in the consciousness and requires quite a sustained effort of disciplined will to overcome its cognitive distortion.

In terms of business though, Jean, was a pioneer managing to effectively flog a product that's somewhat imperceptible, if indeed it exists at all, by selling around it.

Take that i-net profiteers.

That she started this tranche of the slimming cult rolling as a result of seeking to reduce her own weight via calorie restriction is a hint that epigenetics is not simply there to whine about 'obesity'. Amongst other things, our bodies are getting cleverer at seeing off these crude and stupid attempts to use energy to manage weight after its fact.

Perhaps also the desire for greater safety has helped dieting to become even more ineffectual than it already was. If Nidetch had been born 50 years later and she had used her own company, it's far more doubtful that her body would have succumbed to quite the extent that it did.

Nidetch sold WW to Heinz in 1978 for apparently 71 million smackeroos and this useless but profitable industry is still going strong with extensive support, including a couple of doughty rescue missions from its friends in the white coat mafia.

But that's all by the by now for Jean. Goodbye formerly fat warrior against obesity, your race is run.

Starve 'n' Sweat Cannot Argue with Itself

Being dangerously overweight is all down to bad diet rather than a lack of exercise, according to a trio of doctors who have reopened the debate about whether food, sedentary lifestyles or both are responsible for the obesity epidemic.

Where to begin?

Best to deal with what I emphasized. You may not be surprised to learn, that is not a debate. That happens when two or more opposing views are aired. [Why's the @besity crusade either busy chasing or faking non-debates? Is there anything it isn't faking?] Calories in, calories out, or the diet-weight hypothesis refers to the construction of body size as the product of calorie intake minus calorie output.

They are both the same idea, calorie or energy manipulation, via opposing ends (of the same branch). Anything which deals with directly manipulating energy is just a different means to bring about said aim-that includes, stomach removal/gastric re-routing, gastric binding along with most slimming drugs.

They all advance on the same principle, reduce the amount of energy coming in and/or increase the amount going out.

What would be another idea? Theoretically, it'd have to be altering the mechanics that produce weight to change that outcome. In concrete terms, I'm not sure. Everything has been so centered on starve 'n' sweat deliberately, and our grasp of the interplay of metabolic systems so limited, that its hard to get in the mindset of other ideas.

Other routes have been gone down, which could signify other ideas.
 
Manipulating gut flora via bacterial transfer gut, obviously doesn't target fat tissue directly. It appears to have the same mechanical flaw as repeating energy manipulation-homeostasis unravels it, though there maybe a subset of people in whom its affective.

Seems that gut flora as well as acting "like an organ" is a cog in metabolic function, not a driver of metabolic outcomes.

An even further outsider is through something like meditation, yoga, or other practices that soothe/stimulate/refresh the nervous system. That pathway's a long shot because it doesn't promise any amount of weight reversal, though has the potential to if it can be directed at the right place. As usual exceptions apply.

Restorative therapies can lessen hunger and/or appetite because they target/affect/manipulate the nervous system. Cals in/out-starve 'n' sweat-targets fat tissue via suppressing hunger and appetite. Meditation and other restorative therapies affect the system that carries the various messaging and biochemically mediates the operations of metabolic function. Thus supporting greater integrity of function. 

The latter works with the body the former disrupts it. That's the "battle" as in "battle with my weight." Not your will, but your body's metabolic self regulation.

It could be comparable to taking on your immune system [starve 'n' sweat] versus supporting and improving its level of function [restorative therapies].

Starve versus sweat is a non-argument that has become sterile even to many committed fat phobes. It speaks of people who are stuck in a mental hole they refuse to get out of. It's back and forth, round and round is made from ideology above biology. Neither starving nor sweating is the route to reversing weight. Blame is not an issue, even if it mattered.

This is anatomy, not morality.

Is Loneliness a Disease?

An enduring enigma at the heart of the 'obesity' cult, including this notorious brainfart is any assertion that though there's a field supposedly dedicated to the study of it, people must become 'disease' in order to prompt what should be that field's whole reason for existing.

The real issue is simple, there's no sure, direct, predictable, way to halt and/or reverse the process of weight gain. That is all that is needed, that's most of what should have been the central vocation of "obesity science."

It's dodged this forever and it can either see how long it can drag that out, or get the hell on with it. 

This paper looks at loneliness and the potential effects of a mindful approach on what is said to be negative health correlates. It explores mindfulness meditation to see if it can palliate these effects. Wait though.

Has loneliness been declared (a) disease? 

According AMA docs that's the motor of seeking to improve people's health in accessible ways. Not the intentions of those involved in the field, or anything.

It's a small study starting from the basis that loneliness is deemed to provoke potentially serious negative health effects. Focusing on the elderly population who tend to be more vulnerable to social isolation for a variety of factors.

They concluded mindfulness- maintaining focus in your present experience, allowing your thoughts to flow calmly, without becoming emotionally entangled with them-not only reduces the chemical markers associated with the health risks they were interested in.

The signs from the results were that it not only promises to lessen those risk factor markers, it also can reduce people's feelings of isolation.

This raises a question about how we see loneliness. On the one hand we think of it as aloneness-so how could that be lessened from within? Unless that concerned training on how to make friends or something like that.

It brings to mind the old axiom that you can feel lonely in a crowd yet not so on your own. Suggesting more (potential) harm is done, not in being alone so much as the habitual quality of your internal state and your (habitual) reaction to that. Or how you feel on the inside. Being alone, leaves you with that.

This can easily become a continual vicious cycle of negativity can help to wear you(r body) out. I note this so easily because let's face it, that's the 'obesity' strategy. To create a permanent state of negative feeling so acute, that one will do anything to escape those feelings.  The agonies of semi-starvation and overexercising are supposed to seem more tolerable than that.

The process of starting this, gives you permission to stop polluting your mind.

If you're asking, how can you participate in something so seemingly fake? In short, its pretty much boiling frogs. The first (unseen) hook is you accept it is wrong to be fat. Things roll on from there. Ultimately, you feel unethical not to keep participating in this scenario-which is actually very real whilst you are. Trying to stop this is like trying to stop feeling bad about being unfaithful, if that's an absolute no no in your mind. It feels unethical.

Any damage this exhausting cycle inflicts can be put down to 'obesity'. Which is why 'obesity' wallahs hate HAES or anything that remotely reports the reality of the weight/mortality graph.

Mindfulness is in essence, learning about detachment. I'm sure many people done with the cult instinctively start with a form of mindfulness. They learn to try and disengage from the internal cycle of negativity-as well as the external. If they either know or discover to really step off it, that begins to fade and they'll realize underneath this is-"self love."

If it is deemed;

People suffering from chronic inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and asthma - in which psychological stress plays a major role - may benefit from mindfulness meditation techniques,

Then why wouldn't the field and its touting of "minor inflammation" be falling over itself to see the effects of something that can potentially lessen that level of said inflammation/response? Where are the numerous studies devoted to seeing if freeing people from the debilitating 'obese' mindset cultivated over such a long time improves health?

Oh, have I just answered the question?!

Follow up studies are needed. This is sort of like a guide for directing more a more fundamental search for underlying pathways of reversing inflammation and inflammatory response. It would be fascinating to see if this effect could be zoomed in on, intensified, made more direct, predictable and controllable. Perhaps with specific techniques, who knows?

It's the kind of approach that puts people in the driving seat helping us bypass the very professionals, some of whom affect disdain for certain bodies, oh boo hoo. And plus, no wretched nagging about what you eat.

This is my idea of "increased access" people doing stuff we can for ourselves, leaving the rest to the professionals. Rather than always being centered on dragging people into a healthcare system that isn't able or doesn't necessarily want to accommodate them.

Because someone gives a damn about the suffering of others, we can all potentially benefit. All who are lonely/isolated could benefit from this approach, let alone those with inflammatory conditions of all kinds, including of course mental health problems. Yes, inflammation's a bit of a buzz term right now, but I do think there's something in this.

Over time, practise of mindfulness can lead to a different consciousness which can lead to a kind of partnership between professionals and lay, where the latter get to use the deep desire to "take responsibility" denied by a pill for every ill.  Which of course could have started with fat people and our unusually high level of commitment to such cost for such minimal returns. But whatever. 

This is what I mean by "obesity"quackery has cost us all opportunities to learn more and do more about ourselves. 

Taking Responsibility

A few things happened the other day. I was talking to someone and they mentioned they had high blood pressure. Just on the off chance, I asked them if they couldn't manage to lower it themselves. They got what I meant, I was not saying "Oh you totally could" I was asking if they were of a mind and had attempted to-in that they responded that they'd become more philosophical about things, in general. But, they still needed medication to manage their condition.

Fair enough.

Later in the evening, I watched a programme about women making choices about how they would give birth. There was an elective Cesarean, a water birth, a lotus birth-which keeps the umbilical cord attached to the placenta, which is carried around; until it withers away on its own- a woman who wished to consume her placenta and a free birth. The last woman wished to give birth on her own, with no one else there except her partner.

Though the often vigorous disapproval there can be wasn't shown, it was clear that this was cause for concern and required the woman to be rather stubborn. The woman who had the water birth I think-was also interesting, she prepared herself to deal with pain by training herself via affirmations and a programme of hypnosis. It included disassociating from it, re-framing sensations and the like.

Again, I was reminded how far away this is from the mainstream doctor/patient relationship and how all this sort of thing would be the norm and the norm not so, if the medical machine really desired us to take "personal responsibility." A term that has been weaponized and mindlessly used to beat fat people into treating hunger-a biological signal as some kind of optional interloper.

I thought, how would one assess the risk run by the free birther? Would it be more aptly calculated according to the specifics of herself and her situation? Or would a general overview be more informative? Perhaps both?

Either way, it would be taking a chance of some kind. How do you reconcile yourself if things go awry? Though medical practice is far more often than we'd like to pretend about mere convention, e.g. laying on your back to give birth, operating outside the medical aegis makes assessment of efficacy harder to ascertain.

It requires a mindset that differs from our expectations now to put "personal responsibility" into meaningful effect. Healthcare systems eschewed interest in 'prevention' until they could see a way to use it to get a hold of directing people and their lives. 

I never quite thought of it this way but I wonder how much that has affected the ability to keep lying about weight loss dieting. That happened mainly outside the medical remit, on the encouragement of the profession.

And despite the bad faith caused by the rejection of reality that was heartily embraced by the public. How many people haven't restricted or dieted at least once? The aim as long as I've been aware has been to keep us dieting and now that another wave of generation/s are seeing through restriction, it has been drawn into the medical aegis as they intend to try and impose it on those trained to be open to this kind of invasion and take over.

Medics could have of course made a partnership of those millions of people, during the dieting years. Encouraging them to take responsibility-if that's what they really wanted. That would have required them to accept the discipline of reality and keep informed of the feedback of millions-[as if they didn't already know.]

Instead that was used to deepen docility by opening a new front, breaking people's will under the guise of breaking a non-existent will to be fat. And the rest is non-history [according to them.]

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

My first response when I heard CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) was finally being waved around in conjunction with "weight management" was this should be good. Won't this expose the practice of turning of fat people's mind against themselves? [The 'obesity' construct starts its mindwarping with "child obesity" mess.]

Given the purpose of fat phobia has been to make being fat feel so bad that this unease either produces dis-ease or feels like it. The use of CBT and the like would surely expose that by turning it around? The theory behind this to provide explanation as to why diet's fail. Fat people's fatty tristesse. Why're ya sad fatso? Becasuse of my fat gut *sob.* Why d'ya have a fat gut? Because I'm sad. Neat isn't it? So, if fat people's a-hem.... mental health is improved-diets will stop failing.

Don't whatever you do ask how this affects metabolic function, after all that would technically be a scientific breakthrough.  It's the usual 'obesity' cult improvisation. They study afterward. Hey that reverses the clinical trial pathway.

I wonder if anyone's been given an award for this innovation?

Putting it bluntly, the kind of things CBT exists to combat were the techniques employed surreptitiously, to turn 'obesity' into a draining imposture. Goes something like this;

"Negative" Behaviour Cycle

Instead of the "everyone doesn't like me" it's you are disease, not a disease, the disease. That tends to produce "distortions", i.e it sets up a negative mindset. You can learn to interrupt and challenge this process, difficult though that can be (to the point where others define this kind of pattern as "illness.")

Buuuut, when the definition of you is producing it, that can become a life sentence until that [definition] is removed. 

Less sophisticated seeming societies would refer to this kind of shit as spell casting, bad magic etc., Basically through a set of culturally relevant mindwarps, you get people to mess themselves up, then claim that resultant badness/evil i.e. 'obesity' or less formally, "fat logic" is emanating from within them. Technically, a lawyer might argue that's not wholly incorrect [yes that's a double negative, enjoy.] Often the "treatments"required to expel this malevolence are quite vigourous, shall we say.

Anyway, let's see, here are ten cognitive distortions- negative expectations and beliefs that dominate your overall perceptions. How many of them will seem familiar?

1. Mental Filter- Sole focus on the worst possibilities and aspects of a situation filtering out any positives, i.e. the "obesity"construct.

2. Disqualifying the positive- Explains itself really. Any positives don't count.

3. All or Nothing Thinking-Things are either one thing or t'other, slim people are good fat people are bad, any deviation is "denial."

4. Overgeneralization-One example is universal. i.e. One person losing any amount of weight for any length of time, makes fatness "preventable."

5. Jumping to Conclusions- Events cue your pre-formed belief. Fat people are eating disordered. So fat people being enthusiastic about food signals, this eating disorder or the current craze "food addiction."

6. Catastrophization-Maximize negativity, i.e. An observation that either end of the spectrum of any trait, height, weight etc., has higher overall mortality than in between, becomes: Fat kills!!!!

7. Should's and Ought's- Please, you should be slim, you ought be on a diet. You should do whatever you're told, diet's ought to work. 


8. Personalization- Feeling to blame for what is partially or wholly outside your control. Fat people's over-responsibility feeling being fat is our fault and so's the failure of dieting, mind you, we're told that. [Also associated with those who have to look after adults from a young age.]

9. Emotional Reasoning- This is a doozy, basically the idea that because you feel something, it must be so, i.e. because others have cultivated excruciating discomfort about fatness, it's just got to be baaaad.

10. Labelling- Defining yourself, rather than the quality or nature of actions/circumstances/occasions.

And that's just ten of them. Don't hold your breath for this to be mentioned or any contrition or reversal of the 'obesity' cult mindwarp to be a direct out in the open target for the alleviation/ reversal of mental and physical health issues [yes I said physical]. Otherwise known as recovery.

What seems to be happening instead is that is deemed your neuroses. I'm not kidding. The constant panic mode insisted on by 'obesity' alarmist rhetoric, plus things like your nervousness through the aftermath of a constant threat of famine and, exorting yourself to diet and feeling angry with yourself for being fat. Is just the mismanagement of your mind.

Well, technically, that's not entirely false either. You did, but it doesn't say you felt morally obligated to go along with it.

This was wholly supported and advanced by "our betters." And they don't have the cojones to state that openly. Their courage is solely in the area of tearing up fat people pompously. Or now latterly dripping us with oleaginous pity, ((((shudder)))).

Luckily, there are some techniques that purportedly change the content of these to quite a degree to reverse the effect, as fatsphere has instinctively been doing by challenging received opinion. And connecting with our own real experience as human beings.

Or "obesity denial"/"fat logic" as our detractors should have it. 

The Scent of Cray Cray

What are the triggers of fat people's self-acceptance? Science, reason, logic? Clearly diet's don't work, self hatred is pointless (it only means you'll hit a point where you have to go into reverse) and punitive etc.,

Is it being loved and supported by family, friends, a significant other? Discovering that you are desired by potential lovers? Feminist analysis of how the position of women takes a toll on how they perceive their own bodies. Humanism and so forth?

All these. 

The other could be catching the scent of cray cray. Or, fat phobia is actually unhinged.

Now, this terminology may be upsetting for some people.

We make basic errors of reasoning all the time. One of them has been to identify craziness as purely in the symptoms of mental disorder. This I think is an error. "Craziness", biochemical imbalance in the brain and/or nervous system, produces certain symptoms; mania, hallucinations, incoherent addled thinking, mood disorder, delusions-not being able to tell reality from fantasy.

It is not the only possible creator of many if not all of those symptoms though. That's may also be why sane people are called crazy, rather simply using mental illness as an insult.

Wrong thinking, that is uninterrupted and continues on and on. Ideas that should be rejected by our basic critical faculties, but are instead accepted and extrapolated from can if persisted with produce symptoms more usually associated with underlying imbalance. Even if you have none.

Hence terms like "wing-nut" for those who's political or religious views are an implosion of any discernible kind of rationalism.

Now, the habit of calling the sane on their crazy has been deemed stigmatizing those with mental or intellectual disorders. I've no pressing desire to revive calling sane people this 'c' word on the basis of them being genuinely batso in some specific area or areas. It must be said though that this assumption is incorrect.

It also must take some responsibility for the recent and swift conflation of criminal mass killings for instance as the product of mental illness. Indeed, it has almost made evil and madness interchangeable. I've always felt this was the beginning of a lot of modern stigma against the mentally ill. Along with other things that aren't mentioned.

The madness of sane people can be worse than that of those who's symptoms are from an underlying biochemical imbalance. Their sanity makes them more able to act on their deranged thoughts more effectively. They are less likely to be stopped by intervention of others as the disabling effects of internal imbalance tend to derail someone who's mind is not functioning properly. There may well be a lack of intent too.

There is of course overlap. Wrong thinking of all kinds, often brains scrambled by trauma can add to momentum dragging someone toward mental crisis and be reflective of it.

But there's no doubt, that we can all become unbalanced by pursuing lines of irrationality way beyond all reason and there needs to be a way to acknowledge this. Reserving this only for those who are unwell, further others their experience.

I've learned more about mad logic from those advancing the 'obesity' construct than I ever have from someone who's mind isn't working properly.

For years, like many, I accepted what I was told about being fat. About that being my direct deliberate choice, despite knowing it wasn't. I accepted what and who that made me, despite their being little evidence that it was, I thought it must be.  I acted on that. I harmed myself in different ways. Yet never did it occur to me to question it, I saved that for looking at others, I didn't think of them in the way I thought of myself.

Only when I finally got a real sniff of the sheer unhinged nature of what investing in the construct of 'obesity' does to people's minds, did I come to my senses somewhat. You know the scent I'm talking about?

Ever been near a really volatile person who's holding it all in? Your animal senses feel they kick off at any moment. Have you smelt that edge? That's the smell I'm talking about. The feeling that if this takes off, it won't be easily stopped and take down much in its path.

When perfectly decent people started to saying, yes, fat people deserved to die because they were fat. That was the final awakening for me, that's when I had to face the fact that no, this wasn't right after all.........

Amour Propre, Amour de Soi

Amour propre is the self esteem that comes through the esteem of others. It's also more popularly refers to the image or reputation for esteem associated with those with higher status in society. In essence though, it refers to regard one gets from others and then feels oneself.

Armour de soi is literally, love of self. It is innate self regard. We are born that way. Our regard for ourselves is fused intimately with our existence and is indivisible from our awareness of that. Just like other living creatures. It doesn't occur to us to not like ourselves.

It doesn't actually feel like romantic love, which is often a false and hyped up idea of what love can be when mixed with sexual desire and some other stuff we won't go into here. 

Human beings especially seem to be made up of both inside out and outside in self love. Though it seems to be observable in (other) animal kingdoms.

What we learn is not so much to hate ourselves, or even to love ourselves. We learn to put things in between our inner self love and develop an armour propre. And they either support or cause our ability to heart ourselves to implode.

Too many clauses in the way of what just was, before.

We do need to learn to defend that self love from attacks not all of which by any means come in hate. And moreover, when the inevitable fall from the grace of self love is pressing enough, we must learn to repair and restore it.

It is a strange feature of our modern era that amour propre seems to have outstripped the latter to such a degree that the latter is dismissed by some as almost mythical, 'fake' or even oppressive imposition. This is a product of many influences mainly commercial inclined. Here provides a steady stream of routes in which to love oneself from the outside in.

Fat people who have other social value are learning what those of us accorded less all round have had to realise sooner. That a revival of the amour de soi is indeed possible and inevitable once ones amour propre is trashed by all and sundry.

You can see some of the above reactions are what can occur when the fat, nor other imperative isn't present. The cultivation of amour de soi feels somewhat artificial, irritating, if not down right vulgar.

Some of it is class. Middle class self regard is rigidly regulated from the outside, in the groupings they form together. Amour de soi, associated as it is with our original 'wild' animalistic lower status can feel almost grotesque in comparison to the subtle internalized cues of bourgeois esteem.

Self love, does not have to be perfect, nor can it be. We humans have not evolved to that point. If you participate in society's built more on AP, you can't expect to transcend that wholly. But changing the balance in favour of A de S is perfectly legitimate and does not need to be justified or even explained to anyone who doesn't feel the need for it.

That's sometimes how it is when you're not seeing things from the same angle.

What we have here is a dilemma

Well there's even more to this than I thought. In the discussion accompanying Lesley's post, the threat of a fat body becomes looming spectre haunting beauteous slimz.  Pressing their conscience into giving up tha pity sex. We are this way due to being denied sex on account of our looks. Forever yearning for undeserved shags, craving the beauty that so rejects us.

Obeasty is modern mythology.

This seems to be personifying the unspoken distress of all the people out there having sex with those they no longer desire that way.

It's touched in the talk about faking orgasms. It cross ones mind. Often it's volunteered apropos of very little from some men as "We don't want to be forced to find fat people attractive."

The extent of this distress and the determined characterization of fat people as angling for pity sex- something many feel is burdensome to resist-speaks to a need to express upset, without facing implications.

So much for fatness being caused by people using food to block or blunt emotion. If that's the case, it's unnecessary effort. Good news for "binge eaters" and "food addicts". You don't have to "eat your emotions" anymore, just hide from them like everyone else! I wonder if I can patent that as a cure? I'm guessing at no.

The easy prevalence of this theme displays the underlying rules of sexual exchange, or "rape culture" as it's evasively termed. If any who are seen as radical try to take this on, they're labelled fanatics or feminazi's, such is the extent of reluctance.

Despite the above, I still couldn't believe people were framing this was men v women. That was stink bomb distraction of sex-positive-prude Rowan Pelling ed. of "The Decadent Handbook: for the modern libertine". Hiding her own attitudes behind those associated solely with men. 

When for many fat people, men have been the ones who let them know they were desirable. In some cases women taught them they weren't. The amount of fat people who've been used and abused by that belief. Degrading self worth can be the quickest route to being fodder for those on the look out for damage they can turn to their advantage.

It wouldn't have made any difference if the positions were swapped (I know). If it was a wife speaking of her husband. The issue is a person being turned into an adjunct of someone's, everyone's ideology. You know what feminists famously complain about.

Being defined solely in terms of other people's feelings, an object dancing to their tune. Without reference to their experience of themselves. Only concerned with how they must obey their honourable overlord/ess. Even expected to respond to questioning on why they want none of this. How can this feel like self ownership? Which if I'm right is a primary underpinning of agency. 

Exactly why is a partner suddenly turning into an obesity crusade drone supposed to be such a turn on for the fat person? You have both become mere servants of that. The one  who loves you and who you love suddenly is distanced from you because this is now more real to them than all that you've shared.

Who is this person? And who is it they wish to connect with anyway? You or their idea of you? I'm actually not saying that anyone shouldn't feel free to tell me they find my body off putting. I'm saying that changes my view of them too. Something crusaders don't get because this couldn't be articulated before. It was all pressed down, disassociation and added to the general sense of malaise many fat people feel.

Fat phobes need to realise their eyes of god pose is dead. There person involved, who is learning to value themselves more than the value accorded them by society. The one you're so lovingly trying to work. Like someone in a mixed relationship explaining that according to white supremacy, you aren't shit.

Sorry, love! I'm "hardwired" to use every advantage for my own person gain. Isn't that kind of red in tooth and claw sexy for you?

The pointed reference to the way thin privilege is seen as having shut down reasonable debate is worth a mention. i.e. "Isn't there one place left where we can tell the truth?"

Don't think I'm judging slimz. Fat people are apparently the last place for the "truth" and look at all it's brought; huge scientific advance, greater humanism, penetrating sociology and a widespread increase in the depth of understanding about human biology, amirite?  

Are fat women really supposed to say, boo when slim women autonomy is held to be porous? But tally ho if it's their own? Because we sort of aren't women? That was about the last straw for me and feminists not something as (relatively) trivial as fat phobia.

Whatever fails, I at least expect them to manage to be in favour of the liberation of women. Sometimes it's not women who reject feminists, but they who withdraw from women. If fatness means feminism doesn't work, then acknowledge it and modify theory accordingly. That's how feminism, happens.

Nor is fatness like personal hygiene, grooming, having a certain kind of haircut, freely scratching your pubes. Each one of those behaviours is the direct cause and cure of themselves. So, if you stop washing yourself- you are unwashed. Washing yourself, causes you to be washed, I can't make it much simpler. 

The equivalent in terms of fatness would the capacity to direct fat or not fat. Instead, in order to cease fatting, you're required to reduce your intake of food and increase expenditure of energy, both are indirect actions, that are supposed to lead to lowered and indefinitely maintained weight.

A habit of dressing in formal attire does not battle your inbuilt instinct for survival, both of those do. One directly, the other less so.

As for the 'self care'/health angle;

Since your spouse protests she 'likes being curvy', I would concentrate on the health issues at stake. 

 Subtle.

Why don't you tell her you feel exercise and a better diet would keep her longer on this planet by your side? Lead the way by taking her for runs or to the gym and by ordering healthier groceries and cutting down on booze.

Like a little doggy? 

Sex is also good for you. Not sexing could therefore be framed as 'self harm' not taking care of yourself. Is that convincing or indeed, edifying? Perhaps she could "lead the way" by starting off on her own and encouraging him to join in if he feels up to it. And if he doesn't hey, some women don't get vaginal orgasms anyhow.

Hey, is that the solution? Masturbation!!! Independently or parallel. I'm surprised Mz Kinky Boots didn't suggest such herself.

I'm such a reliever of agony.

Your body is someone's libido

There's always been a dubious trope that prudishness is all about this. When the pinch faced prudery of fat phobes is cringe inducing and ill judged. As seems to be the law with fat phobes, they can't hear themselves.

There's something peculiarly sexless about someone who requires another to meet some exacting standard of physique, they no longer have merely in order for their groinal area to erm, come to life. Isn't there such a thing as an appetite for sex? Or is that just an affectation?

Either you're game or not. There's no way it's going to be all about another person. That kind of projection is the basis for behaving as if your sexual appetites are the responsibility of others provocation. Or not.

Adults are not just objects onto which sex occurs.

Some stirrings are supposed to come from within. Our expectations of our sexual desires may not always match the day to day reality in the long term.

There's nothing wrong with not wanting sex all that so much-or at all. If you've not managed to marry a thin person from a long line of lifelong thinz, then you'd better consider the possibility that your partner may gain weight. Turning it into an offense against you, is emotional blackmail.  

This line too many slimz are airing about how fat bodies are uncaring the fat person is about their fee fees needs to be quietly put to sleep and treated as a folly of the previously unaware.

Many of us realise, no one really cares about fatness. Obesitality (that's obesity + fatality) didn't start to bite until it was made all about slimz-in the guise of being all about fatz, as a cover. And boy are some of them riding that pony into the dust.

Give it a rest with your offended by someone's gut, I'm offended by your invasive and entitled prudery. Especially this Rowan Pelling who's made a career out of being........

....you guessed it, sex positive, what I hear when I hear that term? Similar to "pro-life".

What is it with these fat phobic "sex positives"? Positive for a chosen few in their own image alone? Fatz should just twiddle their thumbs (not a euphemism)? Become celibate?

I've never gone along with the idea that being bothered by looks is "shallow". It's the cultivation of extreme distress about looks, as if this makes one some kind of precious aesthete that I have little patience for. Especially when you complain that distress is being caused by the other person, rather than your own thinking.

A person is supposed to run around half starved and probably not becoming slim or for long. Yet this person can't get the hell over themselves? They cannot find a way to just calm down and chill the fug out and see if they feel the same way?

Because guess what? That's a whole lot more in your power than declaring war on your instinct to survive in the stupidest way aka weight loss dieting.  How on earth has it come to seem like the other way around?

No one should be pressuring anyone to have sex with anyone else. Equally, no one should be forced to try and become a lifestyle anorexic for someone else's cultivated distaste either.

Obviously negotiation and compromise is part of relationships. Thinking about getting into fitness, without having to disorder their eating, might be worth discussing. At the same time, the partner could take some time to get over nurturing this;

The fact is we are hardwired to find certain physical attributes attractive, and human nature means it can be difficult to over-look the loss of those qualities in our spouses.

Nope, the body is hardwired to resist and overthrow weight loss diets. That truly is fact.

Any female readers who feel this man is being over-judgemental should ask themselves whether they'd want to make love to their husbands if they had raging halitosis or huge beer bellies.

What? Bigger than mine? Comparing a person to halitosis is also pretty typical of this mindset. For people who demand so much for so little reason. They don't like to trouble their brains unduly.

Weak

Skin aka, Deborah Dyer undoubtedly one of the most talented singers I've ever heard (this isn't even the best performance I've heard from her) and check this out. The respect is evident. She's so good, even though I'm not a fan of the oeuvre of her band Skunk Anansie, I still like hearing her voice.

Yet, there's something about the lyric.

"Weak as I am. Am I too much for you?"

All is uh-gain leading to review the supposed weakness of the word "acceptance," as in, "fat acceptance." I can be quite nit picky about terms, yet I've never had any real problem with it. Liberationist at heart, I've never been keen on "equality" as the be all and end all of anything. I view it as at best a guide, not an aim.

So I feel like the kind of person who might find acceptance insipid somehow, but I just don't. I think that's because I don't really see the direction of fat acceptance as fronting to slim people. Or in performing, proving anything for them.

I don't believe fat hating is a genuine on face value urge. Hate comes from being threatened, its not supposed to be a contrivance of social engineering facilitation. The causes provoking it are heartfelt yes, but that's not what we are getting or being told. The action of it is the highest grade of BS there is.

It makes me cringe.  If we weren't so self conscious ourselves, we'd see just how utterly reprehensible and absurd it is. Which many of us of course, don't want. We protect our love affair with thin privilege, as we complain about it.

My FA is not for slim people sorry. Though they're welcome as always to take what they want-honestly. But it's not specifically shaped for their sensibilities and they need to stop pouting about that.

The priority is enlightening (ha!) fat people young and old alike.

All this means that even if I did feel weak, I'd want room to feel it and still count myself as human-and be counted as such. The right to feel weak, to be weak, because you have been weakened by forces that may or may not be within your influence. This ability to feel feeling honestly something so often undermined in fat people. I want it.

Certainly way more than I want the tight resentful approval of those trying to persuade me to submerge myself into where they've excluded me from and where I frankly don't particularly want to be as much as all that.

You might say, it's either more toward one or the other. Either, outside- changing the minds of others to change your own. Or inside out, changing your own mind which forces others to make a decision about their response.

I don't know if either is superior, just that I know which one makes most sense to me and feels right.

The need to project strength though understandable isn't my priority, not for it's own sake. Having been beat up and drained for so long, people want to be fierce, but we forget, we've survived, amazingly well. I'm not entirely sure how or why, but don't underestimate how unexpected that is, for everyone.

How strong it is.

Fat people staying honest and true to honouring ourselves would be a mighty force indeed. Not only that, our truths are for everyone and can be used by them. Not when our actions are guided by pandering though.

Our weakness is in thinking we need to impress others more than we need to impress ourselves.

Lightness switch

I pick up my bag and put it on my shoulder. It's so heavy that I have to concentrate to stand up straight, at times veering off to the side.

By the time I really get into my walking say, five or so minutes later, it feels different, lighter.

I've noticed my body has adjusted. Some kind of alteration changes it from too heavy, to just a tad unwieldy when I take corners or break into a run. When I'm ambling along it can feel barely there.  

In the wake of this and a bit distracted I recently climbed to the top deck of the bus. It halted suddenly and I fell forward before I'd reached the top of the stairs landing on my side. My bag got trapped in the stair rail stemming the impact a bit but still, I hit the ground with a bump.

There was no fear on being lurched asunder. None of that shaken up feeling you can get from a sudden upending, there was no scare.

If you think I'm alluding to weight gain, I suppose there is that. There was a conversation about the weight of large breasts the other day.

One has to be careful. I don't wish to undermine the fact that they can be cumbersome to the point of causing physical degeneration. But I have to admit, I stumbled over the fact a while back that this this capacity, invoked by changing the way I though about my breasts to a more neutral or positive attitude, profoundly altered the way they felt.

I hasten to add, I'm quite broad shouldered, which might make a substantial difference. I do though remember how I used to feel. Whereas I got to the point of feeling like I hardly noticed them, in comparison to that.

A good well fitting bra adds to the effect.  

The basis of this alteration is definitely tied into this physiological capacity to adjust, sometimes it is a bit like a light flashing on. It's literally an altered state of physical consciousness, of physicality.

What prompted this more was how much this might be the basis of how stress can affect our bodies and health by changing the way it functions. I think there's a mental/ emotional version of this adjustment, perhaps its all a part of the same intermingled process.

I'm sure there are difference depths to it, leading up to pronounced states of pleasure, but this seems to me an early or lesser stage, I wonder if towards its other end point is certain kinds of chronic pain conditions.

I think it is protective of us and when we are overburdened, our bodies cannot make the adjustment. 

We start from a deeper place of this and I sense that it can be breached as well as eroded overall. Whether from traumatic, stressful and threatening environments, or in part the way our moods work, individually.

Its not always so much what is happening to us, its what state of consciousness we are in or out of when it occurs. When we are processing the implications of it, emotionally, intellectually and so on. 

The more we are exposed to being outside the soft pliable flexible state, the more of a chance even everyday stresses and tension have to wreak havoc on us.

I definitely think what seems to be a growth in neuroses. The elevation of rationality-or what passes for it- as the only acceptable metaphysics means increasingly the conscious mind is taking the lead.
The idea of being in control of your biology, via being in control of your eating is part of  this. There are others too and that plus the spread of misguided interpretations of atheism and secularism are putting more and more unnecessary pressure on a part of our mind that wasn't designed to operate like a marooned island.

Fraught

I was going to respond at the blog in question, then remembered, that's not going to work. 

It’s also a good reminder that Health at Every Size is truly a weight-neutral approach – sometimes people do lose weight as a side-effect when they are doing what is right by their body (a lot of the time not, but it does happen on occasion, usually when other physical conditions are in play.)

Ok, but this still implies weight-loss is not a rational/acceptable personal goal.

It of course doesn't, its "weight-loss" not weight loss dieting that HAES avoids. It's the difference between weight loss and weight loss dieting again. Though it seems obvious the conflation can't get past the programming. That's why the pathetically emotive pretending not to be "anti science" accusation is so risible.

If your mind is frozen solid on an issue-apart from what what others say, your pompous arse is going to be hanging out with that gambit. If these people were so "pro science", like pro life we all are, you'd think they'd have noticed how absent real fat people are from the 'obesity field'.

And note the fatuous condescension;

I get that this is super fraught territory with tons of toxic cultural messages surrounding it

Oh do you really, well spotted. Because when women kick off-and frankly the anger of fat women is nothing compared to the inchoate meltdown of anyone daring to query the use of bourgeois sweeties (anti depressants)-it couldn't be because their intellect is being blocked and shut down by sexist levers or the even to me surprising anger at the violation the basic principle that its not who knows but the quality of what is known?

No, its the eeemeaushun of it all. Everyone knows women are more prone to hurt fee fees aren't they? Principles are for the menz.

This is why I'm glad not to bracket myself with this demeaning attitude feminism has sunk to in its glorious "intersectional" phase; so easily led by the male lead fat phobia. Well, that's all inclusive isn't it? Why should patriarchal arseholery that can trade on its ad hominem reputation, not shine out and discredit a group dominated by women. 

Who because of that, need to constantly "prove" they are not crazzee and illogical for thinking; get this; that this existence of theirs, is actually happening to them.

zomg.

The seeming implication that WL(D) is not a rational blah, blah, is the "fraught" effect the commenter mentioned but of course, in their own mind, projected onto fat people. 

People have a pronounced tendency to only be able to see their own issues in fat acceptance because fat people are always wrong, it just "FEELS" so right. Like being drawn into a well worn mental groove.

By the way, I don't believe in set point theory either, not that it matters because on the internet people look for what confirms their hobby horse so they can have a whine arse rodeo, rather than seek those they might agree with and move the dialogue somewhere.

Well, we've all done it. 

It's homeostasis, or the body's self regulation that stops weight loss dieting from being feasible.  Though yes, that may differ for low amounts apparently up to about 10% and /or recent gain after long term slimness.

And no, it is not about gaining over a long term, it's whether the underlying setting of your weight has shifted or is just a temporary response to something.

Sorry, but I'm so far beyond bored around the world many times with this now that its hard not to sound annoyed.

N.B. Love this explanation of badness of quackery which is so apt for authority supported dieting. Though the writer was talking about comp med.  

A certain mindset, part 1

Or the strange sensation of discovering (again) who you're supposed to be, in order for someone to be able to assert their case.

I'm aware that the mindset formed from the diet/weight hypothesis has trouble grasping anything outside its own rigid constructs. Anything which doesn't shore this up is a waste of its time because that takes up all its time. Its distance from a balanced view causes a chain reaction of distortion.

This is on top of my comment box;

try to understand exactly what it is you are disagreeing with.

I know anyone operating from this mindset can rarely manage it.

This is how commenter "anonymous" interprets the motivation of FA;

All this aside, if people just want to be happy with their bodies and feel they don't need or can't handle the stress of analyzing their diets/lifestlyles and making changes that's fine. I don't judge or think it's okay for others to judge. Being happy is a major part of health as well.

That's an example of the way that profound contempt cannot be covered by any extent of surface courtesy.

I can play;

If you need to fantasize to exert control over yourself and feel ashamed of that, its okay for you to impose them on everyone to stop any distance between you and reality jarring on your nerves. Feeling comfortable with yourself is part of health.

Not so good eh? That's a different cultural milieu for you. Where I come from, if you are trash talking, you are talking trash, no matter how "nice" your tone. You'd probably be called out louder for your 'failed' condescension and the presumption that those you're addressing are too stupid to see through it. Folks get more than enough of that from the impositions of their so called 'betters'.

Madness is somewhat defined by it's culture. A consensus of insanity effectively equals sanity. It takes on the appearance of it due to there being no contrast of views. We don't realise how much we perceive through mere contrast.

Similarly, if you can create and impose a consensus of agreed (or not) fictions, you can re-create 'reality' more to your liking. Those who have a genuine interest in function are told they are "in denial" because they refuse such an unbalanced view.

I doubt Anon has a clue what we've already "handled" and what we are still "handling"-Not. A. One.

The inability to assert a case without erasing the targets of your theories lives, experience, self connection, agency and sentience exposes the abject weakness of it.

Reset

I was perusing Ragen's blog when a commenter, Anna tickled some brain cells -scroll 4 comments down, I can't find a way to link.

Right, so every body has a more or less “set point” weight that it is comfortable with maintaining, and diets, weight cycling etc mess this up, and potentially slow down your metabolism and artificially inflate this set point. That’s the main reason diets don’t work long term… Am I right so far?

Dieting is of course "weight cycling", maintaining is managing to keep the response part of the cycle at bay. They can and do reset the point where your body settles, sometimes to a substantial degree. She is not alone in being double the weight she started out at. It can also sensitize your hunger and appetite, increase them to a higher setting, create or heighten an eating disoder.

What my question is, is if my body had a natural “set weight” range that it was happy with, and if I have messed that up with diets, is there any way, within the philosophy of HAES, to…reset this, to some degree at least? Seeing as it was what was natural for my body in the first place?

Clever. If weight could be reset back to pre WLD weight could be reset full stop. If anyone could predictably show, to any statistically significant degree a reversal of weight past everyday variance, then you are at least on the road.

This shoud be the province of 'obesity' science.

Anna has pointed up why the idea of destined to be fat essentialism is as suspect as its progenitor "nobody is meant to be/has to be fat". Sometimes that's the case, in the sense that it would be unlikely that x person would avoid becoming fat. Though if you had a means of reversal, I'm not sure it wouldn't be effective on them too. It's important to say it  might not be one method for all, though I wouldn't rule that out.

She wishes to restore closer to her pre disordered eating/weight loss dieting size and everyone recognised the legitimacy of that wish-on their own terms. That of course doesn't make any difference to being able to do it, no-one can reliably do so.

But I'd say someone as bright as she seems should pursue that line herself, experiment do research and see what if anything she can find. FA should be directed in part by the needs of those interested in it. She should apply her own intelligence.

At this rate clever people, fat or otherwise who might be better off forming a network to try and find their own answers. As at least they have the right kind of genuine interest, unlike the hopeless field dominated by the hopelessly self interested.

Rather like HAES is sort of a physiotheraputic impulse that the professionals can barely be bothered with, from fat people's experiences with exercising and dieting to become slim.

Imagine waiting for mainstream professionals to get their act together on that score? Exactly.

This kind of WLD induced weight gain is also one of the many reasons why science or what's passing itself off as such should finally follow through and find answers, as so many have been set and kept on this course by those claiming to act under its ageis. It should also map out how our energy metabolism actually works, so we never have another round of this cals in/out lying.

Because this is hardly the first time. People ought to be able to look up a functional mapping out of how energy metabolism works, using what we actually know; like one can look up the limbic system which isn't a distinct contained system as such, but an illustration of how parts of the brain co-ordinate to produce human emotion.

Those who've led people astray ought to feel a sense of duty to offer remedy to those desiring it. That will teach them and anyone else to use their influence to manipulate others without due regard for consequences.


The clear handedness of Anna's recognition of her position suggests that she kept going like many of us out of positive tenacity, mis applied;

(Numerous diets, sensible ones, never fad diets, over the past 15 years, where I ended up weighing more at the end than I did at the start, resulting in my weight pretty much doubling from my original “comfortable area.”)

Exactly. The speed or make up of diet doesn't matter, they may vary in their effects on health, a lot of that is individual preferences and reactions, but in terms of weight loss though, so called good or slow WLD's makes no difference, the problem is the direct attack on fat stores. That causes the body's defence of them, obviously.

This doesn't mean of course that her body's settling place or point would have remained where it was if she hadn't dieted, not sure how that can be proven definitively either way. But what we can see is that overall, it has definitely been a weight gain strategy.

The reason why cal res is a hard strategy to start, continue, or "maintain" and rebounding past weight prior to that attempt is the same effect, at different stages/ phases.

Unfortunately I have no useful advice except to just continue to do positive things to recover from the WLD/dietary restriction experience, focusing on stabilising and normalizing your hunger-the desire to eat and your appetite-the make up of what you eat.

Weight will only reverse if a) you have an  heightened eating response and b) that heightened response is overall and includes your weight. If it doesn't one will reduce without the other, usually hunger rather than weight.

I was fascinated by some of the responses to Anna, this from Marylin Wann;

From Linda Bacon’s description of our current scientific understanding, in her “Health At Every Size” book, it’s the nature of our bodies to gain weight easily and defend intensely against weight loss (which generally means something dangerous and/or deadly, in body/survival logic).

I find this fascinating. I think the body defends against weight gain just as much as it does against weight loss. You only have to look at he fattest people to see that is what most people aren't.

Looking at it purely from the POV of slim upward, reflects the thincentric way we've been taught. It is misleading and has a distorting effect on the significance of levels of fatness/weight amonst fat people. If we are talking about fatness why do we not start from them and go down?

Self-estrangement

Did you catch Seal talking about his split from wife Heidi Klum on the Ellen show? Couldn't begin to care? If so I don't blame you, I'm not far behind. A clip was featured on the news and it passed my eyes so to speak. Even so, he did say a couple of things that caught my attention, something to the effect of  "We just grew apart" and "It was a surprise to us too"!

As you know (fat) people's eating is being pressed into a baggy 'addiction' narrative which excites the ignorant no end. Not content with their endless dimwit preaching, we must also be instructed as to what it feels like to try and make calorie dodging the centre of our existence. Expecting our indulgence of their impertinence to be everlasting.

We are ordered; it is just like smoking or taking drugs etc., as if we have no capacity to perceive our own existence.

It's actually a lot more like Seal and Heidi's situation, except instead of two people it's just you, split in two attacking another part. What "part" would that be? Why the quasi mythical construct of  the "bad" you've been told is causing the disease of you, by the 'obesity' consensus.

Due to it not actually existing, you have been in reality persuaded to attack yourself.

No wonder the 'obesity' crusade thinks it owns you.

Picture the scene; you find yourself staying later and later (for free) at some crappy job you're always looking to move on from. As if at last appreciating some of its heretofore unseen charms. The hopes (kidology) you employed when you took it, have suddenly revived in your imagination melding with reality in a way you never quite managed before.

You catch yourself and think, "What they hey?" Then realise, its because you don't want to go home.

The relationship with a "significant other" or your family-parents, siblings etc., or simply those you share a home with-has become so tense and strained, you can barely endure physical proximity with them.

Any interaction tending to drain you psychologically in seconds. You can never feel comfortable or at peace, always off balance, out of kilter. Except instead of two people, there is just one, you and it is you who are having this relationship breakdown with yourself.

When you realise they're unexpectedly out and you won't have to face them, there's a heady rush from the release of pressure. Whatever time there is before they return, you feel you can breathe again and feel fully alive.

That's something like what it feels like when you forget to attack yourself because you are fat. When you can come to a place of acceptance and try to become whole again. And other apparently well meaning people wish to block that. They wish to keep you locked into estrangement from yourself, because they are just sooo nice.

This my friends is what its like to live cornered by the threat of a lifetime of commitment to "weight management" even your body failing badly (a.k.a; weight loss dieting success) gives little relief, because, maintenance.

This inner environment is always there in your mental field of vision. To be negotiated when you can manage to screw whatever reserves of nervous energy and self delusion you can muster, for yet another campaign of maximum effort for scant if any "reward". And when the dust clears, painful reversal.

There is no relief to be had from pointing the finger at the other person as the baddie, until you just become so sick and tired of being sick and tired in your soul that something says, no more.

In other words, the conventional 'obese' role that has formed and shaped your existence, the one others seek to keep you in, is more like the addiction.

Stroking your id

We all like speak the good word about ourselves; the internal pep talks, reruns of favourite praise and compliments thrown our way, shimmering memories of our perceived triumphs great and small.

We can be very high maintenance when it comes to keeping our spirits up.

As long as a person can get over the feeling that it makes them a bit of a shit (plus pathetically needy), an endless cycle of self praise can be set in motion by making sure that when you insult others, you are really praising yourself.

It can give an extra (((((frisson)))))) lacking from even the most gratuitous self praise.

Um, achieving more potent effects through indirect rather than direct means, where is that lesson being missed?

It’s worth bearing in mind when fat people are being insulted, its usually just a means of pressing the real hot button marked "ego boost". A bit like those study mice who'll press the reward button until they're exhausted, sometimes even dead.

That's how fat haters are sometimes genuinely surprised (and irked) at the extent of fat people's upset at these taunts. "It's not about that silly", but hey, they're not going to tell fatz that, directly, that would spoil it.

Whatever's been set up as the opposite of fat is ergo the opposite of the insult; "fat people don't like to work." “fat people are careless with themselves" "fat people are not good looking".

Who's industrious, responsibly self caring, well groomed and stunningly gorgeously attractive?

Coothcie cootchie cooo, whoever's not fat, that's who!

I suppose you could call it a "comfort insult". If you work it right you are always supporting yourself (why there's a need for it is a whole other question) but some think its a necessity, which is perhaps why they claim fat people have "no self respect". If we've succumbed to an idea of ourselves that is intrinsically insulting, we've not only wasted an opportunity to tickle our egos, but actively putting them down.

What are we like!

Ever wondered why the frenzied circularity of fat hating insults, the way they are so boring and never increase in subtlety or wit? Wonder no more. Someone is having an experience. Without that cushion of pleasure haters would bore themselves into some creativity at least.

So next time you're flamed/shamed, try and have some fun working out the compliment haters are giving themselves.

Cart after horse

It's worth saying that immediately going from a high degree of conscious restriction to a normal/intuitive eating pattern is not necessary if that doesn't suit your situation or is too scary.

I did go through a period of letting go completely after a long dieting career I found I could no longer restrict calories.

The defence our bodies mount to overthrow a calorie shortage of calories is taxing. If you repeatedly subject yourself to it long term, fatigue will become ingrained to the point where nervous system shuts down it ability to carry out your orders. Like the wild horse throwing you off by rather than you having to get off.

It meant I had to allow myself to eat things I tried to avoid, in other words, what I "felt" like eating. I couldn't wait for that period to pass to be honest, it felt like I was being directed by a backlash from a habit of imbalance rather than current needs. And at the time, my whole eating impulse was stuck in its down phase, so eating anything was always rather blah and unsatisfying..

I didn't feel any more in tune with it than I did with calorie restriction, it was after all an extension of that process, rather than my own desire. Although I accepted the need for it and was fine with it, that was undoubtedly the end for me and dieting. I actually planned to start again afterwards! But just that little bit of ease made the idea of re-starting (afterward) intolerably repellent.

That's when I realised just what it had taken to keep restricting over and over again, day after day.

I kept checking for when I could engage conscious decision making again without my body/nervous system screaming in protest.

I found that feeling started to pass after about 3 and a half weeks.

I guided myself toward some of the things I'd been missing out on in that preceding month, checking for even the slightest feelings of resistance. If I had no feeling then great, if there was so much of a squeak I left it alone.

That period of release and checking for the end of it gave me the confidence to be gentle and extremely patient with myself. Not saying IE type eating can't work straight off, just that it can be far less suited to people who've had long experience with disordered eating and eating disorders, especially from a very young age. I had both they ran into each other.

Often there are different rules for what could be seen as ingrained disorder and the more situational kind-related to your actions as opposed to self generating.

A negative mentality about food eating and being fat had built up to such an extent that when I tried to eat mindfully-with a complete focus on what I was eating- it felt unbearable and soon descended into an even wilder chaos than usual.

I didn't realise the extent of it until then.

I had to dismantle at least some of this before I could think of normality and would not have fancied eating to the rhythm of it, in fact that would have been more or less the same as before, except without the pressure of calorie restriction.

That can mean a lot, it may even be the most decisive factor, but then again, maybe not. The most important thing is anxiety releases, the release of pressure and stress. The system overall is overexcited and frankly, most would be better off taking up something like meditation and waiting for that to calm things down.

The release of the threat of starvation is a bit too specific.

The thing about eating after all this (or just having had the threat hanging over you for a long time) is to remember that imbalance is not caused by any engagement of your conscious mind in eating, its the over engagement of it. Making (or attempting to make) it the basis of all eating.

That undermines the rhythm of your function, even without limit, such as those who go gluten free and so on. Interestingly, more people can manage that and it tends to get easier, which is what happens when changes though demanding make some sense. Its what people want a restricted diet to be like, but it isn't, because of the body's homeostatic regulation asserting itself.

Your mind is more of a channel into which information from the whole of your body flows, allowing you to respond to that, it does not create your hunger or appetite. It can and does influence it, through other parts of your nervous system function, your emotions and your thinking and things like your habits, history, environment, assumed or otherwise likes and dislikes.

The latter affect what is already there, they are not why and what causes you to eat, solely. It can have a huge influence in the sense of creating a chain reaction-which is why I believe there is some way to change the course of weight- it is not its underlying basis of creation though. It is always acting on something, that's why dieting is so misguided mistaking what effects something, for that it is affecting.

A bit like mistaking writing for the paper you are writing on.

The idea that eating is consciously generated, which exists to serve the calorie restriction model only, ignoring the automatic process already occurring, trying to duplicate it badly getting in the way of what is actually designed for that purpose causing disruption. That's how dieting, with its overly rigid attempts at conscious control creates disorder, it gets in the way and forces the body to mount a counter attack.

All this leads us to think engaging the conscious mind is wholly bad when it's really the over and wrong use of it.



If our conscious mind is unsettled, it needs to be emptied of all the myths and nonsense we collect from our environment, including food marketing yes, but also from healthists and others pushing modish forms of eating.

I went as far, at one point as emptying my mind of ideas of what I liked to eat. I just tried to let go of any feeling of liking x, y, z as much as I could. That was a bit odd, but I wanted to off load as much baggage as I could and experience things freshly. After a while, it made me more responsive to amounts of things, it was this that helped me find out that I tend towards eating lots of different things, rather than full meals of a few food items.

Both it and the increasing release of tension allowed my enjoyment of food to return, after it had been killed off by years of attempted restriction and the upshot of that.

So rather than withdraw completely unless its provoked by diet burn out, in which case you'll have to pause for at least some time, you can do it the other way around and indeed this is the way it should always be to me.

For instance, moving more because you feel like it, mentally and/or physically, rather than making yourself move until you feel okay about it.

Removing all negative, mistrustful ideas about food, eating and being fat. Let go of  your ideas and assumptions about the things and ways you like to eat and let your eating change in response to that. Keeping a conscious overview and using your instincts to guide you, listening always with kindness and care.

The key is to permanently de-stress yourself and your body, before during and after eating, train yourself to be calmer in your life in general and that will flow into everything, eating included. So you can look at it directly and/ or indirectly.

Do what you can do, what either works or feels manageable to you.

In general its usually okay to take an overview of your eating every now and again and think "um, I seem to have forgotten about this kind of food/food group", everyone gets into a rut overlooking good things at times.