Smokers, stop it!

Since I cannot be bothered to wrestle with Slate comments there, I'm responding to this comment which I'll quote in full, here, it's from somebody called, Tarkol;

To the overweight. We warned you. We really did. We said you'd be next. We said food restrictions would come. We said once we were too rare a pariah they would turn on you. You didn't listen. -Smokers

Really, (thin)smokers, I wish you wouldn't. What is the point in your investment in this myth? I suspect as you love calling yourself addicts, this is addicts hubris borne of the constant competition for who's addiction is the hardest to give up, etc.,

Sorry smokers, you told me nothing, that I hadn't been learning for the last 30 years. I was in the playground when I realised things had changed because the medical profession had got on board with fat hating. This meant that it took on it's current triumphant sense of righteousness and sense of legitimacy that it had never had before when people could choose whether to be bullying about it or not.

Try to understand that you like others who aren't fat, shield yourself from recognising what has been happening to fat people and just because you affect this pose, doesn't make it true.

Fact is that the momentum against smokers has been building up for a number of decades now, but that doesn't mean that it precedes the fat hating bandwagon in a such an orderly way.

The obesity crisis has been dated from the late 1970's at it started to get nasty before even that.

Along the way, I haven't noticed smokers standing up for fatties, in fact, I've found a lot of them happily joining in fat bashing. There does seem to be some kind of underlying issue that some have with fat people, almost as if they feel that if fat people were more serious about their weight, they would be prepared to smoke as an aid to weight loss (just like some of them). There's also a sense of deflection- if everyone's hating fatties, they're not hating smokers.

Only a couple of years ago, when England sprang a smoking ban on it's cigaphiles, the first words out of many who went about in the media was, "whaah, this is what we do to/how we treat fatties". This is such an old sentiment, that it hardly annoyed me to be honest. They must of been made aware of themselves because they soon stopped.

This for me is the telling part, carelessly stigmatizing others prepares you and your mind to receive the stigma you think you are directing at others. It creates an atmosphere of the same responsive acquiescence and cowardice, no less because it shows the powers that be what you are willing to put up with. It gives them a mental and strategic route to go down, and I'm afraid the spontaneous recognition that this is what we do to fatties, not real humans, shows one of the reasons why smokers have so meekly accepted, not so much their fate, as the treatment meted out to them.

The lesson is, we should stop ignoring how people who may be unacceptable, to us and consider the general ramifications of what's being done to them, follow through and think, what does this mean for others who may be seen in this light? In short, think. Don't just laugh and take part and wallow, you are fouling your own nest.

We all be better off if we stuck up for each other and did not use so called health to vent personal rage or use it as a chance to lord it over each other, always a sign of insecurity.

It's not too late.

A marriage made in hell

I just happened upon a hero of capitalism, Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watchers. It is undoubtedly true that she is a hero of capitalism. She took a non-product, the weight loss diet and made an absolute fortune from it.

Usually capitalism takes something for as little as possibly can and marks it up as much as it can, in order to maximise profit.

She went one better. Like the weavers in this story.

What is a weight loss diet? Eat less, expend more. Give me money now.

That, my friends is a diet, do you perceive it's sheer intangibility? Ignoring the essential uselessness of weight loss dieting, the irony about it is that it is essentially communistic in character, and fails for similar fundamental reasons.

Dieting assumes that all people ought to eat more or less the same (inadequate) amount regardless, things such as individuality, don't count for toffee. Communism that all should have more or less the same as one another in terms of necessities status etc.,

The fundamental fail of both is that the central authority charged with making all this happen, in the case of the former the conscious mind and the latter the state cannot. They are too inflexible in the same way, neither were designed for the purpose of running everything, they are suited more to an overseeing and keeping an overall balance by plugging any gaps left by the more flexible forces designed to fulfil our needs.

A strange and unholy union.

Wrong way, wrong tool

Whether you believe in people's capacity to change or not. It's their ability or knowledge and the tools available to them that's the issue. With the best will in the world, you can want to change all your like, but you can't if you're doing it in the wrong way and using the wrong tool/s.

Weight loss dieting is both the wrong way and the wrong tool. It's not just dysfunctional but a cluster of dysfunctions. Which of those dysfunctions are brought most into play varies. As does in overall composition of them in individual attempts to diet.

This variance leaves cracks which can be exploited depending on the importance you can give dieting or single mindedness you can bring to consciously trying to regulate your weight. How much conscious attention you'll need to bring to the process of weight loss dieting, also varies because of all those variables.

The 95% failure of weight loss dieting statistic is probabilistic. It refers to an attempt. That is every time you try to diet you have 95% chance of that attempt failing. Saying DDW doesn't mean dieting never works. It could co-coincide with chance or placebo. Above all a spontaneous re-adjustment of your metabolism-towards loss.

After all, weight gain or fatness could be described as a spontaneous adjustment in the first place. Given the amount of people dieting, it's not surprising that this can provoke a chain of adjustment or could itself be the adjustment in some people.

For instance, when people gain weight, they sometimes eat more. It's as if the use of the strategy to gain weight by the body, needs to use this element of your metabolism-extra appetite for some things or hunger-to facilitate it. The reverse could be true, could be that if your body wishes to make a downward adjustment, it reduces your hunger. Doing that artificially could be deemed to have a potential placebo effect, by reverse. Though clearly, not very much population-wise.

As our consciousness is saturated with weight loss dieting, it wouldn't be surprising if this urge becomes submerged in the going on a diet narrative. After all, why now? For example, we're told the story of a person's weight gain. How they ate this and that, didn't exercise or whatever. So why at that moment, sometimes after decades of weight loss attempts does is this attempt the one? What is underlying that?

Professional courtesy

We all seem a bit confused on this one. We as fat people are shocked to hear hateful words on fatties from medical professionals, such as nurses and the like. The thing is, that's how they go on in general.

I think they pretty much "hate" everyone in that they make derogatory comments, behind their backs, or when they think the patient is out of earshot, even under anaesthetic. Work is a place where we generally bitch about work and the people we meet.   

As for the compassion of the medical professions. There's a mix up professional courtesy with personal courtesy. It's like if I work in a shop, and you're a potential customer. I'm polite to you. It's part of acting in a professional manner, to facilitate removing as much cash from your purse/pocket as possible.

That is my job, I might warm to you, or despise you. But if I'm professional, you won't know, because I'll treat you the same. If I was to get mixed up thinking that professional courtesy is out of the goodness of my heart, then I'm being very silly.

The 'caring' of med profs is at heart a professional necessity. None should not kid themselves it's solely out of personal inclination. It's to facilitate doing their job, therefore it is not theirs to withdraw. In the same way you can't abuse your customers because you feel an overwhelming sense that they are undeserving of your professional courtesy.

Whether they are or not, isn't the point.

Obesus neurosus

Well there has to be a name for it. For all the baggage you carry when you buy into fat being a bad state all round. It's a performance and somewhat creative too. It deals in the placebo/nocebo nexus. Your body and to some extent self being the nocebo- that is the (usually 'inert') substance you believe is doing you harm. So its possibility of harm comes from that belief, not the substance itself.

The there's the trying to catch yourself having "fat thoughts" the thinking that you're supposedly doing-but aren't-that supposed to be making/keeping you fat. A lifetime of this can make you mistrustful and somewhat dismissive of believing your own thoughts and emotions.

A state of the kind of discomfort many say leads to 'comfort eating.' Though that's supposed to pre-date your state.

Having to deny/discount what you're doing. And their results, even moreso, is dispiriting, it has to be your failure. Hence the liberation of realizing/admitting to yourself that it isn't. This is not about hurt feelings. It's about being able to acknowledge what keeps happening. Not being able to is humiliating, and a betrayal of yourself. Deepening that mistrust I mentioned.

Self dismissal too. The not taking yourself seriously. Not a cute self deprecating charm, but an eviscerating self contempt combined with finding yourself wholly unconvincing as a person in their own right.

You can end up feeling through more legitimate people. That is, feelings are only feelings, when they've been described by those accorded bona fide emotions.

The physical self dislocation, then sense of disowning your own body. It's not here to stay, it's going right, once I do a, b, c. Not looking at it. Not thinking about touching it. Not wanting to be it.

All this from smashing yourself down, in order to do something that invokes intense feelings of aversion, which you name as your sin bubbling up trying to keep its grip on you, in order to continue not accepting what you are doing, what was the result......

Who'd have thought tiny little behaviours such as this would have so little effect. 

Booga boo

I just have to pay tribute to an excellent comment made by "starling" on an, A Sarah thread over at shapely.

I would think it's good, it expresses so well and succinctly one of the things I've been trying to get at for what feels like an age. Why don't we turn the hyping up of obesity back on that cosmic joke, obesity science?

Instead of reacting and justifying ourselves, why don't we say, you think obesity is gonna kill us? All scream together;

((((SAVE US)))) ((((SAVE US )))) ((((SAVE US)))) 

I swear to goodness, that is what people would normally do if they thought they had a lurgy. Everyone else seems less shame faced and sheepish than us fatties. We can never seem to stop trying to accept whatever hoop we're asked to jump through.

We could not do much more than people have asked of us, but ask, "So why are you going to let us die?" "Are you trying to kill us?" "We don't want butchery, we want options," etc.,

Instead we waste a whole heap of time, 'proving' that we are not bad people just misunderstood or whatever. Apparently such is the bien voodoo powers of "scientific papers" that when people see we are scientifically valid, they'll stop all this willful suspension of reality, in order to go with the overwhelming power of the truth.

That's right, the overwhelming power they've ignored in order to go with an alternative vision more to their liking-that of the obesity crisis. I'm not entirely sure why this has to be. At first I was mystified. Then I supposed 'twas just our learned response to genuflect to the status quo.

There's perhaps an element of class solidarity/understanding about it. a lot of people in FA come from the same place as the people who are selling it. They speak the same language, think the same way. They're academics, a few are medical students/ professional, or of the professional classes themselves. Or aspire to be.

Although this is the case, there's little sense of equality. For instance, they do not speak of doctors etc as one insider to another, they speak as if they are somewhat supplicant. It's clear that we as fat people have been party to the construction of this cul de sac. The fantasy of being thin, is as much of a suspension of disbelief as the fantasy of the obese 'persona'.

To pretend that all ones problems will be over once one is thin, uses the same reserve of fatuous self delusion, as to pretend fat people are all of a certain type, lazy and greedy. As if other people could tell the difference! Yes you can point out lies, but the question is, why do we need to do this? Why do we need these kinds of fantasies to replace the truth?

Show me the evidence

That is the cry, even if reality is that evidence.

It seems asking for that has become a delaying tactic of those who do not wish to accept reality as it is.

Whether its those into creation science, that is where people try to verify biblical creation myths according to the rules of science or those who insist there is a crisis of what would have been prevented by the success of weight loss diets that preceded them, asking for proof that they've failed.

Even though I admire rationalism, I've never fallen into the trap of assuming that this is the only worthwhile way our brains work. I used to wonder what would happen when those who assume we can function solely through logic and what can be explained by it, wanted to cling to things they couldn't explain that way.

Now I know, they just ask for evidence.