Other people’s obsession

In the past, beyond my anarchistic appetite and hunger, I fancied cookery as a skill I should master to be an accomplished person. We have to eat, so we might as well do it well, being able to meet that need with skill and resource is admirable.

Later on, I was able to normalize those inner signals and instinctively I tested ideas as they came up, based on theories I had on logic and so forth, to unravel the hold negative food obsession had assumed over my life. Once I got out of the calorie restriction business, it didn’t feel like my own it wasn’t why I got into healthy eating.

I'd always had an honest relationship with food, it was the obesity persona and wanting to be thin that had made a liar out of me. Feeling I had to 'confess' to things I didn't feel, yet couldn't come up with an alternative explanation for, because of the tremendous pressure that is put on you to comply set that aside. In spite of that, I did not pretend that I enjoyed eating when I didn't, I said, I felt a constant drive to do it, not that I was addicted or getting a high. I said I was relieving the symptom of rising tension that would keep going until it overcame so much of my brain that other thoughts had little room to exist.

I'd have to go back to being to being a small child to think of a time when my awareness was not getting in the way of what I ate. I have a few pictures in my head where I remember eating or drinking things without any concern other than whether I liked or disliked them. Then around that age, I became conscious that my desire to eat seemed heightened for some reason. I could suggest many things but I don’t think it matters.

I reacted to that sense and only the threat to my height stopped me from trying to 'do something' immediately. I held off for a few years, at that point I just couldn't stand the tension and started my first experience in WLD fail. I don't remember a genuine and pure moment of pleasurable nor peaceful eating from then until a couple of decades later, when I crashed into WLD burnout. It was afterwards that I was lucky enough to be relieved of an overarchingly responsive hunger.

Now although that was good, it wasn't enough, I felt I needed to let go of anything I suspected burdened my eating in any way. I wanted to feel psychologically free of the debris of anti food propaganda and feelings left in my head.

I let go not only of this food is good/bad, I let go of as many personal feelings of I like this or that food as I could, trusting that whatever preferences I had would remain without the need for excessive fuss and fanfare. I didn't know it at the time, but I was instinctively moving to a more spontaneous feeling about food. I'm not talking about intuitive eating; I mean offloading as much stress surrounding and during eating as possible. IOW, how rational people eat.

You cannot avoid having ideas about it, but you can try and make those ideas supportive and protective of your own needs and your ability to decipher them accurately. More than that you make your mind get out of the damn way.

I wanted to help re-assert the sense of personal authority I had over myself, that I felt I'd given up to pursue an invasive and outer directed view of myself and how to eat. That had not in any way sympathetic to me on any level. What happened along the way was a bit of a surprise, whilst I can easily enjoy any cookery program I fancy, when I want. Or I can discuss food a bit my interest quickly palls.

I've found the way I feel about food does not suit the ostentatious variety of healthist or foodie preciousness which hangs around the place. Even more, I’m not even sure I care that much about food at all, at least, relative to that.

And that's just what it is and that's the way I like it. I got an inkling of this years ago, when listening to a group of women spend 10 minutes talking about things they didn’t eat but wanted to but couldn't because it was wrong etc., I found myself shouting "eat or don’t eat but SHUT UP!" at the radio.

I'll walk miles to get what I want if I want it enough-and have the time-and if I don't care, I'll eat later, or I'll make do, often just to deal with basic energy needs and eat something more desired later, it all depends on a mind boggling complex set of circumstances both inner and outer. But all is very easy in the end. I just do what I feel like doing, full stop.

I'm not an intuitive eater, I have no problem with thinking, I could use a bit of x or I'm getting into a bit of a rut with y, I'll seek something else and so on. That conscious kind of rational is as natural and instinctive to me as any strong inner preference for this or that; it's just another point to read my needs. I don't pathologize it because of WLD horror- this of course, caused a rise in appetite and fear of fat to erupt.

I’ve junked the nastiness and am using that part of my mind differently to enhance not to be overly directive and I hate it when people come along to give orders on what fat people should/shouldn't eat and how much. That time is passed.

To say that I beyond do not want to use my eating to regulate my weight, full stop, is an understatement of epic proportions. I'm actually, not interested in whether eating more of this or less of that leads to less weight here, because I actually can't relate to food anywhere near like that anymore, it doesn't make sense nor cause me to do anything but switch off. It’s made me fully aware that it is other people who are obsessed with what (fat) people are supposed to eat and they who will not let go of it.

Where's this Michelle Obama?

Just a little request from an outsider. Can US fat children have this Michelle Obama please?



Courtesy of Colorlines.

More reality points

warning; this post mentions slimming companies, but no links or puff.

I'm surprised that not much has been made of weight watchers latest wheeze it's called 'pro plus plan' (check their site if you feel to). I can't force the intricate details into my mind before my eyes glaze over.

Anyone who claims women are not naturally nerdy needs to check out the whole calorie counting whirl to know they don't know what they are talking about. Basically it deviates from its more recent points scheme, that assigned points to food-rather than caloric values and you had to fit those into your daily points allowance, they brought that in about 15 years ago.

So why the update? Well, when reality keeps piling up to a certain point, you have to reach an accommodation with at least part of it, or you get lost in silly. It's stuff that's been known before, but they've worked out a way to take it on board on their own terms. Have you noticed often its not the results, it's the being ready for them that so often counts?


So what is this 'new information'?

That calories don't quite count, straight out one for one, all the time as sure as eggs.

Get this, different foods are broken down in the body differently using up differing amounts of energy in doing so depending on a variety of variable influences and circumstance, which might make a teensy weensy difference to the enigma that is cals in/out.

Get out of town! And how long do you want to bet it will take them to catch on that enjoying what you eat can also make a difference too? I offer, not soon, after all how would they control and regulate that variable? It could not be incorporated into points-imagine trying to earn pleasure points! They stick with things they can control or appear to.

This new method is an attempt to incorporate this 'brand new information' (I'm sure someone researched it last week or something), in order to (desperately) try and squeeze more freedom for their clientele run ragged by the tyranny of their dietary regimes, to increase the sense they are people not directed by dietary restriction, for life. But free to enjoy being told what to do.

People might say "Oh, I'm never hungry on WW, it's fab/ I always feel free as a bird etc.," tell that to those who keep trying to wring a bit more room for manoeuvre from their self imposed famine allowance.

And no, they did not mention this must be the kind of thing so many fat people mention about calorie theory being a tad simplistic, that could make it seem like we actually experience reality in some way, ergo we have meaningful subjective experience that can be as accurate as anyone else's. That would spoil things.

Watching WW from this angle (from afar-like, g**gle earth far) can be amusing. If you look at it over the years, its gone from robotic rigidity to increasingly drawn to mimic normal eating, whilst trying to avoid derailing weight loss all together. Twisting and turning to try and make it's blessed hypothesis function.


Even way back I could see where this was going. It is hard not to laugh when one observes this unfolding, that as these plans become more 'normal' they become less and less effective. Which is saying something, lucky for them they have scale of numbers and unyielding hope of thinness on their side.

My feeling was, if you have normal eating at one end moving toward calorie restriction at the other, is there any point before the former crashes the latter where there is a chink of non rebound creating weight loss?

I'd venture a no (except by chance), research might be better off finding another way to use the conscious mind to monkey with metabolic function, or even not, maybe that's wrong too. Maybe the real answer is focusing elsewhere entirely. Will we ever know? Things would have to change a lot, that's what's in the way.

I have to say, bless all those WW alumni, past and present, you've been and continue to be the lab rats!

Pay to be a guinea pig? Don't tell Big Pharma!

The weight of work

A small story highlighted at kataphatic features a man who cleverly sued McDonald's (he had worked for them) got compensated for feeling he had to eat their stuff every day. He gained 65 lbs and became fat.

It's funny because they couldn't fight it and lost, both in essence due to fat phobia! It's hard not to laugh.

What's more interesting is the kind of tangled response that comes up a lot in FA;

I mean, I have no problem with people choosing to eat at McDonald’s but I think it’s pretty clear it’s not the healthiest choice, and no one should ever feel compelled by their job (or anything else) to eat it.

If I was to close in on the central issue it would be-leaving aside the fact that he felt he had to eat McD's everyday- the balance of needs, his versus his employers. Which is what kataphatic said, so why the need to introduce healthism into the response?

Why do people have to keep referring to the purported un/healthiness of food, as if they are avoiding cracks in the pavement? There is no conclusive evidence that the type of food we eat causes weight gain. Plenty of slim people eat the food associated with fatness and remain so; in fact some people can only remain slim on a normal or even high fat/sugar/carb/protein diet. We only hear about it the other way around fatter people becoming less so or thin, due to healthist eating. It seems some people tend to be thinner on an inefficient diet-healthist- and others on an efficient diet-normal.

It all relies too much on association, which to me is a sign of persuing the wrong direction. If someone's metabolism is responding and adapting to emotional, stress or other imbalances through altering the balance of the appetite, and/or hunger, you can associate that with the kind of foods that tend to get the job done best, high fat/carb/sugar/protein, but that starts the causal chain, towards its end point.

Why would one get a craving for cucumbers during a physically/emotionally draining time in one’s life or when our bodies or minds need support? People need to face up to the fact that whatever we’ve decided to think about water heavy produce, they are nature’s junk food.

The most compelling point is that the ex-manager was unable to respond to his own personal needs and had to (felt he had to) respond to those of his employers. The kind of equation that makes WLD so dependency inducing. If so that put him out of sync with them, which may or may not have unbalanced his metabolism making it less efficiently realised and having to adapt to that.

I personally don't get why that would necessarily make him eat more, you don’t have to or not much to start putting on weight if the conditions are affecting the right place. For instance, during pregnancy a woman’s rate of using up calories can stall, meaning that their weight can increase significantly, double even.

It may have been the stress of a McD's career that made its food more appealing to his palate, although that is not his argument. It seems difficult to eat what you don’t want to eat every day, and why could he just taste like a chef? He could also have spread the burden, all employees get a free lunch, unless no-one takes it up, he could have got their views too.

Perhaps his inflexibility and lack of creativity was a problem, or the reflection of the pressure he felt, perhaps. That level of fear makes demands on our bodies and minds, it can be very draining which may affect our energy needs.

What I find interesting is why we feel the need to make a point which suggests fatness is a sign of unhealthy eating when that is an assumption we often refute ourselves?

The truth is that the healthy/unhealthy eating argument contains so many false assertions that it is difficult to fully disentangle the worthwhile from the worthless but one of the more obvious ones is the pretence that eating certain foods makes you fat.

How can that be when just as many slim people eat that same food? The whole point about the crisis is that it fixates on food, because it is a way into people's consciousness really it seeks social control. I say that because the obvious failure has made no difference to this fixation, if anything, it's strengthened it.

Every religion seeks to monkey around with what you eat, as a vehicle for adherence, for you to express your devotion to the cause and make sure that when you do something you will probably do at least a few times a day on average, you are constantly underlining and reinforcing that code.

That is the purpose of it in a secular context; it takes that pattern, to remind you of whatever the secularist manifesto seeks to bind you to. I've often been surprised at the way many religions embrace it, but then they are maybe picking up on the underlying theme of observance they are used to.

Hard 8

Dear TIME,

 Allow me to respond,

Getting obese patients to lose weight is tricky to begin with,

I have to tell you straight, we fatz have grown up and interacted with slim people and I'm afraid we're on to the fact that despite being the weight you are, you probably don't know why nor can you replicate it in anyone else. We cannot be expected to keep humouring this pretence for much longer can we? I mean, we have done it for a long enough now. Try not to get upset.

Take up a hobby. I think crochet is excellent for breaking bad habits, it helps you focus and keep your mind off others, try making this lovely waistcoat, I just know it will help you to MYOB.

I've noticed that pretending you are superior to fat people and knowledgeable about weight only leads to frustration. Let me help soothe away those boo boos by explaining. When people pretend to be superior and aren't, they are saying to themselves "I am not good enough as I am". This leads to a gaping tear between the expectation of superiority and a secret sense of inferiority. This process can make people fractious and tend towards blaming fat people, as if we cheated you out of the expected windfall of self esteem in some way. So you fixate on any fat person who doesn't hate themselves. If only you spent more time working directly on your own self esteem and did less pretending we'd all be happier. We wouldn't have to support your draining high maintenance demands to lower ourselves to make you feel better. That is a fool's errand I can tell you;

About 165 people, or 8% of the group, chose ideal body shapes that were the same or bigger than their own, suggesting a misunderstanding of healthy weight ideal bodies.

That's 92% of fat people not feeling they look good are a healthy weight yet it just doesn't feel enough does it? That's how badly dependent you are on fat people having lowered self esteem. Is it really that 8% of 'hold outs' stopping the millions of diet attempts from working? Are they acting as a global stopper in the universe preventing all the adipose cells worldwide flowing into a universal furnace?

I think we would have heard about this hard eight by now, don't you? Why don't you try this book, I haven't read it, but borrowing a lesson from you, if you don't know what you are talking about, you must know what you are talking about. Please stop thinking we worship you and wish to touch the hem of your garment because you can't hear yourselves. Sometimes  we have to let you hector us on various things you want us to eat/do/think just to let you get some of it out of your system. Often you sulk if we don't allow you to try and 'save us' from nutritional apostasy, real or imagined.

many clinically obese men and women think they're already at a healthy weight look good.

Is it about looks or health? Oh well, I'm sure that I don't have the level of sophistication to make two contrasting and unrelated ideas seem like a conclusion. Oh, wait, maybe it's because my fat mind is a bit slow and your thin one is lightening fast and athletic.

Wow, your thin mind is just too fast for mere logic! Now that would be a disincentive for losing weight I must say, what if my mind ended up so fast that I made no sense and didn't notice? That would be embarrassing (mind you, not if I was oblivious to it eh?) I prefer the simple life of slowly trying to make sense of things and testing what logic I can, you don't think I'm a degenerate do you?

I'm not going to lie, I was one of those who pretended along that being slim meant you knew something about becoming slim. I never got the "go to the doctor and s/he has a few words with you about your weight and you will lose it". Maybe it was the witch doctor?

I am now thoroughly ashamed of this pretence it's clearly lead you a merry dance and gone to your head, it was to keep hope alive, what was I supposed to do, just accept being fat? I could not, so whatever it took, even when it made no sense, after all, being something doesn't give you mastery of biology does it? I ignored that, now it's hard to tell you because you get upset and say you're doing it to help me.

You aren't because you and I both know deep down, you aren't a doctor. Let's be honest it makes you feel good about being slimmer, yes it does, that's why you love talking about fat, you love it I know. But you can't hear how silly you sound strutting around like a bumptious school prefect talking about how to make fat people see the error of our ways. I just don't feel it's fair to pretend you don't sound like a bossy 5 year old who thinks they know everything! The kind everyone in the family laughs at until they realise suddenly, that everything revolves around them. Many of us can't keep playing along anymore, so please drop it, our indulgence can only go so far.

A healthy acceptance of one's own body is undoubtedly critical to good self-esteem.

Then why is it not working for you? Have you given up? I see the signs, when you're desperate to lower others around you, trying to look better in comparison. But you actually go nowhere, you stay the same. If you had hope, you'd be fine with others having self respect, because you'd be hopeful of raising your own. Don't give up, keep trying, keep pushing yourself. Take smoking, it's not easy to start, research shows that smokers try quite a lot of cigarettes before they stop coughing or vomiting. Yet they keep trying and look how many of them smoke now! I know you can do it.

But a lack of awareness of one's own obesity can lead to undiagnosed obesity-related conditions including sleep apnea, high blood pressure and diabetes.

They know they're fat don't they? They just thought they looked good with it, you can't have missed that. Hey, is that a hidden joke? Did you take bets on how many instances of nonsense you could get into this article without anyone noticing?

Well done! You had me going.

Wriggles.

H/T living400

Ha, ha Stephen Fry!

What larks, Fry, flogging some product or other, no doubt has deigned to reveal that (straight) women-sorry lesbians, you've been overlooked-are not as keen on straight sex as gay men appear to be on gay sex, if you take his rather compulsive standard.

Women it seems only permit males to sheath their swords in order to have a 'relationship' with them. That doesn't sound right to me, I've found that if a straight identified woman doesn't want to have sex with men, she doesn't tend to want a relationship with them either.

I used to hold Stephen Fry in some esteem through a fondness for the idealism he channelled into his alter ego Donald Trefusis. That eroded significantly over the years, but held steady at respect for his undoubted intelligence, until I ran smack into his base fat phobia of the “no fatties in concentration camps" kind on Nigella’s brief incarnation as a chat show host.

That would be bad enough on its own, but given that some of his relatives perished in the Holocaust, hard to believe. That point is not why I went off him it's just that I would have expected him to be disgusted by this kind of trivialisation. I thought he would add a rare intelligence and rationality to the discussion of weight. This was the end of my belief in his ‘genius’, he was utterly shown up in my eyes and I remembered the unpleasantness of that for a long time.

A lot of folk talk about fatness flushing out the objectionable, it also flushes out those who think for themselves, as opposed to those who merely absorb and parrot what they are told. Fat phobia exposes things about people that they're used to hiding. I cannot think of anyone who's ever not been lowered in my eyes by fat hating, and the greater the expectation, the greater that effect.

I can't find much kinship with feminists’ cries of; how could he? He's usually so nice. Oh sista(hood) puhr-lease, some of us could have alerted you to his act but you had to wait until he’s up in your face. I am a bit surprised by the easily released homophobia, rather than just making the case for or against. 

He didn't mention male negativity toward heterosex he said hetero guys think women feel disgusted by them, but men go along with the idea that a woman who has pranged more than a few of them is sullied and demeaned by it. Slut shaming degrades women, sure, but what does it say about men? That they despoil the clean and the good?

This is not a WATM; it’s that the rage about this injury can be taken out on others, including women. There is a definite tang of condescension towards straight men too which seems political, almost as if he's saying; "try gay men, we really love doing it with guys, women don't!" I’ve heard it before, I suppose there’s an inevitable subterranean rivalry between groups.

Instead of solidarity in the face of a heteronormative patriarchy that oppresses all of us, there remains a chasm of suspicion and misunderstanding that obstructs genuine solidarity between women and gay men.

I simply can’t feel that rationale, are gay men necessarily allies of women and vice versa anymore than straight men? It ignores the way lesbians are shunted aside within the gay community at times. I think that gay men can and have often shown themselves to be allies of many outsiders and marginalized people, through empathy, however some haven't, just like any other men. Plenty of straight men supported full female humanity and liberation throughout the ages, sexual attraction does not preclude the self respect not to wish or need to demean others, even if they are potential lovers. And if some or all of those who are complaining would bracket themselves 'pro-sex' we have to ask why they assume it does?

I know they’ve suffered and been persecuted hugely, however, I think their relationship with women is more ambivalent than is alluded to. Clearly that's the case for some women too, judging by their responses.

“female sexuality is still a mystery to many men, gay and straight”

Include some of us women in that because having been trained to be, excuse the French, f***bags. It can sometimes become obscured from us too, this misunderstanding can cause a libido to turn unexpectedly to ashes. It’s always supposed to be about shame or female trouble, but we ignore the possibility that it’s more about the way anatomy and sexuality is described to us.

Laurie Penny talks about lack of safety being an issue for women, but that’s supposed to be what sex is all about, risk and danger, certainly for some men that is part of the attraction of this kind of free range open air sex. That smacks of trying to inject some energy into something that is not as potent as its supposed to be. And really, just how convincing is this kind of enjoyment of sex? Some men seem to pursue the possibility of sex at every opportunity as an ideal, which they claim as their own and can get very defensive about. But honestly, it often seems too pat and unconvincing, a little too ideological.

The way that it no amount of access or availability ever seems to be enough, the scent underlying panic, seem to be more than about pleasure, which is not just about frequency or amount. Its a process with some kind of start and end. There's something about this picture that doesn't quite hang together, like a jigsaw with all the right pieces but some are jammed together meaning the whole view is skewered.

Compulsion is about pursuing a pleasure deficit or trying to pursue satisfaction and/or closure. If you cannot achieve this, you can end up chasing it and if that develops a momentum of its own you end up with much chasing, sometimes manically so.

If women had this level of compulsion they would be questioned, heck, they’d question themselves. Fry's offensiveness is his misogynistic assumption that all men as the standard for human sexuality and women the offcut which all problems reside, so old fashioned it is a joke.

It is clear that many women adore sex, I’d doubt that if men could end up potentially with a baby on board every time he had sex could manage more of the absolute abandon many women do. Don't assume men personify or set the standard for human sexuality Mr Fry.

Modifying the body

When weight loss dieting is slotted into the category of body modification I find myself mystified by the way it never deals with its inability to deliver. Either it assumes it succeeds, or does not care. Wanting to be slim/mer, fat/ter is about fashioning your body, but that desire has to be realised by that actual body or it is little more than an ideal.

This leads WLD to seem like a kind of fetish, in this context, as it becomes the represenation of an idea and the investment of feelings desiring this and behaves as if this means it works. This refusal to contextualise dieting's actual efficacy, as opposed to what is claimed creates a false argument with those who point out the reality of calorie restriction. It makes them the deniers of your freedom to do what you wish with your body, when in fact that belongs to those who've cynically pretended that it's a viable option.

Weight loss dieting is far more about maintaining the viability of itself than it is about the person or the body concerned and is one of the reasons why people get sick of being pressed into it by establishment figures. They just become a servant of the process rather than meeting their own needs.

The irresistible force of desire to shape one's body meets the immovable object of WLD's uselessness and the force gets re-directed towards rancour towards those who are exploring the truth as if by this, they are denying you the right to modify your body weight.

Whether we argue that dieting is morally wrong- I think it is-or that it is morally wrong to alter one's body in certain ways, we are blamed for the failure of weight loss dieting. Which is really annoying, but stupid is as stupid does as they say, we should all have the intelligence to recognise why our desires are not being met rather than scapegoating in our disappointment of thwarted promise.

Above all, weight loss dieting is about the cult of weight loss dieting, it may have been intended to help people lose weight, but the fact that it keeps outliving it's failure shows that it has become more about the only thing it truly delivers on self perpetuation.

Not to mention the fact that it often produces much weight gain and fatness itself, feederism is often preceded by calorie and dietary restriction. This is no irony, shortfall leads often to surfeit and vice versa in cycle where causality can become obscure. Splitting the two is used a lot by religion which cleverly avoids responsibility for its more havoc inducing prohibitions by blaming the result of this on some or other designated demon. Thereby evading responsibility for its own re/actions. It explains the need, I notice that as scientific causality has gained ground, the 'devil' has receded as a force, even before the triumph of secularism among the reality setting classes.

The expected reward flowing from goodness instead becomes the tyranny of outer direction dissolving into self destruction, you've been doubly cheated, yet full awareness of how is trapped within the expectation of a righteous outcome.

This frustration is often diverted into abusing fat people to (why not? If you abuse yourself, why not others?) recover the sense of triumph you thought was in your grasp.

Weight loss is not indivisible/interchangeable with WLD, it is a biological fact
an automatic result of the correct conditions, i.e. lack of calories. Your weight fluctuates during the day, losing and gaining as you take in and use energy. WLD does not create this, it does not create anything, it merely attempts to elongate the original automatic process. Becoming a long and painful demonstration of the success of the body's ability to see off semi or actual starvation.

Actual success is ignored-it's your fault-and mythical success is shored up at every turn, leaving its quarry to pay the tab.

Those who wish to modify their bodies thin/ner should hate dieting more than anyone as it is cheating them out of what they may feel is their full self expression. They should be enraged that this painful uselessness is presented as a viable option, clearly de-railing and being used to shut out alternatives. If they don't want to be, don't take it out on FA or fat people.

If it's so important to them, they should be ready almost ready to riot by now. Clearly they are caught up in the fetish of weight loss/thinness, like everyone else and cannot don't want to see past the illusion. If so, just how much do they really wish to modify their bodies? I do not see how desire for body modification begats any lasting intrest in WLD, I really don't.

I'm fascinated as to why folks would raise this rationale for an approval of WLD, possibly because it carries the kudos of self worship ad absurdum that is so au courant. Or a hiding place for something that doesn't wish to express itself directly.

Without a constant and all consuming attention to it's own survival and as important the ravaging of anything which threatens it such as truth or facts, it unravels. That has been a peculiar source of its drive to dominate, and its an example of the dynamic that makes us fear extremism (often mislabelled radicalism) it needs to alter the world to be like it to survive, therefore it tends toward a ruthlessness and amorality. When dieters insist on destroying even the most tame and wishy washy FA with their (oc)cultism for instance, they are surfing that impulse.

Dieting cannot be denied or partial it has to take over and destroy or it dies, that is the extreme nature of it. It is too unbalanced to come to a harmonious co-existence with any fact other than people's free desire to engage with it. Although it is fear of relying on that, suggests that might well extinguish it via that means.

Its dynamic means it has little room to promote compromise with it, it's nature precludes this too because it is defined by not caring for one's feelings or those of others. It cultivates an inner distance within oneself, by riding roughshod over compelling messages we need to acknowledge, pain and discomfort. It trains us to do the same to others.

Those who've fashioned diets as we know them today have had ample chance to make dieting stem from a positive source. They've had the chance to go with: "Being fat is fine, but being thin is better" or whatever, selling thinness on its own (perceived) merits.

They've choose not to. Either they instinctively or consciously recognise that WLD is too self abusive for positivity to hold, to provide sufficient fuel to launch, therefore it has to come out of and be supported by its milieu, hate, disgust, negativity-be desperate to do anything to evade fatness as much as reach for thinness.

As Maura Kelly's example indicates, calorie restriction is often the cause carrier and generator of fat phobia and fat hate. Mass participation in this and dietary restriction is responsible for the public acquiescence to the hate fuelled rules of the obesity crusade.

Labelling dieting or its goal thinness as good or neutral is just odd, even those who sell it know it isn't. This helps to create an inner dissonance that is not consciously recognised-unless one develops disordered eating, or eating disorders which are actually what they are for- prompting bullying and venting on to designated targets.

Fatties as the personification of what you are trying to fight is the same pattern as blaming us for the WLD fail, as the brave soul trying to defeat the forces of eval fat, it is recast as the cause of your abuse. Your only trying to get away yet in order to do so, you have to suffer. How disgusting it must seem to see it 'flaunting' itself about the place (seemingly) unapologetic, when you were prepared to die to avoid it.

Even if this wanted to be about body artfully shaping your body and decorating it, it isn't by its very nature.