Lore of addiction

The lore of addiction implies addicts are in denial if they are not abstaining from their intoxicant. This 'denial' increases the right of others to describe their inner experience, to take it over in order to put them back on the right track.

Not really the case, but I don't want to get sidetracked.

People ignore that addicts accept they are addicted. However long it takes, it's relatively rare for someone to deny forever that they have a problem -that will only tend to increasing till it becomes overwhelming and speaks for itself. And though addiction affects/distorts behaviour and responses, it doesn't in and of itself remove sanity.

Fat people have travelled in the other direction from the narrative of an addict becoming aware of a change of state from using to needing. Fatz have never resisted other people's diagnosis of 'problem with food' it's the whole shape of calorie restriction. Any of us who've dieted or thought we should have by doing that accepted what they are now trying to call our 'addiction'.

That fits our accusers better as they are totally in denial about the reality of their beliefs. It's called delusion, wilful in this case.

It is our experience of this inner witch hunt that eventually gave way to our moment of clarity. Even if your hunger and appetite are out of balanced dieting is itself an imbalance so you either create or increase inner havoc.

Creating the problem we are already supposed to have, the former would therefore be hidden by the latter too.

It is now recognised by at least a few experts that this is even more the case if you have actual disorder, you simply must not diet. So the only purpose of dieting turns out to be to create the original diagnosis, the reverse of abstinence which seeks to imitate a pre addicted state.

Which of course is almost (though not quite) as bad as lifestyle anorexia.

In truth abstinence doesn't particularly 'work' much for addicts either. It is basically a religious mindset a form of faith healing, that if you believe in wellness you by that belief create it, i.e. placebo.

It's like a depressed person making a singular conscious effort to reverse their symptoms. To act cheerful and energetic, to fake it. If this somehow triggers the body to restore its balance then bingo, it seems like a result.

But how likely is that to work? In a sense if you have reached that state it's far more likely that fake it till you make it has already failed to catch numerous times along the way. It's more likely there is more than one dimension to the condition.

In the case of fatness what is being attacked is hunger and because of that creating or furthering imbalance because the body is design to overcome obstacles to what it needs to continue, whereas in addiction the resistance is the shortfall (that is the addiction itself).

I'm not trying to be snobby here I know addicts often object to to fatz rejecting the tag 'addict',

In the case of fatz and other ex-dieters it is stopping weight loss dieting that actually feels like stopping an addiction. Look at all the trigger warnings regarding weight loss dieting. Dieting actually sensitises your nervous system to the point where everything hurts more and things that wouldn't do, especially in terms of emotions, levels of anxiety and so forth.

Similar to that aspect in addiction or depression.

The addiction scenario of self harming behaviour (which I don't accept as a useful or correct way of looking at it) then piles up and eventually messes up your life, is exactly what happens with dieting, the pursuit of it increasingly takes over your life and messes it up. The more you put into it the greater the mess.

The dieters 'strung out' i.e. dieted/burnt out is when your body can no longer tolerate another effort to impose what is a form of anorexia on it, or what addiction lore calls 'rock bottom' the free dictionary's words;

 b. Physically or emotionally exhausted.

That is when you have to stop and recover the part of yourself that has been steamrollered by your increasingly narrowed focus (obsession).

Understand, I'm not trying any rotty thinking about labelling sub anorexia an addiction, that would be the exact mis-use I can't stand, I'm merely stating that it fits the model far better than merely being fat.

Ditto drug addicts, the addiction takes them over squeezing the energy out of their personality by recruiting that energy to its ends so you  become an entity that exists purely to facilitate drug use. From being a person with an addiction, you become an addiction with a person as an engine for that.

I know also that addiction is being used for the stigma that has been invested in it and this makes addicts angry at fatz who reject the tag thinking that its out of snobbery, this ends up being the same objection smokers have, we've accepted the place assigned to us therefore fatz must too.

If you accept what you clearly don't like that is no reason for anyone else to accept it. If you look at fatz and think "who are you to refuse this? Don't you know how low you are?" and that gives you pause for thought about the things you've accepted, that's a good thing.

But we [Some of us] are not swayed one iota by addicts or smokers as to what we should and shouldn't accept, we make up our own minds same as you.

Arguments have raged about the true nature of addiction, counter arguments have been put and the loose thinking of today where anything can be an addiction (nonsense) won. People who do not grasp it at all feel they can bandy it around.
 
If contempt for fatz and our rejection of it is the catalyst for a rethink, be our guest, the status accorded to addiction is evident in the fact that eating can be compared to it at all with it as a starting premise-that is status indeed. Sorry if it upsets you that [if] we aren't impressed by that status, like you, we feel perfectly capable of knowing who and what we are.

And you of all people should know how tiresome it is when the ignorant/ scared mentality impinges on your lives. This whole self abuse/self harm is their view. As we see from pursuing the sanctioned self abuse of dieting society and authority does not object to this because they feel its right.
Yet when judging you, they do not ascribe that same humanity to you, they switch to you take drugs because you feel it will do you good and harm is a side effect of that, to putting forth self harm as motive.

Drug addicts know those who are endlessly seeking vicarious thrills by hearing your stories. They get off on them, always wanting to know all the scrapes you've been in and what you've been reduced to, then they tsk, tsk and then go onto their wages of sin weariness act.

When they talk about self harm as a motive rather than an effect or consequence they put first what is stopping them from turning vicarious into action, fear of harm to their precious selves. They stoke their contempt of you, at the same time by this reiterate their self valuation.

The self harm analysis puts them first just as the stigmatisation of addicts does too, its all for them all to discourage other from taking drugs. Sacrificing you to their need in the process.

When one thinks of the sanctimonious way people go on about addicts they are endlessly punked into doing things normals don't have to. Any prescription addicts-now there's people with airs and graces- will be told above all else, never stop taking your drugs without medical advice and support.

If illegal drug users are to receive the time of day, they must stop now no matter what. I actually didn't know till quite recently that people die due to having to stop drugs this abruptly especially if that has been long term. I saw a documentary about an addict who died of a brain aneurysm because of this. Although the damage done to his body leading up to that may have assisted, the question remains if he'd been allowed staged withdrawal, would he have survived?

Presumably the clinical trials indicating illegal drug users should do what legal one are advised strongly against will give an indication. I'm sure there are plenty.

That's another thing missing from fatness or even overeating as addiction-intoxication. In order to be in a state of addiction you must have an intoxicant, it is the side effects of this that cause the effects or highs you are seeking.

Many of us are aware of these things and more, but it doesn't feel like our place to interfere in what drug addicts choose to use to represent their experiences. But when it comes to defining our experience that is for us and drug addicts have no more expertise than anyone, even ex-addicts who have now become fat.

Nonsense such as I feel my eating/body is like my addiction, do not impress me one iota and that should be borne in mind when these statements are issued in order to avoid the shock of having addiction spiel taken with a pinch of salt.

Anyone who calls themselves an addict, calls it themselves for themselves, not me or any other fatz. Whatever hierarchy you think exists does not exist for me and my consciousness. So any authority endorsed sensibility you find sufficient compensation for the punking you've been given is not for me to cash. Take it up with those doing the stigmatising.

Mere satiety the soothing of an excess of appetite or even mood support from foodstuffs doesn't cut it as a poison, unless that food has gone off and ferments turning into a drug, like alcohol!

Ethics and placebos

It's sometimes hard not to be amused just seeing the title of things like this post "Pretending that evidence is difficult and complicated".

Indeed.

The first thing that occurs is the way the complex 'obesity' and weight loss is going around serving as an explanation for the results of repeated failure. That tells us nothing other than that approach is mainly futile. To boldly state from that what something may or may not be seems overly descive.

You can only assess the complexity of something if you've studied it rather than what you are convinced will/should/must be true. I never liked the 'complex' argument even when presented by fat activists, it seemed to me yet again to pay extreme regard to what has been a rather mindless approach of late. It behaved as if the study of obesity has been rational therefore we can draw rational conclusions from that.

How can we?
 
Anything is 'complex' if subject to endless blunder. They say simple when you know how, which can also mean simple when you are taking the right approach, when you are looking at it the right way up.

The idea that the repeated failure of a guess = complexity just gives yet another out clause to on the cynical farceurs who've run around like Keystone cops (place cursor on the +) in the face of facts they're studiously blanking. For their own ends.

Then there's the complaining about things like homeopathy. I was slow on the uptake when it comes to the medical ethics and placebos, due to the way 'advice' on calorie manipulation has flown in the face of that with a shocking disregard.

Apparently professionals are not supposed to engage in treating people on the basis of placebos because the investment of belief in them may require a false presentation of facts, or outright lying. And lying to patients is unethical even if it might benefit them.

It seems logical now, but I'd never have guessed, I thought I was just upset because of a petty sense of injustice.

Even if they have nothing else to offer and feel bad/ ashamed/ powerless about that.

They still shouldn't tell people something works to manipulate the patients behaviour, the  authority we invest in them could make us very vulnerable to this form of persuasion.

They should acquaint their patients with the facts, so they are informed and can based their consent on meaningful. Doctors wouldn't want patients to consent to what they wouldn't if they had a more balanced view of the situation, would they?

Therefore telling people to do stuff that is ineffectual at best let alone harmful is unethical.

Umm.........

Whoop de don't

*Trigger warning: Weight loss dieting featured throughout and in links.

The thing about lionizing the absence/shortfall of fat hating in those who make weight their profession is it's obliviousness toward those actually in need of bona fide treatment.

Its hard to see issuing guidelines to the medical profession to stop harassing their patients with quackery about the intricacies of "weight management" as anything to celebrate.

Really, who cares?

I mean what's happened here?

They've (partially) acknowledged the biological reality of which there can be little rational doubt. After all if that were not the case, there would be nothing to manufacture a 'crisis' out of.

Do we have such a low view of the medical profession because of the low standard set by 'obesity' that this is a cause for celebration now? It's partly because I thought more highly of them that this kind of thing doesn't seem like anything much at all.

And are we really so self absorbed that we consider the real problem to be the iatrogenic mindwarp of pseudo anorexia worship rather than why obesity professionals don't have anything for people like Georgia?

That should have been their purpose all along. There was a time when I thought this was the point of making it about all fat people in order to overcome the lack of interest there might of been in people who have some kind of metabolically generated problem or imbalance.

Now I wonder whether the opposite is true, that people would have been more interested in this if it had been presented from this angle with some suggestion that of course the answer for outliers would probably be the answer for everyone.

It's saying something when even the fat phobic lackey media can finally understand something more is going on than their usual hackneyed obesity narrative and ask who is going to help Georgia? They know the answer is not what 'helped' her rebound by 7 stones/98lbs/ 44.4 kilos, from a starting point of  33 stones/ 462 lbs/209.5 kilos at the age of 15.

Rebound is the end of virtually every diet attempt in people of every size including thin so this was entirely predictable, blaming it on parents or the individual is a distraction when that is the general experience and if anyone doubts it, they can look at the growth of weight- there has been a shift upward across the scale. Take a look at the growth of the industries of slimming, fitness and bariatrics in the meantime and explain why none of this has interrupted it thus far.

Those who prey upon the fattest to prove the validity of their useless cult to themselves have 'helped' her by assaulting her body further giving her system a good beating from more than one side. And leaving her feeling what is entirely typical is her fault. I'm sure many of us remember the feeling of thinking we had it sorted this time only to be carried back to where we started. Oh the fury and frustration with ourselves!

It's the vulnerability of the situation that is so evident, along with lack of ideas from those who are happy to shout slanderous platitudes at fat people in general, but quiet as mice when they actually have to push themselves. To do something difficult.

That is what professionals and scientists ought to be working on night and day. They've received funds in the name of it so what have they got?

What are the 'guidelines' for a situation like this? There should be before there are any 'guidelines' for those troubled mostly by the crisis mugging. Healers purveying and/or colluding with stigma, then stopping it partially is in my view, nothing. Above all do no harm is clear. Doing harm, then withdrawing from it to some extent, whilst having nothing for those who are in need, is risible.

The backpatting also seems ableist as far as I can tell. Those of us who only or mostly need an end to stigma are ok, so that's all that matters.

Young Georgia has more than one factor noted to be disproportionate in those who reach a large weight at a young age, parental bereavement.  I once heard a bereavement counsellor who specialised in working with children state that a study had calculated targeting grief counselling at bereaved children in general would be enough to make a palpable cut in morbid obesity in children.

Let alone other things triggered by that. There's also overspill with parental seperation through relationship breakdown too.

Even now she is only 17, I wonder if having a good course of counselling for that would help relieve some of the burden of stress on her, if she wants that of course. Practical support for her role as carer for her mother is needed, she's been a registered carer since the age of ten. She wants to go to college so if help was given that could enable her to move on with her life and do something for herself.

There also could be a compulsive eating disorder response in all this which is caused by the nervous system overstimulating the appetite and hunger often triggered by being trapped in stressful situations although it can develop spontaneously.

For the record size is not in itself a diagnosis for these things, it's about the possibility of greater likelihood or prevalence which needs greater investigation.

It is not weight management that is needed, it's actually ways of turning around the metabolic function so that it weight is reversed as a side effect, just like it comes on. I don't believe attacking it directly is the answer at all, even more in this kind of case.

* (others are abuse and having a parent or relative who was/is mentally ill.)

Thinking through your body- part 1

Trigger warning; mention of extremely negative feelings

Wow, even the possibility of fat people improving their fitness and/or health as fat people is just too much for some. I don't object to the questioning the study findings, but this resentment about possible loss of bullying rights is just sad.

I went through a period where I felt all I could do was swear off exercise and direct attempt at physical fitness. My demoralisation with the way we are supposed to approach the concept- run at it and try to cling to nothing had reached a point where it was just another source of hurt to add to the rubbish bin marked "pointless".

As a child I took part in a sports, nothing major I slowly burned out as the divergence occurring between my body (and therefore myself) into viewer of something to be watched in order to curtail it set in. I've not fully gotten past that to this day.

Getting to this point has meant having to psychologically unburden myself of what built itself around that split as far as I could. The harder part is to repair the actual split the physical alienation between thinking of moving and actually doing it. Either stopped before it starts or by an aggressive build up of tension or ill feeling.

Recently I stumbled on the fact that the whole hating parts of your body thing; "I hate my stomach, thighs, behind, hips etc., -or the imprint from having had long periods of this-can be enough to affect your fluency of movement.

One day apropos of nothing in particular I was of a mood to focus on each part of my body in turn, I can't remember exactly what I said, but I remember gently focusing on each part of my body and kind of apologizing by thanking each part, feelings of gratitude, that sort of thing.

Sounds hippy trippy but I was amazed that I actually felt and moved better soon afterwards. I had no idea those thoughts could just linger, even though overall I'd learned to be accepting and kind towards my body.

It hadn't occurred that the whole body might feel demoralised by abuse directed at it in the same way we can be. I'm supposing that is the mind body connection and that these attacks can become part of a conditioned reflex. The way you think about and through your body that can interrupt it's competence and the fluency of your ability to produce movement.

That is in addition to the numerous messages we get from voices of authority that fat bodies are physically incompetent and incapable due to the 'disease' of fatness. The endless warnings and orders about our health should be are one thing, but the requirement of premise that it is not possible to become fitter or fit without automatically becoming slim displays an even clearer desire to cause harm through confining to the wish fulfilment element of obesity.

That this is required to make fatness fit the predestined prognosis is the kind of thing that has undermined the belief in what we are told, over and above our own personal experiences.

Don't even talk of the female cult of body loathing as bonding etc., ritual. Yes I'm sure there's more to it than we wish to face.

Think about what that may have meant for millions of fat people filled- many since childhood-with taken for granted assumptions of their incapable "unhealthy" compromised bodies. Even if that were so, some kind of rehabilitation would be the correct response not encouraging sidelining and withdrawal.

After years of trying to attain fitness whilst whatever intrinsic fitness I had began to actually fade, which I would have been better off supporting. I felt I had to let go.

The last straw for me was when I was doing some rather tame exercises and out of nothing feeling an intense aversion crash through me like a wave.

Disconcerted I decided this time I was not going to give in. I was going to step back (in my mind) and just let whatever it was wash over me because for once I wasn't doing anything extreme, I wasn't pushing it, this just must be inner laziness coming out to play.

I'd be cleverer, I wouldn't try to suppress or ignore it, I'd just relax continue, be polite, tip my hat to it, but not engage directly or battle with it.

So I continued.

Then there was another wave. Bigger this time, step back, continue.

Hey, I thought this is alright, it's going to be ok, this time.

Then;

BOOM !!!

It was so ferocious, the feeling so piercingly intense that I was stunned. It was the most intense feeling of violation that I've ever experienced in my life.

I stood open mouthed because I had to describe that to myself, what it felt like and excuse me but the first and only thing I could say was;

It felt like I was violating myself.

I'm aware how horrible that sounds and I apologize but it pointed to the way I felt as if I has allowed myself to be taken advantage of and that upset me more than these strange responses. I'm not much of a crier but it stung my eyes, I thought just what do I have to do to make this whole diet exercise thing work?

Why couldn't I just do what I was supposed to do without finding some way to mess it up? Who feels this way, who behaves like this? That's where my head was at then. When you keep falling short and you are hurting because you are trying to prove you want to make good and you just can't, it doesn't show. Feeling it should be so simple, self pity is the order of the day.

And I felt very sorry for myself indeed.

Irresistible loathing

Apart from noticing my sucktastic proofreading e.g, just noticed I can't spell 'irresistible', I hear on the fatsphere grapevine that our 'hate the fatness love the personification of fatness' friend Dan Savage is grinding his phobic axe uhr-gin. This time with a witty little 'satire' exposing the irrationality of an anti gay (marriage) bigot from Iowa.

Said nitwit feels that gay folk are a public health hazard to society as they have a lower lifespan than normals due to 'the "lifestyle" of homosexuality'. I'll pause whilst you pick your jaw up off the floor.

But let's face it, it's hard to ignore just how closely that matches the basis used to justify stigmatizing fat people and people like Savage know that. Which is why they are so fed up with fat activists insistence on pointing out how his hypocrisy undermines his message-some wag said in the comments that there is no such thing because ' fat ACTIV(E)ist' geddit?

ROTFLOL.

The big giveaway is satire’s supposed to undo its subject-the bigot- not leave that aside and abuse to allegory-fatz.

If he wishes to try this again, he should pick a group he doesn't so obviously loathe.

....even if gay people had lower life expectancies (which we do not)—and if that "fact" all by itself was a justification for banning same-sex marriage, why stop with gay people? Iowa should ban fat marriage. There are, according to the state of Iowa, more than 1.4 million obese people living in Iowa. That's nearly 30% of the state's population, and those numbers just keep rising. The social costs of Iowa's obesity epidemic are pretty staggering—and those costs include including premature death and lower average life expectancies for Iowans.

Do you hear the spear piercing the poisoned heart of homophobia? If so, yours is better than mine. It's fascinating even something as dear to him as marriage rights for gay people must take second place to digs at fat people.

Iowa, an overwhelmingly Republican state is 11th in the US league table of plumpness/fatness or 63% and 6th in life expectancy (78 years).

Savage's home, (not birth) state is 51st in both plump/fatness at just under 50% and life expectancy at 72 years respectively.

As we know round these parts figures of overweight/obesity rates are all over the place when it comes to matching them up with life expectancy and I'm sure I knew that as soon as I read his (likely to be) false assertion of premature deaths and lower average life expectancies, didn’t he check it out?

His struggle with fat hate is increasingly like a microcosm of those clinging to homophobia. Not anywhere near as dangerous right now, but how far do people wish to test that? Not all attacks happen on the streets.

There's always some 'excuse' as to why human beings are unpredictable, not paper constructs and therefore subject to laws and imperatives we don’t fully understand. So much easier to assert condemnation. This momentum of prejudice only gets easier to go on and harder to stop, I don’t expect perfection, but if he cannot root out this temptation what does he think he’s asking of others?

Inevitably many of DS's supporters who go on to spew the usual nuanced take on fatness, defend him using Swift's famous raging satire against the British establishment's murderous neglect and abuse of the Irish to explain our error to us (in case mere reading did not).

In the same way anti gay hateists feel 'put upon' by the insistence of ditching their hating certainties, so Savage and his band are fed up with those who cannot stop seeing right through him. We know that in his head he is hiding his phobia to himself as he thinks that is clever it ought not to be visible to others either. Just like homophobes who think the ‘concern trolling’ route hides a multitude of sins and are just sooo obvious.

I think he ought to dispense with the temptation to imagine the ‘swap’ playing on his mind will work out has he might imagine. Fat people as methadone to wean haters off the hard stuff. Often you'll find addicts develop a taste for both. After all these attacks on gay people have been taken and used to bait fatz to the extent that he's on board with it.

It was not inevitable.

Has all this really lessened the burden of homophobia? I very much doubt it, yet fat hating has gained a ground in the meantime. I daresay the fact that this state is a conservative one is supposed to give pause for thought by linking fat stigma to gay stigma for Republican types, to let them in on how it feels.

I can see that he is trying to hold people directly accountable for homophobia whether it’s black people and prop 8. Or homophobes who represent a ‘fat state’, but dealing in the same techniques he himself said don’t pass muster smacks too much of master’s tools.

I’ll leave the rest to the man himself;

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own" Jonathan Swift

'Obesity' boondogglers

Well, I continue to flit between the weird sensation of feeling discombobulated and writing stuff that doesn't seem satisfactory in any way. Nonetheless, I had to respond to someone finally responding to the puzzle-if people are convinced they are "dying of fat" or whatever why they do not at least inquire as to what the hell obesity 'science' is intending to do to save their lives?

Or even, when they think they might get interested in studying weight/metabolism in ways that make sense.

Or better still, what is the purpose of the existence of 'obesity science'.

I certainly can't quite figure out the latter any further than-the continued perpetuation of its own existence.

Which is the imperative of all life force animal vegetable and I daresay mineral. Even ideas that get into your head seem to slide into persuading the rest of your mind to get on board with it, as long as you invest in with sufficient energy.

One of the more genuinely appalling things about the low standard fatz police themselves into and are policed into, is the seeming lack of interest in their continued survival after they insist they are mortally ill.

I don't think I've encountered a group with such a sense of cringing detachment about their own continued survival including those labelled with the stupid "slow suicide" tag, certainly they could take a leaf out of obesity science on that one. By any means necessary as the man said.

Which intrigues is do any of these people genuinely believe they are dying or are they so used to talking themselves into this feeling-for the purposes of "motivation" etc.,-that they cannot back down from it yet don't really believe it? I assume genuineness but they so don't behave like anyone else in the same position it's hard to tell.

It's like being told endlessly, yes diets do work you end up doubting what you feel has to be true because of the gawping mis match between fact and feeling.

Indeed, one wonders the exact same about the science of obesity which shows such utter lack of urgency as I've never encountered from a field that has talked up the lethal nature of the adipose cell to the extent where it can secure mucho funding, which is when seemingly all said 'urgency' peters out.

Not to mention its utter lack of vocation, intellectual curiosity or even real respect for reason perhaps even science which they seem to turn into a parody of itself. It has disgusted me to the point that I can barely stand to be in contact with it.

As 500poundpeeps states;

When I looked into this stuff, this was the late 90s, I couldn't find ONE study that had taken the severely obese over 400-500lbs and actually seriously studied them.

That is almost as appalling as weight loss butchery 'cos as everyone knows even if you have only a cursory interest in any topic, what's one of the first things you want to know? How bad can it get? What's the most, the least, the greatest, most extreme outlandish example of it

You want to know it's perimeters, where it gets better or worse, more or less because that gives you a framework,.

It is in the outliers that you can see the effects you're studying as most severe is likely to be most clear. Any 'discipline' that is not interested in that, let alone wildly disproportionately is not serious or even interested in what it's studying.

Indeed, they are way more interested in cases of fatness that are arguably pretty innocuous and fitting them up for a profile more suited to that which they ignore. Everyone needs to ask themselves;

WHY?

I recently searched PubMed myself to try and assess the percentage of studies on acute obesity (and similar) relative to the subject as a whole compared to acute cases of other fields of (proper) disease and I found that the lowest percentage by far was 'acute/morbid' obesity in relation to obesity.

Staggering.

That they can get away with it in the climate of obesity hype is a tribute to the success of the fat shaming campaign and the sheer ubiquity of its hold on everyone's consciousness.

Even more so, they  get away with it thanks to the refusal of oh, anyone to give a damn, including those who are at the extremes and their families friends and loved ones.

It's sad that it has taken the 'crisis' to show me just how much the self esteem of those studied can affect and facilitate the study of them by others. I thought science was above that, but why should it be? Like everyone else I'm used to science presented by those who appear to be studying things without fear or favour, standing up to some relatively powerful interests-like the pro-life lobby, the whole of the general public, politicians-often with a lofty disdain. I made the error of thinking that was there default position.

I was ignoring that not all science is equal and well scientists have about as much courage as the rest of us. And sadly with some if they can  get away with taking liberties as they can and do with fatz they will, so they do. Just like any other group of people, ethics can vary substantially.

It's really disconcerting to know that you actually have to come across like you are not going to take any shit and hold them accountable, or they will let you swing, simple as.

As I've said before, metabolism must be mastered/ manipulated for many reasons, even if only to save people from the odious abomination that is weight loss surgery. But until those who feel most in need of it get mad as hell

Which shows the way folks have completely written off the professionals coming up with anything-well to be fair they keep saying it themselves! (More on that later).

It's hard to see how their happy playpen will be interrupted from here.

Well, that is apart from this.

*Awe(some)fatz

I hope this will see some adequate resolution this time. One of the first things I noticed that really surprised no, shocked me about the fatsphere was the atomic level fury directed at any awesome fatz (I've just discovered that courtesy of allthatihavemet at tumblr) who have the bare faced nerve to state the obvious.

That if you are further up the fat graph, you are likely to get it in the neck far more than those who are let's face it, acceptably fat. And why are we acceptably fat? Because to some extent awefatz have broken our fall, d'ya get me?

When I was young I was ahead of the obesity spike, I was just about the only fat kid/teen in the world-OK that's what it felt like-then one day some years ago, people kept telling me I'm not that fat. I thought "Wait a minute I know I'm substantial enough" it was then I noticed that I had stayed the same for a while and loads of others bigger than myself had joined the party, a lot were young true, but there were more people who I thought would be slim for life-and so did they!!

I hope this isn't going to sound crass but whatever reward comes of not being an outstanding target for intense vitriol makes up for any possible ish-yoo's I could ever have with 'exclusion' i.e. the open recognition that I do not fall into whatever category I don't fall into.

When it comes to reassuring smallfatz about their place in the movement etc., One line sums up how I feel, let alone Marianne;

Why is that the job of larger fats?

Exactamundo. I've never asked nor would ask any awefatz to give me any reassurance because I see that as my job, if I'm falling down on that I should not be shamed but I must recognise that is mine because it can only be mine.

I don't object to people feeling 'erased' when other people's experience makes some of theirs look or feel like a vicar's tea party, I've said that about thinz in relation to fatz. The issue is the ability to recognize a response that needs to be worked through because it is a projection of your inner feelings onto someone else and one which is actually responding to something coming from said person.

Incidentally, I feel similarly about thinz who keep on about how they want to know that fatz don't hate 'em. I've tried to be patient with that one for a least five minutes but found myself quickly tired to heck of being drained by insecure thinz because:

a) I recognised the futility of trying to persuade someone I hadn't said what I hadn't said because it seemed like I might of....no matter how earnest my protestations.

b) You have to question why reassurance is needed and the short answer is, thinz have been persuaded to either to phobe on fatz or hate them, so they are asking for reassurance that we are better and less corruptible than them and don't feel the same, in other words not equality.

There's an element of temperature check, they want to know how much of the noble fatz game they are oh so used to (but don't acknowledge) is still in play.

In the case of smaller fatz I would venture to suggest looking for reassurance to check that awefatz are not going to exclude them, the way they clearly sense they exclude awefatz. In a sense this exclusion has been set by "obesity science" as it is the only field I know of with such a low interest in the outliers of its subject.

The message of inclusivity and diversity has gotten across many well meaning folks desire to include is out of sync with their ability to carry it through. Or to overcome-if that is even the right word- their desire to gravitate toward their like and those they feel comfortable with.

This has meant regardless of how deeply nice folks are or how good their intentions in the real time  dynamics of human interplay, they've instinctively eased a.fatz to the edges of certain spaces. I'm not saying its deliberate but if they want their own spaces it must have happened too much.

There's clearly more, I noticed before some smallfatz are passing on the chain in this instance they feel they must be noble to thinz therefore, awefatz must play that role for them. Who's supposed to play that role for a.fatz? Why no-one silly! It seems that smallfatz recognise status differential full well and just deal with stuff by moving the obesity game up the scale.

So awefatz become the obese and we become acceptably fat. The complexity of human response can never be discounted. To be fair, I think its under people's (full) awareness that their minds make these instinctual shifts, however, they do that to some extent because of the beliefs already in their head.

People sometimes get upset with me and think I'm just being a pain, but when you extend yourself falsely to others, both yourself those in the same boat who need that support tend to get shafted.

I suggest we all unburdened ourselves of the habit of faux nobility, it should no longer be our job to defuse the hate of others we now know is pre-decided and willful and perhaps we will not pass that on to others.

I'm not being modest when I say, I sometimes don't see the nose on my face. As ever I have to be open to the possibility that there is some legit basis of difficulty that I'm not seeing.

I also can tell you, I've absolutely no time for people who actually do make it their business to get sniffy about smallfatz and say they cannot possibly understand etc., believe me. I don't give a rats poo for that.

However even there it doesn't mean the underlying basis for that pissiness is not legit and some are going to have to stop avoiding that one as it is clear the line is made by both sides.

 * Sorry, deathfatz is fine but it has never felt right for me to use it.