Stagnancy is corruption

And corruption, stagnancy. That is possibly the underlying point regarding messages to "keep active". Most if not all of us, start off active, the thwarting of that impulse for varying reasons can reduce our freedom of movement which becomes stagnation.

Something occurred to me whilst replying to (part of) a comment from Vesta. When it came to mind I thought how come I didn't quite see it this distinctly before?!!

Researchers aren't ever going to find anything out about obesity because they aren't really looking.

I honestly hand on heart cannot quite get why this isn't more evident to others especially in FA anyway. Although it is more in the hiding in plain sight mode, it's pretty obvious. The big clue is to compare with other fields of science/medical research.

The history of research into fatness and weight hasn't been as uniformly pointless as it is right about now. (That's of course taking for granted that studying fatness in isolation-as a separate subject is actually a useful way of studying weight/metabolism-I'm not sure that it is). It has gone in waves, or more aptly, cycles. People have genuinely had a spirit of inquiry when it came to fatness of the without fear or favour sort.

However.

The doozy is, it repeatedly gets stuck with the calorie angle and calorie restriction as the remedy and that cannot be budged from. No matter what the facts say, it has therefore become, sacred. Wherever you start you must end there regardless of what has been found. If something doesn't fit, file as 'paradox'.

OK, you might say. We know all that so what?

That this stagnancy is its corruptness. The inability to move on from there doesn't just stop, it creates atrophy and regression. This is the antithesis of the lack of the more usual, let the chips fall where they may, that signifies good science.

The adherence to this article of faith is corrupt and attracts further corrupt mentalities, rather than the other way around as I thought.

This is what has caused it to become a bit of a non science. Some people got hold of obesity science about 10-15 years ago, after a period of more rigorous investigation and objective interpretation. Then decided to reimpose this as the dominant code. Even though with all we hear about the threat of obesity, this should be a golden age for obesity research.

Instead it has been pretty much a useless irrelevancy that cannot provide care for those who could benefit from it, nor for the millions of people who wish to lose weight, for whatever reason. They have not been served by this either, even though they tend to be its most vociferous defenders. They are defending hope of getting what they want and the profoundly held assumption that obesity science works like any other, or how it has done in the past.

It concentrates on finding out how dangerous obesity is supposed to be using questionable decisions to exclude whatever favours a better outcome for slimness, thereby not only putting a question mark on the figures on paper, but the application of those figures in real life.

That takes precedence over what is supposed to be the best way fat people should proceed as fat people-an obvious sticking point is the unethical refusal to accept incontrovertible evidence of weight loss diet fail. It claims to be able to find the active ingredient, in what can best be categorized with placebo-or even nocebo- and claims this is the route to increasing diet success for those who wish it to succeed.

They don't even give a damn about those who still believe in them. Gary Taubes referred to this saying that objectively speaking, obesity science just doesn't function the way science should. It's a bit of an oxymoron really.

“The institutionalized vigilance, “this unending exchange of critical judgment”, is nowhere to be found in the study of nutrition, chronic disease, and obesity, and it hasn’t been for decades.”

My emphasis.

You don't have to know diddly about scientific medicine to have picked up on what the focus of other medical disciplines tends to be, and how other medical scientists tend to behave, to know that the whole field operates more like a parody of science, rather than an actual one.

We are soooo biased

Just caught this thoughtful and reasoned assessment of fat acceptance. It's written by a person brave enough to see both sides and is balanced and judicious, study it carefully because it shows us in FA what we should be aiming for.

OK, not really, but this is the kind of thing that is categorised as this among 'right thinking people'. Well good luck to them, I'm happy to not bother with role playing judicious reason if that means equating falsehood of the crisis with skeptical enquiry from a point of view of experience and observation. I don't say we in FA get it right, we don't, but the overwhelming majority of our false conclusions are based on the obesity crisis premises and we are not immune to the wrongness that comes out of this.

When you come from the view that the 'extreme' of fat acceptance is presented as having the same right or expectation of self esteem as a person who hasn't had theirs systematically pounded out of them. It is unlikely that you will overcome that tin ear when it comes to making false equivalencies between the 'sides'.

We require this kind of ASSistance because as ever, we are in grave and mortal danger of alienating support, yes that's right. If it wasn't for the projection of fat haters belief in their own mythical invincibility on to us-because we could only possibly be a straight reversal of whatever it is they 'think'-people would flock to support us.

We are of course we are in total control of other people's conscious and wilful decision to indulge in fat hating. Something they know to be wrong and being mostly good people are therefore in denial about. And thus they must keep trying to pretend we forced them into it, in ways that if are convincing to them make them deserving only of our pity.

Let's state something for the record, those who find it politique pretend that the fat people they know oh, so well are suddenly not of this earth and represent pure eval are the ones that have alienated themselves from us, their choice. We fatties have been chasing them for donkey's years saying "yes we are being superbad, but we are trying oh, so hard to be good, please like us please et al."

Only when we burned out or came to our senses, thinking that we'd at least earned a hearing-if we did not deserve the same we gave so freely without counting the cost-that the 'relationship' we thought we were engaged in with those we sought to appease; was almost wholly one-sided and unrequited on our part.

Like the friend you always have to call and when you don't, frendship over, we have been rudely awakened to the fact that the care was all on our side. We are regularly told we are dying and we can only save ourselves by means that don't work and often make things worse to boot, we have been told that this is our fault, we suicidal addicts and why do we want clothes to wear etc.,

It is we who have been abandonned and left high and dry to sort ourselves out as best we can. And we only found out because of the need to rescue ourselves.

And no, we do not claim fat people do not get sick or perish.

I've never heard of a fat person, on being told they are ill saying referring to their weight as a reason why they simply cannot be unwell. Whereas according to quite a few med professionals, "What!? I'm slim", is one of the more recent top responses from slim people in the same position. In fact, how many times do we hear the travails of someone who has some ailment and claims to 'live right' and be at a 'healthy weight' so it's been all the more harder for them to accept they are perhaps mortal after all?

And after that there's this, vileness;

The thin die early in every case. Looks like there is some justice after all.

Sorry, what?!! Justice is people dying before their time? What a shitty thing to say, or even feel. Presumably this is supposed to be a sentiment we should respond to.

I'm not one for endlessly sounding apologetic about FA, but not in our name. We tend to leave death wishing to fat haters.

He ends even better than he began.

Just because there is no quick fix to being overweight gay (we’d all be mid-range straight if there was) and crash dieting ex-gay is dangerous and ultimately self-defeating, giving up isn’t the answer.

Liberties taken, my own.

Better still.

The answer isn’t easy – but what answer worth discovering is?

Ha, ha, you see he's admitted (deliberate choice of term) that the truth is to be discovered. As usual, we somehow have to carry the can for those scientists and researchers health promotionists etc., who cannot get over the fact that their big guess is a bust, when put into action and have decided it's not worth the effort and they're going to continue to have a massive sulk and insist that, "IT WORKS"

)))stamps feet(((

IT WORKS!!

Covers ears singing "la, la, la, I can't hear you!" Tell them, not us. Having studied human metabolism, personally and observed it in others, I'm perfectly sure learning more increases knowledge, if you wish to find it, which the obesity industry clearly doesn't.

They are the one's who've truly "given up", because everything they could possibly want is how it is now progress through knowledge would only undo that.

Therapy

In answer to the question, what do we do about fat stigma? This suggestion caught my eye;

programs which might help fat adults be more resilient in the face of fat hatred;

I've been saying for yonks that we should have some kind of deprogramming, maybe that would remove the need for the endless 101ing that is way too often pointless because the set up of mainstream mentality has to deny fat people any voice to stand up at all. So people come to FA defending themselves against it-which they call having a questioning, objective or open mind-rather than coming to it, to suspend all that long enough to grasp it, and then critique it.

It's a bit like those getting out of cults, or the army-I'm not sure even the army has these programs, but they clearly should. It might help deal with the amount of ex-Army who get into trouble after being subject the mental rigours of 'army discipline' techniques.

What I discovered from that, is I'm not the one to propose it, maybe no fatty is, if we could hear it from a *real person, someone with the required kudos, I'm sure it would be considered more deeply. Hearing it from a fellow fatty is possibly like hearing a breeze.

We need an internalized fat haters survivors group and the reasons we don't is we take our selves for granted. And possibility some of the FA narratives that are to the fore. I say that as someone who cannot ever remember recommending therapy to anyone. Maybe, we could re-write the rules on that too, along with a lot of other citadels fatness could turn over.

When you are knuckled down in full obese persona mode, you can become so outer directed that your core is imbalanced by it. Add to that a childhood start before your brain is properly formed and you are talking about a brain that can be fat hating outer directed shaped.

Part of the problem with FA for me is because that is not dealt with intensely and in depth that becomes the style of outwardness, rather than being outward looking from the centre of oneself. I am not advocating insularity, but a shift from the former supine looking outside in to an expansive inner centred vision.

Trouble is there doesn't seem to be any real appetite for it, sorry about the pun. Underneath it all I get a sense that we seem strangely bored with ourselves, because of that void, because of creation from outside. There seems a sense that we think we are boring and everyone else is interesting. Which of course could be, everyone else seems inward out, we seem outward in. Therefore we pursue the interest and engagement of others-who have actually willfully disengaged from us-and ignore or treat each other rather contemptuously.

I'm not talking about personality clashes etc., I'm talking about fat hating contempt, we are contemptuous of each other because we are each noting but a fatty, the void in you becomes the void in me.

Basically, there's a sense of 'who does (fat) so and so think s/he is?' They're just a fatty like me, they aren't all that.

This might seem an outrageous statement, there is praise of each other too, some of it genuine, however, nothing ever comes close to or as excited as someone who isn't fat, paying us some attention.

It's still the same fatty trying to convince the good folks we are genuine and really, not bad at heart and it's one of the few things that genuinely embarrasses me about fat acceptance on occasion.

I've similar elsewhere to a certain extent all groups in the firing line have this. So it is not unique to FA, but it does seem to have an extra edge, because it's so personal. It seems to me this sense of unreality of constantly and consistently having your feelings and experiences denied, that has left many of us with a deep sense of unreality about ourselves.

It's kind of double track in that we know we are totally real and yet inside the emotional and mental memories collect together and stand as a collection of sense patterns that contain and represent that experience of repeated denial, that sense of learned doubt and feelings of unrealness.

I don't know that it can be escaped, unless it is dismantled and I get the feeling, don't go there, not yet anyway, maybe 'society' i.e. the others, the real people, come around, we won't have to. Because their much desired acknowledgement will heal us.

I'm not so convinced.

And in fact I'll go so far as to say, I've never wanted to be saved by 'society' particularly. I definitely want them to can all fat hate NOW. But I'd be just as happy, if not happier to be saved by myself and others who have a clue, and for real peeps to recognize that. I would have thought they would have to, moreover I suspect they want it that way too. There's a part of them that wants us to stand up to them. I don't think they can free themselves from the yoke of fat hating on their own.

I think there's an issue of loss of face. It is really out there to claim that grown, sentient, sane people don't know what's going on in their own body. Apart from it undermining everyone's capacities for self knowledge, if you are wrong, you are very very wrong indeed.

So you'd better be right and if you are not. That's not something you are going to get out of easily. Far better to just keep it going as long as you can, postpone the day of reckoning, until you have little choice.

If we stop taking it and start telling them what to think of us, as it should be, a lot of them will feel greatly relieved. But we don't give them the chance if we ask them to do it instead.

They didn't do such a good job on telling us how to lose weight did they? What makes anyone think they'll do any better with saving our furrowed minds? Please, if I trusted them with it, I wouldn't bother with fat acceptance in the first place.

It's an easy enough to do. We bring this desire with us into FA and are often disappointed when encountering people who've been affected in the same way we have. And they don't have any better answers than we.

But I just feel if we were more proactive in this area of recovery and training to be more robust under attack, we'd break through that underlying sense of boredom with ourselves and our acquiescing habit and discover an inner core that has survived in all and is far more interesting than we could have imagined. A bit like some of those 'others'.

We fat people always take ourselves way too much for granted, if we learned to stop, we wouldn't feel as put upon as we some times do.

We might even become real enough to ourselves to stop claiming we have no credibility.

* A thin person, golly gosh.

Liberated hair

Surprising and instructive article by Julie Bindel writing on women's hair, facial especially but also including, underarm and leg hair.

My first reaction was to feel quite queasy about it, especially thinking about facial hair. I have to say though, I forget at times that I do not shave my legs nor bother much beyond ripping out some tufts from my underarm.

I also was forced to consider my visceral reaction in view of the whole fat debacle. I realise that this is how some people might feel about contemplating the acceptance of fat. Like puking up. And it makes you wonder, where does this come from?

I've seen a lot of black women with facial other hair and there doesn't seem to be the same feeling as there is amongst certainly white women. Shaving legs is not as much of a habit, in fact it seems to be a recent thing to know of black women who shave at all, although I know that's probably my recollection.

I remember once seeing a woman absolutely gorgeous fully made up etc., who had her blouse open to reveal hair as dense as the densest you would find on any head. Even I have never seen such on any man.

She seemed fully at ease with herself and no one else remarked on it, except later on me-shame-so I know others noticed too including a black guy who was working the same shift as I. He shrugged his shoulders and said so what, she's OK with it?

Double shame!

So yeah, I'm all for hairy women's lib. I remember the documentary when a woman with a full beard appeared throughout, after a while, I just got used to it and I'm sure that affected the way I see facial hair on women.

So the fact that I keep reverting to erghh is interesting. It means there is some underlying idea that I have, possibly as mentioned in the comments that women shouldn't have hair, or maybe it's non-black women?

Maybe it's because they seem to depilitate more overall that the eye somehow gets used to that and it that affects how you view other women, not erasing, but reminding of hairlessness? It maybe goes back to a theme that I wonder about from time to time, is the energy put into appearing separate and distinct between white men and women, somehow greater than that of some other races? Or not at all? If so, does it have some kind of underlying ideology. I'm talking more about cultural ideology?

I actually tend to forget because my hair is relatively fine on my legs, I have never shaved them though and my pits, well, their out of sight, though I've never felt self conscious about them either, I had fat for that.

And speaking of fat, the parallels are obvious, letting your hair grow is mentioned in a feminist context, by a self declared 'proud lesbian feminist' who also says that she plucks her facial hair and carries tweezers about for the purpose.

In spite of all this, there is still the defensiveness when matters of beauty are discussed preceded by feminist. It seems merely suggesting thinking about something translates in some people's heads as orders.

There's a lot of that in FA, if you speak about dieting and why you or others have done it that is often counted as telling people what to do.

It's funny how all the usual things that get brought up in the context of fatness get brought up here, what wo/men find attractive, what does and doesn't turn me on-why anyone thinks others care, I wish I knew, femininity and what counts as femininity, whether feminists can be (allowed to be) feminine by the sister's, what about the menz and competition about who 'suffers' more.

It's well worth reading on it's own merits and to compare the arguments in a fresher less fraught atmosphere, without the usual hate and yet reflecting different feelings.

Reading about it here it is clear that feminism has a lot of baggage for some even when merely considering how we live.

Mz Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

When I read through some of my comments and my postings, I often sound at least a bit angry. I've struggled with this for a while now, back and forth for most of the years I've been hanging around the 'sphere. Although it may not come across so, this is out of character. At least I say that, but character is a multifarious thing. If the right kind of pressure is applied a sunny personality can easily become a permanent grump, or a whiner or a bitch-take a unisex interpretation of the latter.

This is the first time in my life that I have felt and come across (and seemed even when I'm not at times) this consistently and unimpeachable irked, irritated, ticked off, pissy and sometimes volubly angry to an exten that I actually am fed up with.

It's not that I haven't tried to calm down, and as that hasn't worked usually that means it is tied to something I'm trying to do or want to do, rather than badness. It means I have to choose to keep doing this thing or keep getting pissy. My dithering has been ended by the fact that a) I cannot stand this and b) what I want to do, I no longer can pay the price for.

Fat stigma is hardly the worst kind that's been laid on me. I think this is part of what has caught me by surprise, that and the fact that for so long, I was obedient and doing as I was told. So anger was turned inwards.

There's lots to be irritated about. There's also equally, far less than a whole lot of other things, to the point where not feeling particularly angry regarding FA and stuff, is perfectly plausible too.

It never used to matter to me whether there was something to be angry about as such. I was wary of anger and more what seemed to follow from it bitterness. I wanted to avoid that since witnessing it as a child. I realise now that what I was seeing was the stress of the overburdened. I became adept-I now realise- at re-framing myself away from and out of heavy duty rage, my anger worked for me and was appropriate. My anger made sense to me. This kind doesn't. It feels as if I'm constantly off balance, off centre, off kilter. I'm sure all this has disturbed me a lot more than I could have ever imagined.

Before getting involved in fat acceptance, I'd felt more distanced from things. There was always some points of disagreement that made me uncomfortable signing up for the whole.

It was the not hearing a reflection and my alarm about the way no one was defending fat people against attack and where that could lead that probably made me overcome my natural resistence to getting involved. In my enthusiasm, I decided to overlook or set aside things that I knew or suspected already.

I decided this time I would compromise, be disciplined stick to the group even when I disagreed something I usually wouldn't do. I felt like "I'm just not a joiner". I left it up to others, this time I felt, why should I expect others to do something, to say somethng?

It was in stretching to meet the mindset that tended to dominate that was my undoing. Each of us has an internal centre of gravity which we can stretch from, but as we know with every bit of stretch tensile strength decreases and things start to quiver and vibrate.

That's me, overstretched. I kept on because this is more important than personality and culture clash but now I feel I'm just getting in my own way and the way of useful communique, defeating the object of reaching. I need to recover that centre enabling me to express myself with some kind of fluency and clarity. All flows from there for me, to be able to think and translate my feelings into words because I still have a lot I want to say.

I get that my views are minority, believe it or not, I didn't think they were before! This makes it a priority to make clear expression. So I'm letting go of trying to reach out beyond that which can sustain my ability to say what I have and want to say.

To explore what others think too which is as important and to do that a change of tack is required. Another lesson learned.

I'm hoping Mz G is on her way out, thank goodness.

The justified...

Whilst reading this on BStu's blog today I was struck by this;

I caught the Sara Rue commercial for Weight Watchers recently and one of her reasons for needing to lose weight was not having pants she could feel comfortable.

I don't know if I'm just feeling a bit squiffy in the head but this little aside has really made me think; even though losing weight is supposed to be an overwhelming and intrinsic good. It is actually framed as needing an excuse to justify it.

Why would Ms. Rue-or anyone else- need to justify something that is supposed to speak for itself as a good thing to do? Anymore than she'd need to justify falling in love or an act of kindness?

She wouldn't say, 'I had to fall in love with my current squeeze because my heart/life/body felt uncomfortable without, or I had to be kind because my shoes hurt.

Looking at that quote again, it's as if she's saying she would continue to just be, if it wasn't for x (her clothing issues).

What it feels like is I'm finally hearing this aspect of weight loss spiel differently. I'm hearing excusing and the justifying, that was always there, but my ear wasn't quite attuned to, filtered out by old assumptions.

In general this is how it is framed, 'I'd continue to let myself be, if it wasn't for something catastrophic, painful, humiliating, uncomfortable'. It's not just, I've lost weight. And everyone just understands, that's just good, and that good, begets good and that justifies itself, positively.

Talk about hiding in plain sight.

Ironically, I've been more aware of this kind of necessity of negativity when it is less obvious such as the previous furore about dieters v (or not) FA.

I see this is usually hidden by if you don't have a reason to be thin you won't put forth the effort et al.

Fine.

But we are told that obesiteh is a veil of tears, physical, emotional, mental. On one response to a blog, someone stated that if fat people say they feel 'half dead' as opposed to be in actual mortal threat; they are half dead, and that should be respected as they are actually half dead.

We are told that some people are either so sensitive, or that's just the way their body is, that an extra 5lbs is weighing them down and making it difficult for them to get out of bed and perform their duties to the standard they would want.

So it should require no explanation for someone to wish to lose 5 or 500lbs. So why do it?

It is the constant need to disseminate the obesity persona-actually persona seems wrong, it's more than a persona. It reminds me more of the bad voodoo thing of persuading people to adopt an identity a mentality that then gives the persuader a powerful hook into the persuaded; that they can build on and invoke at their leisure.

It is turning your own mind against you and there is this awareness of it amongst those who deal in this. Perhaps it's more the desire to lose weight, via the means available, leads one down this course as an inevitability.

It is such a shame both that it has come to this and that we continue to feel this is acceptable.

It's trusting yourself again

Ellen Satter's excellent blog which has lots of good thought provoking advice provides some insight into how the use of our mind's can derail our attempts to match our needs.

The report is on a study two things about sugar, that our bodies can regulate it's use, i.e. the sugar we take ingest in drinks means we cut down on it or food in other areas. Rather than the usual assumption that sugary drinks automatically add extra calories. And that the widely disseminated beliefs about the harmfulness of sugar affect the way we actually respond to it. IOW, expectations can create a nocebo effect.

This is the aspect of healthist eating that most broke the trust I had in it. That and the subsequent realisation that it, if not provoked, certainly sent my eating disorder to greater heights.

Unlike quite a lot of people in FA, my journey away from eating disorder has been negotiating myself away from what we deem healthy eating, or more pertinently, it's mindset as in part uncovered by the study.

The nocebo part isn't just about programming you to expect bad things from certain foods. I feel that shows that there is probably a lot of exaggerated wishful thinking-in a bad way-about the effects they would like to come from this food, which is rather unedifying and hardly healthy. It's also about the fact that a lot of advice has come from or through the prism of those who have disordered eating and sometimes even long term eating disorders themselves.

That in itself is one of the reasons why eating disorders especially continue to increase, over and above those that come as a side effect of weight loss dieting. There is something about someone who's not only got an ED or a disordered view of food and eating giving advice that causes us all to view eating more through their eyes. In no small measure is it that they believe in the way they eat, a bit like pro ana or feeders.

The quasi religious proselytising plus the fact that they want the world to be more conducive to perpetuating their way of eating and are never held accountable for their activities, no matter the costs.

In terms of malign influence they have been too much like those food companies who will do anything to sell us and to get us to eat more of their product, whether that would be a good idea or not. That is the major disappointment about what's happened with healthy eating.

At one point some people, me included thought they could act as a counter to the industrialised food machine that would feed us excrement, if they could make it cost effective, with their synthetic flavours and various coatings they like to cover the waste matter they call food in.

Alas, we were not aware of how unbalanced some of these people were. There is evinced by their unholy alliance with the hateful obesity crusade, where they have cynically used fat people to hide behind and say, we know about food, we can prevent you from becoming like these fatties. They drifted far away indeed from the more gentle hippy tradition of holistic eating.

They took that and added a new ingredient; rage. At it's directed at fatties who somehow represent everything that gets in the way of a closer and more intimate relationship with their eating disorder.

The fact that they cannot make you thin clearly cannot doesn't matter in this credulously superstitious atmosphere of trying to ward off the fat devil/genie/ hoodoo, any snake oil saleswo/man can get ahead by merely suggesting they have the antidote.

But it's the way we've allowed ourselves to be suckered in to their invasive bossy style that is shows the depth of the desire to be slim at all costs. I'm old enough to remember a time when if a 'nutritionist' told you to eat x and not to eat y, they would have been looked at with utter contempt, as if they were deranged.

Now we behave as if they are entitled to criticise us in invasive ways we would not otherwise put up with, it is they that have been prime movers in training others to violate the privacy of fat people in general and with regard to their eating in particular.

They often cannot do what they advise, it's just assumed, they are the experts, we are not permitted to pry into their dustbins (hint, hint) to see if they eat what they say we should.