Commentary on obese people on London Times

Wicked said:

Have you guys heard of the fat acceptance movement? I'm not sure if it's really gained much ground outside of the US. The main premises, at least as far as I can tell, are that if you're obese you need to just accept it and not try and change it, and that it can be perfectly healthy to be obese, even excessively obese. They say that trying to lose weight is a waste of time, only supports the weight loss industry, and that most people do not keep the weight off. They also deny studies that show a connection between obesity and health problems. If you Google "fat acceptance" you will find blogs about it. This is one- http://kateharding.net/. I would love to know what you guys think if anyone's interested.

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I'd never heard of that but my gut instinct is that it's pretty irresponsible to promote the idea that being obese is healthy in any way, shape or form.

I personally don't get all the allegations of "fatism" if that's what it's called. That's not to say that it doesn't exist and everyone's experience is different but i've never suffered it. I myself was always a fat child and up until about 7 or so years ago in my mid 20s had my weight fluctuate from anything between 16 stone (224lbs) and 22 stone (308lbs). I always knew I was fat but didn't really care, ate what i wanted and never exercised. It wasn't linked to anything that i have ever consciously known and other than usual childhood teasing (and there was about the same about my weight as there was about many other aspects of me and it was always fairly harmless teasing as opposed to bullying!) i never suffered because of my weight.

The only time i vaguely remember being embarassed was probably not lnog before i decided to do somethign about my weight at my biggest and was in Holland. My parents had gotten into a lift with maybe four other people in it and whe i went to get in the "overload" alarm buzzed - the maximum number of people was not even close to being hit and my weight was what tipped it over the edge, the people in the lift that weren't my parents all laughed. My response was not to be annoyed at the people but to actually be annoyed with myself for letting my weight get so out of hand and ignoring it.

It was only in my mid 20s when i saw my graduation pictures and thought i actually looked spherical that i started noticing that actually tying my shoe laces was getting to be a struggle and there was no way that was healthy, and at the same time decided i wanted to learn to skate.

With that aim in mind i started to watch what i ate, joined a gym and started skating and the weight literally fell off. Obviously i always knew i was big and always knew i'd have to something about it but was putting it off for a rainy day (same with the fact that i smoked and knew one day i'd have to quit).

The reason i've shared so much of this is that i honestly think that if there had been a group advocating staying obese and saying that it was healthy i might have been able to remain as I was and I now know that actually the physical restrictions i had being that weight were enormous, but i didn't know that because i'd never known anything else.

As it is now my weight is prone to fluctuate depending on how "good" i'm being about food and exercise but nowadays it fluctuates between 12 stone (168lbs) and 14 Stone (196lbs).

Ant

Some thoughts:

1. You can avoid most addictive things, but food, not. Well, of course you could go anorexic and die. My cousin nearly did, starting with a diet because she thought of herself as fat.

2. As to doctors, a case can be made that excessive haranguing about weight may actually hurt the patient. I avoided doctors for years, even when sick, over this. I was bulimic as a child, and always was at the edge of the height/weight chart. Every time I ate anything, I felt so guilty my stomach would turn, and I would vomit. (all done with the brain) Going to the doctor as an adult and getting a harangue put me back in that space. The last straw was going to a doctor for an eye infection and getting a harangue and nothing for the eye infection. (I didn't know what to do, decided maybe that it was my contacts, and quit wearing contacts. This was back in the day when soft contacts were new. The cleaning solution then allowed a buildup on the lens after a year or so (that's what I think it was, having followed the thing later). So I was lucky-all the doctor cost me was a set of contacts. If I kept wearing them, trying to figure out what was wrong, I might have had permanent damage to the eyes.

I spent years avoiding doctors, particularly gynecologists, who in the day were the worst haranguers.

3. As a child, my eldest brother teased me endlessly about my weight. That's what put me in that bulimic space. Really healthy all that bullying, isn't it?

4. When kids go postal at school and shoot the place up, one of the root causes is often that they have been bullied.
http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Columbine.html#foot3
Another response is suicide.
http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=5913
Both the bullier and the bullied are more likely to harbor suicidal thoughts than children not involved in bullying.

Really, really healthy to encourage, bullying. Just a fact of life. Be fat, expect bullying.

5. Long term, diets don't work. Certainly, in my personal case, the fastest way to gain weight is go on a diet. 2 years later, I am 10 pounds heavier, every time. Maybe 2 to 3 pounds heavier otherwise. Exercise does work, but immediately upon stopping exercise for whatever reason, I'm back where I started (definite improvement over dieting, for sure) Just what the percentage of people regaining all the weight and more in 2 years is disputed...I have heard percentages up to 95% or as low as 85%. Neither a ringing endorsement of the success of dieting long term. Considering some of the successful are like my cousin and me as a teenager (anorexic and/or bulimic), the success is not exactly healthy success.

6. Another unhealthy trend is being used by some friends of a friend who are among the wealthy in NYC is taking daily 'colonic cleansings' (very harsh laxatives). You can see the ads for this on late night TV.

So yes, the article made me angry, although I wouldn't pass judgment on the family that lost their kids since this article is such a mine of misinformation, partially driven by the fact that the author wrote (and is attempting to sell) a diet book. I need to hear more about the case.

In fact I feel a Columbine moment coming on. Good thing the bullying author is an ocean away from me.

for Doris!
On the one hand, she agrees with me - which is always nice, and on the other hand, she taught me a new word to harangue.

I agree with most she said. I have to admit though, I probably can't see this on a purely rational level, because: Nobody talks like that about my Mummy! Which is why I won't bore anyone with more facts about genetics, psychology etc.

Medusa said:

Children love to tease chubby children, they bully them, exclude them from activities. That's really helpful, with the whole self-confidence thing. Children learn from their parents, when they can mock the fat neighbour lady, Junior can bully the fat kids at school, too. Chubby kids start hating all kinds of sports because they are mocked and bullied constantly during games and PE, often also by the PE teacher. This is not some fantasy of mine, traumatic PE as a child can spoil physical activities, especially in groups, for all your life.

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The majority of children are teased and bullied however. Children love to tease, that's the bottom line. If you wear glasses, are a girl with short hair, are chubby, are tall, are really short, if you are a boy who figure skates, or sings, or dances, if you spend the day with your nose in a book, etc, etc. You are going to be teased.

Even today with all the anti - bullying programs and presentations that are given to schools - bullying still exists and shows no sign of slowing down. The most serious cases often exist in the teenage years when youth are supposed to know better. Hazing is another major problem in high schools, universities, and sports -such as Major Junior Hockey. Legal ramifications often come out of hazing and unfortunately, serious injury.

A word on why fresh produce and dairy products are so expensive. Here in Canada, a lot of poverty and obesity exists in our Northern communities because the transportation costs are so enormous to bring in fresh food. You can get a 2 litre of pop for 99 cents or you can buy a 2 litre of milk which may cost you $10. If you have limited funds, which one are you going to choose?

After spending a year in Scotland, I found the attitude towards obesity vastly different than it is here in Canada. The children I took care of were stick figures. Both were extremely picky eaters and both had for the most part, pretty unhealthy diets. I found that their ideas about nutrition were a little off to say the least. I don't know where a meal of chicken fingers and chips is considered to be a healthy meal for a child, but in this household, it was. These kids are only so slim because of their genes. Their mum is bordering overweight and their father is bordering on obese, but both were slender as children. Both of these kids are horrible to their father about his weight (they are only 12 and 9) and they are never reprimanded for it. The little boy actually said to me once, "There is a new boy in my class at school and I'm not sure I'm going to be nice to him because he's chubby." Boy, did he ever get an earful from me. The kids had no qualms about pointing at people and laughing and making horrible comments within earshot. Never have I been so embarrassed. This isn't meant to be the conclusion about everyone's attitude in Scotland towards obesity. Just what I found in my experience.

antmanb said:

The reason i've shared so much of this is that i honestly think that if there had been a group advocating staying obese and saying that it was healthy i might have been able to remain as I was and I now know that actually the physical restrictions i had being that weight were enormous, but i didn't know that because i'd never known anything else.
Ant

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Thanks for what you wrote, Ant. The above paragraph is why the Fat Acceptance movement worries me. Much of what they say makes sense, and many of the bloggers present very logical arguments for it. These are not a bunch of hysterics. But they do argue that fat, even morbidly obese, is healthy. I have difficulty wrapping my mind around that. I won't say that it's impossible to be healthy and fat, but there's so much evidence out there about weight-related illnesses that I can't buy into their premise.

Wicked said:

Thanks for what you wrote, Ant. The above paragraph is why the Fat Acceptance movement worries me. Much of what they say makes sense, and many of the bloggers present very logical arguments for it. These are not a bunch of hysterics. But they do argue that fat, even morbidly obese, is healthy. I have difficulty wrapping my mind around that. I won't say that it's impossible to be healthy and fat, but there's so much evidence out there about weight-related illnesses that I can't buy into their premise.

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I did read somewhere, that being slightly overweight was healthier than being slightly underweight, which makes sense to me. I think that any people who buy into the Fat Acceptance movement would take that and run with it though. I would really like to see some scientific evidence from this movement that being obese is healthy. I could see the argument to being 10-15 lbs overweight as being ok, but morbidly obese? I don't see it.

I'm fat, but I'm not making any arguments about it being healthy. OTOH, I do believe that a great deal of what we think today about metabolism and food is probably partially wrong. I think this because there have been so many significant shifts in thought about what is 'healthy' vs. what is nonhealthy in my lifetime.

When I was very young, even cigarettes actually were supposed to be healthy-partially because smokers were thinner than nonsmokers.

I can't count the amount of times coffee was supposed to totally destroy your health, then to be innocuous, and most recently to have antioxidants and be healthy.

I remember when margarine & corn oil were supposed to be healthy, and olive oil was supposed to be deathly unhealthy.

Milk was necessary for children's health, then poisonously unhealthy unless skim milk, and then whole milk was good for brain development in very young children, but not older children.

And on and on. Name a food and there's a good chance there's 'research' that 'proves' contradictory stuff about it.

So I think we are still in the early days of this subject in a rigorous scientific way.

I supect that the exact genetic issues involved in metabolism are especially early days and that some of them are going to prove to be pretty subtle.

I suspect that some of our beliefs in this area are going to turn out to be related to our desire to be able to control things that are actually only limitedly in our control.

Here's some of the reasons:

My husband's triglycerides are, even with a ton of meds, in the 400's. Without meds, they are 2,300. I'm fatter for my height than he is for his. My triglycerides are 89. We eat the same diet.

My great grandmother lived to 99 and subsisted the last years of her life on fat and sugar. (And a lot of that when younger). She had all her faculties and died of pneumonia. She was always thin. Her daughter, my dad's mother had dessert every lunch and dinner, plus served cookies (big thick homemade ones) every day at 4 PM before dinner. She was also always thin.

My mother spent her whole life obsessing about food. If you were not supposed to eat it, she didn't. Portions were always tiny and under strict control. She was careful to eat no more than a 1/2 a piece of toast, the few times she had toast at breakfast, for example. She did not snack. She was always overweight (but not, I suspect obese) and would have been even more overweight if her legs hadn't been pencil thin. Her mother also had been fat (and obsessively careful about food). Sadly I take after them, rather than my dad's family. (as to the fatness, but not the eating habits)

And so on.

And people lie to their doctors about what they eat (and don't eat) all the time, so it's got to be hard to do research with anyone except prisoners in jail. Funny enough, the doctors believe the thin ones and don't believe the fat ones. However, if you think of the members of your family (who are the only people you actually know what they eat), you can see how this goes.

I do believe that exercise/activity level is a key thing though--I think that has been proved. And yet when I was young, the doctor would point to how many calories exercise didn't burn, and would say it was relatively unimportant.

Health is such a fundamental value in society that it is extremely difficult to be free from moral judgment.

Acceptance movements would help us think outside the box of the "Healthy = Morally Good" equation. Obesity can be unhealthy. But you don't necessarily have to be seen morally bad.

It resonates with the deep-seated discourses in which serious diseases are seen like a sin to be punished. Persons with serious diseases are sometimes discriminated against and stigmatized. Other people may be fearful of the diseases and want to treat them as "the Other" so that they themselves could feel safer. In this process, it is often helpful to find the sufferers'/patients' moral culpability that could be attrbitutable to their personal characteristics.

It is difficult to get away from a negative moral judgement when your conditions are supposed to be unhealthy. I like the way acceptance movements propose alternative discourses.

I have to do the fasting thing next week. Wish it had been before halloween. LOL
Had quite a few trick or treaters, not as many as last year though! I told them my costume was a grandma.