Fat Chicks Rule

Starving the poor, shunning the fat.

I read a very disturbing article in the Hill about using food stamp money (which has already been cut) to fund Mrs. Obama's fat to thin project Let's Move, which probably won't work anyway. 

So according to Mrs. Obama and congress, it's better for children to starve than be fat. Even though starvation already kills 17,000 CHILDREN A DAY, it's better that they be thin and dead then fat and probably healthy.  Also a county in England wants to know what's in their kids' lunch boxes. Because it might be bad (such as an universe eating Cthulu-type monster). I wonder if they will send home a note if your teenage daughter has packed only carrots sticks for lunch.  

I'm sorry but in my mind starvation and food insecurity are much worse problems than obesity. Depending on whose research you believe up to 49 million people in the US are food insecure. I much rather people have too much to eat than not enough.  Because there really isn't a way to make a fat person thin. And gastric bypass the current "cure-all" for obesity works because it is merely forced anorexia.

But at least in Michigan you can sue Hooters if they fire you for being fat.

So let's sum up:

• It's better to be thin and dead than fat and alive.
• Fat people shouldn't get their nails done.
• Don't even dare put a piece of candy in your child's lunchbox unless you want a call from the food police.
• South Carolina thinks obesity kills more than tobacco. So they are offering the first lucky 100 workers WLS. (I think living in South Carolina kills more people than tobacco).
• But you might be able to keep your job in a Michigan Hooters.

Am I the only one seeing something wrong here?

Pay no attention to that person behind the curtain. (And Igigi Reprint)

I often get comments on my blog and in real life from people who feel it is their moral obligation to tell me why I am fat and how to best fix that.  I’ve been told I eat too much or not the right things (like they are watching me) and I don’t exercise enough or at all.  Despite that I often blog about fun exercises people can do and that chronic dieters need to learn to eat normally again, these naysayers (usually naturally slender people) assume that if a person is fat, they have to be eating too much or not doing enough exercise.

These holier than thou commenters don’t know me at all.  They don’t know that I have done the exact advice they are now giving me.  There was a time I reduced calories and did aerobic exercise.  Seventeen years of low cal, low fat, low carb, and not just crash diets either. I did all the ones that claimed they weren’t diets but lifestyle changes.  Every single one of these diets failed.  Some of them lasted longer, including one that actually lasted two years.  The results were the same.  I’d lose about 30 pounds, and then I would stop.  During that time, I’d think about food all the time.  This exact thing happened in the Ancel Keys starvation study.  Men were put in a semi-starvation state (the exact amount of some diets) and became preoccupied with food.  That was me I was dreaming of raiding the fridge and when I woke up I thought about breakfast, after breakfast I thought about lunch and the cycle continued. Once I stopped dieting, I eventually lost that preoccupation with food. I don’t think about calorie counts but how my body will react to a certain food. 

 

My favorite comment was one that claimed I wasn’t exercising enough.  In the past I have encouraged people to move to the best of their abilities, the key word being abilities.  Not everyone is a natural athlete, especially me.  I associate gym classes as being a target of dodgeballs, thin women looking at me wondering why the fattie is doing aerobics and pain, the severe tendon damage I did to my foot because I used to jog  on flat feet.   

 

I would also like to add time.  Diet and exercise had stolen so much of my precious time.  Driving to the gym to watch stupid things on TV while I walked the treadmill; spending time counting calories, carbs, fats.  Now I refuse to give my precious time for weight loss.  Instead I relearn to enjoy food and movement without focus on weight loss. This is why I walk everyday after work.  I actually enjoy walking and it’s become part of my routine.  But when I get home it isn’t that late and I have time to myself to read, play on the computer and be with my hubby while the naysayer is at the gym, working off the carrots she had for lunch in hopes she won't become me.

 

Which is all that it comes down too.  The naysayer’s big problem is that they have to watch their calories, they have to do aerobic exercise for one hour, while I eat good foods when I’m hungry and take nice leisurely walks.  They are jealous that they can’t eat and move slowly like I do.

 

But I could be wrong of course.  Just like they make assumptions of me, I am now making some of them.   To prove a point, that you don’t really know someone and you can’t make judgments on assumptions.

Score another one for HAES

A few posts ago, I talked about how Health at Every Size was a more positive way of living. How HAES makes you happy unlike the misery of dieting.

Social stigma against fat people has dire consequences. From the anecdotal: this girl in England who stopped eating because she thought she was fat, or the 13 year old girl who took OTC diet drugs (don't have a link because it was me) to actual stressors on the body. I always thought that being treated like dirt, being told by doctors you aren't important enough to live, being told by strangers who obviously know every detail of your life how to eat and move had more effect on well being than "excess" weight.   

Even those who are pro-weight loss think that negative talk hurts body acceptance. Even freaking Jillian Michaels thinks this is negative. 

HAES is loving, HAES thinks it's awesome if your exercise is a stroll around the block or the New York Marathon. (Nor is HAES judgemental is you don't move at all.) I try to exercise every single day. Doing HAES, It's not a big deal if I miss a day. When I was a dieter, it was the end of the world if I didn't hit the gym.

Lovin' your body

I got a very nice comment last week from a teen named Audrey asking me how do I feel confident. Most of my life I had chronic low self-esteem. It look a long time and hard work but I feel much better today than ever before.  All people need to resist the messages that they have to look a certain way to be a success in life. So I thought I'd share some of my methods of improving my self esteem and feeling good about myself. 

1. The best thing I did was to stop dieting. I was becoming obsessed with food, the scale and whatever I happened to be counting at the time. My mood depended on weight loss or gain. I'd feel like crap if I gained or if I ate something outside the program.  Once I allowed myself to eat any food I want, the desire to eat it stopped. I began to eat and move for my body.
2. I made sure that some of my media involves people of various sizes. I read size positive books, watched it in TV and Movies. I stay away from "women's magazines," whose sole purpose is to make you feel bad so you buy beauty products. And on my desk is a Venus de Willendorf figurine, a fat Buddha and a fat cat.  My ipod has some positive songs too. One of my current favorites is a cover of Christine Argullia's Beautiful done by Glee cast member Amber Riley.
3. When I look in the mirror, I compliment my body instead of disparaging it. If I do use bad body talk, I immediately apologize to my body.
4. I accept that some days I feel negatively "fat". No one's perfect and it's okay to feel bad on occassion.
5. Laugh it off. I think laughter is the best medicine.

One important note. If you feel depressed and down all the time, seek out a medical  professional. 

Fat but not too fat

Another short post today as I just got back from vacation where this fat chick hiked, swam and walked a lot.

And apparently during my absence I was quoted in the New York Times in reference to the essay I wrote in the Fat Studies Reader about fat heroines in chick lit. One of the points I brought up was that most of these fat heroines weren't that fat (usually around size 12-16). This article points out that in media (in this case fashion), fat is rarely portrayed as someone bigger than 20. Twenty in my essay was a glass ceiling.  Any more than that equals unhealthy.

They also talk about clothing sizes and how it's hard to find big sizes in stores Given the fit challenges a plus-size customer faces, the shift to a virtual space where nothing can be tried on can seem alienating to her — a directive to wear a muumuu. She may not particularly like muumuus, and she doesn’t want to be regarded as someone for whom muumuus are a reasonable choice. This is why I pretty much have given up on most department stores, sticking mostly with Re/Dress, Marshalls and occasionally Torrid,  or Lane Bryant. If you can't fit me, you can't have me.