Fat Chicks Rule

Fat, Happy and Fly like the Wind!

Scientists in Canada have discovered that those with the dreaded horrible obesity gene have yet another added benefit of being protected from depression.

But the genetic findings challenge that thinking, Meyre said, since those with the genetic mutation predisposing to obesity were protected from depression.

I don't like to be called a mutant. Just because a gene makes you undesirable from the mainstream doesn't mean it's a mutation.  On the other hand, without genetic mutations, we'd still be unicellar beasties living in slime pools, so I guess I can live with it.

Here is yet another benefit of being fat. Of course if you're depressed don't gain weight. This just means that if you have genetic disposition to be fat, you may also have protection against depression. 

Speaking of depression, exercise has also been proved to help with depression. It release happy fun endorphins. Just because you are fat does not mean you don't deserve it.  

In Denmark, a racer is doing a 132 mile trek. Jarmo Pitkanen also happens to be fat and he wanted to do the race to show a he can be fat and finish it. 

But by completing the multiple-day competitions as an obese athlete, he is doing a small part in changing the perception of overweight athletes, doctors said, although most physicians have long warned that obesity can lead to an array of health problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.

One thing mentioned in the article is that Pitkanen tries to gain weight before doing competitions so he'll be fat when he finishes. I don't agree with that, because I've always been an advocate of eat well and move and let your weight fall where it should. However, it show that body size shouldn't matter when it comes to fitness. 

“Fat doesn’t play as much of a role in fitness as people think,” said Dr. Linda Bacon, a physiologist and member of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. “Some people who are really fat exercise regularly. We see top athletes perform well in fat bodies. Times are changing. The population has gotten bigger, so we’re going to see more fat athletes out there.”

Not everyone can do a 132 mile trek or in my case the mile swim race I hope to do in the summer, the most important thing is we listen to our genes and be as happy as we can. 

 

Eating season.

In the US, this Thursday week is Thanksgiving and the official start of eating season. This is the season where the halls of Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers are empty. It probably doesn't matter to them because they are planning new ad campaigns to tell you they aren't diets, and that because celebrities can lose weight, so can you.  

Their job isn't to help you be healthy or even really lose weight but to make you feel bad about yourself so they can make a big pot of money at the end of the diet industry rainbow. They want you to fail because tht means that you'll be back every single January.

When I first did Weight Watchers, I didn't restart in January. I was one of the weird folks who would start during eating season. The big rush came in January or right before summer. 

To me it seemed you wanted to diet in the fall. This was the time of the worst temptations. Halloween candy, Thanksgiving Turkey and unlimited Christmas parties. You wanted to go through the holidays without gain.  I also liked the nice small quiet meetings, soon to be shattered by the massive crowds the first week in January. January was also the usually time that my body was pissed over not having enough food and began to rebel with binges. I went to Weight Watchers on Thursday and I became used to Thursday night binge day. 

I will admit that I did pick up some good habits from my dieting years (but it doesn't make up for the bad habits). The first is drinking water, the second is trying to be healthy (in my dieting days to me diet meant health), no matter what part of the year it was.

These two habits stuck with me and became stronger. Right now for the most part, I drink water or tea and that's it. 

The second, the being "good" no matter what said with me, and strengthened with Health at Every Size. You see I did eat Halloween candy, will eat more than I should at Thanksgiving, eat, drink and be merry at the holiday parties but I will continue to eat my vegetables and move. 

You see while dieting during eating season, once I went off the diet that was it. I stopped exercising and eating healthy foods. Because dieting was all or nothing. 

Golda over at Body Love Wellness gives some good tips for surviving the holiday season, dealing with "Helpful" relatives, enjoying your holiday food, and learning not to stress completely out.

And speaking of diets, every year the Healthy Weight Network has the slim chance awards. Awards for the worst of the worst in dieting. Last years winner was HGC. And they are open for nominations. 

So this season, keep your healthy habits by enjoying your holidays without worry about gain or loss.  

Dieting really doesn't work.

I am a firm believer in what works. When it comes to medicine, I have friends who say alternative medicine doesn't work, and I have friends who believe that regular medicine is worse for you. I have a belief in what works with the least amount of side effects whether it be regular or alt. medicine. 

Dieting is an example of something that doesn't work. It has never worked for me and about 95% of other people who have done it. 

It doesn't help you lose weight. If anything it helps you gain weight. 

... brain scans reveal that weight loss makes it harder for us to exercise self-control and resist tempting food. Worse still, the more people diet, the stronger these effects can become, leaving some almost doomed to being overweight as a result of their attempts to become slim.

Essentially dieting wrecks your body, makes you more hungry, and gives you more of an urge to overeat, slows your metobolism so it's easy to regain. 

And it doesn't work to improve health outcomes in diabetics. 

A large federal study of whether diet and weight loss can prevent heart attacks and strokes in overweight and obese people with Type 2 diabetes has ended two years ahead of schedule because the intensive program did not help.

There is IMHO a belief that if you become fat you will get type 2 diabetic. And yes it is true that many fat people have diabetes. The notion is if you are fat and diabetic you should lose weight to control your diabetes. (Sorry thin diabetics, we can offer you no advice.) Any time Diabetes is mentioned, weight loss advice soons follows. No one things that hey maybe it isn't fatness that causes diabetes but the other way around. Ignored are the fact diabetes is highly genetic. For some people may be able to go on a diabetic diet (small case, i.e. not for weight loss) and increase their physical fitness. While some it won't work for at all.

When it comes to public health policy regarding weight and health, the aphorism that insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result has never seemed more appropriate. -- Paul Campos.

 

Starving

(REPRINTED FROM AN IGIGI COLUMN)

A few years ago I read “The Great Starvation Experiment” by Todd Tucker.  It was about “the Minnesota Starvation Experiment” done in the 1940’s run by Dr. Ancel Keys.  In it 36 conscientious objectors were willing to starve themselves for 24 weeks, so that Dr. Keys could learn more about hunger. How it worked, what is was, and how people who were in the process were more or less likely to behave.

While starving the men invariably became preoccupied with food.  Some men suffered from terrible edemas.  Four men were removed from the study due to their reactions: the first dreamt of cannibalism, then went on a massive eating binge (food, not people).  When confronted with this, he first threatened to kill himself, and then threatened to kill Dr. Keys.  The second failed subject went on a massive eating binge without even being aware of it until after it was over (although he was not removed from the study because of that.  They removed him for peeing blood.) The third subject was caught stealing food and eating out of the garbage, the fourth was accused of cheating when he stopped losing weight.

Those were merely the ones removed for presenting extreme behaviors. Of those who remained, one chopped his finger off and another repeatedly started fights.  They all lost muscle mass, felt depressed, had trouble exercising, and becoming aroused.  After the study was finished, 10 men decided to get involved in a follow up study.  When they were finally allowed to eat freely and unsupervised every one of them went on a massive binge.

Here’s a fun challenge: take a guess as to how many calories these were the men were allowed to consume each day: 500, which would be complete starvation according to the U.N.? 900, which was about what the Nazis thought was enough for slave laborers?  Nope. In Keys’ study the men were consuming about 1,500 calories a day give or take. Scary monsters, huh? If 1,500 calories a day is enough to turn an otherwise healthy happy human male into a slavering zombie, can you imagine what someone taking in only 900 or 500 calories a day must be going through? What must it be like to be really hungry?

After the establishment of the Nuremberg Code (which banned torturous medical experiments), no one thinks that an experiment like this one would be allowed to happen again.

Except that it is still going on today and shows what can only be called full and willing participation by all involved.  I’m talking about commercial diets.  According to Consumer Reports the average amount of a major diet is 1500 calories.  Liquid diets and weight loss surgery can go even lower (about 800 calories); Weight loss surgery is forced starvation because there is a limit to how much food the stomach can take before the body has a bad reaction to so much food. Which is bad enough, but actually paying $20,000 or more to volunteer for this is just plain crazy.

People consuming these low amounts of calories suffer the same symptoms as the men in Keys’ study.  Even if they are fat!  The last time you dieted, don’t you remember that you thought about food all the time or that you were too tired to do anything you enjoyed?  Every diet I was on I remembered that all I thought about was food.  Nothing was more important than my next meal.

Chuck the diet, the diet mentality and weight-based health.  Embrace Health at Every Size (HAES).   Don’t fall for false promises, overnight success stories, celebrities or any BS that the diet companies put out that they aren’t really a diets. (Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig are DIETS).  Dieting or changing your lifestyle plan solely on the purpose of losing weight will only end in failure.