Fat Chicks Rule

I have a social disease

For days I couldn't believe my ears. My anger was so strong that I had to take a breath before I could say anything. 

The American Medical Association, in their infinite "wisdom" despite warnings from their science advisory board against the decision has doomed (trigger warning) all fat people with a BMI of 30 and above, regularless of their health, as having a disease. 

You can teach aerobics classes, swim, walk, run, eat your vegetables, only eat 2000 cal a day, be in perfect health but if your BMI is 30 and above, you have a disease.

Granted some diseases can cause you to gain weight (such as sleep apnea, diabetes, PCOS and hypothyroidism) and some diseases can cause you to lose weight (hyperthyroidism, cancer, some autoimmune diseases such as Crohn's and Celiacs) but in these cases being thin or fat aren't the disease they are a SYMPTOM.

Abigail C. Saguy points out: 

Yes, there are certain health risks associated with having an elevated BMI, such as Type II diabetes and heart disease. More broadly, a higher BMI is associated with a greater risk of cardiometabolic abnormalities, as measured by blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol, glucose, insulin resistance and inflammation. Nonetheless, almost one quarter of “normal weight” people also have metabolic abnormalities, and more than half of “overweight” and almost one third of “obese” people have normal profiles, according to a 2008 study. 

 My biggest issue isn't AMA's stupidity (actually it is), but that in the end they will push the same cure that doesn't still doesn't work and that is Dieting (Big d), diet pills and surgery.  In the end that this will lead in more pressure for fat people to get surgery, take diet drugs, do commercial diets such as Weight Watchers. Even though none of these have been proved to work and help in the long run for the majority of people (sure you're always going to find people who went from fat to thin and stayed that way, but they are the exception not the rule.)

This all goes back to one thing, the billion dollar industry. It really is the money. The biggest medical association saying obesity is a disease and giant check to the dieting, pharma, and bariatic surgeons.

As Marilyn Wann says:

This year, Americans will waste $66 billion on weight-loss products. The "weight-loss" industry is a misnomer: nearly everyone regains lost weight and up to two-thirds gain back more than they lost. Repeat customers are the business model of the weight-regain industry — an industry that expands every year, even during recession. (Which wouldn't happen if their products worked, right?) 

Marilyn has a petition urging the AMA to change their decision.

 

The Tankini

So it’s getting on summer (Although it doesn’t feel that way in NYC), and blog posts will be shorter and there will be no blog posts on the following dates: 7/29, 8/5, 8/12, 8/26^th. Normally I might take a summer break but fat hatred doesn’t. If I don’t post those days it’s not because I had a combo heart attack, diabetes, MS, plane crash, global warming catastrophe, I’m going to be on vacation, enjoying good food and fun exercise.

Last Sunday was the Big Fat Flea (Formerly the Fat Girl’s Flea). My favorite fat positive annual event. (Love it to be a bi-annual event, hint, hint). This year I paid $25 to get in a half hour early. And for $53 I walked out with: 2 pairs of pants, an awesome torrid dress, a hippie shirt, beads for my niece, sunglasses, a bathing suit, a swimming shirt, and tankini top. (I now have more tops than bottoms.)

Recently I joined an outdoor pool  and despite the weather have been swimming 2-4 times a week. Unlike the once a week I was doing at the pool from hell. This meant a bathing suit upgrade from the 3 regular and one emergency bathing suit (the emergency suit was fraying.)

So off I went to Marshalls which has been going downhill for a while. I don’t blame Marshalls for the fact that two piece bikinis vanish after size 12, or that thin women’s bathing suits look like string and fat women’s a full-on evening gowns but I do blame them for their lack of inventory. Once we get pass the fat ceiling of size 16, selection and quantity becomes horrendous. I understand that not all fat women want to wear tankini, bikini and some even like the skirts but we are 2/3 of the majority, why do we have to get crap. All they had in my size was a few one piece dresses. I found one bathing suit, saw the long line and figured I might do better at Sears next door.

I did. Even though I call Sears the store of the most returns. If Sears didn’t have a better selection of bathing suits, I would tell them to stick to appliances.

Sears had tankinis, one pieces and skirts. But the tankini bottom and tops were sold separately and even with a half-off sale the pieces were $25 double than what the were in Marshalls. I ended up buying $125 worth of bathing suits. I'm not against spending more to get good quality, but I had a feeling that in one or two years I would be replacing them.

I thought about waiting for the flea to get my bathing suit but the one thing the flea doesn't have is quality control. It is all based on donations.

Doesn't mean I'm disappointed. I never am. I always find a great piece (This year being the Torrid dress) At the flea I got a bathing suit, a top and a swim shirt for $15. Two of them were from a sample sale and never worn. I also feel like I'm a person at the flea because I know that the organizers are looking out for us. They want shoppers to go away with that one or more great article of clothing.

 

About great achievements.

Sometime after I earned my first Master's degree in Education, I had a thought. Here I was achieving a graduate degree that only about 8 percent of the US population have done. My thought was I could achive this, so why can't I be thin? After all there only about an 8% chance of losing weight and keeping it off, why should it be harder than getting a master's degree?  

My first Masters had been difficult. I twice thought about dropping out. I got two low grades, I had second thoughts about going into teaching and later it turned out the thesis adviser was barely letting anyone graduate (She was eventually replaced and I finally finished.) Writing the thesis itself took all my free time and I lived in the library. 

But all I thought about after this incredible accomplishment is why I couldn't get thin. 

The first degree was a nightmare. I ended up never using it. I really didn't like teaching and I had trouble finding work. 

So I got another Master's degree this time in Library Science. Getting was much smoother than the first one. When it was time to do my thesis, I was ready. I found two partners who wanted to finish in one semester. We all worked full time. So every single weekend and some weekday nights the three of us would hole up in a study room at the library and work on our research for hours. Imagine that, having the discipline to give up weekends (at the time I was recently married) to finish this paper. 

During this degree, I was a "successful" dieter. I had being doing a low carb diet for almost a year, I had lost 40 pounds and kept it off.  Eventually I stopped losing and started gaining. But for a while I thought I had it all: the education, the husband, and the weight loss.  

Recently a visiting NYU professor tweeted: Dear obese PhD applicants: If you don't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation.

The tweet was taken down quickly but the damage was done. The "professor" had to quickly backtrack his words, probably fearful of losing his job. 

It's funny of all the unwarranted dieting advice he signalled out that fat people cannot stop eating carbs. Earlier tweets indicated he is a fan of the paleo diet fad (I can write an entire blog post about how incorrect it is and how our Paleo ancestors ate mostly vegetarian.) 

I have previously written that when  I gave up carbs completely, I got very ill. Even in the earlier low carb diets I did where the carb count was higher, I had heart palpitations, reflux disease, constant thoughts of food, dreams about cheating. I became pre-occupied with food, always thinking about the next meal. It turned out that low carb dieting is yet another low calorie diet. 

I have to wonder how I managed to find the strength and discipline after all this dieting to finish two masters degrees. 

And if you want to see more fabulous fat people with advanced degrees, click here. 

The 12 doctors

This is not a post about my favorite TV series Dr. Who and the sadness over the 11th Doctor Matt Smith leaving.

This post is about a study that shows fat people changing doctors more than thin people.

Overweight and obese patients are significantly more likely than their normal-weight counterparts to repeatedly switch primary care doctors, a practice that disrupts continuity of care and leads to more emergency room visits, new Johns Hopkins research suggests.

This made me think of my own history. I realized that over my lifetime I've had 3 different dentists and 3 different gynocologists but a whopping 12 primary care doctors. I dropped five of them for either pressuring me to lose weight and/or assuming I had "fat-related diseases".

• Doctor#1: At 10, he was the first doctor to give me the fat talk.
• Doctor #2: I asked him how to lose weight, he told me to eat less. 
• Doctor #3 & 4 were the first doctors I chose on my own and  dropped because I moved. At the time I didn't really see doctors unless I was sick and I think I saw these two a total of 4 times over 2 years. I don't remember if they ever brought up weight, but if they did, I probably told them I was dieting.
• Doctor #5 didn't bother me about my weight but I moved again. I remembered that he  refused to drain a scary blister on my finger.
• Doctor #6 was recommended by a thin friend as being holistic, except that I found that when she would go, he would recommend alternative medicine first and for me prescription drugs. 
• #7 and 8 were a husband and wife team. I left them when they kept insisting that I do something about the high blood pressure I never had.
• #9 said my fat was the reasons my veins collapsed.
• #10 recommended weight loss surgery (Also ironic that Dr. Who #10 is my least favorite doctor.)
• #11 was okay because by now I was into size acceptance. I left because I found a new doctor who could do blood tests on site. (#11 is still my backup).
• #12 is the doctor I have now. He's weight neutral. He occasionally mentions my weight but he never refuses to treat me or push me to lose weight. 

It's hard to find a doctor these days who doesn't parrot the diet industry and say all you have to do is eat less and exercise and you will be thin or has bad assumptions about fat people. A recent study showed 1/3 of medical students in North Carolina are biased (subconscious or otherwise) against fat people.

More than one-third of the students had a moderate to strong bias against obese people, as measured by the test, whereas only 17 percent had an anti-thin bias. Two-thirds of the students were unaware of their anti-fat bias.

With statistics like these, no wonder Fat people are doctor shopping which is yet another barrier to our health care.  

I have some advice to try to avoid this but it may not happen. The doctor who recommended weight loss surgery was weight neutral.

#1. Your new doctor needs the fat talk. That's the talk where you tell him or her that you are aware you are fat, you don't wish to talk about weight-loss and you are following HAES (Bring Linda Bacon's book or study to show the doctor). When I told Doctor #12 that, he said "Okay." And he's been my doctor ever since. Once I saw a specialist I once saw interrupted my fat talk, and blame my ailments on being fat. I never went to her again. 

#2 For every doctor you got to keep copies of all tests done. Keep them in a binder or folder and if you need to move doctors, at least you have a medical history to give them. 

#3 Educate your doctor. I taught my chiropractor about Health at Every Size.

#4 Consult Fat Friendly Health Professionals to see if anyone is in your area.

#5. A good doctor may not be weight neutral but they shouldn't refuse to treat you unless you lose weight.

Finally while I have enjoyed Matt Smith as Doctor Who, my favorite is #3 Jon Pertwee.