Fat Chicks Rule

Open Letter to Carol Weston. XXXL is ok.

Due to life, I was unable to respond to directly to this letter by Carol Weston which talks about how horrible the childhood obesity epidemic is. Apparently It wouldn't have mattered because the New York Times printed no rebuttals from the fat community.

Dear Ms. Weston,

Can I call you Carol?

Like my peers, when I was a kid, I ate a lot of junk and highly processed food. The 1980’s was a big time to eat out of boxes, and soda, pizza, and candy were plentiful. In school every time there was a birthday, each kid would get one cupcake. I wasn’t into pizza until I was nine and then I couldn't get enough. For lunch, I usually went home to a sandwich or a can of soup, but once a week, for $2 I was able to get a slice, a small soda, and four things of candy (The candy lasted me most of the week). My peers were also stuffing themselves with pizza, candy, and soda. When I was nine something else happened, I started to get chubby (Maybe you're right, maybe it was the pizza) but I suppose I was still safe in your book, Carol, as I was still XL but not XXXL (Because after XL you cease to be human.)

However in the 80’s, there wasn’t any concern about the self-esteem of kids and teens.  I was fat and told to diet. No one mentioned dieting didn't work. And when I started, it took 17 years to stop. Meanwhile my thinner peers were ignored, weren’t told to skip pizza and the soda. We were told the basics of good nutrition, but the fat kids were singled out to change the way they eat.

A lot has changed since the 80s. It is not acceptable to put a child on a diet. And the general consensus is that dieting doesn’t work. It is also became less acceptable to call your child fat. Even if they are fat.

However there is still a massive push to be thin or else. Like me, fat kids are still singled out for their weight where thin kids aren’t. (Or told that if they eat that way they’ll get fat.) Fat kids are the reason schools don’t have cupcakes, pizza or soda (Please keep in mind, I’m pro healthy foods in school and regular gym, but I think an occasional cupcake, pizza or soda is not a big deal.)

You say you’re against dieting but you pressure kids to lose weight. What do you think a fat girl will do with your information? What do you think happens when she see signs like this?

Do you think she’ll laugh as she eats her pizza and gulp down her soda? You tell kids to lose weight but every way to do it doesn’t work for most people. You single out fat girls for eating pizza and not walking. They are the ones that are going to diet, they are the ones who are going to go on the binge/dieting cycle.

Instead let’s have healthy nutritious food and fun exercise for all children, not just fat ones. Let’s teach them to love their bodies whether it be XS or XXXL.

 

Dr. Oz, Snake Oil Salesman

I watched exactly one episode of Dr. Oz. I found him and his show to be superficial tripe. I watched the episode solely because Dr. Glenn Gaesser (A proponent of fit and fat) happened to be on.

Recently Dr. Oz was called in front of congress and chastised for his role in pushing diet products that don’t work in the long run. He was unapologetic about it.

Oz insisted he believes in the supplements he talks about on his show as short-term crutches and even has his family try them. He said his job on the show is to be a "cheerleader" for his audience, one who offers hope even if that means looking to alternative healing traditions and any evidence that might support them.

Dr. Oz pushed a diet product Pure Green Coffee on his show which later the FTC investigated for making false diet claims.  Dr. Oz scolded Dr. Gaesser for promoting fit and fat, but there are plenty of studies showing you can be fit and fat and as far as I know no study showing green coffee working in the long run (I found one short term study of 22 weeks where 16 people lost about 18lbs).

The weight-loss industry is an area where consumers are particularly vulnerable to fraud, Mary Koelbel Engle, an associate director at the FTC, testified at the Senate hearing. She said the agency conducted a consumer survey in 2011 and found that more consumers were victims of fraudulent weight-loss products than of any of the other specific frauds covered in the survey.

I don’t think people turn to snake oil salesmen because they’re stupid,  (I was dieting including fad ones long after I got my second master’s degree) I think they do it because they are desperate. We live in a world that preaches that thin is everything and that we must fit into a magical number of BMI 18.5 to 24.5 or we will die a horrible lonely death. Something Dr. Oz’s show often conveys.

And let’s not even talk about the fat suit.

 

Happy Birthday!

No blog post today because it's my birthday! And I'm still not one foot in the grave.

All Fat is Acceptable Fat.

Stacey Bias recently put out a rad comic about Fatty Archetypes. Including such fatty types as healthy fatties, rad fatties, fat athlete, work in progress (i.e dieting fatties), etc. These are fat people are “acceptable fat.” The point of the comic is to leave no one behind and communicate that we shouldn’t have to squeeze into an archetype.  

 

I talk a lot about health in my blog. Mainly because I think a lot of us fatties are denied health because we live in a fat hating world that preaches “Get thin or else”. We are penalized at the doctors where our fat is treated rather than our ailments, our insurance tries to charge us more for being fat, even at the clothing store we can’t get the sizes, styles, and quantity available to a thinner person. All  because we don’t fit into an arcane BMI number.  

This to me is more important than eating right and exercise. I believe that people of all sizes need to do their best to eat right and exercise. I believe we have the right to exercise without being harassed like Ragen Chastain was while she was running.  (I doubt something like this would happen to a thin person).

However not every fat person fits in the acceptable archetype. Some people are fat and don’t eat right or exercise. They are not a rad fattie, they don’t have a disease that makes them fat, they don’t shop at Whole Foods (Granted, no one should) or do Zumba and they’re not a fat unicorn (Which would be awesome). They are just fat. Guess what? They should have all the same rights and privileges as any other fattie.

This comes on the heels of research that I've been saying in my blog for 9 years. Long term weight loss is nearly impossible. Sure you go on a diet (or lifestyle change) and lose 20 pounds, but for most people that weight will creep back usually bringing the friend of additional weight gain.

 As incredible as it sounds, that's what the evidence is showing. For psychologist Traci Mann, who has spent 20 years running an eating lab at the University of Minnesota, the evidence is clear. "It couldn't be easier to see," she says. "Long-term weight loss happens to only the smallest minority of people."

So no matter what kind of fattie you are, there is no proof that you make it into the arcane number. 

Habits, dieting, and Weight Loss

Scientific American recently came out with an article that discusses ditching weight loss and dieting because of poor results. It refers to a man with health problems who instead of dieting began exercising and eating his fruits and vegetables. The results were minimal weight loss but an increase in health.

Everywhere we go, from the mouths of our peers, on every magazine rack, Internet ad, and weight-loss reality show, we get the message: you need to lose weight. You are too fat. Maybe it’s time to retire this line of thinking. 

The article isn’t fat positive (Although kudos to their using pictures of fat people eating healthy and exercising rather than a headless fatty).  It views weight loss as not important yet later says we shouldn’t judge fat people because maybe they already lost weight and it also makes no mention of Health at Every Size™ (HAES) which promotes healthy habits over weight loss.

However, it brings up the point that we push weight loss more than healthy habits. One of the reason I’m such an advocate of Health at Every Size is all my attempts to lose weight failed me. Once I realized diets don’t work for me (And for most people), I knew that I had to instead engage in healthy habits and not care if weight loss happened. I worked to make sure my meals included vegetables and fruit and that I exercised every day. I tried my best to avoid foods my body didn’t like and to not punish myself for a splurge.  

Maybe it’s time to go for a walk, or eat some asparagus, just because those are good, pleasurable things to do, and will make our lives better, whatever our weight.

Meanwhile a study shows that children who get vegetables earlier tend to still eat them later in life. 

Exposing infants to a new vegetable early in life encourages them to eat more of it compared to offering novel vegetables to older children, new research from the University of Leeds suggests.

I have mentioned on my blog that as a kid I loved vegetables, especially carrots, cucumbers, and peppers. Dieting ruined my love for vegetables. When I was on the dieting/binge cycle, I would hardly eat them if I wasn’t dieting.

We make habits so complex with dieting. There’s a million different diets out there, all with different advice, none of which have proved to work for most people in the long run. Meanwhile we ignore the age-old advice. Eat your vegetables and go out and play. I must rather the money from the diet industry be used to create parks, healthy school lunches and get rid of food deserts.