Shades Of Gray: Science & The Fatosphere
If you read Junkfood Science, you might be interested in the conversation going on in the comments starting here. I’ve been waiting for Sandy to come back and respond, but so far, she hasn’t. The National Post also recently wrote:
There are those who have found their life’s calling in catering to delusional overweight people, which can be a lucrative market…Most fat people realize they have a problem, but many would rather believe that the inability to see their shoes is a benign condition rather than taking the extremely difficult (but hardly impossible) route of doing something about it. Fatophile writers prey on the overweight in the same way miracle diet book authors and miracle diet plans do.
One of these fatophiles is University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos, who authored The Obesity Myth. Among his myths are that thinner people die sooner and obesity doesn’t cause heart attacks…Then there’s Sandy Szwarc, nurse and cookbook author, properly labeled “a bigwig in the fat acceptance movement.” She attacks practically every obesity study that comes down the pike, insists that excess fat is healthy, and has even slammed exercise as a means of weight control. She claimed — I kid you not — that you’d have to walk 3,920 miles to lose a mere pound of fat. Then she asked why the public wasn’t hearing such things.
Obviously, the tone of this article is fucked up. You’re not critical thinkers, you’re “delusional overweight people”! You don’t exercise or eat well! You can’t see your shoes! But this article plus that recent conversation made me think about the role of science in the world of the fatosphere.
I’ve always felt myself a little out-of-step with the mainstream fat acceptance movement, because I feel like I’m more willing to believe that there are health risks to overweight. And so my focus tends to be on other things–“dieting” is dangerous, losing weight is incredibly difficult, fatphobia is fucked up, our paranoia about overweight does damage, especially to young women, and society imposes unrealistic standards and judgments on us all. Do I think overweight is disproportionately demonized? Yes, I do. Do I think weight is the be-all and end-all of health? Absolutely not. Do I think being overweight is benign and has no health effects, ever? No, I do not.
So, I ask you, who’s deluded, if anyone? What are the shades of gray here? What do I need to know? What’s the evidence that you find persuasive? What do you or don’t you believe? And what’s the role of science in the fat acceptance movement? At this point, I can’t imagine a thornier question.
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My response is kinda sorta off-topic. I’m a horrible debater, no kind of scientist, and something of a hippie.
I think my experiences with having a chronic pain condition gives me a bit of perspective on this matter. See, i’ve been misdiagnosed several times, and one time, it was with a potentially fatal auto-immune disorder. I was just over 21 years old, and very quickly divested of the ignorance of youth that lets 21 year olds think they’re immortal. Not so much with the happy. For about six months i walked around thinking that i was a ticking time bomb – i could die in 5 minutes, in 5 years, in 5 decades.
After a while, i found out that it was an incorrect diagnosis. But i’d taken something very valuable away from that experience, and that is that NONE of us know how long we have. It could be a heart attack (like the coworker of mine who died from one at 48 – skinny as a rail), it could be from getting hit by a bus, it could be from brain-eating algae, who the hell knows?
Is fat unhealthy? There are some who scream yes, others who scream no, and some who scream that it’s debatable. All i know is that screaming hurts my throat. So i’m gonna try to have a nice, happy, stress-free life. And if i die at 40, at least i will have enjoyed my time here.
Spending every day worrying about What Might Kill Me is a fast route to a miserable life. Been there, fuck that.
I have read some of the studies that Paul Campos and Sandy Szwarc refer to, and their criticisms appear to be valid. But, I’m not a medical professional. I’m well educated and analytical, but I’m in a different field.
What stands out for me in the CDC mortality data. Overweight people live the longest. Type I obese and “normal weight” people are similar, and the most premature mortality is found among underweight and very heavy people. (Funny how they don’t refer to the underweight people as “morbidly wasted” or something) However, life expectancy does not fall dramatically for people outside of the middle BMI range. It’s a bell curve. People at the extreme ends of the bell curve are higher risk.
So, very large people are in a higher risk category, along with men, people in some ethnic groups, and people with many other characteristics that aren’t demonized and hated the way being fat is.
Risk. It’s a question of risk. Nobody really knows the details of the cause/effect, not even with type II diabetes, which has a stronger correlation with fatness than any of the other medical conditions that are supposedly related to it.
We have control over a lot of things in our lives that affect our life expectancy. We can control how fast we drive, and whether or not we wear seatbelts. We may choose to take part in dangerous sports, or we may choose not to. We may choose to sleep enough to feel rested, or we may force ourselves to function on too little sleep. We may choose a lower stress profession, or a higher stress profession. We may choose to do active things for fun, or to spend our leisure time reading or playing board games. We can choose to eat any way that we want to, within our budgets. We can choose to maintain our relationships with others (critical for our emotional health) or neglect them.
Two important points:
1. Our weight is not something that we can control directly.
2. Adults have to right to choose how to balance risks.
So, let’s say that someone has decided to extend their life expectance as much as possible (of course, nobody is obligated to do so). He might take a low pressure job walking distance from home, and swim laps for an hour, 4 times a week. He is close to his family and friends. He sleeps 7-8 hours a night. When he does drive, he is not aggressive or excessively timid. He eats a healthy, moderate diet.
Sounds like a nice life. But, this person could be fat or thin – there really no telling. And, if he’s fat, it’s probably not worth it to him to try to force his weight down. It will just throw his super-healthy life out of balance.
Now, other people may be bigger risk takers. They may choose not to live the super-healthy life. Seriously, how many people (thin or fat) do? There are people in my family who have stayed healthy and active decades after their friends and peers have passed away. It’s lonely. They have a lot of angst around being in a world that doesn’t feel like home anymore, about feeling left behind, and about not being about to connect easily with people who are much younger. Is that worth sacrificing our quality of life for – just a possibility that we might live for a long time? Where is the inherent value in that?
I’d just like to point out that I can’t see my feet because of my societally-approved gigantic jugs – the ones that I had when I was “thin” – and not because of my societally-shunned chubby belly.
I doubt the author would consider said jugs to be a malignant condition, don’t you?
Baconsmom, amen to that. My ginormous boobs stick out past my belly, always have, even when I was lighter than I now am. But ginormous boobs are acceptable, desirable, coveted, while big bellies are not. Personally, I would gladly give away some of what I carry on my chest and deal with not being able to see my feet because of my belly. Big boobs are a royal pain, they get in the way, they’re heavy, they hurt my shoulders and back, but there are women out there who are jealous of what I have and don’t want. They can have them, I say.
As for quality and quantity of life, I choose quality. And it’s my definition of quality that counts, not some doctor or a stranger on the street. If I have a good life that I enjoy and I die tomorrow, at least I lived the way I wanted. If I live to be 90, it will not be because I’m thin and healthy, it will be because that was my fate, to be fat and live to be 90. I could walk out my door tomorrow and be killed in a car wreck, and even though I’m fat, it won’t have been my fat that killed me. I could drop dead of a heart attack, and I seriously doubt it would be my fat that caused it (contributed, maybe, but not caused). I don’t have time to worry about all this obesity crap, I’m too busy living and loving my life.
ITA, Dee. I myself spent 15 years on medications that took me from the “low risk overweight” BMI range to the ZOMG Instant Death BMI range of over 35, despite eating less and exercising more than I had before I was on the meds. But my psychiatric condition was probably going to kill me a lot faster than my fat ass ever could, had I left it untreated. Would Fumento and his ilk rather I had simply defenestrated myself rather than become so Monstrously Horribly Tragically Fat? Yeah, I do believe they would. And they can bite me with lots of duck sauce.
So many good questions raised here. And I like the grey area; so much potential for rich debate, although it does lapse into yelling and finger-pointing, which is too bad. We’re at an interesting point in human history in which we have a food surplus couple with leisure time and convenience technology–so why not enjoy our lives?
And yet, at my heighest weight, I experienced joint pain, elevated blood pressure, and skipped a few periods. (It was the fertility issue that scared me the most.) I lost some weight through being more physically active (swimming mostly) and those problems cleared up. We all have an optimal weight and setpoint unique to each individual and being under or over can create imbalances in our systems. Whether that’s 90 pounds or 300 pounds shouldn’t matter. It’s the state of health and well-being that matters.
And I like the question Dee raises–is it really, really worth it to live so long? It’s sweet and sentimental to wish people a long life at their birthdays, but the reality is lonelier. I’ve also had relatives who lived a long, long time (I’m talking almost 100) and felt very alone in a world that had changed.
As a medical student I’m constantly bombarded by messages of Fat = Death. As a fat person I am frustrated by this approach because I think that medical educators are simply towing the line, but I also to some degree wonder just how strong the arguments are against that line. I’ve yet to raise my hand in class and call bullshit because I don’t feel completely positive of my defense. I’m here because I believe two things: that fat people deserve respect, and that grownups get to live the way they want to live. Having said that, I will likely be the type of physician who won’t discuss lifestyle with my fat patients OR my thin patients unless I KNOW that they *don’t know* that their eating and exercising is unhealthy. After that conversation, it’s up to them. I will never, ever, ever give a weight loss OR gain lecture. Absolutely ALL of my patients will be questioned once about their eating and exercise habits, and then modifications will be suggested but not demanded. Because I’m mostly sure that those things are healthy and that’s what I’m supposed to be providing, not because I think fat is going to help or hinder a patient. Thanks for giving a forum for wondering about these “other side” assumptions!
I think the best answer to this kind of question was given by Lewis Black who, for those of you that don’t know, is actually a comedian.
What he said was basically that we all have our own health, individual and unique to us, and so no one can make a health recommendation that fits all people.
Is it healthy to be overweight? Perhaps not. But we don’t really know what overweight is for each person. We know what the BMI charts say, but we all have a metabolism that will only burn off so many calories. We all can do only so much exercise. We all have a certain percentage of body fat and lean muscle mass. We all have different bone densities. We all have different genetic make-ups. We all have lived different lives, been exposed to different things in the environment. And I’m not sure we really know how any of that effects us.
Add to that the amount of contradictions found, for example: being overweight causes heart attacks v. a few extra pounds can safe your life. Does ten extra pounds save my life, but fifteen extra mean I’m more likely to die? Studies show that being thin at a young age can increase your risk for breast cancer, but being overweight as you get older can also increase your risk. Does that mean we all need to be a little chubby when we are younger and then diet down when we get older? We just don’t know what is going to influence our getting a disease at the end of the day. We might know some risk factors, but just because we have one, does that mean we are doomed to keel over and die at any minute?
And even if it did, isn’t it up to me to want to change that, not up to society to force me to do it? When all is said and done, I think a lot of these stories put forth by the media are not about our health, they are about controlling our bodies. Just look at this one; it paints fat people as delusional babies who follow the snake oil salesman around town just so we can keep shoving Twinkes down our throats. This man doesn’t want me to lose weight so that I’ll live to be an old grandma. Sure that might be a side benefit, but he really doesn’t care about that. What he cares about is that if I ever walk past him on the street he can enjoy the view, or that the next time he gets in a crowded elevator, he doesn’t have to get to close to a fat man, because in his mind he is surely a smelly, disgusting human being.
Because if he really cared about my health, he would bother to find out what kind of shape I’m in. He would learn that I exercise at least five times a week. He would learn that I get almost all my fruit and vegetable servings just about every day. He would learn that I eat lean protein. He would learn that I rarely get sick. He would come to my house and find a variety of food, from the nutritionally worthless to the nutritionally wonderful, and he would see that though I eat both, I am still just fine. But he doesn’t care about that. To him the healthier person is the thinner person. If he stood me and either of my best friends side by side, he would peg me as the one more likely to develop health problems because I am fat. In realty my thin friends, both of whom have health problems of their own, are just unlucky. However if I developed health problems, it would be because of my weight.
I love science. I think it is a wonderful and glorious thing that can teach us a lot about the world. However, science, like religion and philosophy, can also be used as a weapon. Studies can be tweaked, results altered, some findings discounted or suppressed to produce the results people want to hear. So until we figure out how to accept that everyone has the right to live the life they choose and learn to respect everyone, it is hard to know what is being presented as something we might use to help ourselves, and what is being used to further an agenda.
Note that should have read “In his reality…”
I think Fumento is a total assgoblin. I had to read his “Myth of Heterosexual Aids” in a class as an example of carefulling presenting snippets of information to support a wrong conclusion.
That said, I get really uneasy at times at how reliant so many people in the FA community are on very few sources. Paul Campos says…. Gaesser wrote…. Sandy says… and the same studies tend to get cited a lot. There’s no problem, imo, with having these sources, only that we should be aware that nothing is certain at this point and it might well end up that we’re both right and wrong. Maybe ‘obesity’ is almost always the result of bad diet (not excess calories so much as disordered eating and the kind of calories you eat) but once you’re ‘obese’ then it becomes almost impossible to permanently become not obese. I’m not saying that’s the case, but acceptance shouldn’t be predicated by whether or not fat is anybody’s “fault.”
And I’ve said this elsewhere, but I do see a lot of cherry picking wrt data and ignoring findings completely if they contradict the party line. Like I saw a bunch of blogs cover the fact that epidemiological studies are often not reproduced under laboratory conditions. And yeah, this is a wonderful thing to point out when the media wants to tout the latest big study corelating fat with every illness known to man, but it also means that we need to acknowledge that a lot of studies often quoted in our blogs and books and articles may not mean what we’d like them to.
What do you or don’t you believe?
I believe that the scientific community is focusing on the wrong variable and that research ought to focus on activity level rather than weight. I don’t believe fat=unhealthy, but I do believe that fat+sedentary or thin+sedentary = unhealthy. I don’t think they’ll ever look at this seriously, because there’s no money to be made by telling people to increase their activity level. There’s money to be made in inventing a drug to make them skinnier.
I might point out that The National Post is a notoriously anti-intellectual right-wing rag and that Fumento is one of its louder blusterers. Still, just knowing there’s an audience for this crap is depressing.
Dee, I enjoyed your comment but I disagree with your statement, “Our weight is not something that we can control directly.” It’s only a question of learning how to do so.
I’ve always felt myself a little out-of-step with the mainstream fat acceptance movement, because I feel like I’m more willing to believe that there are health risks to overweight.
Same here on both issues. Plus, I believe it is possible to eat oneself above a setpoint range. All of which often put me at odds with those in the movement who emphasize the “good” fat people who eat right and exercise, over the “bad” fat people who may not.
I have no answer to your question, really. On one hand, science certainly is needed to counter stereotypes about fat people, but on the other, I see it as having the potential to create divisions amongst fat people by focusing instead on why people are fat, when the larger focus ought to be that even if someone is fat, they are no less deserving of basic human rights.
In response to attrice’s uneasiness regarding reliance on very few sources, the fact is that there are indeed very few sources. We all would do well to keep in mind that much more research is needed, good research fueled by questions unladen by prejudice and myth, but the money for research is all going to the 5-extra-pounds-will-kill-you camp.
Mary – Not everyone who is fat has an eating disorder and/or overeats. Your site erroneously assumes so.
I want to clarify, because I think my former post didn’t quite get out what I was saying, that I don’t have a problem with the research or the researchers that are often quoted in the movement. But I do think that the certainty with which a lot of FA activists quote that research is unwarranted and that 1) like Rachel said, it can create divisions in the FA movement and 2) it could very well bite us in the ass if it turns out that more unbiased research contradicts some of our scientific assertions.
“Do I think being overweight is benign and has no health effects, ever? No, I do not.”
I think one of the problems is just this statement. You’re adding “ever” and I’m gathering that the author is not implying “ever” but instead “most of the time.” I don’t think anyone would argue “ever.” We’ve all seen overweight people for who their weight does have an effect on their health and wellbeing. It’s a small percentage of people. The issue here is with a huge chunk of the population being told that their excess weight will make them suffer health effects. Because, does it? The jury is out in my opinion. Come back when I can’t make it up a flight of stairs or I have high blood pressure. I’m a healthy girl and I’m really sick of thinking just because my BMI makes me considered “obese” that somehow I’m some idiot who doesn’t get it or I’m unlovable or not pretty or it’s okay to make fun of me or hate me or lecture me, because I guess, in essence, it’s for my own good.
How many fat people do you know that doesn’t know how to diet. It’s a ridiculous statement to think we just haven’t learned how.
I’m 35 years old. I’ve been dieting since I was 6 years old. I’ve gained and lost the same 70 pounds 3 times, 3 times! It gets old and a big freaking let down and that’s where fat acceptance really looks like a light in the dark. I am not alone, I think I am the 95% of people who can’t do it. I cannot maintain the lack of calories and the exercise required for my body to stay at a supposed “healthy” weight. Just because YOU can doesn’t mean I can. I cannot live in starvation. I applaud anyone who can and I’m happy you get the extra 5-10 years or whatever added to your life because you are hungry all the time.
CAVEAT: Snarky b/c punchy
“extremely difficult but hardly impossible”
There’s tautology of critical thought for you.
Put more bluntly: It’s Frumento?
LALALALALALALALALA I AM NOT LISTENING TO YOU
Messr. Campos is a Professor of Law who dares to tackle the complex (and frequently sufficiently distasteful that we’d all rather live in denial about it all) sociologicaly underpinnings of the visual of body mass in the 21st Century United States.
Next to someone that brave, IMO Frumento’s a ranty lightweight.
Next?
Those would be “sociological” underpinnings.
I’m going to bed now.
There is a common misconception that fat=unhealthy habits. There are several people who read this blog with a BMI>25 but who also exercise, try to get in the right number of fruits and vegetables, etc. Additionally, they are not unhealthy by any clinical definition – blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol, etc. are all good.
Unfortunately, a high BMI is associated with NOT exercising and with NOT eating fruits and vegetables. That is not to say that ALL people with a high BMI do not perform these healthy behaviors – just that there is an association (sorry, I could not find a reference quickly).
There are studies that show that exercise and good nutrition can be of great benefit regardless of BMI status (J Clin Oncol. 2007 Jun 10;25(17):2345-51; Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2007 Oct;39(10):1687-1692).
Also, there are a lot of studies that show a high BMI is associated with risk of chronic disease and early death (Arch Intern Med. 2002 Sep 9;162(16):1867-72; Arch Intern Med. 2001 Jul 9;161(13):1581-6; N Engl J Med. 1990 Mar 29;322(13):882-9). I do not have time to read these beyond the summary sentence, so I do not know if the authors controlled for exercise or nutrition status.
What I am trying to say is that I agree that people should not be judged based on their appearance (fat, skinny, ugly, whatever). I also agree that overweight does not always equal early death. And I even agree with junkfoodscience that the media does a horrible job of conveying public health information. But, there is evidence that a higher BMI puts you at risk – it is just that scientists have yet to tease out the exact relationship between genetics, lifestyle, and environment.
It always boils down to anything straying from the ideological norm is bad, but nothing in life is every fully explainable and there are always exceptions. What is more is that when the exception becomes the rule, things change, so nothing is ever constant. I think that the stress of trying to be something, thinner, fatter, etc. taxes our lives a lot more than just being who we are and loving ourselves no matter what. But we do not live in a bubble and cannot help but to contribute and be effected by the messages of society. I think a really interesting study would be one on the health risks associated with being marginalized for your BMI, or something like that, I believe it would be very revealing on the nature of our society and the way we cut each others lives short over things that are irrelevant in the big picture. We care more about what someone looks like than about how our environment is faring, very messed up way of looking at things. What are the health risks associated with dumping toxic junk into our water systems, what are the health risks of messing around with our food until it is fat free, but unrecognizable in nature, what are the health risks of pumping everything full of horomones and antibiotics??? Now this is the shit I want answered. Everything effects everything else, nothing is every constant, and nothing is ever going to be the same as something else, this we cannot control, what we can is what we allow them to put into our bodies through our environment. Whoops, off into a rant. Still think it’s important to say though.
I think that it’s extremely difficult to deduce cause from correlation. And that Lindsay is right: people who are not fat also have health problems.
Going by BMI alone, I am obese (low end of category) and my husband is normal (also at the low end). If you were going by that alone, you’d say he will live longer and be healthier than I will.
On the other hand, I’m a woman (women live longer), he has depression (depressives, statistically, die younger), and I have several grandparents and great-grandparents who have lived well into their eighties and nineties (more than he does).
It’s a complicated business.
Dee, I enjoyed your comment but I disagree with your statement, “Our weight is not something that we can control directly.” It’s only a question of learning how to do so.
Really? Then, you must have a weight control knob on the back of your head that I’m missing. In my experience, people can control their habits (to some extent), but how their bodies react to a given set of habits is not under their control.
I tend to go back and forth on this issue. On the one hand, I know that I was less healthy when I was heavier — I was dancing with high blood pressure and insulin resistance, and losing some weight helped me get that under control, along with some other hormone-type issues. But I think it can be kind of a chicken-or-egg discussion: Is someone diabetic because they are fat, or fat because they are (or are prone to being) diabetic? That’s just one example; I’m sure there are others.
And I don’t think we can discount how people feel about themselves as a factor in overall health. If you’re happy, if you like how you look, if your state of health allows you to do the things you enjoy — then you’re going to be a healthier person whether you are fat or thin. Sadly, our culture doesn’t want to accept that there’s NOT one type or size of “healthy” body, and I think many of the research done in the field of obesity is designed to prove that there is. Any research that is done with an agenda to justify (i.e. fat is bad for you and we’re going to prove it) isn’t going to be as scientifically valid as that done with an open mind.
With that said, sometimes I feel like I don’t “fit” in the FA movement because I like myself better at my lower weight (which is by no means skinny). A lot of the messages I read regarding FA suggest that anyone who wants to lose weight or who is trying to lose weight is “buying into the fat hate” or that “it won’t work anyway.” Which can be almost as negative as the “fat = bad, ugly, etc.” messages that we get everyplace else. Like others have said, it’s complicated.
What is “health”? What does it mean? How can it be measured? In an effort to answer these questions, scientists seek to quantify and categorize, but the quantifications and qualifications reduce the question to overly simplistic terms. Wellness, fulfillment, satisfaction, physical well-being — all these are subjective things, intrinsically immeasurable.
The medical and scientific laws and dictates established today may mean nothing in fifty or one hundred years. Paradigms shift and things we thought we “knew” are proven false. Science is not infallible. It was one purported to be a scientific, physically proven fact that women were incapable of intelligence equal to that of men.
What further clouds the entire subject is the part the marketing of self-hatred plays, especially for women. We are constantly bombarded with messages of inferiority. Many women’s social interactions with one another revolve almost entirely around beautifying and/or complaining about their bodies. Clearly, when profits are at stake, there may be other agendas than public interest which influence studies into health and wellness.
Taking these things into account – that science is not infallible, that wellness is not really an objective state, and that profits depend on dissatisfaction with our bodies – it only makes sense to approach the various studies and theories about fat and health with skepticism. Being skeptical is not the same as being deluded.
Miss Laura,
Can I piggyback here?
What is “fitness?”
I know that, in my opinion, health is a condition in which an animal is able to carry out “normal” daily biological functions with little or no pain, and reflexive effort. Now, this definition might seem pretty broad, but, what if you can’t use your arms or legs? And who would argue that people who use adaptive stuff – like shower chairs, wheelchairs, eye glasses, etc. — don’t have “health?”
I have the same question about fitness. Most people would look at me and assume I’m not physically fit, but I run, lift weights, stretch and stuff like that. Am I fit? Is my very thin girlfriend (who never wakes up in the morning NOT feeling like she has to throw up — she’s got a fantastically bad gut) more fit than I am? She certainly has less strength, energy and stamina. But most people would look at her and assume she exercises and eats very well.
Good questions, all.
I have to say that the people who maintain there’s no bad effect from overweight are delusional. (And by overweight I mean uncomfortably past one’s setpoint, not “not being a size 4”).
When I was very fat (by 70 pounds or so) my thighs rubbed together and got sores if I walked even half a mile. I couldn’t fit into most clothes and lived in men’s XL tshirts and sweaters. I couldn’t keep up with my workmates on a walking tour of the city. I broke things I sat on. My blood pressure was very high and I found it difficult to catch my breath. It was an unhappy life for me because I had gone so far past the weight natural for me. When I lost the weight I was amazed by the range of things I could now do.
The media fixation on BMI is insane, but to say the only problems weight far in excess of one’s natural setpoint bring are those of prejudice is insaner still.
I agree about being a little outside the mainstream movement. I think Harriet Brown of the blog “Feed Me” put it best when she said something along the lines of “It’s not what you weigh that counts, but your relationship with food.” How true!!
Fat? Fine!
Fat from binge eating or another eating disorder? Not exactly mentally and/or physically healthy.
I just bought Gary Taubes new book “Good Calories, Bad Calories” and I can’t read it fast enough. Although the title is misleading, Taubes has set out to sort through tons of scientific info and studies to expose the places in history where he believes the science of diet (meaning what we eat) and health have been skewed. For example, we were somehow led to believe that cholesterol in food has an effect on blood cholesterol, which the evidence simply doesn’t prove.
I’m really anxious to see what conclusions this objective science writer comes to when he dissects all the info without predetermining what he’d *like* the results to prove!
This is directed at Slightly More Chuffed who commented earlier…
Just because YOU experienced these things when you were overweight doesnt mean every overweight person experiences them! I am a lot more than 70lb (35kg) overweight (according to the BMI) and I have never got sores between my thighs, never lived in men’s clothing, never broken anything I have sat on. My BP isnt high and I can catch my breath just fine (even after walking quie a distance). My life is not unhappy and I am apparently well past the weight that is “natural” for me. Please dont assume that everyone who is overweight has the same or even similar experiences to you.
Slightly More Chuffed, I’ve had doctors tell me I’m as much as 100 lbs. over my “ideal” weight. I can find plenty of clothes, and I can walk for miles and miles without blisters, thigh chafing, or being out of breath. I don’t break things. I don’t have joint pain or health problems or any chronic conditions usually associated with overweight.
I eat the exact same foods as my “normal” weight husband, in smaller portions. So is my body far past its setpoint, because some chart said it is? I doubt it.
I’m sorry you had such a difficult time. But I don’t have problems from being “so far past” my “ideal” weight – or from being at least 50 lbs. over what was my setpoint for most of my life, before pregnancy upped the ante.
There are health problems associated with the extremes on BOTH ends of the body bell curve, I won’t disagree with you there. But for a woman like me, whose only “problem” is being condemned by a society who thinks I’m bad because I’m “ugly”, I intend to focus my efforts on removing the stigma of being fat – whether that’s 10, 70, or 400 lbs over an “ideal”.
Slightly More Chuffed said “beyond one’s SETPOINT”, not “beyond BMI=normal”. The setpoint being the weight your body wants to maintain – which for many folks is outside of what their doctors recommend.
Many people who have gained weight because of medical conditions, change in lifestyle, or stress eating, etc. — experience discomfort at the higher weight — and feel better when they lose it (even though they may still be considered “obese” at their setpoint weight).
I don’t really care what anybody has to say about my body or health – especially some idiot who writes for a rag like the Post. You are not me, therefore you cannot tell me what is “right” or “wrong” for me. I’m sick of people telling me what to eat and how to exercise “properly.” Seriously, get your own life instead of telling me what to do with mine.
According to the BMI, I should be dead. But yet, I’m still here. Several doctors have told me that I have an exceptional heart and lungs. My blood work shows no abnormalities and my blood pressure is normal. I can climb up and down stairs without passing out. The only physical problems I have stem from my clumsiness. I hurt my ankles falling down poorly constructed stairs and by tripping over a filing cabinet at work. My dad has struggled with his weight for a good long while, but he recently got a clean bill of “health.” My mom has struggled to stay thin all her life too, by skipping meals and exercising several hours a week.
So what if I don’t live till 100? Who cares? I’d rather ENJOY life than spend it obsessing over food and exercise. I don’t have health insurance, so you don’t have to worry about paying my bills either!
Sandy Szwarc & Junk Food Science stand for & have always stood for truth & good, sound science. She is not being paid by anyone & in fact struggles to survive because she is telling truths that the Big Money interests want to keep burying. I would caution anyone from believing the slurs of those who seldom ever identify themselves by their real names & who obviously have legal & financial agendas of their own. I am not coming back to argue, I am just cautioning against believing those who want to discount good, honest, deep research, real science, & someone who is the most honest, pure-hearted person I know who wants only to help people stop panicking & to live well in their own bodies. We do NOT die younger than thin people or have more heart attacks, but the Fumentos of the world want us to do so & those who rake in billions selling a phony ‘epidemic’ are intenton doing whatever is necessary to sell us ‘cures’ for a problem we do not have, cures which DO kill people.
What I do know is the quality of life is decreased with my girlfriend being over weight. Going for a walk is walking a few steps in slow as hell and then sitting down somewhere close by the car. Watching tons of movies all the time of other forms of life when your life could be the movie. Eating whatevers in the house because you don’t want to spend the time cooking so a bunch of junk is consumed rather then enjoying a quick meal. I understand the being happy with yourselves for who you are but does there come a time when you tell yourself I could be having a better life if I didn’t have to lug this built up fat around? What else would you be doing in this rare chance of a lifetime, if you didn’t have so much extra weight on your body? I guess if you are happy with the things you only do already then it wouldn’t make a difference that there is more to experience in this world other then parking in the closest parking spot to the store, and making your way to the closest seat. If my adventures in life are being cut short because of me caring about a person, then I would think to the individual that their own life is being cut short of possibilities because you do not have the strength to lug around your body, plus all the extra that you have allowed to build up. I still stand on the fact that it is a bunch of bs dieting and thinking that weightloss will be a success if you just only change your eating habbits. I think the true key to weightloss is to move the body. Look what happens when you cook a roast or something, the broth is all hot, moving and swirling in the pot, but when you stick it in the fridge or let stand in the same place over time, the fat starts to build up and cling together. Same thing with the body. I don’t know I still think the whole accepting that you’ll be overweight forever and being happy with it is just your addiction making you believe these sorts of things to keep you sick within the addiction.
Dude, first, most of us don’t have any problem walking a couple of miles (at speed). Most of us don’t live on junk food. Most of us don’t put our lives on hold until we’re thin. We take care of the bodies we have now and we live our lives to the fullest.
If your girlfriend is too tired to cook, why don’t you do it? You’re just as responsible for what you and she eat as she is. What a pathetic whiner!
What it all boils down to is individuality. It seems that society as a whole feels the need to put everyone in a neatly labeled category. When someone doesn’t fit the mold, we rage against them and come up with all kinds of facts and figures as to why he/she is wrong. I find this all too common in the FA community as well. I can’t help but notice that when someone says that losing weight has helped them, they get some kind of negative feed back even if they don’t imply that others should do what they did. I know some very fat people who have more energy than I do. When I was heavier my extra pounds made me sick. Every single body is different. Let’s just leave it at that.
Michael Fumento is a dick of the highest order. So that probably colors my opinion of anything he writes. That being said, I believe that the reason there are so few people cited by FA proponents when dissecting weight-related research is because so few people are actually open to the idea that fat may not be bad for your health. Fumento’s (and for that matter, most other anti-fat writers) arguments always seem to boil down to “Everybody knows being fat is bad for you, so what are these crazy people doing saying it’s not?” The whole point is that they are questioning what “everybody knows” using very valid methods and saying, maybe the dogma is wrong. Does that make the FA science writers right all the time? Of course not, but until I am willing to learn more about experimental design and read every study that is referred to cover to cover and critique it myself, I need to depend on others to sort through the literature for me. I find that these folks’ logical critiques have far fewer glaring holes than, for example, coverage of weight research in the mainstream media–plus, I don’t think any of the writers mentioned are fat and they get nothing but abuse and mudslinging for their trouble, so it’s not like there’s something in it for them–so I am inclined to trust their take on the research. I am really, especially on board with their general approach of questioning what “everybody knows,” though. When you consider how many times we have all heard “fat will kill you, fat is bad for your health, fat immobilizes you” it’s a wonder we are even capable of thinking outside the box to have this discussion.
If I were to state an opinion on whether weight is bad for your health (and it would have to be just an opinion since I’m not an expert or anything), I guess I would have to say I think that depends on who you are, how you eat, and how active you are. In my own personal case, I started Weight Watchers a while back and I have indeed lost a great deal of weight; these days I have tweaked it for my own purposes, like I eat way more points than I am “allotted” and focus more on not stuffing myself (I have issues with compulsive eating) and getting lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains and stuff than doing the program “perfectly.” I eat what I think is a pretty healthy diet (though I’m sure if I posted it many of you would gasp in horror at the amount of sugar I eat or whatever) and I’m pleased that I have put myself in a place right now where I am happy about food, enjoy a variety of foods, and don’t stuff myself. (At least for now. We’ll see if stuff throws me out of whack in the future. It’s fairly likely.) I have also started running, though I might add that I went to the gym fairly regularly even at my highest weight, and I feel really good (especially right lately) so I have concluded that my “setpoint” is probably near where I am now (“overweight” by BMI) rather than where I was before. In my personal experience only, my weight is fairly mutable and responds relatively easily to overeating, undereating, and “just right” eating. And I suspect that dieting from a young age also contributed to my disordered eating–I have always believed that my body probably “wanted” to be about where it is now, and I could probably have just gotten there and stayed there rather than yo-yoing around if my well-meaning parents hadn’t intervened in my eating at such a young age. But I falsely believed that the choices were “obese if I ‘let myself go’ or thin if I’m a ‘good girl'” rather than “obese if I eat compulsively and overweight if I eat normally.” Thin is not really an option like I wanted to think it was, because I do believe my body doesn’t want to be there and fights back with cravings and mental stress and so forth if I try to force it too low. Therefore I’m cautious of cutting points too much in an effort to get to “goal.” I am trying to stay more in the mentality of deciding what my body needs and eating that way, and letting my weight do what it will, because not only is the former probably bad for me but I know I will also start overeating again if I push it too hard.
But in reading FA blogs I have learned of many people who could eat as I do now and stay the same or gain weight (whether they are currently underweight, normal, overweight, obese, whatever), and many eat a healthier diet (not to mention much less) than I do. Different people’s bodies respond differently to diet. I think once you start eating a diet made up largely of varied, whole, minimally processed foods that you enjoy, in amounts that don’t leave you feeling stuffed, then the weight you are at is the weight you are at. If you were overeating before and you lose weight because you start eating this way, then yeah, you are probably healthier at a lower weight because apparently the higher weight represented an imbalance. If you stay the same or even gain when eating in this kind of sensible way, then no, I don’t think you are less healthy just because you weigh more or are overweight or obese. In fact, I suspect calorie restriction or food group restriction or excessive exercise designed to change your weight at that point is probably actually be more harmful to your health than staying heavy. The kicker is that not everybody is going to end up thin just because they eat well, and it is harmful to make assumptions about people’s habits just based on their weight. Now, do I think that there are lots of people like me (sedentary, eating out of whack, inclined toward too many unhealthy foods and compulsive eating, etc.) out there in our society? Yeah. I feel bad for those people (whom, again, I may be one of again in the future, who knows… I’m acting like I “know” how to achieve peace with food and weight loss when in fact I don’t know shit, I just feel more OK now than I have in a while) because I know how crappy I feel when I am overeating all the time and how depression and job stress and all that can combine right in there to add to the misery. There have been times when I felt food was the only thing that offered me any measure of comfort, and I think there are a lot of people like me out there. There is no question that I personally am unhealthy mentally and physically when I am using food that way. But you can’t tell the “unhealthy fat people” from the “healthy fat people” by looking at them, no matter what Fumento (who apart from being a pompous ass, struggles with his own weight, and I hope he’s beating himself up about it as we speak) might want you to believe.
I also think the bottom line is what many people here have already expressed, that people are deserving of dignity and respect regardless of whether you believe they can “help” being fat or not, and regardless of your beliefs about whether fat is unhealthy. (I think we all know that 99% of the time, someone who expresses disgust about fat doesn’t give a crap about your health anyway, so that is almost beside the point in the first place.) People do lots of potentially risky things, and being fat is the only one that is vilified to this extent. At the very least that is logically problematic.
Or, what Tara said could just replace my whole comment. :)
I have to say that if there is a thing that irritates me about the FA community, it’s the one-upmanship that sometimes occurs of everyone talking about how little they eat and how healthy it all is and how much they exercise. Some fat people do eat heartily but reasonably, others overeat, and that is OK. We are all at different points in the journey and are all individuals with different preferences. It makes me sad when I stuff myself because I don’t feel good afterwards and it’s like punishing my body. So that I don’t want to do anymore. But if I want to eat a big meal because I enjoy good food (which I do) then I’m going to eat the damn meal. I don’t have to be perfectly healthy to earn the “right” to be fat and happy. Or thin and happy (if that were how I was shaped), for that matter.
I think Tara’s right, individual agency, we’ve all got the right to say what works for us, in terms of eating/ physical activity and in terms of the way messages are put across to us.
The problem for me is the design of the ‘obesity crisis’ goes against what suits me. It is designed to panic, undermine your confidence in your appetite, hunger and body. It is obsessed with food and inserts a dubious morality into it, none of these suit me one little bit.
Only when I took responsibilty and turned away from this and stopped hiding behind scientists and doctors was I able to learn what actually suits me. I feel I was being lazy then, even though it was hurting me, it was so much easier to follow than to take charge. For me this is what FA is all about, whatever the style or ideas of some of the people involved, I can make up my own mind and not be lectured to by people who consider themselves my ‘betters’.
To flip the axiom, with responsiblity comes POWER. I have the former, so I must have the latter.
DEE well first off I can not control what picky eaters eat. Someone that tells me that fruit snacks have real fruit juice in them as if their healthy is either joking or is whacked. I don’t live with my girlfriend so I have no control over what she eats. I am totally opposite of her. Thing is I eat healthy and don’t have to watch what I eat because I have never let myself get the point of having to. Some of you may be different, but I’m talking about the people that are out there eating garbage and are gaining more and more weight and it doesn’t matter to them. I care about this person alot for who they are but they just don’t care about their body or they have mental problems or something. So is that a problem, maybe just in my eyes because I can’t see going on like that if you recognize what your doing to yourself or letting yourself get to that point of having asthma. Maybe I am whining but how do I let a person essentially kill themselves right in front of me. So just let it go to the point of severe health problems without saying anything and then someone would say well why didn’t you do anything earlier. Saying things and even trying to encourage going for walks with me, suggesting buying food from a store and then prepairing it yourself, only ends up in fights and her munching down on Burger King or something as if shes hurting me, when she knows that I cook her good meals when we are together. If thats not a problem then I will accept being the screwed up one. Yes I am screwed up for thinking people should be better to their bodies and for thinking that other people want to be healthy. I understand that people will do what they want and will change or kill themselves if they want to.
Oh- sorry. From your first post, I thought you were living together. It sounds like your girlfriend’s problems go a little deeper than just her body size.
Your comments sound like you mean well and want the best for your girlfriend, but I can tell you are pretty judgmental about fat (i.e. saying you don’t watch what you eat because you never let yourself get to that point) and that might be affecting her behavior. (Not that you should be held responsible for how she acts–she is a grown-up–but it might be affecting the dynamic between you.)
As hard as it is to accept, sometimes you have to just let people do their thing. If you want to help her, then make sure to make healthy stuff when it is your turn to cook and/or take her to healthy restaurants and plan active dates. But I think you have to look at the situation realistically and understand that no matter how hard you try, you may never be able to convince her to change. People have to be ready to change themselves and as someone who has had trouble with food myself, I know that that moment where everything “clicks” and you are ready to make a change is very elusive. No matter how bad you want to stop eating like that, it can be extraordinarily hard to actually do it.
I would say especially that if you are emphasizing at all how unhealthy fat is and how out-of-control fat people are by way of motivation, that is really unlikely to do any good and will probably just cause her to resent you and act out more with her eating. Again I’m not saying so much that her behavior is your “fault” as that you have to step back from the situation as it is and decide if you can live with it. If you can’t (or the only way you can envision being able to tolerate it is if you convince her to change), you may need to think about ending the relationship because she may never change. In my own life I find that if my husband takes any kind of an active role in passing judgment on my eating, it makes me resent him and feel like he’s trying to be the “dad” in our relationship, and not only does that make me want to eat in secret and adopt other unhealthy behaviors, but it affects other aspects of our relationship. When I feel “safe” to eat around him because he’s not being judgmental about it, I actually eat less. I really do think the bottom line here is that you can’t control other people no matter how hard you try, and it usually just makes things worse in the end to try. In the end my husband married me for better or worse and we both try to be the best we can be for each other, but I struggle with food sometimes and he understands that that can be part of the package with me.
She does sound depressed and perhaps some counseling would help (I find that for me, overeating is a downward spiral and the more you do it, the more you want to do it and the less you want to exercise, and you just get more and more depressed until you are able to force your way out of the cycle somehow) but that is not a guarantee either. I hope she feels better soon and your relationship starts improving again. I think it’s great that you are looking for ways to help her and hopefully your kindness and caring will help carry you guys through this issue. Good luck.
Love, I’d like to second what spacedcowgirl said, completely. I will add that even comments that seem supportive on the surface, like “I just want you to be healthy,” wind up sounding judgemental, and most likely will only result in resentment and probably binge-eating when you’re not around.
Maybe you could take a cooking class together? Not a “diet” cooking class, but something more fun and exotic, like Indian cuisine or something else that you’ve both enjoyed before. Or just laying off the discussion for awhile — give her a break from your concern and/or disapproval (and the disapproval does come through in your responses, so I’m sure it comes through to her, too) — would probably do more to help than anything else.
Tara said what I was thinking. It’s individual! As an individual, I think I do have some room to improve. Sometimes I eat emotionally, I want to be more active. But I would not dream of telling others, thin or fat, that they are not healthy simply because of their size. Not every thin person is healthy and not every obese person is unhealthy.
Love if you can’t accept your girlfriend where she is right now, you probably shouldn’t be her girlfriend. I wish my husband wouldn’t smoke, but it’s his decision. Everyone has to walk down their own path.
Look what happens when you cook a roast or something, the broth is all hot, moving and swirling in the pot, but when you stick it in the fridge or let stand in the same place over time, the fat starts to build up and cling together. Same thing with the body.
The hell is that supposed to mean? There’s no fat in the broth that wasn’t originally there – it doesn’t magically appear when you cool it, it just congeals instead of being liquefied. Skinny people don’t have liquid fat swirling around inside their bodies that then turns into flab if they eat too many Cheetohs.
I think I want a shirt that says “I am a pot roast.”
Maybe just a brown t-shirt with a picture of a succulent pot roast on it.
The junkscience website, which claims to “debunk” “junk” science, is one of the most ignorant, least creative, curiosity-deprived sites on the web.
Seriously: the celebrity gossip sites and blogs are run by people with far more intelligence than junkscience.com…and, in my experience, greater credibility.
I’m mystified that anyone would find anything published there to be worthy of attention. In fact, the “junkscience” connection pretty much guarantees that the research they claim to be debunking is sound.
Especially where medicine, health, and nutrition are concerned. Sheesh.
junkscience.com and junkfoodscience.com are different websites, but they do link to each other and share a common right wing political stance (libertarian, anti-environmentalist, anti-regulation, pro-industry).