Q&A With PastaQueen
Jennette Fulda, better known as PastaQueen, may have lost a couple hundred or so pounds, but she’s been a commenter on and visitor to Big Fat Deal for a long time. On a blog tour for her memoir, Half of Me, she offered to stop by and answer the toughest questions I could come up with about weight loss and fat acceptance. Feel free to discuss the book, her responses, or my questions in the comments here—I know it will be a respectful and interesting discussion. Thanks again to Jennette for answering these questions so extensively, and giving us so much food for thought.
You say: “Whenever I tried hanging around fat-acceptance sites, I felt as if they were trying to make me feel bad for wanting to be thin, which was just as bad as anyone who tried to make me feel bad for being fat… if there were simply a self-acceptance movement, maybe I could have joined that.” What do you see as being the differences between “self acceptance” and “fat acceptance”? What would your self acceptance movement look like?
Before I make any comments about the fat acceptance movement, I’d like to acknowledge that there are many different ideas and forces at work within it, just like any philosophical or political movement. Asking someone what they think of fat acceptance is like asking them what they think about feminism or democracy or Bob Dylan. Maybe you liked his acoustic stuff, but didn’t care for the electric album. The current battle going on in the American Democratic party is proof that even when people are on the same side, they can disagree vehemently on certain issues. I was very careful in my book to only mention my personal experiences with the FA movement. I’m not trying to summarize it as a whole or write any treatises or manifestos. My book is a memoir, so it covers my memories and my personal experiences, nothing else.
That being said, I have visited fat acceptance sites where people tried to make me feel bad about my desire to lose weight. I never told anyone else to lose weight. I never tried to make anyone else feel bad for being fat. I just had to admit that I didn’t like being fat and I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. If I didn’t like being a brunette, no one would give me shit about dying my hair blonde. At the same time however, I believe that fat people should not be discriminated against or made to feel bad because of their weight and that fat people deserve equal rights. I just think it’s okay if you prefer not to be one of those fat people. Not everyone agreed with me, which is why some of the sites I personally visited were less like fat acceptance sites and more like “accept you if you’re fat” sites, or at least “accept you if you’re fat and you like it” sites. Acceptance that comes with terms attached isn’t truly acceptance.
So, the difference I see between fat acceptance and self acceptance is that self acceptance means you are cool with whatever you are - fat, thin, a fat person who wants to be thin or even a thin person who wants to be fat. Many people in the fat acceptance movement embody this philosophy brilliantly, others not so much.
In your memoir, you also talk about fat girls who “let their thunder thighs steal their thunder.” What would you say to those girls?
First off, I promise that you are not nearly as fat as you think you are. I look back at photos from high school when I felt like a human blob and now I think “You were so thin!” Second, your size only matters as much as you let it. If you’re really self-conscious and feel bad about yourself, it will show in your body language no matter how big or small you are. If you walk into a room confidently, it will radiate out of you. There are many plus-sized role models who demonstrate these qualities, like Queen Latifah or Beth Ditto, and hopefully there will be many more in the future.
You talk about weight loss blogs and fat acceptance blogs not being mutually exclusive–and yet I’m sure many bloggers would disagree with you. Some fat acceptance blogs are not welcoming of people trying to lose weight at all, and some weight loss blogs claim that fat acceptance is the same as turning one’s back on weight loss. Do you think either of these concerns is valid? I think ultimately both of those types of blogs are about the same thing – the right to do with your body as you chose. For some people that means losing weight and for others it’s declaring that they don’t feel a need to drop any pounds. Just as fat acceptance members don’t want people to give them crap about being fat, people who are losing weight don’t want people to give them crap about eating salads.
Sometimes people take their pride so far in one direction that they create shame in the other direction. For instance, I’ve read threads on message boards where overweight women justifiably complain about how women are mocked on tabloid covers for being fat. Then those same women will make jokes about Kate Bosworth for being a “bag of sticks” and say she should “eat a cheeseburger.” How is this any different than saying a fat girl is a “tub of lard” who should “get on a treadmill?” In both cases you’re ridiculing women for their bodies. Some women are naturally fat and others are naturally thin, and neither group deserves to be humiliated or degraded because of that.
If the lines of communication were more open and welcoming between these groups, I think we could make a lot more positive progress in the world than we do by hating on each other. There aren’t that many people who’ve lived life as a morbidly obese person and as a thin person. This gives me a unique perspective on issues and it would be sad if I was shut out from sharing it with one group or the other simply because of my current size. Sometimes I’ve gotten nasty comments on my blog from people on the extreme edges of the fat acceptance movement. It’s ironic that in a movement that is about not judging people for their size, they’ve stopped by to judge me because of my size.
You talk about accepting yourself, and in that process, accepting that you weren’t happy being fat. Do you think it’s possible to accept yourself as a fat person without accepting your fatness? Do you think the fact that you thought of it this way is what enabled you to lose the weight? In other words, do you think if you’d been a more self-confident fat girl, you might never have been motivated to become thin?
No matter how self-confident I might have been, there were things about being morbidly obese that just sucked. It had nothing to do with what fashion editors in New York put on the covers of magazines. I was so fat that I injured my knee walking up the stairs. I had to have my gallbladder removed at age 23. I became exhausted just tossing a ball around with my cat. My weight was seriously inhibiting me from living the life I wanted to lead. Because of that, I believe I would have been motivated to lose weight no matter what.
So, I obviously knew I was fat and accepted that I was currently a fat person. However, I also believed that I could lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle – and I did. I didn’t accept that being fat was an inescapable part of my life, and for me that turned out to be true.
You lost a great deal of weight without surgery, and have kept it off. Do you think it’s possible or desirable for every fat person to do what you did?
I think every man and woman faces different challenges when it comes to weight loss. Some people are naturally thinner than others and don’t have to work as hard to be slender. Some battle eating disorders which can make it dangerous for them to try losing weight because they do so in ways that are harmful to their health. Some people just don’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables and lean meats that are part of a healthy diet. These are aspects of our lives that we don’t control. However, we can all exert some control over our environment by choosing to exercise and to make the best eating choices available to us. So, I think weight loss is definitely possible, though it may be harder for some people than others, and potentially dangerous if they go about it in the wrong way.
As far as desirable goes, I think it’s desirable to eat healthy and maintain an active lifestyle. Many times that leads to weight loss, but you can still be somewhat overweight and healthy. According to my BMI, I’m still technically overweight, but all my medical tests say I’m in excellent health. Ultimately, everyone has a right to do with their body as they chose, so they get to lead whatever lifestyle they want to, be it fat or thin, fit or unfit, or any mixture of those adjectives. Leading the life you want to lead is the most desirable thing of all.
You also say you don’t feel like a fat person on the inside anymore. Do you think you were disconnected from your body when you were very heavy? Or do you think the gradual process of weight loss helped you to adjust? Or is there another reason?
I feel defined by my actions. Last weekend I ran a half marathon, which is not something a morbidly obese person can do. (They might be able to walk it, but I don’t know of any 400-pound people who can run the whole thing.) I can carry my groceries up the stairs without panting. I can fit into my car without my belly brushing the wheel. All of these things make up my daily life and make me feel like a thin person.
The slow process of losing weight over 3 years certainly helped me adjust to the changes. I used to check myself out in the mirror ALL THE TIME when I was losing weight, a lot more than I do now. I think it was my mind’s way of recalibrating my self-image every day.
Also, when I was morbidly obese, I didn’t quite have a sense of how fat I was. When I watched a video of myself or saw photos, I was shocked by how large I appeared. It was like hearing my voice on an answering machine and not quite believing it was me. So yeah, I was disconnected from my body back then. I find that all the exercise that I do these days keeps me in touch with what my body is capable of and more in tune with it in general.
There’s been talk in the fatosphere recently about people’s healthy eating habits, exercise regimes, or weight loss being threatening and triggering, or reinforcing the idea of low-self esteem, of something being “wrong” with you if you aren’t thin. People reading this might see the discussion of your weight loss memoir in a size acceptance blog a hostile act. Admittedly, this is an extreme point of view, but what would you say to counteract it?
As I said earlier, my book is about my personal experiences. No one has to live the life I led or make the choices I made. The decision as to whether you should try to lose weight, or if you even need to, is up to every individual. What I’d like for people to understand after reading my book is that you can lose weight without it being an act of self-hate or self-loathing. And you can learn a lot about yourself through the process.
I think you hinted at the answer in your question when you said “size acceptance” and not “fat acceptance” or “thin acceptance.” I think we all want to be accepted no matter what our size - fat, thin or shifting in between. Just as people who are fat don’t want to be attacked for not being thin, people who used to be fat don’t want to be attacked for having become thin. If we’re going to accept people’s bodies, we’ve got to accept them no matter what size they are, have been, or will be in the future. You’re not really being accepting if you say it’s only okay if someone stays fat or stays thin and anyone who changes their dress size is evil. If size truly is irrelevant to our personal identity, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re fat, thin, shrinking or expanding.
Many times our reactions are more about our own issues than anything else. If you automatically assume that everyone who talks about exercise and eating right is judging you for not being thin, it probably speaks more to your own feelings about your weight than anything someone on the Stairmaster is really thinking about you. I don’t think I’m superior to anyone else because I run 3 times a week and I find it odd that some people assume I do feel that way.
What would you say to Big Fat Deal readers who are focused on body acceptance and not trying to lose weight. Why would they want to read your book?
While my book is a weight-loss memoir, ultimately it’s about transformation and the possibilities life holds for all of us. I’ve always liked the parts of body acceptance that emphasize possibilities and I dislike the parts that focus on limitations. On the surface, my book is about losing a lot of weight, but the deeper message is that you can shape your life into whatever you want it to be. You can lose a ton of weight, find a better job, get out of a bad relationship, start a salt-water taffy stand – whatever you want to do, you can do it!
I also hope they would read it and understand that you can love your body and be making changes to it at the same time. Self-acceptance isn’t the same thing as self-satisfaction. Self-acceptance means you’ve faced the truth of who you are, flaws and all. Self-satisfaction means you’re happy with it. I think it’s okay to admit that there are things you don’t like about yourself and to strive to make changes in a positive way. It’s okay to admit that you don’t like being fat. It doesn’t have to mean that you hate yourself. It just means there’s something you want to change in your life. As long as you go about it in a healthy, sane manner, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Beth Ditto, Books, Exercise, Meta, Question, WLS, Weight Loss
I have LONG thought exactly this same way. I’m all for self-acceptance, but as an inbetweenie I HAVE to admit that there are people much, much heavier than I am who cannot lead the life they would like to have because their weight limits what they are physically capable of that. That’s why I can’t quite call myself a proponent of fat acceptance. I love the term “size acceptance”, however, and will be using it from now on.
It’s an interesting interview, but my only qualm is that she doesn’t seem to consider that some people will remain pretty much fat even though they live a very healthy and active life (see fatgirlonabike)…
Maybe Sarah is an exception and has a very high setpoint, no matter what. Maybe Jennette was living way above her natural setpoint without knowing it. Point is, even though she accepts the existence of HAES, she seems to only half-embrace it.
HillaryGayle, I’m not entirely sure how you can “admit” that someone heavier than you “cannot lead the life they would like to have” because of their weight. I don’t have a damn clue what someone else’s life experience is and how weight affects that experience.
For me, the whole maddening thing is this: health is a great goal. If you feel sluggish and slow and out of shape and malnourished or whatev, then address that. Try to get healthier. That’s a reward in and of itself. But weight loss doesn’t necessarily give you health. And making weight loss a goal supports the idea that treating our bodies well isn’t enough–that we also must be engaged in making ourselves smaller, not simply stronger or faster or healthier.
Fat acceptance takes weight loss off the table and disconnects health from the scale–it says, you can be healthy (or not) and fit (or not) and exercise (or not) and eat intuitively (or not) and all that is okay whether you lose weight or not. It’s about not feeling like you have to fight your body simply because it’s fat (or not).
Sometimes people take their pride so far in one direction that they create shame in the other direction. For instance, I’ve read threads on message boards where overweight women justifiably complain about how women are mocked on tabloid covers for being fat. Then those same women will make jokes about Kate Bosworth for being a “bag of sticks” and say she should “eat a cheeseburger.” How is this any different than saying a fat girl is a “tub of lard” who should “get on a treadmill?”
Bleh. May I suggest that Ms Fulda reads up on privilege and power dynamics (there’s a great intro here) and then maybe she’ll see how there might be a difference.
your size only matters as much as you let it
Rubbish. Tell that to all the fat women who get sub-standard medical treatment because their weight is used as an excuse for anything. Tell that to all the fat girls who’s self-esteem is shattered by years of peer pressure and bullying. It’s all their fault? Er, no.
I’m pretty involved with COFRA, but yet there are some in the fat acceptance movement who do not accept me or think me capable of being a fat acceptance activist because I am one of those 5 percent of people who has lost weight and kept it off for at least five years. In my case, I’ve maintained a weight loss of more than 100 pounds and am on my fifth year of maintenance. So, while I don’t promote weight-loss on my site, I also understand where people like PastaQueen are coming from. It’s important to note that I lost the weight via disordered eating, and that I do not now actively diet to maintain my current weight.
I also don’t identify as a fat acceptance activist. Maybe it’s because I’ve never quite felt comfortable staying within lines that have been drawn by others, but I also feel that my choice of “fat rights” more accurately and semantically affirms what it is I a strive for. I consider fat rights to be the political and body size acceptance the personal aspects of my personal activism platform. Thin people do not face the codified and rigid discrimination fat people uniquely face, explaining my fat rights stance. But people of all sizes are made to feel feel insecure about their bodies, which is why I use the more ambiguous term body size acceptance to denote the personal.
Because of the nature of my personal blog (eating disorders), I don’t link to PastaQueen and given my own relevant past with eating disorders, I probably won’t read her book. But personally, I think we share a lot of the same beliefs and from what it sounds like, even similar experiences.
Thanks for the interview, Mo, and thanks for the insight, Jennette. I realize now I might have had some misconceptions about your site, and I’m glad to see I was wrong about some of the things I thought you promoted.
Great interview! I look forward to reading the book. I hope PQ’s critics will note that she bends over backwards here to point out that her experience is just that–her own experience, and not a critique of anyone else who has a different experience.
I had to have my gallbladder removed at age 23.
That one’s funny. I swear I recently heard someone say that she had to have her gallbladder removed because she’d damaged it by … dieting.
Also, I completely agree with ladyjaye. :)
I apologize that this is a minor quibble, but I am part of a half-marathon running group with several morbidly obese members, including myself, who can and do run– not walk– half-marathons. It might be easier/more possible for PastaQueen to run 13.1 miles now, but that doesn’t mean its impossible for anyone who is morbidly obese.
It might be easier/more possible for PastaQueen to run 13.1 miles now, but that doesn’t mean its impossible for anyone who is morbidly obese.
I couldn’t run even a 2 mile marathon when I weighed 125 pounds and wore a size 4. I admire people who can run marathons, regardless of their size but I have to say, I don’t envy them. I hate running!
Zilly - I had a gallbladder attack several years ago. It was the worst pain of my life, worse even than I imagine childbirth to be. The first question asked of me by the doctor is if I had lost a lot of weight recently (I had). Apparently dramatic weight loss in a short period of time can trigger gallbladder attacks. I had a surgery scheduled to remove it, but chickened out at the last minute. Luckily I haven’t had any problems since.
i agree with her on a lot of this, but the rah-rah you-can-do-anything ending seems to overlook certain realities. contrary to the great american dream, there are a lot of people who will never have the luck to turn their dreams and hard work into the reality they desire, regardless of how much effort they expend. that’s no reason not to try — most people will still realize at least some degree of betterment — but it’s still an unideal reality. she also fails to accommodate the fact that the vast majority of all people cannot sustain significant weight loss. just about everyone reading here has seen the studies and heard something about the biological processes involved. personally, the bottom end of my natural weight range has me teetering on the verge of “normal weight.” i could technically weigh less, but i literally have to not eat in order to get there. i cannot achieve a socially-acceptable slender shape and still be healthy.
i’m also bothered by her conflation of health with weight loss. sometimes they go together. sometimes they don’t. she seems to say that one cannot be obese and healthy. size acceptance tries very hard to uncouple health from weight. her interview answers generally counter that.
Terrific, thought-provoking interview from Mo and PQ both! I can see where, when one’s own personal weight was tied to poor habits and poor health, and her new regime led to lower weight and good health, it would be pretty natural for that person to tie weight, health, and habits together.
I read BFD, Shapely Prose, and Half of Me regularly; they aren’t all preaching from the same gospel, but they’re all about respecting and loving the body you’re in, and I like the result of the combination. It wouldn’t make sense for PQ to accept that diets and exercise don’t result in lasting change, because for her they do — and it wouldn’t make sense for Kate Harding to accept that she can lose and keep off any meaningful amount of weight by exercising and dieting, because in fact it didn’t work that way for her.
I find that the combination of the two schools of thought inspires me to keep working at the exercise and healthy eating even when I don’t necessarily feel like it at the moment, while recognizing that my body also has certain inherent limitations specific only to me. (And to be deeply grateful that I can in fact, at this point in my life, remain healthy by eating well and exercising.)
So essentially, when PQ was fat she did no exercise, was completely unfit and felt awful. Then she decided to get thin and did an absolute pile of exercise. Now she is fitter and feels she has better quality of life because of it.
What the hell does weight loss have to do with it?
Just as fat acceptance members don’t want people to give them crap about being fat, people who are losing weight don’t want people to give them crap about eating salads.
Oh, right! Because fat people never eat salads. I had salad for lunch and tea today, but clearly I’m just a statistical anomaly. Don’t all start giving me crap, now.
I just think it’s okay if you prefer not to be one of those fat people.
The implication that being fat is a choice is galling, incorrect, and something the FA movement is trying to counteract. Why is someone ostensibly associated with HAES giving this perception a wider audience? She has to know that by doing so she’s making life harder for other fat people who’re done trying to starve and exercise themselves into a shape they’re not meant to be. That is not all right.
However, we can all exert some control over our environment by choosing to exercise and to make the best eating choices available to us. So, I think weight loss is definitely possible, though it may be harder for some people than others, and potentially dangerous if they go about it in the wrong way.
And completely impossible for many, who are already making healthy food and exercise choices, but are not automatically losing weight because of it.
It’s okay to admit that you don’t like being fat. It doesn’t have to mean that you hate yourself. It just means there’s something you want to change in your life. As long as you go about it in a healthy, sane manner, there’s nothing wrong with that.
There is very little healthy or sane about dieting for weight loss, which is unachieveable or unsustainable for 95-98% of people. Health and sanity will come a lot easier for most people if they focus on accepting their bodies as they are, and developing healthy, pleasurable relationships with food and exercise for their own sake rather than to achieve impossible weight-loss goals. God knows that’s hard enough to do in the face of all the opposing messages from society; adding this one to the mix is hardly helping anyone.
Mo Pie, obviously this is your blog and you can do whatever you damn well please on it, but I feel that giving this kind of message a voice here is irresponsible. There are thousands of websites all over the internet giving me this “I lost weight and you can too!” bullshit. It felt a bit like a slap in the face to see it here.
Caitlin - phew. I thought I was totally alone but you seem to have picked my brain and written it down. Of course, my eyes glazed over when I saw the reference to “morbidly obese” and by the time I got to “you can still be somewhat overweight and healthy” (gee, thanks for the permission, but I guess I’m really screwed, being really fat and all) and the bit about marathons (I’m not much interested in marathons but FatGirlOn A Bike sure seems to be, and she wears the same size as me so, what. ever) my blood started to boil.
Ok, so the whole thing really really bothers me. A lot. The whole premise. There are literally **millions of places** online you can go and find cheerleaders for you when you are fat and are actively trying to lose weight - why in hell would anyone expect that from the fat acceptance/fat rights movement? It’s completely counter to the entire point.
However, I do know that out of size acceptance blogs, this is one that accepts the dieting message (whether or not that makes sense to me), and I guess I could make the choice not to read because of the chance. Sigh.
Fulda wrote, “If I didn’t like being a brunette, no one would give me shit about dying my hair blonde. At the same time however, I believe that fat people should not be discriminated against or made to feel bad because of their weight and that fat people deserve equal rights. I just think it’s okay if you prefer not to be one of those fat people.”
I’m with Ample on this one and have to say that Fulda’s responses to your questions (exemplified by the hair dye comment above) show a complete and stubborn lack of understanding of the mechanisms of privilege.
Now that she’s so in touch with her body, perhaps she can get beyond her navel-gazing and start to do some critical thinking about the world and maybe even take another look at that strange and inexplicable anger expressed at her by some of those edgy FA types.
Imagine substituting any other oppressed group for fat and perhaps Fulda might start to see why that line of thinking is problematic, especially when Fulda also writes, “I’ve always liked the parts of body acceptance that emphasize possibilities and I dislike the parts that focus on limitations.”
Damn us extreme edge FA folks for pointing out the limitations caused by societal dscrimination against fat people. If we just stopped looking at institutional oppression (like racism, sexism, homophobia, and fatphobia) and focused on the all-powerful individual who has a world of “choice” (be thin or fat, it’s up to you!), we might start to see that the world can be a happy, sunny place!
As she claims to have visited FA sites, I have to assume she didn’t do very much reading there, or she might have begun to see how one woman’s “memoir” can and does function as yet another bit of not very original propoganda in the “I did it, you can do”vein.
Like Caitlin, I’m sort of in shock to see this woman given a forum given that the entire world supports and embraces her. Is she so insecure that it’s not enough to be validated by so many people that she needs this small corner of resistance and critical thinking about fat oppression to validate her as well?
I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog, but I think I’ll give it a pass from now on if this is the direction you’re taking it. I can read this bullshit in any women’s magazine.
Ample says: “Bleh. May I suggest that Ms Fulda reads up on privilege and power dynamics (there’s a great intro here) and then maybe she’ll see how there might be a difference.”
I say: Bullshit. Sure, privilege exists but it seems to me that PQ was pointing out that it is hypocritical for someone to object the mockery of their own body type while participating in the mockery of someone else’s body type. Do unto others and all that….
Red herring. Most FA/FR advocates refrain from such remarks (or admonish others to please refrain from them) while managing to recognize the distinction between them even so. I don’t know of a single FA blog that tolerates that kind of disparaging remark about thin people.
But then I’m one of THOSE fat people. The kind PQ didn’t want to be like. So what do I know?
wow, I never saw that kind of response coming. I wanted to say something else but all I can think now is that you (the collective you of commenters) are scary.
Well there was an article recently on how fat people scare children. We also ruin moments. Sorry anabel :)
oh yes! I remembered. I used to read PQ but I stopped after she reached my weight, then I couldn’t read her anymore (funny how that happens). And the thing about Fat Acceptance is that as I see it, and these are my grandmother words, it is a “high class” problem, probably because I’m not from a first world country.
I can’t believe how rude some of these comments are. If any of you would say such things to this woman’s face, you really have no place in polite society.
Wow, the anger radiates!!
This is the first time I have posted on this site. I recently came across this blog because I thought it was great to have a place where women could come and talk about weight, society issues with weight, and women loving themselves. Maybe I was wrong.
Just because PastaQueen decided to lose weight for herself, to be the person she wanted to be, she gets ridiculed. I don’t think she is seeking validation, just telling her story, from her point of view.
Pastaqueen isn’t getting ridiculed for losing weight; she stated her point of view in the interview and managed to insult those who may be supersize AND healthy. Or anyone else who believes in HAES (not in “lose weight and therefore you will be healthy).
For instance, I’ve been doing aquagym, and I did lose a bit. Maybe one dress size or so. But it wasn’t on purpose and it certainly wasn’t the goal. It’s not even something I usually mention on FA blogs because to me it doesn’t matter how my body reacts. However, her journey was first and foremost to lose weight, getting healthy was a secondary goal. And her book cover does emphasize the “lose weight now, ask me how” part even if it wasn’t her intention.
I want to respond, and I’ve been writing and re-writing my response, but nothing is coming out correctly.
So I will say this. I applaud most people who have the courage to talk about his/her personal choices (that don’t affect anyone but them) in a setting where he/she knows that the majority will disagree (and sometimes disagree vehemently).
I know that the comments here deal with the fact that what PQ did is “mainstream” and regarded well in society at large; however, I think that in the FA community, talking about her “transformation” (for lack of a better word) was actually brave. I read FA blogs daily and… sometimes I think they can have blinders on just as society in general. Just my two cents.
Thanks, Mo, for doing this. I really like your blog, and I think this type of interview and some of your recent posts have solidified this for me.
90/10 rule. 10 per cent is the event and 90 per cent how you react to it.
She stated her point of view in the interview (10 per cent) and managed to insult those who may be supersize AND healthy (90 per cent, that’s your reaction and I disagree)
Christine - honest questions. What exactly do you believe was said that was actually rude? Do you not see how some of the phrasing and sentiment people were reacting to could be seen as rude and if so, why not? And do you think there was ever a struggle for equality worth winning that was won by being sweet and ladylike and polite?
Is there a place in the world where people are allowed to NOT applaud weight loss as a worthwhile goal in life and to accept fat? Why would it be threatening if there are such places, given the absolutely stunning plethora of places (er, the whole world) that already celebrate dieting and weight loss/demonize fat?
Wow, this is obviously a very sensitive subject. I thought is was a great interview and was pleasantly surprised to see it here. While not a member of the fat acceptance movement, I enjoy reading a number of FA blogs because I agree with many of the principles, and because I do want to understand where the FA folks are coming from. Intelligent, respectful dialogue is important to furthering any cause. I think Jennette did a great job of being respectful while explaining her own position.
Can I just mention that it’s not so unique to have viewed life as both “morbidly obeeeese” (any word on the moratorium on that word yet?) and rail-skinny; I’ve been to both; maybe about half my life thin, half fat. I’m still me now. And this message in the context of fat acceptance is doubly assaulting when you’ve come from skinny to fat and have had to learn from scratch how to accept yourself and demand respect that you deserve from others (which was often given to you much easier when you were skinny.)
Yes, it is a sensitive subject, I agree. Because while you may be dabbling, or touring, some people are actually fat acceptance/rights activists and don’t have any meaningful choice whether to be thin or fat. Like 98% of people don’t. They’re talking about things that matter very much to them personally, like how fat people are threatened by the government (not the least of which having their children taken away from them and being called terrorists.) So yeah, it’s sensitive.
Thank you Mo for posting this interview and to PQ for participating in it. Reaching out beyond your comfort zone to defend your ideas is admirable and can be very difficult.
I think that there are differences of opinion which may go beyond some people’s threshold and may still be tolerable to others. Every dissenting opinion to your views is not a threat that needs to be attacked.
However. (yes, it has to come sometime). I have always liked PQ’s writing style and her blog, and by extension, her. She’s clever, she’s funny, she’s all that and a bag of olestra baked chips. But as someone with a checkered past of disordered eating, I have to admit that I don’t pop in to read her site too often, for the sheer fact that I find myself having to skip over what I consider “dietporn” posts. Example: weight updates, post on what she eats, etc. Her posts on her running improvements and life overall are downright inspiring.
She hasn’t turned around and pointed the finger of “YOU SHOULD DO THIS TOO SEE HOW EASY FOR ME IT WAS?” While others might use her (for example, interviewers who are anti-fat/pro-lose) as a shining icon of what we fatties all must be, she herself is not doing that. At all. She really could give two shits about whatever other people do. She is a woman who took her life into her own hands and gave herself agency. I do not see her as someone who is struggling with ED or other disordered behaviors, and if she is, it’s none of my business. She is not prescribing it to anyone. Just because others might infer that because SHE can do it WE should do it doesn’t make her the enemy.
Ultimately here is why I really genuinely think PQ’s blog is good for me (dietporn aside) - she is not living out the /fantasy/ of being thin. Jeanette is the /reality/ of being thin. The mundane bits, the diet sodas, the minutiae of buying a new scale….this is the reality. Her blog reinforces that she lost alllll those pounds and she still has the same old life, basically. She didn’t meet a rock star and get married on a yacht and give her high school enemies their comeuppance. She did not become an actress/model/tap dancer (although she still has time! Even if she gains it all back!) rocketing on her path to stardom as a Hollywood power player. She had totally normal goals and expectations of what would happen when she lost weight, and achieved them by working herself very hard and being ever-vigilant of her own weight and diet. Her writings remind me that this is a tedium and hardship which I would like to avoid, that it is one that has hurt me in the past and that is not worth it.
She is a person. A normal, funny, humble person. Who gets excited about her new mango slicer and posts *pictures* of it. This is a girl that I want on my side. And luckily enough, I think she is smart enough to realize that we aren’t all in one big camp that is anti-PQ. Yes, there are a few wording choices there that I don’t approve of and I do hope that she is treating herself with all the love and compassion she deserves. I want her to be happy at any size, and to understand that some of us can be (and are healthy!). But to due this I’m not going to slap her wrist away. I’d rather high five over our commonalities and respectfully point out our differences.
I welcome the interview as well… I certainly didn’t agree with everything she said. She kinda lost me when she referred to queen Latifah as a plus-size role model… But still, it was a good read, and it made me feel better about *my* position. That is, being extremely overweight, being unhealthy, and doing something about it. For me, that’s Weight Watchers. And it’s not about vanity. I’ve lost 16 pounds, and yeah, my face looks a little thinner… but more importantly, my knees feel better. I bounce between the WW boards and BFD because it keeps me from getting obsessed. I don’t want to be one of the ladies on there that counts how many ounces they’ve lost in a week… I just need a tool that reminds me to eat healthier and move. And I cannot tell you how many times I plug BFD when someone starts in with the self-loathing stuff…
Oh, and I thought her comment about mocking celebrities for being thin was just silly. I don’t feel bad for *any* celebrity. If you don’t want the attention, then don’t live in LA or NYC. It comes with the territory. And most of those women are NOT healthily thin! Hours long sessions at the gym, super-restricted diets… We’ve all read about what starlets do to maintain their figures. She lost a lot of credibility when she mentioned that.
You people need to get over yourselves. She was not insulting anybody, she purely stated a truthful comment. 400-lbs people can not be healthy no matter what you say. They will never be able to ride a rollercoaster, buy an economic airplane ticket and fitting in one seat, fit in restaurant booths, buy clothes from a high street normal shop, etc and don’t give me this crap of “everything is too small”.
Stop giving this woman crap. She made a personal decision to lose weight because she was NOT healthy and happy. Good luck to you trying to be fat and happy and all I can say is even more good luck trying to make society accept you too.
Oh… and setpoints. Can you tell me that someone was born and weighed 400 lbs? wtf? If being fat was like such a not big problem why the hell do you bother excusing it then? I will make a point that will probably be taken completely the wrong way because you always take people’s words and twist them around. Black people do not excuse themselves for being black and they’re subject to a lot of discrimation too so why do you justify your fatness? Shouldn’t it be a case of “i’m fat, period” not “i am fat because of my genes, setpoint, hormones, etc”.
I can’t believe how rude some of these comments are. If any of you would say such things to this woman’s face, you really have no place in polite society.
Christine, this is called the opposing view. One comes across it from time to time in adult society, where truth, debate and accountabilty for one’s words are more important than “politeness”. That said, I can’t see that any of the comments above yours were particularly rude. If you would like to see “rude” in action, take a wander round the internet outside the fatosphere and see the things that are said about fat people on a daily basis. Most of which hinge on the notion that fat people are lazy and stupid and choose to be fat, a perception PQ is doing nothing to alleviate with her talk of “preferring” not to be a fat person, as if that’s all it takes.
And the thing about Fat Acceptance is that as I see it, and these are my grandmother words, it is a “high class” problem, probably because I’m not from a first world country.
So…if a group of people are being marginalised, shamed, discriminated against, and denied equal medical care and employment opportunities, but they live in a “first-world country”, that’s okay? I’m afraid I disagree. Not least because women from working-class backgrounds are at least as likely to be fat as those who are middle-class in the UK and America (the two countires with which I’m familiar), making it an issue that cuts across class boundaries.
This is the first time I have posted on this site. I recently came across this blog because I thought it was great to have a place where women could come and talk about weight, society issues with weight, and women loving themselves. Maybe I was wrong.
Or maybe you were right, and we’re doing just that. It doesn’t all have to be kumbaya to be about women loving themselves. Sometimes a bit of righteous anger is entirely justified — as when one finds such blatant “I lost weight by making healthy diet and exercise choices, and you can too!” on a blog ostensibly devoted to helping women accept themselves as they are. Plenty of women make healthy diet and exercise choices and don’t lose weight — what are they meant to take from this? If they just tried a bit harder, they could make it? It’s confirming the message of weight-loss as a magic bullet, and supporting the idea of losing weight as a worthwhile goal achieveable through hard work and a spunky attitude. For most people that is not the case, and posts like this do a lot more to hurt than to help them.
I take issue with the idea that we’re “ridiculing” PQ, also. “I disagree with what you’re saying, and I think it’s harmful” is not a personal attack.
400-lbs people can not be healthy no matter what you say. They will never be able to ride a rollercoaster, buy an economic airplane ticket and fitting in one seat, fit in restaurant booths, buy clothes from a high street normal shop, etc and don’t give me this crap of “everything is too small”.
I’d love to know what definition of healthy you’re living by. Strangely, not one of these is on the list of symptoms my doctor asks me about. (”I have a bit of a cough.” “Oh, right. Have you had difficulty buying an economic airplane ticket recently?” “Yes! I have.” “That settles it, it’s bronchitis.”) Moreover, Fat Girl on a Bike is well over 300lb and she runs triathalons. That’s pretty damn healthy by any standard.
My point is: neither you nor I know a thing about a person’s health without asking them. Contrary to popular belief, you CANNOT tell how healthy someone is by looking at them. (Yes, even if they’re 400lb+.)
Oh… and setpoints. Can you tell me that someone was born and weighed 400 lbs? wtf? If being fat was like such a not big problem why the hell do you bother excusing it then? I will make a point that will probably be taken completely the wrong way because you always take people’s words and twist them around. Black people do not excuse themselves for being black and they’re subject to a lot of discrimation too so why do you justify your fatness? Shouldn’t it be a case of “i’m fat, period” not “i am fat because of my genes, setpoint, hormones, etc”.
The setpoint is the natural weight your body wants to maintain at a given point in your life, and will maintain if you’re eating as intuitively as you can and doing whatever movement feels right for you. It varies due to many factors — age, drug side affects, stress and hormones being just a few. It can and will change over the course of a lifetime, and for many people it will be higher than the “normal” weight range society wants us all to fit into. The point of HAES and FA is to make your peace with your body’s natural shape and live life the best you can in the body you’re given. It’s very very hard to break out of the bonds of dietcrazy (and I’m not there yet) but it’s much happier way to live.
We “justify” our fatness because the dominant viewpoint in our society is that being fat is a choice — something you do to yourself through overeating and underexercising. Twin studies have shown that weight is roughly as heritable as height, and no one goes around telling short people that if they just tried diet and exercise they could be a foot taller. The FA movement is partly about conciousness-raising in this area — showing people that fat is not a moral issue, because being fat is not due to some personality flaw. Which means that for the vast majority of people it’s not something you can “fix” by going on a personal journey. By all means go on a personal journey, and if PQ’s found happiness on hers I’m glad for her, but to append weight loss as a major component or goal of that journey makes it frustratingly unreachable for almost everyone.
Wow, some of you fat acceptance people are really mean, and I don’t get why. PQ bent over BACKWARDS to say she was only talking about her own views and experience. I think it was a great interview and the comments really prove every point PQ was trying to make.
Mo, I love that you have this sort of article on your site.
To get any traction, FA needs to be able to admit this kind of point of view without alienating people. Are PQ’s experiences as a fat person less valid because she tried (and was able to) lose weight? Are her opinions worth less because she went down a path that many of the commenters above say is not available to them? It seems like the politics of envy to me, not of acceptance. PQ wasn’t asking for applause, she was sharing her thoughts and experiences and if we can’t allow that without getting all hysterical and shrieky then what are we here for?
Interesting, Andrea, that you start with “health” and then go on to talk about rollercoasters, airplane seats, and restaurant booths. I honestly think it’s backwards to take external design issues and extrapolate them back to saying people are “unhealthy” - rollercoaster designers are not sitting there saying “Okay, how can I design this ride so that only healthy people are riding on it?” It’s irrelevant.
And, in the face of fat people on this site telling you that they’re healthy, it’s also . . . dismissive, I think.
Never mind that skinny people are not born weighing 100 pounds, either. Humans do this thing which is called “growing” - usually in several directions. :) It is not my fault that I grew into a body that is considered “normal” by the general public, and I have done nothing whatsoever to achieve this. Then there are those who have the misfortune to grow into a larger body - and what people don’t get is that many of them have not done anything to achieve this, either.
May I point out that there is absolutely no need to twist around those words about black people? They’re already mind-boggling enough on their own. Black people don’t NEED an excuse for why they’re black because everyone KNOWS why they’re black. Fat people, on the other hand, are accused of being at fault somehow, so OF COURSE they want to clarify that. *shakes head in disbelief* Next we’ll have black people announcing, “It’s not my fault, it’s the genes!” - Well, duh. :D
Typical. The minute fat activists dare to push back we get called “mean,” “hysterical,” “shrieky,” and “scary.” Because being nice and quiet always gets us somewhere. Oh, wait, no, it just gets us a list of all the things we shouldn’t dare to do while we’re still fat at someone.
While I was surprised to see this interview here, this is Mo’s blog and her space to do with what she wishes. I don’t care one way or another what Ms. Fulda has done with her body. I believe in body autonomy and that it’s not my business what someone does. But I also don’t believe that you can say you believe in fat acceptance when you’re actively working to lose weight in the pursuit of health. Isn’t HAES meant to divorce health from weight? It’s textbook cognitive dissonance.
[...] Over at Big Fat Deal there’s an interview with PastaQueen, and I find some of the comments to be incredibly whiny. I’ve enjoyed reading her blog, and I put her book on hold at my local library even before it was published. Having now read it, I’ve decided to buy two copies. She writes about her weight-loss experience with humor and honesty. The book spoke to me because I’ve experienced several of the situations she describes. [...]
Thanks Mopie for posting this. Also wanted to call out Sass’ comments because I largely agree with everything she said.
How can you believe in HAES if you don’t accept someone’s right to change their size, if that is what they want to do and if they are able to do it? Does it even matter why people lose weight, and if so, why? If PQ had simply changed her eating and exercise habits without having weight loss as a goal, and had happened to lose weight as a result would people be so scathing? I mean to say, if someone’s weight changes as a result of events over which they have no control is that better than if someone loses weight because they want to? And is it more worthy of acceptance?
I really do want to understand and I apologise for using the words hysterical and shrieky about this, I didn’t think it through and I can see how they were offensive.
I was pleasantly surprised to see this interview posted here, on an FA site, because my experience/thoughts with FA are so similar to PQ’s. The world says “you must diet to fit in”, FA says “you must not diet to fit in”. Where is the middle ground, where it doesn’t matter AT ALL if I diet or don’t diet, if I’m thin or not thin? That would be real Size Acceptance.
For one minute, I thought perhaps this was finnaly that middle ground, but from the comments here obviously it is not.
You know, I know the concept of the “middle ground” and “splitting the difference” between two extremes has an intuitive appeal - it makes sense as an appealing way to mediate two opposing views and have both contribute. The problem is, as they pointed out in the negotiation class I took, its appeal is largely due to our like of neat, symmetrical solutions, rather than because the “middle ground” solution is necessarily the right one. I think that’s important to remember - splitting the difference may produce a solution that is aesthetically appealing, but it doesn’t have any power to come up with a factually correct solution, and rejecting that “middle ground” solution doesn’t make you per se unreasonable, hysterical, or unable to listen to reason.
I guess I must be more of a “radical” class of fat blogger more than I thought I was…
If someone wants to diet then yes, that IS their choice. If some fat activists don’t want to associate with people who think it is ok to diet then that is their choice too. Why are the non-dieters expected to be tolerant of someone’s choice to diet when the dieter isn’t tolerant of the non-dieter’s choice to disassociate from dieting?
And the whole “I am ok with you being fat, I just don’t want to be” smacks of thin being better. Why is it better? PQ says she can do things now she couldn’t do before. Did she even try to do them when she was fat?
She says she was “so fat” she hurt her knee. Well gee, no skinny person ever hurt their knee did they? Just like no skinny person ever needed their gall bladder out at a relatively young age.
Her answers are full of mixed messages. I think she seriously needs to reassess what she actually believes because what she is espousing is not an accepting attitude of fat people.
And I think PQ would find that she wasn’t being “judged” for her size by “extreme” fat activists, she was being judged for her attitude.
I have to say I was really impressed with how nice all of the FA commenters who posted here were. They pointed out the flaws in some of PQ’s comments, major ones being:
1. PQ focused on weight loss instead of being healthy. Improving excersize and diet for health would improve one’s quality of life the same as “losing weight” but one just just so much more socially acceptable.
2. Equating an innocuous change, from blond to brunette, with rejecting traits that make you part of an oppressed group is not the same. A more apt comparison is like Michael Jackson saying “Well it’s okay for YOU to be black, but it just wasn’t for me.”
Pointing out flaws in her arguments is not attacking her, nor is it being “scary.” Deal.
Also, to add some not very civil commentary, as I am really pissed. I edited out my curse words already tho.
Andrea, That was so rude. You must be really embarrassed!!!
My boyfriend is over 400lbs, and he is very healthy, he walks my dog every day, and we like to go camping. But in a way you ARE right, he can’t fly on southwest, ride rollercoasters. And we do have to watch where we sit at resturants, the only place he can buy clothes is Casual Male XL.
It’s not because everything is too small….. nooooo. But then… I don’t know whose fault it is, I mean it’s not my boyfriends fault that his thyroid only operates at 11% and that he is resistant to the medication. It’s not society’s fault, certainly, because society is ALWAYS RIGHT (see: interratial marriage, gay people, Germany 1930-1945). And So I guess it’s Mr. Nobody’s Fault. Curse you Mr. Nobody.
Also, Curse you Andrea, for your close mindedness and insensitivity.
Andrea, I don’t get it. Everything you just said is exactly, *exactly* the kind of stereotyping and fat-hatred that fat rights and FA activists are fighting to end - it’s exactly the message that’s blared by the media day in and day out, that we hear all the time and argue against. If you want to liken it to race for some reason, it’s more like a person of color saying, “Well I believe in rights and stuff for people of color, but I’m going to lighten my skin so I don’t have to be one of those people.” However there are valid reasons why we don’t normally liken this struggle to that of race - they aren’t exactly akin, and a lot of people do not appreciate comparing one type of prejudice against another. You might want to read up on that a little before doing it again.
“Good luck to you trying to be fat and happy and all I can say is even more good luck trying to make society accept you too.”
Since that is exactly what they/we are trying to do, thanks for wishing us luck, I guess. I suppose you’re not “one of those fat people.” Or not a fat acceptance advocate (well, that’s obvious.)
“Can you tell me that someone was born and weighed 400 lbs? wtf?”
Most people are born somewhere between 6 and 8 pounds, but I don’t see many people arguing that 8 pounds is a realistic setpoint for anyone who is older than a newborn.
By the way, have you ever read “She Dances On the Sand’s” “400 lb Strawman” series? Very enlightening. http://rioiriri.blogspot.com/2008/01/big-buts-part-two-400-lb-straw-man.html Except I’m pretty embarrassed for you to have said such things about 400 lb people (nice round numbers) because one of my dearest friend bloggers weighs almost that, and yes she’s healthy, thank you very much. I believe they told her she’d die of teh fatz within 5 years, and that was 30 years ago. (They say things like that so people will have surgery, not because it’s true.)
“If being fat was like such a not big problem why the hell do you bother excusing it then?”
That’s the point. Most advocates don’t believe they have anything to excuse or apologize for.
Well…like some have mentioned I find some of the comments extremely offensive too - but I think the “whiny,” “shrill,” “hysterical,” “rude,” and so forth accusations are meant to demean the fat advocates rather than the diet apologists. Why would advocates have to be demeaned for actually being…advocates, though, I just don’t know. It’s a hell of a shame though.
Oh, I forgot “envious.” People are objecting because they’re jealous. (Not because of objectionable language or ideas.) Wow. I’ve heard it all now.
Looks like Zilly covered a lot of this.
Bottom line, of course this is Mo’s blog, and PQ’s body is her own as well. I don’t think anyone has disputed that. They’ve questioned whether it has anything to do with fat acceptance or whether as fat advocates they agree with the message or not. Some people have made blatant fat-hating posts in the meantime, yet those who haven’t are called whiny, shrill, envious, mean, rude, etc. And they’re being fat at you. I guess if anything this all goes to show why there is a fat acceptance movement at all, and just how far there is to go.
Bri, you said:
And the whole “I am ok with you being fat, I just don’t want to be” smacks of thin being better.
I don’t see why it is interpreted that way. There are many people who don’t feel comfortable, either physically or emotionally, when they’re heavy. If they choose to lose weight and then they feel better about themselves, why does that matter to you? The fact that many other people who are heavy feel perfectly happy and confident and healthy, etc., is great. Why can’t both exist? A person who says, “I don’t feel comfortable being heavy so I want to lose weight, but if you feel comfortable being heavy than I say more power to you and your self confidence!” is in no way saying thin is better as a rule, just maybe for that one person. God, we’re all unique individuals; why do we refuse to accept that we’re going to feel differently about different things? And if that heavy person loses weight and feels better, and in NO WAY makes you feel that now you should jump on board, and in fact goes out of her way to say, “Hey, glad you’re happy as you are; rock on!” I truly don’t see the problem. I don’t see why FA get ANGRY at people who lose weight. It’s not a betrayal to some movement, it is simply a person trying to find a happier path. We all need and take different paths. Let people choose their own, as long as they’re not judging yours.
Some people are bewildered or annoyed at the level of anger in a number of the comments. Ghu knows why, but I’m going to take a crack at explaining:
I think every man and woman faces different challenges when it comes to weight loss. Some people are naturally thinner than others and don’t have to work as hard to be slender. Some battle eating disorders which can make it dangerous for them to try losing weight because they do so in ways that are harmful to their health. Some people just don’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables and lean meats that are part of a healthy diet. These are aspects of our lives that we don’t control. However, we can all exert some control over our environment by choosing to exercise and to make the best eating choices available to us. So, I think weight loss is definitely possible, though it may be harder for some people than others, and potentially dangerous if they go about it in the wrong way.
The thing is, the effect that losing weight or trying to has on people’s quality of life varies tremendously. It’s not just that some people are naturally fatter than others (the other side of some people being naturally thinner) and have to work harder. It’s that a lot of people find that they’re cold, ill, and/or massively distracted by hunger they try push their weight lower than it wants to be. For a lot of people, it’s not just a question of whether losing weight is possible, it’s whether it’s conceivably worth the effort.
The cost of losing weight is mentioned in that paragraph, but the actual magnitude of cost for a lot of people is ignored.
Mary,
I don’t think FA activists get angry at people who do lose weight. I think they get angry at people who se weight loss as a valid goal. Being healthy, being active, eating well, these are valuable goals. And increasing ones overall health will likely help one feel comfortable physically at other weights. If one happens to lose wieght in one’s quest for a more active lifestyle or healthier (read intuitive, or incorporating wider varieties of food) eating then I don’t think anyone begrudges them that. People lose weight when they get sick too, FA activists are not going to start yelling at cancer patients for their thin physique. It is weight loss as a goal that is offensive.
You mention emotional discomfort as well as physical discomfort. Let me just say, emotional discomfort is the problem. The emotional discomfort does not come from Teh Fatz on your body. It comes from society TELLING you there is somethign wrong with the fat being on your body. They tell you it’s ugly, it’s shameful, it’s going to make you drop dead at any moment. And I feel emotionally uncomfortable every day for some reason or another, my solution is not to starve myself.
I was freely admitting that the emotional discomfort was something that some people feel they need to address through weight loss, and that, conversely, many in the FA movement who feel perfectly comfortable at their weight and see no need to equate weight loss with being more comfortable in their own skin are to be admired (see my “rock on!” comment). GOOD for those who love themselves fully, heavy or not. Sorry to tell you that many people don’t. And no, it’s not necessarily just because society tells those people they’re not worthy. Not every person who goes on a diet is under the Fat Is Bad spell. It’s a PERSONAL thing, that was my point. Some people actually feel better when they’re thinner. My point was, who cares? What harm does that to do anyone? We should all be encouraged to find our happiness. And not everyone who loses weight tries to get scary skinny or doesn’t take care of their bodies just so they can be a few pounds lighter. Many people who lose weight never get any where near skinny. I don’t read PQ’s site often, but I’ve browsed there. She looks great, but hey, she’s not skinny. I think she hovers around 170-180 or something? She eats well, exercises, and most importantly, she is HAPPY. Anyway, that was my whole point. If losing some weight makes someone feel better, even if you think they shouldn’t equate being thinner and being happier, if it works for THEM, then just live and let live, you know?
Mary,
There is no actual reason for someone in a vaccum to feel sad, or emotionally upset about being overweight. It is simply a normal biological process that our body engages in to store excess calories against future need. It’s like someone feeling sad about putting money in a savings account. It is not a rational thing to feel sad about.
People who “just feel bad” but think they haven’t bought in to society’s “fat is bad” construction are deluding themselves with believing they haven’t bought in to society’s bullshit. And you know what, I know all about society’s bullshit and I feel bad every time I look too closely at my belly. Some days I actually cry because I feel hideous.
But my response is not to go on a diet. Because I know that trying to lose weight will only make me feel more miserable as I try and fail and try and fail. I know that what I am feeling is not rational, it is based on what society has told me. That doesn’t make the feelings go away, but it does keep me from hurting myself to make myself acceptable to other people.
Society makes people feel like failures for allowing their body to engage in this PERFECTLY NORMAL biological process. People don’t just happen to feel bad when they gain weight. That is not actually part of the biological process.
You can continue to think I’m wrong about this but that will not make it so.
Mo, thanks for this converation. No movement is a monolith, and you’ve always been open about this being a site that does welcome diet talk.
And, maybe, shame on us for being a little too tender to see a dissenting view without being able to self-differentiate.
Mary,
I didn’t address your live and let live comment at all. And I guess I would agree with you in general, except some people are writing blogs and publishing books about their weight loss and then wondering why they don’t feel accepted in the FA community. I think that’s sortof a different conversation, don’t you?
I mean, sure, I want people to be happy. But if their happiness means continuing to convey the message that people like me would be happier if we would just stop eating so much, well, it’s a problem.
Well, I will say respectfully that you can continue to think I am wrong too, but that does not necessarily make that so. You’re making a lot of assumptions in your posts. And just because many heavy people engage in HAES doesn’t mean all do. So, you know, sometimes it’s NOT perfectly normal biological process to gain weight. Sometimes it involves eating too much for the wrong reasons. And then sometimes getting a handle on that and losing weight (healthfully) can be a good thing. And I know everyone loves to throw around the 98% failure rate, but many people lose weight and do keep it off, particularly if they had gained it through unhealthy (such as bingeing) means and then were able to change those habits.
Not everything or everyone fits into a cubbyhole, easily explained with generalizations. I honestly would think that people in the FA movement would be particularly sensitive to that.
And I reiterate that if you are heavy and perfectly happy and lead a full and satisfying life, then more power to you. I mean it. But allow for the fact that not everyone does, and sometimes losing some weight and feeling better about yourself is very much just a personal thing, not a society thing, not a statement thing, not a big ol’ anything other than a person finding what works for them.
I don’t accept any of that shame, Cindy. You can have it if you like :)
Shinobi, I agree there are a couple different conversations going on, and apparently this is too difficult a distinction to be made for some reason. It’s not unreasonable for fat acceptance to question and challenge a good many things; I didn’t know it was a problem to challenge weight loss advocacy.
I don’t think PQ wondered why she was not accepted in the FA movement. She was asked what she thought about the movement, and she said what she did and didn’t agree with. She didn’t bring it up on her own, she was asked about it.
And: “But if their happiness means continuing to convey the message that people like me would be happier if we would just stop eating so much, well, it’s a problem.”
I honestly don’t think that PQ writing a book about what she did to make herself happier conveys a message that people like you would be happier if you’d stop eating so much. That’s like saying that someone who writes a book about what a great life altering experience it was to quit their job and join the Peace Corps is saying that for you to be happy you have t stop working in coporate America and go live in a hut somewhere. It’s simply THAT person’s experience, explaining why that choice worked for THAT person.
I’m sure Mo realized posting this interview here on the site was sure to generate harsh responses. I applaud both her and especially Jennette for putting themselves out there and subject to criticism in order to further debate on the issue.
Last year I featured an interview with my good friend Lisa who recently had WLS. Most FA circles I’ve seen and run in are strongly anti-WLS. I posted my interview with Lisa because I felt there to be something lacking from the rhetoric: A human face. It’s easy to be critical of WLS in theory, harder yet to look someone in the face who has made that decision for themselves for their own personal reasons and tell them they are wrong. It’s the same reason why someone on the street won’t tell me I am fat, but won’t hesitate to tell me online that they think fat people should die.
Regardless if you believe in and accept Jennette’s personal decisions for herself, I think we need to appreciate her right to hold those opinions, even those we disagree with. I also think it perfectly aligned with the theme of this blog and FA to post comments that inspire debate and put a face to those on the other side of the fence. After all, if fat people want to be seen and treated like humans, ought not that courtesy be reciprocal?
Rachel, not for nothing, but is dieting some rare occurrence that we don’t all know like tons of people who are on diets and in various stages of losing weight? It’s pretty difficult to meet people (women especially) who *aren’t* on diets. Most fat people have been on tons of diets themselves. I don’t think dieting lacks a human face. As to WLS it’s getting pretty common now; I have certainly known a couple people very well who’ve had it (they didn’t ask my opinion or permission first; but it’s their choice indeed) and I meet more all the time. Diet books, diet blogs - are these strange or rare commodities? About the only thing that *is* rare and is very hard to find (especially when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for in advance - I stumbled on FA by accident online, believe me) is actual fat acceptance, and real people who are actually fat and who don’t make apologies for it and who advocate for human rights and dignity for ‘those people.’ I know you’ve been involved in the movement for some time now, so maybe it’s a little different for someone who thinks “My god, I can get this *anywhere* and I just CAME from there - where did this come from?” Diet books for FA people, I don’t get it. Mind you, I’m quite aware (in part thanks to you and what you’ve done but also in part thanks to Discovery Health Channel) that there are people who push themselves high up past their normal body weights through various means, and who begin to eat more normally (or go all the way like Jared and start dieting) who then lose the weight - we’ve all seen celebrities do it for certain roles, and tell how horrible they felt when they were fat. Clearly, some people aren’t feeling good when they’re 320 pounds or 240 or whatever. I don’t think anyone has questioned someone’s right to diet or lose weight - though they’ve questioned whether certain language about it has a place in FA, or whether it makes sense to write diet books and then wonder why FA isn’t cheering you on for it.
It reminds me of a comment goodwithcheese made (and I’m paraphrasing here) about when someone says to her “Hey I lost X pounds” and expects her to do cartwheels. I don’t remember if her response was “So?” or “Oh.”
But really, diets, diet books, hahafatpants pictures, diet diaries are everywhere, are ubiquitous, and dieters are also everywhere in everyone’s life. Fat advocates aren’t. Sigh. I know I’m probably not saying this right.
Openly disagreeing with points someone makes does not equal disrespecting their right to be a human being.
Oh, and do ugly comments about hysteria, jealousy and such really add to fat advocacy in some way? Is it fair, accurate, or cool in some way to say people who object to something or challenge it are just being shamefully oversensitive and overreacting to certain fat-hating views? (The interview was fairly tame in that regard, though not innocuous, but the comments haven’t been.)
Since my comment from yesterday wasn’t approved for whatever reason, I will try again.
“No dieters” =/= “no diet talk.” The only fat acceptance blogger, to my knowledge, who ever made it “no dieters” was Paul of Big Fat Blog, but he’s had his blog for over 8 years now and chances are pretty good he found that taking a hard-line stance was the only way to keep out the “I did it so can you” crowd. I do know that there are people on BFB who have lost weight; one even wrote an article about it recently. But here’s the difference: they don’t brag about their weight loss or give blow-by-blows of their diet on BFB. And if you don’t do that, frankly, nobody’s going to know the difference.
As for the “she needs to eat a cheeseburger” talk: Yeah, there was some of that in the early days of BFB and maybe the Gab Cafe at Fatso.com, too. But I don’t allow any talk like that at Fat Fu, and most of the current Fatospherians don’t either.
Meowser, I really have to say you have an amazing way of nailing things on the head. That is all.
Mary,
Gaining weight IS a perfectly normal biological process. What you are talking about are eating behaviors that are not normal or healthy. If someone is engaging in binge eating and gaining weight as a result, then finding away to manage their disorder is perfectly reasonable.
This has nothing to do with the body and its state, and everything to do with healthy behaviors. The body simply engages in chemical processes based on an individuals body chemistry. Perfectly natural and normal.
The problem with believing in weight loss is that if your goal is thinness and not health it is much easier to fail. Some bodies like to retain fat more than others based on their body chemistry, and to continue to try to lose weight instead of focusing on health can be devastating. Again, the goal should be health, not weight loss.
And you’re right everyone does like to throw around the 95% failure rate of diets. Because 95% of people who lose weight gain it back. Are you asserting that statistic is incorrect? If you think it is wrong, but to even mention that statistic and then say “but a lot of people so lose weight” well… yeah. What that statistic actually says is that a lot of people FAIL at losing weight.
It is a lot harder to fail at doing active things you enjoy, and eating healthy foods you like. That sounds less emotionally uncomfortable to me.
[...] By shinobi42 Categories: Uncategorized I was reading the comments over at Big Fat Deal’s interview with Pasta Queen and I started arguing a bit with a commentor named Mary. I am not going to address her comments in [...]
Nice to go read you turned a whole post into what I see as a very intentional misreading of pretty much everything I was saying. Plus I didn’t think we were “arguing,” but, whatever. Trying to convey one’s feelings to someone who refuses to listen or hear because their agenda is screaming too loudly in their heads is futile, I guess. Good bye.
Mary,
I assure you my misreading was not intentional. Also, as I said in my post I wasn’t really responding to you as much as your comments inspired a post. I’m sorry if you feel attacked that was not my intention.
SophG, I wanted to try to answer some of your questions. I also want to thank you for apologising for your use of the words “hysterical and shrieky” to characterise posts that were nothing of the sort. It’s hard to have a debate when that kind of dismissive language is being flung around, you know?
How can you believe in HAES if you don’t accept someone’s right to change their size, if that is what they want to do and if they are able to do it?
The point of HAES is that it is Health At Every Size, i.e. that you do not have to change your size to achieve health. PQ clearly DOES NOT believe in this concept, much as she may give lip service to it, because she says herself she does not believe she could have been healthy at her previous size. She feels she had to lose weight to be healthy and happy in herself. That’s absolutely up to her; equally, it absolutely is not compatible with the HAES philosophy — the whole point of which is that health and wellbeing do not have to be correlated with size or weight.
She also says it is possible to be “somewhat overweight and healthy”. No, it is possible to be any weight and healthy, if we are measuring health by blood pressure, cholesterol, aerobic fitness and all the other measures we use when we’re talking about those of “normal” weight. So PQ clearly doesn’t believe that HAES is possible for others either, once they are more than “somewhat” overweight. Do you see why it’s frustrating, then, to see her co-opting the language of HAES when discussing her weight-loss? Of course I accept someone’s “right” to change their size, or do whatever the hell they want with their own body. I simply disagree with the idea that the behaviours involved in doing so are “healthy” (physically or mentally), and I therefore disagree that they are compatible with HAES.
Does it even matter why people lose weight, and if so, why? If PQ had simply changed her eating and exercise habits without having weight loss as a goal, and had happened to lose weight as a result would people be so scathing? I mean to say, if someone’s weight changes as a result of events over which they have no control is that better than if someone loses weight because they want to? And is it more worthy of acceptance?
I can only speak for myself: I have not been in any way “scathing” of the fact that PQ lost weight. I am instead “scathing” of the fact that her weight loss is being lauded as a worthwhile achievement on a blog about fat acceptance, which only serves to reinforce the message we see EVERYWHERE IN THIS SOCIETY that weight loss for its own sake is good and something we should all be striving for. Is it too much to ask that the fatosphere remain the one corner of the internet where this harmful message is kept at arm’s length?
If someone adopts healthier food and exercise choices and happens to lose some weight as a side effect, of course no one in the FA community (or anywhere else) is going to frown on them for that. (You might have noticed that we’re pretty big on body autonomy.) But that’s not what’s happened here, at all, and that’s the problem.
Advocating weight loss for weight loss’ sake is advocating something that 95-98% of people simply cannot achieve, though many people will spend their lives harming themselves through restricted and disordered eating and overexercise in the attempt. The message “I lost weight, and so can you!” is not just one woman telling us about her experiences; it is another addition to the harmful propoganda that keeps men and women in this culture hating themselves their whole lives. It is a message that actively hurts people, and that’s why so many of us were dismayed to see it here.
There is some amazing miscommunication happening here. When I read the above article, several thoughts came to mind.
1. Is it really so surprising that any movement called “fat acceptance” doesn’t want to hear about how miserable someone was fat and how happy they are with their reduced body? Not welcoming her to discuss her diet =/= saying she shouldn’t make her own choices. Neither does objecting to some of her claims of fact which commenters happen to disagree with.
2. In the Amazon blurb for the book, Fulda is represented as saying things that negatively affect the FA movement’s reputation. Deserved or not, she did. I didn’t read there anything negative about, for instance, the weight loss industry. Not having read the book, I don’t know if these words reflect her own, but they seem consistent with what I read here. She isn’t a fat acceptance advocate that I can tell from the things she says.
3. I see nothing wrong with people responding to her criticism of their group defensively. Why am I finding links that insult the people commenting here with anything other than “Yay for Fulda’s Freedom of Choice!” I found the other Christine’s comments to be almost laughably disproportionate. Clearly, this is a person who has never heard of fandom wars or been in geekdom. This is a Sunday Tea level of discourse.
4. Why shouldn’t she diet, if she really wants to? But why expect nobody to find it annoying? I love sushi, but I don’t go to vegetarian blogs to talk about it and then get cranky they slighted me.
I know it’s been mentioned a number of times that “95% of people who lose weight gain it back.”
As someone who is currently in the process of losing a few extra pounds, I always wonder about that statement. Because I’m one of the few girls my age (college students) that has made the effort to make sure I’m losing weight in the process of getting fitter, healthier, and more comfortable with who I am. I’ve talked to a doctor and a nutritionist, and spent some time with a trainer at my gym testing my fitness levels and body fat and all that good stuff. But I’ve made sure I’m doing this the right way. I’m not dieting, I’m just listening to my body and realizing that sometimes, it’s not actually necessary for me to eat the whole pint of ice cream :) I’ve dealt with anorexia about 4 years ago, so maybe I’m almost overly cautious about making sure I’m healthy now.
But yes, maybe 95% of people fail at losing weight. But how many of those 95% actually knew what the proper approach was? How many resorted to crash or fad diets, extreme exercise, etc. In my age group, I would say about 80% of them.
I guess reading a lot of these comments made me a bit sad, because PQ is getting attacked for saying what she’s strictly labeled as her personal experience. She’s not preaching to the whole world of FA or anything like that. She’s not saying she’s better than people who are fat now. So she doesn’t know any morbidly obese marathon runners… so what? Don’t attack her for that, simply inform her that you do know of some, or that you are one yourself.
I think a lot of people here are so quick to judge and defend themselves, even if they’re not being attacked. It doesn’t always need to be something so terribly personal - these are one woman’s thoughts, who just happens to be someone who successfully got herself into a fit, healthy lifestyle.
She’s not saying you can’t already be there, just because you’re not leading the same lifestyle as her.
Christy, it’s difficult to say for sure. But many, many people on F.A. blogs have personally had the experience of doing everything doctors and nutritionists tell them to and still gaining the weight back or not losing it at all until they started undertaking those unhealthy measures. You may very well be different - you may have a lower set point or be someone who has a naturally easy time losing weight (and given some of the genetic info out there about anorexia, this may not be a good thing so yeah, it’s good to be careful).
But my question is this: if it’s about eating more than you need to (e.g., an entire pint of ice cream when you don’t really want that much), why is the focus here weight loss? Why isn’t it on recognizing how much ice cream you really want at a given time? If you recognize that, and you don’t lose weight, is that still a failure?
As to it being her personal experience, I’d say that’s only true to an extent. And a pretty limited extent. Dieting and weight loss is privileged in our culture to the extreme, and putting forward your memoir of dieting and weight loss in self-congratulatory way, taking pictures of yourself in your “fat” pants (so funny! You used to be so fat! hah!), tracking what you eat, talking about the transformative effect of losing weight in a way that links the transformation explicitly to the weight loss (the book is certainly being marketed as a weight loss memoir) are all things that imply something beyond the personal. And they are all things that endorse weight loss, particularly in a culture that already does so.
And this is triply so where the author makes statements like that people can’t run half marathons while morbidly obese (not true, it seems), or that you can be “somewhat overweight” and still be healthy, implying that you can’t be more than that. These are not things limited to her own personal experience.
Christy, you’re absolutely right. People quote that “95%” statistic all the time, but I recently wrote a little review of the published scientific literature on the subject for my blog, and different studies had vastly different findings. The highest one I saw was that 98% regained weight, but there were also papers finding that only 60% regained weight. I’m not sure how the 95% statistic got to be arbitrarily plucked out of that.
I wasn’t being rude, ok maybe I didn’t ellaborate my point perfectly.
You list all your reasons why it’s perfectly normal to gain weight but you have never gone in depth regarding this.
Ok, fair enough, someone who is 400 lbs might not be exaclty dying. That doesn’t mean they will not feel like dying when running up the stairs. Yes, literally - physically impossible to not run completly out of breath.
And, society and the world has created features to accomodate normal size people. During the prehistroric time there was no such thing as obesity. Obesity is a contemporary thing, coincidently linked with the more accesible and cheaper, unhealthier food around there.
Most people don’t just wake up fat one day. It doesn’t happen like that. Studies have also proven that we massively underestimate our eating and overestimate exercise. Portion sizes, especially in America, are like 2-3 times more than it was over 50 years ago.
While I do believe that there are people who are fat no matter what they do (i.e: thyrod) most people are fat because of bad eating habits. The twin studies proves nothing. A couple of hundred of twins to prove a point? You gotta be kidding me.
Not all people who lose weight put it all back on and I can assure you that those who do are people who slip back into old eating habits. Or people that ate a couple of hundred of calories a day to lose weight quickly who could not mantain this weight loss. Most diets are just unhealthy. Doctors recommend cutting down calorie consumption by about 500 calories and exercising for 30 mins a day. This, most of the time, provides results.
Diabetes is another perfect example of this. High sugar levels often are lowered down by losing weight, just like insulin. So, this proves you wrong when saying losing weight does not mean better health.
I am with Mary on this. All this vitriol and outrage exactly proves PQ’s point. If the FA movement is so concerned with how people view “fat” people, then please be informed that everyone NOT in your movement who sees this sees you as: “angry fat people.”
This may or may not be the case, but it is the perceived notion. Why? Because of your behavior. You can’t just gracefully accept that PQ lost weight and is now happier. You have to go on and on about what a bad example she’s setting? How so? How is HER life reflective of your own?
You show your deep seated insecurities when you feel that somehow ONE person losing weight and being happy about it affects your life or all other “fat people” in any way. This is like assuming one person who chooses not to have children and is happy is giving a bad “anti-family example” to all women. Are women really in your perception this weak and easily led that we all have to be herded around and told what we SHOULD feel and think on a matter?
The bottom line is society is what it is. Whether or not society glamourizes beauty and thinness doesn’t really matter. If someone wants to be thinner, freaking let them. Get over it. Maybe they can lose the weight, maybe they can’t. But why people have to get so freaked out about someone else’s personal choices, I’ll never know.
And fatgirlonabike cannot be held up as an example of a “fit/fat” person who can’t lose weight until she shares what she’s eating. Diet plays a huge role in size and fitness. Any serious athlete will tell you, you can’t out train poor nutrition. If she’s eating crap she can exercise til the cows come home and it won’t matter. So it’s dishonest to hold her up as this great example of someone who is “fit” but can’t lose weight when one half ot the equation she claims is not up for debate or discussion.
As hard as this might be to understand. Not everybody wants the same things in life. And has it EVER occurred to you that a person who feels they should “remain fat to love themselves” because the “FA movement told them to” is just as bad as someone who wants to be thin because “hollywood told them to?”
Either way they are following the desires of some other arbitrarily set group instead of their own. The desire and wish should be for every woman to find her own passions in life and to follow them. Not, that she follow only those passions in life that have been personally deemed PC and acceptable by the FA movement.
I guess I should have realized that “kept it off” was being used in the same way it’s usually used in the diet industry and magazines - i.e. to mean someone has reached their goal, or is close to it, and may have reached their goal within the past year or so. The 95-98% of people who “fail” at diets don’t fail to lose weight initially; what I have read everywhere says that it’s regained by 95-98% within three years of reaching the goal weight. So I guess it all remains to be seen. I don’t know why the author felt it necessary to slam the FA movement, but I reckon it will still be here when and if Ms. Funda needs it again. Unless I get ill or we hit some type of famine (and who knows these days, with food shortages and all), I’ll likely still be fat at that time - whether those who are in the process of slimming now will still be thin, we’ll have to see.
But how many of those 95% actually knew what the proper approach was?
Watch out, here’s my theory:
There IS NO proper approach for them. Those for whom your approach actually works are the remaining 5%. The others, namely those who gain everything back and then some, cannot lose weight by “realizing that they don’t really need to eat the whole X of Y” because eating more than they needed was not what made them fat in the first place.
This is a generalisation. It surely doesn’t apply to exactly 95%, and many people would probably lose a few pounds indeed if they simply did what you did. They would NOT, however, become thin.
It is a well known fact in the fatosphere that following HAES may result in weight loss for some, in weight gain for a few, while not having any effect at all on others. That doesn’t make it the wrong approach, though. :)
yoganut, that’s one of the nastiest, hateful things I’ve read on this thread yet. Who should be ashamed again? And what are you doing on FA blogs if you think of the FA movement as nothing but “angry fat people”? Not to mention, do you even care why people are angry? Do you think discrimination is not cause for anger? But I suppose anyone who faces discrimination (including legal discrimination) should just “get over it.” My god, have you read ANYTHING anyone else has said?
LaWade, the 95-98 stat, as far as I know, refers specifically to people who have lost at least 75 pounds, after 3 years. Of course, there was an awesome examination over at Fat Fu of the Weight Watchers’ stats, and I think it was very illuminating. C’est la vie.
Oh, and when was fatgirlonabike held up as an example of a “fit/fat” person who can’t lose weight?? I thought she was being help up as an example of a fat and fit person, period.
Every person I have met in the entirety of my life who lost weight and gained it back had reverted to their old lifestyle behaviors. They just couldn’t give up the junk food crack pipe and they didn’t exercise enough.
A very few of them damaged their metabolisms by going on unhealthy diets. Instead of working to heal their metabolism (contrary to popular views, metabolism isn’t a one way street), when they went back to their former eating patterns they gained MORE back.
Everyone has a right to stay fat if that’s what they want. But I think it’s wrong to tell people they “can’t” do it by trotting out statistics like these (please note that when DIETS are studied, that’s just what’s being studied, DIETS, not genuine lifestyle changes. “lifestyle change” isn’t a phrase to trick you into going on a diet. It’s really really not.) You’re only reinforcing other people’s fears to support your own ego and decision not to lose weight.
Of importance is, obesity does not occur regularly in nature. How many obese wild animals have you ever seen? Obesity was very rare a hundred years ago. Lifestyle cannot be ignored in this issue. By ignoring it you’re lying not only to others but to yourself.
But she’s only held up as a “fat and fit” person BECAUSE she doesn’t lose weight. If she lost weight like PQ she’d be the subject of the same vitriol PQ has gotten.
Fatgirlonabike is trapped. She will only be accepted by your movement as long as she maintains her weight. If she loses AND omg becomes “happier” then all bets are off.
If PQ hadn’t lost any weight you’d all be lauding her as “fit and fat and fabulous”
The hypocrisy of this movement is obvious to anyone not in it. Those in it seem to be too close to see how ridiculous they are.
Well now. Here is what I think - I think that PQ speaks for many overweight people who would rather be thin and have either lost the weight or feel the same way and are trying to.
I don’t think she speaks for the many overweight people who are either perfectly okay with their weight or are not, but medically cannot do anything about it without damaging their health.
I do not believe in trying to communicate her journey with those that relate to her, she was in any way trying to give a different perspective to those who don’t relate to her.
On Paul’s site, he is not trying to relate to those overweight people who want to lose weight. In fact, he goes out of his way to shoo them away. His site is about FA and how to get people to stop thinking that people over the “average” weight number are in some way not as acceptable as those who are.
PQ’s site is a personal journey about her life. She got asked to write a book about her life. She is not on any personal mission to change anyone or gain acceptance or stand up for anyone.
Mopie site is about all of the above. If a certain post doesn’t relate to you or angers you or makes you feel some movement has been harmed- I would ask you if everyone in your life needs to conform to your mentality in order to be okay with you?
Sure, some commenters posted thoughtful and articulate rebuttals to what PQ answered. But those who got angry and defensive are the ones “hurting” the FA movement. Because FA stands for Fat Acceptance. Not Fat Acceptance as long as you don’t say anything about weight that I don’t agree with.
I for one would like to apologize to fat girl on a bike. I am not much interested in triathlons (and have never been very athletic) but I’ve admired what you’re doing since I first heard about it. That doesn’t make her someone to be bandied about as if she isn’t a real person with real feelings; and that you would say such horrid things about her and others’ admiration of her is too awful, yoganut. I am sorry I even mentioned it now. However, PQ was the one who started with the “half-marathons” and how fat people can’t run them, and how most people would hobble home and collapse after a half-marathon, not that fat people could ever do a half-marathon, and here is someone who is fat and does triathlons. She is far from the only fit person who is fat - I’m pretty amazed at what some of the people in the FA movement accomplish physically. Running triathlons is only one example of many.
oh Wow Annie, could we tone down the sensitive martyr complex please? I guess “nasty” is completely subjective. I said you come off as “angry fat people” I did NOT say you WERE all empirically angry fat people.
I’m just telling you what you look like from the outside. Ostensibly the FA movement is supposed to be about getting less discrimination and having the non fat people not see you as a stereotype. Yet the behaviors on this blog in response to PQ exactly reinforce the stereotypes you’re upset about.
This is all about perception and how you come off. I am not a “hateful nasty” person. What I am is someone honest about her impressions on people’s behavior. Being fat doesn’t give you a get out of jail free card to be as rude as you guys have been about PQ.
Please note also, the anger displayed on this blog has NOTHING to do with discrimination and everything to do with the fact that PQ lost weight. That’s it. One woman lost some weight and you guys are freaking out. That has nothing to do with discrimination so get off your moral high horse.
I have never supported the discrimination of anyone no matter their size, color, or whatever. And to be quite honest, before I heard about the FA movement I NEVER looked at people and thought “she’s fat, she needs to lose weight.” I used to be treated badly for being too thin.
It’s only been AFTER I saw how the FA movement at least in large part reacts to things such as this that I’ve started to notice fat people at all. So what is your movement accomplishing?
People like MoPie IMO is awesome. She’s a moderate. So is PQ. But FA extremists damage your movement just as badly as feminist extremists damage feminism. Because no one outside your movement can relate or empathize with people who are over the top and angry about everything and playing the victim card about everything.
If you don’t want to hear what people honestly think outside your group, fine. Stay insulated. But please be aware these are the attitudes outside your cloister. And they are attitudes you all are promoting by being so friggin hostile in all your interactions with those who were once fat but are no longer.
Oh please, I”m not nasty and bigoted. I just get tired of people whining every time someone who’s not them loses weight. I think it’s jealousy. That’s how it comes off to me and I’m sure to others who are too cowed by your angry rhetoric to speak up.
Someone was fat and now isn’t and is happy. Cue the freakout. Sounds like jealousy to me. If people weren’t jealous they wouldn’t be this loud about it. So call me bigoted all you want. I’ve seen enough bigotry within this movement toward those who were once fat but lost weight, to know that your pronouncement against my moral character stands on sand.
“pronouncement against my moral character stands on sand.”
Is that a dig against fat people? That they would just be standing on the beach sweating and panting and then sink in the sand and thin people would be in bikini’s playing vollyeball without even breathing hard? Is it? Is it?
bwahahahahaha. Um. No. (I sincerely hope you’re kidding.)
Also, in case someone decides to bring it up, i reread where I said I didn’t notice fat people at all, i’m sure someone will say: “Oh, so fat people were invisible and unimportant to you.”
Um no…I just never really paid attention to their weight. It was never an issue to me.
yes, i was kidding. all this defensiveness! instead of everyone trying to understand each other, without having to agree, everyone is picking each other apart. I think this whole comment section on this post is a sad commentary on how we women treat each other. No wonder we all comfort eat. I KID I KID!
Yoganut, many of your pronouncements are also empirically, categorically false. Others are just so wrong, that the cognitive dissonance is burning like a bonfire. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Have fun.
What? What, what, what?
Don’t go “lifestyle” on me now, please. I’ve been leading the most unhealthy lifestyle EVER for ages and I’m not at all happy with this and trying to change it, but it never made me fat. Don’t tell me I’m an exception. That is SO not true. Genetics, people, genetics.
“I think this whole comment section on this post is a sad commentary on how we women treat each other.”
So ironic that I do too. Funny how we see completely different things, though.
Is “angry fat people” supposed to be an insult? Fuck yes, I’m an angry fat person. I’m angry that fat people are discriminated against. I’m angry that fat people are denied medical care. I am more angry than you can imagine that people are dying of eating disorders and side effects of WLS. I am angry that every place I go, I am told: “Your body is ugly. Your body is unacceptable. You have to change.” I am angry and I am not ashamed, because anger drives change. My question to you is, how can you look at all that and not be angry?
Thanks to all of you who have kept this discussion civil. Let’s please try to respond to the reasonable comments and keep the discussion productive, rather than attacking particular commenters.
I just want to say I am shocked by the comments to this post. I couldn’t even finish reading all of them because they seem to be filled with anger and hate.
I respect and admire PQ for her accomplishments and don’t think she deserves these attacks. People are twisting and turning her words around and consider her weight loss as some sort of slap in the face or an attack on fat people.
PQ worked hard to get fit and healthy and the fact that she used the scale to measure her progress doesn’t mean she doesn’t respect people who are fat and happy. It is a personal choice what you do with your body and she chose to lose more than 1/2 her weight.
If you are comfortable with your body and *healthy* at 200, 300, 400+ pounds - good for you but if you don’t feel good in your own skin or have weight related health problems you don’t need to hate on the people that eat healthy and exercise to lose weight.
I think we should try to encourage each other to fulfill our goals whether it is losing a few pounds, maintaining a certain weight or exercising to get the blood flowing.
It appears I am in the minority here and don’t want to piss people off but I felt the need to defend a woman who is honest, sincere, funny, talented and very healthy now.
I congratulate PQ on her success and wish you all good health and happiness no matter what your size.
Peace Out
Andrea, you say: “During the prehistroric time there was no such thing as obesity.”
The Venus of Willendorf” is some 20,000 to 25,000 years old, and looks very much as though it’s a representation of a live model. I’m not saying obese people were common prehistorically, but they did happen.
MB you’re wrong. No one would have batted an eye at this, even remotely, except that it appeared *on the fatosphere feed*. Which is, presumably, the fat acceptance corner of the internet. Had any one of us seen it anywhere else, we would have just clicked on to the next thing, as the hahafatpants weightloss books are *everywhere* and this one is not especially remarkable. It became remarkable, and objectionable, when it appeared on the *fatosphere feed.* Can you for one moment comprehend why that is objectionable to fat acceptance advocates?
And yes I’m seeing a lot of hateful comments, but not from the FA people - for a moment I thought you were a FA advocate annoyed by the vitriol and attacks FA people were having slung at them here (now that actually IS hahafunny.)
As to anger, Becky said it well. How can anyone look at the legal and social discrimination that is going on against fat people and NOT be angry? Even if I were still rail-thin, I’d be angry if I took the barest amount of time to educate myself about what’s going on. Any person of good will ought to be angry about it. If one isn’t, that speaks volumes about one. At least insofar as size acceptance/fat acceptance goes. But also far more than that.
If anyone has any questions about whether this is strictly a “fat acceptance blog,” you might want to read this discussion from January.
So I dare to have my blog on the fatosphere feed? (This has come up several times here, I’m not responding to anyone in particular.) Well, I’m a fat blogger and I write about body image and weight. In fact, if you look at the blogs on that feed, apart from Big Fat Blog, I think I’ve been writing the longest (four years) and the most consistently. I’ve been on television and in newspapers as a representative of the “fatosphere.” I think I’ve earned a modicum of respect from this community as a result.
I posted the interview in part because PQ has been supportive of me and this blog since the very beginning, and I respect her views even when I don’t agree with her. I thought it would be interesting to talk about the intersection of weight loss and fat acceptance that she talks about in her book, and that it might generate an interesting discussion. The fact that this has turned into an attack on this blog, on which I have worked very hard for many years, is quite frankly depressing.
Well it wasn’t my personal intent to disrespect you and I’m aware of your views (I read the manifesto thing at the time) but it didn’t seem to me to be an “intersection” to see the FA movement attacked right in the interview and at Amazon. I’m not sure why a dieting thing (especially with some of that imagery, using pants that many of us could fit into, the “fat people can’t do X, etc.) would be expected to draw kudos from people who go to the fatosphere to read about fat discrimination, fat rights (and the lack thereof) and so forth…I don’t really get why anyone would expect it to draw kudos. Naturally it’s your blog to do with as you wish. I just wish pro-diet and rather anti-fat posts would have a little warning attached so I wouldn’t click on them. It hits you like a bucket of cold water to see something like that when you’re expecting something at least sort of pro-fat-acceptance. And really, the FA people have mostly been moderated in their tone while being accused of some pretty nasty things. It makes a person stop and go “Huh? Really?” How can fat acceptance not be part of size acceptance; it’s just…rather shocking.
I saw you on TV and you did very well; but there was no hint of anything like this - it doesn’t strike me as finding a balance or being moderate, but as a disconnect. I’m sorry if you take that as an attack on your work. But no worry, I don’t even register on the meter to begin with. Your place in the feed couldn’t be determined by the likes of me even if I wanted that kind of power, and I’m fairly certain I’d never be featured on it. But I guess there are more and more people coming in to FA and some of them are going to be, well, really pro-FA. If YKWIM.
I believe our society puts too much emphasis on appearance, including body size and weight. It’s a shame that people are judged undisciplined because of their size.
And I think the obesity epidemic is overstated. And I believe that healthy people come in all sizes.
However I think Jeanette Fulda is a charming young woman who has achieved something important to her and she deserves her moment. Her goal was not to “put down” anyone. I find her to be delightful and an inspiration.
The anger that is felt by those who are criticized for their size, while it is justified, angrily attacking people when they express their viewpoint does little to help the cause. Most thinking people are turned off by it.
Reading these comments and the venom some contained was akin to watching Jerry Springer whose show I find disgusting and therefore do not watch.
If you want to influence people, you must win them over, not offend them.
Good grief! I can’t believe this sparked such outrage.
Mo Pie, I think it’s great you posted it. PQ, I think it’s awesome you took part! Of course, I’m “biased”–I’ve read PQ’s blog start to finish, so I “know” her. And I agree that you can accept yourself but still want to change something. PQ is one of the few people in the world who was able to change this particular thing, and railing on her about it is closed-minded. In the process of getting healthy, she lost weight. And yes, society is rewarding her for it with the book deal. If you don’t like that, don’t buy her book! But there’s no reason to be angry at someone for her personal choices that don’t impact the rest of us at all.
I thought it would be interesting to talk about the intersection of weight loss and fat acceptance that she talks about in her book, and that it might generate an interesting discussion.
And it has. Many of us don’t believe there can be an intersection of deliberate weight loss and fat acceptance, because deliberately losing weight is by definition not accepting fat. You can call it anything else you like, but by definition it is not fat acceptance.
This has lead to us being labelled rude, mean, ignorant, angry, oversensitive (because no one’s ever called a rights movement ‘oversensitive’ or ‘too angry’ before), whiny, and other things I can’t even remember. For insisting that fat acceptance involves accepting fat. There have also been posts displaying a completely stunning level of ignorance of basic FA and HAES concepts, but trying to correct these misconceptions is apparently “worthy of the Jerry Springer show”. You want to talk about depressing, let’s start there.
Anyway, it was never my intent to attack your blog and I don’t believe I did so. It’s this post I have a problem with, and I voiced that problem.
I don’t have alot of sympathy for her contention that she was not accepted on SA boards because she wanted to lose weight. One of the purposes of SA boards is a place where people can be free of diet talk. We are so bombarded with it in this culture, that for those of us who chose to free ourselves from the “only thin is valid mindset,” we absolutely NEED that! We need a place to go to affirm our beautiful large bodies, and not hear the same old negative scripts. I wonder if she stopped to think about how her negativity about her body was impacting other posters??? It violates our safe space!!! There are countless number of web sites where one can engage in diet babble! Why not go there if that better suits one’s goals? I just never understood why folks who literally have thousands of options insist on infultrating the handful of SA boards designed to be free of it. I lose patience with “slimmers” who seem to have a need to get validation from the SA community and there are many out there. I know when I was breaking free from the brainwash I couldn’t handle friends who constantly talked about dieting or indulged in self/fat hatred. I could agree to disagree and leave the topic alone, but if they couldn’t I had to drop them. If they continued to vent despite my feelings I saw it as self absorption. We all have the right to be surrounded by people who will not stand in the way of our own goals.
To me, it seems like she wants it both ways. But then again, she is trying to sell her book!!!
And please let me add, I am not talking about THIS site because the owner obviously has pro diet sympathies. That is her right. I have no issues with people who either want to diet as a personal choice, or want to be “middle of the road.” My qualm is with people who go to boards that are designed to be free of diet/fat negativity then complain they are not accepted when they engage in both!
<i.The fact that this has turned into an attack on this blog, on which I have worked very hard for many years, is quite frankly depressing.
This is a very sensitive issue for many people. I completely understand the frustration and anger. But after being on the receiving end of that anger in the past, I just hope that we can all articulate that anger in ways that do not make Mo or Jennette feel as if their characters are being attacked, also. Mo has never proclaimed BFD to be a strictly FA community, but she has done a lot for the movement and for fat (and thin) folks everywhere. In evaluating our comments, I think we have to ask: “If Mo or Jennette were standing in front of me, face-to-face, how would I phrase my rebuttal to them?” and then post accordingly.
I would also like to add that many of us “old timers” in the movement are naturally feisty. We had to be! When we started, all we had is a paper copy of a newsletter every month. There was no instant support via the internet. We stood alone. What is really sad is that this argument is just a repeat of what I have seen being played out for over 30 years now. Different faces, same script!
As far as thinking about not saying anything we won’t say to their face, I think that is a great idea Rachel! Which is why I changed my screen name to my real last name and included my myspace with a pic of my face. I am a very direct person! So I feel comfortable with my comment. Really, if she does a book tour that comes to Chicago I would pretty much say the same thing in a face to face question. Since she IS promoting a book, that takes it to a different level. Marketing almost always subjugates feelings to profit; I am sure the publisher encourages a bit of fat negativity to promote sales. If one is going to be in that kitchen…..
Sanders = Pani
I’m curious, Rachel: would you also urge those who have characterized other commenters on this thread as “whiny,” “shrill,” jealous,” “akin to watching Jerry Springer whose show I find disgusting and therefore do not watch” to imagine themselves face-to-face with the person they’re responding to?
I just hope that we can all articulate that anger in ways that do not make Mo or Jennette feel as if their characters are being attacked, also.
I haven’t attacked anyone’s character, nor would I. I have instead questioned their actions and the message they’re promoting, which is what “a respectful and interesting discussion” is all about. But, as I’ve pointed out, any number of commenters have attacked my character, and that of other FA/HAES advocates commenting on this thread. Apparently that’s all right though?
In evaluating our comments, I think we have to ask: “If Mo or Jennette were standing in front of me, face-to-face, how would I phrase my rebuttal to them?” and then post accordingly.
Actually, what I’m thinking about is our 14-year-old, because we told her she was perfect just as she was. Reading the posts on this thread, I’m afraid she might realise how few people actually believe that. So I’ll be defending fat acceptance ’til I’m blue in the face, because it matters. Keep the insults coming.
I deliberately framed my comments so as not to single out any one person. My suggestion to frame comments in the same way you would speak to someone in person holds true for everyone. And I think Mo has been considerably civil and neutral in her comments to folks here. Perhaps we could all take a cue from her.
Keep the insults coming.
Does anyone else see the futility in trading insults when we could instead be exchanging constructive debate? Sorry, I just see the angry defensiveness and venomous barbs here to be counterproductive to people on both sides of the issue.
Mo, I don’t think anyone is attacking your blog. I think your blog is great. You’ve done so much to help fat women realise they deserve respect and good treatment, and I think that’s wonderful. But I think people were attacking/questioning your choice to promote a book on weight loss on a fat acceptance blog.
I know you don’t know me from Adam, but. If I may make a suggestion, Mo?
Would you consider answering any of the comments that are in dissent but make their points without resorting to name-calling? I think if people feel that their polite disagreements are listened to and respected, that they will feel less angry. Hopefully the tone of the exchange will take its cue from you.
Just my two cents in favor of unity and pacifism.
P.S. I’ve noticed that people against the entry keep repeating that they don’t care if PQ diets, they have other objections, while (almost) every comment against *them* repeats that those dissenters are angry because she’s dieting, and seems angry that they are angry. This disconnect looks like it is exacerbating the mutual anger, so if you could defuse it things might settle down.
I believe that Mo has gone out of her way to explain that this blog of hers does not take the official FA acceptance stance. This blog is not a “safe” place for people who are in the FA movement. This blog is a place for thoughtful discussion on all areas of SIZE acceptance and has many times had posts that relate to weight loss efforts as well as fat acceptance.
Rather than turn on this blog or on Mo, if you are uncomfortable with what Mo is posting, why don’t you just go somewhere else? This is not an open forum- it is a blog that has open comments- and an open door if what is being posted makes you feel “unsafe” or violated. Because really, you could have just skipped over this post- even if it was in the fatosphere feed.
I am overweight and I hate being fat. I actively am losing weight. My health is about the same whether I am thin or fat (have been both) but I FEEL better physically when I am thin. I am totally into each person being accepted in society regardless of physical appearance and I would not even begin to assume what someone elses life is like based on their physical size. I appreciate all the posts on here and I just look the other way when there are people who comment on here that make it seem there is something wrong with me being fat and not wanting to be, so I would assume you could look the other way when occasionally there is a posting of someone who relates directly to how I feel like PQ does.
Isn’t it fair that we all have a voice here?
It’s not a fat acceptance blog, becky. Or, not “strictly” fat acceptance.
Rachel, to be really really honest, I saw that you framed it thus, but the message was still that the “extreme view” of actual fat acceptance in the face of the anti-FA question(s), anti-FA and anti-fat replies, and the flat-out fat-hating comments were to be “tolerated” while the FA comments were to be moderated. And so it has been. I guess in a way I was attacking the blog, though unintentionally; it wasn’t until like my tenth time reading through to see where *I* was wrong that I finally noticed that I wasn’t. How could blatant fat-hating comments be allowed to stand, even though the question(s) were anti_FA (it’s extreme) and the answers were smugly anti-fat, and the comments were *outright fat-hating*? I think the trouble is that some people want to define the “center” of the FA debate, and label others as “radical.” Well, no. You’re not the “center” and dieting books (hahafatpants!) certainly aren’t the center. Not that anyone HAS to be the center. But neither are pro-FA people the “extreme” or the “limit.”
See, Red No 3 has created monsters. Except totally not because we were already monsters sick of society’s message. It was all bound to happen :) As Pani said, it’s all been done!
Mo, I, for one, love your blog. And the fact that people feel so strongly about it is a measure of its worth. Thank you for the work you put into it.
stungunbilly, as much as I would have loved to respond to every comment, and would love to do so now, I simply haven’t had the time over the past couple of days. I won’t go into the details of my multiple jobs, but suffice it to say it’s been a perfect storm of work this week.
As a result, I didn’t even see the thread until it was already quite long. I would have deleted the trolling comments if I’d seen them in time, but by the time they had garnered multiple responses, it seemed too late. Also, I hate restricting and editing comments in any way on this blog. I would have basically had to delete half the conversation!
Anyway, I’ve tried to explain why I posted the interview and asked the questions; I didn’t write the answers, nor do I automatically agree with every word just because it’s posted on my blog. I figure that’s pretty obvious. Did you have anything specifically you’d like me to address? I’ll do my best.
And just for the record, all comments are being moderated at the moment. So far I’ve approved them all, I think; if you don’t see your comment, feel free to drop me an e-mail.
My bad lifestyle caused me to go from being underweight (I was naturally thin and then several factors came into play which changed that.) Then I got up to 180 pounds, which is a lot of my frame. (Now, since I lost the weight I guess you could say this is my natural set point, but had I not changed my lifestyle I would still be that big. So…where is setpoint theory then? )
I cannot buy half of what I’m told by the FA movement about fat and health or “setpoints” or any of the other things bandied about. Why? Because I’ve LIVED it. And know many others who have as well. I feel like those who say being obese has no effect on health are like the 90 year old smoker who just happens to have stayed healthy after 3 packs a day for 70 years.
It’s the exception.
There are countless studies on what obesity does to ones’ health. It did things to my health that I’m just now recovering from. I gained a LOT of weight from poor lifestyle and I lost it from better lifestyle. So…hmmm. I am not alone in my experience.
Also, I find it disingenuous that so many fat bloggers who are stating “no health issues with obesity” are in their twenties and thirties.
One important thing that is just starting to be really studied and understood is the importance of vitamin D on health and a long list of health issues vitamin D deficiency is linked to. Obese people cannot properly absorb vitamin D, it gets trapped in the fat. So when I hear words like “cognitive dissonance” from people who deny that obesity affects health, I can’t believe the level of science you have to completely blatantly ignore to get that.
I think PQ makes a fabulous point about self acceptance NOT being about your weight. Your weight is not WHO you are. And when people talk about health issues and weight, they are NOT secretly “hating” you and looking for reasons to be mean to you. They are really talking about health issues.
I have very little respect for the way this movement has tried to conflate health and appearance. Someone talks about health and the discussion gets shifted to “beauty ideals” when no one was even talking about that.
It’s because beauty ideals are an easier thing to argue. There are too many studies that show the health rammifications for MOST people of obesity.
I feel like the FA movement has become rife with conspiracy theorists and it’s going to hurt the anti-discrimination cause. Because most people are going to consider the movement a joke if they dont’ get back to real science.
In addition, “genetics” accounts for only 8 pounds of weight in an individual. The “fat gene” does not cause THAT much weight gain. What is inherited far more than fat genes, is bad habits. And lets face it, the bulk majority of americans sit around and eat crap. We shouldn’t be shocked that so many people have gotten so big.
If you think this makes me hateful, I feel you don’t live in the same reality the rest of us do. And I feel like an oversensitivity to the issues causes you to be defensive and see everything as a personal attack. It’s not a personal attack. And I resent people acting like I’m a mean, nasty, hateful person for simply stating: “Hey, you guys sound insane when you go on like this.”
This level of sensitivity while perhaps warranted because of how others have treated you should not automatically be leveled at everyone who disagrees with you.
For some reason, ever since I read this article, the traditional fat acceptance folk who have either been stung by it, or accused of rudeness have been in my heart all day. As an ‘Old Timer” in the movement I have some further thoughts I would like to share. On my OWN blog. Since I personally don’t want to contribute to any more acrimony here, please let me say if you don’t agree with my perspective or are very sensitive please do not go there:
http://tinyurl.com/6ovged
And I just have to say this to yoganut! As a sociologist who has researched this issue for over 2 decades, most studies that find fat is unhealthy are deliberately inflated by their sponsors - PHARMA. I have been trained on how to do studies properly(and most of them are surveys, not clinical studies) and what is hitting the news and scaring the impressionable public are laughable! It is marketing, NOT science!!!
Health - ill or not, is not reason for discrimination to take place against anyone - fat or thin. In additino, people used to openly mock fat people for being fat, and they have been given an excuse to do so openly in recent years by throwing in “health” (thanks to a lot of false reporting and junk science - I’d suggest a long long session at junkfoodscience) when their reason is quite obviously not concern for someone’s health. But even if it were, fat people aren’t going anywhere and until fat people are afforded the same rights and respect due to them as human beings, fat acceptance advocates aren’t going anywhere either. So get used to it.
Also, you act like no one in FA has “lived it.” Of course they have. All of them. Some have never been thin, others have been rail-skinny then got fat, others have always been in between, others have starved themselves or binge eaten, many if not most have attempted to lose weight and met varying degrees of success - some lose nothing despite their best efforts; most lose less each time they try and gain more back; some - about 2% - might lose a significant amount and keep it off - there are a plethora of experiences and each person is an ocean of them. Rather than calling them all insane you might try listening more.
Also, the twin study showed that weight is at least 77% genetic.
Yoganut, you describe your own experience with your weight and health. But that is YOUR experience. It does not match my experience, or that of many of the other people here.
But, even if everything you say about health and weight is true, what would you have us do about it? Because there is no sure-fire way for most of us to lose significant amounts of weight and keep if off. There just isn’t. And medical research DOES back up this point.
I ran a MARATHON while “morbidly obese.” AND I copied all the comments because I think this is a great discussion. And I’m sad that the blog seems to be down now. AND I wonder how much obsessing about food/exercise PQ will be doing over the next 10, 20, 30 years…
Mo, that makes a lot of sense; it’s hard to keep up with a comment thread and maintain one’s life!
It does clear things up for you to make a statement like that, because it’s always the OP who is looked to be the arbiter, and things were getting quite tangled. I really feel that there is a lot of misunderstanding going on, and it made me really sad to see people denigrating each other. So thank you.
Yoganut–I just wanted to point out that in one sentence you declare our sensitivity is warranted by “how others have treated you” when in the previous sentence you have declared that we sound “insane.” (Two groups insulted for the price of one.)
And you have done the classic thing of telling us a story about your OWN body and then extrapolating it to everyone. You know because you have lived it. We all know our own bodily experiences, that doesn’t mean they apply to anyone else. And I think this is a general underlying problem that people are responding to in the interview–both that when people hear diet stories they often extrapolate it to others (anyone can/should do it!) and that declarations like “400 lb people can’t be healthy/run a half marathon”) are statements about one body that get applied to others. Anecdata.
(Now, since I lost the weight I guess you could say this is my natural set point, but had I not changed my lifestyle I would still be that big. So…where is setpoint theory then? )
Setpoints vary within a range — I believe 20-30lb is the current theory. If you’re moving less and eating more, you’ll probably be nearer the top of that range. If you’re moving more and eating less, you’ll be around the bottom. I have no idea what you weigh now so I can’t say if your weight now is likely to just be the lower end of your natural range, but perhaps that is the explanation.
I cannot buy half of what I’m told by the FA movement about fat and health or “setpoints” or any of the other things bandied about. Why? Because I’ve LIVED it.
And you think no one else on here has life experiences? In the past several years I’ve been 115lb, I’ve been 164lb, and I’ve been everywhere in between. You’re acting as if everyone here has been hugely fat since birth and is just trying to find some way of rationalising that to themselves. That simply is not the case.
I feel like those who say being obese has no effect on health are like the 90 year old smoker who just happens to have stayed healthy after 3 packs a day for 70 years.
It’s the exception.
No, it isn’t. If you read some of the links on that page, you might learn a bit about where we’re coming from. There is very little evidence regarding increased health risk and increased weight that doesn’t confuse correlation with causation — a major no-no in any scientific study that isn’t looking for a pre-determined conclusion. The evidence against increased weight as a risk factor for health problems, however, is mounting.
There are countless studies on what obesity does to ones’ health.
Countless studies? Link me some. And then check whether Sandy’s covered them. I bet they don’t show what you think they show.
Also, I find it disingenuous that so many fat bloggers who are stating “no health issues with obesity” are in their twenties and thirties.
Well, a) most bloggers are in their twenties and thirties, full stop (or period for the Americans) — it’s not often an older person’s game. And b) many people in their twenties and thirties don’t have major health issues. So I don’t really know what your point is here. You think thin people don’t become more at risk for health issues as they get older? You think no one should comment on health and weight until they’ve passed a certain age checkpoint?
Also, most people in the fatosphere don’t use the term “obesity” as it medicalises the human body. Being above a certain weight is not a medical condition. So if you’d like to do us the courtesy of referring to us by our chosen terminology, the appropriate word is “fat”.
I think PQ makes a fabulous point about self acceptance NOT being about your weight. Your weight is not WHO you are.
Your body is who you are, though. Completely indivisible from you. It’s what you move around in, what you face the world in, it’s what allows you to feel and do and be. When it dies, you die. And since we don’t know how to make fat people permanently thin, for most fat people, their weight and their body are indivisible too. So you can either accept yourself as you physically are in this world, or you can spend your whole life miserable and trying to be something else. Guess which one has more money in it for the diet industry?
And when people talk about health issues and weight, they are NOT secretly “hating” you and looking for reasons to be mean to you. They are really talking about health issues.
Nah, they aren’t. This is about aesthetics, ’cause fat people just aren’t trying hard enough to look good. If people were actually concerned about the health of fat people, they wouldn’t be continually be trying to shame them into behaviour that a) doesn’t work and b) causes them physical harm. Besides which, what is it to you if an adult human being exercises personal autonomy to eat and exercise (or not) as they see fit? Being healthy is not a moral imperative. My health is my business, and every other fat person’s health is theirs. No one has an obligation to be healthy just because you want them to.
In addition, “genetics” accounts for only 8 pounds of weight in an individual. The “fat gene” does not cause THAT much weight gain.
Oh, the stunning misunderstanding of science. As a geneticist (yes, really), let me tell you that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Start with this study, which shows that weight is roughly as heritable as height. A clue: there is no such thing as “a fat gene”. And I think you might want to lay off with the “ignoring real science” accusations here.
And I resent people acting like I’m a mean, nasty, hateful person for simply stating: “Hey, you guys sound insane when you go on like this.”
How about when you imply that anyone who gains back weight after being on a diet is lazy and undisciplined and “can’t give up the junk food crack pipe”? (Oh wait, you didn’t imply the last bit, you actually said it.) How about when you accuse us of “lying to ourselves and others”? How about when you tell us to “get over it” when we question the promotion of weight-loss dieting in a pro-FA space? How about when you tell us we’re just too angry about social injustice? How about when you toss aside someone’s phenomenal athletic achievements because she’s fat and not posting a blow-by-blow of every bite she puts in her mouth? Any of those coming off as mean, nasty and hateful to you?
This level of sensitivity while perhaps warranted because of how others have treated you should not automatically be leveled at everyone who disagrees with you.
Can I level it at people who call me a delusional, angry, oversensitive, insecure liar, though? Is that all right? I want to make sure I have your permission.
Pennylane, the majority of FA people who preach the “health at every size” rhetoric are speaking from THEIR experience.
Anyway I’m done with this. Believe what you want. Seriously, I think it’s insane. period. Saying an idea is crazy is not the same as saying a person is crazy. Saying someone is enabling an “angry fat person” stereotype is NOT the same as saying “you’re all just a bunch of angry fat people.”
Nuance is completely lost on anyone with such a high emotional stake in an argument. So hey…you win. Rah rah. But remember, debate “winning” isn’t the same thing as being factually correct.
The FA movement IMO is run on “who has the most snarky rhetoric” and out in the real world that means very little. (feel free to misinterpret this entire post as well.)
I really don’t think PQ’s story is a “diet story” persay. She was unhappy with her life and body at 370lbs and wanted to change her life, losing weight in the process. After seeing the comments, I can see why she may have experienced what she did in relation to the FA “movement” in wanting to change her life perspective - both physically and mentally.
I have read her book and I don’t think that she was trying to “push on to others” weight loss or “cheerlead” weight loss. She never said that you should do it. It is a personal decision to want to physically change your body. That was a decision she made for herself.
There were things in her book that I related with and other things I didn’t. However, it doesn’t negate her experience, because it was something I never experienced. It was her story to tell. If you don’t want to hear it, don’t read the book.
Anyway, Mo, I really like your blog and I went back and read your “manifesto.” I can totally relate to what you said. Right now, I am trying to lead a healtier life, eating better and getting more exercise. If it leads to weight loss, that would be great. If it doesn’t, that is fine too. My highest weight was 370lbs (lost 40) and for me personally, I couldn’t run a marathon at that weight. However, that is one of my goals that I am working towards.
There was a discussion a while back about whether or not an individual’s ability to lose weight or interest in losing weight is a threat to size acceptance, and this discussion here really seems to be just a more specific way of looking at the same question, and at a whole new level.
I was trying to explain why I had an issue with some of PastaQueen’s comments from an FA standpoint, but it got really long so I decided to spare the pain for those of you who wish to avoid it, and put it on my own blog here.
My main point, which has been made and ignored by others but I’ll give it another try anyway, is that I don’t think anyone’s mad at anyone else for losing weight. What is troubling to me is the intended or unintended implication that weight loss or gain is a matter of choice. For most people, fighting your natural body shape is a losing battle requiring such rigorous dieting and exercise that it is for all practical purposes impossible. What’s more, dieting is thought to be bad for your physical and mental health, and likely to leave you fatter than when you started. Is it a good idea to engage in healthy eating and exercise behaviors? Sure, but they might not make you thin or even un-fat. The idea that you simply choose to be thin or fat is what I most objected to in PQ’s responses.
[...] weight-loss blogger who has lost roughly 200 pounds over the past few years. I started to type out my response at BFD in an effort to help clarify to some commenters why other commenters identifying as FA [...]
[...] at Every Size, I have been fascinated by the discourse/uproar/kerfluffle that is going on over at Big Fat Deal over an interview between a weight-loss memoir writer and a blogger who is part of the [...]
This conversation really opened my eyes to the fat acceptance movement. If a fat person wants to go to a club where everyone is thin, and they get ridiculed for it, the thin people are in the wrong. If a thin person wants to go to a club where everyone is fat, and they get ridiculed for it, the thin people are still in the wrong.
Seriously. I used to be obese. Now I’m not. I hated being obese. I enjoy being thin.
I would never say crap to a person who is fat about them being fat. I don’t care if someone else is fat or thin. Society SHOULD accept people of all sizes. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the push for weight loss as it’s being shown in pupular media either. It’s stifling. I was tormented in high school by teachers for being fat. In elementary school, I had no friends who wouldn’t call me fat. NONE. That totally SUCKS. That should not happen. Nobody should be ridiculed for how they look.
So the idea that I would be considered an enemy of the fat acceptance movement because I preffer my size 8 body to my old size 16 body really pisses me off. I’m not “thin” by any means. I’m not a super model, but I’m too “skinny” to understand the plight of the fat community.
Where do people like me fit in?
This conversation really opened my eyes to the fat acceptance movement. If a fat person wants to go to a club where everyone is thin, and they get ridiculed for it, the thin people are in the wrong. If a thin person wants to go to a club where everyone is fat, and they get ridiculed for it, the thin people are still in the wrong.
I don’t think this is a fair analogy. The first part, sure. But the second part: it’s more like if someone opened a club for fat people, where they were for once allowed to love their bodies just as they are, and revel in them, and be around other people who felt the same. Think what a positive, happy environment that would be in a world where they were continually told them they HAD to be smaller, at any cost, and continually beat them about the head for being lazy and stupid and disgusting. (I’m sure you can identify with that feeling — you said yourself that you know what this society does to fat people.)
Then a person comes in and talks about dieting and weight loss and how she wants to be thinner, and brings all that body hatred back into the one space that was meant to be free of it — when there are a million other places she could have that conversation with people who would be happy to have it with her. Do you see how that is harmful to the fat people there? (NB: I am NOT saying BFD is that club, at all, I’m just responding to your analogy.)
So the idea that I would be considered an enemy of the fat acceptance movement because I preffer my size 8 body to my old size 16 body really pisses me off.
Not an “enemy” of. But not “part of”, either. IMO, it’s perfectly possible to be in favour of rights for fat people while simultaneously trying not to be one yourself (though there are people who would disagree with me about that). But to my mind you cannot be part of the fat acceptance movement while trying not to be fat yourself, because dieting to eradicate fat is the direct opposite of accepting it.
Where do people like me fit in?
That’s a question you need to answer for yourself, as do we all.
Who is getting “ridiculed” here?
So why is it we can’t accept the choices of others without making them ourselves? Should straight people not walk in pride parades with their friends?
As for who’s being ridiculed here, I’ve seen some really nasty comments towards PQ here. That really blows. How can people who strive towards social acceptance fly off the handle towards someone else because of their own personal choices? It’s not like she was telling everyone else to go on a diet. She said she was uncomfortable with her weight. Big freaking deal. Reading the comments here made me feel like no matter what choice I make, I’m going to be judged, when the fat acceptance movement is supposed to be promoting healthy body image and self love.
If I got that wrong, then I’m sorry. But I thought that people involved in fat acceptance were supposed to be more open towards personal choices and the idea that we should do what makes us comfortable, healthy and happy, regardless of weight.
It’s not like PQ is anorexic. She just works out regularly, and even eats junk food. Her “diet” wouldn’t work for me. Everyone is different. So while I’m definitely not gonna say “oh, all you have to do is diet and exercize and you’ll be thin!” I’m not going to say that losing weight is the most horrible thing in the world. Some people DON’T become horrible anorexic messes, or gain their weight back, or become miserable. Some people actually ARE happier when they lose weight.
So why is it we can’t accept the choices of others without making them ourselves? Should straight people not walk in pride parades with their friends?
This analogy doesn’t work either (and I’m not trying to pick on you, just challenging some misconceptions that are popping up here).
We aren’t talking about thin (=straight) people here. We are talking about weight loss dieting, i.e. people who have consciously rejected the idea that them being fat is okay, and are deliberately trying to diet and exercise their fat away. (And clearly we disagree on the likelihood of their success in doing that, but that’s a whole other conversation.) A closer analogy would be someone who has gone to one of those gay conversion camps walking in the parade with their friends — when they’ve made a decision that being gay might be all right for some people, but not for them, and done what they can to “fix” their sexuality. Can you see how the friends they’re walking with might question how real their support is in that case?
As for who’s being ridiculed here, I’ve seen some really nasty comments towards PQ here.
That’s weird, because I haven’t. I’ve seen what ilookgoodblog insightfully called “[not] tearing down the memoirist personally but tackling the societal baggage that is, by default, attached to a successful weight loss story”. I’ve seen a lot of questioning of the message she’s promoting, the effect it has on others and the motives behind it. But no attacks on her as a person. And I think characterising critical thinking as “flying off the handle” is unhelpful to productive discussion.
Reading the comments here made me feel like no matter what choice I make, I’m going to be judged
That’s a fair comment, and I’m not sure what the solution is. But this:
the fat acceptance movement is supposed to be promoting healthy body image and self love.
No. The fat acceptance moving is about accepting fat. You cannot, again, be accepting fat and simultaneously dieting to eradicate it (as I believe The Rotund put it). Healthy body image and self love all the way, but let’s not redefine the fat acceptance movement til it’s diluted beyond all usefulness.
And to the last bit: I don’t know what is with the continual assumption that we care about or are judging what PQ eats or how she exercises or anything like that. What I care about is that a) she dismissed a movement I am a part of based on what I feel is an inaccurate and misleading characterisation of what we’re about and b) she did so, and promoted a hahafatpants book, in a post where people in that movement were bound to see it. I also care a lot about the misconceptions regarding dieting and (what I see as) its relation to fat acceptance, and the simple fat hatred being displayed by some commenters here, and that is why I’m still here addressing them. What PQ did/does/doesn’t eat on a day-to-day basis is her business, and really, nothing to me.
I disagree that anyone was nasty to or ridiculed PastaQueen. But I did try to address some of your other questions (in my case I explained why I think it is OK for individuals to diet but why I still have a problem with some of what PQ said) in a previous comment upthread if you are interested. (I mean, I was not responding to you specifically but others also had some of the same concerns.)
Sorry, that was to Nina… I missed Caitlin’s comment in between ours. She said it better than me anyway. :)
Hm - my comments are getting lost or something. Well, Caitlin covered it well anyway. Caitlin I think it’s really really cool that you’re a geneticist.
Caitlin, you rock.
She totally does, O.C. Without a single angry or insulting word, she just…laid flat all the objections. With cold hard fact, too :)
Nina you could start by using “fat” instead of “obese.” And I’m pretty sure this has been stressed, but no one objects to someone being thin. Pimping diets and using anti-FA language to do it is another matter. But this has all been gone over.
Rachel, FWIW,I just realized it wasn’t just implied, but pretty specific in your post that it wasn’t “fairness” being asked for. It was in particular not to offend PQ or MoPie. (not easy to insult someone with a cool name like MoPie though.) Since the FA advocates were the only ones who c9ould be imagined to be insulting either (though they weren’t) and all the pro-diet stance folks were praising both of them and the interview to high heaven, the clear result was, “Shut up and learn your place, and don’t be so *radical* FA people. Just learn to go to the back of the bus and be quiet if it bugs you; trust us, there’s reason for it and it’s not your place to question why. I’ve earned the respect and you needn’t wonder how.)
Strange message.
Read the interview - then read the comment thread. And I see what’s missing:
Respect. We’re all individuals. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for the other person.
I’m fat. So what? You’re thin. So what? We’re all different, and I see no problem with that.
We need to get over the prejudices that develop when we analyze WHY people are fat or thin. We need to judge people as individuals, not groups.
Not all fat people are pigs who don’t exercise. Not all thin people are gym nuts who don’t eat. We need to break down these stereotypes and work on loving ourselves - then maybe we can begin to like and accept others.
Pasta Queen did what she felt was right for her situation. I respect that. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a personal attack against me or the fat acceptance movement in general. Using her interview to attack fat people (as one person has done here) is also a bad move. I doubt she meant for her interview to do such a thing. Those attacks are uncalled for and accomplish nothing positive.
Some people have disagreed with the article, but I don’t see why it had to be done with such negativity.
Now, a little bit about me. By BMI standards, I’m morbidly obese. I’ve struggled with my weight since at least second grade. I have tried to lose weight many times, without success. Simply cutting back on food did not solve my addiction to food, which was emotional.
I will continue to try and lose weight. I don’t like the way I am treated by others. Society is never going to change for me. It’s a sad fact. I’m a nice and quiet person who wants to live a normal life without interference. I can’t do this at my size, because too many people think they have the right to butt in and tell me how to run things.
I personally don’t understand why there is such a hatred against fat people. I have never expressed hatred for a person based on their physical appearance, and I’m still quite shocked when others do.
I even hate my fat. But I was trained to do so. Others enforce this hatred on a daily basis. I can’t get over it.
But you know what? When I’m out in public, minding my own business and following the laws, I don’t expect to get harassed because of my size. I hope to be treated with the basic dignity and respect I treat others with. I’m not asking society to change for me or bend over backwards to accommodate my wide behind, OK? Because that is what it comes down to - treating fat people like normal human beings. Many simply don’t want to, even though I would fight for your right to be respected and represented by the law.
And for those who are questioning the “fat girl on a bike” and her health habits - she did a whole post on that:
http://kateharding.net/2007/10/22/guest-blogger-sarah-why-the-fat-girl-on-a-bike-blog-is-going-on-hiatus/
No. The fat acceptance moving is about accepting fat. You cannot, again, be accepting fat and simultaneously dieting to eradicate it (as I believe The Rotund put it). Healthy body image and self love all the way, but let’s not redefine the fat acceptance movement til it’s diluted beyond all usefulness.
So.. what you’re saying is that, one has to accept their own fat as well as other people being fat to be in on fat acceptance. I don’t think that works. Some people aren’t comfortable being fat. I wasn’t. I thought it sucked. I didn’t like the feeling of having fat on me. I’m perfectly fine with other people choosing otherwise though, and I don’t think they should be ridiculed for it.. but it’s not for me.
This kinda reminds me of religious debates.
As for dieting not working, I’d have to disagree. It -can- work, if the person really wants it to, has the means, and works hard to do it. I was overweight my entire life until the age of 20, and then lost 60lbs. None if it has come back. So.. not everyone fails at dieting. It’s a lifestyle choice, and if people in the fat acceptance movement want their choices to be respected, then shouldn’t everyone else’s (so long as they’re healthy) choices be respected?
“So.. what you’re saying is that, one has to accept their own fat as well as other people being fat to be in on fat acceptance.”
Actually, I think this is the very real issue that the community is grappling with and that is raised by active dieters who wish to take part in the movement.
I think many would say yes, you have to accept your own fat in order to be part of the fat acceptance community. And at least in part, I think that might come from a feeling of - if you don’t accept your own fat, I can’t really believe that you accept mine. Assuming that your body’s natural setpoint was heavier - I don’t know that for sure, but if in order to keep those 60 lbs off, your “lifestyle change” involves continuing to restrict calories and exercise for the purpose of weight loss for the rest of your life, it likely was higher and you must now combat that for your whole life — you must have believed your body was not OK if it was fat, even if it was supposed to be fat. How, then, can I ever feel comfortable that you truly believe mine is OK?
Others might feel that fat acceptance is more closely mapped onto the idea of body autonomy; you can accept your fat, you can work to change it -but it is your own choice, and no one else’s. In the way that many women are comfortable upholding reproductive rights, this feeling might ask why we can’t fight for a right to value our bodies and do with them as we please. (Interestingly, I think the bloggers who more specifically focus on fat and feminism are more likely to make comments in keeping with the above.) In this view, how is a diet different than a piercing or tattoo? Or, at least, other perceived harmful behavior that we might not pass such strict judgment on: smoking, drinking alcohol in large quantities, certain drug use and abuse. As the BFD quote sometimes says - enjoy being fat or unfat, everyone - and the key is enjoy.
You’ll find folks with thoughts all over the spectrum. But I don’t think the first stance - that you have to accept your body’s own tendencies, no matter what those are, in order to be trusted that you can accept the tendencies of the bodies of others, and to really perceive what the fat acceptance fight is about - is unreasonable.
I just wanted to drop a note of thanks to Mopie for publishing this link and letting the discussion roll, and to everyone who has left though-provoking and insightful comments. I’ve been somewhat overweight for as long as I can remember, and it’s only recently that I’ve had the self-possession to get off the diet/weightloss treadmill and learn to eat, exercise, and LIVE for the purpose of enjoying my life rather than to make myself thinner so that I can enjoy my life when I meet society’s standard of worthiness.
I’ve been reading a few FA-related blogs in that time, but it’s been this discussion that’s really hit home with me, exposing some underlying prejudices and societal trends that I didn’t necessarily realize before and helping me examine my own thoughts and feelings on the subject more closely. I feel like it’s helped me understand the FA movement and the nuances and debates therein better and more objectively than I did before.
So again, Thank You! to Mo, Annie, Caitlin, and many others.
I agree with some of what Pasta Queen has to say. I used to read her blog and link to her back in my days of dieting blogging.
When I changed my goals from dieting to eating intuitively and body acceptance, I found many of my readers couldn’t relate - and some were extremely negative. Most said they couldn’t ever try Intuitive Eating because they “couldn’t trust” themselves…
It got to a point where I abandoned my diet blog. I couldn’t be part of an atmosphere that was TOXIC to me anymore. So many diet bloggers do nothing but beat themselves up over the pounds they don’t lose or the pounds they regain.
I’m always happy for that rare individual who loses weight, feels good and keeps it off… but I think one of the major reasons this is SO rare is that without body acceptance, any weight lost is lost in a vacuum. If you can’t love yourself fat, the odds are incredibly high that you won’t love yourself thin.
I have a serious, nearly life long eating disorder. Dieting made this so much worse, and only resulting in my gaining more weight - which made me feel like an utter failure at everything.
I get what she means with this statement about her book, “but the deeper message is that you can shape your life into whatever you want it to be. You can lose a ton of weight, find a better job, get out of a bad relationship, start a salt-water taffy stand – whatever you want to do, you can do it!”
BUT - I think that’s incredibly oversimplified. Some people simply cannot lose a ton of weight. She talks about accepting your body while trying to change it, but for many of us struggling with an eating disorder, that’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible - and I am not limiting myself to binge eating/bulimia here. For anorexics, too, this is a challenge.
I think the focus on feeling healthy is a good one, but for many focusing on weight is just too dangerous a game to play… which is why for me, I don’t blog about size acceptance or fat acceptance. I blog with an aim towards body acceptance for EVERY ONE.
I don’t think anyone should feel like crap about their bodies. It sucks that we live in a world where the “ideal” is so completely unrealistic that very, very few can ever achieve it - and even fewer without “help” of some sort.
I do have to say, though, that fat people are not treated the way thin people are. This is simply a fact. I lived in NYC for years and was treated like a freak. I now live in Colorado and as long as I stay out of Denver, most people treat me like a human being instead of some sort of contaminated fat spreading machine. Why? Because in general, Coloradans focus on health and not on appearance, whereas in NYC, it’s all about how small can you get and how beautiful can you make yourself. So I think that while many in CO would still tell a reporter if asked that I look “unhealthy,” they aren’t threatened by my fat.
A lot of former fat people I’ve known have adopted this “holier-than-thou” attitude towards people who are still fat. And that, Jennette, is probably why people in the FA movement are sometimes hostile towards you. I’m not saying it’s fair or right… just something that’s true.
I approve of much of what people in the FA or size acceptance movement are trying to do. Hatred based simply on what someone looks like is unfair… but I do think it’s a two way street, and we can’t judge thin people just because they are thin. However, I do think that when dealing with unhealthy lifestyles to force oneself to be a certain size, this is valid conversation because it ties back into loving yourself no matter what you look like.
But I don’t think the first stance - that you have to accept your body’s own tendencies, no matter what those are, in order to be trusted that you can accept the tendencies of the bodies of others, and to really perceive what the fat acceptance fight is about - is unreasonable.
But what if our bodies have been trained differently due to socity and upbringing? I’m a Native American, and lots of Native Americans are suffering from diabetes due to a diet change that has basically been forced on to most of the US due to the cost of fresh food. The idea that I’m “restricting” myself by not eating cookies or ice cream or anything with sugar in it isn’t so much a restriction as a dietary difference between my body and other people’s. I know that sugar makes me sick. It also makes me gain weight. I have a very tiny bone structure, and being overweight puts stress on my joints. So why -wouldn’t- I preffer to be thin?
At the same time, I believe that all people should be treated equally. But from what I’m hearing, since I don’t accept the fat that comes to me from eating processed food and refined sugar, I’m not accepting my body’s “own tendancies” to be naturally overweight? I don’t think so. Most of the food that causes people to be severely overweight is processed junk food that has snuck into our lifestyles because it’s cheap. This is by no means “normal” or “healthy”.
At the same time, eating healthy doesn’t automatically mean you’re thin. I’m just saying, a lot of people who are severely overweight could benefit from some restriction. I know I did. I was drinking soda every day, and there’s absolutely nothing healthy about that.
I second what Annie said about her objections to Rachel’s post upthread. It was very clearly aimed at the FA folk, who were if anything the ones being attacked. That made it somewhat less than useful as an even-handed moderation of discussion.
Hey Nina, I just wanted to say thanks for taking in what I’ve offered in response to your comments, even though we don’t agree. I can assure you I’ve done the same, and it makes a change from a few of the conversations I’ve had here.
As for dieting not working, I’d have to disagree. It -can- work, if the person really wants it to, has the means, and works hard to do it.
I know you don’t mean anything negative by this, but I’d invite you to think about what this says to people who have been dieting their entire lives and have only ended up fatter (and there are more than a few of them reading this thread). You think they didn’t really want it? Or that they didn’t work hard? Most fat people have incredible willpower (see: the often batshit crazy diets they maintain for weeks or months at a time), and they want to be thin so much they’d do anything to achieve it.
Diets just don’t work. Fat Fu looked at the .Weight Watchers official success numbers — the ones they quietly release themselves when no one’s looking — and found that only 2 in 1000 people using their programme sustain their weight loss — and that’s the one considered effective enough that in some places you can get it on prescription!
If you’ve kept the weight off for five years, congratulations on being one of that 2-5%. But offering yourself as an exception doesn’t change the overwhelming failure rate. No car or drug, for example, would ever be allowed to stay in production with such a low rate of success, and such extensive side effects. People wouldn’t be going around saying “Oh, you mustn’t have changed the oil” or “You must have forgotten to take it at the exact right time” (or “It must have been the cough drops”); we’d accept something was wrong with the product itself, and we would stop using it.
So.. what you’re saying is that, one has to accept their own fat as well as other people being fat to be in on fat acceptance.
That is, as mccn said, pretty much what we’re debating the hell out of just now.
I’m perfectly fine with other people choosing otherwise though, and I don’t think they should be ridiculed for it.. but it’s not for me.
And that’s entirely your choice. But it might well mean the fat acceptance movement isn’t for you either.
This kinda reminds me of religious debates.
Wow, I hear that. No one’s told me I’m going to hell so far this time though, which is a delightful change. ;)
mccn, I think the issues you raised about body autonomy in relation to dieting in relation to fat acceptance are well worth considering. For the record, I am very strongly in favour of both reproductive choice and body autonomy. Whatever you (generic you) do with your own body is very much your own business. However, the political stance of FA (as The Rotund put it) is anti-dieting, because a) sing it with me if you know the words: it’s the opposite of accepting fat and b) it’s harmful and it doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean we don’t have compassion for individual people who can’t take the way this society treats fat people anymore and keep dieting in an attempt not be one of them. It does mean that they can’t expect that choice to be supported and encouraged by the one movement (I’m aware of) that is opposed to dieting for weight loss.
Caitlin I think it’s really really cool that you’re a geneticist.
Heh. Thanks. I do too, when I’m not in exam/dissertation hell for it. Then it’s kind of shit.
Pasta Queen-
You = AWESOME!
That’s pretty much the best thing I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading regarding body acceptance. I used to go to LOTS of ‘fat acceptance’ blogs, but I don’t so much anymore, because so many seem militantly against losing weight and thin people in general. If more people had great attitudes like yours, the world would be a much happier place.
Thanks again for a great read!
I’m not much a fan of the Weight Watchers thing, myself. Or most diets out there. Hardly any of them make sense, but I guess what I do isn’t so much a “diet” anymore. It’s just how I eat.
I know you don’t mean anything negative by this, but I’d invite you to think about what this says to people who have been dieting their entire lives and have only ended up fatter (and there are more than a few of them reading this thread). You think they didn’t really want it? Or that they didn’t work hard?
Noooo no way am I saying that. I also included “has the means”. Personally, I tried dieting with no success earlier, but when I found out what worked for me, I kept up with it. I know there’s a lot of people who either have not found what works for them, or just don’t have anything that will work for them as far as eating/exercizing does. I went through the same debate on a bodybuilder forum, a while back. Imagine arguing to a bunch of body builders that not EVERYONE can simply “eat right and work out” and end up skinny.
I suppose the fat acceptance thing is something that strikes a nerve with me because most of my childhood was defined by my weight, and I’d like to be able to help make it so that doesn’t happen to other kids and adults, but damned if I’m going to risk diabetes by doing that.
Teh diebeetus? Oh my. Nina, most fat people didn’t get fat by shoveling down sweets. If you did, and cutting them out caused you to lose weight, good. As Caitlin points out, for the vast majority of fat people dieting. doesn’t. work. That doesn’t mean WW or Jenny Craig but anything that includes restricting caloric intake in order to lose weight. There is no known reliable, safe way to make fat people permanently thin - whether they’re rich or determined or make lifestyle changes or anything else in their favor. There isn’t. You are an exception, and that’s very nice for you. For most people who are fat, it doesn’t matter how bad they want it or how hard they work - they might lose 20 or 30 lbs and keep it off (setpoints) but significant, permanent, safe weight loss? Almost zero. Statistically insignificant. Rare. To state that because you and a couple others did so (with PQ it of course remains to be seen since she’s still in the losing curve and not on maintenance for over 5 years) that others can, that if they don’t they’re “choosing” to live with their fat - well, that’s offensive. And it’s not true. Many have done it all, been down that road as far as it would take them and then some, to finally figure out “Well, I don’t love being fat, but this is my body; now how can I learn to live with it and accept it, since I’m not going to be issued another one?”
Some of you are missing the point. Especially you Nikki and Nina.
FA advocates do not hate thin people. They hate:
-That being thin is touted as the only way to be considered healthy.
-That being thin is the only way to be considered attractive.
-That being thin is the only way to be an acceptable part of society.
-That eating balanced meals and exercising should be done not for just weight loss, but because that’s what people just want to do.
-That all fat people are lumped into one homogenous group and automatically dismissed as constantly eating lazy blobs of lard. Not all fat people get fat because they can’t put down the fork.
-That fat is associated with bad morals.
-Fat people are now being blamed for most of society’s ills and are compared to terrorists.
-Fat causes every health problem under the sun: diabetes, stroke, heart disease, bad skin, body odor, arthritis, joint problems, headaches, backaches, gall bladder pain, etc.
-That society portrays weight loss as akin to sainthood, and most dieters expect to be treated like saints for losing weight. Sorry, but you don’t become a saint by dropping some pounds, and I sure ain’t treating you like some god/goddess because you diet.
Nina, you want to help kids? Then don’t become another fat hater. Don’t promote health by focusing on weight loss. DON’T SHAME PEOPLE INTO LOSING WEIGHT. It won’t happen.
To quote Nikki, if more people had attitudes like this, the world would be a better place.
Nikki, on what do you base that accusation that people in FA are “militantly against thin people in general”? I’ve never seen such a thing, and I’d like you to cite your source for such a comment.
Jennette Fulda, better known as PastaQueen, may have lost a couple hundred or so pounds, but she’s been a commenter on and visitor to Big Fat Deal for a long time.
Gotta love how an interview that’s supposed to mold size acceptance and weight loss, that’s the opening line. Sounds like you’re playing into the idea that people losing weight can’t be interested in size acceptance. Which is something I find incredibly offensive as someone who is doing just that.
Though I should add that as someone who is losing weight and participating in size acceptance, I truly enjoyed the interview. :)
HA! I’m sorry to laugh at this, Liza, but have you read this thread? Oh my god, that’s ironic.
Basically I phrased it that way because I was afraid people wouldn’t be open minded about the interview even appearing here in the first place. And… read the thread.
Mo, you rock too. :-)
Rachel, FWIW,I just realized it wasn’t just implied, but pretty specific in your post that it wasn’t “fairness” being asked for. It was in particular not to offend PQ or MoPie.
Annie: My comments were geared towards those who chose to harshly criticize and even personally attack Mo and Jennette because that is what I saw as the predominant thrust of the comments. If you take this as an “attack” on the FA folks here, so be it. I do think, however, that you are interpreting my comments in ways I did not intend for them to be taken nor did I state as such and I would appreciate it if you would not put words in my mouth. I did not “attack” the FA commenters; I simply asked that they reconsider the ways in which they phrased their disagreements so to attack the message and not the messenger. After being the recent subject of a mass pile-on, I know that, frankly, it sucks and I wouldn’t want anyone else to experience those hurtful feelings.
I didn’t think I used the word “attack.” Neither do I see personal attacks on MoPie or PQ. (With maybe one or two borderline possibles.) Naturally no one wants to be piled on; which was why I think some FAs were surprised and saddened to find themselves piled on. And then told to moderate their response to that. We seem to be seeing two very different things, and I’m not sure how that’s happening.
Nina, you want to help kids? Then don’t become another fat hater. Don’t promote health by focusing on weight loss. DON’T SHAME PEOPLE INTO LOSING WEIGHT. It won’t happen.
Where am I shaming people into losing weight?? I’m saying that everyone’s different, and some people DO need to lose weight to be healthy. Not everyone. Some. For some people, being overweight is a health risk. For some people, a diet is neccisary to stay healthy. This isn’t fat hate. This is just the reality for a lot of people.
And I agree, there are a lot of people who can’t stay at the same weight after they lose a ton of it. Diets aren’t for everyone, they don’t work for everyone, and they shouldn’t be promoted as the be-all-end-all of health. BUT, some diet restrictions CAN help people, and to deny that is a risk that many shouldn’t be taking.
Teh diebeetus? Oh my. Nina, most fat people didn’t get fat by shoveling down sweets.
I’m well aware of that. However, I’m not talking just sweets. I’m talking processed food that the American public has become addicted to. Not because we can’t stop eating it, because given the chance, I know plenty of people would switch to whole unprocessed fresh fruit and vegetables. It’s because it’s cheap and plentiful and because it’s another one of those things that society says is a normal part of life, when for people like me and many other Native Americans, it’s a contributer to diabetes.
Seriously, it’s not like diabetes and obesity was this rampant before the introduction of cheap processed food.
I’m not trying to point fingers at fat people and say they’re bad, or immoral, or anything like that. It’s not the fault of us or our bodies. Human beings are designed to carry some fat, that’s completely natural, but when it starts going hand-in-hand with health risks, that’s when I have a problem. Native Americans have already taken enough crap from this country, and now our way of life and eating has nearly been stripped from us, forcing many to convert to a way of eating that is not healthy or normal for us.
And please, this has nothing to do with being fat. Just because a person of fat doesn’t mean they don’t eat healthy, but, if a person is of a weight that is dangerous, and they eat in a way that makes them feel better, where is the harm in that??
We seem to be seeing two very different things, and I’m not sure how that’s happening.
Short answer: the internet. I’ve always maintained that if we were to all gather round a table and speak face-to-face, we wouldn’t have as many misunderstandings as we have online. It’s really easy to misinterpret things without the benefit of audio/visual stimuli, especially if the initial sentiments were not expressed clearly and articulately. I apologize if you felt slighted by my comments or if you felt they were targeted at you directly (they weren’t). I just hated to see Mo and Jennette made to feel personally attacked, which is why I spoke up.
I’m talking processed food that the American public has become addicted to.
I see where you’re coming from, Nina, and I, too, am troubled by the rise of unhealthy foods and the increasing lack of availability of healthier foods. I’m a food culture historian and I’ve always wondered if the rise of diseases and illnesses the medical community blames on fatness isn’t instead the result of the rise of processed foods. But I think this isn’t just a problem for fat people, but for all people. Your post raises the important point that our bodies are all relative in the ways we process and metabolize different foods and nutrients. For some people, a diet high in processed foods and sugar will have adverse health risks, regardless if the same food causes weight gain or not; while yet others may not have those same reactions. Thats why I feel intuitive eating is so important; by listening to our bodies, we come to know what it is they want and need to perform at what is best for us.
Thats why I feel intuitive eating is so important; by listening to our bodies, we come to know what it is they want and need to perform at what is best for us.
Well that can be true sometimes, but other times I’m not so sure. There are times when I think for sure that I could really use a piece of cake, when the reality is it’ll make me nauseous.
I think we should all add a disclaimer whenever we talk about weight loss diets - one that says: I am talking about the kind of diet that is supposed to make you slimmer and not just healthier, assuming that you’ve already tried the “healthy lifestyle” approach and it didn’t make you thin. Isn’t that the only thing we object to? Don’t we all agree that losing weight by eating normally is completely okay? And that adapting a healthier lifestyle to feel better is not the same as dieting in this context? It seems that if everyone understood this, hardly anyone would be arguing anymore.
Don’t we all agree that losing weight by eating normally is completely okay?
I certainly hope so!
I think we should all add a disclaimer whenever we talk about weight loss diets - one that says: I am talking about the kind of diet that is supposed to make you slimmer and not just healthier,
Well, yes. But surely with “weight loss dieting”, it’s right there in the name — a diet with weight loss as (one of) its primary goals.
Don’t we all agree that losing weight by eating normally is completely okay? And that adapting a healthier lifestyle to feel better is not the same as dieting in this context?
We agree so much there’s even a name for it — Health At Every Size.
I know, I know. It’s just that I often come across commenters who insist that “in some cases” it can be necessary to go on a weight loss diet, by which they mean something that I wouldn’t call a weight loss diet at all. They talk about going from binge eating, emotional eating or whatever to normal eating and call it a weight loss diet just because they do it in order to lose weight. You know what I mean? I’d call that recovering from an eating disorder, or at least from disordered eating, but they call it a diet and that gives them the impression that “diets are always bad” is a very stupid thing to say. Which actually makes sense if you look at it that way - but in reality we’re only talking about the diets of people who really restrict their eating. We don’t even include those who just switch a few of their favourite foods for others because we think of that as HAES, but someone who’s new to FA or hasn’t ever heard of it would likely call it a weight loss diet as well … because, hey, some people DO lose a little weight that way and even keep it off! Therefore it must be a diet, and “diets don’t work” can’t possibly be true.
I seriously believe that this is what makes up about 75% of the problem. Of course I could be wrong, but I’ve seen it happening so often.
About the whole “400 lb people can’t run a half marathon” Fat Girl On A Bike thing.
#1 the triathlons she is running are short triathlons, not Ironman triathlons. They have 5-10K runs (3.1-6.2 miles). Not even close to a 13.1 mile half marathhon.
#2 reading her blogs about the races she is walking more then she runs and puking from time to time.
And based on that PQ was right when she said: “Last weekend I ran a half marathon, which is not something a morbidly obese person can do. (They might be able to walk it, but I don’t know of any 400-pound people who can run the whole thing.)”
As a mother of both a big beautiful girl and a beautiful tiny girl I see the lack of body acceptance on both sides of the coin. My BB daughter has suffered unkind remarks from classmates about her “fat.” My BT daughter suffers being called house midget and ironing board and no one has any problems leaning their arm (putting their stinky armpit right in her face) on the top of her head while making rude comments. We try to keep our home a safe zone from all cruel remarks. Clearly my daughters are very different biologically, but they also have very different habits that lead to some of their physical deifferences. My BT daughter naturally eats more fruits and veggies and tends to eat “the recommended” serving size of treats. Plus, she enjoys sports and being active while my BB daughter tends to eat more breads and cereals and prefers to read and paint etc….could she be thinner if she changed her lifestyle? Maybe. Would it change what she enjoys? Maybe….I don’t know. Frankly as long as she is healthy I would never even insinuate she try it. What I do know is that they are both beautiful inside and out and to hell with whoever can’t see it, because if they can’t see their awesomness they are not seeing my daughters they are seeing their own preconceived notion of who either of them are. I think the love and acceptance they receive at home is the key to “public” success. My BB daughter is easily the largest girl in our Junior High, but yet she was the lead in the play both this year and last year because she’s not afraid to express herself. All the skinnies in her class are still going through the “don’t laugh at me” stage of their lives. My BT daughter is a little younger so still struggles more. Hopefully, we as her family, can help her too to love and accept herself no matter her size. I’m sorry this had nothing to do with the interview, but this seemed like a safe place to talk. Raising daughters who love and accept themselves has always been a difficult job. Moreso today? Maybe, maybe not. Thanks for reading.
[...] around the web for interviews and other fun stuff. I was surprised to read the comments on Big Fat Deal’s interview, which started with basic Fat Acceptance and Health At Every Size stuff I had gleaned from [...]
So… why is it that the FA movement (as commented on here) seems more about accepting fat than accepting fat people? I was fat. Now I’m not. I also have a hard time buying a lot of the more vitriolic end of the comment spectrum because I thought the same stuff (genetics, setpoints, etc) until I just started to eat less and exercise more myself. Yeah, maybe that’s just me, 1 of the 2 in 1000 who can lose weight… I don’t think so, but whatever.
Anyway, I was a good person when I was fat. I like to think that I still am a good person. I have no issue accepting myself, when I was fat, and still saying that being fat was less than ideal.
If you’re happy and healthy, that’s great. If you want to lose weight, that’s okay too. Not required. Not necessary. It may not even make you healthier, although from personal experience it generally seems to. But if you want to, that’s just fine.
People should be accepted, regardless.
But, again, I think the problem arises when one makes statements that seem to conflict each other such as: 1) “People should be accepted, regardless” and 2) “being fat was less than ideal”. Those statements, in concert, seem to me to be saying - ok, we can accept fat people, but with an asterisk. I accept you* (*but being fat is less than ideal and so I don’t accept that you have fully realized your own potential in terms of health/attractiveness/personal comfort/whatever and so I don’t accept you without the internal criticism that you’re “not ideal” in the same way I can accept a thin person, without that criticism.”
So I think the problem I have with the “fat acceptance” is this. I can accept someone and still have have judgments about their physical appearance. Accepting someone doesn’t mean you have to find everything about them pleasing. That would be impossible! Maybe I am too shallow- but I have a best friend whose teeth drive me crazy. My husband has skinny legs, my son’s hair is way too long for my personal taste. Do I accept them even tho? Damn right.
My parents are both obese but got that way be gaining weight slowly over the years. Were they more active and happier thinner? Yes they were. Were they healthier? Not really- they are still in great medical health, but physically? My dad can’t go down the steps into my hottub and has to sit all the time when we are out because his weight is killing his knees. Do I love and accept my parents? Of course, but do I have to say that I am okay with them being so overweight they complain they are in physical pain because of it (their words)? No I don’t have to say thats okay in order to love them and accept them.
Acceptance does not mean without judgment. I believe it means we can not like something and still accept it because we choose to do so. If you are fat but a good person with a good heart, do I accept you? Yes I do and that is within me, you can’t refute it. But that doesn’t mean I can tell you that I find being fat a situation I want to be in and I myself am actively trying to lose weight.
Everyone is basically arguing over what acceptance is and I think it is a personal issue. But if the FA movement is expecting that acceptance comes with no criticism? That I can’t understand.
[...] of fatness turns into a glorification of obesity. There is a lot of anger in the Fat o Sphere. One can only be accepted there if they are fat and want to stay fat. All this is sprinkled with healthy doses of cherry picked studies, and paranoid delusions of [...]
I am buying Jeanette’s book right now because it seems to me it might hold some keys to the mystery of the delicate balance between accepting your current size and striving for your own personal best in a healthy way without feeling like you’re depriving yourself somehow. This is the Holy Grail for me.
There is no known reliable, safe way to make fat people permanently thin - whether they’re rich or determined or make lifestyle changes or anything else in their favor. There isn’t.
I’m sorry, but there is. The fact that 95-98% of dieters regain *doesn’t* mean that losing weight and keeping it off is impossible - just that it requires dedication and a long-term commitment.
And “requires dedication and a long-term commitment” is *not* the same as impossible.
If you dislike the whole dieting mentality, or don’t want to diet, that’s your decision. But stop spouting this line because (barring medical problems) it just isn’t true.
The fact that 95-98% of dieters regain *doesn’t* mean that losing weight and keeping it off is impossible - just that it requires dedication and a long-term commitment.
The problem with this idea is that sometimes (often?) “dedication and long-term commitment” means “dedication and long-term commitment to strict calorie restriction and intense exercise that impairs your ability to enjoy life rather than improving it.” People who lose weight and then regain some of it may have only lost as much as they did originally because they put serious restrictions on themselves that are impossible to maintain longterm. It’s not because they gave up or lacked willpower or couldn’t stop eating junk food. I speak from experience and from knowing people who lost weight through extreme restriction and exercise and then gained some of the weight back when they returned to normal eating and exercise habits (meaning NOT overeating and being inactive, just not restricting and exercising constantly). I’ve watched my mother struggle for years trying to lose the same few pounds over and over again because the only way for her to maintain her weight loss is to eat nothing but salads and Lean Cuisine lunches and exercise an hour a day, 5 days a week…and even then she complains that she’s only maintaining and can’t lose any more. To me, that’s an unhealthy obsession with weight, not a healthy lifestyle.
I think the reason so many people just can’t comprehend this idea that most dieters regain in the long-term is that it takes the wind out of their sails. So many people are so emotionally invested in their pursuit of a “healthy” (that is, socially acceptable) weight that it’s a stinging blow to tell them they’re doing themselves more harm than good and they’ll likely gain the weight back when they stop flogging themselves. Which is not to say anyone should stop delivering those stinging blows; just that I understand where the defensiveness comes from, and it’s really a sad result of society’s programming.
I feel like I should note that the second part of my comment wasn’t directed at PQ or anyone in particular. It was just a general statement of opinion.
I speak from experience and from knowing people who lost weight through extreme restriction and exercise and then gained some of the weight back when they returned to normal eating and exercise habits (meaning NOT overeating and being inactive, just not restricting and exercising constantly).
I know people like that too. But extreme calorie restriction just isn’t a good - or, as you rightly point out, sustainable - way to lose weight. When dieters reduce their calories by too much, their body will interpret the lowered calories as a famine and invoke the “famine response” by shedding muscle instead of fat. (The body wants to hang on to fat to use as fuel during the “famine”.) The other aspect of the famine response is that your body will slow its metabolic rate, meaning you need fewer and fewer calories to maintain your weight. This is why you should only drop your calories by 10-30% lower than your maintenance level, so that you lose fat slowly while preserving as much muscle as possible. The other important aspect of weight loss that women in particular often overlook is weight training - it’s essential to maintain your lean muscle mass which boosts your metabolism.
You didn’t mention the type of exercise your mother is doing, but if she is only doing cardio, and eating what sounds like far less than she needs, it’s not surprising that her body needs less calories than it used to. She would be well advised to start a weight training program and slowly increase her calories to maintenance level (to let her body know it’s not really starving) then cut back by 10-30% so she can start losing again. It also sounds as though she may not be eating enough protein which is essential for muscle growth.
So yeah, without knowing any more about you mother’s situation and from what you’ve described I agree with your view that “it’s an unhealthy obsession with weight, not a healthy lifestyle”.
The point of my lengthy post is to point out that not every person who is maintaining a substantial weight loss is living the kind of life you describe.