Or, why “just take in fewer calories than you burn” is not quite that simple. Katsyuri sent in this Newsweek article, discussing how intestinal bacteria may affect the number of calories the body is able to absorb. More efficient bacteria = more calories absorbed = more “calories in” than average. The calories that count are [...]

Filed under: Cold Hard Cash, Kids, Science, TV | 16 Comments »

1. We all know I get ridiculous PR spam, but a real doozy landed in my mailbox yesterday, featuring the top five “Flabulous Celebrity Love Handle Offenders” who can fix their “offensive” love handles with a Spanx-type product that we should all run out and buy too! (Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of mentioning the [...]

Filed under: Advocacy, Art, Beth Ditto, Beyonce, Books, Britney Spears, Celebrities, Crystal Renn, Fat Positive, Fatism, Feminism, Health, International, Jessica Simpson, Kirstie Alley, Links, Music, Nikki Blonsky, Science, TV | 8 Comments »

A fascinating article in the Boston Globe, called Fattened by Pills, discusses the often-unspoken correlation between taking antidepressants and gaining weight: Many [psychiatric drugs], which are used to treat emotional problems including depression and anxiety, cause weight gain — often of the rapid and massive sort — as one of their “side effects,” that brilliant [...]

Filed under: Health, Science, Tidbit | 26 Comments »

The health risks of obesity may be exaggerated by (or in part caused by) the discrimination of health care professionals. Particularly, of course, when their patients are women. I’ll quote at length; the article really speaks for itself. (Shoutout to Suzy Smith, my Facebook friend, who is mentioned in the article.) Recent studies have found, [...]

Filed under: Fatism, Feminism, Health, Science, Tidbit | 19 Comments »

Watching less TV = weight loss! At least that’s what the headlines will be saying about this “not statistically significant” study of 20 people whose TVs were electronically restricted. When their TV watching was cut by half, they burned more calories. Overweight and obese individuals whose TVs were fitted with an electronic “lock-out” device to [...]

Filed under: American Idol, Glee, Humor, Science, TV, Weight Loss | 22 Comments »

I was catching up on my blog reading this weekend and found two posts I thought were especially worth passing along. First, I really enjoyed Kate’s post, “We Already Know We’re Fat“: “This so-called epidemic is not made up of theoretical fucking people who are just as fat as you can possibly imagine. It’s made [...]

Filed under: Health, Meta, Personal, Question, Science, Sex & Romance | 2 Comments »

Although I saw this news about this when Kate Harding Twittered about it, I didn’t get a chance to post the link until today! It’s a story about a study that suggests having larger or more muscular thighs is better than having thin ones. People who have agonised over their fat thighs might be able [...]

Filed under: Fat Positive, Health, Personal, Science | 7 Comments »

I’m writing this post in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, after a long and taxing Monday that those of you who follow me on Twitter are sick of hearing about, I’m sure. So my brain is broken, and instead of a real post, I give you… the five Google Alert e-mails that I clicked [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Exercise, Fatism, Humor, International, Links, Magazines, Ricky Gervais, Science, Sex & Romance, Tidbit, Weight Loss | 13 Comments »

From Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker comes a comprehensive article attempting to determine the cause of increased obesity in America. She talks about portion sizes: In the early nineteen-sixties, a man named David Wallerstein was running a chain of movie theatres in the Midwest and wondering how to boost popcorn sales. Wallerstein had already [...]

Filed under: Fatism, Health, Magazines, Media, Question, Science | 18 Comments »

From NPR: 1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual. The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He [...]

Filed under: Health, Science, Tidbit | 7 Comments »

I ran across this hilarious article in the always-reliable and utterly trustworthy very serious newspaper, the Daily Mail: a woman in London decided that she wanted to lose weight, and that weight-loss surgery was too risky, but that she would pay a hypnotherapist to trick her into believing she had! At Joh’s first session with [...]

Filed under: Diet Talk Warning, Humor, International, Media, Science, Weight Loss, WLS | 21 Comments »

We’ve all read ridiculous examples of hate towards fat people, and I know I shouldn’t be surprised or indignant at this incredibly stupid argument, but OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS. This woman, Deborah Coddington, actually comes out and agrees that anyone can be thin, because people in Nazi concentration camps were thin. I know we’ve [...]

Filed under: Fatism, International, NSFW, Science | 100 Comments »

The FDA has issued a warning against the diet drug Hydroxycut, which, as it turns out, can kill you. (It killed a teenager in 2007, but apparently the FDA was just alerted to this now.) Other patients experienced symptoms ranging from jaundice, or yellowing of the skin, to liver failure. One received a transplant and [...]

Filed under: Advertising, Health, Science, Weight Loss | 25 Comments »

I was entertained and sort of fascinated by Mike’s post about the new Big Mac Snack Wrap, currently being tested in Canada, the home of the Maple Leafs, half of Niagara Falls, and Robin Sparkles. The sad, sad, Big Mac Snack Wrap. It is apparently half a hamburger patty with some sauce, pickles, and lettuce, [...]

Filed under: Advertising, Diet Talk Warning, Food, Humor, International, Kids, Personal, Science | 23 Comments »

These new guidelines for childhood obesity programs are just amazing. Rachel has them listed at The F Word, complete with highlighting. In this case it indicates not white-hot rage, but happiness. Consider guidelines like… Interventions should focus on health, not weight, so as to not contribute to the overvaluation of weight and shape and negative [...]

Filed under: Advocacy, Exercise, Fat Positive, Humor, Kids, Science | 7 Comments »

Recently, a reader sent along Gina Kolata’s article from the New York Times discussing some obesity myths that are not news to us, exactly, but good to see in print nevertheless. I think I read it before, but really, it was worth reading again. Many of the so-called facts about obesity… amount to speculation or [...]

Filed under: Advocacy, Fat Positive, Media, Science, TV | 24 Comments »

I don’t think I posted about this, but I do remember hearing a while back that overweight kids are not only more likely to be bullied, but they’re also more likely to be bullies. The topic is coming up again, with a new study showing that “expressions of anger” are reduced in overweight kids who [...]

Filed under: Exercise, Kids, Science | 12 Comments »

A new study from the Journal of the American Dietetic Association reveals something interesting (and possibly counterintuitive to many people) about poor, obese children: they aren’t eating enough. Children living in poverty are obese in part because they don’t eat enough to meet the daily nutritional requirements needed for cell function and metabolism, a study [...]

Filed under: Cold Hard Cash, Health, Kids, Science | 18 Comments »

Fat chicks have more sex than skinny chicks. Sorry, skinny ladies, but it’s science. The story is kind of troubling, though, when you start to look at it up close. The results seem to contradict stereotypes that overweight and obese women have less sex. If anything, the researchers said, the opposite seems to be true. [...]

Filed under: Exercise, Fat Positive, Feel Good Friday, Feminism, Science, Sex & Romance | 41 Comments »

I was interested in this New York Times article about a new, “less invasive” weight loss surgery, currently in the experimental stage, in which surgeons go down the patient’s throat and staple the stomach from the inside. In Mexico and Europe over the past two to three years, 98 patients have had the new weight-loss [...]

Filed under: Health, Science, Weight Loss, WLS | 22 Comments »

Thought it couldn’t get any crazier than the baby food diet or the swallow a tapeworm diet? While surfing around gossip blogs today, I ran across a reference to celebrities going on an “IV diet.” As in intravenous. Diet. I found the blurb here: One of Hollywood’s dirty little secrets is the ‘IV diet’, in [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Cold Hard Cash, Eating Disorders, Gossip, Health, International, Science, Tidbit, Weight Loss | 16 Comments »

A couple of people have sent me this link this morning, and thank you very much to all of you! The New York Times has written an article about de-stigmatizing fat, the fat acceptance movement, and the genetics of obesity. An absolute must-read. But some activists and academics, part of a growing social movement known [...]

Filed under: Advocacy, Fat Positive, Health, Media, Science, Tidbit | 12 Comments »

How’s this for a concept: Enjoying food instead of dieting, because dieting doesn’t work. It’s a movement! It’s a zeitgeist! Or at least it’s an article in the New York Times: After decades of obsessing about fat, calories and carbs, many dieters have made the unorthodox decision to simply enjoy food again. That doesn’t mean [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Food, Health, Media, Science | 17 Comments »

This news article landed in my inbox shortly after I’d read this very funny post at Shapely Prose, and both got me thinking about exercise. At Shapely Prose, Kate writes about a recent article asserting that people who are predisposed to being overweight can avoid being overweight by exercising a mere three to four hours [...]

Filed under: Exercise, Health, Question, Science | 82 Comments »

Wired offers us a look at a hospital bed that’s also a treadmill. But not without making sure we understand that fat people in the hospital—in the hospital—are “immense,” “weak,” and “lazy.” Sick fatties need only to flick a switch to be upended onto the moving conveyor, whence they can exercise their weak bodies and [...]

Filed under: Fatism, Magazines, Science, Tidbit | 11 Comments »