November 19th, 2008
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 | 17 Comments »
October 31st, 2008
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.
Is [...]
Filed under: Exercise, Fat Positive, Feel Good Friday, Feminism, Science, Sex & Romance | 40 Comments »
October 27th, 2008
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, WLS, Weight Loss | 22 Comments »
October 17th, 2008
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 which [...]
Filed under: Celebrities, Cold Hard Cash, Eating Disorders, Gossip, Health, International, Science, Tidbit, Weight Loss | 16 Comments »
October 6th, 2008
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 [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Fat Positive, Health, Media, Science, Tidbit | 12 Comments »
September 18th, 2008
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 they’re [...]
Filed under: Celebrities, Food, Health, Media, Science | 17 Comments »
September 17th, 2008
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 [...]
Filed under: Exercise, Health, Question, Science | 82 Comments »
September 4th, 2008
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 [...]
Filed under: Fatism, Magazines, Science, Tidbit | 11 Comments »
August 20th, 2008
After a whole lot of OBESITY EPIDEMIC OMG!!1! in the news lately, finally we have some good news in the New York Times, where the headline reads “Better to Be Fat and Fit Than Skinny and Unfit.”
The researchers chalk it up in part to the assumptions people make when they hear the words [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Exercise, Fat Positive, Health, Media, Personal, Science | 18 Comments »
July 2nd, 2008
A study released yesterday attempts to answer that important question, dividing adolescent girls into groups like “Jocks,” “Burnouts,” and “Alternatives,” and discovering that their peer groups are the most important deciding factor. From the press release:
The central theme of the study is that peer groups of teenage girls best determine their attitude towards their [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Exercise, Kids, Personal, Question, Science | 43 Comments »
June 19th, 2008
Or “tastants,” as they are being called in the world of science. We all know that the senses of smell and taste are linked; what I didn’t know was that the olfactory nerve is in part what governs our feeling of satiety. (Also, according to this article, people who lose their senses of smell [...]
Filed under: Food, Science, Weight Loss | 27 Comments »
April 24th, 2008
Phat Science has had some interesting posts this week, and I particularly wanted to talk about yesterday’s post, where La Wade looked at some of the science surrounding so-called “permanent” weight loss, and the factors that contribute to it. These factors seem to include certain dietary and exercise habits, online support, time in front of [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Health, Science, Weight Loss | 46 Comments »
April 16th, 2008
And now for the bad news. I’m posting a link to this article not to bring down the room, but to get the message out there yet again: demonizing fat and fat people is a BAD IDEA that can seriously skew our ideas about self-worth. Just ask the women who participated in the studies [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Fatism, Feminism, Health, Kids, Media, Science, Weight Loss | 26 Comments »
March 26th, 2008
Our guest post today comes from the delightful Sara, who writes in with a question for all our readers:
I am fat. I have diabetes. The two are in no way related to one another. Interesting how that works, huh? I have type 1 diabetes, so my pancreas is going to be [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Guest Post, Health, Personal, Question, Science | 14 Comments »
March 13th, 2008
Apart from times when I’ve been tracking Weight Watchers points, I haven’t really been in the habit of tracking my eating. And I found myself becoming curious about exactly what I was eating—how many calories, how many grams of protein, vitamins, etc. So I signed up for a free account on FitDay, a site [...]
Filed under: Food, Health, Meta, Personal, Science | 59 Comments »
March 6th, 2008
My friend La Wade, the BFD commenter and obesity researcher you all love to debate with, has started her own blog about fat and science called Phat Science. The first few posts are chock full of interesting topics for discussion, including artificial sweeteners, yo-yo dieting, and how to decide whether or not to believe [...]
Filed under: Advocacy, Meta, Science | 15 Comments »
February 19th, 2008
We all know there are people who bitch at their fat spouses for gaining weight, and gym owners who berate and shame fat people. And don’t forget random people on the street who yell things and throw garbage at the overweight and obese. In case that just isn’t motivating enough for you, we now [...]
Filed under: Fatism, Science, Weight Loss | 32 Comments »
February 6th, 2008
In the world of health care, that is. We die sooner, so we cost less! Okay, so that’s not exactly a generalization that anyone around here agrees with, but hell. It’s better than “you fat people are costing me health care money and that’s why it is acceptable that I am shaming you.” [...]
Filed under: Cold Hard Cash, Health, International, Science | 19 Comments »
January 21st, 2008
I loved reading this article about workout playlists. I’ve worked very hard on my playlist, which is incredibly cheesy and includes things like “Pop Goes My Heart” (Hugh Grant) and “I Think I Love You” as performed by American Idol’s Constantine. (I can’t help it; my response to that one is now Pavlovian.)
I need [...]
Filed under: Exercise, Movies, Music, Personal, Science | 31 Comments »
January 17th, 2008
…or anywhere else, actually. What diet, you ask? Why, a little something called the Tapeworm Diet. Where, presumably, YOU SWALLOW A FUCKING TAPEWORM.
Now I have provided this very short and rudimentary background to helminth therapy to create the idea of “good” worms versus “bad” worms… The beef tapeworm, in addition to immunoregulatory properties, [...]
Filed under: Eating Disorders, Food, Health, Science, Weight Loss | 33 Comments »
