Thankful Thursday

Because it can be helpful to think about what’s going right.

1) My carpool.
2) Converting a favorite out-of-print exercise tape to DVD.
3) Allergies doing better.
4) The last book of Mira Grant’s trilogy is out and I loved so much of it. (The titles, in order, are Feed, Deadline, and Blackout. Do read in order.)
5) My boss is pleased with my work. This makes me happy.
6) That the other worlds I visit in books can take me out of myself.
7) The man of the house, who reminds me to eat and gives me backrubs when I feel low.

OBESITY NIGHTMARE….

…or rather, a site is starting to show fat people’s reaction to America’s (drumroll…fanfare…lights…)

Obesity Nightmare 

It started with a Tumblr post, and has continued with photos from Brian (at Red No 3) and Turn It Over.

Why?

Because we do not exist to be the government’s or the healthcare industry’s nightmare.

We are people.

We are living our lives.

You want to know what we think of the “obesity nightmare”? Here is our response.

Our lives? Are our lives.  

Not yours.

I realize this may be a challenge to you.

We are not nightmares,

unless your nightmare is

people who aren’t afraid of being fat.

Seriously: Think about this.  If me living my employed, home-owning, happily married life without your intervention is your nightmare … why?

On the other hand, if your nightmare is fat people demanding to be treated as people without losing weight, then yes, I am your nightmare.

Want to join in?  Submissions are welcome. :)

Monday…yeah, I guess it is…

Nothing like meeting and interviewing 6 5 4 3 job candidates in different buildings after a 1-hour whirlwind meeting to make me feel scattered.  I did pull it together, though, and I think I did a good job of interviewing.  I tend to dress a little more on the “business” side of business casual when I have interviews. Partly that it’s easier for me to stay on time if I wear a watch, and I get self-conscious if I’m wearing a watch without rings.  Maybe that’s just me….

Anyway. Black slacks, red v-neck top, black banded watch, garnet and gold rings.  And a really good song  by Marian Call.

Blog commenting

Is it just me or is the combo of “prove you’re not a robot” and OpenID on blogspot.com sites difficult?  I tried to leave comments on a couple blogspot sites today and it kept insisting that I didn’t read the image correctly or that OpenID had erred.  Gave up on OpenID and tried to just enter my name and it again didn’t post — and didn’t even give me an error.  Argh. :\

Americans Are Fatter Than They Think!

I tweeted this, but I’m just not sure how to fully express the snark this deserves, so I thought y’all might want to give it a try.

See, a study has discovered that…drumroll…BMI can be inaccurate!!!!  Really!!!  You might be fat and not know it!!!  (eeek!)  And since most people who are “overweight or obese” aren’t actually very fat, increasing the number of people who think they need to lose weight can increase customers for the weight cycling industry.

….

I keep thinking I’m missing something here.  Got anything else?

Thankful Thursday

[an occasional exercise in gratitude]

This is an exercise in reminding of me things to be thankful for, aka, looking for a bright side.  At the moment I’m dealing with my father’s death a few weeks ago.  It’s also been a year since my bout of unemployment ended.

Right now I’m thankful for:

1. Jobness, at a place where I’m happy and feel productive.
2. Coworkers’ dogs that come over for pets and sniffs to make me smile during the day.
3. Allergy meds that let me enjoy playing with the dogs without an itchy rash.
4. Having a daily routine that supports me getting a steady amount of activity.
5. New (boring but comfy) shoes ;)
6. The Fat Nutritionist’s posts on eating, which have been reminding me that it’s good to eat before I’m crashing emotionally.
7. Being able to sleep.  Yoga and weightlifting are helping here, but I also have ambien when needed.
8. The man of the house and his support through the last few years.

A few common fallacies

From a poster going around Tumblr.  Some of the examples have been edited a bit to suit myself.

A fallacy is any defect in reasoning which destroys an argument’s validity.

1) Ad Hominem. Latin term meaning “against the man.” It is discrediting the opponent instead of his or her argument.

For example: “You’re fat, therefore you cannot be correct.”

2) Faulty Cause and Effect. The belief that if event B occurs just after event A, then A causes B.

For example: “Whenever I wash my car, it rains the next day. Therefore, washing my car alters weather patterns.”

3) Either-Or. Suggesting that there are only two possibilities for any given situation, rather than more.

For example: “Either you lose weight, or you are self-destructive.”

4) Guilt By Association. “Attempting to discredit an idea, person, or believe by associating it with an undesirable person or group.

For example: “I can’t believe you are a Christian! Hitler was a Christian!”

5) Loaded Question. A loaded question is a question phrased so that it forces an answer based on a false or controversial premise.

For example: “Why do fats hate thin people so much?”

Ending Gender Discrimination in US Health Insurance

These maps from FuseWashington make a point about the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare”.  Right now, most states allow insurers to charge women more for insurance than men.

The Affordable Care Act will ban this practice in 2014.  It will also prevent insurers from refusing to insure those with pre-existing conditions like asthma.  And, y’know, ”obesity” is often considered a pre-existing condition.

Currently the Republican candidates all want to repeal the ACA.  I disagree.

QOTD: Dealing with family

Because I don’t engage in fat hating comments or conversations I really just feel more and more like the black sheep from the family. Many of my family members have undergone bariatric surgery so the stress between them and myself is even worse. I have had one cousin who is a lot older than me tell me how proud she is of me for the work I am doing, but my aunt who is her mother left the room during the conversation because she acts like this portion of my life doesn’t exist to her.

— Amanda Levitt, quoted at Fat and the Ivy

Junk Food In Schools Doesn’t Correlate To Fat

Remember how banning junk food in schools was supposed to make fat kids thin?  Guess what?  No,  it doesn’t.  At least not according to “Competitive Food Sales in Schools and Childhood Obesity: A Longitudinal Study” in Sociology of Education (January).

But of course we should’ve thought it would, right?  It’s not like “Snack food intake does not predict weight change among children and adolescents” was published in International Journal of Obesity in August 2004, right? And there wasn’t any studies about “energy-dense snack food” not being correlated with weight gain in adolescents either…right?  Wrong.

Once again, America is continuing to do the same thing (that didn’t work) to try to prevent fat kids.  And yet, fat kids exist.  Time to ban fat marriage?

Ripping off the Yay! Scale

For years, Marilyn Wann has created and sold Yay! scales, used them in anti-diet activism, and written about them online and in her book FAT!SO? : Because You Don’t Have to Apologize for Your Size. Others have mentioned Yay! Scales in books as well, including Health At Every Size.

Now Kellogg’s is using a very similar scale to sell their “Special K Challenge”. According to The New York Times:

In a new commercial, women in Times Square reluctantly agree to get on scales in public, then are pleasantly surprised when, instead of numbers, the scales display words including satisfaction, pizazz, confidence and moxie.

The commercial, part of campaign by the Chicago office of Leo Burnett, part of the Publicis Groupe, will be introduced on Jan. 2, high season for weight-loss companies.

“We’re trying to change the conversation from one that’s always focused about deprivation to one that’s focused on motivation,” said Doug VanDeVelde, senior vice president for cereal marketing at Kellogg.

Let me get this straight.

The entire point of a Yay! Scale is that you get compliments instead of a number.

Because the number isn’t important.

Because so many people in this society measure their worth by their weight.

Because it’s about changing the conversation. 

It’s about yanking away that all-important number and suggesting other things might be more important than weight.

It’s about making people smile instead of feeling judged.

It’s about changing the focus to life instead of weight. It’s about getting a life instead of yet another a diet.

And here’s Kellogg’s acting like they invented a scale that gives compliments, only it’s to encourage dieting.   Maybe no one at Kellogg’s knew about the Yay! Scale, but … you know what the first hit Google gives me on “scale compliments”?  A post about … a Yay! Scale.

Remember when Weight Watchers ads claimed that diets don’t work (because somehow Weight Watchers isn’t a diet)?   It’s co-opting the language of fat acceptance, but twisting it to support dieting.

Weight Cycling Industry

From Deb Burgard comes this amazing post on weight cycling:

Why do we call it the “weight loss industry” when what we really get for our time, sacrifice, and money is weight cycling? 19 times out of 20, what we are really purchasing is the experience of weight loss and regain.

Imagine if we called it the “weight cycling industry,” and “weight cycling programs.”  Would you participate in Weight Cyclers at work?  Buy food from NutriCycle?  Hire a trainer from the Biggest Weight Cycler?  [...]

Because that is what we are doing, folks.   Better face the facts:  Of 100 people trying to lose weight, the vast majority of people will regain weight. Some significant group – perhaps a third – will gain more weight than they lost.  Some tiny number (7? 5? 3?)  will maintain their weight loss, and of that group, some number from 0-4 of them will be flirting with, developing, or fortifying an eating disorder.

People ask me why I don’t diet anymore.  I don’t lose weight “for good” — my weight goes down in the short term  and up in the long term, ending up weighing more than when I started.   So yeah, “weight cycling” is more descriptive than “weight loss”.

And yet, people ask, “what about health“?  As Deb points out in the same post:

It is the practices that people adopt in the pursuit of weight loss that are the problem, because for the 95 out of 100 people who regain weight during a diet, when the practices are not sustainable they lead to more physical and psychological illness.

The Health at Every Size® model is weight neutral.  People using this approach are not pro- or anti-weight loss, but they are mindful that the pursuit of weight loss is usually harmful, unlike the cultivation of sustainable practices that feel life-affirming and support your health.   In keeping with the “truth in advertising” theme, the Health at Every Size model does not insist that everyone is healthy at every size, or that anyone anytime is necessarily the size that optimizes their health.  “Health” in this context means that whatever size you are, there are practices that will support your health.

As I’ve written before, I don’t consider myself perfectly fit.  But I refuse to frame exercise or healthy eating or getting enough sleep as “something I’m doing for weight loss”.  What matters is the effect is has on me.  Getting enough sleep makes me feel good.  Lifting weights makes me feel strong.  Walking increases my endurance.  That’s why I’m doing it.

Today’s Betty

Bub: I’ve exercised and dieted my way to my goal of losing my gut.   So what’s next?

Betty: What’s next?

Bub: What’s after the losing phase?

Betty: Usually a short honeymoon phase followed by the gaining phase.

…yeah. Preach it.

For All The Parents Out There…

Think about how you will react if your child is fat.  Over time, if you’re making it clear that you don’t want a fat son or daughter, well, your son or daughter may not be able to stop being fat.  But your son or daughter can eventually choose to stop being your son or daughter.  Imagine your adult child building a life with people who aren’t nagging about weight loss, or who can enjoy doing something physical without making it about weight loss, or who can eat a meal without it being about weight loss.  Calling home?  Not required.  Spending time together?  Optional.  Listening to lame weight jokes?  Optional.

There are certainly other issues that can cause this sort of distrust.  It didn’t help that my parents’ reaction to my dating a woman was insist I not tell any other family members and then studiously not  want to talk about her much less meet her.  It didn’t help that my father drank large amounts of beer daily for the first 20 or 21 years of their marriage.   A lot of things didn’t help.   But it’s generally expected that drinking or rejecting a child’s sexuality is going to be harmful to the relationship.  Giving kids shit for being fat is practically a requirement of “good parenting” these days.

My dad periodically asks why he can’t move in with my husband and I.   Frankly?  I don’t want to provide day-to-day care for him.  I distanced myself for my emotional safety.   I wouldn’t want him as a roommate, much less as a semi-disabled adult I’m caring for.  My emotions are tangled on this, but my want is for him to live happily ever after … without needing me.

Where did you first encounter fat acceptance?

I first encountered research on

• Diets only working short-term
• Yo-yo dieting leading to weight gain
• Eating well and exercising improving your health, even if you don’t lose weight

… in the pages of the 1980s BBW magazine, along with the general idea that you don’t have to be thin to live a happy life.  I even went to a BBW-magazine sponsored fashion show at the Seattle Bon Marche (since rebranded Macy’s) in 1990 or 1991 and got to meet the editor, Carole Shaw, who coined the term BBW.

It was also in 1990 I got my first job in software and discovered UseNet, including the alt.support.big-folks community.  It was through asb-f that I learned of:

• Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes
• FAT!SO? : Because You Don’t Have to Apologize for Your Size
• Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health

(This may also lead you to believe that I’m over 40.  This is correct! :)

How about you?  When did you learn about fat acceptance?

Head, Meet Desk

Ah, emails….

Is it really surprising that I don’t want to hear about the great new diet website? That I don’t want to read a book about weight loss? (No, not even your wonderful revolutionary diet that reveals the hidden secret of weight loss!) That I don’t want to go on a diet? That I don’t want to promote your new special low-carb-gluten-free-pomegranate-acai WonderWeight[tm] plan? No?

Ah well. Fortunately I have a delete key. ;)

US Obesity Rates Level Off Again?

Oh, not again.  Still.  They’ve been level for years, but this time the Journal of the American Medical Association noticed. There’s discussion as to why, such as “people are getting healthier”.  Given how dieters often gain weight in the long term, I thought this perspective a bit more realistic:

Dr. Ludwig said the plateau might just suggest that “we’ve reached a biological limit” to how obese people could get. When people eat more, he said, at first they gain weight; then a growing share of the calories go “into maintaining and moving around that excess tissue,” he continued, so that “a population doesn’t keep getting heavier and heavier indefinitely.”

That’s not what my mother told me.  She was convinced that if I wasn’t actively dieting I would continue to gain weight for the rest of my life.  Yet when I finally quit dieting my weight … leveled off.  Huh.

Furthermore, Dr. Ludwig said, “it could be that most of the people who are genetically susceptible, or susceptible for psychological or behavioral reasons, have already become obese.”

Gee, y’think?