Not Eating is Not Good

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about the ways we deal with stress. I mentioned that one of the things I have to deal with is a tendency to stop eating.

“Oh, that’s great!” she said.

No, it’s not. Knowing that I can’t sense when I’m hungry or full, that I can feel hungry and not care, that I end up spending too much money on things that don’t require a lot of preparation because it takes the least amount of effort to force-feed myself—sometimes it’s just inconvenient, and sometimes it’s scary. It’s far from great.

On the one hand I can understand why someone who (as she mentioned afterwards) tends to overeat when stressed might see undereating as a better option—but they’re both unhealthy eating habits, and both unhealthy stress reactions. And yet because of our society’s views on fat and food, one is seen as bad and guilt-inducing and the other is seen as beneficial, even if it doesn’t result in weight loss (as in my case, where I think the uncertainty of when my body would get its next meal probably contributed to my weight gain–as with dieting, your body doesn’t know if you’re starving it because you don’t have food or because you’re depressed).

Unhealthy eating habits (and I’m talking about real unhealthy eating habits, not just refusal to diet and neurotically count calories) are unhealthy—and often a symptom of a greater problem—regardless of whether they’re perceived to make you fatter or thinner. I wish that I could eat healthier—but more than that, I wish that I didn’t have to deal with depression and a low stress tolerance, and that I could handle these things in more productive ways than by refusing to feed myself. And I wish that the problems that I have weren’t seen as some sort of benefit.

Why I Am Fat

I think I’m lighter than most people in the Fatosphere. I still have some thin privilege. I’ve never lost a job or a job opportunity because of my weight (although I haven’t had many job opportunities yet, so that could change). I’ve had a doctor tell me that I needed to lose weight or I will get type 2 diabetes, but the majority of my doctors have treated my health issues independent of my size. I don’t have to go out of my way or pay extra for clothing because I don’t usually wear plus sizes. I do not have trouble fitting into one seat on a train, plane, or subway. I do not have to worry about medical equipment not accommodating people of my size. I’ve also had a different fat experience than a lot of people here. I was always a thin child. I never felt pressure to diet. I discovered fat acceptance at about the same time as I became fat. With my size and experience, learning to love my body was not as difficult as it is for some.

It is not my intention, by calling myself fat, to co-opt others’ experience and difficulties, nor to act as if I am better than people larger than me who have trouble loving their bodies or embracing fat acceptance. But I believe that I benefit a lot more by embracing and accepting myself as fat than by accepting the idea that thin is normal and healthy and I should diet but am just too lazy. I also think it’s important to call myself fat in order to show people what the obesity epidemic really looks like. I think Deniselle put it best here:

If we expect epople who weigh 200 pounds, or have a BMI of over 30 or 35, to look HUGE, we are probably only responding to the media frenzy of showing 400 lbs+ bodies in articles about “obesity”. The truth is, if you look at me and deduct 20 pounds? That’s still obesity. I’m much more representative of the “average obese person” than someone who weighs over 400 pounds. So the obesity epidemic? Totally concerns me. Keep that in mind next time you read an article about it.

As Sandy Szwarc points out (many, many times, in fact), people with a BMI ≥50 make up only 0.5% of the population, and people with BMIs ≥40 make up only 2% of the population. When people hear that 30% of the population are obese and another 30% is overweight, they are bombarded by headless images of those people who make up 2.5% of the population. My BMI fluctuates between about 30.0 and 30.7. That’s much more representative of the “obesity epidemic” than the “morbidly obese” are–and at the same time, even the “morbidly obese” don’t look as fat as we expect them to.

Another important point, I think, is that even though not everyone experiences hatred and prejudice for their size, even “normal” weight people have body image issues. Everyone benefits from fat acceptance, from learning that your body is fine just the way it is.

EDIT: From the link about the largest people in the world:

Walter Hudson (1944? – 1991) of Hempstead, NY (born in Brooklyn, NY); 5 ft 10 in, measured at 1197 lbs… Despite his massive size, Newsday reported that he was extraordinarily healthy: his heart, lungs, and kidneys all functioned normally, while astonished doctors noted that his cholesterol and blood-sugar levels “showed the chemistry of a healthy 21-year-old.” Even so, activist-turned-nutritionist Dick Gregory managed to convince Hudson that losing weight was necessary to save his life… Hudson died in his sleep after years of intermittent starvation dieting.

Francis John Lang, aka Michael Walker (b. 1934) of Gibsonton, FL (born in Clinton, IA); 6 ft 2 in, believed to have reached a maximum weight of 1187 lbs.. In early 1972 Lang was hospitalized in Houston for a suspected heart attack, at which time he was estimated to weigh between 900 and 1000 lbs. His symptoms proved to be caused by an inflamed gallbladder, probably aggravated by his weight loss, and the examining physician declared his heart to be “unusually normal.”

Man, name withheld (ca. 1939 – ca. 1986), of New York State; just under 5 ft 7 in, 1050 lbs. His death was due to complications following a massive panniculectomy (“tummy tuck”) to remove fat tissue… According to his physicians, he was healthy when he checked in, and his “past [medical] history was unremarkable except for extraordinary weight all his life.”

Remember, fatphobia is all about being concerned for fat people’s health!

EDIT: For some reason I seem to be getting a lot of visitors outside of the fatosphere on this post. If you have no idea what fat acceptance is and are genuinely interested, there are some links on the right-hand side of the page to help you get started. Please also check out the comments policy.

Diets: in which goodbyemyboy bitches about her family, and it won’t be the last time

(I wrote this during a long car ride and then got carsick. Fun times.)

Diets don’t work. Everybody knows that, even Weight Watchers. Dieting has become increasingly associated with yo-yoing and unhealthy eating habits. So why aren’t more people embracing Fat Acceptance and Health At Every Size?

Going back to that conversation with my mother, here are some things that she told me:

• My brother is “too heavy.” (True, if we’re going by BMI standards.)
• He eats a lot. (True, but he’s also a sixteen-year-old male athlete. He’d probably be in trouble if he didn’t eat a lot.)
• He eats too many eggs. (Apparently he’d been going to school early for extra help towards the end of last semester and buying breakfast there, which worked out to about four egg sandwiches a week. Only for the obese can four eggs a week be considered some huge excess.)
• He’d be better at sports if he lost weight. (Dude, his size is why he’s so awesome at what he does. I’ve seen, more than once, kids half his size rush him in lacrosse and literally bounce off and fall on their backs. It’s fucking hardcore.)
• It doesn’t matter that he’s healthy now, because The Dreaded Obesity will catch up to him later. That’s just the way it is.

And the crazy thing about all this is that she completely agreed with me that diets don’t work, that ~*~lifestyle changes~*~ like healthy eating habits (which she seems to be conflating with diet tricks like calorie reduction and filling up on low-calorie, bulky food, but that was an argument I wasn’t about to get into) and increasing physical activity may not result in weight loss but will improve health regardless–but she still insisted that weight loss is both possible and an imperitive.

The solution to this cognitive dissonance is, apparently, that she doesn’t expect him to drop 30 lbs. overnight–it should happen slowly, over time.

So apparently all that people have learned about diets not working is that diets do work if you call them ~*~lifestyle changes~*~ and lose weight slowly. We’ve got a long way to go.

Citing Sources

I hate books that list endnotes with page numbers and little snippets of the relevant sentence instead of connecting the citations to numbers in the actual text. There’s just a great satisfaction in looking at a page and seeing notes all over that (hopefully) prove the person isn’t just making shit up. When someone argues something on the internet (or when I argue something on the internet, for that matter) I don’t want just an assertion that “I heard this somewhere,” I want a link to proof.

In real life, this kind of attitude pisses people off. Like today when my mother was telling me that my (6′0″, 260 lb.) brother might be healthy now, but his weight will cause problems in the future so he has to lose it! And when I asked why she thought that, I couldn’t get an answer beyond a sudden defensive attitude and a “because that’s just how it is!” (Kind of the more emphatic version of “It’s as simple as that!”)

That’s one of the things that really attracted me to fat acceptance when I was first starting to discover it: people cite their sources. People don’t tend to go around saying that fat can be healthy without offering proof the way that people go around saying that fat is always unhealthy because “everyone knows that.”

(There’s more that pissed me off about that conversation with my mother, but I think that’s the subject for another post.)

Bad eating habits are not the same as binging

I cook for myself most of the time. Usually that means I have a lot of leftovers. If I end up having a day where I don’t feel like cooking, I’ll just eat those same leftovers for every single meal of the day. It’s not the healthiest eating habit in the world–especially if, as has happened once or twice in the midst of studying for finals, I go a whole day on nothing but coffee cake–but it’s not like I eat the same food every single day and it will never balance out. And you know what else? It’s not binging. I’m not eating more calories per day than usual (and in many cases I’m eating less, because I’m just sick of having the same thing but don’t feel like cooking something else–again, not the healthiest eating habit, but it happens). I’m not eating more than usual in one sitting. I just feel like I’m eating more than usual because I’m eating more than one helping of the same thing, so I can see the food disappearing faster than if I ate a little of three or four different things. It’s crazy that I have to remind myself that eating enough to fill my stomach–even if I eat a lot of the same kind of food–is not binging. But sometimes I still do.

“A Story of My Mother”

A friend posted this story in LiveJournal’s Health At Every Size community. I like statistics so I wish I knew some more about the connection between weight loss and dementia; I’ll post more if I find out something. But stories like this always break my heart.

Last week, I had to go see my dad and together, we had to put my mother into a nursing home because of her dementia. It was a heart-wrenching occasion for many reasons. My mother has been declining for many years, precipitated or at least exacerbated, I believe, by an extreme weight loss. She had had pain in her knees for some time, but the doctor refused to operate until my mom lost weight. She’s always been a big woman. At 5′ 10″ she usually weighed about 300 lbs. They told her she had to lose more than 100 to do the surgery, which is difficult if you can’t walk. She basically starved herself for a couple years and they finally did the surgery. When she awoke from the surgery, she was delusional. They had to put her in a home at that point until she recovered enough to be sent home. She still couldn’t walk without a walker and was in constant pain from that and arthritis. After that, she had trouble finding words. Her weight continued to plummet, which she was quite proud of.

You see, my mom has always been large, like her parents, but she has never accepted it. When I was four, she had a nervous breakdown because of diet pills. As I and my sister grew larger, she always told us that no man would love us unless we were thin. She was never happy with my father and always on the verge of some kind of breakdown. She could never be happy with herself or her life. She could never stand up for what she wanted, because she never felt she deserved it because she was fat.

Saturated fat may not be so bad for you, after all

In this last test, the A.H.A. diet was about 30 percent calories from fat, less than 10 percent calories from saturated fat; the low-carb diet was almost 40 percent calories from fat, around 12.5 percent saturated fat. In this particular trial, as in all of them so far, the high-saturated-fat diet (low-carb or Atkins-like) resulted in the best improvement in cholesterol profile — total cholesterol/H.D.L. In this Israeli trial, the high-saturated-fat diet reduced L.D.L. at least as well as the did the A.H.A. relatively low-fat diet, the fundamental purpose of which is to lower L.D.L. by reducing the saturated fat content.

So here’s the simple question and the point: how can saturated fat be bad for us if a high saturated fat diet lowers L.D.L. at least as well as a diet that has 20 to 25 percent less saturated fat?

Interesting. And of particular interest to me because my cholesterol is a bit high. I’m not going to run off and eat lots of saturated fat just yet, but more studies that come out on this are something to keep an eye on.

Doctors

A while ago I went to the doctor for a checkup. I haven’t been to this particular doctor for a while, since I’ve been away at school. So I get there, the nurse weighs me and checks my blood pressure and everything. Then the doctor comes in, takes one look at my chart, and says, “So, should I yell at you?”

Excuse me?

“You gained 50 pounds in a year!”

Um, no. See, I haven’t been weighed here since my junior year of high school–but I guess reading is hard for fatphobes. I gained 50 lbs. in 3 years, which is probably not ideal but a lot less extreme. Regardless, wouldn’t gaining such a large amount of weight in what you assumed to be a short amount of time be a sign of a possible health problem that you should be trying to figure out, not an occasion to yell at me?

“You’re going to get type 2 diabetes. Obesity keeps your insulin levels too high.”

Actually, I got all my blood work done last week, and my insulin levels are perfectly normal. Wouldn’t it make more sense to suggest that I get my insulin levels checked, instead of acting like you have the magical ability to detect blood sugar levels just by looking at a fat person?

“I want you to limit your calories to 2000 a day, and get a little bit of exercise. Just walk about half an hour a day.”

Oh, you mean limit myself to the recommended daily calories for someone of my age and gender? The amount of calories I eat normally? I’m glad to see you have the magical ability to detect overeating just by looking at fat people, too. And I had been walking half an hour a day. For the past two weeks now I’ve been biking for at least an hour a day instead. You know what? I still haven’t lost any weight. I must be lying about my exercise habits.

“You know obesity aggravates asthma? What, your pulmonologist didn’t tell you to lose weight? Shame on him.”

Oh, you meant the pulmonologist who prescribed wonderful medication for me that just happened to contribute somewhat to my weight gain? Medication that helped me manage my asthma successfully even before I was able to remove myself from the stressful situation that was causing a lot of my asthma flareups? The doctor who actually looked at my symptoms and behaviors before trying to treat my condition? Shame on him indeed.

“If you want, you can come back at the end of the summer and we could weigh you again.”

Wait, is that supposed to be an incentive for me to lose weight?

Of course I didn’t say any of this. On the one hand I was too busy boggling at it, and on the other hand I did not have the energy to get into a fight with a doctor that I will, God willing, never have to see again.

But this was the first time that this had happened to me, and it gave me a more tangible picture of what others are going through–and how much worse others have it. I’ve been lucky.

Introductory Post

At 50 lbs. “overweight,” I’m what most people would call “not that fat.” My experiences are a bit different from others in the fatosphere because I’m quite new to being fat; I gained all of the 50 lbs. over the past three years, and most of it over the past year and a half, under circumstances that I’m sure I’ll go into eventually. About six months ago, maybe a little more, I began discovering the Fatosphere. The first fat acceptance blog I ever read was Junkfood Science, which gave me a lot of good ammunition when my mother started telling me that my stress-induced asthma would go away if I’d just lose weight. Before I was really comfortable with the idea of fat acceptance, I got really into the idea of Health At Every Size. I didn’t feel very healthy then, mentally or physically, but a lot of that changed, and is still changing.

Sometimes I do feel a bit awkward, being on the small end of “fat,” that I’m invading someone else’s space, or that I don’t really understand what other people are going through. If I inadvertently insult anyone, please let me know. I’m still learning.