Today in fat hate

[sebastienne]

What is the "obesity crisis"? Every day I get more and more confused.

Today, I read an article in the Guardian that said "exercise protects against heart disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoperosis and high blood pressure". (Which I think has already been pretty well evidenced, to be honest, but it's still a useful thing to put out in the public domain, encouraging people to adopt healthier lifestyles.) But it said this in paragraph ten. The first nine paragraphs of the article? Maybe the headline alone will give you a clue - Exercise alone 'will not solve obesity crisis'.

So exercise has a positive effect on all of the illnesses commonly correlated with fat bodies, but doesn't erase those fat bodies, so isn't good enough. The mask is slipping; anti-obesity campaigners like to hide behind the idea that their determination to erase my body comes out of concern for my health, but here they show themselves encouraging dangerous behaviour (aggressive food restriction) over healthy behaviour (daily exercise) because the former has a perceived aesthetic benefit while the latter "only" protects against heart disease, diabetes, osteoperosis...

Well, fuck them. They want me to fight to be happy? Then I will fight and fuck and dance and laugh and scream and fight.







I'm just gonna keep calling it out when I see it, because I don't know what else I can do.

Comments

[marrog]

...approaches to (temporary) weight loss

I'm interested in what you mean here. Reducing calorie consumption, exercising, etc etc - none of those things are in and of themselves going to lead to only temporary weight loss - if you're able (and not everyone is) to lose weight, and one of those methods works for you, it will continue to work for as long as you sustain it.

Fad diets don't not work because they 'don't work' - they do work in a literal, practical sense. They don't work because they're emotionally and mentally unsustainable for anyone with normal levels of self-control or respect for their own contentment. They don't work because they're depressing and soul-destroying - and consequently unsustainable. With a few exceptions (ie: the diets that will actually damage you if you stick at them) a change of diet or lifestyle will result in permanent weight loss if it's sustained.

The trick to health (whether thin or fat health), therefore, is finding the lifestyle changes that you personally can sustain permanently without wanting to kill yourself. Now, you know this. Which makes me wonder (without wanting to seem aggressive at all) what it is you're describing as 'temporary'.

[sebastienne]

it will continue to work for as long as you sustain it is exactly that point that I'm referring to when I say "temporary". Most people do not approach the kind of severe calorie restriction advocated in the article (reducing daily intake by ~33%) with the attitude of "this is a permanent life change" - they approach it with the attitiude of "a diet is a temporary intervention to cause me to lose weight". Which, as we both know, means temporary weight loss and then likely a higher baseline weight.

[marrog]

Well, that's true, but you're overlaying an assumption there. The act of reducing calorie consumption does not cause 'temporary weight loss'. The inevitable failure to maintain said reduction is what makes it temporary. I appreciate that this is a fine distinction, but when you're dealing with the murky world of privilege and subtle prejudice, you have to remember to make those little distinctions.

[sebastienne]

Hmm, I think this is a tricky one.. on the one hand, you are of course right, and scrupulous accuracy is important; on the other hand, I think it's equally important to fight the pervasive ideas that I laid out in my previous comment, and that can be fought by continually flagging up the concept of 'temporary weight loss' (cf "temporarily able-bodied").

I think that the answer is probably a couple of extra sentences that fully explain the issues, rather than using '(temporary)' as a modifier in the way that I did. I'll try to remember this for next time.

[marrog]

*Nod* Fair enough.

I think that for me, the idea that lifestyle changes that you can actually sustain - for anyone, fat, thin or otherwise - is also really important to promote - not least because that idea of sustainability is one that I think is vital to people's understanding that these fad diets are a waste of time from beginning to end. So I'm pretty sensitive about careful wording in that respect.