i am in too much of a rush to code my italics in
Weight Loss Harms
A little girl sits in a doctor's office. She's a normal little girl, who loves playing, loves food, and is generally perfectly healthy, but the doctor is asking her what her favorite food is. She tells him, truthfully, that it's strawberries, and the doctor sighs and calls her a liar.
"You see," he explains, "your favorite food is really candy, isn't it?" He then tells her that candy is bad, and that she should eat more fruit, because she's fat and the candy she's not eating is what made her so, while the fruit she is eating will make her skinny.
The little girl was very confused then, but when she told the story as an adult, she was frustrated that the doctor hadn't believed her, had attributed her weight to unhealthy habits she didn't have, because in his view no one could be fat and healthy, even though that viewpoint is factually untrue.
"ALL FOOD CONTAINS NUTRIENTS. NUTRIENTS ARE GOOD FOR YOU. NO, REALLY. I’M SERIOUS," Michelle Allison posts to her blog, The Fat Nutritionist (fatnutritionist.com). (She's been interviewed for Newsweek, and helping people to get the food they need and to eat naturally is her full-time job.) In other posts, she points out that the human body needs fat, needs calories, needs all those scary things that food advertises it's "low" in to survive. "The worst food-related thing that can happen to most people is not having enough of it," she points out in another article, with a link to her commentary about how you can survive without vitamins but you can't live without calories, so cheap, high-calorie foods are important. An apple may be healthy, but so is a Big Mac, if it keeps you from starving to death.
This doesn't stop doctors from prescribing unhealthy diets to people who are too fat, though, as Marianne Kirby (therotund.com) and Lesley Kinsel (fatshionista.com) discussed on their political/feminist/size-acceptance podcast, Fatcast. They talked about how their dieting was insane, and did more harm than good, no matter what they tried. Lesley's seventeen years of intensive, restrictive dieting left her heavier at the end than at the beginning, and had ruined her gallbladder, putting her through indescribable pain from gall stones and necessitating the removal of an entire organ. Marianne related in return how one of her doctors, when she wasn't losing weight on her own diets, told her that she should be eating so little that a single head of broccoli would last her a week. If Marianne had been skinny and only eaten a head of broccoli a week, it would have been considered anorexia, without question-- because that is literally a starvation diet. But because she was and is fat, it was literally what the doctor ordered. (Even at the time, when Marianne was still dieting, she knew it was ridiculous and dangerous, and never went to that doctor again.) Like the little girl from the beginning of the story, both women have been called liars when telling doctors about their health and habits.
First, Do No Harm (fathealth.wordpress.com) carries on that theme, of fatphobic doctors doing far more harm than any layer of adipose ever has. There's stories of being pressured towards risky surgery, of being afraid of going to the doctor for fear of being shamed, of orders to lose impossible amounts of weight. The story that inspired the blog to be made is about how fatphobia killed the poster's mother, in a very direct way; the mother refused to go to the doctor while overweight, and thus she died of a disease that was caught too late to treat. The blog is filled with stories like that, as well as stories of trauma, of misdiagnosis where the patient's fatness was blamed for an unrelated condition, of patients being called liars or ignored or treated with disgust-- because they were fat, and usually still are fat, and the doctors thought that was the root of their problems (who knew that fat caused allergies, caused organ failure, cause cancer?).
Frequently, the medicine prescribed for this ever-do-deadly fatness is far worse for a person's health is even more dangerous than any supposed ill effects of being fat. Statistics taken from the very best of surgeons in the very best hospitals say that one out of every 200 patients die on the table during weight loss surgery, but the rate is far higher for less expert surgeons, and the mortality rate of people who have undergone the surgery to make them "healthier" is ridiculously high compared to their "unhealthy" fat brethren. The miracle diet drugs that supposedly melt the pounds away like butter really only slice away five to fifteen pound, on average (significant to someone who weighs 180 pounds, perhaps, but less so to someone who weighs 380), and even then only a fifth or less of the people who take them will be able to keep the pounds off-- a tiny result, not even benefit, considering the damage they can do to the metabolism or organs or digestive system or, in the disgustingly notable case of Alli, having the side effect of uncontrollable, greasy, half-liquid defecation if you eat any fat or oil whatsoever. Having to wear a diaper means the medicine is working.
So why, if weight loss is so impossible for most people, and so dangerous, and so much more unhealthy than accepting that nature or nurture or actions have set a person's weight at "fat", do people still try to force it to happen?
Our culture is steeped in fatphobia. It's everywhere, and we, as humans, unintentionally absorb it, just as we unintentionally absorb so many things. We all see the tabloids and magazines in the line at the grocery store, proclaiming that this celebrity has gained ten pounds and is now a disgustingly fat size 6, while this one lost the flab from having a baby in three weeks and now, so can you! We all see models (5'9" or more tall and photoshopped even thinner than they are in real life) held up as an unattainable beauty standard, or watch Jillian Michaels scream at crying fatties on The Biggest Loser, see Jared touting that he lost hundreds of pounds by eating at Subway, read about studies that are outdated or funded by diet companies, hear all that "common sense" and "common knowledge" that says that if you really wanted to lose weight you would so you obviously are trying to be a disgusting fat pig. "If you would just try to," goes the cry, followed by something that's literally false but that "everyone" knows is true-- if you just ate less, ate better, worked out more, you'd be skinnier and healthier and more beautiful and acceptable, and you certainly wouldn't be like Marianne or Lesley, still fat but also still mostly healthy (and what health issues they have are either caused by their attempted weight loss or entirely unrelated). Nevermind the uncontrollable factors that make people fat, like genes and metabolism, and the damage done to both a person's physical and mental health by dieting and failing to lose weight.
The worst part is, fat people are human, too, and they absorb those cultural messages of being lazy, being unable to control themselves, of being failures if they can't do the near- or entirely-impossible. They absorb the message that they deserve Jillian Michaels screaming about them being worthless, that they should starve themselves more, that because they're fat eating 500 kilocalories a day (when at least double that is what a body needs to continue functioning) is what they should be doing, and that nothing tastes as good as thin feels. And thus, they try to lose weight-- through whatever dangerous, disordered means they can think of-- and are lauded when they endanger themselves.
This needs to change. The world, as a whole, needs to learn that being fat isn't a sin, no more than having curly hair or brown eyes is a sin, and that food isn't an evil temptation, and while there has been some small headway made by the Fat Acceptance and Healthy At Any Size movements, there's still so far to go.
A little girl sits in a doctor's office. She's a normal little girl, who loves playing, loves food, and is generally perfectly healthy, but the doctor is asking her what her favorite food is. She tells him, truthfully, that it's strawberries, and the doctor sighs and calls her a liar.
"You see," he explains, "your favorite food is really candy, isn't it?" He then tells her that candy is bad, and that she should eat more fruit, because she's fat and the candy she's not eating is what made her so, while the fruit she is eating will make her skinny.
The little girl was very confused then, but when she told the story as an adult, she was frustrated that the doctor hadn't believed her, had attributed her weight to unhealthy habits she didn't have, because in his view no one could be fat and healthy, even though that viewpoint is factually untrue.
"ALL FOOD CONTAINS NUTRIENTS. NUTRIENTS ARE GOOD FOR YOU. NO, REALLY. I’M SERIOUS," Michelle Allison posts to her blog, The Fat Nutritionist (fatnutritionist.com). (She's been interviewed for Newsweek, and helping people to get the food they need and to eat naturally is her full-time job.) In other posts, she points out that the human body needs fat, needs calories, needs all those scary things that food advertises it's "low" in to survive. "The worst food-related thing that can happen to most people is not having enough of it," she points out in another article, with a link to her commentary about how you can survive without vitamins but you can't live without calories, so cheap, high-calorie foods are important. An apple may be healthy, but so is a Big Mac, if it keeps you from starving to death.
This doesn't stop doctors from prescribing unhealthy diets to people who are too fat, though, as Marianne Kirby (therotund.com) and Lesley Kinsel (fatshionista.com) discussed on their political/feminist/size-acceptance podcast, Fatcast. They talked about how their dieting was insane, and did more harm than good, no matter what they tried. Lesley's seventeen years of intensive, restrictive dieting left her heavier at the end than at the beginning, and had ruined her gallbladder, putting her through indescribable pain from gall stones and necessitating the removal of an entire organ. Marianne related in return how one of her doctors, when she wasn't losing weight on her own diets, told her that she should be eating so little that a single head of broccoli would last her a week. If Marianne had been skinny and only eaten a head of broccoli a week, it would have been considered anorexia, without question-- because that is literally a starvation diet. But because she was and is fat, it was literally what the doctor ordered. (Even at the time, when Marianne was still dieting, she knew it was ridiculous and dangerous, and never went to that doctor again.) Like the little girl from the beginning of the story, both women have been called liars when telling doctors about their health and habits.
First, Do No Harm (fathealth.wordpress.com) carries on that theme, of fatphobic doctors doing far more harm than any layer of adipose ever has. There's stories of being pressured towards risky surgery, of being afraid of going to the doctor for fear of being shamed, of orders to lose impossible amounts of weight. The story that inspired the blog to be made is about how fatphobia killed the poster's mother, in a very direct way; the mother refused to go to the doctor while overweight, and thus she died of a disease that was caught too late to treat. The blog is filled with stories like that, as well as stories of trauma, of misdiagnosis where the patient's fatness was blamed for an unrelated condition, of patients being called liars or ignored or treated with disgust-- because they were fat, and usually still are fat, and the doctors thought that was the root of their problems (who knew that fat caused allergies, caused organ failure, cause cancer?).
Frequently, the medicine prescribed for this ever-do-deadly fatness is far worse for a person's health is even more dangerous than any supposed ill effects of being fat. Statistics taken from the very best of surgeons in the very best hospitals say that one out of every 200 patients die on the table during weight loss surgery, but the rate is far higher for less expert surgeons, and the mortality rate of people who have undergone the surgery to make them "healthier" is ridiculously high compared to their "unhealthy" fat brethren. The miracle diet drugs that supposedly melt the pounds away like butter really only slice away five to fifteen pound, on average (significant to someone who weighs 180 pounds, perhaps, but less so to someone who weighs 380), and even then only a fifth or less of the people who take them will be able to keep the pounds off-- a tiny result, not even benefit, considering the damage they can do to the metabolism or organs or digestive system or, in the disgustingly notable case of Alli, having the side effect of uncontrollable, greasy, half-liquid defecation if you eat any fat or oil whatsoever. Having to wear a diaper means the medicine is working.
So why, if weight loss is so impossible for most people, and so dangerous, and so much more unhealthy than accepting that nature or nurture or actions have set a person's weight at "fat", do people still try to force it to happen?
Our culture is steeped in fatphobia. It's everywhere, and we, as humans, unintentionally absorb it, just as we unintentionally absorb so many things. We all see the tabloids and magazines in the line at the grocery store, proclaiming that this celebrity has gained ten pounds and is now a disgustingly fat size 6, while this one lost the flab from having a baby in three weeks and now, so can you! We all see models (5'9" or more tall and photoshopped even thinner than they are in real life) held up as an unattainable beauty standard, or watch Jillian Michaels scream at crying fatties on The Biggest Loser, see Jared touting that he lost hundreds of pounds by eating at Subway, read about studies that are outdated or funded by diet companies, hear all that "common sense" and "common knowledge" that says that if you really wanted to lose weight you would so you obviously are trying to be a disgusting fat pig. "If you would just try to," goes the cry, followed by something that's literally false but that "everyone" knows is true-- if you just ate less, ate better, worked out more, you'd be skinnier and healthier and more beautiful and acceptable, and you certainly wouldn't be like Marianne or Lesley, still fat but also still mostly healthy (and what health issues they have are either caused by their attempted weight loss or entirely unrelated). Nevermind the uncontrollable factors that make people fat, like genes and metabolism, and the damage done to both a person's physical and mental health by dieting and failing to lose weight.
The worst part is, fat people are human, too, and they absorb those cultural messages of being lazy, being unable to control themselves, of being failures if they can't do the near- or entirely-impossible. They absorb the message that they deserve Jillian Michaels screaming about them being worthless, that they should starve themselves more, that because they're fat eating 500 kilocalories a day (when at least double that is what a body needs to continue functioning) is what they should be doing, and that nothing tastes as good as thin feels. And thus, they try to lose weight-- through whatever dangerous, disordered means they can think of-- and are lauded when they endanger themselves.
This needs to change. The world, as a whole, needs to learn that being fat isn't a sin, no more than having curly hair or brown eyes is a sin, and that food isn't an evil temptation, and while there has been some small headway made by the Fat Acceptance and Healthy At Any Size movements, there's still so far to go.