Nice to see this short piece in the Sunday Magazine:
This is a core argument of fat acceptance: that it’s possible to be healthy no matter how fat you are and that weight loss as a goal is futile, unnecessary and counterproductive — and that fatness is nobody’s business but your own.
Many fat-acceptance activists prefer a new approach to dieting that focuses on nutrition, exercise and body image. A new book out this fall, “Health at Every Size,” by Linda Bacon, a nutritionist and physiologist at the University of California at Davis, outlines this approach, which is less about dieting than a lifestyle change that emphasizes “intuitive eating”: listening to hunger signals, eating when you’re hungry, choosing nutritious food over junk. It encourages exercise, but for its emotional and physical benefits, not as a way to lose weight. It advocates tossing out the bathroom scale and loving your body no matter what it weighs. […]
Several studies suggest that if the aim is getting healthier rather than slimmer, then in the long run the “Health at Every Size” approach works better than dieting. In 2005, Bacon led the only randomized control trial to date that tested this hypothesis physiologically. She randomly assigned half of the 78 subjects, all women, to a “Health at Every Size” group; while they lost no weight, their healthier behavior led to lower blood-pressure and cholesterol levels, which stayed low even two years later. In the weight-loss group, more than 40 percent dropped out before the six-month low-calorie diet ended, and at the two-year follow-up, the average dieter had regained all her lost weight, and the only measurement that dropped was one for self-esteem.
Scientists who study obesity at the cellular level say genetics determines people’s natural weight range, right down to the type and amount of food they crave, how much they move and where they accumulate fat. Asking how someone got to be so fat is as meaningless as asking how he got to be so tall.
Another thing I liked about this piece: the illustration that went with it was not a photo of headless fatties. What next, an article about comics that doesn’t use “Pow! Bam!” in the headline? (Is that even legal?)
I just had a birthday two weeks ago, and I realized I am now exactly at the weight my mother was at this age. What blows my mind is that she took every (dangerous, deadly) diet pill in creation, smoked like a chimney and would not exercise (she would look at you as if you were insane if you said that word), ate meat and saturated fat… and I am the healthy eater and vegetarian, walk everywhere, take supplements, bust all kinds of ass to keep my weight down and always have. I am her total opposite in every way, lifestyle-wise, and yet… here I am.
It’s really kind of spooky. I find myself wondering WHAT ELSE I have no real control over.
As someone who has lost weight involuntarily due to disease (kidney failure in my case) and who lived through the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. before the cocktail came out and watched friends waste away to skeletal frames as well as having a late uncle who was severely underweight due to a rare disease, I have always been disturbed by the skinny equals healthy religion in the U.S. I knew I would lose weight as my kidneys failed and I knew I would face folks telling me how great I looked as I was getting sicker and sicker so I prepared myself for that so I wouldn’t come back with snarky responses, but it still gets to me. My doctor does not want me to lose any more weight and yet if I say that to anyone I get looks as if I must by lying or delusional.
I know I am not the only person with a medical disability in this position and I know it is as not nearly as upsetting as the continual oppression and discrimination and prejudice against people who are fat, but I thought I would share another perspective on the weight tyranny in our country.
Alison:
The lastest (I think) episode of The Office had a funny scene where the smallest woman said her doctor wanted her to gain weight, but no one paid any attention at all and still expected her to take part in their weight loss competition, because losing weight is always good, and they had to win their weight-loss competition against other branches.
I’m also “underweight,” although not because of poor health. (I think I’m at my natural size for my age–I’m almost identical to my mom’s size at 25.) It depresses me that when I buy any sort of healthy food, the girl at the register assumes I must be doing so because I’m on a diet. Last week I bought a salad and a slice of cake, and the assumption was that I must be making up for the cake by not having dinner.
I don’t want to say what I experience is anything like what fat people go through. (Definitely not!) It just shows how deeply messed up the entire culture is.
“No one” in this case being Michael Scott. (As per usual, through thoughtless cluelessness, not actual meanness.)
It’s a good day for any social movement when its antithesis is embodied by Mr. Scott.
Alison, righteous comment!
I recently complimented a sick person who had lost a bunch of weight, just assuming it had been this *big effort* on her part… she comes back with “It’s the diabetes” and I felt like a real shit. But the exasperation in her voice told me she feels exactly as you do.