Lara Frater's Blog, page 23

A grain of salt

First off a few weeks back the FDA rejected the diet drug Lorcaserin.  It's been a minor miracle that two drugs have been rejected and one removed. Is the FDA finally realizing that diet drugs don't work in the long run and can be dangerous?

The Atlantic Magazine has an excellent article about lies in the medical community.  A meta-reasearcher Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis who questioned in a 2005 paper Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. In the Atlantic article: "He charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed... 

"...But these studies often sharply conflict with one another. Studies have gone back and forth on the cancer-preventing powers of vitamins A, D, and E; on the heart-health benefits of eating fat and carbs; and even on the question of whether being overweight is more likely to extend or shorten your life. How should we choose among these dueling, high-profile nutritional findings? Ioannidis suggests a simple approach: ignore them all."

The Medical community while may contain many things to benefit humankind. Drugs, surgerical procedures, preventive care that save lives. Several members of my family are alive today due to life saving drugs, procedures and early diagnosis.

However even if Dr. Ioannidis is only half right, that is still a lot of false information. There isn't always a lot of consumer protection, so you best bet is to be educated when dealing with the doctor. If you decide to take a pill, get surgery, get preventive care make sure you fully inform yourself about it.

Kill a fat person? It's all their fault.

Imagine this. A driver on a rural road is reckless, loses control of the car, and gets into an accident. A person in the car has hemophilia and starts to bleed out. The ambluance and helicopter rush to the scene but are unable to save the person with hemophillia because they don't have specialized equipment to save them. 

Whose fault is it? The ambluence crew? The person with hemophillia? or the person driving recklessly?

Most sane people would say it was the person driving recklessly.

Not so much a judge and Defense lawyer in Scotland who apparently fined and banned from driving for three years a doctor whose reckless driving killed a 400 lb woman. Apparently the slap on the wrist was for two reasons, one he was a surgeon and therefore served the community and second the woman died because she was fat.  "If the person had been of average fitness they might have survived the injuries caused by the collision." The Judge said.

Average fitness? What does that mean? Did the judge even look at the victim's history or just assume that because she was fat she most not be doing any exercise at all. Perhaps she would have died of a heart attack the very next day!  I mean if the doctor had a terminal cancer patient in the car and his reckless driving killed him, that would be okay right? And what if she was a thin out of shape woman? I don't know the laws in Scotland but in the states if you kill someone through negligence it's called Negligent Homicide. Are future cases going to be judged on the weight of a victim?

This show that even worldwide fat people are treated as second class citizens, moral degenerates, and not worthy of even proper restoration for their death. If you substituted fat for Black, gay, Jewish, disabled, etc, there would be a worldwide outrage. Instead it doesn't matter because she was just a fat woman.

Igigi Reprint: Let's Talk about Food

I'm having a perfect storm of deadlines today, so I thought I post an IGIGI reprint. The Holidays are going to be here soon and I don't want anyone to feel guilty if they have seconds! 

I recently finished two books Fat Girl by Judith Moore and The Gospel of Food by Barry Glassner (Author of The Culture of Fear).  Both books have to do with food.  Judith Moore is a sad tale about a fat girl horribly abused by her mother who seeks solace in food.  The Gospel of Food is about our misconceptions and relationships with food. It includes a chapter about the myth of obesity. I grew up a dieter and learned some very convoluted beliefs about food, some that still haunt me today even after giving up dieting. I started by making up my own diet that consisted of ice milk, rice cakes, melba toast and low-fat TV dinners, I ended it doing low carb dieting that was seriously jeopardizing my health.  I didn't think anything was wrong at the time because I thought it was more important to be thin than healthy.  I thought that poor health would okay in the long run because I would be thin.   

Ideas about food are so ingrained in society.  Sugar, Fats, Carbohydrates have all been vilified as the cause of the "Obesity" crisis.  People become afraid to eat. When I got fat suddenly food became black or white, good or evil, you get the picture. I was refused certain foods unlike my thin friends who were still allowed to eat with abandon. These forbidden foods I began to eat as much as a could sneak. And so began my career or dieting and binging, sneaking food and hating myself for it. Thinking myself inferior because if you are fat you are supposed diet and succeed.  I had no idea that 95% of diets fail. Growing up, dieting was a normal response to being fat. Instead what I was doing was making myself fatter. In Barry Glassner's book he also mentioned that the "obesity" crisis started around the time dieting was pushed on society. He also mentioned a study where people who enjoyed food more absorbed it better and that boys who had no food limits put on them tended not to overeat.  In the book Overcoming Overeating, a guide to help with binge eating disorder, one of the steps is to not refuse bad food and to learn to treat food like food. I no longer looked at food the same way again. Food became calories, exchanges, fat or carbs depending on what diet I was on. I no longer liked it. It didn't bring me pleasure or joy.

 About three years ago I ate at a wonderful French restaurant in Vermont.  My husband and I were served bread, cheese, lamb, potatoes, and four desserts (we mentioned it was our anniversary and the chef gave us free desserts.) We ate it all and the meal was so fantastic that I didn't feel hunger until about 24 hours later. 

Of course I could only think of "Four Desserts!" Four Desserts!  I'm going to wake up tomorrow weighing one ton and have to hauled out in a flat bed truck!   How dare I eat four desserts! Despite that I no longer dieted, I was on vacation and was walking everywhere, I felt guilty for indulging.  This negative talk did not stop me from have crème brulee the next time I had French food, but I didn't fully enjoy it because of the hangups about eating.

In reality, food is meant to be enjoyed not seen in shades of black or white.  We all need to break the spell, we have to sit down to a meal and enjoy it, not worry if we are having too much fat, carbs, sugar, calories or how much we will weigh in the morning.  Food is meant no only to sustain us but to entertain and enjoy.  And we need to learn to enjoy food again, sin and all.

Fat Studies and More Marie Claire fallout

The Daily Beast has a somewhat critical article on Fat Studies, questioning whether it is more of a push for the Fat acceptance agenda then a displicine and wondering whether it's only meant for fat students. It gives an example of a thin student rejected by a fat activist group. (Although I guess Linda Bacon, Glenn Gaesser, Paul Campos and other thin fat activists must be flukes).  All I can think is Fat Studies has finally made it. It has become so noticable that its legitimacy is being questioned.

But the article has brought up an interesting point. The hurdles that many fat people face getting to college.

And No one seems to be happy with Maura Kelly and her "apology". 

 From the Phoenix.com: The post went live on, Oct 25, at 9 am. Unbeknownst to Kelly and the editors of mariealaire.com, the fat-acceptance movement was about to come down on them like a ton of brick shithouses.  

Talk show host Wendy Williams said this: "Whether you are grossly obese, a little bit chubby or just a person with a heart, you realize that fat is the last place of ridicule that is acceptable in this society. Why do you accept that? I don't accept that. We get upset about the N-word, we get upset about making fun of gay people, and paraplegics and people with Down Syndrome - but we can make fun of fat people and that's okay? It's not okay. Marie Claire, we'll be waiting for your apology – how about that?"

Blogger Marianne Kirby states: If Kelly was actually worried about our health, she wouldn't use a media platform to talk about how disgusting we look. Actually, if she was really concerned about our health, she wouldn't be contributing to the mental distress many of us carry around with them every single day. Kelly's words are far heavier than my body, let me tell you.

People like Maura Kelly are the hurdles that fat people have to face. They are bullied, picked on, lectured, and think they are failures when the diet fails (even though diets have a proved fail record.)

It's okay to be naturally slender but not naturally fat.

Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny. No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly can be healthy

So quotes ignoramus Maura Kelly of Marie Claire magazine. Maura, I think you are dangerously underweight. After all so many studies have say "overweight" people live the longest, I am worried about your health, so until you gain some weight, and if its possible please remove all pictures of yourself on the internet because your face really grosses me out.  In fact just writing about you has made me throw up a little in my mouth. 

And your lame atempt at apology?

I know a lot of people truly struggle to lose weight — for medical and psychological reasons — and that many people have an incredibly difficult time getting to a healthy size.

 

Melissa McCarthey is at her healthy size, Bill Gardell is at his healthy size. Healthy size is whatever your body is supposed to be at even when you treat it normally. And yes that means some people are fat and some people are thin. 

Am I being mean? Yep.  However she is just the tip of the iceberg of how some people are not only clueless but have utter comptempt for fat people, refuse to believe it's as natural as being tall or short.  Why are some people naturally slender? I have a childhood friend who wears x-small. Growing up she stuffed herself but she didn't gain weight. She's a natually slender person, just like some people are naturally fat. 

And please feel free to cancel your subscription to Marie Claire and let them know why.

Marie Claire
300 West 57th St., 34th Fl.
New York, NY 10019-1497

I never buy any kind of fashion magazine. I think that with a bad economy fashion magazines should be the first to go. 

Stop dieting now

Kiss this Maura Kelly

Kiss this Maury Kelly

Love your Body and Bullying

Last Wednesday was not only Love your body day but it was a day to wear purple against bullying because some gay and lesbian youths were bullied into suicide.  The anti-bullying message was "It gets better"

For young people, this message is true. No matter how you are bullied now, it will get better. I was also bullied in school, teased, (including sexual taunts) and physically abused due to my weight and because I was a weird kid. Some abuse was so bad that if I were an adult, the police would have gotten involved.

However, it did get better. By the time I was in high school, many of my bullies had gone to other schools or matured out of their habits.  I finished school, went to college, eventually got two master's degrees, married a wonderful man, have close friends, a decent job and wrote a book.  My life became so much better that I was able to put that part of my life to rest. Mostly because I didn't allow taunts to bother me anymore.

Even as adults, there will be assholes who still think they are in junior high and must feel better by teasing others. (I've been called all kinds of unoriginal names on my blog). I say if they can't grow up, more pity for them. 

Watch and vote for a terrific short movie Gordita, which is about a young Latina who is depressed with her life because of her body and dead end job.  When she reminisces about a positive moment in her past, she begins her journey to self-respect. 

Author and Blogger Pattie Thomas talks about Love Your Body day and her similar reaction to mine in reference to fat free talk week. 

And remember every day tell yourself how wonderful your body is!

Do you look fat in that? Yes!

I understand the concept of having a fat talk free week. I understand that women, especially young ones are constantly bombarded with images and talk that say you must be thin or (a) die, (b) die alone (c) have no friends (d) have no future (e) never meet a man or (f) work at Walmart.

My problem is there is nothing to be ashamed of for being fat. Fat should not have a negative connotation. Instead of having a fat talk free week, it's better to have a body love talk week. Remove the negative out of fat. And teach young women to be happy no matter what their size.  This event seems more like "Stop thin people from feeling fat (i.e. bad)".

Also we are not in fact destroying the US health care system. I've mentioned for several years now, a Kaiser report (see figure five) which states that the elderly cost the most.  Here is a blog post (not fat friendly either!) which states that expensive diseases are not infact "obesity diseases" and "obesity costs" aren't enough to explain why we are paying so much per person for health care.

And if my ass doesn't look fat in my pants, then I need to see a doctor because it means that my butt fell off. Is that considered an obesity related disease?