Lara Frater's Blog, page 4

Yes, eat your grandma's gefilte fish

Short post tonight.

More  holidays are upon us, where there is ham, peeps, matzo ball soup, chocolate bunnies, and gefilte fish.

Life is too short, families are fleeting and if you like your grandmother's gefilte fish, you should eat it without worry of the calories or fat content because one day that recipe as your grandmother made it will be no more.

I never liked gefilte fish, but I'll take my late grandmother's matzo soup or my grandpa, who died too young, hiding the matzo in an easy to find spot and giving my cousins, brother, and me dollar bills for being so good at finding things.

As Jennifer Weiner says:

Food isn’t trouble, it’s holidays, it’s funny stories, it’s seasons. Clams and beach plums are summer; turkey and crispy, lace-edged latkes mean fall; gefilte fish tells us it’s springtime again. Maybe my daughters won’t eat more than the single bite that I’ll insist on, but the finished dish is only part of the point.

Everyone have a wonderful holiday!

Ditching BMI for All.

A recent study has said people considered “underweight” have a death rate 1.8 times higher than “normal” weight people. Us fatties were only 1.2-1.3 times higher (yippie?)
 
After reviewing more than 50 previous researches, researchers of a new study have found that excessive thinness is also not good for health. Clinically underweight people have a higher risk of death than obese individuals.
Are we going to break out the term: morbidly thin? Are there going to be Diet programs to help the poor, unfortunate, and stupid thin people, who can't help but not eat?
Are we going to have a national program to help the morbidly thin somehow get to magic BMI number 18.5?
No-- because a campaign like that would be ridiculous.
Or would it?
 
Recently, Yale student Frances Chan was forced to gain weight because the university health center Yale Health deemed her as having an eating disorder as her BMI wasn’t past the magical number of 18.5. (Yale later dropped it, I assume because they realized how ridiculous it was.) I’m not quite sure what Yale’s obsession with weight is but apparently Chan wasn’t the only student forced to gain weight or leave school. I just know when I went to college the school seemed to care about our academic achievement rather than our personal lives.
 
Even if she had anorexia (which she doesn’t, she’s naturally slender), forcing an anorexic to gain weight doesn’t cure the eating disorder.  In order to get Yale Health off her back, she ignored her natural hunger cues, overate, and didn’t exercise.
 
If someone goes to the doctor, they should not get a weight lecture, especially if they aren't there to talk about weight (in Chan’s case she was having a lump checked). The only time a doctor should talk about your weight is if you lose or gain it rapidly.  While Yale and other schools need to have outreach to students because eating disorders tends to hit college age women, there is outreach and then over reach. Like with many fat people, Frances Chan’s health was judged solely on her BMI.  
 People have different body types and BMI says nothing about their health. Being as healthy as you can trumps weight loss/gain.
...but for the people who have been losing the battle of the weight, if they can at least become fit, then they can have a very good prognosis and good overall health.

Doctors, Compassion, and size

Last week I wrote about two stories where "Obesity experts" just don’t get it. This week I'm writing about a doctor who tries but fails to get it. Dr. Edward Thompson writes about treating a 600 pound man and seems to not realize how much he marginalizes his patient.

 The patient lies trapped in his own body, like a prisoner in an enormous, fleshy castle. And though he must feel wounded by the ER personnel’s remarks, he seems to find succor in knowing that there’s no comment so cutting that it can’t be soothed by the balm of 8,000 calories per day.

I've mentioned before that fat people fear going to the doctor. I know that I hate going to a new specialist because I hate to have yet another fat talk.

In this man’s case, the ER doctors couldn’t handle his size and looked at him as if it’s his fault rather than the hospital’s lack of equipment. I don’t believe the doctor went out of his way to marginalize him but fat equaling bad, lazy, a slob, and stupid is so ingrained, he might not have realized he was making his patient less than a person.

Even though dieting does not work in the long run, because weight is fluid and can be artificially changed,  doctors assume that it's either the patients fault for being lazy or society's fault for making food so accessibility to people too stupid to know better.

I know why my colleagues and I are so glad to have this patient out of the ER and stowed away upstairs: he’s an oversize mirror, reminding us of our own excesses. It’s easier to look away and joke at his expense than it is to peer into his eyes and see our own appetites staring back.

I have mentioned before that fat people frequently change doctors. Or don't go at all because we fear the doctor will treat our size rather than the problem.

A few months later the doctor's patient died.

Though I have no way of knowing it, within a few months a crane will hoist the patient’s body through a hole cut in the side of his house, a hole that allowed EMS personnel to lower the body onto their new ultra-wide, ultra-sturdy gurney.

I have to wonder if the patient thought about seeking medical care, remembered being made fun of and marginalized, and decided against seeking treatment.

Another doctor Sayantani DasGupta, criticizes the metaphors used describe the man: infantile, slovenly, lazy, and grotesque.

Not only were they a study in the power of negative metaphors, but as a fellow physician, they felt all-too familiar. They were the way I had, on many an occasion, heard patients’ bodies talked about; ways that I, during my training, had perhaps referred to patients’ bodies. The simple words felt so easy, so unexamined, and in that very ease was embedded their violence.

 All patients of all sizes need to be able to get the medical care they need, including equipment that fits and compassion from doctors, who treat the medical issue, not the size.

 

Zero Steps Forward and Eight Steps Back

Living in New York City, I climb stairs. In my house, in the subway, at my job, and in random  places you wouldn’t think would have stairs. Two months ago I climbed the Manitou incline which was like a giant staircase. I admit when I sometimes climb to the subway (I often take an elevated train), I get winded and going up the incline I thought my heart was going to explode.
 
Every day I take some kind of stairs, an while the exercise has done wonders for my legs, it has not made me thin. Riding my exercise bike 15-30 minutes a day has not made me thin, walking at least a mile or more a day had not made me thin, my daily stretches, my yoga, my summer swimming, my walks around the office has not made me thin.
 
There is a slogan: "Nothing about us, without us." which is often used among marginalized groups. It essentially means no one group decides the fate/treatment of a marginalized group without their input. Fat activists see this all the time. "Obesity" organizations which decide on policy on how to make fat people thin don't seek input from actual fat people.
 
Case in point, this:#‎ICO2014‬

I have mentioned before that there is a constant assumption that if you are fat because you stuff your face and sit on the couch all day. Some organizations try to be gentle by saying “It’s not your fault you stuff your face.” Every single treatment for fatness is always the same: eat less calories than your body needs (aka a diet). It is the same treatment used in the last forty years and still hasn’t been proved to work in the long run.
 
If the people running this International Congress of Obesity would talk to an actual fat person (and not just try to treat them), they might figure out that taking the stairs will not make us thin.
 
Ragen Chastain says it best:
When organizations pull stunts like this, the only thing at which they can possibly succeed is creating an environment that prevents people from, and shames people for, navigating the world in the way that’s best for them and their situation.
 
 
And shame on this Amanda Sainsbury who decided fat people must become thin or they will die and Health at Every Size is bad for encourage people to stay fat. But what can you expect from a person who writes diet books? (Even worse this quack is the editor in chief of the Journal of Eating Disorders).
 
While I certainly agree that it is possible to have healthy behaviours that provide health benefits at a wide variety of body sizes, I disagree that it is possible to be or to stay truly healthy at every size.
 
This is the second time I've seen someone add a Y to the end of health when referring to Health at Every Size. This, to me, changes the meaning. Even though HAES is more geared to fat people because of the discrimination we face in health care, HAES is meant for all body types. Healthy is an abstraction. You can't really define it because everyone has different ranges. My husband can get to the top of a mountain but put him in a lake, and I’m going zoom past him. Are we both “Healthy” or “Unhealthy”?
  
It is thus not surprising that people frequently put off doing anything about excess weight until better conditions arise (e.g. when the children start school or leave home, when a better financial position or home is attained, after retirement, etcetera). The health at every size concept implies putting off doing anything about excess weight indefinitely, instead accepting a higher BMI and focusing on healthy behaviours.
 
Ironically here she accidently points out how HAES is better than dieting. People put off Dieting. They wait until January or when they have money. HAES you do every day, no putting off. No need for money. It's learning to be as healthy as you can in the body you have whether it be too fat, too thin, disabled, or suffering from a disease. You can do HAES if you walk the stairs, take the escalator, or jump up and down. 
 
Related articles

Take the stairs. Or don't.

 

What happens when there is weight loss/gain?

When I gave up dieting, I wasn’t fully into size acceptance. I realized dieting didn’t work and if I continued, I would wreck my body even further.

At first I worried I would gain an enormous amount of weight (this turned out to only be about five pounds). As I got more into size acceptance and loving my body, I was able to accept the occasional weight gain and loss. (Neither were dramatic. I went from a size 20 to a 22, and then back to a 20.) You may find that some changes will affect your weight: medications, exercise, stress, hormones, or dietary changes (Not for weight loss).

How can you deal with these fluctuations? When I was a dieter, I had an easy formula:

Weight loss =love myslf
Weight gain= hate myself.

The diet I was most "successful" on, I lost 40 pounds and kept it off for 2 years. I never got thin, but the day I fit into a size 14 (mind you, I couldn't breathe but they fit), I was excited and happy for the rest of the day, convinced that thinness was just around the corner (turns out it was just the same old story, weight regain and bingeing).

When I gave up dieting and started to learn to love my body, I felt I had the right to that self-love from getting into a size 14. But I also had to figure out how to make my life so as not to be defined by a number.

It was easy in the beginning because my weight stayed the same. But as the hormones of getting older kicked in, my pants got tighter. I bought new pants but I had to figure out a way to not hate myself.

The first thing I did was end negative fat talk. This is when you look in the mirror and tell yourself "OMG, I'M FAT” like it's a bad thing. You need to look at your reflection and tell yourself "OMG, I'M BEAUTIFUL!" “OMG, I LOVE YOU, BODY!”

If you catch yourself telling your body bad things, tell that voice to shut up. Loving yourself is the most important thing you can do.  

It's important that if there is weight gain to not go back to any kind of dieting. HAES and Intitule eating means you listen to your body cues. Forcing your body to eat less than needs is devastating instead of nourishing it.
 
On the other side is weight loss. Maybe you got sick and now your pants are loose. You still love your body but you may feel a little extra self-esteem, especially when other people around you compliment it. I deal with that two ways: I hunch my shoulders like I don't care or I try humor: Thanks! It was a stomach virus/mono/tapeworm. The most important thing is to still love your body and not to feel like you betrayed it for feeling a surge of self-esteem that years of dieting probably programed into you.
 
Still go to your mirror and tell yourself. I love my body no matter what!

 

Is the Faux Epidemic Over?

Fatness among 3-5 years old has dropped 43% and fat adults and kids over 5 and adults have stayed the same and have been for the past decade. Not just in the US but the world.

Paul Campos writes: As Michael Gard notes in his recent book The End of the Obesity Epidemic, data from all over the world indicate that, over the past ten to 15 years, obesity rates have leveled off or declined among adults and children.

Does this mean the epidemic is over? No, because the epidemic of fat hatred isn’t over. A few years ago I breathed a sigh of relief when multiple studies came out showing that overweight people lived the longest (longevity didn't decrease until your BMI reached 37 and even then it wasn't that bad) and the 400,000 people who died of fatness was revised to 25,814 http://www.obesitymyths.com/myth2.2.htm . For a minute I thought that we finally won. We finally proved that fat does not equal death and making fat people thin was not a cure. Maybe it was time to move to HAES(tm) and that instead of focusing on large bodies, we could focus on getting all people to eat right and find enjoyable movement.

Then the diet/medical/drug industry reared its ugly heads. We were bombarded with “studies” proving WLS cured everything; more infective diet drugs hit the market; the American Medical Association called us a disease; we are penalized for not joining “volunteer” workplace wellness. And anytime an actual study came out saying fatness is not in fact unhealthy, those studies were raked over the coals (Any study claiming fatness is bad is never questioned.) When the study came out claiming fatness among young children dropped 43% Forbes was quick to point out it went up first before going down a mere 14% (Although Paul Campos agrees with their assessment.)

Regardless of the drop, this fake war on children needs to end. There is nothing wrong with children enjoying movement and eating delicious and nutritious foods, but when you single out the fat kids, you cause eating disorders, low self-esteem and bullying. According to School obesity programs may promote worrisome eating behaviors and physical activity in kids Report: 

30% of parents of children age 6-14 report worrisome eating behaviors and physical activity in their children.

7% of parents say that their children have been made to feel bad at school about what or how much they were eating.

 

Movement, the News Media, and Another Lie.

A study in the Mayo Clinic indicated that fat women only do about an hour of exercise every year. This was the headline at Time:

Obese Women Get Only One Hour Of Exercise in a Whole Year

That isn't true. The hour was only for vigorous exercise. All the headlines, in the rush to make fun of fat neglected to mention this is vigorous exercise. CBS News was the only one who remembered to add vigorous.
 
Activities that fall under this category include jogging, running, swimming laps, riding a bike fast on hills, playing singles tennis or playing basketball.
 
People can also opt to participate in 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise weekly in lieu of the more vigorous activities, per the recommendations. Those activities include walking fast, doing water aerobics, riding a bike on flat ground, playing doubles tennis or pushing a lawn mower.
 
(Not sure why water aerobics is here. I found it harder to do than swimming laps.)
 
First off the data is from eight years ago. Trends change. Deb Burgard of ASDAH (Her quotes in italics) mentioned on the ASDAH email list some issues she with the study.

1. How it was measured. They used accelerometers which only can detect a subset of human body movements (and the body movements accelerometers measure are most accessible to lower-weight, younger and less disabled people)
 
2. People of other weights didn't get that much exercise either. It's true that fat women did 11-36 seconds of vigorous exercise per day compared to "normal" women who got 108 seconds which means that normal women did something like 3-10 times as much. Which means that at most normal weight women got 10 hours of vigorous exercise a year. Which is less than what I do (I'm on an exercise bike everyday 10-30 minutes and swim 30 - 60 minutes a day 5x a week in the summer). And I don't consider myself as active as I want. I think this study shows that we all need to exercise more. But of all the headlines about this study, only the Huffington Post pointed out that we all needed to exercise more, not just thin people (This goes back to the discrimination where it’s okay for a thin person not to eat right or exercise).
 
So using the same logic as the headlines, people in the "normal weight" category who are not being mentioned in this discussion would have accumulated 11 hours of vigorous activity in a year.  Running half an hour a day, that would be two weeks of running.  Is anyone seriously proposing that running for two weeks is what determines whether a person is in the "normal" weight category or the "obese" category?
 
3. Once moderate exercise was put in the mix, each body type was about equal.
 
However the lower amount of vigorous exercise among fat women does perhaps proves something. I have mentioned on this blog the stigma of being fat and getting exercise. We’re made fun of when we exercise and even rental bikes can’t support our weight. Not to mention that a lot of fat people have a lower socioeconomic status and tend to have less time for movement. (I’ve written before that I do more exercise when I have more free time.) Instead of the news media chastising fat women for not exercising enough, perhaps they should do their job and found out why they don’t.

Nope, still not a disease.

Every once in a while, I get an email asking if I would host  a guest blogger or if I would be interested in this infographic. Usually the blogger or infographic is completely inappropriate for my blog such as the evils of obesity, or has nothing to do with fatness at all. Depending on mood I will ignore or engage. When I engage, my response is usually "Have you even read my blog?" or "Why would I want your fat hating infographic?" Usually I never hear anything again and I assume this was spam. A mass email hoping that a few bloggers will post whatever product they are selling. When I got the last one (from a plastic surgeon service no less) I wrote back "Are you a spammer or an idiot?" expecting not to hear anything back.

 

I got a message not three hours later.

 I am a spammer nor an idiot… (I think this was a Freudian slip.)

Obviously you are bitter though and not as optimistic about your disease as your blog leaves one to believe.

Best of luck with that shining attitude in the future.

The issue here is not this idiot or spammer (or both). But this damage the AMA just did to fat people by labeling all fatness as a disease. Even this moron thinks I have a disease. There is nothing wrong with getting help to fat people with diseases, but to just tell someone they have a disease when they are perfectly healthy is ridiculous.

The New York Times seems to think this is a good idea because it "supposedly" reduces body shame.

On the positive side, we found that the obesity-as-disease message increased body satisfaction among obese individuals, probably because it removed the shame of obesity as a moral failing.

However...

 Suggesting that one’s weight is a fixed state — like a long-term disease — made attempts at weight management seem futile, and thus undermined the importance that obese individuals placed on health-focused dieting and concern for weight.

The gist is, calling fatness a disease meant that people felt less ashamed because they had a disease rather than a moral failing. However since the cure for this disease is the same shit they've been touting for 50 years, people give up on any kind of weight management.

I don't mean to be a conspiracy theorist but since "Obesity experts" use correlation with causality, let's try it with the diet industry. Even though the diet industry still makes a good 20 billion, that shift is moving away from commercial dieting to Do it Yourself. DIY breaks up that massive pie in to tiny pieces. Meaning the big companies are not getting the money they once did. Weight Loss Drugs have been failing miserably for the last 10 years. Weight Loss Surgery is making a lot of doctors wealthy. So calling Fatness a disease means new money comes into these "Cures". Cures that I might add don't work for most people in the long wrong and can cause more harm than good.

Health at Every Size has no real profit margin and helped try to improve quality of life. It works to help people of all sizes enjoy eating, moving, and loving their body again. Nothing in HAES calls you a disease or says you have a moral failing if you didn't get a chance to exercise.

The best thing I ever did to reduce body shame and to work on my health was to stop trying to be thin.

And if any young fat activist wants to do a guest blog, I’m okay with that. If you want to sell your “Fat is bad product”.  Go fuck yourself.

This App just Made me Unhealthy

There is apparently a new fitness app that makes fun of fat people if you fail to lose weight. (If you are interested you can click on the link below but make sure your sanity points are high.) I watched exactly one minute of a Good Morning America clip before I got angry and I felt my heart rate go up. This app didn't help me get healthy, it instead brought up my blood pressure.

I'm sure the makers (Actually one skinny boy) of the app didn't think they were causing harm or being stupid. I'm fairly certain he didn't bother to read studies or think things through. I'm fairly certain that he thought he was funny and he would probably tell me that I shouldn't be so touchy. After all if I don't like it I don't have to buy it.

I have mentioned on many previous posts that stigma NEVER works. It doesn't help you lose weight or get healthy. If anything it makes health worse by stressing out the person because no matter how hard they try or listen to their mean app, the weight loss doesn't happen in the long run.

"People who are criticized for their size often engage in dangerous dieting behaviors that put them more at risk for disordered eating and, ultimately, eating disorders," said Lynn Grefe, president of NEDA, in a statement.

I don't need a mean app to be healthy. I tried everything in the past to lose weight. and Both positive and negative reinforcement didn't work (And thanks to negative reinforcement my self-esteem plummeted.) Negative reinforcement was not allowing myself to do something I enjoyed or wanted unless there was weight loss.

I have a recumbent bike that I ride every day. Some days I can only do 20 minutes, some days I can do 40 minutes. My bike doesn't yell at me for not keeping up.

Making Safe Space in Your Body

Ending dieting and embracing HAES has helped improve my health, but it’s still hard when I’m bombarded with messages that fat is bad. I need to do more about dealing with the stigma of having a big body in a fat hating culture. If I can’t make the world a safe space, the least I could do is feel at home in my own body.

The Rudd Center recently came out with a study showing that weight stigma affects the stress hormone cortisol. This is just the beginning of showing that some "fat-related-diseases" may be more related to the stress of stigma rather than being over some arcane number.

Exposure to weight-stigmatizing stimuli was associated with greater cortisol reactivity among lean and overweight women. These findings highlight the potentially harmful

physiological consequences of exposure to weight stigma.

Another study said that labeling fatness as a disease undermines health.

Specifically, obese participants who read the "obesity is a disease" article placed less importance on health-focused dieting and reported less concern for weight relative to obese participants who read the other two articles. They also chose higher-calorie options when asked to pick a sandwich from a provided menu.

Essentially fat people who saw themselves labeled as diseased didn't care about health when dieting and also ended up eating more.

I've mentioned it before. Dieting pushes weight loss not health as the ultimate goal. You diet, you lose some weight, then the weight loss stops and you go on a massive binge. When all that matters is being thin, health usually goes out the window.

Stigma causes stress and anxiety. Fat people face stigma either outright or even unintentionally: Small seats, labeled diseased, poor quality clothes, assumptions that you drink soda, or don't exercise.

All this could lead to body shame and a mistrust in yourself. I mentioned that when I was climbing the Manitou incline it was harder the closer I got to my goal. I didn't trust myself to make it. It disturbs me because it's been over 10 years since I stopped dieting and tried to work on loving my body and still I have doubts. I still sometimes look at weight loss “successes” (the exception, not the rule) and wonder why couldn’t I do that.

Stigma is hard to escape especially when you are bombarded with weight loss ads, and fat hatred. When you're patronized and told just to eat one less cookie. So how do you escape the stigma? Staying in your house without access to internet isn’t going to cut it.

We can, and have, changed the world to becoming more accepting that people come in all shapes and sizes. It’s slow but happening.

However in the meantime we need to think of ways to protect ourselves from fat hatred.

The best way to deal with that is improving your self-esteem. Names become meaningless if you feel you are better than them. Here are a few suggestions to help deal with stigma.

  Love yourself and tell yourself of your achievements. Tell yourself you deserve it.
 Write everyday things you are grateful for.
 Meditate and do deep breathing. Try not to think about triggers. Empty your mind if possible and concentrate on your breathing.
Take a nice relaxing bath and tell your body how much you love it. If they didn’t make a bathtub big enough for you, take a nice hot shower.
If you are someone like me who blogs about fat hatred, give yourself a respite when you feel like you’ve had enough. Read a fat positive blog or book.
Remember this is the only body you have. You need to trust it.