qotd

[falcongrrl]

As Paul at Big Fat Blog aptly notes, "[The term] health and wellness' has become a euphemism for 'not fat.'" I personally encountered this mentality a lot during my eating disorder. People habitually complimented me on my weight loss and the improved health they assumed it brought, when in reality, I had never before been so sick and unhealthy. The often unsolicited comments annoyed me in that I felt weight was the only redeeming thing people saw about me, but they also spurred me on and validated all the dangerous sacrifices I was making in the pursuit of thinness.

Health has become the new buzzword in this post-9/11 culture, thus granting those who discriminate on the basis of weight an altruistic justification for actions that would, when directed towards women or minorities, be considered sexism or racism. But if our focus were truly on health, we'd have more stories celebrating people like Mo of Big Fat Deal, who was able to dramatically lower her cholesterol without losing a pound. We'd stop pushing dieting and start promoting HAES. We'd encourage people to develop healthy relationships with food and their bodies...We’d embrace a culture that recognizes and celebrates body size diversity as it purports to value racial diversity. We'd make healthy foods available and affordable to people of all socio-economic class levels. The fact that we do none of the above and instead persist in measuring 'health' against a 'badly flawed' litmus only indicates just what our priorities are and aren’t. And health? Doesn’t seem to be among them.

--Rachel (http://the-f-word.org/blog/)

Comments

[toob.livejournal.com]

While it is true that many unhealthy people are not obese, it is also true that most obese people are unhealthy.

It is certainly -- perhaps even often the case -- that those who are "overweight" are in fact living healthy lifestyles, the pervasive obesity in our society is all too often a very visual and apparent indicator of extremely poor diet and little to no exercise, both of which contribute greatly to bad health.

Consequently, when someone begins to lose weight, we tend to associate that weight loss with changes toward a healthy lifestyle -- better diet, more exercise, etc. It is a sad, sad commentary on our society that all too often this is not the cause of weight loss, that anorexia, fad diets, and weight loss pills are more often the cause.

It is not that health is not among our priorities -- that's an unfair criticism. It's just that we have been trained to associate obesity with unhealth. Most people have no IDEA that it's possible to be fat and fit at the same time.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who at her heaviest, weighed over 300 lbs. And at this point, she's eaten more mindfully and exercised and she's down very close to 200 lbs. She's in a much healthier place than she was before, and most definitely in a healthier place than another friend who is still struggling with heart arrythmias and low potassium levels due to bulimia (while she continues being voraciously athletic - to all appearances, she would definitely seem the more healthy of the two.)

And here I am...basically eating the same stuff I did in my twenties, although after two kids and I don't know how many rounds of antidepressants, I'm basically fat. I've dieted, and I do okay for a while, but then I stop.

For me, it works better to say, 'this is what I'm going to give my body to work with today.' It means realizing that the plain (but sweetened by me) oatmeal is more nutritious than Eggos. That yogurt is better than ice cream. It also means recognizing that greasy and spicy food give me terrible heartburn, and that I really can't drink soda anymore. (sorry if that's all tmi.)

At this point, my goal isn't really to lose weight (because what if I don't?) as much as it is to make better choices and fit some exercise into my day whenever it is realistically possible. Some days it works better than others. And there's the hope that good habits will build upon themselves.

But I'm concerned that a lot of schadenfreude and self-righteousness has built up around the concept of appearance-as-dictating-health. I have read so many accounts of epithets being screamed at fat people while they are exercising. It feels like a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' sort of catch-22.

So I'm glad when I read things like this where people are saying, "Umm, know what? I call bullshit, and here's why." Because it may not all be bullshit, for the reasons you've described. But a lot more of it seems to be than a lot of people have the courage to say.

[toob.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't know anyone at my gym who would give a heavy person shit for being at the gym exercising and working out.

A lot of us have been there -- when I first started exercising I was 195 lbs and over 50 lbs overweight. And I was so embarrassed to go to the gym and have my flabby self bouncing up and down. So I know how hard it is. MOST people at the gym know how hard it is, and I think most are supportive and encouraging toward people who are making an effort - there's a world of difference between making that effort and vegging out in front of the tv all day. But there are always one or two assholes anywhere you go.

I don't think of you as fat at ALL, and even though I have a number of friends who are technically overweight, most of those I don't think of fat either. They're not sitting on the couch shoving doritos dipped in sour cream and bacon into their mouths all day. They're not going out to Claim Jumper and cramming several pounds of red meat down their throats.

And anyway, the culture in which we live makes being lean an uphill challenge to begin with.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

I don't think of you as fat at ALL, and even though I have a number of friends who are technically overweight, most of those I don't think of fat either.

But this is interesting to me, because isn't fat linguistically supposed to have the same meaning as overweight? It seems that the word has acquired some additional connotation, but I'm not sure exactly what that is. Slothful? Ugly? Uncaring? It almost seems like there's a quality of saying, "no, not you, you're a good person, not one of those."

They're not sitting on the couch shoving doritos dipped in sour cream and bacon into their mouths all day. They're not going out to Claim Jumper and cramming several pounds of red meat down their throats.

I guess I don't know if anyone really lives like this, though, or if it's a myth. Like I know I could do better, and I know I could do worse, and it seems like most people are about at this level...regardless of size.

I wonder if the 'fattie' stereotypes are similar to other sorts of stereotypes, in that sometimes there's an element of truth in them, but sometimes it's purely negative biases. And it's definitely hard to tell the difference.

[toob.livejournal.com]

Although what I described is a slight exaggeration (except in one or two prominent cases), I DO know people who eat terribly, who never exercise, who don't take care of their health at all, and that to me is the big difference.

In fact, I've known quite a number of these people. But on the other hand, Americans in general have developed very bad eating habits, and it's not our fault.

Our society has a very bad relationship with food. We don't take time to eat well anymore. We don't buy ingredients and prepare food. We buy it in boxes and wrappers. It's crammed full of all sorts of ingredients we weren't meant to eat to make it taste better to us -- and that taste is just to cover up the bad taste of the preservatives used to keep it from spoiling, the coloring used to keep it from looking pale and disgusting after having been mass-farmed and frozen for several months. We don't eat like human beings are actually supposed to eat -- we eat like consumers are supposed to eat -- we process product. And this results in us being sick and overweight. Food companies have a vested interest in getting us addicted to their food, in finding ways to keep us consuming and consuming. You don't see, in other countries, the large waistlines we have in America. Not in the same quantities. Why is that? Do they not have enough to eat there? No, this is not the case. Do they prefer the taste of different foods? Not really.

It's just that the huge corporate feeding structure isn't in place there like it is here -- although you see it developing more and more in places like the United Kingdom.

We eat what's available to us, what's prevalent around us, what our friends are eating. And what that is is poisoned.

As long as what's primarily available for consumption is poison, what's easy to get is poison, what is manufactured to appeal to our basic instinct for dietary survival is poison, what our friends eat is poison, what is advertised on television and on posters and storefronts and billboards and shopping aisles is poison... we'll keep eating poison.

And all the talk about diet and exercise in the world won't help as long as that is the case.

I guess where I lose respect for people is when they're unwilling to do ANYTHING to try to be healthy, as in the stereotype I mentioned above, and I do know these people. There are not as many here in California as I knew in the south, but they do exist.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

I do agree with you on the whole here. I guess I'm just wondering how we stop participating in the whole machine, at least mindlessly. I wonder how we can become more conscious and eat like humans instead of consumers, when so much is rallied against us. It does also feel a little schizophrenic that the same media that advertises all the bad-for-you food also advertises clothes (& otherstuff) with size "0" models.

[malinandrolo.livejournal.com]

Just a note on what is a very good point: when I lost 40 pounds (through changing my diet and eating habits, mostly), most people ended up asking me if I was sick rather than saying I looked healthier. :P I'm sure there's some sort of dual standard applied to men as opposed to women.