Breaking News: Fat People Eat Instead of Sleeping

A new story making the rounds of the news feeds is about a study that claims a faulty circadian clock alters natural hunger cycles.

"Mice fed a high-fat diet experienced a sudden disturbance in their
circadian clocks, which caused them to overeat when they should have been
resting or asleep."

According to a more detailed article, the mice were fed a diet containing 45% fat for two weeks to create the disturbance of the body clock. There was no mention as to how they controlled for other nutrients (if half the calories are coming from fat, how nutrient-dense are the rest of them? Are the control mice getting more vitamins and minerals, and that's having an effect on the circadian?)

"The eating behavior of mice in the study mimicked that of people who experience munchies non-stop and then, after snacking all day, launch midnight raids on their refrigerators, Bass said."

Oh, right. I forgot. Fat people are fat because they eat ALL THE TIME, day and night, never pausing in the quest to stuff their face with baby flavored donuts and milkshakes made from kittens. How silly of me.

I really need to get a subscription to access studies beyond the abstract. I'd really, really like to know details that get handily left out by the media. What was the activity level of the mice? What were the total calories consumed by each group? Did they try a group of naturally fat mice as a control, or just overfeed a bunch of thin mice to make them temporarily fat (which would indeed mess seriously with their biological functions)? Did the researcher find out if the circadian is altered in mice that were born fat?

More importantly, why didn't I know that all fat people sleep badly? Gosh and Geburah, this could explain everything! Sleeping pills for everyone, lets cure this pesky epidemic.

*eye roll*

Cold Day, Spicy Food

Kalamazoo isn't that small. Granted, much of the population is seasonal due to two universities and a couple of colleges in the area, but you'd still think we'd have at least a couple restaurants that stretch the definition of "exotic" further than a Chinese buffet.

Finally, in the midst of this sub-zero February fark, I think we may have finally reached the tipping point where someone has decided that we can support an Indian grocery!

mmm....lentils....with chilies....

Just when I was really starting to get into a cooking funk from boredom, a whole new sub-continent is opened up to me. Finally, I don't have to base my recipes on what's available in the one single "international" aisle at Meijer's. Although, to be fair, they have been a reliable source for whole vanilla bean.

Now if we could just swing a nearby Trader Joe's, it would be like spring all over again :-)

BigMovesBabe left a great Paneer recipe on Shapely Prose today...anybody else have a favorite Indian recipe to share?

The How, Part 3: Be an Example? The challenges of representing fat

The How: Part 3

Be An Example?

(The Challenges of Representing Fat)

Picking up an old series on how individuals can find their own particular niche in Fat/Size Acceptance activism, I've reached what may be the most controversial of the suggestions: Be an Example.

A great post over at FatGrrl talked about the mind games many of us play as fat people. Amongst the other gems that made me cringe with guilt (because we've all been there, played that) is number two: "You’ve seen a fat person in a store in one of those motorized scooters and thought 'that’s what gives us a bad name.'"

Now I created the original "How" post before a lot of the cobwebs of self-loathing had been chased out of the attics of my unconscious, so I hadn't yet realized that I, as a fat person, have participated in fat hate. I’ve been guilty, upon seeing a fat person on television or in person who fit a certain stereotype, of thinking “how dare he/she, when other people will see that and judge me by it.” This may have been part psychological projection, part acceptance of the pop paradigm, or entirely my own awful ignorance. It doesn't matter. I never got to the point of actually going to peoples' faces or blogs and hating on them, but a quiet bigot is still a bigot. If I'm being entirely honest with myself, I was a hater in my own head. I don’t think I’ve really come to terms with that until now. How dare I think I have any right to expect someone to live their life differently because it fit the way I see the world? How dare I heap more negativity on people who are already buried beneath it, when they are human beings deserving of my respect? How dare I presume to have any right to judge, or even know anything about a person’s life, simply because they don’t waste time trying just as hard as I do to conform? How dare I, when others were probably doing the same when they looked at me?

A hate crime enacted upon yourself or upon others who resemble you, should still be considered a crime.

It’s a pretty subtle trap, the idea that all fat people represent fat. As illustrated in the "Knapsack of Privilege," very few groups of people get to walk out their front door without being a representative for something. Few human beings can dress however they want, do whatever they want, eat however they want, or express themselves without having to stop and consider what it says about every other person who looks like them. This is an incredibly powerful state of mind that does more to prevent equality than many more overt barriers. No one escapes it entirely, but some groups cannot escape it at all.

The assumption of representation is designed to keep a group of people in line with what society is comfortable thinking about them. It works so well that the people themselves adopt it, creating a self-regulating stereotype. Another way to put this is to say that living in deliberate avoidance of stereotypes is still allowing stereotypes to control your life.

I’ve been just as quick as any other FA activist to pull out the “good fatty” argument. If someone tells me I wouldn’t be fat if I just exercised enough, I point to Jennifer Portnick, the size 16 aerobics instructor that works out 6 days a week and leads back-to-back classes. I offer up Fat Girl on a Bike as a fantastic example of someone who is at the peak of fitness without being thin. If someone pulls the “donuts and Twinkies” argument, I hit back with the fact that many fat people actually dislike rich or sugary foods, some are vegans, some control carefully for carbohydrates. This works well in those discussions where you know the other party is really not up to the mental exercise of actual science or math and needs a simple picture drawn for them. Now I wonder whether I’m helping or hurting FA by doing so.

So let’s look at reasons why.

FOR:

Every movement throughout history has sought “poster people” who defy stereotypes and give the average citizen a real face to identify. Symbols are important, as they are easier to quickly grasp than studies when so much conflicting information is competing for our attention. If you are a beautiful woman who happens to be fat, it not only challenges the concepts of beauty pushed by the cosmetics and fashion industries, but serves as a positive message to those who still hate their own bodies. If you dress neatly and fashionably as a fat person, it challenges the idea that fat people never care about their appearance, or the infuriating “letting yourself go” theory of why fat people allow themselves to exist. If you eat healthy and exercise, it challenges the myth that doing such will make anyone thin.

The bias and hysteria over fat is so pervasive and under-challenged in mainstream culture that any tiny chip in the armor of certainty is a victory. The response to "well you're not a triathlete you fatty mcfatfat!" should be something like "No I'm not. But I can point to that person to challenge your first assumption. Now that it's out of the way, we can work on your assumption that you have any right to know or judge MY body or how I live MY life." When it comes to stereotypes and prejudice, sometimes you have to divide and conquer.

If you feel like your particular role in FA is to always appear well-dressed and perfectly groomed, become a positive role model in the community through volunteer work, promote HAES, or otherwise represent fat people, then that can be a positive force in changing minds and breaking down assumptions.

AGAINST:

The healthy and positive use of representatives is a pretty narrow line to walk. The danger both within and without the FA community is the potential to start dividing fat people into “good fatties” and “bad fatties.” This is not inevitable, but it is a constant danger that takes vigilance to avoid.

A discussion I’ve seen in FA is whether there is a “cutoff” at which someone is too fat, even for a movement labeled “fat acceptance.” I believe this has a lot to do with ideas people have about the image of the movement and how it will be received, but the question itself is a trap. Do we start excluding diabetics and PCOS sufferers, contenting ourselves with seeking rights for the “healthy fat”? What about the fat people who actually do like donuts? Do we exclude anyone that might allow haters fuel for their vitriol? The answer is certainly “no”.

The risk from outside the FA movement is that people will use the division as confirmation by fatties themselves that only some fat people deserve equality. This could be used as an excuse to transfer all the bias from all the fatties onto a few, who will be more bereft of support than ever. The risk is even more divisive from within FA. If fat people themselves fall into the “good fattie, bad fattie” trap, we will alienate those within the movement who will most benefit from FA and most suffer from discrimination. FA is not about fighting for the rights of healthy fat people, it's about ensuring that every fat person is treated as a human being. Fat Acceptance cannot retain the title if it is not about fighting for human rights for every fat person, period. Sometimes the "good fatty" game can distract from that message, and alienate those who feel that it puts pressure on them to be something other than themselves in order to fit in.

CONCLUSION:

Any tool in the arsenal against fat hate is useful, but any tool can be used with positive or negative results. There has to be a clear, consistant caveat to any use of representation that regardless of whether a fat person has a healthy diet or not, dresses fashionably or not, exercises or not, is married or not, is intelligent or not, is gay, straight, bi, diabetic, struggling with an ED, mobility-challenged, vegan, omnivore, tall, short, black, white, or any other state of being in addition to being fat, they are still human beings. Their weight, dress code, IQ, eating habits, activities, sexual nature or physical health is none of anybody’s business. No one gets to quiz them on their health history or lifestyle before passing judgement on them, because no one has the right to pass judgement on them in the first place. Fat people deserve equal rights and respect not because they are healthy, pretty, fit, disease-free or any other qualifier, but because they are first and foremost human beings.

The Purpose of Movement

I'm glad I got my Friday fluff out of the way yesterday, because this subject came up and I wanted to get my thoughts together on it.

How awful is the assumption that the sole purpose of moving your body in new ways can only logically be to lose or prevent fat? Much like the medicinalizing of food, the "workout" mentality sucks the joy out of what should be joyful and creates punishment in what should be empowering.

The long and short is that I went hunting for a new Yoga DVD. I've been using a very basic beginner's training for a month now, but I'm ready to move beyond it. What I found was that it's difficult to find a Yoga DVD that doesn't advertise itself as promoting weight loss. I seriously found titles like Cardio-Yoga, Yoga Dance Fusion, or more directly, Fat-Burning Yoga Workout! (most of them had a lot of exclamation marks and chipper half naked people in leg-warmers on the covers.)

When I first chose to learn Yoga, it's appeal was the focus on physical power, energy, flexibility, and balance. It's supposed to be meditative. It's not supposed to promise ten minute abs. When did we turn so much play into work? What happened to taking a walk in order to enjoy the walk instead of just trying to get that heart rate elevated? How grim a world where we're so caught up in the aerobics of it that we no longer love to dance?

The only Yoga DVD on the shelf at Barnes and Nobles that wasn't about "visible toning" or "fat burning Yogercise" was called "Fluid Power" by Shiva Rea. It's Vinyasa Flow Yoga, and was labeled for experienced beginner to intermediate. Perfect, just challenging enough, and no mention of abs, fat, or tone. So while I could have gone to Amazon and found a lot of great options, I grabbed this one.

I'm a big believer in synchronicity, so it shouldn't have been a surprise to me when I opened the DVD and found that the first sentence of the booklet says "Infinite gratitude to Yemaya".

Those who don't know me need some background on this. Yemaya is the mother of waters in some Yoruban and their syncretic spiritual traditions. She's the Orisha who rules the oceans, and some of her gifts are healing, intuition, magic, feminine strength and mystery. She's also a power that I personally honor because her symbols or her name tends to appear unexpectedly when I particularly need to pay attention to something in my life, or to confirm that I'm doing something good for myself. Like now.

The method on the DVD is about tuning into your body's connection to water through intuitive free-form movement and asanas. The instructional portion talks about the concepts in terms of both vedic teachings and quantum physics, and there are different practices for different levels and purposes. There's even special prep work to get ready for the namaskars (sun salutations).

But this post isn't really about the DVD itself (as geeked about it as I am); It's about the purpose of movement. I do understand that everyone is wired differently. Some people get the same quieting of mind and purpose from free weight reps as I get from the warrior poses. That's great. After all, "some people juggle geese." It's the people who see either of those as some sort of trial to be endured for the greater good of skinny that bother me. If your body is an obstacle, or a recalcitrant prisoner to be beaten into submission, how can you ever learn to trust it? If it's an opponent to fight, how do you ever find harmony with it? If movement is work, as in workout, how do you ever find joy in it?

What ever happened to dancing?

There are great nights every summer when a circle of close friends all get together around a big bonfire. Sometimes we have enough drummers to get a good complex beat going; other times we have to rely on recorded music. But the best nights are when the energy is high and we kick of our shoes to dance. Yes, even us fat chicks. We're not working out or counting calories burned. We're not trying to impress anyone. We're not worried if we don't impress anyone. We just dance, and laugh, and sometimes spin fire. It's a celebration.

I can drag myself into a gym to use an elliptical machine for twenty minutes and barely be able to walk the next morning because I'm so sore. I hate it, and I hate gyms. They work for a lot of people who find their own form of meditation in circuit training, but I'm not one of them. On the other hand, I can dance (and we're talking raw tribal dance..you want to define aerobic?) for four hours or more to a constantly evolving drumbeat, and wake up without a single sore muscle. Some people have it the other way around. Maybe it's like intuitive eating, where your body will tell you what movement is most beneficial to you on a holistic level, even if that level or type of movement doesn't work for anyone else. All I know is that what I'm doing seems to be right for me.

For that, for the new-found respect for my body inherent in FA, and for the joy of movement... my "infinite gratitude to Yemaya."

Recipe Box: Pico de Gallo, Guacamole, Chilaquiles

After my parents retired, they moved to Ajijic, a small town near Lake Chapala in the Jalisco state of Mexico. I visited them as often as I could afford it during the two years they lived there (they and my brother often helped me afford it!). Right now in the dregs of February, with the weather farking outside the window and threatening to dump another 6 inches of snow on top of the rising floodwaters, I wonder how irresponsible it would really be to use my credit card to hop a plane.

I remember the guys in pickup trucks full of ice that would drive around the neighborhood selling fish they caught that same morning. In Michigan you just don't get fresh shrimp. Ever. My parents grilled them outside with lime juice and a little garlic, then we had lunch in the garden with frosty margaritas and the smell of Jacaranda trees and old city carrying over the wall. The fruit was another marvel for a mid-westerner. I learned that oranges are supposed to be sweet, not sour and acidic. That's the difference of being allowed to ripen on the tree instead of in the truck. Orange mango juice from fresh picked fruit, pineapple that practically melts in your mouth, bananas with actual flavor...I think the lack of really fresh produce is the worst hardship of a Michigan winter. The stuff shipped up from other states tends to be green, sour, bland, or mealy. There's no dark fleshed plums that burst with juices when you bite into them. There's no green beans that steam up nice and crisp and taste like garden-grown bread. There's just the same tired staples under fluorescent lights, sprayed every ten minutes to look like they weren't shipped two thousand miles in the back of a diesel semi.

Every morning in Mexico you walked down to the Tortilleria and got a stack of handmade corn tortillas that served as a lesson in how to live without preservatives. The first day, stored in stone or clay baskets, they stayed soft enough to eat as tortillas. The next morning they were stiff and crumbly. You sliced them up to make chilaquiles in the morning (with scrambled eggs and leftover salsa), then quartered the rest to fry for corn chips. Then you took your basket and walked back down the cobblestone street to the Tortilleria, where the women wrapped your stack of warm tortillas in waxed paper to keep them fresh.

It was the same with salsa. You make fresh salsa at night to let the flavors really mix well. The next day you have delicious Pico de Gallo for almost any kind of dish or snack. The following morning you use it in chilaquiles, then add avocado to the rest for guacamole. Nobody does delicious leftovers like they do in Mexico.

So yeah, going to my warm happy place as I trudge through the snow, I decided to just go ahead and make a batch of fresh salsa for the Super-Tuesday C-span watching "party" on Tuesday. It tasted an awful lot like summer :-) Today it's just about ready to make into guac. If I can find any avacados.

Fresh Salsa (Pico de Gallo)

This is better if made at least an hour in advance, and best if made the night before and stored in the refrigerator. That gives the lime juice and salt time to draw the juices from the tomatoes and onions and really temper the flavors.

6-8 fresh roma tomatoes
2 medium red or yellow onions
3 limes
1 bunch fresh cilantro
2 jalapeno peppers (optional - more if desired)
1 tablespoon coarse (sea) salt

Cut tomatoes in half and scoop out (fingers or a spoon) the seed pulp (or as I call it: the nasty slimy bits)
Chop tomatoes into medium chunks (approx 1/4-1/2 inch)
Slice jalapenos lengthwise and carefully remove core and seeds. Rinse to remove all seeds.
chop jalapenos very finely
Peel onion and chop into medium chunks
remove cilantro stems and chop/shred leaves (approx 1 cup)
Juice the limes; you want about 3-4 tablespoons of juice

Mix all the ingredients well together.
Cover bowl tightly with wrap or lid and let sit in refrigerator at least an hour, preferably overnight.
Serve with a variety of corn chips.

This keeps for a couple days in the fridge, but not much longer. On the second morning, leftovers!

Guacamole:

Use the leftover salsa from above, add equal amounts of avocado.
Slice the avocado lengthwise and scoop out the meat and pit.
Set the pit aside
Use a fork to mash the avocado and salsa together. I like to leave it a little chunky so you can really taste the avacado.

If you're not serving immediately, guacamole will oxidize very quickly. It doesn't make it "bad", but it turns black and looks pretty gross. To prevent this, put the avocado pits back into the bowl, pressing them down into the top of the guacamole. Cover with saran wrap directly onto the dip and pits, leaving as little air as possible between the wrap and the guacamole. Who knows why, but the pits help prevent the dip from oxidizing.

Chilaquiles:

This was the best breakfast, even if it doesn't quite taste the same in winter :-) I've actually found that cooking it in well-seasoned cast-iron makes it taste more authentic:

For each serving:
2 Leftover soft corn (masa flour) tortillas
2 eggs, scrambled
2 Tablespoons salsa ranchero or 1/2 cup leftover Pico de Gallo
1 Tablespoon fresh cream (can substitute sour cream in the U.S.)
1 tablespoon fresh salsa (or to taste)
1 teaspoon olive oil
cut the tortillas into strips and cook in the oil on medium-high until crispy or browned
turn down heat
add eggs and salsa
cook over medium low heat until eggs are to your liking
serve with a dollop of fresh cream or sour cream and fresh salsa. This can be a main dish for breakfast or a "side dish" with eggs and toast

Fat People Sports!

It's an old FAQ, but so far in my reading it's an excellent one!

Big Folks Sports and Activities FAQ

It goes through various sports and physical activities and talks about how to do them as a fat person. Considering my last post, I consider this find a sign that I'm on the right track. They've got a pretty good section on horseback riding. They also have a good section on caving, but while it sounds like a helluva blast, I doubt I have the time or money for the strength training and equipment it would require.

Wouldn't it be grand, though? :-)

I should get back down to Mammoth Cave this year. I used to go every summer as a kid.

Giving up the Fantasy

Thanks almost entirely to Kate Harding's eye-opening blog on The Fantasy of Being Thin, I've posted the following ad to Craig's List:

Looking for a place to take riding lessons or rent a horse for trail riding within 1/2 hour or so of the Kalamazoo/Portage area, either after 5pm or weekends. Specifically looking for a place with a sturdy horse (clyde, shire, quarter, etc.) that can carry a 300 pound fat chick. Grew up with horses but haven't ridden in 10 years. Willing and able to work as part of/in exchange for lessons (stall cleaning, stacking hay, grooming, some carpentry, etc.) Prefer private lessons or adult group with teacher who doesn't judge ability by body size. Frequency of lessons depends on schedule and price.

This is my fantasy of being thin.


I grew up with horses (two AQHA registered geldings), but had to give them both up when I went overseas in my senior year of high school. They went to good homes, and I went to Europe. No regrets, really. The exchange year was a once in a lifetime opportunity and did more to temper me than anything else I've ever done.

I did, however, miss the stable. Fiercely. While I was living in France I tried to take riding lessons, but their horses were too small and I was too heavy. I was at my thinnest in a very long time after swimming and walking every day, but at 6’2” I was pretty damn fit and still 280 pounds. To say I was too heavy to ride isn't fat hatred, just biology. Horses are not machines, and the average riding horse does risk back injury if they carry someone over 240 pounds.

So I made it my shiny, pretty, far-off star to reach for during the next three years. When I got down to 240, I would find a stable and ride again. When I got down to 240 I would finally take dressage lessons instead of the putz-around trail riding I was content to do as a kid. When I got down to 240, I would be a horsewoman, and content, and pretty, and happy, and free, and have no problems whatsoever.

Of course, as we all know, I would never get down to 240, and even if I did, only the first of that list would really change. Not even by swimming laps for an hour every morning before work, doing cardio and weight training every day after work, and eating the media perfect “healthy” diet chock full of veggies, whole grains and lean meats, would I ever maintain a weight below my body's set-point. I lived like that for two years in complete social isolation and never got within spitting distance of that goal weight. Nevermind the 180 pounds I was "supposed" to weigh according to the BMI chart maximum.

Now I have no idea what I weigh, and don't much care. I'm about a size 26/28 in most clothing lines now that my body's set point has "reset" higher from dieting. The one line I had to cross in accepting the FA state of mind was that I thought I had to give up on this one fantasy. I know there's a stereotype about fat girls who like horses, as if it's some kind of freudian defect to har har about. That I could get over. Giving it up would be a lot harder.

This one last dream never changed throughout my life, even when others (like doing the Wild Cave Tour spelunking trip at Mammoth Cave) came and went as motivators to chase thin. I loved going to fairs and horse shows just to walk up and down the aisles. I love the smell of dust and hay. I love to watch them move, I love to do all the little chores of grooming, clipping, brushing, braiding. I didn’t want to give up that part of my identity.

But maybe I don’t.

Now that I'm working my way through the stages of fat acceptance, I'm also learning to think outside the fantasy. For example, did you know that you can put a saddle on a Clydesdale? Also, quarter horses can come pretty big; Ours were 16 and 17 hands and they carried me just fine. Sure I'd need a step to mount until my leg muscles caught up to the jump, but does that matter so much? If I toss the fear that everyone will laugh at the fat chick on the horse, is there really any reason why I have to be six sizes smaller, just to grant myself permission to do something I love?

This is my fantasy of being thin.


And this is me letting go of it.

On a personal note....

New Haiar fridge with adjustable glass shelves and humidity controlled produce drawers: $395.

Delivery, set up and haul away old fridge: $30

Knowing that next time I open the door the cilantro won't be frozen solid and the yogurt won't have completed it's short journey to becoming strawberry-botulism flavored cheese curd: priceless.

ahhhhhhhhh.....

Ok, I crunched a lot of numbers yesterday on the cost of health care, so today I get a break. At least until tonight when I turn on C-span for the primaries.

Big Fat Public Health Care Costs (Revised)

Ok, some people took umbrage with my math in my original post comparing the cost of obesity vs. the cost of the war on obesity. My math was pretty generalized, but then, so are the estimates thrown about by the media on what a fat person costs the taxpayers. My conclusion was that the U.K. is actually spending 35 Million GBP more on failed attempts to make people not fat than they claimed fat people actually cost the public health care system. E-mailers didn't like that.

So I dug deeper. I found more hard numbers, citations, data from the UK's National Audit Office, etc. What I realized part way through is that I'm arguing against fallacious methodology in the first place. The UK's estimate of what "obesity" costs the NHS each year is based on the cost of treating fat people for diseases they assume are caused by fat. The specific studies they use to determine this aren't listed, but considering no independent study (as in, not funded by pharmaceutical companies or weight loss clinics) has proven that fat causes a single disease (remember: correlation is not causation), and that more recent studies are showing that even correlation disappears in most cases when physical fitness is taken into account, I cannot accept their numbers estimating the "cost of obesity" to be valid in the first place.

So here's the revised breakdown, showing that instead of 35 Million GBP, the UK is actually wasting 324 Million GBP, or US $639,772,672.47 trying to make people no longer fat.

(update 2/5/08: Ironically, the day after I posted this, a supporting article came out on Junkfood Science. It analyzed a new study that shows fat people actually have fewer health care costs than thin people over a lifetime. Who'da thunkit?)

Big Fat Public Health Care Costs

It's a good year to be fat, especially if you're a shareholder of Roche or GlaxoSmithKline. According to a January, 2008 report the sale of prescription weight-loss drugs has undergone an eightfold increase since 1999. 1.06 million people in the U.K. are on some kind of prescription drug that promises to usher them into the exciting new world of fashionable thinness through unfortunate (and sometimes lethal) side effects. The majority of media coverage is touting this fact as a positive move, due to what they claim is the high cost of obesity to the public health service.

Claims of “the cost of obesity” vary wildly, from 1 Billion GPB to 40 Billion GBP per year. Few of these claims cite scientific sources; fewer still actually detail the methodology of arriving at that number. One of the few that does is the official Audit Office of the British Government. They say that obesity costs their country 500 million GBP per year. They come to that figure by researching various studies that show a correlation between adiposity and particular diseases. They then calculate the cost of treating the people in the “obese” category of the BMI scale for those diseases, adding in workdays lost through sickness and early death.

This sounds scientific until one considers the fact that thin people get those diseases too. It’s only in fat individuals that the disorder is blamed on the adipose tissue, rather than the likelier suspects of genetics, environment, stress and/or level of fitness. In other words, the estimated cost of obesity is based entirely on the false assumption that correlation equals causation, and that the disease being treated would not exist if obesity were eliminated. (2001 NAO report by the Comptroller and Auditor General).

If, as many studies independent of the pharmaceutical industry are now showing, fatness has little or no bearing on health when fitness is taken into account, this estimate of 500 million GBP disappears entirely. But let’s look at some numbers that do not disappear quite so easily.
According to the NHS (National Health Service), they spend $47.5 Million GBP on prescription weight loss medication, primarily Orlistat and Sibutramine.

According to the British Obesity Surgery Patient Association, an average of 10,000 weight loss surgeries are performed in the UK each year. An average cost for WLS (without complications) is 10,000 GBP. Complications arise in an average of 16% of cases, more than doubling the cost of the treatment. So, on average, the UK can expect to spend approximately 116 Million GBP per year on WLS procedures, not counting lost workdays and the cost of the much-shortened lifespan of WLS patients.

34 Million GBP has been allocated annually to local primary care trusts for obesity prevention programs.

124 Million GPB has been allocated per year over three years for the new 5-point plan for obesity prevention, including programs targeting the gaming industry

2.5 Million GBP has been allocated for the NHS to offer free dance and boxing classes to obese individuals.

So far we’re up to 324 Million GBP, or 64% of the original 500 million GBP expenses blamed on obesity. As no hard numbers were available, I did not account for the cost of TV ads, NHS doctor consultations and monitoring of diets, supplements for programs such as Weight Watchers, government grants for studies, the time and expense of schools to weigh and measure students or police their lunch boxes for snacks, or the billable hours of elected and appointed officials to study, brainstorm, argue, and fight for anti-obesity policies.

In other words, the “cost of obesity” could be better labeled as the “cost of the war on obesity”. The British government is spending 324 Million GBP, or US $639,772,672.47) on failed attempts to make their citizens not fat. So who is really costing whom?

Imagine what all that time and money could do to benefit every citizen if it were spent on HAES instead of hate?

One survivor in Lane Bryant shooting

Police have confirmed that a sixth woman in the Tinley Park store shooting on Sunday survived the incident and was released from the hospital. They don't release any information on her, however, since she's in protective custody until the killer is caught.

Other stores in the mall are open today, and some of the employees are speculating about the motive for the shooting, which left five women dead in the Lane Bryant store. Police say it's a robbery, but some have pointed out that the clothing store wouldn't have much cash on hand. Officials are investigating whether one of the women might have known the gunman.

The dead include store manager McFarland, 42, of Joliet; Connie R. Woolfolk, 37, a real estate broker from Flossmoor; Carrie Hudek Chiuso, 33, a social worker from Frankfort; Sarah Szafranski, 22, a paralegal and graduate of Oak Forest High School; and Jennifer L. Bishop, 34, a nurse from South Bend, Ind., who accompanied her husband to a convention in Tinley Park.

One of the women did apparently try to fight the attacker. Relatives who claimed her body say she had blood under her fingernails and was badly beaten. Thanks to her efforts, they may have DNA to help convict the killer.

Lane Bryant is offering a $50,000 reward.

Shooting at Lane Bryant

5 women were killed at a Lane Bryant in Chicago's Tinley Park around 10:44 am this morning. Police believe that the motive was robbery, and are still looking for the gunman. At least one victim was an employee of the store. Another victim was identified as Carrie Hudek, a 33 year old social worker from Frankfort. The other victims names have not been released, as the families have not yet been notified. They ranged in age from 24 to 40.

The store did not have a surveillance camera, but police are searching surveillance footage from other stores in the area, hoping to catch a glimpse of the killer.

My hope is that the world of pundits and bloggers treat this as the tragedy it is, and remember the humanity of the victims and their families. My sincere sympathy is with them in their time of loss.

Are health risks of fat exaggerated? (well duh!)

The health risks attributed to fat exaggerated from shaky conclusions and a misinterpreted causal relationship? Say it ain't so! :-) Seems like I've heard something like this before, just not sure where....

The Star Tribune in Minneapolis published a quiet little piece about a recent British Medical Journal debate where, wonder of wonders, a couple of rogue experts are actually disputing the epidemic and dangers of fat.

The article, "Are the health risks of obesity overblown?" is available to view once before you have to buy a subscription, so be sure to print it off. (note: if you delete your browser cookies you can read it again.) It features the highlights of a debate between two sets of scientists. One trots out the same tired old propaganda (OMGDIABETES!!!)

The other?

"Media claims about an epidemic ... often exceed the scientific evidence and mistakenly suggest an unjustified degree of certainty."

Really? huh. You mean having breasts doesn't mean I'll automatically get diabetes? Whoda thunk it?

Wait, there's more!

"...The death rates from heart disease and stroke have been falling, not rising. There's no direct evidence that excess fat causes diabetes. "We argue ... that obesity is a symptom of Type 2 diabetes, rather than a cause," said Luik in an e-mail interview. "For instance, changes in physical activity and diet reduce diabetes risk even without loss of weight. How does this support a cause and effect relationship?"

Holy crap on a cracker, Batman! You mean they're still teaching the difference between correlation and causation at those fancy medical schools these days? I would jump up and do a happy dance, but I think the guy at the copier would look at me funny :-)

"Health advocates have resorted to "deliberate exaggeration or, indeed, misrepresentation of the risks" of obesity."

Who cares what the guy at the copier thinks? *HAPPY DANCE!*

Oh, and it's a relief to know that Mememe doesn't get to dance on the graves of the fat people:

Isn't Obesity Deadly? "The evidence is not as strong as you might think. In 1997, the National Institutes of Health found that thin men had the same risk of dying prematurely as overweight men. Any increase in risk is relatively small compared to, say, smoking. "Despite the supposedly abnormal levels of overweight and obesity, life expectancy continues to increase," the two wrote in the British Medical Journal.

Huh...I think I've heard that one before as well....where could it have been? Oh well, I'm sure my memory would improve if I just lost 50 pounds, right?

narf.

In the meantime, Patrick Basham and John Luik are the co-authors of a book that's going right on my Amazon wish list: "Diet Nation: Exposing the Obesity Crusade." It's only available in the UK so far, but I may be able to track it down through the library.

More articles from the same authors:

http://www.forces.org/research/luik/luikintr.htm
http://democracyinstitute.org/Obesity.html

How to contact the sponsors of Mississippi HB 282

In case you missed it, this is the bill that would forbid restaurants from serving food to anyone considered obese.

If you'd like to contact those responsible for this particularly loathesome brainchild, here's how:

Lead Author: Representative W. T. Mayhall, Jr. (R)

Contact Information:

Capitol:
P. O. Box 1018
Jackson, MS 39215

Home:
8417 Cedarbrush Drive
Southaven, MS 38671

(662)393-2069 (H)
(901)734-9540 (C)

tmayhall@house.ms.gov

Co-Author: Representative Bobby Shows (D)

Capitol:
P. O. Box 1018
Jackson, MS 39215

Home:
P. O. Box 373
Ellisville, MS 39437

(601)477-9225 (H)
(601)477-3956 (W)

bshows@house.ms.gov

Co-Author: Representative John Read (R)

Contact Information:

Capitol:
P. O. Box 1018
Jackson, MS 39215

Home:
2396 Robert Hiram Drive
Gautier, MS 39552

(228)497-9852 (H)
(228)497-4090 (W)

jread@house.ms.gov

As a disclaimer, I'm not advocating hate mail, vandalism or anything else illegal or ethically questionable in posting this info. I do think that some informational letters and literature would maybe help to gently correct some ignorant thinking here.

A bill to prevent fat people from eating in public!?

I know I've done this before, but ...

SERIOUSLY!?

SERIOUSLY!?

When I first read this one over at Junkfood Science, I had to double check to make sure the guest writer wasn't from The Onion. Or even the great new Fat Satire (FatSat?) site The Health Institute for Nutrition. I couldn't believe this was something real, or that any elected official could honestly expect to pass legislation that would forbid restaurants from serving food to fat people. That the constitution could somehow allow a state to yank the license of a business that chose to seat anyone who wanted to eat there.

Really, aren't they leaping ahead? Shouldn't they first establish a Fat Section and a Not-Fat section? They could even have completely separate facilities, so that thin people don't have to use the same water fountain. After all, fat is contagious, right?

end sarcasm.

My first reaction, of course, was a cold finger of ice up my spine. Sure they'll never pass it, it can't be anything but a gesture. But the fact that such a gesture can come from a person in a position of authority makes me very, very glad I live in Michigan. *

Basically this stump bill states that the Mississippi department of health is responsible for giving every restaurant in the state information on how to tell if someone is obese. They're non-specific as to how, but I'm sure it'll be easy. After all, isn't it easy to tell how much someone weighs by looking at them? They are then obligated to refuse to serve the bad fatty mcFatFat, and if they dare to do otherwise, their license to serve food at all could be revoked. Then once the fat people can no longer eat in public, they will starve down to a weight that doesn't offend the delicate sensibilities of fat-haters.

Oh wait....grocery stores...and genetics!

curses! foiled again!

So...should we start laying plans for the lunch counter sit-in's now, or wait to see if it dies without fanfare? I don't relish Mississippi in the summer, but it might actually be more effective if we're all in shorts and tank tops.

The funniest headdesk-hysterical part is that the bill would enact three days before the fourth of July.

Happy Independence Day.

Get it?

Ha.

* Michigan’s Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (any age), height, weight, or marital status.

Big Fat public health care costs - a breakdown

It's a good year to be fat, especially if you're a shareholder of Roche or GlaxoSmithKline. Apparently the sale of prescription weight-loss drugs has undergone an eightfold increase since 1999. 1.06 million people in the U.K. are on some kind of prescription drug that promises to usher them into the exciting new world of fashionable thinness through heart palpitations or uncontrollable loose bowels. Why all this fuss?

Why, for the burden of obesity on public health care! The article claims that obesity will cost the U.K. 45.5 billion GBP a year by 2050. They arrive by this highly scientific number by a careful weighing of the cost of every disease obesity is supposed to cause, multiplied by the estimated likelihood that the person with that disease is fat. After all, correlation is always causation, so every fat person with heart disease has only their fat to blame. They run the data through a highly calibrated publicly-funded magic 8 ball to arrive at the 45.5 billion GBP figure. Oh, did I mention that they include the cost of the research to stigmatize fat people into the cost of obesity? Sort of like suing people and tacking on your own lawyer's fee for the trouble it took to do so.

So let's break this down.

A one-month supply of the popular weight-loss drug Xenical is 102.792 GBP at drugstore.com. Let's use that as an estimate. After all it's just as scientific as their numbers.

A one year supply of Xenical is 1233.50 GBP. Multiply that by the 1.06 million people and you are spending 1,307,510,000 GBP per year on weight loss drugs in the UK. That's on the public dole.

Weight loss surgeries have increased dramatically as well. In 2005 there were 4400 surgeries performed in the UK. Since that's the most recent hard number I could find, I'll go with that. After all, we want to be scientific. An average cost for WLS (without complications) is 10,000 GBP. So, in 2005, the UK spent maybe 44,000,000 GBP on WLS procedures.

Now the 45 billion GBP projected for 2050 is a projection, of course. Right now the same study states that "obesity" costs the public health system a whopping 1 billion GBP per year.

So let's break this down. Let's be unscientific and set aside the fact that correlation is not causation and that the cost estimates are radically skewed in the first place as they have no evidence that any of the diseases used in the estimate are actually CAUSED by fat. Only that some fat people have those diseases. (as do some thin people...coincidence?) They also generally fail to take into account the studies that show that fat has protective aspects that reduce the occurrence of certain diseases, and therefore LOWER health care costs in those instances. So let's accept the magic 8 ball numbers and say for argument's sake that fat costs the British Health system 1 billion a year. Let's fudge in the other direction to really be generous with our estimates and not take into account the cost of government staff and resources to enact anti-fat policy, police lunchboxes, lobby for new food labeling guidelines throughout the EU, and other "hidden" costs of the war on obesity.

If fat costs the UK 1 billion GBP a year, and failed attempts to make people not fat costs the UK a highly conservative 1.35 billion GBP a year, doesn't that mean the attempt to solve the problem costs the taxpayers 35,000,000 GBP more than the cost of the original problem?

Doesn't that mean that the UK could very conservatively save itself 35 million GBP a year (approx. US$69,537,012.28 at the current exchange rate) by simply ending the war on fat?

I wonder, if they plowed that 35 million into promotion of HAES, fresh foods in schools, pedestrian-friendly cities, etc.....would they also eliminate the so called "cost of obesity"? A lot of studies are now showing that when lifestyle is taken into account, active and fit fat people (even the "morbidly obese) have the same relative lifespan and health as active and fit thin people.

coincidence?

I think not.

My first photo-shoot

I'm very geeked, the pics from the photo shoot with my friend Breanna came back. It's my first experience modeling for a real photographer who will actually use the pieces in her art.

This one's my favorite, and is definitely my new profile shot:

I'm told that if the subject actually likes 1 in 10 pics from a photo shoot then its a resounding success. That makes this session much better than average. What kills me is that a year ago I would have begged her to delete this because it didn't hide every curve and find that perfect angle that made me look like Angelina Jolie. Is there even such an angle? Who cares? I look damn good in trickster colors. :-)

The best part of posing for her is that she has a great eye for color, and she's a fellow fattie so she knows when I'll be unhappy with a particular shot.

I can't wait for summer so we can do some outdoor sessions.

Fighting for Civility

In the midst of my news searches over the weekend, I apparently missed a complete gem of an editorial that's too good to pass up.

Lucinda Breeding of the Denton Record-Chronicle wrote a piece on Fat Acceptance this past Sunday that I plan to print off and add to my affirmations scrapbook. It's the first really good media response to the New York Times piece on the Fatosphere and if this woman isn't already in the FA movement, I sure hope we can convince her.

"It doesn’t take too much time spent lurking on the blogs to see why they liken their struggles to a fight for civil rights.
In fact, they are fighting for our civility."

How perfectly expressed! That really is the point behind everything the FA movement stands for...that fat people have the right to be treated as human beings. Isn't that the core of civility, to treat people with decency, as human beings instead of objects? We've made a lot of progress towards that goal since the rough beginnings of our culture, but we're certainly far from perfection.

That of course reminds me of Ghandi's quote when asked what he thought of Western Civilization: "I think it would be a very good idea."

"If you’re sedentary and fat, you’re a sinner. If you’re fat and manage two trips to the gym each week, you’re cheating. If you’re a triathlete and fat, you’re destroying your body. Not that the critics have degrees in theology or sports medicine."

Apparently in Denton, TX there's at least one paper willing to print an editorial calling the critics out on their own turf. Bravo!

This particular paragraph slams M. Roth by name and points out her hypocrisy. I'm starting to wonder if Meme isn't FA's best friend, if she's going to continue to make fat hatred look so frantic and ridiculous.

I'd be pretty surprised if Lucinda Breeding isn't a Shapeling in the making. She mentions in her editorial that she's been lurking around the Fatosphere since the NYT article came out. If this is an example of how she expresses herself, I hope she does more than lurk.

Nothing to Do with Feminism

Fat Activism has nothing to do with feminism. Nothing at all. The modern fat health hysteria is completely gender blind. That's why someone put time, money and staff into searching out a correlation between breast size and diabetes. It's also why the careful wording of the scare-tactic headlines are sure to specify bra size as the pertinent risk factor so that men can be sure they're not the ones at risk. Yup, obviously not a feminist issue.

*headdesk*

On top of the obvious scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to be afraid of, this series definitely gets a CDNEC.

(More) Reactions to the NYT article on Fat Blogs

I've been trying to keep up with the slow trickle of news picking up on the awesome New york Times article on Fat Bloggers. The first batch can be found in my summary Here.

THE GOOD:

A lot of the news spread pretty much regurgitates the NYT article word-for-word, such as the National Ledger article from yesterday, and the Tacoma, Washington's News-Tribune article today. They're presenting the issue at face value without tacking on any YOUGONNADIE opinions, which makes them pretty positive!

THE BAD:

While not a lot of news agencies are picking up on this, it's all the buzz in blogs, mostly critical. Google search "fatosphere" for a sample, if you're really masochistic. Also be prepared for an increase in douchhoundery and more fatosphere blogs with the comments moderated.

THE UGLY:

Watch out for those Sanity Watcher Points...Good old D. Savage was on the NYT article like the family dog on leftover chicken in the trash. I won't be linking to it, but at least some of his commenters are starting to express impatience with the recurring theme (read: vendetta).

FA on Fox!?

Does that mean Hell really has frozen over?

(This morning's temperature in Hell, Michigan was -2 degrees fahrenheit, with expected highs of 22 degrees. )

Yup.

Rachel from The F-Word has been invited to appear on Fox’s "Morning Show with Mike and Juliet" this upcoming Monday, to follow-up on the NYT article on Fat Bloggers.

You can see where the show will broadcast in the U.S. at this site. Here in Michigan it's at 9am on the Detroit station, so I really hope someone captures it for YouTube!

It's mixed news, however as they're also inviting fat-hater Meme Roth, who's loathing for her own fat relatives has turned her into a crusader against fat in any form, at any age. She's the rabid idjit behind the fight to make Santa Claus skinny, believes that a healthy woman should be able to fit into her wedding dress for the rest of her life, and threw herself into the public cross-hairs by announcing that Jordin Sparks was "too fat" to deserve to be an American Idol. She was quoted as saying "When I look at Jordin Sparks, I see diabetes". She's an "image consultant" in New York, which makes me wonder how she can possibly be touted as an "obesity expert" by Fox. That's basically like saying a clothing designer is an "obesity expert" because they might sew fabric to cover fat bodies.

Hopefully, Rachel will be able to counter her vitriol and make people see her for the ignorant hate-mongerer she really is.

Give 'em hell!

HAES in the News

"Chasing Perfection," an article in the Australian Courier News yesterday pointed out the connection between dieting, body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. It was a very body-positive article:

""There is a lot of evidence that the more people practise restrictive eating – which is what dieting is – the more likely they are to gain weight," says Lily O'Hara, a public health expert and lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast."

You don't often articles willing to criticize the "obesity" hysteria, it's almost become unpatriotic to do so (regardless of the country). I'm glad to see the Courier News willing to do so.



In Holland, Michigan, a hospital is offering a 12 week course in HAES, including body acceptance, pleasure in movement and intuitive eating. The description worries me a little since it puts it in the context of weight-loss, but it does say

"The program embraces the concept that individuals can be healthy at any size and learn to accept their bodies"

I'm really tempted to go to the informational meeting just to see. I would never be able to make the actual sessions (too far away), but I would like to know what approach they're using.


For those of you unfamiliar with the HAES concept, it promotes the idea that people can be "Healthy at Every Size" (HAAS is an alternative version, or "Health at Any Size"). Balanced eating, fitness and positive body image are the goals, rather than weight loss. More information can be found at: http://www.bodypositive.com/

UK encourages bribery to get rid of fatties

They've begged, bullied and bludgeoned fat people, now the UK is resorting to bribery by paying people to lose weight. Basically, they're going to try and turn British companies into settings for competitions along the lines of "The Biggest Loser" with cash prizes for the most weight lost.

There are many claims out there on the cost of fat people to the health care system. These costs are used as scare tactics to force both companies and units of government to "do something" about fat people. How are these costs determined?

Reactions to NYT Article: The Good, The Bad, The Funny

In case anyone's been out of town in the last few days, you've probably already heard about the fat-abulous article in the New York Times about FA bloggers. The buzz has spread, so I thought it would be interesting to do a quick round-up of reactions so far as everyone else scrambles to pick up the story. I'll try to do another round-up later in the day to see if this dies or explodes.

The Good:

The Boston Globe's Miss Conduct posted a very personal, heartwarming reaction to the article, talking about her own body issues and her concern over the hate mail she gets whenever she has the temerity to "suggest treating fat people with courtesy." There's a LOT of good stuff in this piece (my only wish is that it were longer). Amongst other profound bits of insight, she takes the cake when she says, "I cannot fathom what it must be like to have others take it upon themselves to hate my body for me." Looking forward to more good stuff from that quarter in the future.

The Chicago Tribune has picked up the NYT article wholesale. There's a few additional quotes, but it's otherwise the same article. The main difference is that comments are enabled. This may be a good opportunity for follow-up if the fatosphere keeps on the comments and respond appropriately, but they may need Sanity Watchers points.


The Bad:

Harriet from Feed Me! had a rough time on a shock-jock show that invited her on presumably to talk about the NYT article, but really just as a target for hate. She sounds like she kept her cool and cited good evidence in the face of their crap. I know from experience that radio interviews can be a cause for sweaty panic, especially live! Hopefully a few listeners were able to hear her over the obnoxious host.

ABC News has coverage on the story, interviewing Lesley Kinzel from Fashionista, Monique van den Berg from Big Fat Deal, and Lara Frater from Fat Chicks Rule. It starts out with fairly good coverage, but on the second page it devolves back to "OMGFATKILLS". So mixed reviews, but the condescending tone of the last few paragraphs puts this one in "The Bad" category. Comments are enabled here as well, so watch those sanity points.

Kate Harding from Shapely Prose was invited to New York to appear on the "Today Show," only to be canceled at the last minute so that they could cover Heath Ledger's death. Instead the show featured an outrageously commercial, overfluffed plug for bariatric surgery. So it goes.

The Funny:

Not to double-dip, but going back to the Boston Globe's Miss Conduct piece, the closing line almost made me snort apple bits:

"As I've said before, if you think fat people have no self-discipline, consider the fact that they haven't killed you yet."

Congratulations FA Bloggers!

I know everybody's already talking about it, but I have to add my seriously cheerleader-type screech of excitement over the totally fat-positive article on FA bloggers in the New York Times today! Shapely Prose, Big Fat Deal, The Rotund, Feed Me, Fat-Fu, Red No. 3, and The F-Word are all mentioned and/or quoted. Good studies are referenced on why fat isn't necessarily bad for you, and the writers give fantastic positive snippets, such as:

"Smart, sassy and irreverent, bloggers with names like Big Fat Deal, FatChicksRule and Fatgrrl (“Now with 50 percent more fat!”) buck anti-obesity sentiment. They celebrate their full figures and call on readers to accept their bodies, quit dieting and get on with life."

The article headlines on the website as the main story in the health section (with the great shock-graphic of the cute little girl mouwing on chocolate cake from The F-Word's banner). While I'm sure they're worried about attracting new and dis-improved douchehounds, I'd also guess they'll get some new folks wanting to join the fight for body acceptance.

Congrats to all the interviewees for doing a great job in representing us!

Weekend Fluff: Free Rice

Go to http://www.freerice.com/

It's an addicting word game, and for every correct answer you donate 20 grains of rice through the UN to end world hunger.

Yeah, that's all warm and squishy, but really it's about the fun word game to kill time at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. Forget about Sunday afternoons, this is the true "long dark teatime of the soul."

I peaked out at a score of 46. I'll come back on Tuesday and try again in case my brain just went home early today.

Fat Dance

I'm feeling curmudgeony, so I thought I'd try to counter it with something positive. Not the web comic (both twisted AND funny), but just a little something to show that for each step back, there really is at least one forward!

A special on China Central Television today talks about the growing popularity of the "Danza Voluminosa," a ballet troupe composed of exclusively fat dancers.

A few folks have blogged about this in the past as it's cropped up in the news over the last decade, but the fact that it keeps on coming up might just convince the skeptics who think this sort of thing might be nothing more than a fad or publicity stunt.

To review the fat positive press on these dancers:
NPR covered the troupe in a very fat-positive piece in 2004.
Here's a Youtube Clip of the troupe performing.
There's even a documentary, if you can find it: Defying Gravity came out in 2004.


Unfortunately, while the troupe is in the perfect position to be advocates of fat acceptace, their manager is quick to dodge that mantle. From the New York Times article this year:

Mr. Mas said it would be a mistake to think that his work was intended to glorify or sanctify obesity, or even to deliver a moralistic message that one should not discriminate against the overweight. Rather, he said, the troupe’s art tries to face the reality of obesity while giving larger people a chance to express themselves through dance, a chance they are denied from childhood in most dance classes.

“Although we are obese and dance, we are against obesity,” Mr. Mas explained, saying parenthetically that he admires New York City for banning artificial trans fats from restaurants. “We are always trying to lose weight.”

The quotes from the dancers themselves are much more body positive, and the messages they portray with their dance are powerful regardless of what their choreographer really thinks about fat.

Much more fat friendly (and easier to catch in the U.S. considering the hoops performers from Cuba have to jump to come here) is Big Moves, a dance company with bases in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Montreal.

Featured in the Boston Globe in 2005, Figure Magazine in 2007, and on NPR in 2006, this year Big Moves was also awarded one of the National Women's Confidence Awards by Queen Latifah (before she began shilling for Jenny Craig), and took top honors in the 2007 Montreal Fringe Festival. They were also named Best Dance Company in 2006 by the Boston Phoenix.

Their latest show, "Lard, the Musical" (Like Grease, but Thicker) features a 1950's theme. If you missed it this fall, your last chance may be to catch it at the 2008 Montreal Fringe Festival.

So that's the happy thoughts for the day! If anyone has video clips of Big Moves, they'd be welcome. Otherwise, have a good weekend. I'll be up north in Frankenmuth Michigan at my brilliant and adorable nephew's 2nd birthday party, so no posts until I get back on Tuesday!

Announcing the CDNEC Award for Bad Science

This is pretty much a placeholder post so that I can link back to it easily. The CDNEC Award (pronnounced Cedneck, rhymes with "Redneck") has been invented to mark studies and articles that best demonstrate complete lack of understanding that

Correlation Does Not Equal Causation

Meaning that if a group of fat people eat more asparagus than thin people, the conclusion that asparagus makes you fat is, well, STUPID.

Likewise if more people in a group of men have green eyes than in a group of women, concluding that WEARING GREEN CONTACT LENSES WILL MAKE YOU MALE, is, well, STUPID.

So for all those reporters, researchers, bloggers and editors that believe everything from lung cancer to ingrown toenails is CAUSED by fat, based on correlative evidence, and could be CURED simply by removing adipose tissue, I present the CDNEC:

Feel free to share, cross-post, or use on your own blog as-is, whenever you'd like.

Narf.

Driving Fat = Driving Drunk!?

Seriously!?

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23064210-1702,00.html

SERIOUSLY!?

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20081601-16790-3.html

SERIOUSLY?????

*Headdesk*

In honor of this particular story, which actually has a pretty good chance of getting picked up by media outlets around the world, I would like to propose a new award.....

The CDNEC (CeDNEC, rhymes with Redneck) Award

One Diet Pusher Down, So Many to Go....

For those of you who remember L.A. Weight Loss, they were the very typical, trendy, can't get away from their TV ads of greased up women in bikini's, weight loss scam. They were lately known as the relentless pushers of the over-the-counter version of Orlistat, sold as the weight loss aid "Alli", possibly the greatest invention ever for the laundry industry due to the violent and uncontrollable diarrhea triggered by any fat consumed. Oh, and that handy little hushed-up bit about the colon cancer. That doesn't matter, right? Isn't cancer worth it to lose those 5 pounds? Besides, Chemo will take the fat right off, you'll look great. (eye-roll)

They changed their name to "Pure Weight Loss" in 2007 after a string of lawsuits, orders from state attorney-general offices in Washington, Oregon and New York to substantiate claims in advertisements, a class action lawsuit claiming discriminatory hiring practices against men, and an ABC expose' of their undisclosed costs, hard-sell tactics and emotional manipulation.

Now they have to finally admit that a simple name change can't quite turn the ship around. All 400 branches of Pure Weight Loss have closed as of January 4th.

But weight, (insert rim-shot here)

What about the money?

Members are reporting that corporate headquarters stopped responding to calls and e-mails well in advance of the closing. By the time the doors shut, Pure Weight Loss owed refunds to a lot of people. Tens of thousands of people. They have assurances on their website that they will process them as soon as possible, but members are reporting a complete lack of response. Many of the lawsuits filed against the company in the past were to force them into paying rebates and refunds as advertised, and that was when they were still in business.

Now:

Pure Weight Loss files for Chapter 7 protection (Philedelphia Enquirer)
Pure Weight Loss Inc., the Horsham diet company, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection Friday in U.S. Bankrupty Court, Philadelphia. In a court document, the company said it had more than 100,000 creditors. It estimated its assets at $1 million to $10 million and its liabilities at $10 million to $50 million. The company announced in December that it was closing its weight-loss centers Jan. 4. The company's lawyer did not return a phone call yesterday. - Stacey Burling

Do you think these people will ever see their refund? It would be difficult, considering where the company filed the refund forms they received:

"As for a refund, Pure Weight Loss has posted claim forms on their website, but CBS4's Al Sunshine found out that's not the only place they are. He found dozens of refund claim forms thrown out in a dumpster behind the vacant Pure Weight Loss Center off Sunset Drive and Southwest 117th Avenue. Many of these forms were completely filled out with the customer's name and personal information including their address, their medical histories and their weight. In some cases, the forms even included medical reasons why they wanted to cancel their diet contracts and stop paying for them."
- CBS4.com Daily News


More news articles are beginning to trickle out from customers impatiently waiting for money they paid for nutritional bars, supplements, and counseling, that may never come:

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Jan/20080116News006.asp


Remember, the first one's always free.

Fluff: Murder at the Four Deuces

Since I'm still technically offline, I'm not keeping up as well with fatosphere or news feeds, so now that I've caught a few minutes at a computer, It's filler-time :-) Ten days late, but the pictures of our New Year's Eve party are up. We did a murder-mystery party where everyone had roles in a prohibition-era brothel and speakeasy in Chicago. I was "Madam Meme", wife of the Don and co-proprietor of the fine, upstanding establishment. Girls upstairs, gambling downstairs. Everyone had a blast and went to the line with their costumes. The lovely Tante' sent me a box of great sequined and beaded dresses that we put to good use, and I won best costume in one of them. Unfortunately I was taking more pictures than I was in, but I'm modeling for a photo shoot with Breanna at Beautifully Chaotic Studios on Saturday so I think I'll put it all on again and get some better shots with her pretty new camera :-)

In the meantime, Pictures!

A few more pictures are on my Photobucket

Not everything's loaded, of course, but like I said...offline. It's like having half my brain disconnected.

Sporadic Posting

I will try to get somewhere with a computer once a day to keep my posts up in the next week, but my home computer is DOA so they might get sporadic for a little while until I decide the repair/replace conundrum.

How to Look Good Naked

I caught the re-run of the first episode last night, and was just about in tears by the end of it. It's such a breath of fresh air amidst all the New Year's dieting shows, ads, etc. to have a show that shows how real women can be happy with their bodies right now, instead of dangling impossible standards in their face then chastising them for failing to reach.

It started out with the girl stripping to bra and panties and having to look at herself in a full length mirror. She looked about an average size (12/14? 16 at the most?) but definitely what Hollywood would call fat. She was asked to go over each body part to assess it in front of the mirror, with Carson standing by as coach, countering each complaint with a reality check (you have beautiful skin, all women have those flaps under their arm unless they pay someone to suck it out with some horrible machine, etc.). We did a similar exercise in a meditation class, where we had to look at ourselves naked in a full length mirror (although not with cameras on us!) and describe what we saw without value statements. So I know just how terrifying and vulnerable it felt for her to stand there.

Next they did an experiment that I hope becomes a regular feature of the show. The woman said that her "worst" feature was her large hips. She was brought into a room with 7 or so women, arranged by size from the narrowest to the widest hips. The woman was asked to place herself in the order based on what she thought her size was. She put herself second to largest. Carson pointed out that by measurement, she had added six inches to her hips in her mental image of herself, and moved her down to the correct placement...second to smallest.

This reminded me of an experiment we studied in a sociology class. Women were shown a series of silhouettes, and asked to select the one they think most accurately depicted their body, and the one that they saw as most desired by men. Consistently, women chose a body shape several sizes larger than their actual silhouette, and chose a "desirable" shape several times thinner than surveyed men had chosen as ideal. That's why the first exercise (mirror) is so crucial. Part of being able to love our bodies is knowing our bodies. Part of learning to dress to our shape is knowing what shape we are, and being completely unafraid of it.

The woman was taken to have a professional bra-fitting (and found she was wearing a cup two sizes too small). With all the info Pretty Pear has given on the subject, it's something that's gone up in my priority list. Apparently, the vast majority of women are wearing the wrong bra. 90+% of the support is supposed to come from the band, not the straps (could be why my shoulders ache when I wear certain bras?). The fitting was really enlightening.


At the end, after primping, dressing to her own body shape and style, and agreeing to a photo shoot, Carson dropped another bombshell that I think is going to be a regular. He told her the photo shoot was going to be nude. After some tears and gentle persuasion, she agrees, and they do a series of tasteful shots that turn out really, really sexy. As a final surprise, Carson takes her out into New York, where her photo was projected onto the side of a building. She had to stop random strangers, point at the billboard and ask "Do you think I look good naked?"

The response from both men and women was an overwhelming "yes". A lot of the responses said something along the lines of "That's what real women look like!" One guy got so enthusiastic in his praise that his girlfriend started shooting him glares. The show closed with the woman giving a really positive "no more dieting, I'm going to love my body the way it is" message.

It was fantastic, wildly anti-mainstream, empowering, and I can't wait to be an avid fan of the series! It was definitely anti-diet (described as "destroying yourself") anti WLS/Liposuction, pro body acceptance and love. I just hope that ratings can stay up so that this show can have the kind of life it needs.

The only complaint was that two quack diet pill ads followed the show in commercial break. Lifetime's taken a great step, but has yet to reflect it in their advertising standards.

Recipe Box: (easy) Spicy Winter Soup

Normally I'm big on fresh everything, but this recipe is from a co-worker and tastes surprisingly marvelous, even with packaged ingredients. You can, of course, substitute fresh ingredients for the packaged. In the dead of Michigan winter, however, the "fresh" (i.e. picked under ripe a month ago and shipped here) ingredients are often uninspiring. This is also a great quickie soup for unexpected house guests or family dinner, or cold season to clear out the sinuses and get a dose of nutrients. Serve alone or with a hearty, crusty bread (like sourdough).

Here's the base recipe, feel free to substitute for vegetarian or fresh ingredients if you can get them:

2 cans petit diced tomatoes (2 cups fresh)
2 cans petit diced tomatoes with green chiles (2 cups fresh)
1 pound polish or andouille sausage
1/2 cup rice
1 package (1 pound) frozen chopped spinach
8 cups chicken broth
1/2-2/3 cups fresh chopped cilantro (to taste)

slice the sausage thin (1/4 inch) .
In the bottom of the stock/soup pot (or separate pan), cook the sausage on low to med-low heat until browned.
drain oil.
In soup pot, add sausage, broth, tomatoes and Chiles.
Bring to a simmer and cook for at least 20 minutes (an hour gives optimum flavor, but isn't necessary)
Add the spinach (you don't need to thaw first) and rice
Cook for an additional ten minutes
Add the cilantro
Cook for 10 minutes or until rice is done. Serve hot. This serves well as leftovers, but I haven't tried freezing it. I don't know if the cilantro would survive freezing without breaking down.

Mayor of OKC Calls for City to Lose 1 Million Pounds

The Mayor of Oklahoma City has begun an ambitious campaign for the entire city to lose weight. Unfortunately, they're not talking about urban sprawl, either.

In the Edmond Sun, an article says the mayor's goal is for the entire city to lose 1 million pounds.

The article gives the link to the city's new weight-loss website, http://www.thiscityisgoingonadiet.com/

Seriously?

Now I didn't know if it was an editing issue when the article made a sideways leap mid-paragraph:

"Obesity can lead to other health problems, too. This year alone, one million people in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer. Half of Oklahomans will develop cancer at some point in their lifetimes and 1-in-4 will die from the disease."

Wait...did I miss something? No, the rest of the article is entirely about the dangers of cancer, with no further mention of weight. In an article about dieting.....?

(Cue theme from the Twilight Zone)

Oh, wait, I forgot. Fat causes every disease known to man. Even hangnails and scurvy. How silly of me to think otherwise!

To quote the writers at Shapely Prose....

*Headdesk*

Oh wait, but they're not just targeting fat people this time:

"Together we can become healthier citizens of Oklahoma City. EVERYONE is encouraged to join in the OKC Million community challenge to lose a total of 1,000,000 (ONE MILLION) POUNDS in 2008!"

That's right. Apparently everyone, from athletes to anorexics, can show their civic pride by endangering their health in a crash diet. Doesn't that make you just all warm and fuzzy? Like linty goo? They even include links to Bariatric Clinics in the behavioral modification and surgical programs sections of the website. Because nothing helps to drop those pesky pounds like surgical starvation! I wonder if they put the crematorium ashes on the scale to see if they're under the person's goal weight? Sure you lost a pulse, but you lost a couple hundred pounds with it! And that's what's really important....I wonder if they knock off a couple pounds for the urn?

Oh look, they've got corporate sponsorship! Of course, all of them are Bariatric Surgery clinics:

http://www.thiscityisgoingonadiet.com/Sponsors/tabid/57/Default.aspx

But that doesn't mean this program is a clever advertising/moneymaking scheme by the weight loss industry. They're just concerned about your Health......It's for the Children....


You ever experience a moment when bitter and incredulous sarcasm is the only thing keeping you from screaming and throwing things?

Action and Inspiration

Maybe you've decided that this year will be the year that you reach out and take some part in making Size Acceptance accessible to everyone. Maybe you've resolved to stop waiting for others to provide FA/SA resources and be part of the solution. Maybe you want to do something to get involved, but aren't quite ready for your face and/or name to start showing up on the news or at the bottom of editorials. Maybe you're frustrated that winter is thwarting your ass-kicking plans for sign-waving, whipped cream throwing protests at bariatric clinics. Maybe all of these.

This time of year is difficult. Diet ads and talk are closing in on the post-holiday blues to compound the exhaustion that comes from a concept of self and health that runs so contrary to cultural programming. It's not a new concept. Great literature (Orwell, Huxley, Tolstoy) is replete with characters whose story can only be told because they stand out from the societal landscape. Every great change begins with a small group of people willing to act. Every person who is remembered beyond the death of their children is memorable because they were willing to take a step dictated by their consciousness of rightness being stronger than the programming of mother culture.

But for every person who sits down on a bus and every student who stands in front of a tank, there are hundreds more who create the possibility for that action to be meaningful in the context of a greater whole. There are the organizers, the pushers of paperwork, the poll-workers, and the nameless faces in the crowd that provide mass and inertia to the message. You don't have to be the face in front of the camera to be a force for change. You don't have to be the leader of an organization for organizations to happen. Small actions by individuals are what make the bigger stands something more than an aberration. One person with a sign in front of a WLS clinic is a nut. One hundred people is a movement.

I'm getting a bit side-tracked from my original plans for a post today, but it's difficult to stay on-track this time of year. When I lose inspiration, I also lose motivation. To keep myself inspired, I keep a few good books around, like Paul Campos (merci beaucoup Tante'!) and my recently acquired "Body Wars" by Margo Maine (gracias a Gita por el regalo de Navidad!). When I find myself slipping into the masochistic practice of trying to argue with haters on fatphobic comment or chat threads, or the latest fat hate in the media is dragging me back, I return to what inspired me in the first place. This weekend, it worked. An hour with the Fatosphere often does the trick as well if there's a lot of new posts. I'm inspired by the reminder that I'm not in this alone, and that there's so many intelligent, well-researched, strong-minded individuals out there fighting the same issues with their bodies and the society that wants to create the illusion of shame and monstrosity around something as innocuous as a collection of fat cells.

Another way to stay inspired is through action. Some people are timid to get involved at all, or are worried that they don't have the skills. To be honest, there are plenty of opportunities to make small changes regardless of what you can bring to the table. Right now there are exciting new projects playing out on a grass-roots level throughout the Size Acceptance movement. Some need complex skills, such as web-design or grant writing. All need the less-glamorous but still necessary grunt work that can be done by almost anyone.

Some opportunities to get involved:

1. The MAFRAD project (Media Advocacy for Fat Representation and Anti-Defamation) is working on a revolutionary new combined media guide for Fat Acceptance, covering everything from acceptable language to use in discussing fat in the media to research and links to show the dangers of dieting. Their aim is to create a centralized resource with reliable information so that members of the media can easily find what they need to present an unbiased report.

They're finished with the initial research and drafts. They're currently looking for people to volunteer for the Editing committee to put the pieces into a cohesive whole, and the Web committee to make the finished guide accessible online. You can volunteer by joining their Yahoo Group here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mafrad/ or sending an e-mail to mafrad-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.


2. The Fat 50+ Project is in the early stages of created a guide (state-by-state, province-by-province in the U.S., other countries as volunteers happen) to legislation, legal and medical rights, complaint resources and other issues regarding fat/size rights. This will hopefully create a resource for both consolidating activism efforts and helping with cases of individual discrimination. They have a framework in place but they do need help collecting the information on each state/province/country. Information is easy to find in most cases through the state or province's web site, but if you live in the covered area you have an added advantage of consulting local lawyers, paper records, and local news archives. Any help given will add to this valuable resource. Primarily need researchers. Legal or government contacts would be stellar, but anyone who can slog through legislative documents on a website or google newspaper archives is needed.

You can help by visiting http://fatrights.org/members/ and creating a (free) account. Then click on the link to "Fat 50", pick a state, province or country, and add any information you can find with a link to your source so that editors can double-check.

3. The COFRA project (Council of Fat Rights Activists) is the lead organization for the Fat 50 project, founded by the folks at Big Fat Blog. They're seeking to organize efforts towards Size Acceptance, and need volunteers in many areas.

Volunteer opportunities include: Legal/organizational help (to create organization structure and obtain tax-exemption, create a mission statement, etc.); Web Design; Street-Level Activism (rallies, events, advertising, public relations, etc.

You can help by visiting the COFRA member website at http://fatrights.org/members/ You'll need to create a (free) account, then visit the forums to see what's been done and where they need help.

4. NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) is a Size Acceptance organization with long standing and credibility. They are responsible for the successful push to add weight/body size to the non-discrimination policy in San Francisco as well as other legal battles against weight discrimination in employment, adoption, and government practices. They are based on the West coast, but have local chapters elsewhere.

The list of volunteer positions can be found here: http://www.naafa.org/volunteers/
Their Fat Activist Task Force tries to coordinate and announce activism opportunities such as letter writing and response to specific issues: http://www.naafa.org/fatf/
To find or create a local chapter to organize Fat Acceptance activism and social support in your area, see the Chapter Index at: http://www.naafa.org/chapters/chapter-index.html
Special Interest Groups are created to coordinate activism and support for those with specific needs or interests, such as diabetics, WLS survivors, Vegetarian, Teen/Youth, Men, Families, Singles, etc. To see a list of SIG's, or to propose a new SIG, visit here: http://www.naafa.org/sigs/sigs.html


That's just what I'm involved in, of course! There's plenty more out there, and if people want to use the comments to draw attention to other volunteer/activism opportunities, please do so. I would personally like to see what else I can help support.