In this iconic cartoon, a young owlet has to choose between following his passion for jazz, or pleasing his father by singing what his father insists is best.  With Father’s Day coming up, it’s important for dads to remember to support their child’s autonomy, allow them to develop into the person they would like to become, and to refrain from exerting too much pressure to conform to cultural ideals of success or beauty. For those of us who are not fathers, the challenge is to remember that we are the experts on ourselves.

It always amazes me how often I have to remind myself that I am the expert on me. After all, who else knows me as long as I have? Why is it so difficult to trust myself? Why did I develop the habit of handing the reins over to others and allowing them to determine what is in my best interest? And why do owls say “who” and not “why”?

One answer emerges when I reminisce about choices I made that were not in my best interest. Whether it had to do with drastic weight loss attempts or other ways I coerced myself to ignore my inner owl, the driving force behind those poor choices was my attempt to live up to someone else’s standards — someone else’s idea of what I should look like or what I should be doing to fit in.

The more I strayed from my own sense of self and true identity, the less I trusted myself to know what was best for me. So I began to rebuild my trust in myself by remembering that each one of us is unique. And yes, while sometimes it is difficult to embrace the ways we are different from the “norm” (because that can be painful and lonely) it can also be liberating and delightful! Just check out all of the ways an owl’s idiosyncrasies make it beyond amazing!

And it doesn’t have to be lonely. Spoiler Alert!  If you watch the entire version of the classic “Owl Jolson,” in the end his father, mother, and siblings all recognize that he is his own bird and they support his individual journey to find his own version of happiness and success.

So as we enter the month of June (aka Beach Body Boot Camp Month), the diet and fashion industries are counting on us to forget that we are the ONLY ones who have the right to define ourselves. They are hoping that we will stifle the jazz singer within us and believe that we have no choice other than to buy their products in order to conform. I say, who gives a hoot what they think? I, for one, am gonna sing-a about the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a!

Til next time!

Trigger warning: Eating disorder, fat hate, weight loss surgery

I’m fairly picky about my friends, it’s true. I hold my friends to a high standard and any bigotry must go. I’ve ended friendships over sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia/biphobia/transphobia, and, yes, fatphobia.

The thing is, most people understand perfectly when you end a friendship because your friend ends up being a racist or a homophobe, but they get all undie-bunched when it comes to choosing friends who are not fatphobic, like this sort of bigotry should be accepted and tolerated with kindness. Which yes, some people can and do, and that’s perfectly fine. Change people from the inside. You go!

The thing is, though, you’re also allowed to not have that negativity in your life. For many of us fatties, having fatphobes around constantly bombarding us with body hate, either internalized or directed at us, is extraordinarily triggering. Many of us have experience with eating disorders, many more with disordered eating, and almost all of us, at some point, have hated our bodies. Being around the negativity of weight bigotry can put us in a very bad and very dark place. But, say the haters, you should just deal with it because body hate is perfectly acceptable in our society.

Now, I do understand that someone with fat hate issues can’t necessarily be blamed. In a culture that constantly demonizes fat and fat people, how can you really not have fat hate issues unless you’be become enlightened through education and understanding? It’s tough, and internalized fat hate is society’s fault especially more than the person’s. But that doesn’t mean I have to put myself around it.

And this is where the self-preservation and kindness part comes in. I have the right to look after my mental and physical well-being. I have the right to say that enough is enough and that I need positive body influences in my life. You have that exact same right and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Recently, I ended a friendship because this friend decided to get weight loss surgery. She was involved in the Fat Acceptance movement, so it was a double blow and a personal betrayal. I decided that it would be very bad for my health (mental and physical) to watch someone I care about go through that all because of severe internalized fat hate. As someone with a 10-year history of having an eating disorder, I could not watch someone choose what amounts to a medically-induced eating disorder (and, in fact, medical anorexia can be an official side effect of these surgeries).

I blogged about this on my personal blog and got bombarded with pro-WLS people calling me sexist slurs, threatening me, and calling me a horrible person/friend, all because I decided to look out for myself. If there’s one thing that I want you to take away from this blog post, it’s that no friendship is worth your mental or physical health. No relationship is worth your health. Period.

Now, personally, my friend was completely oblivious to how her actions could effect me at all. I chalk this up to pure self-centeredness, but I have the feeling the rest of you know exactly what I’m talking about. Others’ actions have consequences. They do affect friends, family, and lovers. Your decisions are not made in a vacuum and the consequences of those decisions don’t exist in a vacuum. Your body hate poisons other people.

So, be careful who your friends are. If you are the type of person who can stay friends with bigots and try to change them, then more power to you. We need people to change the world from the inside. But if you aren’t, that’s perfectly acceptable too. Never, ever feel guilty for taking care of yourself. You’re totally worth taking care of.

Trigger warning: Assholes harassing a fat person for having a physical disability and discussion of weight loss.

To quote Michael Corleone…

Fat people exist! Feast on the outrage!

Last May, I wrote a post with a Cher reference in the title that I was quite proud of, all about reddit’s disturbing compulsion to perpetually talk shit about fatties. Since then I’ve written about reddit alot. It’s like lifting a giant rock and finding this nest of massive creepy crawlies that both repulse and fascinate me.

The only time I remember to visit those dens of douchebaggery is when we start getting traffic from one of their posts. The one that is burning up the most oxygen in redditland is in reaction to Heather’s post about unfriending a former Fat Acceptance ally who decided to get weight loss surgery and started talking about things that were triggering Heather’s eating disorder. As I said in this noodly comment yesterday, I saw how people read it the way they did, but that I read it completely differently as being about the mentality around the decision and how that manifests in life.

But I honestly don’t care what these people think of Heather’s decision. Why would I? These subreddits are set to Full Outrage every single day, which is ironic given their mockery of the outrage of so-called Social Justice Warriors. Of course they’re going to be pissed about this post. We’ve got plenty of hate readers who troll our digital archives searching for sweet, crude outrage fuel.

There just isn’t that much that reddit can say that will actually surprise me any more. There’s just always going to be a contingent of some terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people. And when it comes to shitbirds, I highly recommend listening to the inimitable John Prine:

So, I thought I’d seen the bottom of reddit, but boy was I wrong.

Casey performing a layback drop prior to her spinal injury.

Before reddit found Heather’s post, I noticed that someone else went back to Casey’s post from March about how she decided to stop fearing the stigma associated with being a fatty in a scooter because she was having mobility issues on her campus. Also, by using a scooter, she can prioritize how she uses her body for exercise, rather than spending all of her strength and ability on simply navigating campus. Up until then, she relied forearm crutches and a rollator because she is physically disabled.

As Casey explained in her introductory post, she has a spinal injury. Prior to her injury, Casey was quite active. As she explained, “My physical activity repertoire over the years has included triathlons, endurance cycling, powerlifting, CrossFit, fire spinning, and belly dancing.” Yes, “triathlons,” as in more than one. But after her injury, all that changed:

After having a spine fusion surgery in January of this year, I’ve been trying to figure out my place in the world of academe with this fat, gimpy body. At the same time, I’m trying to figure out if I can successfully get back to the physical things I used to enjoy (specifically belly dance, racing, and powerlifting).

The reason Casey wrote about her disability in March is that she needs to raise $2,769 for the scooter, which is why it’s been on the front page since then, and is also probably the reason reddit found her post in the first place. And what was their reaction to a fat woman with a spinal injury attempting to raise money for a scooter?

Yeah.

Let that sink in.

America has always had a problematic relationship with people who have disabilities — we either infantalize them or mythologize them. Either people with disabilities are poor dears who deserve our sympathy, pity and charity, or else, as comedian Stella Young said in her TED Talk, “We’re there to inspire you to think, ‘Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person.’”

But when it comes to fat people with disabilities, the script goes out the window. Suddenly, the disability isn’t this tragic consequence of uncontrollable circumstances, it’s both caused by and exacerbated by the fat person. If you weren’t fat, then you wouldn’t have become disabled and if you’d lose weight then your disability would be healed. At no point is the fat person with disabilities assumed to have that disability independent of their weight — weight is the one and only thing standing between them and recovery.

So, when I saw this subreddit mocking Casey for wanting a scooter, I lost my shit. Normally, I try to stay out of their discussions, but I decided to point out the problem. Their response was fucking amazing:

Believe it or not, the comments on the thread are much, much worse, including mocking the fact that she’s studying kinesiology (the movement of muscles and joints) and needs to rely on ambulatory devices. This is just the denial and contempt they dish out when confronted with reality.

If Casey were thin with the exact same spinal injury, she probably would not have thought twice about using a scooter to get around campus. Why? Because when you see a thin person in a scooter, your immediate thought is “Person with a disability.” But when you see a fat person in a scooter, your immediate thought is “Lazy bastard.” And not wanting to be perceived as a lazy bastard, despite a preexisting physical disability, is known as stereotype threat.

Being a fat person with a disability is a minefield for stereotype threat. If it’s a physical disability that requires ambulatory assistance, then you’re likely to get dirty looks from the kinds of people who populate /r/FatHate and /r/FatPeopleStories. Of course, if you actually notice people giving you a dirty look and say something, then you’re being paranoid and narcissistic. At no point is a fat person allowed to acknowledge that the hatred overflowing on reddit actually exists in real life. At which point, the fat person with the disability is essentially gas-lighted into believing that judgmental assholes don’t really exist, except as some anonymous, amorphous entity on the internet.

Yet here we are. Here we see the worst of the worst confirming that there are people who know nothing about Casey’s actual situation who take pleasure in mocking her for such a basic act of self-care.

And so, I found myself wondering what the circumstances surrounding her spinal injury. She’s never explained it on here, leading me to assume it was some kind of accident. Curious, I asked her if she’d be interested in discussing it, and she shared that information. She also said that she had toyed with the idea of being more open about these circumstances because of the stereotype threat she’s experienced at her school because others have noticed the fat kinesiology student who has trouble getting around. And so, with her blessing, I’d like to share Casey’s story.

Casey developed hypopituitarism from an aneurysm before she was born, which led to pituitary dwarfism, which explains her petite height of 4’11″. This form dwarfism is slightly different than the kind people are more familiar with, achondroplasia, which is what actor Peter Dinklage has. Casey explained the consequences of her dwarfism to me:

The blood flow was cut off to my pituitary gland (the “master gland” that controls most hormones), one of my optic nerves (so I’m legally blind in one eye), and my hypothalamus (which does a lot of things, like impact sleep-wake schedules, eating, emotions). The main bugger is that I’m severely deficient in growth hormone, which is the cause of pituitary dwarfism. Even more charming is that it wasn’t until the past 10 or so years that endocrinology researchers believed that GH had any impact on adults. So I had GH injections (that’s the only way it can be replaced exogenously) as a teenager, which got me to the fabulously tall height of 4’11″

This deficiency of GH can result in cholesterol problems, as well as symptoms similar to multiple sclerosis, since GH helps repair muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves and bones. As Casey explained, “Joints that don’t have tissues that repair themselves properly can have loose joints, particularly people with a family history of hyperflexibility.”

Growing up, Casey was frequently harassed for her weight. As a result, she was frequently active in an attempt to “correct” the problem. In those attempts, she believed pushing herself to the limit was how she would overcome her weight issues, “especially as someone that has always been fat and told that ‘no pain, no gain’ is the ideal course to become not fat.” Casey pushed herself hard, completing three triathlons, one duathlon, and a two-day, 150-mile bike ride for the MS Society. She also became active as a belly dancer.

In 2007, suffered a spinal fracture while performing back bends while belly dancing. As Casey explains, “Since I was really active, the fracture wasn’t a huge huge deal at first because I had the musculature to keep it stable. As I got older, it got worse (both pain and function).” As mentioned above, Casey finally got a spine fusion surgery last year, and has been working on recovery since then. She’s come a long way, going so far as to complete a 5k in her wheelchair without training, but she still has a way to go.

“But what about her weight?” I hear the trolls whining. “If she wasn’t fat, she wouldn’t have injured her spine in the first place and she would have recovered by now.”

Casey could not be more of an archetypical “Good Fatty” if she tried. Hypopituitarism results in a slow metabolism, which she has spent a lifetime fighting by becoming fiercely active and following dietary prescriptions to reduce her weight. As a result of a lifetime of over-exertion, she exacerbated a birth defect that triggered intense pain. As a result, her physical activity has been limited and she’s taking pain meds that cause weight gain (a result of opioid-related endocrinopathy), yet she’s still pushing herself to be as physically active as she can handle.

Again, none of this is good enough for the trolls: Good Fatty or not, the fact that she’s fat is cause for demonization and dehumanization. Being a Good Fatty does not inoculate you from hatred or judgment. So every single day, Casey has to decide whether or not to contribute to the judgment of strangers or to engage in the radical act of self-care.

And now, because she has reached out to us for help with her scooter, she has become a target of reddit’s chronic rageboner (it’s been four or more hours, boys, it’s time to call a doctor).

What Casey needs more than anything right now is solidarity. She needs the support of family and friends in real life, as well as her online family here at Fierce Fatties, to support her as she continues to recover and continues to defiantly pursue her degree in kinesiology in spite of the stereotype threat of being the fatty with a disability. And a major part of that support right now is getting Casey to her goal of raising $2,769 for the scooter that will get her to and from classes on campus.

Now, we have recently seen the Body Acceptance community rally together to raise nearly $10,000 to make Michelle Allison the Fat Dietitian and nearly $45,000 to help Lindsey Averill and Viridiana Lieberman finish their documentary Fatitude. By comparison, Casey’s goal is modest and within reach. So please, if you can donate even a dollar of solidarity, please visit her GoFundMe page and show Casey some love.

To that end, I will be including a call for donations at the top of every blog post we share on Fierce Fatties until we reach this goal. So help us shout down the haters by giving Casey the assistance she needs to achieve her goals. She has made the fierce decision to choose self-care over stereotype threat, and the least we can do is give her the resources to follow through on her efforts.

Thank you.

We don’t ask much of our readers, but we are asking you to support Casey in improving her mobility while fighting the fat haters. Read more here or click the image above to donate.

The physician’s assistant will see you now.

Trigger warning: Talk of weight loss and disordered eating histories.

The past month has been an utter blur as my university began summer term and I began a mentored teaching course on top of my other work duties. As I’ve become busier, I’ve obviously become more stressed… especially with regards to dealing with healthcare providers like my pain clinic. [Cue horror movie music]

Because of scheduling SNAFU’s, it looked like I was going to have to see the Evil Physician’s Assistant who harassed me so much about my weight, while outright disbelieving me about my health and physical activity behaviors (along with denying my scholarly work in kinesiology). I should have reported her for verbal abuse to the hospital network. Instead, I did get a note put on my record that I hoped would keep our paths from ever crossing again, but she is the backup person for my doctor when scheduling issues arise.

As the appointment with Evil PA got closer and closer, I noticed that I was reacting to my fear of fat shaming in several very unhealthy ways… and I think a lot of fat folks deal with this, which is why so many of us delay necessary health care or attempt to skip it altogether (both of which contribute to more ill health in the long run — take that, “obese people are more expensive” propaganda!). Since I can’t skip this appointment without screwing up my pain medication contract or without losing my prescriptions altogether (which is the only thing allowing me to remained employed and working on my PhD), I’m forced to cope as well as I can.

The first thing is that I’ve been lapsing into old disordered eating behavior. I’m skipping meals despite being hungry. I’m trying to take my pain medication without food (which screws up its absorption rate). I’m becoming obsessed with the math of food (e.g., calories, fat, serving sizes). This isn’t in a good way like Shaunta’s Eating the Food experiment; this is self-destructive dieting behavior. The worst part is that I know it’s happening and I’m trying to fight it with all the tools in my Fat Acceptance and Health at Every Size^® (HAES) toolbox.

The next problem is that I’m trying to jam physical activity into my schedule with the goal of weight loss. My brain spent so many years of my life doing this that it’s not even a conscious thing. My spine injury makes physical activity pretty difficult at best, so spreading small bouts of exercise throughout the day is definitely not a bad thing in and of itself. I generally do things like that in my normal life because I like to multitask (like doing calf raises while the coffee brews at work) and because I like earning points on Fitocracy. The problem is that it’s become an obsession. I overdo it consistently, which messes up my work life and my dance life, and I’m really upset that I’m ruining my ability to dance. Being able to dance requires very careful management of my time, body, and energy just to take one or two classes a week.

The last problem is the variety of awful things that many folks with disordered eating histories go through (despite the trigger warning, I’m not going to go into detail). Every little thing becomes about ways to manipulate that damned number on the scale just so I can be a little less “morbidly obese” on the BMI readout on my chart. It’s not healthy at all.

This has been eating at my self-esteem and self-worth, and has created a hell of a lot of stress, most notably when I recently gave a guest lecture on healthism and ableism to a class of undergraduate kinesiology students. When you challenge a person’s fundamental beliefs about how society impacts one’s health, many times the speaker gets challenged on a personal level. When the speaker is fat, some listeners see my lecture as me justifying my place in a health-oriented field. That process is tiring and stressful in itself, so when I’m struggling with my own internalized healthism, sizeism, and ableism, I’m not an effective educator. When I’m hungry and hurt and feeling harassed, I’m not healthy.

As I try to tell the students I talk to, fat stigma can be exponentially more harmful than any supposed causal links between fatness and disease. My story is just a drop in the sea of fat people with serious histories of weight cycling (repeated weight loss and regain) and disordered eating. It’s not easy being a fat health and physical activity educator, but I hope that pulling my story apart like this will help health professionals realize that bullying and abuse do not create healthier people.

p.s. The appointment I was afraid of? Got re-re-rescheduled back to my actual pain management physician. I’m trying to switch to a different pain clinic in hopes that I will get harassed less and have better treatment to get me to an activity level that both my mind and body can agree on.

Thanks to everyone who has gotten us this far. Please support Casey in improving her mobility while fighting the fat haters by donating whatever you can afford. Read more here or click the image above to donate.

Trigger warning: Idiotic asshole columnist with major personal issues pontificates about fatties, eating disorders and the power of negative thinking.

Today, I read an article so awful that I’m going to do something I haven’t done since Alec Baldwin wrote his rambling screed on fatties I’m going to respond to an entire article word for word because the idiocy is so entrenched that I can’t do it justice by extracting a single paragraph to represent the ugliness of spirit behind it. I’m not lining to the article itself because I don’t want to give its author a single click. Same with the other articles she has written which I will cite in my response. Clicks are currency, and I’m not spending any of mine on this waste of carbon.

The article rain the the UK’s Daily Mail. For those Stateside unfamiliar, Daily Mail is to journalism as The Learning Channel is to actually learning anything.

And never ones to miss an opportunity to exploit women, they’ve even got a fun, female-oriented section called “Femail.” Get it? It’s like email for vaginas.

Anyway, as we all now, what women love reading more than anything else are weight loss testimonials like this one:

Aaaaaaaaaaaw, lookie there… cruel taunts are so inspiring that they turned this obese teen into a pageant queen. Oh, and here’s another!

See, bullies, you’re doing God’s work! Keep up the benevolent douchebaggery.

So, on Wednesday, Femail published an article by Linda Kelsey, whose romance novels are available on Amazon for a penny. I don’t recommend wasting the copper.

Kelsey’s other writing gig is being a terrible human being for the Daily Mail. For example, she used her prominent platform to shame older women who don’t dye their hair by citing that deep font of wisdom, evolutionary psychology:

The old cliché about grey-haired men looking distinguished while grey-haired women just look old is depressing, but the sad fact is that it’s as true today as ever… This probably has to do with the fact that men remain fertile for longer — when a woman goes grey it signals the end of her fecundity, while it doesn’t have to for men — and men are programmed to seek out those who are able to reproduce. Add in the cultural pressures on women to stay young and beautiful, and grey-haired women are playing a losing game.

She then goes on to write an article about how much she loathes dogs, including her 11-year-old Labrador, Cuba. She starts the piece by sharing this anecdote:

Cuba is suffering — perhaps for the 50th time in the past decade — from a nasty bout of intestinal trouble, after she decided to wolf down the remains of a discarded take-away curry while we were out for our morning walk.

How did Cuba get a hold of that curry? Kelsey says she took Cuba off the leash and was “distracted by my mobile ringing in my handbag.” You would think that that after the 49th time, Ms. Kelsey might think twice about taking Cuba off her leash in an area where discarded take-away curry containers might be found.

You know, we once had a German Shepherd who we kenneled during the day while at work. One day, we came home to find that we had placed the cage too close to a cardboard box. In the space of an afternoon, Farley gnawed a good chunk off the box and expelled it all, and then some, like a molten brown geyser that splattered the walls and turned the plastic bottom of his kennel into Lake Shitwater. You know what we did in response? WE DIDN’T PUT THE FUCKING CAGE RIGHT NEXT TO THE CARDBOARD BOXES ANY MORE!

Kelsey goes on to talk about how scientists put dogs in an MRI and found they show “‘human’ levels of love and affection.” She goes on:

Despite this, my dog is generally not so much a best friend as a worst enemy. In fact, at the risk of riling every dog lover in Britain, I’d go so far as to say that the old adage suggesting a canine can ever be a best friend is utter nonsense — and an insult to human best friends everywhere.

Linda Kelsey, taking humanity to new lows.

What never seems to occur to Kelsey is that the saying, “Dog is man’s best friend” refers in non-PC terms to the relationship between the species of humans and dogs, not that dogs are better than human friends. In other words, among all the animals in the world, dogs are probably the best at giving humans their unconditional love and attention. This is not to denigrate other pets, but let’s face it, cats don’t give a shit if we live or die, until it affects their food supply.

Kelsey then says that maybe she shouldn’t have gotten a dog (gee, ya think?) and that she only got it after being fired (er… “going freelance”) from her job as a magazine editor. She then talks about how jealous she is because when she takes Cuba for walks people pay more attention to her dog than to her. And she spends an awful lot of time (and I do mean awful) comparing her dog to her human best friends and complaining how Cuba doesn’t patronize her narcissism verbally.

In the end, the only conclusion I’m able to reach is that Ms. Kelsey is too stupid to own a dog, which is quite an accomplishment.

And this stupidity translates into body issues, when, in an article on her post-divorce dating life, she talks about everything she went through to prepare herself for dating again. “I signed up for a course of cellulite-busting treatments because I thought that in the unlikely circumstance that I would ever again reveal my body to a man the orange peel thighs would surely be a deal-breaker.”

Here’s the thing about cellulite: 90% of women have it. As Shaunta’s friend at GoKaleo wrote:

 This is a matter of structural mechanics, folks. It’s not caused by poor circulation, PUFAs, animal foods, sugar, toxins, ‘negative energy’, poor diet, laziness, or any of the other novel and ridiculous things charlatans have come up with to sell you ‘cellulite cures’. Men are less prone to cellulite for three reasons: their connective tissues have more of a criss-cross pattern, their skin is actually thicker so any unevenness in fat below the skin is less evident, and they store more fat viscerally (around their internal organs) than subcutaneously (between the skin and muscle). Ie, their bodies are structurally different.

What have we learned about Kelsey from her own words? She’s a narcissistic, dog-hating douchebag who lectures other women on how they should look and wastes money on scam cellulite treatments. So, what do you think the odds are that this woman has anything productive to say about fat people?

Fat of the Land

The headline sets the stage:

The gall! How dare these young women stroll along in shorts and tank tops like they have the right to be comfortable in summer. Don’t they know they must cover themselves from top to tail until they have spent all their discernible income on cellulite creams?

And from there it only gets worse. In the following section, Kelsey’s words will be in blue, while mine will remain black.

Standing in the queue for airport security at Luton last week, en route to Malaga and my fortnight in the sun, I became transfixed by the three young women in front of me.

All in their early 20s, they were laughing and chatting, clearly looking forward to their hols on the Costa del Sol, excitedly planning their days on the beach and nights on the town.

They sounded — and looked — happy and carefree. But what mesmerised me most about this jolly trio was not their conversation, but their appearance: they were size 18 apiece, at least.

Like a curry-filled dog, Kelsey regurgitates her experience in this word bile because of three young women who were at least a size 18. As a guy, I’m not intimately familiar with women’s clothing sizes, so I decided to get a reference point for this. Wanting to be fair, I searched Daily Mail for size 18 and found a few examples. For instance, there’s Lauren Punter, a size 18 sales assistant from Leicester who won a plus-size modeling contest.

Then there’s Emma Haslam, the size 18 pole dancer from Britain’s Got Talent, which you can watch here.

As for the “at least,” I found the weight loss testimony of Gillian Shaw, a size 20.

These are the kind of women that Kelsey was not only judging in line, but that she decided were in need of a public lecture on the finer points of being FiP (Fat in Public). So, what exactly does Kelsey think of these happy and carefree women?

They were not chubby, but fat. They had bulging bellies and billowing pillows of back and shoulder stuffing, punctured by flabby arms and lardy legs that no amount of fake-tan could disguise.

I had no idea that fake-tan was an effective treatment for hiding your fatness up to a size 18. I’m assuming that after her cellulite treatments, Kelsey slathered herself in enough self-tanning solution to look like John Boehner.

In reality, John Boehner is a size 16.

And what struck me even more forcefully about these lumpen individuals (there were dozens more, equally large, in the queue behind me) was how obviously unconcerned they were about it.

Note to Fatties: Henceforth when FiP, you shall not show any signs of enjoying life. Laughing and smiling is strictly forbidden, and if you’re going to talk about anything, make sure it’s about how desperately you are to shed every last unwanted ounce from your lumpen selves. It will help immensely if you can wring your hands and gnash your teeth from beneath the sheet-with-eyeholes you’re wearing. Because we all know what fatties cannot wear:

One was wearing shockingly skimpy crochet shorts, as seen on size-zero models in adverts. But in this case, the shorts made it appear the wearer had an extra bottom hanging below the cut-off hemline.

Another girl wore white stretch leggings with a pattern of cellulite dimples showing through, accessorised with a super-sized sausage of overhanging belly.

Meanwhile, the third sported a cut-away vest top revealing the entire back of her pink bra, complete with chunky rolls of fat above, beneath and around the straps. To top it all, these three were — I kid you not — sharing a bag of crisps.

First off, we all know how Kelsey feels about cellulite on her own body, so is it any surprise that she’s counting the dimples and rolls on other women? Second of all, are you sure they were sharing a bag of crisps? Are you sure they didn’t each have their own bag? Maybe two bags each? This reminds me of that time Dr. David Katz (aka Dr. Dickhole) expressed his outrage on HuffPo at two fat women on his flight to Maui who shared a box of cheesy poofs in front of a child. What is it with rich assholes flying to vacation hotspots and fatties with snacks? Have they never seen thin people eating chips or is it only a damnable offense when fatties do it?

I feel like part of the outrage comes from an expectation that certain wealthy people have that their world should be unsullied by the unattractive. Dr. Dickhole’s a doctor, so we know he’s got money, while Kelsey shared the details of the thousands and thousands of dollars she spent on Cuba, not to mention the £300 she dropped on new underwear when she began dating again, along with the estimated $1,200 for cellulite treatment. Oh, and she can afford to fly to Málaga for two weeks, so she’s not hurting for money. It seems that being thin and rich, you not only feel like you get to judge how people dress and eat, but that it’s a brilliant idea to write about it for major publications.

It occurred to me that if these girls hated their bodies and were racked with self-loathing, as we’re so often told that the majority of young women do and are, they were doing a grand job of projecting exactly the opposite impression.

Far from body hatred, what I witnessed was a let-it-all-hang-out faith in themselves and a don’t-give-a-damn attitude to their evident obesity.

Ah, the good ol’ days when women loathed their bodies like proper ladies! I mean, how is Kelsey supposed to enjoy her vacation if these women aren’t racked with the kind of incipient self-loathing that she, an ostensibly thin woman, has to contend with on a daily basis?

And it’s one that must be shared by many, given that it’s not just in departure lounges that I witness young fatties confidently flashing their flesh. I see it on the High Street every day of summer, in the park where they strip down to their undies the second the sun comes out, and outside any given pub after dark, even in winter.

Really? Fat people are stripping to their underwear on High Street? Or are they simply wearing the same shit that thin people wear and you don’t think they’ve “earned it.”

Un-PC of me as it may be to criticise my sex for their size, when it comes to weight I’m not afraid to say it: I am unapologetically fattist. It’s unattractive, it’s unhealthy and, given the problems that being fat can cause, it should be as unacceptable as smoking.

*sigh* Here we get to the crux of the issue. According to Kelsey, being fat is unattractive and unhealthy, but her primary concern is for women. She readily admits that her criticism is not aimed at fat men, who have been wearing whatever the fuck they want since time immemorial, it’s with fat women who wear skimpy shorts and stretch leggings and cut-away vests. And like any good concern troll, her visceral disgust is wrapped in the moral blanket of healthism. But if Kelsey’s concerns were legitimately health related, then sex wouldn’t matter. But the fact is, this is more about Kelsey’s own values of beauty and acceptability than health, though she certainly gives that the ol’ college try.

Yet to judge by the moral panic over anorexia you would think our daughters are a generation of self-starving stick insects. That each and every one of them is dangerously striving for Keira Knightley’s razor-sharp scapula and fried egg breasts or Victoria Beckham’s hand-span thighs and knife-edge hips.

Oh good, Kelsey doesn’t stop at body shaming fatties. She’s also into mocking thin women as well. How metropolitan of her.

This is clearly a fallacy, and it’s one that needs addressing, because not only are most fatties doing nothing substantial to reduce their size, the cost of obesity to the nation’s health — not to mention the health budget — is enormous. And it’s getting worse.

As the Daily Mail itself reports, at least half of fat people are physically fit, and those fat people who do exercise are just as healthy as normal weight people:

They had a 38 per cent lower risk of death from any cause than their metabolically unhealthy obese peers, and the same risk as healthy, normal weight participants. The risk of developing or dying from heart disease or cancer was reduced by between 30-50 per cent for metabolically healthy, obese people, compared with fat unhealthy people, and was similar to those of normal weight.

I don’t deny that anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders are a pernicious problem, and I’ve witnessed at close hand the devastating effects of anorexia as young daughters of friends and acquaintances have succumbed to it.

To put the false dichotomy of “eating disorders vs. fatties” in proper perspective, it’s worth pointing out the fact that 2,700 children in 100,000 have an eating disorder, while just 12 in 100,000 children have type 2 diabetes. And eating disorders are on the rise.

But in the cases I’ve come across, the psychological issues these girls were suffering from had far more to do with their driven personalities, their determination to be A*  students at any cost, as well as troubles with over-demanding parents, than simply emulating glossy magazine images of super-skinny models and stick-thin celebrities on the red carpet.

Ah yes, Kelsey’s case study proves to her that it isn’t caused by an over-emphasis on the value of thin bodies in the media, it’s that they’re driven. And to be sure, there is certainly a genetic component to anorexia (as discussed in my interview with Harriet Brown) which may correlate with certain behavioral traits, but actual research by actual scientists finds Kelsey’s assessment to be nothing more than vapid anecdote.

Field et al found that the importance of thinness and trying to look like women on television, in movies or in magazines were predictive of young girls (9 to 14 years old) beginning to purge at least monthly. In another prospective study (17), this same group found that both boys and girls (aged 9 to 14 years old) who were making an effort to look like the figures in the media, were more likely than their peers to develop weight concerns and become constant dieters.

Oh, adolescent weight concerns and constant dieting? Nevermind, that’s a good thing!

Skinny celebrity icons are an issue, but I don’t believe they’re the issue on which society should focus in our muddle over body image.

Far more attention and, dare I say it, opprobrium needs to be directed at young fatties who eat unhealthy diets and sit around watching TV and texting rather than going to the gym or even for a walk.

Ah yes, brilliant call, Kelsey! If there’s one thing the UK is lacking it’s shows about how horrible fat people are.

While it’s well known that socio-economic factors have a bearing on weight — with those on lower incomes more likely to eat sugar and fat-laden diets, and less likely to exercise — there are other factors being ignored.

Oh, you mean like endocrine disruptors and dysfunctional gut flora?

A generation of mothers seem to have swallowed a dangerously misguided message of body acceptance; making them terrified of telling their daughters they’re getting fat for fear they’ll stop eating altogether.

Mums are now so busy shoring up their daughters’ self-worth by telling them they’re lovely just the way they are, they’re becoming guilty of benign neglect instead.

Kelsey, you’re a fucking moron. First, she’s assuming that those three women on her flight just weren’t shamed enough growing up, and that if they were shamed, then perhaps they wouldn’t be so fat. I have my own anecdotal evidence for why that’s bullshit, as you can hear in this interview with my wife where she talks about how both of her parents spent the bulk of her childhood doing exactly what Kelsey recommends. And in a survey of 500 teenage girls, a mom’s own dieting behavior is correlated with the daughter’s eating disorder. So what do you think the effect of a parent constantly criticizing their body is?

I can’t count the number of mothers who have confided in me their concerns about their daughters’ weight, while emphasising they’d never say anything about them tipping the scales because they don’t want to tip them into anorexia.

Good for them. Perhaps instead of worrying about their daughter’s weight, they could simply focus on fostering an environment where healthy behaviors are rewarded with  — oh, I don’t know  — a healthier body whether or not you have cellulite…

I don’t have a daughter, nor do I have a weight problem. I’ve always felt it was unattractive and unhealthy to be fat and I’ve always been disciplined about what I eat without ever starving myself.

Sorry, Kelsey, but you most certainly do have a weight problem. The fact that you are thin and you are “disciplined about what I eat,” yet ashamed of your own cellulite is just a small glimpse into the self-loathing you wish all women shared.

I love food, but even today, at 62, I am still very careful to cut back if I feel my jeans getting too tight. While I have sympathy for those with genuine metabolic conditions, the majority of today’s fatties seem simply too greedy, ill-disciplined and or ignorant to do the same.

But seriously, Kelsey…

The statistics speak for themselves. According to the Government-backed Health And Social Care Information Centre, the proportion of overweight and obese women has increased by 10  per cent in less than a decade.

Correct, however, if you look at the actual prevalence trends (PDF), you’ll see that, like the United States, the majority of that increase took place in the 1990s, and is now beginning to show signs of leveling off.

As Kelsey said, there are a number of socioeconomic factors that explain these trends,and one of those is the shift to two-income households who have less and less free time. Now, if you’re a relatively wealthy former magazine editor, you probably haven’t felt that squeeze, but I guarantee the middle class families in Britain are feeling it just like they are in the United States. Pour environmental factors like the endocrine disruptors and dysfunctional gut flora I mentioned, and you see where the shift stems from.

I’m sorry, but I interrupted your panic with facts. Please, continue.

And youngsters are getting fatter at an ever earlier age — one in ten four to five-year olds are now officially obese when they start school. That figure almost doubles when you look at under-15s. These statistics are particularly shocking because the earlier fat sets in, the harder it is to shift in later life.

Let me ask you this, Kelsey: did you know that the UK adjusted downward its definition of overweight and obese in children (PDF)? Basically, it followed the lead of the US, as I explained in this post from when The Biggest Loser hired a quack to make fat kids lose half their body weight:

In 2007, an expert committee recommended changing the cutoff points for obesity and overweight. Before, a child whose weight was between the 85th and 94th percentile was considered “at risk for overweight”; between 95th and 97th percentile was “overweight”; and greater than the 98th percentile was “obese.” After the committee’s recommendations were accepted, 85-94 became overweight, 95-97 became obese, and 98 and above became morbidly obese.

Overnight, the number of overweight children jumped from 15% of the population to over 30%, despite the fact that childhood obesity rates have remained stagnant since 1999.

Do you think this might have an impact on how we perceive the amount of fat kids in the population? Give that some thought.

Of course we can, and should, blame the greedy manufacturers of addictive sugar and fat-loaded foods for cynically marketing them at the young.

But as a mother of a food-loving son myself — who was only allowed biscuits, ice cream and the occasional McDonald’s as treats — I know full well that healthy alternatives are out there. Overfeeding your kids is not love, it’s abuse.

Of course, as an upper class citizen, those “healthy alternatives” are more readily at hand for you, aren’t they? My in-laws are relatively wealthy and they still rely on convenience foods for most meals. The difference? Their convenience foods are typically freshly prepared with a minimal amount of unnecessary ingredients, like high-fructose corn syrup which is ubiquitous in cheap convenience foods. This isn’t just because HFCS makes food sweeter, and therefore more palatable, but because it’s used to preserve frozen foods and increase shelf stability. This idea that fat people are gluttons for fast food, while thin people are all eating homemade, organic, locally-sourced, freshly-prepared meals every day is bullshit. Everybody eats convenience foods, but the quality definitely depends upon your time and financial budget.

Fat is killing millions and costing billions. More than £5 billion to the NHS each year, in fact, compared to the £80 million to £100 million that eating disorders cost.

Ah yes, the ol’ “fatties cost us more money” argument. It’s a favorite among fat-haters because it turns personal choices into “waaaaaaaaaaaah, you’re robbing me!” arguments. Except, studies on the costs of obesity frequently use spurious calculations, like counting ALL heart disease as caused by obesity or counting fat people with mental health issues (like depression) as an “obesity-related disease,” as I outlined in this post. The fact is that health problems stem from an unhealthy diet and a sedentary lifestyle, regardless of what size you are. And if you think fat people are the only sedentary people out there, then you are a fucking moron. Full stop.

Of course, eating disorders can kill. But being overweight leads to high blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks and even cancer. According to Cancer Research UK, as many as one in ten cancer cases could be prevented by improving our diet. The link to breast cancer is less clear, but dietary fats are increasingly thought to be implicated.

Again, it’s unhealthy diet coupled with sedentary lifestyle that can lead to hypertension, strokes, heart attacks and cancer, not being fat. The fact is, if you are fat and you have a healthy lifestyle, you’re no more likely to develop metabolic disorders than thin people who have a healthy lifestyle. And if you’re thin with an unhealthy lifestyle, you’re fucked as well.

Type 2 diabetes, linked to being overweight, is on the increase and more children are suffering from it. Asthma, sleep apnoea, acid reflux, fatty liver disease, dozens of illnesses, minor and major, can be linked to being overweight. Fat, and this can’t be denied, is fatal.

First of all, yes it can be denied. I’ll deny it right to your face. Second of all, type 2 diabetes is linked to being overweight because insulin resistance causes weight gain. But simply being fat does not make you diabetic. First, you have to have the genetic predisposition, according to the American Diabetes Association. If you’re fat and have a family history of diabetes, research confirms again and again and again that exercise, “regardless of weight loss,” has an incredibly positive impact on the disease.

We live in a society in which it has become OK to shame people for being skinny, but to come out and say ‘You’re fat. Not healthy, not a good look’ would be tantamount to a crime.

First of all, it is not okay to shame people for being skinny, but I find it ironic that you snarked on Keira Knightley and Victoria Beckham in this article. Here’s the deal: it’s bullshit to shame anyone’s body, and to do it in such public fashion is fucking pathetic. You may as well write, “Here are all my insecurities projected onto three innocent girls who I resent for not sharing my daily self-loathing!”

It’s about time we stopped tiptoeing around the size issue, stopped kidding ourselves that anorexia, however serious, is the biggest eating problem we face, and started to tackle fat for the problem that it is.

I’d like to tackle you for the problem you are.

Not because celebrities and models are worthy of emulating but because fat is a blight on both individuals and society.

Sorry, but assholes like you are a bigger blight on society than fatties.

One way to start might be by calling a fat girl a fat girl. No apology required.

Kelsey, I know you think you’re being edgy and thought provoking by standing up against the tyranny of self-acceptance, but it seems to me that if anyone is in need of wake-up call it’s you. Obesity rates were driven up long before Body Acceptance became popular. The 1980s and 1990s were the hay days of fat shaming and aspirational media representations of the thinnest and most socially acceptable bodies. This is also the time during which eating disorders AND obesity rates increased the most. For example, hospitalizations for EDs in Canada jumped among teenagers during that time:

And since the obesity panic began in the early 2000s, eating disorder hospitalizations among children in the United States has jumped 112%.

Body Acceptance only really took off in this decade, so anyone waving a flag of fear over three fat women comfortable in their own skin is completely ignoring what came before that. Kelsey acts as though Body Acceptance is responsible for obesity rates increasing (which they are not) and that shaming them into a state of perpetual vigilance over every morsel they eat will result in everybody leading healthy lifestyles and wearing clothing appropriate for their size.

It’s pearl clutching at its finest, and the “solution” proposed by Kelsey as novel and radical is nothing more than the status quo. It’s the equivalent of somebody lamenting the rates of drug abuse in this country and suggesting — oh I don’t know — a War on Drugs or something.

Weight is a complicated issue with complicated causes and complicated effects, so when someone offers this kind of childlike proposal for dealing with fat people who don’t hate themselves enough, it’s time we realize who really needs to be shamed in this world.

Thanks to everyone who has gotten us this far. Please support Casey in improving her mobility while fighting the fat haters by donating whatever you can afford. Read more here or click the image above to donate.

Today, I have the honor of introducing our latest blogger: Jean Braithwaite. I made the executive decision to add Jean to our blogging ranks after we were reunited on Facebook nearly 15 years after she taught my favorite Creative Writing class at Mizzou. Jean has written a fat memoir and after today’s post I’m sure you’ll find my judgment is spot on.

Lots of people in the Fatosphere have already written to rebut or scold Linda Kelsey, so there’s no point in my doing that one more time. I want to take a slightly different angle. In today’s post on Never Diet Again UK, my hero Angela Meadows wonders about the average person’s reaction to Kelsey’s Daily Mail editorial last week.  If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware of the screed already, where Kelsey figures that three fat girls ahead of her in line are “obviously unconcerned” about their size — because look, they’re laughing and chatting! They’re wearing shorts at the airport! Furthermore, Kelsey just knows “most fatties” are “doing nothing substantial to reduce” and while she has “sympathy for those with genuine metabolic conditions,” she just knows that “the majority of today’s fatties” aren’t in that category, they’re “simply too greedy, ill-disciplined and or ignorant” to stay thin, like she does.

Angela, I wonder too. When those of us in the Health at Every Size^® (HAES) and Fat Acceptance (FA) communities read stuff like this, we see it as hate-mongering. Meanwhile, our haters — folks who are actually aware of HAES and FA and are manning the battle stations to defend civilization against us — well, presumably they’re cheering and doing a happy dance.  But how might Kelsey’s op-ed strike an ordinary reader, brought up in a weight-loss culture, trained by the media to fear “obesity” like the plague, and barely aware (if at all) of any countervailing scientific opinion about dieting and fat? Will such readers notice Kelsey’s glaring logical errors? If they’re fat, and have ever worn shorts in the heat or smiled in public, they might. Or if they’re fat and have ever tried to lose weight — ha ha, does she really think that’s a minority of all fatties? Ha ha — excuse me while I get a grip [wipes eyes]. Okay, I’m back.  Will the ordinary reader notice the similarity between a phrase like “genuine metabolic conditions” and “legitimate rape,”  both of which imply that there are a whole, big bunch of false claims out there, a whole culture of whining victimhood that tries to shift the blame away from the disadvantaged person (where defenders of the status quo would prefer for it to stay)?

Actually, it’s not statistically likely, but I hope that by sheer chance Kelsey’s dopey mind-reading attempt happened to get it right about those particular three girls. I hope for the sake of their health that they’re not chronic dieters and that they don’t feel ashamed of their fat bodies. I hope they know that anyone of any size can guard their well-being and pursue health, irrespective of weight.  I wonder what they themselves would think if they read Kelsey’s piece? Would they recognize themselves? Would they (Ugh! Horrible!) concede that she was right about their lack of self-discipline? I picture myself as a teenager back in the 70s, reading a column like Kelsey’s, then redoubling my efforts to starve myself and thereby set myself up for an even bigger biological rebound inflicting even more damage to my eroding self-confidence.

That’s not all I wonder. I wonder about Kelsey too; how her mind works. Let’s make some charitable assumptions. Let’s say that she isn’t just trying to beef up the thin privilege she clearly enjoys by further vilifying the already marginalized. Let’s say that she actually does want the world to be a better, healthier place, but just happens to have some wrong information here and there. That happens to the best of us. If we want to be really charitable, we might even spare a little pity for someone who evidently has so much of her self-esteem tied up in her slenderness. After all, Kelsey received the same fat-phobic, pro-weight-loss cultural indoctrination that all of us did, and we know how hard it was to get free from that.  Presumably, she thinks that sound empirical evidence exists proving fat is always unhealthy. Why wouldn’t she? We’ve been told so. Presumably, she’s also at least vaguely aware of evidence that complicates the otherwise-very-satisfying idea that a fat body must always be the wages of gluttony, sloth, or both (because thermodynamics!), or she wouldn’t include that sympathetic proviso about “metabolic conditions.”  Now, what I want to know is this: how does she get from there to the confident assertion that the gluttony/sloth/both analysis is still the correct one for “the majority of today’s fatties”? Does she think that empirical evidence exists for that proposition too? Or at that point, does she just stop caring about evidence and go straight into evangelical-faith mode?

I’m genuinely curious what happens in the minds of fat-haters who believe empirical science is on their side. When they enter into some kind of double-think in their relationship to evidence and logic, do they know that it’s happening? Kelsey believes in the existence of at least a few fatties in this world who have something going on with their metabolisms and therefore aren’t just glutton/sloth/both. Why she feels certain there can only be a few is still a mystery, but in any case, unless she thinks she can diagnose metabolic conditions by sight, she still can’t know which fatties are which.  How did Kelsey decide that the three girls grossing her out at the airport were definitely not going to be sorted into the tolerable category? Do people with metabolic conditions never wear shorts, never go on holidays, never laugh?  Standing at the airport, shouldn’t Kelsey’s reasoning have gone something more like, “Well, I figure there is a 95% chance that these girls deserve my contempt and a 5% chance that they deserve my sympathy” — or whatever she thinks the percentages are. How do you get from there to a certainty that contempt is justified? How do you do it? This isn’t just a rhetorical question. I really wonder.

Thanks to everyone who has gotten us this far. Please support Casey in improving her mobility while fighting the fat haters by donating whatever you can afford. Read more here or click the image above to donate.

Trigger warning: Discussion of anorexia in a fictional story.

Young adult literature was a lot different back in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, we have an endless series of humans falling in love with vampires, zombies, werewolves and other assorted creatures of the night. We have teenagers fighting in dystopian societies who must enter violent and deadly competitions to survive and/or to change the status quo. We have ordinary teenagers who suddenly learn they have special powers and they are the only ones to stop the evil about to takeover their town.

When I was in middle and high school, most of the young adult books were less supernatural in nature, apart from the awesome, and now hard-to-find, Dark Forces and Twilight: Where Darkness Begins (yup, we had our own Twilight series way before Stephanie Meyer cooked up sparkly vampires and their problematic romances with self-depreciating teenage girls), R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series and Goosebumps series, and the fun and over-the-top Point Horror books. Teenage supersleuths Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys were still around, but the stories were updated for a new generation, with more romance and violence. But there was one series I absolutely adored when I was all of nine years old. The year was 1983, the debut of Sweet Valley High.

The book that started it all.

Sweet Valley High was created by Francine Pascal, but most or all of the books were ghostwritten. The main characters were 16-year-old identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield — blonde, with aqua eyes and “perfect size six figures” (which was changed to size four when the books were reissued with modern updates since size six is so fat now). They were also cliched as hell. Jessica was the “bad twin”: boy-crazy, obsessed with fashion and gossip and getting what she wanted. Elizabeth was the “good twin”: an excellent student with a longtime boyfriend who was kind to everyone and dressed modestly. The twins, their friends (and enemies) lived in the picture-perfect suburb of Sweet Valley, California and spent so much time at the beach or going to parties you’d think they were living in a Beach Boys’ song.

Looking back at the series with an adult eye, the drama was bizarre and contrived. These 16- and 17-year-old characters were written like they were 40 years old. If you think unrealistic dialogue for teenagers started with Dawson’s Creek, think again:

• “Sandy’s a doll, but her taste is … suspect.”
• “I was talking to AJ Morgan the other day. He said he met a girl on the beach with an ego the size of Utah. And a butt to match.”
• “Jess, please stop acting that way around AJ.” “What way?” “You know, spineless, weak, like a complete dullard.”

I never talked like this when I was 16, and neither did anyone else my age I knew. Hell, I don’t know anybody in their 30s and 40s who talk like this. But I think the over-the-top dialogue and plots of these books attracted so many of us to read them. With all the dances and backstabbing and romance, Sweet Valley High certainly made my school sound like Dullsville, USA.

There were a ton of problems with the Sweet Valley books; problems you don’t think about when you’re nine years old. There was quite a bit of fat-shaming. One character that never had a story of her own, but was mentioned randomly, was a supposedly-fat girl named Lois Waller (and, of course, since she’s fat, she doesn’t get an attractive name like the Wakefield twins or Lila Fowler or Amy Sutton). She was always the target of fat jokes and was always seen eating a lot in the cafeteria. Considering that all the main girls in this thing were size six or smaller, Lois was probably a 10 or a 12 at most (I wore a regular size large at this time, so I could definitely relate to Lois and all the crap she got from her classmates).

Another female character that did get stories of her own was Robin Wilson. In the first few books, she started off fat and was treated nastily, but lost weight and obtained The Fantasy of Being Thin: she joined the cheerleading squad, became a member of the high school sorority (what high schools even have sororities?) and stole another girl’s boyfriend. Later on down the road, she developed anorexia due to school pressure, but by the end of that book, she was magically OK.

This leads to another issue with Sweet Valley High — when a character does go through trauma, there are no lasting effects. The only exception was when rich debutante Lila Fowler is nearly raped and goes into therapy and can’t handle being around guys for a while. If I had a dollar for every time the Wakefield twins were stalked, kidnapped and nearly killed, I could buy the entire island of Maui. And they came out pretty much unscathed.

Fat-shaming aside, Sweet Valley High was actually pretty fun to read, although the plots got even more ridiculous as it went on. The franchise, counting spinoffs like Sweet Valley Twins and SVU, has been around for over 20 years, making it one of the longest-running YA series’ ever. It was escapism, pure and simple, and not meant to be taken seriously. Of course, when you compare it to today’s darker, grittier YA fiction like The Hunger Games and Divergent, it’s easy to dismiss it as badly-written, fluffy, outdated tripe. Although it would be fun to see Jessica and Elizabeth battle it out in a post-apocalyptic world. Hmm, maybe I should write Francine Pascal and give her an idea for a new Sweet Valley saga. She’s already had them face a vampire and a wannabe werewolf way before Bella Swan did, so it wouldn’t be that weird. ;)

Thanks to everyone who has gotten us this far. Please support Casey in improving her mobility while fighting the fat haters by donating whatever you can afford. Read more here or click the image above to donate.

Trigger warning: Discussion of eating disorders, weight loss and a posted image of a thin celebrity.

One good thing about social media is that fat-shamers can instantly get called out on their hateful attitudes in real time. Maria Kang took heat on Facebook for her “what’s your excuse?” posts and her negative opinions on larger women taking pictures of themselves wearing Curvy Girl lingerie. Marie Claire writer Maura Kelly faced immediate backlash and threats of subscription cancellations for saying she didn’t want to see fat people being intimate on TV, much less walk into a room. There was the Cintra Wilson incident, where she was boycotted by fat activists and allies (myself included) for her scathing review of JCPenney clothing, that included a not-so-nice dose of fat hate. And who can forget the Wiscon controversy, where pictures of fat people, disabled people and/or people in the LBGT community were taken secretly by blogger Rachel Moss and posted online for ridicule.

On the flip side, we have thin women who get bashed for posting pictures of themselves wearing a bikini right after they had a baby. Rihanna (who I can’t stand because she cyberbullied her fans on Twitter — but I digress) posted naked pics of herself on her Instagram account and they were removed. The latest social media outrage happened just last week to reality TV star Bethenny Frankel.

Frankel is widely known for the pride she takes in being thin. She named her product line of cocktails, sweeteners, nutrition bars and shapewear Skinnygirl. She has given some horrible advice on eating.  To be fair, she’s admitted to suffering from eating disorders and obsessive dieting, and claims she grew up in a home where her bulimic mother was very controlling toward food, so it doesn’t surprise me that she followed in those same footsteps. It also doesn’t surprise me that, due to her history, she was  so widely criticized for her now-infamous selfie of wearing her four-year-old daughter’s pajamas.

Some people told her she was gross and to eat something. Many wondered if she was setting her daughter up for eating disorders and unrealistic body goals. Others said she was doing this as a cry for help and attention.

Frankel defended herself on Twitter by saying that her daughter asked her to put on the pajamas, so she did it for fun. That very well might be the exact reason she did it. We don’t know her actual eating habits or her lifestyle routine, just like we don’t know the eating habits and lifestyle routines of fat people. It’s not our business.

But since Frankel chose to make this picture public, and given her history, it does make me wonder if deep down fitting into her daughter’s pajamas was a moment of happiness regarding her body and she wanted to shout it from the rooftops by taking the photo. Women, famous or not, are expected — even demanded — to be thin and to stay thin at any cost.

Our diet culture takes pleasure in seeing women proudly exclaim they dieted down to the size they used to be in high school, to be able to fit into the dress they wore on their wedding day 20 years ago, or to get back to their “pre-baby” figure as soon as possible. So should we really be upset and angry when we see women online showing off their slim bodies? After all, it’s what most of society expects from them, while at the same time, expressing disgust for fat women (and men) who take pictures of themselves happy no matter what they’re wearing or doing. The disgust is so high that Facebook pages have been created to mock big women and reddit has probably as many fat-hate sites as all the galaxies in the universe.

The more social media dominates our daily lives, the more of these pictures we’ll continue to see, and just maybe more people will start to think about how our culture imposes unrealistic body standards on women, and work towards eliminating those standards.

Thanks to everyone who has gotten us this far. Please support Casey in improving her mobility while fighting the fat haters by donating whatever you can afford. Read more here or click the image above to donate.

Trigger warning: Discussion of articles about weight loss, eating disorders and weight loss surgery.

Welcome to Parents Night, Mr. and Mrs. Post. It’s such a pleasure to see you again. You’ve got quite the ambitious rapscallion on your hands with Young Huffington. He’s quite a resourceful lad and I have to say he’s one of my favorite aggregators by far. He provides us with daily updates on the state of the world, politics and pop culture in a way that is both entertaining and informative. And he’s quite popular, to boot.

There’s just one area that I feel I need to bring to your attention. It’s his Body Acceptance. He’s certainly made a lot of progress since that unfortunate incident four years ago, but as you may recall, last summer Huffington angered some by spreading sensational stereotypes about fat people on the same page as “Plus-Size Model Stuns in New Swimwear Line.” It’s as if he doesn’t realize that “obese” is the same as “fat” is the same as “plus-sized.”

Huffington’s confusion led me to follow his work far closer this past year, and I’m finally ready to share with you my findings on exactly what he’s been up to. What follows are the screen captures of all Body Acceptance-related front page stories that Huffington has shared in the past 12 months. The coverage isn’t perfect, but I check on Huffington enough to confidently say that 80-85% of his work is included in this analysis.

I’ve divided the headlines into the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Oh, and the Meh.

I hope you’re willing to listen and work with Young Huffington so that he will continue to improve on providing a welcome place for people of all shapes and sizes.

The Meh

These are the eight headlines having to do with diet, exercise, weight loss or fat people that didn’t raise any flags or make me stand up and cheer. They’re the straight news stories that relate information without judgement.

They certainly aren’t perfect. At first glance, I worried that the giant, naked, climbing fatties might make larger bodies the butt of the joke (pun intended), but I would imagine that any building-sized nude statue is going to be interpreted as offensive to some, regardless of what size.

I’ll take innocuous over insolent any day.

The Good

Huffington has shown some amazing progress in the past year in representing fat people, as well as promoting positive body image, body acceptance, and inclusion. He has great initiative in covering a variety of aspects of weight and health that are both respectful, insightful and relatively diverse. If Huffington’s goal in life is to begin meaningful conversations on difficult subjects surrounding weight and health, then he has taken great strides toward that goal since last July.

One of my favorite front-page pieces was Lauren Duca’s outstanding analysis of Biggest Loser.

From the very first paragraph, I knew I was reading something special:

It’s no secret that “The Biggest Loser” is unhealthy. Outlets like The New York Times itemized the hazardous medical implications of such extreme and rapid weight loss as early as 2009. Yet, the “Biggest Loser” is flawed beyond the questionable practice of more than six hours of exercise a day. Ultimately, the concept of diets — absurdly rigorous or not — are faulty attempts at healthy living. And the imposition of such an intense weight adjustment has an alarming impact once the cast leaves the ranch.

I remember being pretty shocked that I was actually seeing any kind of skepticism of the show. Prior to 2014 (when “winner” Rachel Frederickson’s  weight loss “shocked” the country), Huffington posted just one brief, critical article about the show from 2009. There are articles about controversies, but none as harsh as Duca’s. Huffington did once report in 2012 about a study on how the show discourages people from exercising. Other than that, it’s all been “rah rah, Biggest Loser!” Quite frankly, we were all quite embarrassed by it.

I can only imagine the epiphany Huffington must have had when he witnessed what happens when you train people to adopt disordered eating and exercise habits for a cash prize and extend the time contestants could follow such toxic advice. Hopefully Huffington realizes what happens when these contestants go back to the real world where people have jobs and families and responsibilities outside of their daily six-hour workouts. He’s quite a bright lad, and I have no doubt he’ll come to his senses.

Huffington has also shown himself to be quite the wisenheimer, sharing body image comics that can’t help but make you smirk.

When you click the link, you get Annie Lederman’s quirky sketch.

Huffington has also handled an easy-to-sensationalize story without taking cheap shots. The article and accompanying video are appropriately horrifying and heartbreaking.

Of course, I’m never going to discourage Huffington from reporting what Pat Robertson says God thinks about low-carb dieting.

Finally, there was one troubling incident that, for all intents and purposes, clearly belongs in the Good list. And yet, in the presentation of Jenny Trout’s hilarious bikini exposé, somebody fucked up. See if you can spot the error (hint: it’s outlined in a red box).

Nowhere in Jenny’s story does she talk about an eating disorder, which made me wonder if this might be a prank on the order of Huffington’s anti-Fat Acceptance Easter egg. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that it was an accidental tag, but given his history, it’s hard not to fear some malicious intent.

And although Huffington has had a number of body positive “fatkini” articles, he occasionally falls into old habits. One afternoon, I had a teachable moment with Huffington. I sat him down and showed him four headlines and asked him to play “One of these things is not like the other.” You probably remember it from Sesame Street.

See if you can figure out which one of these things is not like other, which one of these things just isn’t the same, Mr. and Mrs. Post:

I’ve pointed out to Young Huffington that it’s unseemly to promote summertime confidence on the front page while peddling swimsuit insecurities on the front page of the Weight Loss section.

But overall, Huffington has shared having an impressive 67 body positive and fat-friendly articles, not including the five stories in the animated gif below that exist twice under different headlines or photos.

But as evidenced by the Bikini Paradox, Huffington is suffering from an acute identity crisis, which can best be summed up by the presence of this article:

Huffington wants to give the impression that obsession with fatness is a “social epidemic,” and yet any one of the magazine headlines illustrating this point could just as easily have come from Huffington’s Bad headlines.

The Bad

Sadly, Young Huffington still loves Fat Talk, even while decrying it as a social epidemic. Being fat is still the biggest health problem in his eyes, rather than the behavioral choices that can negatively impact the health of people of all sizes: poor nutrition and sedentary lifestyle.

The popular belief goes something like this: people who eat a diverse, healthy diet and get adequate exercise are thin, while people who do not are fat; ergo, all fat people are eating an unhealthy diet and not getting enough exercise. So if you’re fat, regardless of what your actual lifestyle choices are, you should be doing more, more, perpetually more, until you are the right size.

This popular belief permeates our culture and leads people (especially women) to treat their bodies like a lifetime “home repair” project. In fact, the language surrounding weight loss is that once you shed all that unsightly fat, you’ll have a “new body.”

As I wrote in my post on weight bullying, at this point they must have Britney bodies stacked like cordwood in Hangar 51.

If Young Huffington really wants to do something about this social epidemic of fat talk, then he’s in the perfect position to do something. First and foremost, stop framing so many stories around the importance of fat people losing weight. Now, I can tell by the aghast look on your faces, Mr. and Mrs. Post, that you’re wondering whether I am joking or not, and I assure you that I am not. It’s a complicated subject which will be discussed at length next week by our special guest lecturer from Harvard, but in a nutshell, when people adopt a healthy lifestyles they don’t tend to drop 100 pounds or more, even in the long term.

In fact, the average amount that people lose after a year (regardless of what diet you prescribe, how much exercise you prescribe, how much counseling you receive, or which professional service you hire) is between 5-10% of your starting weight. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pay some lip service to it on its healthy weight loss page by linking to this study (PDF), which explains why 5-10% is so successful and so sustainable. And we have now secured an interview with the professor who wrote that paper where he goes on to explain how people who promote weight loss of greater than 10% are woefully misinformed.

In fact, this same professor wrote another paper on how people who have weight loss surgery lose an average of 25% of their starting weight (less if we’re talking Lap Band). So hopefully you understand why promoting the most extreme weight loss of 25% or more is giving a false impression of what the vast majority of people experience when they adopt healthy lifestyles. Is it impossible to lose more than 25%? No. I know people who have done it. But is it sustainable in the long-term? For most people, no.

And yet here is the Weight Loss section by Huffington Post today below the lead story of the girl who went from “obesity to bikini body”:

Huffington features an average weight loss of 140 pounds. So, unless each of those subjects started out being 1,400 pounds, then Huffington is promoting the most outlier results from the average weight loss experience. And according to our guest lecturer, that goes against what the public health message is supposed to be.

And by “supposed to be” I mean that if you open a weight loss research paper, any weight loss research paper, you are 95% certain to find a reference to that 5-10% average being referred to as “clinically significant weight loss.” When you hear somebody bragging about how their study showed their particular weight loss approach yielded “significant weight loss,” ask them if it was more than 10% and watch that smirk melt right off their face.

So what is the answer? How do you promote healthy behaviors without falling into the trap of promoting calories as currency in the down payment on your “new body”? Well, oddly enough, Huffington published the answer himself last year when he shared Iris Higgins’ open letter to her weight loss clients.

Promoting healthy foods? Great! Promoting exercise? Awesome! Promoting either as the penance you must pay to get your bikini body? [Cue Price is Right horn of sadness]

So when I looked at Huffington’s front page headlines, what jumped out at me was the obsession with outlier weight loss as inspiration and the emphasis on sneaky and bizarre ways to lose 25% or more and how to “reset” after overeating (aka, perpetuate the restriction/disinhibition cycle that is at the very heart of yo-yo dieting) and how obesity is simply caused by skinny kids not eating apples and how you should “burn calories like an Olympian” rather than exercise like an Olympian.

But what really steams my clams, Mr. and Mrs. Post; what really chaps my hide is that Young Huffington knows that The Biggest Loser is full of shit, and yet he chooses to promote its approach anyway.

Huffington Post needs to make a choice: is it going to continue promoting unhealthy behaviors in the pursuit of unrealistic goals? Or is it going to promote healthy behaviors that work for every body regardless of how much weight they lose? This is ultimately the choice that Young Huffington needs to make in the coming years.

And yet, even with all this Bad, there is still some Good. Above, I listed just 22 Bad stories, which is just a third of the Good stories I found. Given Huffington’s history, I was kind of shocked by the ratio. In my personal opinion, 2014 was a year of breathtaking progress on the front page of Young Huffington Post. It gives me great hope that in the coming years he can begin living up to his full potential.

The Ugly

Disturbingly, there are still remnants from Huffington’s cretinous past. From time to time, there’s a meanness about the way Huffington talks about weight issues. For example:

When I saw this, I pulled Huffington right out of class and said, “Really?” If you’re going to discuss fat kids, discuss fat kids, but don’t make a mockery of your subject.

Another simple rule of thumb is that Huffington shouldn’t ask questions that make people look at him like he’s sprouted a tiny penis at the end of his nose.

Also, if Huffington insists on promoting weight loss, could he at least match the photo to the story? For example, this story…

… made me think I was going to click on an article about how enjoying yourself at the beach makes you skinny. Nope. It’s about weighing yourself. Go figure. So in hindsight, what this story seems to be saying on the front page is, “Hey fat people enjoying themselves at the beach, why don’t you weight yourself once in a while!”

I’ve also advised Huffington to keep Bill Maher’s fat jokes to a minimum:

It’s a dick move to post fat jokes at all, but to mock a man who was (at least partially) motivated to mutilate his stomach just so he wouldn’t face the same level of weight stigma when running for President of the United States is despicable.

Also despicable? Body shaming anyone.

Of course, I already decimated Huffington’s “exercise vs. diet” nonsense.

But Huffington definitely needs to knock this shit off:

And how in the hell did Huffington not realize how insulting this juxtaposition is?

Now, there’s one area where Huffington may feel justified in being hyperbolic and aiming its lens directly at fatties:

What is it? According to The Washington Post, it’s liver disease, or nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD):

The condition’s rise is tied to the obesity epidemic — about 40% of obese children have it — but isn’t caused solely by being overweight. The disease appears to be growing among normal-weight children too, experts say. And even though obesity rates are starting to level off, the prevalence of fatty liver disease continues to rise, they say.

Here’s the thing: NAFLD is caused by insulin resistance, and weight gain can be a symptom of insulin resistance. But there are normal weight insulin resistant people, too. So, by focusing this on fat kids, you’re simply targeting a symptom rather than the disease. And the fact that some fat kid might be reading your front page, recognize himself on that scale and believe he’s got a fatty liver is a shitty thing to do.

So, what is a conscientious Huffington to do? Consider all the influences:

It’s likely there are multiple factors that worsen fatty liver disease. Early research shows that the disease is partly genetic but likely needs to be triggered by environmental conditions, like obesity or insulin resistance. Much of the current research has focused on genes and specific nutrients in the diet that might cause the disease. One culprit is fructose, a type of sugar found in corn syrup and fruit juice, which are widely consumed in western diets, according to Dr. Vos’s research.

And guess what triggers insulin resistance in those genetically susceptible to the disease? Fructose. So, why not focus on the dietary influence, rather than singling out fat kids?And yet, even the article turned its lens on fat kids in the end:

The medical team educated the Waskowskis, who live in Cleveland, about the condition and what Gregory needed to do to reduce his weight, which is the primary recommendation for treatment. He now exercises five hours a week, mostly by walking on the treadmill, and eats more fruits and vegetables. The Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Alkhouri, one of his doctors, wrote a note to his school advising against excess snacking there for Gregory.

Of course, research has also shown that NAFLD can be improved on a Mediterranean diet, regardless of weight loss. So what if Gregory adopts those behaviors, but doesn’t lose much weight? Because those behaviors may improve NAFLD, but may not result in a huge weight difference.

If you’re going to wage a public health campaign, at least aim it at the things that ALL bodies need to be healthy. Don’t single out the one group you think needs it.

Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Post, Huffington needs to stop giving a platform to the haters. Back in January, this made the front page:

As you may recall, some ignorant dog-fucker named Dick Wisken wrote an open letter to the fat guy he had to sit next to on the plane. As I pointed out, aside from being completely unsubstantiated, many of the details seemed dubious at best. Why give Dick Wisken any oxygen? Because he wrote a snarky letter to some fat person who doesn’t have the opportunity to defend himself? What’s the point? If I write a sufficiently witty letter to some douchebag who doesn’t use deodorant on my next flight, will you give me some clicks? Honestly, who gives a shit what this bottom-feeder thinks?

As the ancient proverb goes, you are who you link to.

Final Grade

In the end, Mr. and Mrs. Post, it all comes down to what kind of environment Young Huffington wants to promote. Does he want to be the aggregator who trades in insecurities and body shame or does he want to be the aggregator who promotes self-acceptance and positive healthy change?

You can see the conflict in action when you compare the “obesity” tag to the “plus-size” tag to the “fat” tag. The first is for hyperbolic fear-mongering of fat people, the second is for celebrating fat people, and the third is for ambivalent coverage of fat people. And here’s a final hint for that last tag: if I self-identify as “fat,” then I sure as shit don’t want to read any articles by Dr. Dickhole, the mile high fat-shamer extraordinaire.

As far as Huffington’s grade, he would be in big, fat trouble if I used letter grades, as his rating of 67% would not get him out of failing territory. But for now, we’re grading on pass/fail and, this year at least, Huffington has barely passed.

I hope to work with Young Huffington to improve his score this year, and I will continue keeping a close eye on his content to ensure that progress is being made. But for now, I’m willing to celebrate the fact that he has expanded his discussion of fat people beyond “ZOMG! FATTY APOCALYPSE!!!” rhetoric. At least he seems to understand that even fatties are people too.

Thanks to everyone who has gotten us this far. Please support Casey in improving her mobility while fighting the fat haters by donating whatever you can afford. Read more here or click the image above to donate.

Trigger warning: Discussion of office weight loss and diet talk.

Hi Everyone!

It’s been a while. I had to take a hiatus and put my nose to the grindstone while working my way up the academic and employment ladder. Now that I’m back, I’m ready to make some keen observations that will throw your senses into overdrive. Are you ready? Today we’re going to talk about a favorite subject: workplace fatphobia!

Recently, my department was moved into one of those ultra-cool open workplace environments that the employees hate but the administration loves because they shove 50 people into the amount of space built for 20, therefore saving tons of money on office space (thanks, Google!). Because walls are ripped down and it’s like a giant studio apartment on steroids, everyone hears everybody’s everything. It’s like the high school cafeteria in there.

One of the many, many downfalls of this situation is that we are now inundated with the inane ramblings of those colleagues who choose to spend their time engaging everyone in mindless fatphobic remarks and endless food moralizing (did I mention the kitchen is open air, too?). Instead of this bigotry being relegated to the comforts of a small cubicle, it has now been set free to roam.

To stimulate your visual senses, I’ll paint a picture:
A container of candy sits out in the open as a gesture of goodwill and sweetness by a colleague. This container is located in my general vicinity. People spend the day gasping at how “dangerous” this candy is just sitting in the open like that, how utterly shocking it is to be seen in broad daylight, not relegated to the side drawer of shame of someone’s desk, obviously sitting next to the 50 other empty candy bar wrappers they must be hiding.

Tired of this uninvited back and forth, I decide to take a stand. Now, every time someone makes a comment, I look at them and eat a piece of candy.

Now we’ll add texture:
Yesterday, I was getting coffee when a group of colleagues were sitting in a group talking. I overheard a conversation that went something like this: “And he was SO gorgeous in high school, and then I saw him not too long ago, and he was FAT and BALD! I was like, haha.” As I made my coffee, I sat there thinking, “Is it worth it? Do I say something? Do I walk?” I decided to walk, and then I decided to write, so here goes…

NEWSFLASH! You don’t win an award for having the least unchanged body since high school! You know, that time before your brain is even fully developed? Being fat or bald does not make someone less of a winner in whatever game of life you’re playing; judging someone based on their appearance as a minor versus an adult does.

The finishing spray:
Finally, I’ve never ONCE eaten a meal in the dining area for lunch. Not ONCE. I eat at my desk. I can’t handle all of the diet talk that goes on. I’ve never been able to stand by the microwave with people eating in that area without listening to them wax poetic about their diet meatloaf or losing weight. As much as workplaces push the wellness card, they should really start with addressing negative food culture.

While there are a lot of positives to being in a workplace where we can interact more openly as colleagues, one of the biggest negatives is having to deal with food shaming, fatphobia, and constant diet talk. While I am at a point in my self-acceptance journey that I can move on without focusing on these conversations, there are students working in our space that may be very vulnerable to this kind of negative environment.

According to the National Association for Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, 91% of students on a college campus have attempted to control their weight through dieting. To have adults in your workplace exhibit behavior that suggests that the constant fight for thinness should continue well into adulthood, a poor example is being set for the young individuals we invite to gain work experience and broaden their resumes.

A more concerted effort needs to be placed on keeping conversations professional and appropriate for the work environment. And while we all may get chatty and loud at work, once your conversation veers into a territory that may harm others, it’s more important to check the content of your dialogue than the volume.

Trigger warning: Discussion of anorexia and weight loss.

So, before I explain my strange food fantasies, a quick synopsis of my personal history: thin/athletic up until age 14, totally unaware that I enjoyed thin privilege. Taught in school that anyone’s body can be made fat or thin through diet and exercise, because 3,500 calories = one pound. It seemed obvious, since “everyone knows” fat people overeat and underexercise. Because thermodynamics, right?

Sometime before I turned 15, my fervent desire for athletic and romantic success prompted me to try using that simple energy-balance equation to lose five pounds, returning my now barely-post-pubescent 125-pound body to the previous year’s 120 (I was 5’6″). Over the next six or seven years I got gradually fatter and fatter, while secretly practicing what I now regard as part-time, variable-intensity anorexia.

Crossed the 200-pound mark by age 20, feeling like a desperately-flawed, contemptible human being. If ever there were an advertisement against trying to lose weight, it’s me. Got thin again finally at 21 by

Not made from people.

eating more or less nothing for most of a year. Somewhere during that time, realized that 3,500 calories doesn’t “equal” a pound, at least not always. For two more years, devoted most of my attention and energy to staying thin, until overexercise injuries caught up with me.

Just short of my 24th birthday, learned of the existence of heterodox opinions about fat, including among empirical researchers, and even a nascent social-justice movement. I read Shadow on a Tightrope (still a great book) and Dieter’s Dilemma (ditto). And I forswore anorexic behaviors and committed myself to a Health at Every Size^® (HAES) practice (that’s what it amounted to, though, of course, that acronym wouldn’t be coined until years in the future).

Over the next five years, gradually rebounded to somewhere between 250-300 pounds. Thus, I led my entire adult life as a non-thin-privileged person, until at age 40 something weird happened — but let’s just pause the narrative here for now. I’m here to tell you, because I’ve been both and I know: it’s way better to be a fat woman who cares for her health than an anorexic, even part time. It’s way better to have a good relationship with your own body, even if this means having a body that other people scorn. Nothing matters more than your own health and well-being, nothing!

Still, and all, I found it kind of uncomfortable inhabiting a fat social identity. I still had basically the same personality from my teenage years, still had that athletic drive and desire to be admirable, seen as admirable and disciplined. I still had the ascetic temperament that had made fasting so tempting. Like idealistic Dorothea in Middlemarch, I “enjoyed giving things up.” Now here I was, to other people’s eyes, the embodiment of self-indulgence and softness. At least now I knew I wasn’t “guilty,” but nobody else did.

It drove me a little crazy, the mismatch between what I felt myself to be and how the rest of the world automatically read my body. Even in my own family, where you would think people should know me best — They could see me exercising! They could see me choosing foods according to the most exacting nutritional standards — well, but people often see what they expect to see, don’t they?

Even as a child, I was never much interested in food or eating, with a few exceptions for special treats. The siren attractions of food were deeply enhanced during my fasting years, a fact which seemed inexplicable at the time. Then, during my fat HAES years, the interestingness of food declined once again. Nobody believed that, though, because they saw me eating the amount I needed to eat to satisfy hunger, and that was a fair amount.

Eating is an endless, tedious chore, costing money and time I’d rather put into other things. If I didn’t have to do it, if there were other options (photosynthesize, plug into the wall at night), I’d definitely choose one of them instead. Science fiction, right? Well, I’m a science fiction fan.

I read a science fiction story where a space traveler from a less-enlightened culture visits a more enlightened culture. One reason you know his culture is fucked up is that he can’t stand to participate in a shared meal. In his culture, eating is just as private as defecating. People shut themselves up alone with the food the same way we have to be alone with the toilet. Readers weren’t supposed to approve of that, but, man…

I wished so much that I lived in that “perverted” food-taboo culture. It would be so great! No more food talk, nothing about who’s eating what or why, or what should or shouldn’t be eaten. Not that food wouldn’t be available in public or at social events. You’d go to somebody else’s house, they’d make sure you could feed yourself as needed, just the way they currently make sure you can do whatever might be needful in the bathroom, with special-purpose paper and everything. It just wouldn’t be social. You’d excuse yourself, pop into the food stall with your biological need, and relieve yourself. Everybody would cooperate to say as little about it as possible.

Probably some of you are thinking I’m a pathetic pervert now too. And it’s sort of true. Lots of fat activists have reclaimed for themselves the pleasures of social eating, and bully for you, but I (a) can’t quite manage that and (b) don’t even exactly want to. I don’t want to retrain myself to enjoy social eating, I just want to be left alone. Ideally, I’d like to get a pass on having to have a social food identity at all. Fat chance of that!

There are other science fiction stories, usually dystopias, where some kind of scientifically designed nutrient-delivery system, the human version of dry kibble, can replace food as we know it. Usually in these stories, either everybody eats the science-blend people chow (like in Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day) or else the vast majority of non-rich people subsist on it while only the most privileged can afford what we would think of as “real” food (like Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! which the movie Soylent Green was loosely based on).

That was another long-running fantasy of mine. If only! What if food were made publicly available in giant vats of nutrient broth or nutrient pudding/sludge? Plenty for all, hunger eradicated around the world! The key factor for me in this fantasy is that the food itself is no more than neutrally palatable. Anyone can suck out as much as they want anytime, and everybody would naturally eat so as to satisfy hunger and it would be clear to everybody that everybody else was eating intuitively, because, you know, nutrient broth just isn’t tasty enough to make ideas that are widespread in our world (theories du jour like “emotional eating” or “binge eating” or “food as a substitute for love” or whatever) even remotely plausible in the fantasy world. If somebody’s eating oftener than average, or more than average, that’s evidence that they’re darn hungry, nothing more.

Don’t you want to live in a world like that? Okay, I know for most people the answer is no. But for me it’s yes.

And then in the May 12 issue of the New Yorker I read an article called “The End of Food,” about a guy, Rob Rhinehart, who invented his own version of nutrient-broth food replacement and was on the verge of mass-marketing it. He’s even calling the stuff “soylent” after the Harrison novel. (Not the Charleton Heston movie, okay? If you know the movie, you know what I’m talking about. In the novel, soylent is made of soy and lentils, there’s no shocking secret ingredient.)

OMG! OMG! Is my private, long-running, silly, science-fiction food fantasy about to come true? Watch this space.

Trigger warning: Discussion of body dysmorphia and eating disorders.

Last week, one of my childhood best friends (Belerma, on the far right) posted this picture she found of us taken during our sixth grade camping trip, circa 1982. I was 11 years old. That’s me, in the yellow, in the middle. The girl to my immediate right was my other best friend, Stacy.

Here’s what it was like to live in my 11-year-old head: I believed, truly and fully, that I was ugly. I believed that I was fat. Not chubby or baby-fat, but full on, big as a cow, big as a house, FAT. I looked in the mirror and saw a body that looked deformed to me. I look at this picture and I see myself hunched over, trying not to look like the tallest — which equated to big, which equated to fat, which equated to bad in my preteen mind.

That little girl hid food and ate it in tears until her stomach hurt. She fantasized about cutting her one little handful of belly fat, that only showed up when she lay on her side, with a steak knife. She hated herself for not being brave enough to make herself throw up the food she ate.

Here’s a sort of eerily-similar picture I took last week of my daughter Ruby on her first day of fourth grade. She’s nine. That’s her on the far right, in the yellow. Like I was, she’s the tallest girl in her class.

I love how tall she stands.

I love that she loves that maybe she’ll be taller than her daddy some day.

I love that sometimes she just randomly says that she loves having long legs, because it makes her a faster runner, which makes her a better soccer player.

I do not worry about her weight. Ever.

I don’t worry about her weight because I know the damage a parent obsessing over a kid’s weight can cause. I know that warning lectures about “you’re not fat yet, but if you’re not careful…” and slapped hands when you go for seconds and advice about making sure you burn the most calories while you’re riding your bike might not seem like such a big deal (might even seem helpful) — but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I don’t worry about her weight because I am Tiger-mom level protective of Ruby’s self-esteem. I never want her (or any of my kids) to feel the way I did when I was 11, and really, from age eight through my adolescence and my twenties and most of my thirties. I don’t want her to wake up one day and find that all of her attempts to fit in and be normal (forget perfect, I just wanted to blend) have culminated in her being actually fat instead of just holding the potential for it.

I don’t worry about her weight because I refuse to contribute to her having an eating disorder. It’s the same reason I don’t bad talk my own body in front of her, even on days when I can’t turn off hating it.

I thought I’d share my top three things to do instead of worrying about your kid’s weight.

1. Make sure that your kid has access to a wide variety of foods of all kinds. In my opinion, it should be unrestricted. Trust that without certain foods being taboo, your kid will naturally gravitate toward a balanced diet. And that without any food hangups, they’ll eat when they’re hungry and stop when they’re full. They were born with that, and if you foster it they’ll hold onto it. I believe they can also relearn it. Check out any books by Ellyn Satter for more information.
2. Make sure your kid has plenty of opportunity for active play. Dance classes, soccer teams, family hikes, a dog to play with in the backyard. Limit time with technology, and your kid might just decide to go outside and play. (They might also decide to read, which is good, too.) Don’t push it. Don’t make it a big deal. Just offer up fun ideas and then help your child engage with whatever makes them excited. Does your community have a YMCA or Boys and Girls Club? Join if you can. Take your kid to the park. Make after-dinner walks a family tradition.
3. Do not engage in negative body talk. Ever. Not about your kid (please!), but also not about yourself. Or that fat lady at Wal-Mart. Don’t share laughing-at-fat-people pictures on Facebook. Don’t talk about your latest diet. Don’t hate on your belly or your thighs or your saggy boobs. Kids are sponges and they will pick up on it. They’ll internalize it. Over time, it’ll start to feel normal. Like they’re supposed to hate their bodies. Follow steps one and two yourself — you’re the best model your kids have.

Trigger warning: Brief mention of eating disorder and weight loss.

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

I want to be antifragile. The opposite of fragile. I want to get stronger when I meet with resistance.

But damn. It’s so hard. For instance, a few minutes ago I got a notification on my phone that someone left a message on a post I made here in 2012. Here’s what they had to say to me:

Except without the cute little piggy. Or the heart over the ‘i.’ Because people angry enough to leave random messages like this aren’t really the cute-pig-and-heart-dots type, right?

Here’s a secret about me: I never even meant to be an activist. I wanted to share what I was learning about how taking care of myself made me feel, outside of weight loss. I wanted to help people who seemed to me to truly not understand what Health at Every Size^® (HAES) is (they really, really don’t understand, still). I wanted to keep myself accountable for how I was treating my body. I wanted to document my recovery from disordered eating.

I burned out. I took a few days off of daily posting about my 100 day experiment on Tumblr when I was gone to a conference and I haven’t been able to make myself go back.

I did post there that I came home sick. That prompted a whole reddit thread about how I was sick and doesn’t HAES mean that all fat people are always healthy at every moment, always and forever amen? (NO.) Never mind that I have never claimed health and in fact started that whole experiment because I felt very unwell.

I hate feeling fragile.

I hate that I care, at all, what random, faceless assholes think about me. I hate that denying that I care only highlights that I do, in fact, care. I hate that I let reddit critics derail me, even a little bit.

I’ve been thinking about antifragility lately — beyond dealing with feeling fragile myself. My Facebook feed has been flooded with people voicing their opinions about Wil Wheaton calling himself a fat piece of crap when he was talking about his efforts to lose weight.

After really thinking about it, it turns out that I’m not mad at Wil Wheaton. I bet that made him sigh with relief, right? (This isn’t even about Wil Wheaton. It’s just my take on what’s being talked about in the Body Acceptance community.)

I think that most people in America equate being fat with being a piece of crap. I think tearing yourself down is a national pastime for women especially, but also for men. I think I want off that fucking roller coaster. And I truly believe that getting angry at people for holding a belief that they are culturally groomed to believe is a waste of time. I mean sure — dear Wil, you are not a piece of crap just because you’re fat (although you may be for other reasons. How am I to know?). But I think it’s safe to say that Wil Wheaton was not extrapolating his feeling about himself to how he feels about all of fat humanity.

I do not believe that Wil Wheaton believes that all fat people are pieces of crap. In fact, I don’t believe that he believes that he’s a piece of crap.

I do believe that Wil Wheaton voiced a cultural norm. When a celebrity does that, it’s like holding a mirror up to all of us. Maybe instead of worrying about whether he thinks we’re all, in fact, pieces of crap, we should think about how we can start changing the fact that people do, in fact, believe that being fat makes them pieces of crap.

Being antifragile is about learning to not make everything about you (me). Wil Wheaton’s self-esteem issues, whatever they are, have nothing to do with me. He’s part of a world that venerates thinness to the point that a grown man who, according to Google, is 5’11” tall and, according to himself, weighed 185 pounds before he lost weight, would even consider calling himself a fat piece of crap. Instead of being offended or angry or certain that Wil Wheaton hates me and every other fat person there ever was, I choose to be antifragile.

I choose to take a step back and decide that my energy and effort are better spent being an example of how being fat doesn’t make a person a piece of crap.

I think we all know that people of all sizes can be pieces of crap. I chose not to be one. Being antifragile helps with that.

I choose to use whatever little platform I have to say to Wil Wheaton (if you’re listening)–I hope you feel less like a piece of crap now, because feeling that way about yourself sucks.

Being antifragile, in this case, looks like recognizing that not very long ago I would have equated being fat with being a piece of crap, too. But I don’t anymore. I want that for everyone else.

It isn’t all that fun to be called a disgusting pig out of the clear, blue sky on a random Friday afternoon. Being antifragile means that I can look at those words and know they aren’t really about me. Not only that, it means I can have compassion for the person who typed them. I feel for someone who has to live with that kind of anger in them all the time. I imagine it hurts.

Note: I received a review copy of the book I’m discussing.

I’ve been asking questions about Health at Every Size^® (HAES) since before I really understood what HAES was all about. Of course, Dr. Linda Bacon’s book, was out there as a resource, but I didn’t have access to a copy when I wrote an article for Skorch magazine about this new health and lifestyle philosophy. So if you listen to the interview I did with Dr. Bacon, you can hear the early skepticism I had regarding HAES.

I did not arrive on the Body Acceptance scene knowing that there was a viable alternative to traditional health advice. Like most people, I believed that a healthy lifestyle led to weight loss which led to improved health. The idea that the middleman of weight loss was entirely unnecessary (or at the very least, overrated) seemed completely foreign to me. Our culture emphasizes that the weight loss middleman is essential for health and that if you’re missing that component, then you may as well not even be living a healthy lifestyle.

Before I talked to Dr. Bacon and read her book, that was my attitude as well. I was what you might call health agnostic. As a result of my family history of heart disease and the premature death of my ostensibly-healthy uncle, I felt as though the pursuit of health was Sisyphean at best and futile at worst. But HAES taught me that there were small, sustainable ways to improve my health without feeling like the cards were stacked against me.

As a result, I delved into HAES, both in my personal life and as a scholarly pursuit. Two posts from now, I will have written 500 blog entries for Fierce Fatties, the majority of which are deeper explorations of the peer-reviewed research that form the foundation of the HAES approach. I’ve grown quite comfortable discussing the subject of HAES and felt as though I knew everything there is to know about this new paradigm in healthcare.

And then, Body Respect came out, which you can purchase directly from the BenBella Books for about ten bucks.

Body Respect is Dr. Bacon’s followup with Dr. Lucy Aphramor, a dietitian with the National Health Services of the UK and founder of Well Founded, a HAES education company. This book expands upon her original HAES book and those original concepts of self-care.

The biggest difference between the original HAES book and Body Respect is its emphasis on the social determinants of health (which I seem to be the only person who abbreviates as SDH).

In a nutshell, the SDH are all of those socioeconomic influences on health that America by and large ignores in its discussion of healthcare. Of course, outside the US, the SDH is a widely-accepted concept that even the World Health Organization (WHO) has embraced:

The social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels.

Body Respect delves deep into the SDH, providing metrics to determine how your own health is affected by the SDH. For instance, there’s allostatic load, which is the “cumulative collective factors that influence an individual’s ability to cope with difficult circumstances,” which includes “genetics, personality, previous metabolic strain, and early developmental events.”

Understanding allostatic load can give us a powerful glimpse into the ways that power and privilege can impact our health independent of individual health choices.

I’ve been writing about the SDH for a while now, first mentioning it in my open letter to Dan Savage back in 2011 and later exploring it in greater depth during the Strong4Life campaign of 2012. I pointed out to Savage how our long-held beliefs on weight and metabolic health are challenged by socioeconomic confounders:

[O]besity and poverty are strongly correlated, but something we rarely talk about is how income affects health outcomes in obesity-related diseases.

Even in Canada with it’s single-payer health system, those with higher incomes fare better with diabetes:

The death rate from diabetes fell by one-third between 1994 and 2005, according to new research.

But the drop in mortality was dramatically greater in high-income groups than among low-income groups, underscoring that diabetes is increasingly a disease of poverty in Canada.

The same holds true for heart disease:

When socioeconomic factors were added into the FRS risk assessment, however, the proportion of low-income and low-education patients at risk for death or disease during the next 10 years was nearly double that of people with higher socioeconomic status.

So when I heard that HAES would be incorporating the SDH in its message, I was all on board. And Body Respect goes into the nitty gritty of how, explaining life-course, lifeworld, sense of coherence and sense of agency that can impact us even while we are objectively making healthy choices.

Winger learning that he’s a victim of the social determinants of health.

Interestingly, Veronica and I have been getting into the show “Community” and last night we watched the episode where Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), the narcissistic leader of a diverse group of ne’er-do-well community college students, learns that he needs to take cholesterol medicine. When Winger reacts indignantly, boasting about how he treats his body like a temple, Nurse Jackie (Patton Oswalt) sets him straight in typical geek fashion:

I can’t be the first person to tell you this, but the temple doesn’t last forever. This is a Temple of Doom, and you know what? Like the real Temple of Doom, it represents the fact that all good things — be it people or movie franchises — eventually collapse into sagging, sloppy, rotten piles of hard-to-follow nonsense.

Later, Winger confronts his friend Ian (John Oliver) over his utter disbelief that he spent his whole life abstaining from donuts and exercising religiously to no avail. In a snit, he tells Ian, “I could eat powdered bran every day while you suck down figgy pudding and I still might die first. It’s not fair. I want my donuts back!”

This is a sterling example of someone coming face-to-face with the reality of the SDH. We don’t know Winger’s full back story, but obviously there’s something besides the two main pillars of health (diet and exercise) that have led to his need for cholesterol medication. It could be family history, it could be the stress of his former job as a high-powered attorney, it could be the loss of coherence and agency that he feels at Greendale Community College. Whatever it is, Winger’s health is not solely the outcome of his fundamentalist fitness regime.

Central to HAES is this bigger picture that Winger must accept as his new health reality. And it’s something that we all need to accept: that our health is affected by things we don’t think about on a daily basis, let alone get lectured on by a health-obsessed culture.

Despite overwhelming evidence found in the groundbreaking Whitehall study, American culture virtually ignores the impact of class and status on our health. This is largely because, as a hardcore Capitalist economy, we like to ignore the impact that rigidly-enforced social structures have on our health, particularly on the job. We like our worker bees to be obedient, respectful and to know their place. God forbid we have an actual discussion on how treating people like cogs in a machine is doing as much, if not more, health damage than a highly-processed diet and a sedentary lifestyle. Because the medical community has answers for those last two problems: prioritize diet and exercise. But when it comes to the SDH, the medical community doesn’t have jack squat to say.

So I’m quite pleased with this new, updated, comprehensive version of HAES, which views health through both a macro and micro lens.

There’s just one part that bothered me as I read this book. Although all the evidence for the diet and exercise approach of HAES are included in this update, there seems to be an attempt to deemphasize the health effects of lifestyle choice:

[I]t is wrong to assume that diet, or even diet and exercise, are the main determinants of health. In fact, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others, health behaviors account for less than a quarter of the differences in health outcomes between groups.

The net impression I got from Body Respect and from discussions with HAES advocates is that studies like Whitehall show that people with similar lifestyle choices, but different socioeconomic status have disparate long-term health outcomes. If you eat healthy, exercise and you’re in upper management, then your health outcomes will be good. But if you have a health lifestyle and are middle management, then your health will be dismal by comparison.

What seems to be missing from this framing, however, is what difference a healthy lifestyle has within socioeconomic status. If I’m a vegetarian Ironman middle manager, I might not have the same health outcomes as my boss who’s a vegetarian Ironman. But how does my health compare to another middle manager who is sedentary and eats mostly fast food? I have a hard time believing that, all things being equal, lifestyle choices won’t have a significant effect on our health, independent of status syndrome.

Over the years I have spent reading research, I have become thoroughly convinced of the protective effects of exercise in particular (although I recently shared some evidence supporting the health benefits of a Mediterranean-leaning diet). If we take a step back from the HAES ideal of moving your body in a way you enjoy and look strictly at the data, it seems that the American College of Sports Medicine recommendations for fitness yield the most potent health benefits.

Those recommendations include 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week, plus strength training. Strength training provides significant benefit for metabolic health because building muscle improves insulin sensitivity, which can have a dramatic effect on your metabolic health. Bacon and Aphramor touch on this effect briefly in their chapter on exercise:

Just a single short stint of activity … makes muscle cells more responsive to insulin, even when you’re not moving, which will help you manage your blood sugar, reducing your risk of diabetes and other conditions.

While this is true, it’s my understanding that while cardiovascular exercise certainly helps with insulin sensitivity, it’s the resistance training and muscle building that improves the efficiency of insulin production. So it’s not just activity that improves metabolic disorder, it’s a specific kind of activity. As I learned in my interview with Dr. Steven Blair, brief bursts of activity certainly do have a positive effect, but we can’t ignore the evidence that shows how specific kinds of activity are more effective than others.

This is not to say that only certain kinds of activity are acceptable or useful or appropriate. Any activity that you enjoy and can sustain is a net positive. I think the difference for me, personally, is that I did not come to HAES with a history of disordered eating or treating exercise as penance. So, when I decided to pursue HAES, I wanted specific metrics and goals to aim for, which I found in the ACSM recommendations. Knowing what the research says about fitness gave me a guidepost to aim for, though I don’t always hit that mark. But because of HAES, I don’t feel guilty about that either.

In the end, I’m left feeling that Body Respect wants us to tackle the macro health influence (the SDH), while being less concerned about the micro health influence (diet and exercise). But in my view, regardless of your socioeconomic status, there are micro health changes that can yield positive, long-term effects on our health. The trick is to strike that balance without triggering unhealthy behaviors or attitudes that ultimately undermine our pursuit of health. And to that end, Body Respect has a wealth of valuable information on how to navigate those treacherous waters.

Trigger warning: Discussion of anorexia and assholes who tell fat jokes.

Hiya Folks,
With the recent death of Joan Rivers, and many discussions around her type of insult comedy arising on the interwebs, I thought it the pertinent time to discuss an encounter with my favorite comedian that left a permanent bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve been a fan Craig Ferguson’s for about five years. I never watched him on “The Drew Carey Show,” but I discovered his late night show and fell for his comedy stylings during a time when I was going through deep trauma in my life. His silly antics, intellectual wit, and biting disregard for the go-to gags and lazy jokes of classic late night and other comedians always made me laugh, without fail. He was a storyteller comedian, weaving comedy into historical and everyday situations that everyone could identify with.

The impish mind of Craig Ferguson.

It was rare to find an example of Craig really aiming to insult someone; in fact, he was more likely to show compassion during times of trouble in someone’s life, as can be illustrated in his now-famous monologue about Britney Spears’ mental health breakdown in 2007. Oftentimes, individuals who were on the receiving end of Craig’s digs were those in positions of power, a comedy style reminiscent of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The individuals he poked fun at were the privileged few who leveraged their power to take advantage of those who had less. His is the type of satire that, in my opinion, actually awakens the public consciousness and advances public discourse — a responsible type of comedy.

Over the past few months, however, Craig has been getting lazy, reverting to the type of insult comedy that belittles the most vulnerable in society, the easy targets that are often the butt of jokes and ridicule in everyday life; the people who Joan Rivers made a living out of demonizing.

A few months ago, I first became concerned when Craig brought up a couple of members of the audience. One was a fat woman from America, and another was a thin woman from Canada. This is how he started the show:

The one and only YouTube comment from sweiland75 illustrates exactly the kind of response that Craig was trying to elicit when he thought up this gag: “I guessed that fat one was American.” And with the hysterical laughter from the audience that ensued when the women revealed themselves, and the judgmental glances Craig gives to the audience before they do, it’s clear his goal was to make a statement about weight in America by ridiculing an unassuming audience member on national television. Although he never brings up weight in this clip, his thinly-veiled intentions aren’t lost on the fans who endure disapproving looks and jabs about our weight on a constant basis, nor those who judge others based on weight every day. It was a dick move if I’ve ever seen one. 

A few weeks ago, Craig finally made me hit the pause button and reevaluate how I felt about his comedy. During this episode, he dedicates a significant portion of his show ridiculing fat people who dress as superheroes at Comic-Con.

During the monologue, he shows pictures of unassuming people, almost assuredly without their permission, in order to mock them for daring to dress as the same characters and stories as thin people. He breaks out into gut-wrenching laughter and declares that they should play sad music to accompany the photos because it’s somehow incredibly troubling that someone fat would immerse themselves in the activities of Comic-Con. He goes on to further degrade these random individuals he’s decided to parade in front of America during the email segment. It’s absolutely sickening.

After this incident, the Salon article from Caitlin Seida about her cosplay experience happened to be recirculating around the web. Reading it, I realized her situation was exactly what had bothered me about what Craig was doing on his show. Because I was such a big fan of his, I decided to tweet him with a link to the article, with the comment “Also why fat Batman mocking isn’t funny,” hoping that he would read it and think a little more before so cruelly criticizing people on television for their weight.  Later, I went to check if there was a reply. This is what I found:

Don’t get me wrong — Craig boasts on his show about how he blocks any and everyone who criticizes him without a second thought, so I knew this might happen. Still, I won’t lie that it was slightly shocking that a grown man who preaches tolerance and “love all the people” is incapable of reacting to the least bit of constructive criticism without acting like a two year old who sticks his fingers in his ears when he hears something he doesn’t like. Craig is also open about how he goes to therapy on a regular basis while encouraging all of his guests to do the same. In light of this information, you’d think a little self-reflection would be possible for a man who has so many opinions on the lives of others.

So while doing research for this post, I was trying to find the clips I had recently seen on YouTube. It turns out these incidents aren’t the first incidents of Craig’s fat-shaming rodeo. Posted in 2008, the following clip shows a video of Craig OUTRAGED that a woman in New Hampshire complains to the Medical Board about her doctor calling her overweight and saying that her weight is bad for her health and her sex life.

He goes on to rant that it’s the doctor’s job to tell her she’s fat and he shouldn’t be investigated for doing his job. Additionally, he had another patient he fat-shamed into losing weight so, obviously he’s just an empathetic doctor thinking of the best interests of his patients. There’s so many problems with Craig’s logic that it’s hard to pick a place to start, but I’ll give it my best shot.

First and foremost, Craig is not a fat woman. In a patriarchal society that values thinness over all else, to have a man tell you you’re fat and that your sex life is going to suffer from it is incredibly demoralizing, especially since fat women are the overwhelming victims of fat discrimination in society, particularly in the medical community. To illustrate bias in the medical field, one can look at a survey from the 1980s which found that doctors associated negative stereotypes toward their obese patients. They described them as “unintelligent, unsuccessful, inactive, and weak-willed … 400 doctors … associated obesity with poor hygiene and adherence … dishonesty and hostility … A study of nutritional professionals found that most respondents attributed obesity to emotional problems (70%) and believed that obesity was a form of compensation for lack of love or attention (88%).”

Moreover, fat people are more likely to be given unsolicited “advice” about their weight from medical professionals during routine visits for issues that do not have any relation to a patient’s weight or actual health status, and this practice, along with many others, may be what makes many fat people opt out of receiving medical care in the first place, or sticking with one medical provider who can help them navigate health care issues over a long period of time. It’s really fucking annoying to go in for a sore throat or ingrown toenail and get told that if you lost weight you’d be magically healed.

Next, being fat does not mean being unhealthy any more than being thin means being healthy. Being fat does not mean someone has developed any of the conditions so often pointed to as “risk factors” any more than being a man means one has developed prostate cancer or being a woman means you’ve developed migraines or had a stroke, both health risk factors that are much more common in women. Everyone faces increased risk due to all sorts of things; you can’t brand them unhealthy just because the potential for them to become unhealthy is there. It makes no fucking sense.

Finally, there is no correlation to a healthy sex life and fatness. Fat people have just as healthy of sex lives as thin people and, as women often have their sexual lives dictated by and commented on by men in power who have no expertise on what they’re advising (e.g., pro-choice rights, birth control access, health care coverage), it’s borderline malpractice that this doctor would tell this woman something so blatantly offensive and untrue, as this 2010 study reveals. I, too, would demand an apologize for that bullshit.

Interestingly, on August 8, 2014, Craig had Cathy Ladman, a comedian who struggled with anorexia, visit the show. She did a set about her disorder and then talked to Craig after to discuss her comedy. During the segment, Ladman says that the disorder and some of her resulting behaviors are nuts. Craig states “”It’s nuts, but at least you’ve turned it into something marketable that you can use on television. And I know how you feel!” It’s incredible to me that Craig is so disconnected from reality and the ways in which he treats fat people when discussing this anorexia with Cathy; how he immediately states “I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know” (no shit) when asking her about how to classify what she terms an eating addiction; and how sympathetic he looks while listening to her story. He then says “I think perfectionism is a manifestation of self-hate.” So I’m wondering, as Craig used to be a fat man, is his willingness to mock other fat people a manifestation of his own self-hatred? I mean, I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t know. But it makes you wonder.

I’ll leave you with one final clip of Craig giving a faux mea culpa to Kate Winslet after she refused to come on his show when he called her fat. He excuses his behavior by saying that he was not calling her fat in the offensive way, just the joking, completely unoffensive way. You know, the way that women shouldn’t get offended by because it’s not like they face pressure to be thin or judgement about their appearance from every person in society, everyday, everywhere.

Our bodies become commodities, products to be commented on, and objects to be molded and changed to fit the wants and needs of another. I mean, you can’t even read a magazine without being told you’re fat or, as too many of us are familiar, go to the doctor to receive medical care without being ridiculed about your weight. Not to mention that we can’t participate in a celebration of pop culture without being laughed at, let alone visit your favorite comedian’s TV show without being mocked.

Additionally, as men don’t have to deal with these issues to the extent that women do (although fat men are not immune, as Craig so crudely pointed out),  the complete and utter disregard for the cruelty of his actions makes it obvious that Craig is offensively unaware of how damaging the bits he does is to women in society. I’m now even more of a fan of Kate Winslet since she stood up for women everywhere by refusing to be a party to Craig’s insulting and lazy comedy.

For myself, I’ve completely given up on supporting Craig. I am so angry and disappointed in the way he’s decided to use his platform to devalue fat people and defend fat hatred. I’m more upset by his complete unwillingness to engage in a discussion with a huge fan who has a genuine reason to be upset with the way he’s encouraging discrimination against fat people. I’ve done as much as I can by tweeting CBS, his show, and Craig. I’ve also written to his show and am now spreading the word to you lovely folks. If you’d like to join me in showing your disappointment with Craig’s actions, you can tweet him and CBS at @CraigyFerg, @LateLateShowCBS, @CBS, @CBSTweet, @CBSTVStudios. You can also write to his show here.

Although I don’t think that Craig is going to change, especially since his show is ending and it’s blatantly obvious that he doesn’t care about the content he’s creating, I’m still hopeful that someday he will be more cognizant of the material he puts out into the world. Only time will tell.

Recently, I came across a post that blew me out of the water. Seriously it was the most disgusting combinations of words that I have read in a looong time.

“Top 10 Reasons Why the Fat Acceptance Movement Should Be Ashamed of Itself.“

Don’t worry about clicking the link to improve traffic, I used DoNotLink. The content, however, may just anger you though. Roll up your sleeves, y’all. Let’s dig into this bullshit!

First and foremost, this author equates the Fat Acceptance (FA) movement with Health at Every Size^® (HAES). While many of the elements coincide, they are not the same thing. FA is about not only accepting yourself at whatever size you are, but also about making fat people acceptable in society (e.g., working on ridding society of thin privilege). This is where Fativism comes into play. HAES is an ideology giving tenets about how one should feel and act with regards to their body. It gives a person the tools to accept oneself as they are. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume (wrongly) that they are the same thing.

10. The Fat Acceptance Movement is Anti-science

Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft.

Because 50+ studies aren’t good enough for you? Here are just a few:

1. Naturalistic weight reduction efforts predicted weight gain and onset of obesity in adolescent girls
2. Intentional weight loss predicted accelerated weight gain and risk of overweight
3. Dieters gain more weight during pregnancy
4. Eating in response to hunger and satiety signals is related to BMI in a nationwide sample of 1601 mid-age New Zealand women.
5. List of intuitive eating-related studies
6. This paper evaluates the evidence and rationale that justifies shifting the health care paradigm from a conventional weight focus to HAES
7. Among people who have ever been overweight or obese, just 4.4% have lost 20% or more of their starting weight and kept it off for one year
8. Face-to-face format finds people still gain weight anyway
9. Reviews the science of the failure of LTWLM (long-term weight loss management) and how most weigh management programs essentially ignore the overwhelming body of research
10. This comment that lists various quotes from studies that shows the futility of LTWLM is well-accepted in the research community

Of course, these studies and others don’t jive with your idea of the world, so obviously WE are turning “a blind eye to the overwhelming medical evidence,” as you say.

This particular bullet goes on to quote the Fat Nutritionist:

“I’d like to say something about how much fat people eat. I, personally, would be neither surprised nor offended if it were somehow proven that fat people, on average, eat more than thinner people. Of course, this hasn’t been proven, and if it were, there would be exceptions and outliers — but if it were found to be the general case, it wouldn’t surprise or offend me in any way.” (Emphasis from the offending article.)

This was taken from Michelle’s post titled “If I eat more than you, it’s for one simple reason.”  You see, Michelle goes on to say that it doesn’t matter if fat people eat more than thinner counterparts because “If I overeat, it’s an occurrence relative only to myself, not to the thin person next to me” because you can’t compare watermelons to apples. Just because you knew this one person’s aunt’s cousin’s son who lost a ton of weight by starving themselves or, conversely, got “huge” from sitting around all day eating whole pizzas and drinking 2 liter sodas doesn’t mean that every fat person does this.

9. Because It’s Un-empowering, Dispiriting and un-America

Oh really, what? What the what what??

The FAM [Fat Acceptance Movement] adheres to an ideology that our bodies are unmalleable, unchangeable, and something to accept.  This is a denunciation of the American way.  In this country we believe in pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and carving out a better life than that to which we were born.

What kind of jingoistic, dog-whistling piece of absolute filth…??? No, I’m done, that’s some bullshit right there. Next!

8. Because the FAM Promotes Laziness, Overeating, and Unhealthy Behavior

One of FAM’s central tenets “accepting and respecting the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes” shrouds tacit approval of bad behavior. While it’s true that not every individual is the same, each individual can be characterized as either obese or not obese. Each individual has the capacity to be either thin or obese.

This tenet is actually part of HAES, and the next two tenets directly conflict with what the author said by their own volition.

• Accept and respect the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes
• Eat in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite
• Find joy in moving one’s body and becoming more physically vital

What part of “eat until your body says you are full” and “move in a way you enjoy” sounds anything like “lazy,” “overeating,” or “unhealthy”? Oh wait:

While it’s true that not every individual is the same, each individual can be characterized as either obese or not obese.  Each individual has the capacity to be either thin or obese. To say otherwise is disingenuous.  To accept an obese body as normal is to accept the behaviors that lead to such a state. (emphasis mine)

Oh, you aren’t actually talking about laziness, overeating, or unhealthy behaviors. You are talking about how you don’t like fat people to actually feel good about themselves. If a fat person is fat, it’s because they made themselves fat. Gotcha.

7. Because the FAM Promotes Disease

Being obese leads to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, stroke, kidney problems (End Stage Renal Disease), fatty liver disease, and pregnancy complications. Obesity impairs the normal functioning of the body. Obese people have excess adipose tissue (fat) that causes the overproduction of leptin. Leptin regulates food intake and energy expenditure. Too much leptin results in abnormal food intake and energy regulation.

I am pretty sure you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. First of all, non-fat people get these diseases whether they stay not-fat or become fat. Second, even if a fat person becomes non-fat, they will still have many of these diseases, because you can’t just become not diabetic or not arthritic or escape from genetic diseases. Next, leptin controls satiety, or the feeling of fullness. Specifically, the more leptin you have in your bloodstream, the less hungry you are. What you are describing is ghrelin, the hunger hormone.

What else do you have, author?

Among experts there is absolutely no critical or recognized debate about whether obesity is unhealthy. Universally, all experts agree that obesity without a doubt or prevarication leads to serious disease.

Oh really? There is perfect consensus in the scientific community that being fat is unhealthy? It is universally accepted? 

For example, obesity causes heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States and the world.

No. Just no. Not only is heart disease caused by a variety of different health problems, it affects people of ALL SIZES.

Being fat may be strongly correlated to heart disease, but you know what else is strongly correlated?

That’s right, suck it.

6. Because Obesity is 100% Curable

*sigh* let me guess where you are going with this. Being fat is not a disease, just like being tall or not having big enough balls are not diseases. Sure, you can “cure” each by expensive cosmic surgeries, but it is not a sickness.

Diseases don’t generally gift their hosts with health benefits, one of which is longevity. If you don’t believe me, look it up.

5. Because the FAM’s Encouragement to Accept Yourself is Deceptive

Listed as the first step in FAM manual, accepting yourself is as self-deceptive as it is self-destructive. The first step should be: identify the problem or more accurately admit that you have a problem with food. Self-awareness is crucial when attempting to fix a problem or cure a disease.

Oh I see what you did there. All fat people everywhere gorge on food, which is why they are fat. If they would just admit to themselves that they eat too much, then they can begin fixing themselves to be socially acceptable. Obviously every fat person is a food addict. Silly me.

4. Because FAM’s Advice to Trust Yourself is Wrongheaded

Would FAM advise someone suffering from anorexia or bulimia to trust themselves?  Would it provide the same advice to someone suffering from a heroin addiction or alcoholism? An obese person has gone off the tracks and is a state of utter disrepair.  The individual’s internal sensors have short-circuited. Relying on your own judgment in such an altered state is foolhardy.  Obtaining advice from a trained medical professional and following that advice is paramount. (emphasis mine)

• “Learning to Trust Myself in Eating Disorder Recovery” by Patricia Lemoine. (Eating Disorders)
• “Intuitive Eating: Learning to Trust Yourself Again, Part 2” by Eating Disorder Hope
• “3 Ways to Trust Your Body and Trust Yourself” by Lisa Ryan (Eating Disorders)
• “Learning How to Trust Yourself Again” by Promises Treatment Center (alcoholism)
• “Addiction, Recovery, and Self-trust” by Marc from Memoirs of an Addicted Brain
• “The Importance of Trust in an Alcohol Treatment Program” by Vista Taos Renewal Center

Ahem, I’m just going to leave these here. NEXT!

3. Because FAM Puts Too Much Emphasis on Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is something that is earned.  And it can be. Just like each individual has the power and ability to make real change in their lives.  They can choose to do so and the reward… you guessed it is self-esteem and positive results. The FAM is blissfully ignorant on this point.  The FAM merely asserts that each person has the right to high self-esteem regardless of their behavior.

Building self-esteem is incredibly important, especially to people who have devastatingly-low amounts. Self-esteem is not earned nor is it a privilege to be taken away simply because a person is fat. Feeling like you are worthy and valued as a person can never do harm; to take these away is incredibly detrimental. Saying that a person’s worth and value depends on their size is really shitty.

2. Because FAM Ignores That Behavior Equals Result: We are what we repeatedly do

Good habits equal good outcomes. Bad habits equal bad outcomes. Engaging in repeated bad behavior day in and day out leads to nothing but sorrow and failure. It is the small steps taken every day that can lead a person from darkness into the light. This article is not meant to be disheartening or cause dismay. Rather it is to point out the irrationality of the FAM and to suggest, humbly an alternative. And that alternative is that small, positive steps can produce dramatic productive results.

1. Because Accepting an Obese Body as Normal or Healthy is Purposefully Harmful

Ah, FINALLY we get to the point. Fat people should be ashamed of themselves because they are fat, because they aren’t thin, because fat people are KILLING AMERICA. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!@#%)*&!!! You see, at this point the author quotes some figures, says fat people are an “epidemic,” and then calls for said “epidemic.”

To turn back the tide there can be no acceptance that obesity is normal because to do so would be to hammer another nail into the coffin of America.  Recognizing obesity as a disease is perhaps the first great step.  But what comes next is harder.  The eradication of the disease.  Much like the eradication of other diseases what comes first is education and then action. (emphasis from the author)

You see, only by accepting that we fat people do not deserve to feel worthy or valued, that we are diseased and need to be cured, that we are addicts unable to trust or be trusted, and that we are being deceived by “disingenuous charlatans posing as prophets” who use anti-science to promote an epidemic that is destroying America and the WORLD, only then can we fat people truly heal and recover! Only then, by making small steps, can we too be not-fat.

Trigger warning: Discussion of dietary restrictions for reasons other than weight loss, as well as people who engage in similar restrictions for weight loss. Also, mention of eating disorders and weight loss surgery.

Check out the first and second installments of Jean’s exploration with soylent.

So, the first thing I do after reading the soylent article in the New Yorker is go to the commercial website and watch the advertisement, which gets me excited. “What if you never had to worry about food again?” A rainbow of vibrant multiracial young people go about their diverse pursuits while sipping intermittently from containers of blended soylent. They’re high-tech and vigorous, studying law, exercising, backpacking, DJing at a club (oh, and, of course, they’re all thin). Set free from the food-related chores of shopping, cooking, and kitchen cleanup, they can fully dedicate themselves to their true passions.

Oh, yeah, I want this.

Methodically, I click through every button on the site, saving Purchase for last. One week’s worth costs $85, with discounts for larger or repeat orders. My mouse hovers. For most people, maybe $85 is significantly less than what they usually spend to feed themselves, but for me with my peculiar habits — my rota of legumes, grains, and vegetables — it’s actually three times as much as I usually spend, or more.

So what? It’s an experiment, I tell myself. I remind myself that my time is also of value. Freed from food, I’ll save 10 hours a week. Minus what I would have spent in cash to eat anyway, I’ll only be paying around $6 for each of those hours. Heck, I’m worth way more than $6/hour. I debate with myself about the larger discount orders and decide against it. Later, maybe, after I make sure that one day of the stuff actually feeds me for 24 hours.

I click the button to order seven single-day bags and the thrill of making the commitment shoots through me. Once all of the shipping and credit-card stuff is done, I get the confirmation. My order will ship in “10-12 weeks.” Whoa. Some of the wind goes out of my sails. Okay, so two and a half months is the best-case scenario.

In fact, my order will still not have arrived five months later as you read these words, though on August 19 I received a second email thanking me for my patience and asking me to confirm my address for shipping “in the next few weeks.” But back in May, two and a half months seemed plenty long enough.I get the New Yorker article out again and point my browser at the do-it-yourself soylent website, where people are creating their own homemade nutrient blends.

I’m immediately impressed with the intelligence and good sense of whoever put this website together. If our basic desiderata for getting fed are maximizing nutrition and minimizing the expense in both money and time, soylent is not necessarily the best at any one of the three goals, the website admits, but it gives you the chance to find your optimal fit among the three.

Yes, I think, yes, that’s me. There are far more convenient ways to eat than what I do now, if I weren’t concerned about what goes into me. And I could even shave the expense a little, if I didn’t insist on including some things (whole grains) while avoiding others (processed flours, sugars, fats). And there are doubtless even healthier ways of eating, if I had all the time and money in the world and no more compelling hobbies.

I plunge into the website. There are sample DIY recipes and nutrient profiles posted by what appears to be thousands of users, most of them men. There’s software for putting together your own recipe from a database of ingredients, and checking it against your chosen nutrient profile to see whether it provides all your daily requirements. It’s possible to copy ingredients, recipes, and nutrient profiles from other people, or to customize your own which you can either keep private or make public. There are hundreds of ongoing conversations on the forum.

At first I’m overwhelmed. Where to start? I explore the tools and gradually figure them out. There’s a little slider thingie to set your preferred percentages of the macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates and fats. That’s cool, but what should my percentages be? There are well over a hundred nutrient profiles posted. Which should I pick? Most of them say “male.” All of the few which say “female” are for young women, not post-menopause like me. How much does that matter and what should the differences be?

I’m fantasizing an oatmeal-based recipe. “Jean’s Augmented Oatmeal,” it could be called, if I ever publish it on the soylent site. Or perhaps “Jean’s Nourishing Gruel” or “Jean’s Nutrient Sludge.” Oatmeal is one of my most important staples, ever since I discovered on an out-of-town trip once that you don’t have to cook oatmeal. You can just put in the water, wait a minute, and eat it, even if it’s not “instant.”

Now oatmeal is my go-to food. I keep some at the office, I take it to the beach, I pack it in my carry-on. It’s an unusual day that I don’t eat any oatmeal. I make sure that I always have a spoon with me, and a screwtop Lexan camping container. Oatmeal is cheap, doesn’t need refrigeration and lasts a long time. I can keep going on nothing but oatmeal for about half a day, but then I’ll start to feel protein hunger and that’s what makes all the nuisance and requires so much advance planning. That’s the thing I want to be freed from!

Gradually a plan takes shape in my head. There’s a 20-pound sack of pinto beans in my closet, bought just before this New Yorker arrived. No matter what, I’m not going to waste that. It will take a while before I eat through all the food stores I have in the house. I don’t have to have a perfect nutrient profile and recipe right off the bat. I can transition gradually, working from both ends. On the one hand, I’ll start doing some nutritional research on the way to zeroing in on my optimal recipe; on the other hand, I’ll start beefing up my oatmeal.

With the addition of protein and fat, my oatmeal could carry me a lot longer than it does now. I buy some protein powder; that’s fairly easy, though there are many decisions to make and I spend a long time reading the labels in local stores and online. As for fat, oil would work at home but it’s not a good travel solution. On diy.soylent.me, many recipes use chia seeds or flaxseed, because they’re high in omega fats.

I already own some chia seeds! I bought them during an intense period of experimenting with sprouts and before I realized that sprouting chia requires special equipment. Ha! Oatmeal plus protein powder plus chia seeds or flax meal is my new travel food and it works great! My leash has just gotten a lot longer.

I take a trip with my girlfriend. She’s a normal woman, by which I mean she doesn’t subscribe to a Health at Every Size^® (HAES) philosophy. For instance, she owns a bathroom scale and uses it. I used to try to explain my thinking, but she never did fully get how different my philosophy of food and eating is. She assumes weight control is a goal for me, as it is for most women, and she’s long suspected me of orthorexia or worse. She’s pleased to see me adding fat to my oatmeal, believing this means I’m backing off of what she has long regard as my dietary “extremism.” Little does she know — and I’m not going to explain — that actually I hope to retreat even further from the world of conventional eating.

Meanwhile, I’m spending time on the soylent forums, studying. As near as I can tell, every single guy on here (it’s mostly guys) buys into the weight-control worldview. Soylent recipes are formulated in terms of calories and people endlessly discuss their body-manipulation techniques, goals, and progress. Lots of them are body-builders. Just to make sure, I do a search on “HAES” and variants of it. Zilch. Just to make sure, I start my own thread, “Soylent from an HAES perspective?”

A few days later, I’ve gotten a few responses (all from men). They’re fairly supportive about my plan to do an intuitive-eating version of a DIY soylent, but they aren’t exactly enlightened from my perspective. Oh, yes, BMI is horseshit, they agree with me there, but that’s as far as it goes. They think keeping track of your body fat percentage totally makes sense, or else the ratio of your waist to some other bodily circumference, and they’re confident that these things are within anybody’s reasonable control.

So I’m definitely alone out here. I’m the sole representative of HAES in the soylent world and, probably, vice versa. But I’m kind of exhilarated. Maybe I have something unique to offer. The possibilities of soylent (the commercial brand or DIY) for calorie counters and aspiring body manipulators are pretty obvious. But I see soylent as a potentially useful tool for people who are trying to repair damaged relationships with food and eating. There are a lot of people for whom the business of nutrition requires walking a tricky psychological tightrope between control and shame: people recovering from anorexia, bulimia, and many other varieties of chronic food restriction and/or perceived “binging.”

A solid DIY soylent recipe can let you feel confident that you’re getting your daily nutritional needs met. If you have a psychological need to assert self-control, here’s a relatively wholesome way to do it. If you see yourself as a “binge eater” or as eating “compulsively” or for “emotional” reasons, you can create a no-nonsense nutritional formula which is uninteresting enough to convince you eventually that in fact physiological cues can reliably prompt your eating.

And for people who have (alas!) had weight-loss surgery, a sippable soylent formula could be a great nutrient-delivery system that avoids some of the terrible side effects; the ingredients can be manipulated easily to increase micronutrients or take out anything that causes dumping or other bad reactions.

Up until now, I’ve kept all my own DIY soylent tinkering private, but when this goes up on FFF, I’ll go ahead and make my current working nutrient profile and recipe public in case y’ll want to take a look. I’ll label everything with “Jean’s” and “HAES.” Watch out, though, there will be weight-loss talk triggers everywhere!

Trigger warning: Frank discussion of eating disorders and weight loss.

Photo comes from cat_fuentes on Instagram.

On Saturday, Buzzfeed published “15 Former Couch Potatoes Share Their Best Tips For Getting In Shape.” You know, 15 former couch potatoes share how they got healthy. In other words, it’s a pretty safe bet you’re going to read how 15 people lost weight.

The opening paragraph describes a guy who would, “trick himself into using the spin bike more often.” Am I the only one who finds the concept of trickery completely insulting? I get the mental image of a dude on a bike thinking, “Ho ho, what’s this? My couch got really skinny and sprouted pedals? Wait a second… I’m on a bike! How did that happen?”

Time for some editing.

1. Make it easy for yourself to work out in the mornings — OK, I like the general concept of this one. Cat wants to exercise, but knew it was never going to happen after work. She’d come home, prep everything for the next morning, then go about her regular evening activities. If that’s what works for her, more power to her. I do something similar because I don’t want to do anything after I’ve walked through my front door. I’ll bring my skates to work, hit the rink, cooldown by doing my Costco shopping, and then do absolutely nothing the rest of the night. Bravo to Cat for not mentioning weight loss in her tip. We’re 1/1.
2. Master the art of portion control — Hmm, what do you suppose the goal of this one is? Yup, Emily lost 70 lbs. and I gained a bingo on my diet talk card. She couldn’t dream of running a marathon while she was fat because she was fat and we all know fat people can’t/won’t/don’t run. I hit bingo with the invocation of “mindless munching.” I come across that infuriating phrase all the time when I’m looking for what other people have eaten in Situation X. For instance, what low-carb options are there at a ball game? The consensus seems to be peanuts in shells so that my hands would be busier than my mouth to reduce all the damage from my “mindless munching.” I brought in hard-boiled eggs, beef jerky, and almonds dusted with cocoa. I enjoyed it all mindfully because how the hell do you not notice yourself eating? A healthy portion is the amount that is right for you. Trust yourself to know whether that’s whole pizza, a slice of pizza, no pizza or something else. We’re now 1/2.
3. Get enough sleep — This opens up with the tale of Rachel getting a breast reduction, learning to cook, and exercising now that she has less boob. She emphasizes the importance of a regular bed time and getting enough hours of sleep. No weight loss mentions here either. 2/3.
4. Don’t aim for perfection — Laura lost 80 lbs. in 2007, then gained most of it back in 2012. Big surprise. She wanted to get back into shape (read: lose weight), so she decided to try running. As it turns out, she hated running. Like any rational person, she didn’t spend a lot of time running. I don’t like flipping my eyelids inside out. Guess how much time I spend doing that? Because Laura is not me, she decided that what she really needed was a friend who lost 100 lbs. running to hold her accountable. The mantra of accountability? “You don’t have to be good at it, you just have to do it.” That worked for Laura and now she loves running. Me, it reminds me too much of gym class. I wasn’t good at anything we did, I did it anyway, and now that I’m free of that system, I do none of it. If someone was to tell me I don’t have to be good at softball, I just have to play it, my response would be some variation of, “No I don’t.” And then I’ll go do something I find fun. Laura did mention simulated surfing and swimming, so she did diversify a little bit. If she weight cycles again, I hope she ups the water activities instead of convincing herself that she loves running. 2/4
5. Find a workout you love — That way it doesn’t feel like a chore, and it’s something you’re excited to do. Well this is ironic. Ben knew he hated the gym. When looking for an activity to help him cope with sobriety, he discovered that he didn’t like hip-hop dance either. He didn’t turn to social media to force him to get into a gym or dance studio. Instead, he tried Krav Maga. Guess what? He loved it enough to eventually become an instructor. Bravo, Ben! 3/5!
6. Try to do some form of exercise for 30 minutes (or three miles) every day — Kit was suffering from disordered eating and body dysmorphia. She felt this was hypocritical because she was a personal trainer. Because of that, she decided to enforce the above exercise rule. I’m not sure how that helps either problem, and apparently Kit isn’t either, because her results paragraph is primarily about being the same weight. I’ve read some of Kit’s fitness articles and knowing this makes me feel sorry for her. 3/6
7. Focus on creating a sustainable healthy lifestyle, not temporarily following a fad diet — Delores weighed 350 lbs. and discovered that her weight stopped her from living. Weird because the next sentence didn’t involve her dropping dead. She says, “I used to be this vibrant, sexy woman, but I didn’t want to go anywhere, I didn’t want to do anything.” Coupled with taking a multitude of medications for conditions attributed to being fat (e.g., diabetes, high blood pressure), she decided she needed to stop being fat. She made a “lifestyle change” to lose 20 lbs. and then she started going to the gym every day until she achieved her 150+ lb. weight loss. It seems to me that Delores may have been suffering from depression. Exercise might help with that, and we know it also helps with diabetes and cardiac health. This would’ve been true at 350 lbs. or 200 lbs. If she weight cycles, I hope she gives herself permission to keep living her life. 3/7
8. Make working out a social activity — Julie felt like going to the gym solo meant trading exercise for her social life. By working out with friends, she can have both. She’s also emboldened to try more forms of movement. Good for Julie and her friends! 4/8
9. Distract yourself, if you need to — Oh, hey! It’s the guy who tricked himself into being on a bike! Jeff was able to forget he was on a bike by watching the first three seasons of 24. Of course, he warns you have to be disciplined enough to not watch 24 when you’re not on the bike. Is it just me or does that undermine the distraction angle? I mean, if you’re not supposed to know you’re on a bike when you’re watching 24, why wouldn’t you watch 24 whenever you want to? He pedaled his way through Buffy and Angel, which must make him a better person than me because I like to focus on skating when I’m skating and TV when I’m watching a compelling TV show. To point or not to point? It’s a stupid tip, but it doesn’t mention weight loss so I’ll give it to him.  5/9
10. Learn to lift weights — When Mackenzie found herself gaining weight, she was suspected of having polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) — naturally, her first priority would be to get her weight under control. Although PCOS ended up being a misdiagnosis for me, my first priority upon receiving it was to find out what options I had to not bleed for months at a time Different strokes and all of that. Mackenzie hired a nutritionist and trainer who showed her the joy in lifting weights. Now she views lifting as a way to achieve “strength and confidence and power,” rather than a weight loss method. In the end, 6/10
11. Use social media to find cheerleaders and to hold yourself accountable — Jamie is paralyzed from the stomach down and uses a wheelchair. After she started gaining weight, her chair wasn’t a good fit for her. Rather than try a different chair, she auditioned for The Biggest Loser and Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition (Why? Why? Why?). After posting about the bullets she dodged on traditional media  (no wait, that’s my take), her sad and compelling posts moved a trainer and nutritionist to volunteer to help her. Jamie started a Facebook page for accountability and apparently that works for her. I’m still shaking my head trying to understand why the hell I’d voluntarily create an outlet for people to come by and “motivate” (in my experience, read: insult) me. I’ve made some posts about not falling during my first class, committing to multiple classes, and the saga of finding a boot that’ll work for me, but rarely specifics about things I’m working on. Do you know what motivates me? Doing something I like. Because I like skating, I don’t have to “force” myself to go, “distract” myself from being there, or get people on Facebook to “hold me accountable.” Because of the boot saga and my immune system acting like Joe Biden with a shotgun, I’ve been off the ice for a couple of months. I can’t wait to get back to it and I sure as hell don’t need people telling me to do so in order to keep losing weight.  6/11
12. Build a solid foundation of good habits first, and then add to it slowly — Josie is a mixed bag. Like many of the above, she wanted to lose weight. She got skinny, but felt like crap. She turned her attention to eating better and then she felt better. She also did it incrementally. That’s a good lesson and I’m feeling generous, so 7/12.
13. Eat more fiber and lean protein — Arjun wanted to become a Marine officer, but the military has weight, appearance, and fitness standards. He trains hard, but doesn’t think he can be fast until he’s lighter. He eats well, exercises, and loses weight. I’m voting present on this one. He chose to have his appearance dictated. 7/13
14. Keep a food diary, if it helps you — Javier was in a car accident and gained 45 lbs. while bedridden. He kept a food diary, in the name of accountability, of course. Again, I don’t think weight loss would be my first priority in that situation, but it’s not my life. I suspect his body would’ve returned to its set point as he was able to resume his life. Javier ends up being another toss up. I’m not a big fan of this Use External Forces To Hold Yourself Accountable philosophy, but he does describe the diary helping him determine whether he was eating when he was hungry. This story gets a bad grade regardless so 8/14.
15. Celebrate how exercise makes your body feel — and do things that make you feel sexy! Now why couldn’t this have been number 1? In fact, why not make this a story on its own? Oh, because it’s still couched in not being fat. Theresa gained weight and was too tired to go to the gym. She drummed at a dance class and was inspired by the women there. This is all positive so far. She started dancing and loved it… because there was a community to hold her accountable. *headdesk* What the ever-loving hell? Is intrinsic motivation dead? Maybe it’s just my issue. 9/15

In all we’re at 9/15, which, at 60% is a solid F. The thing that turned me to Health at Every Size^® (HAES) was that there were only three things to think about: 1) healthy eating, 2) joyful moving, 3) loving your body. It’s easy to individualize, doesn’t require buying anything special, and there’s no group shaming. As you might have guessed, I’m not into that at all. If I had to give my tip, it would be this:

1. You know what is best for you — Love running? Go running. Prefer trampolining? Do that. Eat what makes you feel good, do what you enjoy. Anything else is unsustainable. You are more capable than you’ve been led to believe. Live your life now because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

Trigger warning: Discussion of weight loss and weight loss surgery.

Saying that “Quick weight loss works too” about as well as slow weight loss isn’t saying much. How many times have we been told that losing weight slowly is the way to lose the most weight? And how many of us have done that, and then regained some, most, all, or more weight back? How does rapid weight loss stack up against the tried-and-not-so-true slow weight loss?

In a randomized trial, there was no difference in long-term weight regain whether patients lost their weight fast or slow, Joseph Proietto, PhD, of the University of Melbourne, and colleagues reported online in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

Really? I wonder if the same holds true for the number of people who regain their lost weight. If it does, then why the fuck are they still recommending diets as the “cure” for obesity? This article doesn’t even address the number of people who regained weight, just the amount regained. Maybe it’s because they consider any amount of weight lost and kept off for a year or two as “success” (lmao).

“Across the world, guidelines recommend gradual weight loss for the treatment of obesity, reflecting the widely held belief that fast weight loss is more quickly regained,” co-author Katrina Purcell, BSc, of the University of Melbourne, said in a statement. “However, our results show that achieving a weight-loss target of 12.5% is more likely, and dropout is lower, if losing weight is done quickly.”

Well, here’s another “No shit, Sherlock” moment. Dropout is lower, if losing weight is done quickly. Gee, could that be because people can’t sustain a drastically-reduced calorie diet for very long? At least, not without binging at the end of it (or in the middle of it), or without having all kinds of psychological problems (anxiety, mood swings, edginess, etc.).

Guidelines do indeed recommend gradual weight loss, but researchers have questioned whether that leads to better outcomes. Proietto and colleagues enrolled 204 obese adults and assigned them to either a 12-week rapid weight-loss program (using a very low calorie diet of 450 to 800 kcal/day) or to a 36-week gradual weight-loss program (lowering daily intake by 500 kcal/day in line with current dietary weight-loss guidelines).

WT everloving F?! Try putting me on a diet of 450 to 800 calories a day and I will tear your head off after a couple of days of it. If I don’t eat enough, I turn into PsychoBitchFromHell (just ask my husband, he can testify to that).

As for lowering intake by 500 calories a day, are they still going by that old canard that one pound is 3,500 calories? Seems like it, if they’re saying that eating 3,500 calories less a week is going to result in slow weight loss (yeah, been there done that, it does not work).

Those who lost more than 12.5% of their weight were subsequently placed on a weight maintenance diet for 3 years.
Participants in the fast weight-loss group were more likely to hit their target weight loss: 81% of them lost at least 12.5% of their body weight compared with just 50% of those in the general weight-loss group.

Let me get this straight — if people didn’t lose more than 12.5% of their starting weight, they were ignored? Only the ones who lost 12.5% were put on a maintenance diet for three years. WTF!? For me, losing 12.5% of my starting weight means I would have had to lose 50 pounds. Sorry, it took me six months to lose 70 pounds after I had WLS. And yes, I was eating between 500 and 800 calories a day (that’s if I didn’t upchuck everything I ate, which happened more often than not). So they’re saying it’s possible to lose an average of over four pounds a week (LMAO). Notice they aren’t saying anything at all about the safety of this kind of dieting.

Oh, and how well did that maintenance diet work? Well, here’s what they had to say about that:

The researchers found that the initial rate of weight loss had no effect on weight regain in the long run, with a similar amount (71%) regained in both groups after 3 years.

Those who lost weight rapidly gained back the same amount of weight as those who lost it slowly. So 71% of that 50-pound weight loss for me would mean I would have regained 35.5 pounds. That’s really a best-case scenario — anyone who has yo-yo dieted knows that it’s very likely one would regain all of the lost weight, and maybe a bit more. So these people went through all of this to ultimately only lose 3.625% of their starting weight. Yeah, somehow, I don’t think 12 weeks of starvation is worth that small of a weight loss.

Notice, again, that they aren’t saying how many of those people regained that 71% of lost weight. Want to bet it was at least 90% and that’s why they aren’t saying anything?

In an accompanying editorial, Corby Martin, MD, and Kishore Gadde, MD, of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., said the study indicates that a “slow and steady approach does not win the race, and the myth that rapid weight loss is associated with rapid weight regain is no more true than Aesop’s fable.”

Yes, and it’s also a myth that most people can lose weight, any amount of weight, and keep it off forever.

“Clinicians should bear in mind that different weight-loss approaches might be suitable for different patients in the management of clinical obesity,” they wrote, “and that efforts to curb the speed of initial weight loss might hinder their ultimate weight-loss success.”

You know what hinders ultimate weight loss success? The fact that there is no safe, proven way to lose weight and keep it off forever, not for the majority of people. So to keep on recommending something that hasn’t worked in the past, isn’t working now, and won’t work in the future is futility and blindness at its best. The fact that it’s all in the name of “health” (read “we don’t like looking at fat people, so of course they can’t possibly be healthy and that just has to change”) is what makes this so rage-inducing.

When are these researchers going to stop focusing on weight loss as the way to health, and start focusing on behavior changes? And when are people going to realize that “health” is not a moral imperative? Probably about the time they realize that all people have the right to exist free from judgmental asshattedness about bodies, looks, gender, race, sexuality, ability/disability, and every other aspect that makes each and every one of us unique human beings.

Trigger warning: The “wacky” in Wacky Wednesday today refers to my public mockery of hateful, ignorant redditors whose comments I share in all their grotesque glory. Read at your own risk.

It’s been nearly a decade since I’ve had to do a job interview, but I can still pinpoint the one question that will make me panic every single time: what is your biggest flaw?

It’s not that I don’t have flaws — I can tick off a list a mile long. The problem is that I want to choose a flaw that is actually a benefit to the employer, like “I work too hard” or “I’m too nice to people” or “I’m willing to subjugate myself to the will of my supervisor, regardless of how demeaning or humiliating the task.”

At a recent parent-teacher conference, I learned that my daughter has the same knack for soft-selling her flaws. When asked what she needs to work on more, she repeatedly told her teacher that she couldn’t think of anything. Her teacher told her anything she wanted to improve would work. As a parent, I would have suggested she continue working on her handwriting. Instead, she went with this:

In her defense, she does not “sond “horabl,” she’s quite the talented whistler (although I have no idea how she learned it, as I have come to accept that it is impossible to teach anyone to whistle… when you “just put your lips together and blow” you make a raspberry, not a whistle). But rather than dig deep for ways she can improve in school, she went for the one thing she personally wanted to get better at.

Considering she’s only in second grade, I’d say that’s par for the course.

But let’s say you’re an adult who participates in one of the toxic reddit forums dedicated to mocking people for being fat. What do you suppose the self-reflection skills of this particular subset is?

Recently, a redditor asked the 94,000 subscribers of /r/FatPeopleStories a question that seems fairly simple: “Is there a reason we see many times more female obese people than male obese people in these stories?”

The obvious answer is that our society hates fat women. As a fat man, I haven’t experienced one-tenth of the harassment that women who weigh 100 pounds less than me endure on a regular basis. I’m “off the radar” of fat haters, as it were, despite weighing 265 pounds.

Have I been teased about my weight? Sure, especially when I was a kid and I wasn’t even fat. “Fat” was just one of the many insults lobbed at me in my awkward youth. The difference is that I didn’t have pop culture compounding the fat insult by telling me over and over and over again that I had to be thin to be accepted and attractive. In other words, being picked on general made a greater impression on me than the specific insult that I was fat (whether it was true or not).

When it comes to the dreaded F-word, women don’t have the same kind of safe harbor as men. From an early age, women are told in no uncertain terms that there is an ideal weight for them and any deviation (too fat or too thin) will not be tolerated. As an added bonus, men are recruited to reinforce that stigma by degrading and dehumanizing women who deviate even slightly from the norm.

You may recall the time  Sport Illustrated swimsuit issue cover girl Chrissy Teigen posted her photo to Instagram and was fat shamed. If Teigen can be subjected to this kind of behavior, imagine what ordinary women who aren’t professional models have to endure.

And so I read the answers to this simple reddit question and I couldn’t help but laugh at the self-seriousness, the obtuseness, the circular logic used to justify what is clearly a case of weight-based misogyny.

My favorite bit of convoluted reasoning is that reddit primarily targets fat women because of… wait for it… genetics.

“Typical hetero red-blooded dude” cites the way women are more efficient at “absorbing food” like calorie sponges, the way they carry their weight, and how their female bodies are constructed. See, it’s not that he’s an asshole, it’s that genetics make fat women the ideal victims. He can’t help it; evolution has simply made fat women more noticeable and, thus, bigger targets (ha ha ha! I made a reddit-quality funny!).

Y’all won’t be surprised to find that the biggest group to blame for reddit’s obsession with fat women is feminism, whether it’s through entitlement or them darned ladyfolks who “shove their feelz down everyone’s throats.” If this subreddit knows what’s good for it, they will reframe this argument as “ethics in obesity journalism.”

For some, that feeling of entitlement isn’t a feminist issue, but a woman issue.

Now, let’s stop here and ponder a moment: why do women feel “entitled” to feel “feel good about the way they look”? That’s absurd! I mean, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and we all know that saying is all about how The Beholder™ is a monolithic agent who has deemed one female size and shape as beautiful and the rest as second-rate castoffs who must accept their lot in life and wallow in self-loathing. I mean, if The Beholder™ weren’t right, you’d probably find articles about the way “perfection” radically changed over the past century.

<DoucheLogic>So why would anyone want to be happy with the way they look if they aren’t appealing to The Beholder™? It just doesn’t make sense, so let’s start a subreddit to mock them mercilessly. </DoucheLogic>

I should also point out the bizarre claim that all the fat man stories are featured on /r/neckbeardstories. For those unfamiliar, neckbeard is basically an insult about the stereotypical basement-dwelling fat man with poor shaving habits. Earlier in the thread, someone made a similar, popular claim. Yet, compare the subscribers to both…

There’s still ten times as many subscribers to the subreddit that users freely admit is biased against women. So the question remains, why is the most popular fat-hating subreddit so focused on women. One particularly astute redditor claimed that fat boys are bullied for their weight WAY more than fat girls, and have thus accepted their lot in life.

Hear that, ladies? You simply haven’t been bullied enough into submission. If only people were meaner to fat girls in middle school. This is a common theme to a lot of comments: women are undermined by coddling and feelings.

I mean, what is it about our culture that makes women feel as though they have to validate their appearances? Surely the blame lies with women who put waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much emphasis on “self-worth” and that darned media market that’s constantly telling women they’re “high-value.”  Because if there’s anything the media is good at, it’s reassuring women that their value lies solely in their character and not their appearance. (Psych!)

One of the most upvoted and responded-to comments is that (1) there are more fat women out there and (2) women are just bigger assholes in public. Both claims are empirically proven by bagboys and waters:

At least one commenter challenged the claim that fat women are the ones most likely to complain. Actually, says the commenter, it’s ALL women. But we tend to ignore thin complainers because they have the “redeeming quality of their appearances.”

While we’re entertaining delusions of objectivity, there’s this insightful gem:

These are some of my favorite answers because the irony is that these groups LOVE to claim that Fat Acceptance and Health at Every Size^® (HAES) are promoters of pseudoscience, yet the most popular answer to the question of “why do you hate fat women so much” is…

It’s not a cultural or social issue, it’s not misogyny or weight bias, it’s just a statistical fact that there’s more fat women who are mentally unstable assholes. Of course, that fact crumbles in the face of actual science.

Most of these redditors can’t admit to themselves that the reason they love to trash fat women is that they are indoctrinated to believe that that women who are assertive are “bitches,” that women outside of the ideal are of low value, and that women who loves themselves despite being low value are “crazy.” In other words…

In fact, one user tries to mate the “bitches be crazy” reality with pseudoscience and creates this projection of “twisted logic.”

Aside from the fact that this person sounds like he’s quoting Todd Snider’s “Statistician Blues,”  they admit that men don’t give a shit. Why don’t they give a shit? Again, they ignore the fact that our culture tends to ignore fat men and zero in on fat women. Whatever “twisted logic” this person is citing seems more like a coping mechanism for a hostile environment than some underlying psychosis that sprouts from genetic inferiority.

Instead, the resilience of men is chalked up to their inherent awesomeness. The logic is unassailable.

For instance, did you know that even though a man may be fat that, unlike women, he can also have other awesome attributes?

Did you know that an “insufferable obese female” is funnier than her male counterpart?

Did you know that men are so brutalized throughout their lives that they’ve become numb to such basic concepts as empathy?

And did you know that society has an underlying, possibly-divinely inspired hatred for fat women?

The last paragraph there, the claim that men who engage in fat logic are “more likely to get punched by someone” is reinforced by another redditor who claims that men are simply trained to not be assholes in public. This is why we never see male assholes in public.

Women, on the other hand, are constantly being assholes toward men and if he hits her, then he’s the asshole. Oh the injustice of it all!

I guess the logical solution then seems to be that men should start punching women who are rude to them, and rather than be asshole-shamed into feeling guilty for the assault, they should proudly claim that they are simply providing negative reinforcement for bad behavior. Surely the police will pat them on the back and thank them for their service to humanity.

All in all, this thread reads like a desperate attempt to paint the masculine culture that enables bullying and harassment as the rational checks and balances that keep fat men from suffering the inflated sense of self that has become endemic among fat women, and which these redditors are doing their damnedest to fight back against in their noble War on Fat Logic. In other words, “I was bullied when I was a kid and now I’m awesome, so I’m paying it forward.”

Except what they aren’t willing to accept is that it’s not women who have been coddled, but men.

I was born in 1979, so I grew up immersed in a culture that emphasized slenderness for women, not men. And as I said, despite being mocked for my weight, that humiliation was not reinforced by culture. In fact, our culture did everything it could to reassure fat men that they could be fat and loved.

The emphasis on male slenderness is a recent phenomenon, and, as a result, research shows that more and more men are struggling with body image and eating disorders.

According to pop culture, the problem isn’t that women have been coddled for too long, it’s that men have been coddled from fat shaming and the media is attempting to “level the playing field” as it were and make men just as insecure about their bodies as women have been for decades.

In defense of this subreddit, there were a few redditors who somewhat accept this fact, like the one who cited “intersectional privilege” and got “whut” as a response; the one who pointed to Hollywood’s fat husband/hot wife formula; the one who discusses the “male gaze” and its effects; the one who called it a “backlash against traditional standards of beauty”, but then pointed to the fact that there are male models and said “I just happen to have the emotional toughness and common fucking sense to ignore it”; the one who says “Straight up, there is more of a bias against fat females than males” and basically got “nuh uh” as a response; and finally, the one who out smacks down the misogyny contained within all the answers I outlined above.

My favorite response to that last one?

Got that, ladies? You’re emotional wrecks because of hormones and physiology.

Of the 159 comments contributing to this fascinating discussion of the objective, scientific, irrefutable reasons why reddit hates fat women, I found just two that actually seemed to hit the nail on the head. The first is something I’ve suspected for a long time…

And the second is so fucking brilliant, so fucking insightful, so fucking pithy, that I would buy this user reddit gold if they weren’t a willing participant in this douchebag shitshow:

In a world where “not my fault” is the most damning indictment of “fat logic,” the majority of users lack the ability to look critically at their own behavior and determine the source of their gender-specific hatred. They go to absurd lengths to blame their misogyny on genetics, feminism, statistics, physiology, hormones and female entitlement.

In reality, by their desperate attempt to justify their adolescent behavior, these redditors have done nothing more than demonstrate that they have the self-analytical skills of a second grader.