Public Fat Shaming is not Good Marketing

Well hello!  I haven’t forgotten or abandoned you all, I promise.  Life has been intensely busy and I made a promise to myself at the beginning of this year that I would pace myself better and not work myself into the ground with both my activism and my day job.  So you will be getting less posts from me but I’m sure they’ll be better quality in the long term.

I actually had another post written and ready to publish, but something else has cropped up that I would like to talk about.  On Thursday night, as part of the local Bluewater festival here on the bay, there was an event at Shorncliffe called Bayfire.  I decided to take myself along to it to have a look at the markets, get some dinner and watch the fireworks.  I wandered up there and had a look around, bought some very cute hair accessories from a small business called Princess Perfect Clips, tried Transylvanian cheese pie for dinner (verdict – rather tasty) and then watched the fireworks.

When the fireworks were finished, I decided to go and have a look at the rest of the markets.  As I was walking along the waterfront where the stalls all were, minding my own business, someone shoved something in my hands.  I looked down and it was a flyer for some ridiculous weight loss product, which was basically wrapping bits of your body in cling film.  I turned towards the woman who had stuffed it in my hand without asking me if I wanted it, and there they were, a bunch of seriously miserable looking women, all with their arms or middles wrapped in cling film.

I couldn’t believe anyone would be so rude to shove weight loss propaganda into the hands of someone who was not in any way inviting them to do so.  So I tore up the flyer very deliberately right in front of them, making sure they were all watching me, and tossed it into a bin, and walked away.  I was so pissed off.

A bit later I decided to get some dessert, and I decided to share this picture of my dessert on my social media sites (Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook) with the following caption:

Om nom nom, right?

Well, I didn’t imagine the shitstorm it would create on Tumblr.  Mostly because some people seemed to take personal offense that I wasn’t “allowing anyone to be encouraged on their weight loss goals”.

Now how my protesting some company forcing their material on to fat women (they were not shoving the flyers in the hands of men or thin people) to shame them equals “not allowing anyone to be encouraged on their weight loss goals”, I’m fucked if I know.  After all, I don’t give two fucks what other people do to their own bodies.  This has got nothing at all to do with other people’s bodily choices.  What this has to do with is the public shaming of fat women to make money.  What this has to do with is some woman wrapped in cling foil selling a phony diet product deciding that the fat woman walking past her has a body that is “unacceptable” and she can make a buck off that fat woman by flogging her snake oil product.  This is about someone selling a product assuming that as a fat woman that I must be unhappy with my body and want to spend my money on cling film to reduce it.

The other argument that people kept making is that it is “legitimate advertising” to single out fat women (again, they did not hand the flyers to men or thin people) in public and give them weight loss propaganda.

I am not sure what planet some people are living on.

To equate handing unsolicited weight loss flyers to fat people (and only fat people) to an ad on TV, in a magazine, on the radio or on the side of the street etc is fucked up.

Advertising in general is shitty, and needs to be spoken up against, but it’s not picking out an individual in a public place and physically handing them a flyer that says “Hey fat person, here’s a product you should buy to stop being a fat person because fat is gross.”  It’s not singling out someone who is minding their own business in public, to pass commentary on their body by recommending a product to reduce their body.

Imagine if I wasn’t the confident, self aware woman I am now.  To be singled out like this and handed such propaganda would have DEVASTATED me years ago.  I would have felt so upset that someone had pointed out my fatness in public and made commentary via their actions that my body was unacceptable.  How many other fat women had their night ruined on Thursday by being handed this shitty flyer while enjoying an evening out with their friends and/or family?  I don’t know about you, but most fat women I know don’t go out to a fair to find a weight loss solution, they go out to have fun and enjoy the shopping, dining and fireworks.

For some reason, it is believed by many people that weight loss peddlers actually care about us.  That they care about our happiness, our health and/or our bodies.  They don’t.  They care about obtaining our money.  They tell us our bodies are not acceptable, sell us a product that does not work, then blame us for failing, and sell us the product again, or a new product that does not work.   In Australia alone they make almost $800 million per year.  In the US, it’s $66 billion per year.  They are taking your money and laughing at you as they watch you blame yourself for their product or service failure.

Don’t stand for that shit.  Don’t let anyone dismiss what a horrible act it is to single out a fat person and try to shame them into buying a product.  Don’t let the weight loss industry brainwash you into believing that they care about you, or that they are doing anyone a public service by pushing their product on to people who never asked for it in the first place.

I Want to Break Free

I came to a realisation last night.  Thanks to discussions on Twitter and Facebook, I realised that I no longer consider myself aligned to either fat acceptance or body acceptance.

Don’t be too alarmed, I’m still the same rad fat feminist I was before yesterday, I’m not about to start pushing diets and fat hate at you and change the direction of this blog.  I’m still a fat activist, and a proud one at that.  I just no longer wish to be aligned with the concepts of fat acceptance or body acceptance.

The epiphany was twofold.  Firstly, I came to the realisation that I have a problem with the concept of mere acceptance of fat people.  I think we deserve more than to be merely accepted into society.  We should be valued members of society, not merely accepted ones.  In the discussion we had on Twitter, someone mentioned that in some queer communities, the word “tolerance” is considered the weakest form of homophobia, and suggested that in fat communities, perhaps “acceptance” is the weakest form of fat phobia.

I tend to agree.  I think acceptance implies a begrudging kind of acknowledgement that we exist.  It says to me “Yes, ok, fat people exist, I accept that.” and no more.  I think as activists for fat rights, we need to demand more than that.  We need to realise that just being acknowledged as existing is not meeting our rights as human beings.

It is my belief that we more than simply exist on this planet.  We have value.  We contribute.  We are as worthy of our place on the planet as any other human being.  Fat people are as precious and worthy as any other human being.  We are not damaged goods that need repair.  Nor are we “too big” and need to be made smaller to “fit in”.  The world is big enough for all of us, from the very largest person down to the tiniest.  We are not vermin to be eradicated, diseases to be cured or crimes to be prevented.  We are people who hold as much value as any other human being on the planet.

The word “acceptance” makes me feel like I have to compromise my value, because as a fat person I am devalued.  And I want no part of that.

The second reason I realised that I no longer identify with fat/body acceptance are the constant calls for us to accommodate reductionism.  By reductionism, I mean the practice of forcing ones body to lose weight.  I’m not referring to the incidental weight loss that comes due to illness, environmental change or through the changes ones body goes through with age.  I’m referring to reductive weight loss – diets (including diet products, diet foods, diet camps or clubs, diet books or any other tools of dieting), “lifestyle changes”, medications, appetite suppressants, weight loss gadgets, weight loss companies, “medical interventions” and surgical procedures.  This also includes eating and exercise disorders.

Every time I speak out against any of these damaging practices (many of which I partook in myself in my past), someone crops up and says “But what if people choose/chose to do these things, is there space for them in fat acceptance?”  My answer is usually “yes”, with the caveat that they not promote or advocate these practices in FA spaces.  Of course, then comes the argument that I am somehow “excluding” or “silencing” them because they’re fat people too and they deserve to be heard.

However, this to me, is a derailment – in that the whole world is a space for diet promotion and weight loss advocacy.  Reductionism is the dominant paradigm – and FA should not have to “make space” for something that already takes up ALL of the space.  I had believed fat/body acceptance to be about breaking down dominant paradigms and being a space where fat people could have some respite from that constant harassment to lose weight, but more and more often I feel that I’m being pushed into being accommodating to a world that has refused to accommodate me.  I want no part of that either.

Some will call this absolutist, some will label it “militant”.  Others will suggest that “it’s not black and white, there are shades of grey”.  No.  Not in my fight there is not.  Perhaps there is in your fight, perhaps there is in fat/body acceptance.  There is no grey of “acceptable” weight reductionism for me.  You get the rest of the world to celebrate/promote/advocate/have pride in your weight loss agenda.  I get this tiny space to say no, and to make clear my stance on forced weight loss.  One only has to look at just how vast the chasm is between the amount of Google mentions/information on the terms “weight loss” and “fat acceptance” to see how loud the voice is for weight loss, and how fat acceptance is a mere whisper against that tide.  Try doing the same for “weight loss” and terms like fat liberation, anti-diet, fat pride – the latter terms don’t even register.  How dare anyone suggest we have to “make room” for weight loss talk?

I know we talk a lot about body autonomy in fat/body acceptance, but I feel that there is rarely a voice that declares that they are against reductionism that isn’t shouted down by how we “must be accommodating” to the dominant paradigm, which in doing so immediately removes my body autonomy.  To me, if Fat/Body Acceptance must be a space that includes the dominant paradigm, then now is the time for me to distance myself from it.  I want more than to have to be accommodating to people who already have the lion’s share of the space in the world.  I want to be able to completely and utterly reject reductionism from my life.  If I cannot do that within Fat Acceptance, then I am happy to walk away from it.

Part of me felt bereft at this realisation.   I felt a sense of loss in discovering that there is yet another space that I cannot find respite from the dominant paradigm around fatness.  But then I remembered the Fat Liberation Manifesto, authored almost 40 years ago by Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran as part of The Fat Underground, and I found solace.  This manifesto sums up exactly how I feel about my fat activism and what I want from the world with regard to how fat people are treated.

I want liberation from the dominant paradigm, not to “make room” for it.  Somewhere I heard the saying “We don’t want a piece of the pie, we want a new pie.” which is a brilliant way to express it.

So I share the Fat Liberation Manifesto with you all here, and I honour the foremothers/sisters of The Fat Underground for paving the way for me to claim my own liberation.

FAT LIBERATION MANIFESTO

1. WE believe that fat people are fully entitled to human respect and recognition.

2. WE are angry at mistreatment by commercial and sexist interests. These have exploited our bodies as objects of ridicule, thereby creating an immensely profitable market selling the false promise of avoidance of, or relief from, that ridicule.

3. WE see our struggle as allied with the struggles of other oppressed groups against classism, racism, sexism, ageism, financial exploitation, imperialism and the like.

4. WE demand equal rights for fat people in all aspects of life, as promised in the Constitution of the United States. We demand equal access to goods and services in the public domain, and an end to discrimination against us in the areas of employment, education, public facilities and health services.

5. WE single out as our special enemies the so-called “reducing” industries. These include diet clubs, reducing salons, fat farms, diet doctors, diet books, diet foods and food supplements, surgical procedures, appetite suppressants, drugs and gadgetry such as wraps and “reducing machines”.

WE demand that they take responsibility for their false claims, acknowledge that their products are harmful to the public health, and publish long-term studies proving any statistical efficacy of their products. We make this demand knowing that over 99% of all weight loss programs, when evaluated over a five-year period, fail utterly, and also knowing the extreme proven harmfulness of frequent large changes in weight.

6. WE repudiate the mystified “science” which falsely claims that we are unfit. It has both caused and upheld discrimination against us, in collusion with the financial interests of insurance companies, the fashion and garment industries, reducing industries, the food and drug industries, and the medical and psychiatric establishment.

7. WE refuse to be subjugated to the interests of our enemies. We fully intend to reclaim power over our bodies and our lives. We commit ourselves to pursue these goals together.

FAT PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE ….

By Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran
November, 1973
Copyright The Fat Underground

(Unfortunately I was unable to find anywhere I could link back to for The Fat Liberation Manifesto, but if someone knows of one please let me know and I will amend this post.)

Living Large

Well you can take the fatty out of the blog but you can’t take the blog out of the fatty!  I still don’t have full internet access, waiting on it to be connected by my Telco, but I can’t stay away.  I’ve got stuff burbling around in my head and I need to share it!

As you probably know, I moved house a week ago.  I’ve moved to a lovely seaside suburb, mere metres from the bay.  Every morning when I wake up, the first sounds I hear are seagulls and other water birds.  At night, other than the occasional passing car, all I hear are the sounds of ocean breezes and lapping water, punctuated occasionally by the chime of the town clock.  It is so peaceful here, and so beautiful.  It was a hard wrench to move from the place that had been my home for almost 15 years (in fact, I only did it because I had to), but now that it’s done, I am so glad I have.

I mean, look at this place:

This is the first time I’ve had a major lifestyle change that I haven’t attached the goal of losing weight to.  In the past, every time I had a major life change, I would convince myself that this time, it would be the thing I needed to help me get thin.  That new job with the higher pay, meant that I could afford more weight loss programmes and gyms.  Moving away from the country meant that I would have access to more options to help me lose weight, and I could find more diet foods in the supermarkets.  Every time I changed my life somehow, I would desperately cling to the notion that it would be the change that would make me thin.

Of course, I know now, that it just doesn’t work that way.  My body is a fat body, and no matter what I do to it in an attempt to lose weight, there is a 95% chance that it will fail to actually make me thin.  I would say a 100% chance for me – after all, I’ve spent over 25 years trying to make my body thin – and no matter how extreme or whatever I did, nothing made me thin.  This is my body, and it is a fat body.  I am very comfortable in my body, more comfortable than I have ever been in my life.

But it’s funny, but after a week, I can already feel changes in my body.  For the first few days I think my body was desperately trying to shake off all the negativity, and toxicity, that I was carrying around before.  A few lungfuls of clean ocean air and my body seemed to go “Right, let’s shake all this shit out.”  My skin broke out in patches, and got terribly dry in other patches.  I seemed to produce copious quantities of snot and ear-wax.  My fingernails got all brittle.  And I was SO DAMN TIRED.  Some of that can be attributed to the exhaustion and stress of moving, but I really do feel like I was getting something out of my system.

A few days ago, I came good.  My energy levels came back.  My skin is starting to settle down.  I’m sleeping really well at night, but am not feeling tired during the day.  I’m off work at the moment so I am getting a lot of rest, but I think it’s about more than just time off work.  I think I’ve cast off the stresses of living in my old place, plus the new place doesn’t have carpets that I believe hold a lot of dust and stuff either.  Not to mention that I’m getting those lungfuls of fresh sea air.

There are other changes afoot too.  When I go back to work on Monday, I have a slightly longer trip, and now on a train instead of the bus.  That will give me 40 minutes each way that I can sit and read (I can’t read on the bus, it makes me pukey), which I think will be really significant on the trip home each day, in helping me let go of work for the day.  I have access to a really large supermarket which has much more choice than my old options, and is very close by.  Not to mention a lot of other small shops that I had no access to before.  Besides, groceries are significantly cheaper up here than they are closer to the city.  Don’t let anyone tell you that the big supermarkets don’t vary their prices by neighbourhood!  But most of all, I have daily access to this:

A beautiful foreshore where people walk, cycle, rollerskate, scoot, get dragged along by their dogs!  I have a beautiful bicycle – you’ve all seen my bicycle Iris haven’t you?  Here is an old photo of us together:

I now can go for a ride in my favourite place, every single day, without having to worry about being mowed down by traffic (I was always terrified to ride in most areas around my old place).  Not only is it my favourite way to move my body, but it’s also incredibly relaxing.  I always sleep so well after a bike ride.

But most of all, I feel relaxed an happy here.  My anxiety and depression is feeling lessened already.  It’s amazing what being somewhere you love and letting go of stress can do.

So you can see, I have a lot of changes in my life lately, and those changes are going to play out on my body and my health.  I hope the choice I have made to move here will mean they are positive changes, that I will feel more relaxed and stronger.  I hope that the exhaustion I suffered regularly before will be a thing of the past, now that I’m not living in such a stressful environment, am able to relax and put my head away from work, and can get out into fresh air, moving my body in a way that I enjoy, in a place that I love.

But for the first time in my life, I’m not pinning my hopes on these things making me thin.  Because to me, while being thin has cultural privileges, I now know that it is not a worthy goal to work towards.

And that is an incredibly liberating feeling.

How Does Dieting Benefit Our Health?

**Trigger warning, topic is about weight loss diets and disordered eating.**

I got a fantastic question on my Tumblr yesterday, that got me thinking a bit about diet culture and the constant calls for fat people to go on diets “for their health” and “take care of yourself”.

I was thinking about my own life of dieting, and how I felt all those times, and what my own health was like in those years.

When people say fat people should go on diets “for their health”, they’re not factoring in a) how dieting  affects the body and b) the mental health of the fat person.  Even if they are genuinely concerned for someone’s health and not just using concern trolling to police fat bodies because of their appearance, how much thought do they give to what dieting turns people into?

Now let’s just establish here that we know that fat people aren’t lazy gluttons and that we’re not all stuffing our faces 24 x 7 and that “dieting” doesn’t equal “just eating healthy”.  I know that’s the rhetoric that is spouted at us all the time, that we just have to “Put down the donut/cheeseburger/whatever.”  Let’s make it nice and clear that I’m talking about food restriction or replacement, rather than the mythical “just eat healthy” that the anti-fat seem to think we are not doing already.  When people say “Just eat healthy.” they don’t actually mean that, they mean diet, because hey, there’s no possible way a fat person can already be “just eating healthy”.  I’m talking about weight loss diets.  Calorie counting, no carb, no fat, no sugar, cabbage soup, replacement shakes, Atkins, South Beach, Pritikin, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, grapefruit, high protein, high fibre, high cardboard… whatever the fuck diet we were on at the time.  And this includes any of the disordered eating habits too – bingeing, purging, starvation, laxative abuse, diet pills, exercise bingeing, and even weight loss surgery.  Anything that is designed to restrict, reduce or purge for the supposed purpose of making us thin.

Can I ask… have any of you ever known a person, fat or thin or somewhere in between, who has been on a weight loss diet/programme, who is/was actually HAPPY while they are doing so?

*crickets chirping*

I know I was never happy.  I always felt like shit.  Having to measure every bit of food, count points, calories or grams, having to think about what I was going to eat every minute of the day.  I couldn’t just relax and spend time with friends, because I’d have to think about what foods met my diet.  Organising lunches for work was a headache and I was always on my guard for people questioning my eating habits (or lack of them).  Grocery shopping was even more nightmarish than I find it now (and I hate it now, thank God for online grocery shopping!) because almost everything was “forbidden” on whatever diet I was on at the time.  I was always hungry.  When I did get to eat, it was shitty.  Either it was really bad food (cabbage soup?) or it wasn’t even food at all, it was some powdery substitute or rubbery/cardboard diet version.  I never wanted the things I was “allowed” to eat, and yet I was so unbelievably hungry all the time that I had to eat them when I could.

Physically, my body fought me all the way.  I was constantly sick with every cold and virus that came around.  My skin was bad.  My teeth were terrible.  I constantly had to fight bad breath and diarrhea.  I had constant hayfever and headaches.  I never had any energy and never slept properly.

Emotionally, I was depressed, anxious and obsessive.  Depressed because I hated being hungry all the time and having to eat things that tasted like cardboard or rubber, depressed because no matter what I did, I could never lose weight and keep it off.  Anxious because I never knew where I could get “suitable” food, and I hated anyone knowing I was on a diet.  Anxious because my blood sugar was always low and I was shaky and couldn’t concentrate.  Obsessive because food might actually GET me, if I let down my guard.

Yet all of this was supposed to benefit my health?  How?

We all know that diets fail on the long term in 95% of cases, with weight regain plus more, but we never talk about how bloody miserable dieting is.  How nobody is actually happy while they are dieting, and because 95% of them find diets fail, they’re not happy in the long term either.  The whole diet culture just sets people, particularly women, up to be miserable all the time, both during dieting and then when it inevitably fails.

And this is supposed to be for our health?  This is supposed to be “taking care of ourselves”.

I call bullshit.

Instead, we can put all that crap behind us, re-learn to eat to nourish us, let go of exercising as some kind of penance and learn to find activity that we enjoy and live our lives to the fullest no matter what our weight.

I know which sounds like taking care of myself to me.

Weight Loss Surgery: Becky’s Story (Guest Post)

Recently there was some discussion on Facebook and Twitter about the experiences of people who have had weight loss surgery (WLS), and how the voices of WLS patients who did not reflect the wine and roses view sold to us by those in the WLS industry were often silenced, or made to feel like they are the ones to have failed, rather than the surgery having failed them.  I put out a public invitation on both Facebook and Twitter to anyone who had undergone WLS and not been “cured” of their fatness, had any complications or illness after the surgery, or were dissatisfied with the results of their WLS to guest post any time here on Fat Heffalump*, and anonymously if they prefer.

I received a request from Becky of The Ramblings of Mrs Bebe and she has written this piece to share with you all.

Now, before I share the piece with you, I would like to make it clear that while I personally (and vehemently) disagree with Becky’s belief that the medical world should recognise obesity as an eating disorder, and while she currently believes she is glad she had WLS, I still want to give her story and experiences the opportunity to be heard, particularly as they present a highly alternative perspective of WLS to what we normally hear and see presented in the media and marketed by those who profit from this practice of what I believe, is mutilation.

I want you to respect that this is Becky’s story and Becky’s body, and that this is the way she feels about her experience.  You are welcome to disagree with and discuss the issue of weight loss surgery, and the points Becky raises, so long as you treat Becky with respect.  Becky is doing something very few weight loss surgery patients do, and I commend her for her courage to speak out and her choice to be identified in this piece.

So without any further ado, here is Becky’s Story:

Its been noted that all too often we hear peoples stories of their weight loss surgery charting that first vital year, the dramatic weight loss, the life changing effect it has on people and the reaction people receive from friends and family. I’d like to share my story with you 4 years down the line.

I guess I should start from the beginning though, albeit an abbreviated version.  Overweight child of overweight parents, said overweight parent petrified I would end up like them, so I was put on a calorie controlled diet from the age of 9, restricted to 3 square meals, was told off if I even approached the fridge let alone opened it. This was the start of what was and will always be my very difficult relationship with food.

I spent my teens on a vicious cycle of starvation and binging, and gradually I would put a stone on for every year, at 13, I was 13 stone (182lbs), 15, 15 stone…..you get the picture. By the time I was in my twenties, I had levelled off at 24 stone (336lbs). Through various diets I fluctuated anywhere between 20 – 24 stone (280 – 336lbs).  Throughout my life I had tried my very hardest to be positive about my appearance, to the point of appearing on national television to promote image positivity in my capacity as a plus size model.  But at the age of 26 when my knees and hips where starting to fail me and getting out of bed even felt like an effort, I felt a more drastic option had to be considered.  So I visited my doctor and asked for a referral to the weight loss surgeon. At this point in time (2006) the gastric bypass was really becoming popular in England and doctors were handing them out the sweets (ironic).  Without any great resistance from my doctor I was referred to a surgeon, if I recall correctly I had about 4 consultations with him and the same with the dietician. The process took about 8 months, then in August 2007 I went in for my operation, I was wheeled down to surgery at 12 midday on the Sunday, I returned home on the Wednesday.  As mentioned above I wont harp on about this part, but safe to say my story is probably similar to most,  I lost 4 stone (56lbs) in the first 2 months, then gradually over the space of about a year I lost a further 3 ½ stone (49lbs). It was then that I plateaued.

Its probably one of the most soul destroying parts of the process.  To think that you went to through life threatening surgery, months of massively restricted eating, vomiting, diarrhoea, pain, nausea and explanation after explanation as to why you’ve left three quarters of your meal in a restaurant, only to be stared at by the waiter as if to say, “yeh right love, you still look fat to me”, just to find out, that that is it.  You’re still classed as obese, you’re still “plus size”, and yeh, you’re still fat, just not as fat as before.

I tried desperately to get the weight loss moving again, I would walk the daily miles to work at a good pace, restrict my food intake, visit the gym but nothing seemed to work (oh wait does that sound familiar?)  So there I was stuck at 16 & ½ stone (231lbs). Subjected to work colleagues still asking, “oh have you lost anymore weight?”, “how’s the weight loss going?”, “should you be eating that?” F@*K OFF!!!!! I have been scrutinised all my life, the immense pressure after having a bypass is even more intense.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get over the sense of failure and disappointment despite everyone’s positive words.

The particular hospital trust at which I had my operation, offers no physiological support whatsoever, and I feel this is the root of the problem. They can re-jig my insides all they like; they can’t operate on my brain. I’m still hungry, I’m still greedy, I still have very deep rooted issues with food and I still dislike myself. I am glad I had the operation and I am glad I was able to shift a substantial amount of weight, but I think the process as a whole needs reviewing and until the medical world recognises obesity as an eating disorder and start treating obese people with respect and dignity, things will continue as they are.

This piece reflects my opinions, and my opinions alone, I still stand by the fact that if you are genuinely happy with your physical image fat or thin, then I am in total awe of you and long may your confidence continue, I, unfortunately am not one of those people.

*The invitation to anyone wishing to share their story of dissatisfaction with their weight loss surgery is still open, either anonymously or identified.  Please feel free to email me if you would like to share your story.

Why I Don’t Diet

Reading this post over on Fatties United!, inspired by the call from Dr Pattie Thomas to do video blogs on why we don’t diet as a response to the Fat Poz ReVolution apparently being stolen by a weight loss reality show.  Like Whaliam over on Fatties United!, I’m not one for video blogging, but thought it would be a really good topic to write about here on Fat Heffalump.

There are actually lots of reasons I don’t diet.  But the main one is very clear.  Dieting makes me gain weight.

I dieted from when I was a very, very young age.  Pre-puberty.  And every time I dieted, I just got fatter in the long term.  Every time I lost weight, I would get to a certain point and then no matter how much I restricted and exercised for punishment/bargaining purposes, my body would fight and fight and eventually, the weight would creep back.  In my darkest days, I was exercising between 6 and 8 hours per day (and the haters say that fatties have no willpower!) and eating almost nothing as well as being on prescription “appetite suppressant” amphetamines… and I was gaining weight.

So when I found Fat Acceptance, I decided I’d try to give up dieting and see how I go.  I was reading the work of The Fat Nutritionist who makes a LOT of sense to me, so for the past 2 years, maybe 2 and a half, I’ve been trying intuitive eating.  I found Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon PhD a bit after and that reaffirmed a lot of the thinking I’d been having about intuitive eating and activity for enjoyment rather than punishment or bargaining.

Surprise, surprise, for the first time in my life, I have maintained the same weight for two years.  Within a few kilos, but it’s been stable for the first time in my entire life (considering I’ve been dieting since before I hit my teens).

Another reason I don’t diet is because it makes me sick.  When I am dieting my hormones go all weird and my body tries to regulate those and I get all kinds of issues.  My depression and anxiety get worse.  My skin gets bad.  I get chronic reflux and gut issues.  My menstrual cycle disappears.  I’m always exhausted and cranky.

Yet since giving up dieting, my wellbeing has been so much better.  I get a fraction of the depression and anxiety that I used to get, my skin is clearer than it ever was, and for the first time since I hit puberty I have a regular menstrual cycle.  But best of all, I have more energy and am far happier.

There are dozens of other reasons I don’t diet, but these two are the most important to me.

So for those of you who don’t diet… would you share with us in the comments why you don’t diet?

When “You Look Great” Doesn’t Match How You Feel

“You’ve lost weight!  You look great!”

I’ve heard that quite a few times over the past week.  I’ve been conflicted as to what to say.  I don’t want to be rude (particularly if it’s someone at work), but I feel the need to respond with something other than positive/affirmative.  Because I haven’t looked great at all.  I’ve had shadows and bags underneath my eyes, I’m still coughing a lot of the time and I frequently turn green with nausea.

I haven’t looked great.  I have only looked thinner.

It has been two-fold.  First I was sick with a cold that turned into a chest infection.  It left me as weak as a kitten and with absolutely no energy.  I didn’t eat properly the whole week I was sick.  I was either too exhausted, too sore or when I did try to eat, it just made me cough more.  I’m lucky a friend dropped by with home made soup and rolls (and some other tasty noms for me to nibble at), or I probably wouldn’t have eaten anything solid all week.

Add to this that thanks to my recent diagnosis of T2 diabetes, I am back on Metformin again.  Diabex to be particular, though it doesn’t make much difference, all versions of Metformin make me sick.  Not to be indelicate, but they make me spend most of the day going back and forth to the toilet, with the occasional vomit in between.  At least for the first month or so taking it, and again when the dosage is changed.  I’m just settling down into my initial dosage now, and I know I have to adjust the dosage soon.

But I’ve lost some weight, so people say “You look great!”  Regardless of how I feel.

I have said many times before that this whole culture of thin supposedly equaling health actually has nothing to do with health and everything to do with appearance.  People see thin as “better” so they label it as “healthier”.

I have seen people who have weight loss surgery turn grey-skinned, lose their hair, have shadows and bags under their eyes, lose teeth, become physically frail and weak, their skin break out and develop chronic shaking.  Not to mention the things you can’t see – reflux, vomiting, bowel problems etc.  Yet they lose weight, so people say “You look great!”  When they are not well at all and their quality of life is far worse than it was when they were fat.  But we are so indoctrinated that thin = better, if anyone was to show genuine concern for how they feel physically, they become the enemy, the one who “doesn’t want me to be healthy.”

A few years ago, a friend of mine had cancer.  She had a hell of a fight on her hands and underwent huge doses of chemotherapy to try to beat it.  I remember at her lowest point, at the moment it was touch and go whether she would survive, people kept telling her she looked fabulous.  Simply because she’d gone from a fat lady to a thin lady.  Of course, she was dangerously ill and it was on the line as to whether or not she would survive.  But because she had lost weight, many people deemed that she “looked great”.

This happens a lot to fat people.  Even without any solicitation, all we have to do is look like we’ve lost even the tiniest amount of weight (even if it’s just clothing that makes us look this way) and people tell us we “look great”.  I remember in my deepest, darkest eating disorder days when I starved, purged and exercised myself down to my thinnest (which was a size 16-18 – I’m currently a size 26) and I was desperately unhappy because being thin didn’t fix my life at all, and I was physically sick from all the ways I was punishing my body, people told me that I looked great.  They told me I was awesome, fabulous and amazing.  Without ever once asking me how I felt.  Which was miserable and sick.

If that’s what I have to do to look great in the eyes of the world… no thanks.  I’d rather feel good, trust my body to show me what it needs, feed it as best I can and move it in ways that I enjoy, and stay fat than do that kind of damage to myself in the name of looking good.

No Guarantees: A Post for Jackie

My heart is heavy today.  Very late last night, I got a message to tell me that a lovely friend of mine in the US had passed away unexpectedly.  Jackie was only in her early 30′s, and such a sweet, sweet soul.  I was only chatting with her via Facebook a couple of days ago, mere hours before she died.  Her best friend and roommate came home in the evening to find that she had passed away in her bed.  At this point we don’t know what has happened, but I know she wasn’t feeling well when I last talked to her, but she’d chalked it up to the consequences of a good night out the night before.

I think a lot about her right now, in context to the fat activism I do.  Jackie and I often disagreed on a lot of things around body politics.  Or not even that, it’s like she agreed with me in principle, but was unable to believe them of herself.  I used to feel that way too, I would think that Fat Acceptance was a great thing, and all these fat women (and a few men) were doing amazing things, and were fabulous people, but I couldn’t be like that, it didn’t apply to me.  That did change with time.  Jackie and I used to talk about it from time to time, and I was always hoping that she could see the beautiful woman I saw when I looked at her, but I know she always struggled with that.

Jackie and I had so much in common.  We were both Cysters (women with PCOS) and met online many years ago on a PCOS forum.  I was so lucky to meet her in person when I went to the US, and spend time with her and her friends (one of whom I now consider my friend) and get to know her even more.  She was such a generous soul, she made me feel so welcome, and even though we could only spend a few days hanging out together, we talked so much.  She made me laugh, and she made me think, and she made me cry.  She had the cutest Louisiana accent (though lived in San Francisco) and was one of the most stylish women I ever met.  That girl could rock a frock and a red lipstick like no other.

We have both had difficult times in our past, and both dealt with the issues of our weight, self loathing and food issues.  Our paths diverged somewhat when I found Fat Acceptance, but we still had so much in common.

Jackie did everything that a woman is “supposed” to do about her weight.  She dieted, she exercised, she struggled.  She couldn’t see that she was so beautiful, both inside and out, and she struggled with her self esteem.  I wanted so much for her to see just how wonderful a person she was.  I understand it though, I struggle with my own even now, and I’m well immersed in the soothing balm of the Fatosphere.  Eventually Jackie had weight loss surgery and lost a lot of weight.  She was still beautiful, with or without the weight, she was still intelligent and funny and kind and just a lovely person through and through.  She was one of the most glamorous women I have ever met, always immaculate and fabulous.

And she still struggled with her self esteem.  Which has always broken my heart.

As I sit here remembering her, and all of the effort and yes, hell she went through to conform to society’s ideal of femininity and beauty and “health”, it hits me all over again that she’s gone.  That even after doing what our culture tells us women need to do to be “desirable” and “healthy”, we have lost her at such a young age.  I totally understand why so many women choose this path, because it is sold to us as the only way that we’ll be of any value, and that by getting rid of fat we’re taking preventative measures for our health.  I understand that wholly, that pressure is phenomenally strong, and those of us who fight it have to fight day and night, as hard as we can to resist getting caught up in it.  We are wading against a tide that takes every bit of our strength to resist.

But I can’t help but feel cheated for losing such a beautiful friend despite her trying so hard to do what society tells us is the right thing to do.  I am angry that not even when you do what mainstream culture tells you to do, there’s no fucking guarantee that it’s going to give you a long life or even make you happy.  All I wish right now, knowing that we can never have Jackie back, is that she knows how loved she is.  That she knows how terribly she will be missed.  And that she knows right now that she has been beautiful and valuable and precious all along.

New Year’s Revolution

If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, you may have seen the New Year’s Revolution campaign started by Marilyn Wann and Amanda A Evans.  The idea is to put an end to the ridiculousness of setting New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, or diet, or any other body loathing goal.  If you’d like to learn more, you can have a look at the campaign page set up here.

Most of the campaign has a Health at Every Size foundation, but since I don’t believe HAES (or even health) is compulsory when it comes to fat/body acceptance, I’m going to skip that bit.

I am however going to talk about fat acceptance and body acceptance as a New Year’s revolution.  I like the idea of “revolution” instead of “resolution” because, well, let’s face it, actively working towards NOT hating your body is radical, revolutionary.  When the mainstream media is flooded with ZOMGOBESITY CRISIS stories, magazines and other popular media tell us in one breath how to love our bodies, then how to diet them away, and then look at these yummy desserts you can make, stepping out of that flooding stream of body negativity is a radical act.

We are taught that loathing your body, no matter it’s size, is normal.  From being too fat, too thin, too short, the wrong shape, too wrinkly, going grey, having visible pores (let alone actual “blemishes” like freckles, scars, zits, moles, and all the other completely normal things that human bodies have), being too hairy, not having lush, flowing locks on our heads, having curly hair, having straight hair, having big breasts, having small breasts, from being apple, or pear, or whatever other fruit they can think of shaped bodies, you name it, you’ll find a magazine article, or a news story, or a television advert about it being “wrong”.  We’re bombarded with these messages from as early as we can hear and see.  We hear them from our parents, our colleagues, our friends, everyone in our life.  We are told what clothes to wear to be “flattering”, what shoes will elongate our legs, what makeup will hide our “flaws”, what diet will get us “bikini ready”.  Fitness, and increasingly more loudly, the moralising of “health” (to be exact: thinness) is the message that is hammered home over and over again.

Is it any wonder that when a new year rolls around, and the cultural meme of setting resolutions for the coming year kicks in, so many of us just default to body loathing to spur us on to our goals?

What if you were to just not do that this year?  What if you were to not set any goals, or if you feel you need to, set a positive one?  Or one not even related to your body?  What do you think would happen?  Do you think that your life would suddenly get worse if you didn’t diet or if you just stopped engaging in body hating activities?  Would you die?  Would anyone go to jail?  Would the zombie apocalypse happen?

I’m totally ready for the zombie apocalypse if it does happen, by the way.  No really, I’ve got it covered.

I know what would happen.  You’d not have to worry about the disappointment of failing another diet.  You’d not have to beat yourself up about breaking another resolution.

You know what else might happen?  You might actually feel good about yourself.  You might have more time to spend on living life, because you’re not fussing over diets or having to get to the gym when you hate it.  You might actually look in the mirror one day, and not feel bad.

I can tell you what has happened to me since I stopped buying into body shame and loathing.  Now, just like Pantene, it didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen.  Let’s see:

• I’m a heck of a lot happier than I was when I bought into all of that diet and body shame and loathing.
• I can look in the mirror and not feel worthless, ugly, repulsive.
• I can go shopping without it being a major exercise in self loathing.
• I save a whole lot of money that I used to spend on diet pills, meal replacements, diet magazines, “fitness” gadgets, and a bajillion other expensive things designed to fail at losing weight and getting fitter so that I would just spend more money on them.
• I get dressed in the morning and feel good about how I look, and if someone doesn’t like how I look, then tough shit to them!  I still feel good about how I look.
• More people compliment me than ever.  Now that my shoulders are back and my head is held high, people feel they can approach me, they smile at me and I smile back.
• I just smile more often than I used to.
• When someone makes a rude comment, or is downright nasty, I now realise that’s their shit, not mine.
• When the black dog of depression does bite my butt, and I find myself either depressed or anxious, I am better equipped to work it through than I was when I was full of body loathing and self hatred.  It still happens, but it is usually shorter and less severe.
• I’m better company when socialising around food.  No more agonising, no more causing a fuss because “there’s nothing I can eat” (because I was eating nothing and hated being around food), no more self loathing and guilt trips for actually letting any food pass my lips.
• The range of clothing I will now wear is far greater than it ever was.  All those things I told myself I was too fat to wear… just get in my wardrobe already!
• I have so much more confidence with dating.  I hold my head up, look a dude in the eye and smile.
• I save a shitload by not buying magazines.
• I only watch TV without any ads… I can watch twice as much in the same time.
• When I have conversations with people, it’s about INTERESTING stuff.  Not diets and how fat I am and blah blah blah.

And there are no doubt dozens of other benefits that have come my way since I got off the body loathing roller coaster.

Look, I can’t promise you that all of this is going to happen to you.  I can’t promise you that any of it is going to happen to you.  But don’t you think it’s worth a try?  Don’t you think that if you get just ONE benefit from giving up on all of the self loathing and actually being kind to your body, and therefore yourself, the experiment is worth it?

Would you give it a try?  Just for 2011.  Come on, the water’s fine.  Jump on in.  We’ll look after you.

Australian Fat Studies Conference: My Paper

Well, day one of the Australian Fat Studies Conference down and one more to go.  I have no words for how awesome it has been – but I will attempt to find those words once I’ve been home and been able to think about it.

Instead, I am going to share with you my paper, which I presented this morning to the conference.  I feel it went well, though I was very nervous!

So here you go:

Collateral Damage in the War On Obesity

A perspective on how the “War on Obesity” affects someone who is obese, and whether any of those effects are of any use to the obese person.

I need your help.  I can’t live like this.  No matter what I do, the weight keeps coming back.  I know, I know, I’ve lost 25 kilos already, but it won’t stay off.  It just keeps creeping back.  I exercise every day for before I go to work, then again during my work day at the office gym, then again for a couple of hours at the local pool when I get home.  All I do is exercise.  I have no life.  My friends won’t talk to me any more, because all I talk about is the gym and dieting.  I don’t go out or socialise or anything anymore.  All I do is go to the gym or the pool or walk around my neighbourhood by myself.  I keep getting in trouble at work because I can’t keep up, I can’t concentrate, I forget things and I cry all the time.

My doctor gave me these pills, but… they frighten me.  I took them just like he said, and all it did was make me crazy.  I haven’t slept for four days.  I haven’t eaten anything in four days.  I keep forgetting to even drink water.  These pills, they make me climb the walls, all manic and hyper.  The doctor keeps asking if I’m lying in my food journal, if I’m not writing everything I eat down.  I have been lying.  I’ve not been writing all of the exercise down, and I’ve been writing food in there that I didn’t eat. But the weight keeps coming back, no matter what I do.

I don’t know what to do.  I don’t want to live if this is living.  Please.  PLEASE, I need help.

“Hmmm… do  you think you could add another half hour of exercise in the evenings?  You just need to ramp it up a little to get over the hump and lose some more weight.”

That was me begging for help.  The response was from my psychologist at the time.  Over 5 years later I still don’t have any words for how I felt at that moment.  But I went home.  I filled my water bottle, I took this packet – this is the packet for the Duramine, the prescribed amphetamines for appetite suppressant, I still have it – and I sat on my bed, with the pills in one hand, and the water bottle in the other, and I decided that this would be the end of all of this.  I sat there, with the decision made that I was going to stop this life, that I was going to end it because I couldn’t live like this any more.  The world didn’t want me, a fat woman, to be in it.  I was meant to be invisible, to not exist, unless I could be thin.  So I was going to just kill myself, because what better way to lose weight and keep it off, than to be dead.

Just as I popped the pills out of their packet and put them in my hand, my mobile phone went off with a text message.  I looked at it, a message from one of my oldest and dearest friends, and it said “I’m worried about you.  We haven’t talked in a long time.  I love you, call me.”  It saved my life.  It reminded me that someone cared about me, that someone had loved me for so long, even at my fattest, I was loved by ONE person in the world, and it would devastate him to lose me to suicide.  That one message made me decide that life was worth far more than spending it trying to be something I simply was not, and that’s the moment I walked away from the War on Obesity.  The war on myself.

None of us can miss the “War on Obesity”.  It’s in the media every day, splashed across headlines and the lead item on bulletins, it sells tabloids, books and magazines.  Studies are released with regularity that are then tweaked into news items, telling us how obese people are to blame for global warming, rising health care costs, the high price of airline tickets and even the failure of the American mitten industry.

But in this war, it’s foot soldiers are not those who volunteer for duty.  The troops drafted involuntarily into the war on obesity are those who live it.  Who get up every morning, look in the mirror then to the newspaper or radio bulletin to be reminded that not only are they the ones expected to fight the hardest and bloodiest in the war, but in fact that the war is on them, the obese.

Like most wars, those that give the orders are rarely the ones at risk of becoming victims of the war themselves.  In the case of the war on obesity, where the ranks are fighting their own bodies, how can there ever be victory?

Instead, the troops are going to the grave earlier than they should be because of self loathing, depression, self harm and avoiding seeking medical treatment out of shame.  Even those who survived are permanently maimed – be it damaged bodies from eating disorders, yo-yo diets and weight cycling or the post traumatic stress of having to live their lives in a war that they never asked for.

Today is International Suicide Prevention Day.  How many people have to opt out of the War on Obesity by the only means they believe is possible, which is to opt out of their lives all together, before we end this madness?

We need to end the War on Obesity before one more person dies needlessly.  Just like the “War on Terrorism”, the terror isn’t out there, for us to fight.  The terror is here, right within us.  The terror isn’t fat, it’s hate.

As Professor Paul Campos says in the introduction to his book “The Obesity Myth”:

Nothing could be easier than to win this war.  All we need to do is stop fighting it.