Well the Fatosphere has been alive this week with discussion on the rather awful piece by Jess Weiner in Glamour magazine where she claims that body acceptance (not quite sure why she chooses the word “body” when we all know she means the word “fat”) almost killed her.
I’m not really going to talk about why her article and attitudes towards FA, not when so many other people have done it already and probably better than I could. Check out these pieces by Ragen of Dances with Fat, Golda at Body Love Wellness, Marianne at The Rotund and on the Health at Every Size blog.
What I want to talk about in this context is Ms Weiner’s demonisation of diabetes, especially as using it as a death threat. In her article, she quotes her blood sugar levels pre-epiphany as 99 (and states that between 100 and 125 is pre-diabetic – which would make her 99 reading PRE-prediabetic – go figure!) and also quotes her doctor as saying:
“Jess,” she said, “your blood sugar numbers show me that you are almost in the prediabetic range. If you don’t lose some weight and watch your sugar intake, you will get diabetes.”
I have to say… this is a pretty bloody alarmist statement. Yes, Ms Weiner’s blood sugar levels were on the high side… OF NORMAL. We also don’t know if her doctor made a prognosis on anything more than Ms Weiner’s weight and current blood sugar levels. There’s no mention of Ms Weiner’s pre-epiphany eating habits or activity levels, but from the article one can surmise that she has been living a fairly active lifestyle already, and it is known she has a history of eating disorders. Is none of that a contributor to someone’s health?
This is all a prime example of just how easily fat people are given the prognosis of future diabetes, even when their blood sugar levels are in the normal range or they are active and eat well.
But let’s just say that Ms Weiner was on her way to diabetes, perhaps because she has a family history of type 2 diabetes, or for some other reason. The reason doesn’t matter. Let’s just say that diabetes was a known likely issue for her.
Why is body acceptance a threat to her life? Does body acceptance (let’s go back to calling it fat acceptance) encourage people to be sedentary in their lives? No. In fact quite the opposite, it urges people to live their lives to the full, to find activities and pursuits that they enjoy and make them feel good. Does fat acceptance encourage people to eat extreme levels of food with the purpose of gaining weight so that everyone is fat like us? Not at all, fat acceptance is all about loving the body you are in, and treating it well, while nourishing it with the food it needs. Most fat acceptance activists do not believe in changing ones body to change ones life, which includes gaining weight as much as it does losing it. Does fat acceptance discourage people from obtaining medical care from health professionals? Absolutely not! Again, quite the opposite. It encourages people to demand respectful, dignified health care that listens to the patient and works with the patient to find the best methods to encourage wellbeing in the patient, no matter what the circumstances of the patients life.
Something wants me to say to Jess Weiner – Fat/Body Acceptance… You’re doin’ it wrong!
And finally, as a diabetic myself, I get so royally fucking fed up with type 2 diabetes being used as some kind of moral measure of the population. The minute the word diabetes comes up in a conversation about bodies, people start gasping and clutching their pearls, and screaming “Won’t somebody think of the children!!??” While there are lots of us out there in the world who actually have type 2 diabetes, who are fed up with being used as some kind of cautionary tale for “bad” people who “let themselves get fat/unhealthy”.
The reality is, diabetes exists. It’s not fun, it is an illness that people suffer and if not managed, it can make your health decline rapidly and irreversibly. However, diabetes is not a death sentence. It’s not an indication that your life is over and that you have “failed”. Like any other chronic illness, it requires managing and some changes to your life to mitigate any problems that may arise. It is not an indicator of who is a lazy glutton (after all, lots of thin people and active people get Type 2 diabetes as well – I have several in my family alone) or who has “failed” to take care of their health.
Unlike Jess Weiner, I am not pre-pre-prediabetic, I actually HAVE been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and I’m fat. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to optimise my health as best I can within the circumstances of my life, nor does it mean that I have got myself this way by “loving my body”. It also doesn’t mean that I deserve to be demonised as what happens to lazy gluttons who are “bad people”.
It’s a complete “othering” of people who have a chronic illness and it’s disgusting that people do this.
To Ms Weiner and anyone else who wants to use diabetes to frighten people into dieting and following their “campaigns”, I send a hearty FUCK YOU!
Fat Heffalump 
Hi Kath
Couldn’t agree more. I have read the article by Ms Weiner and the posts from her followers and from the FA fraternity and I was a little confused being relatively new to this FA movement. But now after reading your succinct Post I can again clarify my own stance on the matter and feel reassured I have chosen the right path on which to travel.
Thanks Kath.
Incidentally this will grab ya. For many years I have had the diabetes Issue pushed at me from every man and his dog.
Once even had a dr tell me I didnt deserve to be as healthy as I
countrygirl I’ve had that one too. Doctors or people in general who tell me I don’t “deserve” to be healthy, or that I don’t even deserve to be alive because I’m fat. It’s a very clear indicator that the issue is not even about health, it’s about them feeling superior to someone because of their body shape/size.
Thank you. This needed to be said. It’s possible, perhaps to delay the onset of diabetes with “lifestyle choices” (which are, of course, more easily made by the affluent and privileged), but if you have strong genetic markers and/or advanced age, you can’t really avoid it entirely. It does not make you a failure or bad or wrong or self-destructive. And you’re right, 99 is NORMAL BLOOD SUGAR, at least until the drug companies get around to moving the goalposts again. “Pre-diabetes” is actually a very poor predictor of who eventually gets a t2d diagnosis anyway, especially at the lower end of the range.
Meowser I think I certainly would have not had diabetes kick in at my age if I had not fucked up my metabolism with a lifetime of dieting and disordered eating. If I had been allowed to just live my life healthy and active instead of trying to get thin at any cost, I might have been like my Grandma, who is fat but didn’t see diabetes turn up until she was in her 70’s.
Moving the goalposts is exactly what keeps happening. Drug companies keep pushing it in every single area of medicine, but with the current obesity epipanic, this is one area they keep succeeding in.
Genuine question (I don’t know anything about science, only that my mum had t2d and no family history of it), does FA completely reject the notion of a ‘lifestyle’ disease?
Well, the older I get, the more I doubt that there is such a thing. I’ve seen people who’ve never smoked a day in their life get lung or oral cancer while there are lifetime smokers seem to escape it. I’ve seen robust people who almost never drink alcohol end up with kidney disease while others drink copious quantities and keep on going. And those are just a couple of examples.
The one thing we do know is that the human body is a complex thing. It’s not a machine that can be predicted and tweaked to run the way we think it should. All we can do is accept the body as it is and treat it with love and care.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I certainly reject it. Remember, the diagnostic standards are much different now; back in 1997, they changed the qualifying fasting blood sugar from 140 to 126 and started looking for it even in people without advanced symptoms like gangrene, fainting, etc. So in generations prior to your mother’s, it’s very possible that nobody in her family even got tested for it, and that even if they did, they didn’t qualify under the old standards. And the whole idea of “lifestyle disease” has way too much classism and ablism wrapped up in it to suit me.
Once again, Kath, you hit the nail right smack dab on the head.
Diabetes is a chronic condition, like asthma, or a severe allergy that can be deadly if not managed, but that is not an early death sentence on its own. It sucks, but it’s not something that means the end of your life, or even your general decent health. It’s not an indication of your morality, a righteous punishment for having a fat body, or a special way we fatties have found to use up all the health care, mwhahahahaaaa! It’s. A. Disease. Period.
What kind of world are we living in that we shame people who have an illness? I mean seriously!
Diabetes, both Type II and hypoglycemia, run on my mother’s side of the family. I have been diagnosed with PCOS, which spikes my blood sugar when I’m not on birth control.
This is not a fat person’s disease, it never was, until the obesity panic kicked in. Now the medical community appears to be diagnosing anyone visually fat with pre-diabetes or even predicting they’ll just automatically get it by being fat, ignoring that many thin people have it as well. This isn’t a condition that discriminates against weight but until they finally get the picture that because the cutoff points have been moved BMI and blood sugar wise, they’ll continue to harp it’s a “lifestyle disease” made by “bad food choices.”
I was diagnosed with PCOS about 7 years ago lifeonfats. And shoved right onto Metformin, which was supposed to “prevent” diabetes in me. Yeah right!
One thing most people totally ignore is that at this moment, at least 90% of the fat people in the United States (where I live) do not have diabetes & about 75% of us NEVER will, while they say at least 25% of thin people will be diabetic at some point. I fail to see a huge difference there between fat & thin. Also, Type II is as genetic, as strongly hereditary, as Type I & no one’s “fault”. Do I believe in ‘lifestyle diseases”? No, not really, as I do not believe that we have a great deal of conscious control over what diseases we get or how long we live; I am nearly 62 & I have seen/known/been related to far too many people who do all the ‘wrong’ things but live to be very old, or people who live the ‘healthy life’ who drop dead suddenly when they are under 50, sometimes under 40, often while working out. I do feel that heavy drinking, smoking, drug use can & likely do have a strong negative effect on people’s health, but even there, there are no guarantees. I have always been active & do think that it is likely that some moderate regular activity has some health benefits, but there too, I have had mostly SEDENTARY long-lived relatives, many of whom have drunk, or smoked or sometimes both. Many of my relatives also are or have been fat. I have a brother who has been fat all his life, considers exercise walking from the house to the car & back, sees green vegetables as the peas & green beans someone occasionally puts on his plate, & who has been a heavy drinker since he was 15; he has never weighed below 200 pounds since he was 15, weighed 12 pounds at birth, & has been between 260-270 for at least 25 years now (he is 5’11”). A doctor told him he would be dead by the time he was in his early 30’s if he didn’t stop drinking. Yet, he is still very much alive & still working fulltime drilling water wells at age 72. My mother did virtually EVERYTHING wrong (she didn’t smoke, but she lived with a heavy smoker for 43 & developed emphysema), she had only 1 kidney for over 40 years, but she lived to be 85; her mother, who never saw a piece of chocolate she didn’t love & put 4 tsps of sugar in a cup of coffee & was always fat, lived to be 90 (And she was never diabetic.) So, no, I am not a strong believer in ‘lifestyle diseases.’
I intend to go on owning my own body, eating what I like, exercising as I am able (I have cerebral palsy & arthritis), & living as I see fit. I will live as long as I live. None of us is immortal &, the older I get, the more I believe it is more important to live happily & fully than to compete in some ‘I can live healthier than thou’ or “I can live longer than thou” sweepstakes. Even if we DO manage to live to be 100 or more, for most people those last few years are definitely NOT ‘the best years of your life.’
My mom is very thin (to the point of shopping in the girls sections because women’s clothes are too big) and very active and rarely eats anything processed or with sugar and yet, when her blood sugar came back high, her doctor told her she needed to eat less sugar and exercise more. So she cut her calories down to a riduculously low level, under 1000 calories, and doubled her exercise to nearly 3 hours a day because her doctor told her to. She was skeletal by the time she saw the doctor again and he admonished for being too thin, but when the test results came back and her sugar was still high, he told her to eat less sugar and exercise more. I guess that’s what the doctor manual tells them to do.
We just can’t win, can we Kate?
Brilliant post, and you are so right.
I want to tell Ms Weiner that she got all alarmed over nothing. My fasting blood sugar regularly comes back as 95. According to her doctor, that would put me in the pre-pre-diabetic range too. Am I worried about it? Not in the least. Every time I’ve had a glucose tolerance test done, my results come back “normal”, and the glucose tolerance test is a better predictor of whether you’re headed toward type 2 diabetes than a fasting blood sugar test, unless your fasting blood sugar consistently comes back above that 126 that’s considered “normal”.
Of course her doctor is going to tell her she’s headed toward diabetes, it’s a scare tactic that doctors use to get us to lose weight when nothing else works (that vague future health threat). Even though my doctor knows my blood sugar is normal, every time she saw me, she had to ask me if I was diabetic, even though there’s nothing in my chart that says I am, and she isn’t prescribing any diabetic medications for me – she still would ask me if I was diabetic simply because I’m fat and all fat people either are diabetic or will get diabetes one day (according to the way she thinks). Of course, she also thinks diets work for everyone, and that yo-yo dieting is acceptable and doesn’t harm one’s health either (which is why she’s no longer my doctor).
My husband happens to have type 2 diabetes, and his doctor gets worried when his blood sugar goes below 85. She says he should keep it in the 90 to 160/180 range, which will give him an hbA1c of 7 (and she doesn’t want it much lower than that, she says too tight control can cause as many problems as not enough control). DH didn’t eat himself into t2d – both his parents had it, as do 4 of his 6 brothers (genetics, much?). He was 38 when he was diagnosed with it, and he’s almost 56 now, so he’s been living with it for almost 18 years, He managed it quite well with oral meds, diet, and exercise for 15 years. It’s only been the last 2 years that he’s needed insulin to help him keep his numbers where they need to be (I think that’s part of the progressive nature of the disease).
So a diagnosis of diabetes isn’t a death sentence – you can live a long, healthy, happy, productive life in spite of having any disease, as long as you treat it and take care of yourself as best you can with the resources you have. And Ms Weiner, using fat acceptance as the reason you “almost killed yourself with loving your body” is a massive cop-out for failing to take responsibility for taking care of yourself. If you really loved your body, you’d have taken care of it instead of ignoring it.
I’m the same vesta44 in that even though my BSL’s are high, I find hypoglycaemia kicks in for me at a higher level than average. So I have a fine line to dance along, making sure I keep my BSL’s down in the normal range, but it’s easy to go that bit too far for me and end up with problems. I think my BSL is always going to be at the high end even while managed, because that’s just how I run.
Right on Kath. Besides the epic flaw of using body size as a diagnostic tool when actual diagnostic tools exist, there is the issue of post-diagnosis blaming. I am well aware that people of all shapes and sizes get Type 2 diabetes and it seems like the thing to do is give them the best treatment possible rather than trying to figure out how to blame and subsequently shame them. I’ve read the hyppocratic oath a couple of times and shaming people for their diagnoses is just not in there anywhere.
I am really glad that you are speaking out about this issue. Awesome blog as always!
~Ragen
Thanks Ragen.
A while back I was talking to a friend who has T2 diabetes, as does his mother. He is one of those thin, wiry men, and his Mum is a short, fat lady. He was telling me that he gets lots of sympathy from his doctor for having T2 diabetes (and from other people/health care professionals) while his Mum is constantly told that she brought this on herself and that she’ll have to “get serious about her health.”
It boils my blood!
I saw that article, well 99 is NORMAL. Anyone crying over a 99 blood sugar has lost the plot. In fact I start feeling like I am going to pass out when mine goes below 85-90. So 88 would be definitely WAY TOO LOW. There are pharmaceutical companies that probably would love for the “worried well” to be led to buy their diabetes drugs, should they cross the 99 mark. Diabetes is affected by bad food, a toxic society and stress more then “bad behavior”. Being diabetic, I have to ignore diabetes articles, lest I feel like I will drop over that minute, they just create depression and anxiety. Well watch the a1c, with your doctor’s help and there you go. I don’t blame the lady for wanting to go lose weight and avoiding crossing the 300lb mark, but sadly her personal health endeavors probably were used for another “you lazy fatties” hit piece. What I hate is how the same degree of personal “body control” is expected of every person, as if the “changes” of behavior will create the automatic body changes.
Absolutely, I don’t have a problem with Ms Weiner deciding to increase her activity and eat better, I don’t even have a problem with her deciding she wanted to lose weight. What I do have a problem with is her need to conflate body/fat acceptance with “loving your body to death” and her demonisation of diabetes as something that only happens to lazy, gluttonous people.
I love you Kath! Because of this, because of so many things you do and say…you tell your own truth while shining a light on the realities of the oppressed and marginalized! Thank you!
My father was one of seven siblings – all fat (except one of them who smoked, who died young of lung cancer) – and two of them (ironically, the only two now still living) had T2, although my dad himself apparently escaped that gene. Because of that family history, I had my mother tell me when I was younger (and well within what was then a ‘normal’ weight range) that I would definitely get diabetes if I didn’t lose weight immediately. My mother herself, though, was diagnosed as T2 in her later years in the nursing home, and was utterly bewildered, as not only did she have no genetic background of it, she’d spent her whole life believing only fat people ever got it, and she was extremely thin. (The doctor said a huge number of people develop T2 in their 70s or 80s, regardless of size, habits or genetics; the pancreas, like all other organs, doesn’t last forever in anyone.)
Some years back, I ended up with a GP who took one look at my size (I was maybe 20lb into the ‘overweight’ BMI category by then, and in my mid-20s) and concluded that my severe fatigue couldn’t be anything but T2 – despite me having none of the other symptoms of T2, and an awful lot of others of what I (and my current doctor) later recognized as clinical depression. I went through a barrage of tests before he had to accept that it wasn’t.
Re demonisation of this disease, I’ve noticed, actually, a really disturbing tendency in the comments on many articles these days that mention Type II: people with Type I, or who have kids with Type I, saying things along the lines of ‘Please distinguish between the two types of diabetes, us Type I people do NOT bring it on ourselves by being fat!!!’ And parents saying that they want other kids to stop bullying their kid at school for being diabetic because ‘he has Type I, so it’s not like it’s his fault’. So not only is Type II now absolutely a disease the patient can be blamed for because ‘everyone knows’ it’s caused by being fat, but even Type I sufferers and their families – i.e. people who are themselves struggling with a metabolic disease and therefore might be assumed to have a little empathy – now appear to think it’s OK for Type II sufferers to be bullied and blamed. The link between diabetes = obesity = ‘their own fault’ is that strong in people’s minds.
I have a relative who works in diabetes research. Every time the subject comes up and I question whether the supposed ‘obesity epidemic’ is really the cause of rising rates, he changes the subject. Next time, I intend to talk him round to the subject of how excess cortisol (i.e. stress) can increase insulin resistance, because I’ve read research that suggests there’s a connection, and I want to know if anyone out there has drawn what, to me, is an obvious conclusion: That we need to treat fat T2 patients, and fat people in general, with a damn sight more compassion than we do now. Not just for our own humanity’s sake, but because blaming and shaming them is actually, physically likely to make their condition worse.
Emerald I have seen evidence of the “Type 1 = good/Type 2 = bad” thinking as well – especially from Type 1 sufferers themselves. You would think that anyone who knows what it is like to suffer a chronic illness of any kind would have some understanding and compassion towards others… but it seems not in some cases.
With the blaming and shaming not being conducive to good health, that is one area I REALLY want to talk about more. Simply because to me, it is common sense – how on earth will someone ever honour their lives and their bodies if they’re bullied into hating themselves? Not to mention the emotional stress it adds as well. It’s just the most redundant method one could ever employ to improve anyone’s health.
But it draws me back to what I keep saying – this is not at all about health, all this blame and shame. It’s about people giving themselves permission to feel morally superior to others.
Excellent post, as usual.
Oh, lifestyles! I have chosen a certain “lifestyle” that some would consider overly healthist while others would judge much too lax. I usually eat “good” food but good heavens, that includes baguette, cheese, red meat and…two squares of “medicinal chocolate” most evenings after supper.
When it comes to nutrition, I know that I have the education and privilege (i.e. I make a good living, so I have the money to buy antibiotic-free meat, for example) to make my own choices. What I have learned through the FA movement is to stop moralizing over the choices others make or are forced to make through circumstances beyond their control.
On a more personal note, I always like to tell the stories of two women I knew well. They have both passed away. The first was a lithe ex-dancer who took vitamins by the fistful and watched everything she put in her mouth. She only ate the most “healthy” food and followed the dietary prescriptions of a doctor who maintains that you must follow a diet regimen based on your blood group. Needless to say, she did not smoke and I don’t know whether she drank any alcohol at all. She died in her early forties of breast cancer, leaving a very young daughter and a loving husband behind.
Then there was my MIL who believed in the major food groups: cigarettes, sugar, fat and rare but copious amounts of alcohol. She died at 82 of a massive heart attack. She was found dead in her bed.
So much for lifestyle.
Great post, thanks for sharing your toughts. I love your blog!
Another brilliant post, and you’re absolutely right.
Then again I find it pretty off-putting when relatives, friends, and the news media treat T2D as a death threat to get people on diets. I find it downright wrong when doctors do it.
Thanks rubyfruit – it’s just an exercise in shame, that does not benefit anyone exept those who gain from other people’s misery.
And the real kicker is that I don’t know of anyone in my whole (more immediate) family that has T2D, I know of family members who are fat and thin, some who do the “right” things and some who do not, and I’m African-American.
It’s something about this current cultural concept of health that bothers me. The idea that all you need to do is take a few steps and be free of all disease forever just…bugs me, because many things about health seem to be determined as much by luck (meaning genetics, environmental factors, socioeconomic factors, and a bajillion other things that cannot be controlled at all, or cannot be controlled completely) as by determination (doing some things and avoiding others). So…yeah.
Sorry for getting all rantypants in the comments.
And also: Because t2d used to be diagnosed almost exclusively in the end stages of the disease, it used to be a lot more people died from its complications. Now that it’s diagnosed pretty much exclusively off blood tests in people with no symptomatology (other than weight, and even that’s poorly predictive), it’s pretty much exclusively poor people who die of its complications (that’s what happens when you don’t have full access to healthcare, not to mention jobs where you’re not allowed time off from work to see doctors, etc.). Trust someone who looks at dozens of medical records every week, even elderly diabetics usually die of something else.
Yep, bang on Meowser. I was diagnosed that way – no symptoms at all, just had a routine annual blood workup, fasting BSL was high, off for a Glucose Tolerance Test (my 5th in a decade) I went. Still no symptoms. But my doc and I work together to keep the BSL’s down, and monitor all the other vitals. If I start to show any symptoms or have elevated BSL’s again, then we readdress our tactics.
It’s not 1963 any more, we have good diagnostic tools that people WILL use if they’re not shamed away from medical care.
I used to go by the handle “WellRoundedType2” in order to show that a person with diabetes didn’t have to live in shame, or fear of death, or not be able to participate in fat acceptance or HAES.
I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1994, when I was 25 years old. When I realized that I was going to need a new career when the internet bubble burst in 2001, it slowly dawned on me that having type 2 diabetes made me a more powerful public health person than someone who didn’t have any understanding (or compassion or empathy) for what it was like to live with a chronic disease.
I’m now 42.5 years old, and so far, I don’t have any complications. What’s made this possible isn’t weight loss (although I do weigh less now than I did when I was first diagnosed, mostly because of medications I take and the way I live my life differently than I did then) but mostly is, as Meowser says, really good health care. I knew, when I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, that I needed, as much as was feasible, to never go without health insurance. And it’s made me feel trapped in jobs I wished I could leave.
Having type 2 diabetes comes with its measure of medical costs, but it hasn’t kept me from doing things that matter to me — traveling, having a child, raising that child, having a career I love, having meaningful relationships, growing as a person. I might be a little more expensive to care for, but I think I’m worth the investment.
after all, lots of thin people and active people get Type 2 diabetes as well – I have several in my family alone
Well, if you can’t choose your parents properly, what hope do you have? 🙂
I work in pharmacy, and see lots of people with Type II diabetes every day. The only thing that most of them have in common is that they tend to be related to each other! There’s tall, short, thin, fat, in-between, apple-shaped, pear-shaped, log-shaped, stick-shaped, men, women, genderqueer, teenagers, elderly people (including an active 99-year-old!), middle-aged people, active, sedentary, disabled, able-bodied…all managing their diabetes and living long lives with it. Of course, it helps that Australia has accessible and mostly affordable health care, my tiny local hospital has a committed diabetes educator who ruthlessly exploits drug companies to get blood glucose testing machines at big discounts, and Diabetes Australia and the government supply hugely discounted testing strips and other equipment. With those conditions met, there’s no reason why a chronic health condition has to be The Big Scary Fat-Shaming Stick.
I was recently at the hospital for a ct scan with contrast dye to try to find the cause of a sudden attack of vertigo. Being a fat woman I was already freaked out about my dr sending me there cos I was worried about being judged. Well u guessed it, I struck a douche of a radiographer who had me lying on the contraption for at least 20 mins before the procedure trying to find a vein. He was obviously frustrated about not being able to find a vein and I am in no doubt that he was blaming me for being fat. The classic was when during all this he asked me if I had diabetes WTF? Even if I did what does it have to do with what I was there for. Obviously in his mind fat = diabetes. The best part was when he finally got sick of prodding and called a nurse she came in and got a vein first go! I was angry with myself for not asking him to get someone else to come and try sooner. Test results were fine , GP reckons it was a virus. Lesson for me is to be more assertive in future.
One of my pet peeves is the stereotyping of Type 1 diabetics as the “good” and “deserving” diabetics, and the Type 2 diabetics as the “bad” and “brought-it-on-themselves” diabetics.
I saw that in a news story just this week from the mom of a type 1 diabetic. She says he gets hassled because people don’t understand that type 1s don’t “bring it on themselves” and it’s not due to what he eats or a poor lifestyle. And of course, type 2 is all due to that.
AUGH. So much moralistic thinking around diabetes, and it drives me nuts.
I’m a “normal” sized person who’s been pre-diabetic since my late 20s. The only thing that keeps my blood sugar normal is regular exercise. When I manage to keep active, it gets me down to Jess’ “pre-pre” diabetic levels. My ultra-skinny Dad has been Type 2 since his early 30s. Gotta love heredity!
I just don’t get Jess Weiner. How she can equate “loving your body” with “ignoring your regular checkup” totally defies logic. I get doctor avoidance, I do – but to blame it on your acceptance of yourself? Totally nuts.
As a person who once struggled with disordered eating and body image, the Glamour article seems irresponsible at best. But I’m not surprised – afterall, how many of their advertising dollars come from companies that prey on women’s self-image?