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livPolitically speaking, I am firmly committed to a body-positive stance. If I want to sum up a fairly complex set of ideas, I would say that means I don't think people should be judged or face discrimination based on what their body is like, whether that's on aesthetic grounds, or health grounds, or (as so often happens) a convoluted mixture where the two are confused or treated as interchangeable. I also am positive about bodies, in that I don't think it's virtuous to mortify one's body for the sake of attaining some higher spiritual or similar goal, I think people are their bodies, and bodies should be treated with respect and care. But that's not the aspect of body-positivity that I want to talk about here.
As part of being body positive, I include fat bodies. There are lots of different groups trying to improve fat people's experience of the world, using labels such as fat acceptance, fat positivity, health at every size, fat pride and so on. And they all have slightly different ideas of what it means to be an activist in favour of fat people. I broadly agree with all of these movements, but I don't subscribe in detail to every aspect of their philosophy, so I don't consider myself as a member of any of the movements supportive of fat people. For me, it's part of my general belief that people are their bodies and people are worthy of respect; there isn't a certain weight or BMI or whatever above which that principle ceases to apply.
Given this, and given that I generally love Body Impolitic, you might think I'd be all over this recent post on International No Diet Day. In fact, it really bothers me.
It has often been my experience that when I, or other people on the internet, say we are fat positive, people react by assuming that we must hate thin people. Maybe some fat activists do, but I strongly doubt it, and I certainly don't. Thin people, just like fat people, have the bodies they have because of their genetic inheritance, their upbringing, their environment, their lifestyle choices based, I can only hope, on much more important priorities than whether I find them aesthetically pleasing. It would be hypocritical in the extreme if I were to react negatively to thin people just because they happen to be thin. As far as I can tell, the people who hate thin people are those who are desperately trying to lose weight, who believe that thin people have the highest value in the social pecking order, and therefore "hate", or perhaps more accurately are jealous of, people who are more successful at achieving the thin ideal.
The other assumption that people make, though, is that I and my activist allies hate dieters. And it feels to me like Oelbaum's project, as described by Murray at Body Impolitic, is contributing to that false impression. The thing is, I have personally chosen not to diet, because based on the evidence I have seen, I conclude that most weight-loss methods are not effective for most people. Further, while I am aware that there is a correlation between being extremely overweight and poor health, there is almost no compelling evidence that a fat person who loses weight will have health outcomes as good as someone who was always thin to start with. That's partly because very few people do in fact lose substantial amounts of weight in the long term, so what evidence there is is based on small and quite likely exceptional populations. For all that's a personal choice, not a political stance, I can see why people sometimes become defensive if I refuse to participate in their hobby, and furthermore doubt that their weight-loss plan is going to do them as much good as they think it is.
Politically, though, I am strongly against the pressure exerted on many people (especially fat people, but on quite a lot of relatively thin people too) to diet, to the point that it's almost compulsory. If I have decided that the putative benefits of dieting aren't worth the cost, I want other people to have the right to make that judgement call too! And like Oelbaum, Murray, Chastain as quoted in the Body Impolitic article, and many others, I am in fact angry with the weight loss industry, which puts almost unimaginable resource into pressuring people, both individuals and healthcare providers and purchasers, to spend lots of money pursuing a chimeric goal of weight loss.
But that doesn't in the slightest mean I am against individuals who want to lose weight! The medical orthodoxy is still after all that weight loss is good for you, so it is entirely reasonable to follow that view. Some individual health conditions may be improved by weight loss – type II diabetes may be, at least for some people, ditto PCOS, and some joint problems and pain can be alleviated by reducing the weight borne by the affected joints. Some people can't access needed treatment unless they meet weight goals; I might have a problem with doctors restricting healthcare access on that basis, but from the patient's perspective, it only makes sense to do what it takes to get your condition treated.
And some people just plain feel better when they weigh less; it's not for me to judge whether that's because they buy into beauty standards that I consider artificial or for any other reason. People have autonomy over their own bodies, people have the right to decide that it's worth going hungry in order to have the body shape they feel good about. Wanting your body to look a certain way isn't "superficial" or trivial, it's a valid desire, because people are their bodies.
Furthermore, just because most people don't lose substantial weight in the long term through dieting, doesn't change the fact that some people do. Estimates run at around 5%, which isn't that tiny, 1 in 20 people have a metabolic quirk which means that when they consume fewer calories and do more exercise, they get thinner. Not just a little bit thinner, which nearly everyone does, but substantially and sustainably thinner. I don't want to argue those people out of existence because it suits my political cause! Well-known Fat Acceptance blogger Kate Harding at some point said something like
Sometimes this feels a bit like some of the debates within feminism about expressions of conventional femininity. Feminists may passionately argue that women shouldn't have to wear makeup and high heels to succeed in the world or be taken seriously. And some people are always going to hear that they're wrong or inferior or somehow "unfeminist" if they do want to wear makeup, high heels etc. People shouldn't have to diet; that doesn't mean people who do diet are the problem. I try to be as supportive as I can of friends who are aiming to lose weight.
I don't agree with Oelbaum characterizing dieting as always being about
So, much as the Willendorf project – making replicas of the Venus of Willendorf out of papier mâché made from ripped up diet books – is cute, Oelbaum's ad campaign I think misses the mark, and I am really quite uncomfortable with Murray's write-up of the project. I also feel quite uncomfortable with today being designated "International no diet day". I like the idea behind the project, and in some ways I'm marking it by making this post setting out my body positive, partially anti-diet stance. But I am very uncertain about the implementation; apart from anything else, I think the idea of having a "No Diet" day is potentially quite damaging. Because nearly all weight-loss diets have, whether formally or in practice, "days off" when you're excused from your diet for just one day. That's part of the reason why diets are often quite unhealthy in the first place, because people are encouraged to use their days off to stuff their faces with as much of the forbidden foods as they can possibly eat, knowing that they'll have to go back to abstaining when the day is over. It's all tied up with the idea of "naughty" foods which are bad for you but you can indulge in them occasionally as a treat, and that itself is very much the message of weight-loss marketing, and marketing from other industries which piggy-back on keeping people hungry, dissatisfied and insecure so that they can more easily be tempted to part with their money.
Have I alienated everybody yet?
As part of being body positive, I include fat bodies. There are lots of different groups trying to improve fat people's experience of the world, using labels such as fat acceptance, fat positivity, health at every size, fat pride and so on. And they all have slightly different ideas of what it means to be an activist in favour of fat people. I broadly agree with all of these movements, but I don't subscribe in detail to every aspect of their philosophy, so I don't consider myself as a member of any of the movements supportive of fat people. For me, it's part of my general belief that people are their bodies and people are worthy of respect; there isn't a certain weight or BMI or whatever above which that principle ceases to apply.
Given this, and given that I generally love Body Impolitic, you might think I'd be all over this recent post on International No Diet Day. In fact, it really bothers me.
It has often been my experience that when I, or other people on the internet, say we are fat positive, people react by assuming that we must hate thin people. Maybe some fat activists do, but I strongly doubt it, and I certainly don't. Thin people, just like fat people, have the bodies they have because of their genetic inheritance, their upbringing, their environment, their lifestyle choices based, I can only hope, on much more important priorities than whether I find them aesthetically pleasing. It would be hypocritical in the extreme if I were to react negatively to thin people just because they happen to be thin. As far as I can tell, the people who hate thin people are those who are desperately trying to lose weight, who believe that thin people have the highest value in the social pecking order, and therefore "hate", or perhaps more accurately are jealous of, people who are more successful at achieving the thin ideal.
The other assumption that people make, though, is that I and my activist allies hate dieters. And it feels to me like Oelbaum's project, as described by Murray at Body Impolitic, is contributing to that false impression. The thing is, I have personally chosen not to diet, because based on the evidence I have seen, I conclude that most weight-loss methods are not effective for most people. Further, while I am aware that there is a correlation between being extremely overweight and poor health, there is almost no compelling evidence that a fat person who loses weight will have health outcomes as good as someone who was always thin to start with. That's partly because very few people do in fact lose substantial amounts of weight in the long term, so what evidence there is is based on small and quite likely exceptional populations. For all that's a personal choice, not a political stance, I can see why people sometimes become defensive if I refuse to participate in their hobby, and furthermore doubt that their weight-loss plan is going to do them as much good as they think it is.
Politically, though, I am strongly against the pressure exerted on many people (especially fat people, but on quite a lot of relatively thin people too) to diet, to the point that it's almost compulsory. If I have decided that the putative benefits of dieting aren't worth the cost, I want other people to have the right to make that judgement call too! And like Oelbaum, Murray, Chastain as quoted in the Body Impolitic article, and many others, I am in fact angry with the weight loss industry, which puts almost unimaginable resource into pressuring people, both individuals and healthcare providers and purchasers, to spend lots of money pursuing a chimeric goal of weight loss.
But that doesn't in the slightest mean I am against individuals who want to lose weight! The medical orthodoxy is still after all that weight loss is good for you, so it is entirely reasonable to follow that view. Some individual health conditions may be improved by weight loss – type II diabetes may be, at least for some people, ditto PCOS, and some joint problems and pain can be alleviated by reducing the weight borne by the affected joints. Some people can't access needed treatment unless they meet weight goals; I might have a problem with doctors restricting healthcare access on that basis, but from the patient's perspective, it only makes sense to do what it takes to get your condition treated.
And some people just plain feel better when they weigh less; it's not for me to judge whether that's because they buy into beauty standards that I consider artificial or for any other reason. People have autonomy over their own bodies, people have the right to decide that it's worth going hungry in order to have the body shape they feel good about. Wanting your body to look a certain way isn't "superficial" or trivial, it's a valid desire, because people are their bodies.
Furthermore, just because most people don't lose substantial weight in the long term through dieting, doesn't change the fact that some people do. Estimates run at around 5%, which isn't that tiny, 1 in 20 people have a metabolic quirk which means that when they consume fewer calories and do more exercise, they get thinner. Not just a little bit thinner, which nearly everyone does, but substantially and sustainably thinner. I don't want to argue those people out of existence because it suits my political cause! Well-known Fat Acceptance blogger Kate Harding at some point said something like
Congratulations, you're literally a freak of nature, which I considered really unhelpful, calling people freaks is never good politics, and anyway, people who lose weight through changing their calorie balance are in real terms not that rare at all, it's only slightly less common than being left-handed. From a HAES perspective, I'm all in favour of people changing their lifestyle to be more healthy, and for many people that means doing more exercise and eating less or differently, and some (a relatively rare few, but some) are going to lose weight if they do that. It would go against my principles entirely to have a problem with that.
Sometimes this feels a bit like some of the debates within feminism about expressions of conventional femininity. Feminists may passionately argue that women shouldn't have to wear makeup and high heels to succeed in the world or be taken seriously. And some people are always going to hear that they're wrong or inferior or somehow "unfeminist" if they do want to wear makeup, high heels etc. People shouldn't have to diet; that doesn't mean people who do diet are the problem. I try to be as supportive as I can of friends who are aiming to lose weight.
I don't agree with Oelbaum characterizing dieting as always being about
self-loathingor
measuring our worth on a bathroom scale. And I don't like Murray referring to a dieter as
the infinitely exploitable sucker. I have a big problem with her dragging in eating disorders, and with Murray endorsing this by calling diet books
"Create Your Own Eating Disorder" books. People with mental illnesses are the worst possible people to blame for social problems! Someone who has an eating disorder is not a gullible fool taken in by pro-diet social messages, no more than anyone else is. And people who diet and worry about their weight shouldn't be inappropriately diagnosed with eating disorders to make a rhetorical point.
So, much as the Willendorf project – making replicas of the Venus of Willendorf out of papier mâché made from ripped up diet books – is cute, Oelbaum's ad campaign I think misses the mark, and I am really quite uncomfortable with Murray's write-up of the project. I also feel quite uncomfortable with today being designated "International no diet day". I like the idea behind the project, and in some ways I'm marking it by making this post setting out my body positive, partially anti-diet stance. But I am very uncertain about the implementation; apart from anything else, I think the idea of having a "No Diet" day is potentially quite damaging. Because nearly all weight-loss diets have, whether formally or in practice, "days off" when you're excused from your diet for just one day. That's part of the reason why diets are often quite unhealthy in the first place, because people are encouraged to use their days off to stuff their faces with as much of the forbidden foods as they can possibly eat, knowing that they'll have to go back to abstaining when the day is over. It's all tied up with the idea of "naughty" foods which are bad for you but you can indulge in them occasionally as a treat, and that itself is very much the message of weight-loss marketing, and marketing from other industries which piggy-back on keeping people hungry, dissatisfied and insecure so that they can more easily be tempted to part with their money.
Have I alienated everybody yet?
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-06 07:05 pm (UTC)I find it often really hard - for myself, personally - to separate the idea of dieting from the weight of socially-mandated self-loathing that comes with it. And self-loathing is a pretty good gateway to a bad episode with depression for me. Which doesn't mean it's that way for everyone! But it certainly means that for me, I tend to choose my own mental health over the potential health benefits of being a "normal weight".
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-06 07:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-06 07:12 pm (UTC)One of the best medical weight-related interactions I ever had was when I was regularly giving plasma. As rapid weight loss is a symptom of some health problems, and as the amount of plasma it is safe to give depends on body weight, weighing is part of the donation process, and the computer system informed the technician if there was a weight loss of more than 10 pounds in a one-month period. The tech explained that they needed to make sure I was healthy enough to give plasma, which included drinking enough water and eating enough. It left me with the conviction that they cared more about my health than about my weight, unlike some previous interactions I'd had where excessive food restriction, excessive exercise, and excessive weight loss were all praised, and the effects on my general health were ignored.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-06 07:23 pm (UTC)The plasma-donation story sounds great, and exactly what I would like to see more of from medical professionals!
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-07 01:01 pm (UTC)I had a moment of cognitive dissonance the other day when my partner reported that his GP had picked up on (lifestyle-based) weightloss and been concerned about potential health issues. I'm overweight, and no GP ever has treated weightloss ever as anything other than positive and a sign of health, and none of them have *ever* brought up the idea that it might be linked to a health problem and that I ought to be checked out.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-06 07:27 pm (UTC)The piece of "like me" that I would promote is a broader self-acceptance: the problem isn't heterosexuality or bisexual people choosing other-sex partners, it's compulsory heterosexuality. Thin people aren't a problem, wanting to be thin isn't usually or inherently a problem: tthinness as a demand is the problem, and that set of demands is where wanting to be thin can be problematic (in directions of "I can't do X until I lose weight" as well as eating disorders). Hannah Blank posted early today on the theme of "There is no wrong way to have a body," which includes any combination of height, weight, amount of hair, shape, primary and secondary sexual characteristics, etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-06 07:43 pm (UTC), yes, I completely agree! Is Hanne's post about no wrong way to have a body anywhere public? I am such a fan of her writing, particularly about fat acceptance related stuff.
(no subject)
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Date: 2013-05-06 07:57 pm (UTC)Person A (who is large-framed, fat, and has what looks from the outside like a tumultuous relationship with their weight) posted a thing about muffin-top, which I read as a: "please, wear clothing that fits and flatters the body that you have, not clothing that hurts the body you have but would fit the body you want to have" sort of thing.
Person B (who is small-framed, often thin, and has various body-weight-related Issues) read it as a: "I hate you, skinny bitches" screed.
The ensuing did not go well.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-06 07:52 pm (UTC)From my perspective, you are completely right and you are also missing a crucial piece. I do believe that dieting-to-lose-weight is not always based in self-loathing; I do support individual dieters in the right to be on their own path; and I don't believe that all diets are equivalent to creating eating disorders.
At the same time, any analysis of people's right to follow the dominant media-driven capitalist/kyriarchal paradigm is, in my opinion, insufficient if it doesn't acknowledge the difference between making a personal choice to follow that paradigm and making a personal choice not to. I think "International No Diet Day" has to be placed in a context where the other 364 days are unacknowledged "International Diet Days."
And while dieting-to-lose-weight doesn't have to be about self-loathing and doesn't have to create eating disorders, there is no doubt that the entire structure that supports, encourages, and damn near demands that we diet is constructed around self-loathing. Eating disorders pre-date dieting-to-lose-weight (see Fasting Girls by Joan Jacobs Brumberg for some data on this) but they do not (in fact, in the Western world's historical context, they cannot) precede the pressure on girls and women to hate ourselves and our bodies. As a result, dieting-to-lose-weight and eating disorders are far more often constructed around self-loathing than they are constructed positively.
It's simply different to follow and to resist the dominant paradigm, and while we all have the right to do both and owe it to each other to appreciate individual choices, I think we always have to acknowledge that distinction.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-06 09:02 pm (UTC)[liv, I have Thoughts on my utter inability to be supportive of people trying to lose weight, but perhaps I should wait (hah) until I am more talking-in-sentences? But basically: with a history of disordered eating, conversations in which people take the attitude that weight loss in and of itself is a good, wholesome, and entirely unproblematic goal? Not something I can deal with being around. And I don't think that's wrong, either; not that I think you're saying that it is, but. A thing.]
(no subject)
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Date: 2013-05-07 03:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-07 08:52 am (UTC)A flaw I'm prone to is that I naturally consider political questions more from an individual than a society perspective, and I do miss things because of it. It's a really important point that choosing to diet happens in a different context from choosing not to diet, they are not neutral or equivalent. Part of what's going on, I think, with the idea that fat activists "hate" dieters is that a lot of the time, people who diet for weight loss get loads of praise and are considered to be virtuous. If that's missing, and instead people are analysing the political implications of their choice, they may well feel attacked.
My trouble with No Diet Day is not, I hope, like the fatuous complaint that there's International Women's Day but no International Men's Day, or Black History Month but no White History Month. My problem is that it easily blends with the concept, which is very much part of the diet industry paradigm, that you have to spend 364 of your days "virtuously" living on lettuce and meal replacement shakes, but you get this one special treat day where you are allowed to eat "unhealthy" food. Having one day for political awareness is a good thing. Having one day when you stop dieting (and spend money on the foods that get designated as being indulgent, naughty treats), only to go back to it on 7th May, is the same old diet industry bullshit.
I know that wasn't the intention of the people who set up INDD, but it is very susceptible to being subverted. It's a bit like those Dove, Body Shop etc "love your body!" ads, which are superficially body positive but are actually yet more beating the capitalist drum of, spend money on our products to achieve self-acceptance.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-07 09:12 am (UTC)I am automatically twitchy about appropriating actual mental illnesses to make a rhetorical point. I accept entirely that mental illness, like everything else, exists within political reality, it's not just some purely biochemical coincidence which conveniently can't be blamed on the political forces which are creating an unhealthy environment. I very much appreciated your recent post on "Public Feelings," for example.
But I also think it's harmful to, well, medicalize people's difficulties in coping with a damaging society. Yes, many people do diet for very negative, self-loathing reasons, but I feel it's important to address that as what it is, and look at the influence of advertising, gender expectations etc, rather than to snap to "oh, they have a sub-clinical eating disorder". That's not much better than the kyriarchy-supporting habit of looking at very thin celebrities and saying "that's disgusting, she must be anorexic!"
Conversely, the rhetoric that the diet industry is evil because it "makes" people develop EDs I think runs the risk of using real people as a symbol for a political campaign. I am sure that the pressure to diet for weight loss and the pressure to be thin at all costs affect people prone to EDs, affect how their condition manifests and so on. But I don't think those people are particularly helped by being the go-to example for what's wrong with society. It positions their mental illness as a moral failing. Oh, if only you accepted feminism, practised self-acceptance and didn't hate yourself so much, you wouldn't be suffering this agony!
Okay, so I joined Dreamwidth to comment on your comment...
Date: 2013-05-06 11:45 pm (UTC)My experience differs from yours in some ways. For starters when I say I'm "fat positive" I don't usually have people assume I hate skinny people. More often people suggest that I'm suffering from a delusion of some sort, as one reader put it "I don't agree that it's okay to be fat." Fortunately, she followed that up by saying the liked the mystery story anyway. I also get many readers of my fiction saying that they were put off by my characters who kept bringing up the subject of fatness and they didn't want to hear it. Recently I've been accused of being "pro fat" with the suggestion (sigh) that I want to spread the fatness or encourage people to be or stay fat. Not true. I want people to feel good in their own bodies, listen to them, respect them. I believe our bodies are constantly giving us feedback, and once we learn to listen, it's better for us.
Just for the record neither I nor Brenda Oelbaum called anyone a "freak" or any other disrespectful name (although, as an unrepentant hippie I have no problem with anyone calling ME a freak, a word with a proud fringe-dwelling heritage). My guess, and it's just a guess, is that Kate Harding's "freak of nature" comment boiled over from the frustration of seeing many times daily the claim that "just do thus and such" and dramatic weight loss will be yours.
I do have to address a couple of your comments about my Body Impolitic post. You say:
"I don't agree with Oelbaum characterizing dieting as always being about self-loathing or measuring our worth on a bathroom scale. And I don't like Murray referring to a dieter as the infinitely exploitable sucker."
I think self loathing often comes into play with food restriction to achieve weight loss. There are recent studies showing that dieting resulting in temporary weight loss most often is followed by weight cycling and damage to self-esteem. That certainly was my experience, during the years from my first doctor-prescribed diet at the age of 9 (which came with an unwholesome side order of amphetamines) to the last few attempts to change my weight more than 25 years later. I feel I can talk about being an "infinitely exploitable sucker" because I lived that life. I don't think my experience was uncommon at all, and I firmly believe many others still suffer from being milked as cash cows by an exploitative, cynical diet industry. It pissed me off then and now. When I get angry and feel protective of people getting ripped off, I get snarky, so sue me--not really, please don't sue me!
I struggled to give up the dream of magically changing my body size to avoid the stigma attached to being fat and I don't miss it.
You go on to say:
"I have a big problem with her [Oelbaum] dragging in eating disorders, and with Murray endorsing this by calling diet books "Create Your Own Eating Disorder" books. People with mental illnesses are the worst possible people to blame for social problems! Someone who has an eating disorder is not a gullible fool taken in by pro-diet social messages, no more than anyone else is. And people who diet and worry about their weight shouldn't be inappropriately diagnosed with eating disorders to make a rhetorical point."
Okay, I don't mean to clinically diagnose anyone. I think that sub-clinical obsessions around food and eating don't have to qualify as formal disorders in order to mess up our lives. I agree with wild_irises' comment that
"[W]hile dieting-to-lose-weight doesn't have to be about self-loathing and doesn't have to create eating disorders, there is no doubt that the entire structure that supports, encourages, and damn near demands that we diet is constructed around self-loathing."
At no point did I say that the victims of eating disorders "are to blame for social problems."
On the contrary, if you look at the kind of mass marketing, psychological talent involved in the big business of marketing diets and diet products to all of us, we don't have to be "gullible fools" to fall for it. All we have to do is listen to the almost unavoidable drum beat of propaganda about how our bodies are Wrong or Unloveable or Unfit or Ugly & etc. & etc., and once we let those words into our heads we are more vulnerable to sales pitches.
Vulnerable. Not gullible. Big difference.
I DO firmly believe that listening to our bodies can include eating what makes us feel and function better and staying away from what doesn't--aka Intuitive Eating. For example, I'm allergic to Ahi tuna steaks. I ate one. It was very tasty, and nothing could ever convince me to eat one again--spectacular and immediate badness. I'm sparing you the awful details. So that's a food restriction that makes perfect sense....for me. I figured it out on my own, with my body giving me a very clear "hell no" message.
As you can see, I feel quite passionate about these issues, but I always aim to be constructive and encouraging even when I'm gettin' snarky with it. I appreciate your feedback and hope that my response clarifies at least my intentions, even if we still don't agree on every point.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-07 09:36 am (UTC)Right, that's definitely another way of missing the point! For one thing it's nearly as hard to make a thin person fat as to make a fat person thin. But more generally, there's a big difference between taking the view that fat people should be treated with respect (including self-respect), and promoting fat, which is something that I've practically never seen anyone actually doing. Totally agree about how important it is for !
Absolutely, that name-calling comes from Kate Harding, not your post. I think you're almost certainly right that Harding's comment came from a place of extremely justified frustration. Harding's shtick was always that she's sarcastic, blunt and sometimes even a bit mean, which is a totally valid form of activism, especially when it's directed at people who keep raising the same tired old anti-fat talking points over and over again. It's just not my preferred rhetorical or political approach, and I was trying to give a sympathetic reading to people who claim that size acceptance is all about hating dieters, so that comment came up as an example of something that might have put people's backs up.
It may be a US/UK difference, but to me "sucker" is at least as insulting as "freak". Your clarification that you were really talking about your own experience more than attacking other dieters makes me feel better about it. I can entirely relate when you say . I think we're on the same page here; I want to be extremely clear that that ire is directed at the , not at its victims, if you see what I mean?
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-07 09:48 am (UTC)Entirely true. I am not convinced that the evidence supports a continuum, though. Dieting, coming from a place of self-loathing and troubled relationships with food is definitely a problem and can mess up your life, and I am all in favour of activism to halt the weight loss industry from pushing people that direction. But from what I know of the ED literature (as an interested amateur rather than any kind of expert), a lot of the time an eating disorder is a way of exerting control, or a form of self-harm or obsessive-compulsive type of issue, not necessarily a desire to be conventionally beautiful. And yes, the diet industry does bear some responsibility here, absolutely, but it's not the whole picture.
I do completely take your point about the difference between vulnerable and gullible. I read your snarky and passionate post uncharitably, when I took away the impression that you were blaming either dieters or people with EDs for their inability to resist the . The fact that some people are vulnerable to EDs is certainly a good reason why the diet industry needs to take a whole lot more responsibility for the consequences of their marketing strategy. That most certainly doesn't make self-loathing the fault of the people struggling with such disorders.
And yes, I'm generally in favour of intuitive eating and the idea that some foods are genuinely unhealthy for some individuals, no problem with that at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-07 05:55 am (UTC)Not to mention the dubious assumption that the society which created the Willendorf figure was in fact embracing fat women. Assuming she's some sort of fertility figure (which we don't actually know; that's an educated assumption), many societies attribute traits to goddesses and fertility fetishes which are unacceptable in regular women.
AHEM. Here be your angry historian rant of the day, vaguely related to the topic of the post.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-07 10:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-05-07 06:47 am (UTC)Does this also apply (for you) to feminism, anti-racism, etc?
I don't entirely understand why this is the medical orthodoxy, given the lack of evidence, particularly against the background of a move toward evidence-based medicine.
You touch on this when you say: Yes, exactly. The evidence for the health benefits of losing weight just isn't there. You don't see research like, for example, this meta-analysis on reduction of certain cancer risks after giving up alcohol, with follow-up periods of up to 25 years[1]. A sufficiently large population of people who've lost weight and kept it off for 25 years would be headline news in itself. We don't have that, so we can't find out what the effects are.
There is also very little research into the negative effects of attempted weight loss. If there are positive effects, do they outweigh the negatives? Who knows! There's no data.
You mention a figure of 1 in 20 for people who can lose weight and keep it off. I see this figure a lot, but I can't remember the last time I saw a citation, and hence can't go and check, but isn't it based on a single study from decades ago? The true figure may not be 1 in 20; it may be 1 in 1000. We don't know, and nobody seems to be seriously trying to find out, and that's very odd.
We also don't know how to identify the people for whom it will work. In other fields, you see lots of research into which subgroups a given type of intervention will work in, with the aim of targeting resources where they'll do most good. Again, there's very little (if any) work on this for attempted weight loss.
I think hyperbolic language like Kate's can be both appropriate and effective in the early stages of a movement. I think fat acceptance has passed that stage now, but I'm not sure it had when she said it.
My overall opinion of publically-announced attempted weight loss is that (like many other things) it may well be a good and sensible choice for a given individual, but the associated effects cause harm to society. I think we should try to change society so this isn't the case, and this will help both those people who are harmed by the diet culture and those people who would like to just get on with their attempted weight loss in peace.
[1] Example chosen fairly arbitrarily — I just happened to have the reference to hand because I copyedited the article. I'm not experienced enough with meta-analyses to know how high quality this one is, but my main point is that it exists.
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Date: 2013-05-07 10:39 am (UTC)Haven't got my references immediately to hand, though. The big diabetes study, Look AHEAD, that was halted last year because they couldn't see any clinical improvement, had figures of average weight loss of 5% of body weight at 4 years, which was considered a really impressive result. And I can't quickly find the breakdown of whether that average represents most people losing around 5%, or a few people losing a lot and most people staying the same weight. This fairly comprehensive comparison of weight-loss diets says 2-4% of participants had maintained a 20 kg weight loss after 2 years, which is still a bit short term to really get a clear picture.
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Date: 2013-05-07 08:22 am (UTC)Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.
19. I Sing the Body Electric
I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?
[...]
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;
All things please the soul—but these please the soul well.
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Date: 2013-05-07 11:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-07 02:16 pm (UTC)(Especially about the "freak of nature" thing. I really like a lot of Kate Harding's work, and as you say in a comment above, it's clearly coming from a place of really understandable frustration. But it's not helpful.)
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Date: 2013-05-07 05:30 pm (UTC)Regarding calling people "freak of nature": I don't want to slip in to the whole tone argument morass. My tentative thought is that if you're trying to get people to change a really pervasive belief like "being fat is unhealthy", it really helps to be willing to acknowledge the parts of their worldview that are true. Like, yes, it is true that some people lose weight when they restrict calories and do regular exercise. Most people know someone who has, so denying that that's even possible makes your case sound really implausible.
a few more commentary thoughts
Date: 2013-05-07 06:43 pm (UTC)I agree with highlyeccentric's point about not knowing the meaning of the Willendorf figure to the culture that created her, whether women were empowered or enslaved--there's a lot we don't know. And yet she bears witness through the portrayal of her physicality. The delicate details of sensuality in her form tell us that her flesh was valued, and I think that's a healing thing, no matter what kind of (now unknowable) culture created her.
I LOVE the Whitman quote, a reminder to revisit him, thank you mair-aw!
Liv, you say:
"from what I know of the ED literature (as an interested amateur rather than any kind of expert), a lot of the time an eating disorder is a way of exerting control, or a form of self-harm or obsessive-compulsive type of issue, not necessarily a desire to be conventionally beautiful."
Control is a major goal in our culture and the desire to control our bodies when we can't control other things is a major motivator for many. A close friend who went through an anorexic interlude after her life imploded on several fronts told me, "There was only one thing in my life I could control--what I put in my mouth." Fortunately she's survived and is in a much healthier place.
Also from my own experience with ageing, I now notice how much marketing is done to ramp up anxiety in people who already fear getting older, dealing with physical limitations and losing control of our lives. But that's another rant!
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Date: 2013-05-08 10:01 am (UTC)I do love the Willendorf figure, both for itself and the ways it's been used in fat-positive memes. Sometimes the emotional resonance may be as important as the historical facts, with this sort of thing. And hooray for people who post poetry in intense political discussions.
This is a really good point, a lot of the weight-loss industry is likewise about control as well as beauty. And anxiety about ageing as something that can be commercially exploited, definitely very much worth bringing up! I am glad to hear that your friend is healthier after that bad experience, too.
I guess I'm still chary of politicizing mental illness / medicalizing political issues. But certainly, the environment of fixation with control and fear of dependence is highly relevant to EDs.
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Date: 2013-05-08 01:52 am (UTC)While looking for something else, my GP happened on signs that I have early-stage metabolic syndrome. I'd like to reverse that, so I'll be paying a visit to the diet-and-exercize specialist. I've got two weeks to figure out a polite way to rephrase "I don't give a good goddamn about my weight; talk to me about insulin sensitivity."
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Date: 2013-05-08 10:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-08 03:56 pm (UTC)I hear ya. I agree with some things you are saying and disagree with others but you make far more sense than people who get on their soapboxes usually.
I might have a problem with doctors restricting healthcare access on that basis
I have to say, with my best friend working in a field that deals with this regularly I feel the need to defend this. She works in radiotherapy and when it comes to planning this stuff and then treating people they see many patients where they physically can't find the cancer because of the fat rolling around it and often risk frying organs trying to get around stuff to get the cancer. Often weight means the equipment they have won't support a certain weight limit. I also know there is a lot of times where it does seem like doctors just think weight loss is the answer to everything but yeah, there is another side to it.
And people who diet and worry about their weight shouldn't be inappropriately diagnosed with eating disorders to make a rhetorical point.
Yes. I hate that 'diets' have this label of self-loathing too because I didn't hate myself. Some do but it isn't a universal thing and I feel like society has this black and white view of if you want to lose weight you're not 'strong enough' to accept yourself and if you don't want to lose weight you're fat and therefore less of a human being. I did it because I love myself and want to feel the best that I can and have my diabetes be as stable as it can be and diabetics will always react better to insulin when slimmer because of how insulin is processed in the body. I also hate how people get a lot of abuse from people over keeping an eye on their weight, not necessarily doing anything other than watching. I mean, totally apart from the whole 'diet thing', what weight I am requires different levels of insulin. The world isn't black and white. It isn't fat and thin. It isn't right and wrong, and I can't get over how people can't see that.
As for the 'no diet day', yeah that is terrible. Especially as diets are not just about losing weight. Everyone has a diet. A diet is just what you're eating. The term has been hi-jacked into this weight loss machine and that has always annoyed me. I think my weight loss plan worked because it didn't have naughty foods. Nothing was banned so there was less reason to take a day off and go mental and binge. It was just a case of if I used calories having chocolate cake, I'd have less for the rest of the day. I understand how it implies every other day is diet day but that whole aspect is just weird and sad to me.
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Date: 2013-05-11 01:50 pm (UTC)It sometimes can be the case that physically being fat makes it harder for people to be treated effectively, yes. On some level I would argue that it's the responsibility of the health service to provide equal access to treatment for all, eg getting equipment strong enough to support the heavier patients. But still, yes, I can see that there are some circumstances where there are good reasons to ask a patient to attempt to lose weight in order to give a treatment the best chance of success.
I do very much agree with your last section! People are individuals with their individual medical conditions, it's just as bad to say "monitoring your weight is always unhealthy and self-loathing" as "everybody should spend all their effort trying to get their BMI under 25". I'm glad to know that you had a system that worked for you and got you down to a weight where you can manage your diabetes better. And yes, I am absolutely in favour of people making choices to eat as healthily as they can; you are right that diets can include all kinds of things apart from weight loss.
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Date: 2013-05-08 06:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-11 02:07 pm (UTC)There are two possible ways of restricting calorie intake. One is that you cut down by a small, sustainable amount and keep on doing that basically forever. The problem is that for many (not all, but many) people who do that, their bodies will adapt to living at a lower calorie intake and after a while they will stop losing weight and possibly eventually start gaining. Like, their metabolism will get more efficient, so they'll use fewer food calories for keeping alive and moving about, leaving more spare for building up fat supplies. The typical time-scale is 6 months to a year of weight loss, followed by either plateauing or weight regain even when the person isn't eating any more than they were before making the lifestyle change.
The second possibility is that you eat substantially fewer calories than you are using. It's basically impossible to keep doing that indefinitely, because you'd starve! So people who follow that kind of diet regime usually do it for a short period, a few months or whatever, in order to get to their target weight as quickly as possible. Ideally, if they're being sensible, they don't then go back to eating absolutely everything they can lay hands on, but rather switch back to a more balanced regime, where they're eating about enough to sustain themselves but no more. However, many people find that when they do that, because their body is in "starvation" mode from the intense diet, their metabolism will prioritize converting as many food calories as possible to fat. So they put on weight and end up heavier than they were before starting the diet.
It's not inevitable, it's not that all diets are doomed to fail. The people most likely to succeed are those who combine a calorie restricted diet with quite intense exercise, I've heard figures quoted of an hour a day, that sort of thing. And people who rapidly gained the weight because of some underlying problem, maybe a period of forced inactivity through injury, or a period of stress or depression when they live on crisps and chocolate. Those people often are successful in dieting back to the weight they were before the sudden weight gain.
Here's a nice article about the 5% who do maintain weight loss long term.