That link confuses me, too, though. Is Renie on there somewhere? All the Posts seem to be from the same person.
The Fat Acceptance thread
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RJDiogenes
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Re: The Fat Acceptance thread
It's true, those kinds of places just send me into overload, unfortunately.
That link confuses me, too, though. Is Renie on there somewhere? All the Posts seem to be from the same person.
That link confuses me, too, though. Is Renie on there somewhere? All the Posts seem to be from the same person.
And read 
Re: The Fat Acceptance thread
For the post below, if you're interested in researching any of this yourself please start at http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com. I've written many posts like the one below, filled with links, and it doesn't seem to matter. I don't have time to sift through and find the links again, but I trust if there's interest, it'll be easy enough for you to find the resources yourself. Everything I've written below I've researched thoroughly, and have several sources on.
Health has been brought up above, and to that I'll say this:
There's no rigorous scientific evidence that overweight/obese causes bad health incomes, which I know after much intensive research for about two years. Some of the articles I researched are linked from the Junkfood Science link blab provides above, if you are interested. In particular - though this might shock some people, given the amount of marketing that is directed at us via commercials and other mainstream media sources - type II diabetes has never been shown to be caused, triggered, or exacerbated by fat. There is a correlation, in that 1 in every 4 people who are extremely large have type II diabetes; however, there is a strong body of evidence that suggest fatness and weight gain is an early *symptom* of type II diabetes for some people. Additionally, 30% of type II diabetics are thin, which I'm sure not a lot of people know. In short, the relationship between fat tissue and diabetes is not at all clear, with the exception that not for lack of trying there's been *no* evidence that fat *causes* diabetes. Correlation does not equal causation, especially when there exists so many counterexamples.
As for weight loss, the vast majority of people cannot lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off in the long term, which has also been shown in several studies (the most recent a JAMA study in 2004 which compared the Atkins, Weight Watchers, and "exercise eat less without direction" diets). This is regardless of the diet/lifestyle change/etc method chosen. This has been shown time and time again.
It has also been shown that individuals have a setpoint weight range of about 30 pounds, and it is different for individuals and based largely on genetics. In fact, weight is as heritable as height. That means that if your setpoint is 180 lbs, you can move in the range 175lbs - 210lbs with fairly little effort, but moving beyond this range in *either* direction is difficult. In fact, to do so, you'd have to be eating disordered: either restricting food or binging on food. And for those who aren't aware, binge eating disorder isn't "oh no, i had too much turkey at dinner, I feel so full!" It takes as much work to binge as it does to starve. Binges are unpleasant, painful experiences where one cleans out the entire fridge in a sitting, and it happens several times a month. Dieting/starvation can bring on binges, but when one eats normally, one doesn't binge or restrict at any point.
It's also been shown rigorously that naturally fat people don't eat any more than naturally thin people, and in some cases, they eat less. Metabolisms are the body's engine, and the metabolic system determines at what weight we will settle. Metabolisms, like height, skin color, hair color, sexual preference, etc are different and nuanced from person to person, but at bottom have a strong genetic link. While height is about 77% heritable (blab, correct me if I'm wrong on this, you're the geneticist!!), weight has been shown to be about that or slightly less, perhaps 75% heritable. And, like height, weight is locked in after only a few years of life. Good nutrition in the womb and during the first few years of a baby's life will make your baby healthy and push it to the tallest its heritable range dictates. In the same way, it will also be pushed to the fattest its heritable range dictates.
Because --- and here's the real shocker, the real statement we've been marketed to to believe the very opposite of for about 100 years now, ever since diet industry started getting a toehold --- fat is healthy.
Overweight people live the longest of all people. Next in line, neck-in-neck, is obese (yes, even morbidly!) and normal weight people. The people who have the shortest lives by far are underweight individuals. It's been shown that >65 years of age, overweight and obese people have *by far* the best health outcomes (this is called in the medical establishment the "obesity paradox." Yeah, well, it's only a paradox if you hold the "common wisdom" belief that fat is unhealthy. When you understand that it is healthy, it's no longer a paradox).
I'm willing to bet that many people outside the fat acceptance movement haven't heard of this. It's all quite true, which you'd come to understand have you spent the past two years, as I have, going through the body of evidence for and against fat with a skeptic's eye. The evidence against weight is almost *always* makes correlations where they don't exist (i.e., it is in fact a null study, one that shows no correlations) by fucking with statistics or assuming that main readers aren't scientists and don't know statistics (which I do). Additionally, they almost always have - in fact, I haven't found one that hasn't been - funding for the study which is traced to an anti-obesity group of some sort. That is, a group that *profits* from the idea that obesity is unhealthy. In other words, the studies are conducted with a strong conflict of interest.
And what about the "obesity epidemic," indeed? A moral panic would be a more suitable description. "Epidemic" is a misnomer on its face - no serious scientist would claim that even accepting the obesity numbers (which are largely manufactured) that obesity is an epidemic. For one thing, epidemics spread through contagion --- fat does not. "Epidemic" is being used as a charged word, a scare-term to make you afraid of fat and fat people. Nothing more.
In fact, here's your epidemic: Over the past 30 years, Americans have gained two inches in height, 15 lbs in weight, and are the healthiest and live the longest of any generation.
"Obesity" has doubled, tripled, etc because the *definitions of overweight and obesity have been revised down at least twice in those same thirty years.* In fact, just in the last twenty. In 1997, for instance, when the CDC changed the cutoff for overweight from BMI 27.5 to 24.9 and the cutoff for obese from BMI 33 to 30, 30 million Americans became overweight or obese OVERNIGHT. Some epidemic!
So everyone who believes you're doing your health a service by restricting in order to lose weight, you're might be doing more damage than good, wasting money and time. Keeping one's body in shape by working out doesn't necessarily lead to weight loss, and has by far been rigorously shown to be one of the best things one can do to maintain one's health. Messing with food, dieting, eating Splenda-flavored air instead of dessert and so forth, does nothing and can in some cases worsen health outcomes. And as for diet choices in general, those are usual personal and tailored to the individual, as in AS's case. Diet*ing* to reduce body weight/mass is a whole other matter, and is what I'm referring to in this tract.
As for weight loss surgery (WLS) --- mutilating a perfectly healthy organ (the stomach) has been shown to cause regain of the original weight in 2/3rds of the individuals at post op five years, shortens life spans by about 10-15 years, causes death in a significant fraction of patients right out of surgery or post op a year, and causes severe nutritional complications like deficencies in ALL thusly surgered patients. WLS is the lobotomy of our time, and it's a horrible, horrible thing. Anyone who claims to be in favor of it can't possibly actually know anything about the science of it or the outcomes. They see the WLS "honeymoon" that occurs in the first two years, when the individuals are losing weight rapidly, off their insulin, and vomiting up every meal. In fact, it's been shown that most WLS patients that survive post 5 years have to take their diabetic meds and other meds they'd be "cured off of" again. WLS doesn't "cure" squat. It's all a lie. Just like they used to convince reasonable people that lobotomies "cured" homosexuality: there's no evidence of permanently good outcomes for a significant portion of patients, and, in fact, it's plain torture and mutilation of a deviant class of people, on its face.
When it comes to joint pain and the other excuses people have to say that fat people caused their pain (which is asserted by many orthopedists and PCPs), I'll say this: tall people are at more of a risk for joint pain in general, and knee pain in particular. Is anyone telling me I need to get shorter in order to get a knee replacement if I ever need one, because my tallness is exacerbating the pain? Yet they say this about fat people and knee replacements all the time. What about athletic injuries, that are clearly self-inflicted? Those are treated with respect, because they happened during a socially-sanctioned and morally upstanding activity, exercising. It's a moral jungle, with fat people at the bottom of the food chain, in these sorts of situations.
I know there's tons of anecdotal evidence out there which you might believe argues against the evidence I've cited (merely cited, not created out of belief). However, I'm not talking about Uncle Bob who lost 100 lbs a year ago and feels better than easy and all he did was cut out soda and walked an hour a day. All this anecdotal data has been put to the test in *real, rigorous studies* and it has *failed*. The vast majority of people cannot permanently lose a significant amount of weight. WLS does vastly more harm than good. Fat is healthy, and protective. Fat people, especially women, are discriminated against, with the prevalence of discrimination being higher than that of racial discrimination. *This* is what has been shown.
For everyone who still believes fat is unhealthy, it takes a lot of research and time, but it's worth it. Start by researching your own beliefs first, and pay attention to the study, how it is set up, who it is funded by, what does it *actually* say in its statistics, the study length and so forth (for instance, pro-weight loss studies often are only conducted for under two years because it is shown that 60% of people regain the weight post 2 years and 95% post 5 years). Find all this out for yourself. If there's a study you can't debunk, chances are Sandy at Junkfood Science has debunked it. Go read her argument, think about it, decide whether you think she's being more rigorous, or the study authors themselves.
It took me a long time to overcome my prior ideas about fat, health, and self-worth. I'm a child of this "epidemic." I've been told since I was seven that I was less worthwhile a human being due to the relative ratio of my adipose tissue. It was indicated to me that my fat implied I was stupid, even as I hovered at the top of my classes; that my fat meant I had no willpower, even as I created full screenplays, books, musical scores, etc through the power of my will; that my fat implied I was emotionally out of control, even as I was pleasant and civil to those who tormented me; that my fat implied I was lazy, even as I had the most packed schedule of my peers, in debate club, musicals, chorus, three bands, dance lessons, voice lessons, art shows, political clubs, writing poetry, novels, and music, and near the top of my class --- all at the same time.
We need to start rooting out these plainly wrong, and very hurtful attitudes about fat. The best pickaxe is truth, which I have wielded today. The rest is up to you. If you have a question about the location of the studies I cited, please look them up on your own at Junkfood Science, or just by searching around the web.
Health has been brought up above, and to that I'll say this:
There's no rigorous scientific evidence that overweight/obese causes bad health incomes, which I know after much intensive research for about two years. Some of the articles I researched are linked from the Junkfood Science link blab provides above, if you are interested. In particular - though this might shock some people, given the amount of marketing that is directed at us via commercials and other mainstream media sources - type II diabetes has never been shown to be caused, triggered, or exacerbated by fat. There is a correlation, in that 1 in every 4 people who are extremely large have type II diabetes; however, there is a strong body of evidence that suggest fatness and weight gain is an early *symptom* of type II diabetes for some people. Additionally, 30% of type II diabetics are thin, which I'm sure not a lot of people know. In short, the relationship between fat tissue and diabetes is not at all clear, with the exception that not for lack of trying there's been *no* evidence that fat *causes* diabetes. Correlation does not equal causation, especially when there exists so many counterexamples.
As for weight loss, the vast majority of people cannot lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off in the long term, which has also been shown in several studies (the most recent a JAMA study in 2004 which compared the Atkins, Weight Watchers, and "exercise eat less without direction" diets). This is regardless of the diet/lifestyle change/etc method chosen. This has been shown time and time again.
It has also been shown that individuals have a setpoint weight range of about 30 pounds, and it is different for individuals and based largely on genetics. In fact, weight is as heritable as height. That means that if your setpoint is 180 lbs, you can move in the range 175lbs - 210lbs with fairly little effort, but moving beyond this range in *either* direction is difficult. In fact, to do so, you'd have to be eating disordered: either restricting food or binging on food. And for those who aren't aware, binge eating disorder isn't "oh no, i had too much turkey at dinner, I feel so full!" It takes as much work to binge as it does to starve. Binges are unpleasant, painful experiences where one cleans out the entire fridge in a sitting, and it happens several times a month. Dieting/starvation can bring on binges, but when one eats normally, one doesn't binge or restrict at any point.
It's also been shown rigorously that naturally fat people don't eat any more than naturally thin people, and in some cases, they eat less. Metabolisms are the body's engine, and the metabolic system determines at what weight we will settle. Metabolisms, like height, skin color, hair color, sexual preference, etc are different and nuanced from person to person, but at bottom have a strong genetic link. While height is about 77% heritable (blab, correct me if I'm wrong on this, you're the geneticist!!), weight has been shown to be about that or slightly less, perhaps 75% heritable. And, like height, weight is locked in after only a few years of life. Good nutrition in the womb and during the first few years of a baby's life will make your baby healthy and push it to the tallest its heritable range dictates. In the same way, it will also be pushed to the fattest its heritable range dictates.
Because --- and here's the real shocker, the real statement we've been marketed to to believe the very opposite of for about 100 years now, ever since diet industry started getting a toehold --- fat is healthy.
Overweight people live the longest of all people. Next in line, neck-in-neck, is obese (yes, even morbidly!) and normal weight people. The people who have the shortest lives by far are underweight individuals. It's been shown that >65 years of age, overweight and obese people have *by far* the best health outcomes (this is called in the medical establishment the "obesity paradox." Yeah, well, it's only a paradox if you hold the "common wisdom" belief that fat is unhealthy. When you understand that it is healthy, it's no longer a paradox).
I'm willing to bet that many people outside the fat acceptance movement haven't heard of this. It's all quite true, which you'd come to understand have you spent the past two years, as I have, going through the body of evidence for and against fat with a skeptic's eye. The evidence against weight is almost *always* makes correlations where they don't exist (i.e., it is in fact a null study, one that shows no correlations) by fucking with statistics or assuming that main readers aren't scientists and don't know statistics (which I do). Additionally, they almost always have - in fact, I haven't found one that hasn't been - funding for the study which is traced to an anti-obesity group of some sort. That is, a group that *profits* from the idea that obesity is unhealthy. In other words, the studies are conducted with a strong conflict of interest.
And what about the "obesity epidemic," indeed? A moral panic would be a more suitable description. "Epidemic" is a misnomer on its face - no serious scientist would claim that even accepting the obesity numbers (which are largely manufactured) that obesity is an epidemic. For one thing, epidemics spread through contagion --- fat does not. "Epidemic" is being used as a charged word, a scare-term to make you afraid of fat and fat people. Nothing more.
In fact, here's your epidemic: Over the past 30 years, Americans have gained two inches in height, 15 lbs in weight, and are the healthiest and live the longest of any generation.
"Obesity" has doubled, tripled, etc because the *definitions of overweight and obesity have been revised down at least twice in those same thirty years.* In fact, just in the last twenty. In 1997, for instance, when the CDC changed the cutoff for overweight from BMI 27.5 to 24.9 and the cutoff for obese from BMI 33 to 30, 30 million Americans became overweight or obese OVERNIGHT. Some epidemic!
So everyone who believes you're doing your health a service by restricting in order to lose weight, you're might be doing more damage than good, wasting money and time. Keeping one's body in shape by working out doesn't necessarily lead to weight loss, and has by far been rigorously shown to be one of the best things one can do to maintain one's health. Messing with food, dieting, eating Splenda-flavored air instead of dessert and so forth, does nothing and can in some cases worsen health outcomes. And as for diet choices in general, those are usual personal and tailored to the individual, as in AS's case. Diet*ing* to reduce body weight/mass is a whole other matter, and is what I'm referring to in this tract.
As for weight loss surgery (WLS) --- mutilating a perfectly healthy organ (the stomach) has been shown to cause regain of the original weight in 2/3rds of the individuals at post op five years, shortens life spans by about 10-15 years, causes death in a significant fraction of patients right out of surgery or post op a year, and causes severe nutritional complications like deficencies in ALL thusly surgered patients. WLS is the lobotomy of our time, and it's a horrible, horrible thing. Anyone who claims to be in favor of it can't possibly actually know anything about the science of it or the outcomes. They see the WLS "honeymoon" that occurs in the first two years, when the individuals are losing weight rapidly, off their insulin, and vomiting up every meal. In fact, it's been shown that most WLS patients that survive post 5 years have to take their diabetic meds and other meds they'd be "cured off of" again. WLS doesn't "cure" squat. It's all a lie. Just like they used to convince reasonable people that lobotomies "cured" homosexuality: there's no evidence of permanently good outcomes for a significant portion of patients, and, in fact, it's plain torture and mutilation of a deviant class of people, on its face.
When it comes to joint pain and the other excuses people have to say that fat people caused their pain (which is asserted by many orthopedists and PCPs), I'll say this: tall people are at more of a risk for joint pain in general, and knee pain in particular. Is anyone telling me I need to get shorter in order to get a knee replacement if I ever need one, because my tallness is exacerbating the pain? Yet they say this about fat people and knee replacements all the time. What about athletic injuries, that are clearly self-inflicted? Those are treated with respect, because they happened during a socially-sanctioned and morally upstanding activity, exercising. It's a moral jungle, with fat people at the bottom of the food chain, in these sorts of situations.
I know there's tons of anecdotal evidence out there which you might believe argues against the evidence I've cited (merely cited, not created out of belief). However, I'm not talking about Uncle Bob who lost 100 lbs a year ago and feels better than easy and all he did was cut out soda and walked an hour a day. All this anecdotal data has been put to the test in *real, rigorous studies* and it has *failed*. The vast majority of people cannot permanently lose a significant amount of weight. WLS does vastly more harm than good. Fat is healthy, and protective. Fat people, especially women, are discriminated against, with the prevalence of discrimination being higher than that of racial discrimination. *This* is what has been shown.
For everyone who still believes fat is unhealthy, it takes a lot of research and time, but it's worth it. Start by researching your own beliefs first, and pay attention to the study, how it is set up, who it is funded by, what does it *actually* say in its statistics, the study length and so forth (for instance, pro-weight loss studies often are only conducted for under two years because it is shown that 60% of people regain the weight post 2 years and 95% post 5 years). Find all this out for yourself. If there's a study you can't debunk, chances are Sandy at Junkfood Science has debunked it. Go read her argument, think about it, decide whether you think she's being more rigorous, or the study authors themselves.
It took me a long time to overcome my prior ideas about fat, health, and self-worth. I'm a child of this "epidemic." I've been told since I was seven that I was less worthwhile a human being due to the relative ratio of my adipose tissue. It was indicated to me that my fat implied I was stupid, even as I hovered at the top of my classes; that my fat meant I had no willpower, even as I created full screenplays, books, musical scores, etc through the power of my will; that my fat implied I was emotionally out of control, even as I was pleasant and civil to those who tormented me; that my fat implied I was lazy, even as I had the most packed schedule of my peers, in debate club, musicals, chorus, three bands, dance lessons, voice lessons, art shows, political clubs, writing poetry, novels, and music, and near the top of my class --- all at the same time.
We need to start rooting out these plainly wrong, and very hurtful attitudes about fat. The best pickaxe is truth, which I have wielded today. The rest is up to you. If you have a question about the location of the studies I cited, please look them up on your own at Junkfood Science, or just by searching around the web.
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RJDiogenes
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Re: The Fat Acceptance thread
Well, I certainly like the idea that gaining weight is healthier-- because I'm still gaining weight and exercise doesn't seem to be stopping it. Hopefully that means I'll live longer. 
But there is certainly no excuse for treating people badly because of their weight-- that's just barbaric.
But there is certainly no excuse for treating people badly because of their weight-- that's just barbaric.
Re: The Fat Acceptance thread
RJ,
People usually start gaining weight around middle age until they're about 65, when they start literally "wasting." A big myth about the middle age weight gain is that it's just going to go up, up, up and you're going to end up a 500 lb bedridden whomever. It's simply not true. You'll gain a bit, and around 65 you'll need it, because you'll start wasting.
On the topic of weight discrimination, I need to fly and I'm very concerned that I'm going to be forced to buy two tickets at the last minute. Airlines have width policies, and though I don't look it because of my tall frame, my hips are fairly wide and the seats are very uncomfortable. I got unlucky enough to have the frame I do, so I get to pay more than other people to fly. Wheeee!
People usually start gaining weight around middle age until they're about 65, when they start literally "wasting." A big myth about the middle age weight gain is that it's just going to go up, up, up and you're going to end up a 500 lb bedridden whomever. It's simply not true. You'll gain a bit, and around 65 you'll need it, because you'll start wasting.
On the topic of weight discrimination, I need to fly and I'm very concerned that I'm going to be forced to buy two tickets at the last minute. Airlines have width policies, and though I don't look it because of my tall frame, my hips are fairly wide and the seats are very uncomfortable. I got unlucky enough to have the frame I do, so I get to pay more than other people to fly. Wheeee!
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RJDiogenes
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Re: The Fat Acceptance thread
^^ That's definitely not fair, either. Those seats are uncomfortable even for thin people.
And what makes you think I'm middle-aged?
And what makes you think I'm middle-aged?
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DeaconBlues
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Re: The Fat Acceptance thread
This may be a shade off topic, but hopefully you will indulge me. I find it kind of odd that in the United States, there seems to be a prevailing feeling that whatever you are doing, and whomever you are, you are not good enough. Every few months, new dietary guild-lines seem to come out suggesting that the high red meat, high sugar, high corn diet in America is bad so we must instead all eat more soy, almonds, chicken, low-sodium, ... ad-nauseum. When raising children, if you ever do x, y, or z you are a deplorable parent, but if you do a, b, or c you are better for it (let x, y, or z be drink fruit juice, watch more than 15 seconds of television, act out in public, actually hurt themselves, try and subsequently fail at something ... while a, b, or c could be the likes of control behaviour problems like poor attention). I suppose what I am wondering is, why does it feel like we can't be happy with who we are? Yes, we can do harm to those around us by inaction, but we can also do harm by taking actions (even if the current information says it is the best thing in the world for us).
History is written by the victors, edited by the self appointed morally superior, stripped of life by education, and forgotten by the average person.
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RJDiogenes
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Re: The Fat Acceptance thread
Eh, it has been ever thus. People follow fads, and real wisdom gets lost or overlooked along with them.
But children should never act out in public. They should be seen and not heard.
But children should never act out in public. They should be seen and not heard.
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DeaconBlues
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Re: The Fat Acceptance thread
I suppose I was just wondering if there is something about our current culture that tells us that we do not measure up unless we are doing everything we can all the times that we can, or if this has been more a part of American culture, if not world culture. I ask if this is part of American culture, since it seems that until roughly the early 1900s, American culture was shaped largely by trends in Europe, and Great Britten in particular.
On top of that, the more I think about my education about history, I realize I know very little outside of the generalities of US history and European history, with little focus on the actual views and lives of people from a different time, and more large events and conjecture.
On top of that, the more I think about my education about history, I realize I know very little outside of the generalities of US history and European history, with little focus on the actual views and lives of people from a different time, and more large events and conjecture.
History is written by the victors, edited by the self appointed morally superior, stripped of life by education, and forgotten by the average person.
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RJDiogenes
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Re: The Fat Acceptance thread
I think it's probably always been the situation that people had to be doing something all the time, but I think that the 'something' has changed over the decades. Back in the 1900s, it was just working from sun to sun. Now it's health clubs, night school and signing the kids up for every extracurricular activity that they can squeeze in. 