Jezebel 
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New York, 9:15 AM
Fri Dec 4
69 posts in the last 24 hours
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Take a skinny person who is maintaining an unnatural weight FOR THEIR BODY and highlight their poor hair and nail health, their lower bone density, their low iron, or even their decreased energy levels and inability to sustain short exercise.
Take a fat person who is maintaining an unnatural weight FOR THEIR BODY and highlight the joint stress and damage from carrying their weight, their diabetes, or even their inability to walk a short distance without becoming winded.
Those are failures of healthy at any size. I don't care if you are a size 14 and you have great blood work or if you are 2 and have great blood work. Why is that even a question of an issue? I don't care if you have cancer, that isn't weight related. If we are going to talk about weight related health then people should focus on weight related issues, not the OTHER health issues that are unrelated but for the fact that are in the person being talked about.
End rant.
12/01/09
The focus being on the choices and not the potentially misleading physical appearance. Am I making any sense?
12/01/09
At the end of the day, I don't know anyone who takes issue with a healthy fatty or a healthy skinny- and that is a good thing. However, I am unfortunate enough to know many who are quick to be terrible about an overweight person who has any weight related health issues. So that is an issue I would prefer to see addressed.
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When 75% of the American population is expected to be overweight in 2015, you know a HUGE majority are being unhealthy at their size. This point really isn't up for debate.
And according to the American Cancer Society:
"Excess Weight is Linked to 90,000 US Cancer Deaths a Year"
You have no rant, this is senseless dribble at best.
12/02/09
12/01/09
However, that he didn't take care of himself has nothing to do with FA or HAES. I think she would agree with HAES if she studied it more. The point is that her brother should not have given up health because of his size, and worked on being as healthy as possible within his legitimate limitations. HAES is by no means saying "hey, you obese person, you can be healthy, here's a gold star!" It is not discouraging the considerable hard work it takes to be healthy. It's trying to shift the perception of healthy away from looks alone - since focusing on size instead of actual health is why a lot of dieters fail.
My old therapist had a thyroid condition that caused her to gain 100 + lbs on her naturally thin frame. She didn't stop eating nutritious food and staying active because of this, though. She eventually lost the weight due to medication, but she was never miserable because of her size since she didn't give up on her health.
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What does concerning yourself with other people's health do for you?
I'm not a doctor, and I don't want to be one.
12/01/09
However, I think it's quite normal to care whether your family is healthy. My husband's brother recently had a string of health problems related to his weight, culminating in his gall bladder being removed. My husband had tried to talk to his brother several times about his health and his diet and exercise habits, but his concerns went unheeded. I think in some ways, family members and loved ones who express concern do so not only for the benefit of the overweight person, but also for their own benefit so that when something bad does happen, they haven't just stood by and watched.
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I would definitely never say anything to a co-worker, casual friend, acquaintance, or stranger about their weight or health, but I would have and have had that conversation with a family member or close friend. And the conversation isn't, "You're fat. You're going to die." It's, "Have you been to the doctor this year? What did he/she say? I'm concerned about you, because I love you and I want you to be around for a long time."
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That said, there may be a point when it's not the General You, but someone very dear to me who is very unhealthy- not fat, but ill- and then I'd care a great deal.
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Drop dead for all I care, folks! Fat and skinny alike!
;)
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[kateharding.net]
[jezebel.com]
12/01/09
HAES and shriver's brother's weight and health battles (and death), really don't have that much to do with each other.
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Funny, that.
12/01/09
This hardly seems like someone who hates anyone whose BMI rises above her own. The piece actually read to me like a sister watching her brother repeat behaviors that were undeniably killing him (medical emergency after more serious medical emergency). I would refuse to accept that my brother couldn't change a destructive pattern too, whether it be a drug addiction or some other kind of self-destructive behavior, if it so clearly was killing him. You love your family.
It seems like talking about weight and obesity with blanket statements, and lumping anyone with a BMI over average into one category on which to pass sweeping judgment (health! not healthy! attractive! lazy! curvy! risky!) is counterproductive in all cases. I'm curious to see others' takes on this piece.
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This raises the larger point of whether or not critiques of a movement by people who can't be bothered to even acquire a rudimentary knowledge of what they stand for is worth reading. My personal stance is no. Ignorance is not a defensible position from which to critique anything.
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And it's Health At Every Size.
12/01/09
Might I connect you with some of my family members who are in rather desperate need of your wisdom?
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And while ignorance may not be a position to critique from, I do believe that a lot of people (myself included, I never claimed not to be) are in that pool, and that the name is problematic "healthy" or "health."
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12/01/09
I get that you find me hard and mean and petty, but you are attacking a group from a position of either dis- or mis-information, and I'm sorry, I'm sure you don't mean badly, but I do think that your position comes from ignorance. And I think ignorance deserves pettiness, I'm sorry, because it's really pretty fucking awful how many of the comments on this thread mischaracterize the agenda of the HAES movement, and it happens again, and again, and again.
I get that you want to "start a conversation," but your conversation goes down the path of shaming people for being overweight because you believe they are too stupid to know their own health. That's a pretty appalling position to take without backup.
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12/01/09
Until there is broader knowledge of this specific group as well as the movement as a whole, I think their name is working against them because ignorant people will dismiss it. Is that the groups fault? No, it's not. But most activists want people to join their movement and not just preach to the choir, and that means having patience for the ignorant, and taking time out to educate them and have constructive conversations without shaming them for their lack of knowledge. Being petty will only alienate potential alliances for the cause.
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12/01/09
Similarly, judgingamy, the problem with the "pettiness alienates" is this: it implies that one's alliance with a political program is dependent on how "nice" the movement is to oneself. Which means that we end up, as we are in this thread, spending a whole lot of time attending to the discomfort of the ignorant instead of, y'know, liberating the oppressed. Which, like: oppression is WRONG, whether or not we all are friendly with each other at the clambakes. So you owe these people your alliance whether you feel alienated or not.
I don't mean to dismiss your argument entirely because I understand pragmatics, but what I am saying is that the honourable, "I want to learn" way to approach a debate is to ask questions, read on your own, etc. It is not to arrive with a pre-set position on a subject that is articulated without evidence, loudly proclaim that position, and then get upset when people call you out on not having any support for it. When you take the latter path, you can't blame your opponent in the debate for assuming your bad faith from the get-go.
That's the point. Trust me, I've been in this position before, and I think I'm far better off knowing that sometimes the pettiness is deserved. Particularly when I'm just spouting on the internet to blow off steam, as we often are around here.
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There is a difference between "There are healthy people at every size" and "Every size is healthy for every person."
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I just don't see why it has to be either a) you're fat and you always will be no matter what you do so accept it, or b) if you're not a size 2 you're doing something wrong.
I personally don't care what people do to their own bodies, obviously everyone has agency, but be honest. It irritates me when people profess that simple things like exercise are futile. They're not. And if they are? See a doctor.
12/01/09
But that doesn't mean that someone who goes from eating fried food and restaurant food daily to eating smaller portions of healthier fare and working out will not lose weight and keep it off if she keeps at it. She may not lose as much weight as she wants to or expects, she probably won't automatically--poof!--be thin (and she may never be thin!), and she will have to keep doing those things to stay at the lower weight . . . but in most cases, eating less, eating healthier, and working out more DO change your weight. And if you make permanent changes in those habits, you do see permanent changes in your weight.
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I don't read fat acceptance blogs, so I can't speak to your point on their reaction to weight loss.
12/01/09
So, 1/5 -- not as bad as I expected, but still a minority.
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I mean, Jesus, it's only in fat acceptance posts that this attitude comes out. I once noted that Gisele Bundchen was terrifyingly thin on Jez and it turned into a shitstorm for the ages, and all sorts of people told me I didn't understand how hurtful that was, etc etc, and probably they were right. But we seem to all agree around here that that sort of stuff isn't helpful because it has nothing to do with anyone's concern for a thin person's health. So pretending this is a health concern here: reprehensible, IMHO.
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The "only freaks of nature maintain weight loss" memo is what bugs me. I think a lot of people in the size acceptance community are naturally bigger and have gotten fed up with the pressure to go to extremes to fit someone else's notion of healthy. But for a lot of people, reasonable measures significantly lower their weight but it is easy to sit on the couch and eat take out. That's why my weight goes up and I'm not the only one.
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You can disagree with my opinion, but I don't think it is reasonable to jump to the conclusion that I am misreading them. I understand the science and I think her criticisms are sometimes incorrect.
12/01/09
Yes, people, this is why your doctors are so mean to you if you're fat. They learn it in med school. *sigh*
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On the 10%/BMI thing, it really depends. A 10% loss can shift someone from the overweight category to the healthy category according to BMI and more people are in the overweight category than the obese category. If a woman is 5'2" and 140 her BMI is just over 25. If she loses 10% (14 lbs) her BMI is 23. If someone who is 5'11 goes from 200 to 180, their BMI goes from 28.7 to 25.8.
12/01/09
That's the problem, isn't it? I mean, I gave up coffee and my blood sugar improved. Didn't lose an ounce, though. I am very, very nervous about weight loss - especially surgically induced weight loss - being touted as a panacea. The science about metabolism, weight and health is completely lacking - and until we have decent science, we're relying on prejudice.
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I mean, you and I sort of have a vague internet acquaintance, but I can't just agree categorically with you when you refuse to back your position up, no. Maybe that's what you're reading as not receptive, but you are making claims you now claim it would be irrelevant to defend.
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I don't know if it is intentional or not, but reading your comment it sounds like you are accusing me of fat/fat acceptance shaming because I have a less than 100% positive view of fat acceptance blogs. I also have a less than 100% positive view of HuffPo and the DailyKos, but it doesn't mean I hate liberals.
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Yes. I agree. Compulsive overeating is just as dangerous as Anorexia. Both are EDs (in my opinion). I am not saying that everyone who is overweight is a binge eater, but the morbidly obese tend to be.
Most of us have very complex relationships with food.
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And just like how many bulimics don't lose weight, many binge eaters don't gain weight.
And that's my take on it as well. If your eating habits are compulsive, whether it's compulsive restricting, or compulsive binging, it's a psychological disorder. It's not about self-control and it has nothing to do with fat acceptance.
12/01/09
The hell it is. I'm a purging type anoretic (and, yes, I binge -- 10,000 calories in an hour kind of binge, not "two bowls of cereal"); my mother is a compulsive overeater. We have completely different pathologies regarding binging. In her case, the binging is not a concentrated, focused act but an attempt to find pleasure, however mindless, that is inevitably futile, and she takes some 'relief' in the shame of the binge. For me? Binging itself is a violent act; there is no attempt to find pleasure but instead to beat the hell out of my body by shoving in as much food as possible at once, either to shove down an unpleasant emotion or because I feel I deserve it. But I binge for the purpose of getting to the purge -- the release of everything through my compensatory mechanism (vomiting), which allows me to maintain the delusion that it's now 'all gone,' the emotion and the food. My mother seeks no such release.
Bulimics (and anoretics) who purge via exercise share a psychological similarity to me, not to my mother -- the purge, while done through exercise, restores a feeling of 'it's okay it's okay it's okay.' I am not saying that compulsive overeaters do not also find a sense of 'it's okay' through the act of binging (as I'm sure some of them do), but I really dislike the lumping in of people who DO NOT PURGE, IN ANY WAY, BY ANY COMPENSATORY MECHANISM (even if that compensatory mechanism is just "If I repeat the words PURPLE MONKEY DISHWATER ten times, that means the food doesn't have calories") with those who walk into binges with a compensatory mechanism set up and may in fact binge solely for the purpose of getting to the point of being able to use that compensatory mechanism.
Some people binge to binge. I binge so that I can purge. My mother finds me as alien as I find her. Whereas her emotional release starts midway through the bag of potato chips, mine doesn't until I've pushed my vomit down the garbage disposal. You can stretch the criteria of ED diagnostics however you'd like to make binging with absolutely no compensatory mechanism a form of bulimia, but you're doing a disservice to both sides: the binge/purge cycle is poorly understood as is and has plenty of variety (some bulimics binge to binge and purge solely to maintain weight, some binge for the emotional release of purging, some purge without traditional binging....); turning compulsive overeating into "oh, bulimia without the purging" is both a reductionist view of the binge/purge experience and inaccurate.
I mean, think about it: I can purge, and that changes everything. I can, therefore, eat to the point where I am seriously afraid of gastric rupture, because I know none of this is staying in. My mother, on the other hand, has no such mechanism. From the outside, I probably look more frenzied while binging, act more desperate; certainly my caloric load is greater. If you didn't know the diagnoses, I assume I'd come off as the compulsive overeater, as I've just spent a considerable number of hours today stuffing my face. But my problem is not that I compulsively overeat in a quest to fill myself with some good feeling or to bury some bad one (or out of malnutrition borne of the western diet); my problem is that I binge so that I can do my 'I'm a teenage drama queen/I'll throw my guts up for self-esteem' routine. Psychologically, I'd be in the same boat if I were using exercise, but it would certainly change my eating habits. When I binge, I binge to the point where I'm pretty much crawling on the ground in agony. If I knew I was eating and then going to the gym... I probably wouldn't eat to that point. Etc.
The diagnostic criteria are one thing; the experience of an ED another. And while I know everyone with an eating disorder can relate to some part of another sufferer's experience, regardless of diagnosis, I think that blurring the lines so much that entirely separate syndromes are shoved in under loosely written and poorly understood diagnostic criteria does no one any good.
12/01/09
I absolutely understand that the motivations are different. As they are for each person with an ED. Which is one of the reasons they're so misunderstood. Not all anorexics are starving to be aesthetically pleasing or conventionally attractive. Sometimes the opposite. Sometimes to avoid developing breasts and hips. And sometimes for other reasons altogether, like controlling households, or depression, etc.
All ED's, though, come back to control. Whether trying to maintain it rigidly through restricting, losing it in the binge, or regaining it via the purge. That's generally the common thread.
Binging does create a euphoric "high", must like fasting will. So there's an element of that in all ED's. It's partly what makes them addictive in behavior.
The reason I mentioned the categorization was to show people that compulsive overeating is, in fact, an ED. Most people don't know that. They hear ED and they just think Anorexia or Bulimia, with absolutely no understanding of what defines either, or the variety of forms most ED's take. It's actually really important we know how these things are defined by psychologists, precisely because they ARE lumping many behaviors together. So people aren't being treated with their individual issues in mind.
I actually think the problem is that we've failed to take into account that ED's are not just one behavior, one pathology, one experience.
So. I'm sorry if you thought I was dismissing ED's, or condoning the limits of the categorization. I can assure you, I'm not.