#anti-fat bias
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I don’t really want to hear everything you’re doing to avoid looking like me.
“You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People, Aubrey Gordon
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Dr. Caleb Luna @chairbreaker, on fat embodiment & divesting from constructions of health
Culturally, we are taught that we can control our health based on our individual choices, including eating habits. As part of this, body size gets conflated with or becomes a shorthand for health, with thinness becoming synonymous with good health and fatness with poor health. To control this, we are taught that eating a particular diet and regular exercise will automatically produce a thin body, and, with that, health.
This is false, for a few reasons:
1. There is no universally healthy diet. People have allergies, preferences & individual needs based on unique conditions. Some people need to eat more meat, some are allergic to nuts or berries, some bodies can’t digest lactose. Food is also culture, & the compulsion to standardize our diets into one model flattens human difference and imposes white supremacist foods & eating habits as the standards the rest of us should ascribe to.
2. There is no diet and exercise regime that is guaranteed to make you thin. Diets have a 95-99% long term failure rate. Exercise has many benefits, including increase in strength, mobility, stamina, flexibility, stress relief, connection to body, and more. But the conclusion it will make you thin is a lie from the diet industry to aspire to white supremacist beauty standards. It fuels the diet industry to make people feel like failures when diet & exercise don’t produce the thin bodies we were promised.
3. Illness is innate to the human condition, & many people who structure their lives around diet culture will still contract viruses, develop cancers & other conditions. There is no diet or exercise regime that is guaranteed to prevent illness or injury.
4. Body size is largely genetically determined. It can be influenced by food intake, but bodies hold what is called a set point that is nearly impossible to change long-term, without extreme & unhealthy measures. Our genetics also determine how we are racialized. Body size is one of many factors in this process, which includes skin tone, body hair patterns, height, body shape, and sizes & shapes of eyes, nose, & mouth. This is all race science; ascribing to these metrics of health through diet and fitness culture is also white supremacy.
There are steps we can take to take control of our individual holistic health, based on whatever goals they may be, but the idea we have complete control over our health is false. The notion that we can & should take ownership of our health comes from Enlightenment thinking that separated body from mind and man from nature. This epistemology teaches us that our bodies are projects that can and should be controlled and shaped through our actions in order to demonstrate our cultural values (allegiance to white supremacy). This is used to organize society into good subjects, who ‘take care of themselves,’ and bad subjects, who don’t. We don’t have dominion over our bodies; we are in relation with our bodies, and with each other.
In the U.S., we live in a deeply unhealthy society founded on anti-Blackness, Indigenous dispossesion & settler colonization. This is bad for the health of all of us. The emphasis on health as the result of individual choices that can be evidenced through the body is a distraction used to pit us against one another as good and bad subjects. Fat, sick & disabled bodies are viewed as failures of the project of self care and, as such, less deserving of resources. This also shifts responsibility to take care of one another, or for the State to take care of its citizen subjects. This is white supremacist & colonial thinking. We are all in relation with one another; we all have responsibilities for one another’s well-being.
Finally, disabled people have let us know that we can become disabled instantaneously through accident or illness; in fact, it is a part of life. If we live long enough, we will eventually become disabled in some way. The emphasis on health devalues disabled people, whose bodies will never achieve these standards. This construction of health is a value of white supremacy, colonization & capitalism: we are expected to be healthy under colonial metrics only to be productive workers for longer. We need to divest from settler formations of health if we want all of us to truly be free.
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If you have the time and energy: Do you have a link or a title for the longitudinal study about dieting and diabetes that you mentioned in the tags of that one post? I would greatly appreciate it, I'm trying to collect some data to better argue against fatphobia in my job
yeah dude i have like. everything lol
the study is called the look AHEAD (action for health for diabetes) study and it ran between 2000 and 2015. five thousand participants were assigned to either a weight loss program (1200-1800 calorie diet and 25 min/day physical activity) or simple informational counseling with no weight loss component. as health markers, the study looked at rates of cardiovascular disease, weight loss, diabetes remission, and a few more technical indicators.
the results are so instructive on what dieting does and doesn't do for the body. to start: the maximal “weight loss” for our the group peaked at 9% one year in and leveled out at less than 5% by the third year. so, a 200-pound person would be a 182-pound person after the first year and a 190-pound person after the third year (i.e.: still fat, and fatter the second year than the first). this is informative because it is so typical; six months on a diet is the amount of time it takes for the metabolism to react and counteract the incidental weight loss at the beginning of the diet. take any random weight loss trial and you will see the same shape of the curve; for example, these are examples take from a literature review published in 2000 where the authors talk about how no matter what kind of diet they prescribe, the field is not seeing long-term weight loss and, quote, “fresh ideas are needed to push the field forward.” (spoiler alert, these fresh ideas would not be forthcoming.)
while i was ranting in the tags i confused the cardiovascular disease results and the diabetes remission results – it was the CVD that had showed no impacts. ultimately the trial was ended for futility because the hazard ratio between the two groups was so totally identical:
this also is entirely typical. most studies on weight loss show no significant decrease in mortality. for those that do show a small improvement in mortality, it is dwarfed (and confounded) by the much more reliable result that increasing your physical activity improves mortality regardless of weight loss. basically, exercising makes people live longer, and the rare positive mortality impact of dieting is best explained as an aftereffect of the exercise that usually goes along with a diet. not to mention that the weight loss from these trials is so trivial that it’s hard to objectively credit anything to it. for metabolically healthy individuals, weight loss from a diet is associated with a higher mortality risk. like, surprise, cutting calories and working your body past its nourishment is bad for you. glenn gaesser and siddharta angadi talk about this here in one of the best papers to read on this subject if it interests you.
and finally there's diabetes remission. in the first year, 11% of the diet group experienced some remission compared to 2% of the controls. on the surface, that looks like a flatly better remission rate. however.
the total remission rate went down every year after. so, your hba1c or your glycated hemoglobin level describes the percentage of your hemoglobin that has glucose bonded to it. it's the level of sugar in the blood, and it's how we define diabetes: anything higher than 5.7% is pre-diabetic and anything higher than 6.5% is diabetic. what these graphs show is a temporarily decreased hba1c that goes steadily back up the longer the diets continue. this is far from a cure.
eating less food than usual can make your blood sugar drop, especially if you are diabetic. as i understand it – insulin is the hormone that allows your cells to take in glucose, and type 2 diabetics have an excess of insulin in their bloodstreams, so when a diabetic eats less than usual that unregulated excess insulin allows the available glucose to be taken up quickly, resulting in lower blood sugar levels after the fact. this is what you're seeing at the beginning of the study. but like, that effect doesn't continue forever. even if you continue faithfully on the diet, your body rebalances your metabolism against your normal food environment. as a diabetic, that rebalancing takes you out of remission and you don't go back in.
the fact that people remitted for a short time is not nothing. there's no broadly-accepted cure for diabetes, which renders diets as treatment a nuanced subject. like, you're relieved of the diabetes effects for a while, but now you're suffering from the diet itself, and in the long run it exacerbates the scale of the problem by intensifying the underlying metabolic syndrome.
it's early to tell (read: there aren't a lot of vectors putting out this information, so take with grain of salt) but treatment for the underlying metabolic syndrome that causes type 2 diabetes appears to be the path to remitting type 2 diabetes long-term. diabetes is like a series of hormonal triggers failing to cue one after another. you want to address each of those failed triggers through medication and a safe food environment rather than the symptoms-based approach of e.g. a diet, which produces the desired end effect for a while but doesn't actually cure you of the disease. the foremost doctor working on metabolic syndrome is emily cooper, who has a book and a podcast and a medical practice that i recommend. it's good stuff, especially compared to some of the bullshit in this field.
ultimately the look ahead study is a case of an obesity study uncovering relevant results by accident. if you read the text, the authors don't discuss any of their fucked data at all; they instead jump to making excuses for why, surprise, prescribing light malnutrition doesn't cure heart disease. the degree of corporate capture in the obesity treatment field is extreme and due to a cascade of reasons* diets are held as sacrosanct and are not allowed to be aspersed. so authors of studies in this field talk around their data like it's their job (it's their job). it's, like, tobacco research in the 80s bad. the whole field is sick with rot.
but despite the barriers put up by the financially interested, good work still happens and good people are still working. even in the bad work, all of the information is there if you read what the data says and not what its interpreters tell you it's supposed to say. we're coming to a point in history where people can read studies for themselves and plainly see what is and isn't. we're coming to a point in history where the long game of telephone from some corporate exec to the morning news to my doctor to me is arrested at the jump. we're coming to a point in history where we're harder to just lie to. and it's going to feel real good when the truth goes further.
good luck with your job, lmk if you have any other questions 💜
*one: the corporations actually responsible for rising obesity levels don't want to be challenged and the focus on personal responsibility scapegoats them. two: leveling the "disease" of obesity and cultural anti-fatness against people creates a fertile consumer market for pharmaceuticals, diet products, cosmetics, etc. three: the main prescriptions for obesity (diets, drugs, and surgery) don't work long-term, so people stay fat or get fatter and the aforementioned consumer market never disappears. it's real fucked.
#fatphobia#anti-fat bias#body positive#fat positivity#me talking about my hyperfixation on my blog for almost the first time?? crazie
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the main reasons i dislike and almost never reblog posts screaming at artists to draw fat characters is 1) i really don't think it does any work to fix the problem to call people cowards, it just gives you a brief high of saying something mildly justified but cruel to a general group of people on the internet and 2) while i'm not saying i catalogue each reblog that's just screaming at artists and meticulously compare the art that the person who reblogged it puts love on in their personal blogging, i do notice when people talk the talk but never walk the walk, and i don't much care for that. it's always a little harder but more rewarding to put a little bit of love on a single piece of art with the things you claim to want artists to work on that you had to dig and curate for than to slam reblog on a pithy mean statement that isn't showing you any images that offend your subconscious bias towards thinner bodies
#anti-fat bias#i genuinely do kind of think that the fact that those pithy statements get so much more traction is that there's no images#like as SOON as you see a real picture with the traits you claim to value... well you dislike it for OTHER reasons#the style's not to your taste. it's amateurish. you don't know the character or want to reblog OC art. the way they do shading is weird.#i know that sometimes the people who write these posts are out there drawing traits outside the beauty standard#but the vast amount of reblogs... i genuinely don't think are from their followers. i think it's virtue signalling to be frank
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Posting about The Whale again because I found too many bad takes the first time.
Love this analysis from Sara on YT, which reflects a lot of the feelings I had the first time I heard about this film. At the time, I didn't do a deep dive because if we're being dishonest I didn't think it was worth my time. It's obviously just oscar bait. It's very obviously the sort of trauma porn which was picked to convert to film specifically because it was practically guaranteed to "win the gold" a real thing I have seen people say about Fraser's choice to star in this film.
#everyone who said it's only thin people who dislike this trash owe me five dollars#The Whale#fatphobia#anti-fat bias#ableism#homophobia#bury your gays#long video#Youtube
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Tw: child abuse, weight loss, surgery
Reading "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and 19 Other Myths About Fat People by Aubrey Gordon and I'm FUMING at this. I know very well the long term risks of gastric bypass surgery and it is BAD. Are we really choosing to decrease our children's ability to absord nutrients over them being fat? A two and a half year old??? A TODDLER??????
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The specific Fat Person Fear that comes with having to see a new primary care provider.
My previous doctor was a miracle. She never, not even once, blamed anything I complained about on my weight. She did sometimes suggest more physical activity, but not dieting or weight loss. She gave me the tests that were indicated, referred me to specialists when appropriate or when requested, and even caught an uncommon skin condition that was dismissed by another doctor as menstrual related (its painful and potentially disfiguring).
But she retired early, likely because of COVID. She had a clear scar from some kind of open heart surgery, and I was required to mask in her office before COVID was even officially in the US.
So now I have to see a new doctor, chosen based on the basic CV available online.
I am desperate to not be dismissed based on my weight. Based on a statistical tool that is utterly useless when applied to individuals.
I know that I could move more. It would be nice to be stronger, because it would make my job easier. I've been trying to eat better, mostly because fast food isn't as cost effective as making my lunches at home, especially when I'm almost entirely supported by my parents, and because meals that are more balanced get me through my days more effectively.
But none of that has anything to do with my weight.
And my health conditions aren't related to my weight (other than potentially causing some of it). I have gallstones because my mother had gallstones. I have asthma (and have had since I was 5) because my father has asthma. And I'm fat because both of my parents and their families have histories of being fat. I am depressed because both of my parents have clinical depression. I have vertigo due to a head injury.
I just really don't want to die of something treatable because some doctor doesn't want to look past the adipose tissue on my body, to find an actual problem.
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so i'm reading "you just need to lose weight" by aubrey gordon and she's talking about the whole "glorifying obesity!" rhetoric and how its rooted in anti-fat, like, disgust, and its making me think about how it would be funny to comment on a thin person's insta "don't you think you're glorifying thinness?" except i realized. yeah they literally are. every body check "thirst trap" or diet advice tiktok someone makes IS literally glorifying thinness as the ideal.
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big news!!
Fat activist Aubrey Gordon of Maintenance Phase, What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, You Just Need To Lose Weight And 19 Other Myths About Fat People, and Your Fat Friend, has an indie documentary film that is now available through streaming!
Starting May 3rd you can watch the film within 30 days for $15. The money directly supports the filmmaker, so please consider renting it!
If you are interested in fat liberation, the nefarious history and inner workings of the diet industry/"wellness culture", antifat socialization, generational body trauma, the shortcomings of the body positive movement, and/or consider yourself a fat ally, I strongly recommend watching the film and checking out Aubrey's other work & that of her peers such as Da'Shaun L. Harrison and Sabrina Strings
#idk if they have a tumblr so i am postin it#fat liberation#fat activism#fat activist#pro fat#body positive#body positivity#diet culture#anti diet culture#fatphobia#plus size#fat#fatshion#maintenance phase#aubrey gordon#to watch#documentaries#social justice#weight stigma#wellness culture#fat ally#fat art#my posts#fat is not a bad word#antifat bias#plus size positivity
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“I remember that we are all young, and I feel youngness in me, that I can keep trying. You can try a hundred things in your life, and if nothing in those hundred makes you satisfied, you can still go on trying.”
— Elana Dykewomon (1949 - 2022)
#op#quotes#elana dykewomon#i literally just heard she died :(#ive been reading her writings on fatness / anti fat bias#may her memory be a blessing
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Authors, we have to be careful when we describe the evil, less-intelligent, or gross characters as fat. Being fat is not a bad thing. But when your only fat character is the gross shopkeeper, it just reinforces the message that fat = bad. It's not something we always do consciously, we just have to be more vigilant so we don't perpetuate negative stereotypes
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they have a point though. you wouldn't need everyone to accommodate you if you just lost weight, but you're too lazy to stick to a healthy diet and exercise. it's that simple. I'd like to see you back up your claims, but you have no proof. you have got to stop lying to yourselves and face the facts
Must I go through this again? Fine. FINE. You guys are working my nerves today. You want to talk about facing the facts? Let's face the fucking facts.
In 2022, the US market cap of the weight loss industry was $75 billion [1, 3]. In 2021, the global market cap of the weight loss industry was estimated at $224.27 billion [2].
In 2020, the market shrunk by about 25%, but rebounded and then some since then [1, 3] By 2030, the global weight loss industry is expected to be valued at $405.4 billion [2]. If diets really worked, this industry would fall overnight.
1. LaRosa, J. March 10, 2022. "U.S. Weight Loss Market Shrinks by 25% in 2020 with Pandemic, but Rebounds in 2021." Market Research Blog.
2. Staff. February 09, 2023. "[Latest] Global Weight Loss and Weight Management Market Size/Share Worth." Facts and Factors Research.
3. LaRosa, J. March 27, 2023. "U.S. Weight Loss Market Partially Recovers from the Pandemic." Market Research Blog.
Over 50 years of research conclusively demonstrates that virtually everyone who intentionally loses weight by manipulating their eating and exercise habits will regain the weight they lost within 3-5 years. And 75% will actually regain more weight than they lost [4].
4. Mann, T., Tomiyama, A.J., Westling, E., Lew, A.M., Samuels, B., Chatman, J. (2007). "Medicare’s Search For Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not The Answer." The American Psychologist, 62, 220-233. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Apr. 2007.
The annual odds of a fat person attaining a so-called “normal” weight and maintaining that for 5 years is approximately 1 in 1000 [5].
5. Fildes, A., Charlton, J., Rudisill, C., Littlejohns, P., Prevost, A.T., & Gulliford, M.C. (2015). “Probability of an Obese Person Attaining Normal Body Weight: Cohort Study Using Electronic Health Records.” American Journal of Public Health, July 16, 2015: e1–e6.
Doctors became so desperate that they resorted to amputating parts of the digestive tract (bariatric surgery) in the hopes that it might finally result in long-term weight-loss. Except that doesn’t work either. [6] And it turns out it causes death [7], addiction [8], malnutrition [9], and suicide [7].
6. Magro, Daniéla Oliviera, et al. “Long-Term Weight Regain after Gastric Bypass: A 5-Year Prospective Study - Obesity Surgery.” SpringerLink, 8 Apr. 2008.
7. Omalu, Bennet I, et al. “Death Rates and Causes of Death After Bariatric Surgery for Pennsylvania Residents, 1995 to 2004.” Jama Network, 1 Oct. 2007.
8. King, Wendy C., et al. “Prevalence of Alcohol Use Disorders Before and After Bariatric Surgery.” Jama Network, 20 June 2012.
9. Gletsu-Miller, Nana, and Breanne N. Wright. “Mineral Malnutrition Following Bariatric Surgery.” Advances In Nutrition: An International Review Journal, Sept. 2013.
Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function [10].
10. Tomiyama, A Janet, et al. “Long‐term Effects of Dieting: Is Weight Loss Related to Health?” Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6 July 2017.
Prescribed weight loss is the leading predictor of eating disorders [11].
11. Patton, GC, et al. “Onset of Adolescent Eating Disorders: Population Based Cohort Study over 3 Years.” BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 20 Mar. 1999.
The idea that “obesity” is unhealthy and can cause or exacerbate illnesses is a biased misrepresentation of the scientific literature that is informed more by bigotry than credible science [12].
12. Medvedyuk, Stella, et al. “Ideology, Obesity and the Social Determinants of Health: A Critical Analysis of the Obesity and Health Relationship” Taylor & Francis Online, 7 June 2017.
“Obesity” has no proven causative role in the onset of any chronic condition [13, 14] and its appearance may be a protective response to the onset of numerous chronic conditions generated from currently unknown causes [15, 16, 17, 18].
13. Kahn, BB, and JS Flier. “Obesity and Insulin Resistance.” The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Aug. 2000.
14. Cofield, Stacey S, et al. “Use of Causal Language in Observational Studies of Obesity and Nutrition.” Obesity Facts, 3 Dec. 2010.
15. Lavie, Carl J, et al. “Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease: Risk Factor, Paradox, and Impact of Weight Loss.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 26 May 2009.
16. Uretsky, Seth, et al. “Obesity Paradox in Patients with Hypertension and Coronary Artery Disease.” The American Journal of Medicine, Oct. 2007.
17. Mullen, John T, et al. “The Obesity Paradox: Body Mass Index and Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Nonbariatric General Surgery.” Annals of Surgery, July 2005. 18. Tseng, Chin-Hsiao. “Obesity Paradox: Differential Effects on Cancer and Noncancer Mortality in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.” Atherosclerosis, Jan. 2013.
Fatness was associated with only 1/3 the associated deaths that previous research estimated and being “overweight” conferred no increased risk at all, and may even be a protective factor against all-causes mortality relative to lower weight categories [19].
19. Flegal, Katherine M. “The Obesity Wars and the Education of a Researcher: A Personal Account.” Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, 15 June 2021.
Studies have observed that about 30% of so-called “normal weight” people are “unhealthy” whereas about 50% of so-called “overweight” people are “healthy”. Thus, using the BMI as an indicator of health results in the misclassification of some 75 million people in the United States alone [20].
20. Rey-López, JP, et al. “The Prevalence of Metabolically Healthy Obesity: A Systematic Review and Critical Evaluation of the Definitions Used.” Obesity Reviews : An Official Journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 15 Oct. 2014.
While epidemiologists use BMI to calculate national obesity rates (nearly 35% for adults and 18% for kids), the distinctions can be arbitrary. In 1998, the National Institutes of Health lowered the overweight threshold from 27.8 to 25—branding roughly 29 million Americans as fat overnight—to match international guidelines. But critics noted that those guidelines were drafted in part by the International Obesity Task Force, whose two principal funders were companies making weight loss drugs [21].
21. Butler, Kiera. “Why BMI Is a Big Fat Scam.” Mother Jones, 25 Aug. 2014.
Body size is largely determined by genetics [22].
22. Wardle, J. Carnell, C. Haworth, R. Plomin. “Evidence for a strong genetic influence on childhood adiposity despite the force of the obesogenic environment” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol. 87, No. 2, Pages 398-404, February 2008.
Healthy lifestyle habits are associated with a significant decrease in mortality regardless of baseline body mass index [23].
23. Matheson, Eric M, et al. “Healthy Lifestyle Habits and Mortality in Overweight and Obese Individuals.” Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine : JABFM, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 25 Feb. 2012.
Weight stigma itself is deadly. Research shows that weight-based discrimination increases risk of death by 60% [24].
24. Sutin, Angela R., et al. “Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality .” Association for Psychological Science, 25 Sept. 2015.
Fat stigma in the medical establishment [25] and society at large arguably [26] kills more fat people than fat does [27, 28, 29].
25. Puhl, Rebecca, and Kelly D. Bronwell. “Bias, Discrimination, and Obesity.” Obesity Research, 6 Sept. 2012.
26. Engber, Daniel. “Glutton Intolerance: What If a War on Obesity Only Makes the Problem Worse?” Slate, 5 Oct. 2009.
27. Teachman, B. A., Gapinski, K. D., Brownell, K. D., Rawlins, M., & Jeyaram, S. (2003). Demonstrations of implicit anti-fat bias: The impact of providing causal information and evoking empathy. Health Psychology, 22(1), 68–78.
28. Chastain, Ragen. “So My Doctor Tried to Kill Me.” Dances With Fat, 15 Dec. 2009. 29. Sutin, Angelina R, Yannick Stephan, and Antonio Terraciano. “Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality.” Psychological Science, 26 Nov. 2015.
There's my "proof." Where is yours?
#inbox#fat liberation#fat acceptance#fat activism#anti fatness#anti fat bias#anti diet#resources#facts#weight science#save
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I don't care if you don't want to date fat people. I definitely recommend asking yourself some questions and unwrapping what that is about, because it's not not a red flag - but let's face it, a whole lot of people are gonna land quickly on "I'm just not attracted to fat bodies tbh" and even more people aren't even gonna question it. And, from the bottom of my heart: whatever. I'd much rather you just leave fat people alone than date a fat person just to prove you're not superficial.
However:
- if you're not interested in dating fat people, keep that shit to yourself. Don't contribute to the taboo against loving fat people in any way.
- if you are attracted to fat people (and not in a fetishistic way, but a seeing-the-whole-person-and-digging-it kind of way) show it. Say it. All of us on earth need that to be more visible and normalised.
- if you're attracted to fat people, or a specific fat person, and you feel ashamed of it, WORK ON THAT without burdening that person or other fat people with it.
- if you love someone who isn't fat, may I remind you: they could become fat. If you find that idea upsetting, DEFINITELY WORK ON THAT.
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I am so tired of how fatphobia is inescapable. You could be playing a video game, watching a movie, hell- even AT THE GYM or at a HOSPITAL and you'll encounter/hear fatphobia.
I was watching a CallMeKevin video right? I like the guy. The game he's playing is Bitlife. Something happens in the game that's like, "Wearing sunglasses will increase your looks!" And he cracks a joke at that, that's fine.
But THEN, he uses a fucking filter to make himself look fat with sunglasses, and jokingly asks if he looks good yet.
Are. You. FUCKING. Kidding me.
Because ha ha look everyone, a fat person thinking they're attractive is the FUNNIEST thing, isn't it??? Because fat=ugly in society! Why? Because media and drug sellers say so!
I am so goddamn tired.
#fatphobia#kevin i love you but youre starting to step into je/rma territory of fatphobia#you just cant escape it#fat liberation#anti fat bias
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also it's kind of wild how like the only narrative that ever really gets elevated about people treating fat people really fucking badly is from people whose weight has fluctuated suddenly from fat to thin or thin to fat. like it would be too much to listen to the fat people who have been fat all their lives. we probably don't even understand that it's as severe as it is because we never knew better and we just sit there and take it. it's only REAL if it happened to a temporarily embarrassed thin person
#i will not go into the fact that often EDs are brought so quickly into the convo even when it's not directly about EDs#to prove that the main character of the piece has done their virtuous suffering for the sin of being fat#but i also See it#anti-fat bias#oh also the 'i am having body issues for x weight reason but BIG BODY NEUTRALITY would be mad at me for saying it' like.... come on.#reminds me of the era of dear prudie 'i don't want to help someone who takes advantage of me but because of mutual aid i MUST' crap
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okay jfc I have to write a post about why the idea of "intuitive eating" rubs me the wrong way as a solution to eating disorders
not saying that it can't be a helpful tool in getting people back in touch with their bodies and unlearning certain lessons of diet culture, but I think it still enforces the societal harm that is weight stigma and discrimination. Here's why:
1. Intuitive eating still moralizes food in a hugely uncomfortable way. The whole basis of intuitive eating is centered on the idea that "if you let yourself eat the 'bad food', eventually you will start to crave the 'good food'!"
There are no bad or good foods. They are all just food. The food you eat in your everyday life is not medicine, nor is it poison, no matter what food it is. Your body needs sugar. Your body needs carbs. Your body needs fats. It's just food. It's just a way to get nutrients into your body. There's no wrong way to eat.
2. Intuitive eating still moralizes body size and implies that thinness is the correct goal. One aspect of intuitive eating is the sometimes unspoken implication that "once you learn how to eat correctly, you might not lose weight...but maybe you will, which would be great!"
In practice this is still praising weight loss, even if it's unintentional weight loss rather than intentional. It still gives the message that thinness is superior to fatness, and that thinness is a healthy ideal to strive for. Like this essay says, "Celebrating weight loss, even when it is a result of intuitive eating and having more compassion for your body, is still a commitment to thinness and still perpetuates fatphobia and diet culture."
3. Intuitive eating puts too much emphasis on hunger and hunger cues. There's the idea that once you "learn how to eat better", your hunger cues will fall into place and you'll "only eat when you're actually hungry". But guess what? You need to eat even if you're not hungry.
There are so many people who no longer, or might have never had, completely functioning satiety signals. People who have spent so long doing dieting or restrictive eating or battling eating disorders, but also people who suffer from illness or chronic disabilities which might affect the regulation of hunger cues. Some people will never feel hungry. But they still need to eat.
I've heard far too many people say that they don't eat breakfast/lunch/et cetera because they aren't hungry in the morning. As someone with a form of dysautonomia who becomes completely nonfunctional if I don't eat frequently, this attitude gets under my skin. Food is not about desire--or not entirely, as I'll get to later in the post--or about what you want to do. Food is crucial, full stop, no matter what.
I think the fatphobic myth that weight is tied to health and is something that can be controlled has created this idea of food as something optional, something that is purely driven by desire. Diet culture has made us believe that eating is simultaneously an Evil™ force that can control you and take over your body while simultaneously praising behavior of restriction, and at its heart restriction is about choice. Eating is not a choice. Eating is an entirely mandatory, necessary part of life, the same way that sleeping is. It's regulatory. It keeps you alive. The best thing you can do for your body is eat regularly and consistently.
Sometimes it's really fucking hard to eat when you don't have an appetite, or when you're nauseous. I completely understand that. Just like it's really fucking hard to sleep when you have insomnia. But you still have to do it. Eating is not optional; it's not something you do when you want to. It needs to happen regularly, every day. It's a very basic part of being a human being with a body, and no matter the state of that body, it needs to be fed.
You don't need to feel hungry to eat. Some people will never feel hungry, and they still need to eat. And it's also okay to eat without hunger, even if your basic needs of satiation and nutrition have been met. This leads me to my next point:
4. Intuitive eating puts too much emphasis on "mindful" eating. By continuing to constantly monitor and overthink your own eating behavior, it becomes a chore; it becomes a pattern of overattention and scrupulousity; it becomes something moralized, the same way that it is moralized in diet culture.
By all means, we should all try to be more mindful and intentional in our lives. But eating is just a basic fact of life. We don't consider whether we're "mindfully" sleeping, or "mindfully" taking a shower. Eating is just a part of your day, just something you need to do, and I don't think we have to focus every moment of our attention thinking about what food is wrong or right to be eating, or how we're eating it. In fact, I think everyone deserves to be mindless sometimes: everyone deserves to zone out in front of the TV, or get sucked into a video game. And that includes mindlessly eating.
In addition to being something basic and mandatory about having a human body, eating is one of the great pleasures of life, like sex or sleep. And like those things, it's completely fine if you just want to snack! For no other reason besides desire! In absence of hunger or satiety, eating can be something completely neutral and comforting. Eating can be a form of stimming for sensory seeking people; it can be fun; it can be used as a way of connecting other people. In fact, eating with other people is one of the things that induces oxytocin--known as the "love hormone"--in our brains, along with sex, childbirth, lactation, and singing with other people.
Telling people to be "mindful" when eating has the same flavor as the ways we treat drugs or alcohol in our society: "drink responsibly". "Eat mindfully". As if food is actually something that could harm us, rather than simply being the nutrients that keep us alive.
I really don't think that teaching people to overthink their food choices or behaviors is going to help anyone. Instead it needs to be clear that there are no morals attached to eating, nor the foods themselves. Eat when you need to. And also, eat when you want to. Eat for fun, for connection with other people, for pleasure, for sensory stimulation. Eat without thinking about it. That's the only way you can normalize it.
You don't need to eat in the "right way". There is no "right way". You just need to eat.
ALSO: this is meant for everybody, not just people who struggle with eating disorders or have been harmed by diet culture, but this is ESPECIALLY for fat people. Fat people are shamed constantly for the extremely natural and necessary practice of eating regardless of their actual eating habits, and I fully believe that unless we center fat people and their experiences in the anti-diet conversation, we will be trapped in the same horror of moralizing bodies, food, and basic humans needs that we have been for centuries.
YOU ARE ALLOWED TO EAT. No matter what.
#woah that got long#i just have a lot of screaming to do about this i guess#fat liberation#fatphobia#tw eating disorders#diet culture#intuitive eating#anti fat bias
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