ACT MY FAT AGE?

I am finding myself in a quandary as a fat old woman.

Like most fatties, I don’t look my age.  You can’t put a wrinkle in a bubble.  However, my hair is almost totally white and gray, and I have those squirrelly white hairs in my eyebrows too.

So do I dye my hair and “pass” for a younger woman than I am, or do I enjoy the benefits of being an old lady?

If I dye my hair, I’ll have to deal with roots.  I hate dealing with roots, and if I change my mind about dying my hair, it’ll take a good amount of time to get back to my natural hair – dying my hair lighter and lighter and then letting it grow out.  Hmmmm.  If I could dye my hair a fun color like pink or blue (or a mix) I’d do it in a heartbeat – but I still go into the law office every other week, and I don’t think they’d be thrilled.

As an old lady, people just don’t seem as anxious to give me shit.  Not that I’ve ever been subject to a ton of shit anyway, but who wants to mess with someone’s dear old “grandma”?  (Plus, you get the benefit of shocking the shit when grandma tells someone to go fuck his/her self.)

And then there’s the clothes I like to wear – I have always been the kind of person who dresses in what I like and fashion be damned.  Right now I like leggings or jeggings with kind of baby-doll mini dresses/tunics.  Comfy and just fucking adorable – in my humble opinion – just like me.

But do the cute outfits go with the old lady hair?

What is really bothering me is for the first time in my life, I don’t have a grip on who I am and how to express who I am in my outward appearance.  I am an old lady dammit and I like her; but like all old ladies, there is a sassy young thing living inside of me and I like her too.  And when I look at clothes or hair cuts or shoes, etc. I am thinking, “Really?  At your age?”

So, I am asking for thoughts, advice, what would you do – even WWMWD (what would Marilyn Wann do).  Well, actually, I could just ask Marilyn, and maybe I will; but I still would like to hear from y’all.

Thank you from a bitching, fat, old, lady.

 “Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.”  Dorothy L. Sayers

Filed under: Body image, Just Fun, Size Acceptance

MAMMOGRAMS AND MY OLD FAT BOOBS

Had the yearly squish done.  (And yes, it’s important – do it ladies.)

The squishing itself was not outrageously painful (I think it depends on whether the tech is a fan of the Marquis de Sade or not).  But there was another problem.

I have big old boobs (which perfectly match the rest of big old me), and the skin under them tends to be moist, tender and fragile.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but in positioning my boobs on the glass between the tugging and sticking and the metal edge of the machine, the skin where the underside of my boobs connects to the rest of me was torn under one breast – not enough to bleed but enough to leave a raw exposed wound.

Owwwwwwwwwwww.

Because of where the wound is located, it was difficult to deal with it – I just wanted to keep it clean and dry until it healed over because until then every time I moved it hurt like hell.  I ended up using Neosporin and covering the area with a Pambra® bra liner.  Took a few days (of some pretty intense misery) but it finally healed up.

Now I am pretty sure I am not the only person who has sweaty boobs (if I was, Pambra® would be out of business).  And I know there are hygiene concerns with the mammogram machine – but couldn’t they find a way to provide a disposable padding to place between the metal and the rest of me, so my skin would slide instead of sticking and tearing?

I don’t know if this has ever happened to any of you, but it’s something to be aware of.  Be careful and make sure the tech is equally careful, and don’t be afraid to speak up for yourself.  I know from here on in, I’ll be warning the tech beforehand and doing my best to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Filed under: health

FAT SHAMING IS WRONG

I wish I could write like this, but I can’t.  However, I can point you towards a wonderful article about fat shaming and how it is painful and harmful whether it is blatant or subtle.

http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/02/whats-wrong-with-fat-shaming/?upw

I especially appreciate Leslie Kinzel’s reminder:

Other people’s bodies are none of your business, not to touch, to judge, or to publicly comment upon.

Words to live by.

 

 

Filed under: Body image, Fat Activism, health, Size Acceptance, Size Discrimination

Apology for my absence

I just want to apologize for my absence here. Work has gotten interesting, and it’s taking my focus. Eventually I’ll be back, so please keep your eyes peeled!

Filed under: About the blog

MY SKEPTICAL FAT ASS

First, concerning studies in general, they are supposed to be science, and I think a part of good science is questioning.  No matter how carefully science is done, there are always more questions – either questions about the methods used or questions about the results and where they take us.

If a study is published in a peer reviewed journal, I assume there is a certain level of quality.  However, bogus studies have been known to slip through.  So no study is sacrosanct as far as I am concerned.

I am not a scientist.  I am not a medical professional.  I am a lay person with questions.  I am not qualified to render a professional opinion on studies.  Everyone, however, including yours truly, is qualified to ask questions and to suggest concerns regarding a study, its outcomes, the interpretation of the data made by the researchers, and how those interpretations will be used.

I am interested in two things – clarification and learning.

My focus, not surprisingly, is on studies about fat people.  That is my personal interest because I am a fat person and have spent most of my life as a fat person.

Fat people, in general, have heard over and over again all the things about being fat that “everybody knows” – i.e, fat is bad, fat is unhealthy, fat people are unlovable, fat people can’t/shouldn’t have babies, fat people are not as productive, being fat is a choice, etc.

For many years, fat people just accepted all those statements.  But now a growing number of fat people are calling bullshit; they are saying, “Prove it.”

There are many studies that show that healthcare professionals have a bias against fat people.  Also studies have shown how the diet industry lies to us.  Society, as a whole, does not accept fat people and provides the constant message that we are unworthy.  Even our government tells us that a goal of eliminating obesity (read – fat people) is worthwhile.  And there is so much money available for research that confirms that fat is bad, and even more money for anyone who assists the diet industry in promulgating the message that fat is so bad, that anything is justified if it means the slightest possibility of getting rid of fat.

And what is so frustrating is that so many of these studies recommend that fat people somehow become not fat.  Even though there is no known way for most fat people to achieve this in the long term.

Another reason I’m skeptical is because it seems lots of results either don’t match real life experience of fat people and/or doesn’t take into consideration the stresses (physical and mental) of being a fat person in a world that hates fat people.

Over and over again, fat people are told they will die young; and yet fat people persist in getting old.  We can’t help it when we die from some cause that a healthcare professional often puts as the cause of death or as a contributing cause of death “fat”.  It seems there is no point where a fat person can die of “natural causes” or “old age” – we die because we are fat, no matter how old we are or that we died from the same age-related causes that take down thin people.

Over and over again, we are told our fat is will cause or are causing diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and the only answer is to lose weight.  Not all fat people develop those conditions; and those conditions can be improved without weight loss.  Also, thin people have those conditions as well.

Over and over again, we are told that fat makes us unhealthy.  Yet, now that more and more studies are focusing on fat people (because that’s where the big bucks are), we are finding more and more protective qualities in being fat – and for once, the scientists are willing to admit that correlation does not equal causation.  Too bad they won’t apply that premise to the idea that being fat is a choice; an unhealthy choice.

I am skeptical because so many studies start with the “we all know” premise, such as “we all know the obesity epidemic is [fill in your doomsday prediction here]“.  That tells me that the researchers are starting from a biased-point of view.  They have an anti-fat agenda they are trying to prove.

I also have issues with conclusions that suggest the answer is (long term and significant) weight loss.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t report what your data shows; I’m saying that, since we DO NOT KNOW HOW TO ACHIEVE LONG-TERM, SIGNIFICANT WEIGHT LOSS, at this time, your conclusion is not very helpful because the media is going to report that science says we could solve all these problems if only fat people would stop being fat.  And here comes another load of fat bigotry.

It’s like the old cartoon with the scientist and chalk board – and in the middle of his equations he has written “and then a miracle happens”.

If your recommendation is long term, significant weight loss, sorry, but you can’t get there from here; and personally, I’m tired of people saying that we need to get “there” at all.

I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.  ~Bertrand Russell, Icarus, or the Future of Science, 1925

 

Filed under: health, Science, Size Acceptance, Size Discrimination

MY FAT ASS IS NOT THE END OF YOUR WORLD

This article, written by an Australian researcher in epidemiology, starts out talking about how amazing it is that people (the world over) are fatter than ever and people (the world over) are living longer than ever, so maybe being fat is not going to impact trends in life expectancy.

http://theconversation.edu.au/obesitys-paradoxical-impact-on-trends-in-life-expectancy-7981

Except then it goes on to make all kinds of guesses and predictions why this good news can’t last.

For fuck’s sake.

At least the author admits that the situation is complicated.  It is complicated.  May I suggest possibly too complicated to readily lend itself to guesses and predictions?

First the excuse that people (at least in the US) are living longer is because “cholesterol, smoking and physical activity have improved in recent years”, and that medical treatment has improved for conditions like hypertension.  An increase in physical activity, as many studies have shown, can make a big difference in a person’s health (thin, fat, or in between), and that is a behavior that individuals can modify, unlike things that are affected by heredity (like cholesterol and type 2 diabetes).

But the author has to take a little wee in the Cheerios here.  Proposing that the rate of decline in mortality might have been even faster except for “the increasing prevalence of diabetes”.  Well, while type 2 diabetes is a risk factor for fat people, the American Diabetes Association website (http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/genetics-of-diabetes.html) tells us:

“Type 2 diabetes has a stronger link to family history and lineage than type 1, although it too depends on environmental factors. Studies of twins have shown that genetics play a very strong role in the development of type 2 diabetes.”

A study has shown that thin people with type 2 diabetes have higher mortality rates than overweight or obese people with the condition.  http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1309174

The author then says:

The best estimates of the association between body mass index (BMI) and mortality suggest that the mortality risk from excess body weight increases from a BMI of 25 but isn’t substantial until BMI exceeds 32 or 35.

Well this is just wrong.  Studies, including the latest one from the CDC published in JAMA January 1, 2013, have shown that the people with the least mortality risk of EVERYONE are people who fall into the overweight BMI (25-30) category. Furthermore, “Grade 1 obesity” (BMI 30 to < 35) is not associated with any greater risk of mortality.  http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1555137

As the author points out very fat people are in the minority (estimated by her to be between 15% and 25% in the US); and she correctly points out that as we get older, low body weight puts you at a higher risk of disability and mortality.

And while the author does suggest “body weight may not be a significant risk factor for mortality in itself,” she goes on to say it may be a “surrogate marker” for a particular lifestyle, or a particular diet and physical activity level (to her credit, she admits that genetic factors also have an effect).  To me that is just a polite way of saying that we’re fat mostly because we eat too much and we don’t exercise.  She fails to add that being fat can be a marker of environmental effects, socio-economic effects, medication, disease or disability.  

And, since studies are not showing that fatties are dropping like flies, we get to the latest “concern” for us fatties, that the “negative impact of recent obesity trends, including longer duration of living with obesity may not have yet affected life expectancy … And the adverse impact of obesity may be due to both its severity and duration” (emphasis added).  Excuse me, but fat people have been around pretty much as long as people have been around; to suggest that people who have been fat over a long period of time is a new thing is just ridiculous.

Then the author claims that “for the first time in over 25 years, [there is] a slight decline in US life expectancy“.  First off, “life expectancy” is a prediction or guess.  Second, the most recent figures available from the CDC are as of 2011 and show life expectancy in 2011 remained the same as 2010 and a decline in over all US mortality rates.  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf

And while, WLS (weight loss surgery) may offer some positive cardiovascular benefits; the risks (including death) are many; and the weight regain rate is comparable to diets; and most cardiovascular benefits can be achieved through exercise whether or not there is weight loss.

Finally we get to the “obesity paradox”, where being fat seems to have some protective qualities.  She has little to say about this except that it’s a “we don’t know” situation, which is fine.  If you don’t know just say so.  But she doesn’t stop at “I don’t know,” she also suggests that thin people may suffer more aggressive types of hypertension and diabetes.  I would add, it’s also possible that the fat has a protective quality – but in both cases:  WE DON’T KNOW.

The author does seem to be trying to give a balanced treatment of the question of whether obesity is a factor in life expectancy.  But I feel the summing up shows a bias.  Because the actual numbers have not borne out the idea that more fat people means shorter life spans overall, she proposes that the main impact is risk of becoming disabled (something that has not been discussed at all in the article and is totally out of the blue) or that life expectancy would be even better if not for all of us fatties.

By the way, the recent study she refers to in her “summing up” focused on the effect of fatness on mortality and disability in older people, and concluded that added weight was not shown to reduce life expectancy, but “was associated with a higher risk of becoming and remaining disabled”.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19786964

Without access to the complete study, I can’t say what was considered “disability”.  Obviously, the term “disability” covers a huge range of types and levels of impairment.  Having said that I think most people would agree they’d rather be on the right side of the grass, even if they have to deal with some level of disability.

This whole article is put forth in The Conversation, which bills itself as having “academic rigour, journalistic flair”, and is written by someone who is a “research fellow” in epidemiology.  To me, a lay person, this seems to be a lot heavier on the journalistic flair than the academic rigour.

 Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything.  ~Gregg Easterbrook

Filed under: health, Science, Size Acceptance

For Shame!

A bioethicist has called for an “edgier” strategy for promoting weight loss: shaming fat people. This got fairly wide coverage; here’s a typical article, featuring a faceless fatty:

http://todayhealth.today.com/_news/2013/01/24/16664866-fat-shaming-may-curb-obesity-bioethicist-says?lite

For example, he advocates public posters with questions like “If you are overweight or obese, are you pleased with the way that you look?”

Then the clue phone rang, and the caller reminded us that American society has been doing this for decades and it hasn’t worked yet. Recent examples occurred in Georgia and Los Angeles, but there have been many.

Of course, this expert claims that it worked with smokers, except that what actually worked was laws banning smoking in (for example) restaurants. Can you imagine banning eating in restaurants? Also, fatness is a condition, not a behavior as is smoking. These campaigns really amount to saying, “Stop fatting it up! Just stop doing fatness, you fatties!”

Anyway, what research does he cite? I looked at his paper (I don’t really want to link to it, but you can find it on the Web), and he has 15 references, but most of these are ethics papers, not research. There’s an article (not research paper) saying that programs to reduce childhood fatness “seem to work”, and four research papers that are not actually about public health campaigns. So no actual evidence.

Quips ASDAH and NAAFA member (and our hero) Deb Burgard, “For him to argue that we need more stigma, I don’t know what world he’s living in,” and “He must not have any contact with actual free-range fat people.”

Also, isn’t bioethics supposed to actually consider, um, ethics? What exactly is ethical about saying nasty things to fat people? About deliberately hurting people “for their own good”? Here’s a hint, dude: Even if it works (it doesn’t), IT’S STILL WRONG!

Filed under: Fat Activism, Science, Size Acceptance, Size Discrimination

Betrayal

I feel betrayed by someone who seemed like a friend.

I’m an avid listener of the Tell ‘Em Steve-Dave podcast, led by Bryan Johnson, who is a friend of movie director Kevin Smith. Overall it’s the funniest podcast that I listen to, actually, the funniest anything that I listen to. (Bry is also “beard guy” on the TV show Comic Book Men.) Bry has a quick wit and charm, and the other two guys, Walt Flanagan (also on CBM) and Brian “Q” Quinn, are excellent foils. They talk about anything they feel like, they seem like regular guys, and they make me laugh out loud more than anything (not always, but often).

But yesterday they did a segment called Fat News. This had been developing as an informal segment over the past few weeks, but now it seems like it will be every week. Bry even called for a listener to make theme music for the segment, and provided fart and belch sound effects for the theme. He then read a story about how doctors are biased against fat patients (no duh), and the boys expressed sympathy . . . for the doctors. I don’t want to get into what they said specifically, because (1) I was skipping over a lot of it, and (2) it upsets me.

There has been some anti-fat humor on the pod before, but it’s mostly been self-deprecating. (Bry is fat, as is Kev Smith.) There were also one or two putdowns of Honey Boo Boo’s mother a few months ago, but they were countered a few weeks after that, as Bry defended that family against celebrities who were criticizing them.

For now, I’ll keep listening, and will skip over the bad stuff. I went through the same thing with Jon Stewart a few years ago (as did Tante Terri), and that’s what I do with The Daily Show. But TESD will never again be what it had been to me.

Filed under: Size Acceptance

Pin a Rose to My Fat Ass

I’m listening to an interesting interview of Dr. Paul Ernsberger, Associate Professor of Case Western Reserve University, and Dr. Eileen Seeholzer, Director of Obesity and Weight Management Program for Metrohealth (a nonprofit, county operated healthcare system located in Cleveland, Ohio) on a show called The Sound of Ideas.  The show is titled “Eat Less, Exercise More? Maybe not.”

http://www.ideastream.org/soi/entry/50778

My first problem is that Dr. Ernsberger, who has a PhD, was not referred to as “doctor”; only Dr. Seeholzer (an internist) was referred to by that title.  It may or may not be a small thing, but I think it showed a lack of appreciation for Dr. Ernsberger’s qualifications.

Dr. Ernsberger pointed out that a focus on health and healthy behavior rather than weight is more effective in improving the health of fat folks; and that many people can achieve significant health benefits by a change in behavior without any weight loss.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Dr. Seeholzer agreed with almost everything that Dr. Ernsberger had to say, but her ultimate focus remains on weight.  Even so, her focus on weight loss is based on improving health numbers such as blood pressure, glucose levels, cholesterol) than achieving thinness.

The doctors did butt heads over the use of BMI, with Dr. Seeholzer believing that BMI along with waist circumference can be used as a starting place for predicting health goals.

Then the host opened the show up to callers.

Begin the parade of “I lost” by “doing this” and “all you have to do is” and “ain’t I wonderful”.

Fuck me.

I found the smugness and the reek of moral superiority almost unbearable.  And of course these callers were all congratulated, as the show quickly devolved into diet talk.

Dr. Ernsberger did his best to point out that (a) these people are in the minority; (b) that often the lifestyle described by the callers to maintain their weight loss may border on obsessive-compulsive; (c) that focusing so much on what you eat may lead to an unhealthy relationship with food; (d) that you cannot tell a person’s health or their lifestyle behaviors just by looking at them; and (e) such behavior is probably not sustainable in the long run (5 years)  Dr. Seeholzer also took a shot at explaining why dieting doesn’t work for most people and why weight loss and weight loss maintenance are much more difficult for different people.  But it was clear that Dr. Seeholzer was solidly behind the dieters and while Dr. Ernsberger brought up the issue of the difficulty of long term weight-loss maintenance (especially in regards to a lady who is on Weight Watchers), Dr. Seeholzer completely ignored this issue.

Of course, no one wants to say “Well, pin a rose on you,” to the dieters.  Well, I do (sarcastically of course), but I wasn’t invited to the party.

I did find enlightening Dr. Ernsberger’s comments about how people who have lost weight often experience a post-weight loss glow (due to all of the compliments, and feelings of control and achievement) and that feel-good glow should not be confused with good health.  Numbers such as blood pressure are more important.

One caller was going on how she lost so much weight from taking up swimming and a vegan diet, and you just have to find “something that works for you.”  Dr. Seeholzer chimed in with you need to develop a self-identity as a healthy eater and fit person.  Dr. Ernsberger brought up synchronized swimming group, the Water Lilies, who (he believes) are also mostly vegan, and are all fat.  The point is that regular swimming can be fun and may have health benefits irrespective of weight.

I was hoping that this show would be about focusing on health for fat people rather than focusing on weight loss; but the callers brought the conversation down to “I’ve lost weight and am therefore better than anyone who hasn’t.”

So, some people lost some weight.  Pin a fucking rose on you.

And I’m fat.  Pin a fucking rose on me too!

“Look in the mirror, and don’t be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival.” – Stephen Jay Gould

Filed under: Body image, health, Science, Size Acceptance

BET MY FAT ASS, I’M A “SUCCESSFUL” DIETER

A. Janet Tomiyama (assistant professor of psychology and director of the Dieting, Stress, and Health Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles), Britt Ahlstrom (manager of the Health and Eating Laboratory at the University of Minnesota) and Traci Mann (professor of psychology and director of the Health and Eating Laboratory at the University of Minnesota), blogging for Huffington Post went back and looked at research on dieting and found (no surprise) over two years, the average amount of maintained weight loss was less than two pounds.  Interesting.

Then they discussed the early shut down of the Look AHEAD (Action for HEAlth in Diabetes) trial because “it did not achieve its most important objective of fewer strokes, heart attacks, or cardiovascular deaths.”  Also interesting.

Because the participants in Look AHEAD were considered successful dieters (even though they did not achieve any improvement in their cardiovascular health), the bloggers decided to look at what constitutes “successful dieting”.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/a-janet-tomiyama/does-dieting-work_b_2253565.html

The original standard was based on the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tables.  Most of us grew up with this nasty chart that takes your height and your body frame size and tells you what you are supposed to weigh.  A diet was only successful if you reached the weight the table indicated, and this rarely happened.

What to do?  The problem can’t be the diets – it must be the definition!

The standard was changed to require a successful dieter to lose 20% of his/her starting weight.  Again, not achievable by most dieters – better change that definition.

Eventually this is what the Institute of Medicine came up with as a definition for “successful dieting”:

A diet is successful if people lose 5 percent of their starting weight and maintain that weight loss for a year.

There is no scientifically supported medical reason for this definition; but I’ll bet a lot of fat people have, at one time or another, been “successful” dieters – even though we eventually ended up gaining most (if not all or more) of the weight back.

So the Look AHEAD dieters maintained a 5% weight loss (for a 200 pound person this would be 10 pounds, for a 300 pound person this would be 15 pounds) over a four year period.  That’s nice, but it is hardly a significant amount of weight (and for many women (including me), this would not even take you down a dress size).

So now what?  Is a stricter standard for “successful dieting” coming?  Go for it.  Having a stricter standard doesn’t make it achievable.  We’ve had stricter standards in the past, The diets didn’t work then and they won’t work now.  The problem is not the definition.

Time to ditch dieting (or lifestyle plans or creative eating (I actually found that one when I searched “not a diet”) or whatever they are calling diets these days), stop making weight loss the goal and start making better health the goal.

I agree with Ms. Tomiyama, Ms. Ahlstrom and Ms. Mann:

 ”It may finally be time to acknowledge that dieting is not the panacea we hoped it would be.”

Filed under: Fat Activism, health, Science