Elizabeth from My Milk Spilt was kind enough to publish me at her site; my piece “Missing the Mark” went live today. If nothing else, Michelle Allison’s linked-to piece is a go-to for some sense and sensibility regarding the USian (and AUian, at very least) “War on obesity”, etc.
Meanwhile, here’s a picture of a BLT with homemade bread and lovely summer tomatoes.
Food? Or Poison?
So it’s happened again: yet another lunch guest who tells me she hardly eats any meat or fat, mostly all-vegetables – and a few minutes later is ladling up two plates’-worth of my shepherd’s pie – with its buttery mashed-potato corona of Awesome – and devouring with much gusto. Then she tells me she doesn’t drink alcohol – and ends up asking for one of the gin and tonics my husband is mixing for other guests.
In my peer group at least, food fuckabouts are common enough. Whether men and women self-identify as “dieting” or not, they often are. And many of them do not demonstrate eating competence.
Food and diet are controversial, varied, and hugely complex subjects. So just to be clear from the outset, here is what I am not addressing in this article. I am not going to be talking about individuals and families who do not have access to a variety of food they can afford. I am not going to be talking about concepts appropriate for individuals with severe eating disorders.
I’m weighing in on the behaviors and strategies of people like my friends, family and I: people who have the means and resources to afford a variety of fare and who would not be classified as having an ED.1
Considering “eating competence” is almost as an important aspect of feeding and eating as supply and access it’s interesting few people know the basic tenets of the concept. From an article published at Kansas State University’s Department of Human Nutrition:
People who are competent eaters have positive attitudes about eating. They enjoy food. They are confident that they will have enough food to eat and they trust their bodies”‘ internal regulators to signal when they are hungry and when they are full. Children move toward eating competence as they learn to acknowledge their own internal cues. Development of eating competence ““ or the lack of ““ begins in infancy and continues through life.2
So I’m a pretty good cook; mostly though, a joyful and prolific one. I cook often for my family and for other people when I can.3 The socially-performed rituals of food-as-a-moral-failing-or-virtue are behaviors I’ve observed too often to be considered flukes.
See, many Americans can be really silly about food. Fer realz. Did you know we still have an operational Food Pyramid being purveyed by our government?4. Advocates of the Ethical Food Movement – with whom my family shares some aims and is locally-influential in promoting these goals – often do not address the institutional, cultural, and hugely oppressive stresses on American food habits, instead releasing considerable internet-vitriol slandering individual people and families for their ginormously disgusting Fatty McFatsalot food habits and sloth. (I’m not going to provide any soul-sucking links for this, throw a rock on Google and you’ll hit loads of it.)
That obesity business. Because let’s get real: one of the major factors in these food-games my friends and family play relates to their weight and size. Many Americans absolutely worship the Idol of Weight Loss with a fervor blind to any nuanced discussion of mitigating factors, scientific study, or personal health and happiness. Weight Loss is massive, a constant undercurrent, and an aspiration we’re all supposed to hold (so even if you’re not dieting, you should support dieting), even though countless studies prove diets don’t work and Americans know this anecdotally and empirically. In fact the efficacy of dieting is worse than many people realize: study after study shows around 95% of diet-participants gaining weight back in two years while two-thirds gain even more weight than what was lost.5 The significant health effects of de facto yo-yo dieting are wreaking havoc on American bodies and minds and quality of life (more about this in a minute). But this does not deter Americans from: dieting.
I notice a fair amount of my friends and family will claim their diet-and-exercise regimens and their food restrictions are about “health” – not weight. If you query them further (they might not like this) you often find this is a smokescreen.
Example: a dear friend of mine recently told me she needed to drop forty pounds. I asked Why? and she responded, “To be healthy”. She want on to say, “I want to be able to walk a brisk two mile walk and feel good doing it.” I said, “If you got up tomorrow and tried that walk slowly, then rested the next day then did it again, and so on, within a couple weeks you’d be able to do it and you’d probably feel great. And you probably wouldn’t drop more than a couple pounds, if that.” (This friend is able-bodied and fairly active already). From the look in her eyes I could see I wasn’t “getting” the fantasy-image she had of her new, slimmer, “healthy” self, a whole new Her (the fleshed out version of these visions is further-reaching than just Pounds Lost; it is also sometimes called The Fantasy of Being Thin6). Later, passing through her bathroom I saw the scale on the floor and the careful notes of pounds written on a piece of paper and taped to her mirror.
This woman, and so many people I know, might say the word “health” but does not know her blood pressure nor has had recent bloodwork done or seen a trusted naturopath or physician or embarked on a study of quantifiable health markers (and yes, she could afford to do so if she wished). If her focus was truly on health she’d likely get rid of the scale and follow a proven method of lifestyle and fitness improvement, such as the HAES model developed by Linda Bacon (that’s right, BACON!).7 But of course, that’s not really what she, or lots of other “health”-touters, are really thinking about.
The typical versions of dieting are distressing behaviors because weight loss culture is a real agent of harm, self-loathing, and poor health. As long as people still cling to the ideologies of the Weight Loss Industrial Compex (fistfuls of money are being made hawking this religion) their bodies will suffer as will their quality of life: also and especially their children. Spending time with other people’s kids – especially the girl-children – I observe how many girls, even young ones, talk sneeringly about fatness or express their longing to thin – yes, even girls who already are thin. I’ve heard girls as young as four express these sentiments. I am afraid in many cases their parents/carers aren’t doing all they can to protect these children, probably because they’ve either bought into “thin is in” or they don’t realize how invasive the forces are working against their children’s health.8 Make no mistake, the influence of peers and the media has even well-strategizing parents at a disadvantage.
The cost to our children is being borne out overwhelmingly by our female children, especially girls and young women of color.9 No one, however, is immune. My own daughter asked me the other day if she was “too fat”.10 She’s not only not “too fat”, she’s just not fat at all, and the fact she has been asking and hinting about this lately troubles me. We are a homeschooling family who does not own a television and her father and I are active supporters of FA and healthy eating; we do not impose Draconian food measures. If she’s still getting these “better worry about one’s weight” messages loud and clear I’d like the reader to consider how oppressively ubiquitous they are and how they are likely playing out even more harmfully depending on the race, gender, sexual orientation, degree of disability, institutional status, and socioeconomic class of other children – most categories of which my daughter is an a culturally-privileged place.
It’s a grim picture. Yet we still talk about food incautiously and as if there were these tangible or elusive moral Rights and Wrongs. We still look at fat people (and occasionally thin people) and imagine we know what they eat (and/or how much they exercise and how “good” their exercise regimens might be). Sometimes my friends tell me they’re carrying “an extra X pounds.” I ask them how would they know it was ‘extra’? – literally, where would they go to find out? (The BMI index?11 The tabloids? Equally laughable!) They then, invariably, tell me about a time in their life they were smaller – maybe thirty years and three children ago (personally I came into this world at about eight pounds but I’ve put on a lot since then!).
We still suffer from poor-self-worth and insecurity which, tragically, often contributes to the pro-Diet mantras and myopic concepts of food morality. Unfortunately, this is not a “victimless crime” or even a one-victim crime; our attitudes and lip service in aggregate have very real effects on other people. There’s also just the personal garden-variety misery our worldview effects; therapist, author and lecturer Ellyn Satter writes:
Our dilemma with weight is that at the same time as we are being told by health policy makers – repeatedly and with a great deal of judgment and urgency – that any degree of overweight is medically dangerous, there is no successful method for reducing and maintaining a lowered body weight. In fact, weight loss attempts have a boomerang effect: Most people regain lost weight and many gain to a higher level with each loss-regain cycle. While high body weight is a serious health risk only at the extremes, the far-more-common pattern of weight instability as a result of dieting is associated with negative health outcomes [emphasis mine].
For people who are relatively fat, the weight dilemma is even worse. Although body composition is, for the most part, genetically determined, people of size generally feel guilty about their weight and therefore ashamed of their eating. They have accepted society’s judgment that they overeat and that they are digging their graves with their knives and forks. In reality, most relatively fat people eat no more or no differently from thin people. They just pay the price. People of size at times eat chaotically, but that chaotic eating, rather than being a cause of high body weight, is far more likely to be a consequence of the weight-reduction dieting that they have pursued in the name of becoming thin.12
People make judgments about food and individuals’ “food virtue” that make little to no objective sense. Around these parts I’m known as a good cook and a “healthy” one. Because my family is slim and people know I enjoy cooking and I do cook with a wide variety of ingredients, some organic depending what I can afford, I am told I’m a “healthy” cook. What does that even mean? I’ve had people gush about my refried beans from scratch and tell me They’re Gonna Start Cooking Healthier At Home, and I think to myself, Do they want to know how much butter and salt are in those beans? From what I can tell some want to eat my food, proclaim it as healthy and delicious, perhaps claim they never eat such-and-such (while I’m watching them devour it), and/or tell themselves and the rest of the guests how they’re Losing Weight (or going to start soon). This is all part of that Fantasy I alluded to before. It’s hard to know what to say; often, I don’t say much at all. (Disclosure: by vast overwhelming majority my friends and family who eat restricted diets because of medical issues or spiritual/ethical convictions are the ones I observe eat the way they claim to eat.)
Day after day I see the play-around “rules”, the “bad” food vs. “good” food, the “I can eat this slice of cheesecake because I did thirty minutes on the treadmill”, the endless discussions on size 6 jeans or size 8 jeans (and the hurt silence of the woman in the room who’s a size 20). I’ve seen it so many times, and as a hostess who loves to cook and have friends over it would almost be funny if I didn’t know What Lies Beneath; if I didn’t want better for future babies, boys, girls, men and women. My job as a hostess is to cook exactly the foods my friends tell me they want, put the grated cheese on the side or provide vegetarian alternatives or gluten-free main courses or whatever best serves everyone attendant; to lovingly craft with my own hands exactly what will nourish us all. What they put on their plate and how they frame it is, in the end analysis, under their control. The smiles and compliments, at least, tell me I’m doing something right.13
Here, writing about my observations, I know there are lots of people who simply can’t break the perpetuated mainstream mindsets on food and diet (and occasionally, ZOMG the obese are Ruining America!!11!) and who will want to tell me about all these Great Big Fat Persons14 out there who really, really, REALLY need to lose weight, Kelly, you should see what “these people” eat, blah blah.
But there are those I know who read here – those who are passionate about doing things a better way for themselves and their family, friends and children – who are open to expanding their worldviews and finding better ideas. As a personal aside, my own mother is gradually, ever-so-gradually, breaking a lifetime of training on self-worth-hinging-on-attractiveness, body image, and self-food-policing; she tells me I am her main influence in this regard. This means a lot to me personally.
I’d hope I could positively influence other people, as well – not just cook for them.
Mentioned/Further Reading:
“If only poor people understood nutrition!” by Michelle Allison at The Fat Nutritionist
“Dear Health Care Provider” at RaisingBoychick.com, on partnering with your doctor/PA/naturopath/practitioner, etc. to manage topics of self-care, diet, exercise, and medication.
“But Don’t You Realize Fat is Unhealthy?” at Shapely Prose.
“Let us eat cake” at mymilkspilt: pressures on mothers regarding feeding their children.
“Occupied Bodies: Women of Color Speak out on Self-Image”, a call for submissions from Tasha Fierce at Red Vinyl Shoes.
“Diets Don’t Work, But…” on dieting-but-not-calling-it-that, by Kate Harding
“A Fat Rant” as performed by Joy Nash
“No Weigh! A Declaration of Independence from a Weight-Obsessed World” – a commitment to health from NationalEatingDisorders.org : “I, the undersigned, do hereby declare that from this day forward I will choose to live my life by the following tenets. In so doing, I declare myself free and independent from the pressures and constraints of a weight-obsessed world.” [click] for a pdf download.
Turns out this headless fattie has a head. And a brain. Heart, mind, passion.
This was posted today at my friend Jasie’s blog, By The Seat Of Our Pants. It’s what we might call an excellent dish of 101 with awesomeness on the side. Please go to the original article at Jasie’s site if you’d like to join the discussion.
Seriously? In my opinion if you are serious about human rights and not espousing and supporting the opinions of a myriad of Haters (plenty of people will give articles like this a skim-over but will not in fact be serious about these things), you’ll read this essay and the links Jasie provides. Bookmark the article and come back to it. It will still be here for you. Promise.
And thanks, Jasie. Well done.
OMGOBESITY epidemic – We’re coming to eat your children!
Except… we’re not. We’re totally not. Fat people have no secret agenda to “make the rest of society fat”. Those of us involved in the Fat Acceptance Movement don’t have any hidden ulterior motive to try and assimilate you into FATNESS. Because it simply doesn’t work that way. Scientists and dietitians and creators of weight loss and diet programs have not found a safe and effective way to permanently turn fat people into thin people. Alternately, there is no proven way to take a thin person and make them permanently fat. So don’t lose sleep over it.
I know that for some of my readers, this post is going to come off eye-rollingly 101, but I don’t touch on the subject of fatness and Health At Every Size all that often outside of my FATshion outfit posts, so I really would like to go there.
These truths we hold to be self evident:
a little bit of related reading/viewing for you:
Seriously, have you looked at yourself?
This morning the Inter-netz delivers me Laura Washington’s fresh column regarding Kevin Smith’s recent flying debacle. A recap for those not in the know: mid-February of this year the Hollywood director was kicked off a Southwest Air flight for being too fat. He proceeded, in view of his 1.6 million Twitter followers (and though a podcast), to object to a “sizest” and “rude” policy of the airline, his objections – to my view – equally eloquent and profane (a mix I myself enjoy muchly). Mr. Smith is a vociferous tweeter – he sends out about a couple dozen messages a day. The story was likely featured in our media as much as it was because, A. we love talking about celebrities who are fat, B. Kevin Smith is vocal – and eloquent and profane, and C. Kevin Smith is much-liked and much-followed (whatever you, dear reader, may think of him, if you think of him at all).
Ms. Washington’s column this morning is completely familiar and, sad to say, typical: “fat people are unhealthy and gross, and they should all lose weight, because it’s wrong to live that way.” I don’t know Ms. Washington and up until this morning had not read a column of hers; I have no reason to believe she would care at all for my thoughts or that she would be interested in challenging her worldview. I probably shouldn’t write her an email – as a friend quickly tweets to me this morning: “I thought I heard the rule ‘Don’t feed the trolls’ from you”.*
But you know, some of the best things that happen for me are the day-to-day discussions between people trying to understand one another. It’s true that finding other like-minded people is an essential supportive mechanism that many, myself included, employ. But I also know healthy changes (individual or society-at-large) are threatened by encampment with only those who share similar ideologies. So, a letter I decide to write:
Ms. Washington,
Your recent column is troubling because it is seems to be more fat hate. Shaming the obese does not help them make positive changes in their life; there is every piece of evidence to believe it actually makes things worse for them. Shaming the obese is quite trendy in the media these days.
You also seem to not understand Fat Acceptance; your assertion the proponents avoid the phrase “fat” means you have not read some of the more important sites regarding Fat / Body Acceptance. But I must admit, when I first read into the subject I was confused, a bit disgusted, and it seemed contrary to everything about health that I had previously understood. Fortunately, because I’d heard from credible sources it really is a human rights issue, I kept reading, and reading. I’m glad I kept reading and I wish more would consider doing so. It is a challenging subject but it has improved my life in so many ways – many seemingly entirely unrelated to body acceptance and much more along the lines of clear thinking, compassion, and a more fine-tuned ear to our social environments today.
I’m always sad to read another author who jumps on the all-too-common “fat people are gross and unhealthy and causing us all these problems” bandwagon. Just know you’re in – I won’t say, “good company”, but, lots of company. I’m sure your comments section will be full of, “fat people are gross and wrong”, etc.
If you are interested in continuing a discussion I would be happy to send a few links that I have found wonderful, relevant, and helpful for my own life, as well as share some of my own experiences.
Regards,
Kelly
I sent the email; it bounced immediately. Looks like the Chicago Sun-Times needs to update their author’s email information.
But: I’m not sure I’m the best person to address random online Fat Haters directly (you know a couple who really, really are? Michelle Allison and Kate Harding: see links below). It’s not that I don’t fully relate to Fat Hate – I do: I used to be a card-carrying Fat Hater. And these days, although my mind has changed, it’s not as if I am neutral or laissez-faire on the topic – I fully comprehend it is a terrible, terrible thing that so many in our culture engage in (including, it would seem, our own First Lady; her well-intentioned – uh, I choose to believe – “Let’s Move” campaign, entirely focused on the word and concept of “obesity” – thus framing a “health” debate irrespective of health, conjuring up images of lazy, bratty kids sitting on couches playing video games and fisting snack mix into their faces). I take Fat Hate seriously because A. I am friends with actual fat human beings, and even if I weren’t, I object to seeing any human denigrated, B. We have health problems in our culture and those aren’t being properly addressed by the OBESITY SCARE; C. worse than that, we have those who are large, obese, and really, really obese being shamed constantly by the media and culture around them; they visit their physicians (if they can afford one) and are often told their weight or size is a problem (even when it isn’t, and sometimes when more pressing problems need examination and treatment). After such experiences some don’t return to doctors, ever. Many don’t get their health diagnosed properly. I could write more about Fat Hate and just how pervasive, destructive, and obfuscating it is, but believe me when I say I have read, read, read on the subject and I remain convinced – net gain for our public health/well-being: negative.
What I’ve found works well for me is to try to have discussions with the Real Actual People in my life – when the subject comes up. Unsurprisingly, these conversations don’t always go wonderfully – but at least in face-to-face contact with acquaintances and family who – for whatever reason – do not believe I am sticking up for TEH FATTIEZ because I, personally, want to lie on a pudding-encrusted beanbag chair all day and inject bacon grease – well, these conversations have gone well enough. If nothing else, I am glad to startle my friends and family, who have come to rely on the songs of diet and self-loathing so much that any other response is a surprise. My friends simply aren’t hearing the typical litany from my lips.
In other words, when my girlfriend says, “Oh ugh, I’m so fat,” she expects me to say something like: “Oh my gosh, I know what you mean, I am simply bulging out of my jeans!” What she got instead: “Do you think you’re fat?” a considered question on my part. At this she says, “Well, yeah, I mean…” and I watch her puzzle over her answer: isn’t it obvious she is So Fat? Why would I ask her this? She definitely expects that as she shames herself I will respond either of two ways: “You’re not fat!” (the knee-jerk response some men Har-har over as the ONLY correct one, because Oooh ladies are scary and silly and neurotic when they call themselves fat!), or “I am fat too! Yay verily, I am in the same Wretchedly Inadequate Boat as you; let’s hate ourselves together”.
After a bit, listening to her experience and her feelings of fatness, I tell her truthfully, “I think you’re beautiful the way you are.”**
My in-person conversations are going well enough, although they have their roadblocks and speed bumps. I was recently treated to a long, mansplainy lecture by a beloved friend who told me no really Kelly, Calories In – Activity = How Fat You Are, including the use of various dinner utensils at the table to illustrate his point. More personally – and more painfully – I have witnessed my mother’s arguments with her new boyfriend, who praises her for her weight loss efforts and will not allow a Genuine Fat Person to pass them on the street without saying, “That’s so sad.” Last summer my mother, likely influenced by our conversations together, told me how she defiantly said to this man, “I’m not losing weight for you or for approval, I’m losing it for my health!” She wanted me to Yay-Sister! her, and to agree this dude was seriously overstepping. Instead I said, “What’s the difference between the entitlement of his comments about your person and your body, and the fact you’ve been dieting your whole life?” It hurt a little, because contrary to what you might think I don’t always enjoy challenging someone in a vulnerable area. It also wasn’t a sudden flower of Understanding opening up between us, either; in that moment my mother was not willing to understand and admit that she’d spent her life calorie-counting in an effort to be smaller – and she was definitely not in a position, challenged suddenly when she thought she’d be getting a feminist fist-pump from her adult daughter, to even consider what effect her constant weight-loss efforts and poor body image might have had on her children.
You may be surprised to know how many people – even when they don’t enjoy feeling bad about themselves, when they are not willing to give up Fat Hate or The Fantasty Of Being Thin (dear reader, if you click-through none of my other listed links, please do read this essay as linked below), when they know their personal efforts of dieting and excercise only result in temporary weight-loss – are simply not wiling to change their worldviews. I wish it were so simple, but what I am discovering is that body intolerance and self-loathing, besides being the morally correct de rigueur lifestyle, have a few very seductive upsides – sure, it’s a poisoned apple, but it tastes so sweet going down and besides, everyone else is doing it.
I can still fight the good fight of talking to friends and family; I am learning from them and, I hope, they learn from me. But tackling someone online whom I don’t know? Someone who seems entrenched in the “hate people for their own good” mentality? Should I attempt to speak to or dialogue with this person?
Sure, why not? I just know it might not go very well at all.
Oh, and please note – I actually think the accompanying picture here is of an adorably cute animal, lest ye think I am a porcine bigot.
Mentioned:
“Kevin Smith is in denial, and it’ll kill him”, online at the Chicago Sun-Times
* What’s a troll? This. Also: Concern-trolling techniques, addressed.
Michelle Allison, The Fat Nutritionist
Kate Harding’s site, Shapely Prose
“Let’s Move”, Michelle Obama’s anti-childhood obesity campaign
A response to Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move”, by Kate Harding
** You know what’s funny? Fat Haters claim that by proclaiming a compassionate message – or hells, even saying, “You are beautiful” to someone who may actually be fat – we are personally giving someone a Lifetime Fat-Ass Voucher that they will immediately employ to disgusting, disastrous affect. But you can absolutely not tell by this anecdotal (and true) story how “fat” my friend is. Like, is she a “fat” size 6, or 12, or 32? The reason you cannot tell is because So. Many. Women. (& some men) believe they are “fat” and flawed – irrespective of their actual body mass and size.
“The Fantasy Of Being Thin”, at Shapely Prose
A response to Jamie Oliver’s latest effort, more anti-obesity FOR THE CHILDREN