Regan Chastain, "Fathelte" supreme

[Trigger warning for really mean trolls.  But it's nothing you haven't heard before.]

I want to turn your attention to Ragen Chastain, size activist who blogs at Dances With Fat.  (Also the author of the incredible Why I Quit Dieting: True Stories from Real Women: How I Quit Dieting.  My post can be found here.)

credit motherhoot.com

I actually just remembered a post that I read on Socimages last year, from before I recognized Ragen's name.  She wrote this guest post about trying to convince trolls that she is in shape.

Okay, so we all probably know that persuading trolls that fat isn't bad for you is one of the most thankless tasks on the planet.  This is one of the more tame comments that Ragen received on her blog:

5’4 and 280 pounds is not healthy and you’re just deluding yourself if you think it is. There is no way that you can work out the way you say you do and eat the way you say you do and still be that fat.  You are not healthy and you need to get real, stop gorging yourself and get to the gym.

Here's the thing, Ragen is really fit.  When the trolls aren't convinced by pictures and videos showcasing her incredible flexibility, strength, grace, and stamina, Ragen writes,

Many of the people who posted weren’t satisfied with disagreeing with my Health at Every Size lifestyle or calling me a liar, but actually felt the need to diminish my accomplishments. I can only assume that they were trying to avoid some sort of cognitive dissonance. In addition, the comments reflect an intense desire to convince me that no amount of accomplishment is enough if I am fat — as if being fat is such an utter failure that it eclipses anything else that I could possibly accomplish...Remember Jennifer Hudson’s commercial where she said “Before Weight Watchers, my world was can’t” even though before Weight Watchers she had won a Grammy for her first CD and an Oscar for her first film?

Ragen is an inspirational figure and excellent writer, so after reading this blog post, I enthusiastically refer you to her blog, Dances With Fat, also on the blogroll on the right-hand side of this page.

Ragen receives a LOT of hate mail.  If you're interested in hearing what the trolls have to say, and the funny retorts that Ragen fires back at them, you can click on the link below; also, in doing so, you'll benefit HAES-friendly companies and organizations.

http://www.danceswithfat.com/hate/

"But it's SCIENCE": STUDIEZ.

By now, we're all on board that we shouldn't be mean to fat people, right?

(By the way, I love how this blog has played out like a cumulative course in FA 101.  I wish I could bring in guest lecturers, just like a real course!  Or that I was actually qualified to disseminate any of this information.  But thanks for reading.  -The Phat Ally)

Okay, there's this one retort that you, my disbelieving loved one, have.

That being fat is bad for you.  It's SCIENCE!

Okay, this mentality may be a result of years of conditioning or brain washing or whatever you want to call it, but it actually can be credited with almost all our fat hatred: from well-intentioned, condescending "interventions" towards friends to whispering-behind-our-hands, this-gossip-is-justified-because-that-fat-person-has-brought-it-upon-themselves type reactions.

One thing I have definitively learned: the multi-billion dollar industry exists for the purpose of maximizing profit at the expense of the mental health of millions of people, especially women.  So be careful when you read studies.  Are they trying to sell you a diet, with a side of low self-esteem?

Enough talk.  I always talk too much.  This time, I'll let more qualified people do the talking.  With studies that I feel are rigorous and refreshingly free of the weight bias that colors so many other studies.

I hope to keep adding to this list.  Also, links may appear either blue or grey.  I wish I knew how to standardize that, sorry!

On Advocating for a Health at Every Size (HAES) public

health model:

"Healthy Lifestyle Habits and Mortality in Overweight and Obese Individuals"
Source: Medical University of South Carolina, Department of Family Medicine 

"Healthy lifestyle habits are associated with a significant decrease in mortality regardless of baseline body mass index."

"They all work...when you stick to them": a qualitative investigation of dieting, weight loss, and physical exercise, in obese individuals:

Source: National Institute of Health

"Public health approaches to obesity must engage and consult with those currently living with obesity, if patterns of social change are to occur."

"Health at Every Size: New Hope for Obese Americans?"

Source: US Dep of Agriculture

"'For obese folks who can’t find a healthful weight-loss regimen that gives them lasting results, this alternative to conventional dieting may offer greater and more sustainable improvements to several key indicators of their health.'"

"Size acceptance and intuitive eating improve health for obese, female chronic dieters"

Source: UC Davis

"Encouraging size acceptance, reduction in dieting behavior, and heightened awareness and response to body signals resulted in improved health risk indicators for obese women."

"Weight loss for the obese: panacea or pound-foolish?"

Source: National Association for Physical Education in Higher Education

"Because traditional weight loss programs have poor long-term efficacy, a nonweight-centered paradigm might be more effective for improving the health of individuals considered overweight or obese."

"Dietary Therapy for Obesity: An Emperor With No Clothes"

Source: University of Iowa

"As he has ably pointed out in his accompanying article, there are numerous biological, behavioral, and environmental paths to overweight. It is not surprising that the more or less “one size fits all” approaches that have been taken in past behavioral interventions have been less than impressive."

On weight cycling being worse for you than maintaining a constant weight:

"In Obesity Paradox, 'Thinner' May Mean 'Sicker'"

Source: The New York Times

"In study after study, overweight and moderately obese patients with certain chronic diseases often live longer and fare better than normal weight patients with the same ailments."

"The effect of weight cycling on blood lipids and blood pressure in Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial Special Intervention Group"
Source: International Journal of Obesity

"RESULTS: Men who weight cycled did not have the predicted smaller improvements in total cholesterol, HDL, the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL, or diastolic blood pressure, compared with noncyclers."

"Genes take charge, and diets fall by the wayside"
Source: The New York Times

"'It is entirely possible that weight reduction, instead of resulting in a normal state for obese patients, results in an abnormal state resembling that of starved nonobese individuals.'"

"Confronting the failure of behavioral and and dietary treatments of obesity"
Source: PsycNET

"The stigmatization of obesity, the overstatement of health risks, and the pervasive influence of the lucrative diet industry have maintained public demand for dietary treatment. However, much evidence suggests that maintenance of high but stable weight is safer than weight fluctuation. "

Pathways from weight fluctuations to metabolic diseases: focus on maladaptive thermogenesis during catch-up fat
Source: International Journal of Obesity

"In particular, Debray et al noted that the early increase in the weight of prisoners transferred from German concentration camps to a Paris hospital in a condition of severe starvation was largely due to the accumulation of fat rather than to the rebuilding of muscles...These findings led Keys et al to describe such preferential fat accumulation and fat overshooting as ‘post-starvation obesity’."

Dieters Put on Weight in the Long Run: Study
Source: Reuters

"'The majority of people -- up to two thirds -- regained all the weight they had lost, plus more.  We concluded most of them would have been better off not going on the diet at all.  Their weight would be pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the war and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back,' said Mann."

"Does Exercise Really Keep Us Healthy?"
Source: The New York Times

"But before you turn to a fitness program as the solution to your particular health or weight concern, consider what science has found...Exercise alone has not been shown to bring sustained weight loss."


NYT: "Our Absurd Fear of Fat" by Paul Campos

"The study, by Katherine M. Flegal and her associates at the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health, found that all adults categorized as overweight and most of those categorized as obese have a lower mortality risk than so-called normal-weight individuals."




Weight loss studies tend to be biased:

"A meta-analysis of the past 25 years of weight loss research using diet, exercise or diet plus exercise intervention."
Source: US National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health

"Weight loss research over the past 25 y has been very narrowly focused on a middle age population that is only moderately obese, while the interventions lasted for only short periods of time."

"Medicare's Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Dieting is Not the Answer" (PDF)
Source: UCLA

"It is clear that dieting does not lead to sustained weight loss in the majority of individuals, and additional studies of the effects of dieting on weight are not needed...We recommend that researchers conduct long-term randomized studies on the effects of dieting on health outcomes, with a specific focus on whether the short-term health benefits of weight loss persist after the weight is regained...These studies must make every effort to minimize the biases that led to overly optimistic reports of the success of diets."


I will close with a quote from Michelle Allison, the incredible Fat Nutritionist:

"I am comfortable with the fact that, yes, there is a clear association between higher levels of weight and ill health...I am comfortable with the fact that, yes, behaviour contributes to weight...I am comfortable with the fact that, yes, many people do not find fat people sexually or aesthetically attractively...None of these facts shakes my conviction that It Is Not Okay to Engage In Appearance-Based Discrimination, to deny rights or enforce unfavourable social policies on people because of their appearance. 


"These facts also do not preclude the peculiar theory to which I subscribe, that people can be healthy and happy at a variety of weights by focusing on self-care instead of weight loss, and that, in my opinion, this is a preferable policy to the destructive and ineffective "War on Obesity" we have waged for the last decade."

Post in context.

A rare personal annecdote

When I was in college, my mom, concerned about my low energy level, took me to see a nutritionist.  I had never been very energetic, but just in case, my invested, proactive, baby-boomer Mom had spoken with doctors and gotten my blood tested.  When the results came back negative, I rationalized them with my late teenage complacency and inertia (and, I suppose, my low energy level).  But Mom reasoned that even if there was nothing concretely wrong with me, there might be something that I could adjust, in my diet or lifestyle, to fix it.

It was a very good idea of my hers.  And so, I pretty cheerfully accompanied her to the nutritionists'  house.  Whereupon I was informed that she was not actually a nutritionist, but a "nutrition detective".  And that I probably had a rare mitochondrial condition - nothing too serious, but I should still take daily supplements.

(And they were such strange supplements! - not your run-of-the-mill calcium, iron, and vitamin D, but evil-tasting and requiring a search in more than one store.)

It's true that I am bitter towards this woman because it was very clear that she had no interest in treating people, and certainly didn't take an interest in me, but only cared about providing very specific and unusual (and reductionist) solutions to complex questions.  (And for suggesting that I shouldn't study abroad because of my "condition".  And for always bringing up my "low muscle tone".  I get it, lady, sheesh.)

But if I had anything to discuss with her, it wasn't my low energy level, it was my not-so-good relationship with food.  I told her that I was afraid I ate too much.  She asked me why that bothered me. So I told her I never really let myself get hungry, and did not know how to stop eating when I was full.  I still remember the way that she pushed her glasses to the bridge of her nose, peered at me, and said, "But why do you care?  You're not fat."

With no regard for psychology and mental health, she was clearly a quack.  I only knew that I didn't like to be shut down enough to insist after three sessions that I was't going back, but at the time, I failed to put my finger on four key things:

1. A bad relationship with food is an issue, yes, even in a thin person.
2. And her idiotic, insensitive response made me fear, and hate, the ever-dreaded GETTING FAT with even more fervor.
3. I was not alone.
4. Innumerable other young women that feel the exact same way is a symptom of something gone seriously wrong with the system, not something to be dismissed and neglected.