"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.

Feeding your mind, pt 2 - union edition

Readers,

I am diverging from my favorite/least favorite topic of body image to express my strong support for the striking teachers in Chicago.

credit New York Times

Any one who has spent any amount of time inside an urban public classroom can tell you that teachers and their administrations are severely underpaid.

Any one who has spent a month there can tell you that public school teachers have responsibilities that extend far beyond teaching.  Low-income children, with fewer community resources to address their needs, are not only underprepared for a day of learning, they look to the school to provide them with these resources.

Let me start by explaining what I mean by underprepared: maybe their homes are cramped or loud and they don't get enough sleep.  Or they do not get enough food at home and are hungry during the day.  Some have no one at home who has the time/the ability to help them with their schoolwork.  Or to provide them the discipline to complete it.

Also: the drinking water at the school flows through the building's original lead piping and is not safe to drink.  There is not enough funding for a school psychologist.  Three first-grade classrooms share a single pencil sharpener, and student liaisons must be sent between classes to bring it back and forth.  There is a shortage of all school supplies.  The classrooms are old and ugly and don't get a lot of natural light.

These are a few among a myriad of reasons why a student might easily lose focus.  And they all were huge factors that hindered student learning at the elementary school where I volunteered my time last year.

Now, I'll shift to some problems teachers had to face.  Unmanageable class sizes of students with very different levels of ability.  And almost all these students would benefit from the help, either because of a learning disability, behavioral disorder, or emotional problem, from a social worker.  And an administration, lacking the funding to issue more than six IEPs per classroom, because seven means that the teacher gets a full-time aide.  The teacher had to spend so much time on discipline that her first-graders hated coming to school.

And when she went on a maternity leave, she was replaced with a rookie teacher, fresh from school, who cried every single day in trying to cope with the stress of disciplining/establishing ground rules, teaching, and handling the problems at home for every student of this very difficult class.  As a volunteer with a BA but no background in elementary education/power in the classroom, I could only handle problems as they came up, like a very large-scale game of whack-a-mole.

credit dailykos.com

There is no question in my mind that basing 25% of a teacher's evaluation on the basis of student growth is a misguided and harmful policy.  And of course student growth is measured by standardized testing, whose effectiveness is disproportionately affected by all the factors I listed above.  And extending the school day and school year without providing the support of aides or secondary teachers in the classroom is out of the question.  Urban teachers need smaller classes if they are to successfully get any teaching done.

And to those who are demonizing these striking teachers for taking away two days (and counting) of learning from the students.  These teachers sure ain't getting paid for striking.

Feeding your soul, part 1

I interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to present one of my own personal heroes.

Formerly Sugar,



now, having come out Valentine's Day 2012 as Cheryl Strayed.



See what I did there?!

I loved her when she was Sugar, and I was afraid I wouldn't love her any more after she came out.  But she is still the same Sugar, except now I know where to look to find her incredibly beautiful writing.  I wish I could express to all of you what she has meant to me.  I saw this glittering human speak tonight at the Harvard book store.  Meeting her in person was an incredibly moving experience.  I want to share her with every one I meet.

From the Reckoning:
"My mother never spoke an ill word about my father to my siblings and me . . . she didn’t demonize him. She cast him as human: complicated, flawed, and capable of redemption. Which means, in spite of everything, she made it possible for me to love my father, this absent man who was half of me."

From How You Get Unstuck:
"Don’t listen to those people who suggest you should be “over” your daughter’s death by now. The people who squawk the loudest about such things have almost never had to get over any thing. Or at least not any thing that was genuinely, mind-fuckingly, soul-crushingly life altering. Some of those people believe they’re being helpful by minimizing your pain. Others are scared of the intensity of your loss and so they use their words to push your grief away. Many of those people love you and are worthy of your love, but they are not the people who will be helpful to you when it comes to healing the pain of your daughter’s death.

They live on Planet Earth. You live on Planet My Baby Died."

Inspiration comes from so many places, but no matter how I have felt in these two years of reading her column, she has always spoken directly to me.  If you are interested in working through your problems, becoming a better person, or simply reading great stories, you can check out the entire archive in the Dear Sugar section in therumpus.net.

Some of my favorites:

Tiny Beautiful Things

The Reckoning

How You Get Unstuck

The Obliterated Place

Reach

Please enjoy, and welcome to the Cheryl Strayed fan club community.

Feeding your mind, part 1

Sometimes, having such a specialized blog makes me feel so insignificant, not very well rounded. Who wants to think about size acceptance all the time? Or any one thing for that matter? If you read this post, you’ll know that I clearly don’t. There are books, poetry, news, friendship, laughter, love . . . I’m going crazy. I’m just a tiny speck in the universe, you know?

SO I INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING TO LEARN SOMETHING MIND-BLOWING ABOUT THE UNIVERSE.

Buckle your seatbelts, readers.

On July 4th, scientists at CERN (remember CERN? From that timeless classic, Angels and Demons? or maybe from your own highly rigorous research) found, with sigma-5 level certainty (which is tantamount to discovery) the Higgs boson particle. 

(that’s nice what’s that) 

 If you want to hear it first from a concise, compassionate expert, I highly recommend this article, by Ainissa Ramirez.

Physics operates on a theory, known as the Standard Model of particle physics, to explain how particles interact. According to Lawrence M. Krauss, writing for CNN, “The model provides an eloquent description of almost all of nature as we have observed in experiments in a few equations that can fit on a T-shirt” [Article, cnn.com, posted 7/6/12].


Credit: http://www.physi.uni-heidelberg.de/~bachmann/Lehre/F13.php

But scientists had not yet found the Higgs boson, a subatomic elementary particle that is the basis for this theory. Peter Higgs proposed the theory for this particle in 1964 to explain why some particles have mass and others don’t. To explain how the universe went from nothing to something. 48 YEARS AGO. And modern physicists have been on a quest to find this particle or else devise a new explanation to revise our understanding of the universe. WHAT.

 Video: CNN Scientists confirm 'God Particle' exists


Thank you for tuning into this first installment of Feeding your mind. I hope your mind is as blown as mine!!