Race, weight, diet

[sarahmichigan]

This Big Fat Blog post is mostly about being appalled that some journalist is saying that Fat Acceptance is "disempowering" and that higher body self-esteem in minority populations is misplaced and dangerous. However, the very long discussion in the comments about eating disorders, dieting, and the "intuitive eating" approach were incredibly fascinating to me.

Many people hear about the Overcoming Overeating Approach, or even try parts of it, and think it doesn't work because they still overeat, even after they "legalize" all food and stop dividing food into "good" and "bad" columns. They feel the MUST have some food restrictions, calorie-counting, etc. in place or they'll overeat. My contention, and that of several other commenters, is that you're not seeing the full picture if you believe you'll be "out of control" in your eating habits without outside, arbitrary limits. "Legalizing" foods is just part of the process-- you also have to understand when you're eating for emotional reasons rather than for hunger. You need to examine the politics about weight, fat, food, and gender in this country (Fat IS a feminist issue). Legalizing all foods is just one of many steps to undoing all the sick cultural conditioning we all have pounded into us about food, fat, weight, and morality.

The comments by the registered dietician working with eating disordered clients who was a binger herself are incredibly touching.

http://www.bigfatblog.com/archives/000488.php#comments

Comments

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

I think the comments on that blog err as much, if not more, than the NatRev article they're deriding, but in the opposite direction. It does bother me when people insist that they have no control over their weight, and so we should all accept it. I'm not talking about people like you or me -- I consider us "heavy," and while I personally would like to lose some pounds, I also prefer to be satisfied with my weight than obsess on some goal I may never reach.

I'm talking about the morbidly obese, and from my own experience, I DO think their obesity is tied to their self-esteem, and that it's not (despite the read I got from some comments on BFB) primarily an external. The people I've known who are so obese I have trouble being around them (with one exception, my sister-in-law) have been so utterly miserable, I'd have trouble being around them if they weren't obese. I don't get a lot of sense out of saying, "Yay! Hooray! You're so miserable that you've eaten your therapist!"

I get that mocking isn't productive, I agree that for people who are obese because they're miserable, making fun of them isn't going to do anything for their esteem (and hence, their waistlines). On the other hand, I don't personally think that celebrating is constructive, either. If someone spends all their time playing video games instead of cleaning the house, neither mockery nor celebration will get that behavior to change, either.

So this is the reaction I have when I see people saying we should celebrate the overweight. For most people, I think weight is what it is. *shrug* Not something to mock, not something to celebrate.

[lilpeace.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if I can concisely put into words the things this made me think about...but...

I agree that it is not healthy to think obsessively about one's weight, whatever that may be. And also that
"social stigma" is not necessarily a good motivator for people to change--or that people should change to fit someone else's standards.

However, I also believe that the deeper problem has nothing to do with what someone weighs, it's more a problem of living in a culture and an economy that thrives off of telling people there is something wrong with them.

I totally believe that we are more lazy, unhealthy and sedentary than maybe we've ever been. I believe that most of the food we eat contributes to mental and physical health problems, and that Americans put a lot of shit in their body that is really, really bad for them.

But I think thin women worry about their bodies just as much as fat women, or women anywhere in between. I have always been thin, and people bigger than me have always made the assumption that I was thrilled with it, that I must have it so much easier, am so much less oppressed because of it, etc. I was also teased and called names in school because I appeared to some to be underweight and "anorexic," when in fact I was constantly trying to gain weight. I see thin women being demonized just as much as fat women, though it's seems more acceptable (at least among the more "liberal" and "body positive" groups I tend to be around) to hate thin women. There's something wrong with that, too.

The media, peers, and just life in this culture will always point out something about ourselves that we could "fix." I don't think it's so much about fat or thin being a better place to be--but the article was not off in suggesting that sitting in front of the TV three hours a day, eating McDonalds or candy is an unhealthy and disempowering habit for anyone to have, regardless of body size. It seemed like some of the response posts went so far as to praise genuinely unhealthy behavior patterns, like eating whatever we want.

Is it wrong to say that it's not ok to eat whatever we want? How is it different from making some other choice to take care of oneself? I might really enjoy eating a whopper, but I know that it's horrible for me and that it will actually cause me to feel more moody than I already am--so should I do it anyway just because I want to? That's not empowering, it's just defiant. There are lots of things I might like the immediate effects of, and that doesn't mean I should do them. Also, food and hunger affect the same part of the brain that becomes affected when drug addiction and alcoholism are present--so I realize that to some extent a person's control over what they put into their bodies may be impaired (and lots of people with eating disorders also have substance abuse problems)--but that doesn't mean they should do it just to prove they don't care what others think about it.

...my thoughts are not entirely organized around this, but it made me think a lot.