Tag Archives: Health At Every Size

The Right Now! Show: On the Size Diversity Task Force

This week on episode 2 of “The Right Now Show with Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick) I’ll be talking about a fabulous activism project created by the Size Diversity Task Force (of which I am a proud member). The Size Diversity Task Force is asking folks to “liberate” diet books from thrift shops and rummage sales and donate the pages to the SDTF. The group will then take the pages and use them to create a world-record breaking paper-mache sculpture! You can learn more about it here:

Paper Mache in a Big, Big Way

Oh and if you’d like to win extra special bonus points and save the planet while you’re liberating diet books, check out this video created by Julianne Wotasik and Ragen Chastain:

I had so much fun working on this trailer. And I liberated over 1,500 pages for the cause just in one day! It was easy! Thanks so much for your interest in the show. Remember, I’m collecting ideas for future shows so drop me an email at jeanette at thefatchick dot com to let me know what you’d like me to talk about.

And to make sure you don’t miss a single episode of The Right Now! Show, don’t forget to subscribe to this channel.

Thanks!
Jeanette DePatie
AKA The Fat Chick
http://www.thefatchick.com

P.S. Tonight I’ll also be doing a Teleseminar with Anne Cuthbert. You can sign up for free right HERE! I’ll be speaking at 5:00 PM (PST) and I can’t wait to take your questions about how to set up fitness resolutions that won’t leave you sad, sick, injured or dead!

Thursday Theater: Presenting Right Now (With Me!)

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Hi everybody! I’m so excited to present the very first episode of my new web show “Right Now! With Jeanette DePatie AKA The Fat Chick”. Hope you like it. If you’ve got some specific topics you’d like me to cover in the show, I’d love to hear them. And if you are willing to be interviewed for the show (via my super handy skype cam) I’d love to have you on! Just comment below or send an email to jeanette@thefatchick.com.

I also feel it necessary to talk about a few of the other incredibly awesome things we’ve got going on! First of all, on the Fit Fatties Forum, we’re still going strong with our Fit Fatties Across America project. In less than 2 weeks we’ve gone from New York City to Topeka, Kansas! Can you believe it? Don’t forget to enter your minutes or miles HERE by noon on Fit Fatties Fridays. Then check back after 5PM to see just how far we all have gone.

Next, I wanted to let you know that I will be presenting a teleseminar next week Tuesday evening at 5PM PST (8 PM EST). I’ll be talking about setting safe, reasonable and fun New Years resolutions for fitness. Click HERE to register. There are limited slots and we’ve got a whole lot of people already registered. So go on over there and register right away!

Finally, I wanted to remind you that Paper Mâché in a Big, Big Way is still going strong. We’d love for you to “liberate” diet books from thrift stores and resale shops (so no more money goes to the diet industry) and send them to us so we can use them to make the world’s largest paper Mâché sculpture. Or if you’d prefer, you can donate money and we will liberate the books for you! I know. There’s just so much awesome here, it can hardly be contained!

So hop to it my little Chicklettes. Let’s get going, right NOW!

Love,
The Fat Chick

Why I Write About Health

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There are times when I and other fellow bloggers in the fatosphere are criticized for talking about fat and health. We are accused of healthism and ableism. We are told we are furthering the notion of “good fatties” who eat well and exercise and “bad fatties” who don’t. We are told that we are playing into “poster child” syndrome where fat people feel obligated to behave in a way that is outwardly healthy in order to be accepted in our society. So I thought I’d take a moment today to talk about why I blog so much about health.

First let me state for the record that I think every human being on the planet should be treated with respect. Whatever you choose to eat, whether or not you choose to exercise, whether or not you choose to go to the doctor–however you choose to live your life, that’s your choice. No one has the right to call you names or choose not to hire you or give you health insurance based on the way you look.

Second let me state that I am one person who happens to write a blog. I am not the end all and be all authority of what it means to be a fat person. I do not speak for or represent all fat people everywhere. I am one person, and I report my experience from my perspective. And in my world and from my perspective health is very important to me. So I write about it. That doesn’t mean that there are not other very important things to write about. Some people write about being fat and wearing fashionable clothes. Some people write primarily about being fat and social justice. Some people write about being fat and having a fabulous sex life. These are all perfectly wonderful things to write about. There is not one single one of us fat people who can write about the entire experience of being a fat person and cover every angle, every detail and every nuance of what it is to be a fat person in our society. We all write from different viewpoints, and I say vive la différence.

I also understand that not everybody is coming at health from the same place and with the same access. Not everyone has access to good, affordable medical care. Not everyone has a safe place in their neighborhood to go for a walk. Some people cannot walk. Not everybody has access to the food they would like to eat or the fitness resources they might like to utilize. Not everybody has much free time in their lives to focus on anything other than earning enough money to survive and to shoulder the responsibilities they have for caring for family members. I get it. I offer what resources I can when I can. I offer resources understanding that accessing these resources may prove very difficult if not impossible for some people. Again, I am not everything to everybody. But if I can be something to somebody, I’ll keep doing what I do.

As I said, I write about health because it is a topic that is important to me. And since health has always been important to me, understanding that Health At Every Size (R) was even possible was an important step on my personal journey to self acceptance. Because when I believed that being fat was necessarily and unquestionably a death sentence, I had a hard time with the idea that being fat was okay for me. I understand that there are no guarantees in life. I am not nor will I ever be “in perfect health”. In fact, I don’t believe “perfect health” even exists. Health is a continuum along which we all travel back and forth from hour to hour and day to day. And when I am sick and when I am injured and when I face health limitations, it doesn’t mean I was a good fat person or a bad fat person. It means I am a human person. And I’m okay with that. But knowing about HAES (R) was unquestionably important to me.

Just because I write about health does not mean that I think it should be important to everybody. But I want people to know, that if being healthy is important to them, health is possible at every size. They can choose to have a health focus in their lives without choosing to spend a lot of their life losing weight. If health is important to you, there are plenty of things besides weight upon which you can choose to focus that are statistically likely to help you be healthy and may have a positive impact on your quality of life.

Another reason that I choose to write about health is that fears about our health have been used to bully fat people into some very dubious health practices by people who may be well meaning or may simply want to earn a lot of money from us. Frankly, before I decide to have gastric bypass surgery, or take weight loss medications or ingest a tapeworm or empty my stomach contents into a bucket in the name of health, I want to understand the true story of the health risks of engaging in these behaviors as well as the health risks of not engaging in these behaviors. I want to understand alternative treatments. If engaging in a little bit of moderate exercise is likely to have a better health outcome than a surgery which permanently alters the way I digest food, that is something I want to know. Not everybody in the world may want to know that. It doesn’t mean that everybody in the world is obligated to choose moderate exercise. But if there is an alternate therapy that costs very little and has very few side effects then I am going to talk about it. I am going to share that possibility. You can pick it up or leave it alone as you choose. You can read my blog that day or be completely uninterested and read something else, it’s up to you.

Look, in my little blog corner of the world, I can choose to serve pancakes. Maybe somebody else will choose to serve lobster. I think I can serve pancakes without in any way disparaging the lobster chefs or lobster eaters out there. Thankfully life is a giant buffet with infinite choices. Fill your plate with the things that make you happy.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Trigger Warning: Why an At Home Stomach Pump Might Not be Such a Good Idea

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Okay, what I’m going to talk about today amounts to potential corporate backed, government sanctioned bulimia. And it has a pretty major “ick” factor as well. So if either of these things are triggering to you, you might wish to go back to Thursday’s post with the dancing bird. I’m totally cool with that.

But there has been a flurry of articles and emails flying around about a firm that wants to tackle obesity by offering what amounts to an at-home stomach pump. I know. It sounds like an article from The Onion. It sounds like a really badly thought out skit on Saturday Night Live. I even checked Snopes.com But unfortunately, it appears that this is real.

Wired magazine recently published the article, “US firm wants to tackle obesity with at-home stomach pump.” In the story, they explain that a US company (ASPIRE BARIATRICS LLC) has filed for a US patent for “Apiration Therapy” which is intended to be “a non-invasive alternative to gastric bypass.” Basically what happens is the patient has outpatient endoscopic surgery in which a tube is installed in their stomach that pokes out a very small incision in the center of the abdomen. Once the incision heals, the tube is trimmed flush with the patient’s body and a “skin port” is installed.

The patient is then encouraged to regularly pump the contents directly out of their stomach. Let me explain exactly what this means. (And I’m offering an additional trigger warning right here. Thursday’s dancing bird was super cute…) Here’s a quote from the “study”

She “aspirated” after every meal: “the patient uncapped [her] tube, connected a 60 cc syringe and extracted food from her stomach twice. This resulted in a siphon effect, which permitted the subject to freely drain the stomach by allowing the open tube to empty into a bucket. The patient squeezed the tube to enhance propulsion and to break up large food.”

Okay. So you eat a meal. And then you connect a syringe to your “skin port” and create a “siphon effect” which “freely drains” your undigested stomach contents into a bucket. Apparently by doing this and drinking water between each aspiration, the dieter was able to evacuate between 2 and 3 liters of fluid after each meal.

Let’s just stop right there, shall we? Just HOW can anybody think that this is okay? How, exactly are you supposed to have anything approaching a normal life with this treatment? After each meal, you have to attach a syringe and engage in a multi-stage process, during which you drink several liters of water and dump your raw stomach contents into a bucket. How can THIS be a good idea?

The reason I am telling you this decidedly disturbing story is not simply to gross you out or titillate you with gory details. (Although I have no doubt that both of these play a part in why the story was originally published). No, I want to use this story to illustrate a few very important points.

1. Our society makes people desperate to lose weight. Fat people face constant messages that they are sick, lazy, gross, unworthy and useless. Many are harassed by strangers in pubic places, derided by doctors, passed over by potential employers and face daily abuse by strangers and loved ones alike. Fat people who have internalized these messages or are worn down by the constant abuse may become desperate. They are desperate enough to have irreversible surgery done to alter the functioning of healthy organs. They may even be desperate enough to siphon their stomach contents into a bucket. But is the real problem here the fat, or the desperation that our world inflicts on fat people?

2. This patent application was filed based on a single study of 24 patients who, best I can tell, have been followed for less than two years. Now it’s important to note that this invention has NOT been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. But given some of the folks involved in this project (including Segway creator Dean Kamen who co-invented the prototype) it is likely to move rapidly in that direction. Can we just note the situation here where we had a guy who invented a product that keeps people from having to walk anywhere also inventing a bariatric product? Anybody else see a contradiction here? And while many weight loss schemes and products seem to work well in the first year or two, they all seem to have considerably less success at the 3-5 year stage. What reason do we have to believe that this process would be any different?

3. The purpose for the product as stated in the patent application is “The present invention is less invasive than current surgical procedures for reducing weight and allows patients to live a normal and active lifestyle without experiencing adverse side effects.” Just exactly how normal is it to spend more than 20 minutes several times per day emptying food out of your gut into a bucket? It is interesting however that the patent application does not cite any potential health benefits of the product outside of the “normal and active lifestyle”. This may be because with their extremely limited sample size and study duration they weren’t able to record any. Or maybe they just feel the health benefits of weight loss are something that “everybody knows” about. Or maybe it’s because we’re finally realizing that the health problems associated with overweight and obesity may have been blown out of proportion.

4. How is this not medically induced bulimia? Whether you regurgitate your stomach contents or squeeze them out of a tube, it basically amounts to the same thing. Sure, you may have less damage to tooth enamel and esophagus from the tube method, but it seems likely that many of the problems of malnutrition as well as the damage of the binge/purge cycle would apply here. Maybe dealing with fat by creating a systemic, medicalized eatiing disorder is not the way to go here.

5. It’s about money. The prototypes were created, the medical trials were completed all at what had to be enormous expense, because there is a tremendously huge amount of money at stake here. Gastric bypass surgeries seem to be waning in this down economy as stories of corruption, and more and more information about long term side effects and reductions in efficacy come to light. Bariatric medicine is looking for the next “big” thing that will allow them to make a lot of money. You can bet this project will be fast-tracked.

Okay, this post has already reached epic length and I should probably wrap this up here. So here’s the bottom line. Do we want to live in a world that is so emotionally toxic to fat people that they will do anything to lose weight? Do we want to live in a world where the health benefits of intuitive eating and regular moderate exercise are pushed aside in a mad dash to create stunning “before” and “after” pictures and to line the pockets of bariatric medical establishments? Or do we want to choose something better for ourselves and for all of our brothers and sisters of all sizes?

I don’t know when or if this product will ever come before the FDA. I do know that in the mean time, I will continue to work towards a HAES (R) approach to wellness. I know that I will work for health and well being for people of all sizes that is based on sound science, dignity and self-respect.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Okay, let’s get back to WORK!

New Years Resolution Special Edition

Roll Models

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It’s hard to say whether kids today have an easier time or a harder time with the whole size acceptance thing. On the one hand, kids have access to a much more diverse community now. When many of us who are currently adults were children, our community was pretty small. We were influenced by television and magazines and movies of course. But most of our role models and experience came from a much smaller group comprised of our friends, the kids at school, our church or community group, the folks in the neighborhood and our families. Via social media, kids nowadays have access to a much wider group of people. There are social groups focused on size acceptance on the internet. And some of their heroes like Adele and Lady Gaga have spoken out directly about the notion that kids can love their bodies just as they are. Thus many kids are exposed at a much earlier age to the concept of size acceptance.

On the other hand, that social media is a double-edged sword. Kids are constantly communicating and critiquing one another. Mistakes can be immortalized via words, photos and videos and be part of an child’s online presence for life. If a group of kids should decide to pick on another kid, they can do so relentlessly, 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. They can find and follow their target even if they choose to move away. Sometimes this cyber bullying can have disastrous consequences.

And there’s also the question of kids being sexualized at a much younger age. Kids as young as 3 are paraded around in beauty contests. Companies sell padded bikini tops to preteens. Child actors and particularly singers are presented as sex objects well before the age of consent. Kids are under more pressure than ever to conform to an extremely thin, sexually desirable, designer clad, hot number at younger and younger ages. And yes, obesity and childhood type 2 diabetes have gone up in the past 20 years (although there is ample evidence that this is now leveling off or even decreasing). But we also have a situation where hospitalizations for eating disorders for kids under the age of 12 is up 119%. That’s kids UNDER 12 here folks.

So what are we to do? How can we help? Well one thing we can do is all go sign the petition created by Ragen Chastain and I to keep kids off the next season of The Biggest Loser. The last thing kids need is to see other kids like themselves battered, bullied and abused on national television just because of the size of their bodies. If you haven’t signed the petition, hop on over there and do it. I’ll wait…

But the other thing I think we grownups can do, especially when we are grownups of size is to be good roll models for our kids. Sure we can also be good role models. We can choose not to disparage other people for their size and we can speak out when we see it happening. But I’m also talking about rolls of flesh–our bumps, and love handles and folds of skin. We can wear those body “imperfections” with pride. We can wear tank tops. We can choose not to speak negatively about our bodies, especially in front of kids. By walking around, comfortable in our own skin, we send kids the message that bodies are wonderful and beautiful and diverse–and that there are lots and lots of other things we can choose to be neurotic about other than how we look in our skinny jeans. I’m not talking about lecturing to kids. We all know how well that goes. I’m talking about simply modeling a level of casual comfort over the whole body thing. Because so often while kids are busy not doing what we tell them, they are watching intently to see what we do.

So what about you? Are there ways that you can be a roll model for today’s youth? I’d love to hear what YOU think!

Love,

The Fat Chick

Body Intelligence or Body War?

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This week, I’ve come across two very different approaches to young bodies in the media. One is the announcement (and subsequent activism response by the amazing Golda Poretsky) that the television show “The Biggest Loser” will now include teenagers and the other is a new study about the effectiveness of “intuitive eating” among young adults.

It’s hard to imagine a stronger dichotomy than these two approaches. On the one hand, we have “The Biggest Loser” which teaches us that our body is the enemy. No punishment is too harsh. No humiliation is too great. We must deprive ourselves of delicious foods. We must exercise until we vomit or pass out. We must make our bodies thin at all costs.

The study outlines a different approach (at least to eating) by documenting the outcomes of young adults who practice intuitive eating. The study defines intuitive eating by the young people “trusting their bodies to tell them what to eat” and “stopping eating once they felt full”. Based on the Biggest Loser story, one would imagine that those who trust their bodies and allow hunger to guide their eating would be larger than those who focus on controlling body weight. However, the study seems to indicate the opposite. Those who trusted their bodies not only had fewer signs of disordered eating, but also had a lower average BMI.

Now, it’s important to remember that this is only one study. But we’ve yet to unearth a single study that indicates that deprivation and self hatred is an effective way to maintain a lower body weight or BMI over the long term (more than 5 years). So what should we be teaching our kids, to love their bodies or make war on them?

While it seems obvious to me that teaching kids to trust the innate intelligence of their bodies is the better choice, I think it’s important to recognize this is not the easier choice. I think peer pressure plays an enormous role both for children and their parents. I think many of us have faced discrimination and outright cruelty from others because of the size of our bodies. We don’t wish that pain on our worst enemies. So it’s not surprising that we don’t want it for our children. And the prevailing wisdom of the women at the beauty shop, Aunt Thelma and even our pediatricians often involves hushed side conversations about what the parent is going to “do” about a child’s weight. It seems clear to me that peer pressure bends us towards putting our kids on diets, obsessing over their BMIs, forcing them to exercise, sending them to fat camps and yes, even allowing them to be on “The Biggest Loser”, even though there is so, SO much evidence out there showing that this approach doesn’t work. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves, “Is peer pressure a smart way to decide what’s best for kids? Is bowing to peer pressure in this case going to make our kids happier or healthier in the long run?” I think we need to ask the proverbial question, “If our friends tell us to run off a cliff, will we do it?” Or will we put peer pressure aside, assure the ladies at the beauty shop and Aunt Thelma and even our pediatrician that we are doing what science indicates is best for our kids, and teach them that their bodies are wondrous and intelligent and trustworthy?

I’d love to hear what you think.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Obesity Panic: Now Available at Birth

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Counting baby’s fingers and toes and BMI

The Washington Post recently reported on a study that purports to predict which kids are most likely to become obese. This study claims that you can use a simple formula to predict which kids are more likely to get fat over the course of their lives. Apparently, worried parents can follow the formula (using a simple online tool) shortly after the baby’s birth to begin obsessing over the child’s potential chub before they have even brought their bundle of joy home from the hospital.

That’s just great, isn’t it?

The article goes on to suggest that doctors and parents will know shortly after birth, which kids can “benefit most” from interventions aimed at preventing them from becoming fat. The article admits that helping people lose weight once they are heavy “has yielded disappointing results”. So the article suggests, we might have better success in preventing kids from getting fat in the first place.

Hmmm. Based on what, I wonder? Is there any proof that these interventions work? Is there any evidence in the world to indicate that kids who receive these early interventions wind up thinner or more healthy than those who don’t? And what does it do to these kids to be singled out at such an early age?

Reading a little further in the article, I came across this little gem:

The authors note that such a formula if used in common practice could help physicians allocate health-care resources by steering those kids who most need help toward nutrition and psychological counseling. They further note, though, that their formula should not be used to stigmatize some families or to falsely reassure other families that their babies are not at risk of becoming overweight in the future.

Okay, so let me get this straight. The formula can help doctors figure out which kids to start badgering about not getting fat (starting at birth) but reassure us that those kids and families shouldn’t feel singled out (because we tell them not to). And God forbid you parents with kids at lower risk for obesity should relax your vigilance for even a minute. Your kid could wind up fat anyway. You just can’t be too careful.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

How long before we have Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers for babies? How long until health insurance becomes more expensive for families of “high-risk” kids? How long before parents are crunching potential BMI numbers before they even decide whether or not to have a kid?

I don’t know about you, but this sort of thing really, really scares the crud out of me. It’s not enough that we have five and six-year-old kids with eating disorders. Nope. Now we’re supposed to be obsessing over the gene size and the jeans size of children before they even start solid food.

Why don’t we just make healthy foods and a safe place to play available to all kids? How about we don’t start messing with kids innate and intuitive skills for playing and eating before they even begin to form their first words? How about we teach all kids about Health At Every Size and give them tools for healthy, happy, expansive, joyful lives instead of teaching them to fear and hate their own bodies before they are out of diapers?

Let’s, at least for a little while, let kids be kids.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Where there is Hatred, Let’s Sow Love

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Recently my good friend Deb Lemire sent me a link to this amazing Ted talk. Why not go take a look right now? It’s that good. I’ll wait.

It’s clear to me that Lynne is an amazing woman–one I’d love to meet one day. She said many, many true and moving things in her short talk. But one of the things I’d particularly like to talk about today is her discussion of the war on obesity, and her assertion that war is about hate.

I think it’s important to share this business about this war on obesity. There are new people every day who join the ‘righteous’ and march out in this war. The recruits are now younger and younger with indoctrination beginning in kindergarten and even preschool. So what’s wrong with it? Why not fight against this crushing “disease” which is “killing our children”?

In answer, I’d like to begin with two words: collateral damage.

I think many of us have been caught in the “friendly fire” of the war on obesity. Many of us have seen the disapproving looks as we dare to order a roll (maybe even with real butter!) to eat with our salads. We’ve been photographed and filmed with our heads cut off and displayed for the wartime propaganda. We’ve been made scapegoats and blamed for everything from high prices for flying and insurance to global warming. We have been named bad parents and some of us have even had our children torn from our grasp. We are the butt of the joke, the cautionary tale, the perennial ‘before’ photo and the ’cause of the downfall of the human race’.

Except, for one problem. It ain’t necessarily so. There is little evidence that fat people raise health insurance rates to any significant degree. Flying is expensive because of a whole host of reasons including high fuel prices, inept airline management, a complex web of travel taxes and tariffs and poor aircraft upkeep among many other factors. There is little reason to blame fat people for any of the problems the world is facing right now.

And even beyond those issues, there is one other. The war can’t be won this way. You can’t hate fat people thin. For all the marching and the propaganda and the fabulous uniforms and billions of dollars spent, people aren’t getting any thinner. All the money we’re spending and the people being emotionally and physically damaged in the crossfire is for nothing. We are not making people any thinner.

I’d say that perhaps some of this money should be spent on determining what should be done to make the world healthier and happier without causing massive casualties from collateral damage, except we already know what actually works. It’s called Health At Every Size or HAES and it’s for every BODY. There is a lot of evidence that healthy habits are a better determinant of health at all sizes than body size. So HAES simply suggests that we work on making healthy behaviors available and attractive to folks of all sizes, and stop trying to make fat people into thin people.

Why can’t we focus on health irrespective of size? Why can’t we focus on making healthy options like good locally sourced food and safe places to walk and play for people of all sizes, races and economic levels? Why can’t we focus on teaching our children to love and respect their own bodies and those of everyone around them?

We can. As it says in the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, “where there is hatred let us sow [your] love”. So, let’s do it! Let’s commit to being body pacifists. Let’s throw down our weapons and walk out on the battlefields and bring aid and succor to those who are hurting out there. Let’s find the kids who are wandering around shell shocked and bewildered and show them that there is another way. That making a healthier body is about having a healthier community and a healthier world forged from love and not hate. “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”

Love,

The Fat Chick