Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
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Re: Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
#2(2014)
The authors followed up this article with a subsequent article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4039050/
Re: Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
#3In modernity, hurt feelings are the ultimate sin, public health be damned.
Re: Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
#4In modernity, hurt feelings are the ultimate sin, public health be damned.
Not surprising in a world that is increasingly virtual; the space of subjective reality supersedes objective reality.
Re: Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
#5In modernity, hurt feelings are the ultimate sin, public health be damned.
On the other hand, self-acceptance by those we dislike is often derided, to the detriment of finding solutions to these social problems instead of assigning blame.
For myself, I've found suppressing my initial feelings of hostility toward people who promote incorrect ideas and providing an emotionally neutral answer is a more useful approach than derision, sarcasm, and other such behaviors.
Re: Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
#6This is significant as well in that it points out that people can legitimately struggle with overweight eating issues as the brain adapts and makes people more hungry. I struggled a lot with losing weight and continue to struggle with keeping it off. It's frustrating when some folks (presumably, who have never struggled with weight and eating, and the psychology issues with eating, such as eating to feel good and then feeling depressed because of overeating) say simplistic things like "just don't eat so much" or "try having a salad". It's not that being big is healthy; it's not. It's that breaking the cycle of being big is hard (for some).
Re: Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
#7This is significant as well in that it points out that people can legitimately struggle with overweight eating issues as the brain adapts and makes people more hungry. I struggled a lot with losing weight and continue to struggle with keeping it off. It's frustrating when some folks (presumably, who have never struggled with weight and eating, and the psychology issues with eating, such as eating to feel good and the…
I agree. Earlier this year I read an article highlighting just how extraordinarily rare it is to overcome morbid obesity in adulthood and maintain this progress indefinitely without medical intervention. Ultimately, we need to accept that our bodies, including the organ which gives rise to our behavior, are physical systems subject to occurrences entirely beyond our conscious control.
I've not dealt with obesity personally, but I would speculate that many of the people who enjoy "fat shaming" are unfamiliar with the experience of having internal conflicts which lead one to take actions that are obviously irrational, even to the person performing them. This is an area where more empathy would lead to greater mutual understanding and perhaps increase the probability of finding solutions. (Of course, finding this empathy is perhaps a similar challenge.)
Re: Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
#8This is significant as well in that it points out that people can legitimately struggle with overweight eating issues as the brain adapts and makes people more hungry. I struggled a lot with losing weight and continue to struggle with keeping it off. It's frustrating when some folks (presumably, who have never struggled with weight and eating, and the psychology issues with eating, such as eating to feel good and the…
That goes for a lot of issues, it's hard to empathize.
Addict? Just stop using
Alcoholic? Just stop drinking
Gambling issues? Just stop betting
Depressed? Just cheer up
Unmotivated? Just try harder
There are underlying, complex factors to most of these and many other issues. It's easier to ignore them when you've never directly dealt with it.
Re: Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
#9Nutrition is such a vast science, one where new theories and ideas are coming almost every month and one where the general public is either completely uneducated or working off of decades-old assumptions (such as following the surgeon general's dietary guidelines from the 70s or 90s). It's no wonder to me at all that a vast majority of people regardless of their current size have zero idea what to do to eat healthily.
I became interested in the Health At Every Size movement during its inception as part of recovering from an eating disorder and, at its core when it was first started, it had a very positive message- essentially "Hey, everyone, let's promote the idea that we all should eat healthy food and get exercise and do fun active stuff regardless of if we're fat or thin or old or young or tall or short." It was a direct challenge to the idea that you had to be a particular size to be active or to go to the gym or to do active hobbies. However very soon after inception it was perverted into a message of "It is entirely possible to be healthy regardless of how fat you get and if you are fat and your doctor says that you are not healthy because you are fat then it is your doctor who is wrong because it's never, ever wrong to be fat, ever."
Message #1 was great as it was all about promoting eating healthier regardless of your size, getting regular exercise that was fun and that you enjoyed doing regardless of your size, and about being gentle with yourself during that process- so stepping away from hating yourself because you were fat and instead doing something productive with that brainpower. Message #2 corrupted that into "You are perfect because you are fat and if anyone tells you that you should be less fat then they're trying to abuse you and make you change to suit them."
I'm extremely excited about the nutritional research that's coming out regarding gut microbes and their potential impact on our health and weight because I imagine how awesome it'd be to go to your doctor, spit in a cup, and have it tell you what all you should and shouldn't be eating (due to genetics, microbes, etc) as well as recommend which probiotic you should be taking to get your gut bacteria in line.
Re: Call for an urgent rethink of the ‘health at every size’ concept
#10This is significant as well in that it points out that people can legitimately struggle with overweight eating issues as the brain adapts and makes people more hungry. I struggled a lot with losing weight and continue to struggle with keeping it off. It's frustrating when some folks (presumably, who have never struggled with weight and eating, and the psychology issues with eating, such as eating to feel good and the…
I agree. Earlier this year I read an article highlighting just how extraordinarily rare it is to overcome morbid obesity in adulthood and maintain this progress indefinitely without medical intervention. Ultimately, we need to accept that our bodies, including the organ which gives rise to our behavior, are physical systems subject to occurrences entirely beyond our conscious control. I've not dealt with obesity pers…
I think you're touching on the heart of the tension behind the "health at every size" movement.
I know a couple of people who are big advocates of it, and surprise surprise, they're all pretty fat. They're still wonderful people, and I of course don't respect them less because they're fat. You know, for me, it's like..who cares? It's not my body. I'm even pretty sympathetic to how much difficulty they have doing basic stuff, just for having their joints and muscles carrying around an extra hundred pounds.
But it really seems to me that what's going on is that they're reacting to the constant onslaught of fat-shaming and moral judgments with this ideology of "health at every size". There is a constant moralizing about fat people in our culture, like if you're fat you're lazy or bad or whatever, none of which is warranted.
But I think that's where things get muddled--culture turns fatness into a moral failing, wrapped under a sheath of health concern trolling. Reaction to the moral judging is to try and take away the health claims, when that's really kind of missing the point.
What would be appropriate, I think, is to push for "human dignity at every size," you know, and leave the moralizing to stuff that matters. But that's not so catchy or easy to distinguish, I guess...
As for the actual health claims, I, for one, don't buy it at all, it seems obvious to me that carrying around excess weight is going to cause a number of immediate problems (joint strain, etc), to say nothing of the strain on your organs for being encased in excess fat. But the health stuff is separate from the moralizing, and I don't know how you'd get the larger culture to separate out "you're fat and it's hurting your body" from "you're fat and you're lazy/stupid/etc".