My response to Marily Wann's Latest: "You Can Be Fat and Fit!"

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Big Deal: You Can Be Fat and Fit

I am going to start this with the caveat that there can be people of large sizes and large proportions who certainly can be in great shape, aerobically and otherwise. The large sized weight lifter that made it to the Olympics is probably in better shape then most large people. There are football players, wrestlers and others who play sports at heavier and larger sizes. There are many midsized people who do enjoy sports, dancing and active living. All the best to them. Stay as active as you can and enjoy life as much as you can no matter your size. A lot of people MY size are totally bedbound, the housebound doctors have told me, so I even say by the grace of God go I. So enjoy but now I must address yet another article that just adds to the pile of confusion out there. Are there Healthy smaller fat people? Sure. Are the scientists finding proof, that one doesn't have to be a skinny-minny to be "healthy" and when it comes to some problems like pneumonia that it actually may be a detriment...Sure.

But newsflash....this is up to a certain point. In most cases dependent on height, up to the mid-200s line.

Over 300lbs for most people, the breathing is affected, movement is affected and more. I mean how far does the delusion have to go and the active denials? Sad to say this one even made it to mainstream media on CNN

Marilyn Wann states in the article...

"Another recent study found people who were "metabolically healthy" and overweight or obese had no higher death risk than metabolically healthy "normal" weight people."

How many fat people are "metabolically healthy"? That would be an interesting question to ask especially for the supersized given the very idea of metabolism has been set aside by the diet industry. I obviously am NOT metabolically healthy. Though would they say someone at a supersized weight who suffers from eating disorders which has led them to a high weight is? I am a bit confused by that study and doubt it applies to those in the super-sized weight categories.

Wann continues:

"I take an interest in the topic because I'm fat and because I don't have a death wish. I'm also interested because, like so many fat people, I've encountered weight discrimination when I seek routine medical care. I was 26 years old when I was denied the right to purchase health insurance. I had no significant history of illness or injury. I was just fat. That day, I became a fat rights activist."

What is this talk about a "death wish"? I often have pondered what if Wann did get ill? It is strange to me I am still hearing the same lines written in the mid 1990s. Most women her age, she is two years older then me which makes her 46, are starting to face some health problems, that includes THIN women. Most of my friends who have hit the age of 40 or over have dealt with at least ONE health issue that took some degree of comprehensive health care. She seems to have a very strong Baby Boomer ethos rather then that of a Generation Xer with a whole "we are going to live forever" theme to it.

Does illness as a fat person mean having a "death wish" or that you did something wrong? This is the "healthism" stuff I've mentioned in passing.  One ponders this. And who cares if she had some history of injury or illness? Should anyone who hasn't been there think anything less of anyone who has? Should one give out medals to those blessed with good genetics and good fortune in avoiding car accidents, thyroid issues, some arthritis,  a hole in the snow to trip in, or a cup of too hot of coffee spilling on the leg? She is right about weight discrimination in the medical arena, I certainly have explored that issue myself. She is also correct about the non availability of medical equipment but should the response of the fat be an enforced smiles, "we aren't that sick anyhow" response? Or demanding that some changes be made to the above? Yes too much blaming the fat happens and weight loss techniques like WLS that fail and maim and all the biases!  But what if I said to Marilyn Wann, fat is often the RESULT of illness a symptom in itself, that is where size activists who believe the way she does, refuse to get on board. She continues in the article to praise HAES which I of course disagree with. She talks about those living to 65. Long-lived society?, actually the lifespans in America are dropping.

"Here's a finding from the recent research that didn't make the headlines: For people over 65, being fat wasn't associated with increased risk, not even for the fattest old people. When do most people die, in our increasingly long-lived society? Over age 65, perhaps?"

This part of her article really disturbed me though....

"I also learned this week that a highly accurate way to predict a person's risk of dying is to see how easily they can get up from the floor. I'm trying to imagine how different our health care system would be if, instead of focusing on weight and weight loss, caregivers did the sitting-rising test instead."

How many supersized especially extremely super-sized people can get off the floor? I fail this test massively. Why? I fell down twice and know I cannot get off the floor. I was stuck and it was terrifying both times, and in one case, needed three grown men to help get me up to the place where I could finish the job in getting up all the way. Wann seems to have this edge to her articles where someone being sick, is enough to prove them wrong or "bad". That one would be an interesting sociological study and essay. We live in a society now where sick equals someone is "bad", instead of just with the admittance of the natural flow of things on this earth. Why must caregivers do the sitting-rising test? That one confused me. Okay my thin doctor gets down on the ground and gets up? So what? They probably can go camping and other things I miss. What does that prove? Did she think this one through?

With my failures to get off the floor, at least I was saved the medical bills from calling the paramedics to bring me to a standing position. My first fall I wrote about and the second one I had only weeks later, and at that point switched to a walker due to my balance issues. Since this summer there hasn't been any more falls. For years, due to youth, and after my initial weight loss from the massive weight gain, I did practice getting on the floor and then getting up, to make sure I still "could" but I lost the ability with time anyway, and remember in my case, I am not bedbound and tried to stay as active as I could including physical therapy. So what does that test say to fat people but hey you midsized people who can still get down on the floor and play with your puppy or your kids or scrub a spot on the floor are okay and those of you whose weight has become too heavy for you to lift off the floor are not? Is she living in reality here?

Hey I could take some of these edicts from on high if she did admit, "OK I am talking for smaller sized fat people here, I know you supersized or in my case extreme super-sized folks have other concerns" but she does not, she expects the HAES formula to work, and issues a blanket edict of "You Can be Fat and Fit!" Um no..... I am even facing battling a leg infection over the last month, I am not sure what has brought on the reaffirmed battles with leg infections, this time with huge fevers to go along with them, once I hit near 104. Trust me I am sad because I struggled with this for years, having 6-7 of these a year for so long and many times in the hospital, and recently I went almost an entire year without a leg infection in my lymphedema leg and being thrown back into the infection merry-go-round obviously is very frightening to me. I almost have lost my life to this stuff before. What brought it on? I am not sure, and even have the worrying feeling that my intense commitment to a physical therapy and walking program brought these latest infections on despite improved sugars.
Hey I write this blog knowing I live in a society where the prevailing ethos is unless you are healthy and well, [and wealthy in a lot of cases] you aren't worth listening too, but since it's an ethos I reject, I speak out anyway.


Wann continues:

"How much healthier would we be? How much more would we actually enjoy healthy living, free from weight judgment? How much time and money would we save? How much discrimination and human tragedy could we avoid? I'm guessing it'd be tons."

How about just some reality? How about some understanding? How about some size activists admitting that people like me exist? How about telling the truth about weight while at the same time demanding good treatment for fat people and good medical care without shame and hatred even if we are indeed stuck on the floor when we fall down? How about admitting what is going on? 

See:

Health At Every Size? And Healthism in the Size Acceptance Movement"

"Seeing Through the Obesity Lies"

Are Calories Themselves a MYTH?

Calories poorly grasped for maintaining weight:Obesity experts concerned about caloric literacy

I like Dr. Sharma's other writings and website, but disagree about calories.

To be honest, I have wondered to the shock of others, if calories are even "real". A few friends have chuckled saying, "Now Five Hundred Pound Peep, you may be getting out to lunch with this one!"

Some may wonder about me saying, that "Is she insane"? Yeah I know I am pondering something that is a bit different. Just thinking aloud. But what else would you expect of someone like me? Remember I've had enough strange health problems not to buy all the "accepted wisdom" as complete and utter fact. One day if technology and knowledge is allowed to expand anymore and it's not a new "dark age" and if the world hasn't ended by then, well one day, the facts will prove they got fat people wrong, very wrong.

But I always have had that thought lately, I mean given calories don't seem to mean a thing to my body, and I am told all this stuff about how they work, and I never see the evidence, tell me why I should believe the whole "calories in and calories out" myth? Why should I believe fewer calories mean weight loss?  How many fat people do I know that worry about every little bit that crosses their mouths while so many people who are thin, just eat when hungry and let the chips fall where they may, literally.

I know EXACTLY what calories are in everything. I can sit here and add up what I ate today, and yesterday. Every fat person over the age of  25 just about knows every calorie in every food. They drum it into your head. Hey I kept endless food diaries for YEARS. Do Weight Watchers enough and the other stuff, and you got the calories memorized. Toss out a food, the portion, and I bet I can hit within 50 to 100 calories where it's at. By the way for some reason everything you eat out, has far more calories.  I know what foods have more calories then others. With nutrition, given my health food interests and others, I can tell you what foods to eat for healing different diseases. This book is referred to all the time in my household.

They ignore metabolism when it comes to the CALORIES IN and CALORIES out formula, and they ignore the bodily systems that turn calories to fat so automatically and how this system is thrown off.

Hey did you know they literally figured out the calories in food, by lighting them on fire and BURNING them, I kid you not. Any hands? Even Straight Dope admits that is SIMPLICITY, but is the human body simple? NO. Also just adding up the carbohydrates, proteins and fats too seems very limited as well, given that even nutritionists admit to the existence of micro-nutrients.  Hmmm, so if you don't even know everything that exists in food yet? Maybe I distrust science, or maybe I just realize so much of it today isn't as unbiased as it claims. The other day, a food company told me GMOs were safe......hmmmmmm

Do they even understand completely how this energy is utilized? Calories are a measure of "heat", by that alone the fat process is not explained.

How come no fat people ever are studied when it comes to calories?

The math never added up for me. You do realize to be 500 lbs, they expect your caloric intake to be over 10,000 calories a day.  I couldn't afford the groceries. I mean they have so much of our society dedicated to calories in and calories out, and well, all the health magazines, shows, constant beration isn't stopping anyone from getting fat is it? Why do we believe something that does not work? By the way what is with those women's health magazines that tell everyone to lose weight and then put in endless recipes for things like h'ordeuvres dripping in olive oil and 20 dollar a pound fish?

I guess it's like the old days when people believed in spontaneous generation, accepted as fact, not questioned until later. They may light a pound of fat on fire and claim it that it equals 3500 calories and try and divide up the food into the simplest equations, but something isn't adding up. Feel free to disagree with me here, or that I am on too much of a stretch, this discussion is open.

FOOD BRAND CHART that says it all!

Hmmm, I know that 5 major corporations run just about all the news, which is why there is so many lies in the news. How much of our food traces back to a small number of megacorporations? Click to make picture larger. 

Corporate Food Masters Busy Trying To Fatten Up The Rest of the World

I guess our American corporate food masters are trying to fatten up the rest of the world. So in Middle Eastern cultures where they have parsley, tomato, onion and cucumber salads and baked chicken and hummus, they want you to wipe that away for an orgy of cream cheese in fried dough hooked onto a pizza filled with more cheese. You got to be kidding me.

How They Plan to Get Rich From the Fat

How to get rich from the global obesity crisis

You know that whole Hegelian dialectic thing, create a crisis, and then produce the solutions?...[in this case they desire to produce "solutions" that make them money!] Remember repeated business due to failures in weight loss keeps the whole fat hamster wheel humming.

But what does it mean for your portfolio? A new Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Global Research report looks at how investors can take advantage of what they call the "globesity" trends. Opportunities include:

Pharmaceuticals and Health Care: We look at companies taking advantage of the FDA's increased support for obesity drug development. We also highlight companies tackling related medical conditions and needs including diabetes, kidney failure, hip and knee implants. We also consider equipment such as patient lifts, bigger beds and wider ambulance doors.

Food: We position companies on their efforts to access the $663 billion “health and wellness” market, as well as on how they are reformulating their portfolios to respond to increasing pressure such as “fat taxes” to reduce sugar and fat levels.

Commercial Weight Loss, Diet Management and Nutrition: Up to 50 percent of some western populations pursue dieting, targeted nutrition and behavioral change making it a $4 billion market in the U.S. and growing globally.

Sports Apparel and Equipment: This is the longer-term play, but we believe that promoting physical activity will become a key priority for more government health policies.

No One Chooses Obesity: Obesity Chooses Them; The Skinny on Fat: Part 1

If only it had not chosen me! LOL

No one chooses obesity; obesity chooses them notes Robert Lustig, MD



I plan to watch all the episodes of this but will be dealing with them, one by one.

Lustig asks "Did everyone just become a bunch of gluttons and sloths?"

Good question. No they DID NOT! Until the powers that be figure that out, then nothing will be done that will work.

He then adds


"If it was just glutton and sloths how do you explain obesity in 6 month olds?


Would you call them glutton and sloths?


This goes far beyond personal responsibility!"


Remember this article I posted?  



"Animals and 6-Month-Old Infants Are Getting Fatter … Which Mean that It’s Something In the Environment"

He talks about how this statement "a calorie is a calorie" has become a dogma that ignores endless things

They cover the things I've talked about on this blog, about what is causing all the obesity, high fructose corn syrup, antibiotics, fast food, etc.

He talks about the worse things about American modern life. He adds in information about the cheap global fast food diet. It is designed to taste good and keep people eating. This has spread everywhere. Every new nation that these fast food restaurants end up in, the people start getting fat.

One lady adds, we have had the perfect storm with restricted activity, chemicals we don't know what we have been exposed to and it's all working together. They talk about how the fat free stuff impacted people and led for more eating of sugar.

 They are right about the bad food being more easily accessible.

Lustig talks about metabolic syndrome that includes several diseases, and says they have it wrong about those things being caused by obesity instead of obesity being a marker for those things and talks about how widespread these things are, now in 60% of the United States. His statistic about how these diseases are hitting the NEWLY developing world is astonishing, and that these things now beat the rates from infectious diseases.

"Something is going wrong here" he adds.

That's for sure!

Diets Seem Like "Magic" to Me.

My body has long exited the normal 'Diet and lose weight" mode. From my own experience, people who "eat less" to lose weight are performing "magic" that has no bearing on my actual reality. Try explaining this one to doctors, no one believes you. Friends who have spent enough time with me do.

My digestive problems which are a constant bane of my life, has limited the eating. I seem to go from doing good to bad rather quickly and had two days of nausea and pain. Realizing the food allergies are getting worse and worse has limited the eating.

Now having a hate relationship with food because it causes me pain more often then not has limited my eating. If a doctor told me to go on a diet, I'd laugh in their face and tell them to try having to eat like I do. That includes avoiding even the seeds in strawberries and sesame seeds on buns or health food store sesame chips, to keep from painful bowel attacks as well as all dairy, potatoes, fish, anything fried, anything with too much oil, and a vast variety of other foods that seem to have become my enemy.

I even due to warmer weather and this focus on community involvement and trying to do at least a few things with my life, from art to a new interest in disability advocacy have been more active [well for me], in between times spent in bed, but that hasn't seemed to help though some of the stamina has improved at least on a good day.

I know a normal person would be losing tons of weight, I'm not from what I can tell. I wondered if I have finally exited the 500s, somehow I doubt it. Sometimes this sort of thing is scary. I think about my life and experiences and how everything I am told does not match my own reality.

Time Magazine and the Path Foundation Agree: "Everyone is Fatter then you Think!

Americans May Be Fatter Then We Think

What kind of study is this and financed by who?

In a study published in the journal PLoS One, lead author Dr. Eric Braverman, president of the nonprofit Path Foundation in New York City, which supports brain research, says that our current measure of obesity — body mass index, or BMI — significantly underestimates the number of people, especially women, who are obese.

Braverman and his co-author, Dr. Nirav Shah, New York State’s Commissioner of Health, studied 1,400 men and women, comparing their BMI measurement to their percentage of body fat, as measured by a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan. While BMI is a simple ratio of a person’s height and weight, the DEXA scan — which is normally used to measure bone density — can distinguish between bone, fat and muscle mass.

What is the Path Foundation?

It seems if they were interested in real brain research, they would study the influence of hormones, chemicals and satiety rather then a study like this which could be picked up and used by the Industrial Diet Complex to tell the fat people, there are far more of you then we thought!

I went to the Path Foundations page of things they are involved with and interested in studying...

I think you will find this list very interesting.....

Our findings will make a major contribution to the restructuring of American health care to brain-based medicine by:


• Affirming that brain’s cognitive energy is directly related to the number of brain cells firing, and exponentially related to the brain’s processing speed.


• Confirming that adequate hydration and preservation of brain cells sustains cognitive energy with age by keeping the mind fast and powerful.


• Linking dementia and obesity to hormonal imbalances in the brain.


• Establishing a biomarker for obesity management


• Proving the impact of the hormone PTH on osteoporosis and dementia prevention while emphasizing the critical importance of maintaining low levels of PTH for longevity.


• Improving parity of men and women in the work force with awareness and early correctionof the rising levels of hormones FSH and LH from age twenty-two onwards.


• Highlighting menopause as a main cause of dementia in women.

I bolded and increased the font of some of these I find worrying....


Is it just me or is there a "brave new world" kind of edge to this "science"?

Don't get me wrong, I agree with them about the BMI being inaccurate, but notice even that was in the cause of saying too many are too fat.

How come no research on the effects of all the chemicals and toxins on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis?

Biomarkers for the obese? Would the be given at birth to see who will be fat?

Well I find it all disturbing, even the part about menopause causing dementia. Old age and dementia do go together. Just strange.

They have studied 'hypometabolism in the brain".  Hey remember that article where it connected dementia and obesity from acouple years ago? This was some different researchers, but this story reminded me of it.

Is it just me but does some of this the research seem pointed in a certain biased way? Not all reseach, some are doing decent work, but I am thinking some "brave new world" thoughts about how such research will disenfranchise the obese more and more ["future dementia" victims, their brains are "deficient"] without really offering HELP OR ANSWERS.

I do not mind scientists studying neurology to figure out how people's bodies work, even I believe that fat people's bodies work differently. However why the focus on this sort of study?

Just some things I am thinking about

PS. Later I was on another blog Living~400lbs and saw some discussion of this. There one of the commenters wrote about Dr. Eric Braverman's book.

I find myself sighing yet again, I do think some changes to eating can help, but here we have the false message of "hyper-control" that such types think everyone has. Would this guy even believe a 500lb woman buys Veganaise and uses tumeric in her food on purpose?

Even scarier is Dr. Braverman's page, where testimonies of some of women who are only 150-160lbs consider themselves desperately obese.

"Once Fat: You'll Never Get Slim"

"Once you are fat, you'll never get slim"

I have never seen someone who was previously fat become forever thin. Some dieters get down for a while but it always goes back up. The only person I know who used to be fat but became permanently thin is someone who had severe cancer and had half their intestines removed. Not exactly the way you want to do it.

The scientists, from the Medical Research Council's National Survey of Health and Development, have concluded it is better to avoid getting fat in the first place.

They followed 5,362 men and women from their birth in 1946 and 20,000 from birth in 1958, measuring their weight and blood pressure and assessing their lifestyles.

The researchers found both groups began gaining weight in the 1980s and have steadily increased in size ever since.

Dr Rebecca Hardy, the council's programme leader on body size, said: "Once people become overweight, they continue relentlessly upwards. They hardly ever go back down.

"A few lose weight but very few get back to normal. The best policy is to prevent people becoming overweight.

"For men (weight) goes up steadily through life. For women it starts slowly and accelerates in the mid-thirties," she added.

I wonder about preventative measures being important too, because it seems once the fat is there, it's far harder to get rid of. Also why aren't the scientists paying attention to the fact of lower metabolism among fat people? Metabolism is the ignored elephant in the room.

Weight Watchers Works?

"Weight Watcher Works"...

If it worked, wouldn't there be fewer fat people?

I did Weight Watchers circa 2008, all those points, that annoying little brown booklet, all those weird counting of points, [I had to eat the same as the people who weighed 230lbs], all that nauseating cabbage soup that ended up chewing out my bowels, where you had to stingily measure out the tomato paste, I was happy when it was over. I lost 8lbs for my months of trouble but then trying to figure out what fat had been lost among all the 20-30lb up and downs due to water, was difficult.

The director yelled at me, telling me, "don't you care about your life"? You should be losing more!" Hey yeah tell me about it.

I saw this story done on national news, forget if it was ABC, CBS or NBC.

By the way the study was funded by Weight Watchers!

In the weight loss study, which was funded by Weight Watchers International but run as an investigator-led trial with all data collection and analysis conducted by the independent research team, researchers assessed 772 overweight and obese adults in Australia, Germany and Britain

I wouldn't touch Weight Watchers with a ten foot pole now.

A Letter To Jamie Oliver

"Jamie Oliver calls for global action to tackle obesity"

A coalition of nutrition and health experts – ranging from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to former government chief scientist Sir David King – are urging western nations to play a key role in halting the dramatic rise in numbers of obese people across the planet.

"There seems to be a trend with developing countries wanting to follow in the footsteps of the western world, and copy their patterns of fast food and consumerism," Oliver told the One Young World conference in Switzerland on Friday. The phenomenon was a particular problem in India, South America and the Middle East, he said. Oliver added: "Pre-packed convenience food is seen as a symbol of being 'modern' in developing countries, but the problems it causes are long-term, and costly." "Diet-related diseases are two of the top five causes of premature death for people under 60 years old. They look set to create an absolute catastrophe over the next 30 to 40 years if nothing changes."


Oliver's aim is to encourage heads of state and the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, to "sit up and take notice" at a summit on non-communicable disease in New York on 20 September. He called for a "global movement to make obesity a human rights issue" and urged a million people to sign a petition. Oliver also urged countries to hold on to their national dishes, and for recipes to pass from generation to generation, saying: "I believe that together we can make some real noise ahead of this meeting of experts."

Dear Jamie,

The United Nations is not going to solve obesity. The politicians do not care, and the multi-national corporations including the pharmaceutical companies will profit from the hordes of the newly fat. The food multi-nationals are profiting now off selling people pseudo-food and their versions of chemical Solyent Green. Also, if one looks at the global economic predictors, the world is leaning on the edge of economic collapse what will happen when people no longer can afford the packages of ramen noodles and greasy potato chips? Turning to the United Nations to solve obesity is like turning to Godzilla to rebuild your city's infrastructure, after a double earthquake-hurricane has devestated it. Why aren't you telling the UNITED NATIONS to rescind Codex Alimentarius which is out to destroy even more access to healthy supplements and health food?

Wake up Jamie and quit being a sucker! They want to solve "obesity" like they want to solve world wide exploitation. They don't! All you want to do is help them get even more power to tell people what to eat and of course then they can raise food prices even more, and sell the world "starvation" and "rationing" for the "common good".

Book Teaches Fat Kids, Diets Work...yeah right!

"Book Weighs Heavily On Childhood Obesity"

CONTROVERSIAL new children’s storybook about a girl who transforms her life by going on a diet has been condemned by parents and health experts around the world – before it has even hit the shelves.

The book, Maggie Goes on a Diet, written by US self-publishing children’s author and dad Paul M Kramer, will not be published until October, but Amazon and Barnes and Noble are taking advance orders for the book on their websites.

The hardcover book, which is aimed at six to 12 year olds, tells the story of a 14-year-old girl who goes on a diet and “is transformed from being extremely overweight and insecure to a normal-sized girl who becomes the school soccer star”.

The book’s overview explains: “Through time, exercise and hard work, Maggie becomes more and more confident and develops a positive self-image.”

The front cover shows an overweight girl looking into a mirror and seeing a much slimmer version of herself.

If anything this is setting up this girl for getting fatter. Why not put her in soccer if she likes it, if she can still run and see what happens? Like have FUN? How many of us fat kids, looked in the mirror, like the fat girl with her horned pig tails on the front cover, wishing we would see a skinny body?

I have never seen a super-fat kid turn into a skinny look like other kids. Now there are children who from illness, and other factors just like adults can gain temporary weight. But here we see the carrot of "you can be super-thin too, if you just WORK hard enough" held out to the kiddies and it's a lie. Here's a secret, the skinny kids don't have to WORK at it, they just ARE.

What is scary to me about my childhood, and I was fat as a kid, though supersized obesity came much later, is how ACTIVE I was. I rode my bike EVERYWHERE even 5 miles down the road, this in the era before helicopter parents, this included hours and hours of walking and hanging out, and delivering an hour and half newspaper route, from age 9 on, even on weekends. This included hours spent at pools, doing yard work and more. What about the fat kids who are active? I know there are some kids they definitely need more exercise, don't leave them in the house, only playing video games night and day, but this book bugs me, they hold out a false "dream" that failed for so many of us.

Why Diets Don't Work: Starved Brain Cells Eat Themselves, Study Finds

Why Diets Don't Work: Starved Brain Cells Eat Themselves, Study Finds

This seems very interesting, well I always thought obesity is definitely with brain function and not the overly focused on stomach, but of course the entire system is more complex.

A report in the August issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism might help to explain why it's so frustratingly difficult to stick to a diet. When we don't eat, hunger-inducing neurons in the brain start eating bits of themselves. That act of self-cannibalism turns up a hunger signal to prompt eating.

"A pathway that is really important for every cell to turn over components in a kind of housekeeping process is also required to regulate appetite," said Rajat Singh of Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

The cellular process uncovered in neurons of the brain's hypothalamus is known as autophagy (literally self-eating.) Singh says the new findings in mice suggest that treatments aimed at blocking autophagy may prove useful as hunger-fighting weapons in the war against obesity.

Fake Sweeteners

There is no way I would ever touch Splenda or Truvia or Sweet and Low. Nutrasweet I do try to get rid of and need to stop drinking ANY Diet pop, but haven't quite managed it yet, have it down to about 2 glasses a week.

Research the health effects of this stuff, even with Truvia, there seems to be some major concerns.

Truvia Side Affects

Splenda Side Affects

I believe sugar should be limited, but its better to even deal with a little bit of the real stuff, then filling your body with even more dubious chemicals.

"A Weight Off Your Mind": Australian Writer Confronts the Biased Researchers

I know I have confronted this issue here. "Letter to Obesity Researchers".
I believe us fat people have all been betrayed. Corporate and other interests are wiping out real true help, for profit.

It seems this writer also found out the nefarious connection between the "research" out there and the diet and weight loss surgery industry.

Just last year the Centre for Obesity Research and Education (CORE) - a department of Monash University - published a study that found lap-banding procedures were appropriate interventions for obese teenagers as young as 14. What they didn’t reveal, however, was that the study was funded by Allergan, Australia’s largest manufacturer of lap-banding products. In mid-2010, Allergan sought approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market lap bands to US teens after sponsoring clinical trials, essentially opening up the global teenage market for profit.

They arrive at this very good question and I've asked it many times on this blog, why do they keep pushing the solutions that do NOT WORK?

What is odd then, is why there seems to be a dialectic approach to obesity. On the one hand, the obesity “experts” don’t have solutions that work long-term for the majority of the population, yet at the same time continue to prescribe their shonky solutions. If Viagra had a 98 per cent failure rate, doctors would not be allowed to prescribe it. Yet most of the time, individuals who cannot “lose the weight and keep it off” are treated like failures, as though they are “not trying damned hard enough” and shamed in hostile programs like The Biggest Loser.

The reality is that obesity research is riddled with conflicts of interest. It’s best to check who funded the research prior to reading it. Obesity research typically does not account for a person’s history of weight cycling, life fitness, stress, socioeconomic status, history of weight loss drugs, and nutrient intake. Is it the case that the solution might be worse than the disease?

"Obesity is Bad, We Get That"

"Obesity is Bad, We Get That"...

This article kind of goes along with a theme I've discussed on this blog, ok we know obesity is bad and leads to a lot of health problems well how about a real cure?

Diets don't work. They may have a short-term effect but, unless you can maintain a celebrity-like iron grip on your eating for the rest of your life (and few can) they are not a permanent solution and can have negative effects. For some people, like me, they don't work at all, because of complex endocrine deficiencies that are only recently being properly investigated, documented and understood. People tend not to believe that a medical condition can cause weight gain, but the little-known – and devastating – Cushing's disease is one such cause, alongside more well-recognised but not yet fully understood illnesses including hypothyroidism and PCOS (sometimes referred to as metabolic syndrome because, yes, it does affect men too).


It's easily understood that we are less active and eat more processed food than our ancestors did, and we have seen our size increase as a result – not just weight but height and shoe sizes, too. But that's not the whole story. Why do some people manage to eat as much as they like and yet remain slim, while others gain weight even on a restricted diet, with healthy levels of exercise? Why are children increasingly affected by obesity? There are pieces of the puzzle – the social elements, the dietary issues, the medical problems, the genetic picture, the psychological factors – that are still missing. And it is on that absent information that our research efforts ought to be focused.

What is sad is all the snide comments under her article, They just won't let go of the usual failed answers will they? Until someone actually starts listening to fat people, I fear no changes will be forth coming and that includes the medical researchers. The thin people eat too, and do not let them make you think they do not.

Dieting Mothers Means Fatter Babies?

"Obesity Now Another Thing You Can Blame on Your Mother"

According to a BBC interview with the lead author of the study, Keith Godfrey, a professor at the University of Southampton, the finding accounts for a quarter of the difference "in the fatness of children six to nine years later." The study says the effect was "considerably greater" than that of birth weight and did not depend on how thin or fat the mother was, reports the BBC.

I know all that low carb stuff makes the people fatter too. It doesn't work. One month trying to be totally gluten free, I barely ate any carbs, I had the WORSE blood sugar ever. I don't believe everything they tell you.

The Show: Heavy

Last night I watched this new show on A&E called Heavy. The blank faced traumatized looking woman on their ad banner bugs me. I have conflicted emotions about it. The premise of the show is that they take fat people to this spa, where they are taught to exercise, eat right, and given therapy for a month, then they are to go home and continue the program to lose weight. I watched the show that had Jessica who weighted 289 and Ricky who weighed 555 lbs at the start. [and also part of another that show Tom and Jodi.]

Jessica talked about how she couldn't play with her kids nor keep up. In the high 200s, yes people get exhausted. Ricky, admitted he was a food addict and said "There is no off switch with my brain when it comes to food". Definitely some sort of satiety disorder there, those levels of hunger are not normal. Jodi admits having had a stroke giving her the impetus to lose weight. I think her health problems to have had a stroke that young are far more complex then the obesity but wonder if the doctors are looking into it? Tom is seriously overweight with bad lymphedema.

The therapists and trainers did seem to care about their charges. I am not sure how much the psychological affected them. I wanted to know more about Ricky's mother, was she fat too? Was this an inherited problem by any chance? He blamed himself for too much. One could tell he was broken hearted, I do think when he got angry, and yelled, he was just asking for some space, that was not good timing on part of the trainer to approach him just seconds after walking out of therapy, dealing with the death of his mother.

They taught them some good advice, like stay out out of the middle section of grocery store. One can be trained to shop, and it helped me, though it didn't solve all my problems. I do think that healthier food is far harder to come by, for me to maintain a celiac diet and manage my food allergies, grocery shopping is like a military campaign, I can take 45 minutes to write a list of a 100 dollars worth of food items for husband. One thing these programs need to tell people how hard it really is and not hold back, I related to Ricky being overwhelmed in the grocery store, I'm still overwhelmed, so much junk and so much digging to get to the good stuff. Should an apple cost a dollar each? At the smaller store here, they do.

One thing one can tell from this show, the social outcomes of obesity are severe, all the fat people you could tell felt ostracized from society and like they didn't fit in. They all spoke of things they faced in life such as Ricky admitting he can't go out because people laugh at him. Jodi's rather cold husband admitted he was on the verge of leaving her, and she quit singing for a rock band, being embarrassed about her size which I thought was sad, but have felt some of the same emotions. Tom admitted not dating for years and years and seemed to live the typical very lonely severely fat person's life, though in his case his brothers do help him. I didn't get the show's claim that he had not seen a doctor in 15 years, how did he make his living?, he had to be on disability.

We weren't told about what their real diet was while fat, Ricky was shown eating a sandwich, but then that would be the normal diet of thin people around him even if they gave us the gratuitous camera shot of him taking a big bite, music and all. Were all the 6 greasily baked pork chops for him? The three packages of stuffing were a bit much. During the second show [this one with 628lb Tom Arnold and 366lb Jodi], they showed him ordering 6 junior burgers and 3 spicy chicken nuggets and eating them all.

I've addressed this issue on this blog "Are Fat People Hungrier?, how much of this driving hunger comes from a psychological or lack of will power but something awry physiologically in the body?

They didn't go in much detail about what they fed them at the center. I found myself thinking a few mixed greens with a sprinkle of green beans and vinaigrette wasn't much of a lunch. Where was the protein? It would have done nothing to keep my blood sugar going if that's all they got.

Ricky had the leg that was dark red and leaking fluid, by the way when you are at that point, you have an infection, I have been hospitalized for over a week for a leg that looked only half that bad and hadn't broke out leaking. I was literally frightened for him, because blood poisoning via cellulitis is a reality, and I've almost lost my life to it shooting up to 105.5 degree fever. How he managed not to succumb to weakness shocked me, he must have moved into the chronic stage, I am glad his leg looked better by the end of the show. [Mine has improved, I used to have 6-7 infections a year, but only had one so far in the last 14 months]. By the way, they gave a false snippet of information, where they said lymphedema was caused by obesity, thin people get lymphedema from different conditions, where their limbs swell up. Obesity can exacerbate lymphedema but is not its sole cause.

The thing that most disturbed me about the show, was the bootcamp exercise and the tears of frustration, pain and misery. Taking fat people who have barely moved from 0-60 in one day seems dangerous to me! The show was heavily advertised this way, showing us groaning, straining, literally bawling out of pain and distressed fat people. This alarmed me greatly. How did any of these fat people avoid going to the hospital? By the way when someone is throwing up [and I've done it from over-exertion] that means you are about to be in the emergency room. How do the extremely obese ones keep from swelling from congestive heart failure? [Most people above a certain size, retain tons of fluids from the heart not being able to keep up, in fact this more then anything limits the degree of exercise I can do] During the second show Jodi is barfing. Part of me thinks, you know a lot of thin people are just thin, via eating normally and doing a nice job on the treadmill, they aren't puking their guts out, wailing and turning red. One thing Ive said in my case, if I could burn it all off without ending up dead, I would. One seemed to have some type of exercise induced asthma.

I think fat people should exercise, I make myself walk the length of my large apt building everyday [just 18 months ago, I couldn't do this], because I fear losing mobility from being housebound due to cold, and lift cans for weights at least once a day. If I did the level of exercise they showed these fat people doing, the paramedics would have needed called--my physical therapist, had to stop me a few times, and I'm not kidding. Someone could say well maybe they are in better shape then you, with your bad lungs, cardiomyopathy and multiple conditions, but they showed at least one of the fat people with their multitudes of pills. One thing about me, before my severe fast weight gain, as late as 1995, I used to walk for FUN and knew I walked at least 2-3 miles if not more on many occasions.

That said, there is something disturbing about watching people put through the gauntlet so bad, they are crying. Is this the answer to obesity, for trainers to get that whip out, act as drill sargents and literally force the fat to "feel the burn". Aren't fat people punished enough in this life?
It seems all the "solutions entail more suffering" not less. There is a problem with that. Some of them seemed to be risky serious injury. I thought in the fitness community, the misleading "no pain, no gain" ethos had been left behind.

This is something that always bothered me about The Biggest Loser. Is exercise supposed to be life threatening and painful? One thing I pick up on when it comes to the fat, pain and torture seems to be the responses from this society, "let us cut your stomach out, let us make you do so much exercise you start barfing in the bathroom". Something is really wrong with that equation. To be frank, the levels of exercise on this show seem dangerous to me. Why did my physical therapists treat me so differently?

This fitness blogger writes about Jillian Michaels [from a different show], who I think is downright abusive to her charges so I don't watch any show she is on. He brings up the point what good is exercise that brings injury to the obese? I was happy to see some personal trainers on this website that get it. Wish I had money to hire one. At least the show Heavy as far as I have seen, hasn't made anyone run, but it brings up good points.

One thing I noticed too, is a lot of the weight gain in the different parties, seems triggered by stress, [I address that here: "Is Stress Making Everyone Fat?"] such as in the case of Ricky losing his mother and being overwhelmed. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this facet of weight?

I am glad they lose weight, and seem to do better. The show has inspired me to try and add more exercise in my life though I will have to do things differently. In Ricky's case, his greatest test will be living at home with a family that obviously will not be eating the same diet, Jessica being more moderately obese and the one managing the kitchen, has a greater chance of success. But over all I find myself thinking, are these solutions really going to work? Why doesn't anyone get more to the core root of the hunger problems and the bad food this society is awashed in? Most severely obese people are never going to be able to afford a month in a nice spa with day to day personal trainers. I told someone the other day, they'd be opening gyms with affordable HEALTHY training and physical therapy for fat people all over, and make healthy food more widely available and less expensive if they really wanted to deal with the obesity epidemic.

My other worry about this show, is it promotes the same failed solutions we have seen so far, no I am not against people trying to lose weight or following exercise programs, but isn't this the same stuff that has failed all these years when looking at long term projections? It promotes the majority of the world's belief that if the fat people just got off their lazy duffs, they would be thin. If this was true, Wouldn't all fat people just go join the gym, eat healthy and be done? It makes the viewers think obesity has simple solutions, and that everyone can follow this formula and be a thin person for the rest of their life. I am hoping all the parties succeed, but I've seen other fat people lose for a time, get gung-ho dedicating hours at the gym, but one thing, just a slight let-up on this intense work, and the weight will come back. Have seen it happen time and time again. Does this mean these people are all "lazy failures" or that something else is in operation?

I will have more comments on this show as it continues......

I've Never Lost Weight On A Diet!

Nope I never have. Even when I lost down from almost 700lbs into the 500s, it was mostly medical treatment floating that boat. I have lost everywhere from 160lbs-80. Good health, less stress, and more activity seemed to be my winning strategies. Right now I am losing weight and have been for some time but its a mixture of some exercise and the gluten free diet--I stopped wanting to itch to death. Barring some societal or American economic collapse that puts us on famine status or other horrible illness--one friend used to tell me all 500lb diabetics become thin if they live long enough--my dreams of thinness are over. "Live life the best you can, doing what you can", this was great advice I got from my favorite doctor of 8 years who was from Ghana and less indoctrinated by the American stupidity regarding obesity. That good man probably bought me 10 more years of life

When people tell me, they have lost weight by what they eat, I almost laugh, it seems like a magic trick to me, because in my own experience it just doesn't work. I ask questions of them like well how do you handle the hunger pain? They look at me all googly-eyed like I just asked how Mars was? I have hunger pain right now and ate lunch at 12:30 and its 3:51 pm. Welcome to my world!

Months of illness before where food nauseated me haven't even done the trick to strip weight off, so why would I even connect the two things in my mind? While some of the doctors and rest concede that some people have very low metabolisms and that dieting is an exercise in futility, most of the world thinks its the answer to all the fat person's problems and its not! With the exception of Jared, an aunt who had to have half of her intestines removed due to an illness and a few who took the winning spin of the weight loss surgery, I have yet to see one super sized person become a "thin person" for the rest of their life. Even the majority of people I know who had weight loss surgery, either had it just work for a couple years with a full regain, or had to be happy going from severely obese people to more midsize obese--say from 400lbs to 300lbs. One core component, those who have decent hearts and lungs and can exercise normally, do far better.

With few and rare exceptions, the majority of superfat people earn very little but brief reprieves from obesity. Most of the corpulent have gone through the ever-revolving door of Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Phen-Fen, Pritikin, Atkins, nutritionists, gyms, personal trainers, leaving as one fat lady said to me..."You take control for a while and you fail yet again, and you're more depressed then ever".

Lack of willpower, shame, physical hunger, boredom, migraine headaches, stomach pain, buckets of tasteless cabbage soup, almost every obese person knows the reality of the diet is like. Even under the euphemism of the "lifestyle" change, many diets end up with the same results, its a long plod, getting the special foods, groceries, cooking and facing the fact that some of the meals in those diet books alone could cost $40 bucks by themselves.

The Diet Psychologist sighed and peered over his bi-focals taking his chin in his hand, "If you want to succeed in this program, you need to stop lying about your food intake" I thought back, I at that time, was living in the ghetto, with 40 bucks a week to feed two people--I had filled out the journal of then 15 years ago, honestly even including 2 cookies I had nibbled on at a friend's house and a greasy take-out gyro, that if I ate today probably would put me under the table.

Then after weighting the exact same on their broken scale [it was actually weighing me far under what I was, and getting the same number, 5 times in a row, I knew it wasn't accurate. I would leave the room full of other depressed and beleaguered obese people who mostly were at least 150lbs smaller then me to the room to commiserate over their mutual lack of "will power" and supposed "cheating".

Dieting has an extreme high failure rate. For years Ive watched several fat relatives, more healthy, able to feel the burn and exercise, ping pong back and forth between 250 and approaching 400lbs. This is such a problem, that bariactrics is seen as the low man on the totem pole of medical specialities. No other illness has the failure in treatment like obesity. If cancer and skin rashes had the same failure rate, doctors would be out of business for good, all bankrupted by malpractice suits. Even those who work in the obesity research field, have their true desire to help people but are realizing what an insurmountable problem obesity has proven to be.

Many fat people do lose weight, some even great amounts, 100lbs-200lbs. Regains however are high as soon as one looks away, stops the extreme vigilance, gives in to the hunger, the diet fails again, and the fat person resumes the soul destroying roller coaster of no mercy.

Many humans have been cursed with the so-called thrifty gene, a good thing to have during constant famines and most of world history, a bad thing to have during plentiful food and supermarkets. All the physiology is set up to keep weight on as much as possible to keep you from dying of starvation. Some people even realize that when they eat too little or starve themselves, the body goes into metabolic shut-off. I witnessed this myself when during a severe illness I could barely keep down 600 calories a day for weeks and weeks , and didn't lose a pound.

The overweight are often hungrier then the thin on top of it. I have come to the conclusion that unlike some thin friends, not eating for a day, would cause me far more physical suffering [maybe insulin resistance from PCOS?] It is all mental? The whinings of a person with "no self control?" Well blinding migraines are no fun, feeling the room tilt or your hands go numb is scary. I have seen the thin and smug announce "I only eat one meal a day", "an apple for lunch is more then enough" and I have thought "I wish!"

While some say to the metabolically imbalanced like myself, why don't you just eat 1000 calories a day, its not that easy. It's easy to hit that mark even eating normal allotted meals by noon. After all my big body craves nutrients, hunger is present in the brain too. Maybe you can take the hunger pain, and the fuzzy wuzzy feeling in your head, but it doesn't do much for me, except in some ways create more hunger.

The body has some over powering hormonal messages to feed it. It will pull out all tricks to get you to run to the refrigerator, in thin people it causes some moments of uncomfortableness, that supposedly go away after 20 minutes, in some fat people in never leaves you alone. Drink a glass of water, take a walk, if you've skipped lunch and you're fat, it will be hours of thinking of nothing but food and it's not always psychological. There are many things I'd rather be doing, even my stamp collection is more exciting then washing more plates or worry about what to eat.

Forget to eat in my case, and be visited with asthma and the shakes--asked doctor about that one and was told "Don't do that!" People think fat people are lying, and whiners and just do not have the gumption, but the problem is, that all bodies are assumed to operate the same, it would be nice for those to understand that some of us are experiencing something else entirely.

Even the dieting world seems set up to sabotage it seems, Slim-Fast, SWEET protein bars, all sugar, leading to a crash, a rise in insulin and starvation within a couple hours. Avoid the sugar if you want to avoid the hunger pain Dietitians are no guaranteers of good diet advice either. Even as last as the mid-90s, I was told a bagel for breakfast and a baked potato for lunch was my ticket to normalville. The supposed low-fat diet that now most recognize did more harm then good.

Lynn McAffee in a long ago article in Radiance Magazine says this: she asks a doctor why figures on the failure rates of diets haven't been divulged. His response to her, is that no one wants to discourage people from dieting. It's absurd, she thinks, to suggest that people do what is clearly impossible. She is incensed. "I spent my childhood and adolescence feeling like the lowest form of life because I couldn't do something as 'simple' as lose weight and keep it off."

Psychological Tricks to Get Kids to Eat Healthy Food?

Ah that isn't THAT healthy.....

This seems like 2 million dollars of wasted money, why not cook healthy food and provide it, instead of having to fool the kids into choosing the healthier foods? Kids aren't stupid if you hide the chocolate milk behind the white, they are going to dig for it.

These subtle moves can entice kids to make healthier choices in school lunch lines, studies show. Food and restaurant marketers have long used similar tricks. Now the government wants in on the act.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced what it called a major new initiative Tuesday, giving $2 million to food behavior scientists to find ways to use psychology to improve kids' use of the federal school lunch program and fight childhood obesity.

If they are eating nothing but junk at home, what makes anyone think they are going to pick all the fruits and vegetables at school?