The False Shame of Fat Women Affects Lipedema

                                    a picture of my leg wrappings after I took them off.

I  recently got in trouble for "fat shaming" someone on a Lipedema health support board I won't mention the name of here.

Funny thing judging by this someone's wall on Facebook, they looked like they were a size 10-12 with no health problems and these were pictures over a series of YEARS.  Every other post on their very public wall, was an advertisement for the organization they did sales for, and I asked people several times to go look at these public photos but I guess no one did because they did not believe me. The diet they were bringing up was actually one sponsored by the organization they did sales for.

 I don't think I understand all the rules of political correctness. I thought they were a sales-person coming on a health support board and warned people. Aspie honesty got me  hated by some in a group of neurotypicals.  Later I was banned. Well I was made out to be the "bad" person, even though this new poster included "selling a diet" that had Beach Bodies in the name, and I thought some people believed the same way I did about diets, espousing basic size acceptance principles but I guess not. I was the "meanie" for trying to warn of someone I thought was an imposter. They called me a "fat-shamer".

It's weird to be 500lbs and told I am a "fat-shamer" for someone far smaller and functional then me. Can someone explain that one to me? The liberal world bugs me too just as much as the conservative world and all their "go die in the ditch", "pick a job off a tree" Tea Partiers. The speech controls and endless impossible rules are too much.

Yes I'm a big meanie. The Lipedema world has gotten to be a tough one or me. Some still believe in diets and the fantasy of weight loss. It's weird since all the medical literature rightly says this is not weight that can NOT be taken off by dieting. If anything dieting messes up Lipedema more and sinks your metabolism. Many severe Lippys like me have nutritional deficients. Dieting is a joke to me. I got doctors to finally believe me and got diagnosed. Yesterday I had eggs for breakfast, sandwich, and some broccoli slaw for lunch, and rice and chicken with broccoli for dinner. I am not eating that bad. My blood sugar was 122 this morning. So to be told, that I can fix my body with the "perfect diet" is a dream. Yes I have to watch WHAT I eat, but the dream world of  having a body that functions like everyone else died long ago for me. Thinking a diet will fix this is the definition of insanity.

My own body is full of Lipomas and fluid. I see constant weight changes now dependent on how active I've been and how much I've peed off and every night shrink a bit from Flexitouch treatments.  The hormonal crap foisted on me by Lipedema has affected my life far more. In fact I believe much of the research for Lipedema is being ruined because the focus is on weight loss, diets and liposuctions and not the internal health, and endocrine realities of this disease. Because it is a WOMAN'S disease primarily all it seems is cared about is LOOKS, LOOKS, LOOKS. 

Google Plastic Surgery and Lipedema, or Lipedema and Beauty and you will get a look-see at what I am talking about.

Even the liposuction stuff seems unproven to me. What's going to keep the fat in the legs from coming back? The plastic surgeons are setting up for a new market, and on Lipedema boards for early stage women, one can see the model thin, on there who seem to care most about having sculpted legs showing up who complain of having Lipedema and it makes one wonder. Their reality bears no resemblance to my own hell of Lipo-Lymphedema. I believe that the "worried well" market is the focus in the Lipedema world, where the plastic surgeons are diagnosing otherwise thin and healthy woman with Lipedema to do leg sculpting. There are some who seek out the liposuction who are higher stage and who do truly have the condition and some sincere doctors like one in Germany who see it as a break-through but I remain concerned about how so many of the  main treatments for Lipedema all focus on the removal of fat and "being made thin" instead of the root endocrine and lymphatic causes.

In my case,  I renounced the beauty prison and yes this has been mentioned on this blog but the "beauty prison" seems to be running a lot of the Lipedema world. In a disease that has hurt me, brought me endless pain and destroyed my life on a multiple levels including almost dying of sepsis [leg infections that poisoned my blood] how do you think I feel about this development that the main focus for Lipedemics is to be BEAUTY and LOOKS and doing away with the FAT, and becoming THIN?

I have to admit I was disappointed by the people touting size acceptance beliefs contradicting themselves allowing the discussion of another failed diet to be sold to wealthier women who can afford trips to a giant theme park. It was unjust and unfair for "Beach Bodies" to be advanced among many women who have weighed 400lbs-700lbs from a disease we had no control over. Haven't we suffered enough? This was a contradiction to the max. It felt like a middle finger in my face. Of course I was the one being "too sensitive" for refusing the mainstream cultural mandates.

 I believe one neglected avenue of Lipedema is the psychological and emotional. We are being hurt, by the constant diet talk and the non-answers being sold us. We are told that the shape of our body is the thing most wrong with us and that must be corrected no matter what. While there are good medical professionals dealing with the lymphatic system and MLDs and others out there to help us, the beauty imperatives and prejudice against fat is influencing treatment of a disease in a very negative fashion. Many Lipedema women are reporting that some doctors are pushing weight loss surgery and weight loss as the first thing they "must do" instead of dealing with their failed lymphatic systems. There is a weird focus on "non Lipedema fat". How do they know what's fluid or fat or not?

We are shamed for our bodies constantly and some eat the shame, still acting like it is their fault, and they must all conform to societies impossible demands and still "live in the dream" of thinness one day being theirs. I suppose this is why I got banned from the health board. I am too radical for them and a "trouble-maker" because I got a big mouth and I have written against the diet industrial complex for 5 years on this blog. I have pissed off the size acceptance side out there by exposing their "normalization of obesity" and  health "denials" about severe obesity and I have pissed off others by calling out the "diet industry" as completely harmful to our health. My life values are in opposition to those who want perfect clone bodies among humanity, and who sell conformist "beauty" as the highest ideal above all.

 I threatened the "dream" and even some of the denizens of size acceptance will show their true colors when pressed. They don't want to give the "thin dreams" up and no matter their size support the cultural imperatives, that put thinness and the status of the thin above real treatment and research for a severe medical condition. Maybe if they got to the root of the problem, there'd be far less people struggling with severe obesity.

It reminded me of the Lipedema spokes person who got honored by a top obesity organization with several weight loss surgeons on the board that I wrote about before without naming names.

All the focus is still on the fat and the looks of a body and the SYMPTOMS of a disease instead of the inherent disease process within. Cultural mandates of shame among the fat, affecting treatment of Lipedema. The diet industry is a negative influence on Lipedema and Lipedema treatment. I stand by this belief whether they like it or not.

Punk Size Acceptance

 A friend took a picture of this on a girl's jacket at a punk concert some years ago. I don't advocate violence or riots but it made me laugh. I wish fat people would go and protest and yell the "Diets aren't working!" Remember I think all the focus on the acceptance of the fat itself and not the people has thrown help for fat people off the rails. Fat people are like the scapegoats of our society, not believed and invalidated when we tell them the diets have failed us. Everyone wants to be healthy.

What is Fat Studies?

I took the women studies class in college an eon ago, and realize it was more a brainwashing indoctrination session, to love hyper-feminism, and to "worship" the "goddess". My professor there was hard core. Shout that you were against the patriarchy, and ready to go back in time, to burn a few bras and your "A" was almost guaranteed.

Now we have "fat studies".

Should I write a paper? I doubt academia would give me much of an ear. That is it's own world, if you divert from the "rules" in the size acceptance world, refusing to celebrate fat, and desiring a real cure--not the nonsense they are shoveling--any free thinkers need not reply. Even here, how could I write a paper of "fat ACCEPTANCE", I do not accept my fat, my fat is equal to my almost deaf ears, annoying but to be celebrated? Forget it. Some of the language here gets kind of odd.

Fat Studies reminds us that all bodies are inscribed with the fears and hopes of the particular culture they reside in, and these emotions often are mislabeled as objective “facts” of health and biology. More importantly, perhaps, Fat Studies insists on the recognition that fat identity can be as fundamental and world-shaping as other identity constructs analyzed within the academy and represented in media

.

What about the hope to stay alive? This seems a lot to ask Mr. Adipose cell...I suppose Mr. Adipose does not realize the trouble he has caused.


What's wrong with using the words overweight or obesity? They want those only used in "ironic" fashion.

"Why We Need Size Acceptance" [Violence on The Fat]

"Why We Need Size Acceptance"

Hey, I do not disagree with EVERYTHING having to do with size acceptance. While I have some giant beefs about the movement, standing up against abuse of fat people is a GOOD thing.

I think if fat people weren't so hated, and we weren't being used as a vehicle to be profited from or to be exploited, there would be SOME REAL HELP and change out there, but she is on to something with this one:

We are all participants, willing or no, in a culture that promotes and glorifies this kind of violence against ourselves, and which revels in that violence’s effects. Even the language we use in discussing our body fat is steeped in violence; our fat parts are to be burned, blasted, destroyed, dissolved, eliminated, eradicated, or otherwise abolished. Let’s think for a moment about the broader effects of regarding our bodies—even an aspect of our bodies—with such language and imagery. This thinking divorces us from ourselves, and from the wonderful mechanism which enables us to experience the world. It creates a divide where none should exist. It turns our bodies into enemies, or antagonists, or discrete objects to be controlled and restrained. It denies us healthful connections between the thoughts in our heads, our interactions with the world around us, and the physical form that enables us to connect and communicate. It does us harm.

Sometimes I think about all the 'answers' they give to the fat, and it always incorporates pain and suffering. Nothing about wellness, joy and happiness. I don't have to go smack myself around for having thyroid disease or have some crazed trainer scream at me like the TV show "Heavy" but supposedly for being fat, I should be groveling on the ground, and prepared to suffer.....

Would some of you be offended if I told you that sometimes I wonder in my mind if weight loss surgery is more about torture?

Let me talk this one out, the other day, I was reading a book about "footbinding" in young Chinese girls, as I sat there getting grossed out as the fictional author Lisa See, described the breaking of foot bones and the rest to give Chinese women of some hundreds of years ago [footbinding lasted 1000 years], teeny feet, I thought what else is weight loss surgery, but more pain and "suffering" to get a "good" look, and most of the time it doesn't even work, even in this book, they admit 1 out of 10 girls died from footbinding and infections, gangrene and the rest plagued the rest. So human beings have done really screwed up things with their bodies for centuries.

So when they tell you to go under the knife and tell you, hey we will shrink your stomach down and make you "thin", they couldn't have thought of a worse way of torture. Trust me as a person with severe digestive problems where I projectile vomit for literally 18 hours with severe bowel pain [dry-heaves are no fun] if I accidentally eat some MSG or some high fat item [it took me 6 months to figure things out], one does not want to go to the land of digestive organs that do not work.

I think about the VIOLENCE of that....

and how fat people are so hated....

and how no one wants us to get any REAL HELP, because we are considered NOTHING to them.

I still am NOT going to LOVE fat [because of what it has done to me], but I know when things are seriously screwed up, and looking at a society that is so messed up in so many ways. All the "wars" on obesity, are about violence, instead of actual HELP and HEALING.

Part II: Me and The Size Acceptance Ideologues

Years ago on a few message boards regarding size acceptance, I used to get in trouble there too.

It was pretty much the same thing. Hey this is my website at least and can speak my mind without being censored though they'll wipe every comment quicker then any 1984 civil servant rewriting history for Big Brother.

You know one thing that isn't easy in this world is holding your ground when the group, tells you how very wrong you are and lacking in every positive attribute they can think of. All I know is to go their way, I am supposed to suspend reality itself and live in some sort of fantasty world. I probably have stepped on a few toes, with the two sides against the middle argument, the whole LOVE YOUR FAT side, actually helping the FAT HATER side OUT. Even one poster posted some stuff where she kind of lost me, she had good thoughts to share too.... I do not buy the premise that I have to prove how self-loving I am or not to have others give me worth, my worth comes from God, which I know even naming God, may give some of the hyper-liberals of size acceptance a few shudders, but there it remains. In other words, how come, when you try to get people to "think" deeper about this stuff, they always want to slap you with the "you have too low self esteem" 2 x 4? I guess because it works on a lot of people.

I *think* this could be about me. Maybe it isn't and hopefully I'm wrong. I like the blogger, she has interesting thoughts on freedom I find enjoyable. I'm a bit confused on this stuff, what is "healthy weight mysticism"? Some of the weird terms throw me off. Am I crazy to deem 700lbs-500lbs as being "unhealthy"? Stop the world from spinning I want to get off!

A fat person, or former fat person, buying into the ‘healthy weight’ mysticism is not ground-breaking.

In fact? It’s downright mainstream.

A fat person, or former fat person, blaming themselves for how our culture (mis)treats fat people and (mis)characterizes the fat experience is not ground-breaking. We are (mis)fits, after all, in that we are outliers, living in a world built for those who are smaller than we are. Self-blame for nonconformity is such a normal social response that it hasn’t seen a ground-breaking since Genesis.

What does she mean by self-blame? Didn't she read the rest of the blog, when I have shared how I got to be where I am at? And what does she mean by "mischaracterize the fat experience"? Does she even understand or even guess at what life at the higher weights could be? I guess if you do not follow the party line, you are automatically self-hating. How strange, well they know how to manipulate arguments don't they. If anything wanting to stay alive and desiring that MORE IS DONE for FAT PEOPLE beyond the FAILED pathways, I think shows more self-love and love for others then anything else.

As for non-conformity, who is the conformist, the one who stands with the crowd or the one who takes the heat, making a solitary stand? Let's not forget the diet mongers, weight loss surgery types and "thin to win" people aren't giving me any high fives either. According to these types, you'd think I had signed a Weight Watchers contract or something.

A fat person, or a former fat person, coveting the higher status granted by a smaller pants-size is such a foundational part of our culture that it supports a $60 billion-dollar (and growing) industry, not to mention providing employment for bored pseudo-science journos, teevee doctors, washed up celebrities, professional snarks, and any dieter in possession of a word processor.

Forget status, I just want to be able to walk a mile one day and to see my nieces and nephews grow up.

Also considering that 60 billion dollar industry, I've taken issue with them MANY TIMES on this blog. I think they profit off failure and repeat customers which is why the wheel keeps turning, but then I do not want to complicate things for some of these angry readers.

In summary: trashing a lifestyle you fear and failed at (body acceptance) while giving lipservice to some kind of bullshit concern for others under the guise of promoting venerable Healthistic ideals and body-driven moral imperatives isn’t ground-breaking.

How does one fail at size acceptance? That is an interesting premise. Where does the "fear" come in? I know some of these ladies are younger then me, being healthy, mid-sized and being able to dance the night away is a much different exsistence then life in a higher weight body. I suppose I *failed* in that I dared to disagree. Hey that's ok with me. Am I morally degraded for wanting to stay alive? LOL How about whoever else this could be meant for if not for me? How does one pass the size acceptance test, being the most jolly? Can someone fill me in on that one?

It’s the same old bull****. And the attempt to Trojan-horse fat-hate and body-shaming into HAES and FA/SA circles?

I'm getting the feeling that anyone who is over a certain body weight who wants to share their truth and reality, are not welcome in size acceptance but I sort of knew this years ago. They get very angry at anyone who threatens the core beliefs, like size acceptance is a cult, and you can't ask any questions. I should perhaps do a paper or some sort on how size acceptance is a manifestation of the human potential movement but skewed to another market. That may be of interest.

Ah, getting a few of them mad out there, is nothing new to me. Here is a secret for your fat delusionists, most fat people especially people hitting my sizes, know that size acceptance delusions aren't working for them either. We are cool with the "do not discriminate" aspects and calls for fat people to be treated like human beings, but the rest of your garbage about being happy at any weight and refusing any REAL cures and help even at the stratosphere weights is total nonsense.

I'm out there in the world, and talking to folks like myself all the time. I hope I am wrong, this was not meant for me, but you got to wonder why the anger? It's like you can't even have a two way talk whatsoever. Notice how the verbal beat down and censorship comes so quickly and so suddenly. Not one word allowed of dissent. I certainly couldn't even get a word in edgewise.


I noticed over on "The Truth is Radical" blog article, where my secondary comments got censored, Marilyn Wann and others made an appearance.

See this blog entry too...

"Thought Crime and Size Acceptance"

for context...

I found this comment very interesting...on "The Truth is Radical" article

I totally agree that fat is not a disease. It’s just … fat, and, like food, it’s neither good nor bad. It irritates me that so many people are looking for a cure. It’s like trying to find a cure for blonde hair. Completely pointless and seriously who wants everyone to be the same size anyway. How boring would that be.

To me the above rings so weird...

Has this person been near 700lbs and almost DIED?

Fat in it's extreme forms or even less extreme forms HURTS. I do not want people to be the same size, I do not think everyone should be a skinny minny but come on people it's called reality lets go look at a little bit of it. Here too the brush-offs continue.

Marilyn Wann then chimes in....[LOL wonder if she saw my link to this blog]

Marilyn Wann said,

August 1, 2011 at 7:29 pm

Brilliantly argued and supported! I also refuse to agree with any sort of weight horizon. I believe that defining anything in life based on weight is harmful, never helpful. Each one of us, living in our bodies, can seek our own best possible health and happiness in a weight-neutral manner. There are also no guarantees for any of us that we’ll be able to avoid pain or illness or injury or unhappiness. What sort of brittle, unhuman standard is it that would devalue people who experience the inevitable downsides of embodiment?

She refuses to agree with any weight horizon?

What about 800lbs and above? Yes there are people reaching those weights. I know about them from my visit at home doctors, and from own life experiences reaching out to other very overweight people. My health and happiness demands MORE answers then just go "move a little" and some vague nebulous "go eat healthy" which I already do to best of my ability, and so it does for other fat people. Of course Marilyn Wann would never consider anything regarding modern culture or what is being done to our food for even such heights of weight to become even more prevelant. I suppose her eyes would glaze over if I discussed endocrine disrupters. If I told her about the super-fat people my deceased friend knew in her nursing home--[she herself was more midized], who could not walk or had their skin break down, what would Marilyn Wann then have to say? Who is talking about anyone being devalued? Haven't I been devalued by these folks? Yes I have, by basically having my thoughts and opinions censored. Notice how they lump me in automatically with the other side. They are like political idealogues, that can't even imagine that another position beyond the other mainstream side can even exist.

If anything what I have written would give super fat people more value, in that their very lives would be honored as real help and answers would be found or demanded beyond the fat haters and the fat delusionists.

By the way, I do not plan on shutting up. I believe the way things are going there are many people getting fatter and sicker out there too. The delusionists can live in their fantasty world while some of us deal with reality. If people want to know what has held size acceptance back, as anything but just a "fringe" enterprise, there you have it.

Obesity and Power: The Lies That Control You

I was thinking about some more of this stuff as a continuation of the Marilyn Wann article, and the one I posted about size acceptance and how they marginalize the voices of real fat people. I would even state there is a definite classist element to size acceptance where snobbery and hyper-liberal types rule, in other words, what am I saying? It's not your average citizens who are getting fatter year by year getting a voice out there even on that side of things. Thank God for the internet as it now stands, that some of the rest of us can get a voice out there.

In other words, if you do not toe the line you are tossed to the side. Right now, in trying to get this blog out there, I have been censored from probably more then 10 size acceptance websites, "Big Fat Blog" among them. Anyone who reads this blog, can tell, that I definitely stand against fat hatred and what is being done to fat people in this world but they do not want any other truth told.

As I have written before BOTH SIDES serve each other and fat people slip through the cracks. While the public is trained like Pavlovian dogs to bow before their scales, and see obesity as a wholly hyper-personal responsibility problem, this keeps the populace dumbed down and fat people scapegoated as a whole. Why wouldn't size acceptance be dumbed down too? Perhaps there is a reason I see the endless lines of the SAME kind of people saying the SAME kind of things over and over barring those with a different voice from the door. I mean after all, would the powers that be allow true questions out there? It is a question to think about.

Poorer people in America are fatter by the numbers [more adulterated food] so this can even keep the poorer of this society more down and impoverished, as they are trained to blame themselves for the state of their bodies, instead of anyone looking around and saying "Hey maybe it's the system, maybe human beings weren't designed to live this way, and eat food that is so processed to death, with every fattening and high sugar agent added to it as possible". Consider high fructose corn syrup, lately I feel like I can barely get away from the stuff even finding it in an expensive bottle of barbecue sauce to put on some baked chicken....Turns out it does make you far fatter then regular sugar:.

(CNN) -- Acolytes of "Food Rules" guru Michael Pollan and other well-meaning foodies who've made corn a scapegoat for the nation's health crises have welcomed a new study from Princeton University that suggests high-fructose corn syrup causes more significant weight gain than table sugar.

But the findings have been criticized by food science experts and industry veterans, who say the study unfairly demonizes corn syrup and implicitly absolves cane sugar of responsibility for making Americans fat.

If the food lacks nutrition, what else is going to happen? Why does unhealthy automatically mean cheaper in America when it comes to food? It seems to be almost by design. More on that later too...

Very few are following what is happening to our food supply, as many more giant corporations buy things up, where our food is becoming genetically modified--[which is proving to be more harmful and kill nutrients in our food. Even small farms are under the gun today and they are trying to outlaw herbal and other supplements via Codex Alimentrus. Why are so many invested in telling us what to eat or limiting the supply of the GOOD STUFF?

Why are all the agriculture subsidies going for the fattening stuff instead of the healthy food? Ponder that one for a bit.

In an an article called

The Obesity Conspiracy Exposed

the author lists the culprits:

1. Giant food manufacturers. The greedy corporate executives who run these publicly traded companies habitually demand that addictive obesity additives be added into foods and beverages that line our grocery store shelves. These (mostly) man-made chemicals lead to severe food addictions, causing people to eat more and more (and, subsequently, buy more and more) while unsavory food giants haul in record profits.

2. The big, bad pharmaceutical giants and the medical industry. Keep in mind that the drug companies don't make profits by helping you become slim and healthy. On the contrary, their big profits come from force feeding you and your family dozens of medications to control such weight-related conditions as high blood pressure, depression, certain cancers, high cholesterol, anxiety, heartburn, insomnia, low energy, erectile dysfunction, gout, and diabetes… just to name a few. The goal of these companies is to make you a pill-popping client for life. Even more terrifying is the fact that pharmaceutical giants virtually own doctors. They control most of the curriculum in medical schools as well as the continuing education classes doctors are required to take. Unfortunately, this means doctors are learning to push a pill or a procedure rather than getting to the root of the problem, which in many cases revolves around nutritional issues. Doctors today should keep in mind what the Greek physician and father of medicine, Hippocrates, said more than 2,000 years ago: "Let medicine be our food, and food be our medicine."

A public that is guilted over failing to have a perfect body, and given no answers to the same is more easily controlled and manipulated. The "bad fatties" which have grown to the majority of the American populace [I know I am on the extreme of the spectrum, but look up the obesity numbers, what is it 40- 60% plus now?] are told they are bad, awful people, who simply do not hold enough will-power, self-control as their thin, plastic surgery infused overlords.

Some time ago, I decided I am tired of being told I am "at fault". In my case, the insane endocrine problems cut me a minor break, with at least the decent doctor's telling me I have severe metabolic issues but so what? The world as a whole has been brainwashed to blame every fat person on the planet. All I want to know is why don't the fat haters ever ask who would ever choose to be fat in this world.

I wonder if obesity will be used in the future, as not only the informal class marker it serves as today [barrier to jobs already] but as a way to control the populace even more, if one's body doesn't measure up. Already we know about the health care bills that want to track obesity, being set up now, but what one can wonder about is how that information will be USED?

Think about this, how many now are profiting off obesity, and how many more will profit off it in the future? Consider this too, obesity has exploded in the last thirty years. Who stands to profit? When you see even obesity organizations joining with mega corporations you really got to wonder...Why is MSG and other chemicals literally being poured into the food?

While there are good people in size acceptance who join up to stand against the fat hatred, you won't see any of the size acceptance elite ask these questions, in fact some of them definitely seem to serve the interests of the powers that be too, telling the fat, just be happy to be fat, no matter what it does to you and doing everything in their power to shut up anyone who doesn't follow the party line.

Thought Crime and Size Acceptance, Ideologues and The Big Brush-Off

I went to read this article, I got it from the Big Liberty blog...and it's from another blog...called Dead of Winter...

But here is:

"The Truth Is Radical"

I will share two of the posts, but there are more in the comments:

Blogger to me:

This was aimed at the general population, not at every single possible instance there is. I beg to differ that some people are too fat for fat acceptance or that you cannot be healthy at every size (depending on your definition of health.) Indeed, that was my point-I used to think this way until I was radicalized.

Even if fat did cause or exacerbated health problems, we still cannot be made permanently thin in a safe way and doctors should stop prescribing weight loss as the cure.

It may not be radical to you to be told to accept what is before you, and it really isn’t, another point I made in my post.It’s radical to ask to be treated with basic respect. However, it’s radical in our culture of fat hate to say, “I’m fat, get used to it” and stop making concessions that grant fat phobics their arguments. We’re under pressure to make the larger fat phobic culture feel good instead of challenging them with the best we have and our message gets watered down in the process.

Society has a toxic potion to sell at both ends of the spectrum? Sorry, but I find the idea of society promoting fat to any degree laughable.

Oh, and have Americans really gotten fatter? Or is that just the BMI talking? Most people that get labeled “fat” are either only slightly fat or not visibly fat at all. We wouldn’t have as many fat people as we do if the BMI charts did not change to include more people in the fat category.

No, we don’t support a cure for obesity because…we’re fat acceptance. Pretty straightforward really.

My post still stands. You are certainly welcome to comment on whatever you like here, but this is not the place to win converts away from fat acceptance and to hash out your issues with it.

What I Wrote in Response: [well unless it gets taken down]

Again I get the brush off, as if there is only one of me in this country. I know in the size acceptance world that super-fat people are the lowest of the totem pole especially if they are of lower financial means which most are being disabled, and because they do not protray the image that size acceptance wants. I know from friends and even my own doctors there are people who are bedbound, wheelchair bound and even in nursing homes. I can still walk, my life is limited more by the breathing problems-COPD, but I can walk far further then I could acouple years ago. I can still get out and live a bit when the weather is good. I know even on the spectrum, there are people suffering far worse then me.

A person my size yes can stand against fat discrimination and more, and have dignity, but this idea that fat should stand alone and untouched, what if they found a cure? You know that one worked? I am not saying everyone has to be a skinny minny, I am talking about those with severe obesity…it’s like telling a kidney patient, “oh, you do not accept the fact your kidney’s have failed no more research and help for you, go be proud of needing dialysis everyday. Give me a break!

So what has your “radicalization” done but give out the usual status quo? If you read my blog, you will see I am anything BUT an apologist for the rotten diet industry, but no instead of listening you tell me, “Oh this doesn’t apply to you”. Well why wouldn’t it, I’m fat too. Hey call it “the midsized and still healthy fat acceptance movement”, then we can call it a day.

Ok the dieting and WLS is failing most, we cannot be made thin “pernamently” in a thin way, but does this mean saying Ok, now we embrace the health problems for those on the higher end of the spectrum? Why not demand some more answers and better ones that work?

Hey I know in this life, there is a 99.95 chance that I will die fat. So don’t try and claim I expect to wake up lithe tommorow. Maybe I’ll be thinner, or maybe I’ll be bigger from the heart failure, putting on even more fluid, whatever but don’t tell me that I am supposed to “accept” what is a serious health problem and tell the world, Ok now because you have abused us, we will turn the other way and say, “We love our fat!” no matter WHAT it does to us. It is operating only in response to them!. Forget them. I want help, and by the way I used to weight near 700lbs and probably would have been dead 15 years ago, it wasn’t like the size acceptance world was any help then too. Your brush off of me and my issues is nothing new.

I have the self respect to say, “Look you are wrong”. An overabundance of adipose tissue can destroy lives, taking the moral imperatives out of it all. Basically you want me to ignore my own reality, and here you basically are telling me to go away. If anything I worry about midsized women because I was smaller one until my late 20s. So think that one out. .

I don’t care what the fat phobic culture thinks or doesn’t think, I want to stay alive, and if I die young from being fat, maybe my nephews do not have to. Maybe they will be able to get help without all the baggage and social engineering garbage. It’s like the two political parties, two wings of the same predatory bird, well size acceptance has become a dance partner with the diet-fat industry, no one wants a real cure or answers. I know people have gotten fatter, no doubt of it, have lived long enough to see the difference, back in the 90s people my size I never saw them, now I see them all over–the ones who can still get out.

The main post was typical boiler-plate size acceptance stuff, we are radical and standing against the fat-phobes, OK I get it, I just wanted to put my viewpoint out there.

But has anyone wondered if gearing all your positions in response to the fat haters, is the most healthy position? If anything it becomes a dance of two parties, where one makes all decisions in RESPONSE to the decisions the other makes. Sorry to say this, and some may find me unusual to state it, it is a position of WEAKNESS. It merely makes you a puppet to their strings. They scream, "We hate you fat people!", the size acceptance idealogues scream back "Forget you, We Love our Fat!"

Again I am brushed off. Supersized and fat people like me don't matter in the size acceptance world, I learned that long ago. Fat hating Sociopaths will post pictures of us to make fun of us as our bodies go crazy, and then we will have the size acceptance crew say "you do not matter". They hate us too because we represent the "hole" in their arguments and their absolute concessions.

From Big Fat Delicious: Some Thoughts on Fat Identity

I found this blog entry interesting...

"Some Thoughts on Fat Identity"

In it she talks about girls who are thin, who are critiqued over their weight and memories about being younger and really not that big and told how she is fat over and over.

Now, before y'all start flaming me - understand where I'm coming from as a DEATHFATZ woman who, when I look back at pictures of me as a kid/teenager, wasn't really fat back then but sure as hell thought I was because that's all I heard. Sure, I never wore single digit sizes in my life (well, maybe as a baby and a toddler), and I don't remember ever wearing a size that wasn't classified as "Chubby" in girls' sizes or ever getting to wear any of the clothes like my peers wore when I was teen (I had to shop in the womens' sections of the stores to find anything over size 14/16 to fit me). But I wasn't fat like I'm fat now

I think about the times I was younger, and remember being 12-13 years old wearing size 12, and ironically remember being told how fat I was. At that age, I sunk to the level where some of the teasing stopped, but it was short lived, a summer where my parents had bought a pool membership, probably brought me more exercise, and the 100lb weight gain that would come in high school and from the blossoming of PCOS, would still be acouple years in the future and would begin after the trauma of a move on my 13th birthday. [Remember the 12 plus years I speak of where I was in the mid 200s before my massive fast weight gain that drove my weight to nearly 700lbs?]

There is one moment that stands out in my mind, where the brown size 12/13 pants suit with vest I wore on New Years Eve no longer fits 6 months later and my mother is very angry at me, at the time, I felt devestated and like I was being blamed for something beyond my control. Later I would wonder why didn't anyone take me to a doctor since my weight would skyrocket so fast especially between 1983 [the summer I went out West with my family and 1984?]

My life where my average weight was around 240-250, with a few 30lb up and downs for many years is ironic now, as I remember the job discrimination, losing jobs-over my bad lungs where the doctors gave me prednisone would put back on weight I lost and then later more, the health problems and it seemed the unyielding unending abuse just for being bigger [remember I was 5'11] then the average person.

I think how did all of this affect me in the long haul? It seems they just want to bombard fat people further, rather then come up with any real answers of making lives more happy and healthy? Consider I was later diagnosed with at least one endocrine condition related to stress and high levels of cortisol, what did all this do for me but hurt my health worse?

How many people especially women live under a rain cloud of despair for an extra 20,30, 50 plus pounds? What does this do for their health in the long run? Maybe they are ensuring more fatter and sicker people down the road! I think so.

She goes on to talk about the expected perfection and more things they pressure people to fulfil, mostly to make money.

I think more and more our society has lost its mind. The feelings are very poignant when I look back at the pictures of myself at age 12-13, and see a very pretty girl who may have a little plumpness to her but who otherwise was very good looking.

From another blog: "Swept Under the Rug of Size Acceptance"

Here is an article from the FatPinkMonkey blog, "Swept Under The Rug of Size Acceptance". She addresses many of the issues I had previously with HAES, which now I am discussing different issues, per this article. One thing right now I am discussing some of these issues with a leader in HAES who I am having a very good discussion with but it continues my theme, that what applies to more moderately fat and functional people may not apply to the super sized. She does point out something I experienced in size acceptance, the fact that when you get "too big" you are seen as NOT belonging. I heard the but "there is a limit" line too.

Feeding into the isolation I felt in such a large body were the comments of "oh, yeah I like big girls, but there IS a limit", "We don't want to hear about the problems of fat people not being able to wipe their a**" ect. It's actually very common! Fat people hate fatter people. If you have ever seen a fat person and thought to yourself, or actually asked someone else, "I'm not THAT fat, am I?" Then you are guilty of this.

One thing I never have talked about on this blog, is that in the world, the people I fear the most ire and judgement from isn't always the thin but the midsized, who sometimes will run from the super sized and ostracize them, fearing that one day they could be us. She is right there are those fat people who do hate fatter people. This isn't everyone of course, but it is really a problem out there.

I have my own beliefs about weight loss surgery, but totally understand why people make this decision, being super sized is very difficult. You become more immobile, you lose semblance of a normal life, people are going to grab on to any rope that has the possibility to save them.

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

Read this article for context:"Goodbye NAAFA: Why I Left the Size Acceptance Movement Behind", this article is kind of a continuation of the points I make there.

One large size acceptance organization is ironically named Health At Every Size or HAES promoted by the Association For Size Diversity and Health and is growing and popularity, getting the word out to professionals and others. Denial of the health problems related to fat really takes hold in a group that purposely turns a blind eye to the sick and fat. Paul Campos who is a spokesman for HAES in his book "The Obesity Myth, somehow manages to exclude super-sized people in general with a main focus on the moderate and mild fat or "The wish I was skinny" crowd. This sentence sums up the weird rabbit hole and ideals of the HAES movement: " A healthy weight is the weight a person maintains while living a healthy life" [p.79] Consider that sentence and the implicit backhanded judgements within it.

Entire chapters are devoted to proving that fat doesn't affect health, and that those who complain of hurting knees and edema,are a bunch of whiners.

Read this one too."The Reason why the disease of obesity doesn't kill those who suffer from it, and why it remains impossible to cure are one in the same because it doesn't exist'" [pg 41]

What!?? Talk about wiping away endless people's experiences.

Can't they admit fat is even a symptom of illness? I suppose not. While some tenets of HAES are good things to follow for health:

•Accepting and respecting the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes.
•Eating in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite.
•Finding the joy in moving one’s body and becoming more physically vital.

I would like to take all these HAES followers and NAAFA fat activists on a visit to a nursing home that specializes in the rehabilitation of obese people who have lost all mobility and suffer an array of health problems and tell me straight to my face after visiting this facility that obesity is never a disease or even the symptom of one.

While exaggerations do exist to sell diet products oppressing hordes of mildly fat people, doctors aren't being "mean" to suggest a correlation between ill health and obesity. Many become fat from a variety of causes, some even mixed and find themselves in the same boat.

Does Health at Every Size apply to 500lbs? 400lbs? Find me even one 350lb person of average height capable of running a marathon. How many 400lbers do you see in the Olympics? Seen any fat basketball players lately? Even the "Refrigerator" of Chicago Bears fame was forced into early retirement from his bulk. While the HAES folks are right to nod to the fact to the genetic undergirdings of obesity, no one tried to tell Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man, that he was as healthy as everyone else and that just some "positive thinking" would cure his leg problems and other ailments that came from his height.

Many don't know this but there is a dimension of healthism within size acceptance, that is so focused on proving "Nothing is wrong with being fat"! It denies the reality of the majority of people who cross a certain mark. Even by the 200s, the pain began, I sit here, now knowing my stomach is killing my legs,and my time is limited to get this typed out. Part of me screams--"Are these people on drugs? Being fat hurts!"

When I was in size acceptance, this was during the years I was at my peak weights and the pressure to keep quiet about all physical suffering was the unwritten rule. Ironically I went to a NAAFA conference held at the most sprawled out hotel in the world that would have given a thin healthier person exhaustion just to navigate the place [no one thought of the sick there, or assumed all immobile fat people already had the scooter]. It was interesting to note one 600lb lady, playing "my stamina is better then yours" games with me adding to my distress.

I figured out fast during my time in the size acceptance world, that unless I presented myself as perky and healthy, that I wasn't wanted. This was not a world that embraced "thinker" type personalities but extroverts and adherents of delusional false "positive thinking". For a time, I basically said, lets just tell the truth! You think fat people do not know they are sick, or that their weight doesn't cause problems just on the sheer physical level? Why do we have to live in delusion in some sort of over the top people pleasing escapade? This doesn't mean helping the fat bigots out but just standing up with some integrity!

One fat activist got angry with me on a message board and asked me "Would it be so terrible if you let go of that fat negativity? What would happen if you thought about your health problems the same way a thin person thought about theirs?" She went on to tell me that the valuing any weight change was related to keeping fat prejudice in it's place and finished up telling me. "I cannot see anyway to seek 'the fat cure' without investing fat hatred".

The irony of a fully mobile 200 and something lb woman saying this to a woman who [at the time I was somewhere in the high 600s] is immensely absurd. Fat negativity? What is that? Wanting to stay alive? No one would tell someone dying of kidney disease, that we don't wish to seek the kidney cure anymore! The size acceptance world has lost it!

One thing about me, I'm an independent thinker and know when I am being bamboozled. By the way, having discussed these matters for years, most people see size acceptance as trapped in a morass of delusion and that includes many fat people. More damage is done to fat people demanding they must hide the realities of larger bodies, and surely the merely large still can function well, but to deny the super sized of us, a voice or even admitting our truths is a betrayal beyond belief!

What is wrong with not wanting to see friends sick anymore? What is wrong with wanting people not to lose the ability to have functional lives? What is wrong with asking true professionals and researchers for unbiased help?

Size acceptance if it really cared about fat people instead of just being the inverse side of the diet enterprises would have worked on helping there to be rehab centers for the obese [those are so few in number to be laughable] and demanding real research in obesity that isn't biased. They would have allowed super sized people to tell their truths, instead of foisting "think positive" New Age claptrap on them. By the way "intuitive eating" is badly named, intuition is related to what one feels, eat when you are hungry is good advice, but not eat when you feel like it.

Health at EVERY size? I don't think so. How absolutely ABSURD.

Chubby Chasers Give Me the Willies!

Chubby Chasers and Fat Admirers/Fetishes:, the men that are out there with their overwhelming desire for the full figure and who love fat women over all other kinds. I have absolutely nothing against a man who thinks a 300-lb. and over woman is beautiful, as a summation of all her parts personality, values, and even, yes, looks, but to be frank the ones who have turned fat into a top priority and a fetish creep me out.

I'm glad whoever wrote this Wikipedia entry on fat fetishism gave a nod to fat people in size acceptance who got a bit fed up with the objectification of fat women. This website will help explain some terms I use here, like "fat admirers" [though they hold a more fence-sitting view], feederism and more.

Some people involved in the fat acceptance movement argue that fat fetishism undermines social movements towards fat acceptance, through counter-productive objectification and dehumanization of fat people.

This may be politically incorrect to some liberals and others but when it comes to Chubby Chasers and "Fat Admirers", outside of men who are dating fat women because they are overweight themselves, or looking for you as a whole person....Run like the wind!

I was a pretty enough woman [today I'm much older with years of illness notched on my belt], which garnered their attention, and have had some chubby chasing type strangers, show up at the grocery store, bookstore, and other places, come up to me to say "hello". Perhaps some were truly interested in me as a person, but I know especially at my peak weights, I was fat enough to gain some attention, and in my case, was oh so young, when hitting the top weights. Anyhow, their efforts were for naught, hitting on a woman who was attached by age 25.

Years ago, once at a conference for fat people, I got a secret admirer sniffing my trail and remember telling a lady whom he wanted to serve as a go-between: "Tell him, I'm married!" In certain circles of size acceptance, this was no stumbling block, but of course it was for me.

Luckily this man didn't even know my name or address, but a realization hit me: somebody who never spoke to me was enamored because of how I looked. Now this can happen to all women, thin women talk about their objectification, and when a men and women do meet each other, appearances is all they got to go on in the first seconds and minutes of meeting each other, but it just felt weird overall.

This is because by then, I had seen so much weird stuff around me. As a fully monogamous, then engaged and married woman, I was an outside viewer to the size acceptance date and relate world. I know today I was beyond very horribly naive, in thinking these groups could be about platonic friendship, size activism and not just about sex, but then being in the 500-lb. and rising class, social isolation from my size was already affecting me and I just wanted to make regular friends. My experiences include some fat acceptance conferences and social groups that focused on BBWs and larger women.

When it came to the men, the few good ones loved fat women regardless of their weight -- maybe they were overweight themselves, maybe they had grown up among a loved fat role model -- anyhow, they just saw weight as a physical trait, and did not glorify it. These were the ones who were overweight themselves or in some way, could relate to previously suffering from obesity or growing up with it in some way.

The worst men gravitated towards fat women whose mannerisms left their would be suitors believing that they were passive, compliant and easily controlled. In some cases, this was true, in others the vultures left empty-handed, sorely disappointed.

I believe most fat women who are mid-sized can date normally, the world is full of all sorts of sizes in healthy marriages, but very super-sized women especially need to be careful. People under turmoil and in vulnerable positions can attract those who do not have their best interests at heart. One friend said it this way, "Broken people can attract other broken people". This doesn't mean everyone who is very fat is "broken," but definitely they are facing things the normal healthy folks are not facing. This may include severe health problems or food addiction.

I have heard horrifying stories, even from other people in size acceptance circles and organizations, about the treatment of very large women. They ranged from an 800-lb.-plus woman being kept entrapped in a walk-in closet on the floor, to finding out about feeders. I had the experience of befriending a lady near my size [she was in the high 400s], thinking we would relate to each other, and then being shocked on finding her feederism website. That new friendship was ended quickly.

There are men who like their women more easily controlled and that can happen especially with fat women facing mobility problems. Very fat people who have faced social ostracization or rejection need to be extra careful as to their selection out in the dating world.

But as an outside observer, with my fiance and then husband at my side, it was quite obvious -- for men, it was an absolute buyer's market with women always outnumbering the men. While some men were overweight, super-sized men were basically nonexistent, and most of the chubby chasers were of a thin or average build. Married or otherwise attached couples made up a sizable number, but still remained in the minority. This was no place for Christians or the traditional, which is one reason I left size acceptance too. A wedding ring meant little, judging by the men who ignored the silver circle on my left hand and those of other women.

It seemed when fat women discovered the opportunities in this new "fat-loving" underground, they went absolutely boy crazy like teenagers. But boy crazy at 35 or 44 is different then boy crazy at 15; hotel rooms can be rented, and trips made with no more required parental supervision. It was no holds barred.

Promiscuity ruled that world [and I think it would be worse today], which is why I removed myself from it. This applied not only to the socially focused groups, but the activism one as well. Ideas about platonic friendship and finding a wouldbe fat sisterhood was a joke, in that crowd. My morals didn't fit into this hedonistic mentality, where very fat women offered themselves to any man who'd have them driven by the nudge that whispered, "Take what you can get honey!"

I still remember one conversation I had with one of the ladies in one of these social groups. "Hilda" [name has been changed] reveled in her largeness, claiming that she liked weighing 320 lbs., and when she fell under that oddly chosen benchmark, ate to get back up there, and dieted to not get too much over it, fearing the immobility that comes with larger sizes. She'd married a very timid man, who catered to all her desires who openly admitted he was only with her because she was fat.

One day I made the mistake of asking, "Well what would happen if you lost weight, say, to getting a digestive disorder or something?" "Hilda" didn't hem or haw for a instant: "Well, that probably would be the end of it!", she said.

It didn't take too to figure out that others like "Hilda" populated these scenes; outside of the regular world of dating and marriage, very fat women seemed all too vulnerable to the new flattery they encountered, and became easy marks for the most predatory of men. This doesn't mean there aren't thin women who also become marks, but just seeing human beings treat each other as objects will forever stay with me.

Towards the end, before I cleared out for good, I realize that some fat acceptance organizations seemed far more interested in fulfilling and pleasing chubby chaser and fat fetish/admirer desires, then raising any awareness or help for fat people. I want to keep this article rated G, but I found out about too much: women my size signing up to have soft porn videos made of them [they were told it would "empower" them], realizing swinging wasn't just something left behind in the 70s. You know life has gotten strange when your local plus sized social club, calls you "the prude" because of your refusal to join in on their lifestyle choices. By then I had seen enough.

Radiance Magazine

I always liked this magazine and realized while they went out some years ago they still have an online precense. So check it out HERE:

I am considering ordering some back copies....[they stopped publishing in 2001] Right now there is no fat magazine for women I know of, Radiance is gone, BBW went poof!..This is one I wish would consider coming back..

The Locked Down World of Size Acceptance

SOne thing that is bugging me lately, trying to get this blog out there, the fat acceptance blogs and websites are locked down tighter then a drum. I have never seen so many censored websites in my life, where every blog demands automatic moderation before any posts appear or where membership must be approved on every message board. Freedom of speech doesn't seem to be a very loved concept in size acceptance.

When one has a blog, you do want readers and you have to get your link out there to get them. So far its been very tough, I've never seen anything like this. Some just general obesity websites have been okay, the politically correct police haven't barred the door from my entrance but all the size acceptance/fat positive etc, websites, its been near impossible.

There is one big fat blog where I applied for membership and at least to enter into discussion with the folks there, and got no response. Well I left the size acceptance movement to begin with, because they did everything they could to silence my voice, and my experience. Because I talk about realities of being super-obese, they do not want the "fat positive" bubble popped by anyone. I doubt that once pink haired size activist ever took my advice, when I told her to go visit a bariatric nursing home to see what obesity could do to people. There is no intregrity in trying to control people or silence the voices of the ultra-super sized.

Sometimes I feel like the Size Acceptance world works like a closed down gulag, of ideologues, who can't stand to ever examine anything. I'm against fat people being treated like garbage, and have managed to grab on to many of the good things life has to offer even being so severely obese but that doesn't matter. Unless you think exactly like them, they do not even want to listen. The Super-sized are already rendered invisible in a lot of places in society, it stinks, when the people who are portending to represent fat people's needs, lock you out as well.

A Revealing Conversation On Size Acceptance and Health

I and a fellow endocrine sufferer, who I appreciate very much, shares her common experiences with hormonal health challenges and size acceptance. We agree on much. [My questions in blue] Read on:

1. Describe your experience with size acceptance, what did you find positive about it, what did you find negative?

I originally joined the size acceptance movement in 1996. After purchasing my first personal computer and joining the citizens of the internet from home, I stumbled across the Dimensions Magazine website that broadcast the statement: Where Big is Beautiful. The print magazine articles were written by men and women who took pride in themselves as a whole person. This was a new discovery for me, having been a fat teenager and dealing with discrimination, bullies, and general bias because of my size.

I spent a few years mostly reading and studying materials from the NAAFA and Dimensions Magazine, and researching the phenomenon that is fat acceptance.

Over time, I began to learn that for me, the journey to "Size Acceptance" is really a journey of "Self Acceptance" rather than coming to terms with being just fat. As a person, I learned from the SA movement that I have a right to enjoy life just as I am. Since that time, I've even been able to help friends of all sizes come to terms with their own bodies. It's been an interesting journey. When I tell women with low self esteem that I love my body and who I am-- they begin to wonder how "I" could love myself, when they see me as socially unacceptable!

Things I learned from SA:
Doctors usually believe you're fat because you're lazy. Little research and questioning is done for fat people. Diet and exercise are the common prescriptions. Many fat people then turn to alternative medicine or "acceptance" of themselves and then fail to get help! Fat and sexuality are not mutually exclusive. Many people can and so see through the fog of the myth that fat people are somehow second-rate.

My opinions matter, no matter how fat I am! The anonymity of the SA movement online has helped many fat people find their confidence and ability to speak in regards to various issues. I think this has helped the most in fat people learning to advocate for themselves. They know they're not alone, and can voice their opinions.

Society still has yet to accept fat people as the norm in America. Theater seats are uncomfortable, airplane seats and being asked to purchase two seats is the norm. Bathroom stalls are too small. Stairs are too steep. Booths at restaurants are made with fixed tables. Hospital gowns for fat patients are hard to find (and you're made to feel like a freak if you ask for a larger gown at times). Chairs at airports and doctor's office have arms that can cause physical harm to a fat person.

There's a bias in America that fat people are nonsexual. That's so far from the truth! We are human beings just like everyone else, and we have carnal desires, wants and needs to be loved, feel affection and physical attraction. The lies that are perpetuated by the media don't help any.

Size Acceptance has its own militant activists just like every other agenda.

I am still a member of the SA movement, but left my formal advocacy agenda in late 2008.


2. How did you come to be diagnosed with Cushings?

When visiting a new doctor one day in 2007, I was bemoaning to my doctor that for years I'd been battling a host of issues that I thought were just normal things for a fat person. After years of being told that I was fat, lazy, an over-eater and I would have to deal with my health issues -- this new doctor started to ask questions. Every answer I gave created a new question. At the end of an hour-long exam, the doctor asked me if I'd heard of Cushing's Disease. I hadn't yet, but then she explained the textbook symptoms.

The trouble from that point was that local doctors aren't trained in what to do with Cushing's patients, and you have to find an Endocrinologist that understands the disease. There are few specialists who truly understand the full body of research in regards to this endocrine disorder. I saw two local Endocrinologists who laughed me out of their offices despite my doctor's referral. Finally, after much research on the internet and talking to my doctor, I found Dr. Ted Friedman in Los Angeles. Dr. Friedman took the time to meet with me, look at my history of pictures from spanning from current days to my childhood, looked at all of my physical signs and symptoms and prescribed a very focused and intricate testing regimen. After only 46 days of tests, MRIs and discussion, it was decided that I had been living with this disease some call the "Ugly disease" since birth.

Since that time, I have had two pituitary surgeries to help establish a period of remission of all of the difficult symptoms. After each surgery I've enjoyed 6 months of improvement.

3. Do you feel support was lacking in the size acceptance community regarding your diagnosis with Cushings?

Once I shared my disorder, the problems it caused for me, and that I was pursuing a cure for my issues, things began to change for me. When I announced I was having pituitary surgery to work towards a cure, I was treated like someone who didn't know what was right for myself. Constantly people were telling me reconsider such a "drastic surgery" that they felt could leave me crippled for life. Despite all my assurances that I looked at every angle, I received countless phone calls, emails and visits from people who insisted I was making a wrong choice. When I needed support the most from my friends, a dichotomy arose -- that of having to deal with friends who felt I was fat for life, and that of trying to cure a deadly disease.


4. Do you agree that in size acceptance there is a lack of truth about obesity being for some people a symptom of a disease process?

Many of my fat friends categorize their fat as a physical trait, and refuse to believe that obesity is a serious medical condition.

While I personally believe a rubenesque woman can be fit and fluffy, there are many fat people who have serious medical conditions that may go undiagnosed because of their attitude towards size acceptance, their fear of the doctors being emotionally cruel to them, and that there aren't any real serious medical diseases for fat people.

In many circles in the SA community, the talk of "dieting" is forbidden. The reason being that fat people need a place of solace from the people telling them that diets will solve all their problems and they refuse to diet. I can see the point in this argument, but the people that can't diet to lose weight have serious medical issues that should be addressed! I'm sure some people who say they diet really don't and they are fooling themselves, but people like me who eat only 1100 calories a day and gain weight have metabolic disorders that need serious help!

Diseases I've seen friends suffer with from obesity related issues:

Lypo/Lymphadema
High Blood Pressure
Heart Attacks
Deep Vein Thrombosis
Diabetes
Osteoarthritis
Osteopenia
PCOS
Cushing's Disease
Hypothyroidism
Growth Hormone Deficiency

The website bigfatfacts states: Weight is not a barometer of wellness. More Americans die every year from weighing too little than from weighing too much. An estimated 25,000 people die from obesity. Moderately overweight people live longer than those at normal weight. (Flegal, et. al.) (See reference notes at bottom of report)

Weight is not a barometer of wellness! So a fat person can have normal blood pressure, activity level, blood sugar, and labwork. But notice here it says moderately overweight people live longer. Most of my friends in size acceptance are overweight into the hundreds of pounds. Dear friends of mine are over 400 pounds, and one is over 500. Somewhere fat does become a barometer for wellness!



5. Where do you think the size acceptance movement is headed today? Do you think it has a future?

Size Acceptance is splintering into various new groups and is no longer a united front. Some advocacy groups want fat to be declared a disability, yet some don't. If it's a disability, then is it not healthy then? Other groups are insisting that super-sized people shouldn't be part of mainstream size acceptance as they are the "freaks" of the movement.

These kinds of separate attitudes don't do any fat person any good, and it's a shame to see that happening. I wish to think that in the future, we'll find a better united front and be able to be inclusive again.

Goodbye NAAFA and the rest: Why I left Size Acceptance

Here is my old 2001 article: I left size acceptance many years ago, circa 2000-2001.

Here is updated version for this blog. Over the years, I did get response to my articles with many people in agreement, many repeated my concerns, and told me they were ignored as well. I have noted the size acceptance movement in examining its websites, publications, organizations and spokespeople has declined from late 1990s, honestly I am not surprised.

While some of size acceptance's ideals are sound, which include ending discrimination against fat people and advocating for their rights, the foundations are crumbling. I have noticed while things hit more of a peak in the late 90s, where one saw NAAFA and other size acceptance organizations in the news everywhere, nowadays things seem to have shrunk. Americans have gotten even fatter and corpulence is becoming even more reviled. The Size Acceptance movement as it now and then stands has failed.

Today's primere size acceptance organizations are NAAFA [National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance] and the far lesser known ISAA International Size Acceptance Association. NAAFA as of the late 90s had thousands of members {4,000}, I do not know its present numbers. ISAA being a much less known group, one can only estimate the membership. These groups match in their basic philosophies. There are size acceptance groups with activism as the main endeavor, but many have cropped up focusing on the social end of things, dances, parties, for the overweight people and their "admirer's with Heavenly Bodies in Boston, and even nightclubs such as Club Bounce in California. Here is a list of these groups. Many of these groups sprouted up from the NAAFA fountainhead, though their first priority is social functions rather the activism. When I speak of Size Accceptance in this article, it does encompass some of these groups but focuses mostly on the activism part, and what is being sold by top 'spokesmen" and "women" for size acceptance.

The first reason Size Acceptance has not grown is it promotes fat rather then just dealing with it as a physical characteristic. Sometime around 1980, NAAFA changed its name from National Association to Aid Fat Americans, to National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. This was also a philosophical stand not just a linguistical one.

Fat is great according to the size acceptance minions and while the ideals of fat people deserving right and proper treatment are commendable, this belief flies in the face of scientific logic. The demand for pasted on smiles and glorying in my hugely rotund body, basically failed as I gasped for air merely climbing some stairs.

The big names in size acceptance try to sell some nice sounding ideas such as "Health at Any Size" [does that apply to 600lbs too?] and brush all the health problems that come about from obesity whether the obesity itself is a sympton or not, right under the proverbial carpet. I still remember the day many years ago, where I challenged a certain notable in size acceptance circles, whose more extroverted personality gained her the attention in the national media for a short time, to go visit a bariatric nursing home, and to go see where "fat" could take people.

I get that people who have never exited the mid-sized world where normal living has never ceased may just "not get it" but ignoring the experiences of thousands you proport to represent is willfully neglectful.

Anyone who surpasses the 400lb mark soon learns that bikini parties with the "Padded Lilies" [an actual Size acceptance group that is compromised of mid-sized women who do synchronized swimming, conventions, and fat positive rhetoric soon rings hollow next to their scooter, sleep apnea machine, shortness of breathe and bottles of expensive prescriptions. It is good to be healthy, fit and happy, but where does denial of reality come into the size acceptance presentation on size? Marilyn Wann in her book "Fatso?!" points out at 250lbs how she climbs mountains, and dances for hours without exhaustion. As late as 1995, I would walk 2-3 miles for "fun" myself. But sadly this negates experiences of heavier people who find walking across a parking lot, an exhausting challenge. Fat people can indeed be healthier and in better shape via exercise and better food, but some reality checks are in order.

The SA publications all showed fat women frolicking in swimming pools and doing aerobics. While I liked much of what these publications had to offer, it is sad so many have gone defunct. While these activities are good for the more midsized person with better health, physical realities come crashing through for those who suffer with obesity in it's most severe forms. Those who find their stamina crumbling usually are ironically told to exercise more but not lose any weight. When the first health crises crop up, many did leave size acceptance for the university diet clinics or for weight surgery. I found myself thinking that size acceptance as presented in this country was just the flipside of the coin of the failed diet industry, all desiring to profit off everyone where very little truth was spoken. Years ago before I departed, I talked about this stuff, but the brick walls of refusing to face reality never budged. I doubt, that size activist I mentioned above ever went to go visit that nursing home.

Denying the fact that obesity is a disease or even a disabling condition, size acceptance has put its head in the sand and closed the door long ago on those who were not fat, "fit and healthy". Tracy a past person with PCOS as well, I knew on a size acceptance board had this to say

"I have in the past, held the concept of "size acceptance" dear to my
heart, but at this stage and with my health in the crisis that it is, I cannot
with a clear conscience, advocate or agree with any movement that does not
address the reality of the negative health consequences of severe
obesity."

No size acceptance organizations supports a cure for obesity. None that I know of have called for there to be real medical studies {the ones on supersized people my size are nearly non-existent} or for any real help to be developed. The focus even in the 90s, as I viewed it was almost all social stuff, with only a few working indepth on the "heavier" matters. After all its all about "acceptance" rather then "aiding". The people speaking for the fat are as bad as those who wish to bilk them of their wallets for liquid diets. Imagine a kidney disease foundation telling those with kidney disease they must accept their condition. Fat people are told this is "your lot in life you must accept it". This leaves the fat person out in the cold in general between fad diet charlatans and size acceptance advocates who tell them their only other option is to make the best of it!

Logic was a sold out proposition, as the elephant in the room was ignored, that elephant being, that being "fat" for most fat people is not their perferred way of being. The secret that 99% of people hate being fat, and it wasn't about the discrimination always, but the plain fact for many it hurts, and makes everything harder to do even limiting activities for the mid-sized crowd. As one NAAFA spokesperson said

"It is my position and that of many in the movement that we need to focus on
what we can do to make fat people healthy--not make fat people thin. Right now I
believe that working toward making fat people healthy is a winnable battle--I do
not believe making fat people thin is."

What better position to remain a non-threat to the diet industry complex? But I digress.

This shows that acceptance and promotion of fat was and has been one of the most prevailing goals of size acceptance. Obesity is seen like something like tallness, a normal part of person's makeup. I wonder how a 600lb person who can barely walk is supposed to take this information?

Out of fear and justified loathing of the diet industry, size acceptance took a wholly reactionary position, shoving it's head in the sand. Repeating mantras of "Fat People are healthy" even amid oxygen and wheelchair dependent people, very few are buying into the lie.

The problem is the cost of demanding equal rights for fat people should not have as its price out and out lies and denial. Most Americans know at least one friend or relative who has suffered the out and out social ramifications as well as the physical results of being obese. The public is privy now to the sufferings of the super-obese on the Discovery network. Many fat people outside of the SA network, see it as a group of extremists who have "give up"!

Science is discovering more facts on fat people's behalf that many diseases and conditions have obesity as a sympton including PCOS, Syndrome X, Cushings, side effects of prescription drugs etc. There are also those who do have eating disorders or other conditions, then there are the facets of modern life itself [which I'll be talking about more later]. With all the writing about the futility of diet, which has some truth to it, where is the writing or academics willing to face honestly the complexities of obesity? What I noticed is that the size acceptance community walled itself off from anyone will to do this. NAAFA and groups like it have nothing to offer those who face the results of severe obesity, disabled or not, because they never want to threaten their position of ever admitting fat can be the result of a disease process.

Size acceptance in the 90s, and I doubt this has changed much, had a dark side that was unknown to the public. Being more conservative in my own lifestyle choices, that alone, was reason to depart the world of NAAFA conventions and BBW social gatherings. Some leaders are involved in the selling of plus size erotica and photos. Some "size acceptance" websites, you will find obese women selling videos and nude photographs of themselves to the proverbial "FA" [or fat admirer]. Odd that objectification of fat women, has been one of the results of the "acceptance message."

Many of the so called fat advocacy organizations and social groups then center themselves on "pleasing" the FA. The integrity has been lost by that alone. The FAs [known as "chubby chasers" too] do not want anyone to lose weight as they are sexually attracted to those who are obese. It is a fetish for many who look at weight as the primary factor in choosing a partner. One other debauched world is the one of "feeders" who seek to make their significant partner fatter and "feedees" who want to be fatter. I encountered one woman years ago who had to have serious psychological problems whose life goal was to be 600lbs. Years ago, I told her she was basically inviting the Grim Reaper over for a party, those warnings were not listened to as far as I know.

Size acceptance is a failure, but then the premise of accepting what for most is basically a health issue, that causes uncomfortableness on the low end, and serious health issues on the high end, basically has been a cop out all along. Truth about obesity has been shoved under the carpet and overweight people have remained being handed the same cup of indignity, the diet profit makers have served. Perhaps it is an impossible dream, to think of a group that truly looked out for overweight people and stood up for true help instead of serving as a conduit for all those who want to exploit the fat in different ways.