Health at every size

[redfox]

http://www.lindabacon.org/HAESCommunity/index.php

A blog I recently found...

[ctg492]

I am a doubting Thomas I guess.
People should respect and love the body they are in. People should respect the bodies others are in. Having said that. Why not continue to improve what you have?
I am cycling to 3,600 miles this summer. I am a vegetarian all my life. I am training for a 1/2 marathon. I have learned that I have had to change my 51 year old mind on how I treat my body and diet each day to accomplish the marathon. Daily I fight with the urge to not run, eat junk. For all my personal work to improve my health and body what do I hear from people ? Why would you do this, why don't you eats this that? You are too thin, You will wreck your knees".....I never say to those people " why do you eat that? Why don't you loose weight?, why don't you work out?. I have found it seems to be Ok to say things about people who work out, eat a diet that works for them, yet good heavens Never say someone is overweight, or eats poorly, since it is the norm now and when things become the norm they become justified. Never in my memory do I remember hearing it was ok to be over weight, till it became the norm.
My guess is in 20 years, it will all change when the health issues that will plague all today's overweight young people hit.

[Suzanne]

Thank you for posting this link, redfox. I read Bacon's book a couple of years ago, and found it very heartening and persuasive. There's a new study out which also shows that obesity in itself does not necessarily shorten one's life. http://www.livescience.com/21474-excess-weight-death-risk.html

The Venus figures of the upper Palaeolithic, going back to 35,000 years ago, show that women have always had a range of sizes; some of these ladies are what we'd call morbidly obese today, and their preponderance in the artwork suggests that they were considered highly desirable. At least one was completely covered with ochre, which was a sacred material back then, and she was carved from oolitic limestone, not the easiest thing to get, so her cellulite was immortalized for posterity! There was no junk food back then, and life involved a lot of activity in food getting and preparation. Jean-Pierre Duhard wrote two very interesting papers for the journal Antiquity, describing not only the statuettes, but also engravings and cave drawings. Also, a while back PBS brought out a video called "Fat" that explored the connections between size and health; so did NOVA.

Here are some Venuses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurines
PBS Frontline Fat: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fat/etc/synopsis.html
NOVA: http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie/nova-fat-chance-in-a-thin-world/
Obese athletes: http://sportsmanagementdegree.org/2010/top-10-obese-athletes-who-dominated-their-sport/
More fat athletes: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/obese-athletes-show-fat-can-be-fit-20110218-1ayof.html

I agree that one should respect one's body and seek to improve one's health. However, I strongly disagree that the only criterion for either beauty or health should be skinniness and athleticism. For people who would never be able to achieve a ripped frame, there are still ways to make the most of one's body - by dressing well, good grooming, choosing good foods for the sake of their nutritrion - single ingredient, fresh, prepared from scratch - and being respectful of one's shape by not trying to force it into clothes designed by a sadist with a fixation on the prepubescent male body - get something attractive that actually fits! I disagree with CTG about "never say someone is overweight..." societal disapproval and often contempt for the large people is only too blatant. I am not myself obese, but I've heard the things that strangers say, obviously intending to be heard, when I'm out with my obese sister, and their cruelty is sickening. I hear what people say on the bus and on BART when a big person boards. I hear what people say in restaurants while staring fixedly at a large person's plate. Bullying of fat children is flagrantly permitted and subtly encouraged by some teachers. People assume that fat people must spend their time gorging on junk food - yet I know skinny people who gorge on junk food, and their mainlining of soda is not commented on, nor are they scolded for their unhealthy habits when they lie on the couch day or night or party night after night.

I think it's high time the faulty connection between size and health is broken. "Thin" does not necessarily equal healthy, nor does "fat" necessarily indicate moral turpitude and rampant illhealth.

[JaneV2.0]

As someone who's struggled since puberty with weight and who's tried every diet and exercise combination that's come down the pike for fifty years or so, I applaud Linda Bacon for stating what's obvious to those of us on the front lines: not everyone can be thin. Thinness doesn't equate to virtue; it's a matter of genes and hormones, as Gary Taubes has pointed out in his excellent books. As far as I'm concerned, there's a special place in hell for the unregenerate playground bullies who think they're entitled to judge others' character by how they look.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Whether or not marathoning does improve one's body (in terms of health) is highly questionable. Now moderate exercise generally DOES improve one's health, yea talk that walk and don't be sendentary, work out with weights a few times a week for your bones, or do some yoga or tai chi. Marathoning is a whole other category of EXTREME exercising though, that type of exercising generates a whole boatload of free radicals, and based on free radical theory that's not a good thing (I'm not sure how many epidemiological studies there are on marathoners, but based on low level theory I've heard it's not a good thing). And yea it is probably tough on the knees so is being significantly overweight (mostly physics at this point I think). As for people saying things even if marathoning is damaging to the body on some level so what, as I understand it it is burning up some degree of the body (maybe of potential longevity or health let's say) for MENTAL and SPIRITIUAL ends (feeling of accomplishment and triump or whatever). That's the perogative of a human being.

Suppose fat was horribly horribly bad for people's health (doubtful, sure caloric restriction is a theory with immense amount of evidence for longevity so maybe everyone should be nothing but skin and bones - ONLY things get really really complex in actual human bodies). There's only perhaps certain types of personalities that will respond to shaming of this by losing weight anyway. Why assume shaming works. Probably at least as many that will respond by feeling bad about themselves by eating even more. And even if they don't, isn't feeling bad about oneself also bad for one's health. And some of the one's that respond to the shaming and lose weight will do so by being chronically hungry. The root cause of people in general weighing more is not "lack of shame in this society" obviously. People are misfed from birth (inadequate omega 3s to omega 6s etc. etc. - this is sad when you really think about it) and raised in a culture that is not by default full of healthy food (you have to go out of your way), many people's default weight was probably to some degree set by the time of the completion of puberty and set in this unhealthy culture. Then even if they want to take charge of it as adults they are set against a whole array of forces in addition to biology: they have to work sendentary jobs in dimly lit cubicals for 40 hours if you are lucky and much more if you want to get ahead jobs, then commuting long distances home in cars. And that's never even mind the smaller percentage of people who would be genetically inclined to be fat even in an ideal society.

[JaneV2.0]

So well said. And dieting--practically a national pastime--does little except to prime one's body--designed to defend itself against stressors like starvation--to store more fat for the lean times. As you suggest, if shaming worked, no one would be fat.

One change that might help keep human bodies in the lower range of their design parameters might be throwing out the grain and sugar-based foods most people wean their babies with. One of my personal heroes, Dr. Leila Denmark, regularly prescribed meat and water as primary foods for toddlers and growing children. She took her own advice, eschewing sugar, and lived well into three figures.

Gary Taubes, from an interview at http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_interviews/eat_your_lungs_out_while_getting_leaner

If you look at animals, all animals regulate their fat tissue very carefully. You can't just force animals to overeat and make them fat.

TM: Really?

GT: They won't do it. The only animals that will get fat by dietary means are very carefully bred rats in laboratories, and house pets that don't eat the foods they evolved to eat.

If you've ever looked at cat food, it's packed with carbohydrates. And yet cats are carnivores in the wild. Felines don't eat carbohydrates. They eat meat. That's what they do. And yet we take then into our homes, we feed them carbohydrates, and lo and behold, they get fat.

The argument I'm making is that [obesity is] a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not of sloth and gluttony. Overeating is the side effect of the disorder, not the cause. What you want to know is, what regulates fat accumulation?

TM: This sounds like some sort of semantics game. Isn't the problem just that they were overeating?

GT: Yao Ming has been growing for much of his life. Until he got to 7 feet, 6 inches, he was in positive energy balance. He was overeating. Nobody considers his height to have been caused by overeating.

He was secreting growth hormone, and that also prompted the secretion of something called insulin-like growth factor, and those things made his bones extend and his muscles extend. He got heavier and heavier because he was getting bigger, but he didn't get bigger because he was overeating. He was overeating because he was getting bigger. He was getting bigger because he was secreting hormones.

So if you're talking about growth, all you care about are what hormones and enzymes control growth. As soon as you get into fat tissue and horizontal growth instead of vertical growth, suddenly the causality slips. Hormones and regulation go out the window, and now overeating is the problem. Instead of a metabolic defect, which the research clearly points to, we assume that it's a character defect.

[Spartana]

I agree that one should respect one's body and seek to improve one's health. However, I strongly disagree that the only criterion for either beauty or health should be skinniness and athleticism. For people who would never be able to achieve a ripped frame, there are still ways to make the most of one's body - by dressing well, good grooming, choosing good foods for the sake of their nutritrion - single ingredient, fresh, prepared from scratch - and being respectful of one's shape by not trying to force it into clothes designed by a sadist with a fixation on the prepubescent male body - get something attractive that actually fits! I disagree with CTG about "never say someone is overweight..." societal disapproval and often contempt for the large people is only too blatant. I am not myself obese, but I've heard the things that strangers say, obviously intending to be heard, when I'm out with my obese sister, and their cruelty is sickening. I hear what people say on the bus and on BART when a big person boards. I hear what people say in restaurants while staring fixedly at a large person's plate. Bullying of fat children is flagrantly permitted and subtly encouraged by some teachers. People assume that fat people must spend their time gorging on junk food - yet I know skinny people who gorge on junk food, and their mainlining of soda is not commented on, nor are they scolded for their unhealthy habits when they lie on the couch day or night or party night after night.

I think it's high time the faulty connection between size and health is broken. "Thin" does not necessarily equal healthy, nor does "fat" necessarily indicate moral turpitude and rampant illhealth.

I second this. Health (physical wellness), fitness (strength, speed, endurance, etc...), weight (amount of body fat) and looks (some arbitary standard of beauty our current culture values) are all different things that often have nothing to do with one another. My quest for fitness to compete in sports has often been very detrimental to my health in many ways. Many peoples quest for a slender body or certain looks has been detrimental to their health as well as their fitness because of unhealthy diets. Overweight people can be very fit and underweight people very sickly, etc. etc... We need to stop assuming that everyone who is fit is healthy, that all the slim are both fit and healthy, while the overweight are ALWAYS unhealthy and unfit. Or that beauty is only looking one certain way. It isn't always the case by a long shot.

[Suzanne]

It seems to me blindingly obvious that all bodies are not the same. When I was a young woman, I agonised over my waistline and my square hips, because even when I was very very thin, unhealthily thin (under 100lb at 5' 6" tall"), I could not get a tiny waist no matter how many situps and crunches and twists I did, and I worked at it obsessively for years. I still remember the surge of relief when I discovered body shapes - which go beyond ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph! I'm very shortwaisted - only just 2 fingers will fit between the bottom of my rib cage and the top of my pelvic girdle, plus there is practically zero flare between the top and bottom of my hip bones. Hence, I will never have an hourglass shape. And I will never be "ripped" either. My frame isn't made that way.

It's not worth wrecking my life over...I'd rather be doing fascinating things with my increasingly precious life energy, and be fit and healthy enough to do those things with ease and pleasure.