Yesterday I was attempting to support a friend on Facebook when I came upon this: “Whether you love your fat or hate it, it’s not the best thing for you”. To be clear, this wasn’t directed at any one person, it was intended to be a global statement.
At almost the same time I got an e-mail from a blog reader that said “Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for your opinion and writing style. Never once have I felt like you were secretly judging me (or any of your readers) for not sharing any of your choices.”
The e-mail made my day and it also illustrated to me what made me so angry about the Facebook comment: one of my core values is that I respect other people’s choices just like I want mine respected. I think that the difference between that Facebook poster and me is intellectual humility. I am aware that what I talk about is the best of the information that I have at the time, but that I could be wrong (and I have made peace with that). But there are a whole lot of people running around who lack that sense of self-awareness and so they state their opinions as fact. Earlier this week we talked about how to be part of these discussions while staying in integrity.
Today I want to talk about how to deal with this emotionally. I don’t know about you but I find it exhausting to be constantly assaulted by sweeping, generalized opinions that are being stated as fact. The diet industry has done a really good job of turning people into walking commercials for the message that makes them 60 Billion dollars a year. I think that people end up being in this position for all kinds of reasons including:
- They honestly (but mistakenly) believe that what they are saying is proven fact
- It makes them feel better about themselves to speak as in absolutes as if they know for sure what is true for everyone
- They lack the intellectual humility to be aware that they could be wrong
- They know that they could be wrong but they lack the emotional intelligence to admit it
In any event, dealing with the constant barrage of this can be anything from frustrating to maddening.
It’s times like these that I reflect on Galileo. At the core, he was a guy who was looking at the research and saying “I know that everyone believes this but the evidence doesn’t support it.” So of course the establishment said: “Wow, thank you for bringing this up, we need to look into this!”
Wait, no they didn’t. They put him under house arrest for life.
Obviously that put a damper on his social life but it didn’t make him any less correct – the Earth does in fact move around the sun.
Galileo is a reminder to me that just because the majority of people and those in power believe something and repeat it endlessly, that does not make it so. I think that I’m part of that tradition – I’m just a woman looking at the evidence and saying that I know that everyone believes that fat is bad, but the evidence just doesn’t support it.
Nobody can prove that fat actually causes all of the health issues that it gets blamed for. Nobody who says that fat is unhealthy can explain the 51% of overweight adults and 30% of obese adults who are metabolically healthy (based on studies from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York). Nobody can prove why we’re getting fatter (there’s even argument as to whether or not we are). Nobody knows for sure why obese people who live in cultures that don’t stigmatize them do not show negative health outcomes that those in stigmatizing societies do. Nobody knows for sure why all of the health problems that are correlated with being fat are also correlated with being under constant stress. Nobody knows for sure the long term health effects of living in a society that constantly stigmatizes you and tells you that you can’t possible be healthy.
That’s a lot of “nobody knows”. So the way that I deal with the constant barrage of BS is by reminding myself that people can say “everybody knows you just eat less and exercise more and you’ll lose weight” or “everybody knows that we’re fatter because of fast food/sedentary lifestyle/hormones in food/alien invasion” or “everybody knows that we would all be thin if we would just give up carbs/give up sugar/go vegarian/go vegan/go paleo/drink most of our meals/swallow a tape worm” but the evidence does not support their hypotheses and so the truth is that “everybody” knows nothing.
We all have opinions and we are entitled to base our choices on our opinions but that’s where it ends. Nobody has the right to tell me that personal responsibility means that I am personally responsible for making my choices based on their opinions, and I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. So whenever I see one of these comments I picture them dressed up in 17th Century Garb writing with a quill “the sun revolves around the Earth” It puts it right back in perspective for me.
You mean to tell me I’m not fat because of an alien invasion? Aw man! Here I thought I had it all figured out.
Thanks for another great post. I have a tendency to go a little more childish (or maybe it’s childlike…I haven’t quite figured that out yet) in my thinking. Where you think of Galileo, I have a tendency to think of the old Family Circus cartoon where the mother is asking the children who did something and the answers are along the lines of “I don’t know” and “Nobody.” Of course at the end of the strip there are ghost like figures of I Don’t Know and Nobody. I think “Everybody” is one of those ghost like figures that you never see, but so many people insist that they exist that they somehow become corporeal, at least in their minds.
I know that cartoon! I can absolutely see it – but everybody would be dressed snooty with a clipboard and a judgmental look
~Ragen
Love, love, love this post!!! Ragen, you are so awesome!!!
Elisabeth,
Thank you so much, I’m really glad that you love, love love it
~Ragen
I thought I was fat because I was from Pluto. No?
It’s actually as likely as any other theory
~Ragen
Do you get exhausted by the lack of intellectual curiosity and humility? It exhausts me… to no end. And I get to the point where I think, “Why bother to even try to explain X?” Then, of course, I continue to try, but again, doesn’t it just exhaust you?
Hi Christine,
I saw a quote once (I think I even have it on one of my blogs) that says “I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you”, I think about that a lot. I do think that people are so desperate to feel ok in our body-hate filled society that if they manage to fit into the stereotype they don’t want to challenge it (and therefore their “okayness”). I do get tired of it sometimes but I try to remember that the people who I write and talk to are those whose minds are open and not people with their fingers in their ears
~Ragen
Ah, yes, excellent reminder. Thank you.
Like the students I teach in person…the ones who don’t return? I can’t do anything about them, but I can totally focus on the ones who come week after week after week and are ready and willing. They give us hope!
This is so timely, you have no idea. Thanks, Ragen!
I spent the past week working with an extremely slim young woman who just smiled knowingly and smugly when the third team member and I informed her that “eat less-move more” is one of the greatest fallacies known to humankind. It was clear that she felt that she knew better…
Ah, youth.
Samuel Clemens once said, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
’nuff said.
Love that!
Your posts consistently blow my mind. I’m just getting into this whole, you know, loving me as I am, mind set. Thank you so much. Between you and a close friend my eyes have been opened. Every word speaks volumes to me.
Alien invasion…Snork!!! Too funny!
~ManDee
Trying to argue against ‘common sense’, I have discovered, is the most exhausting and futile thing to do, regardless of what the ‘common sense’ is. I guess there’s an underlying reason for this – if we all had the rethink every major social and intellectual underpinnings of our lives at every turn, we’d be a mess. So it’s easier to accept received wisdom until something drastic happens and we’re made to change. But if you don’t subscribe to a particular piece of wisdom, it’s extremely aggravating.The only thing you can keep doing is keep chipping away, because eventually people do change. We now accept, for example, that Galileo was right. But it took a long time.
“How true!” she says, chip, chip, chipping away.
This is interesting, and it is indeed a very complex issue. At the most, we can say excess weight and many other health issues have co-morbidity, To early to say which comes first, chicken or egg?
However, in my own case, when i actually did modify my diet to eat less and (usually) healthier foods, I found I wanted to move more, and, yes, lost weight, over several months.
I don’t think any one food (including the villain, high fructose corn syrup) makes people gain weight. i do think more food than we need does. I also know from raising animals that some gain easily, and some are impossible to keep weight on, on very similar diets. It’s a complex issue.
That said, I do believe that excess weight in all animals (including us) does exacerbate underlying physical problems. So, sometimes, it helps to take off a few pounds.
But, a good post.
Hi Katie,
Thanks for the comment! There are a couple of things that I want to address:
First, I’m very happy that you’ve found a path to health, and I am aware that weight loss can be a (typically short-term) side effect of such a behavior change, but I do want to be clear that your experience is yours alone, and that it is not extrapolatable to others.
To your point about it “helping to take off a few pounds”". There are a few issues with this. I appreciate that you correctly stated it as your opinion and not fact – again nobody has proven that weight causes health problems. But further, not a single study of intentional weight loss has ever shows a success rate greater than 5% over 5 year period. Weight loss fails 95% of the time over the long term and so even if weight loss was actually proven to improve health (which it isn’t) we don’t know how to get it done. That’s why I always say that recommending weight loss is telling people to do something that nobody has proven is possible for a reason that nobody has proven is valid.
Thanks,
~Ragen
You have such a good way with words.
I never tell anyone to lose weight. That’s their business. And also, when a person thinks they should do, for some reason, I am all for the more moderate suggestions made by many physicians, to lose 5-10% of total weight. I have seen that for many people, that is 1) doable and 2) sustainable.
It scares me right now that so many places are recommending surgery, even for teens. I have witnessed first hand that people who get bariatric surgery can gain back all they lost.More scary by far is the fact that nutrient absorption is messed up for teh rest of your life. Are they trying to say that THAT isn’t a health problem??? eeek.
I have a family full of doctors. There are some things (like surgery) that are truly made more difficult by excess weight. No matter what your culture says about weight. But basic health doesn’t seem to be affected in all cases (look at you, after all, in that fantastic picture where you are holding your leg straight up in the air!)
I like your blog because you address all the silly fads: EAT THIS! DON’T EAT THAT! When any of those things may or may not make anyone fat or thin.
But the simple fact is, that even if all the claims were true, shouldn’t everyone be treated as a human being, with real value to friends, family, and the world?
Hi Katie,
Thank you for your kind words and I absolutely agree that people deserve respect no matter what. In fact, I agree with almost everything that you said but I don’t feel comfortable letting this one thing go by: based on every study ever done, weight loss fails 95% of the time. Whether people are trying to lose 5% of their body weight or 50% of their body weight, whether they do a diet or a “lifestyle change”. It is so far proven to be un-doable and unsustainable for most people and I think it’s important for people to know that because we are constantly fed the message that if we just try hard enough we can lose weight despite a complete lack of evidence.
Thanks for the dialog!
~Ragen
Conversely, I get slightly annoyed when people say “You’re perfectly healthy just as you are” in a self esteem affirming tone if I work out or drink more water.
My back and shoulder hurt almost constantly. My bowel movements are painful and not regular. People shouldn’t be ashamed of their bodies, but a trend has latched onto that, where people say ‘don’t be a neurotic health and fitness bunny, there’s nothing wrong with you!’ when they DON’T KNOW THAT.
I think it’s a symptom of our superficial beauty culture that looking into your habits and intakes in order to change your life (your mood, your sleep patterns, etcetera) means that you think you’re ugly.
Harboring all that stigma and expressing all that resentment is probably raising those people’s blood pressure. I’ve never understood why people want to, and think they have the right, to make sweeping generalizations about anything. I think the reader’s email to you says a lot. I don’t agree with or understand everything you write but I love reading it, feel like it’s a safe place to express my opinions, and feel better for having been exposed to a dialogue I definitely wouldn’t in my everyday life. I would say this the one blog that I MUST check everyday. Ok, now I’m just gushing, but your voice is valued by many and needed by everyone. Thank you.
Just stumbled onto your blog today. You are brilliant. This is going to be one of my new favorite places online. ((hugs)).
Thank you so much, I’ll look forward to “seeing” you around
~Ragen
I love your posts Ragen because it puts a frame around the oft used arguments and thinking and points out the lack of supporting information and allows the reader to decide or not to find out for themselves without bias or judgement. At the same time creating an opportunity for responsibility for our beliefs and actions. Thanks so much
Thank you! This comment made my day because that’s exactly what my writing goal is!
~Ragen
The Health at Every Size movement is taking up more space in a very weight-centred, fat phobic society. Keep up the insightful and often misunderstood work, DancesWithFat!