Ah the obesity epidemic. The media can’t get enough of talking about it, now we have HBO partnering with all kinds of (heavily lobbied) government organizations who are producing the documentary “The Weight of a Nation” to focus more attention on it – to really whip us into a warring frenzy. I’ll talk more about the documentary in the upcoming days, but today I have some questions.
But what are we fighting against? Trumped up charges of fat people causing additional health care costs, or how much we cost the workplace? People who decided that we’ve have strayed too far from the stereotypical beauty standard?
And what are we fighting for? A world without people whose weight in pounds times 703 divided by their height in inches squared is greater than 30? A world where we find a group of people who we can identify by sight, decide that they are too expensive, and systematically attempt to eradicate them through means that hardly ever work but generate tremendous profits across multiple industries?
What weapons do we have? The first study that showed that weight loss fails 95% of the time happened in 1959. Since then the same result has been repeated in hundreds of studies and has never been disproved by any study. We have no idea how to make fat people thin, the thing that we suggest fails 95% of the time, and up to 2/3 of the time actually has the OPPOSITE result when people gain more weight than they lost. Yet the war on obesity encourages us to throw good money after bad on odds that I wouldn’t take on a hand of blackjack. Weight loss has been failing for 50 years and we’re still blaming fat people? The tool that is most often wielded is shame. Doctors, teachers, family and friends are encouraged to shame fat people, to make them feel horrible about themselves, hate the body they live in 100% of the time.
What we are really experiencing is not an obesity epidemic. It is a shame epidemic.
We know that shame/stigma is correlated with the same diseases as obesity. We know that concern about body weight was a stronger predictor of mental and physical illnesses than BMI (said another way, women who were concerned about their weight had more mental and physical illness than women who were fine with their size – regardless of their weight. We also know that healthy habits make healthier bodies of every shape and size.
It’s not just that shame doesn’t work. The problem is that shame, like weight loss, often results in the opposite of the intended effect. We know that 30 minutes of moderate movement 5 days a week provides incredible health benefits to people of all sizes. However, in addition to the negative affects of shame mentioned above, the fat shame and weight bullying that are encouraged in our society mean that many fat people don’t engage in movement because of a (well-justified) fear of being shamed. Fat kids aren’t able to develop a lifelong love of movement and a healthy relationship with food, and strong self-esteem and mental health because they are shamed by family, teachers, students all lead by the First Lady of the United States.
There is a possibility that all of the “negative” health effects that are correlated with obesity will end if we simply stop shaming fat people, if we create a world that respects a diversity of body sizes and provides access to the foods that people would choose, movement options that are enjoyable and safe (which includes the ability to go to the gym, pool, beach, ride a bike etc. without even the idea that we might face shame, stigma, and bullying), and affordable (or free) evidence-based healthcare.
Instead, we have government-sanctioned shame, stigma and bullying. The government encourages people to look at fat people as scapegoats for the Nation’s ills. Which is pretty convenient for the government – as long as we’re shaming and blaming fat people they don’t have to address real issues like a lack of access to healthy foods, safe stigma-free movement options and affordable evidence-based healthcare or the fact that the dieting that they’ve been pushing doesn’t work.
We’ve been trying weight loss for more than half a century and the best we have been able to do is 5% success. Which is exactly what all the evidence in those 50 years said would happen. I don’t believe that obesity is a disease, but since weight loss is considered a medical intervention, ask yourself this: If we were having a “war on cancer” and were trying the same treatment protocol and 95% of the time all the Cancer came back and 2/3 of the time the cancer got worse; on year 53 would the government declare a war on cancer using that same treatment?
It’s obviously time to try something different.
If we really feel the need to have a war, let’s have a war on shame. A war on stigma. A war on size bullying.
A world free from shame, stigma and size bullying is a world worth fighting for.
Join the Club…Support the work!
I do HAES and SA activism, speaking and writing full time, and I don’t believe in putting corporate ads on my blog and making my readers a commodity. So if you find value in my work, want to support it, and you can afford it, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution. The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free. If you’re curious about this, you might want to check out this post. Thanks for reading! ~Ragen
I got a laugh out of the discharge paperwork from my doctor’s appointment today. Apparently, the group she’s with is starting to “crack down on obesity,” and so they insisted on getting my height, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, my awesome doc circumvented the system by saying, “Obesity discussed.” Nope. We chatted about the gym (we go to the same one) and my ear problems, and that’s pretty much it. She’s outright said more than once that there’s no medical reason for me to kill myself to lose weight. She encourages exercise and eating well, but is pretty dedicated to HAES. It’s so nice to find a medical professional who thinks that way.
It is so hard and so painful to see headlines like this morning’s “dire obesity warning” for the U.S. It is so hard to be judged by one’s size as opposed to one’s talents, strengths, kindness, intelligence, inner beauty, etc. I’m so glad I found your blog. It’s keeping me going, day to day.
Ragen – when I saw this advertised whilst awaiting the newest Game of Thrones episode, I cringed and thought immediately of you…I find it FRIGHTENING that such media moguls have the backing of so many different institutions, the government being the most disconcerting. I feel more than ever that we need to go get them – to counteract this ignorance. Just watching the ad made me sick – the producer’s/etc. clearly us shame, despair, and FEAR. After all, who really decides the standards of beauty and health? Usually it’s people who can’t think for themselves…I do not want ot bequeath such a world to my children.
Keep it up, Ragen! I think your blog is at least partly responsible for me riding my bicycle about twice as long as I normally do. Instead of thinking about weight (and becoming angry about the whole failure of diets), my mind has begun to focus on how I enjoy the ride. And in doing that I ended up going twice as far and riding much faster than I would have if I was doing it to lose weight. I just did it to enjoy it. Thanks for that gift. Hope you keep at it and I will do what I can in my own day-to-day life to contribute.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that being fat is a both unhealthy and a choice, and if only fat people would exercise and use some self-control, they could be thin and healthy.
OK. So, what I want to know is where is the War on Lung Cancer (smoking)? Where’s the War on Liver Disease (alcohol use/abuse)? Those are serious problems too, and both smoking and drinking (unlike *eating*!) are choices people make. No one *needs* to smoke or drink to survive.
So why hasn’t the government, the media, and the general public declared “war” on those things, too?
They HAVE declared war on smoking, and a lot fewer people in the US smoke now than smoked decades ago. They’ve also declared war on drinking (Prohibition) but that didn’t turn out too well, so Prohibition was repealed. These days, they settle for taxing the hell out of cigarettes and such instead.
But you don’t see pics of headless smokers in news articles. Smokers aren’t shamed the way fat people are. Neither are drinkers, for that matter.
That’s what I’m getting at here. Even though we need to eat to survive, people are judged as moral failures if they don’t stay thin. And yet, smoking and drinking doesn’t carry that same brand of judgment with it at all, even though we don’t need to smoke or drink to survive.
I’m probably wording this badly. I’m in pain, on codeine, and can’t think straight at the moment, so you’re really not getting me at my best. :p Sorry!
Ragen, did you see this article yet? http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/08/us-usa-health-obesity-idUSBRE8470LC20120508
It is Exhibit A, B, C, and D for your blog post!!
the only thing more disgusting than that article are all the fat-shaming/fat-blaming comments attached. ::sigh:: -_-
Indeed…
Here’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask….what the heck does that 703 in the BMI represent??? It’s just a wacky, arbitrary equation.
Also – why square the height?
703 (or 704, the real number is a fraction between the two) is the number used to convert kilograms/meters to pounds/inches. The height is squared because weight varies roughly as the square of height. Try a few calculations without squaring the height, or with cubing the height, and you’ll get some odd figures.
I still just find it loopy.
It’s always about the bottom line, and how much money business can make. Forget about anything else. Humans are just wallets anyway.
Thank you for this, as someone who has been shamed and blamed her whole life, I have often asked “isn’t it more important to be healthy?” I hadn’t heard of HAES before this article but will look it up.
“as someone who has been shamed and blamed her whole life”
This is the part that bothers me the most.
Even if someone is obese because s/he stuffs his/her face nonstop 24/7, it’s no one else’s business! How much wine I drink is my business. How much food I eat is my business. What I do with *my own body* is *my own business*.
And none of us are obligated to meet society’s beauty standards, either!
My body is my own. If I want to stuff it with Twinkies, I will. If I want to starve it, I will. If I want to feed it a sensible diet and exercise when I can, I will.
And it’s *my business*.
And since science itself tells us that diets don’t work and that we’re pretty much stuck with the body that genetics gave us, it makes *even less sense* to shame/blame people for something they can’t help or control.
I hate the world we live in sometimes. Most of the time.
Ugh. And people wonder why I prefer cats!
My little black cat actually *prefers* the days, weeks, and sometimes months when I’m too sick to be active. It gives her maximum cuddle time, and she gets to act as my guardian the whole time. I’m waiting to see yet *another* specialist right now (ENT this time), and she’s been all over me 24/7.
Oh, and on the judgement front, can I bitch for a minute about laypersons assuming my weight is the cause of my health problems? My doctors don’t have a problem with what I weigh, and they know perfectly well the issues are completely separate. So why do so many people without formal medical knowledge assume that I’m sick because I’m fat? I’m sick because my immune system has an unknown fundamental error in it (not PIDD), and I’m fat because I got my Grandma’s build *and* got put on diet after diet starting at age seven. Hell, when I’m well enough, I go to the gym between four and six times a week, an hour at a pop. (Now to hope my ENT doc can get this current mess fixed or treated without removing my inner ear!)
A few days ago, PBS Newshour, an organization whose page I “Liked” on Facebook, posted on FB about the hideous, horrible obesity epidemic. I was indescribably disappointed to see an organization that I respect so much for digging out the truth post that crap. I left a comment to that effect. I said that if they really wanted to “help,” they could expose the B.S. behind the BMI, and investigate weight-chart manipulation by the insurance industry. Man, I was ripped to shreds. Every other comment on PBS’s post–and ultimately, there were hundreds–agreed that the world is going to end, and it’s all the fault of hideous, horrible fat people. And I felt so angry, and so bullied, and so, so, so tired of it all.
I’m so sorry that you had to deal with that, PBS has definitely jumped on the omgfatpeoplearecomingforushidethechildren bandwagon. If this happens again, just send me the link and I’ll post it to the Rolls Not Troll community on Facebook (we are a community that posts fat positive comments on fat negative spaces on the web). You are, of course, completely welcome to join and post it yourself if you would like.
Big Fat Hugs,
~Ragen