Post by nancylebovitz on May 8, 2007 14:03:44 GMT -5
This is a discussion of many points which have come up in the recent blog articles and comments about intermittent fasting and obesity.
Is fatness invariably a sign of emotional issues? There are strains of lab mice and rats which have reliable genetic variations that lead to different fat percentages. I don't believe the rats put on weight or not because of their emotional issues.
I have heard of two cases of people dealing with more or less emotional issues and spontaneously losing weight. If fat were mostly about emotions, this should be a lot more common.
One case was a woman who did Feldenkrais work (Feldenkrais is a method of improving coordination). The other (findable at learningmethods.com) was a woman who'd did careful introspection and found that she was overeating because she felt it was part of hospitality. When she'd figured that out (and that she didn't want that many guests anyway), she lost weight easily.
However, people can get a lot saner without losing weight.
Also, when you're talking about the extremely obese (I'm reading your discussion with Fat), you're talking about people who have put on more weight than you could no matter how hard you tried. They really don't have the same metabolism you do.
What do you suppose was going on with people getting really bad advice for decades on how to lose weight? I still believe it's mostly about status rather than health.
First you say it's about quality of life, and then you promote some standards of energy and appearance which may not be practically reachable for a lot of people. Not everyone is healthy to start with. Not everyone who's fat is immune to other unrelated health problems. One constant complaint I've seen in fat-acceptance groups is doctors who tell fat people to lose weight and will not pay attention to other symptoms. This can range from dangerous to deadly.
As for attractiveness, we've all been subjected to constant propaganda that fat (even small amounts, especially in women) is hideous. I've seen a number of stories from fat women who found that all they needed to greatly improve their lives was to not put off what they wanted to do until they lost weight. The emotional problem wasn't that they couldn't lose weight, it was internalized prejudice.
Part of what I'm seeing in your advice is the implied claim that there's something automatically wrong with fat people which is related to their fatness, and if they try to lose weight and it doesn't work, there's nothing wrong with the project--either they're emotionally damaged or they were given bad advice. Sometimes you say that following bad advice suggests that they're emotionally damaged. For the latter, I'm specifically talking about that friend I mentioned who was exercising for three hours a day--this was at least 20 years ago. She did research, and was following standard medical advice.
But if you feel pain about the way the world treats you...then you must do something to change.
Sometimes the best available solution is to quit oppressing yourself and find the best people you can to associate with and/or swat back at those attacking you. The best bet isn't always to accomodate the haters.
I've been attracted to larger ladies, absolutely. The key thing in my mind was their self-love.
In this culture, it takes ferocious self-confidence and sometimes considerable psychological work for a fat woman to think of herself as attractive. Should this be necessary?
I'm going to hammer on the movie thing. It is not a coincidence that the only women who are presented as attractive are very thin, and this has bad effects. I didn't get your point about black men in movies on the first bounce nor the third, so I don't think a little repetition is out of order.
As for sociobiological arguments, it's important to make sure that something's a human universal before you attribute it to genes and evolution. As far as I can tell, while extreme obesity is generally considered a negative (though not, I believe in all cultures--I've heard that traditional Polynesian cultures count tall and fat as the best combination), viewing moderate plumpness as completely unacceptable is a fairly recent development. While there's some argument about how big Marilyn Monroe was, it's clear that she wasn't at all lean, and she was considered the most beautiful woman of her time.
Another problem with sociobiology is that, at this stage of knowledge, it's guesswork. If you don't have the physical connection between the genes and the behavior, you don't know that it's physically based. If you don't have a really wide knowledge of human cultures, you don't know that it's universal.
Here's an alternate theory. Attractiveness in women is a pull between low maintenance traits (health/youth/fertility) and high maintenance (rare or costly) traits. It's a cliche that pale skin was most attractive when rich people were the only ones who could afford to stay out of the sun and a tan became a status symbol when it meant you had time to take vacations out of doors. I've noticed that tans are less of a big deal now that anyone can go to a tanning salon.
As for being able to function as a hunter-gatherer being equivalent to attractiveness, consider foot-binding. It was a tremendous erotic big deal in China for 1000 years, and made it impossible for women subjected to it to take more than a step or two.
witcombe.sbc.edu/willendorf/willendorfdiscovery.html is an article about the Venus of Willendorf, a stone age statuette of a fairly fat woman. Not only did someone take the trouble to make that statue with stone age tools, many other similar statuettes have been found. Afaik, the stone age didn't go in for statuettes of thin women. I bet they didn't think she was disgusting to look at. I don't know if she was a goddess--I suspect she was at least a good luck/status/prosperity image, considering the elaborately braided hair (possibly a woven hat) and, on some Venuses, string skirts.
I've read a book of Irish bathroom humor--I don't have it handy for quotes, but there were a number of mean-spirited cracks about thin women and none about fat women.
I suspect your 80 pound rule is set too low. I don't have evidence there, but looking at myself I find it hard to believe that there aren't a lot of people who can carry more than that without having much problem with it.
I'm 4' 11". I weigh 175 pounds. I'm 54. I do t'ai chi, chi gung, and casual transportation bicycle riding. I'm probably 60 pounds "overweight"-- I don't know what my socially acceptable weight would be, but I was moderately plump at 125 pounds in college. I have some knee problems. My weight doesn't help them, but I believe the problems were mostly were caused by some falls. I manage them by coordination work and by being careful about impact.
I seem to put on muscle more easily than a lot of women do, but I haven't put a lot of work into it. It seems plausible to me that larger stronger people could handle a lot more than 20 pounds above what I'm carrying.
(Sidetrack because I'm going through a bunch of comments) You could be mistaken about almost all black people being willing to change their race due to prejudice. Judaism's still around in spite of ferocious anti-Semitism. Admittedly, it's a religion which gives it extra clout in holding onto people, but I believe a lot of what holds people in groups is shared culture, and any religion that's been around for a while is a shared culture as well as a set of metaphysical beliefs.
It is very, very difficult for me to believe that a person would voluntarily accept this pain unless:
1)they are physically incapable of changing.
2)Psychologically, changing is more painful than remaining the same and accepting the grief.
OK, this may be the key bit. You leave out the possibility that sometimes there are physical costs to changing which are more than the change is worth. You also leave out the category of people who've gotten bad, life-damaging advice so many times that they are not willing to do the experiment again.
Do you have reason to believe that obese people have more and/or worse psychological issues than non-obese people? Do you believe that people who can't keep enough weight on to be healthy will be able to do so if they resolve specific emotional issues?
At least some of the problems that get attributed to fatness may have other causes--depression or various hormonal problems. It's very easy in this culture to assume that fat is the cause of problems which have other sources.
Also, I see you list pain caused by fat and possible emotional causes, but I don't see huge numbers of stories of people's lives stably (at least five years) getting better because they lost weight.
Another angle: It's possible for a socially accepted standard to just plain be bad for people. For example, most Americans run seriously short on sleep. You could say they have emotional issues that make them tired--after all, some people (obviously saner) are ok on 6 or 7 hours a night.
[Anorexia]I’d say it’s more of a psychological and familial problem. I often hear women complain that “men have this unrealistic desire for skinny women.” Haven’t they noticed that the really skinny women are in women’s magazines, not men’s magazines? The lists of “Most Beautiful Women” rarely includes skin-and-bones types: men like breasts and hips, and always have. Callista Flockheart or Nicole Richie are often talked about as “Role Models” but they are hardly typical of the poster-girls that MEN are attracted to.
Why has it only become common recently? I've read one book (_Fasting Girls_) about historical parallels, and they weren't parallel. The medieval woman who appeared not to eat weren't trying to be thin. The whole point was that they were sustained directly by God rather than by eating. I assume they were sneaking their food, but in any case, they weren't destroying their health. The other part was an account of a Victorian girl who might have actually had a personal/familial problem.
I don't believe anorexia is about attracting men, though it can start with a desire to be attractive. It's about avoiding hatred, and there's plenty of that. I agree that there are family and emotional issues (and possibly brain chemistry as well), but there's also huge social pressure.
Sometimes the family issues have to do with pressure to lose weight, and the pressure to lose weight (especially if it's unkind) is about status, not health.
Also, I've seen plenty of accounts from women who were still getting more favorable attention and compliments as their weight dropped below levels that were healthy for them.
[Steve's daughter] KNOW that her excess padding is due to lifestyle: all of her entertainments are sedentary. She loves her books, movies, and computer games. She loves carbs. She also wants to be an actress. Because she had trouble losing weight, she developed a mythology that she “couldn’t” do it. She ain’t leaving my home until she knows this for a lie. Then, if she WANTS to put the weight back on, that’s her business. But she’ll know how to lose it, any time she’s willing to exert the discipline.
I don't know if this represents your settled policy or a passing mood, but there's a age at which she is legally permitted to leave your house. You don't get to decide.
You can't control what she thinks.
If you aren't clear about those two things, I'd say you have some gaps in your map.
David Bellamy said some good things to me about parents not being able to directly convey things it took them a long time to learn, and I'm taking this opportunity to nudge him about posting them in case I haven't done the idea justice.
What is the difference between a diet and a lifestyle change? Do you think people tend to have accurate ideas about what they can sustain?
There's at least some reason to think that dieting raises people's set points.
One of the saddest things is a belief I’ve heard again and again (hopefully not serious): that if there was a famine, their excess fat would make them the last to survive. Hah hah. No, in a famine, civilization breaks down, starving mobs roam the streets resorting to cannibalism, and they’d be the first to be killed and eaten. There’s just no survival value there in the modern world.
I think actual research into who survives famines would be called for. The standard list is that the old, the very young, and the ill don't make it. Cannibalism isn't the usual reaction, and I think the fat people who say they wouldn't survive a famine are expressing self-hatred.
I've seen people say that fat reserves helped them survive cancer. I don't think that would be a good reason for deliberately becoming fat, but it's definitely survival in the modern world.
I don't think you're saying losing weight is easy. I do think you believe it's always worthwhile, and it's possible that you underestimate how hard it is for people whose metabolisms aren't like yours.
I suppose I should be grateful to Observer for proving my point (to a very limited extent--there's much worse out there). Part of why I've taken a while to reply was figuring out what I wanted to say about his comment.
Zingers are certainly possible--I should hope that women find his temperament loathsome, and I suspect he's afraid of smart people--but I believe strongly that people generally aren't at their best when they're being hated. On the other hand, I'm not sure that Observer's best is accessible to me.
I could probably come up with more to say, but I don't want to go over Observer's comment again. One way of dealing with insults is to not give them attention.
Here's why I keep talking about trolls and hatred when everyone keeps saying it's really about health. I believe that malice is a pleasure. It may not be a very high quality pleasure, but it's a strong drive in a lot of people. It doesn't necessarily contribute to survival, and I don't have a sociobiological explanation for why it's so pervasive. People damage their children and their countries just because they can't control their desire to hurt those who can't strike back.
There are fat people who are afraid to go to gyms because they think (sometimes rightly) that they'll be harassed. There are swimsuit catalogues where *every* large sized suit has "figure control"--a built in girdle which has got to interfere with exercise. This isn't about health, it's about status enforcement and cruelty.
Fat and Observer, I'm in science fiction fandom. Fat women really don't have problems with attracting men there. This is probably also still the case for the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Steve Perry: a mention of men insulting women reminds you of a joke about feminists having no sense of humor. I am not a feminist, but my sympathy is on the side of people who don't like being treated as designated humor objects.
On the other hand, I appreciated your rant about athletes not necessarily being healthy. I suggest that in addition to being a visual species, we are also an easily influenced one--so easily influenced that we're apt to think that what people keep telling us is actually our innate responses.
nancylebov.livejournal.com/107801.html Alternate theories about fatness
www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/magazine/13obesity.html?ex=1178769600&en=7c071db343a8043d&ei=5070 Details of science behind some of the theories. This is way cool if you have any geekish tendencies at all.
Is fatness invariably a sign of emotional issues? There are strains of lab mice and rats which have reliable genetic variations that lead to different fat percentages. I don't believe the rats put on weight or not because of their emotional issues.
I have heard of two cases of people dealing with more or less emotional issues and spontaneously losing weight. If fat were mostly about emotions, this should be a lot more common.
One case was a woman who did Feldenkrais work (Feldenkrais is a method of improving coordination). The other (findable at learningmethods.com) was a woman who'd did careful introspection and found that she was overeating because she felt it was part of hospitality. When she'd figured that out (and that she didn't want that many guests anyway), she lost weight easily.
However, people can get a lot saner without losing weight.
Also, when you're talking about the extremely obese (I'm reading your discussion with Fat), you're talking about people who have put on more weight than you could no matter how hard you tried. They really don't have the same metabolism you do.
What do you suppose was going on with people getting really bad advice for decades on how to lose weight? I still believe it's mostly about status rather than health.
First you say it's about quality of life, and then you promote some standards of energy and appearance which may not be practically reachable for a lot of people. Not everyone is healthy to start with. Not everyone who's fat is immune to other unrelated health problems. One constant complaint I've seen in fat-acceptance groups is doctors who tell fat people to lose weight and will not pay attention to other symptoms. This can range from dangerous to deadly.
As for attractiveness, we've all been subjected to constant propaganda that fat (even small amounts, especially in women) is hideous. I've seen a number of stories from fat women who found that all they needed to greatly improve their lives was to not put off what they wanted to do until they lost weight. The emotional problem wasn't that they couldn't lose weight, it was internalized prejudice.
Part of what I'm seeing in your advice is the implied claim that there's something automatically wrong with fat people which is related to their fatness, and if they try to lose weight and it doesn't work, there's nothing wrong with the project--either they're emotionally damaged or they were given bad advice. Sometimes you say that following bad advice suggests that they're emotionally damaged. For the latter, I'm specifically talking about that friend I mentioned who was exercising for three hours a day--this was at least 20 years ago. She did research, and was following standard medical advice.
But if you feel pain about the way the world treats you...then you must do something to change.
Sometimes the best available solution is to quit oppressing yourself and find the best people you can to associate with and/or swat back at those attacking you. The best bet isn't always to accomodate the haters.
I've been attracted to larger ladies, absolutely. The key thing in my mind was their self-love.
In this culture, it takes ferocious self-confidence and sometimes considerable psychological work for a fat woman to think of herself as attractive. Should this be necessary?
I'm going to hammer on the movie thing. It is not a coincidence that the only women who are presented as attractive are very thin, and this has bad effects. I didn't get your point about black men in movies on the first bounce nor the third, so I don't think a little repetition is out of order.
As for sociobiological arguments, it's important to make sure that something's a human universal before you attribute it to genes and evolution. As far as I can tell, while extreme obesity is generally considered a negative (though not, I believe in all cultures--I've heard that traditional Polynesian cultures count tall and fat as the best combination), viewing moderate plumpness as completely unacceptable is a fairly recent development. While there's some argument about how big Marilyn Monroe was, it's clear that she wasn't at all lean, and she was considered the most beautiful woman of her time.
Another problem with sociobiology is that, at this stage of knowledge, it's guesswork. If you don't have the physical connection between the genes and the behavior, you don't know that it's physically based. If you don't have a really wide knowledge of human cultures, you don't know that it's universal.
Here's an alternate theory. Attractiveness in women is a pull between low maintenance traits (health/youth/fertility) and high maintenance (rare or costly) traits. It's a cliche that pale skin was most attractive when rich people were the only ones who could afford to stay out of the sun and a tan became a status symbol when it meant you had time to take vacations out of doors. I've noticed that tans are less of a big deal now that anyone can go to a tanning salon.
As for being able to function as a hunter-gatherer being equivalent to attractiveness, consider foot-binding. It was a tremendous erotic big deal in China for 1000 years, and made it impossible for women subjected to it to take more than a step or two.
witcombe.sbc.edu/willendorf/willendorfdiscovery.html is an article about the Venus of Willendorf, a stone age statuette of a fairly fat woman. Not only did someone take the trouble to make that statue with stone age tools, many other similar statuettes have been found. Afaik, the stone age didn't go in for statuettes of thin women. I bet they didn't think she was disgusting to look at. I don't know if she was a goddess--I suspect she was at least a good luck/status/prosperity image, considering the elaborately braided hair (possibly a woven hat) and, on some Venuses, string skirts.
I've read a book of Irish bathroom humor--I don't have it handy for quotes, but there were a number of mean-spirited cracks about thin women and none about fat women.
I suspect your 80 pound rule is set too low. I don't have evidence there, but looking at myself I find it hard to believe that there aren't a lot of people who can carry more than that without having much problem with it.
I'm 4' 11". I weigh 175 pounds. I'm 54. I do t'ai chi, chi gung, and casual transportation bicycle riding. I'm probably 60 pounds "overweight"-- I don't know what my socially acceptable weight would be, but I was moderately plump at 125 pounds in college. I have some knee problems. My weight doesn't help them, but I believe the problems were mostly were caused by some falls. I manage them by coordination work and by being careful about impact.
I seem to put on muscle more easily than a lot of women do, but I haven't put a lot of work into it. It seems plausible to me that larger stronger people could handle a lot more than 20 pounds above what I'm carrying.
(Sidetrack because I'm going through a bunch of comments) You could be mistaken about almost all black people being willing to change their race due to prejudice. Judaism's still around in spite of ferocious anti-Semitism. Admittedly, it's a religion which gives it extra clout in holding onto people, but I believe a lot of what holds people in groups is shared culture, and any religion that's been around for a while is a shared culture as well as a set of metaphysical beliefs.
It is very, very difficult for me to believe that a person would voluntarily accept this pain unless:
1)they are physically incapable of changing.
2)Psychologically, changing is more painful than remaining the same and accepting the grief.
OK, this may be the key bit. You leave out the possibility that sometimes there are physical costs to changing which are more than the change is worth. You also leave out the category of people who've gotten bad, life-damaging advice so many times that they are not willing to do the experiment again.
Do you have reason to believe that obese people have more and/or worse psychological issues than non-obese people? Do you believe that people who can't keep enough weight on to be healthy will be able to do so if they resolve specific emotional issues?
At least some of the problems that get attributed to fatness may have other causes--depression or various hormonal problems. It's very easy in this culture to assume that fat is the cause of problems which have other sources.
Also, I see you list pain caused by fat and possible emotional causes, but I don't see huge numbers of stories of people's lives stably (at least five years) getting better because they lost weight.
Another angle: It's possible for a socially accepted standard to just plain be bad for people. For example, most Americans run seriously short on sleep. You could say they have emotional issues that make them tired--after all, some people (obviously saner) are ok on 6 or 7 hours a night.
[Anorexia]I’d say it’s more of a psychological and familial problem. I often hear women complain that “men have this unrealistic desire for skinny women.” Haven’t they noticed that the really skinny women are in women’s magazines, not men’s magazines? The lists of “Most Beautiful Women” rarely includes skin-and-bones types: men like breasts and hips, and always have. Callista Flockheart or Nicole Richie are often talked about as “Role Models” but they are hardly typical of the poster-girls that MEN are attracted to.
Why has it only become common recently? I've read one book (_Fasting Girls_) about historical parallels, and they weren't parallel. The medieval woman who appeared not to eat weren't trying to be thin. The whole point was that they were sustained directly by God rather than by eating. I assume they were sneaking their food, but in any case, they weren't destroying their health. The other part was an account of a Victorian girl who might have actually had a personal/familial problem.
I don't believe anorexia is about attracting men, though it can start with a desire to be attractive. It's about avoiding hatred, and there's plenty of that. I agree that there are family and emotional issues (and possibly brain chemistry as well), but there's also huge social pressure.
Sometimes the family issues have to do with pressure to lose weight, and the pressure to lose weight (especially if it's unkind) is about status, not health.
Also, I've seen plenty of accounts from women who were still getting more favorable attention and compliments as their weight dropped below levels that were healthy for them.
[Steve's daughter] KNOW that her excess padding is due to lifestyle: all of her entertainments are sedentary. She loves her books, movies, and computer games. She loves carbs. She also wants to be an actress. Because she had trouble losing weight, she developed a mythology that she “couldn’t” do it. She ain’t leaving my home until she knows this for a lie. Then, if she WANTS to put the weight back on, that’s her business. But she’ll know how to lose it, any time she’s willing to exert the discipline.
I don't know if this represents your settled policy or a passing mood, but there's a age at which she is legally permitted to leave your house. You don't get to decide.
You can't control what she thinks.
If you aren't clear about those two things, I'd say you have some gaps in your map.
David Bellamy said some good things to me about parents not being able to directly convey things it took them a long time to learn, and I'm taking this opportunity to nudge him about posting them in case I haven't done the idea justice.
What is the difference between a diet and a lifestyle change? Do you think people tend to have accurate ideas about what they can sustain?
There's at least some reason to think that dieting raises people's set points.
One of the saddest things is a belief I’ve heard again and again (hopefully not serious): that if there was a famine, their excess fat would make them the last to survive. Hah hah. No, in a famine, civilization breaks down, starving mobs roam the streets resorting to cannibalism, and they’d be the first to be killed and eaten. There’s just no survival value there in the modern world.
I think actual research into who survives famines would be called for. The standard list is that the old, the very young, and the ill don't make it. Cannibalism isn't the usual reaction, and I think the fat people who say they wouldn't survive a famine are expressing self-hatred.
I've seen people say that fat reserves helped them survive cancer. I don't think that would be a good reason for deliberately becoming fat, but it's definitely survival in the modern world.
I don't think you're saying losing weight is easy. I do think you believe it's always worthwhile, and it's possible that you underestimate how hard it is for people whose metabolisms aren't like yours.
I suppose I should be grateful to Observer for proving my point (to a very limited extent--there's much worse out there). Part of why I've taken a while to reply was figuring out what I wanted to say about his comment.
Zingers are certainly possible--I should hope that women find his temperament loathsome, and I suspect he's afraid of smart people--but I believe strongly that people generally aren't at their best when they're being hated. On the other hand, I'm not sure that Observer's best is accessible to me.
I could probably come up with more to say, but I don't want to go over Observer's comment again. One way of dealing with insults is to not give them attention.
Here's why I keep talking about trolls and hatred when everyone keeps saying it's really about health. I believe that malice is a pleasure. It may not be a very high quality pleasure, but it's a strong drive in a lot of people. It doesn't necessarily contribute to survival, and I don't have a sociobiological explanation for why it's so pervasive. People damage their children and their countries just because they can't control their desire to hurt those who can't strike back.
There are fat people who are afraid to go to gyms because they think (sometimes rightly) that they'll be harassed. There are swimsuit catalogues where *every* large sized suit has "figure control"--a built in girdle which has got to interfere with exercise. This isn't about health, it's about status enforcement and cruelty.
Fat and Observer, I'm in science fiction fandom. Fat women really don't have problems with attracting men there. This is probably also still the case for the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Steve Perry: a mention of men insulting women reminds you of a joke about feminists having no sense of humor. I am not a feminist, but my sympathy is on the side of people who don't like being treated as designated humor objects.
On the other hand, I appreciated your rant about athletes not necessarily being healthy. I suggest that in addition to being a visual species, we are also an easily influenced one--so easily influenced that we're apt to think that what people keep telling us is actually our innate responses.
nancylebov.livejournal.com/107801.html Alternate theories about fatness
www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/magazine/13obesity.html?ex=1178769600&en=7c071db343a8043d&ei=5070 Details of science behind some of the theories. This is way cool if you have any geekish tendencies at all.
