I’m all for healthy eating. But weighing each gram of food you eat, planning each meal down to the calorie, and consuming far fewer calories than your body needs is not healthy. It’s a sign of an eating disorder. The fact that mainstream media outlets are touting this as nothing more than a “diet” is disturbing.
Rebecca Traister is spot-on in pointing out the class issues involved, and in her observation that this lifestyle sounds pretty miserable. The whole thing is disturbing. I hope that the people involved can someday make peace with food; in the meantime, I hope that media outlets will quit giving them laudatory airtime, and will call calorie-restrictive eating what it is: disordered, ill, and in need of compassion and help, not encouragement.
Jeebus, a multi-vitamin is all you need to make sure you get enough nutrients on a calorie restricted diet. No, I’m not begging the question of whether calorie restricted diets are reasonable. I’m addressing the hyper-anal-retentivity-of-weighing-all-your-food aspect of CR. Constant, militant attention to what you eat is not necessary in include proper nutrition in a CR diet. Constant, militant attention to what you eat constitutes either an eating disorder or a really weird hobby.
I would not go so far as to say CR is inherently disordered and ill. Anorexia is a mental illness which has other aspects besides calorie restriction. I’m sure there are anorexics who are attracted to the rigid structure of CR, but to say “anorexia=restricted calories -> CR = anorexia” is a logical fallacy.
Longer lifespan, better health, and less illness.
Sounds awful.
This sums up the discomfort with the study. It seems to prove what many have been denying for quite some time: that reducing the number of calories consumed leads to a longer, healthier life.
Unless you believe that the National Institute on Aging is a shill for the diet industry.
This is not actually all that dissimilar to some ED mindsets. Some people with anorexia are ecstatic over what they see in the mirror, so long as they’re seeing progressive emaciation caused by assiduous self-denial. They’re never satisfied, but I’d be surprised if all CR observers manage equilibrium soon or easily.
And this part from the magazine article is classic:
And a lot of anorexics–especially these days–are obscenely informed about how to maintain certain aspects of health while starving themselves. Many of them, particularly athletes, do it in the name of health. Calorie-restriction options are all over the place. All of us tend to report the same miserable bodily reaction to not eating, whether we live on diet coke or raw vegan cuisine.
RM, did you miss the part about, “may lose the ability to do strenuous exercise?” That needs to be factored into any calculation of better health. I wouldn’t consider being too weak and thin to go on a backpacking trip or shift a dining-room table an improvement.
If I need (say) 2500 calories per day in order to live, and am consuming instead 4-5000 calories, I’m gonna have health issues. I know this because those numbers are actually true for me. Cutting my calorie intake down to 3500 per day, and then (after a month or two) down to 3000 per day, and then down again… it’s not fun. but when I’ve done it before I’ve rather enjoyed the results. ..
Having said that, the idea of going from 4000 calories per day down to 1800 per day is just slightly monstrous…
GASP!!! I do this too!!! …but don’t call the people in the white coats on me, please!!!
And what about the risk of osteoporosis for the women?
I may be mistaken, but I thought that was Traister’s opinion, not the opinion of the scientists studying CR.
As her other opinions about CR seem to have been proven wrong, forgive me for being skeptical about the validity of her claims.
Traister may have no idea what she’s talking about.
As they say, no pain no gain.
I don’t quite get this. I don’t see much of anything in the article, or the New York magazine piece before that, or the various other stories, to justify the claim in your last sentence about ‘compassion and help’. I’m sure there are some people on CR who really do have eating disorder issues, and I’m sure there will be more as a result of the recent publicity. But the people profiled really don’t seem that way, and I think we should, absent good evidence, treat their self-understandings with some measure of respect (shades of the burqa discussion here!). In the case of traditional eating disorders, we DO have that good evidence: people who do those things waste away and die; they fail medical tests rather than pass them with flying colors, etc. So when they say they’re fine, we can tell them, “no, you’re really not.” But this isn’t the case here.
I think Traister’s intro is quite important–there’s something upsetting for us healthy-but-epicurean types about the possibility of fundamental, irreducible tradeoffs between longevity and gustatory delight. It would have quite serious consequences for our society if it really were true that a proper CR-regimen gave you another 20 or 30 years, especially if this were tied to class and psychological ability to pursue such a lifestyle in a healthy way, which I imagine few have (I certainly couldn’t do it!).
I agree that reporting here ought to be done carefully, with attention to the worries of encouraging eating-disorder behavior (though the New York magazine article really seemed to portray them as nutty). But surface similarity is not identity. These people seem much more like an odd religious sect, one that makes certain large sacrifices in pursuit of other, quite understandable even if idiosyncratic, benefits, than they do to anorexics.
This whole thing started with lifespan studies. Some biologists are trying to find the gene or set of genes that restricts/controls lifespan, and in the course of looking have found links between insulin signaling, caloric restriction and lifespan. And I think lifespan is still the major indicator that people are looking at in this context. In that aspect, I think their definition of “health” is somewhat limited.
I read the NYT article smoe weeks ago while making dinner with friends. Our consensus was pretty much “do you really live longer? or does it just feel like forever?”
“Humans who put themselves on gloomily scant meal plans appear to have better blood pressure, heart health and lower rates of illness than the rest of us mere mortals.”
Sounds like a broad definition of (physical) health to me.
Ok, I’m being an awful person and skipping the whole content of this post and all the comments to have a personal freakout:
QUORN! THAT ARTICLE MENTIONED QUORN!
I haven’t had Quorn since I left the UK… is it really available in the States? Really? That must mean I can get it in Canada soon!
Of course, I’m pissed that it just got associated in this article with meany-poo calorie counters when it is perhaps the damn tastiest thing a vegetarian could stuff her face with (imo, anyway). I’ll refrain from going on a rant about how people tend to assume vegetarians are self-denying puritans.
/angryvegetarianranting
Does it need to be factored in? I don’t know. The research does, in fact, indicate that this kind of dieting, if done properly and with respect for micronutrient needs and whatnot, actually does increase lifespan, albeit at the expense of more subjective quality-of-life measures. But, given the chance to either be in shape for a 5K run or live 20 years longer at the expense of that fitness, might some people make an informed decision to seek the latter? You and I wouldn’t, of course, but that’s us.
But it’s not being marketed that way. Whenever I see news articles about this, I feel like we should cue up the theme music to “Fame”. “I’m gonna live forever…”
Here’s another striking passage:
Okay, so having your period isn’t exactly a joyride, unless you’re a crunchier in-tune-with-nature type. (I’m not.) However, it strikes me that developing amenorrhea, thus risking osteoporosis, is counterproductive to a healthy life.
Honestly, people, it doesn’t matter how long it is, it’s what you do with it that counts…
Screw old-school CR: I think I’ll have my cake and eat it every other day:
Fasting every other day, while cutting few calories, may reduce cancer risk
A workable analogue may be alternating CR with more “typical” eating habits–sort of like the Rotation Diet, come to think of it.
You are mistaken.
I didn’t get this information from Traister’s article, but from the other ones I’ve read. I’m a recovering anorexic; this stuff interests me.
From that link:
It also refers to low energy reserves, slower wound healing, and weaker bones, which isn’t exactly counterintuitive.
On a related note, their comparison chart between anorexia and CR is just not accurate.
If what I gather is correct, studies show that this is only effective if you start before puberty. But it is effective. If you start before puberty.
Thus, these finding are predicated on real lifestyle obligations for a human being, not just a lifestyle trend of the rich.
findingS
Like Rhiannon, I found the audible gasp at the idea of people WRITING DOWN WHAT THEY EAT to be more than a little irritating. Yes, I write down everything that I eat, even that two-thirds of a bag of popcorn. Does Traister not know that a bag of regular microwave popcorn is around 350 calories? That’s a little steep for a snack when you’re trying to lose weight.
I weigh some of my food to keep my portions under control. It’s recommended by Weight Watchers. I realize that in Traister’s eyes, that makes me a crazy, on-the-verge-of-an-eating-disorder person, but too fucking bad.
Although the website I just linked to is careful to discourage children from starting CR diets (which I’m not complaining about, mind).
No, I don’t think Traister does know.
While it is important not to confuse rigorous control with an eating-disordered mentality–because it would result in a definition of eating-disorders as spectacular in its fatuity as the one on the CR website–Traister isn’t necessarily producing trivia here. It wouldn’t be irrelevant if it were mentioned in an article about anorexia.
But weighing each gram of food you eat, planning each meal down to the calorie, and consuming far fewer calories than your body needs is not healthy.
Again, I am currently doing all of these, because I am trying to lose the 15 extra pounds that I gained after my knee surgery. I am doing all of the above with the advice of Weight Watchers, and have been for several years. The Weight Control Registry also strongly recommends keeping a food diary and controlling your portions to keep weight off.
Sorry if it makes you uncomfortable to realize that not everyone can eat anything they want, any time they want.
I stand corrected.
But as jt stated, it’s all about the trade-offs.
I can see why someone would trade an increased risk of weaker bones for a decreased risk of heart disease, slower wound healing for longer life, or lower energy reserves for a lower rate of illness.
If there were only negatives and no positives, I’d agree that is dangerous and unhealthy. But as that is not the case, I see no reason to claim that those who engage in CR are sick, in need of help, and should be discouraged from doing so.
Why would something that science tells us will lead to longer, healthier lives be viewed as dangerous?
Nevertheless, all diets that work are calorie-restrictive, and that includes Weight Watchers, Nutri-System, and every other method. Some of us are just calorie-retentive. My body grabs each one and hugs it fiercely. So I am excessively padded, indeed.
This is not necessarily true. While eating disorders can be dangerous and frequently are dangerous, some people with eating disorders manage to be healthy, and still others are obsessively healthy. Eating disorders typically involve obsessive pathological control. You’ve gotta be obsessed with food and your body, and you’ve gotta think about food and your body in an unhealthy way. “Unhealthy” and “obsessive” often translates to caring more about eating less than keeping your heart from stopping, but there are a lot of other variants. (And the majority of ED sufferers don’t die; many of them probably don’t ever get diagnosed.) I don’t think that CR is ipso facto ED, but they’re not incompatible by any means.
I worry that some of these trade-offs are insufficiently researched; that’s where I see the danger. What happens to an eighty-year-old CR woman when she suffers a hip fracture? Does her heart remain healthy if she’s immobilized for years afterward? Hell, what happens to a forty-five-year-old CR woman who has a bad fall? What does slower wound healing and low energy reserves (which means, basically, that you have nothing to fall back on if you suffer any health problem) translate to for a senior citizen?
There’s also the problem of control. A lifelong diet high in fiber, low in saturated fat and refined sugar, and rich in green vegetables will make me decidedly not average in terms of cardiovascular health. It will not, however, make me CR or carry all the risks of CR.
So call me skeptical, too.
As they say, no pain no gain.
And of course, they say this from scientific fact! Don’t question it!
Sounds like a broad definition of (physical) health to me.
I weigh 235 pounds and have 120/70 blood pressure, have a “good heart rhythm” (the words of my doctor, which I don’t understand, admittedly, but she seems to be knowledgeable), and the last time I was ill was a terrible cough about two weeks ago, though before that, I had a period of ten months without illness. Admittedly, this means nothing in the wide spectrum, except to show that your definitions are not, on the whole, accurate for all people. I don’t worry about my calorie intake, I am a vegetarian (pescatarian, actually, but wev), and I exercise on a daily basis. Though, you (RM) have called me fat before, which I am willing to accept, since I called you a moron and you seem to be the type that like to backlash at a people. However, despite the “fact: that I am fat, I am in good health, at least according to my general practitioner. I suppose she is wrong, according to your well-thought out analysis. Meh.
Subclinical disordered eating patterns which while not requiring the person to go to the hosptial immediately are pretty strongly ingrained patterns of obsession and control over food and can in fact become full blown eating disorders.
Yeah, I did this for a while, too; I just found it helpful when I was starting to regulate my diet. After a while, I was able to estimate calories in my head, and became more lax about exact numbers. It wasn’t a manifestation of OCD or anything like that.
20 extra years of starvin’ oneself?
I’m 5’3″, 115, and relatively sedentary due to … nowhere to really go (used to walk a lot, but I can’t do that if I’ll need a bathroom at a moment’s notice). So I try to keep things around 1500 calories a day. My BMR isn’t great to begin with at that height and weight, and walking up and down the stairs ten times in a day isn’t going to raise my caloric needs enough to make much more than that allotment necessary.
However, when I’m active, I eat whatever I want to eat. (And somehow still lose weight … which is a tad worrying, but it plateaus at a certain point.) I see my current calorie restrictive diet as a way to maintain my weight, which is exactly what happens. Oh no. Call tha polleeeeeeeees.
One of my friends is doing one of these fucking insane CR diets (when she started, they only let her eat 900 calories a day. 900!). She likes lifting weights, but eventually she couldn’t really do that any more, plus she was having trouble thinking. Her nutritionist told her to just stop lifting weights, rather than, you know, maybe go crazy and eat 1,000 calories.
Then she got her blood tested for one reason or another, and had to have emergency perscription potassium pills delivered to her house because it was so low her heart might’ve stopped beating. Yet even after that freakout, she wanted to continue on the diet.
She has a new nutritionist and is allowed a whole 1,100 a day. She is obsessed with what she eats now (she ate healthily before, mind you, and even though she was very overweight her doctor told her that OVERALL she was perfectly healthy, because she exercised so much and ate so well, her body just has a shitty metabolism). She likes giving blood because it means she can have a slice of pizza. Apparently making new blood burns a lot of calories, so she can splurge.
She’s definitely lost weight. A lot of weight. But she looks old and tired and flat and she never has any energy. It’s upsetting.
I guess I don’t mind CR diets that aren’t as crazy and hardcore as hers, surely this can’t be a run-of-the-mill experience, but it’s really, really soured me on the very thought of them.
I remember that exchange. I apologize. I usually disregard that kind of online insult (they’re a dime a dozen), but for whatever reason that one time I returned fire. Once again, I apologize. I should’ve been the bigger man (and no, that’s not another fat reference).
I don’t know what definitions you are referring to. Please explain.
As Scorpio said “all diets that work are calorie-restrictive”. I metioned this on another thread here, but it seems to me that only a small segment of America disbelieves this. It is regarded as scientific fact in the rest of the Western World. But it is your right to disagree.
Glad to hear that. I wish you continued good health.
Again, I don’t know what you’re referring to. What analysis?
I’m kind of surprised she’s allowed to give blood.
Actually, there are diets that involve switching out unhealthy kinds of food for healthy ones, and they can result in weight loss (albeit in part because of appetite changes) and increased health and energy. So that’s not true.
And not all fat-mobilization diets are calorie restrictive in the sense you’re using.
How does skepticism translate into an endorsement of:
It seems to me that you are not skeptical about CR; you are certain that it is a dangerous lifestyle.
Perhaps I am misreading your comments. Do you believe that CR is dangerous and people should be discouraged from following it?
In TN, they always seem to require you to weigh at least 110 pounds to give blood, but in other states I don’t know
I have no desire to be old if I can’t do the things that I enjoy. If I can continue to eat what I like, roughhouse with my friends’ kids, and play ice hockey three or four times a week as I do now and I live to 65, I’ll have another 33 happy years. If I had to stop playing hockey, play calmly with the kids, and restrict my diet tomorrow in order to be guaranteed to live to 85, I think I’d be pretty cranky for the next 53 years.
Fortunately, the youngest of my grandparents died at 82, and two are still going at 83 and 87. I had three great-grandmothers live into their nineties and one into her late eighties. None of them did anything close to CR. I think heredity is on my side in this one. Besides, I could die in a car accident on the way home from Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, and then wouldn’t it have been a shame if I hadn’t enjoyed those roasted potatoes and that cheesecake? Yum.
I kinda was too, to be honest.
Well, as an overweight woman, I sometimes keep a “food diary” to remind myself that I need to eat enough fruits and vegetables. My life is so crazy that I often need the reminder that oh, yeah, haven’t eaten a leafy green in three days. Better get on that.
But at the same time, I would hesitate to equate that experience, or even the experience of dieting with CR. (Dieting, changing your diet, improving your diet- sometimes healthy and necessary. Tell me about it !) But when food becomes a taboo, it’s dangerous ground- we need food to live. It’s not the enemy. I have known people on CR diets, so to speak- yeah, poor people. People who don’t get enough calories per day. It’s not healthy. It’s not positive. The circles under their eyes and their lack of energy indicates that they’re shutting down. So it’s painful to look at CR practitioners and have my television set tell me that they’re doing fantastic.
An emotional response, sure. But I don’t think an invalid one.
And to echo what some other people are saying, don’t those news stories on the “World’s Oldest Woman” always feature the elderly champion in question saying “it’s that extra whiskey I drank before bed !” or “that extra steak I had every Sunday!”
Me, I’m going to take that advice over the arugala.
That’s true, but there is one thing that these people all have in common.
As my mother’s doctor told her when discussing her weight-related health problems, “You never see a fat 100 year old”.
Just sayin’.
Just FYI, there was a Scientific American Frontiers special a couple of years ago that focused on CR diets and the (then current) research around it. The whole episode is available from their website (linked from pbs.org).
Ellie said:
I agree with this. I’m 5’2″ and 100 lbs, and I just moderate my eating based on my activities. Sometimes I’ll go for weeks without exercising beyond the short walking it requires to get back and forth from work….during those periods of time, I restrict my calorie intake because I have no need for those calories. Sometimes I’ll exercise, and then I’ll up my calorie intake accordingly. I don’t write anything down, I just listen to my body.
I think calorie restriction is part of a normal life; gluttony is not a positive trait. Calorie restriction to an extreme, however, is guilty of the same addiction (to control instead of food), but in a different disguise.
What “you” are you referring to here? The feministe hivemind? Learn to tell us apart, and maybe you won’t misread me anymore.
Well, as an overweight woman, I sometimes keep a “food diary” to remind myself that I need to eat enough fruits and vegetables. My life is so crazy that I often need the reminder that oh, yeah, haven’t eaten a leafy green in three days. Better get on that.
I’m thinking I should keep a food diary, because I’m developing this really bad habit of forgetting to eat anything before about half past seven of an evening, and perhaps keeping tabs will remind me it’s a good idea to eat some lunch, and maybe breakfast once in a while.
I think it’s a question of control: some people don’t have enough and need more (like me), whereas others already have plenty and if they think they need more, it’s a sign something isn’t quite right.
You can’t give blood if you don’t weigh enough. The exact threshold varies from place to place. I lied and said I weighed enough on 9/11, just because I wanted to feel like I was doing something. Damn, that was a mistake. In all likelihood the Red Cross threw away my blood and it took me months to get my iron levels back up.
Calorie restriction isn’t the same as dieting. Dieters are restricting their food intake in order to lose weight. The essence of a diet, as opposed to a change in one’s eating habits, is that it’s a temporary regimen designed to induce weight loss. So, for example, becoming a vegetarian or a vegan isn’t a diet, even though many people end up losing weight if they make that lifestyle change.
CR folks straddle the line because they cut back calories to the point where they’re hungry all the time. (On average, I’m sure there are exceptions.) That’s why I won’t do CR.
The research for CR seems pretty good, as speculative physiological hypotheses go. If it were just a matter of giving up treats and eating healthy, I’d be CR. (From day-to-day I probably eat more or less what the CR folks do, plus 20% extra to maintain my weight. And on Thanksgiving, screw it!)
According to the underlying theory, CR requires people to cut back their calories so far that they are preoccupied with food and hungry. That’s the essence of the evil of dieting, IMO. Empirical studies of famine and experimental starvation have shown similar results. Even the CR monkeys appear perpetually hungry to the casual observer. My dad is a physiological psychologist who visited some CR primates a couple years ago. He came away shocked with how crazy and obsessive these creatures seemed compared to their well-nourished controls.
If it were an issue of giving up food and living without hunger until I was 120 years old, I’d give up food. With CR, the issue is (at best) trading a shot at a slightly longer life for a long lifetime of gnawing deprivation.
I’ve been using some software for tracking my food and nutrition intake, and it’s been very helpful for me in figuring out what I consume, and where I need to be more cognizant or take supplements. There are times when I enter something and had no idea that it had so many calories, so I know that it’s something that isn’t a good idea to eat frequently.
I can’t imagine, however, putting everything on a scale and running it through a computer to determine what to eat that day. I’d rather be guided by my appetite and what’s appealing — even when I’m trying to make choices based on nutrients or calories — than chained to a computer program.
And, yeah, the class implications are a bit freaky. Not to mention the smugness.
That said, I’m pretty uncomfortable with the tone of Traister’s article, with the assumption that a life without pie is not worth living and that unusual eating habits are per se suspect or the sign of a purse-lipped kind of self-denial. Vegetarians and vegans get that all the time from people who just can’t imagine that vegans could eat anything other but nuts, seeds and twigs and make defensive statements about rare, bloody steak.
Oh, and her swipe at Quorn. Quorn is awesome.
And Whole Foods carries Quorn.
piny: “the feminist hivemind”
Funniest thing I’ve read all night :)
Completely OT, but I couldnt find emails for the girls:
Ok, I admit, I tend to dismiss marketing and packaging people. Seriously though, this sells the product: http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2006/11/when_you_need_t.html
I’m not sure if people are deliberately misreading me, or simply sensitive about this topic and therefore not really understanding what I wrote. I’m not saying that watching what you eat is unhealthy, or trying to consume a particular number of calories is necessarily disordered. But, having some background in restrictive eating, I feel pretty confident in saying that “dieting” and “healthy eating” cross a major line when it turns into an obsession that dictates how you live your life. Anorexia and bulimia are not the only two types of disordered eating; they’re extreme psychological disorders, but anorexics and bulimics have varying backgrounds and don’t have identical psychological profiles. One thing that many people with eating disorders have in common is an obsession with food that controls their behaviors — what they eat, how they eat, how they socialize, etc. Keeping track of the calories you consume or keeping a food diary isn’t in itself disordered eating; allowing the number of calories you consume to control much of your daily routine, and centering your life around your food consumption habits, is unhealthy and a sign of disordered eating. That’s what the calorie-restrictive dieters in the article described, and that’s what I meant.
And, as has already been pointed out, you probably aren’t all that healthy if you lose the ability to do strenuous excercise and stop menstruating.
Excellent Post.
Uh, since when, Raging moderate? I have never understood this idea that elderly people are all tiny. Many, many people, especially um women, tend to gain weight as they age as their metabolism slows. I’ve seen many larger size 90 year olds. Take a good look at some of the older people you know, and contrast their weights now to their weights in older pictures.
Yup. Been there. And there’s the control issue, like I said: if I took on all of the other dietary restrictions they observe, without cutting down to a virtual-starvation caloric intake, I could probably reap a good portion of the health and longevity benefits.
Huzzah, I say. Great article. No disagreement here.
I have often noticed that, in discussions about body weight, body image, dieting and fatness, that SOME PEOPLE are EXCEPTIONALLY TOUCHY! I am sorry to say, they are never the chubby folks.
In our society, if you are on the thin side, it is easy to experience this as a personal VIRTUE. It proves you are better, more virtuous, than those with a less perfect body. This self-perception of evident virtue seldom has anything to do with actual virtue, yet it is so culturally pervasive that I have caught myself feeling virtuous when I have been thin due to mere youth, or illness, or mental stress. (in other words, I did nothing virtuous other than become magically thinner without trying.)
The calorie-conscious commenters here seem to be of a similar mindset. Any implication that self-deprivation≠superiority and they get quite defensive! I think they feel that any questioning of patriarchal beauty standards and practices are personal attacks on their self-esteem, which are, apparently, fragile and body-centered. To bolster said fragile self-esteem, they think it is perfectly justified to hate on the fatties.
Listen: no one is attacking you! To declare that a practice of keeping yourself constantly starving to the point of weakness, loss of muscle mass and amenorrhea is “unhealthy” is not an indictment of YOU. It is an opinion about an extreme practice. Try to think of yourself as more than your BMI, because, you ARE more than that.
Try not to judge other people by their bodies, too. It makes you look meanspirited and superficial.
I have often noticed that, in discussions about body weight, body image, dieting and fatness, that SOME PEOPLE are EXCEPTIONALLY TOUCHY! I am sorry to say, they are never the chubby folks.
I’ve noticed people do that to both directions (and here it’s mostly the other way around; Raging Moderate is not so much defensive as in a way skeptical).
Even the point about beauty standards goes in both directions. In general, people have a tendency to make thinness look like a virtue. But this forum is not the general population; it’s filled with people whose bias would be not toward confirming patriarchal beauty standards, but toward undermining them.
I think it’s a combination of sensitivity and misunderstanding.
I think that “Calorie-Restrictive Dieting is Not Healthy. Period.” and “call calorie-restrictive eating what it is: disordered, ill, and in need of compassion and help, not encouragement” was offensive to some. As the comments show, many of us follow a calorie-restricive diet without obsessing about food.
The misunderstanding could be that some readers interpreted your post as saying you regard all of us who follow CR diets as disordered, not just those who take it to extremes.
I think you guys are off base here. CR comes from some legitimate research that found out that keeping calorie counts really low allowed mice to live like 50% longer.
So some people went out and made some choices to try to live to 130. Just because it makes you feel guilty for eating a pizza doesn’t mean their choice is invalid, and I think the desire to add 30 years to your life is completely legitimate, even if it does have scary parrallels to anorexia.
All this article does is point out that doing so is pretty expensive, and that eating food is fun, but neither of these do any damage to the claim that this is a legitimate choice for people to make.
Oh yeah, and the article gives the standard smoker’s defense of ‘I might get hit by a bus tomorrow anyway’, which again, doesn’t really address the issue.
That’s different from what I said. Not all elderly people are tiny, but you never see a fat 100 year old. I’ll stand by that claim unless someone can supply a link to disprove it.
ED specialist here to say – CR dieting is disordered. It is a fairly newly studied area nicknamed: ortho-rexia. An obsession with “righteous” eating.
It allowed mice in cages to live 50% longer. What appears to be the main catching point of the extreme CR diet is that it reduces available energy and nutrition from food to the point that it also restricts activity. The usual conclusion of most of the studies on it are that it is useful in replacing lifelong bad food habits but it is not useful as a lifelong eating alternative. The fact that most of the benefits from it only come if it is a lifelong habit mean that you need to make a choice between life and living. It also means that if you venture outside on a extreme calorie restricted diet then being hit by a bus is much more likely.
CR seems to be useful as a study, in clinical situations, with doctor’s supervision and a nutritionist providing the meals, and in a less restrictive manner, as a means of helping people get real about food. We all need to get real about food, it can kill us, eventually.
So yes, the mice lived to be old, but they didn’t have any energy. What good is a longer life if you can’t like do anything?
I definitely think some people are misinterpreting Jill. She’s not saying that any calorie restriction is bad, but these CR people are taking it to gigantic extremes.
I lost 15 pounds this summer by keeping a food diary, counting calories etc. However, my calorie intake was about 1800 a day. Any less than that and I felt woozy, because I was exercising for at least an hour a day, including weights.
You have to eat enough to live. But if you aren’t eating enough to exercise? I really question that.
I felt compelled to say that breathing can kill us eventually too.
You may be following a calorie-restrictive diet (and patting yourself on the back for your self-control, given your past comments on the issue), but you’re not following a Calorie Restrictive™ diet. Therein lies the difference.
As for fat 100-year-olds: there’s an insurance company running ads for its annuities which uses a variety of 100-year-olds to illustrate that this product will take care of you no matter how old you get. Only one or two were “thin,” and given the relatives shown with them, they were likely always that way.
Old people shrink. My grandparents were well into their 90s when they died, and neither one of them had become thin people by that point. They both ate the same kind of diet, just not so much of it due to gradual loss of appetite and various infirmities affecting their ability to chew and swallow and get up for snacks. These were fat people who lived well beyond life expectancy. That they were less fat when they died than they had been a decade earlier had more to do with the aging process than it had to do with any sort of virtue and longevity bestowed on the thin.
THANK YOU. When I referenced “calorie-restrictive” diets in my post, I was talking about the kinds of behaviors covered in the article — that is, measuring everything you eat, recording everything you eat, having highly specific portions of each nutritional requirement, and allowing these restrictions to dictate how you live your life.
I know that food issues are sensitive, as well they should be — it’s pretty difficult to eat (or even appear) in just about any way without having your choices indicted by somebody. If you’re fat, you’re a glutton. If you’re skinny, you’re anorexic. If you diet, you’re a tool of patriarchy. If you refuse to diet, you’re lazy. And on and on. But I do think it’s fair to draw some lines, and to point out that certain relationships with food are not healthy. Obsessing over what you eat, how much you eat, and how you eat it is not healthy. It’s not the same thing as counting calories, or trying to consume fewer of them. And I stand by my assertion that it’s disordered, even if it is a valid “choice.” Surviving off of diet coke and iceburg lettuce is a valid “choice” too, and so is sticking a toothbrush down your throat or taking laxatives after every meal; but just because those are “choices” doesn’t make them healthy, and doesn’t mean that mainstream media outlets should be applauding them.
Kathy McCarty: also, not everyone who eats a healthy, balanced diet and exercises regularly will look like Gisele Bundchen or Heath Ledger. I’m willing to bet that even if someone is in great health, with impeccable eating/exercizing habits, but doesn’t fit the societal vision of a “great” body (whatever that may be), then the judgmental people you described would be like, “Ewww! Hit the treadmill and lay off the french fries, fatty!”
Conversely, I know a lot of tiresome people who are naturally skinny with high metabolisms and brag about how much they can pig out and sit around on their ass without gaining weight. Although those are clearly unhealthy habits, those people are considered ok and even cute, because they LOOK like our idea of an attractive body.
Also, and I ask this every time, not getting any great responses, what is fat? Although I will try to heed what pigeon said on the anorexia thread, I’ll throw this out there. I weigh about 30-40 lbs less than the average American woman, but people still make negative comments about my weight/size and I am obese compared to the unrealistic standards for fashion models and actresses. However, I eat fairly healthy and I have a relatively active lifestyle (I don’t work at a desk and I don’t drive myself everywhere), and I’ve never had a doctor tell me I have a medical problem because of my weight. Obviously fat isn’t posing a health risk to me, and yet some people think my weight so excessive that it merits abusive comments. So what am I supposed to think?
You don’t get any great responses because there aren’t any great answers. The BMI doesn’t account for muscle mass — according to its standards, Brad Pitt is fat. “Fat” ultimately comes down to personal judgments, which are based largely in aesthetics. I’ve linked to pictures of myself before, so I know that at least some of you have a pretty good idea of what I look like. I’m short and a little round, and while I certainly would like to be a bit thinner, I think I’m pretty average sized for my height. I’d never call myself skinny, but I don’t think I’m fat, either. But I’ve definitely been called fat and “a pig” (or was it a “cow”?) and various other things by people who found my body to not be small enough to suit their tastes. I’ve also been called tiny and thin by people who perceive me to be smaller than the average woman. I’ve been told that I have “a little extra cake,” and I’ve been called a “skeletor.” My conclusion: There’s little rhyme or reason to who’s considered fat.
I weigh some of my food to keep my portions under control. It’s recommended by Weight Watchers. I realize that in Traister’s eyes, that makes me a crazy, on-the-verge-of-an-eating-disorder person, but too fucking bad
I watch my calories very carefully as well because I have not one, but two metabolic disorders. And while I could go on a rant about what a pain in the ass it is to work out, eat well and still be fat (with all the societal blame bullshit that goes with it) I will instead draw your attention to a website about one of the most common reproductive/endocrine disorders among women.
http://pcosupport.org/
Women who are very “calorie retentive” might want to check it out.
Interestingly, the very first link I clicked on from that article took me to a page with a video of a guy into CR who notes that once he got to a certain point, he had to start increasing his calorie intake slightly so that he didn’t keep losing weight.
What is fat?
Beats me, I am 5′ 9″, 210 lbs. I look 40 lbs. lighter because my fat is evenly spread and I have decent muscle mass and bone density. I use the appearance thing to win prizes for my son at carnivals. I am not particularly active but I enjoy a good walk. I freak out many of the men I know by being able to lift and carry more than they can. That appears to be an inborn thing. My husband and son are downright thin and that is definitely an inborn thing. They eat like most North Americans but stay pencil thin.
People usually make negative comments based on their own insecurities. If you are healthy, happy and comfortably able to function then you are doing well. I know that when either myself or my uber thin sister are feeling self-conscious then we argue about our weight. Basically if you mixed the two of us and divided by 2, you would get societal norm. She eats out, absorbs candy and lost weight when she managed a cookie shop. She also moves full bookcases when upset.
So what is fat or thin- it is what the commentator is feeling at that moment in time and probably has less than nothing to do with you.
Well, I found this link:
And then:
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This is not to say that smoking or Law & Order marathons are conducive to longevity. I think, though, that centenarians might be in a special class.
Oh, and there was this abstract:
Just from a quick read off google, it seems like some of the deciding factors in longevity have less to do with watching one’s health and more to do with support. There are a lot of references to family that watch out for you, a community that keeps you a member in good standing, and friends who provide you with companionship and activity.
Heck, I got that today from my family, when they lectured me on the virtue of using small plates as a way of regulating portion size. This was after my mom brought me food from my favorite Thai restaurant in Seattle, and I warmed myself a heaping plate of it. And they certainly know that I eat well and exercise — I’m just not stick-skinny like my sister, and like my mom was when she was my age. I can’t wait to see what kinds of comments I get at dinner today.
Jill, Hawise, thanks for the thoughtful responses … doesn’t hurt that I mostly agree with both of you :)
I was mostly waiting to see what RM or the “but … but fat is unhealthy!” (I think that was the name of a post here awhile ago …) crowd would tell me.
And say that our idea of health as based on aesthetic standards is really kind of ridiculous.
Weighing food and recording everything you eat can be useful in some contexts: in particular, when my husband was diagnosed with diabetes, we got a kitchen scale and weighed everything (me along with him), so that we could learn what the portion sizes that corresponded to particular amounts of carbohydrates looked like. We also recorded what my husband ate (I didn’t go as far as writing everything down for myself, just tried to allow myself a certain amount of each sort of exchange a day so that I could understand his diet), at the same time he took his blood sugar a couple of times a day, so that we could see how variations in his diet affected his blood sugar.
That doesn’t mean that either of us lives on a restricted calorie diet, though, or that we weigh everything out in the long term. Once you get an idea of what balancing out your carbohydrate intake across the day (rather than having your blood sugar spike and fall) actually looks like, you don’t necessarily have to be that obsessive. Or at least, he seems to be able to keep his type II diabetes within bounds without being as obsessive as that (but with taking his blood sugar regularly and paying more attention than most non-diabetics need, to diet and exercise).
The other thing about the diabetic diet advice was that it was all about figuring out what diet you needed to live on long term, not about what temporarily restricted calorie diet you needed to get down to your ideal weight.
Well, I can’t supply a link, but I can say that there are several people in my extended family who are in their 80′s or 90′s who you would consider “fat.” None of them are 100 yet, but they’re getting there. Now that I think about it, they larger people have outlived the smaller people in our group. Obviously that doesn’t mean that high calorie inactive lifestyles are healthier, but I think the single greatest predictor of long life is heredity. The usual cliche is “You never see a fat old person” and that can be disproved by visiting any forum where the elderly tend to be represented.
RM said:
My gran, now 97, was a fat woman until she turned 90. Now she’s both tiny and thin. She’s going to be one of those thin 100 year olds, I reckon, as her doc thinks she’s fit as a fiddle. So she fits your mother’s doctors statement, but … then again, not so much.
The body doesn’t process food as well, at that age, I think, which is probably why she’s thin despite still eating butter-fried crumpets like she has since she was young. And it might go partway to explain why all those 100 year olds are thin. Being 100 and thin is not reason to believe that the person has always been thin.
(My gran’s half sister, at 95, has been thin as a rake her entire life :)
Which country is this study from? In France, the second thinnest country in Europe, just under a third of the population is overweight. In the US, two thirds of the population is overweight.
That the people who say you’re overweight are idiots. Unless, of course, you live in an environment where you really are considered overweight – say, if you’re a model, or even an actor.
A lot of things in life become easier to handle once you realize that half the population has below average intelligence.
Usually, it means that a higher than normal percentage of your body is fat. I think the normal rate is 10-12%, but I’m not sure, which only goes to show how pervasively BMI is used as a proxy.
My grandmother on my father’s side was quite heavy up until the day she died, and she lived to 91 quite happily. She was never in a hospital until several days before she died. She was on medication for certain health problems, but she wasn’t ill, kept her faculties, and was generally happy.
Her brother, who never ate anything but boiled chicken (this is true), lived to be 95. However, he spent the last 3 years of his life in a nursing home quite ill and unable to recognize anyone.
My grandmother on my mother’s side was thin her whole life, ate health foods since the 1940s, and died from cancer at the age of 85. That was the third time she had cancer. The other two were when she was 65 and 75. Her mother and two of her siblings died from cancer before they were 75. Her other brother dropped dead of a heart attack when he was 50, despite having been in good health up until that time. Only her one sister was overweight, and not that much.
Sometimes you just hit the genetic lottery.
10-12%?!?! I knew a very petite girl who was a district competitive cross country runner who had a body fat percentage of 19%. This chart puts healthy body fat percentage at 8-35% depending on sex and age.
The whole reason I brought up the “well, what I am I supposed to think?” question is because I find the fat debate ridiculous. Without gaining or losing an ounce, I can be seen as on the thin end of healthy by my doctor and as hideously obese by the fashion industry or Asian people (disclaimer: I *am* Asian and live in a community with a fair amount of Asians, so I’m not being racist). Fat is in the eye of the beholder, which is why we shouldn’t run around diagnosing people for poor health and diabetes by our aesthetic judgments.
How did I know that Raging “Women who can move with their own muscles are ugly” Moderate would be all for the emaciation diet?
I wouldn’t take it as an insult, though. RM would probably call Cindy Crawford fat.
And therefore the only way to be is 30% underweight. This is the problem with Americans—ironically, we don’t understand the concept of moderation. Equating an unwillingness to be emaciated with an endorsement of obesity doesn’t scream “moderate” to me, but more “hung up on the idea that flesh is nasty”. Every time the discussion of anorexia comes up, there are some men that can be counted on to express a desire to shut down anti-anorexia discussions because obesity kills more people. Implication: If women aren’t starving themselves to death, then they will all be big fatasses and then who will I fuck?
This inability to realize that a middle ground is possible is why we have a culture that’s obsessed with teetotaling and yet has a huge alcoholism problem; if you believe that drinking at all makes you a drunk, you have no way to check yourself at “enough”. It’s also why our stupid schools teach abstinence and yet we have a giant teen pregnancy problem. The idea that there is no such thing as moderate behavior, only being “good” (i.e. self-depriving) or being “bad” (i.e. going way overboard) ruins people’s abilities to make measured judgements.
Every time the discussion of anorexia comes up, there are some men that can be counted on to express a desire to shut down anti-anorexia discussions because obesity kills more people.
Thank you, and happy belated Thanksgiving.
Alon, 10-12% body fat is in no way “normal”. Amenorrhea sets in for women somewhere around 15-17%– which is to say, 15-17% is as low as most women can go without losing certain normal body functions. I think 20-25% might be closer to medically “normal”.
When I moved into residence in first year, any time I told anyone that I didn’t drink, they’d laugh knowingly and say “you will”.
And I didn’t, and to this day never have, but all the other fresh-faced non-drinkers fell hard into it, for the exact reason you’ve given. They held off drinking in high-school because they thought it made you a fuck-up or a bad-ass, or because their parents would kill them if they found out, blah blah. And at university, surrounded by intelligent people who drank, and away from adult supervision, they went nuts. A lot of kids who started the year lily-white didn’t come home after Christmas cause they partied themselves into a hole.
Which I suppose is a long-winded way of saying “word”.
Which, I suppose, is another piece of evidence that people are idiots. In a country where a third of the population is obese and another third is overweight but not obese, you’d expect people to realize that sexual performance is mostly independent of weight.
Calorie-Restrictive Dieting is Not Healthy
I’m convinced my calorie-restricting dieting in my teens permanently weakened me to this day and I’m my thirties.
Implication: If women aren’t starving themselves to death, then they will all be big fatasses and then who will I fuck?
The most sexist kind of concern trolling.
As per the never seeing a fat 100 year old: generally peoples’ appetites tend to decline as they age anyway. correlation=! causation.
and Julia Child lived a long happy life, goddamit.
I don’t intend to shut sown discussion. I’m just always confused why it is considered such a big problem to some…
Yes, anorexia is a serious problem to those who suffer from it, but it’s not something that’s a widespread problem for society as a whole.
I’ve never known an anorexic, but I’ve known hundreds of obese people.
What? Amanda is snarking at people who think like that, while I’m calling them idiots.
“Mostly”?
If you’re so confused, perhaps you should just stay out of these discussions to spare yourself.
Really? When 42% of first-grade girls want to be thinner and 51% of 10-year-old girls say they feel better when dieting, I’d say we have a widespread societal problem with disordered eating. Not all of them will develop a full-blown eating disorder, but many of them will, and almost all of them will expend precious mental energy worrying about the size of their thighs, even if they’re average or thin.
Well! That’s definitive, then! Anorexia doesn’t exist, because Raging Moderate’s never known one! Let’s stop discussing it, then, because there are fat people to be shamed and hectored and blamed for the downfall of society nd the breakdown of the helth care system!
To the Fatmobile!
I’ve never known an anorexic
You’re just plain mistaken. You may never have met an anorexic at the extreme end of the disease, one who’s exhibiting a set of symptoms that the majority of sufferers never exhibit, but you’ve known someone with an eating disorder.
Plus, did you miss the women in this series of threads who’ve described themselves as ED survivors?
Why can’t we acknowledge both obesity* and anorexia as problems? I don’t think it’s logical to assume that just because someone sees anorexia as a problem, they think obesity is great. Oh, and RM, if you come back, I’m curious as to how you define fat (see my comment at #70).
* I think there are a lot of flaws in assuming that fat=unhealthy, but here I take obesity as the kind that is so severe that it’s stressful for your body to carry that weight. You know, like having a hard time going up the stairs.
Why can’t we acknowledge both obesity* and anorexia as problems?
Although there are some people who do not believe that there’s any connection between obesity and ill health, most of us do–just not in the threads that are dedicated to eating disorders. Like Amanda said, it’s fucked up that you can’t have a thread about anorexia–see pretty much every thread on ED issues this blog has ever hosted for examples–without some jackass coming in to talk about how obesity is way worse and why don’t we care about it? It’s not exactly like the MRAs who come into discussions on Alas to complain about false accusations of rape, given that there are large numbers of people with unhealthy diets, but it’s pretty close.
piny – Sorry, I might not have stated it very well, but I agree with you and Amanda on this issue. I meant to direct it to RM – that just because the bloggers here are concerned about eating disorders, doesn’t mean that you think obesity is wonderful and healthy. I really dislike it when obesity is used to justify anorexia, or when anorexia is presented as a better alternative to obesity. There *is* a middle ground and we don’t have to be either/or! And yeah, this is like MRAs and just about any feminist issue, although the analogy that came to mind was white people who crash antiracism discussions to bitch about affirmative action.
That’s what I’d like to see.
I did a bit of looking in the archives here, and I couldn’t find a post about the obesity epidemic and the harm it is causing North American society. But it seems anorexia comes up fairly frequently.
Why does anorexia gets so much more attention than obesity?
How could you possibly know that?
I can’t define it. But I know it when I see it. Fat is in the eye of the beholder.
Because we write what we want to write about here. Don’t like it? Find another blog to read. We’re not your monkeys.
As for your archive search, your parameters are a bit narrow. We talk about both obesity and anorexia here. You put no limits on the anorexia topic, yet you only looked for “post[s] about obesity and the harm it is causing North American society.” Funny that.
And yet someone can appear to be not-fat and have a higher body fat percentage than someone who, visually, appears to be overweight. Which brings us to the point we’ve made over and over here, which is that you can’t rely on your eyes to tell you who’s fat, who’s healthy, who maintains a healthy diet, who exercises, who’s got an eating disorder, etc.
Oh, this is fun. Just change “but what about the men???” to “but what about TEH FAT???!!!!!” what other discussions can we derail with totally unrelated subjects?
What Zuzu said, and because this blog isn’t here to represent every single problem in American society. The mainstream media certainly does enough talking about the evils of obesity; we write about things that we’re interested in, and that we hope our audience wants to read about. We aren’t here to reproduce everything that the New York Times publishes — if that were the case, we wouldn’t have much of a purpose, would we?
I’m sure you could come up with a whole laundry list of things we don’t write very much about: The estate tax, animal rights, the exploitation of coffee farmers, and on and on. It doesn’t mean that these issues aren’t important, just that the absense of something doesn’t really mean all that much.
How could you possibly know that?
The same way I’d know you were mistaken if you said you’d never known a rape survivor. It’s extremely unlikely, virtually impossible, that you’ve never known anyone with an eating disorder. A diagnosed eating disorder? Sure. A visibly anorexic person? Sure.
And you can’t possibly know whether or not you’ve ever met an anorexic person.
It’s not as if I’ve had sex with 25 people with BMIs ranging from 18 to 35. I’d rather leave myself open to the possibility that eating disorders in either direction, which are correlated but not synonymous with being over- or underweight, lower someone’s sexual performance the way Morgan Spurlock’s was in Supersize Me.
I’m not Lauren, Jill, Piny, or Zuzu. But when people criticize my blog for not giving appropriate emphasis to their pet issues (usually their version of what’s going on in Iraq), I always say, “I reserve the right to post or not to post about what interests me. When I criticize you, it’s always about specific wrong things you said, not things you didn’t say.”
The Feministe writers talk about anorexia more than about obesity, even though obesity is a greater social problem. You talk about obesity more than about world hunger, even though world hunger is a greater social problem.
I know you read Feministing, so I’ll ask you to try and remember the whole brouhaha around Ms. Jane’s “You’re writing more about racial issues than about GLBT issues” exhortation.
Alon, obviously, whoever made the statement was trolling not the person who pointed it out. *eye roll*
The more relevant question is why are anti-anorexia discussions such a big problem for you?
Alon, are you giving this BMI range as that of overweight/obese people? Because 18 is the BMI floor for Milan’s Fashion Week.
Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald’s food for a month. I should think that, and not the weight he put on as a result, was the cause of any lowered “sexual performance,” however you’re defining that term (from this example, seems penis-centric). McDonald’s food, you might not be surprised to hear, is loaded with sodium, which can affect blood pressure and thus all kinds of vascular processes.
If you’re not, in fact, fucking fat people, perhaps you don’t need to “leave yourself open” to any speculation about their “sexual performance.” Because it doesn’t really concern you much, then, does it?
“I can’t define it. But I know it when I see it. Fat is in the eye of the beholder.”
That’s why I think this debate is ridiculous. As I’ve stated several times, people who use subjective aesthetic standards have called me fat or made comments about my weight, while I can go up 4-5 flights of stairs without getting too short of breath, never eat fast food, commute in a car only once a week, have insanely low blood pressure and according to my doctor, could afford to GAIN a little weight. To underscore the absurdity, I think that Jill has been called “hog” and “skeletor” from the same photo (and obviously, she is neither!).
Anyway, it seems like you’re concerned about obesity because it’s a health problem and yet when I ask you to define fat, you base it on aesthetic standards (how you see it). I have no idea what your standards are, but for me, the problem is when people think that anyone heavier than say, Scarlett Johansson or Jessica Simpson, is fat. And that fat=unhealthy or disgusting.
Long-time lurker, first post here.
Raging Moderate, let me ask you this: Would you go to an AA meeting where people were smoking and say, “Well, why don’t we talk about how bad smoking is? Why are we so obsessed about alcoholism when everyone’s sitting here puffing away and that’s much worse for us than alcohol, which is just fine in moderation?”
No, you wouldn’t. Not unless you wanted to get tossed out on your ear. For one thing, people are there to talk about their drinking, not their smoking. They are there because they know that the way they drink — which precludes moderation — will kill them much faster than smoking will. That is why it is a higher priority for them to get a handle on their drinking.
The media already palavers on and on and on and on about how “obesity kills.” We do not have a shortage of stories in the media telling people who are “overweight” that they’re killing themselves with their forks, even though the data they use to arrive at such conclusions is sketchy at best. (A closer look at study data, even when maximally dredged to find an “obesity kills” conclusion, will tell you that very fat women, of BMI > 40, actually live longer than “ideally thin” men, BMI 18-21.9.)
We do, OTOH, have a serious shortage of accountability in the media for how their portrayal of the “ideal” female body fosters deadly eating disorders, although starving oneself to death will kill a person much faster than fatness ever could. Can you blame people here for being a lot more alarmed about a person playing Russian roulette than they are about someone drinking three martinis a day?
Nobody made that statement; Amanda wrote it as a way of snarking at people who think the existence of women with BMI over 20 is a sign of the apocalypse. It’s like when Stephen Colbert says, “I’m not one of the factinistas.”
I’m giving this BMI range as ranging from underweight to obese – after all, if I’m wrong and weight does affect sexual performance then it can still go both ways. It’s also more or less the range of BMIs of the people I’ve fucked, but I wasn’t thinking about that when I wrote the above comment.
Absolutely true. I’d leave that up to a doctor. But I don’t understand the fairly common complaint that a doctor telling a patient that his weight is a health risk is somehow “fat shaming” . As I’ve mentioned before, why is it acceptable to tell smokers how disgusting and unhealthy they are, but it is unacceptable to do so with the obese? Isn’t that “smoker shaming”?
And you’re doing a damn fine job. Especially Jill (sorry, I know I shouldn’t play favorites). That’s why I keep coming here, and recommend the site to my friends. I agree with you guys 95% of the time (but don’t generally comment when I do). Please don’t take my comments as attacks. I try my best to disagree poitely, but I guess I’m not always successful.
True, but any posts about obesity seem to be criticisms (often justified, but sometimes not) of those who raise the issue, not about obesity itself. If you could refer me to a post that proves me wrong I’d be glad to read it and admit I’m mistaken (not that you have to; you’re not my monkey after all).
You keep using fat and obese interchangably. They are not the same thing. Fat is an aesthetic judgement, while obesity is a medical condition. I’m sure that there are people who confuse fat with obese, just like there are people who confuse skinny with anorexic.
I’m with you there. That’s just ridiculous.
I don’t know about women, but being overweight or obese seems to be one of the factors that leads to erectile dysfunction, and losing weight has been shown to lead to significant improvement. Some studies have shown that up to 80% of men who suffer from ED are overweight or obese. I never brought it up before, as I did not wish to give ammunition to those who would claim “it’s always about your dick, isn’t it?”.
I guess my biggest issue is the common attitude on feminist sites that being skinny is ugly, unhealthy, and unnatural, yet being fat is beautiful, healthy, and normal.
It’s the inconsistency that bothers me.
Thanx for yet another issue to debate with my friends tonight (after the hockey game, of course – Go Habs Go, eh).
Speaking of sexual performance and weight, one of the most widely-reported side effects of the CR regimen is diminished sex drive.
However, I don’t know of any correlation between weight and sexual performance in generally well-nourished individuals of different body types.
Because if someone is otherwise healthy, hectoring them to lose weight serves no purpose other than to shame them. Also, many doctors — as people here have said over and over again — will attribute any and all physical complaints to weight and not look for underlying causes. Such as when Magis went in to the doctor to have an ear infection treated, only to find out that his insurance company wouldn’t cover the visit because the doctor had put down the reason for the visit as weight-related.
If someone is otherwise healthy, weight is not a risk factor, certainly not like smoking is. Smoking is a direct cause of various illnesses and directly affects breathing, etc.. Fat doesn’t give you cancer.
Oh, so fat’s just an asthetic thing now, is it? I see you’re trying to have it both ways. I thought you were the one who insisted there were no fat 100-year-olds? Did you really mean obese? Sure didn’t say that. And that’s not the tune you’ve been singing for quite a long time whenever these discussions occur.
Cites, please, to studies that control for other factors than weight, such as prostate issues, blood pressure, etc. Need I remind you that “ED” is a term used by the pharmaceutical industry? So be mindful of the origin of those studies as well, and how they define “ED.”
Again, cites. “Common attitude on feminist sites” ain’t going to cut it. Which sites? Who says that? What was the context?
“I guess my biggest issue is the common attitude on feminist sites that being skinny is ugly, unhealthy, and unnatural, yet being fat is beautiful, healthy, and normal.”
As you said, skinny doesn’t equal anorexic. Furthermore, if you consider some of the feminist bloggers who post their pictures (I’m not going to be able to include everyone, this is off the top of my head, sorry if I miss you!) – Jill (I don’t think piny and zuzu post their pictures), Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon, Lindsay Beyerstein at majikthise, the bloggers at feministing – they are not fat. And even if they were, who cares?
What’s wrong with fat being seen as beautiful, healthy and normal? Even if fat is a health problem, there are plenty of skinny people who smoke, drink, tan, eat trans fats, etc. who are still seen as beautiful by virtue of their weight.
I don’t begrudge full-figured women wanting to feel beautiful when magazines, diet ads, Hollywood, etc. scream “FAT IS UGLY!” from the rooftops.
I don’t know where anyone said that being skinny is ugly, unhealthy and unnatural. I don’t think it is, anyway. My whole family is skinny except for me, and I’m nowhere near obese — but as context, they’re so little that I’m “the fat one.” They all eat well. They don’t diet or count calories obsessively. When my mom was a teenager she used to try and drink weight-gain shakes because she thought she was a beanpole. I think my mom was gorgeous when she was younger, and continues to be. My stick-skinny little sister is incredibly beautiful. I don’t think their thinness makes them beautiful, but they are thin and they are beautiful, if that makes sense.
Like Zuzu said, I really haven’t seen anyone call skinniess ugly. I’ve seen us critique eating disorders, but everyone with an eating disorder isn’t skinny. And we aren’t criticizing bodies when we’re criticizing eating disorders –we’re more often criticizing systems of oppression that push women into unhealthy behaviors.
When I write posts about anorexia or EDs, no, I don’t make the statement that “skinny people are beautiful.” It’s not because I don’t think they are; it’s because that’s such a dominant cultural message that there doesn’t seem to be any point in saying it.
The strawfeminist said that skinny people were ugly. She also said that she is going to have a castration party at the winter solistice.
RM is the concern troll because he has problems with anti-anorexia posts on feminist blogs.
Its your projection to think this is a common attitude on blogs. If it’s really common, show me ten quotes where women really said “fat is beautiful” or “skinny is ugly”.
Common would mean more than ten instances. Show me twenty quotes of women who actually said “fat is beautiful” or “skinny is ugly”.
The sad longing, the wistful look into the horizon. “Oh, what I would give to have someone to fuck who is too hungry to orgasm but that’s okay, because even if she did, the pressure on her heart would kill her.” So erotic, so tempting, and yet so elusive, because the women who you can tell are fat because their teeth are all in their head—sexy women have their teeth nice and loose from scurvy, you know—selfishly deprive RM of the bony, dying body he desires.
Hey, I went to one of those once. I had a ball.
Just one?
I guess my biggest issue is the common attitude on feminist sites that being skinny is ugly, unhealthy, and unnatural, yet being fat is beautiful, healthy, and normal.
Well, as you said, do you mean fat as in aesthetic arguments, or do you mean obese? “Fat” people, according to your aesthetic, do not, necessarily entail “unhealthy” or “abnormal” people, though you seem to conflate fat and obesity as well, so I’m not shocked that people seem to take you at your word. Though you are…strange…
Second question, is living to 100 a valid touchstone for “health”? Does it have genetic factors? My grandmother is 96 and 180 pounds. I’ve rarely thought of her as fat, but I’m sure, by your gauge, you would (she has flab, eww, right?) I really can’t stand people like yourself who continually use the fat moniker and yet, you keep saying you don’t want to conflate “fat” with “obese”. You really don’t get it.