National Women's Studies Association 2012 Fat Studies Interest Group Call for Papers
November 8-11, 2012, Oakland, CA.

Papers on any topic at the intersection of women's studies/ feminism/ womanism/ gender/ sexuality and fat studies will be considered.

At minimum, your submission should fall under one of the following themes for NWSA 2012:
*Revolutionary Futures
*Traveling Theory
*Social Networks, Power, and Change
*Decolonizing Knowledge
*Creative Awakenings
For more information on the themes, visit: http://nwsa.org/


While this is an open call, topic suggestions from last year's meeting include:
* Fat Intersections (including race, nationality, disability, sexuality, appearance/beauty)
* Fatopias/Fat Utopias
* Transnational Fat Bodies (immigration, globalization)
* Teaching Fat Studies (professorial bodies, student bodies, resistance)
* Knowledge-sharing/de-colonizing
* Fat Feminist Research Methods (including role of the researcher body)
* Fat Feminists Theorizing the Body
* Fat Performance/Performing Fatness/Fat Icons
* Fat activism & feminism/Fatosphere


If you are interested in being a part of the 2012 Fat Studies panels at NWSA, please send the following info by February 13, 2012 to NWSA Fat Studies Interest Group Co-Chairs Michaela A. Null and Candice Buss: (mnull@purdue.edu and cdbuss@uncg.edu). Please make sure one of us confirms receipt of your submission.

Your submission should include your:
*Name, Institutional Affiliation, Snail Mail, Email, Phone.
*NWSA Theme your paper fits under (and fat studies topic area/s if yours fits any of the above).
*Title for your talk, a one-page, double-spaced abstract in which you lay out your topic and its relevance to this session.
*AND a 100 word truncated abstract (NWSA requirement).

Each person will speak for around 15 minutes, and we will leave time for Q&A. In order to present with your name in the program, you must become a member of NWSA in addition to registering for the conference.

______________________________________________________________________________
If you submit a fat studies related paper or panel, you can tag it with the keyword 'fat feminisms,' and likewise search the program for 'fat feminisms' to find relevant panels. If you submit a paper or panel on your own, we encourage you to use this keyword if your paper or panel fits the bill. We thank NWSA for adding a keyword that helps conference attendees locate fat studies panels.

Anyone who reads The Fatosphere Feed has already heard about Marilyn Wann's Stand for Kids Campaign. It's a HAES, body lib reply to Georgia's god-awful bullying Strong4Life billboards, which portray fat children as pathetic and inherently unhealthy.

Atchka of Fierce, Freethinking Fatties has created a Stand for Kids Blog where he's republishing related posts.

Recent Fatosphere Feed articles include:

• Body Love Wellness
• Communications of a Fat Waitress
• Dances with Fat, and
• Fat Heffalump

I hope I didn't miss anyone!

The full album of images is here, on Facebook, and there's a Facebook group as well. There's also a STAND4KIDS tumblr.

If you'd like to Stand with Kids, Marilyn says:

Do you want your very own Stand4Kids ad? Yes? Good!!! It's easy... Steps:

1. Send me a photo (either attached to a message here or by email: marilyn@fatso.com)
2. Tell me your "I STAND..." statement.
3. Wait until I send you the ad for your approval.
4. Post your ad online and change the world!

There's an effort underway to fund actual billboards with some of these images, through Kickstarter. I'll post when I hear more about it.

I haven't submitted a picture (yet!) but hopefully our fearless leader Carrie won't mind if I post her very excellent contribution.

This video was written, directed, starring and conceived by Lillian Behrendt and Matt Cornell. It's the second in a series. BFB linked to the first video here.

Trigger warning: fat shaming, body snark, diet talk

(from the video)
"You look great. Have you lost weight?"

(my recommended answer)
"No, I haven't lost weight. I just look great, thanks."

This, from NPR: Obesity Epidemic May Have Peaked In U.S.

"These data basically show than we haven't seen any change probably since back to 2003-4 in obesity in any group," said Cynthia Ogden of the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the latest data and published two papers online in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. One paper focused on adults while the second focused on children.

This has been common knowledge in the fat acceptance movement for a while now. Those who are still claiming that Americans are getting heavier generally have a financial or personal stake in believing that, and are using old or suspect (if any) data.

Some researchers are saying...

"We've seen some very effective changes that are occurring in schools and at the societal level in terms of food labeling, economic incentives, behavioral strategies," says Penny Gordon-Larsen, an obesity researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Hum. I cant remember reading anything suggesting that those strategies are effective at making people thinner, though I suppose that here they're just trying to take credit for average BMIs remaining stable. It could just as easily be because people have begun to reject dieting, and dieting often leads to long term weight gain. Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if fat acceptance is playing a role in Americans' average size stabilizing.

Others are saying...

It's also possible that we're reached a kind of new normal, with the proportion of population who is predisposed to obesity having already become obese, says Harvard's David Ludwig, a specialist in treating overweight kids.

...and there may be some truth in that.

It ends with a quote from Dr. Glenn Gaesser, author of "Fat Lies."

"Most people who lose weight will ultimately regain it. If you do this do over and over and over again you develop a nation of weight-cyclers, a yo-yo-dieting society and there are risks associated with yo-yo dieting that are every bit as hazardous as the risks associated with just being fat."

Wow! It's not the usual "But fat people should diet anyway" ending. If it weren't for the headless fatties illustrating the article, it would seem almost unbiased.

Of course, if the government and medical establishment really want to play a role in lowering obesity rates, they could just do the opposite of what they did in 1999. Instead of redefining "obesity" to a lower BMI, they could redefine it to a higher BMI - one that actually reflects serious health risks and increased mortality. Better yet, they could stop trying to use body size as a proxy for health and instead treat it as one physical characteristic among many.

This video was written, directed, starring and conceived by Lillian Behrendt and Matt Cornell.

...and I think it's fucking brilliant. Cheers, Lillian and Matt.

Trigger warning: fat shaming, body snark, diet talk

What would you add?
I'm thinking

• You have such a pretty face.
• Congratulations. Getting active will help you lose weight (when you've been active - and the same size - for years, and are not trying to lose weight).
• You're not fat.

Ditching Dieting* is planning a protest today, Monday January 16th, at 2:30pm until 6:30pm. The protesters are meeting under the Lion on the Southside of Westminster Bridge, by the yellow wheelie bin.

They have a Facebook page.

(thanks, Tehomet!)

From the Guardian: Women plan protest against diet industry outside parliament, subtitled 'Protesters say weightloss companies wreak havoc with appetites and rely on dieters' repeated failures to make money.'

Women who say they have been failed by weightloss programmes sold to them by diet companies are planning a demonstration outside parliament on Monday to hit back at the multimillion-pound industry for "wreaking havoc with appetites and lives while it builds huge profits".

The protest, part of a campaign called Ditching Dieting, has been organised to coincide with representatives of the diet industry giving evidence to an all-party parliamentary group inquiry into the causes and consequences of body image anxiety.

Ditching Dieting's homepage is here. It's sponsored by an organization called "Species Endangered" that's planning summits in London, New York, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Melbourne, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

I've only taken a quick look at the website, since I wanted to get this posted quickly. Here's the interesting thing about Species Endangered / Ditching Dieting. It's not a size acceptance organization. They're focused on body image and preventing eating disorders, which is all well and good. Except, it looks like regular people can't join the organization, and who's in charge? Well, Suzy Orbach is first in the list.

Suzy Orbach is well known for "Fat is a Feminist Issue," a late 1970s book that got some things right but endorsed the idea that weigh loss will naturally result for all of us once everything is hunky-dory. Yes, when we learn to see past society's bad influence and heal ourselves emotionally and psychologically, we will be rewarded with skinniness- it's a sign of mental health and enlightenment!

I wish I could say that she's learned more over the years and now has a different outlook, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Googling support for the protest, I found groups such as Beyond Chocolate, Stop Yo-yo Dieting and Lose Weight for Good that seem to form the core. Yes, these are the "it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change" folks. (Sorry, guys. If weight loss is a goal, then it's a diet.)

So... I would urge fat acceptance supporters in London to show up for this with the knowledge that there may be opportunities to educate your fellow protesters as well as the intended audience. It's great that Species Endangered has organized this. If they have an outlook that excludes fat women who think we're fine as we are and do not expect to become thin? Well, you've gotta start somewhere, and we do share a lot of common ground.

* For the folks who are didactic about the word "diet," in this post it's short for "weight loss diet."

Covered by the Hinterland Gazette, "a source for thought- provoking social and political commentary on issues affecting the African American community and beyond": Guy Vines Sues Panera Bread for Racial Discrimination, Saying Co. Doesn’t Want “Black, Fat or Ugly People at Register”

Also covered by NBC10 Philadelphia: Panera Doesn't Want 'Black, Fat or Ugly' People at the Register: Lawsuit, subtitled "A Pennsylvania man has filed a lawsuit against Panera, saying it has a policy that keeps black employees away from the public eye. He's the second person to file such a suit against the restaurant."

The lawsuit hasn't been resolved yet, but this sounds pretty overt and pretty heinous. However, it might be a problem with the owner of the franchise, Sam Covelli, rather than with the company as a whole. The NBC article notes that "according to its website, Covelli is the fifth-largest restaurant franchisee in the country and develops and manages the franchise rights of nearly 200 Panera cafes in northeast Ohio, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and West Palm Beach, Fla." So, if it's the franchise owner, it's still a widespread problem. If there is a systemic problem with Covelli Enterprises, then hopefully the parent company will do something about it.

Has anyone had experiences with Covelli Enterprises' restaurants or with Panera Bread in general that would shed light on this?

This article in MedPage Today is so frustrating. Richard Kahn, PhD, who was the chief scientific and medical officer of the American Diabetes Association for nearly 25 years, said that community programs are ineffective at achieving weight loss. No shit, Sherlock, what was your first clue? He told this to public health advocates and diabetes researchers at the Health Affairs briefing Tuesday, which was a stark contrast to the "prevention works" message of the event's other speakers.

Kahn -- who now teaches medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- said that just sustaining significant weight loss, even with intensive dieting, exercise, and coaching, "requires near-heroic measures" in the face of a "very hostile food environment."
He outlined his views in a paper published in the January edition of Health Affairs, in which he wrote that there are two ways to dramatically reduce the toll of diabetes: One is to detect diabetes early and then treat it so effectively that complications from the disease are practically zero. The other is to prevent diabetes before it even happens.
Thousands of public health campaigns are aimed at prevention, and for diabetes, that generally means losing weight. But people have the "fundamental problem" of not being able to maintain weight loss, so preventing diabetes in a person at high risk for the disease is extremely difficult, Kahn said.

So, they're saying that community programs are ineffective at achieving weight loss, but for preventing diabetes, pretty much all they recommend is losing weight. Sounds to me like they're dooming people to have diabetes if that's all they can come up with (and I happen to know there are other solutions to delaying/preventing the onset of type 2 diabetes that don't entail weight loss, depending on your genetic risk factors for it).

His paper looked at diabetes prevention studies, including the large Diabetes Prevention Program, in which patients lost an average of between 4% and 6% of their body weight (but gained about 40% back by the end of the nearly three-year trial). It also looked at the government-funded Look AHEAD trial, which found that intensive lifestyle changes resulted in a major reduction in cardiovascular risk factors, but the effects greatly diminished after four years when many participants gained weight and lost their improved fitness.
Kahn said those studies, along with the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study -- in which the greatest diabetes prevention benefit occurred in people who lost at least 5% of their body weight -- suggest that "without substantial, sustained weight loss, progression to diabetes will probably resume." Progression to diabetes may be delayed for a few years, but the long-term effects are uncertain, he said.

So, losing weight helps, but it can't be maintained in the majority of cases (tell us something we didn't know about maintenance) and the benefits of weight loss disappear when the weight returns. Doesn't sound like such a good recommendation to me.

"The main argument is that implementing a nationwide community intervention program is not going to do anything, I believe, except waste resources," Kahn told MedPage Today.
Kahn said that there are too many unanswered questions about how weight loss works that must be answered before a national program would ever succeed in preventing diabetes in the long term.
"We really need to know what is going on with this complex system we have," he said. "What is going on in our physiology that precludes us from losing weight and keeping it off?"
Another issue that prevents people from keeping weight off is the ubiquity of the "cheap, widely available, delicious food that we eat again and again."
He suggested "painful policies" as the solution -- such as raising the price of all food except for fruits and vegetables, and offering financial incentives to people who can keep weight off, while penalizing overweight people with higher insurance premiums.
He acknowledged those aggressive policies likely would be unpopular among members of Congress and doctors.

Those "painful policies" are going to be unpopular among members of Congress and doctors? What planet is he living on? Congress won't give a shit about raising the price of all food except fruits and vegetables, or penalizing fat people with higher insurance premiums. If it isn't going to affect the pocketbooks of the members of Congress personally, they don't care. As for offering financial incentives to people who can keep weight off, that will be one of the cheapest programs to finance, what with the success rate of diets, as Kahn well knows.
The disconnect between Kahn saying " community programs are ineffective at achieving weight loss" and "raising the price of all food except for fruits and vegetables, and offering financial incentives to people who can keep weight off, while penalizing overweight people with higher insurance premiums" is staggering. Does he realize how two-faced he sounds? Does he realize what an asshat that kind of thinking makes him? "Weight loss is nearly impossible, but if you don't lose weight and keep it off, you're going to pay more for your insurance, even though it's not your fault and there's nothing you can do about it, we're going to fuck you over anyway because you're fat and we think you should be thin because only thin people are healthy."

He added that the best doctors can offer right now is to suggest to overweight patients that losing 4% body weight and keeping it off can reduce the risk for serious complications of diabetes by 15% to 20%.

The best he can offer? Even though he knows it's damn near impossible to keep the weight off, he still recommends losing weight as the best way to reduce the risk for serious complications of diabetes. Kahn, I have some suggestions for you - carb counting, controlling blood glucose, regular exercise, and regular check-ups with an endocrinologist who is well-educated about type 2 diabetes will go farther to reduce the risk of the complications of type 2 diabetes than losing weight ever will. Pull your head out of your ass and wake the fuck up before you do more harm than you already have.

Another quick link.

There's a new study out in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine: Healthy Lifestyle Habits and Mortality in Overweight and Obese Individuals. It's from a research group at the Medical University of South Carolina. The link above leads to the full study.

Here, "Healthy Lifestyle Habits" are defined as

• eating 5 or more fruits and vegetables daily,
• exercising regularly,
• consuming alcohol in moderation, and
• not smoking.

From the abstract:

When stratified into normal weight, overweight, and obese groups, all groups benefited from the adoption of healthy habits, with the greatest benefit seen within the obese group.

This table is from page 13 of the study. At the bottom are the number of healthy habits (out of the four above) that the subjects followed. The hazard ratios along the side are the comparative risks of dying early, with a BMI 18-25 person with four healthy habits set as "1". Anything above one is a higher risk.

Two things really jump out at me. First, the more healthy habits we have, the more our life expectancy matches the life expectancy of thin people with the same habits. When we've got all four, the gap is pretty much closed. Second, it's only the fat people with no healthy habits who have a dramatically reduced life expectancy in comparison to thinner people.

This is a strong confirmation of what HAES advocates have been saying for years.

Just a quick link. Yesterday, CBC Radio's Ontario morning had a piece on HAES featuring Jacqui Gingras, a professor at the Ryerson School of Nutrition. It's upbeat and encouraging.

You can listen here.

Favourite quote: In answer to "How do you determine what is healthy for you?"

Healthy... is being able to eat according to hunger and fullness, the signals inside our bodies... our ability to move in an embodied way; to move freely, without pain... to feeling good about ourselves, trusting ourselves, trusting our bodies to know what we need.

Lynne Gerber's new book, "Seeking the Straight and Narrow," subtitled "Weight Loss and Sexual Reorientation in Evangelical America," is now available from US booksellers, from international booksellers, and from Amazon.com.

Here's an excerpt from the University of Chicago Press's description of the book:

Losing weight and changing your sexual orientation are both notoriously difficult to do successfully. Yet many faithful evangelical Christians believe that thinness and heterosexuality are godly ideals—and that God will provide reliable paths toward them for those who fall short. Seeking the Straight and Narrow is a fascinating account of the world of evangelical efforts to alter our strongest bodily desires.

Drawing on fieldwork at First Place, a popular Christian weight-loss program, and Exodus International, a network of ex-gay ministries, Lynne Gerber explores why some Christians feel that being fat or gay offends God, what exactly they do to lose weight or go straight, and how they make sense of the program’s results—or, frequently, their lack.

Lynne has also contributed a piece, weigh in, to "freq.uenci.es, a collaborative genealogy of spirituality." The article focuses on First Place, a Christian weight loss program, and the relationship between the spiritual and physical demands of the program.

I haven't read the book yet, but the freq.uenci.es article is engaging and insightful. As someone who hasn't been involved in a church, I found Lynne's analysis of how spiritual and physical goals interact in the program really interesting:

First Place’s range of commitments reflects a central ambiguity in the program’s purpose: whether First Place is a weight loss program whose value is enhanced by the inclusion of spiritual practices or whether it is a spiritual program whose value is enhanced by the inclusion of weight loss practices... Ostensibly, the program positions itself as the first: as a weight loss program that is enhanced by spirituality. First Place is effective at weight loss, they claim, because it focuses on the whole person, integrating spiritual concerns into the heart of its practice. The absence of God is depicted as the problem in secular weight loss programs and First Place presents itself as filling that crucial void.

Yet there is reason to see First Place as primarily a program of Christian discipleship that instills spiritual practices by linking them to the popular goal of weight loss. Spiritual changes are often the changes celebrated in First Place literature and its spiritual disciplines inculcate Christian practices that are deeply valued yet quotidian in the evangelical subculture...

Most of the time this ambiguity is not an issue. Within this self-help landscape, weight loss aims and spiritual aims are seen as so vitally interconnected, so conflated, that there is no need to distinguish between the two. Thinness is God’s desire, and godly devotion will effect weight loss. But when the judgment of the scale threatens to reveal possible tensions between First Place’s spiritual and weight loss projects, distinguishing between the two can be helpful...

Lynne also has a website,pondering the body in American religious life, where you can find links to other articles she's written.

I should probably note that anyone who's very sensitive to the discussion of weight loss dieting may find both the book and article triggering.

New Year’s Eve is here, and for at least 3 weeks now we have been subjected to the annual bombardment of fat hate messages designed to send us keening into the unloving arms of Jenny, and WW, and all of their friends. The Very Serious Media (such as NPR and my hometown paper – New York Times) tart it up in pretty colors and words of concern and false empathy, but it’s the same stuff. Here are some examples. Don’t read the comments if you don’t want to come away with your sanity points in the red.

NPR clearly got itself a shiny new toy of some kind (crystal ball? Roulette wheel? Gatling gun?) and has been at the forefront of the barrage since much earlier this year with seriously biased information woven through the totality of its reporting on obesity. Here’s a link to its articles over the past 30 days for your perusal. Peruse at your own risk. Full disclosure – I support my local NPR station, but have been screaming at the radio for months now in the mornings when I hear some of this stuff.

The NYT – the Gray Lady – has some great writers. Gina Kolata, for one, has written about the topic of food and obesity extensively, sensitively, and accurately. Tara Parker-Pope really did try with one article, but it was a swing and a miss in my opinion (although many seemed to welcome it). The rest of them… Complete insanity. One of them (in the No Shit Sherlock department ) talks about how (horrors!) children are discarding “healthy” lunches and creating a thriving black market of junk food in schools. Wow… Who knew?

In a non-Times article which Mark Bittman to in his collection of Solstice links) the writer takes to her bed with the vapors because Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative is now focused more on exercise than dieting. Never mind what science tells us… Kids must diet. I could go on and on about all these links, including those castigating Black women ( of whom 50% are obese – we are told )... And these are just articles in “serious” media. The year-end weight loss adverts on TV have been going on since before Thanksgiving. There is material out there from the last 30 days to keep a Fatosphere blogger busy for a year and a half!

So what are we to do in the middle of this onslaught of disinformation? Well...

REVOLT!!!

Yes, siree, it is the Health At Every Size® New Year’s ReVolution. We need to get the HAES® message out there to counteract the torrent of disinformation being put out there by a 60 billion dollar per annum industry which is BUILT upon the knowledge that diets don’t work. Here is how to join:

Have a look at the New Year’s ReVolution Resources website . Here you can learn how to participate by:

• Changing your profile picture on your favorite social networking site to promote the ReVolution
• Dedicating your Facebook status on January 1 to the ReVolution
• Posting about the ReVolution on Twitter using the hashtag provided
• Blogging…
• Passing along the Lose the Hate, Not the Weight press release
• Sharing your ReVolution story at PDA Nation
• Following the website and contributing your ideas to get the message out there! For instance – getting a larger number of Google-hits, getting the message to new venues or new audiences…

Everything you need to ReVolt against the diet establishment is there. Check it out! Join in! Let’s make sure the word makes it out far outside the Fatosphere, where someone today might need to hear the HAES® message.

PS -- edited to remove a repeated phrase and a messed up link

And of course hope you had or are having a Happy Eid, Hannukkah, Diwali, Winter Solstice, etc.

and Lo Saturnalia!

A solid (and seldom mentioned) point in favor of Health at Every Size (HAES) is that being physically active and maintaining a high, stable weight results in a different type of large body than yo-yo dieting; a stronger body.

Yo-yo dieters lose fat and muscle and gain back mostly fat. The heart is a muscle, and it shrinks during weight loss. So, when weight is regained without anything being done to recover strength and maintain stamina, the heart stays small and the skeletal muscles don't redevelop. And weight regains are almost always done in shame, in self loathing, and in denial. When people who have previously lost weight are regaining it, we generally blame ourselves for everything - it's what we're told to do - but take no responsibility for the large body that's reemerging. Why would we take care of something that we hate and see as proof of our failure and weakness? How can we stay active when we - reinforced by society and the media - are telling ourselves that we have no self discipline and no self respect?

I've seen this happen to family and friends and it has happened to me too, on a lesser scale. I tend to lose and gain smaller amounts of weight, and never really on purpose either way - but I've fallen into the trap of not taking good care of my body when it's at its largest.

So, when saw this article: Weight Regained in Later Years Has More Fat, subtitled "Study: If Postmenopausal Women Lose Weight, They're Better Off if They Keep It Off," I had a completely different take on the study's results than the Rita Rubin, the author of the article. I would have called it something like "Yo-yo Dieting Cycle and Resulting Psychological Shit Storm Lead to People Neglecting Their Bodies When They Regain Weight."

The study of postmenopausal women suggests that when they regain weight -- and previous research suggests about 80% of dieters eventually do -- they don't recover as much lean mass as they lost. As a result, they end up with more fat, even if they're about the same weight as they were before the diet.

People lose lean tissue as well as fat when they shed pounds, the authors of the new study write. In fact, they write, studies have found that lean tissue represents roughly a quarter of total weight loss. Because the loss of muscle and bone can be especially detrimental to older people, "it is important to examine whether the benefits of weight loss outweigh the risks in this population."

The scientists analyzed the body composition of 78 non-active postmenopausal women, ages 50-70, before and immediately after they'd completed a five-month-long diet. The researchers then weighed the women six and 12 months after the weight loss trial ended and analyzed the body composition of those who regained at least 4.4 pounds.

Most Regained Some Weight

On average, the women had lost about 12% of their body weight. By the six-month follow-up, about two-thirds of the women had regained some weight; by the 12-month follow-up, about three-quarters had, including 11 women who had gained more than they had lost.

After one year, 84% of the regainers had put on more than the benchmark of 4.4 pounds. Those were the women whose body composition was analyzed.

The women had lost twice as much fat as muscle when they were on a low-calorie diet. But afterward, they regained more than four times as much fat as muscle.

Previous studies of weight cycling were done in younger people, who tended to regain fat and lean tissue in the same proportion as they'd lost it, says researcher Barbara Nicklas, PhD, professor of geriatrics and gerontology at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.

(I have to admit that I doubt the validity of the studies mentioned in the last paragraph. I suspect that younger people who regain weight also end up with a higher fat percentage. I've seen it in action.)

When I think about these issues, I do like to try to understand the reasons for things; what about our bodies is in our control and to what extent. I think that for most people, the weight regain is difficult or impossible to prevent, but that individuals have a much higher level of control over our physical activity and therefore our strength, stamina, balance, and flexibility.

Now, some people may say "Fitness is not a priority for me." Fair enough. But, for myself, I've found that being at least minimally active really adds to my quality of life, and nobody should deny themselves a basic level of fitness because they don't keep weight off. Very few people can maintain large weight losses. Most people can fit in 1/2 hour a day of walking, a bit of swimming, a recreational sport, some yoga or pilates, a few dance classes a week - and will enjoy both the activity and the benefits it brings.

If I found myself gaining weight for whatever reason - normalizing previously restricted eating, a prescription drug, a medical condition, menopause, whatever - I hope that I would be able to create a strong, balanced larger body with good posture and the ability to do everyday things like stair climbing, fast walking and short jogs without undue strain.

The lesson I'm taking away from this study is to avoid yo-yo dieting by not dieting in the first place. However, people who have already dieted or who feel they must make the attempt may find that it's a good idea to keep fit regardless of what's going on with their weight. I think that this lose-muscle-gain-back-fat effect could be mitigated if yo-yo dieters kept up some physical activity during the regain part of their cycle, and I think that people whose bodies have already been affected by this and who are now fat accepting can reverse it by easing their now-loved and accepted fat bodies into a higher level of fitness, if they choose.

In a way, the article's author is both too optimistic and too pessimistic. She thinks it's reasonable to tell middle aged women to keep off weight that they've lost while dieting, but treats the net loss of muscle in the yo-yo cycle as permanent and inevitable. I think she's got things backwards.

It's interesting to note that the researchers themselves present the study's results in a neutral way, at least in the abstract. The study is called Is lost lean mass from intentional weight loss recovered during weight regain in postmenopausal women? The first and last authors are Kristen M Beavers (it's her paper) and Barbara J Nicklas (it was produced in her lab) and it was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in September 2011.

Salon.com posted an article today, "Why Women Need Fat,", subtitled "Evolution shows that women's dieting beliefs aren't just unrealistic -- they're unnatural. An expert explains," by Hannah Tepper.

It's a review of a new book called “Why Women Need Fat,” by Steven J.C. Gaulin, an evolutionary biologist, and William D. Lassek, a retired doctor of public health at the University of Pittsburgh. The article features some nutritional theorising (omega 6 acids are the villain), and the idea that Americans as a group are heavier than we should be is dutifully reinforced.

Be that as it may, set point theory - the idea that our bodies have a certain weight or weight range that they tend to gravitate toward - is presented as a well supported idea among evolutionary biologists and it's acknowledged that human beings naturally have a wide range of set point weights. While it seems that the book is aimed at women (because we are more likely to indulge in weight loss dieting), it's hinted that the author has a slightly different take on men and fat.

Many M.D.s have bought this fallacious line that the optimal weight for women in terms of their health is what M.D.s call normal weight, a BMI between 18.5 and 25. And they have thought this to be true because women with higher BMIs exhibit a series of physiological measures that are indeed risk factors for disease in men. But they are not systematically risk factors for disease in women. If you actually look at the data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and data from studies done in other countries, the optimal weight for women who have had a kid is what doctors currently call “overweight.”

The next line? "I’m not saying that obesity is optimal..." Well, we certainly wouldn't want to promote obesity! However, implying that a 30+ BMI can be natural and healthy is not at all the same thing as saying "obesity is optimal." Given anti-fat bigots' typical (lack of) reasoning skills, I guess he had to cover his ass on that one.

The term “Processed Foods” is one that we frequently treat as one that is universally understood and defined, or one that is “we all know” - rather like Justice Potter Stewart’s famous phrase concerning pornography – “I know it when I see it”. Truth, however, is more complicated than that.

When one person talks about processed food, they may be talking about anything that is not in its whole state before it is cooked (for instance, white rice could be considered processed food in that context). When another person talks about processed food, they could be talking about frozen, microwave-ready meals made for the purpose of dieting. There is a lot of daylight between those two extremes. In order to discuss food and processing meaningfully, we need a new framework and an agreed terminology.

What I will do in this post is lay out the terms of the discussion – the framework for talking about food, processing, and fat. I will talk about why and how food becomes ‘processed’ and the reasons why humans ‘process’ food. I will also define the common terminology we can use to talk about fat within the context of food and ‘processing’. Finally, I will show how this coalesces into what I call the hierarchical ideas about food which become the stick with which to beat fat people.

The Framework

The first beam in this framework is the definition of a processed food. What is almost always missing in conversations about “pure” or “processed” food is an understanding of what constitutes a processed food. For the purposes of the discussion over the entries in the series, I won’t take the very nerdy and picayune position that chewing food or cooking food is processing food – while technically correct it is needlessly confrontational. I intend to be as descriptive as possible when discussing a food which has been altered from its original form in any way. In that way, it will be easier to tease out which kinds of processing are meaningful in a discussion of fat and which are not meaningful. Thus a definition of ‘processed’ food is meaningless absent a discussion of why food is ‘processed’ and how this is accomplished.

The Means of Processing Food

For as long as humans have been on Earth, foods which have been altered from their raw state (whole grains or plants, milk and honey as taken from the animals that produce it, or raw animal flesh from butchered animals) have been part of the food ecosystem. They were necessary to feed and nourish people throughout the year (for example, pickling), or for other reasons (shelf stability – the food can be kept on the shelf at room temperature without getting rancid or spoiling). These methods of processing were developed in response to these needs in addition to those of averting vitamin deficiencies, feeding of military forces, and food transportation needs.

Our modern society is so far from its roots in agriculture that we frequently forget the original purpose of food preservation which was to get through bad harvests or the non-growing seasons, while also preserving vitamins in the food to prevent disease. We needed to make foods stable so that an oxcart, or a rail car, could get them from point A to point B without refrigeration to retard spoilage. In place of these very basic requirements a new need (real or perceived) has arisen (convenience and speed of preparation) which accounts for the rise of the prepared frozen meal or the convenience food.

The latter are the ones who have caused the most recent concern, yet the food scolds and wags often point to foods preserved using techniques which are old as time, and offer instead foods of which we should be suspicious. For instance, we are told we should prefer a “sugar free”, 100-calorie pack of cookies over a strip of bacon, because the bacon (in their minds) is the evil source of salt and fat.

Traditional food preservation and preparation methods are frequently unlovely, but they are most effective. Smoking and salting food go back as far as the earliest human settlements. Bacterial and yeast action give us fermentation of milk products as well as fruit and grain (think yogurt, wine, and beer). Our Asian ancestors developed tempeh (fermented soybeans), and tofu. Our European ancestors gave us bacon, and ham, and aged beef, and smoked or dried sausages. Salted and brined foods abound in Africa. Beer was brewed in Mesopotamia. White flour was developed to prevent milled wheat from going rancid in a short time, and was then fortified to address the vitamin deficiency this causes. In all cases the needs of humans to preserve their food drove the development of methods that were achievable and cost effective for the time and the culture.

Canning food allowed our more recent ancestors to have tomatoes in December, but the techniques used to put food in cans trace back their lineage to Napoleon’s need to feed his army during his empire-building campaigns. Napoleon’s campaigns and pretty much every war humanity has ever fought brought about advances (great or small) in preserving food – from (allegedly) wet soybeans turning into tempeh under a saddle, to pressure-canning for Napoleon’s boys. Frozen foods (developed in the mid-20th century) offered a superior way to preserve vitamin content and fresher taste, and enabled us to have such delicacies as summer green beans in February simply by investing in a freezer and the electricity to run it.

The foods resulting from these techniques (some of which are thousands of years old) are ‘processed’ foods. All of these were around during that blissful past that commenters in my hometown paper like to bring up as having “no” fat people (I love it when they say “look at the old movies there were no fat people”). Some were around even before that, so it is false to say foods were ‘unprocessed then’. Yet, we need to find words to distinguish these foods from those that some suspect are causing ill effects in the population.

A Common Terminology for Processed Food

As a general rule, I’ll use the following words for the remainder of this series:

Whole or Raw Food : A food which is as close to its original state as possible. A whole grain qualifies, as does a raw vegetable or raw meat.

Staples: Flour, salt, sugar, butter, oil… This category can get hairy, and play a large role in this discussion. For now, anything that you would not ordinarily eat as a food without further cooking is here. Rendered fats (such as lard) are here.

Traditionally-Preserved Food: This vast umbrella term will embody food that has been salted, smoked, brined, pickled, dried, fermented (except for fermentation intended to produce alcohol such as wine or beer). Anything “potted” (cooked then packed in fat or some other medium) would be included here, as well as food products or sauces made by including microorganisms such as molds (e.g.: some cheeses). This is not an exclusive list, however, because I cannot say that I know all the means humanity has ever used to preserve food. Humanity is endlessly creative when it comes to feeding itself.

Home-Canned Foods: Food prepared and canned in the home, using any standard method. Jams are in this category, as are any foods or produce put in cans by home-canning methods. This could mean apple-pie filling or meat sauce.

Home-frozen Foods: Whole foods (such as garden produce or raw meat) preserved at home by freezing in a home freezer.

Frozen Whole Foods: These include whole foods preserved commercially by freezing and marketing as such. Your frozen raw fish fillets (not breaded or otherwise altered), and your frozen mixed vegetables fit in this category.

Shelf-Stable Foods: A lot of what we call ‘processed food’ fits into this category. You can have blue boxes of macaroni with cheese powder stuff, biscuit mixes, muffin mixes, condiments, syrups, cereal. Peanut butter is here, as are canned soups and other ‘just add water’ or ready to eat foods. If you can take it off a shelf and mix it up and eat it (or eat it straight off the shelf) it lives here. These foods tend to have a bunch of additives to allow them to stay moist, fresh-looking or tasting, mold-free, and unspoiled for some long time.

Prepared Foods: Your frozen diet food is here, ice-cream, frozen hamburgers, frozen meals of any kind, prepared pies that you buy at a store, frozen cakes… Anything labeled “processed ____ food product”… These all belong here. This is the home of another large population of foods we call ‘processed’ today. Ditto on the additives here.

I have chosen these words because they are as close to morally-neutral as I can get where food is concerned. They are descriptive, they offer information, but they are not ‘dog whistles’ for those who consistently give specific foods any kind of moral label. Yet, for the purpose of discussing food and fat, we also need to face what I call the food hierarchy.

Hierarchical Ideas about Food

The second beam in the framework is an understanding of the Food Hierarchy which rules the public discussion about food. Understanding this hierarchy and how it works is important in separating fact from fiction and prejudice. This hierarchy of foods has taken hold of people’s imagination, and reflects perfectly the societal views of poor people and fat people and this is where we run into trouble. Foods, even if they belong to any of the ‘processed’ categories listed above, can be considered (magically) morally correct or morally suspect by their identification with either the “rich and thin” or the “poor and fat”.

When I read any article by specific food or health writers in my hometown paper, and also read the comments by fellow readers, I am struck by the implicit hierarchy that has developed, and that many have brought up in BFB and other blogs in a variety of contexts. I read these articles between the lines and I find the prejudice pretty easy to spot. For example:

• Why is tempeh superior to cheese? A food wag may tell you that tempeh is a vegan option which has protein and low fat and is kinder to the earth than cheese (which requires the existence of a cow). He or she will also tell you that it won’t make you fat and/or that it will help you lose weight (neither of which are true). The first objection actually makes sense, provided you are vegan or vegetarian (or want to be), and that you like tempeh (I don’t happen to, but many do). The second is just fat hate disguised as concern.

• Why is a Serrano ham superior to sliced ham? Both have been treated with salt, but one is an artisan ham. I think a Serrano has the superior taste, but I will also argue that someone else might possibly prefer a sliced deli ham and that preference is just as valid. A good whole Serrano will cost you well over $1,000 (and a good bit of that is importation cost). You need to be pretty well off to eat Serrano on a regular basis. This is less true of commercial ham products like sliced deli ham. Still, a Serrano ham sandwich on a good piece of baguette won’t send a food snob to bed with the vapors, but sliced ham on white will – and you will be told you will get fat for eating the second option. Even so, each is still a ham sandwich (much as I adore Serrano, I have to admit this).

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not a great fan of tempeh, I like cheese, and I like both types of ham, and I appreciate the qualitative difference between the options. None of this is about the foodstuff in and of itself. It is what the foodstuff symbolizes in the minds of the writers and wags who are forming opinions about food, and particularly food that has been prepared or ‘processed’ in some way that is associated with a lower class of society. Somehow the cheese (particularly inexpensive cheese that is accessible to poorer people) or the deli ham becomes a symbol of that which makes people fat, it is “processed”. Then, in a feat of cognitive dissonance that would rival Superman leaping tall buildings, the more refined expensive foods seem to lose their ‘processed’ nature by association with the thin and the rich, even if a given cheaper alternative does not contain suspicious ingredients that adulterate the food and could conceivably cause a problem.

So now, I’ve set the framework that we will use to talk about the different types of food processed in different ways. I’ve pointed out the food hierarchy that serves to confuse the issue and reinforce stereotypes and societal prejudice. Next post I will talk about the changes we have seen in food preparation and preservation over 100 years, how some of that came about, and what that has meant for fatties.

In the meantime – are there any other categories we should consider? Would you have more categories or fewer? Would you describe them differently? I’m looking forward to hearing your ideas.

--Andy Jo--

(Edited to correct a grammatical error -- I'm sure I will find more of them - and my husband did find another typo)

I just received a copy of Lesley Kinzel's new book, Two Whole Cakes - How to Stop Dieting and Learn to Love Your Body, and I must say, it's a very good reading experience. My uncorrected proof copy was 167 pages and I finished it over the course of 2 days (would have finished it in one sitting but we had one of our granddaughters over for the weekend).
One of the things in the book that really resonated with me was the part about how fat women are expected to look when we go out in public:

On the one hand, sweatpants and shirts with grease stains are a statement no matter who is wearing them. Their message is, "I don't care about how I'm dressed right now." The "right now" is important because one cannot always assume that a person who runs to the corner store in sweatpants and a soiled shirt necessarily dresses that way all the time. If the person wearing the clothing is otherwise slender and attractive, we're usually willing to imagine the reasons why: maybe she's sick, or maybe she's in the middle of writing a term paper, or maybe she's doing laundry. She must have a reason. But when it happens to be a fat person who is sloppily dressed, the stereotype kicks in: the sweatpants and stained shirt represent not only a disregard for fashion at a given moment in time, but a systematic failure to adhere to the most common standards of appearance. A fat person is believed to have little respect for her appearance in the first place, simply by virtue of being fat, so she cares nothing for fashion, and of course she has no regard for the tender eyeballs of those other individuals upon whom she foists her sweatpanted, stained fattery in public. She is a visual - and even moral - disgrace.
Yet, she also may be sick, or writing, or doing laundry. And even if she's not, even if she is simply a person not much interested in fashion, she should have the right to step out into public, fat and sloppily dressed, and not be forced to face candid disgust from strangers. What is she doing wrong? How is she hurting anyone? She may offend our delicate sensibilities but ultimately there is no real damage done, except to our expectation that people who fail to meet cultural standards of attractiveness should not offend our sight in public, that we should be protected from having to look at them.

There are so many more passages that hit home with me, and I think will hit home with any woman who reads this book, and it won't matter what size she is. If you've ever hated your body because it wasn't the right size or shape, Two Whole Cakes - How to Stop Dieting and Learn to Love Your Body is one of the books that should be on your to-read list.

This study isn't new, but it certainly gives good evidence that putting fat children into foster care isn't going to make them thinner.

From the journal Child: care, health and development November 2008;34(6):710-2.
Obesity in looked after children: is foster care protective from the dangers of obesity?
by SC Hadfield and PM Preece.

Unfortunately, the full article does not seem to be available for free online. However, here's the abstract:

BACKGROUND:
Obesity in all age groups of children has become an increasing concern in recent years. Children looked after by the Local Authority (LA) should be protected from health problems while being accommodated. These studies assess the effect on weight of looked after children (LAC) in the care of a Midlands County Council. They assess the frequency of obesity or overweight problems in looked after children following receipt into care and review changes in body mass index (BMI) while in the care of the LA.

METHOD:
The height and weight measurements of all 106 children who had statutory health assessments while in the care of the LA between 1 January 2004 and 30 December 2004 were used to calculate their BMI. The data were plotted onto standard Growth Foundation charts and the International Obesity Task Force Paediatric cut-offs were determined to distinguish overweight and obese children and young people. The date that the child had come into the care system and the number of moves of placement was obtained for each child from the social care. This was related to the total group and the overweight group of looked after children.

RESULT:
Looked after children are more likely to be overweight and obese compared with standard norms, and there are a number of children (35%) whose BMI increases once in care.

OUTCOME:
Looked after care did not protect a child from the national problem of increasing weight gain and obesity.

Contrary to the common assumption, the families of fat kids may tend to be better at helping them learn to manage their eating and activity than a family who isn't used to having to worry about it. After all, the tendency to put on weight is highly heritable, and adults who have had to deal with it are likely to be more knowledgeable about how to mitigate it. And, of course, stress tends to cause weight gain (maybe even independent of emotional eating) and it's hard to imagine a worse stressor for a kid than being taken away from their family.

It's a small study, but the results don't surprise me.
Good ammunition for debates with people who think this kind of thing is helpful...

Everyone knows Marilyn Wann, right? She wrote the fun and radical Fat!So? in 1998. And now she's got a new Fat!So? website. Check it out!

But I'm here to tell you about her new project: the 2012 FAT!SO? dayplanner. Full of quotes, art, factoids, and body-love events, it's available from Voluptuart, a fabulously fat-friendly shop. You can buy it here.

It features:

• Original art on a fat animal theme each month by Barry Deutsch, Jill Pinkwater, Les Toil, and more
• A built-in flipbook of national dance champion Ragen Chastain
• Body-positive tips and resources
• Quotes from fat pride and Health At Every Size® leaders
• Games
• DIY projects
• And it comes with a fat animal paperclip and surprise gifts!

This dayplanner is printed on 100% post-consumer paper by worker-owned collective. At 4.25" x 6, it has double pages for each month and week, lots of blank pages (lined and grid), and a sturdy cover.

All dayplanner sales support creation of the Weight Diversity Action Lounge, a community center, and it's priced at a very reasonable fourteen bucks.

This looks like it would make a perfect gift for all of your fat activist friends, or anyone who might benefit from some body positivity in their lives.

I moved to the UK a year ago, and I want to share the lowdown on clothes shopping here. In short? It's a veritable paradise if you wear a US or Canadian 14W-18W (maybe up to a 20W). This is because around half of normal British shops carry large straight sizes: 20, 22 and sometimes 24. Almost all of them carry sizes at least up to an 18.

Let me explain why this is a big deal to me.

I grew up in the US in the 1970s and 80s and lived there until 2003. Then I moved to Toronto and was unsurprised to find that Canada is just like the US when it comes to large sized women's clothing. Through my entire life until the past year, I've had to shop in plus-sized stores. I could never just walk into a department store and find something that fit me. I'd have to go to the fat lady section, hidden in the back of the top floor or the basement, with vastly inferior styles and quality and higher prices. Alternatively, I could shop at Lane Bryant, the Avenue, Ashley Stewart, Addition Elle, Pennington's or one of a very few regular stores that carry 16s and 18s in North America. The trendy shops have always been out of my reach.

I've worn between a 14W and a 20W (16-22 in straight sizes) all. my. life. Yes, it's been a good 30 years that I've been in that size range, ever since I got to be tall enough to wear women's clothing. Before that, I occupied an even deeper circle of sartorial hell: the boy's "husky" section.

I've always needed to shop in the plus-sized ghetto because the vast majority of American and Canadian clothing lines stop at a size 14. Now some people will say "there's been size inflation since you were growing up and US 14s are like British 18s." Well, as far as I can tell, size inflation in the US has been in waist measurement only. My waist has always fit into a smaller size than my hips; it's my hip measurement that's the deciding factor. With bigger waists, US clothes are even more ill-fitting on me than they used to be.

Additionally, British straight sizes are not two sizes smaller than US straight sizes. They are only one size smaller, if that (for me, anyway). They're two sizes smaller than US plus ("W") sizes, which run a size bigger than straight sizes. Got it? So I have UK 18s and 20s, US 16Ws, and US straight-sized 18s in my wardrobe right now. Complicated.

Let me tell you, most British clothes are cut more generously in the hips and chest than North American clothes. Women with pear and hourglass shapes, take note. They also seem to be proportioned for shorter women. I'm 5'-4" or 5'-5", and I never wear petites in the UK. I wear "mediums" or "shorts." Yes, they have four inseams on most women's trousers: tall, medium, short and petite. The petites are actually made for women who are around 5' tall, not for women who are really medium height, like me.

I freaking love British clothes. The 20s fit me. They really fit, almost perfectly. I can even wear an 18 in some dresses. Some brands are cut straighter through the hips and those aren't as good for me, but my god. I can walk into a department store and buy almost anything I want. A mini skirt? They've got it in my size. A cheap but decent looking suit? Ditto. A nice dress for a wedding? No problemo. I was looking for one, and I found 10 of them to try on at Debenhams. Ten that I liked and eight of them fit! It was the first time I'd ever been able to choose something based purely on style. In North America, I'd count myself very lucky if I could find something that fit, was appropriate, and didn't look cheap.

This isn't true at every department store, mind you. Marks and Spencer has up to a 24 in most things. Debenhams carries up to an 18, 20 or 22, depending on the clothing line. Monsoon has everything in their regular line up to a 22. Evans, the UK plus sized chain, goes up to a UK 34, and I wear an 18 or 20 there just like I do at the other shops. However, House of Fraser is hopeless (their clothes are cut narrow through the hips and end at an 18) and John Lewis seems to be as well (they don't have sizes on their hangers, so it's hard to figure out what, if any, ranges go higher than an 18).

SO... if you're in the US 14-20 size range and are thinking about visiting the UK, bring some money for clothes. If you wear a 14W, there will be very few places that don't have your size. Almost every UK shop goes up to at least an 18.

Oh, and I'd like to take this opportunity to link to my favourite UK fashion maven, Buttercup Rocks! She has a Tumblr, Buttercup's Frocks, and a a Fatsion set on Flickr (and so do I, actually).

Here's me in some British clothes. Click on the picture to go to the description on Flickr:

The bad news? If you wear over a North American 20W or UK 22 then you'll find a better selection in North America. The UK has fewer plus sized shops because the smaller, more common plus sizes are easy to find at regular stores. I think we should have a shopping post for size 24+ Brits visiting the U.S. and Canada next.