I’m just catching up on my blogroll now, and I noticed that Feministe has an interesting post discussing fat acceptance that touches on a lot of the issues I’ve been mulling over here on my blog lately. I disagree with many of the points Zuzu makes in the original post, but I find many of the commenters’ sentiments to be validating of my own points. It’s so sad to see that people who agree with most of the tenets of the fat acceptance movement refuse to consider themselves members of the movement. These are people who would in any case be our allies, and should be our constituents, but look upon our movement as a joke, a counterproductive joke. Why? For all the reasons I’ve outlined in my past couple of posts on this subject.

I just saw on Aftenposten that the identity and face of Lordi’s lead singer has now been revealed by a Finnish celebrity mag. Lesser known is the fact that said monster (the Lordi guy, not the mag) is a bulldog owner!

WP apparently doesn’t allow me to have a non-deprecated Atom feed or to shunt my feed info to xml files. So, you’ll have to point your news aggregators to a different feed address again: http://brodwall.com/sarah/blog/feed/. Sorry for the trouble.

I’ve gotten everything moved over to the new server and imported into WordPress now. During the import, I noticed a bunch of new comments that people had written but I hadn’t received notification about. If you’re one of the commenters, know that I just found out about your comments right now, and I’ll respond soon. I promise I’m not blowing anyone off! Damned MT. I hope both WP and the new server prove to be more reliable.

Blog’s going to be down for a little while while I switch servers and upgrade to WordPress.

Here is the first thrown pot I made all by myself. I am pretty proud of it. It is made with white stoneware clay, with black iron oxide and nickel oxide added to the clear glaze.

Feministe » I am Pre-Pregnant

Jesus Christ! This makes me want to rip out my uterus and shove it down their throats.

Well, I guess it’s high time for me to write a post about my weight. I’ve been putting this off since October, but the recent discussion I’ve been participating in on BFB and Michelle’s blog makes me feel like I’m failing to address the elephant in the living room (so to speak). To make a long story short, I’m taking Meridia.

As for the long story: Back in the spring of 2003 or so, I started sliding into a depression again. It was pretty mild for a while, but I did start to gain some weight since I was eating mostly crap and was completely overcome by inertia. Around the end of 2004, the depression started getting really nasty, and I wasn’t able to seek help ’til around April. When I did, the psychiatrist I saw put me on a drug called Remeron–a drug known for causing weight gain and massive carb cravings.

Now, due to the fact that it seems like all of my previous weight gain was due to antidepressants, I’d vowed to never again take any drug listing weight gain as a side effect. It seems like any time a drug has weight gain as a side effect, I gain massive amounts of weight. Like 50 pounds. I felt so desperate, however, and since I’d already exhausted all of my other options for antidepressants, I felt like I had no choice but to try the Remeron. So I did. It helped me sleep wonderfully, but it didn’t help my depression much, and it caused me to gain enough weight–about 30 pounds–to where I was over 300 pounds. My clothes didn’t fit me anymore, and I hated the way I looked. I didn’t feel right in my body. I was just as healthy and mobile as ever–the weight didn’t seem to affect me physically at all (with the exception of the extra strain on my knees and the annoyance of having more skin folds and hanging fat)–but I was miserable. The weight gain was more than canceling out any benefit I was receiving from the Remeron. I made some behavioral changes (mostly eating less sugar in the form of Coke and other sweets) but my weight just continued rising. I felt disgusting. I wanted the weight off. So I decided to go off the Remeron and start Meridia.

Why is my decision anything to write home about? Because I’m a rabid advocate for size acceptance. I’ve read near to every book on the subject that’s been written, I’ve volunteered my time to fat acceptance organizations, I’ve subscribed to every fat acceptance periodical that exists, I’ve participated in several fat acceptance forums online, I preach the fat acceptance gospel to anyone who will listen and many who won’t, I go to various fat acceptance conventions–the works. And I believe the message, or at least the vast majority of it. I believe that being fat doesn’t have to mean that you’re unhealthy. I believe that being fat doesn’t have to mean that you’re unattractive. I believe that fat people are just as good as everybody else. I vehemently believe that no-one should put off her life until she loses weight. And I know that diets, weight loss surgery, and diet drugs do not work. Since I found the fat acceptance movement, I’ve tried to be a role model, demonstrating that being fat doesn’t have to keep you from living the life you want. So I felt like a traitor to the movement when I decided to take Meridia.

My reasoning went like this: my weight gain was caused by drugs, so why should I feel so guilty about using a drug to try to lose weight? The drugs that made me gain so much weight have generally listed statistical weight gain in the realm of 5-10 pounds, which is about the same Meridia has statistically been shown to help people lose. I always gained way more than the listed statistics, so perhaps I’d lose more than the statistical probability. Obviously my weight is majorly reactive to drugs that tamper with my brain chemicals. I also figured that since Meridia was originally tested as an antidepressant, it might give me a boost in my mood, too, especially since it’s an activating drug and those are the kinds of drugs I’ve had the most luck with. I figured that since my cardiovascular health is just fine, I would be unlikely to experience any of the side effects people wig out about so much. I figured my aunt wouldn’t prescribe it for me if it were really dangerous. I figured that if my appetite did get suppressed, I’d use that as a tool to help me make better food choices. I would not use it “together with a reduced-calorie diet” as recommended. I would absolutely not make any effort to eat less; I’d eat whatever I wanted just as I usually do. I figured that I’d just use it as crank, basically. And lastly, I figured it was worth a try. That if it didn’t work, fine–I would just stop taking it.

My gut feelings, however, went something like this: I’m quite cavalier about my long-term health because I’ve got a mental illness that makes living not so much fun, so I didn’t really care about any potential side effects. I hated the way I looked. I was so miserable that I felt that anything was worth a try. I hated being that fat.

Here’s the kicker–the drug worked. I dropped 40 pounds in six months with no effort or side effects whatsoever. The only thing I sacrificed was some cash. My weight has stabilized now at about the level it was when I was last mentally stable. My clothes fit again, and I once again like how I feel in my body and like how I look in the mirror. That was the most I realistically hoped for, and I’m incredibly pleased with the way things have worked out. Losing weight has not cured all my ills, and I never expected it to. I expected it would make me feel better about how I looked, and it has. But I’m still fat, I’ve always been fat, and I’ll always be fat.

Of course, we all know that the real test of a weight loss method is how it performs in the long run. Will I be able to keep the weight off? I think so, for several reasons: I’ve never dieted, and did not lose this weight due to any calorie restriction. I have a really healthy relationship to food. I think the weight I gained on the Remeron was completely unnatural, so I don’t see any reason why my body would want to return to that weight if I’m not on that drug. I was stable for a few years at this weight, so I figure it’s more or less my set point. The only difference between the way I’m eating now and the way I was eating 40 pounds ago is that I eat a little more fruit and veggies now. I do not restrict my eating in any way. Also, I get 6-8 hours of exercise a week. It does not seem to me that I’ve set my body up for rebound weight-gain due to re-feeding. I think and hope that the Meridia has just corrected whatever the Remeron did to my system that caused me to gain so much weight. Only time will tell.

So, how has this experience changed my views on size acceptance? What have I learned? I think that size acceptance advocates often don’t take fat people’s personal feelings and experience into consideration nearly enough. I think smaller fat acceptance advocates don’t understand what it can be like to live in a supersized body, so the rhetoric they spout can often sound like ignorant bullshit to bigger people. I know that exercise and healthy eating do not always result in a weight that feels healthy for an individual, and that any given individual’s experience will not necessarily reflect the fat acecptance doctrine. I know that there are some things about being fat that suck in and of themselves, and have nothing to do with self-esteem or societal discrimination. I know that just because you’ve accepted yourself at one weight doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to accept yourself at another, or at least not as easily. There will almost certainly be more work to be done. And most likely acceptance will take more work the bigger you are.

So, I’ve learned a lot, and it has given me a different perspective on the fat acceptance movement. Most importantly, this experience has helped me understand that many of the tenets of size acceptance don’t reflect reality. I believe that the fact that the SA movement doesn’t speak to many fat people’s experiences is one of the major factors preventing the movement from both growth and being taken seriously. I used to be one of the mid-sized people who doggedly touted the HAES philosophy as the solution to all fat people’s problems, regardless of their size (the people or the problems). I understand now, though, that sometimes being fat just sucks–because of problems inherent in the at itself, and not problems with society, self-care, or self-esteem–and there’s not necessarily anything you can do about that. I hope this experience can help me convince other SA advocates that the movement will be much more effective if we acknowledge these facts.

Michelle Murphy, who’s currently guest blogging at Big Fat Blog, recently wrote a post there discussing a survey which demonstrates that even fat people are biased against fat people. In the survey, fat people were asked what they’d be willing to sacrifice in order not to be fat. Quoting the article, “Nearly half said they would swap one year of life rather than be fat, while 15 percent reported that they’d give up 10 years or more. About a third of respondents said they’d rather get divorced than be obese. One in five said they’d prefer to be childless; 15 percent said they’d pick severe depression over obesity and 14 percent chose alcoholism over girth.”

Personally, I wasn’t surprised at all. While some of us may accept being fat, and even like some of the things that go along with being fat (being massive rocks!), very few of us like being fat. Those of us in the fat acceptance movement included. While we may not be willing to diet, get WLS, or go on some strange pill–we know those things don’t work, after all, and will make us worse off in the end–I strongly believe that the vast majority of us would make the sacrifice of at least a year of life if we were guaranteed thinness.

Interestingly, however, BFB’ers resoundingly disagreed with my beliefs in their comments on the article, even going so far as to imply that no reasonable person would make this kind of sacrifice. Many commented that such a sacrifice can only be the result of self-hate, that the negative aspects of being fat that would cause people to make such sacrifices can be ameliorated with a good dose of self-love. While this may be true for some people, including most of the people at the lower end of the BMI scale, it by no means addresses the realities many of us fat people face on a daily basis. My position is that until the SA movement accepts the fact that being fat has disadvantages in and of it self, disadvantages unrelated to self-love and society’s attitudes–we’re never going to be taken seriously by the majority of the population. Especially fat people, since our statements aren’t grounded in their personal realities.

Many BFB’ers remain stubborn idealists, however. The whole idealism/pragmatism dichotomy in general is a major hot-button of mine, as is the SA movement’s lack of acceptance of the fact that sometimes being fat sucks because of physical problems inherent in the fat itself. Add into that my strong views about people who believe they can judge the worth of other people’s lives…well, suffice to say, few discussions could get me more riled up than this one.

Michelle often argues that if we could only convince the world, and particularly the health establishment, that being fat isn’t unhealthy, we’d make major strides toward achieving our goal of fat acceptance. I generally concur with Michelle’s views on SA, but this subject is one on which my views greatly diverge from hers. I think she’s totally barking up the wrong tree. I think most people dislike being fat because of vanity and inconvenience. Therefore, convincing fat people that they don’t need to lose weight to be healthy is not going to keep people from trying to lose weight.

I subscribe to Michelle’s LiveJournal, so I noticed that she’s posted her thoughts about the BFB discussion there. Riled up as I am, I wrote a tome of a response–so much of a tome that LJ wouldn’t let me post it as a comment there, so I’m posting it here instead. I’d love to hear your comments on this debate.

—

There’s an extremely important part of my argument that you’ve misunderstood. Just because making a big sacrifice in order to not be fat can be a reasonable choice doesn’t mean that refusing said sacrifice is not a reasonable choice. I strongly believe that this is not the kind of question the SA movement can purport to answer for all of its members. This is a personal calculation in a way that e.g. “you can improve your health without losing weight” isn’t.

I’m a good utilitarian, so I see this problem through the lens of that philosophy: minimizing overall suffering. Were you in reality given the choice between being fat and giving up a year of your life (which year?), you’d have to find the balance between the amount you suffer from being fat vs. the value of one of your years. From your comments here and at BFB, I understand that such a sacrifice is not one you’d make, and that may very well be a reasonable decision for you. For you, one of your years is too high of a price to pay to buy off the amount of suffering you’d experience for the rest of your life as a result of being fat, and that’s wonderful! You love your life enough to want to live as much of it as possible, and your weight doesn’t hinder you from doing so to any meaningful extent.

The calculation doesn’t work out the same way for everyone, however. The way I see it, there are three different spheres where we can suffer from being fat: the physical, the societal, and the personal.

• Physical issues are objective facts about how being fat can affect the body. For many fat people, physical issues seriously lower their quality of life, causing a major amount of suffering. Many of these are issues that no amount of societal acceptance or self-love will change, contrary to the popular beliefs of many in the SA movement. Examples of physical problems include cellulitis, major joint problems, and mobility issues. Luckily I don’t suffer much at all from the physical problems caused by my fat; the knee and skin problems I mentioned on BFB are pretty much it.
• Societal issues are the attitudes most people in our culture hold that lead them to behave in ways that cause fat people suffering. These include lack of access to inexpensive, quality, stylish clothing, lack of respect, fit problems, job discrimination…the list here goes on and on. Unfortunately, society cannot practically accommodate each and every one of its members. Not all of our societally-caused problems are practically fixable. I suffer from only a few (and non-major, at that) societally-caused problems, e.g. my lack of attractiveness to other people, my lack of ability to find clothing I like in my size, and my lack of ability to physically fit in some places.
• Personal issues involve the way our self-esteem affects the way we treat ourselves; this is the sphere over which we can exert the most control. IMO, personal issues are where the rubber really hits the road of fat acceptance. Improving your self-esteem can help you take better care of your health, do the things you want to do regardless of your weight, dress in flattering clothing, demand respect, etc. When it comes to personal issues, I suffer very little because of my weight. I don’t hate myself and I don’t hate the way I look (I’m actually pretty conceited when it comes to those things–just ask anyone who knows me!). I don’t keep myself from doing things because I’m “too fat”. There are very few things I would be doing differently with my life if I were thinner. Increasing self-love can work wonders for those of us lucky enough to be primarily hindered by a lack of this valuable commodity, but it’s hardly a panacea for others who are mostly hindered by the other two spheres of difficulty.

So why would I be willing to sacrifice x number of years of my life to be thin, when it seems that I suffer so little from my weight? Mostly because of the other half of the equation. My years aren’t worth much to me. I’ve got a form of bipolar disorder that’s primarily characterized by depression, and depression, by definition, means that I’m not enjoying life. For me, sacrificing a year of my life to be not fat is a win-win situation. Granted, though, I’m not the best illustration of a person who might reasonably choose to sacrifice a year to be thin. Ever been to a NAAFA convention? My first NAAFA convention really opened my eyes. There you’ll come into contact with many people who have major problems caused by their weight. People who cannot walk, people who are in a great deal of pain all the time, people with major breathing problems, people who cannot go out of their homes without being stared at or harassed. These people can love themselves all they want and treat themselves and their bodies with utmost respect–and many do–but that’s not going to magically help them be able to walk or allow them to get on an airplane and travel cross-country to see their family. Luckily, many of these people have a constitution that allows them to love life irrespective of any problems their physical embodiment brings them.

But some people suffer from their fat an incredible amount. Who are you to tell them they’re unreasonable for being willing to make the transaction under discussion? Who are you to judge the amount they suffer, how easily that suffering can be remedied, or how valuable their lives are to them? No-one can judge another person’s suffering, no-one can know whether or not any remedies touted to cure another’s ills or those remedies’ benefits are realizable for that person, and no-one can judge the value of another person’s life. Period.

As for the Krishnamurti quote, I think it’s total bullshit. (And before I rip it to shreds, I should clarify that I understand the term well-adjusted to mean accepting/acknowledging reality). To begin with, in a healthy society, no-one would need to be well-adjusted. A healthy society, as I understand it, would itself by definition be adjusted its members, so its members would not have to adjust to it. Not to mention that a healthy society cannot practically exist, and probably not logically, either, so those who refuse to adjust to a sick society are basically condemning themselves to being poorly-adjusted for the rest of their lives. I can hardly comprehend how it’s preferable to be poorly-adjusted to our sick society–the society that exists, and only society we have–than to be well-adjusted. Being poorly-adjusted implies increased suffering for you, and as a result, others around you. Most importantly, however, it’s difficult to effect positive change in society if you’re poorly-adjusted to it. And I’m assuming, with all the judgmental terms here, that there’s an ideal, non-sick society that we want to work towards. Seems to me that in order to begin to mould society into your ideal, you have to first become well-adjusted to society as it currently exists.

This whole discussion reminds me a lot of the issue of abstinence-only education. Some people think a sick society is a society in which people have sex before marriage. They are poorly-adjusted to the realities of what they see as a sick society–that people do have sex, regardless of whether or not they’re married. In order to work toward their ideal of no-one having sex until marriage, they want to teach kids that sex before marriage is a sin, that condoms don’t work, that sex before marriage will end up killing you, etc. They propagate demonstrable lies in order to further their agenda of creating an ideal world where no-one has sex before marriage. The result of their lack of acceptance of reality–the result of their poor adjustment to our supposedly sick society–is that teen pregnancy and STD rates are higher than ever. How is it that singlemindedly pursuing their ideal of a non-sick society while failing to accept reality is healthy?

I do most definitely not see acceptance–well-adjustedness–as defeat. I see it as a prerequisite to positive change. Is this not one of the defining tenets of the SA movement? Therefore it’s my goal to be well-adjusted to our sick society. I actively work to change society to be more in line with my ideal world, but at the same time I have to relate to society as it is now. I don’t have a choice–none of us does, unless we want to go all Unabomber. I believe that I will not be able to affect positive change in the world unless I use reality as my starting point. Just like I accept the fact that I’m fat, I accept the fact that society makes things difficult for fat people. I also accept the fact that being fat is sometimes difficult in and of itself. Because of these facts, most fat people don’t want to be fat. If I don’t accept these facts–if SA doesn’t accept these facts–no-one will take us seriously because we’re not demonstrating that our ideas have a base in reality. It’s logic, you know? You can have a valid formula, but if you plug junk into it, you’ll only get junk out.

Here are some pics I just took of Ada.

There is another bulldog just by where we live, and her name is Pølse. “Pølse” means “sausage”. The above image gives a really good idea of why you’d think of naming a bulldog that. She looks like the worm in Dune. Albeit cuter, and with more snot.

Ada lying on her back. Bullies are such mutants. They do this a lot. being so round, they can do this more easily than most dogs with thoraces that are more elliptical in cross-section.