Is Fat Acceptance and Weight Loss Surgery at Odds? Can the Slimosphere and Fatosphere Share Space?

Big Fat Blog is an interesting place to visit. . . .

Shame on anyone for thinking that WLS patients or advocates are sizists. I will always be that fat woman.  Always. Unfortunately she was not working for me and I am a hell of a lot more content with a light body to carry around with my degenerative arthritis, Lupus, intermittent brain swelling and joints that are too flexible . . .but most of all I am happy to have lost the burden of shame and ridicule -most of which is disguised in everyday interaction. 

Unless you have a hidden camera or recording device you'll have no idea what they say about you behind your back! 

A few years back I sat on a committee where we interviewed applicant for a therapist position.  
Joyce was big, really big but by far she was the best choice- as fora as I was concerned.  The group met on a Sunday over breakfast while we went though the applications.  No one in the group knew me as the 300-pounder I once was or they wouldn't have said what they did that morning.

"Joyce obviously can't handle anyone with an eating disorder," giggled Sandy.  I knew Sandy did have an eating disorder, bulimia, one she kept hidden form our group but I smelled when she left the bathroom with puke on her breath.

"Oh my God, can you imagine going out to lunch with her," laughed Terry. I ate lunch with terry for years; she was a cheap bitch who never paid her share, ate of my plate and then had the nerve to sneak money from the tip.

As they went around the table I had time to search my purse for my business card, the one i use when i run weight groups.  I keep them on me, one side shows me at in underwear, topping the scales at 300+ and the other side half of me.  Under the pictures is the sentence: Which Woman Would You Hire as Your Therapist? 

I flipped the picture-card out, threw down a $20 and left.
Joyce was hired. The truth and the saddest fact is that FAT ME was just as good in every way as THIN ME.  I wasn't as big a woman as Joyce to shoulder what society dished out.

I admire all of you for holding up that banner some of us couldn't.

By-the-way, I left the practice and so did Joyce.  We remain wonderful friends.    

Thank God for Weight Loss Surgery Otherwise it might have been Tonga, Kuait, Fiji, Jamaica, Samoa, . . .

One time I decided to go to a third world to lose weight. So fat I had been unable to catch anorexia or bulimia, every diet failed me and my exercise bike broke under my weight. I was wearing depends from the blisters. Then I found the article for the missionary activity in the subway. It read: Christian Envoy’s needed for faith work in South Africa. Bring the word of Jesus and the Love of God to all! 

Okay, I was going. It made complete sense: third world, terrible food, limited portions and diarrhea. Nuts, bananas, fruit, some rice and God-knows, in a few months of treking through the jungle I’d be thin.  My only issue was that I was married and Jewish.  There I am joking with my girlfriend, Layne, about the idea. 

“In case you don’t know, South Africans are fat, they life to be fat, and the prize it.” 

Read this from top tenz

10. Tonga

In the small South Pacific island of Tonga, beauty is marked by large physical size.  This coupled with a reliance on fatty, nutrient-deficient imported foods and a decrease in activity has caused the nation to embrace obesity.  About 100,000 of the island’s 114,000 adult inhabitants are overweight.  According to several studies released in 2004 by the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, Tongans are genetically predisposed to be fat.  The predilection toward feminine obesity also appears to be rooted in heredity and custom.

Read more: http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-countries-celebrating-female-obesity.php#ixzz2RaZkKewa

9. Kuwait

Middle Eastern Kuwait is not only home to rich oil deposits in the land but some in its people.  Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and 52% of Kuwaiti women over 15 are obese.  Historically, these nomadic desert people came to prize fatness as a sign of health and wealth–a trend which clearly continues to this day.  In a country where women exercising is a taboo, wives are frequently prized as decorative items to fill up the house: the bigger, the more opulent.

8. Fiji

As its leaders strove to connect the once-isolated island with the rest of the world, Fiji unwittingly introduced new calorie-dense food into its diet.  This South Pacific nation’s customs revolve around the giving of food as a sign of prosperity.  This, coupled with insufficient education about health risks, has left the vast majority of Fiji overweight.  Not only are they fat, they are happy.  Girth has long been revered in a woman as a sign of health, wealth and fertility.

7. Jamaica

With nearly 65% of Jamaican females classified as obese, the ideal beach body is nearly twice its medically-appropriate size.  In this island nation particular emphasis is placed on generous hips and hindquarters, a condition known as steatopygia.  A 1993 study conducted in rural Jamaica associated thinness with sadness but heaviness with happiness, kindness and social harmony.  There is also a burgeoning pill market which caters to young women desiring to gain weight.

6. Samoa

Since the country abandoned its South Pacific taro and fish diet for processed foods following WWII, body mass has been on the rise in Samoa.  Nonetheless, obesity is not a recent phenomenon there:  Food shortages have plagued the natives for centuries and biological anthropologists believe Samoans are genetically programmed to store extra calories in fat tissue.  Because this natural proclivity produces a generally larger population, heavy women are simply the norm and therefore embraced.

5. South Africa

Due to the prevalence of AIDS, the association between weight loss and illness has contributed to South Africa’s negative view of thinness.  The centuries-old correlation between higher weight and higher wealth was not overcome by the post-Apartheid introduction of European size ideals.  Large women continue to be favored as their heft lends insight into both their health and financial status.

4. Afghanistan

For centuries, plump Afghani women have been prized for their stark contrast to the barren environment.  Female fertility is highly associated with excess pounds among these nomads eking out survival in the desert sand.  For the most part, burquas conceal the exact terrain of a woman’s body but a chubby face with soft features is highly desired.

3. Tahiti

The French Polynesian island of Tahiti was home to the native practice of ha’apori.  Literally meaning “to fatten,” young women were plumped and presented to the chief for beauty and fertility inspection.  The celebration of obesity continues to this day, due in part to a diet rich in carbohydrates and coconut milk.  Tahitian women continue to be revered for their rounded faces and bodies.

2. Nauru

Not only is Nauru known for the highest rate of diabetes in the world at 31%, it is renowned for its universal embrace of obesity.  This tiny South Pacific island’s 14,000 population associates corpulence with beauty and fertility– women are fattened in preparation for childbearing and men for strength competitions.  The phosphate deposits which cover the vast majority of the island prohibit large scale farming.  Importation of fresh produce continues to be cost-prohibitive so mostly cheap, fattening foods are brought in from New Zealand and Australia.

1. Mauritania

In this drought-ridden west African nation, female obesity is synonymous with beauty and wealth.  Though less common, “gavage” (borrowed from the French to describe fattening a goose’s liver destined for foie gras) is still practiced, with young girls imbibing vast qualities of fatty camel milk daily.  Women unable to pack on the pounds at fat farms routinely take antihistamines and animal steroids to induce appetite.  Exercise isfrowned upon and women are frequently divorced for their inability to sustain excessive girth after childbirth.

Suzanne Duvall

Read more: http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-countries-celebrating-female-obesity.php#ixzz2RaZBzQen

Psychology, Your Dieting and Your Fat

Yesterday I had a call from a mental health worker. I was sure she was no more than 25, just out of diapers, near-emaciated and no issue worse than an ingrown hair from her bikini wax.  

“Do you recall Roberta SOandSo? I’m reviewing her obesity history and I know she saw you a year ago and I still don’t have a clear idea about how she became obese.”

Roberta was in the process of securing her permissions for weight loss surgery. There always has to be a reason when you’re fat. It’s like being a drunk or addict—those psychologist’s need to turn you inside out to find the splinter in your fiber, shake you up and down to get the pebble in your sole; because you have to be fat for a reason. Rest assured if you are being interviewed by one of them, he or she will think they can pin-point the exact hour, time place and circumstance by spending weeks sorting through your personal history (at over a hundred dollars an hour). 

Other than overeating, psychology still doesn’t know why you are fat. I preferred to think that I had a normal appetite but was under-exercising. Had I run a marathon each week there would have been nothing wrong with my diet. Today psychology can only tell us that you have low self-esteem, low self-worth, more depression, emotional issues, less satisfying sex and relationships. But it’s the chicken and the egg problem and we don’t know what drives what.

The truth is no one can figure out why we overeat. If we could, we’d have a cure. We might be able to find some triggers, but no solid reasons. And there lies the biggest problem with treating obesity; we all took different paths. Over the years I’ve seen it all; clients whose parents forced them to clear their plates of friend chicken, potatoes smothered in margarine and then tackle of apple pie. I’ve had the closet-eaters who regarded food as precious as crack. My rule is and will always be: if you were obese as a child you have many more issues. But science and doctors don’t care how you got it, like the early Aids epidemic, whether blood transfusion or through sex—you still got it. 

Most of us got fat slowly. Roberta’s poundage crept up. Five children later, an extra seven or eight pounds each year for fifteen years. I calculated it to be equivalent to an extra scoop of ice-cream every day. For that atrocity her doctor sent her to the nutritionist and told her that he wouldn’t see her as a patient unless she lost 20% of her body weight. He told her to get psychotherapy for her food addiction. After that therapist delved into her life, linking pot-lucks with pot-bellies, I like to think I saved her—I don’t know about now.

Roberta had come up with a more believable reason she was fat. At least she did not admit to being sexually abused, in the midst of a divorce, or break-up—that might take you off the surgical table. No one cares if you have a face-list, body-makeover or nose job—but God forbid you have WLS to begin a new life.  

The child-social-worker wasn’t buying the extra scoop of ice-cream hypothesis. She was looking for more: the sexual abuse, rape, beating with a belt, divorce . . . yes, I recalled Roberta might have come from “divorce.”  

It’s so sad that I had to assist Roberta in coming up to a more believable legend for her size.