Thinky thoughts about bodies

[mamagotcha]

So I finally got my mitts on a copy of Linda Bacon's Health at Every Size (thank you, 1firefly!) and devoured it the day it arrived.

It was simultaneously liberating and discouraging. The liberational (is that a word?) part was by far better than the downside, though, and so I heartily recommend it to anyone who is struggling with weight issues or body image.

Let's just get the bad news out of the way so I can focus on the good stuff: that whole setpoint thing? Where your body has a weight it deems to be safe, healthy and correct? Turns out it's pretty easy to raise it... but not so easy, or even really possible in a healthy way, to lower it.

If you're over your setpoint temporarily (stressful time, birthing a baby, etc.), you'll find it pretty easy to get back down to it (hence, the weight loss "success stories" we hear about). But if your setpoint has been readjusted higher, it will be very hard to go below it (plateaus, anyone?), and your body will insist on putting that weight right back as soon as possible (cravings, hunger signals, lethargy and hanging on to every bit of energy that passes your lips). If you use this method to control your weight, you WILL be miserable for as long as you do it. And your body will construe this loss as famine, and when (not if) it manages to restock your fat stores, it will do it at a higher setpoint, so that it will be better prepared for the next period of scarcity.

This all corresponds to my own personal relationship with weight loss efforts. And it means that I am not a glutton, not lazy, not weak, and not unhealthy. Or rather, I could be those things... but being fat is not necessarily an indicator of those things.

Being fat means my body was under stress at some point (heh... a LOT of points!) and it made the evolutionarily and biologically correct and intelligent move: to build up stores to get me through the next bout of stress.

There are very few deadly health problems that being fat by itself is associated with (although there are certainly plenty that being fat is a symptom or result of); one of them is sleep apnea, which I do have. But it turns out that being fat is actually a good thing in many ways: I'm never going to have to worry about osteoporosis, and my chances of getting a number of cancers are better than the Skinny Minnies.

This book has a LOT of information and research to absorb (fat people do not eat more than skinny ones; exercise does not make you lose weight; losing weight does not make you live longer) and a TON about how and why our culture marginalizes us fatties (hint: $). The story of how we have grown over 1 1/2" inches as a population over the last several decades, but the government LOWERED the BMI even after every single scientist's recommendation was to RAISE it is, by itself, enough to make you henceforth disregard every bit of nutritional "advice" from the feds.

I wish I could put this book in EVERYONE's hands. It will do the most good for people who are fat and unhappy about it, but it will also do a lot to deprogram all those assumptions our culture has placed upon those of us with large bodies. What is really sad is that *I* need that deprogramming so badly... you'd think someone who has LIVED the truth all these years would be able to shed those ugly/disgusting/lazy/worthless/useless tags with alacrity amid whoops of joy.

And maybe it WILL be easier for me, but cripes... if it's hard for a fat person to erase those messages, what an uphill battle it's gonna be for people who aren't fat and don't know the truth first-hand. Humans LIKE feeling superior, and how easy it is to have a naturally low setpoint and feel morally above those fat slobs! Yeah, it's gonna be a loooong row to hoe.

I've also been tripping over a bunch of other research lately: more info on how bottle-feeding can't provide the nutrition to raise babies' serotonin levels, and how SIDS victims are low in serotonin; how mothers' stress levels are reflected in their infants' long-term mental health (babies of stressed mothers are more likely to have low IQ and depression later in life); and today's bOINGbOING post on the TED talks, about anti-angiogenic foods and how they "starve" early cancers (that 40% of the population have non-threating growths in their breasts/prostates, and the theory that triggering angiogenesis can be the difference between a benign tumor and deadly cancer... it also looks like angiogenesis has something to do with all that setpoint/obesity stuff, which makes sense... when fat stores have their own blood supply, they'll be far more permanent).

Our bodies are pretty freakin' amazing, and I'm learning to be more and more awed and grateful at how well my own has done over the years. This is all coalescing into a strong message to me: listen to your body. You know more than you think you know. Trust your instincts, but do your homework as well.

Comments

[feckalyn.livejournal.com]

Glad you got it and it was impactful!! (I made up my own word!)

I, frankly, had an extremely hard time swallowing the "cutting calories and exercising don't necessarily make you lose weight" concept at first. So counter-intuitive.

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

Very much so, despite my own vast personal experiential history.

What is truly infuriating is that there will be people who will read this book, or even this post, and shake their heads sadly, and say, "Poor misguided thing. She's just taking the easy way out. If she REALLY wanted to change, she could." Because that's what I still hear in my own head, the result of all those years of conditioning.

How are you doing at silencing those little voices? Any words of wisdom?

[feckalyn.livejournal.com]

That's such a wonderful question!! Like you read my mind :)

I worried about those same little voices (mostly from the outside, but also the inside) when I posted the sentence about diet and exercise.

I'm not very good at silencing them at all. For now I'm trying to educate others, especially health care providers, and hope the lessons will rub off on me :)

I've had success at weight loss related to consistent exercise (I've totally given up on 'dieting'.) So, therefore, if I'm not exercising, I feel guilty about my weight. It's a vicious cycle. I've had 4 major weight fluctuations over my life. Around 12 I went from being a bean pole to pretty overweight. Then at 16 it melted away unexpectedly (and without effort on my part). At 20 I gained again, lost it at 24. Then 28 I gained, 33 lost (but not as much as previous times) and then 35 gained it back. I'm currently at my heaviest.

It's so, so complex. With multiple social, psychological, and physical factors playing into it.

I just know that, today, I get pretty fucking angry when I hear someone say, "If fat people would just get off their asses they wouldn't be fat" or something along those lines.

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It's so hard to disentangle all the strands of shame, guilt, facts, wishful thinking, and such...

I'm so grateful there's a new wave of health practitioners like you who are learning and sharing the truth!

[kcatalyst.livejournal.com]

It sounds like such a great book! I'm hoping to read it at some point, but not soon (the only non-work reading I do these days is mysteries I've read a zillion times, seems to be all my poor brain can handle).

I've absorbed a lot of the basics from Kate Harding and crew, but one thing I've wondered about: how can you tell the difference between a new setpoint and a temporary gain? Is it about how long you've been at the higher point? I mean, I assume that you can tell by whether the weight goes away when the situation changes, but that seems dangerously circular to me as an argument (although practical as a life practice!). Did you happen to pick up the answer in your reading?

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

As you may surmise, that is the subject of all kinds of speculation. From the little I've read, it seems that when you remove the stress/hardship and feed freely, the organism will return to their setpoint on their own. In fact, it seems that it's really hard to PREVENT them from returning to it, whether they are over or under it.

However, since it can't control the results, industry is a little gun-shy of pouring cash into research, and since there is so much pressure on the feds to keep harping about BMI and the obesity epidemic to keep the weight regulation industry healthy, there's probably not gonna be a whole lot of government funding, either. Still, I'm sure it's being studied and I'm hoping to hear more about it.

[genderfur.livejournal.com]

this: "weight regulation industry"

yes. (fuckers)

[xakana.livejournal.com]

It would be interesting to see what my setpoint is. When I eat healthier (not just what we can afford, which isn't even really what I want, but it's what I can eat of what we can afford), my weight goes down. I'm pretty sure it's around 185, which would suck because I would like to get down to 160.

Eh, I was happier and felt healthier when I was down below 200, so I know some of my weight is definitely more than I should have. I also know I don't get enough exercise (just normal moving around, not like hitting the gym), particularly during the winter, being agoraphobic and stuck inside. And whenever I DO try to move around, the kids yell at me to carry them with me, making me just sit back down so I don't have to listen to them or wreck my back or lose my pace.

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

One thing she did mention in the book was that the setpoint (like a due date) was more a range, not a specific point, and that some people had wider ranges than others... but the general range seemed to be 20-40 lbs, IIRC.

[xakana.livejournal.com]

I need to get that book. I really like the premise and I'm sure my best friend would benefit from it as well. She told me a few years ago about a similar book that talked about the origin of fat-phobia and how "doctors" used it to sell diet pills (that killed more often than not), etc. and then started looking for more ways to profit from it once it was started.