Thinky thoughts about bodies
Feb. 11th, 2010 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamagotchaSo I finally got my mitts on a copy of Linda Bacon's Health at Every Size (thank you, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.