Miscellany: A new podcast (already); weight loss not a game-changer; and I cannot stop watching this video.

Marianne and I made another mini podcast last night on the idea of the “Fatosphere”. (Also, “scare quotes”.) You can either listen or download via the web; or if you haven’t already, you can subscribe via iTunes.

In it, we failed to say thank you for the tremendous offering of kudos and support from y’all, so: thank you. We’re both overwhelmed by the response. Already. We are digging this new media like whoa, so it’s wonderful to get such positive feedback (though we are open to constructive criticism as well).

Elsewhere, MSNBC has run an article on post-weight-loss “disappointment”, essentially noting that often folks lose a great deal of weight only to discover that all the things they disliked about themselves and their lives are still the same. I know I’ve said it a thousand times at least: if you don’t like yourself as a fat person, you won’t like yourself as a thin person either. Says the article:

“People expect a lot from weight loss, things that weight loss alone can’t deliver,” says [Lee Kern, clinical director for Structure House, a residential weight loss facility in Durham, N.C.] “People think it just isn’t worth it and relapse all the way back.” And then they learn “the hard way” that success and happiness aren’t linked to a number on a scale, he says.

Hmm. I do wonder where folks might pick up these unrealistic expectations. Could it be from listening to the kind of doctors who use the word “relapse”, a word generally applied to drug abuse or illnesses like cancer, to describe weight gain? Or could it be from a culture that promotes life in a fat body as a horror not worth living, and life in a thin body as a constant superlative pleasure? Shit, culture LIES? I don’t know anything anymore.

Two of the names in the article are familiar to me, though I’ve only pinned down one: Jeannette Fulda wrote a book that I read a review of and which led me to write the sentence, Weight loss don’t put gallbladders back in the abdomen, y’all, right here in this blog two years ago.

Says Fulda:

…Although she believed she was realistic about what weight loss could and couldn’t do for her, Fulda thought a “leaner bod” meant no more health woes, which “just goes to show that being thin doesn’t guarantee perfect health,” she says.

And she is surprised that despite her monumental weight loss she still has what she calls a “skewed” relationship with food.

“I eat when I’m bored, when I’m sad, and that’s not something that went away with being less heavy,” she says. “I guess we all really think that losing weight gets rid of our issues. But in so many ways we’re still the very same person, not that skinny woman we dreamed about.”

I know, right? Thin people are not smarter, happier, more successful, more confident, more secure in their bodies than you are. It’s unfortunate that many of us have to put ourselves through hell in order to learn this, but that just underscores the ubiquity of the message. The standard “but of course being fat will cause you to DIE DIE DIE!” rhetoric aside, the article is an interesting read, so check it out if you haven’t already.

Finally, to end on a high note: there is this video. I’ve been watching daily it for weeks. I think the artist has the potential to reach Gagaesque levels of amazingness, and coming from me that is high praise indeed. I can’t get it out of my head. And so I infect you all with it, on the off chance that some of you may not have seen it yet.

Right on.

• «Previous Post
• Next Post »