Watching last Thursday’s episode of Oprah is pissing me off.

(Never thought I’d say that.)

I just CANNOT understand why happiness has to be equated with losing weight. It’s infuriating. The title of this book alone made me cringe:

The Life You Want: Get Motivated, Lose Weight, and Be Happy

Maybe I want to be fat. Maybe restricting my food and working out all the time is not my idea of happiness.

Maybe I know I’m not healthy but I’m not motivated to get healthy because I don’t really want to live anyway. Perhaps I’ve been brought down SO long for being overweight that I just don’t care anymore.

Maybe I have a medical something that makes it impossible to lose weight without extremely costly measures; measures I cannot afford.

Maybe I have other health issues I have to take care of (read: pay for) before I can invest in losing weight. Eating right is more expensive than eating junk, period.

Maybe my body shape is just completely different from yours and just because I look unhealthy to you doesn’t mean I am.

Maybe I have a super busy life and taking the time to plan and cook 5 meals a day is just not something I can manage. Don’t even get me started on working in working out.

Maybe you just don’t know me.

Maybe you shouldn’t generalize.

Maybe we should all ignore the “healthy” hype.

If you ask me, preaching health is just a guise for some people to judge other people. Chances are when you see a person you deem overweight you’re not at all considering their health, you are made uncomfortable because our society and media and even friends and family have taught us to believe fat=wrong.

Whatever happened to fat=wealth and contentment?

Can someone build me a TARDIS so I can go back to those days, please?

lovingthebeautifulyou:

“Are you a reluctant dieter? Then, it would be a perfect excuse for you, as scientists have claimed that staying fat may be better for your health.

The researchers said the idea that weight is harmful has been “exaggerated” and people who are little heavier may actually live longer. The California University (CU) study that looked at about 350,000 people in the US also suggested that the obese put their health in greater danger when they obsessively try to slim down.

It recommended that people should eat a varied and balanced diet, and take “enjoyable” amounts of exercise — even if they still end up carrying a few extra pounds. The researchers also noted that society’s obsession with dieting is “ineffective” and often leads to people becoming fatter as they crave food and binge, the Daily Mail reported.”

Of coarse when studies like this are discovered, the media keeps it under wraps. I’ve seen another study such as this on on judgmentofparis.com (found this there to). When will the public hear about this, instead of hearing about another ideal they need to fit, or how they can fix their “imperfect” weight. This is the media’s harmful effects staring you in the face. That you need to diet, you need to do this diet plan, or need to do buy that one, because you need to look like this perfect ideal, and you need to be that now.  What will we do? Run out and be [or try to be] that, because it’s just so glamorous, and here it shows how aggressively doing this can be detrimental to our bodies instead of, how it’s shown on the media, helpful, creating an illusion for health.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/…how/7358082.cms

SUCK ON THAT, CONCERN TROLLS.

feministslut:

Fat hate, the “obesity epidemic” and the medicalization of inequality

liquornspice:

Holy shit, this blog looks amazing!  A doctor who puts the “obesity epidemic” in historical context and shows how “health” is politicized?!  ::singing:: LOOOVES IT!!!

A sampling of awesome. (All emphasis mine.)

Despite the focus on evidence-based medicine, much of the “obesity science” is arbitrary. Gerald Reaven, a leading scientist on insulin resistance, exposed the pseudoscience behind the metabolic syndrome, especially its inclusion of waist circumference:

“Not only are the cut points for the five chosen criteria arbitrary, there is no reason to believe that the individual elements of the metabolic syndrome are equally reflective of either the presumed basic defect or the risk of cardiovascular disease…although being overweight/obese increases the chances of an individual being significantly insulin resistant, by no means are all overweight/obese individuals insulin resistant, and, of greater clinical relevance, weight loss in overweight/obese individuals who are not insulin resistant does not lead to substantial clinical benefit.”

[…]

Last month, Scientific American published a study on the “diabetes belt” through the US: 

“…the 644 counties in the diabetes belt match up to known risk factors for the disease, including: a high obesity rate, sedentary lifestyles, lower education levels, and more non-Hispanic blacks…”

But there is a clear marker, almost universally ignored, that matches both diabetes and those “risk factors”: poverty. These 15 states include 11 states with the highest poverty rates:

[…]

…many studies on obesity take these conditions for granted, controlling for differences in race and occupation—either explicitly, or implicitly by enrolling white middle-class people. This means filtering out the health impacts of racism and class, two of the most potent determinants of health. The premise is that these are natural and unchangeable, and should be eliminated from analysis, and that instead we should blame the difference in weight amongst ourselves… While this perspective is not medically useful, it serves economic and ideological purposes.

[…]

The obsession with measuring people’s waists in order pass to judgment on them is reminiscent of the early pseudoscience of phrenology, which measured people’s heads as a basis of justifying social inequalities. Almost every oppressed group has at one time in history been blamed for an infection disease: First Nations blamed for TB, European Jews blamed for chlamydia, Mexican-Americans blamed for typhus, African-Americans and sex-trade workers blamed for syphilis, Haitians and gay men blamed for AIDS. Homosexuality was considered a psychiatric disease until the Gay Liberation Movement. Transgendered people continue to fight against being pathologized. People with disabilities call for a broader definition of health instead of mainstream medicine’s desire to “fix” them. Muslims are resisting attacks on civil liberties that use the language of “public safety” in order to restrict their rights to movement, attire, athletic competition, occupation, and voting.

In all these situations the “target of intervention” has been the supposedly monolithic and deviant behaviours of oppressed groups rather than the social and economic conditions that place them, and others, at risk. The results have been social stigma or repressive laws, rather than accessible health care, better housing, and higher wages.

And from the comments section, Dr. J lays some more knowledge on us:

As you’ve both outlined, this has imposed a very real experience on the majority of people who are forced to eat unhealthy food while immersed in toxins in the environment/food/workplace. As a result there’s an epidemic of diabetes, as well as cancer. (Americans are also an inch taller than they were a generation ago, but this deviation from “normal” is praised because it conforms to the current standards of beauty).
While the cancer epidemic is being ignored, the diabetes epidemic has been personified as the “obesity epidemic”. This depoliticizes, fragments, and individualizes the causes of the health crisis, leading people to blame certain people’s bodies instead of the collective conditions we need to change so we can all live healthier lives.

Holy shit, I never thought about that! If we’re getting taller AND more cancerous and diabetic, why isn’t height a “risk factor”?!?!?! ::Mindfuck::

posting so I can finish reading this later.

(Source: blackraincloud)