Supporting Sandy at Junkfood Science

I know that she and her blog are controversial but I just made a small donation to the Junkfood Science blog. This is the first time I've given money to someone over the internet just because I respect the work she's doing. As I mentioned in my last post, her latest series is both enligtening and inspiring and I am sooooo thankful that there is someone out there doing the work that she is doing even if some of it may be motivated by ulterior motives than just Fat Acceptanc. Her committment to truth and the disemination of accurate interpretations of scientific news is very strong. Of course she doesn't cover everything, but I like the way she covers what she does and I respect her habit of linking to the original sources so that I can go read the science behind it myself.

Here's a bit of her intro that says it better than I ever could. I think she believes this and that she actually is living it.

"The more I’ve learned, the more horrified I’ve become. Science is being misused for marketing and political purposes. Evidence is being distorted and bias has inundated media, research, government policies and clinical guidelines. Unsound information proliferates in professional and advocacy organizations, academic institutions and journals; and even professionals aren’t reaching beyond beliefs to critically examine studies and recognize credible information. So much valuable and critically important information, and the very best science — well documented in careful, objective, evidence-based research — is never reported and almost never published. Fear sells and unfounded scares, exaggerations and “what-ifs?” are being used to terrify people about their foods, bodies and health.

And all of this is costing, frightening and hurting people.

For years, I have traced virtually every science, food and health story in mainstream media to their original press releases, which are reported verbatim. Literally everything we hear and read today is marketing and created by those trying to sell us something: a belief, cause, product, service, or themselves. That’s why we hear “science” finds something one day, and something entirely different the next. “Pop” science, what is popularly believed and marketed as “science,” is oftentimes really the junk science.

I’ve also gone to the original source, the study behind each of those stories, and been even more alarmed to realize that the evidence is nothing like what we hear, or even what appears in the conclusions of many study abstracts. In fact, it’s often the exact opposite! Simultaneously, I’ve watched the very best science that counters popular beliefs and could put fears to rest, go unreported. And after a decade of unsuccessfully trying to get any mainstream or alternative publication to publish articles with the fact-based information, I realized it wasn't possible.

That’s not right. I believe people deserve to know the truth and not be taken advantage of, needlessly terrified or put at risk.

People also deserve the soundest facts to make informed decisions for themselves and their loved ones, and so we can all ensure public policies and clinical guidelines are based on sound evidence and risk analysis.

My personal commitment is to give people information that is as true as I know it to be."

Thank you Sandy! Thank you to all of you out here in the blogosphere who are fighting the good fight.

Another Ah Ha Moment

This article on Junkfood Science (one of my favorite blogs) has really stimulated my brain. Sandy points out that the authors of a new study on the effect of negative body image have shown a link to poor health outcomes including diabetes and heart disease. They posit that this may be due to the stress response from discrimination and internal dissatisfaction rather than the actual body fat itself (they controlled for actual BMI!). That right there is a big old WOW! and thank all that is good that someone is doing this kind of research but this went even further for me.

In the last paragraph of the entry she mentions her plan to discus how "Those very same health problems associated with the stress response and obesity, are also found among other groups in our culture most targeted by prejudices and discrimination." I work on a multi-million dollar research project that is looking at health care disparities for African American families. We've been looking at what might be some of the causal factors that lead these families to have poorer outcomes even after you control for socio-economic status. I'd never thought to put internal stress related to self-perception into the equation, stress caused by being in a group that is consistently dealing with societal messages that they are "too dark" or somehow less than people of different skin tones.

Thank you Sandy! Thank you researchers at Mailman School of Public Health! You've certainly opened my eyes to some new possibilities today.

But it's Soooo Easy

I've been thinking about this all weekend.

I was sitting at happy hour on Friday with my brother and a co-worker/friend. She was asking me where I plan to go once I finish my PhD and suggested New Zealand. I joked "Nah, they won't take me cuz I'm too fat." and she replied "Well you can fix that easily enough."

Easily fixable? Really? Does she honestly think I would stay 100+ lbs. over weight if it was easily fixable?

She's recently been doing Weight Watchers and has lost a significant amount of weight. She's mentioned to me several times how easy it is. This is of course the first time she's ever been on a plan like this. She just turned 40. I was on my first diet at age 7. Believe me, if it was easy I would have done it. I've dieted many, many times. I've lost over 40 lbs three different times. I've spent thousands of dollars on diet plans, support groups, special foods, and exercise programs. If I could find a way to maintain that kind of weight loss I'd do it in a heartbeat!

Maybe I'm weak. Maybe I'm lazy. I don't know but for me maintaining any kind of weight loss has NEVER been easy. It breaks my heart. I'd give so much to not deal with this struggle but here it is and here I am and it doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. So as far as I can tell, I've got a few choices. I can continue to try each new diet that comes out, try the diets that worked but didn't stick again or maybe try something different--not focusing on losing weight. Not hating myself for the shape of my body, not beating myself up for every morsel of food that goes into my mough, and celebrating the good things about this body I have.

Yeah, I think I'll go with option number three.

No Soup for YOU!

This Mississippi Bill is a bunch of baloney. It made me mad enough to write a letter to the jerks who sponsored it...something I don't do nearly enough. Check out some of the other letters that the infinitely more articulate Shapelings wrote, read mine, and send one of your own!

Here's what I wrote:

Representatives Mayhall, Shows, and Read:
I am writing in opposition to House Bill 282. I saw a report on this bill on my local news here in California. I'm certain this must be a ploy for publicity but that does not excuse the ignorance and biggotry that this bill contains. It is both discriminatory and frankly ridiculous which I assume you already know. I'm not sure what your true motives are but I know they can't be good. How exactly do you propose that stopping fat people from eating at restaurants will decrease obesity? Are you going to stop them from buying food at the local grocery store? Do you think that people will let their heavier friends and families starve? In at least 95% of cases people who have been on a diet gain back more than they initially lost. The body is designed to resist starvation by slowing the metabolism and storing additional fat.

I am a professional who works with children with eating problems. One thing I can say for sure from my experience is that shame and restriction DO NOT WORK. If you really feel that this is one of the biggest challenges facing your state (a notion I highly doubt, take a look at this website for some clear critical reading of the actual research that is out there http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/), and you actually want to help people be healthier there are all kinds of things you can do to promote the health of your constituency. Perhaps you could make cities friendlier for bikers and walkers, perhaps you could subsidize fresh vegetable farmers, or support campaigns that promote Health at Every Size (http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/mar06/health0306.htm). The news report that I heard this evening mentioned that you have brought up this bill because the programs Mississippi has tried so far have not helped decrease the rates of obesity in your fair state. Perhaps Health at Every Size might be a humane answer.

I urge you to revoke your support for this bill in order to show that you are a person of character and to remove this blight from your states image which certainly doesn't need more association with discrimination."

It's time to speak up. Fat discrimination is real! Feel free to copy my letter or let your own passion speak.

Contact info here.

Broomball the pics!

Look at me all dressed in fleece and defending the goal! It's always so interesting to see pictures of myself. I love taking pictures and am often the person in the group with a camera but for once someone else was documenting the event so there are lots of great shots of me and everyone else. My first thought upon seeing the picture above was "My eye-makeup looks pretty good" others in the set got my negative self talk started but I was mostly able to head it off at the pass.


This one made me realize how really round my body is. I rarely look at it from this angle...in fact I'm not sure I ever saw my body from this perspective, but it doesn't look inherently bad. It certainly doesn't look like a fashion model's body, but it's kind of cute. And look at how active I look in that picture, not posed and careful of every lump and line. I'm moving, attending to the ball, ready to drop to my knees or sweep the ball away at any second. I don't see pictures like that of me very often either.



This one is harder for me to get over the negative self talk with. In this one it's my giant busthoomas that are giving me trouble. I'd just run down the bleechers from setting the self-timer on the camera and didn't have time to make an adjustment so I'm uncomfortable with how much flesh shows in this shot, but it's such a fun picture. Look at the silly grins on our faces. I know it's hard to look away from the boobs but trust me the rest of the picture is more interesting! We were all lit up with the energy of the playing the game and goofing around with the fake mustaches from our goody bags. It's just hard for me to see beyond the fact that my boobs are bigger than some of their heads. But I'm trying. This is a journey afterall. That is my body. My body that served me very well for the game and which does so many other wonderful things for me. I've got a couple of serious bruises and a few sore muscles, but overall it held up and allowed me to have the most fun I've had in weeks!

What do you think when you see pictures of yourself? If you have negative self-talk, how do you handle it?

Joyful Movement--Broomball!

Broomball, what a game! Running on ice in your tennis shoes chasing a ball and swatting it with your broom, trying to beat the other team and get that dang ball into a goal while remaining upright on an incredibly slippery surface...what could be more fun?

Tonight I played Broomball from Midnight to 2 am with a bunch of my friends. It was A.J.'s birthday and his wife Beth had planned quite an evening. We started drinking at a dive bar near the ice rink and then migrated over to the rink. Beth had bought 20 brooms at the dollar store and blue and red tape to tape the bristles with. I was nervous. Afraid I wouldn't be able to keep up, afraid I would fall and seriously injure myself, afraid I'd look like a fool.

I fell and I probably looked like a fool, but the great thing was that all of us did. No one was automatically good at this and though I wasn't the fastest or the most coordinated, I felt like I contributed to the team (I played goalie for the first period and stopped about 15 shots!) Some were better and some were worse than me, but overall I had a great time. I laughed and ran and slid and fell down hard a few times but at the end of the night I was committed to finding a way to play games like this more often. This was so much more fun than the treadmill and it was an intense workout. It made me want to do more yoga (to improve my balance and strength) and work on my endurance but only so I could have played longer. I am proud that I was able to play the whole time and was still going strong when we had to get off the ice to let the Zamboni come clean the sheet. My extra padding probably helped me a bit too as some of the falls I took were definitely less damaging than they would have been if bone was hitting ice instead of a nice fleshy hip or bum. Of course I'm going to have some bruises and be a little sore (too many goal tending splits I think!) but I'm so happy I did this. So happy I didn't let my fear keep me from getting out there and participating and moving my body.

What a night, what a game, what a body!

Let your light shine out!

Today I attended a memorial for a friend's wife, Mary, who passed away on Thanksgiving. The service was lovely and the party afterward was full of laughter, sweet stories and great food and drinks. As my best friend and I walked out of the restaurant I asked "Is it wrong that I had a really good time?" and then I thought about it and realized how absolutely right that was. How much this woman would have enjoyed this party herself and how I'd want people to celebrate my life in the same way. And so by this post I mean to in no way diminish the saddness of losing her and the pain that her friends and families are in but I found some real food for thought in the words of the priest at the service today.

This woman was only 57 years old and she was not fat. As far as I know, she'd never been fat. Everyone in her family is naturally slim. And yet, amazingly enough, she died. Way too young, way too soon for anyone around her and from cancer...a disease that if I only got my information from watching the local news I'm pretty sure I'd think was caused by being fat. It's certainly a factor that seems to be brought up frequently as a consequence in the "obesity epidemic" discourse.

KateHarding over at Shapely Prose recently addressed this very point when she talked about the kooky CRON people and now I have a specific example right here in my own life.

Hey, here’s a scientific fact: We are all going to die. And in the meantime, we all make decisions about the kinds of lives we want to live. Some people eat as little as possible in the explicit hope of outliving this silly, primitive limitation known as mortality. Other people eat less than they want to in hopes of living a little longer than people who “indulge themselves.” And other people eat what they fucking feel like eating, because to them, chronic restrained eating would — unlike obesity — indeed be a “huge risk factor for… a life of misery.”

And in those last two categories, at least? There are people of all sizes. People who are unequivocally fat despite consistently eating less than they want to, and thin people who seem to have the proverbial hollow leg. There are even, horror of horrors, fat people who eat whatever they want. Because they’re grown-ups, and they’re allowed. What a concept.

Yup that's right folks, we're all going to die. And so often the fear of fat and the fear of fat people seems to be linked to a great big huge fear of death. Mary lived an active life dedicated to serving her community and raising her children. She was also a joy to be around. Full of life and laughter even in the last few years as she fought through four years of cancer ups and downs. She was still acting president of a large service organization and the last time I saw her she was swing dancing to a live band at a local bar.

The priest at the service asked us to observe her shining example and ask ourselves how we were living. This question has haunted me all day. There are so many things I wish I was doing but am not. I've been wanting to do some volunteer work for the last few years and have done some little bits but I am craving something regular, a weekly dose of using my talents to serve the world instead of just serving myself. I've said I'm going to take a Spanish class for the last 3 years and have yet to do it and I'm stalling on moving forward on my darn PhD. Overall I've been feeling like I've been blocking my light. Self-sabotaging myself so as not to shine too brightly and it really sucks!

How often as fat women do we do this? I feel like so many of the women I know let their lives be dominated by thinking about diets, weight, fat, and all the shoulds. We should be thinner, taller, dress better, eat better, be better mothers, daughters, wives, lovers, and friends. How much time do I sit around thinking about all the things I should do instead of just doing them? Just imagine if all the energy (not to mention the money) that goes into dieting, exercising to lose weight and beating ourselves up for all the shoulds that we just can't seem to match up to went into giving back to our community or into our work. What if we all opened the blinds we've installed and actually let the light shine out? Just imagine what a world this could be.