History
All relatives, especially the female ones, are large. In fact, I might be the skinniest of them and I am borderline between "overweight" and "obese."
I have spent my entire life watching people I love, especially the women, starve themselves, pass up birthday cake, corn, and potatoes, etc to no avail. If they loose, it comes right back on with interest. Most of the time they didn't loose at all.
When they went to the Doctor, all their ills were "because your fat." The doctors never believe they are actually sick.
I have seen the hopelessness and humiliation of being larger than is acceptable to our culture.
And while watching this, I have compared my diet to my relatives. Now, I have seen a few eat massive amounts of food at holidays, but most of my relatives don't, even at celebrations. I know that many of them don't eat more than I did when I was skinny; less, in fact. And active? Often way more active than I was as a young adult.
Because I have studied nutrition I have been asked what to do to help them loose weight. I can only shrug helplessly. They are following all the rules for weight lose. I am totally lost.
Results of recent studies on Obesity:
There are many causes of obesity and our society does not help the fat person to be healthier. In fact they often make it worse.
Poverty
We way underestimate the affects of poverty on every aspect of life, especially health. (And lets just say my last name isn't Rockefeller. We are not a bottom-of-the-ladder poor family, but we are not rich either. In fact, my parents both grew up in abject poverty, though they are upper middle now.)
Poor people live in poor neighborhoods. I know this may seem obvious, but it has repercussions we don't often realize. For example, If you are going to live in a mobile home in our area, if you are rich enough you buy in the community on the top of the hill. If you are poorer, you buy at the bottom of the hill. In between are a number of mines, closed and open. So those on the bottom of the hill drink and bathe in water that ran off of these mines, while the rich are above that water level.
The rich live in newer, healthier houses (for the most part). The poor live in 10-30 year old houses where the glues and paints are beginning to deteriorate.
The rich often work in newer offices while the poor work in older, often toxin-filled work places. They are also exposed to more physical labor and, thus, are injured at work more often.
The rich can afford gym memberships.
Studies show that the poor go to doctors less than the rich do, even if they have insurance. The reason is simple; doctors and their staff treat poor people differently than rich. Especially if they are also fat. The disdain and contempt is often palatable.
All relatives, especially the female ones, are large. In fact, I might be the skinniest of them and I am borderline between "overweight" and "obese."
I have spent my entire life watching people I love, especially the women, starve themselves, pass up birthday cake, corn, and potatoes, etc to no avail. If they loose, it comes right back on with interest. Most of the time they didn't loose at all.
When they went to the Doctor, all their ills were "because your fat." The doctors never believe they are actually sick.
I have seen the hopelessness and humiliation of being larger than is acceptable to our culture.
And while watching this, I have compared my diet to my relatives. Now, I have seen a few eat massive amounts of food at holidays, but most of my relatives don't, even at celebrations. I know that many of them don't eat more than I did when I was skinny; less, in fact. And active? Often way more active than I was as a young adult.
Because I have studied nutrition I have been asked what to do to help them loose weight. I can only shrug helplessly. They are following all the rules for weight lose. I am totally lost.
Results of recent studies on Obesity:
There are many causes of obesity and our society does not help the fat person to be healthier. In fact they often make it worse.
Poverty
We way underestimate the affects of poverty on every aspect of life, especially health. (And lets just say my last name isn't Rockefeller. We are not a bottom-of-the-ladder poor family, but we are not rich either. In fact, my parents both grew up in abject poverty, though they are upper middle now.)
Poor people live in poor neighborhoods. I know this may seem obvious, but it has repercussions we don't often realize. For example, If you are going to live in a mobile home in our area, if you are rich enough you buy in the community on the top of the hill. If you are poorer, you buy at the bottom of the hill. In between are a number of mines, closed and open. So those on the bottom of the hill drink and bathe in water that ran off of these mines, while the rich are above that water level.
The rich live in newer, healthier houses (for the most part). The poor live in 10-30 year old houses where the glues and paints are beginning to deteriorate.
The rich often work in newer offices while the poor work in older, often toxin-filled work places. They are also exposed to more physical labor and, thus, are injured at work more often.
The rich can afford gym memberships.
Studies show that the poor go to doctors less than the rich do, even if they have insurance. The reason is simple; doctors and their staff treat poor people differently than rich. Especially if they are also fat. The disdain and contempt is often palatable.
Genetics
I have a picture of my great-great-grandmother and her mom with their family. I guarentee these wome did not eat fast food or much if any of what we would call junk food. In fact, everything they ate was totally organic (non-organic food had not been invented yet!)
They did not "couch potato" since TV (and even radio!) had not been invented yet and they were poor, so no servants to do their work for them. Mere survival meant a lot of hard exercise.
In fact, because they were poor, I would bet they seldom or never had enough to eat. Stuffing themselves would have meant denying their children food.
Despite all this, these two ancestors of mine both weighed close to 300lb.
Why?
The only thing I can figure out is that God made people of every different size and shape. Some of us can be size 3, while most of us, well, let's just say "won't be." It is the way we are made and we can't do anything about it.
Dieting
I am more and more convinced that dieting itself CAUSES obesity. It forces our bodies into "famine mode" where they hoard every last ounce in order to keep us from dieing in this great famine (our bodies can't tell the difference between a famine and a diet.)
Do you know someone who can eat anything they want and never gain weight? I really wonder if they never gain weight BECAUSE they have always eaten anything they want.
Obviously dieting doesn't work. EVERYONE is on a diet yet NO ONE is losing weight. In fact, the number of people who lose weight and keep it off is only about .5% and that includes those with weight lose surgery.
If any one diet or diet product or eating plan worked there would be only one out there because everyone would use it.
Obviously the problem is in how we think about our bodies, not in our scales.
Interesting observation BT, and since I share a large (sorry) portion of your relatives, I share your interest. I am curious in your conclusion about it amounts to how we THINK of over-weight people.
ReplyDeleteI was remembering reading about the colonizing of America and how the natives were easy to get drunk and swindle. It seems that, by your rational, that we just "think is was bad" for them to get inebriated. Seems to me that if I knew I was more easily susceptible to alcoholism, that I would abstain, which I do. Isn't it true that, in your studies of nutrition, that calories in should equal calories out, and if you take in more calories than you use up....you get fat. I think that most of us have a problem with limiting our intake of calories, but that is no reason to accept being FAT as the new norm. Anymore than we should accept a drunk Indian as a norm.
Just sayin......
Thank you for your comment, Martin. And we do share a lot of those relatives! lol.
DeleteThe "calories in calories out" idea is logical, but is not holding up in careful science. You see, our bodies aren't like cars with set performance standards. God designed our bodies to adjust so we wouldn't starve to death during famines. Unfortunately, our bodies can't tell the difference between a famine and a diet. When our calorie count goes down, so does our metabolism (equivalent of our "miles per gallon" going up). We become more efficient.
One study I read about, the participants initially lost weight, then added an exercise program (increasing calories out), but after 6 months began to put all the weight back on- even though they were eating even LESS than they did when they first lost the weight! Obviously CICO doesn't work. Look around you. Have you seen anyone who actually lost and kept it off? Anyone?
Fat is not the "new norm." Skinny is. Variety used to be the norm, but now if you aren't cookie-cutter alike you are ridiculed and it is acceptable for others to abuse you. We have replaced racism with fat-phobia as the acceptable bigotry.
What I am saying is that we should not buy into this bullying to starve ourselves and damage our bodies (and studies have proved that dieting DOES damage our bodies while, if you control for poverty and diet industry funding, the evidence of harm from fat is iffy at best). For some of us, being larger than Twiggy is normal and good and healthy and we need to quit buying into our society's lies. We need to accept ourselves the way God made us.
(And humans can live without alcohol but they can't live without food so the two aren't comparable.)