Something to Ponder:
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
--Krishnamurti
Something to Ponder:
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
--Krishnamurti
Top 10 Things -- the .pdf
Several people have asked me to put the series up as a separate webpage. With the help of Peggy Elam at Pearlsong Press, I now have a .pdf version of the series available at http://threewisetwins.com/Top10.pdf.
It is also permanently linked in the sidebar.
Thanks for the interest and support.
Pattie, You've Lost a Lot of Weight, Haven't You?
I haven't heard that in years.
Last night a neighbor said that to me.
I responded that I didn't know if I had or not because I don't weigh myself. I said I thought I might have lost some weight when I was sick in January for three weeks with some gastric problems.
Dead Silence Ensued.
After the pause, I smiled and said "I don't recommend any methodology for intentionally losing weight and I certainly don't recommend how sick I was in January."
Then I headed for the pool.
It is weird how much looks and health are related in this culture. When I first became sick with what was eventually diagnosed as lupus, I would flush. In sun-worshiping Flori-duh, I frequently got compliments on my "color" and asked if I had got some sun. I never figured out what to say to that. "Uh, no, actually, I'm feeling pretty sick and what did you think I was before--too pale?"
I'm in a full blown flare-up this weekend. All my joints hurt. I'm exhausted. I have accomplished the laundry, one trip to the pool, a little bit of meditation and a bunch of sleep. But the sleep only seems to help temporarily.
The disconnect I feel between the world and my experience in my skin grows ever wider.
The thing is, this looks = health equation is dangerous.
I know of several cases where older people died of cancer because their "diet worked" for the first time in their lives. Turns out that 60 pounds was their bodies being eaten away. But boy they looked healthy!
It works both ways.
My father probably died younger than he would have because a liver condition went undiagnosed while his doctor told him to lose weight. He finally went to an emergency room where 27 pounds of fluid was drawn from his belly due to liver failure. By then the damage was done and what is done to a liver is rarely undone. He died 18 months later of the condition.
So lately I've lost a few pounds and I don't know why. I feel sickly and yet I'm pretty sure almost no doctor would take the weight loss as a serious symptom. Of course, I don't really have a doctor because I'm fat and can't afford insurance and, well, I avoid doctors as much as possible.
But hey, apparently, I am the envy of the neighborhood at the moment.
It is NOT about the FOOD
Unsurprisingly, in all the reactions I've read to the Top Ten List and the attention it has received, the two most vehement negative reactions have been against my assertion that prejudice is prejudice (Number 8) and that food is not relevant to weight (number 3).
The prejudice question is one that I think has been discussed ad naseum and I think I've been as clear as I can be on the point, so define me as you like. I don't really care. I know who gets it and I know who does not, and why. Enough said.
The food question, however, may have some nuances to address and since I've just given a talk at Smith College this past weekend in which I addressed some of my complaints about the food question, I think I'm going to take it on again, even if I am tired of discussing it.
Here's my beef (pun definitely intended):
Several people have posted (on various comments where the series was referenced) that they are convinced that fat people eat too much or eat the wrong kinds of food as compared to other people who weigh less.
They seem absolutely sure on this point. They KNOW.
So my question is epistemological in nature:
How the hell do you know that that one type of person eats more or less or even the same as other types of people?
When I read these statements, visions of people with notebooks sitting in cafeterias, restaurants and bars across the country, counting the number of bites their fellow diners are taking come to mind. I mean, are we all sitting around watching each other's eating? Do we follow the skinny girl home and see if she eats in private after ordering salad only at the steak house? When a fat boy eats a salad in public, do we assume that he is on a diet or just hungry for a salad? De we follow him home to verify that he goes to bed without a snack?
I am just having trouble understanding how these comparison studies take place in the real world.
I am married to a man who eats more than I do when he sits down to a meal and less than I do between meals. I don't really keep track strictly, but my sense is that we eat about the same amount of food. We both pretty much eat when we are hungry and eat what we are hungry for. I had to learn to do this. He has done so for most of his life and as such hasn't been that conscious about it.
For most of our life together, I was on a diet. I generally ate much less than he did during that time. Once I stopped dieting, my weight stablized and without much effort has been pretty much the same for six years now.
In public, at restaurants, any of you guys who are watching everyone around you eat would see him eating about twice what I do. I don't like big meals and generally take home part of my plate. At home, between meals, I graze and he does not. I don't each much at one sitting, but I do eat about 5-6 times a day on the average. Though I've been known on busy days to not eat anything till the evening.
Okay, so there is the data. But for the life of me, I'm not sure what you are supposed to make of it. I mean, we are two different people with different tastes and different pattens of hunger. That's about all I can glean from it. Other than, when I stopped dieting, I generally ended up consuming about the same amount of calories every day that he does, though along a different pattern. BTW, since I weigh a lot more than he does, I think that means I should be losing weight or he should be gaining weight in the strict calorie in/energy out model of weight.
At the risk of repeating myself, I just don't understand how so many people can be so sure than they know and understand the intricate eating histories of all the people around them. Yet their blanket statements about eating and weight suggest that they have this knowledge, that they know what other's eat both in volume and in quality.
Of course, I suspect that they "just know" or that they notice those things that are consistent with their knowledge and ignore things that are not.
Okay, so there is evidence about food and weight and weight gain/loss. Amp has outlined this in a great entry over at Alas, A Blog, so I won't spend a lot of time outlining it here.
If you believe that food consumption is the most relevant factor to weight gain, please review Amp's data. I think this might be the most convincing part of his argument on food:
From the New England Journal of Medicine (emphasis added):Many people cannot lose much weight no matter how hard they try, and promptly regain whatever they do lose…. Why is it that people cannot seem to lose weight, despite the social pressures, the urging of their doctors, and the investment of staggering amounts of time, energy, and money? The old view that body weight is a function of only two variables - the intake of calories and the expenditure of energy - has given way to a much more complex formulation involving a fairly stable set point for a person's weight that is resistant over short periods to either gain or loss, but that may move with age. …Of course, the set point can be overridden and large losses can be induced by severe caloric restriction in conjunction with vigorous, sustained exercise, but when these extreme measures are discontinued, body weight generally returns to its preexisting level.