Food and fat (part 1)
Posted March 9, 2006 at 7:20 pm
My story with food and fat is a complicated one, but whose story isn’t? The way I got to nearly 400 lbs was to eat my way there. There’s no question of “but I don’t eat any more than” such-and-such skinny friend. No, I’m a binge eater…one of those who can eat a thousand or more calories in a sitting kind of eater.
Now, it’s not like there aren’t other factors. There are some fat genes in the family; I come from good Eastern Europeans who settled in Pittsburgh and ate pierogis and pigs in a blanket (the stuffed cabbage kind, not the little hot dogs kind).
And I am convinced that years of dieting screwed up my metabolism, messed up my body chemistry (e.g., insulin resistance), contributed to my inability to treat food like a normal person, and was largely the reason I got as fat as I did.
What was nearly as bad as the excess weight was the stress from being so friggin’ conflicted: lose the weight or love the weight?
I figured it had to be one or the other. I sure as heck didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alternating, pretty much on a daily basis, between stuffing my face and beating myself up for it. I either needed to figure out how to stop overeating (and see where I wound up) or I needed to accept the behavior and learn to live with the consequences.
As you can tell, I chose the former. However, there are folks who have chosen not to try to lose weight, like Pattie Thomas of fattypatties. And as I read more from Pattie and others in the fat acceptance camp, I’m trying to see how my thinking is badly informed by our anti-fat culture.
In looking at it again, my list of consequences may well have been able to be resolved (though perhaps not in my lifetime) by a combination of political advocacy and personal work. In a world that accommodates larger bodies, I might not have had the problem with airplanes and restaurants and bathrooms. And I might have learned, as Pattie did, to move better.
So, while my way (losing weight) may be faster (though not necessarily permanent, of course), I grant that her way (working towards fat acceptance) may be more elegant, in the sense that it’s the right thing to do and more people would benefit.
That said, I’m having a bit more trouble finding the common ground with one of Pattie’s points. She has been posting her Top 10 Things I’m Tired of Discussing. Number 3 on the list is what foods are healthy.
Since Pattie is tired of discussing this, I figured it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment on her site, though I was sorely tempted. But I don’t agree with at least part of her position, and I want to try and explain why.
First, I agree with this entirely:
The problem is that by dividing the world up into “good eaters” and “bad eaters” we have simply traded one stereotype and victimization for another.
If foods were clearly in one category or another, this might not be such a problem. But anyone who watches CNN for a month will see that a single kind of food can be moved from the “good” category to the “bad” category and back to the “good category” in record time.
This issue of “good” and “bad” foods came up over on Big Fat Blog, where visitors were discussing an article that had this to say at the end:
We just need to enjoy every last bite of our home-baked birthday cakes, then have some oatmeal for breakfast the next morning.
In the comments for this post, I wrote that I thought that this wasn’t so offensive (heck, I eat oatmeal most mornings). Pattie didn’t agree with me, and I certainly see the point that cake is not universally “better” than oatmeal (particularly the instant sugary varieties).
That said, I’m not prepared to agree with the following, from Pattie’s what foods are healthy post:
Food is something we should enjoy as human beings. It is irrelevant to fat.
Okay, this doesn’t work for me. In my world, food is not irrelevant to fat. And Pattie didn’t ask, but I think that this is a bit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I guess what we’ll have to do is agree to disagree. But in a way, that’s a shame, because I think that the fat acceptance movement would benefit from including those of us who agree that we need to change the culture, change the way that people look at those of us who are overweight, but who also want to change ourselves.
It seems to me that the fat acceptance folks feel that it is too easy to go from some personal responsibility to only personal responsbility. It is certainly clear that the pendulum is way overswung in that direction currently.
But as Pattie says in her post: “the reason that no one knows what is good for us to eat is that each and every one of us is unique in our needs.” As someone with my own unique needs, I’m not sure that Pattie can speak for me in terms of fat and food! If she is tired of discussing the issue of healthy food, that’s fine. But I’m not sure that lobbing a bomb over the wall — “food is irrelevant to fat” — is the best way to stop the discussion!
Anyways, here’s my stick in the sand. I am someone who feels strongly that eating too many refined carbs is the source of my weight. Or as I like to say, I’m allergic to sugar…it causes me to break out into big gobs of fat :).
Now, I might not have gotten to this place without years and years of yo-yo dieting, but I’m here now. And what I’ve discovered over the last year is that by really minimizing those kinds of foods and eating lots more nutritious food (i.e., fruits and vegetables), I have been able to lose weight pretty steadily, without exercise, without counting calories or excluding foods permanently, and most importantly, without endless cravings.
Food has been very much relevant to my fat.
To be continued…
March 10th, 2006 at 5:47 am
You said:
“And I am convinced that years of dieting screwed up my metabolism, messed up my body chemistry (e.g., insulin resistance), contributed to my inability to treat food like a normal person, and was largely the reason I got as fat as I did.”
Beth, are you sure we’re not twins? I’ve been saying this for the past half-dozen years or so of struggle. I have yet to speak with any physician (I’ve been to three endocrinologists, two gynecologists and an internist, and I live with a psychiatrist) who will even examine the possibility that dieting [and, for me, excessive exercise] can wreck one’s metabolism.
Learning about insulin-resistance and finding a way to eat that’s compatible with the condition has been key for me. Unfortunately, because of my past working-out history, I also need to be much more active than I’d like. It’s working, though.
March 10th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Wow, just wow. I cruised over there and had a look at the comments. Wow.
March 10th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Yep. And those are actually pretty mild! I’ll have more in part 3 of this topic today or tomorrow.
March 11th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
I’m not sure dieting screwed up your metabolism, but I’m darn sure it screwed up your ability to have a normal relationship with food.
In “Losing It”, Laurie Fraser also writes about an experiment done with a group of people given a milkshake to drink, supposedly to rate the taste. They had previously filled out a questionnaire to sort out which of them were restrained eaters (dieters) and which were not. The researchers measured how much of the shakes was consumed by each participant. Those who were not restrained eaters ate less lunch after drinking the shake but among the dieters, the more of the shake they drank, the more lunch they ate afterward. They weren’t eating according to hunger, but according to how badly they felt they’d broken their diets.
These researchers went on to do 8 more years of research. They found that dieting disrupted people’s physical sense of when and how much to eat, and led to overeating. Not only did the dieters eat more than non-dieters in experiments where they had to eat a high-calorie snack, breaking thier diet, but they ate mroe than non-dieters when they believed the snack was high-calorie, even when in fact it was low-calorie.
Over and over the researchers found evidence of the “what-the-hell effect” of overeating after breaking a diet. Dieters were also prompted to binge in response to emotions, alcohol, anxieties, and anything else that disrupted their strict sense of being “good”. Dieting teaches people to ignore the physical feelings of hunger and they learn to rely on external rules to control their eating. They inevitably break those rules. Dieting is emotionally disempowering and causes people to lose the eating skills they were born with.
March 12th, 2006 at 10:42 am
If I were you, I would stay away from “fat acceptance.” They’re a very angry, negative group of people. Continue your journey to health joyfully. And don’t play Duelling Studies with them, either. Just ask them: if reducing calories doesn’t cause you to lose weight, how come all the victims who went into concentration camps fat came out skinny?
I couldn’t agree with you more about that Big Fat Blog guy. He is heartlessly manipulating all those poor lonely women who are desperate for male acceptance.
March 12th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Whoa! You’re not agreeing with me about Paul in this post! That isn’t at all my belief. I think Big Fat Blog is a great site, and I’m sorry that I didn’t get a better sense of the community and their issues before naively jumping in. Paul, in particular, seems to do a very good job of keeping the site on point, while trying to support the many different discussions that the community wants.
Also, at the risk of being difficult, I think that many (most?) FAers realize that reducing calories can cause people to lose weight. What it seems that some believe is that people who lose weight by dieting overwhelming gain it back and then some. This is certainly what I believe.
March 14th, 2006 at 8:01 am
Hi Beth,
I am seeing your blog for the first time, due to the link Paul provided in the forums at Big Fat Blog.
Reading this entry reminds me a little of my own experience, though I wouldn’t say I was ever a compulsive overeater/binger. As far as resources go, I know you’ve probably got a whole program worked out, or maybe a team of health professionals, since it sounds like you’ve got some health complications as well.
But I wanted to say that I recently saw a dietitian who’d been trained in Ellyn Satter’s (another dietitian) methods called “Treating the Dieting Casualty.” You sound like you might describe yourself as such.
Anyway, I found it to be an interesting mix of size acceptance philosophy, with, of course, emphasis on health and nutrition. My dietitian told me that of COURSE it is possible for people to lose weight…she just didn’t think it was the best, overarching goal to have. I don’t know your situation, but if you’re interested in nutrition counselling, I’d highly recommend finding a dietitian trained in this method. I think if you email the folks at www.ellynsatter.com they can provide you a referral to someone in your area.
And also, regarding the milkshake study, I actually met one the researchers who did it (Janet Polivy.) For me, it was like meeting a rock star (I’m working on my bachelor’s in nutrition.)
Good luck, Beth!
March 14th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
I consider myself part of “fat acceptance,” (I also consider myself neither angry nor negative) and I also believe that there are ways to improve one’s health that both may and may not result in weight loss. I have done some of both of those things in the past couple of years. I think the Big Fat Blog is a great site, though I very much disagree with some of the people who frequent it.
For me, as someone who’s been through the mill with a lifetime (a short one, as I’m 22, but nevertheless) of dieting & cycles of starving and binge-eating, food plays a huge role in my actual fatness, but a relatively insubstantial role in my conception of myself as fat. I didn’t get fat until I got fucked-up about food, and I didn’t get fucked-up about food until I decided I was fat.