#tw anti fat bias

[fatliberation]

how is obese a slur? (genuine question, not rooted in hate! )

isn’t it just a word for when someone is more than just a tad overweight? like, for if they’re… i guess the word is obese. doesn't it just mean fat?

again, no hate, just a genuine question from someone who belives everyone should love themselves and have the ability to travel with comfort… but maybe being morbidly obese shouldn’t celebrated?

do you hear yourself?

no hate, but I think your body is morbid.

no hate, you should love yourself, but I don’t think you should exist in that body.

you should be able to travel (aka the world should be accessible to you), except I draw the line at what I deem is “too big.”

you are part of the problem.

[skippydiesposting]

okay jfc I have to write a post about why the idea of "intuitive eating" rubs me the wrong way as a solution to eating disorders

not saying that it can't be a helpful tool in getting people back in touch with their bodies and unlearning certain lessons of diet culture, but I think it still enforces the societal harm that is weight stigma and discrimination. Here's why:

1. Intuitive eating still moralizes food in a hugely uncomfortable way. The whole basis of intuitive eating is centered on the idea that "if you let yourself eat the 'bad food', eventually you will start to crave the 'good food'!"

There are no bad or good foods. They are all just food. The food you eat in your everyday life is not medicine, nor is it poison, no matter what food it is. Your body needs sugar. Your body needs carbs. Your body needs fats. It's just food. It's just a way to get nutrients into your body. There's no wrong way to eat.

2. Intuitive eating still moralizes body size and implies that thinness is the correct goal. One aspect of intuitive eating is the sometimes unspoken implication that "once you learn how to eat correctly, you might not lose weight...but maybe you will, which would be great!"

In practice this is still praising weight loss, even if it's unintentional weight loss rather than intentional. It still gives the message that thinness is superior to fatness, and that thinness is a healthy ideal to strive for. Like this essay says, "Celebrating weight loss, even when it is a result of intuitive eating and having more compassion for your body, is still a commitment to thinness and still perpetuates fatphobia and diet culture."

3. Intuitive eating puts too much emphasis on hunger and hunger cues. There's the idea that once you "learn how to eat better", your hunger cues will fall into place and you'll "only eat when you're actually hungry". But guess what? You need to eat even if you're not hungry.

There are so many people who no longer, or might have never had, completely functioning satiety signals. People who have spent so long doing dieting or restrictive eating or battling eating disorders, but also people who suffer from illness or chronic disabilities which might affect the regulation of hunger cues. Some people will never feel hungry. But they still need to eat.

I've heard far too many people say that they don't eat breakfast/lunch/et cetera because they aren't hungry in the morning. As someone with a form of dysautonomia who becomes completely nonfunctional if I don't eat frequently, this attitude gets under my skin. Food is not about desire--or not entirely, as I'll get to later in the post--or about what you want to do. Food is crucial, full stop, no matter what.

I think the fatphobic myth that weight is tied to health and is something that can be controlled has created this idea of food as something optional, something that is purely driven by desire. Diet culture has made us believe that eating is simultaneously an Evil™ force that can control you and take over your body while simultaneously praising behavior of restriction, and at its heart restriction is about choice. Eating is not a choice. Eating is an entirely mandatory, necessary part of life, the same way that sleeping is. It's regulatory. It keeps you alive. The best thing you can do for your body is eat regularly and consistently.

Sometimes it's really fucking hard to eat when you don't have an appetite, or when you're nauseous. I completely understand that. Just like it's really fucking hard to sleep when you have insomnia. But you still have to do it. Eating is not optional; it's not something you do when you want to. It needs to happen regularly, every day. It's a very basic part of being a human being with a body, and no matter the state of that body, it needs to be fed.

You don't need to feel hungry to eat. Some people will never feel hungry, and they still need to eat. And it's also okay to eat without hunger, even if your basic needs of satiation and nutrition have been met. This leads me to my next point:

4. Intuitive eating puts too much emphasis on "mindful" eating. By continuing to constantly monitor and overthink your own eating behavior, it becomes a chore; it becomes a pattern of overattention and scrupulousity; it becomes something moralized, the same way that it is moralized in diet culture.

By all means, we should all try to be more mindful and intentional in our lives. But eating is just a basic fact of life. We don't consider whether we're "mindfully" sleeping, or "mindfully" taking a shower. Eating is just a part of your day, just something you need to do, and I don't think we have to focus every moment of our attention thinking about what food is wrong or right to be eating, or how we're eating it. In fact, I think everyone deserves to be mindless sometimes: everyone deserves to zone out in front of the TV, or get sucked into a video game. And that includes mindlessly eating.

In addition to being something basic and mandatory about having a human body, eating is one of the great pleasures of life, like sex or sleep. And like those things, it's completely fine if you just want to snack! For no other reason besides desire! In absence of hunger or satiety, eating can be something completely neutral and comforting. Eating can be a form of stimming for sensory seeking people; it can be fun; it can be used as a way of connecting other people. In fact, eating with other people is one of the things that induces oxytocin--known as the "love hormone"--in our brains, along with sex, childbirth, lactation, and singing with other people.

Telling people to be "mindful" when eating has the same flavor as the ways we treat drugs or alcohol in our society: "drink responsibly". "Eat mindfully". As if food is actually something that could harm us, rather than simply being the nutrients that keep us alive.

I really don't think that teaching people to overthink their food choices or behaviors is going to help anyone. Instead it needs to be clear that there are no morals attached to eating, nor the foods themselves. Eat when you need to. And also, eat when you want to. Eat for fun, for connection with other people, for pleasure, for sensory stimulation. Eat without thinking about it. That's the only way you can normalize it.

You don't need to eat in the "right way". There is no "right way". You just need to eat.

ALSO: this is meant for everybody, not just people who struggle with eating disorders or have been harmed by diet culture, but this is ESPECIALLY for fat people. Fat people are shamed constantly for the extremely natural and necessary practice of eating regardless of their actual eating habits, and I fully believe that unless we center fat people and their experiences in the anti-diet conversation, we will be trapped in the same horror of moralizing bodies, food, and basic humans needs that we have been for centuries.

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO EAT. No matter what.

[nerdyqueerandjewish]

I ordered a one piece swimsuit I’m really excited about but the sizing fucked with my brain because my waist measurement was 3 sizes up from the rest of my measurements and it’s just hard to be reminded that my body is built in a way that society views as unacceptable.

And like, I am eating healthy, I’m fairly active, and my goal was to do those things independently of their impact on my weight, and I am! And they do help me feel better physically. But it’s hard because there’s this cultural attitude of “well if you’re fat and you say you do these things, you must be lying.” And it’s like, I didn’t ask for this input, I don’t want to participate, and Yet

[theladykit]

Hey, I just want to put people on their guard: there is an article that appeared in The Washington Post today which has the potential to be extremely triggering to anyone with an eating disorder, disordered eating, or food issues, or is in a larger body. To make matters worse, it is sloppy, unnuanced reporting passed off as good and it's going to hurt a lot of people. I won't link the article because I believe it to be that harmful, but it's about dietitians who take sponsorships from food and beverage companies. Many of the dietitians the article names are rather sketchy in how they present these partnerships and in some of the advice they give, but at least one of the RDs they profile is given a lot of unfair weight and the framing they use to talk about her is next-door to sinister, especially because she's Black and primarily works with low-income, food-insecure clients. I happen to be familiar with her work, and I know that what the Post wrote about her is flat-out wrong.

I hesitate to call it a smear piece overall, because there is a grain of truth in the article, but it's taken in the worst faith possible (and some of the "facts" they report have no factual basis at all) and I want people to beware, especially people struggling with food and/or in larger bodies. Please, please protect yourselves and don't read the article if you think it might even be a little bit upsetting. Sometimes it can take awhile for that to set in, too, so if you do decide to read it, try to give yourself the time you need to process it, knowing that it might take a few days or more, and reach out to both your professional support system and your informal supports as much as is feasible. It's okay to make a mistake and think you can peruse without issue, and find out you were wrong. Just try to take care of yourselves if that happens, please.

I love you all and want you to be safe.

[stonequill]

Putting it out there - hate on Americans all you want, but turning everything into hamburgers/making constant "for my Americans its like if hamburger X"/"Americans can't understand something that isn't hamburger per person" and such come from fatphobic roots

[morning-meltdown]

TW: Eating disorders

My roommate has been diagnosed with anorexia and bulimia. I’ve had some sort of disordered eating since I was 6 until recent years after consistent therapy, my own work and a network of support through literature and podcasts to help me heal but lately it’s been so triggering. I’m not eating any differently or things like that but I am much more aware of my body which I don’t like as I practice body neutrality. She throws up the spaghetti I make because it’ll make her fat but what’s so wrong with being fat? We can’t deconstruct diet culture and anti-fat bias at this stage but I’m so close to throwing an Aubrey Gordon book at her and locking her in a room for a day.

[solarpunkcitizen]

I think we can all benefit from listening to shit statistics being ripped apart in real time. This episode is both enraging and delightful.

I put tws in the tags if it’s just not your jam today but to be clear, this podcast is pro-fat people. It’s a clear take down of issues arising from fat phobia and anti-fat bias.

[sugaftrm]

non-online shopping while fat is so annoying why do i have to call a store to ask if they have a plus-sized section, it would be nice to just walk in and find a broader range of sizes, oh and like cute things too not wearable window curtains 

[fatliberation]

I don't know if I'm looking for advice or solidarity, but I have to express this to someone.

I'm an eating disorder survivor. At my worst I was hospitalized, in 2004. Now, in my 30s I'm fat and happy, except for one thing. I want to be a mother. For me and my wife to be eligible for fertility treatment at the only clinic in the UK treating fat people I have been told to lose 20kg to get my BMI to under 40, or be refused treatment altogether.

This is horrendously triggering. I don't know what to do. Our fatness means we're already barred from adopting or fostering in England, so this clinic is my last option. I don't want to put myself and my wife through the resurgence of my eating issues, but being a parent is all I've ever wanted. This whole system is so fucked up and I hate it. Fat people have been having babies since the dawn of time, if it caused such terrible problems there wouldn't be nearly so many of us, but still they're gatekeeping who can get to be a parent.

I'm sorry. I just figure you'll understand.

Dear anon, my heart bleeds for you. I am wrapping you up in the tightest hug. I wish I could take away the pain you must be feeling being faced with this incredibly unfair decision. Not enough people realize the true extent of what anti-fatness steals from us. Our humanity. The right to a family. The restrictions on BMI and adoption in England are disgustingly inhumane. God forbid fat people raise kids. I'd say this is eugenics but it's beyond genes at this point. Nevertheless, they want our genocide. It's okay to do whatever you need to do to process it or survive it.

I've been sitting on this ask for months in hopes that I could offer you something helpful. Today, I finally came across Big Birthas, an information and support page on pregnancy, labor, and birth for fat people in the UK. They have a facebook group where I hope you might find some answers about fertility treatment, or at the very least, connect with a community of fat people who will understand your unique experience.

I'm so sorry you've been put in this horribly unjust situation. You have every right to grieve. I hope you and your wife have been taking care of yourselves and that you may surround yourselves with support. Please remember to be gentle with yourself and know that whatever decision you make about your own body here is completely justified. You have been in my thoughts for a very long time and I am wishing you all of the best with love. Please don't hesitate to use this blog as a resource, you have thousands of fat liberationists right here in your corner, many of whom would be so proud to call you mom! ❤️

[fatliberation]

hey, i really need advice and I hope it's okay to come here for that. tw for eating disorders and abuse i've been suffering with severe back and leg pain and of course my parents and doctor attributed this to my weight. my doctor has recommended a strict diet for me to lose weight and my parents ( im a minor ) are taking it upon themselves to implement this diet, restricting my food intake, punishing me for getting snacks, etc. I have a history of anorexia BECAUSE of my parents forcing me to lose weight and have recently regained all that weight, which took an extreme toll on me along with ridicule from family telling me how much better i looked when i was underweight and extremely sick. i was still suffering from the same pains at my lowest weight. my mother has a history of disordered eating and has frequently tried to and successfully forced me into doing diets with her.

Oh dear heart, I am so sorry. It is extremely inappropriate for your provider to recommend a diet, ESPECIALLY given your history with anorexia. I'm sorry that your parents continue to cause you harm, it must feel so awful to have your autonomy taken from you like that. I am enraged on your behalf. Fatphobia is so poisonous. You deserve unbiased and proper care for your pain.

Do you have any connections to adults you can trust? School faculty or mental health professionals? My first recommendation would be to find a new doctor, but I understand that my usual advice is a thousand times more difficult as a minor. If you have a therapist (hopefully one who is anti-diet), they should be able to write a letter to either your parents or your doctor, advocating for your needs and explaining how this is harming your wellbeing. They can also have a meeting with both you and your parents, if your parents agree to it. If therapy isn't an option for you right now, I recommend reaching out to either of these free ed hotlines and share exactly what you told me. These are trained professionals who can offer you much better advice than I can.

Anorexia Nervosa & Associated Disorders Hotline: 1-888-375-7767

Project HEAL (Help to Eat, Accept, and Live) Crisis Textline: text HEALING to 741741

Good luck, sweet pea. My heart is with you. I sincerely hope you're able to get out of this soon and receive ACTUAL care for your back and leg pain. Remember that there is nothing wrong with feeding yourself, and nothing wrong with existing at a higher weight, despite the messaging you're being bombarded with. One day this will all be behind you and you will have the breadth to heal. It will get better. In the meantime, please rely on friends and give yourself permission to do whatever you need to keep yourself safe. Sending buckets of love. 💕

[fatliberation]

So sorry to bother you and jump on the recent bandwagon of medical questions, especially if you have already answered this before and I haven't seen it, but my doc tried to tell me that weight loss is the best/only way to reduce/reverse liver damage and high enzyme levels when they are not caused by alcohol use. I know the genetics for the condition are in my family, and I also know that weight loss as a goal/medical treatment is generally BS. Just wondering if you or the community have any resources for improving liver health that doesn't focus on weight loss. Thank you, love your blog, it means so much to me.

I did some light googling on liver health, and already I'm sure this is one of those conditions that can be improved through diet and exercise ("diet" here meaning nutrition), but since those things are so entrenched in diet culture and people can't POSSIBLY imagine uncoupling health-promoting behaviors with weight loss, the conclusion goes from "x group did ___ behavior, and in doing so, they also lost some weight" to "their weight loss is actually the thing that improved their health" rather than. y'know. the fucking health-promoting behavior. If there's one thing I know, it's that weight loss is NEVER an effective treatment. It simply does not work. Even if it does improve some conditions, it is not sustainable beyond 1 to 5 years, and sends folks into a cycle of losing and regaining, which ends up doing the body much more harm. (Prescribed weight loss (or dieting) is also the leading predictor of eating disorders, by the way). If literally any other treatment showed time and time again that it failed in 95-99% of patients, the medical world would drop it. Instead of letting data speak for itself, we have been twisting data to fit a narrative that we already believe and seek to uphold. That is not how science works. Why we haven't labeled prescribing weight-loss as medical malpractice by now is beyond me. Well, I wish I could say it's beyond me but I know exactly why.

Sorry for the rant, I'm sure you already know this. It just gets my blood boiling!! I'm sorry you're going through this, anon. And thank you so much, I'm really glad you're getting something positive out of this blog.

My advice to you is to make it clear to your doctor that you are not open to pursuing weight loss. Ask your doctor to recommend the same treatment for you as they would for a thin patient. Here's a guide for how to advocate for yourself at the doctor's office. If you receive any pushback from your doctor, find a new one.

[nerdyqueerandjewish]

Tw descriptions of anti fatness, fatphobia, mention childhood emotional neglect

Ugh I’m in this thing for people dealing with childhood emotional neglect because sometimes people share helpful things to read.

But there’s a person who is saying that being fat made his parents selfish. And when I’m like “I’m sorry you’ve experienced whatever you have, but if your parents were skinny that would not have solved their emotional problems.” And he’s like “maybe… but it would have helped me connect to them more…” because he’s skinny and he just said a lot of other gross things ohhh boyyy I do not need to be engaging with this very unwell human

Every once in awhile I’m like 😃 yeah, maybe people understand that fat people are just people, and then I come across this type of stuff 🫠

[fatliberation]

i'm super nervous to ask about this, but i need some input.

so i've been fat my whole life, but i've only recently stopped dieting and fasting all the time, and i've been trying to eat more than one meal a day because i'm tired of starving myself.

that being said, i have been putting on some weight from all this (i went from 250 to 270 lbs in several months), and my mom has noticed. she's been really pushing back about it.

i tried to wear a cute dress to a party and she said it made my waist look "big, fat, and ugly"; she said i needed to tuck my rolls into my swimsuit and cover my "lumpy legs" when i went to the pool; and the most hurtful of all was that she told me that i would "not be able to get married until i lose some weight." she also tells me that it doesn't matter if I love my body or not, i still need to "look good for other people."

she does mean well and i can't move out yet for personal reasons, but i feel kind of stuck and i don't know what to do.

any advice?

firstly, congratulations!! 🎉 it sounds like you’ve made so much progress and I’m terribly sorry your mom is behaving that way. you do not deserve to be met with such fatphobic judgement. sounds like she really struggles with body image and is projecting all of it onto you in really nasty ways. fuck that shit!

I bet you looked fantastic in that dress, (doesn’t she know? the tummy completes the outfit!), you do Not need to tuck anything anywhere—let alone have to think about it, and I promise you that your future spouse will treasure you and your rockin body 😤❤️ you do not exist to please the eyes of other tasteless people, MOM!!

sorry I just had to rant. I feel you, dude! I’ve been going through the exaaaact same thing living with my parents this summer (and having recently put on 40-50? lbs).

It sounds like some boundaries need to be set with your mom. If she truly means well and wants the best for you, hopefully she’ll understand that the best thing to do for your general well-being is to stop making comments about your body. I hope that you feel safe enough to have a conversation like that with her. making any comment about your body at all is off ✋ limits. ✋

best of luck, my darling ❤️ don’t let her get to you - be proud!!

[fatliberation]

TW: violent fatphobia and torture

“Medical professionals” have created a weight-loss device that bolts fat people’s jaws shut, reducing them to a liquid diet. Subjects reported discomfort, speech issues, and feeling tense/embarrassed. The creators still claim “there are no adverse consequences.”

“This is a grim reminder that many ‘medical professionals’ do not view fat people as human, or deserving of ethical, humane healthcare,” says Ragen Chastain, danceswithfat.org

[ID: a 3D model of a mouth with teeth that has a small two-piece metal device connected to the molars. The device locks together to keep the jaw shut. End ID.]

Counselor and fat lib educator Hannah Fuhlendorf MA LPCC shared her thoughts this morning:

“I just want to say that I’ve seen the news about the device that doctors want to use to wire fat people’s mouths shut to keep us from eating.

I’m not avoiding talking about it because it’s unpleasant. I’m processing and caring for myself in the midst of a literal torture device getting medical approval to keep people from looking like me.

This kind of constant trauma is part of my experience as a fat person fighting against systems designed to punish and harm me.

I want to emphasize that this isn’t even the first “intervention” like this. Weight loss surgery is literally the amputation of a healthy organ for the purpose of forcing starvation by threat of excruciating physical pain and injury. We have weight loss pills that cause heart attacks, blood clots and more at significantly higher levels than would ever get approved for any other type of medication.

This, by the way, is the reason I have zero tolerance for the “but fat people’s health...” bullshit. Our health is not now and has never been a priority. Most people and organizations only care about fat people shrinking and manipulating our bodies by any means necessary. Yes, even if it means torture, sickness, or death.

If, god forbid, this device actually enters medical use (which I don’t expect) then I will have action opportunities available at that time.

For now though, it’s just another day of trying to survive in a world that would rather have me dead or in constant suffering than fat.

I’m sorry this is our world.”

(source) @hannahtalksbodies

Thank you, Hannah.

[fatliberation]

If you’ve been following the fat liberation movement, you’ve probably heard about the teenagers in West Sussex who were removed from a loving home and placed in foster care simply because they could not lose weight.

A petition created by Dr. Natasha Larmie (@fatdoctoruk) addresses the needs of the UK to stop punishing kids for being fat. Here is her call to action:

“We are calling upon West Sussex County Council to order an internal investigation in to why such blatant weight-based discrimination was allowed to occur over the course of 10 years, and why both children did not receive the correct care and support that they deserved. Furthermore we are calling on the government to act now to address the way that weight stigma impacts everyone, especially the most vulnerable members of our society.”

http://chng.it/kKZmqmpmRh

[fatliberation]

This is a difficult one to read, but it’s important to be aware of how deeply harmful and destructive anti-fat bias is. This happened this month in West Sussex. CW: Extreme fatphobia

Some words from Tracy Cox:

“Teenagers, removed from a loving home for being fat. Removed from a loving home for not using their social services-ordered fitbits or consistently attending weight watchers meetings.

Abuse and love has been completely conflated by the fear-mongering of anti-fat bias. Horrific set of priorities.”

My love and condolences to this family.

The world needs change. Now.