Fat People Aren’t The Enemy…

It seems pretty obvious to us fatties but it seems to require being said over and over (and over) again… FAT PEOPLE ARE NOT THE ENEMY!

Sorry for the cap but maybe someone will actually hear me this time… (not that I am holding my breath over that or anything). It is refreshing to read an article that finally acknowledges that the ‘war on obesity’ is actually a ‘war on fat people’. The ‘war’ isn’t on fat so much as individuals and the way we are perceived as living and the innate character flaws we are presumed to lug along with our lumbering frames.  The whole concept of health insurance in the US continues to boggle my mind simply because the system we have here in Australia is SO much different. So very, very much different. I do not need private health insurance to go to a doctor, to a specialist or to hospital. I can have it, if I so choose and in some instances, it can benefit me to have it but it is not necessary and when being admitted to my local hospital, it really makes little to no different if I have private health cover or not. Not to mention that our health cover is in NO WAY associated with our employment (or lack thereof). So yeah, the US thing makes my head hurt.

To quote Rockefeller University’s Jeffrey Friedman – ‘Obesity is not a personal failing’. Hallelujah! Someone else who gets it.

High Traffic Areas May Lead to Kids’ Obesity

There isn’t a lot to say about this one without resorting to a resounding ‘Well, der….’.  It seems glaringly obvious that if an area is high traffic, it is likely to be considered by parents to be less safe for their children to play outside. Less playing outside can lead to less physically active children and some children who are less physically active gain weight. Not all, some. So yeah, high traffic areas can be part of the reason some kids get fat. But the emphasis here should be on the physical activity, not the weight of the kids in question. It shouldn’t matter if they are fat, as long as they are being as active as they can be.

Maybe It’s Time to Emphasise Fitness Rather than Fatness

Again… well, der…

As we keep saying over and over (and over) again, fat doesn’t always equate with unfit, just as thin doesn’t always equate with fit.

Thoughts and opinions expressed in items linked to may not necessarily align with my own thoughts and opinions and may not be ‘fat friendly’.  Read at your own peril!
Maternal mortality rate soars, obese mothers blamed

Doctors and some researchers immediately want to blame the increase in the maternal mortality rate on obesity, even thought the research doesn’t support this claim at all.

Are you afraid of gaining weight?

I’ve heard of more than one occasion where people left Fat Acceptance becasue they gained weight.

Is it ok to talk about your daughters’ weight if it’s for the national good?

Two weeks after announcing the unnerving news that childhood obesity has tripled over the last 30 years, and unveiling her own initiative to combat it, Michelle Obama has offended critics by discussing her own “wake-up” moment—when the family pediatrician told her that daughters Sasha and Malia were becoming overweight.

In fighting obesity, Michelle Obama eats foot

As she takes up the pressing issue of childhood obesity in America, Michelle Obama seems to have started by putting something in her mouth. Namely, her foot.

New York public school’s whole milk swindle

Instead of monitoring children’s weights after removing whole milk from school cafeterias and replacing it with low fat or no-fat milk, it just measured the difference in overall calories entering the cafeteria system and concluded that as the children couldn’t eat them, they couldn’t turn them into fat, and therefore they were better off.

The Obesity Backlash Begins

The wonderfully named 31-year-old National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance has seen its membership increase 20 percent each year for the last five years, the Times reports.

by Australian feminist cartoonist Judy Horacek

Thoughts and opinions expressed in external sites are not necessarily representative of my own thoughts and opinion. Read linked items at your own peril!

Doctors miss major cause of infertility and obesity

Gail Donnelly’s classmates nicknamed her “Knobby” because she was so skinny all her bones seemed to poke out from under her skin. But when Donnelly turned 27, that once knobby frame disappeared under mysteriously ballooning weight. Her diet hadn’t changed, she was still walking several miles a day, but she gained 50 pounds in just six months.

Fat behaves differently in patients with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome

Polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, is the most common hormonal disorder of women of childbearing age, affecting approximately 10 percent of women. It is the most common cause of infertility, and an important risk factor for early diabetes in women.

The skinny on fat

Research indicates that discrimination based on weight has been increasing in recent years.

Michelle Obama puts her daughters on a diet

Michelle Obama started a campaign to tackle childhood obesity in the U.S. on a personal vein – with an admission that her own daughters were becoming overweight before a diet nipped the problem in the bud.

The First Lady said that she had been warned by the family paediatrician that ’something was getting out of balance’ with her two children Malia 11, and Sasha, 8.

No surgery – a 15 minute cure for obesity

The breakthrough treatment, considered a cheap and safe alternative to surgery, involves a device called EndoBarrier — a plastic sleeve that is inserted into the intestine of a patient to prevent food being absorbed into the body.

My son started secondary school yesterday. Here in my state of Australia, secondary school commences with Year 7, when the student is generally 11 or 12 (depending on whether they were born before or after the cut off date). My son, being a July baby, is 12 1/2 just as I was when I started high school. While we live in the same town that I went to high school in and we live in the same house I lived in from when I was 16. While the high school I attended is within a five minute walk, we chose not to send our son there. We elected to send him to a different secondary school in our town, one that we think will suit his academic and social needs more appropriately.

While he was nervous about starting at a new school where he pretty much knows no one (only three other students from his primary school are attending this secondary school, they are all girls and none of them are in his class this year), he was stoic about it and seemed to enjoy his first day. He told me he made two new mates and was quite pleased about it all. As was I. Primary school was not a fun time in my life and while high school was a million times better, being the fat kid was still a social stigma I had to bear. Because of my own experiences at school I have always worried about my son’s school experience, not wanting for a moment for him to have an experience that is in any way similar to my own.

Naturally, I try to keep it to myself, this panic I have about his social experience of schooling. I don’t think letting him know about it will help him in any way. It is my issue, not his. My son is not fat. Far from it. He would be at the low end of the BMI for his age. He inherited his father’s genetics in that regard, in regard to his appearance in general actually. My son looks nothing like me and obviously, nothing like his stepfather. Interestingly enough there is a resemblance between my son and my daughter (whose father is my son’s stepfather). But anyway, there is no reason for my son to be socially ostracised due to his weight. Even so, he was called ‘fat’ when he was at primary school. And he believed it for some time. He would squeeze the loose skin folds on his stomach and tell me he was fat. There was no fat, only skin. Thankfully we managed to navigate that time without too much drama and it hasn’t been an issue for quite a few years now.

So when my son told me today that he spent lunchtime on his own, I knew it wasn’t because of the reasons I often spent lunchtimes alone at primary school. Yet dread still clenched its cold clammy hand around my heart and panic seeped from between dread’s spindley fingers. I had to bite my tongue in order not to grill my son as to why he spent the lunch break alone. Why wasn’t he with the friends he had made the day before? Why wasn’t he trying to fit in with the other kids? Why, why, why? My son is content in his own company. He is a relatively shy boy until he gets to know you. He isn’t a leader yet he isn’t a total sheep either. He hasn’t hit the ‘interested in girls’ stage (outwardly anyway) and he isn’t obsessed with music or sport as other kids his age are. He likes music and he plays sport but they don’t dominate his life. He would rather read a book (like his mother!) or play computer games. He has a small circle of friends outside of school. But he is not an alpha personality. He is not an over achiever. He is not me and he is not the sort of child I was at the same age. I have to remind myself of that. I have to remind myself to let him live HIS life and not in any way try to relive my own life through him.

Today was the second day of his high school life and he spent the lunch break by himself, by his own choice. I have to remind myself this is not a big deal. I know I spent the first few days of high school with some girls that, by the second week, I had vowed and declared never to hang around with again. And I didn’t. I ended up with a different group of friends and we were all friends for practically the entire 6 years we went to school together. Some I still keep in touch with now.

So even though my past came flooding back because of my son’s present, I have to remember that not only is it MY past, it is the PAST. Not only is he not the same kid I was, I am no longer the kid I was. Everything is different in that regard and I don’t have to relive it for myself or through him.

Sometimes I just need reminding about those sorts of things.