Somebody got in there before me like I thought

Anon, here’s what I wrote in reply to you, before Indi answered brilliantly quicker than I did:

I’ll answer this in more detail later but because we’re sharing an inbox right now and I’m scared somebody will answer this before I can and I really want to do this one so this answer will be short -

Your body needs saturated fat, because it needs saturated fat.

  • People have been eating it for hundreds of years and, well, not dying of heart attacks or whatever health concern is attached to saturated fat these days.
  • If you don’t eat any saturated fat, your cholesterol goes through the roof just like it would, in theory, with a person who eats only saturated fat.
  • About that: do you know where the ‘more butter = more heart attacks’ theory came from? Ancel Keys in the 1900s was doing studies on war nutrition (which, incidentally, was how he came to do the Minnesota starvation experiment). He hypothesised that eating more saturated fat / cholesterol would make your cholesterol levels higher and give you a heart attack, basically. He then collected data from 7 countries which supported his hypothesis and published his paper. Given that he had masses of respect already, the theory caught on.
  • Until somebody collected even more data - I think it went up to 23 countries, I’m not sure, it’s too early for me to think straight - and the connection completely disappeared.
  • I’ll write more about this later today because I haven’t, in a while, but to be honest I’m trying my hardest to not laugh at the ‘my dietician is registered so she must be right / you don’t have a degree so you’re wrong’ logic.
  • Okay, so the ‘my dietician is flawless because degree’ logic: 
  • If I listed the number of stupid things my ‘registered dietician’ has said to me in the last year, I’d be here for about an hour. I’ve had a friend of mine be told by a ‘registered dietician’ that 1500 calories is ‘more than enough’ to grow and develop, at age 16. (Just off the top of my head.)
  • I have, sadly, even more stories about ‘professionals’ saying stupid / illogical things, if you want to hear them… Moral of the story?
  • A lot of these people are very fatphobic (of both the dietary kind and the body kind). A fair few of these people are in it for the wrong reasons (I don’t have the links bookmarked, but there’s a much higher coincidence of restrictive eating disordered behaviours in nutrition-science students than in the general population) - just to put it out there, I don’t know if it matters. A lot of these people are just parroting the ‘government advice’ about trying as hard as you can to never eat butter again in your life ‘because heart disease’.
  • Here’s a nice little graph I found within 30 seconds on Google. These tribes live ridiculously long lives.
  • I wonder what the US/UK governments would have to say about that saturated fat percentage. Aren’t we supposed to be getting 10% as the absolute maximum?! ….perhaps not.
  • As for the ‘all food is not the same’ statement - did you even read this post?
  • Just in case you haven’t, and don’t want to, I quote myself: “Foods are different. Not ‘better’ or ‘worse’. Just different.”
  • Yes, of course a stick of deep-fried butter is different to a piece of lettuce, but morally all the foods are the same. Obviously, they’re nutritionally different - but putting some foods on a pedestal and declaring some foods as ‘unhealthy’, ‘bad’, ‘forbidden’ even, is very counterproductive.
  • The assumption we’ve grown to have that less calories = better is very, very sad. A little sister of one of my friends went up to her the other day and asked, “what are calories? I mean, I know they’re bad, but what are they?”
  • Ditto for ‘less fat = better’.
  • I’m seriously tired, so I can’t venture out into Google right now, but here’s a study.
  • In a nutshell:
  • I don’t have a degree, no. I’m not exactly planning on getting a nutrition degree either. That doesn’t magically render everything I say as ‘wrong’.
  • You ‘NEED’ saturated fat because if you don’t eat it, your cholesterol levels will rise past normality. (Learnt this the hard way, I’m not the only one. And, yes, even my ‘registered dietician’ agreed with this - she was the one who told me it in the first place.)
  • I’m not saying eat deep fried butter all day. I’m saying, please try to chill about food and its ‘nutritional superiority’ (i.e. nuts > meat, etc.), it will only do good.
  • Please read the post where I said all food is equal again, I’m 99% sure you missed the point.
  • Saying that the things I say are ‘just wrong’ is a bit of a blanket statement, no? What else do you disagree with?
  • Oh, here’s another study about the ‘saturated fat = heart attack’ myth.

I’m honestly exhausted, so I’m sorry if this was incoherent.
I just had to answer because this question (please hear me out) is a little bit…typical, if you get what I mean. It’s the sort of eating-disordered-anxiety-driven things I get thrown at me sometimes saying that “3000 calories would make everybody obese/die of obesity” or “but nobody normal eats 3000 calories a day”, etc., etc.
Feel free to ask more.
I’m sorry, but I can’t help but laugh at the ‘Please, show me your degree.’ part.
I feel like it should have this gif next to it:

I’ll write in more detail later but here’s a very very short summary:

There is 0 actual connection between saturated fat and heart disease. (oh!! that reminds me. Here’s another study. It puts the biased ‘Super size me’ thing to shame.) Heart disease is complex and is caused by many things, and flat-out saying that cheese makes you ‘get’ one is just too simplistic. ‘Registered dieticians’ have been known to say a fair amount of bs, I really should keep a record of all the stories I’ve heard, for future reference - basically, the title doesn’t make them magically correct in all cases. Ditto for anybody with a degree. Please read the ‘all food is equal’ post because I’m 99% sure you didn’t understand it. 

And send in anything else you disagree with and I’ll respond to it at a time when I’m actually awake and functioning. (This question was just an emergency one.)

Somebody somewhere said once: “All food has nutrients. Nutrients are good for you. THE END” which I thought was wonderful. 

- Kate

This is b-eat’s update on their site, and the Tweet I sent them. (Here is the original post I made about this.) Oh, I feel so damn good right now. I made a difference :). (A small and insignificant difference, but hey, a difference’s a difference.) I guess the assumption ‘all obese people binge-eat’ annoyed me. If they put obesity there because it’s an eating disorder symptom to them, why put it next to anorexia, which is an illness - if they wanted to show that they ‘offer help for symptoms’, shouldn’t it have said, “we offer support for dizziness, weakness, lanugo, obesity, low concentration and low self-esteem, to name but a few”? Maybe I’m just being weird, I don’t know, but seeing ‘obesity’ listed next to ‘anorexia’, as if obesity was an eating disorder/mental illness in itself, made me sad.
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This is b-eat’s update on their site, and the Tweet I sent them. (Here is the original post I made about this.) Oh, I feel so damn good right now. I made a difference :). (A small and insignificant difference, but hey, a difference’s a difference.) I guess the assumption ‘all obese people binge-eat’ annoyed me. If they put obesity there because it’s an eating disorder symptom to them, why put it next to anorexia, which is an illness - if they wanted to show that they ‘offer help for symptoms’, shouldn’t it have said, “we offer support for dizziness, weakness, lanugo, obesity, low concentration and low self-esteem, to name but a few”? Maybe I’m just being weird, I don’t know, but seeing ‘obesity’ listed next to ‘anorexia’, as if obesity was an eating disorder/mental illness in itself, made me sad.
Zoom
This is b-eat’s update on their site, and the Tweet I sent them. (Here is the original post I made about this.) Oh, I feel so damn good right now. I made a difference :). (A small and insignificant difference, but hey, a difference’s a difference.) I guess the assumption ‘all obese people binge-eat’ annoyed me. If they put obesity there because it’s an eating disorder symptom to them, why put it next to anorexia, which is an illness - if they wanted to show that they ‘offer help for symptoms’, shouldn’t it have said, “we offer support for dizziness, weakness, lanugo, obesity, low concentration and low self-esteem, to name but a few”? Maybe I’m just being weird, I don’t know, but seeing ‘obesity’ listed next to ‘anorexia’, as if obesity was an eating disorder/mental illness in itself, made me sad.
Zoom

This is b-eat’s update on their site, and the Tweet I sent them. (Here is the original post I made about this.)

Oh, I feel so damn good right now. I made a difference :). (A small and insignificant difference, but hey, a difference’s a difference.)

I guess the assumption ‘all obese people binge-eat’ annoyed me.

If they put obesity there because it’s an eating disorder symptom to them, why put it next to anorexia, which is an illness - if they wanted to show that they ‘offer help for symptoms’, shouldn’t it have said, “we offer support for dizziness, weakness, lanugo, obesity, low concentration and low self-esteem, to name but a few”?

Maybe I’m just being weird, I don’t know, but seeing ‘obesity’ listed next to ‘anorexia’, as if obesity was an eating disorder/mental illness in itself, made me sad.

I tweeted b-eat about this. They’ll probably ignore me, like they did before (sigh). Anyway, this is just something that really gets on my nerves - people assuming that all obese people don’t just binge-eat, but actually have binge-eating disorders. b-eat isn’t just assuming that. b-eat is actually said here that obesity itself is an eating disorder. I’m disappointed, because I support b-eat. (I even donated £200 to them last month, so I mean that.) But this? I’m seriously hoping it’s a slip-up, and that they don’t actually believe this as an organisation. (Not that that would make this sort of assumption any more ‘okay’.)
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I tweeted b-eat about this. They’ll probably ignore me, like they did before (sigh). Anyway, this is just something that really gets on my nerves - people assuming that all obese people don’t just binge-eat, but actually have binge-eating disorders. b-eat isn’t just assuming that. b-eat is actually said here that obesity itself is an eating disorder. I’m disappointed, because I support b-eat. (I even donated £200 to them last month, so I mean that.) But this? I’m seriously hoping it’s a slip-up, and that they don’t actually believe this as an organisation. (Not that that would make this sort of assumption any more ‘okay’.)
Zoom

I tweeted b-eat about this. They’ll probably ignore me, like they did before (sigh).

Anyway, this is just something that really gets on my nerves - people assuming that all obese people don’t just binge-eat, but actually have binge-eating disorders. b-eat isn’t just assuming that. b-eat is actually said here that obesity itself is an eating disorder.

I’m disappointed, because I support b-eat. (I even donated £200 to them last month, so I mean that.) But this? I’m seriously hoping it’s a slip-up, and that they don’t actually believe this as an organisation. (Not that that would make this sort of assumption any more ‘okay’.)

Slightly unrelated, maybe interesting, most likely not. I’ve been kind of stalking the entire ‘thin privilege’ debate for a good couple of weeks now, and sometimes I really do think it gets very extreme. So, here is my attempt at a compromise, and to try and make sense of it all. 

-Kate

realthinprivilege:

[submission]

I’m glad your blog exists, because I think that there always needs to be ‘2 sides to the argument’, but I’ve got to say sometimes the stuff you post makes me…idk, it makes me really uncomfortable. This, for example:

“i have an eating disorder!”

are you aware of how many mental health professionals there are in the world? having a mental illness and not getting help for it is quite pathetic.

Just to put it out there, first: I am not ‘fat’. I may feel like it, sure, but logically, I am not. I have (had?) an eating disorder (now, I am in recovery and doing great). I have found it hard to get help / to be taken seriously by doctors at certain points - I’ve actually met a one who told me that “real anorexia is <25kg, anything else is kidding yourself” - even though I met all the diagnosis criteria for anorexia nervosa, BMI <17.5 included.

How bigger people manage to cope with that sort of discrimination in the mental health field is beyond me. I get (kind of) the point you were making there ^, but sometimes (often, actually), not getting mental health help - especially to do with eating disorders - is nothing to do with being pathetic or lazy. It’s about being terrified of being told that you are ‘too normal-weighted’ (or too ‘fat’, even!!) to have a restrictive eating disorder.

I’ve had it happen to me even when I was below the ‘diagnosis marker’ for anorexia, so again, I can’t even imagine how often it must happen / how awful it feels for those who do not meet that marker.

Also, just something I’ve sent in to you anonymously before but I think it needs to be repeated: YES, fat people do get unnecessarily bashed, and YES, fat/thin is determined by genetics, but there really should be common sense in it too. If you have so much fat on your body that you physically cannot move, then there’s an issue. If you’re unnaturally thin due to a restrictive eating disorder, then there’s an issue.

I’ve seen perfectly healthy people who were ‘fat’ (my ‘obese’ grandma with perfect bloodwork who lived until 93, for example), and I do believe - no, know - that some people are meant to be larger than others. And that’s fine. It goes the other way as well - some people are meant to be thinner than others. And that’s fine.

(Likewise, some people are meant to be taller, some are shorter, some have lighter hair, some have darker hair, some have lighter skin, some have darker skin, and so on.)

I should also add that the real problem is not the weight, but, well, the problem. If a person suffers from an eating disorder/disordered eating, they should pay attention to the weight changes, yes, but must focus primarily on healing the actual eating disorder, and not the weight. If a person suffers from metabolic disorders, they should pay attention to the weight changes, yes, but must focus primarily on healing the actual hypothyroidism, and not the weight.

My point is that people need to focus on health, not weight, and ‘health’ does include (amongst many things) being happy. It also includes being at a weight that is comfortable for your body, being at a weight that you maintain through truly normal eating, and non-militant* exercise…

* = too many people do exercise just for the sake of ‘burning calories’, and that makes me sad, because sport is about much more than that. If you do it that way, you’ll never learn to love it or appreciate it, and you’ll make yourself unhappy. If you don’t love it, don’t bother.

…that said, people should have the right to not be insulted and judged for their size. (In my opinion, ‘fat’ people do have it worse than ‘thin’ people, but it very definitely does happen both ways.) I see and hear way, way too many people get judged and laughed at and basically humiliated for their size, and it makes me sad and quite angry, even.

I’ve seen it happen to ‘thin’ people, I’ve seen it happen to ‘fat’ people, I’ve seen it happen to ‘normal’ people, and the judgements really should stop. It doesn’t really matter who has it worse, at the core of things - if all judgement would disappear, then all judgement would disappear, and that’s what needs to happen. Fighting over who has it ‘worse’ is kind of pointless - if people - any people - are made unhappy because of society’s snappy, rude and misinformed judgements, then society needs to change, and that’s what matters.

I hope this made sense - it did in my head, but often that doesn’t really mean much. :)

Why Food Addiction Doesn't Really Exist: 'Food addiction, natural rewards, and self-fulfilling prophecies.'

bumsquash:

This kind of appropriation is misplaced. Define your condition on its own terms. Society sells calorie restriction as a healthy lifestyle and splits food into healthy/unhealthy.

There doesn’t need to be even more pathologization of food to add to that.

(Source: fyoured)

Junkfood Science: 'How we've come to believe overeating causes obesity'

reality-otherwise-specified:

and this is on 1600 cals a day THINK ABOUT IT

Exactly! Honestly, if you haven’t read the above article, please do. It’s definitely in my ‘top 3 articles of all time, ever’.

This post is also essential:

fyoured:

  • completely healthy (physically and mentally) guys were fed 1600 calories a day for a couple of months (3-4)
  • (comparable to 1300 calories a day for women)
  • (pretty low exercise levels)
  • became neurotic, obsessed with food, miserable, felt ‘fat’
  • lost 25% of body weight
  • then:

  • all were convinced they were ‘binging’
  • all were convinced they were fat/would become fat
  • (one guy even cut off his hand)
  • some began to purge because they felt so guilty for eating ‘so much’
  • all collected cook books, recipes, hoarded/collected/organised food a lot
  • all displayed massive personality changes during both starvation and refeeding
  • all met diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa
  • none became ‘obese’ or ‘fat’ or ‘binge eaters’, even after eating up to 10,000 calories a day due to intense hunger
  • all described this hunger as ‘maybe I’m just eating because I’m bored’ or ‘I’m hungry but I’m not hungry’ or ‘I just can’t stop eating’
  • none became ‘obese’ or ‘fat’ or ‘binge eaters’
  • all were restored to their natural size and shape naturally with no restriction in ≈1 year after weight restoration (some ‘overshot’ their natural weights temporarily due to bloating in the midsection etc whilst their bodies were still repairing)
  • idk how relevant you will find this/ how accurate the information is (I’m pretty sure it’s 100% accurate but then again it’s 5:52am), but this is so important

I can’t find the original sources because I’m too tired but have these: [x], [x], [x].

(Source: fyoured)

from hearttrack:

Hello, dear (: I still really enjoy reading your blog! Just wanted to tell you so you will surely not forget how important you are to so many people all over the world. Keep up! <3

Also I wanted to ask about your opinion on diet shows on tv this time… I’ve been watching couple of episodes of ‘Supersize vs Superskinny’ and ‘Secret Eaters’. Such shows are meant to help people with obesity in the US and UK but they are AWFUL! The last episode I saw a women got a diet plan cut down to 1500kcal per day and it just shocked me (glad it didn’t trigger me though!). Maybe you find some time to have a look? I can’t really believe that the shock therapies or diet plans they get there are truely healthy. Bullshit!

Anyway, stay healthy and happy, dear! <3 Thanks for reading xoxo 

Thank you, first of all, so much :) and you’re so, so right about those shows. I wrote a long-ish post about Supersize vs Superskinny here, and one about the obesity epidemic here, but ugh, those shows frustrate me more than I can describe, they really do. 

A little word on BMI categories

That wasn’t the point of the previous post :P, but either way here you go:

BMI categories were ‘bumped down’ by a NIH committee in 1998; most of the members at the time were affiliated with commercial weight-loss industries such as Weight Watchers. The man who chaired the whole thing, I think, was this guy:

F Xavier Pi-Sunyer, MD, MPH

Grant/Research Support: Novo Nordisk (new weight loss drug); Merck (new weight loss drug). Consultant/Advisory Boards: Novo Nordisk (diabetes mellitus, obesity); AstraZeneca (obesity); McNeil Nutritionals (non-caloric sweeteners); Weight Watchers (obesity).

The normal category used to be 20-27.

(22-27, I think I read in multiple places recently, is the BMI ‘range’ associated with longest life expectancy. Can’t find the exact sources, but here are some relevant-ish links: [x], [x].

The markers for diabetes diagnosis, may I add, were also shifted down in 1997.

So idk, I’m still pretty skeptical of the whole ‘obesity and diabetes’ thing.)

Even so, the point of that (somewhat pathetic, I agree) little post was to help maybe try to maybe change how you think about these things. For example I still tell myself when I need to, “I think I’m fat, but I’m not, and even if I was, it doesn’t matter any more than my eye colour doesn’t matter” - if it wasn’t helpful then I’m sorry, I tried :)

Anonymous ASKED:

I personally read undressedskeleton's blog and i have to say i think you give her a bad name. her recipes may be low calorie, but for some people it's a healthy way to lose weight (perhaps an obese person?) i find it kind of cruel that you feel her recipes are unhealthy when in fact most of them work for people like my boyfriend for example who wants to lose weight (being 19 and almost 250lbs) i feel you're too quick to judge someone simply because they choose to diet...

(Post being referenced.)

I feel her blog is unhealthy because it portrays food as numbers, and some food ‘superior’ to others. She talks about ‘bad’ foods and ‘good’ foods a lot, and generally tells people to avoid cheese and bread. She also encourages people to choose food for its nutritional value (read: calories) alone, which is just wrong, because once again: food is not numbers. 

“12g saturated fat! Gross!” - yeah, okay. You know you need saturated fat in your diet?

“Almost zero calories! Awesome!” - yay, because calorie free food is just so GOOD, right?

I could go on for much longer, sadly, but I’ll stop there. Basically, the assumption her blog gives out is the following: count calories, count everything, eat mostly plants - which makes me mad, because it took me a lot of time, effort and tears to break out of that cycle. (Have a look at this question, it’s very similar to yours.)

If a person actually needs to lose weight, then they do that by eating according to their true hunger. They challenge any compulsive-overeating behaviours they may have, and they participate in activities they enjoy and love, and they do not reduce food and exercise to an equation.

If you lose weight by counting calories, then you’ll never really learn how to eat, which at the end of the day is the goal. So, don’t count calories when losing weight. It will just make you obsessed and miserable.

Relevant questions:

  • “What do you think of the obesity epidemic?” answer here.
  • “I’m scared I’ll become obese…” answer here.
  • “You just want to make people fat and unhealthy and die of heart disease and explode of OBESITY!”  answer here. (okay, I may have exaggerated the question a little bit, but seriously)
  • “I’m overweight, how can I lose weight healthily?” answer here.

Losing weight to x lbs is stupid. Each body has its own pre-disposed ideal weight and trying to ‘make’ your body weigh x is very counterproductive. Trying to trick your body’s hunger is very counterproductive. People need to start working with their bodies, not against them.

Yes, in weight loss, too.

By eating ‘healthy’ and ‘low-cal’ foods alone, you’re depriving yourself, and you’re losing touch with joy, because food is, yes, enjoyable. Food is not ‘just fuel’, food is a whole experience, food is a part of life, food is not numbers and foods are certainly not either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Eating should be relaxed and spontaneous and not filled with rules and regulations.

Saying that food is ‘just fuel’ is like saying that sex is only for reproduction. (Like, I’m sorry, but seriously.)

I don’t judge people who choose to start eating intuitively and get to their true weights - I judge people who start to count calories and people who preach how ‘superior’ some foods are to others.

I’m reading her blog now and it makes me sad, because that is exactly how my eating disorder started. I cut out all salts, sat fats, added sugars. I counted calories in everything that passed my mouth. I became obsessed with having the ‘healthy’ version of everything. I became more and more isolated because even her tips on ‘avoiding ‘unhealthy’ food in social situations’ didn’t apply to my situations.

I threw all my hopes for a better life into ‘healthy’ eating (read: weight loss/thinness/slimness/insert word of choice), like many others, and of course I didn’t find any happiness, because guess what?

True happiness cannot be found in numbers, calories, and saying ‘no’ to a ‘bad’ food repeatedly. I wasted a whole year believing otherwise, and I regret it with all my heart. I want to spend the rest of my life making sure other people never, ever, ever believe that, either. 

I mean, I know not everyone who follows her ‘tips’ is going to develop an ED, but even so. It’s just all very… unnecessary.

It was a really good question, thank you.

Food for thought. Our society has become weird. Here&#8217;s a parody.
Zoom

Food for thought.

Our society has become weird.

Here’s a parody.

Tags obesityetcdiet