"'I’ve had people question whether I truly love myself if I want to be thinner,' [said Anne Coleman, who weighs 200 pounds and considers herself to be 'body positive'].... 'I kind of feel stuck between people bashing me for having obesity and telling me I should lose weight, and the other half that says you should love yourself and that means you shouldn’t lose weight,' said Sarah Bramblette, 42, of Miami. 'I’m bad for wanting to lose weight, and I’m bad for not losing weight.'... Molly Carmel, 42, understands the conflict between wanting to be thinner and wanting to rebel against cultural norms. At her heaviest, she weighed 350. She lost 170 pounds from 'gastric bypass surgery and bulimia,' as she put it. Then she founded The Beacon Program, an eating disorder center in Manhattan. While she does weigh clients, she doesn’t let them see the number. 'I’m not saying to get into this skinny mini body... But when you’re eating in a way that’s supporting a really heavy body, it’s arguable that that’s self-love. When I weighed 325 pounds, I couldn’t get into the shower. My underwear stopped fitting. That girl deserves to release weight if she wants to, culture or no culture.'"
From
"Fighting Fat Discrimination, but Still Wanting to Lose Weight/Is it OK to be 'body positive' while striving to be thinner?" (NYT).
That's an interesting expression: "release weight." It replaces "lose weight." It suggests the weight would like to go, and you're letting it, rather than that you're somehow oblivious and dropping it somewhere.
Is this language change being promoted? I'm not seeing much of it on the web, though I did find
this article at a website called Wholistically You:
Years ago, my Wing Chun Sufi taught me that “we do not lose weight, we release weight”. At first I didn’t quite understand what he was saying, until he explained that whenever you lose something our instinctual nature as humans, is to find it or want it back. He went further to explain that if we truly wanted to lose something, or to give something up, then we needed to release it....
I adopted the language, understood the power behind what I was saying and watched as it manifested in my life, and in my lovely body. The results I have garnered have been life altering....
We do not achieve results. We
garner them.
Posts
58 comments:
Release the murder donuts!
That's an interesting expression: "release weight." It replaces "lose weight." It suggests the weight would like to go, and you're letting it, rather than that you're somehow oblivious and dropping it somewhere.
That seems to be more of this "stuff has agency" trend that is going on. I did not do it, the gun just went off. I didn't do it the car jumped into gear. I didn't do it, the lamp just broke.
It is NEVER ever MY fault. Stuff just happens, bad stuff anyway. Everyone owns the good stuff but bad stuff just happens.
In this case if the weight doesn't leave, well "it" chose to stay and it is NOT your fault!
These people are lying to themselves and expecting the rest of us to go along with them. The choice is not between being supermodel skinny and as heavy as you want. Obesity is unhealthy. If you want to be unhealthy, that's on you.
Also, in all those Rebel Wilson and Melissa McCarthy movies, their character's love interests are always unrealistically attractive. I wonder why that is?
I wonder how many COVID deaths the "body positive" message has caused.
We do not achieve results. We garner them.
You didn’t make that!
The better medical question is which cam first- the obesity or the neurosis?
I'll put this down to language idiocy. When you take each word as a literal meaning, all context of a language is lost.
People know when they are overweight. No one has to tell them or shame them.
A lunch of rice, peas and instant mashed potato is very filling. Add spaghetti and get all three major starch groups, though that adds a lot of calories.
'I’ve had people question whether I truly love myself if I want to be thinner,
You know, my heroin addiction is PART of me;
i question whether I truly love myself if I want to release my addiction
You know, my pyromania is PART of me;
i question whether I truly love myself if I want to release my affection for arson
You know, my desire for self mutilation is PART of me;
i question whether I truly love myself if I want to release my gender change surgery
[oh, i'm being sarcastic; about at least One of these]
"People know when they are overweight. No one has to tell them or shame them."
Not always - often they convince themselves that they aren't overweight.
I don't "fat shame" overweight or obese women. I just won't date them. Not my kink.
THEOLDMAN
Back on the Keto as soon as this lockdown is over LOLz
The Truth About Fat, a PBS Nova documentary is a good start to understanding what’s really going on in your body. I think you’ll be very surprised to discover what the documentary has to say. The Paleo and Keto people have it right.
Fat is part of our endocrine system. It signals the brain as to whether we are sated with food or hungry.
A processed food diet, that is a lot of refined sugar, white flour and processed foods, screws up that endocrine signaling system. No matter how much of that stuff you eat, you still feel hungry. So, you just keep piling on the sugar, carbs and processed foods... and get fatter.
Paleo and Keto both operate on similar principles. Limit sugar, get rid of white flour and don’t eat processed foods. Primarily eat protein with plenty of fat, butter, whole grain breads and raw fruits, vegetables or nuts. Eating in this way sates your appetite. You don’t feel hungry.
I’ve lost 50 pounds in the past year, basically on a Keto diet, and have stayed at my maintenance weight for 6 months. I’m never hungry.
Obesity really isn’t a moral problem or a problem of will power. It’s a problem of improper diet.
I’ve been fat and I’ve been slim. Slim is better.
"Some people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths."
-- Steven Wright
When I had been retired for about 6 months, I realized all of my clothes were getting bigger. I hadn't made any conscious changes to what I was eating, and the only extra exercise I was getting was my walks with my dog were longer and more frequent. When I saw how easy it was for me to lose weight without really trying, I sped the process up a bit. A lot of times people aren't overweight because they eat too many doughnuts. They just have jobs that are too sedentary and schedules that influence when and what they eat.
How difficult can this be? Why not abort the weight. Happens all of the time when you want to get rid of something.
ST said... No matter how much of that stuff you eat, you still feel hungry.
Might i recommend, Delicious Whole Milk?
Know what happens, if you have two cookies and a glass of Skimmed milk? You're STILL Hungry
Know what happens, if you have ONE cookie and a glass of Delicious Whole Milk? You're FULL!
Know what happens, if you skip the cookie, and have a glass of Delicious Whole Milk?
You're Not Hungry AND, you Lose weight
...religion substitutes
Turkey salami on gluten-free rye with Miracle Whip.
Have lunch without having it.
This is just indiscipline and self indulgence.
One lives for ones obligations, after all. Living like a pig makes one much less useful for what should be your external purpose, or a burden on everyone (often literally).
She mentions "having obesity", Like it's a virus.
I've got a touch of the obesity myself. Unfortunately, despite having been released, it hasn't yet gone away.
"Is it OK to be 'body positive' while striving to be thinner?"
"while"? or "by"?
Yes, it's OK. Better, actually.
How did obese become "positive"?
I’ve had people question whether I truly love myself if I want to be thinner,
The proper reply to that is a vacant stare. But why are you telling them you want to be thinner? You're only asking for a comment when you do that, you know.
ST....have you seen “Fat: a documentary”?
Years ago, my Wing Chun Sufi taught me that “we do not lose weight, we release weight”.
One of those sentences that maybe nobody has ever said or written before.
All my Wang Chung Sufi told me was "Everybody Have Fun Tonight."
It's hard to be sane in an era of mass insanity.
Fat is unhealthy but it in not shameful. Fat people are people. Love them but, if they are part of your life, encourage them to lose weight.
Can you people not understand something as simple as that?
What baby???
That seems to be more of this "stuff has agency" trend that is going on. I did not do it, the gun just went off. I didn't do it the car jumped into gear. I didn't do it, the lamp just broke.
Rush had a re-occuring bit. SUV killing people. The headline would be "SUV, rolls killing"
in that case the 'agency' was meant to demonize SUV's That same has been happening to guns forever. "assault rifle kills 2"
As AA has been chronicling over the last several months, media is not about news, but rather creating narratives. Dishonest at its core.
I noticed that model the media used for about 1/2 news cycle, claiming a huge increase in death with re-opening. The one Inga linked to and pushed. It was a stupid model created for the express purpose of pushing a narrative (orange man bad). No science, no truth. Just something to smear the President.
"which cam first- the obesity or the neurosis?"
That's easy. The obesity.
The neurosis is to rationalize it after the fact.
When you release weight, where does it go? Is it piled up with the snows of yesteryear?
release weight
Not to mention using the word "weight" for "fat", a la H.G. Wells' "The Truth About Pyecraft".
If you love your fat, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never meant to be.
People turn their negative characteristics into positive ones and "affirm" them because they don't want to collapse into self-loathing. They may want to be "healthy" and "normal," but they feel like it that would involve a betrayal of themselves and the group they belong to now. And heaven knows, there are enough complacent, judgmental "normal" people out there that one can understand not wanting to join them or wanting to shove a condition they don't approve of in their faces.
I'll go out on a limb and draw a parallel to politics. You may have developed certain political attitudes through learning or experience, but when you start to associate with those who "naturally" think and feel that way, you may recoil: they haven't worked their way to what they believe but just believe it "naturally" and "normally," so they may not feel the qualms and caveats and the effort that goes into developing those convictions.
Something about William James's "once born," "twice born," and "after born" categories is relevant to the politics. People who go through something like a conversion experience may have more in common, even if the conversion lands them on different sides of the fence, than they do with those who believe what they have always believed.
Back to fat acceptance: the struggle against self-hatred underlies much of what we call "identity politics" today, and the identity politics of those on the fringe may be a reaction to the "identity politics" that those on the fringe perceive among the "normals," but that the "normals" don't see in themselves.
@Eleanor
I'm in the same process right now with the shutdown. More walking, no more eating Philippine Barbecue with heaps of rice from a food truck at lunch and suddenly the weight just falls off.
Weight falling off is a better metaphor than releasing it.
Back in the old days we fat shamed with glee. And there were not a lot of fat people. And contrary to current opinion there was plenty of barbecue and pie and butter and cake. And cars
I stay thin on a mostly vegetarian (about 1-oz of meat per day in soup base) diet of high carbs moderate protein and low fat. No sugar or alcohol, no processed foods, no fried foods.
Once you hit 65, protein is more necessary for peak performance. I'll probably go up to 4-oz meat per day from 65 on.
You lose weight by exhaling more carbon dioxide than the equivalent calories you take in.
Sugar, alcohol, fast food and processed foods are addictive and not satiating. Live Free and Die
No one should be fat shamed. But I don't like anyone being told not to try improving their diet or scheduling moderate daily exercise (like walking), both of which can lead to weight loss. It is also wrong to tell people that weight loss will not improve their health, because it will. Because 'dieting' (defined as a regimen which will not be maintained) has a low success rate should not lead people to believe it is useless to try to 'release' one's weight. Drugs are also getting better at doing this as well.
I read the sufi's remarks as differentiating between "losing" weight, which involves exercise, dieting and restriction for a period of time, after which most people revert back to their old ways and regain the lost weight (often plus more), and "releasing" not just weight but the whole lifestyle and mindset that led to weight gain in the first instance. Not just the self-loathing aspects that Lurker21 referenced (although I agree with that comment), but the whole thing. If you have a high stress, sedentary job that both restricts your ability to move and exercise and triggers stress-eating (or stress-drinking), consider the reasons you feel it necessary to hold that job, consider releasing your perceived need for the prestige or income level that the job brings, for example. As several commenters mentioned, retirement led to a healthier lifestyle and to weight loss without any actual effort to "lose" weight on their part - this is a demonstration of what I think the sufi meant.
I am going to be a bit contrarian and offer up a different interpretation of the "release weight" and "body positive" concepts. While also noting that many overweight people use them as an excuse to remain heavy.
I think the idea of release is helpful because heavy people do indeed hold on to their extra weight. It may be a cushion against life events, a way of remaining undesirable, among other things. When they release the weight, what they are releasing is the protection it offers. Doing that is a necessary prerequisite for keeping weight off after losing it. People overeat for many reasons--gluttony may be one of them, but there are many more reasons. Until those reasons are addressed, the weight won't go away or stay away.
Body positivity is a similar idea. One reason why people continue to overeat once they are heavy is out of shame and despair. The same reason alcoholics may keep drinking. It is a negative feedback loop. To step out of the loop, one must stop the initiating stimulus. Shame is not a recipe for change when a neural pattern has been established.
As I said, these concepts have been misused. That doesn't negate their utility.
When they release the weight, what they are releasing is the protection it offers.
Agreed. There is a a webiste, Postsecret, that solicits and publishes anonymous postcards on which people write their secrets that they would not be able to reveal in person. I have seen many variations on the idea that the writer is afraid to lose the weight because then they will have to face that rejection or dislike relates to them as a person rather than as fat-shaming or fat hatred.
I've had decent results following Michael Pollan's maxim: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."
"Weight" should not be confused with excess adipose tissue which, when released, is an optimal source of fuel. The "weight" of muscle fiber should not be released or lost. It should be used, preserved, cherished.
Doesn’t anyone know about the Universal Theory of Fat in the Universe? Fat can be neither created nor destroyed. It simply moves from one entity to another. So if you lose fat, someone else is gaining fat.
Fat is stored energy. Release all that stored energy, fatties.
People should be reminded that once they lose the weight, they never have to lose it again. One battle, win, and you never have to go to war again.
"I’ve had people question whether I truly love myself if I want to be thinner,"
Complicated statement, translation: if you want to be thin, you do not love yourself.
I guess I don't love myself if I want to stop being an asshole.
I'm in North Beach, SF reading this and looking across the street at an immensely fat black woman wearing hot pants and a superman's cape waiting for a bus. It's all good.
"When I weighed 325 pounds, I couldn’t get into the shower."
Life gives us hints.
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