I wrote yesterday about some of the issues with the Health At Every Size paradigm as it is voiced publicly, but there are a number of other issues that come up as people are transitioning to and practicing HAES.
One of the things that I like best about HAES, based on my understanding of it, is that it’s about a paradigm and not about a specific set of behaviors. So each person gets to prioritize health as they wish and choose their own path either on their own or in concert with professionals who are focused on their health rather than their weight. To me it’s not just about Health At Every Size, but also about every circumstance – doing what I can, with what I have, where I am, based on my own priorities and goals.
When I started on the HAES path things were complicated by the fact that I came to HAES from a diet/weight centered mentality where there were good and bad foods, strict rules and regulations, and the goal was to be thin – period.
Choosing HAES meant taking my health into my own hands, looking at the health messages that I had received with a critical eye, setting my own goals and making my own choices.
One of the things that makes this more difficult is that we can escape the diet mentality but we can’t always escape people who want to tell us all how to eat and what to do, but call it Health At Every Size. Mostly these people act like health, especially food choice, is an all or nothing thing. Typically they want to bring back the good food/bad food labels that I left behind when I walked away from my dieting days. Health is much more gray than black and white and it’s a continuum.
Just like I’m not interested in a life of drinking protein shakes and eating carb-less meals or risking being called a diet failure, I’m not interested in home cooking every meal from scratch from only locally grown vegetables warmed in a sweater knitted by someone’s grandmother or risk being called a HAES failure. I assume that anyone who is telling me how I have to eat, whether they are calling it HAES or MediFast or whatever, however well-intentioned they think they are, is working from an over-exaggerated sense of self-importance and/or trying to feel superior/important/whatever and I don’t have to put up with bad behavior because of good intentions.
There can also be a tremendous intrinsic pressure to be “perfect” in our HAES practice because we are the new paradigm on the block and so people are watching us. We get accused of using HAES to justify our fatness (ie: if people stop weight loss dieting they’ll do nothing but eat Twinkies all day long), or accused of giving up because we opt out of a dieting/weight loss culture.
Personally I have definitely felt this pressure. It has been suggested that as a blogger and activist I am obligated to publish a food diary. I’ve talked about what happens if I do get sick and what happens if I’m wrong. I’ve had to learn about the dangers of trying to “prove it” the hard way, but sometimes I still struggle with it.
In fact, last week I was in LA for a talk at CalTech and to meet awesome people and hang out. I had fast food breakfasts, ate hotdogs and toasted marshmallows, and skipped workouts. I started to feel really stressed about it, but I realized that from a long-term health perspective the eating and skipping workouts for a week are not really a big deal but stressing out about it can be. So I put it in perspective that I ate delicious things, honored my hunger, rested my body, and I also tried new things (beet salad and cornmeal crust pizza!) and had a bunch of fun (Thanks Julianne, Jeanette, Jennifer, Terri, Anastasia, NAAFA-LA and CalTech’s event staff). To me that’s a HAES success and since it’s my health we’re talking about, mine is the only opinion that matters.
As our movement gains more attention I think that we should take care to stick to working on creating paradigm change and giving people access to information, food options, movement options and healthcare rather than telling people how to behave or what they should do or want when it comes to their health. Health At Every Size is not about what any one person thinks everyone else should do. I also think it’s important to recognize the pressures that comse along with the microscope that people working for social change can be under. As with so many things it’s not our fault but it becomes our problem. I think that the best we can do is be true examples of Health at Every Size as it works in real life rather than trying to be pictures of pretend perfection. Our ability to prioritize and make choices that are as individual as we are is our strength and I think that hiding that is a mistake.
Disney Update
I blogged about how I think Disney could fix their Habit Heroes exhibit for NBC’s iVillage. If the mood strikes you and you want to read and maybe even comment that would be awesome!
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Dances With Fat 
I have to wonder, though…at the risk of getting a virtual ass-kicking here…I truly mean well…
Knowing what has actually been proven in real studies about the negative effects processed food can have on one’s health, I don’t understand how someone who makes the conscious decision to eat nothing but processed food at every meal can truthfully say they’re practicing health at ANY size, be they fat or thin. In particular, if that person is fat, then it seems they are furthering the stereotype about us that automatically comes to mind for society as opposed to promoting healthy habits and encouraging people to accept their bodies for what they are. To me it’s damaging to the paradigm.
This is not to say that people should be told what to eat or have their healthcare taken away because of it (I can’t afford to eat nothing but organic meals constantly myself, but I do try to make the most reasonable decisions within my budget most of the time)…I just feel like there truly ARE some “bad foods” (because they’re made of kitchen cleaning products our bodies were never meant to digest!) and that if that’s all you purposefully consume AND choose not to get any activity then it’s not actually practicing good health…and perhaps you shouldn’t get to say you are cuz it makes the rest of us look bad and makes it harder to dispel stigma.
I’m sure that sounds WAY more judgy than I wanted it to. It’s late and I’ve not had the best day, but I hope someone understands my point. I’m very willing to listen to opposing viewpoints, so I appreciate anyone who wants to share their two cents whether they agree or not.
In particular, if that person is fat, then it seems they are furthering the stereotype about us that automatically comes to mind for society as opposed to promoting healthy habits
Fat people (like thin people and those whose weight is considered “normal”) aren’t obligated to be role models of eating in order to shatter stereotypes.
I am not a poster girl for fat. I am just me, being fat and living my life.
Sometimes people with certain health conditions ACTUALLY do better on processed food than not-processed food. Really. For reals. There are diseases like this, and sometimes people have them.
Sometimes people eat processed food because they are doing the best they can with what they’ve got – money, time, cooking skills, kitchen facilities, whatever.
I have a degree in nutrition. Never once did we learn the definition of “real food” vs. “processed food” because it doesn’t exist. All food exists on the same continuum, and all food is nutritious in different ways. Some people handle certain nutrients better than others. Some people need more of one thing, and less of others, and other people might need more of the exact opposite things.
Nutrition is individual. It is also a matter of free will – you can’t impose what you think is a “healthy” eating style on anyone else. You can only choose for yourself.
There also isn’t any research I’m aware of, aside from popular food writing that is ridden with personal value judgments, that indicate “X Food is Unequivocally Bad For Everyone.” Because it doesn’t exist.
A person’s diet can be imbalanced by focussing too much on one thing, and not enough on others. A person’s health can suffer from not getting enough of something they need, or too much of something they don’t handle well. But it’s more individual than we are led to believe. Every single nutrient requirement has a bell curve associated with it — most people need a moderate amount of X nutrient, but a few people need a TON of it, and a few people need a tiny amount. There are dozens of nutrients that we know about, and probably even more that we don’t.
Knowing this, do you want to go ahead and put together The One Healthy Diet for Everyone? I sure as hell don’t. The closest anyone has ever come is the Food Guide or the Food Pyramid, and you know how much criticism they take, and for good reason.
So, unless you’re someone’s personal dietitian and intimately know all the details of what they eat every day, you have no idea whether what they eat is “healthy” or “unhealthy” – and you have even LESS room to be telling them what they should be doing.
People have to figure out what to eat for themselves. They just do – no one else can do it for them. That’s part of what intuitive eating is all about, and intuitive eating is a central part of HAES.
“Knowing what has actually been proven in real studies about the negative effects processed food can have on one’s health, I don’t understand how someone who makes the conscious decision to eat nothing but processed food at every meal can truthfully say they’re practicing health at ANY size, be they fat or thin.”
Does this person actually exist? I mean, I know people who eat processed foods only exist, but have you actually met someone who says “I’m HAES and I eat only [things made from 100% non-food], woohoo!”
A couple of thoughts:
I don’t think processed food is particularly great, but I think mental and emotional health are just as important as physical health. If someone is eating “junk” food because it helps them sustain their mental/emotional well-being, that’s valid.
And I also think, well, individual circumstances. For me, exercising is a path to health. For a pregnant woman who’s having issues with premature labor, exercise is a TERRIBLE idea. If junk food’s the only food you’ve got, then hell yeah you should eat it — better than starving!
As I practice HAES, it means that I trust people to know what they need to be healthy, and to do what’s right for them. The only times I feel like I should intervene is when they’re defining “health” as “being thin” or “losing weight”, and I don’t ever criticize their gym or food choices — I just point out that health is also your metabolic markers and how you feel and how much you’re able to do, and they should incorporate that info into their decisions.
What is “processed food”? You seem to feel that there is some universal definition that all food falls under. Are canned beans “processed”? (There’s some evidence they’re better for the environment than dry beans.)
We can start with this. Processed food is more healthy than a) too little food, or b) spoiled food. Both of these are still major issues for a lot of people. Second, life expectancies have risen together with processed food over the last century or so.
Perhaps now some of us have the luxury of working out even more healthy ways to eat, and that’s great. More power to you, and I hope everyone will have a chance to share equally in that. But recognize that this is going to be tinkering around the margins compared to sufficient and relatively safe food supply.
Ragen – one quibble. You said you thought that stressing about your food might hurt you. A small amount of stress won’t do you any good certainly, but won’t do your health any harm. Sometime the HAES/FA folks are in danger of overinterpreting the stress research much as the anti-obesity folks overinterpret the nutrition research.
Agnes,
Thanks for the comment. In this particular case I wasn’t thinking that the small amount of stress about food would hurt my health directly – rather as someone who has had an eating disorder, this kind of stress about food can lead back to restricting food and over-exercising for me. As far as HAES/FA people over-interpreting the stress research, we live in a world that shames, stigmatizes, and humiliates us constantly because we are fat, and then bullies us more because we’ve opted out of the diet culture (I get death threats). Muennig found that the amount of stress we’re under is correlated with the same health problems that are correlated with obesity and that women who are concerned about their weight have more physical and mental illness than those who are fine with their size, regardless of their weight. So I tend to think that it couldn’t hurt, might help, to keep the other stress in my life to a minimum.
~Ragen
Food diary – heh! For me, that was the Worst Idea Ever ™. I know what a food diary is supposed to do – make you aware of what you’re eating, and of all the “unconscious eating” you do throughout the day. For me, it just made me obsess more about food, and eat more.
I think that if food diaries work for some people, and they like using them, then they should use them – but it needs to be understood that they don’t work for everybody, any more than anything else is a one-size-fits-all solution. Nobody should be pressured into using a tool if it doesn’t work for them.
Now I try to pay attention to when I’m actually hungry (as opposed to bored, frustrated, or avoiding doing something I don’t want to do), and eat what my body wants. Does it always work? No. But abandoning the good food/bad food mindset (and the good person/bad person mindset as well) that went with dieting has done wonders for my health and well-being. And since I don’t think about it, I don’t actually want as much “bad food” as when I categorized it that way.
“Food diary – heh! For me, that was the Worst Idea Ever ™. I know what a food diary is supposed to do – make you aware of what you’re eating, and of all the “unconscious eating” you do throughout the day. For me, it just made me obsess more about food, and eat more.”
Me, too! This is the main reason I have decided never to “diet” again – because I already obsess about food and dieting makes me obsess even more if I’m wasting hours writing things down, counting, measuring, etc., etc. If I want to go completely insane, then I’ll diet again.
I firmly believe that we ALL…all sizes, shapes, genders, ages, whatever…have the right to own our bodies & live as we please. My problem with HAES is that it has always seemed to me to be a way to tell people that there is a ‘prescribed’ way to live that, if we are to be considered decent, worthwhile people, we MUST live this way. I feel that fat acceptance is about rights/access & an end to stigmatization for ALL people, regardless of how they live. I also feel that one of the best things we could do is bring an end to this ‘nanny’ culture. I have seen no absolute PROOF that eating in any particular way leads to either better health/longer life or shortens life/necessarily causes illness. Food is food, it is fuel for our bodies, we need it to stay alive & keep functioning. All food has nutrients, it is a good idea to eat a variety of foods on a regular basis. Dieting is almost always unsuccessful, usually damaging to people’s health, becomes more damaging as we age, etc. But, no, I don’t believe that there are ‘BAD” foods. If you don’t like a food, don’t eat it. If it is spoiled, poisoned, contaminated in some way, don’t eat it. If you have a violent allergy to something, don’t eat it, though we do seem to live in a culture now where it is ‘trendy’ to have food sensitivities, go gluten-free, whatever.
I would certainly love to know what cleaning products are included in what foods. I can read labels as well as anyone else & I have not noticed that. I don’t really think “Big Food” is out to get us as much as it is popular to suggest; they want our business, they want our money, they want a profit, but, hell, so do organic farmers, producers of soy, olive oil, ‘health food’ stores, vegetarian restaurants, etc. They all want to make a buck, no one moreso than Whole Foods. It would help us to remember that every time someone is saying “eat eggs, don’t eat eggs”, “Real butter, no margarine”, “eat organic”, “use more garlic”, “drink more tea”(& I am a tea lover who consumes 4-6 mugs daily), “Olive oil is better than vegetable oil or lard or whatever”, whatever the actual nutritional value of these foods, these claims are based on a desire to sell us something & make a profit. A lot of us get brainwashed by this salesmanship to the point where we can feel afraid of food, guilty & confused about what we eat or think we should eat, & sometimes some people attach ‘magical’ properties to food. Food is good, but there are NO ‘super foods’, no matter how much someone with a diet or a book to sell wants to tell us so. Most of us eat a lot of different foods over time, so I seriously doubt that any of us will be eating any demonized food 3 times daily every day, & I genuinely do not believe that, in most cases, food will hurt us.
What I do believe most of all is that fat acceptance is for EVERYONE, of all sizes, all levels of health or ability, all lifestyles, all eating patterns. I most passionately believe that we do not have to ‘prove’ ourselves worthy but what we eat or how much we exercise, or always be a ‘good example.’ Does anyone ask a thin person to keep & share a food diary & give proof of how much she exercises in order to be treated with respect, courtesy, & allowed her dignity & full access to life? No. Fat people should be expected to prove our virtue or worth either. We deserve full rights, respect, access, & not to be stigmatized or bullied, we deserve access to good, caring, unbiased medical care, because we are HUMAN BEINGS, not because we give constant proof that we are ‘one of the good ones’ & ‘living right.’ It is nobody’s damn business how we live our lives, move, eat or whatever. There are people who live EVERY way, who eat EVERY way, who exercise or do not, who die young or live to be 100. Nothing is guaranteed except death. I am over 62 years old & have had people trying to tell me what to do for far too much of that time. I live by my own rules. I am & always will be a fat activist & a supporter of disability activism because I was born disabled, which has nothing to do with fat. I am on the fence about HAES & do not pay too much strict attention to it, because I do feel that in many cases, it is another way of telling others how to live, &, in some hands, it is kind of another diet in disguise, especially when people sneak in the phrases like, “Eat ‘intuitively’, stop dieting, & you will maybe lose weight”, or stuff like, “When I stopped dieting, I stopped wanting the ‘bad’ foods & lost some weight’. I feel as if some people, even if they talk about HAES & not dieting & accepting our bodies, still think that, if doing all this results in weight loss, it is a good & desirable thing or as if someone who has not dieted for years but still likes chocolate just isn’t ‘doing it right.’ I am very uncomfortable with ‘healthism’, whether those atttitudes come from fat people or thin people.
Without wanting to say that food has magical properties, there are genuine questions around some foods. Gluten intolerance and celiac disease are more than trendy problems – they’re on the rise and can be extremely serious. It’s possible – possible, not proven – that wheat hybridization has created strains of wheat that are problematic for increasing sections of the population.
Those same techniques have massively improved yields and lowered the price of food, so it’s about payoffs. But more research is definitely needed and that’s not just about sales.
Celiac disease and gluten intolerance are real things – but I’m not sure much sure that they’re “on the rise” as much as they are being diagnosed more frequently because there is more awareness about them in the medical community. This then trips off a sort of trend among the public, because people are more aware of the possibility of having this condition, and understandably ask themselves, “Could I have this?”
Thanks Patty. That’s what I would have said if I could have found the words to say it. I no more like moralizing about food choice than I do moralizing about body size. It’s really very simple. People deserve to be treated with respect, all people, no matter their size, their food choices, or their exercise regimens.
Regarding “bad foods” – for example, I love my Coca Cola. But it seems like common sense to reason that something that can also be used to clean a car battery is probably not a good idea to put into my body on a regular basis.
I also just read recently about the Monsanto company creating genetically modified sweet corn that contains insecticide,has yet to pass the FDA and has been linked to organ failure, but for some reason will be on Walmart’s shelves soon anyway: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/monsantos-gmo-corn-linked_n_420365.html and http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/walmart_gmo_corn/?rc=fb_share1
Just saying, there are questions.
I’m not sure there are “bad foods” in general but there are specifically bad for you things (pink slime, Monsanto corn, High Fructose Corn Syrup). Even then, it doesn’t mean the occasional soda or KFC Corn wil kill you. From an ED perspective (as a fat girl who has been there and back), it’s the idea that ALL HAMBURGERS are evil and death food, and instead of eating one, you should cry alone in your room and do more sit ups. (Does not apply across the board, of course).
I guess it comes down to bad ingredients, but even then for mental purposes, I don’t think eating Monsanto stuff will kill you. Then again, it might kill the planet and I’m horribly anti-monsanto.
You can also clean corrosion off of battery terminals using baking soda, water, and a wire bristle brush (and some elbow grease). Doesn’t mean that baking soda and water are things which aren’t a good idea to put in your body regularly.
You could also use stomach acid to clean a battery – stomach acid is nasty stuff and everything we eat gets soaked in it.
One of the worst thing the diet mentality does is distort everything about food and it makes it hard to have any sort of meaningful discussion around it. I know this from talking to some people, that food is seen exclusively in light of its power to add fat or banish it.
What’s often happening is that food is being used as a proxy for something else – many immigrants have discovered that their way of eating has been mocked under the pretence that people are worried about health, when actually the dominant culture just wants to stamp out their ‘otherness’. (The way Italian migrants were pilloried for ‘mixing their food’ for example.)
So it’s always good to be on the alert when the ‘food and health’ discussion rears its head, because it’s often social prescriptiveness on the table, rather than medicine.
Having said that… many cultures have food rules of some sort of another that work extremely well for the people inside that culture – there are food norms that enhance sociability and pleasure, for example. How we nurture ourselves and get the best in circumstances that smash those norms – e.g. for people who have to endure long hours, broken shifts, work prioritised over time for eating etc – is a discussion worth having.
It’s worth noting that advertising relentlessly promotes eating on the run or eating at all hours, not because it wants to promote real food choice, but because destroying cultural food norms is a great way to sell more product – and it’s a great way to reassure people that putting work before their food needs is actually a virtuous thing to do.
Insisting that food is only about weight, is a great way to obscure and distort all these other things that are going on.
I want to add a second to your suspicion of “healthism.” No matter how they try to hide it, practitioners usually consider big people as suffering from an illness that can be cured by education. That makes them feel smart and us feel stupid.
This is a good and forgiving account about how other parts of life interact with food choices:
My philosphy on food:
If I want a piece of cheesecake, I’m going to have a f***ing piece of goddamn cheesecake!
I try my best to eat a balanced diet, but sometimes it just won’t happen. I won’t have time. I won’t want to. My cat ate the recipe. Whatever, its all good.
I love this. Being a vegetarian I eat better than I ever have in my entire life, but lately all I’ve wanted is cookies and brownies and milkshakes o my! And I’ve eaten them. And it is what it is. And the world didn’t collapse. But I was happy.
Thanks for saying what I’ve been feeling all along. 🙂
I’m a natural health practitioner, and I think that saying “food is just fuel” is entirely too simplistic. Food and diet absolutely have the power to build-up health and mitigate, and sometimes correct, health problems related to auto-immune disorders, hormone imbalance, environmental pollutants, and contagious agents. On the other end of the spectrum, food can also cause inflammation and make certain health conditions worse. The first thing I ask my patients to do–no matter what their size–is to keep a food journal for one month. What I’m looking for with these is patterns that point out if particular foods are causing inflammation or decreasing inflammation and promoting energy and feelings of well-being (anybody can do this outside of a doctor-patient setting; it’s a very useful practice to manage your own health). We all know here that health is far more than just weight, but most people don’t realize how important food choice can be in relation to disease: whether it improves symptoms or worsens them. Also, “superfoods” do exist, in particular in relation to their anti-oxidant levels, which promote heart health and are natural inflammation and cancer fighters. If you’re combating an illness, “superfoods” should be part of your wellness plan.
It’s useful to research the history of food being used as medicine. Before the advent of commercial pharmaceuticals and big drug companies, food and herbs were all we had to fight disease and safeguard our health, and we used to them to good effect for centuries. Let’s separate the discussion of diet and food away from weight and put it into the spectrum of overall health, where it belongs. It’s not fair to dismiss and vilify the very positive affects of whole foods and their function in illness management just because “health foods” have been associated with “losing weight” within the last 60 years.
“Natural Health Practitioners”, well, whatever… Going that route led me to a 30 year fight with orthorexia and turned me into the MOST ANNOYING PERSON EVER, TM. This would be true whether I was fat or thin. Now I respect only that which is at least partially scientifically established. Epidemiological studies are dicey. Last I heard, antioxidants were overrated and could even be harmful if overconsumed. Sure the pharmaceutical industry want to make money. So do vitamin pushers. So do people with bogus credentials from quack schools. Even if they add them onto real credentials. Witness Dr. Oz.
No offense, but some of us are just not satisfied with natural health talking points anymore. They all but destroyed my life, and I’m hard pressed not to challenge the rhetoric. I am sick to death of reading stuff like this, because it reminds me of the food cult I was involved with.
There are no such thing as “superfoods”. They don’t save your life any more than losing weight makes your life perfect. Stop peddling the fantasies! Vitamins don’t cure diseases, other than vitamin deficiencies. If you get too many vitamins, you just piss them out anyway, and probably screw your liver up a little bit in the bargain. I don’t want to hear the stories of people with cancer being influenced away from real treatment to said “superfoods” and shark cartilage, etc. That kind of thing is as despicable as MD’s writing unnecessary prescriptions for drug company kickbacks, it’s just more uncool to complain about it. And that’s part of the problem. Pseudoscience always has to come with some florid language or some romantic “hook” to draw you in.
IMO, if you’re not causing eating disorders, this type of hypervigilant behavior around food can lead to food OCD and hypochondria. Food journal – oh, hell no! You could give someone a questionnaire involving food choices. These journals seem, to me, disingenuous. Just what are you trying to accomplish, if not create neurosis? If it was about adding good things to the diet, you wouldn’t need them. It’s all about taking things away, I’m sure. You could accomplish this without obsessive, morbid monitoring too. Fat people, sick people, are not children or idiots – they know what they eat.
Maybe if I had not been through this experience, I could take this neutral, harmless information, like “broccoli has lots of vitamin C” with a grain of salt and start adding nice things to my diet.
But food journals? I don’t care if your clients are fat or thin. Thin people have eating disorders too.
I think, as fat people, we should be on the side of anyone who is sold useless, ineffective products – whether it be diets, unnecessary meds, or #*&*’ing “miracle” foods, instead of being given effective
treatment.
Rock on, Ragen.
As a diabetic, I absolutely do have to pay attention to the food I eat. But even as I get excited about all of the really amazing new things I am cooking (give me a vegetable and I will roast it), and about the fact that I am cooking at all, I recognize the feeling of New Diet This Is Going to Fix Everything.
So. I eat buffalo wings and spinach artichoke dip from the local pub for dinner every once in a while, and don’t sweat it. A recipe that has some sugar in it? Not the end of the frickin’ world.
And I am absolutely DETERMINED to reject the fake foods pushed at diabetics all the time — fat free half-n-half (what the hell is that anyway?), Splenda, nonfat cheeses, buttery “spreads.” I know that the reason for all this is because the ADA still thinks weight loss is essential for fat diabetics. And of course they’re ignoring the most recent studies that say that full-fat dairy is better for us in every way than low-or non-fat dairy. Whatevs.
Anyway, thank you as always for pushing away the moralizing about food and health.
Every time I see a trainer on some tv talk show recommending people use margarine instead of butter to save calories it makes me want to SCREAM. And usually I do. And throw things at my tv.
Me too, with the screaming.
I have a sister whom I love dearly who absolutely has drunk the kool-aid re low fat foods, and who eats Smart Balance and no butter. She’s coming to visit in a few weeks (yay!) and I will buy some for her to eat while she’s here. Number one rule of being a good food friend: just because I hate it with a fiery hatred, doesn’t mean I am allowed to be an asshole and not a good host.
I am hypoglycemic, which is to say, the other end of the sugar spectrum from you. I metabolize sugar too quickly, and my blood sugar doesn’t so much drop as plummet.
The last time I dieted, I started having frequent sugar reactions. When I say “sugar reactions,” I mean full-blown grand mal seizures. Embarrassing, not fun, and dangerous.
The culprit? All the fat-free crap! Comparing the labels on fat-free and “real” ice cream, for example, I found that the fat-free ice cream contained much more sugar! So they reduce the fat, and bump the sugar way up. No thanks!
Since I started eating like a regular person, I have not had a sugar reaction. Also, the “real” ice cream is more satisfying, so I don’t want as much. And no sugar reactions in the last 2 years!!
Congrats on the no sugar reaction for 2 years! That’s fantastic. The same is usually true of the low-sugar fake foods — loaded with fats to make them taste better.
It’s kind of deeply insane.
Eating fat with sugar helps slow down the metabolizing of sugar, thus effectively lowering the glycemic index of whatever you’re. eating. So not only are the non-fat-free items lower in sugar, the sugar that’s in them doesn’t just get dumped into your bloodstream. Give me the regular stuff every time! 😉
Bravo Regan! My favorite sentiment from your post: “…since it’s my health we’re talking about, mine is the only opinion that matters.”
Right on!!
Such a good reminder. When talking with clients about food, I’m tempted at times to slip into this kind of thinking — it was pretty much ingrained during my training. What I realized later was that the only “should” with eating is to listen to your body, and give your body what it needs and likes. If I eat a lot of processed food, I start feeling unwell. That doesn’t mean that processed = bad, it just means that frequent use of processed foods does not work for me. If someone else is healthy and feels just fine on processed food, who am I to judge?
P.S.: “The Trouble With Proving It” is one of my favorite blog posts ever.
I just recently stopped keeping a food diary, and it’s been so freeing. I also cut way back on the times I weigh myself, and I feel so much better.
As far as food choices, I eat in a way that makes me able to look in the mirror. I have great self-esteem therefore I realize that my way is not the right way for all. My way is just the right way for me. If more people would work on self, and stop trying to convince everyone that they have to live a certain way, it sure would be a nicer world to live in.
What you wrote here could be used very well as a HAES(SM) 101 talk. I so enjoy being reminded that I am the expert in my own lived experience. Thanks again, Ragen.
I just found your blog last week, Ragen, and I’ve been reading the archives. Amazing work and well done! It’s so nice to see someone who hates Biggest Loser and who’s been to ED town and understands health /=/ weight.
I’m 5’4″ and 230, although at my skinniest I weighed a lot less. I never hit “unhealthy” levels which is hilarious to me because I was counting calories, crying when my family ordered pizza, and later became bulimic, because that’s totally healthy. I’m recovered now but it took years to understand that I could not diet. That dieting meant a mental calorie count and constant shame and gym time where instead of fun, I felt pressured and stressed to do more. Now I’m very focused on eating healthier, doing exercise, and not obsessing about numbers, and I didn’t know HAES existed until recently, so thank you.
Thanks to Michelle (the fat nutritionist), btw, for clarifying what I was trying to say. There are indeed people who have allergies to all kinds of foods, many with wheat/gluten issues, etc., but reading around the Net & overhearing people in public, it would seem as if there are likely several times more people who THINK they have these problems than actually do, a food version of hypochondria, where you hear of some symptom & are sure you have it. With that clarification, I stand by everything I said, & I do not believe in ‘super foods’, just good foods with perfectly good nutrients. Nothing…no diet, no lifestyle…absolutely guarantees perfect health or long life. I believe firmly in owning your own body & living the way that feels good to you & makes you happy. One thing is certain & that is that we will ALL die eventually. Why do we feel the need to spend the time we have hear making ourselves & others anxious, guilty, & miserable?
Amen. I don’t know why people want to live this way, but it seems to be a preferred lifestyle for some. My family are all food hypochondriacs and health faddists and have been their entire lives, and I can tell you that it hasn’t insulated them from health problems – quite the opposite.
There is research that suggests that enjoyment and psychological peace contribute to how much nutrition is derived from a meal. We shouldn’t forget that.
Agreed—
I don’t think anxiety, guilt and misery does anything good for our emotional/mental/spiritual health. Especially when it comes to something as basic and personal as how we fuel our bodies.
I often think as far as we have come with anti.prejudice and accepting people as they are being fat is still used as a reason to hate. I got so upset the other day because people were bashing the girl who plays on mike and molly because of the dress she wore to the oscars, Personally I thought she looked beautiful. Some of them were so cruel of course I am old enough now to know not to listen to someone being stupid but I put a cpmment on there saying that I’m tired of the name calling and that saying another human being makes you sick because of their size is ridiculous. That people of size are just as smart,,sucessful,and loved as anyone else and I am not going to live in fear of someone else’s stupidity. I am tired of people thinking its okay to make fun of us in public or judge us based on prejudice. Our society has swung too far to valuing a person based on their appearance. Are your teeth white enough? LOL How about concentrating on what type of person we are inwardly and accepting people as they are I am 54 years old I spent too many years of my life laying down and taking abuse over my size and not really living because I was trying to be something I was not. If there is anything I could say to young girls in this country that are struggling because they are bigger is love yourself for who and how you are don.t buy into the current trend of if your not skinny you are a second class citizen. Stand up for yourself let people know it is not okay to bully you. I enjoy your blog hang in there I think your great.
I think this discussion really illustrates the fact that FA and HAES are not the same movement. FA (or, if you like, BA, Body Acceptance) is about accepting bodies as they are; this can include attempting to change behavior for greater health, but it doesn’t have to. HAES…honestly, I think that “health” at the beginning does mean something different. It means that it’s possible that we DO do things that aren’t best for our own individual health and well-being, and that we try to replace some of those not-healthy-for-us behaviors with things that are healthy-for-us. FA teaches us that we have no obligation to do things that are healthy-for-us (and I’ll agree with that.) HAES says that if we’re prioritizing health, maybe we’ve chosen that obligation—not to perfection, or to someone else’s view of health, but to rethink things that really are NOT healthy-for-us, if we have other options. It means we really can do better or worse at HAES, though there aren’t many, or maybe any, who can make that call for us. And it means that sometimes we may resist the impulse of a given moment, rather than defending that impulse as healthy.
I’m not speaking of people whose medical conditions, or stress, or psychology, or circumstances make it virtually impossible to eat the foods that are healthy-for-them; or the people whose health is best served by choices that look “bad” to others. There are many such people.
But if we aren’t such people, and we *routinely* do things that make us feel unhealthy (like nauseated, hungover, depressed, or, in the case of dieting, hungry), for reasons that aren’t helping us much (like the desire to numb other things we’re feeling), when we do have the time and money and knowledge for other options,–how is that HAES? FA says that’s our choice; I do too. I think HAES, though, says that if that choice really isn’t keeping or making us healthy, and if we really want good health, we need to consider different choices (though I hope I wouldn’t presume to decide for anyone else which choices fall into which category.) So I have some real doubts when people say or imply that health—as defined by ourselves in light of our circumstances—doesn’t really have to be a part of Health at Every Size. I’d say if we’re consciously, regularly doing things that make us feel worse, when we have options that make us feel better, we can practice FA…but maybe it’s problematic for us to also say we’re practicing HAES.
Let the virtual ass-kicking begin. 🙂
I think it’s completely cool for you to believe this for you, but I’m not ok with it being applied to everyone (as I think you did by your use of “us” and “we”) Because who gets to decide what’s healthy for someone else? Who gets to decide if someone is living “healthfully enough” to be considered HAES. I do not think that HAES is an obligation – I think it’s the opposite, it’s about always living in the choice. People’s circumstances and priorities and goals are different and I feel that if someone identifies as choosing to live a Health at Every Size lifestyle then it’s not anyone else’s job or business to question that.
~Ragen
I too agree that HAES is not an obligation–not at all! And I agree that, by and large, it’s not for any given one of us to decide for anyone else who’s “healthy enough”, or to make health a moral value; it isn’t.
But surely HAES means *something*, something beyond “whatever I happen to say it is at a given moment.” And surely we can acknowledge that some people (of whom I am sometimes one) make choices that hurt themselves even by their own standards–addictions, anorexia, other ways of eating–and are not honest about it, and that while those choices are the business of the person making them, they are not–no matter what that person says–congruous with HAES. Otherwise, we’d have to watch our anorexic family members die because they either believe or say they believe that their choices are healthy. While the anorexic family member’s thinness is no business of the person on the street who yells “eat a sandwich”, I think it is the business of the people who love her.
Also, I really don’t want to see HAES move from “I don’t have to be thin to be healthy if I eat as mindfully as I can manage and move as much as I can manage” to “And don’t tell me I have to eat mindfully and move regularly to be healthy, because I get to decide what’s healthy! If I choose to do it, it’s healthy!” If that happens, HAES will lose the credibility that Linda Bacon has worked so hard to give it.
Wait, HAES has credibility because of Linda Bacon? Why? Because she’s thin? Because she lost weight when she stopped dieting?
Health has no single definition. I think it is useful and wonderful even when folks who think of it in the same general terms are able to get together and support one another. I think it is very much not useful and harmful even when we try to impose our own versions of health on any other person or group. If someone *asks* for support or information that’s different.
People are anorexic for reasons. Probably what would be considered by mental health professionals to be “disordered” reasons, but the fact is that it is serving some purpose for that person. And the very last thing that can help that person make choices that will help their body to thrive is judgment and advice.
The reason I know this is because I know that in my very fat body when I make choices that are not helping my body thrive the very last thing that can help is any person coming at me with judgment and advice about what is and is not “healthy.” No matter how framed in love it is.
So what can we do, if we love someone who is doing things that *we* see as unhealthy? Stand by them. Listen. Offer help, in the form of picking up a movie to watch together on a Friday night. Or in the form of a walk together, no matter how brief. And be ready to listen, and affirm, and support when/if the person we love is ready to talk about the pains or fears they are struggling with. And yes, information if they ask for it.
Because really? Every human being is just like you are. They really do want the best life for themselves. Sometimes their obstacles are just not as visible or obvious as we think they are.
And no, I don’t think HAES means that the word “health” has all meanings and therefore no meaning. I just think that no matter how it is framed, judgment is always a deterrent to health.
Cat, you won’t get a virtual ass-kicking from me, I hear you.
Thanks to all who are replying. I hope I’m not beating a dead horse here, and if I’m disagreeing on some points, I hope I’m doing so respectfully. (I also know that at this point, I’m commenting on what’s probably a dead thread.) But this is a conversation I’ve wanted to have for a long time.
I’d say Linda Bacon’s largely responsible for such credibility as HAES has because she has the medical credentials and because she publicized HAES in her book, better than Robison or anyone else has to date–not because she’s thin. In fact, I didn’t know she was thin…but I’d say a thin ally with some M.D’s is generally a good thing. 🙂
I’m also dubious about judgment always being a deterrent to health, though maybe that’s because we haven’t yet agreed on what “judgment” means. One common definition of judgment is the ability to form an opinion objectively, authoritatively, and wisely. “Medical judgment” is different from the “I get to JUDGE you because I’m BETTER” that strangers throw around on the street, or even the “I get to JUDGE you because I know you” that comes from well-meaning family members. In medical terms, “health” does have a definition; it has objective components which can be judged in the sense of “form an objective opinion about” (though not in the sense of “criticize and assign a moral value to).” those components include blood pressure, blood numbers, the rate at which our blood takes up and distributes oxygen, and so on. Those components also include aspects of health of which we may (but also may not) be the best “judges”, like mental health, or like our need to address a stressful situation with what can look to someone else like maladaptive behavior. That need is real; we’re the only ones who can decide whether to address the situation that way. But over the long haul, there really are maladaptive behaviors, like the ones that will kill us if we keep them up. I’m not talking about weight; I’m talking about heavy smoking, disordered eating, shooting up cocaine, and pursuing crazily extreme sports, no matter what pushed us into those things. These things may be necessary to us—that’s not for me to decide for any other person—but they’re not healthy for us.
So if I think I’m pretty healthy, but my cancer markers suddenly shoot through the roof; or my doc does the routine blood work and finds that my blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides have taken a sudden jump, or that my iron has fallen abruptly, I think that doctor has a right to make a judgement—without being judgmental—that my health is impaired. If I take up smoking and never exercise again, that’s my choice, and not one which carries any moral value. But if I call it a healthy choice, no matter how valid my reasons–even if its initial function is keeping me from cutting myself–I’m not forming an objective or accurate opinion. Over the long haul, neither cutting myself nor accepting addiction is a healthy choice, because “health” means something measurable, something which can be judged (though not morally.) We can choose not to pursue it, but we can’t choose to utterly redefine it.
Or, to put it another way, when Ragen wrote in the original post that because it was her health involved, her opinion was the only one that counted…I didn’t agree with that as a general principle (though in context of what she was talking about, one week in which she couldn’t make all the choices she otherwise might’ve liked to, she was of course right.) I think our doctors’ considered opinions count, if those opinions are based on facts and not prejudices. I think our loved ones’ considered opinions count, if they aren’t just trying to control us for the sake of control. I think these are judgments which can help us to live more healthily (if that is what we want, and which, of course, we have no moral obligation to do), and that judgment doesn’t necessarily equal judgmental.