I know that with all of “war on obesity” stuff you hear it’s hard to believe, but stick with me here for a minute. First let’s clarify who the War on Obesity is actually against. It would seem to be against obese people, but that’s not quite true. “Obesity” as currently defined is the result of a mathematical formula involving a ratio of weight and height called “BMI” We’ve discussed before why the BMI is BS. Part of the reason is that there are so many exceptions to the rule. When people talk about eliminating obesity they don’t typically mean that world class athletes should drop muscle mass so that their ratio comes into line, or that very tall people should be underweight so that they have an “acceptable” ratio of weight and height.
When people talk about eliminating obesity, they typically mean eliminating people who are visibly fat. The war is not against a ratio of weight and height that’s greater than 30, it’s against people who don’t fit the stereotype of beauty. And the front lines of this war are everywhere we look and listen – magazine covers, billboards, commercials, infomercials, ads on the internet, random strangers on the street, health care and wellness professionals, talk show hosts etc.
Knowing that, today I’m going to ignore the mountain of scientific evidence that says that intentional weight loss doesn’t work. I’m going to ignore all of the evidence that Health at Every Size does work. I’m going to ignore the many healthy fat people and unhealthy thin people who exist and disprove the efficacy of conflating weight and health. My question today is: Even if we would all be healthier if we were thin, is the War on Obesity a good idea?
Have you ever had something that you hated: a purse, some shoes, a knick-knack that was a gift from someone? Did you take good care if it? Were you inspired to dust it and polish it and keep it beautiful.
Me neither.
The war on obesity has branched out to cover not just the appearance of bodies, but also their health, intelligence and worthiness. The War tells us that if our bodies are fat then they are unhealthy, ugly, unattractive and not worthy of love. We are told that we are not thin because we are lazy, don’t make healthy choices, and lack will power. We are told that thin is the same as healthy and that we can’t have health without attaining a “healthy weight”.
The vast majority of dieters gain back all of their weight plus more within five years. Yet if we are part of this vast, vast majority, we are shamed and called weak failures.
The war on obesity tells us to hate ourselves. Then it says that we have to take good care of ourselves. Then it says that it doesn’t matter if we take good care of ourselves, we have to lose weight or we should keep hating ourselves until we hate ourselves enough to take good enough care of ourselves to lose weight.
It’s ridiculous. It’s a system that sets us up to fail, actively participates in our failure, then makes us feel horrible for failing, all the while profiting the diet industry to the tune of almost $60,000,000,000 (yup, that’s sixty billion dollars) a year.
So back to my original question: Even if we would all be healthier if we were thin (and I don’t think we would be), is the War on Obesity a good idea?
I think that the answer is a resounding no. There are absolutely no circumstances in which a war on all people who look a certain way is a good idea. Here’s are some steps to fight back…
- Notice how often these dangerous messages happen Tomorrow notice how many messages you get about obesity – from television, the radio, the internet (how many diet ads are on the pages you look at) etc. Notice how many of those messages are created by someone who either wants you to buy their product or has something to gain by maintaining the status quo (ie: they derive their self-esteem from being “better” than fat people)
- Appreciate your body! Your body is amazing – think of all of the stuff that it is doing for you right now: you are breathing, your heart is beating, you are blinking, the list goes on and on. Your body deserves to be loved and appreciated. Just as it is. Right now. Right this minute.
- Do things that make you and your body feel good.
- Stop judging others by their weight. Stop assuming that very thin women have eating disorders. Stop assuming that fat people are lazy or unhealthy. Strike words like “skinny bitch”, “fat pig” etc. from your vocabulary
- Don’t push your idea of health onto other people. Make choices for yourself and stop telling other people how they should live unless they are asking directly for your thoughts or advice. Your experience is just that – YOUR experience. You get to make decisions for you based on your experience but nobody else is required to take your experience into account in their decisions. Don’t confuse your experience for everyone’s experience.
- Speak out when you see other people partaking in these negative behaviors. Every time someone says something like this they are reinforcing to someone else that they are unhealthy, unattractive and unworthy. The idea of making someone hate themselves healthy is ludicrous.
- Tell your story. A lot of people don’t even know that Health at Ever Size is an option for them. That’s the entire point of my blog. I don’t want to tell people how to live, I just want them to know that there are options for happiness and health with the body they have now.
Like the blog? Check Out the Book. The E-Book is “Name Your Own Price”!
I wanted everyone to be able to afford Fat: The Owner’s Manual – Surviving a Thin-Obsessed World with your Health, Happiness, and Sense of Humor Intact so it is now available in soft cover and e-book which is “name your own price
Become a Member, Support The Work!
This month’s member deals come from More of Me to Love, Jodee Rose, The Fat Nutritionist, Golda Poretsky, Jeanette DePatie and of course me. If you are a member and haven’t received the e-mail with details and passwords just let me know!
I do HAES and SA activism, speaking and writing full time, and I don’t believe in putting corporate ads on my blog and making my readers a commodity. So if you find value in my work, want to support it, and you can afford it, you can become a member (you get extra stuff, discounts, and you’re always the first to know about things) or you can support my work with a one-time contribution. The regular e-mail blog subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free. If you’re curious about this policy, you might want to check out this post. Thanks for reading! ~Ragen
Dances With Fat 
And the very biggest reason WHY NO ONE REALLY WANTS TO ELIMINATE OBESITY is that it would put too many people out of work. Fat people are very profitable, so not only do some love feeling superior to others, they especially love profiting from us. There are a lot of people who not only know that no weight loss method really works, but do not WANT any method to work, because, if it did, they might have to get a real job. Every culture seems to need its pariahs & whipping boys & our modern culture has joyfully seized upon fat people as someone to marginalize, stigmatize, abuse, & use as a symbol of all that is ‘wrong’ with the world. Some people may, as we know from the comments of internet trolls, hate us so much that they want to kill us, but our culture needs fat people. What they DON’T want or need is fat people who are self-loving, confident, non-dieting, & unwilling to play our assigned role. Fat people like us they DO want to eliminate.
I don’t think there’s a conspiracy keeping methods that would eliminate obesity a secret. Anyone who came up with something that worked would make a fortune.
What’s really going on is that either no method is possible at all, no method is possible at present levels of knowledge, or no one cares enough about the well-being of fat people to really think about the issue carefully (it would take caring about fat people to invent a method of weight loss which isn’t part of the “it doesn’t matter if they suffer” model).
Since no method exists, there are plenty of people who are willing to make money off desperation. I think most of them believe their methods would work if only fat people would try hard enough, rather than consciously engaging in fraud.
At the same time, though, there would be a big incentive to keep obesity from being cured, simply because if people could stop being obese, they would stop buying diets and weight loss tools. This way, people feel bad, they buy the stuff, it doesn’t work, they feel even worse, and they buy more stuff. It’s a vicious cycle, solidified for most people by the steady current of fatphobia in our culture, and by the “research” on how bad obesity is for your health.
I don’t think there’s a conspiracy keeping methods that would eliminate obesity a secret.
With respect Nancy, Patsy never said anything of the kind. She said no one gives a shit about ‘obesity’ which is correct. They never have.
The whole reason we were lumbered with the individualization of weight loss is so that the food industrial complex could continue unabated for the profit (and desire) of society as a whole.
The logical follow through of “eating needs to be reduced to save fat people”, would have been restricting that development at the levels they were at the start of the fuss about ‘obesity’.
After all, the crisis started in the 1970’s.
I’m sure there are ways to manipulate human metabolism, instead of seeking them out, they insist on sticking with just one, which has energy restriction/increased expenditure-which has proven to be defunct.
If you check everything from WLD to pills, to surgery, they all subscribe to this actually one underlying principle. Indeed, I think that’s one of the reasons, they would like that license to print money, but that requires them to find a means where they are in control. Not the individual.
If they could find a way to control the course of a persons weight ,that they couldn’t profit from, I’m not sure they would be pleased.
It’s moot anyway, they just continue to pretend a useless route is the only possibility because, well, they like the sound of it. You’re right, that they can feel this way, is a signal of their awareness of the weakened position fat people are in.
Being in a position to observe more of the truth of ‘obesity’ mayhem and degeneracy, should not require one to have to pussyfoot around or be seen to be extreme or unbalanced. Merely because one is reporting on what is going on.
It was perfectly normal for virtually of us to accept we were choosing to “eat ourselves to death”. No one spoke of how ludicrous that was. So yeah, people don’t give a shit to exploit the position of others. That’s recognising other people’s cynicism and common ground, it’s not conspiracy theorizing.
“Conspiracy” is putting it too strongly, but I can’t imagine someone finding a “cure” for obesity and not trying to make a huge profit and/or gain a huge amount of reputation from it.
Actually paleo eating (eating based on ideas about pre-agricultural people ate) kind of proves both of our points. It isn’t a calorie restriction system, some people lose weight on it, it doesn’t cause the misery level of calorie or fat restriction (at least for a significant number of people), and so far as I know, it was invented by people who weren’t scientists and weren’t part of the weight loss industry.
Yesterday, I was reading an article on gun control (following the recent massacres in Wisconsin and Colorado) posted on a feminist website. and wouldn’t you know it! Some of the commenters said to lay off gun control and start talking about what’s really harming society: obesity. Fortunately, others jumped in and remarked on the inanity of this idea.
Yeah…because jiggling my belly fat at people is what’s causing mass deaths.
Long time reader, first time commenter here! I really love this post – it gets to the heart of what is wrong with the “war on obesity”. Lies, misdirections etc…it’s such a shame. Thank you for calling it out.
Welcome to the comments section!
~Ragen
we should keep hating ourselves until we hate ourselves enough to take good enough care of ourselves to lose weight.
This is exactly the mental knot my brain ties itself in when my eating disorder flares up. And it’s nearly killed me. I’m sure I’m not the only person who can say that.
Thank you for saying this so clearly, Ragen, and for this blog – your posts and the comments are a huge help for me.
I just finished your book. I really enjoyed it, and am planning on including it in my research paper for School. I am studying to be a naturopathic dr. I want to be a dr. that looks at each person as an individual, and not at their size. I am a fat person, have been all my life. I was one of those who went to the dr. and every time he said lose 60 pounds and all would be well. In highschool, I was anorexic. I weighed 100 pounds I’m 5′ tall, good BMI at 100. The dr. was happy as a clam, even though at 18 after I graduated, I had burned a hole through my stomach from not eating more than 3 cartons of yogurt a day for three years, and gallons of unsweetened tea. Naturopaths treat the whole body, but I have found in school, that if you are not thin, not vegetarian, not a whole lot of things, they will immediately assume you are not healthy. In my research paper, I want to show them, that even though they are promoting natural living, we all have different shapes, and that’s ok. It will be interesting bringing this up in my oral presentation, but I think my school needs to hear it. Thanks again for all your hard work.
I agree that it’s a common problem with people who believe they are thinking about health in a holistic way. It’s NOT about just doing things that are healthy, because it seems even these people refuse to believe that you can do all the right things and still have visible adiposity. Blah.
Just to chime in about the diet industry/ diet ads – lately I notice they’ve been targeting women who are smaller and smaller to fill their dollar quota. The other day I saw an ad of a woman who bragged went from a size 6 to a size 2.
Evidently the 60 Billion dollars from fatties and in-betweenies isn’t enough. Now they have decided to go after anyone whose dress size is actually a number.
I agree with you, but this has been going on for longer than you think. I can remember a few decades ago when actual fat people were used in diet ads. Meaning people with abundant adipose tissue, not just medium-size folk. It’s not surprising that they’re going after smaller and smaller people over the years.
It’s downright brainwashing of the millions of people who don’t sit down and do critical thinking. The article I’m posting isn’t about weight/size/health, but it is a good look into the industry I pursued a degree in. My professors always said that film is a powerful tool, but didn’t go into detail. Everything written is truth, and I knew it, I just never put words to it or had a reason to:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-you-dont-realize-movies-are-controlling-your-brain/
I also post it as a tool to use in arguments because it is well written.
Thank you Ragen, I love this line, ” The idea of making someone hate themselves healthy is ludicrous.” That is what folks don’t get. I spent the day listening to Christopher Fairburn talk about his theories on eating disorders treatment and it was fascinating talking with the health professionals I sat by. They had not heard of HAES and went on to tell me that, “But we really do have to do something about obesity.” I asked the one if her “fat” as she called it was giving her any health consequences. She said no, her numbers are all great. The other one who was much larger said she does have health issues and I think I made some progress helping her to see that it may be the behaviors such as food and movement choices that are causing the health issues not the actual fat itself.
So much brainwashing has happened in the name of preserving the last acceptable prejudice.
If doctors still want to believe that telling a patient to “lose 70 pounds” is going to do ANYTHING good they need to hear this story. A woman told me that after her doctor told her that she went across the street and bought a donut because she felt so badly about herself. FIRST DO NO HARM…
Becky Henry
Hope Network, LLC
When people talk about eliminating obesity, they typically mean eliminating people who are visibly fat. The war is not against a ratio of weight and height that’s greater than 30, it’s against people who don’t fit the stereotype of beauty.
YES. This exactly.
This is something I’m especially aware of as an ‘in-betweenie’. I’m a British size 18 and have been for over a decade. While I don’t know my current weight, if I’m the same size I was the last time I was weighed (at my last doctor’s surgery in 1998 – and my husband thinks I’m still around that size), I’m just over 13 stone (182lb), which puts me just into the ‘obese’ BMI category (not that BMI means anything, but, anyway.) Yet no medical person has told me to lose weight (interestingly, back when I was weighed at that other surgery, the nurse’s sole comment was ‘You’re about a stone (14lb) overweight but it’s not going to kill you’). I don’t get cat-called in the street about my size. And the people close to me (with the exception of my late mother, who called me ‘fat’ at a much lower weight) don’t think of me as a fat person.
I’m aware of my privilege in not having suffered the same sort of public hatred and prejudice many larger fat people experience, and I think it goes some way to showing how much this is all based on whether someone is perceived as looking fat. I’ve not yet been in a situation where someone says something offensive about ‘obese’ people without realizing that I come into that category, but I have some good ideas for what to say if and when it does happen.
“The front lines of this war are everywhere,” and one of those places is the White House. I don’t know why the First Lady’s apparent obsession with obesity is mostly ignored on many HAES and body acceptance sites. Her most recent eye-rolling moment was when she chided gymnast Gabby Douglas for having a celebratory Egg McMuffin after winning the gold medal for best all-around gymnast. Jokey? Not really. Not when you hear her drone on and on and on and on about thin=health. I know that size-acceptance generally leans a little left, but pretending that Michelle Obama’s noxious and ignorant bigotry doesn’t exist is disingenuous. She has done more to whip up a froth of hatred for fatness than just about anyone.