One of the things about a long-term, difficult to achieve goal like a marathon is that it leaves ample opportunities to have bad days.  For me and this marathon that can mean days when I don’t meet my goals for speed or duration, days when my motivation flags,  days when I think maybe I don’t want to do this and days when I think maybe I can’t.

There are lots of different ways that I deal with bad days:

If I was slower than I wanted to be, I remind myself that improvement is more of a roller coaster than an escalator that goes straight up and I review my longer term progress to remind myself that I’m still on track.

If I have to cut a session short, or miss a session, I remind myself that it’s a long road and that things happen sometimes and that’s ok.

If I find my motivation waning I go full-on cheesy – inspirational songs, stuff on pinterest, the rah rah sayings on the walls of my gym, whatever it takes to get myself back into a good, positive, optimistic place.

When it comes to marathon training the truth is that it’s a long term commitment to doing something that I don’t really like to do,  for a goal that I really want to achieve.  I chose that, I accept it, and part of that for me is not just doing the training but also doing the work to keep myself in a good place mentally.

So, in the selfish interest of having more good stuff for my bad days, please feel free to post your favorite inspirational songs/pictures/things to get over a bad day etc. in the comments!

Like this blog? Consider supporting my work by becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do (like answering hundreds of request for help and support every day) isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (THANK YOU to my members, I couldn’t do this without you and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Book Me!  I give talks all across the country about self-esteem, body image, health and wellness for people of size and more, and I’d love to speak to your organization. (I’ll be in Northern New York and Central Pennsylvania in the next couple of months if you are in those areas and would like to add an event to those trips.) You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

Here’s more cool stuff:

Buy my book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

Allison is a new reader, and she e-mailed to ask me  a question that I get a lot regarding my feelings about food moralizing – the practicing of labeling food as good, bad, clean, sinful, junk, trash etc.  Specifically she asked:

Because some foods, (such as fruits, vegetable, lean meats and dairy, etc.), contain more nutrients that are good for your body than some other foods (chips, cheese puffs, candy, etc.). So why is it bad label foods that can fuel your body better as “healthy” or “good”? It’s not like I’m saying people are morally obligated to eat certain foods. But isn’t it true that eating foods that can better feed your body is good for you. If you can just clarify on this a little bit, I would appreciate is so much. Thanks for running a good blog!

Thanks for asking Allison! First of all there are a lot of things that go into food choices – availability and affordability of foods, availability and feasibility of cooking methods, availability of time, tools, and skill for food preparation and consumption, allergies, sensitivities, health conditions, culture, religious beliefs, personal moral beliefs, tastes and preferences, and the circumstances at each time someone eats.

Next, the ideaa of foods as “healthy” and “unhealthy” are not absolutes.  For example, vegetables are generally seen as universally “healthy” but there are some people who can’t digest fresh vegetables because of health conditions so they aren’t healthy for them at all.

There are also many ways of eating that people believe are the “healthiest” way or “right” way to eat – many of them are diametrically opposed to each other:  low carb, low fat, raw foods vegan, vegetarian, paleo etc.  People are allowed to choose to eat any way that they want for any reason that they want, but making it a public and adding an element of food being good/bad becomes problematic really quickly.

Our culture encourages us to make our decisions about eating into a performance – we talk about our food choices in a way that we don’t talk about our other bodily function choices. (For example, it wouldn’t be unusual to be at lunch with three other people where we spent most of the lunch discussing what we eat and why.  It would be unusual if we spent the meal discussing how, when, and why we used the restroom even though that’s just the other side of the equation.)

When we turn our personal food choices into a public performance complete with moralization, we create a construct by which people are then judged and often shamed and stigmatized for their food choices, that ignores both context and personal choice.  This disproportionately affects the poor, people with health issues, and people from cultures and religions that are considered different than the “mainstream” (by which I mean the culture doing the judging.)  It also affects fat people since our current paradigm of size bigotry suggests that fat bodies are public property and our choices are up for public comment. It can also contribute to disordered eating and  eating disorders, the understanding being that genetics “loads the gun” by predisposing some to developing eating disorders, and environment- like one in which food choices are constantly put under a social microscope and it can seem that no choice is ever healthy “enough” – pulls the trigger.

So while it’s fine to believe that a certain way of eating is the “best” or “healthiest” for us,  if we feel the need to reinforce our choices by discussing them publicly, and calling other food/food choices “crap” or “trash” or “sinful” or “bad”or whatever, then I think we need to assess why that is.  Is it because we are trying to feel superior?  Is it simple pretension? A need to have our choices validated by insisting that those who make other choices are wrong and putting them down?  An attempt to gain social approval? Regardless I would suggest that, considering the negative outcomes that food moralizing/policing/shaming can have, opting out of it allows us to do a positive thing for our culture with no impact to our ability to make our own choices.

In my dream world everyone would have full and easy access to non-biased information about food and nutrition available to them, and would have access (including affordability, cooking method and time to prepare and the ability to learn the skills to make) the foods that they would choose to eat, and live in an environment where they are not judged for their choices.

For now I think that when it comes to nutrition we should confine ourselves to making decisions for ourselves and, if we are interested in helping others then we can work to make sure that people have access to neutral, unbiased information (giving advice only when directly asked,) and access to the foods that they would choose to eat, and respect their choices in the same way we want ours to be respected.

Like this blog? Consider supporting my work by becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do (like answering hundreds of request for help and support every day) isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (THANK YOU to my members, I couldn’t do this without you and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Book Me!  I give talks all across the country about self-esteem, body image, health and wellness for people of size and more, and I’d love to speak to your organization. (I’ll be in Northern New York and Central Pennsylvania in the next couple of months if you are in those areas and would like to add an event to those trips.) You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

Here’s more cool stuff:

Buy my book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

I have a few rules for this blog (they’re really more like guidelines…) and one of them is that if 100 non-troll people ask me to write about something I usually do.  Today the whole Katie Hopkins debacle passed that threshold so here you go 102 readers:

If you aren’t familiar (you lucky thing) Katie Hopkins is famous for having been part of a reality show, and subsequently saying horrible things to get attention, without a care in the world about the bigotry she perpetuates.  She’s now taking her bigotry against fat people further with a ridiculous stunt in which she gained about 44 pounds so that she can lose it to “prove” that people can lose weight if they try.  TLC has given her a two-part documentary to, in their words and not hers, “confront her attitudes and put her beliefs to the test, by following her own physical and emotional journey as she gains and loses weight, whilst exploring the broader issues of body image in our society.”

So far she has lamented about how difficult it is to eat 6500 calories a day for three months (if she’s surprised by that then clearly her meal plan did not include a bowl of No Shit Sherlock flakes) and then whined “This is a stupid project. I hate fat people for making me do this…” I agree with the first part.  As for the second, I’ve seen plenty of footage of her and in none of it did I seen a gang of menacing fat people threatening to harm her if she didn’t eat a tube of Pringles.  As far as I’m concerned the only thing I’ve seen more pathetic than her whining, is people complimenting her for her “bravery” and wishing her luck on her “difficult journey.”

In what I hope is obvious, whatever the outcome the only thing that she’s proven is what happens to her body when she engages in rapid weight gain and then attempts to lose it.  This has actually nothing to do with the experience of fat people or the likelihood of weight loss success. Luckily we don’t have to rely on n=1 publicity stunts, because we have actual research on the efficacy of long-term weight loss.  While we know that there are some people who manage to lose weight and maintain it we also know that the successes are a tiny minority. And what happens if she isn’t able to lose the weight?  What does that tell us?

But at the end of the day her “experiment” is even more pointless than that.  Fat people have the right to exist in fat bodies without shame, stigma, bullying or oppression.  Even if we could be thin.  Also, we’re completely competent witnesses to our experience.  The thing  that I find so insidious is that this “experiment” is being reported all over the place. And the idea that there is any shred of validity to it is based on the idea that we can’t believe what fat people say about their experiences, so we need a thin person to “try out” being fat, and then we’ll consider their single, completely atypical, experience to be a credible report, more valid that the lived experience of thousands of fat people, and the results of actual research based on the Scientific Method and not the Unholy Bible of PR Stunts.

There are plenty of credible reports about what it is like to be an actual fat person, so those who are interested in our experiences don’t actually need Dr. Oz in a fat suit or Katie Hopkins eating 6,500 calories a day, they could just listen to us.

Like this blog? Consider supporting my work by becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do (like answering hundreds of request for help and support every day) isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (THANK YOU to my members, I couldn’t do this without you and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Book Me!  I give talks all across the country about self-esteem, body image, health and wellness for people of size and more, and I’d love to speak to your organization. (I’ll be in Northern New York and Central Pennsylvania in the next couple of months if you are in those areas and would like to add an event to those trips.) You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

Here’s more cool stuff:

Buy my book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

I was in an interesting conversation on Facebook where people were discussing whether or not, as Size Acceptance activists and/or Health at Every Size practitioners, they buy “diet’ products and why or why not. This is something I’ve thought about a lot.

There is a quote by Anna Lappe that says “Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want.”  As an activist, that rings really true for me – the way that I spend my money is a form of activism.  I can spend money in a way that supports companies that support me, or I can fund companies that do something between ignoring and outright oppressing me.

First, to be clear I’m not talking about a boycott –  boycotts have absolutely proven to be effective tools in the right circumstances, and it’s true that if everyone stopped buying products that attempt to sell things to us by convincing us that we’re not good enough, they would stop doing it, but this is something different than that.  This is about making choices for how I  spend my money regardless of how anyone else spends theirs.  These decisions are rarely cut and dried, and they typically involve sacrifices. They are also personal decisions for each of us, and it’s not anybody’s job to tell us what to spend money on and our choices don’t make us better or worse than anyone else.  I’m not trying to tell anyone else how to live,  it’s just something I think is worth talking about, so I’ll confine the discussion to me.

A few years ago I made the decision to stop buying or consuming anything sold using a weight-loss or anti-obesity message.  It occurred to me that I spend a great deal of time trying to counteract these messages and that giving the people who create the messages money is a bit counter-intuitive.  So I decided to stop funding the very thing that I am trying to fight.  It has eliminated a lot of drink options, a lot of food options, there are stores where I don’t shop, and items that I don’t buy, but when I make the oatmeal from the brand that took me 10 minutes to find and cost $0.50 more, I feel good that I’m not paying for more oatmeal containers that try to terrify people into eating oatmeal in an effort to prevent them from looking like me.

Of course this leads to all kinds of judgement calls – I don’t want this to become a thing that overtakes my life but I do want my purchases to be in integrity with my beliefs.  Sometimes it is easy –  “Biggest Loser” branded carrots are right out, I’m not giving money to a show that abuses fat people for profit.  Then there are some others that are much more judgment calls – does Sweet and Low count? For me it’s easy to over think, and worry about being perfect and I have to remind myself that, just like the rest of civil rights, it’s not about perfection, it’s about making the next choice and doing the next thing in front of me.  Nobody can do everything but we can all do something, and this is one of the things that I try to do.

Like this blog? Consider supporting my work by becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do (like answering hundreds of request for help and support every day) isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (THANK YOU to my members, I couldn’t do this without you and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Book Me!  I give talks all across the country about self-esteem, body image, health and wellness for people of size and more, and I’d love to speak to your organization. (I’ll be in Northern New York and Central Pennsylvania in the next couple of months if you are in those areas and would like to add an event to those trips.) You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

Here’s more cool stuff:

Buy my book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

Civil rights change always happens against the vehement objects of those who cling to the old beliefs, typically for whatever it buys for them – privilege, a false sense of superiority reinforced by social contract, fear of change, there are plenty of reasons.  In fat civil rights that brings us fairly quickly to haters, a group of people who are so upset that there are fat people who won’t hate ourselves and spend our lives dieting and professing our inferiority, that they dedicate significant amounts of their own lives to obsessing about us and everything that we do.

In fat rights activism for the foreseeable future there will be sad people who spend their time spewing hate and bigotry trying desperately to feel ok about themselves by putting others down (and, based on the ridiculously overwrought death threats I receive, playing a lot of Call of Duty.) Each of us gets to deal with this in whatever way works for us.

For me, I think that while I can create safe, hater-free spaces, I can’t eradicate them.  So one of the options I choose is using them. This post was inspired by this e-mail exchange that happened over the last few days:

A friend of mine linked to your blog on FB.  I want to respectfully challenge your premise.  I just don’t think there’s a bunch of fat discrimination and hate out there that it’s worth having a movement to fight.

I e-mailed back, sending her this blog about oppression and for hate I sent her to a couple reddit fat hate groups as well as several specific threads about me, and my hatemail page.  Today I got this e-mail back:

Thanks for answering my e-mail.  I agree with some of the examples of oppression but I would need to do more research on others which, honestly, I’m not going to take the time to do right now. I can see what you’re saying though.  I checked out those forums and I have to tell you I’m seriously horrified.  Obviously these are some messed up people and I see your point that this level of hate couldn’t exist if discrimination or stigma against big people didn’t exist in society.  Anyway,  I made a donation through your hatemail page and I followed your blog.  I doubt I’ll agree with everything you have to say but I’m willing to listen.

My haters yammer on and I spend a lot of time laughing at their antics, but I definitely find ways to use them to my advantage.  When people can’t see the fatphobia that’s all around them, these groups help put it into extremely sharp relief and help people see why the work I and other fat activists do is necessary  And it’s not just me, there are a number of fat activists and fat activism projects that have received boosts in fundraising, media, and  visibility when they used their haters wisely.

So again, you shouldn’t have to deal with haters, and if you do then you get to choose how to deal with them.  Using them wisely is just one option, whatever option you choose is completely valid.

Like this blog? Consider supporting my work by becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do (like answering hundreds of request for help and support every day) isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (THANK YOU to my members, I couldn’t do this without you and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Book Me!  I give talks all across the country about self-esteem, body image, health and wellness for people of size and more, and I’d love to speak to your organization. (I’ll be in Northern New York and Central Pennsylvania in the next couple of months if you are in those areas and would like to add an event to those trips.) You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

Here’s more cool stuff:

Buy my book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

As my regular readers are no doubt aware, I moderate my spaces – this blog, my Facebook page, the Facebook pages I manage etc.  This often angers the people who would like to use these spaces to forward their agenda of fat hatred and bigotry and/or call me unoriginal names.   Sometimes I get the ridiculous “You’re infringing on my freedom of speech” argument (newsflash to these Constitutional scholars –  the first amendment says “Congress shall make no laws…abridging the freedom of speech” it does not say “bloggers shall be required to post your bullshit comments”.)

The one that I want to talk about today is:

If you really believed in your cause you would allow open debate on your blog (or Facebook etc. )

In order to fight oppression, and have some respite from it, marginalized populations have every right to create spaces where their oppressors do not have a voice.   The insistence otherwise is about further oppressing people, as well as the shock of people who are laboring under the misapprehension that they should get to say whatever they want, anytime and anywhere they want, and are experiencing the rude awakening that there are spaces that aren’t for them to speak in.

Let’s also be clear that fat civil rights activism shouldn’t be necessary. The idea that our right to live in a fat body without being oppressed is debatable is a pretty clear indication of the problem.   The truth is that fat people have the right to exist in fat bodies without shaming, stigma, bullying or oppression regardless of why we are fat, what it means to be fat, or if we could become thin.  There are no other valid opinions about that.  Our rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and basic human respect should never be up for debate. At some point our society got confused and started to think that some people should have to debate for their civil rights with people who are already enjoying theirs. That’s complete and total bullshit.

The reason we have these spaces in the first place is that people are threatening and stealing our rights through an inappropriate use of power and privilege.  We are under no obligation to help them out.  That means that, while we may be forced to fight for rights that should already be ours, believing that we shouldn’t be oppressed does not mean that we have to allow our oppressors in our spaces to “debate” about whether or not we have the right to exist.

Like this blog? Consider supporting my work by becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do (like answering hundreds of request for help and support every day) isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (THANK YOU to my members, I couldn’t do this without you and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Book Me!  I give talks all across the country about self-esteem, body image, health and wellness for people of size and more, and I’d love to speak to your organization. (I’ll be in Northern New York and Central Pennsylvania in the next couple of months if you are in those areas and would like to add an event to those trips.) You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

Here’s more cool stuff:

Buy my book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

In the past couple of days I’ve seen the following responses from fat people to fat shaming behavior that they experienced:

“I mean it’s true I’m a big lady, but being big shouldn’t be a reason to treat me like crap.”

“Yes, I had a second piece of pie, but nobody asked him to be my food police.”

“Sure, they weren’t the most fashionable workout clothes but I was focused on my workout, I didn’t ask her to comment on my outfit.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these, and people get to to deal with inappropriate behavior that is directed at them anyway that they want. This is not a criticism, just another option, which is that we don’t apologize for ourselves when the problem is actually someone else’s behavior.

Fat people are constantly told that we are wrong just for existing in fat bodies, it’s not a surprise if we start to internalize that.  I think that an incredibly powerful form of fat activism is to not apologize in any way for being fat, for doing things that are considered “bad” because we are fat (like eating, existing outside our homes in non-approved non-slimming clothing, exercising without the blinds closed in our own homes etc.).  When people behave inappropriately toward us, we have the option to point out their bad behavior with no apology for our existence in a fat body.

We may not yet be able to convince everyone that shaming, bullying, stigmatizing and oppressing fat people is wrong, but we can be sure of it ourselves and we can vocalize that with authority.  When someone says something inappropriate, we can respond with certainty and resist, with conviction, the urge to apologize in any way.   There are some options below, you can use these to end conversations or to start them.  As always it’s entirely up to you:

“Wow are you out of line.”

“I can’t imagine what would make you think that was an appropriate thing to say.”

“Nobody asked you to be my food police”

“What I eat is absolutely none of your business.”

“If you’re going to treat me that way, then we simply can’t be friends.”

“What I’m wearing is not your concern.”

“Honestly, I’m kind of shocked you would think that was ok to say.”

“[Your behavior] is completely inappropriate.”

Feel free to leave your ideas in the comments.  In the meantime try it, and you too may experience the joy of not apologizing.

EDIT:  One reader asked how to respond when people say that our body size/health/behavior is their business because it costs them tax dollars.  My thoughts on that can be found right here!

Like this blog? Consider supporting my work by becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do (like answering hundreds of request for help and support every day) isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (THANK YOU to my members, I couldn’t do this without you and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Book Me!  I give talks all across the country about self-esteem, body image, health and wellness for people of size and more, and I’d love to speak to your organization. (I’ll be in Northern New York and Central Pennsylvania in the next couple of months if you are in those areas and would like to add an event to those trips.) You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

Here’s more cool stuff:

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

The LA Times ran a headline in their science section that read “Diets work, but brands don’t make much difference, study finds”

It goes on to talk about a meta analysis that found:

Low-carb diets were linked to 8.73 kilograms of lost weight (19.25 pounds) at 6 months, and 7.25 kg (15.98 pounds) at 12 months. The low-fat diets were close behind, with 7.99 kg (17.61 pounds) lost in the first half-year and 7.27 kg (16.03 pounds) at the one-year mark.

The careful observer will note that at some point between 6 months and 12 months weight loss turned to weight gain.  This isn’t a surprise, it’s what the long term studies of weight loss tell us – almost everyone on almost any diet can lose weight in the short term, and almost everyone gains it back in the long-term with many regaining more than they lost regardless of whether they keep their diet behaviors going or not. It’s one of the reasons why most weight loss studies (many of which are funded by weight loss companies) don’t go beyond a year or two.  When confronted by the FTC about this, weight loss industry reps said that they wouldn’t do long term studies because it would be “too depressing” for their clients.  I love the smell of for-profit “science” in the morning.

I don’t believe that weight loss should be used as a medical intervention at all, but even if doctor’s believe that it should they are still going about it in a way that doesn’t make any sense. What they’re doing at this point is the equivalent of prescribing a pill for a diagnosis that 60% of the population has, that has been shown in every long term study to work short term, but in the long term return the patient to their original sick state, making the majority more sick than they were within 5 years., then telling those who “failed” long-term (which is almost everyone) that they just need to try harder at not being sick because the treatment worked for 6 months so there’s no possible way that it can’t work forever or could stop working.  That’s not even in the same galaxy as the ethical  practice of medicine.  Again, I agree with the AMA Council on Science and Health that body size isn’t a disease,.my argument is that even if doctor’s believe it is a disease, recommending weight loss does not constitute the ethical practice of evidence-based medicine. Of course the study authors don’t agree, they claim:

This supports the practice of recommending any diet that a patient will adhere to in order to lose weight,”

Except it doesn’t, it support the practice of recommending any diet plan if the goal is for the patient to lose weight for 6 months and then start gaining it back. And here is the problem with weight loss research:  Studies show that weight loss doesn’t work long term but study authors just go ahead and say that it does.

Sometimes it’s a study where more than 2/3 of participants dropped out and the rest lost an average of 2 pounds. Sometimes it’s Weight Watchers own studies finding that the average client loses 10 pounds in the first year and gains back 5 in the second year, and their chief scientist calls that “validation” of what they are doing. Today it’s these chuckleheads finding, clearly,  that most people lose weight in the first 6 months and start gaining it back in the next 6 months and saying that supports the practice of recommending diets to patients (and I’m not even getting into the fact that this is based on the untested and scientifically challenged hypothesis that weight loss will lead to better health.) The obesity epi-panic is so completely out of control that scientists grossly misconstrue their findings, and the LA times puts in in the science section.

Activism Opportunity:  Comment on the article at http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-diet-low-fat-carb-brand-best-weight-loss-study-20140902-story.html

Like this blog? Consider supporting my work by becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do (like answering hundreds of request for help and support every day) isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (THANK YOU to my members, I couldn’t do this without you and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Book Me!  I give talks all across the country about self-esteem, body image, health and wellness for people of size and more, and I’d love to speak to your organization. (I’ll be in Northern New York and Central Pennsylvania in the next couple of months if you are in those areas and would like to add an event to those trips.) You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

Here’s more cool stuff:

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

Well, at least I’m not going to take it, everyone else gets to choose whether they are or aren’t.  What is it I’m not going to take? The insistence that I have to put up with poor treatment.

When I wrote about ways to deal with the Friends and Family Food Police, I got an e-mail saying that I should just “keep my mouth shut and appreciate that they care enough about to say something”.

Um, no.  I’m not going to do that. I respect everyone’s right to handle these situations in their own way, but that’s not how I roll. To me this behavior is inappropriate and I’m not going to smile pretty and take it.  The people who are in my life must respect my choices (even if they don’t agree with them) and must treat me with the level of respect that I require. I do my best to give clear communication, set specific boundaries and consequences, and follow through.  I respect someone’s choice not to be in my life, and I will not hesitate to remove someone from my life if they aren’t able to get it together. What I won’t do is be surrounded by family and “friends” treating me in a way that I find inappropriate while I shrug and say thanks.

When I wrote denouncing bullying behavior disguised as being for our own good, I got an e-mail saying that I should “stop worrying about the words people are saying and appreciate their intentions instead.”

I get why this can make people uncomfortable.  It’s difficult to see someone get upset with  a person who seems (or says that they are) well intentioned.  And I think that’s exactly what’s so insidious about this type of bullying.  People get to mistreat us and then side step while waving their red cape of “good intentions” and the compassion police will step up to misplace the blame on us.  That doesn’t work for me.

When I did a video condemning the fact that Dr. Oz, who makes MILLIONS of dollars scamming people with weight loss promises, was shocked to find out that there is research that disagrees with him, I received e-mails saying that I “need to find more compassion for Dr. Oz and where he is at in his journey”.

I might be able to locate my compassion if Dr. Oz admitted that he was on a journey, and had bothered to do a basic literature review and wasn’t a big scammy scammer. But he chooses to call himself an expert and tell millions of people (as a medical doctor who they trust, and for profit) to do something when he hasn’t even bothered to look at the research and/or he knows that it’s not going to work.  I’m not scraping up a lot of compassion for Dr. Oz, though I do have tons of compassion for the people he is so confidently and profitably lying to.

In this culture fat people deal with a whole bunch of crap and everyone has their own way to deal with it and that is totally cool, but I will not give up the option of insisting that I be treated with respect, and pointing out fat shaming/hating/stigmatizing when I see it.

Like this blog? Consider supporting my work by becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do (like answering hundreds of request for help and support every day) isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (THANK YOU to my members, I couldn’t do this without you and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Book Me!  I give talks all across the country about self-esteem, body image, health and wellness for people of size and more, and I’d love to speak to your organization. (I’ll be in Northern New York and Central Pennsylvania in the next couple of months if you are in those areas and would like to add an event to those trips.) You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

Here’s more cool stuff:

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

During the excitement of the Fat Activism Conference my little blog reached a few milestones that I’m just getting around to writing about.  I wrote my 1,000th post, got my 10,500th follower, and reached 4,000,000 views.  I know for a lot of sites that’s not much but me those numbers are just completely overwhelming and humbling and I am profoundly grateful to everyone who reads, interacts with, and supports this blog and me I am also incredibly grateful that I get to do size diversity activism work full time.

In fact, almost exactly two years ago I transitioned my last business consulting client and started doing this work full time. It definitely hasn’t been easy but it’s been totally worth it. Sometimes people ask what it’s like – essentially what I do all day – so today I thought I’d talk about that, if you’re not into it then feel free to skip this post and I’ll be back tomorrow with more standard fare!

Most of the work that I do is unpaid and a lot of it has to do with e-mails.  When I answer e-mails I sort them into one of three categories – general request, teacher/professor requests, and student requests.  So far this year I’ve answered 45,464 general requests (these range from people looking for help with a personal situation – sometimes heartbreaking-  to people looking for resources), 13,644 teacher/professor requests (these are usually about resources or curriculum development), and 19,630 student requests (these typically ask for help with a fatphobic teacher, an interview for a project, or help with research).  So that’s 78,738 e-mails so far this year (for those playing the home game, that’s a little over 320 e-mails a day).

I get somewhere around a couple hundred hate emails a day, but those are just a quick skim and delete unless they are entertaining enough to make the hatemail page.  I also get a few (like 20-50) requests from people to blog about things each day – those definitely come in handy when I’m trying to think of something to post about late at night!

Then there’s Facebook: I moderate the Rolls Not Trolls group on Facebook as well as my own FB page and I get between 300-500 Facebook messages a day to my personal page.

I post a blog almost every day, depending on how much research it takes these can take anywhere from just a couple of hours to many hours over a period of days.

I run More Cabaret which is a three hour rehearsal each Sunday, during the week there’s creating the choreography, working to book gigs, plus producing a few shows a year.

I moderate this blog, and Facebook pages for More Cabaret, Rolls Not Trolls, and my personal page to create safe spaces and spaces that encourage and support activism.

I work on big projects like the Fat Activism Conference and the Fat Activist History Project.

Jeanette DePatie and I run the Fit Fatties Forum which includes moderating the forum, moderating the Facebook page, and doing the work for various contests that we run (some of which actually generate a little money which helps pay the bills!)

Speaking of paying the bills, when I went full time doing this work, what that meant to me was that I was going to find a way to make a living by providing people with resources that help them live the life they want despite a fatphobic world, while simultaneously fighting fat phobia. Here’s how I do that:

I get paid for some of my speaking engagements, and like almost everything I do I utilize a sliding scale so that if people want to bring me as a speaker money doesn’t get in the way.  I also get paid for some of the writing I do.  I make money selling books  and dance classes. I also teach workshops (like how to deal at the doctor’s office), I’m planning to do more of that in the reasonably near future!

I have members (and big, giant, massive thanks to all of you!) whose memberships provide stable, predictable income which is super important because the speaking gigs are, of course, not guaranteed, and they are seasonal since I’m predominantly booked by Universities during the regular US school year.

In my free time I’m training for my next marathon and I hang out with my awesome partner and two very adorable dogs!

So that’s my life in a nutshell.  I am able to get by doing work that I love, I’m grateful to be able to do that and I know that it’s due to a combination of luck, privilege, hard work and support from my family, friends, and the community  and I really can’t even say how  grateful  I am!

If you want to support my work. there are lots of ways to do that:

You can become a member! For ten bucks a month you can support my work, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  (Seriously, THANK YOU to my members, I couldn’t do this without you and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

You can book me!  I give talks all across the country about self-esteem, body image, health and wellness for people of size and more, and I’d love to speak to your organization. (I’ll be in Central Pennsylvania, Cleveland, Austin and Las Vegas in the next few months if you are in those areas and would like to add an event to those trips.) You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

You can buy my book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

You can buy dance classes DVSs or downloads: ! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

No money?  No problem!  You can share the blog posts that you like to your social media, you can leave a comment or send me an e-mail telling me you like the blog or if it helped you in some way, you can subscribe to the blog (the box in the top right hand corner – the number of subscribers helps when I look for sponsors for events or literary agents or whatever) you can think nice thoughts about me!

One other thing that I get to do sometimes is fun interviews. Recently I was a guest of the fabulous Gina Pond on the podcast This Week in Heresy to talk about religion and Fat Shaming. You can check it out here!

So thanks for the first 4,000,000 views, here’s to the next 4,000,000!