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No, being fat does not automatically make you unhealthy. [giant list of articles and studies, another giant list of articles and studies, a single article]

No, unhealthy people (who are also, mind you, thin people — that’s a Venn diagram, not two separate graphs) are not less deserving of love, dignity, and acceptance than healthy people. A person with fibromyalgia is not more or less worthy of being loved and supported than a person with diabetes or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. A person with depression is not more or less worthy of being loved and supported than a person without. I’m not going to cite sources here — I just feel like that’s a really obvious thing to point out. Further, the health of an individual is between that person and their doctor.

Yes, I think promoting full-body health is a good thing. This is why I’m a proponent of HAES. However, focusing that promotion solely on fat people is ridiculous, starting that conversation with “thin = healthy and fat = unhealthy” is both counterproductive and not actually based in fact, and using shame as a motivational technique clearly doesn’t work (if it did, everyone in America, at least, would be thin).

I’m glad you’re taking steps to becoming a happier person. I genuinely am. Happiness is so important, and such a tough journey.

“

It is none of my goddamned business if a random 400-pound (or 150-pound, or 90-pound) woman is healthy or not. Just as it’s none of my business how much money she makes or how her sex life is going. Health is private. Period.

What I do believe – and what I feel perfectly qualified to proclaim from the rooftops - is that every woman at every weight, shape, and size deserves to be treated with respect, deserves to feel loved, deserves to make her own decisions about her own body. Every woman at every weight, shape, and size deserves to have a fabulous time exploring her personal style and honing her unique look. Every woman at every weight, shape, and size can define health for herself. And, above all, every woman at every weight, shape, and size deserves to be happy. Every woman at every weight, shape, and size CAN be happy. And anyone who claims that happiness is contingent on weight is foolish and misguided, prejudiced and small-minded.

I’m not interested in quantifying the health of other women. I’m not qualified to make decrees about the health of other women. But I’m making it my life’s work to make sure that other women are happy. Happy with their lives, their bodies, their very existences.

Because happiness trumps everything, and we all deserve a piece of it. ALL of us. Including you.

”

The question of health is a private one. And often irrelevant | already pretty (via curvesahead)

I believe this could have  included gender neautral pronouns but overall it hits the spot right.

(via bigassfemme)

(via rocko-socko)

Big Fat List of Myth-Defying Health Resources

redefiningbodyimage:

This is Redefining Body Image’s go-to list of resources, articles, research, videos, etc. providing facts and information regarding health and body image, especially dedicated to debunking the everyone’s favorite myth that fat = unhealthy.

If I referred you to this page and this way of thinking about fat and fat health is new to you, I encourage you to have an open mind.

If you have something to add, please submit! The more this list grows, the more ammo we have to back us up in our fight against the body positive nay-sayers.

Let the facts come marching in.

Fat Acceptance/Size Discrimination Related Resources (WIP)

Body Positivity Resources (WIP)

Thank you.

redefiningbodyimage: healthiie: fightthewhispers: summergirl88: xueni: This is Seventeen Magazine’s BMI Chart. Take a moment to read it.  I am almost 18 years old. According to this BMI chart, I would be healthy between the BMI of 14.8 - 21.7.  Excuse me? Since when is a BMI of 14.8 considered healthy? Not even the smallest-boned of people should be at a BMI of 14.8 when they are 18 years old. To put that into perspective for you - I am 5 foot, 3 inches tall. To even be considered “underweight” on this BMI chart, I would need to weigh under 83 pounds. And if I weighed more than 122 pounds, I would be considered overweight.  Does that sound fucked up to anyone else, or is it just me?  With this sick and screwed-up BMI calculator, Seventeen Magazine is essentially encouraging their readers, mostly teenage girls (the population most at risk for developing an eating disorder) to maintain extremely low weights. How would you feel if you were 123 pounds and 5’3, calculated your BMI, and saw that you were overweight at a perfectly medically healthy BMI of 21.8? I will be writing a strongly worded email to the editor of Seventeen Magazine to express my anger towards this issue as someone who has struggled with poor body image and anorexia nervosa.  Please, if you feel the way I do - indignant, furious, sick to your stomach - reblog this. Seventeen Magazine will not get away with encouraging body hatred and unhealthy weight goals.  This is absolutely horrifying. I do not have strong enough words for this. What issue is this from? I will also be writing a strongly worded letter to Seventeen. This is not acceptable. Is Seventeen magazine out of their fucking mind? Wow I want to stab someone in the face. I thought this was fake but its real. Reason number 993296249602 why the BMI needs to be wiped off the face of the earth. BODY MASS DOES NOT INDICATE ANYTHING ABOUT HEALTH OR WORTH. ALL YOU ARE DOING IS PERPETUATING BEAUTY IDEALS AND ENCOURAGING EATING DISORDERS. THIN ≠ HEALTHY FAT ≠ UNHEALTHY FUCK YOU SEVENTEEN So much for that whole Body Peace Treaty thing. This is so disappointing and disgusting. Who decided to run this tripe? Jesus. Their twitter is @SeventeenMag. I suggest we all voice our disappointment yonder.

redefiningbodyimage:

healthiie:

fightthewhispers:

summergirl88:

xueni:

This is Seventeen Magazine’s BMI Chart. Take a moment to read it. 

I am almost 18 years old. According to this BMI chart, I would be healthy between the BMI of 14.8 - 21.7. 

Excuse me? Since when is a BMI of 14.8 considered healthy? Not even the smallest-boned of people should be at a BMI of 14.8 when they are 18 years old. To put that into perspective for you - I am 5 foot, 3 inches tall. To even be considered “underweight” on this BMI chart, I would need to weigh under 83 pounds. And if I weighed more than 122 pounds, I would be considered overweight. 

Does that sound fucked up to anyone else, or is it just me? 

With this sick and screwed-up BMI calculator, Seventeen Magazine is essentially encouraging their readers, mostly teenage girls (the population most at risk for developing an eating disorder) to maintain extremely low weights. How would you feel if you were 123 pounds and 5’3, calculated your BMI, and saw that you were overweight at a perfectly medically healthy BMI of 21.8?

I will be writing a strongly worded email to the editor of Seventeen Magazine to express my anger towards this issue as someone who has struggled with poor body image and anorexia nervosa. 

Please, if you feel the way I do - indignant, furious, sick to your stomach - reblog this. Seventeen Magazine will not get away with encouraging body hatred and unhealthy weight goals. 

This is absolutely horrifying.

I do not have strong enough words for this.

What issue is this from?

I will also be writing a strongly worded letter to Seventeen.

This is not acceptable.

Is Seventeen magazine out of their fucking mind?

Wow I want to stab someone in the face. I thought this was fake but its real.

Reason number 993296249602 why the BMI needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.

BODY MASS DOES NOT INDICATE ANYTHING ABOUT HEALTH OR WORTH. ALL YOU ARE DOING IS PERPETUATING BEAUTY IDEALS AND ENCOURAGING EATING DISORDERS.

THIN ≠ HEALTHY

FAT ≠ UNHEALTHY

FUCK YOU SEVENTEEN

So much for that whole Body Peace Treaty thing.

This is so disappointing and disgusting. Who decided to run this tripe? Jesus.

Their twitter is @SeventeenMag. I suggest we all voice our disappointment yonder.

“

No, there is not a documented epidemic of brutal murders of fat people for being fat, but there is a documented epidemic of failure to provide life-saving healthcare: Google will easily help you find stories of fat people who died while emergency crews laughed at their weight and appearance, of fat people who were told they should lose weight to fix problems actually caused by blood clots, cancer, internal injuries, infections, and myriad other problems that later killed them, because their doctors couldn’t see past their fat to properly treat them. Google will also easily help you find stories of medical equipment that cannot accommodate fat bodies, of anesthetists who accidentally kill fat people in surgery, of doctors who prescribe wrong doses for fat bodies, of drug trials that make no attempt to include fat patients. Google will also easily help you find stories of fat people who did not seek life-saving healthcare because they had been so viciously fat-shamed by doctors their whole lives that they had given up hope of finding sensitive and caring providers who would treat them.

Fat people die because of fat hatred ALL THE TIME.

”

Melissa McEwan, in a comment on the Shakesville post “On Fat Hatred and Eliminationism” (via thisisthinprivilege)

(via redefiningbodyimage)

songsforthesiren: stophatingyourbody: You can be fat and healthy, actually. Here are  a ton of links and studies and  people to prove it. But the most important part is: Not your body? Not your business. Shame doesn’t help anyone. Stigma doesn’t help anyone. Vague future health threats don’t help anyone. But if the only places that you hear that fat is always unhealthy are from mass media, which helps the diet industry make $40 BILLION (or more) profit per year, or from the medical community which is more interested in making money off prescribing pills and bariatric surgery, you might want to consider that you’ve been fooled. Also keep in mind that the government and medical community immediately throws out/stops funding any studies that prove that fat is not unhealthy. This is not the place to be asking such questions. This blog is not about health. This blog is about self esteem. This blog promotes POSITIVE self-esteem regardless of weight, health, or any other physical factors. We’re not here to argue about it. ~Amber The best part about that question was that the person who answered said: You may feel fine, and your doctor may tell you you’re fine, and medical tests may say you’re fine BUT YOU’RE NOT.  I loled. 

songsforthesiren:

stophatingyourbody:

You can be fat and healthy, actually.

But the most important part is: Not your body? Not your business. Shame doesn’t help anyone. Stigma doesn’t help anyone. Vague future health threats don’t help anyone.

But if the only places that you hear that fat is always unhealthy are from mass media, which helps the diet industry make $40 BILLION (or more) profit per year, or from the medical community which is more interested in making money off prescribing pills and bariatric surgery, you might want to consider that you’ve been fooled. Also keep in mind that the government and medical community immediately throws out/stops funding any studies that prove that fat is not unhealthy.

This is not the place to be asking such questions. This blog is not about health. This blog is about self esteem. This blog promotes POSITIVE self-esteem regardless of weight, health, or any other physical factors. We’re not here to argue about it.

~Amber

The best part about that question was that the person who answered said: You may feel fine, and your doctor may tell you you’re fine, and medical tests may say you’re fine BUT YOU’RE NOT. 

I loled. 

(via redefiningbodyimage)

Thin privilege is using health to justify hate.

thisisthinprivilege:

Let’s cut the bullshit here, even if every single idea that’s currently common about the negative health effects of being fat was true, the way fat people are treated would still not be justified. Most of the time, people who say “I’m just concerned about your health” aren’t. There’s sometimes some genuine concern for health in there, but the core is often the same old hateful ideas about fat people, and the idea that because they don’t prefer fat bodies, they can police yours. The fact that some fat people are unhealthy is so often used as a reason to target all fat people everywhere.

And people are, or should be, free to do with their bodies as they wish. Yes, even if they’re doing something unhealthy. People should be educated about health in a respectful way, and then have the choices left up to them. You don’t get to force someone into health because you’re more comfortable with it. This is not me saying, “Everybody should get fat,” or, “Nobody should care about their health,” or, “Trying to become healthier is evil!” This is me saying that it’s wrong to try to become the guardian of someone else’s body if they haven’t asked you for help.

Health is not an excuse for hatred.

(submitted by anon)

thisisthinprivilege:

bumsquash:

: Fat Haters & Thermodynamics…a troll ask

everysmilealie:

fatbodypolitics:

thisisthinprivilege:

image

I’m a physicist, and you’re fucking wrong. Sorry. The metabolism is a complex system with many variables. Efficiency of the system varies not only from person to person, but throughout someone’s life. That’s the second law of thermodynamics, the one that governs chemical reactions. You’re hung up on the first law, which is just a conservation law (bookkeeping).

Humans aren’t lawnmowers. God I hate educating you trolls. Spend three seconds thinking about this instead of copying a paragraph from your thermo 101 book. Do you really think a teenager has the same metabolic efficiency and rate as a 70 year-old man? A pregnant person as a non-pregnant person? Someone with a healing wound as someone whose body is enduring the depths of famine (or is dieting)? 

The metabolism isn’t perfectly understood, definitely by people like you, and even by researchers. There are theories out there about a bodyweight setpoint around which a body fluctuates, but towards which a bodies tends, mostly programmed by genetics and partially by history and environment. This means the metabolism resists weight loss below a certain point, and it also resists weight GAIN above a certain point. 

Also, fat people haven’t been shown to, in general, eat any differently than thinner people. Which mean’s they’re not consuming a giant amount of food to make their bodies bigger. And 95% of diets fail long-term, which means  your little “it’s easy, eat less move more!” prescription doesn’t work, which, if you’re a scientist (please I hope you’re NOT), points to some kind of fatal flaw in your theory. 

Here’s a list of resources compiled by Michelle at the Fat Nutritionist. Which you probably won’t read, if you’re ignorant enough not to understand how the laws of thermodynamics apply to chemical reactions and human metabolic systems. But my readers are sharp and reflective folks (not literally, freshman!), so they might appreciate it.

(made rebloggable by request)

I seriously think people need to stop pretending they know how the theory of thermodynamics works. Every time you make this argument you prove you don’t. As it was stated above,

People are not lawnmowers.

Oh my god there is no post in the world better than this one right here.

What surprises me is that physicists-real ones- don’t seem to have explained this. I would have thought it was quite an exciting puzzle to crack.

A couple years ago I found a few interesting articles that break down basal thermogenesis and suggest possibilities for metabolic variance.

First thing’s first, here’s a better ‘equation’ of metabolism (that is, to replace ’2000 cal = food – exercise = weight maintenance’). I’ve linked the terms. The ‘equation’ is from this article [1].

Classically, three major biochemical systems are believed to contribute to basal thermogenesis: futile cycles, Na+/K+ATPase activity, and mitochondrial proton leak [2 - 3].

One of the most interesting parts of the ‘equation’ above is the mitochondrial proton leak, which is highly (if not entirely) genetic. That would be the second item in this quote (link):

Discrete gene sets may prevent or facilitate obesity in humans by influencing food intake (e.g., leptin), by altering the ability of skeletal muscle to dispose of excess energy (e.g., uncoupling proteins [UCPs]), or by influencing the capacity of the adipocyte to accumulate triglyceride (e.g., CD-36, perilipin). [4]

If anyone’s willing to look into this deeper in a reblog, that would be fascinating and much-appreciated.

I want to make it clear that while I fully reject the common-wisdom bullshit modern notion of ‘health,’ that’s because I am a scientist and interested in actual real fucking scientific results, not risk factors and propagandized statistics and fudged models to get the result the company/institution providing you the grant money wants you to get.

This post is so beautiful.