Why is watching what you eat 'obsessive'?

I was reading a article on another horrible Fat-o-Sphere Blog. The Author claimed that Weight Watchers was co opting Fat Acceptance rhetoric. The reason this article annoys me isn’t because its bad mouthing weight watchers. I’ve never been on anything like that, but its lines like this:

"Ugh. I’m gonna go bake some Christmas Eve morning sticky buns and get my non-mathematically-eating baker on. Here’s hoping that all of you can celebrate the holidays/have celebrated the holidays without taking the time to calculate what you’re putting in your mouth."

This is one of the massive contradictions in the fat movement. One minute its 'I DO eat healthy, f-you your ignorant, i watch what i eat too'.....then its 'ha! only obsessive people watch what they eat'.

Why is watching what you eat 'obsessive'? It’s completely misinterpreting the phrase.

It doesn't mean weighing out and calculating every morsel because eating 1 extra calorie will make you fat. Its about learning portion control, what foods are good for you, and what should be had in moderation. If you have this knowledge you have nothing to worry about.

Those who 'obsess' obviously aren't researching for themselves what to do, just always worrying that what they are doing 'maybe wrong'.

And what is the difference between this statement:"Here’s hoping that all of you can celebrate the holidays/have celebrated the holidays without taking the time to calculate what you’re putting in your mouth."

and this one

"Here’s hoping that all of you can celebrate the holidays/have celebrated the holidays without taking the time to calculate how much alcohol you’re putting in your mouth".

What’s the difference? If watching food = worrying non stop, then that would also mean that watching how much you drink means you constantly worry, and you can never enjoy yourself and relax.

Therefore just shove all you want down your throat, its not like you can make yourself unhealthy or sick THAT way is it..........!

They want to call others (often including professionals) ignorant and delusional, whilst at the same time believing the most illogical nonsense, tales of magically appearing bodyfat and making contradicting statements*, topped off with guilting and bullying those who are overweight if they don't agree.




* I can see an argument coming from the fat movement saying 'but the diet industry makes contradicting statements, therefore nothing can work!'.

So does that therefore mean that no education systems can work because people try and jump on the education bandwagon by telling you that all you need to do is pop a cd into your cd player and you can learn top level algebra whilst you sleep? Does that make all genuine child and adult education a 'trick' because of people capitalising on something?

You always get people capitalising on something, just like for example, you get people who capitalise on pets being ill by saying 'Don't take them to the vet, call a 'pet psychic' and they will talk to the pet, and it will tell them what’s wrong', then 10 minutes later you have an idiot in your house shaking bells to conjure up the 'dog spirit' to communicate with it.Or witch doctors who say 'don't visit the doctor, I’ll cure you....with my DANCE OF WELLNESS!!!'. Does that make all doctors untrustworthy?

Are there no good mechanics because some will try to tell you that your car is unsafe, even if its 5 minutes out of the showroom and you only came in to use the phone?

Are no builders trustworthy because there are those who raid the jewelry box, try on your wife's underwear whilst you are out, swear infront of your kids, then mess up the job they are doing and leave paint all over the carpet even though their advert said 'You can't beat us, we are the best in the business'?

The point is that with any industry, you need to use commonsense as there is always someone trying to jump on the bandwagon. But that doesn't make others less genuine.

Almost everyone would know that putting on 20lbs in 5 days would be unhealthy. That weight gain would take at the minimum in most cases a couple of years (not including medical problems).

So is it really illogical to come to the conclusion that taking OFF 20lbs of weight gain, that took years to accumulate, in 5 days would also be unhealthy?

Its just that saying 'you need to build muscle and incorporate resistance training with this and this', isn't eye catching enough or like a magic pill.

That’s why there’s always the new fad diet every two weeks, because this one DEFINATLY 'will' work, or new exercises are always being invented that will magically make everything perfect by 'standing on a wobble board whilst doing a painting of your gran with your shopping balanced on your head' or 'pedal as fast as you can on an exercise bike whilst juggling and saying the alphabet backwards'.

There’s even things that are made up to make people feel like they are doing 'exercise' but really doing nothing. Like ‘workouts’ that say 'stretch your legs out in front of you and tense for 10 seconds then release. Do 3 times for a *ahem* 'killer' leg workout'.

Many also don't get to hear about it, or believe the right way to do it, because they believe something has to be so complicated to work, but its really quite simple.

The things you really need to do, just aren't eye catching enough or extravagant sounding enough to get put in the mainstream magazines where a lot of people get their 'information'.

A sensible program of resistance training, cardiovascular work, portion control, nutritious food and rest doesn't sound flashy enough and doesn’t promise god like miracles in even more miraculously quick times. And that doesn't make headlines.

But anyway back to the piece at the top, its an unfair statement that you can only 'not care what you eat, or obsess over it', just like other arguments that convey that you can only 'be overweight or anorexic'.

You could also say:

: Its either not revise/care about your exams or stay up all night for a week revising
: You can either not get a job....or become a workaholic
: If you watch how much money you spend, you become 'obsessive', so just blow the lot etc

They (the fat movement) show all the signs of being an extreme, and they only seem to listen to the extremes, both the extreme ideas from people they hold up as saviours (even those who have no credentials), and the extreme fad diets they put down as they believe they are the only option besides staying overweight.

In my opinion it's a waste of time listening to either.


A101 is a regular contributer to the My Fat Spouse forum.

I'm ready to ride the roller coaster.

This post is hopefully not going to end in me crying as hard as I did when I saw the name of this site, but I'm sure it will. If I chase a few rabbits and digress a bit, just hang with me, okay? I might over-rationalize, make excuses and really just tell you more than you'd ever want to know, but geez, it's not like I haven't done that before, right? 

Okay.....I'm taking a deep breath and jumping right in ...... 

We went to Silver Dollar City last Friday. It's a theme park, with more rides each year. I remember back when there were two rides - an indoor, underground rollercoaster and the flume. Now there are kazillions of rides and more coming. I am a roller coaster junkie and have been since I was a kid. The bigger and faster they are, the better. I love a good thrill ride. 

I am a big girl. I guess if we're gettin' honest today we'll just come right out and say it, I'm fat. I know I am, it's my fault and well, that's that. 

I was a chubby kid from about 4th grade till 6th grade. I wore Pretty Plus clothes from Sears and hated it with a passion. I was popular and well-liked, but I was fat. Therefore, boys didn't like me all that much. My maiden name was Bass. 

"Kristin Bass has a fat ass" was heard more than once on the playground. 

I don't like sports, I don't like to sweat and I love to read and study and learn. So it was kind of a given that I'd get chunky as a kid at some point, I guess. Plus, well, I like my groceries. Then miraculously before 7th grade I started slimming down. I wasn't skinny, rail thin and gorgeous like the "pretty girls", but I wasn't fat anymore. The women in my family have butts, though - big, round butts. Baby got back? Oh yeah, we got back. The summer before my senior year I had a 27 inch waist and 40 inch hips. I had a flat stomach and small boobs - my gosh, how could I ever have thought I was fat back then? I was round and flat in all the right places, I was voluptuous and cute. Yet I was a cow in my mind and even in the mind of most guys. They wanted my best friend who was a size 2. I lived my Junior and Senior years on carrots stick and SlimFast. My Senior year I did start eating a Snickers bar and a Diet Coke for lunch every day, but the rest of the time I starved myself. My collar bones stuck out freakishly, my cheeks were sunken - my mother thought I was anorexic. 

In college I was well-liked by the black guys on campus - they appreciated my curves and ooh I enjoyed that attention. Meeting a group of guys and having them turn and watch me as I passed had never happened to me before. It was nice. I ended up dating a good ol' boy from up in Missouri who wanted his women skinny and submissive. I'll never forget the Christmas that he wanted to get me some Rockies jeans and asked what size I wore. Although I weighed barely 120 pounds I wore a size 9 to 11 jeans. When I told him that he laughed and said, "Fatso. You better get out of the double digits, girl, if you wanna be with me." Needless to say, I didn't stay with him. 

When I met my husband, Paul I weighed 135 and between the time we met and got married - 3 months - I had gained 10 pounds. But I still was thin and looked good, I fit in my tight cowgirl jeans and could scoot a mean boot. He loved my body the way it was and only wished that I had bigger boobs. He was happy and so was I. But I had found my niche, I had achieved my dreams - I was married! I set about being Suzy Homemaker and cooked him three meals a day. I made cakes and cookies and pies and big, hearty, meaty meals. I fried everything we ate because he was 6'1" and weighed 165 pounds and is a redneck - they eat fried foods and can get away with it. He was a beanpole and had the metabolism of a race horse. He ate my greasy food cooked with love and was a happy newlywed. I ate my greasy food cooked with love and got fat. And fatter and fatter and fatter. 

Then we struggled with infertility and I ate to make myself feel better about being a total failure at giving him a child. Then I got pregnant and ate because well, I was eating for two. Then we lost our baby and I ate to drown my pain and heartache. Then he started noticing that I was gaining more and more weight and I knew he noticed so I ate more. 

I am a compulsive. I have many compulsions, but eating is my most dangerous. I can alphabetize my canned goods and no one gets hurt. They may laugh, but it doesn't harm anyone or mess up anything. But my compulsion to eat is hurting me. It's killing me, to be honest. But eating makes me so happy, it's something that I can control when the world is spinning in a direction I don't want it to go and can do nothing about. If the kids are whiny, I eat a handful of chips. If Paul is cranky, I hide in the kitchen and down a couple of Twinkies. Bad day at work? Oh that merits a few Oreos. And a few more. Maybe three helpings of mashed potatoes at dinner, too. I can fix anything with food. 

Except now the food that was my glue, the stuff that stuck my life together for all these years, is clogging my arteries, raising my blood pressure and making my cholesterol do a funky upward conga line to Cardiac Arrestland. I have stretch marks in places I didn't know stretch marks could exist and thrive. That barren wasteland that is on the underside of the upper arm - I had no clue it was stretch mark inhabitable, yet they have formed a colony and it looks like they're not leaving. I ache, my knees hurt, I snore, I huff and I puff. 

I am the woman they kick off the roller coaster when they can't get the harness buckled. 

I am now crying, by the way. I told you I would. The name of this site made me cry at first. 

I never wanted to be a fat mommy. I wanted to be the cute mommy with the cute clothes and the cute hair who had tons of neverending energy to bounce around the park with her kids, have time and energy for tons of kid activities. I am ashamed to admit this, but there were a few fleeting moments where I thought it might be cool to have an outfit that matched my baby's. But they don't make Mommy and Me outfits for fat mommies. They only go up to size 10. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a cool mommy and I know I'm a good mommy, my entire self-esteem as a parent doesn't hinge on my looks, but I'm sure the kids at school talk about how fat Abby's mom is. I remember being a kid. Fat people are funny. And they're so easy to make fun of. 

I have just been able to tell myself all these years that the babies like snuggling with me becuase I have lots of cushy goodness and they can snuggle into my big, squishy boobs and fall right to sleep. And trust me, they do. But if that is my rationalization, my reason, to stay fat it's a pretty poor one. 

So after getting kicked off the roller coaster, I ducked my head, gathered my daughter and niece who couldn't ride without me and with cheeks ablaze, I exited Stage Mortified. TotOne was crying. (Abby wasn't - she didn't want to ride that one anyway) I had to squat down on her level, get eye to eye with my 7 year old niece and tell her that Aunt Kiki was too fat to ride the roller coaster and she'd have to wait. That was a moment I never envisioned for myself when I was a teen. But I didn't start crying until after Tater and TotTwo and Sam got back from the ride and Tater took TotOne off to ride. It was then that TotTwo asked why TotOne was getting to ride and TotOne yelled across the walking path, "Because Aunt Kiki's butt was too big to fit and we got kicked off!" That convenient hole that you wish would swallow you up whole was nowhere to be found. Instead I walked down the hill to find my Mom and youngest daughter and burst into tears when I had to tell my mom that I was too fat to ride the roller coaster. 

Why am I writing all of this to you? I am not sure. Do I want sympathy? Nah. I don't need sympathy. Do I want you to send me all of your low fat, carbless recipes? Nah. I don't want those, thank you very much. I'm not sure why I wrote what I just wrote. Maybe I just needed to sit here and cry awhile. 

I am on day three of Weight Watchers. I have done this before. I have started, I have stopped. I have drugged my way into two smaller pant sizes. (Legal drugs, not meth, although I hear that, too, is effective. But I do kind of have an attachment to my teeth as well) I have starved myself. I have been tempted to throw up, but I really hate to throw up. I guess the reason I might be writing all of this is to tell you that I'm ready to enjoy life again. I'm ready to run and not feel like my lungs are going to explode. I'm ready to jump and not jiggle for half an hour afterwards. I'm ready to be naked in front of my husband and not wonder if he's secretly turned off and embarrassed of me. I'm ready to feel good again. 

I'm ready to ride the roller coaster. 

Posted by Millie  on the famous My Fat Spouse Forum