#mod siarl

[fatphobiabusters]

The obesity pay gap is worse than previously thought

It affects men as well as women, and is wider for the well-educated

So you definitely don't want to read the comments on this one, but there's a new study out showing just how bad weight discrimination in the work force can be.

I like how they examine how the impact intersects with class and gender (just men and women, with 23000 ppl in their sample, I'm 100% sure there were trans ppl, unless they were deliberately excluded)

tw: o word, lots of fatphobia in the comments.

These results suggest that the aggregate costs of wage discrimination borne by overweight workers in America are hefty. Suppose you assume that obese women, but not men, face a wage penalty of 7% (the average across all such women in our sample) and that this is the same regardless of their level of education. Then a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that they bear a total cost of some $30bn a year. But if you account for both the discrimination faced by men, and for the higher wage penalty experienced by the more educated (who also tend to earn more), the total cost to this enlarged group more than doubles, to $70bn per year.

-Mod Siarl

[fatphobiabusters]

If you knit and are fat, this video is for you!

[fatphobiabusters]

So i always thought "dont be an asshole to fat people" and followed you for this part, but "healthy at every size" and "food is good" are new concepts to me, like is there really "no such thing as overweight" and "obesity is a slur"? What about the people on my 600 pound life ot whatever it's called? And do you mean it's ok to eat french fries every day or a whole chocolate bar at once? (genuine questions, im just new to this)

Look.

All of the later parts follow from the “don’t be an asshole to fat ppl.”

I weigh more than 500 lbs. I eat french fries a lot. I am unhealthy.

How is insisting that you are involved in my life and decisions without knowing anything else besides that not being an asshole?

How is helping doctors to mistreat me by medicalizing the parts of my body that aren’t causing me issues not being an asshole?

Do you know why I eat french fries a lot? Do you know why and in what ways I’m unhealthy? Do you know how trying to do the impossible will impact me?

Who the fuck are you to judge other ppl like that?

There’s a lot of evidence that losing weight isn’t possible long term and that exercise doesn’t help (though it can help with health and feeling nice it doesn't help you lose weight) and that dieting is more harmful than helpful.

Why not hang around and listen and learn?

I can also recommend @bigfatscience and @heavyweightheart if you’re up for actually learning the science. We’re less focused on the sciency stuff than them.

-Mod Siarl

P.S. Eating a whole chocolate bar at once is normal. If you want to do it you should try it. I get that some ppl don't feel like eating the whole thing and you should listen to your body but seriously this sounds like disordered eating of some kind. Most ppl I've known in my life who like chocolate, thin or fat, eat the whole bar.

[fatphobiabusters]

Wouldn't you rather be healthy than fat? I don't mean this in an offensive way or anything, it's just that it's clinically proven by numerous sources that being over or under weight has detrimental effects on your health. Surely you should focus on being proud about health, and not being fat, just like most underweight people (myself included) try to gain weight to be healthy, even though society frowns upon this? Idk, just feel like it should be health oriented.

I hate to burst your bubble but you can’t choose to be healthy. It’s not something in your control.

I feel like you are one of the ppl who think this way. I think most of us do to some extent, and blame ourselves for our health problems even though they are like 95% out of our hands.

I don’t think we should be proud of things we don’t choose for ourselves or that are thrust on us.

As a chronically ill person, I really dislike healthism, which is what your ask is displaying. I don’t think I am less of a person or should be less proud of myself because my genetics and social determinants of health made me ill in my early 30s, with a disease I’ll never recover from.

And I don’t think you really think that either, you’re just not considering all the implications of what you’re saying.

I could say the normal things like “healthy and fat are not mutually exclusive”, which is true. Or “there’s no safe way to take a fat person and make them thin”, or “the studies that tie being fat to health issues are overwhelmingly flawed”, but I’ve said all that before.

So instead:

It’s ok to be unhealthy. It’s ok to just live your life without obsessing over something that you can’t really control. Everyone is going to get sick and everyone is going to die.

It’s ok to just live for now while you can.

-Mod Siarl

[fatphobiabusters]

My doctor said that exercise isn’t helpful unless I do it for more than ten minutes at a time is this true

So, this is very vague! But I’m going to say exercising for less than ten minutes can be helpful.

There are some studies that show that certain exercises are more effective at certain things if they’re done for 10-12 minutes.

But that doesn’t mean exercising for less than that is always unhelpful.

It might make you feel nice. It might help with some tension you’re holding in a certain part of your body from sitting for a long time. Etc, etc.

There’s so many things movement can do for us, of course it can help in less than 10 minutes.

-Mod Siarl

[fatphobiabusters]

I'm trying to get a diagnosis for a sleeping disorder (hypersomnia/eds) which i am pretty sure i must have at least mildly (people have pointed it out and actually suggested that i get medical help) but while i was reading about it online one of the causes listed was obesity. I'm afraid that when i talk to the doctor, he's going to dismiss the issue by bringing up my weight or something. do you guys have any suggestions as to what i should keep in mind and try to do to avoid this?

I think you’re best looking up patient self advocacy stuff.

First off, bring someone with you who can keep a cooler head and not feel personally attacked by the doctor, but who can help you stand up for yourself. Discuss what you want out the appointment with your person so they can help you get it. If you have a male friend, this often works better, especially with male doctors. I assume this works on other axes of oppression, too. It really, really sucks that this is the case, but doctors have completely changed their tune if I come to a follow up with my husband.

If you know there is a test for your condition, and they are refusing to do it, ask them to explain why they are refusing to test you and to record the fact that they are refusing to do it as well as the reasoning in your chart. Most of them won’t want to do this because it creates a record that can be used against them. 

There are also phrases like “I understand that my weight might have caused my condition, but now I have it and I need treatment. What treatment would you recommend if I weren’t fat?” Which might make you throw up a bit, but can get cooperation sometimes. The goal of a doctors visit is to get medical care, we can work on activism some other time.

You can also try looking around on fat friendly docs dot com. You might get lucky and find someone local, but it’s pretty sparse.

It might be worth digging around in google scholar and seeing if the articles supporting weight as a cause have been retracted (last I heard, for example, the link between apnea and weight was blown up because the only studies on it were retracted because the researcher did bad science). Doctors don’t tend to change their attitudes when confronted with journal articles, but I’ve found it makes them shut up for the appointment because they can’t just sit there and read the article right then and there.

The experimental design linking conditions to weight is often really terrible, and sometimes the data even points to the opposite conclusion but it’s so dogmatic they can’t actually put that in their conclusion. @bigfatscience has some stuff on that. You really need training to read scientific journal articles well, and it can still be hard outside of your field, so this isn’t an option for everyone.

Good luck with this and never forget that you can always fire your doctor.

-Mod Siarl

P.S. This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve never had a weight issue with sleep doctors. They can be shitty in other ways, but so far they all understand sleep issues can cause weight gain, so they are some of the most accommodating offices, for example, that I’ve been to.

[fatphobiabusters]

I don’t know if I’m doing this right, but could you publish this anonymously, if possible? I really appreciate everything that you do and don’t mean to cause extra work - I j4I am surrounded by fat friends. Our fatness (and chronic illnesses, for a few of them) was something we bonded over, because we shared a lot of the same fat-phobic experiences. Since my health has improved (again, I fully believe that the weight loss was just a side-effect, and not a negative or positive thing, only a positive indicator), my friends have pretty much kicked me out of their lives. I never talked about my weight loss, never made it seem like it was something they should try, and I never bragged about all of the things I could now do. I did tell them about my progress - finally getting a diagnosis after a lifetime of difficulties and hospital stays, about starting a new medication and new treatment plan, about feeling better. I tried so hard to be conscious and aware of my language - verbal and nonverbal - so as not to revert to fat-phobic or ableist dialogue and behaviour, but they have apparently decided that the very fact that I lost fat has made me a bad person. I am still struggling with my health to a certain degree, and although I have some thin privilege now, I also still experience some fat-phobia (I see privilege as a spectrum - I’m not quite sure where mods stand on that).

I’m 18, a freshman in university, and feeling really really isolated and alone. I essentially just lost my support system and the only truly accepting and positive space I can find at school. I understand where they are coming from to a certain degree, because i know what it’s like to feel like the ‘elephant in the room’, but I also miss them. Do you think I am being disrespectful or fat-phobic for wanting to talk to them about this? For bringing this up? If not, do you have any advice for the best way to approach this? I am fairly new to really being educated on the topic, and I don’t want to hurt anyone, or encroach on their safe space. I just don’t know what I’m going to do if I permanently lose the only friends I had here.

Again, I really do appreciate everything you all do, even if you can’t respond to this. You are one of the many blogs that have helped me be more accepting of myself, and more loving and accepting of those around me. I am so grateful for that. Thank you.

So, just to start off, it really sucks when people who were your friends no longer want to be friends. It’s happened a lot in my life, and I don’t usually know why. Most people won’t explain, and just expect you to know what you did wrong. While they certainly don’t owe us explanations, it hurts when they won’t tell you, and makes it really hard to learn from the experience.

It’s possible that you accidentally said or did something hurtful, and they didn’t want to or didn’t feel able to explain. It’s possible that they just don’t feel comfortable hanging out with someone with privilege on an axis that they don’t have and they like to talk about a lot. It might just be that you’re doing all this new stuff they can’t do and it reminds them of their limitations and makes them feel bad. Maybe they’re just all super busy with classes and don’t hang out as much at all anymore. Maybe they think you don’t want to hang out with them anymore because you’ve got this new activity in your life.

I think it’s ok to ask them what they are thinking, but you have to respect them if they don’t want to answer or just dodge the question. Personally, I’d just say something along the lines of “I noticed we weren’t hanging out as much, and I really miss you guys. Would it be ok if we did [activity we used to do]?” and kind of feel it out from there. I wouldn’t jump in with the assumption that they think you’re a bad person, because there’s all kinds of other possible reasons you’re not hanging out as much as you were.

But it’s important to keep in mind that friends come and go throughout life. You can also try to make new friends.  I don’t know what size the university is or the town/city it’s in, but I’m sure there are other fat people with chronic illnesses around.  People grow apart, and it’s not always someone’s fault.

-Mod Siarl

[fatphobiabusters]

what's a death fat? ive never heard the term before

It’s word play/reclaiming with “morbid obesity”.

A lot of us very fat ppl use it, some ppl are uncomfortable with it and use “super fat” instead.

-Mod Siarl