Stacy Bias, founder of FatGirl Speaks is putting together a book and is looking to interview fat women about their experiences.
The book "will consist of a series of monologues suitable for stage performance, all around the topic of fat. Bias intends to interview 150+ women of size, all across the United States, and in Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, Samoa, Asia, India and South America."
So all you fat chicks out there, check out her site for more info on the project and how to contact her if you are interested in being interviewed for the project.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Follow the money
So who is sponsoring the 10th International Congress on Obesity 2006? A whole lotta companies with a vested interest in selling things to fat people to try and make them thin (most with a very miserable success rate. There is no profit in people who actually like themselves, so these companies have to come up with epidemics and pandemics to panic people in to buying their crap.
Here's a tidbit, everyone in the world is now "pre-hypertensive" and "pre-diabetic" since the drug companies are now trying to get people who don't have these problems onto medications so they can sell more.
Here's a tidbit, everyone in the world is now "pre-hypertensive" and "pre-diabetic" since the drug companies are now trying to get people who don't have these problems onto medications so they can sell more.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Legislating Weight Loss: Is Fatness a Federal Affair?
Legislating Weight Loss: Is Fatness a Federal Affair?
Thursday, August 31 2006 @ 08:33 AM PDT
HealthPull up the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) homepage these days, and it looks frighteningly like the latest copy of "Glamour" or “‘O’ Magazine.” At www.fda.gov/loseweight, we're told, "You Can Lose Weight—Here's How!" followed by instructions on counting calories, setting weight-loss goals and "giving ethnic foods a try."
Legislating Weight Loss: Is Fatness a Federal Affair?
By Maya Schenwar
Pull up the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) homepage these days, and it looks frighteningly like the latest copy of "Glamour" or “‘O’ Magazine.” At www.fda.gov/loseweight, we're told, "You Can Lose Weight—Here's How!" followed by instructions on counting calories, setting weight-loss goals and "giving ethnic foods a try." The goal is to combat what the FDA calls the "obesity epidemic," which supposedly claims the lives of 400,000 Americans per year. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2005 Dietary Guidelines target weight loss as America's number one health goal. The war on drugs is old news, ladies and gentlemen. It's time to rally the troops for the war on fat.
The FDA is spreading the message through a variety of obesity awareness advertisements and programs in schools and workplaces. Government intervention in weight loss doesn't stop at "educational" efforts, though. In many states, including Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia, schools are required by law to weigh students each year and report their weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) to their parents, in a format much like an academic report card.
Meanwhile, at home, government health agencies claim that over 30 percent of Americans are obese, endangering their health and shortening their lives. However, many health professionals are questioning the link between body fat, illness and death.
Dr. Glenn A. Gaesser, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Virginia and author of Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health , calls the FDA's standards for morbid obesity "arbitrary," noting that people do not die of fat.
“There are 'healthy obese' people who are in no need of 'treatment,'” he said. "Furthermore, most of the health problems of the 'unhealthy obese' (i.e., blood pressure, lipids, insulin and glucose) can be remedied by changes in diet and physical activity independent of weight loss." In his recent study, "Obesity, Health, and Metabolic Fitness," Gaesser reports that fat people are no more likely to have clogged arteries than thin people, and that body weight and BMI are not indicative of death rates. In fact, according to a study by the federal Center for Disease Control (CDC) itself, "excess" body fat does NOT claim 400,000 lives per year; people categorized as "overweight" (BMI 25-30) actually tallied 86,000 fewer deaths per year than those categorized as thin.
The rigid standards set by the government are outdated and are not based on sound science, says Peggy Howell, public affairs chair of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). The height/weight charts that determine BMI were created in the 1970s, with only a slight revision in 1998. "I don't question the statistics that 30 percent of the American population is over a particular weight," Howell said. "I do, however, take exception to the yardstick they are using."
-snip-
Thursday, August 31 2006 @ 08:33 AM PDT
HealthPull up the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) homepage these days, and it looks frighteningly like the latest copy of "Glamour" or “‘O’ Magazine.” At www.fda.gov/loseweight, we're told, "You Can Lose Weight—Here's How!" followed by instructions on counting calories, setting weight-loss goals and "giving ethnic foods a try."
Legislating Weight Loss: Is Fatness a Federal Affair?
By Maya Schenwar
Pull up the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) homepage these days, and it looks frighteningly like the latest copy of "Glamour" or “‘O’ Magazine.” At www.fda.gov/loseweight, we're told, "You Can Lose Weight—Here's How!" followed by instructions on counting calories, setting weight-loss goals and "giving ethnic foods a try." The goal is to combat what the FDA calls the "obesity epidemic," which supposedly claims the lives of 400,000 Americans per year. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2005 Dietary Guidelines target weight loss as America's number one health goal. The war on drugs is old news, ladies and gentlemen. It's time to rally the troops for the war on fat.
The FDA is spreading the message through a variety of obesity awareness advertisements and programs in schools and workplaces. Government intervention in weight loss doesn't stop at "educational" efforts, though. In many states, including Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia, schools are required by law to weigh students each year and report their weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) to their parents, in a format much like an academic report card.
Meanwhile, at home, government health agencies claim that over 30 percent of Americans are obese, endangering their health and shortening their lives. However, many health professionals are questioning the link between body fat, illness and death.
Dr. Glenn A. Gaesser, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Virginia and author of Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health , calls the FDA's standards for morbid obesity "arbitrary," noting that people do not die of fat.
“There are 'healthy obese' people who are in no need of 'treatment,'” he said. "Furthermore, most of the health problems of the 'unhealthy obese' (i.e., blood pressure, lipids, insulin and glucose) can be remedied by changes in diet and physical activity independent of weight loss." In his recent study, "Obesity, Health, and Metabolic Fitness," Gaesser reports that fat people are no more likely to have clogged arteries than thin people, and that body weight and BMI are not indicative of death rates. In fact, according to a study by the federal Center for Disease Control (CDC) itself, "excess" body fat does NOT claim 400,000 lives per year; people categorized as "overweight" (BMI 25-30) actually tallied 86,000 fewer deaths per year than those categorized as thin.
The rigid standards set by the government are outdated and are not based on sound science, says Peggy Howell, public affairs chair of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). The height/weight charts that determine BMI were created in the 1970s, with only a slight revision in 1998. "I don't question the statistics that 30 percent of the American population is over a particular weight," Howell said. "I do, however, take exception to the yardstick they are using."
-snip-
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Campos: Fat doesn't equal unhealthy
Campos: Fat doesn't equal unhealthy
August 1, 2006
Occam's razor is a logical rule of thumb suggesting that, roughly speaking, a simple explanation which accounts for all the data is better than a complex one that does the same. For example, the fact that biologists have never seen a unicorn can be explained by the theory that unicorns are superintelligent beings that have devised technologies to make them undetectable to humans.
A simpler theory is that unicorns don't exist.
A story in The New York Times, authored by its excellent health writer Gina Kolata, illustrates how useful Occam's razor can be. The story chronicles the astonishing improvement in health Americans have enjoyed over the course of the past century - what Kolata describes as our transformation "from small, relatively weak and sickly people to humans who are so big and robust that their ancestors seem almost unrecognizable."
Over the course of the past few generations the average American has gone from being thin and sickly to being fat and healthy. The average American man is 3 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than he was at the time of the Civil War (Kolata's story focuses on the health records of Civil War veterans).
This means the typical Civil War veteran had a body mass index of 23, which put him in the middle of what our public health officials incorrectly label the "normal" range of weight (it was normal to be thin in the 19th century, mainly because so many people were malnourished).
Meanwhile, today's average middle-age male has a BMI of 28, putting him toward the high end of the government's "overweight" category.
-snip-
August 1, 2006
Occam's razor is a logical rule of thumb suggesting that, roughly speaking, a simple explanation which accounts for all the data is better than a complex one that does the same. For example, the fact that biologists have never seen a unicorn can be explained by the theory that unicorns are superintelligent beings that have devised technologies to make them undetectable to humans.
A simpler theory is that unicorns don't exist.
A story in The New York Times, authored by its excellent health writer Gina Kolata, illustrates how useful Occam's razor can be. The story chronicles the astonishing improvement in health Americans have enjoyed over the course of the past century - what Kolata describes as our transformation "from small, relatively weak and sickly people to humans who are so big and robust that their ancestors seem almost unrecognizable."
Over the course of the past few generations the average American has gone from being thin and sickly to being fat and healthy. The average American man is 3 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than he was at the time of the Civil War (Kolata's story focuses on the health records of Civil War veterans).
This means the typical Civil War veteran had a body mass index of 23, which put him in the middle of what our public health officials incorrectly label the "normal" range of weight (it was normal to be thin in the 19th century, mainly because so many people were malnourished).
Meanwhile, today's average middle-age male has a BMI of 28, putting him toward the high end of the government's "overweight" category.
-snip-
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
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