ANYWAY, so the last post had me announcing that my eating that day has been fantastic. Guess what? For the most part, my success has been continuing!
I won't lie - there always seems to be a time every day (normally dinner time) where i seem to eat too much, so I'll leave the table feeling quite uncomfortable. It happens most days and I'm not thrilled with it, but considering what I used to do (which was, buy 1000 yen's worth of snacks at a convenient store, or 1000 yen's worth of macca's, and scarf the lot before the evening was done, I'm doing much better. I'm eating, I'd say, 3 meals a day. Not many snacks, surprisingly (in Japan it was all about the snacks, pretty much), but three reasonably solid meals, with dessert and drinks, and no binging! At all! Just about!
I'm not prepared to declare myself completely cured yet. Right now I'm in England, with my family, and life is good, mostly. That might be why things have been going well. But I've also been taking inspiration from Health at Every Size, and paying more attention to what I'm eating and how I'm eating it.
Now for what might have been a slight slip. Tonight Mum announced that she was making omelettes. As somebody that has had to occasionally eat her mother's cooking, my reaction was a completely understandable "oh, fuck". She sent me off to procure ham and capsicum, and I ducked into Co-op, withdrew a tenner and bought three small bags of chips (they were going for 1 pound). Turns out Mum's omelettes were lovely and I think I'll be making some for myself in the future (for someone who likes eggs like me it's weird that I don't eat them often), but a few hours later I ate all three bags of chips, amounting to about 120-odd grams.
I've done worse, believe me. To be honest though, I don't feel too terrible about it. The last bag, I think, I may have eaten because of the binge-instinct, but the first two I felt I was eating because I was hungry and genuinely felt like eating them. I still want chips now, at any rate. Before I started writing this I was hungry again, and I made myself a ham and cheese roll and poured myself a glass of pineapple juice, and it was soooooo good. I find I'm starting to appreciate how food tastes more, now. I still feel a bit hungry, but I dunno... there's nothing I really feel like eating now, so I think I'll just let it go. I don't like eating right before bed anyway. I might be making spag bol tomorrow night for us all, and I'm SO excited about that. Spag bol! Yum!
Also, LJs Fatshionista community's posts today included a link to this article, which was written by a doctor called David Katz, on the 16th March (I know. I think his last name is awesome too). The person who posted the link said that it was nice to see an article like this, because what this doctor does here, essentially, is apologise on behalf of everybody in his profession who has abused fat people in their offices. I shall offer a few choice phrases, and my commentary:
I quickly ascertained that seeing a doctor was quite a novelty for her. She avoided us ... like the plague.
How ironic, that expression, for professionals bequeathed the proud legacy of predecessors who risked their own lives to treat such antique scourges as plague!
I quite liked how he phrased this. Sadly this is not uncommon, which is ironic. People complain about us using up billions of pounds worth of NHS money (or whatever the equivalent is in other countries. Medicare, in Aus), but the truth is, a lot of us, particularly those of us who are VERY fat (I'd say, 200kg or more), do not go to the doctor because we fear this sort of reprimanding, or we think that the only treatment we'll be recommended is to lose weight (and that's for just about everything, from back pain to high blood pressure to, I dunno, the common cold. Last I checked, thin people got colds too) so we feel there's no point in going through the humiliation of having a doctor criticise us for our weight. I'm going by heresay here, because as a size 20/22 I barely enter the ZOMGFATTIE!!!!! spectrum and I've never been reprimanded for my weight while I've been in this FA sphere (rest assured if I got reprimanded now I'd give them an earful), but yeah, some of the stories I've heard are pretty bloody scary.
She avoided our kind like the plague because we had been that virulent in her life. Across an expanse of medical encounters for an array of reasons across a span of years, a whole battalion of us had abused her. We had treated her not as a patient, but as a fat patient.
She couldn't quite bring herself to tell me the specific words of insult and injury she had encountered, again and again. She came close -- she told me I wouldn't believe the harsh words (although, alas, I'm sure I would) -- then squared her shoulders and wiped incipient tears not quite escaping the brim of her lower lids. She managed in a combination of few words and silence to convey very eloquently the vile, venal, vituperative reception we had given her, again and again.
The Unknown Fattie here is not alone.
In this public forum, I say to my new patient and all others like her: I am sorry. I am sorry for the sins of ignorant brutality originating in a profession that espouses to "first, do no harm." I am saddened. I am ashamed. And I am profoundly sorry.
Wow, thought I. I can't lie, people. I was excited. This is huge, and to those of you who do not understand how huge this is... you've never actually BEEN huge, have you? There is an argument (an argument that I'm sure many doctors fully support, let alone most of society today) that the abuse (and YES, it's abuse! Fat Kid on the Playground, hello?!) fat people suffer is deserved. Talking harshly, reprimanding, scolding fat people is considered OK, because goddamn it, how else are they going to learn that they are JUST NOT HEALTHY? Because fat people are so unhealthy, they deserve this abuse. If you think I'm being overdramatic here, think about things like fat jokes. Think about times when you've seen fat people holding Macca's bags and shaken your heads in disgust, but when a thin person walks past holding a Macca's bag you pay it no heed. It's astounding to see that somebody (and a DOCTOR, no less. As much respect as I have for the professionals who work tirelessly to save people's lives, I'm prepared to acknowledge that many think they cannot possibly be wrong, ever) has humbly acknowledged that fat people are people too.
To my professional counterparts who have perpetrated this abuse, I say in no uncertain terms: shame on you! Have you looked around? Have you noticed that two-thirds of American adults and a rapidly rising proportion of the global population are overweight or obese? Has it not occurred to you that something larger than the will power or motivation of an individual might be in play?
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. You've hit the nail on the head here, buddy!
There is, of course a need to address weight control among other medical priorities; obesity can conspire mightily against health. And there is, of course, a role for personal responsibility in addressing the challenge of weight control. But sharing in responsibility for the solution says nothing whatever about being to blame for the problem
...here's where the sound affect of screeching brakes would have been appropriate. What? a need to address weight control among other medical priorities; obesity can conspire mightily against health? Crap. He doesn't quite get it.
To one degree or another, it disempowers legions of us endeavoring to lose weight, and find health. It can be overcome, but most lack the skill set to do it.
It can be overcome?!?! He REALLY doesn't quite get it. C'mon, dude, you're SO CLOSE to seeing the light here! If you want to find a group of people who know more than anybody else about how to lose weight, go to fat people. We. Know. Shit. The problem. The shit we know, *ahem*, DOESN'T WORK.
The prime directive of the medical profession is "first, do no harm." In deriding patients for their struggle with weight, we are doing harm. In denying patients the compassion that was the hallmark of our profession long before the cutting edge of biomedical advance was quite so finely honed, we are doing harm. In driving patients away from the very services we are charged to provide them, we are doing harm -- and violating our professional oath.
I absolutely agree. This was the point of his article, and despite his not quite getting that pesky Diets Don't Work part of fattism, I admire him and appreciate him, for saying something that has needed to be said for a long-arse time. Let's hope some of his colleagues have paid attention.
I've checked out his website, and all of his books are, like, Lose Wight Without Eating Cardboard! and Learn to Tell That Pesky Biological Urge Called Hunger Off and Lose Weight - Permanently! and that sort of crap. My smile and thumbs-up of approval for this bloke wavers slightly upon seeing this, but I will say that if you're desperate enough to spend a few months trying in vain to do what your body will fight tooth and nail to prevent you from doing - lose weight - you'd probably be better off checking out his work than Atkins, or whatever.
PS diets don't work so don't even bother. You're fabulous the way you are, all right? And unlike popular women's magazines I actually mean that, because my next page is not littered with titles like 10 Top Ways To Get Him Into Your Pants (Hint: Wonderbras Work Wonders!) and The Thigh-Friendly Eating Plan
...I am having fun coming up with these titles, yeah! How'd you guess? :P
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