I'm not the voice of the fatosphere or anything, but if you're making "lifestyle changes" that include "watching what you eat," or counting calories, or restricting what you eat in any form, or attempting weight loss in any fashion, you are dieting. Weight Watchers may call it something else, but can we please just call a spade a spade? A diet is a diet is a diet. And you know what? If you're dieting, I don't care. It's none of my business. But can you please take it elsewhere? The fat acceptance community is just not the place to discuss it.
There are a billion other places on the web where you can talk about dieting. For the people on fatshionista who were complaining that they didn't have a safe space where they can talk about dieting as fat people, head over to Sparkpeople: those are the friendliest, most open dieters around.
However. The rest of us need our own safe space, one that's free of diet talk. There's another blog on the fatosphere feed, Exceptionally Fat, who's essentially turned her blog into a diet blog. Obviously that's what's working for her at the moment, and I'm glad she has a forum to explore her journey through that, but it's incredibly triggering to be clicking on links in the RSS feed and coming across diet talk time and time again. It's an invasion of the one corner of the Internets where I don't have to feel guilty because I take up more space on the subway than the genetically blessed person beside me.
Peggynature made an incredibly insightful comment in a discussion on deeleigh's journal:
"I think many of us think, at some point or another think, "Gee, it would be nice not to be fat" but that's to be expected, as we are all still members of a fat-hating culture. It requires conscious effort to remain fat-accepting. The default position within our culture is to desire weight loss -- unless you keep constantly on top of that by fighting it, of course it's going to peek through at times. No one said being fat accepting would be easy.
At any rate, I have tons of ambivalent thoughts about my body, and I even have fairly frequent (though passing) desires to be thinner. Yet I've still managed to avoid doing any kind of dieting or weight-loss directed activity for eight solid years. I know there are other people much less conflicted about their bodies than me within fat acceptance, and I would assume they're managing to get along without secretly trying to lose weight, too.
The people who feel inconsistent between a genuine belief in fat acceptance and a genuine desire to lose weight are not being liars or hypocrites, and their existence does not nullify the right things about fat acceptance. They're simply a testament to how ingrained our bias against fat bodies is, and while they can gather information and strength and friendship from the fat acceptance movement, it's still entirely up to them to decide how they're going to apply it to their lives.
And it still means that, if they want to talk about weight loss, they need to do it on a weight loss forum -- even if they really believe in fat acceptance. Heck, maybe they can take fat acceptance over there for a change, rather than continually bringing dieting back here."
Edit: Thank you, attrice, for handling this in such a straightforward manner. I do actually define dieting as a lifestyle change with the intent to lose weight. We'll have to agree to disagree about the definition. My apologies for singling you out; I didn't know you'd asked to be removed.
Everyone else: I'm not blaming attrice for anything. Her blog is a great example of how people and opinions change. It's obvious that her journey is leading her somewhere else right now, and I hope she finds what she needs there.
23 comments:
I am struggling with how to blog about adjusting what I eat in order to deal with health conditions I have (type 2 diabetes, maybe gluten intolerance) and I worry that I'm crossing that line. I hope people will tell me if I do.
What I try to have at the center (but I slip sometimes, as I'm human) is what eating patterns will give me the most energy and vitality, and I think that is intensely personal, and nothing I would advocate for anyone else -- unless they are seeking to change what they are doing and are looking for other examples.
Sometimes I think there truly is a need for a different feed -- and maybe using tags to pull "dieting-related" off of this feed. I know that's possible, and I will look into how to do that for myself.
I think there is a difference between "eating style" and "restrictive eating." For example, I sort of losely keep kosher, and don't find that to be a depriving experience most of the time. Sure, I remember how good shrimp and scallops and bacon taste, but the reason I avoid them isn't because I'm worried about the impact they will have on my size or weight or health, but the style of eating that I feel brings me a little closer to my heritage and religion.
I'm thinking you aren't talking about restricting food for these sort of purposes, and yet I often used to wonder how it was I could manage to avoid foods that were blatantly not kosher, but I might think that because I had type 2 diabetes, I needed to avoid certain very high carbohydrate foods (like the occassional very big slice of chocolate cake) but found it harder to do so. I'm still not sure what this is about, but I'm thinking that just because someone is vegetarian, or vegan, or observes Halal, or chooses to avoid non-organically grown foods, this doesn't mean they are interested in depriving themselves.
Sorry this got so long, I'm going to need to blog about it myself. But please let me know if I've crossed the line over to dieting talk when I talk about avoiding certain foods for any reason.
Right now I'm not pulling the Fatosphere feed from my site because I like your & Wellrounded's posts...
Wellrounded, I don't think you're crossing any line. In fact, I think you're blogging some good insights, like how when you'd focus on your weight in the past it made you put off dealing with GI issues to help lose more, but now that you're focusing on your wellbeing you're doing a better job of taking care of yourself. That is a GOOD THING, and something I think a lot of people miss....
Attrice from Exceptionally fat has stated that she's asked to be removed to the fat feed. Please don't blame her for "invading" your safe space.
What's with all the talk about "triggering?" What the hell is triggering? You sound like you expect to be insulated from things because you don't like them.
To be honest, I very much disagree with the idea that all attempts to lose weight can be classified as a diet (unless your definition of diet is simply a lifestyle change with the intention to lose weight.) But I suspect that that would be a pointless argument for both sides.
It is neither my intention nor do I relish the idea of triggering people. I do my best to label my posts so people can do their best to avoid the content. As pointed out by one of the anonymous, I have asked more than once to be removed from the fatosphere feed. I agree that my blog no longer belongs on there. Whether my responsibility extends farther than that and into deleting my blog or totally moving it is a question that I haven't been able to answer yet. Once the semester's over and I have more time, if I'm still on the feed, I may have to consider moving the blog both for people who read the feed and for myself.
Yes, anonymous, you are SO right. Fat activists have no right to be free from your hatred and bigotry. How dare we try to find one small place of refuge in a world that is obsessed with talking about how we ought not be and about all the ways we should try not to be. How FUCKING rude of us to want to have our beliefs respected enough to not be repeatedly subjected to to discussions which belittle and marginalize us. How dare we try to carve out some little niche where we can go to not be bombarded with diet talk and calorie counting and "cheat days" which reduce our bodies to an objectionable other under a false veneer of "betterment". A betterment defined by attacking and insulting that which we are and that which we are overwhelming likely to continue to be no matter how many carbs get counted. How dare we feel even a little upset to have such a narrow oasis undone by someone who may say they don't want to be on this community but have done exactly nothing proactive to demonstrate the oft professed respect for this community. (Cuz gosh, its so hard to just start a new blog these days and just make ONE post announcing it and be done with it)
As usually, it is the marginalized, subjugated minority that is to blame. How could anyone have missed that.
Anonymous: It's good to know that attrice has stepped up to the plate. Your comment is pretty juvenile, though. The interesting thing is that you don't get to decide what's triggering or not for anyone but yourself. I don't get to decide what's triggering for a person who's been raped, and you don't get to decide what should (or should not) be triggering for me.
Wellroundedtype2, I think that goes back into HAES territory. You're eating what you need to eat to manage health conditions, and because you feel a spiritual need, and not to lose weight. If controlling diabetes causes some weight loss, hey, bonus, but that's not the intent. Are you avoiding chocolate cake because you believe that slice is going to cause diabetes issues, or because you're being "good" today?
Intent is such a strange thing, but that's what HAES comes down to. Because of the fog of fat bias we all live in, it's so hard to know how much of what we do is for true health reasons, or "lose weight, you fat fatty" reasons.
Oops, I didn't see the part of your comment discussing the feed, wellrounded. I think that would be a fantastic solution. There are already blogs there that don't always discuss fat-related topics, and there's absolutely no reason we can't include people who want to discuss dieting but don't want that included in the feed.
Attrice, I amended the post some, so please take a look if you get a chance. I absolutely think you have no responsibility to delete or move your blog. Wellroundedtype2 has a great point about further filtering the feed based on tags, and I hope that works out. I like your writing and what you have to say in your non-dieting posts, so I'd love to see you stick around.
Attrice,
My apologies, I had not realized you asked to be removed from the feed.
(unless your definition of diet is simply a lifestyle change with the intention to lose weight.)
Well, yes, because that's what a diet is. What's your alternative definition?
There's nothing more insiduous than the Weight Watchers-style bullshit of "It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change. I'm eating more healthily/moving more/whatever to lose weight, not dieting." As mentioned in the post, if you're restricting what kinds or amounts of food your eating with weight loss as (one of) your express goal(s)? You're dieting, and buying into that mentality that the body you have isn't good enough til you make some of it go away. They're still lying to you to make you feel bad about yourself. They've just found a better way to do it.
Anonymous people who except us to take them seriously amuse me. Ah, you're super-brave sticking up to the fatties when you don't have to deal with *gasp* our opinions having consequences. I wish I were more like you.
your=you're
Good god, that hurts the language geek in me.
FYI, those two anonymous comments are not from the same person. I made the first one, not the second one about triggering.
Anonymous 1, thanks for clarifying, I conflated the comments because I assumed it was the same person for both. That's one of the risks you run when you stay anonymous.
I agree with you. At times I have been confused why a blog that has become a diet blog is on the feed while mine is not and I have been trying to get on for some time.
Etooz, have you tried looking here? There are instructions for getting onto the feed.
For the record, I think Weight Watchers is a diet and I don't think dieting is healthy and rarely do diets result in healthy sustainable weight loss. I also don't believe that fat acceptance sites ought to feel pressured to include diet talk, but if a FA community chooses to allow it, nor should that site feel pressured to exclude it. Many people feel that talk of privilege has no place in fat acceptance -- should those sites that discuss it also refrain? Likewise for those who believe that talk of eating disorders has no place in fat acceptance. If the Fatosphere feed has shown us anything, it's the fact that the FA movement is incredibly diverse and that diversity only makes the movement stronger.
WW and many other commercial diet plans have co-opted the term "lifestyle changes," along with other size acceptance vernacular, to promote their diet products, but "lifestyle changes" are not necessarily synonymous with commercial dieting. There are some people for whom making a Health at Every Size lifestyle change will result in weight loss. There are some people who have emotional overeating or binge eating type issues who, upon making a lifestyle change in learning to confront and manage their disordered eating behaviors, may see weight loss occur. There are some people for whom making a lifestyle changes of adopting healthier food choices or increased activity will result in weight loss. I agree with you that these things should not be undertaken with the sole intention of weight loss, but rather as part of a holistic and sustainable approach to improving one's overall mental and physical health -- and yes, for some people, weight loss may factor into this equation.
I understand and respect the need for diet-talk-free-zones, but I also often see the unfortunate tendency within the Fatosphere to automatically conflate discussions of health and healthy eating with that of diet talk. To me, healthy eating is about taking in as many calories and nutrients as you need in the pursuit of optimal health, while dieting is all about restricting calories and specific foods in the pursuit of weight loss. I understand the inclination of chronic dieters or diet survivors to associate healthy eating talk as code for dieting, but we also need to learn to distinguish if what we are calling a spade is really just a rake.
Rachel, privilege and eating disorders are tangential to the main FA discussion, but they should be included because they're related. Dieting is related, too, but as the antithesis of FA. Would discussions of the merits of white supremacism be welcome in an anti-racism community?
If one undertakes a personal wellness plan that causes weight loss as a side effect, that person may see it as a positive or negative effect. Discussions of that are just fine. If one's personal wellness goals include weight loss, then they can discuss that part of their lives elsewhere. That's not a difficult concept.
Caffeine: Your comment reinforces my point of how all talk of healthy eating or weight management is construed by many in the FA movement to be code for dieting. Being health-conscious is not the same as dieting.
If one's personal wellness goals include weight loss, then they can discuss that part of their lives elsewhere. That's not a difficult concept.
This decision is best decided upon by individual site owners and their community of readers, not by self-elected arbiters of the fat acceptance movement. Visitors who do not agree with a site's message or what it chooses to allow discussed are always free to find more like-minded communities.
Rachel, you're exactly right. No one's holding anyone hostage here. Which is why I'm grateful that Attrice was proactive and asked to be removed from the feed.
"Weight management" IS dieting. More specifically, its a way to talk about dieting while pretending you're not talking about dieting.
And word, Caffine. It is so utterly bizarre to act as if a marginalized group has any power to suppress the status quo. If you just can't accept your fat, whatever. Don't do it. Just don't expect FA to applaud you. Because really that's what all of the cries about the supposed narrow-mindedness of FA is about. People are expected to applaud for fat stigmatization. Dressing this all up as a crusade for personal choice is just a charade masking the fact that OUR choice not to clap for weight "management" is the only thing really in danger.
Post a Comment