 Hello there, it's Thursday at noon. I know it is Do you remember our arrangement Thursdays at noon on CFUV Are you ready to get started? What do you have in mind? What I want to do now is called first-person plural You make it sound excessively attractive That's what I have in mind Medical research is often constructed as being above or beyond cultural context Medicine is based upon objective study, right? Scratch the surface of this narrative, however, and you find that the history of medical advice is riddled with well-meaning, but inaccurate guesses Reinforcement of prejudices and out-and-out social control mechanisms Read the history of how medicine has treated women or people of color and you read a history of junk science The assertion of cultural beliefs and colonial attitudes shrouded in the language of objectivity and science One would like to think that Western medicine has grown past that point But an examination of the current research on obesity is a case in point that medicine remains firmly within the boundaries of culture And it's susceptible to the same economic political and social forces It always has been a great deal of press is given to any research that asserts any kind of connection Between being fat and having poor health little press is given to the funding of such research Which often comes from the diet industry in fact little or no critique is ever made of this kind of research The relationship between fatness and disease is such a given now in medical discourse that few people even question the validity of the assumption However, the researchers who have questioned obesity as a factor in health have found some interesting and seemingly counter-intuitive Results many of the studies indicating the fatness is related to a number of diseases and early death do not control for important factors such as physical activity dieting weight fluctuation diet drug use and poverty and Studies where these factors are taken into consideration the relationship between being fat and illness and or early death Disappears or sometimes even becomes a positive one where fatness enhances health If you've ever taken a basic undergraduate statistics class You've probably heard the example of the researcher who quote proved close quote that smoking among teenage girls caused Pregnancy there is a statistically significant relationship between smoking and girls and pregnancy Further examination shows that girls who engage in smoking behavior are often the same girls who engage in sexual relations Having sex not smoking is what causes pregnancy and the quote Scientific evidence closed quote is a lot more rigorous on this point than on the rhetorical precepts Underlying the attacks on fat people being fat might be statistically related to illnesses and or early death But Corellida blinks cannot conclude that causality exists only suggest connection of some unspecified sort Some studies have indicated that fat people who are active and eat well Live longer and have fewer diseases than their thinner but less active junk food eating counterparts Other studies have indicated that dieting itself may be leading to illnesses and early death The so-called cure may be more dangerous than the so-called disease So why is the diet industry a multi-billion dollar industry? Why did 40 to 50% of North Americans start a diet on New Year's Day and make the resolution to lose weight this year? This week on first-person plural we spoke with Francie Berg a nutritionist Who is trying to help us question dieting weight loss schemes and the damage we are doing to ourselves and our children With our fear of fat to highlight her message Berg helped start healthy weight week Celebrated annually the third week of January her message is simple We should be promoting health at every size and that is what we called this episode of first-person plural on your website you talk about encouraging health at any size and Especially this kind of approach to eating and exercise So tell tell us a little bit about what that means Yes, okay Health at any size or some people call it health at every size it has some alternate names is About people being healthy at the size they are it seems like the traditional Medical thinking has been that first you lose weight and you get down to this ideal size and then we help you be healthy Well, that hasn't worked for the last 20 or 30 years as you know people have been trying to lose weight by all these different methods They have failed and mostly it's been weight cycling back and forth the health at any size approaches We help you now to get as healthy as possible, and it's all about lifestyle living More actively it's one of the main things and then also eating well trying to eat in ways that are natural and normal which means usually eating three meals a day and one or two snacks instead of grazing through the day and Tuning into the body's natural signals, and that's really important for our kids if we can help them to Eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full and then we'll have far fewer Eating problems and far fewer weight problems. There are a lot of people you mentioned the medical approach to this But you're making a case that people can be fat and be healthy at the same time. Is that correct? Oh, absolutely. We have just lots of Examples of that in research that shows that in fact the the research that shows people who are You know heavier people are less healthy most of that research does not separate out the active people and At the aerobic center the Cooper aerobic center in Dallas They've been doing that research for 20 years and what they're finding is that people In the first research was done on men men who are more active It really doesn't matter the size they are it matters their activity and their fitness and Men who are more fit and more active live longer and are healthier and Now they've been doing research on women probably for about the last 12 years and seeing the same things for women great You've published two books Women are afraid to eat and children's and teens afraid to eat. Why do you think we are afraid to eat? How does weight obsession lead to this kind of relationship with food? It certainly has and the emphasis we have in our country and in Canada throughout North America on and really throughout the world on Finn is is the ideal and it's really an obsession within this and the ideal woman and Men are not far behind on this by the way, but it's sort of led by women The ideal woman size has been reduced by one-third in the last 30 or 40 years Marilyn Monroe was Was an average size woman about 12 to 14 size 12 to 14 Now that's a little different in Canada. I'm not sure how that translates. It's not that different Okay, she she was an average. She was an average size woman and that was that was fine But now the average size woman or the ideal woman in the news media is about a size one Two or maybe even zero and most women cannot be that size in a healthy way And but they're trying to so consequently we have just enormous problems I look at six main problems that we're having as a result of of our Eating and our mixed up that we're not eating normally We're not listening to our body signals and also the fact that people are so much less active than they used to be And these six problems are one of them is overweight one's eating disorders dysfunctional eating, which is just a big area Probably 80% of women are eating dysfunctionally at some time or other another one is undernourishment And this is particularly a problem with our teenage girls. Many of them are very much undernourished Another problem is the hazardous weight loss methods that so many people are using and Really is injuring and also killing quite a few people and then the sixth one is size prejudice And this is also a big big problem that leads to too many problems I think a lot of people might be surprised that a discussion about dieting would lead one to Think about making people afraid of eating I think that there's a lot of people who would think well if you go on a good diet in other words if you if you lose weight in a healthy way Then wouldn't that lead to a better relationship with food? But after reading your website it seems like what you're saying is that just the whole concept of dieting creates a problem it does and Dieting by its very nature is restricting food. It's eating less than your body wants and No, mind you many people are eating more than their body wants because they've also lost touch with their body signal But if you're eating less than your body wants Then then the whole the whole physical self starts to dry in on itself and shut down and also the mental Person shuts down and so people who are dieting tends tend to be less than they really could be So they're putting their whole lives on holes It gets to be a cycle people go on this diet on Monday morning and they lose weight for three days and Then they blow the diet they binge About two or three times a year a chronic diet or we'll usually go on a major diet Which maybe lasts longer maybe it lasts for a couple of months, but the longest that weight loss that a Weight loss diet seems to be successful as about six months And then even if they continue the diet they will start to gain back the weight just because of the body adjustments You're suggesting too that the deprivation is is setting this up so no matter what the good intention is here just the the physical part of it of going on the diet depriving you know depriving yourself from the calories that you need and Putting yourself out of touch with your own body signals kind of sets up that cycle. Yes Yeah, I call it the starvation syndrome in in my books women In children afraid to eat there is a chart that shows all of the things that can happen Or that do happen when a person restricts calories There are there are many emotional things that happen as well as we kind of think it's it's physical things Mm-hmm, but it's also Emotional things to that happen Well if can ask a rhetorical question at this point shouldn't dieting lead to a better relationship with food You would think so and and that's the basis that people have been dieting all this time, but Sometimes going on a well-balanced diet helps the person learn how to eat better and to eat Better foods, but it's the restriction that's causing the problem Babies know how to eat babies eat when they're hungry and they stop when they're full there They cry when they're hungry, so you know and Somewhere before kids get to be about five years old in our current society Where we're trying to restrict what everybody eats and trying to get them to eat more of this and less of that Before about five years old kids are eating in a natural way, and we should let them eat that way Ellen Satter who is the feeding specialist for children? well-known nationally and internationally has Given the golden rule for feeding children. It's a really a good one for parents because parents parents sometimes try so hard and and It it can be making the problem worse so Ellen's rule is that parents are responsible for Putting the food on the table the meal Bringing the food into the house that they think is good food and then parents must stop and Children are in charge of how much and even whether they eat so children should come to the table They should sit there, but they should not be forced to eat anything They are prevented or prevented from eating anything right exactly So if they want two servings of of hot dish or whatever it might be or three pieces of bread They should just be let to do that on the other hand They shouldn't be urged to eat more or if you eat your beans you can have dessert parents get into all kinds of emotional Tanglement when they start trying to to mat micro manage what children are eating a great negotiation at dinner exactly and Parents get concerned sometimes because the child might eat only bread for a day nothing else it will even out average out and Many times children don't like a new food And so parents get concerned, but if the parents eat it and other people at the table are eating it Eventually the children will eat it So I think that that's really a good golden rule, and I I hope the parents Who are listening? Well, we'll try to think how that can fit into their lives You're listening to first-person plural on CFUV 101.9 FM Victoria this next week January 19th through the 25th is the ninth annual healthy weight week and Which is part of why we decided to do the show right now? Yeah, and it seems to me January is a good month for something like that Can you give us a little bit of history and? Maybe talk a little bit about why you chose January Healthy weight week is the third week in January I guess we we said at that time because the first New Year's Day people go on their diet and Make their New Year's resolutions to lose weight by the second week the diets are dumped the binges are over and people are looking for some reasonable and healthy ways to get their lives back on track and they can find this by Celebrating healthy weight week with activities that promote healthy lifestyle habits that Can be long-term in their lives and do prevent eating and weight problems It's a time to say I'm okay, and you're okay, and stop this on again off again diet team and yo-yoing weight Which can be a health risk in itself and move on to being healthy in our natural So what kind of issues you do you talk about eating disorders about eating healthy? Are there other kinds of issues that come up during? There are a reading this week. We mostly don't look at the negative things We look at the positive ways of being more active, and I think we need to talk more about being more active it seems like people are They are overwhelmed by food restriction advice, and they're underwhelmed by exercise advice And then people what are people hearing you know if you tell people to be active and eat Well what they're hearing is oh sure. I should be active, but I'm not going to do that You know that's too much trouble, so I'm going to restrict what I eat So we have lots of people restricting the fat restricting the sugar restricting all of the food they eat and Then forget that it would be It would be probably much more to their advantage if they would be active spend that time being more active And when you say be active I think one of the things that people start thinking of is oh god It means I'm going to have to join at the gym and go down and stand on the treadmill For a half an hour and sweat really bad and do this you know like two times a day seven days a week Exactly, and that's really the old Weight-centered paradigm. I have to you know to eat off a cookie have to run two miles The new approach to health at any size approach is one of enjoying being active and being active your own way every day that is one thing that that In our culture people tend to do they Have to go on a big diet. They have to buy some exercise equipment join a gym Pay some big fee and then they think they will be successful, but It's really more successful to go by through little steps And I like to encourage people to just start with five minutes a day for a whole month if we would walk five minutes a day for a whole month and This winter time it doesn't have to be outside. It can be in the house It can be in front of the television or it can be just marching in place but if people would start by Walking five minutes a day for four weeks and then start to increase maybe six minutes for another month Now nobody's going to get fit in five minutes But what is going to happen is that? We can change a habit. We can change a habit in four weeks And then if we're consistent we can keep that habit in in that five minutes a day You can find out what time of the day works best for you to have some bad activity you'll learn a lot of things what kind of activity you like but Being active in the the health at any size approach means that it's part of your life It makes you feel more energetic and you move for the sheer joy and power of it You choose fun activities and another thing to be creative in adding activity throughout the day I decided what I'm going to do this winter is park at least a block away from the store or whatever I'm going to instead of trying to find that parking place that's right outside the door and That gives me an extra couple blocks that I'll walk just Just as part of the the trip down in my car. Yeah, I think one of the ways that I've gotten more active is To actually have a cat that walks on a leash, but I mean, you know if you have a dog or something like that Yeah, I mean pets can be a way of getting you out and about Playing with them walking with them that kind of thing right they certainly can and maybe just playing with them Maybe it's just playing out in the yard, but dog is so much fun I do that too. I walk with my dog and and then you find when you don't go out the dog feels so bad He'll guilt you into it Another thing about being active with this new approach is we're not being active to lose weight And this is such a such a crime that's been done to women. I think that women Exercise to burn calories. You know, what a depressing Reason to to be active. We should enjoy the benefits. We increase our energy. We lower our stress We meet new people you can sleep better and improve your health in just many ways long-term health and bone strength Bones are stronger more resistant to illness There are so many health benefits to being active and of course one of them is Maintaining the weight that a person is and this is a worthwhile goal just to maintain the weight That you are even for a larger person. Yeah to get away from the yo-yoing of up and down weight loss weight game that kind of thing and even getting away from adding a pound every year There are lots of people who do add one or two pounds a year and if we can just Be active enough to to stabilize our weight at a certain place now I should say that doesn't work for women at when they get to be a certain age Maybe in their 40s and 50s most women will put on 10 or 15 pounds and there's probably not much we can do about that I I have a tip for women. It's often goes on your tummy So the tip that I tell women when I'm giving a presentation is what you do is buy your pantyhose one size longer that takes care of it Well, I know I work as a gerontologist and One of the things that I've seen is that seniors who are thinner when they get up into their 70s and 80s actually have some difficulties because What happens is that after the age of 60 or so you start losing a pound or two a year And it can actually create more frailty. So this is not something that This is more of a theory on my part than anything that's actually been seen But I suspect that one of the reasons why we gain a little right after menopause and right before we go into our Senior years is that we need a little bit of that weight Yes to deal with aging as we live longer. I believe that too And I I have seen research that backs that up bones tend to deteriorate at that age for women after menopause Women who and men who are a little larger who have a little more weight always have stronger bones Almost invariably. They have less bone fractures less osteoporosis and all those things So I do I too. I believe that it is a protective thing Also, there is research that shows Women can be a little heavier in their older years and probably live longer I don't want to get the time away from us without talking about a Little bit more about the healthy weight week. Yes Maybe we could talk about the awards that we give sure Two different awards are being given this week the women's diversity awards and these slim chance awards Tell us a bit about these awards and about the 2003 recipients. Okay? The slim chance awards is this is the 14th year that we have presented these awards And it's given on Tuesday of that week, which is called rid the world of fad diets and gimmicks day Only we could do that. They just pull proliferate now that we have the the internet And so we've picked the four what we call the four worst diet products and services of the past year And we've done this every year for 14 years So the worst product we have are the Goryeb Hypnosis seminars not sure if Iran Goryeb comes up to Vancouver and Victoria in that area but certainly travels the United States goes books into a hotel and Charges $39 only for people to come but the trick is that there there is hard sell for overpriced pills and hypnosis tapes that People are very much encouraged to buy worst gadget is called lapatch this is a An appetite patch which some people call snake aid on snake oil on a band-aid It's billed as an advanced appetite suppressants and metabolism builder booster They can advertise pretty much what they want on email spam The worst claim we've picked an HGH product and HGH stands for human growth hormone Which is a natural hormone in the body that people don't have as much of us they grow older and a lot of scams are built on this human growth hormone this one sounded the most dangerous to me and the Four that you talked about is well, or well, I don't know it might be a toss-up without me I think all of the pills can be dangerous now. I don't think that band-aid is gonna hurt anybody But when the when the hustlers start selling pills, then I think we need to to think real carefully about taking them the Second one the most outrageous is Nutr America's trim spa now this this is also a pill and this one One of the ingredients is ephedra and ephedra that we know is Is very possible to cause serious adverse effects and even death FDA has many many Complaints about ephedra. Yeah, it's been controversial in Canada as well And I believe it's not possible to get the herb in Canada anymore really, but I wonder if you can sell You know, it's actually used in some cold pills as well. Yeah, I'm not really clear on the The regulations that they have now about it. I know that there's been a lot of controversy about it here though Yes, there certainly is in the US and they've tried very hard to ban it, but It's not easy So those are worst product worst gadget worst claim and most outrageous We're talking about health at every size this week. If you'd like to explore this more fully, please visit our website FPP dot cultural construction company dot com and click on this week's episode number 31 You will find links to Francie Berg's work as well as a number of articles and resources to help you understand obesity research And the relationship between fatness and health you're listening to first-person plural on CFU VFM in Victoria British Columbia If we move on to the women's diversity awards a few years ago We decided to honor businesses that show women's diversity, especially size diversity a great new catalog I wanted to is one of the the best catalog we picked something called girlfriends LA and This can be found on the internet. It's a great catalog for for young girls. They're mostly junior sizes and The the pictures show girls of different sizes and every garment in the in the catalog Can be purchased at sizes from xs to 4xl So it's extra small extra small to extra extra large, right now. Isn't this amazing? Can you imagine a woman's catalog? Who did that? No, I've never seen one I'm sure there's not one that one that I've ever heard of but why not I mean If it's a t-shirt or a blouse or pants and that's this catalog is just really neat So that's why we picked it is the best catalog. We picked the best stage show hairspray We usually pick a television show or a network and we picked the stage show. This is the Broadway my shit musical Yeah, it's based on John Waters movie Yes, I believe so. Yes So it it actually showed is the movie called hairspray. Yeah, I believe it is It actually showed in Seattle, which is not far from here. I don't know. I guess about four or five months ago So it has come through here. This is the play. Yeah, the play It's it's about doing what you believe in whatever your age whatever your size or ethnicity and the stars I Believe she wanted to be on a on a TV dance show and her mother said no way at your size It touches the audience. Yep. She actually gets the cute guy in the end, too. So he does, okay And then we picked the best magazine glamour magazine now that was the big surprise for me I know it surprises people I have reviewed the at least five or four or five issues of glamour of the past year and The amazing thing that glamour has done is to picture women with curves in larger hips and summits Now glamour has been talking about this for quite a few years Talking about some size acceptance and some of these things But I don't believe that they pictured very many women that break the stereotype a little bit And I'm just so happy to see that that glamour has done that glamour even showed before and after pictures of Well, they had a breast implant for example and the before picture was an actress with the breast implants The after one was without them and she said I decided I wanted to be my real self. Oh There are several pictures of before pictures of of women larger women in Boxy baggy clothes that kind of hide their shape and then the after picture are Tight hip hugging clothes in bright colors and and they also wanted to be themselves So this is quite a switch from what we've been seeing very cool Well, we're about out of time here And I want to make sure that you get a chance to tell us about your new book before we take off here Oh, yeah, and and also I want to mention that people can go to the website We we need to give them that address. Definitely. Yes. It's it's healthy weight dot net The health healthy weight is one word dot net, right? And we want to emphasize the dot net because the dot-com ain't it. Oh, right? If you go to dot-com you get a pill Yeah Yeah, I've got Sent to the wrong website a couple of times trying to find you Oh It's the net. It's the network The new book is underage and overweight. It's about America's Childhood obesity problem and what every parent needs to know about it I've this is going to come out very soon And I'm really excited about it. I think it's going to show I hope it's going to help parents to see how they can work Help their children develop a healthy lifestyle that they can be on long term for well for life And it includes the seven-step plan For raising healthy weight children Not just children who are larger, but it does focus on on larger children It's it's not a diet an exercise plan It follows the health in any size or the health at every size approach of And and I guess we didn't say the four things in the health at any size approach One is live actively two is eat well three is feel good about yourself in the fourth is feel good about others Now since we're in Canada, I might say that this is based on the Canadian vitality program Which we saw quite a bit of about those ten years ago, and we don't hear a lot about it now But it's it's based on that and also the health at any size approach is very much coming out of Canada There's a lot of strength of leadership in Canada, so I thank you Canadians for that It's a little harder in the United States because we have this tremendous Weight loss industry, which is so powerful here And I think that's been a barrier to learning healthy lifestyles as a solution for weight problem others a pretty strong industry here most of most of the American Companies sort of the leaders in the industry have been imported in here. You can find Jenny Craig's and all of those kind of things weight watchers and all of the diet pills I yeah, I'm not quite sure which diet pills are approved in Canada There is more regulation of herbs here than there is in the States all good, but it nonetheless a lot of schemes Still find their way here. Yes, I'm sure Well underage and overweight is a book about solutions for parents who are concerned about weight and eating problems in their children Or if they only want to help their children lead healthier more active lives, which and feel good about themselves Reducing stress building self-esteem parents need to be able to communicate better with their children And sometimes it's just time, you know one of the things that Teenagers need more than anything from their parents these days is time And we all know everybody's so busy, but it's such an urgent thing to do at this stage in kids life Do you see a rise in the stigmatization of larger children? With this emphasis on childhood obesity. Well, there certainly has been for In the very past few in the most recent years I think I'm seeing a little bit of relaxing of that now that is kind of You know, we get so much information now from the government on you know every few months There's another percentage of kids that are overweight. So there's a lot of pressure on this But I think some of our size activists have done a very good job in the media also in presenting their side of the issues that Okay, if I am this size and I'm not able to lose weight. What about it? You know, what about it? Why not be teach me to be healthy or help me to be healthy? Yes, I think that's especially important with kids Oh, it is because it sets it sets you up if you worry so much when you're a kid I know this is my own personal experience About body size and that kind of thing it just sets you up for a lifetime of having to deal with this Right, and we might talk about some of the things that parents You know some of the important things parents can do as far as self-esteem for a larger child And this will also be in my new book one of them is to love and accept your child unconditionally Doesn't matter their weight or whatever But this helps them to love and accept themselves and then treat size in shape is that just contributes to a person's uniqueness It's not it doesn't define a person. A person is still an individual a unique individual And parents need to examine their own biases now if they happen to be slim and the child is has more Access body fat the parent has to ask themselves. What is their concern here? Is your concern for yourself or your child? sometimes parents feel embarrassed and and might feel that People are putting pressure on them to do something about this child And that is another problem with having a larger child is there there is a pressure and parents need to resist this and do What what they really believe is best for the whole child? And you know when we think of a person's weight, that's only one aspect We need to look at wellness and this is one thing I look at wellness for the whole child which Takes in not just weight or the whole physical part, but it takes in Emotions social dimensions intellectual spiritual and then occupational which for a child would be usually school all of these Aspects are part of wellness and so we need to look at the total child and who is better better to know and understand the total child than the parent and so parents need to rely on their own good sense They need to trust themselves and they need to trust the child. We're out of time. Oh, okay, but I want to Make sure that people know that we'll we will put up links to your website on our website Let's say the website again. It's healthy weight won't all one word dot net And I'm sure that you'll have information when your book comes out on where people can Get the book if they're interested right and we very much appreciate you talking to us today And maybe we can talk again in fact when the book does come up that that sounds good We'll at least make sure people know that it's out. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Thank you very much You're listening to first-person plural on CFUV Victoria's Public Radio 101.9 FM one of 4.3 cable and on the internet CFUV.UVAC.ca Giving sociology an edge I Do you know why I hate January January, yes, I hate January the post-Christmas left down No, and I don't have anything particular against a month, but I hate Being in January in this culture and the reason is that everybody in the world talks about dieting in January and It drives me out of my mind. I can't turn on the freaking TV or the radio or go down the street or talk to my friends or Do anything without weight loss coming up and most specifically going on whatever This year's diet is so not the post-Christmas let down post-Christmas slim down and we now must be punished That's the way Mardi Gras works, isn't it where you have the great big party and then you go do lint the non-Catholic Mardi Gras is have a great big holiday season and then punish yourself in January by restricting your food That's not why it drives me nuts the most The reason it drives me nuts the most is that inherent in all of this is fat hatred And I don't mean just hatred of your own body fat I mean hatred of fat people because the other people who come out during this time are fat haters and most specifically the ones who like to Shroud themselves in science The latest thing is this month's JAMA issue JAMA by the way is the Journal for the American Medical Association Which used to be fairly prestigious, but now they don't have a panel an independent panel critiquing their articles and so a lot of things slip into JAMA now that are funded by people who have a certain agenda and There are lots of people with agendas around fat hatred It's a multi-billion dollar industry So we found out about something that's sort of a voice of sanity in the midst of what I affectionately call hunting season because January is hunting season on the fat and that's Francie Berg and Her healthy weight week So I kind of enjoyed interviewing her because I've always liked her website, and I've referenced her website several times and have used her website personally to check out things and I Like to insert a couple of North Dakota jokes here one of which is actually on point Okay, one is that North Dakota has a reputation of being the place that Manitobans go to to get away from it all And the other is actually sort of on boys more of a joking question Do you think that fat hatred would be less pronounced in Areas with a small population per square mile? No, I actually don't I think fat hatred is pronounced everywhere in North America I'm gonna take it seriously even though you're kind of joking around I My bet is that they don't make room for the fat people in North Dakota either That it's just as just as many chairs that You can't fit in just as many buses. You can't fit on just as many airlines You can't fit on just as many theaters, etc Maybe not as many as you find in a big city But I think that it probably is still a world in which It's not one size fits all and it's not accommodating and I mean the world is just built around a certain view of what the human body should be and We can debate all day long Why people are larger than that ideal and there are lots of reasons and since nobody actually Studies it directly or studies it without medicalizing it. We just don't know why people are fat But what we do know is that fat people exist and that fat people are intelligent people They're productive people. They are good citizens. They are human beings with feelings Taking good care of themselves Sometimes better care than of themselves than their thin counterparts because They've learned that they have to take good care of themselves Because they don't have access to the same kind of medical advice and the same kind of care That their thinner counterparts do one thing I really like about Francie Berg is that she is connecting this Obsession with dieting and with food restriction, especially among women with the fat acceptance movement That if we do not accept people as they are where they are right now and help them Support them in being the healthiest people that they can be then We are in the end setting up a system in which all of us end up being afraid of what we eat and Afraid of who we are What she didn't get into in the interview that I think I see as a sociologist is that this is systematic It's about advertising There are a lot of people who make a lot of money making us as Consumers dissatisfied with our own bodies and The more dissatisfied we feel the more likely we are to go and purchase Whatever bad thing is available this week to try to improve our bodies and there is a particular agenda that these funders have and They get published in places like JAMA because JAMA just like everybody else Once readership once press notice and so forth and they get it when they publish things Like the latest thing in JAMA, which is that obesity supposedly cuts 20 years off of your life That if you're fat in your 30s and 40s according to this study Which turns out to be quite junky You will reduce your lifespan 20 years From the normal so you're going to be dying in your 50s instead of your 70s according to this Now This is junk science on several levels, but Paul Campos Who's a columnist and the Rocky Mountain news and kind of my new hero of the week right now? Takes a look at this study and one of the things that he brings out is how spurious the results were basically he parallels this in his column to doing a study about lung cancer and high school dropouts and suggesting that If you did a study about relating lung cancer to high school dropouts Without and saying that high school dropping out of high school causes lung cancer and Don't look at or control for who is smoking among those high school dropouts, then you've done a really poor study because high school dropouts tend to have higher smoking rates and It has been well established that there's a relationship between smoking and lung cancer Not to mention smoking in pregnancy Which would be oh, yeah the other spurious one Yeah, the one they always tell you in cross-stack classes, which is if Go ahead and There's a high correlation between smoking in pregnancy and teenage girls One man for a causality one likes but then one would be dumb Yeah, given that smoking doesn't cause pregnancy so there have been several recent studies that have demonstrated that activity level is more important than obesity and predicting disease and predicting more mortality in fact, there is a study that Francie Berg made reference to at the Cooper Institute that has demonstrated that and Paul Campos makes reference to it without mentioning it That has demonstrated that people with higher body mass indexes who are active actually have better health and longer lives than people who have so-called normal BMIs who are sedentary and This has been true across the board several different studies Made by the Institute What this suggests is that a great deal of the studies that link obesity with disease and early death are Doing so without paying attention to Exercise without paying attention to how active the participants are and if you would control for that in these other studies What you might find is that the link between Obesity and disease goes away and that it actually is more about how much exercise you take and how active a lifestyle You live then it is about How big you are this is important sociologically because it is very difficult for Stigmatized people to be active in society. There are Restrictions on the kinds of exercise equipment that you can use because sometimes they're not built for bigger bodies Going down the street riding a bike or walking or running often is met with Ridicule I've had people when I've ridden a bike around when I've been larger screened cow at me Screen pig at me make rude noises and so forth You have to be very assertive when you're a large person to exercise in public Being active is more difficult if you are stigmatized for being big You mean that people send mixed and even contradictory messages. Yes Yes, you're amazed No, but the radio people the radio listeners can't see you Yeah, it becomes it becomes a catch 22 in other ways too And that is when things like this JAMA study comes out and doctors read it physicians read it they very often have their own fat prejudices and It becomes more difficult to get Medical care because you walk in the office and the latest thing that they've read is that obesity kills So the first thing that they want to do instead of checking out whatever it is Whatever symptoms you have the first thing they want to do is make you lose weight And so you walk in with all sorts of problems and you walk out with a restrictive diet and There is also a growing body of Research that is suggesting that restrictive dieting is in fact Harmful to your health in many ways. It's harmful to your mental health. That's true But it's also harmful to your body Turns out starving yourself is not very good for you. Who knew Yeah, but Americans do it on purpose Canadians do it on purpose and that's really sad I mean what I remember sitting in a diet group one time and listening to these women go on and on about how they were Not eating more than a thousand calories a day and talking about how but they weren't on a starvation diet This was a reasonable diet in their mind for a woman a man It was okay to eat, but a woman it wasn't and when I pointed out to them that the World Health Organization Uses a 1500 calorie a day limit for in other words if they go into a population and The people in that area are taking in less than 1500 calories a day. That's the definition of starvation That's where they start So they they say that area is suffering from starvation if the average calorie intake is less than 1500 a day And yet they're I mean I could walk out on the street. I bet and ask a hundred women What they thought was a normal diet and they would tell you between a thousand and 1200 calories That's starvation women are starving themselves men are beginning to do it more often as well And it's very sad and I mean that doesn't even scratch the surface that Francie Berg brought up about all of the other scams out there I mean the slim chance awards were just amazing to me that there are still people out there Selling all sorts of schemes, but you know, I've tried them all. I mean there are new ones But nothing's new under the Sun. I've tried them all to lose weight and it's part of why I Have problems now with my health It just it's aggravating and it's aggravating to see it come up year after year, especially this time of year So I want to leave this on a positive note. I think that healthy weight week is a great idea I love that it's in January I love that it's at the third week because that's about the time everybody gets sick of starving themselves and goes out and Bigs out and I love the approach that she's taken with this My hope is that more people will start looking at this and thinking about it and Begin to see that self-acceptance and accepting of fat people is more healthy than this annual ritual of deprivation Do you feel less a person because you are under height? Are you unable to reach into high cabinets and shelves making you dependent upon others? Did you know that under height people have more car accidents? 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