Monday 21 February 2011

Whoop de don't

*Trigger warning: Weight loss dieting featured throughout and in links.

The thing about lionizing the absence/shortfall of fat hating in those who make weight their profession is it's obliviousness toward those actually in need of bona fide treatment.

Its hard to see issuing guidelines to the medical profession to stop harassing their patients with quackery about the intricacies of "weight management" as anything to celebrate.

Really, who cares?

I mean what's happened here?

They've (partially) acknowledged the biological reality of which there can be little rational doubt. After all if that were not the case, there would be nothing to manufacture a 'crisis' out of.

Do we have such a low view of the medical profession because of the low standard set by 'obesity' that this is a cause for celebration now? It's partly because I thought more highly of them that this kind of thing doesn't seem like anything much at all.

And are we really so self absorbed that we consider the real problem to be the iatrogenic mindwarp of pseudo anorexia worship rather than why obesity professionals don't have anything for people like Georgia?

That should have been their purpose all along. There was a time when I thought this was the point of making it about all fat people in order to overcome the lack of interest there might of been in people who have some kind of metabolically generated problem or imbalance.

Now I wonder whether the opposite is true, that people would have been more interested in this if it had been presented from this angle with some suggestion that of course the answer for outliers would probably be the answer for everyone.

It's saying something when even the fat phobic lackey media can finally understand something more is going on than their usual hackneyed obesity narrative and ask who is going to help Georgia? They know the answer is not what 'helped' her rebound by 7 stones/98lbs/ 44.4 kilos, from a starting point of  33 stones/ 462 lbs/209.5 kilos at the age of 15.

Rebound is the end of virtually every diet attempt in people of every size including thin so this was entirely predictable, blaming it on parents or the individual is a distraction when that is the general experience and if anyone doubts it, they can look at the growth of weight- there has been a shift upward across the scale. Take a look at the growth of the industries of slimming, fitness and bariatrics in the meantime and explain why none of this has interrupted it thus far.

Those who prey upon the fattest to prove the validity of their useless cult to themselves have 'helped' her by assaulting her body further giving her system a good beating from more than one side. And leaving her feeling what is entirely typical is her fault. I'm sure many of us remember the feeling of thinking we had it sorted this time only to be carried back to where we started. Oh the fury and frustration with ourselves!

It's the vulnerability of the situation that is so evident, along with lack of ideas from those who are happy to shout slanderous platitudes at fat people in general, but quiet as mice when they actually have to push themselves. To do something difficult.

That is what professionals and scientists ought to be working on night and day. They've received funds in the name of it so what have they got?

What are the 'guidelines' for a situation like this? There should be before there are any 'guidelines' for those troubled mostly by the crisis mugging. Healers purveying and/or colluding with stigma, then stopping it partially is in my view, nothing. Above all do no harm is clear. Doing harm, then withdrawing from it to some extent, whilst having nothing for those who are in need, is risible.

The backpatting also seems ableist as far as I can tell. Those of us who only or mostly need an end to stigma are ok, so that's all that matters.

Young Georgia has more than one factor noted to be disproportionate in those who reach a large weight at a young age, parental bereavement.  I once heard a bereavement counsellor who specialised in working with children state that a study had calculated targeting grief counselling at bereaved children in general would be enough to make a palpable cut in morbid obesity in children.

Let alone other things triggered by that. There's also overspill with parental seperation through relationship breakdown too.

Even now she is only 17, I wonder if having a good course of counselling for that would help relieve some of the burden of stress on her, if she wants that of course. Practical support for her role as carer for her mother is needed, she's been a registered carer since the age of ten. She wants to go to college so if help was given that could enable her to move on with her life and do something for herself.

There also could be a compulsive eating disorder response in all this which is caused by the nervous system overstimulating the appetite and hunger often triggered by being trapped in stressful situations although it can develop spontaneously.

For the record size is not in itself a diagnosis for these things, it's about the possibility of greater likelihood or prevalence which needs greater investigation.

It is not weight management that is needed, it's actually ways of turning around the metabolic function so that it weight is reversed as a side effect, just like it comes on. I don't believe attacking it directly is the answer at all, even more in this kind of case.

* (others are abuse and having a parent or relative who was/is mentally ill.)

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