Open Windows

A while back the fatsphere was up in arms because fat people were being blamed for global warming. The real irony was rather than fat people being a metaphor for human destruction of the earth fat people are more like the earth itself.

After insisting we must have certain goods and services, out of more than necessity to support our various cultural peculiarities with attendant status symbols. We use up the earth in pursuit of these skimming over consequence. Especially if it clashes with our reading of what the bottom line is.

The earth, although we know it has its own design, must obey us thus the dance between that and how it actually works begins...

When signs of the earth's accommodation of our will shows in ways we deem offensive, fury ensues and accusations are flung around. The earth is bad, non complaint and misbehaving for doing the only thing it can, operating to its own design.

I wonder though if my brain was pointing to something else, what if a better model for thinking about human metabolism, is weather and climate rather than "thermodynamics"?


I don't pretend to have any real grasp of either. I've no doubt physics can explain exactly why diets don't work. Some people have already spotted the cals in/cals out flaw, more calories in, more expended, less calories in, less expended.

As for climate, all I know is that weather is climate adjustment on a more day to day basis (hence climate change) and the earth's temperature control.

In the post ci/co hangover we still told to assume weight is a mere product of eating and/or activity, when maybe it has a different primary or secondary purpose to merely being the sum total of eating and activity, and that is to regulate and control our inner climate and temperature.

Eating is obviously about energy and nourishment for the body to use to rebuild/replenish and even destroy its cells, a basic definition of metabolism.

We are told from ci/co, that if  you take in more calories than you use, you'll gain weight.

I've lived with one of those types who eats a lot and remains slim. The type who often sweats when they're eating a hearty meal. If you put your hand a few inches from their forehead, during and some time after a meal, depending, you can feel the heat coming off them.

It's not unique to them more a question of extent. There are other sites on the body that are supposed to do similar. There may be other things that also waste energy along with this, gut bacteria for instance.

So for them, rather than energy intake causing weight gain, it triggers their body to just waste any extra through burning. It's like opening the windows in a house that's too hot. What happens if the place stays hot? Is fat part of the body's transfer of energy to cool itself?

It reminds me about years ago discussing why people gain weight with someone trying to wriggle out of the straight jacket of ci/co, I ended up exclaiming "It's like it's [the body] stuck on store, stuck on store!!!" Storing fat that is.

Something triggers the body to keep storing, it stabilises or continues gradually or less so. Sometimes it seems as if once that pathway opens or is opened, it finds it easier to keep using that way for whatever purpose it is putting it to.

Fat people use up more energy in survival and movement, if size is adjusted for our metabolic rates don't vary much with slimmer people. This is the factor of stabilizing weight in some of us.

But now I'm thinking that maybe these counterbalances either don't kick in or peter out in some people.

I don't and have never believed weight is purely a question of genetic destiny. It is too responsive to and influenced by too many other factors. It's not so much saying everyone can be a weight outlier, but far more can probably than do. And that's probably a matter of circumstance; genes, environment, absence/presence of counteracting factors.

By the latter I mean things like pressure and stress, how strong and long term and unrelenting they are. That can play a crucial role and is for me the source of any weight/class differentials rather than food which I think most suspect is largely a dead end. Even if it wasn't, there is no reason why it should be the way even if it was true.

Weight change is noted after the fact, mostly it requires no effort and is a product of either time or underlying change. That is the only viable way it can be reversed. The idea that any pain or torment of any kind must be present is purely a sop to those who insist on their favoured * trigger warning fetish of restriction.