Should we be afraid for our health
because we're fat?

Or is the "Obesity Epidemic" a Myth,
and losing weight to get "healthy" 
just another Anti-fat Biased Hype?

Our Absurd Fear of Fat
                     By Paul Campos: January 3, 2013 New York Times

ACCORDING to the United States government, nearly 7 out of 10 American adults weigh too much. (In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention categorized 74 percent of men and 65 percent of women as either overweight or obese.)

But a new meta-analysis of the relationship between weight and mortality risk, involving nearly three million subjects from more than a dozen countries, illustrates just how exaggerated and unscientific that claim is.

The meta-analysis, published this week in The Journal of the American Medical Association, reviewed data from nearly a hundred large epidemiological studies to determine the correlation between body mass and mortality risk. The results ought to stun anyone who assumes the definition of “normal” or “healthy” weight used by our public health authorities is actually supported by the medical literature.

The study, by Katherine M. Flegal and her associates at the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health, found that all adults categorized as overweight and most of those categorized as obese have a lower mortality risk than so-called normal-weight individuals. If the government were to redefine normal weight as one that doesn’t increase the risk of death, then about 130 million of the 165 million American adults currently categorized as overweight and obese would be re-categorized as normal weight instead.

To put some flesh on these statistical bones, the study found a 6 percent decrease in mortality risk among people classified as overweight and a 5 percent decrease in people classified as Grade 1 obese, the lowest level (most of the obese fall in this category). This means that average-height women — 5 feet 4 inches — who weigh between 108 and 145 pounds have a higher mortality risk than average-height women who weigh between 146 and 203 pounds. For average-height men — 5 feet 10 inches — those who weigh between 129 and 174 pounds have a higher mortality risk than those who weigh between 175 and 243 pounds.

Now, if we were to employ the logic of our public health authorities, who treat any correlation between weight and increased mortality risk as a good reason to encourage people to try to modify their weight, we ought to be telling the 75 million American adults currently occupying the government’s “healthy weight” category to put on some pounds, so they can move into the lower risk, higher-weight categories.

In reality, of course, it would be nonsensical to tell so-called normal-weight people to try to become heavier to lower their mortality risk. Such advice would ignore the fact that tiny variations in relative risk in observational studies provide no scientific b...

At present the word Healthy
has now just become another word for
Thin or Lean or a “Normal” BMI.

Those trying to lose weight often say it's for their health.
But is it?

I don’t choose to view myself as a “victim”, so haven’t written a great deal about Anti-Fat Bias which involves an ongoing victimization process.

My perspective is that: I accept that the Anti-Fat perspective is a Truth of Life within our culture.
I also accept that I’ve spent a great deal of my life being fat.

My own life experiences taught me how to establish boundaries between myself and people who demonstrate ignorant, unkind, or encoaching behavior on the issue of Fat and me…. and to emotionally move-on-past any such annoyances. As a result of my own attitudes and behaviors, after I reached about age 40 …. although still fat…., it became very rare for people to make any socially negative remarks to me about my size.

Still, my major motivation to lose weight and to maintain weight loss has a great deal to do with Anti-Fat Bias … both in myself, and in others.

Why We Diet

            By Abigail Saguy   -   Los Angeles Times,   January 4, 2013 ,   

If your resolutions for the New Year are typical, they probably include a pledge to lose weight. But if you are like most Americans, any success you have shedding pounds will be short-lived, and you'll end the year weighing more than you do right now.

So why are Americans obsessed with weight loss? Many people say they want to lose weight to improve their health, but this may not actually be their primary motivation. In one of the more interesting polls I've seen, more than three-fourths of the 231 dieters surveyed said that they would take a pill that would guarantee they would achieve or maintain their desired weight even if it would lower their life expectancy. On average, they were willing to give up 5.7 years. Moreover, 91% said that they would not take a pill that would lengthen their life by five years if it guaranteed that they would also remain overweight. This was a small sample, but it is consistent with other research. For instance, a book published just last year showed that the desire to fit in or be "normal" — rather than improving health — is the primary motivation for many people who undergo weight-loss surgery.

These findings may seem puzzling, but they are not so surprising when you consider weight-loss attempts for what they really are: efforts to protect against weight-based discrimination. The fact is, fear and loathing of fat are real, and American attitudes about fat may be more dangerous to public health than obesity itself.

Yale researchers have shown that weight discrimination in the United States has increased dramatically in the last decade and is now comparable in prev...

Maintenance is KEEPING the Weight Off. We are almost at the end of 2012, and I’ve been reviewing my own personal 2012 “diet/way-of-eating/lifestyle” Efforts and Results.

My Eating Behavior wasn’t Perfect, and my Results were even further away from Perfect. 

I’d like to be about 10 lbs lighter, and during 2012, despite many, many Efforts, I didn’t achieve the Results that I believe that my eating behavior deserved.

I was unsuccessful at losing the weight my body regained over the previous 4 years. However, Today, in the last week of 2012, I’m only about one lb higher than I was during the first week of 2012, which actually is excellent maintenance.

Behavior I’m proud of in 2012 is ... that I continued working on my weight-loss maintenance for another 12 months. I did my very best to eat in a way that would cause weight-loss and keep me from regaining my weight. I entered all my food into my computer food journal, DietPower. I entered my weights, and kept additional charts & records updated even when I felt sick-to-death of the weight Results I kept seeing.

I’ve continued to do my best to make Dieting an enjoyable Hobby.  Some of the ways I’ve done this is to continually search for new information; read diet-related books; try out new recipes, and write and make videos here at DietHobby.

I’ve now maintained my current weight-loss for SEVEN years, and am now starting on year EIGHT.  As stated in the article below, avoiding obesity requires “lifelong management”, and to achieve continued Maintenance success, I can never stop my Efforts. 

There have been many days when I got tired of the whole thing, and wanted to live “normally”, but I am a “Reduced Obese” person. A person with a disability like amputed legs will always have to make “lifestyle” adjustments, and I am in the same boat. I can never expect to handle food the way a “naturally thin” person does. My own experience has taught me that eating like a “normal” person will put my body back into morbid obesity. 

“The only weight loss that matters
 ...