Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture

I'm glad I ordered the book Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture by Amy Farrell yesterday. I've been putting off buying it for a few weeks but my husband told me to just go ahead and put the order in for that, and a few other books.

She did an interview with Steve Colbert a few weeks ago:

The Colbert Report
Tags: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Sure, he didn't give her much chance to talk, especially about the book itself, but at least her name and the book got out there to the general public.

And now this morning I log in and see there's a thread on the Big Fat Blog about it, too.

I'm glad the regular television season is over - I have way too many good books stacking up that need to be read!

Another Reason Not to Even TRY to Lose Weight

I never heard of Dr. Sharma or his blog before today, but what he writes here makes perfect sense and goes along with my declaration earlier today that I'm no longer even going to try lose weight. He's talking about a lecture he had attended.

Here's the blog post, and here is an excerpt from it:

One of the key underlying problems is that when people lose weight, their energy expenditure does not simply fall to that of the energy expenditure of a person ‘naturally’ at that lower weight - it drops to levels far greater than expected.

Thus, a formerly-obese person burns 20% less calories than a never-obese person of that lower weight - or in other words a 200 lb person, who loses 40 lbs burns about 20% fewer calories than someone who is 160 lbs, but has never been obese. On top of this, the formerly-obese person experiences hunger, cold intolerance, and other behavioural and metabolic changes that make sustaining this lower body weight difficult.

Size Serenity

On the Yahoogroup SizeWisePlus, someone asked for another phrase to describe how we feel about our fat bodies, and long-time member Liz suggested "size serenity."

Yeah, that sounds good.

And here's our theme song to go with it:

Random Blog Name Generator by Jennette Fulda

Jennette, formerly known as the Pasta Queen, has a new blog. In real life she's a computer geek, and her old blog for her weight loss (and the basis for her book, Half-Assed) had cool graphics on it. On this new blog I see she added a random weight loss blog name generator.

Here are a few I was given:

Empress LaPotato Chip

Diva of the Muffin Top

Quest of a Roly Poly Princess

Lardy O'Cracker Jeans

Okay, I liked that last one, but for now I'll stick to Suzy's Search for Sanity.

Got Fat Feet?

Then you'll love these 2 videos by Kim Brittingham, author of Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large. You need to watch both videos to get all the info this Jersey Girl has to offer.

and

Turning Back the Clock for Sanity's Sake

I quit!

No more diets. No more daily weigh-ins. No more agonizing over eating one cookie or a slice of pizza.

I'm going to follow Margaret Cho's philosophy and just say Fuck it!

I may not lose any weight, will probably regain some that I already lost - multiple times - but I'll regain some sanity in my life.

And that's what this blog is about - my Search for Sanity - right?

Take THAT, Dr. W (my cardiologist)!!!

Measures of clinical adiposity and cardiovascular risk

5 May, 11 | by Alistair Lindsay

The importance of clinical measures of adiposity (such as body-mass index [BMI], waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio) in calculating cardiovascular risk remains controversial.  For example, both the World Health Organisation and the United States National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute recommend assessment of BMI, however several common cardiovascular disease risk scores (e.g. PROCAM) omit adiposity measures.  In this analysis, the Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration analysed records from 58 prospective studies to determine the separate and combined associations of BMI, waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio with the risk of first-onset cardiovascular disease.

Individual records were analysed from 221,934 people in 17 countries; serial adiposity measurements were made in 63,821 people.  Hazard ratios (HRs) were calculated per 1 standard deviation (SD) higher baseline values for three clinical adiposity measurements: BMI (1 SD = 4.56kg/m2), waist circumference (1 SD=12.6cm), and waist-to-hip ratio (1 SD=0.083).  Hazard ratios for cardiovascular disease were 1.23 for BMI, 1.27 for waist circumference, and 1.25 for waist-to-hip ratio.  Of note, adding information on BMI, waist circumferece, or waist-to-hip ratio to a cardiovascular disease risk prediction model using conventional risk factors did not significantly improve risk prediction, even when the three measures were considered in combination.

Conclusions:

In this analysis of 58 prospective studies, clinical measures of adiposity, such as BMI, waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio, did not improve cardiovascular disease risk prediction over the use of conventional risk factors such as blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol.

• The Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration.  Separate and combined associations of body-mass index and abdominal adiposity with cardiovascular disease: collaborative analysis of 58 prospective studies.  Lancet 2011; 377:1085-1095.