5.03.2011

Biology: 3, Anti-Fat Techniques: 0

So we know that diets don't work long-term.  And we know bariatric surgery doesn't work long-term.  Now, we know liposuction doesn't work long-term, either.  A study recently released showed that over the year following liposuction on the hips and thighs, new fat cells were created to replace the ones lost, distributed over different areas of the body (they're theorizing that it's because the liposuction destroys the supporting structure under the skin where the fat cells would normally grow).

Fat bodies cannot be willed, fooled, or altered thin.  When are we going to accept this?  When are we going to stop shaming people for a product of genetics and biology?  When are we, as a culture, going to take science seriously when it says, over and over again, No, this weight-loss thing just doesn't work, no matter how you do it?

But you know what the worst part of the linked article was?  The control group had been promised a reduced rate on their surgeries if they still wanted them, in exchange for waiting the time of the study before getting liposuction done. 

And when it was time, even after they had been told the study results, more than half of them went ahead and got the surgery anyway.

My heart breaks for them. 

6 comments:

Whimsical Kelly said...

I was put on my first starvation diet when I was ten. In a body that would later prove to have PCOS, Hashimoto's Disease and a strong genetic propensity for the short, round Slavic build. My mother spent my childhood angry with God that he'd given her two healthy, active but fat daughters.

I've been fat for my adult life. I've had job interviews end abruptly when the interviewer met me face-to-face, I've had the name calling, the subtle and not-so-subtle insults, even from friends, the sneering down the nose when someone loses those fifteen vanity pounds - if they can do it, so can I, if I wanted it bad enough. I've had doctors tell me same thing in the exam room and blame real complaints on my weight, even when it would prove later to be something wrong with my health.

I am more than a number on a scale. We all are.

Jadelyn said...

I am so very sorry for what you've had to deal with. Forcing a child to diet is a form of abusive behavior, IMO. *hugs* offered.

Doctors - ugh, just, ugh. My mother has told me about her "favorite" of those type of visits, where a doctor blamed an *ear infection* on her weight. Who knew inner-ear disorders were caused by deathfatz? >.<

Here's to life beyond the number on the scale.

ladyneeva said...

(tw: fat hatred, bullying)

Warning: The following post could be printed out, bound, and placed on a bookshelf because it's a freaking novel.

I was 11 the first time "concerned adults" in my life decided to stage an intervention for me to save me from my fat. Not my parents, at least I never got this from them so I feel very lucky compared to a lot of fat people, but the school nurse, the PE teacher, the school guidance counselor and the principal all decided that I needed an intervention.

The principal and the guidance counselor stood in my first period class, waited until all my peers were present and the teacher had finished taking attendance. Then they announced that they needed to "borrow" me. They then walked me down the halls of a very small rural school, in full view of all the other classrooms, one on each side like I was going to flee.

So we get to the principal's office, and waiting there are the school nurse and the PE teacher. They sat me down and proceeded to lecture me for over an hour about the damage I was doing to myself, the fact that I'd be dead before I was 30, and how my weight was preventing my peers from interacting with me. How unfair it was of me to put my parents through losing a child so young when I could just lose weight and be healthy and spare them that. They actually asked if I thought it would be fair to expect some poor boy to go to prom with someone who looked like me instead of a normal girl. Didn't I want to date and go to dances with boys?

Horrible as that was, worse was yet to come. During gym class, same day, the PE teacher announced that we all needed to band together and work together to support me in my quest for weight loss, and how unhealthy it was for me to be so fat, how it was up to ALL OF THEM to keep me on track with my diet and exercise goals.

I think, even had I not been extremely shy and easily embarrassed at that age... that would have been pure hell. I know for a fact that dealing with my peers for the rest of the time spent in school was pure hell. Their attempts at helping me keep on track with diet and exercise involved stealing my lunch, putting dead animals in my lunch (not until they missed and put it in another girl's lunch did the practice of locking up all the lunches start), accidentally spilling things on my lunch, throwing rocks at me, punching/pinching me or pulling my hair until I chased them and then yelling run fattyrun... I could go on, but why depress everyone more than I have?

The sad thing is how horribly disgustingly fat and hideous I was when I was first pulled aside and told I'd be dead by 30 if I didn't lose weight. See for yourselves, I'm the one in the back - http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=28862&l=6438690a6a&id=100001018639992

I'm the one in the back, holding up the dinosaur. It was taken maybe three-ish months before the intervention, somehow I doubt I gained all that much weight in that time.

I think this obsession with weight is really damaging in a lot of ways. Sure there are some health issues which become more likely the heavier you are. There are also health issues which become more likely the thinner you are, or the more you lose and regain weight, or the faster you lose weight, or the more you exercise or the less you exercise, etc. There is no "perfect" -- even if you do everything right, following all the best diet advice the best nutritionists give and following doctor recommended exercise plans and reducing stress and on and on... you could still be like the owner of a small fitness gym and health club in my city who dropped dead of a heart attack while taking his morning jog on his 49th birthday a couple years back. I don't remember much detail, I just remember thinking what a damn shame it is that he spent most of his adult life devoted to the cause of staying healthy and trim and fit and it didn't prolong his life one bit.

Jadelyn said...

Oh, ladyneeva... I...have no words. I really don't. I cannot understand for the life of me what kind of compassionectomy an adult would have to have to feel like it's ok to publicly humiliate a child as they did to you. As has been said many, many times, shame is not a weight-loss technique. You have my deepest sympathy for you for what they did to you. :-/ *hugs* offered, if you would like them.

I want to make clear real fast that I am not trying to shame the women who chose the operation despite knowing these results. As I said, my heart breaks for them, and that's precisely because I do understand the desperate drive to latch onto any possible chance no matter how slim. I sympathize; it's not so much that I'm judging them for choosing it, as desperately wishing they hadn't felt the need to in the first place.

ladyneeva said...

I never thought you were trying to shame them, just that you felt sorry that they'd been so... I guess brainwashed... by the whole fat hate thing that they'd still want it even knowing it won't likely work.

I'm not entirely sure that what those adults suffered was a compassionectomy. I'm certain that they thought that what they were doing was very compassionate and that they were only trying to help. I think maybe that they were just so fixated on the idea of helping that they didn't stop to think of the consequences of HOW they decided to do that.

I think adults, especially teachers, and most especially special education teachers have a lot of trouble understanding that children are NOT innocent little beings of sweetness and light.

You want innocent sweetness and light, get a kitten heh. Even then you usually need to teach them not to chew on your hands thought.

Jadelyn said...

So. Much. Yes. Adults don't seem to like to see how genuinely cruel kids can be. They absorb the compassionless cruelty of the world before they learn the ability to channel it and mask it and suppress it, which I think is honestly why children are often more directly cruel than adults. I think my attributing the adults' behavior to a lack of compassion is my own assumption that everyone understands the consequences of their actions and so the consequences must be a deliberate part of the action.

Also, lol at kittens and hand-chewing. ^_^

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