dieting

[keryx]

I'd been thinking that my recent bout with accidental weight loss would make me more empathetic with people who actually set out to try to lose weight.

But... um, no. Not so much.

That is, I'm not feeling as personally attacked by things other people do these days. I'm doing better at holding onto my own self-concept without triggering the crazy thoughts. You know, establishing an "oh, whatever" attitude about my body (I mean, if you can do it about cat shit...) and such. When it comes to my friends' dieting, though, the most supportive feelings I appear to be able to muster are - not very supportive.

I realize this is an area of some narrowmindedness for me (I have grown, I'll add - there was a time I'd simply stop talking to people on these grounds), but it's also an area of some narrowmindedness for the rather large number of you, LJ friends, who've been talking about losing weight this week. I believe dieting is a bad idea - I don't think it's healthy for us, I don't think it's successful, and I don't think it's necessary. You've all heard me say that 800000000 times. Kinda over it, right? But at the same time, many of you dismiss me out of hand because you just know that your "fat" body is wrong, unattractive, or unhealthy.

I'm not saying that there aren't useful things that diet culture can provide - for instance, it seems like some folk get a better emotional perspective (that is, making these things less about whatever extreme emotional reaction one might have) wrt food or exercise from adopting diet-like concepts. It's more that, for some reason, the people I know seem to independently decide they're Too Fat all at roughly the same time. So I feel dismissed en masse (hee, punny). Why is that?

I may be barely big enough for the fat conference attendees to fucking talk to me, but around almost everyone else I know (or well, at least among the women), I am the Fattest of Them All. So excuse me if I take your statement about being Too Fat a little personally. If you feel shitty and slow or out of control, say that. Okay? Address shitty slow-feelingness, not the size of your body. Don't mistake the word fat for all that other crap. Because I am as over that as you are tired of this lecture.

Anyhow, I feel a lot of times that this position is just so radical that everyone who wants to diet or change their eating or exercise more for any reason feels like they either a) want to clear it with me or b) expect me to just overlook this aspect of disagreement with them because I am oh so strange and radical. I think the first position is unnecessary but kindof sweet of my friends, to grant my opinion that much weight just because it's mine (or better, because it's partially theirs, too), and the second treats me with exactly the same disrespect I am mentally treating you with when I "excuse" your diet thing.

How do people really agree to disagree? How do we not do that in a way that dismisses the other person to a degree?

Comments

[enchochada.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, anticipation of your potential reaction has made me think a lot more carefully about how and when I mention weight and body image issues on my LJ! Don't get me wrong, it's not a fear thing in that I'm scared of what you might say, but more an awareness that I am *not* sucked into that whole diet culture thing any more and thus must not 'pretend' that I am (which is getting easier and easier!)

[keryx.livejournal.com]

This idea of "pretending" to be part of the diet culture intrigues me, but I don't think I quite get it. Could you expand?

[enchochada.livejournal.com]

Maybe 'pretending' wasn't the best way of putting it... but I guess what I meant was that I know, in my heart that my body is OK - it's healthy and feminine and so on; but I do find that if I'm, say, in the fitting room in a high street fashion store, or at a club where there are young nubile women wearing flimsy bits of nothing, that the old feelings of inadequacy and freakishness and self-loathing start to creep up on me unbidden unless I check them very firmly, even though I *know* that there's nothing wrong with my body. I think what I was trying to say was that despite my well-informed and well-reasoned rationalisation and acceptance of myself, the reality is a lot harder to actually live.

I assume I'm one of your irritants today ...

[cutegaychick.livejournal.com]

... But I feel better about myself when I don't feel overweight. Sometimes I feel overweight. Sometimes I don't. Neither has anything to do with my actual weight or body size -- just where my head is at any given moment. When I feel overweight, I do two things simultaneously -- work on feeling differently, and work on losing weight. I don't think either are unhealthy and the point of both is to make me feel better -- not to make me look differently. I can't apologize for that -- it's how I feel and I get to feel how I feel.

And when I say "trying to lose weight," what I mean isn't "stop eating" or "exercise until I pass out." It's more like "get off the couch every few hours" and "stop subsisting on jelly beans and ice cream and maybe try a green vegetable every once in awhile."

I don't think you're wrong in your point of view but I take the position that it's Your Perfectly Valid Point Of View and I get to have my own Completely Different Yet Still Perfectly Valid Point of View.

I don't expect you to overlook the disagreement any more than I'm going to check in with you before I start a diet. But you are more than welcome to harrass me good-naturedly about it and roll your eyes at me and consider me to be Part Of The Problem.

But don't stop speaking to me -- I'd miss you. And you can declare yourself The Fattest of Them All if that's making you happy, but from where I'm sitting, you're just hot and that has nothing to do with your size.

you sure are.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I'll reply to the rest of this comment later, when I'm not stuck on the idea of "feeling overweight". What does "overweight" mean in that sentence? Is a ladder buckling under your feet as you type?

Re: you sure are.

[cutegaychick.livejournal.com]

*laugh* Calm down, darlin. Let's not draw pistols over this, okay?

Overweight means I weigh more this week than I want too. There's no magic number or size attached to it -- it's about what's in my head, not about what's on my body. Next week, I may feel fine or too thin at exactly the same weight. And it certainly has nothing to do with your body.

I am Woman! I demand my God-given right to be somewhat insane and always insufferable about my body. It's my birthright. I also get to declare that my ears are too big, or my hair is too frizzy or that one of my nostrils is higher than the other. Or that I'm a far sight better looking and sexier than anyone else in the city. Whatever. I am Woman!

Re: you sure are.

[divinerose.livejournal.com]

*jumps in*

I tend to agree with what cutegaychick said above, so I might as well toss in my two cents.

Like she said, for me feeling "overweight" is more in my head then what's on the scale (which, before you yell at me about putting my self worth in the numbers or something of that nature, let me say I don't even OWN a scale). I have an image in my head of what I like to look like. No, its not skinny. Its pretty much where I am now, just more toned and muscular and less chub. It is where I have been before (not my skinniest), but not where I am now. It is where I feel most comfortable in my skin. Right now, I feel "overweight", but compared to where I would like ME to be, not where society says I should be.

So yea, for me its a mental thing. I don't mind the weight I am at (though sometimes its hard due to the rampant anorexia that plagues UVA*), but sometimes I waver as to what I would like to be, and if I am comfortable in my body or not.

*this may or may not be true, there are just way to many skinny chicks around campus

Re: you sure are.

[chubbyninja.livejournal.com]

hehe... this amuses me because it is the exact reason i dont like how big i am.
Broken chairs, couches, beds, ladders, etc.
i am literally overweight.

[belladonnalin.livejournal.com]

I don't really know how to do this with dieting, either. Because there are people I love who are doing diet plans and things and all I know is that I cringe. I appreciate when they will ask if people want to be on a filter, becuase, really, I don't want to. It's hard for me to not be out-of-hand dismissive, because I know that I care about them, but I also don't think that anything but lifestyle changes so that one feels more healthy and body-moving is really going to do one bit of good.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

So, do your friends who diet think of you as "oh, that belladonnalin, she's so crazy with the fat talk"? Or what?

I feel like I'm being such an asshat to people, but then I also feel like that's mutual. And I really don't want to disengage with people just because we have a difference of opinion about the body.

[belladonnalin.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't know how people think of it. I tend to frame it in the context of my eating disorder and how that framed the way I think of intentional weight loss and dieting, because I feel horribly co-opt-y with too much of Fat Movement Stuff. I mean, I'm not fat - my body, at the way that I currently live, falls at the top-ish end of of what society probably considers "okay". I get some shit from family members, but I feel like a jackass going into fat movement stuff and having people look at me like "Hey, you're not living the stigma." Because I'm not. So the eating disorder framing feels more genuine about the ways that the weight loss culture affects me.

I really don't know what to do with how people feel about it, either. Because I really don't feel good about people's dieting, I really am concerned for their health and the reasons that they've engaged in this culture, especially people who join Weight Watchers or something similiar. HOWEVER, I also don't want them to think that I'm juding them or deeming them not radical enough. But I can't pretend I'm not concerned and that I don't HATE THE FUCK OUT OF HEARING HOW MANY POINTS MY GODDAMN LUNCH HAS IN IT.

SO I don't know don't know don't know.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Lots to say. No time to say it. Will try to return to this point later!

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. Am particularly interested in hearing your thoughts on this, as I think you and I at least have reached a point where we can disagree slightly on a couple of things that are critical to us and not have it be about demeaning each other, even in our heads.

But I think that is, unfortunately, about you and your attitude towards disagreement than it is about me and mine.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Oops, there's a "more" missing in that last sentence somewhere. You get what I meant. :)

[peggynature.livejournal.com]

"...the people I know seem to independently decide they're Too Fat all at roughly the same time."

That is hilarious, and I've totally experienced that.

I'm not sure how people learn to agree to disagree on very controversial issues like this without each dismissing the other in at least a small way. Honestly, even though I can respect someone who is dieting, and even respect their right to make that choice, I still think it's a stupid choice (with very rare exceptions, which I'll not go into now, except to say that they are really, really, really rare.)

I suppose that is dismissive of me, and I'm sure people who fervently believe in what they are doing, diet-wise, dismiss me a little bit when they choose to get along instead of arguing. I don't know if there's a way around it.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I don't really care at all if people want to diet, but I think they should shut up about it and diet secretly. Any expression of aesthetic preference for being skinnier is automatically an insult to the appearance of anyone else who weighs the same or more, and I'm really sick of people willfully refusing to grasp that.

I don't think it's the least bit unreasonable of me to expect people to refrain from talking about their diets. Most people already manage to refrain from talking about their bowel movements to everyone they know - and personally, I find it far more offensive to hear about people's obsessive regulation of what goes in their mouths than to hear about people's hardly ever obsessive observation of what comes out the other end. Because people talking about the latter don't insult anyone along the way, whereas people talking about the former do.

[cutegaychick.livejournal.com]

I don't really care at all if people want to diet, but I think they should shut up about it and diet secretly.

*nodnodnod*
Yes and I don't mind the gay people so much as long as they don't talk about it.

[attrice.livejournal.com]

Comparing the attitude of wanting to not hear about dieting to wanting gays to stay in the closet is so damn ridiculous that I just sat there staring at it cuz I thought I must be reading it wrong.

Dieting is not only completely accepted (especially for women) in this society, it is encouraged. Comparing it to an identification that can sometimes get you killed is just mind bogglingly innapropriate.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Maybe you consider "talking about being gay" to inherently imply talking about considering other people's bodies ugly, but as far as I've noticed, it's perfectly entirely possible to "talk about being gay" merely by expressing a preference for or appreciation of members of the same sex for reasons that could just as easily be based on shared gender roles and not having to deal with sexist gender-based power-differentials between you and your partner. Saying "I love my girlfriend" or even "I prefer not to date men" does not, in my opinion, inherently insult anyone's body. Saying "I don't like being fat!" does.

And when I encounter people whose manner of "talking about being gay" does involve saying things like "Yuck, men are so ugly! All that disgusting hair and stuff!" - particularly in a forum where anyone male could possibly happen to read those words and maybe develop a complex about their body hair or something - then yes, I do get offended by the speakers' potentially harmful effects on other people's comfort with their own bodies.

[chubbyninja.livejournal.com]

seriously... those fucking gays and their wanting to flaunt their sexuality all over the pla-... wait. you were being facetious, werent you?

but seriously, i want a "straight white guy tolerance" parade... it seems like we've been getting the short end of the stick from everyone but the other straight white guys.

i mean shit, if we didnt run everything, we'd be totally screwed. :)

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Wow. Did I ever think about this all freaking day. I am still not sure exactly what I want to say; and MANY MANY parallels are drawn in my mind between this and my hotbutton issue and our relating on that. Or anyone really; probably most of my friends use porn, and yet I'm vehemently confident that it's all exploitation and hurting women. And I can talk to them. And alot of that is staight up... River In Egypt Time, I think. I do alot of "what they do I cannot force or stop; I can continue to tell people at opportune times the ways that porn is exploitive and damaging to women, but I am fighting a raging, swirling sea of majority, and will not be able to communicate if I disengage, even if it hurts me sometimes."

I try to imagine what I would do if someone (close to me) posted, "I signed up to sell nekkid pictures on the internet through a third party website!" or something like that. It would certainly conflict me... and it would hurt like mad. (I know there are people *currently* involved in related work on my friends list. I am at peace with it, even if I am not at peace with the industry.) (And I have benefitted, I think, by being open to what they have to say.) But yes. There would be a time when I would say to myself, do I have to disengage? How can I call this person a friend when they are participating in something which I am *confident* is hurting people?

But I am not here to talk about my issue, it's just that the parallels are so powerful, it's hard to ignore. Am I dismissing people I know to some degree? Probably, but they're dismissing me too, so we have a mutual, kind-of-respectful dismissing. I think in its own weird way, it works, and we get to hear what each other have to say, which is helpful. (Let me now see if this is too long for one comment...)

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Uh, way, way too many parenthesis. Can you tell I'm all het up?

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

So, I hope I fall into the a) column in regards to my recent lifestyle change (and I do feel that is what it is, even if the tool I've chosen has a definite endpoint, i.e., when I stop paying them). I didn't want to clear it with you, I don't know, I steamed forward all engines go when I made the decision because I needed the positive energy - every other time I've tried to control my eating has been an extremely short-lived disaster with me ending up right back where I started, unhealthy eating habits. I am not sure, for me if WW is going to have all the detrimental effects you ascribe to dieting. It may and it may not. And your points are ever in my mind. But there are also many voices who said, "I did that! It helped me alot. I am off it now, but I am still happy about the experience." Which is sort of an amalgamation of what many people said to me, many trusted and intelligent friends whose opinions are pretty mindful and aware about the culture we live in. All those voices (and yours isn't alone on the fatyay! side!) come together and guide me, in addition to my own conscience and experiences.

Am I saying "I think I am too fat" by going on WW? It's possible. I tend to think of it as "I've never learned how to eat" coupled with "my body is telling me in various ways that it's damn well time to learn how to eat or at least think about what I eat at all".

Am I contributing to an industry that hates on fat people? You have me there. You have me right between a rock and a hard place. Hell, there's not even a rock, it's just a hard place. I am. There is really no defense for it but to say that when I interact with other people about the program, I try to approach it from the most fat-positive perspective possible, insomuch as that's possible. What can I say? The tool that works for me is one of the monoliths, and while I think that the tool is not inherently evil, there is alot of fluffy bullshit and words surrounding the tool that are. I don't know what to say about that.

(Dammit I had something else... let me meditate)

[firecat]

You rawk.

When I see someone write "I feel overweight," I get puzzled. Because "overweight" is something that, if you believe there is a single ideal weight for you (which I don't), can be measured objectively. But feelings aren't objective. Some of the people talking about feeling overweight in this thread admit that "feeling overweight" has nothing to do with their actual weight, but they still use this terminology.

I think there is no way that a human being can go through life without feeling run down, tired, bored, uninspired, or lacking in energy some of the time. But I think our society has taught us, especially women, to use the words "overweight" or "fat" to describe those feelings, even though one's weight doesn't have much to do with whether one is feeling those things.

And our society has taught us that "dieting" is what we do to get rid of those feelings. For a lot of people "dieting" includes a bunch of stuff that don't really have anything to do with restricting calories (e.g., exercising, taking more time for yourself, making plans for the future, buying new clothes, eating more vegetables, whatever) and those things probably have more to do with making someone feel better when they are "dieting" than the calorie restriction. (At least I hope so, because calorie restriction can't continue indefinitely.)

Most people don't really do those other things outside of the "dieting" context all that often, so maybe they don't realize what's really causing them to feel better. Or maybe they do but it's all tied up in this one ritual.

To me, agreeing to disagree has a large component of just avoiding certain topics of conversation. As a pinky-green-liberal-leftist-feminist in a family of republicans, I've had a lot of experience with that.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Most people don't really do those other things outside of the "dieting" context all that often, so maybe they don't realize what's really causing them to feel better. Or maybe they do but it's all tied up in this one ritual.

Yeah, actually a couple of things friends have said recently makes me think this is key - that even if you're aware that the weight/number per se, it often takes the structures and short term push of "diet" to reset your habits to things that make you feel good. It turns out that this is an idea I fundamentally don't get - I have plenty of other issues with food, but it takes me maybe a week to bounce back to my normal "healthy" habits because they make me feel good all the time.

I am at least beginning to be able to frame this issue as people having the same goal (wanting to feel better) and very very different approaches. Which is exactly what I say to my Republican friends.