The Obesity Myth

I appreciate that many of you who are coming to this blog for the first time – in particular, friends and colleagues with whom I have not yet discussed the meaning and importance of fat acceptance (FA) – will be disturbed to see [someone as fat as] me embrace what you will be inclined to regard as a spurious theory about fat. To document why FA is more than legitimate (it’s essential!), I’ve been assembling research in preparation for writing a detailed post on this subject. In doing so, I came across:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/printable/383/

This article appeared on spikedonline.com, a blog from the UK with quite a bit of info about the obesity hysteria epidemic (England has a worse case than the US). It’s an edited excerpt from The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession With Weight is Hazardous to Your Health by Paul Campos, a Colorado sociologist, attorney and teacher. Although it was not the first book to posit some of these ideas (Dieter's Dilemma: Eating Less and Weighing More by William Bennett got things going back in 1983), The Obesity Myth immediately became the seminal tome of the current fat acceptance movement when it was published in 2004.

Frankly, I don’t feel like re-inventing the wheel. I’m referring you to this Campos piece because I can’t even begin to quickly and cogently write my own version of what he spent a great deal of time researching and writing. This article is long – but reading it won’t take a fraction of the time involved in undertaking another unproductive diet (98 percent of people who lose weight re-gain it, with interest, within two years). I think you’ll find it fascinating reading that will perhaps motivate you to re-think your beliefs and ideas about fat.

This post is illustrated with the Ten of Swords Tarot card because, as you can see, it portrays serious injury, even death. But the 10-S is really about over-reaction to trouble and loss; it hardly takes ten swords to inflict a mortal wound! And look closely at the sky. The soft colors on the horizon represent the dawn of a new day, a new opportunity to face problems with courage and innovation instead of panic. It's time fat people stopped killing ourselves with misinformation, stopped allowing the myths about obesity to stab us in the back!