unlocking the fat trap

i have talked about fat before. but until january 1st, 2012, i had little in the way of stats. below are excerpts from the New York Times' fact-filled magazine piece, The Fat Trap. in the meantime, in my quest to find a decent physician, i had to interview a number of frogs. the one i have in mind is the one who responded to the question as to why he thought so few people kept weight off since losing it. with an expression saying, 'isn't it obvious?' he made it clear: for the same reason they got fat in the first place: they're lazy, and they're not quite honest. these doctors need to be educated.

A full year after significant weight loss, these men and women remained in what could be described as a biologically altered state. Their still-plump bodies were acting as if they were starving and were working overtime to regain the pounds they lost. For instance, a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone,” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study.

Another hormone associated with suppressing hunger, peptide YY, was also abnormally low. Levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism, also remained lower than expected. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place.

Researchers know that obesity tends to run in families, and recent science suggests that even the desire to eat higher-calorie foods may be influenced by heredity.

That experimental binge should have translated into a weight gain of roughly 24 pounds (based on 3,500 calories to a pound). But some gained less than 10 pounds, while others gained as much as 29 pounds.

The research shows that the changes that occur after weight loss translate to a huge caloric disadvantage of about 250 to 400 calories. For instance, one woman who entered the Columbia studies at 230 pounds was eating about 3,000 calories to maintain that weight. Once she dropped to 190 pounds, losing 17 percent of her body weight, metabolic studies determined that she needed about 2,300 daily calories to maintain the new lower weight. That may sound like plenty, but the typical 30-year-old 190-pound woman can consume about 2,600 calories to maintain her weight — 300 more calories than the woman who dieted to get there.

Scientists are still learning why a weight-reduced body behaves so differently from a similar-size body that has not dieted. Muscle biopsies taken before, during and after weight loss show that once a person drops weight, their muscle fibers undergo a transformation, making them more like highly efficient “slow twitch” muscle fibers. A result is that after losing weight, your muscles burn 20 to 25 percent fewer calories during everyday activity and moderate aerobic exercise than those of a person who is naturally at the same weight. That means a dieter who thinks she is burning 200 calories during a brisk half-hour walk is probably using closer to 150 to 160 calories.

How long this state lasts isn’t known, but preliminary research at Columbia suggests that for as many as six years after weight loss, the body continues to defend the old, higher weight by burning off far fewer calories than would be expected. The problem could persist indefinitely.

Tara Parker-Pope

When you're fat....

you think about fat all the time. I wonder if it's the same if you're gay, or if you're black -- do you think about that thing about you that you know others see about you first, that thing about you that makes you different, that makes you, it's clear, stand out?

Slowly, crepuscularly slowly, it is being accepted that perhaps your gayness is something you've inherited; perhaps it isn't a choice after all, perhaps, in fact, you're not deviant, just different.

And it goes without saying that skin-color is not a choice, but don't a lot of people feel that "they" don't have to act "that way"?

I have two primary doctors, my GP and my cardiologist; both are tall and thin, i'd describe him as lanky, her as sleek. He, the cardiologist, is white, be-speckled, she is long-haired and so pretty that you know being a model would have been an option. She is also black.

Neither are, as far as i know, gay.

It's clear both have made decisions about their lives-- perhaps difficult ones. That both are full-time physicians, full-time parents, spiritually involved, illustrates this.

Though both may do some forms of physical-fitness regimen, that's not why they're tall and thin; they were born that way. Just like the black guy and the gay one: this is the way they are.

And so am I. Despite all evidence to the contrary, and it is all to the contrary, short and fat is a natural state of being, a way one is born; i asked my GP if she could be shaped like me even if she did choose to be and of course the answer was no.

I also asked her, according to her experience, if i could choose to be like her (the thin part, not the tall and black, of course). If ability to change is borne out by statistics (as has been used as an argument in the nature of gayness), the answer has to be a loudly resounding , "No!"

Her experiences predict the same as that of the many published reports: only 5%, at most, of people who attempt to lose weight permanently are successful. My cardiologist reported a higher number, 20%, which he believed was due to greater motivation; still, in that case, four out of five patients failed.

Being fat, then, is being a failure; when what you inescapably are is seen as changeable, like the belief that prayer can "heal" homosexuality, those who believe that assume you have failed (unless you are too lazy even to have tried).

Is it any wonder that it is so easy to fall into the trap where self-esteem's only source is the report from the scale?

The assumption about fat people, by thin people and fat people alike, is that they should, and can, be thin. I suddenly realized this year that i had spent a fair part of every day for nearly 60 years thinking i should be "repairing" something about myself, that i was, intrinsically, in the wrong. At all times.

And quickly added to this: that the same was probably true for almost every other woman alive; tell me this isn't oppression? Tell me that anyone who assumes i am lazy, un-intelligent, un-motivated, boring, slovenly, or worthless, because i am fat, isn't oppressing me? I live in a society in which the assumption is ubiquitously that fat is sin, not characteristic.

*I cringe when i hear Oprah berate herself for gaining back some weight; is it even possible, in this society, to define one's lifestyle not as 'letting herself go' but rather 'letting herself be"?

Does fat come with health consequences? Of course! Diabetes, heart disease, and more. But, and i know I'm not original in stating this, but the stress of living all the days of one's life seeing oneself, and being seen by others, as a sinner is not healthy either. I'm not debating that there is a relationship; I'm arguing that the relationship is inherited, not made. If someone is fat, start early with diabetes and cholesterol treatment. Don't ask your patient, your friend, your child, to do something they cannot do, and then judge them for not doing it.

You wouldn't do that if the subject were sexual preference. I know you well enough to know you would not. And if you did, it would say more about you than about your lesbian friend.

My tall, thin, beautiful doctor had never had anyone tell her that they had been beating their head against a wall for 60 years. That when you're online you don't reveal you're fat because that might just invalidate everything you say to just too many people. That people have told you they would love to be friends with you but they just didn't like fat people. That neighbors don't look at you when you meet in the street. And that these things had been happening for 60 years. And you've blamed yourself.

Tyra Banks dressed herself up in a fat-suit; she looked like she weighed over 300 pounds despite being as tall as she is. "The people that were staring and laughing in my face -- that shocked me the most," Banks said. "As soon as I entered the store -- when I went shopping -- I immediately heard snickers. Immediately! I just was appalled and hurt! There's no excuse for rudeness. There's no excuse for ugliness. And there's no excuse for nastiness and that's what I experienced,"

"It seemed like the last form of open discrimination that's okay, and I deci- ded to put on a 350-pound suit myself and live that life for a day and see what happens. And it was one of the most heartbreaking days of my life."

it is true that body shape and size, like race, sexual preference, mental illness, and more traits they're learning every day, are inherited, not chosen, and thus no more than these other traits should it be judged.

lily pond (lotusgreen)

*she has since retracted those statements

i am the laziest girl in the world

BLUES

I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, 'til
my face is creased and swollen,
'til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch,
butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.

Sometimes come
dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown,
the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it. Many days
I do not exercise, only
consider it, then rub my curdy
belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy. I use
syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong
of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go
for pages. And yesterday,
for example,
I did not work at all!

I got in my car and I drove
to factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father's money.

To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five and on
Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.

To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job months in advance. Work hard
and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you
what you have.

There is no sin but sloth. Burn
to a wick and keep moving.

I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up
dead. In sleep I am looking
for poems in the shape of open
V's of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.

Elizabeth Alexander

From Body of Life by Elizabeth Alexander, published by Tia Chucha Press. Copyright © 1996 by Elizabeth Alexander.

all of this by way of saying that i need to start exercising again, and i've run into a wall before i've even begun. i've exercised a lot, intermittently, in the past: running, working out at a gym, lots of walking, even working out with exerciseTV. right now i am simply not motivated at all.

except for the fact that my mother started developing alzheimer's when she was not much older than i am now, and already you'll never know when i'll just forget how to use something, like my answering machine, that i've used a million times before, and plus they say that really the only thing that slows or even stops it is exercise, and it works really well. 1

can you help? please share with me any ideas, suggestions, thoughts, whatever you have that can help me get moving again, and i thank you from my heart. and my brain cells.

colette's breast

The 'modern' corset is attributed to Catherine de Médicis, wife of King Henri II of France. She enforced a ban on thick waists at court attendance during the 1550s and had a questionable effect on women for the next 350 years. 1

''Ten years ago, so many department stores wouldn't even consider carrying larger sizes because they didn't want larger-size

women in their stores,'' said Kurt Barnard, the president of Barnard Retail Trend Report. 2

In order to survive, female movie stars had to be constantly wary of excess fat. "Eternal vigilance in the diet is the price of liberty from the ogre, obesity," declared Corliss Palmer, the winner of Motion Picture Magazine's Fame and Fortune Contest for 1920.

Throughout the 1920s, fan magazines were liberally sprinkled with dramatic tales of stars' battles with weight as well as their "helpful advice" for readers who might wish to reduce.

When "Bar- bara" made her first hit, she was a slim young gift.... When the money came rolling in, "Barbara" became a victim of luxury. She grew plump and prosperous; naturally, because she was carefree and happy. But the public didn't like it. Her "fans" complained; the exhibitors
kicked; the critics laughed at her. "Barbara's" admirers wanted to see her slim and big-eyed. "Barbara," alas, looked too healthy for a "vamp."

Yet all reducing articles, even those that highlighted particularly painful or foolhardy methods of weight loss, operated under the tacit assumption that no one, regular folks included, would wish to "let herself/himself go." 3

so despite the fact that madeleine vionnet, when a fat woman walked into her shop, would ask her to turn around and go, many a woman, obese by today's standards, was considered a paragon of beauty, a muse and inspiration.

lillian russell, misia sert, loie fuller and others had more paintings done of them than any other women of the time. they were on more maga- zine covers, and they were names in dedications in every- thing from music to novels.

colette satirized the whole "flapper situation" in a number of her non-fiction essays:

Colette makes us laugh at the fact that fashion affects not only clothes, but bodies; style fashions the body and hence the self. Breasts were to be dieted into oblivion for last season, Now we witness the return of the repressed in, what is more, a fashion industry bonanza: if you do not have any breasts left, we can do something about it.

Designed in rubber and painted a delightful skin colour, you may find them lifeless: why not try this little tulle number, with an accommodating hole for the nipple? Moreover, for women who failed to fashion their bodies for last year, there is also a solution: any breast can be changed, filled out if it is too flat, rounded and lifted if it is pendulous, the whole body encased in a rubber tube to give you no more hip than a 'bouteille à vin du Rhin.'

There are fashions in bodies: a woman's body is infinitely 'malleable' — if you are required to be a sausage, then a sausage you will be. We are taught by Colette to see that dress reaches very deep into the flesh, that style fashions the body and hence the self.

Rubber tubing and the extraordinary inventiveness of corsetry ensured that where diet and patent medicines failed, the female form could still be disciplined into the tubular shape required by the waistless tunic. But where 'too fat' required constraint and compression, 'too thin' was simply reinterpreted.

No longer referring to a woman ageing before her time, the 'thin' body becomes 'slim', acquiring an erect posture and youthful vitality; it is captured as it were eternally at the threshold of sexual maturity before the deposit of womanly fats on the hips and the breasts. 4

(i hope this makes some sense to you. it's a long essay, with all of colette's words in untranslated french -- too complex for the online translators or for my old rusty skills. but to tell the truth, i didn't perfectly understand the english, either. in any case, it becomes clear that colette was hip to the game: when imitation -- even of the bodies of the women of japan -- goes below the surface to effect self-esteem, it becomes just another power game. women, yet again, are pawns in that game of fame. no wonder clara bow looks so sad.)

'colette's breast' is from sisters of salome.

The Hymn of a Fat Woman

All of the saints starved themselves.
Not a single fat one.
The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same
Latin root.

Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones
or shards of stained
glass or Christ carved
on his cross.

Hard
as pew seats. Brittle
as hair shirts. Women
made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted
wooden chest. Women consumed
by fervor.

They must have been able to walk three or four abreast
down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.
They must have slipped with ease through the eye
of the needle, leaving the weighty
camels stranded at the city gate.

Within that spare city’s walls,
I do not think I would find anyone like me.

I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.

© 2008 Joyce Huff

bosoms lost

don't tell any- one, but women used to have bottoms, breasts, and bellies. in fact, when they chose clothes to wear, or dictated what was fashionable, the styles might even exaggerate them. but then things changed.

It was a difficult time for the former matrons of Edwardian society, the previous leaders of fashion whose style of dressing became as passé as their rounded figures and older faces. More youthful women who could party all night and carry the boyish fashions well were all the rage.

The slender flat- chested tanned body and face of a 15 year old became the desired silhouette of the bright young things of the 1920s. 1

Women’s fashion in the early 1900s highlighted the silhouette of the mature, full-figured body. Low busts and curvy hips were flaunted by the dress styles of the era... From 1910 until the start of the First World War in 1914, fashion continued to move toward slimmer, narrower silhouettes that emphasized flat busts and slim hips . Bustles and trains were removed from dresses, as fashion designers played with the length of skirts to reveal enticing new areas of skin. 2

and of course, as we've seen, this is also the period during which the influence of japonisme on fashion became the most evident. women and fashion designers were suddenly looking at young idealized japanese courtesans with a new eye. but this new audience for the ukiyo-e may not have understood that they were seeing through the artists' eyes as well.

Suzuki Harunobu (1725-1770) was the first artist to use the technique of full color printing. He popularized a new aesthetic in female beauty—that of a delicate, ethereal, childlike woman... Torii Kiyonaga (1752-1815) focused on bijin-ga (pretty women). His women are stately and statuesque. They are more realistic than Harunobu's, but are still impossibly tall and elegant. His faces exhibit a high degree of idealism and are often indistinguishable from each other.

Kitagawa Utamaro (1750-1806): Utamaro worked mainly with bijin-ga, his prints dominating the Ukiyo-e scene in the 1790s. He took Kiyonaga's female type to its elegant extreme. His were tall, full-bodied women with large oval heads. Utamaro depicted these women on a monumental scale, often delighting in bringing the figure forward and focusing on enlarged heads and torsos. 3

so i begin to wonder, putting this all together in my head...: were we seeing, in the 20s, evidence of women's "new freedom," as the new look is often attributed to, or yet another sample of japonisme?

are we still punishing ourselves for having edwardian bodies in a "modern" world due to the fancies of japanese printmakers from over 200 years ago?

as we've seen, we were quick and happy to emulate the japanese clothing, and perhaps we were also inviting in their bodies as well. many of us in the west are from, or have ancestors from, european peasant stock, inheriting bodies as far from the stereotyped (let alone the idealized) japanese body as a body could be. in inviting in these body images, we were also welcoming decades of frustration and self-hatred.