Category: Media
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Twitter Party
11 comments on Twitter PartyThere’s a bunch of fat folks tweeting about “things fat people are told” – in twitterspeak, #thingsfatpeoplearetold. (The # before makes it searchable.) Some examples: You have muscle? But have you really, really TRIED to lose weight? You’re too fat to do yoga properly, so don’t think you’re REALLY doing yoga. Your allergies (that you’ve had all your life) would go away if you lost weight.…
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QOTD: Fitness and fatness
From Reuters, on a study in patients with coronary artery disease that looked at fitness levels and BMI: [Heart specialist and study leader Dr. Francisco] Lopes-Jimenez said, the lesson for patients is clear: try to improve your physical fitness. “It is much easier to become fit than it is to become slim,” he said. “Anybody who has gone into an exercise program would agree with that.” While Lopes-Jimenez…
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Ah, The Fat-Phobic Media
The headline: “Are the Religious Prone to Obesity?” The facts: A study finding that those who attend religious services most frequently tend to gain more weight in middle age. Those who attend religious services most frequently also tend to be healthier. What I consider fat-phobic: The “healthier” is seen as despite the weighing more in middle age, even though other research found that weight in itself isn’t…
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Music Monday: Tanglewood Tree
…featuring New York Times Bestselling author Seanan McGuire (blonde) with Vixy (redhead) & Tony (guitar), Betsy Tinney (cello) and Amy McNally (violin). Recorded at a bookstore event for Seanan’s first novel Rosemary and Rue. (Music starts about 30 seconds in. A studio recording of Tanglewood Tree with many of the same performers is also on Seanan’s latest CD. Song lyrics and chords are here. Late Eclipses is…
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Heart Risk – BMI Not Useful
Or as Reuters put it: “[T]he best predictors of future heart risk are measures of blood pressure, cholesterol and history of diabetes.” According to a paper in The Lancet: BMI, waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio, whether assessed singly or in combination, do not importantly improve cardiovascular disease risk prediction in people in developed countries when additional information is available for systolic blood pressure, history of diabetes, and lipids.…
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Plus-Sized Athletes (with heads)
There’s a story making the rounds on “plus-sized athletes” reacting to the US “Let’s Move” campaign. The fitness community has embraced the first lady’s ‘Let’s Move’ program, but many health experts balk at equating improving health with lowering weight. Fat aerobics instructor Sandy Shaffer and physical trainer GeMar Neloms are interviewed. Dr Kenneth Cooper, a longtime supporter of measuring fitness independent of body weight, comments. All suggest that…
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What’s the fattest country in the world?
Well, one question is, who cares? Okay, we know the media cares, and legislators, and Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign. Dr Samantha Thomas recently posted about some myths popular in the Australian press, including that Australia is the “fattest country”. (Hint: it isn’t.) She also linked to some statistics, ranking countries by the percent of the female adult population that is officially obese (BMI >…
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Sex or Thinness?
Obviously it takes a certain kind of mind to ask 2,400 women if they would sacrifice a full year of sex to be skinny. In this case, the mind works at Fitness magazine. 51% of the 2,400 women said “Yes”. Now, I’m sure that some of those women interpreted “sex” to mean “sex with a partner”, are single, and figure they aren’t getting any anyway, so why not? However,…
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Ban Fat Marriage?
Yes, I know that Dan Savage’s screed on banning fat marriage is trying to illustrate the point that gay marriage bans are ludicrous. Fellow Stranger writer Lindy West has already responded with a solid “why fat hate doesn’t work” aimed at those who don’t want to get it, and I don’t disagree with it. However. I do think Dan seriously missed the boat bringing up the silly “fat is…
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Culture Affects Science Reporting
The bare facts in this piece on breakfast size are simple: German researchers studied the food intake of 280 obese adults and 100 of normal weight. The subjects kept records of everything they ate over two weeks, and were carefully instructed about the importance of writing down what they ate as soon as they ate it. For both groups, a large breakfast simply added to the number…
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Fat Discrimination Research
Rebecca Puhl, director of research and weight stigma initiatives at the Rudd Center, is quoted on studying weight bias in The Toronto Star: [It’s] one of the easiest [bias] fields to research as the prejudices are so widespread and socially acceptable that people easily admit to them. This is a form of bias that is so prevalent, society accepts it unchallenged […] It’s a social justice issue and…
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MLK Day
I was born in 1966, in a state which entered the Union in 1889, and thus had always been a “free” state; some of the founders came here because they couldn’t legally own land in other states. Yet state history included two of the most prominent counties being named in honor of the pro-slavery President Pierce and Vice President King. I learned about the Reverend Martin Luther…
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Today on Twitter: Body Acceptance
I don’t plan to write a lot of posts about things I say on Twitter, because I figure if you want to read it you’ll read it on Twitter. But I have a couple today I’d like to share to a wider audience. Today, Polimicks (of http://www.polimicks.com/ and http://polimicks.livejournal.com) decided to tweet about body acceptance, using a “#bodyacceptance” tag (which in twitter searches for things with that tag). Some…
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Gowns and Gowns
A couple random thoughts: The hospital gowns at the doctor’s office are always too small. I know I could buy my own, but that seems like overkill. Today, though, I was just going in for a pap smear, so I wore a dress that could easily hiked up and just removed my panties and shoes. Yay for simplicity. Realized why many fashion shots seem so strange to…
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Dawn French, “Happy In Her Skin”
In a recent interview tied to her new novel (not yet out in the US), Dawn French mused about how most articles about her mention her weight. “Sometimes it’s done in a mean way, but I do find it strange because it’s not as though it’s a new thing, I’ve been this size for a long time, you would think people might not feel the need to…
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Way Outside the Bell Curve
Per the US CDC’s Anthropometric Reference Data (PDF) 5% of adult, non-pregnant women in the US weigh less than 111lbs, and 95% weigh less than 250lbs. 90% of US women weigh between 111 and 250lbs. This is why I consider myself a statistical outlier, weight-wise. As I’ve noted before, in some ways I’m a freak of nature — most humans simply can’t weigh as much as I do. And…
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Oh, CNN
This blog post got my hopes up with “Dieting gets you nowhere” and then dashed it with the “but it works for kids!” ending. No, people, turning off the TV or passing up a Happy Meal will not automagically turn a fat kid into a slender one. Sorry.
Living ~400lbs 