Geez, I am Kate Harding.

LOL

I just reached two comments I simply had to respond to (my apologies if other commenters addressed it too and i missed it) -

1. Bobette – just my 2 cents: i know for myself that wild swings in blood sugar are not a good thing. i also know that all that means is for me it’s better (usually) not to eat something sugary on an empty stomach, especially if it isn’t mixes with anything that would slow the digestion down (which i think fat does but the fat/sugar combo in a candy bar doesn’t work for me on an empty stomach, i need more than what’s in there to slow down the absorption of the sugar). The solution is simply to eat a little bit of something else first, or together with the sugary thing. That goes for fruit for me as well – esp grapes.
And, shockingly, when i listen to my body i don’t even WANT anything sugary on an empty stomach. I always feel a bit queasy at the thought of anything sweet when my stomach is empty. Funny how that works. The only reason I ever ate sweets on an empty stomach is before I became an intuitive eater. If I had some “permission”, or something was available and i felt i could “get away with it”, i’d eat it. Candy or cake at work or something, when I happen to have an empty stomach, but if I don’t eat it now who knows when i will have cake or candy again so i have to eat it now!!! Of course with intuitive eating that goes away. I know that if/when I want it i will have it.

2. The jenny mccarthy thing pissed me off so much, the way she went on that show and stirred up the bullshit unscientific paranoia about childhood vaccinations and autism.
Her answer to the science was smiling beautifically at the camera and saying “My science is at home, and his name is…” whatever his name is. That’s the stupidest fucking NON-answer i ever heard. And sadly, too many americans have little or no understanding of or concern with science and how it describes and affects our lives. That’s exactly how everyone gets so misinformed about “obesity”.

Secretly – i’m not arguing with what u said about the gluten-free diet helping people with this problem because i havent read anything about it.

And you might be right that she is a good mother but i didnt get that feeling at all. I always thought she was a lovely person but after this I wanted to slap her. And when she talked about how she reached a point where she felt she needed to focus less on dating and more on her child, i thought, what the fuck? This came to you just recently? You mean you didn’t realize he should be your focus when he was BORN? Or maybe when he was diagnosed?

That was so much fucking hollywood spin; I only heard HER side of it and still it sounded she was more concerned with a million other things than her own son. And when she presumably decided to focus less on dating and more on her son, that manifested itself in dating Jim Carrey.

She can take her “mommy instinct” and shove it. All she did was stir up hysteria, paranoia and heaps of self-blame for parents.

I don’t usually judge so harshly but she asked for it by going on about if for an hour on oprah.

Whew sorry for the rant… It seems off topic maybe, but as Kate probably realized when she commented on Jenny in the first place – it’s the same bullshit thinking that makes people believe in the dangers of obesity and the effectiveness of certain diets, which we all know is false.

Regarding the potential (H), I’ve considered it as something that manifests for me mentally, rather than physically. I am aware that girls are much less frequently diagnosed, and often (at least anecdotally) don’t display the typical hyperactivity– but I think that, for some of us, it may just be a less visible (or invisible) manifestation of that behavior.

oh hai Lume :D

Kalm ur nrvs. Teh owenurs r nyce heer.

Girls daydream. Some of us ruminate. (Anecdote does not equal data, but I’ve observed the combination of “inactive AD(H)D” and mild OCD with a dash of depression in mah familee. Gud tymes. Yeh.)

(We’re also actively and aggressively socialized to be “ladylike” and not shout and run around and “be disruptive”, but that’s slightly tangential in this context.)

For years AD(H)D has been under-diagnosed in girls — even those of us who got Satisfactory Plus Plus in every other area of the report card with a “Unsatisfactory Minus” in desk organization for, like, six straight years in primary school — because they, unlike their boy counterparts, were not smashing desks, starting fights with the other kids, and jumping out of windows.

Also, even for breast cancer , the majority of medical research has been done on male instead of female cadavers. As a result, to paraphrase that guy talking about Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything”.

Is anyone else feeling like a non-person because we’re carrying the XX as opposed to the XY chromosomal marker these days? ‘Cause between the Governor, the Administration, and the medical research, I’m feeling like life is teh suk.

Also, anyone else thinking DMSV writers are being “prudently cautious”? Or, like me, think they’re a bunch of risk-averse dolts who are revoltingly slow on the uptake when they could be HELPING some people?

Whoa, long comments. I wil atmpt to furthurr reestrayne mah thawts todaye. thx

But there is simply no such thing as “abstinence” from food, and I think trying to bend reality so that an addiction model fits overeating can be really dangerous.

It’s been a while since I’ve disagreed here. Wait a minute; I have to stretch.

Here’s what I’m wondering, especially in the face of the related AD(H)D discussion.

I’ve seen and heard of people having neurotransmitter swings from sodium nitrite, BHT, alcohol, and nicotine.

I’ve felt myself have them from either mainlining or accidentally consuming refined white sugar (without sufficient protein/fat to cushion the blow).

[Alcoholism has popped up on both sides of my family, and alcohol does apparently end metabolize as sugar -- interestingly enough, the alcohol, nicotine, and sugar swings all have a tendency to hang on the same dopamine, seratonin, and B-receptors -- so I thought it best to understand my personal biochemicalisms as early as I could. ]

In order to make the argument, one must, of course, concede the assumption that “white refined sugar” does, in fact, constitute food.

(I’d also like to respectfully add that, for this commenter, there are parts of OA that suck. How obsessing more about what you put in your mouth constitutes alleviation of food addiction, I’m not sure, and I really hated that and some other parts of the program during the time I attended.)

Now this may be a “”radical v. moderate activist POV” type of issue, and if so, so be it.

But for the aforementioned reasons, I don’t really see that one can’t apply the verb “to abstain from” to certain types of food (like white sugar). I don’t really see it as that different from a food allergy, since food breaks down to chemicals.

(By saying that, I am NOT excusing those who refuse dessert for “dieting” reasons as “I’m allergic to tiramisu”. I DO, however, know some people — e.g., my size 2 godmother — who swell up and you have to take them to the hospital if you accidentally feed them chocolate.)

I also, for the aforementioned reasons, don’t believe “abstaining from food/a chemical substance with which your body chemistry disagrees” is synonymous with “bending reality”.

I am also highly suspicious, as many commenters here know, of the chemicals the commercial “food” industry pumps into edibles these days that our bodies have no idea what to do with. I don’t think, though, that that automatically makes me an orthorexic.

I DO understand — or I think I do — that the notion that “OA works for some people” is fodder for the arguments of non-critical thinkers that believe that “all nondieters overeat”.

I believe that there are tenets of the AA model that don’t neatly fit the situation of someone who’s struggling with an eating disorder.

I agree that a philosophy that characterizes “overeating” as “bad” is “dangerous” to FA activists’ efforts to get lunkheads to perceive all people as people.

I also think a lot of this hinges on how one defines an “addiction model”.

But I DON’T believe that there’s “no such thing” as abstinence from A food (or foods) that screws with your body chemically.

I also don’t believe that abstinence from that food is REQUIRED to be characterized as “not ‘overeating’ to the point that you are dieting”.

As far as the “for us or against us” model goes, it really almost reads as simplistically as “all skinny women are bitches”.

And as one who also struggles a bit with neurotransmitter regulation — some of the best specialists on the East Coast have yet to agree on whether it’s AD(H)D or just an “overly” high IQ with the “requisite” social maladjustment, since I’m a girl and all — I find it hard to believe that that’s what you meant, KH.