Ask Aunt Fattie: Do I qualify for HAES?
 |
Used To Be Thin
It does seem sometimes as though only fat people have caught on to the idea that there is not a size prerequisite for health. This isn’t actually the case — prominent HAES proponent Linda Bacon is quite thin, for instance — but Aunt Fattie can forgive you for thinking that you must perhaps be THIS FAT to ride the HAES bandwagon. As effective as it’s been shown to be, sometimes it feels like we’re the only people who’ve noticed.
But that doesn’t mean we’re the only people who can practice it. Health at Every Size means health at every size; HAES is, quite simply, the idea that there is no weight limit on living as healthfully as you are able. Lose the acronym, and the question about qualifying becomes absurdly simple: Is there a set of things that are salutary for your body? Are you a size? All right, you’re in.
But you, Used to Be Thin, you aren’t really asking for permission to practice Health at Every Size. You’re asking for permission to diet. You are hoping that Aunt Fattie will applaud your “meal plan” and say that of course you should continue and intensify it until you’re the weight you’ve decided must be natural for you. You’re hoping Aunt Fattie will give you dispensation to second-guess and deprive your body. And Aunt Fattie is hoping that on some level you know perfectly well that she is going to say no such thing, and are really secretly hoping to be told to cut it out. Because that is what she is going to tell you.
Your current weight (16 pounds heavier than your highest “before” weight, I might add, not 30) may indeed be a natural weight for you, no matter what you’d like to believe; if the caution that you threw to the winds includes that calorie restriction you’re so keen to get back to, you may have been well below your set range before. You’re also not 20 anymore, and our bodies tend to change as we grow older. The important thing is this: you don’t get to decide that your weight surely cannot be right or natural. That’s something your body will decide — your choice is only whether to spend your life fighting its decision.
The healthy weight for your body is the weight it becomes when you treat it healthily, and that six months when you were eating whatever you wanted may be the closest you’ve ever come to that. (Assuming that you were also reasonably active, not binge drinking, etc.) Certainly, your current “very strict” plan does not qualify. Consider your wording: with whom is one “very strict”? With someone one wishes to control, subdue, and punish. You’re never going to stop hating your body that way, even if you did get back down to 120 pounds. When you can let go of the idea that you know better than your body what it needs and what it should look like, you can start treating it in a way that is nourishing and caring rather than “strict” and “restricting.” And perhaps you can even stop thinking of your body as a thing that is separate from you and realize instead that it is you; that’s not a stranger in the mirror.
As for getting used to the way you look — which, yes, might be the way you’re meant to look, the way you’ll continue to look — Shapelings are sure to have suggestions. Here are some tried and true ideas:
- Take lots of pictures of yourself. Better yet, have someone else take them. Throw out all the ones you don’t like, or trust a friend to cull them before you even have to look at them. Look at the ones you do like, a lot.
- Practice seeing the beauty in women of all sizes, even when you can’t see it in yourself.
- Buy (or keep buying) beautiful clothes that fit, and get rid of clothes that don’t fit. Dressing for the body you have will make you feel more at home in it, rather than feeling like you’re waiting to move into a better place.
You qualify for HAES — everyone does. But only if you can call a ceasefire on fighting yourself.
If you’ve got your own questions on fat, fatshion, fatiquette, self-esteem, or body image, send them to auntfattie@gmail.com.
Filed under: Ask Aunt Fattie, Fat, Health at Every Size, Self-Image
I needed that this morning. I’m 5′6″ and hover between 155 (when I’m super active, like when I was running 7 miles a day) and 172 (when it’s winter and I’m really busy/stressed). Getting below 150, for me, requires that my whole life be about carefully NOT eating in BAD BAD BAD ways, and that leaves very little of me left over for — well, take your pick: my own mental health, my marriage, my kids, my students, my friends, my interests, etc. But it sounds like 146 is just right for you. Great! I do know the feeling of not being able to quite figure out how you look, though — the post-baby body is also a really hard adjustment — and I really appreciate Aunt Fatty’s advice for doing so. I’m maybe not so ready for the picture-taking, but I do know that I find such courage and JOY in realizing that it’s not a hard thing at all to see many different kinds of bodies as beautiful. At some point, that starts to be the *default*, even — the view that, hey! There are lots of ways to be beautiful! Of course! And also, yay! — with the Hollywood version of beauty seeming like some kind of weird, fussy, and toxic aberration whose appeal is a mystery.
On a marginally-related note: I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to do this, btw, but I’m finally unsubscribing today from all the dieting-”encouragement” horses#it emails that I get because I signed up for them once. The last straw was getting one this morning that said, “You can be a success story!” I was like, “Uh, I already AM a success story. And you can be too! Ask me how.” LOL
Word Aunt Fattie! I wish you were my aunt.
I was like, “Uh, I already AM a success story. And you can be too! Ask me how.” LOL
A Sarah, that is fucking awesome.
*applause*
Ah yes, the former thin person who believes that her new weight simply cannot be natural. My mother is one of those. I used to be puzzled by her weight gain, too, but now I’m beginning to think that it was probably a simple combination of giving up calorie restriction and aging. It may have been my last step to full acceptance of the whole HAES concept.
Also, awesome advice.
(delurking) Thanks, Aunt Fattie. I needed to hear that. I’m coming up on my college graduation, and certain portions of my brain are insisting that I need to get skinny for the photos. They need a smackdown, because I don’t need to be strict with myself. Eff that.
That was a really beautifully worded reply.
The only thing I’d add, if anything, is an acknowledgement that intuitive eating is not always as easy as it seems - there’ve been posts along those lines here and there in the fatosphere, but it bears repeating for UTBT. It’s possible that “whatever she wanted” was somewhat affected by a disordered relationship with food. I’m projecting here: it certainly took me some time to realize that what *I* wanted was a variety of foods that made me feel good.
But it’s totally irrelevant what and how UTBT ate when she was changing shape. The point is, as Aunt Fatty says, to be nice to the new body and make it feel good, not punished.
I needed this today, as I’ve been dealing with weight issues.
I too used to be thin, and somehow in the past 2 years have gained 40 pounds. For awhile my set point seemed to be at 155ish (I’m 5′3”
but over the winter I somehow gained another 15 pounds. I’m seeing a doctor because I think it’s a thyroid thing (seriously, 5 pounds a month with changing nothing about my diet and only slightly decreasing my activity level?), but I’m still struggling with the mental health implications of constantly and steadily gaining weight.
>>But only if you can call a ceasefire on fighting yourself.
I loved that last sentence, it’s so important– regardless if it is weight-related or not, we need to stop fighting ourselves. Negative thoughts just breed more negativity. We deserve better.
What Aunt Fatty said.
I would like to know that you won’t know what your set point is until you have let your body be for a while. If you have been in a diet and yo-yo cycle (and and ’strict eating plan’ does equal a diet even if you have maintained for a while), then your body won’t know its set point from its elbow. Eat intuitively for a period of time - really intuitively - and your weight will stabilise at what is right for your body.
“When you can let go of the idea that you know better than your body what it needs and what it should look like, you can start treating it in a way that is nourishing and caring rather than “strict” and “restricting.” ”
This part just sang out to me…UTBT, I too have gained some weight in the last couple of years and am now 5′5”, 150 pounds.No, I’m not thin anymore, and sometimes it still bothers me, but I’m enjoying my new curvy voluptuousness When you are able to do as Aunt Fatty says, and stop thinking that you know what your body should look like, especially when your ‘knowledge’ has been completely shaped by a fat-phobic, sexist culture - you will begin to learn to love your body. And when you love your body you will feed it well, move it the way it wants to be moved, and dress it beautifully. We are all here in this journey together. Welcome!
This reminds me of an ongoing conversation that my room mate and I have about the “Freshman 15.” We are both in our early 20’s and gained a significant, though not huge, amount of weight when we went off to college, which led to several years of diet attempts in both cases, though now we know better and are on the FA bandwagon. Thing is, I’m pretty sure in my case that changes in my diet and access to all-you-can-eat cafeteria food played a part in the weight gain, but seriously I’m pretty sure going from being a teenager to a grown woman played a WAY huger role. For the last 4 years I was convinced that my body “wanted” to be back at it’s high school weight, and after I got back there I tried to make it even lower…. and now of course I weigh more than I probably would have if I had just accepted my adult body, but at 5′2″ and 145 lbs my weight has been stable for at least 5 months and I’ve learned to accept that and be happy with that. The whole concept of the Freshman 15 is really sad and damaging because it promotes the idea that it is realistic to maintain an adolescent body throughout adulthood, which is so not the case (and really kind of creepy and disempowering.)
I *really did* eat whatever I wanted as a young adult (still do really). Until I went on Depo-Provera, that meant I was 5′6″ and 120-135lbs. Post Depo, it means I’m 160-170lbs. Big hormone changes can very much affect a woman’s weight.
Post Depo also means I don’t spend 7-10 days out of every month pounded flat by menstrual cramps. I have the energy to bike, walk, lift weights and swim. Before, having energy was always an issue. I spend less time being freezing cold now too, which is a plus.
I try not to beat myself up over this change. Before, I was on the skinny side of normal for women in my family. Not skeletal, but definitely one of the skinny ones. Now, I’m about in the middle. My female relatives all tend to be pretty active - swimmers, hikers and rowing mostly. So I don’t think this is a horrific size to be.
Sometimes tho, I wish I could have the *size* I had before, and the *function* I have now. I think that’s a pretty normal wish tho. Our culture rewards thin in some really unhealthy ways.
Since I started practicing HAES about a year ago, I’ve gained 10 pounds.
I think I’ve basically plateaued, or that I’m getting close, but I don’t weigh myself that often, and so when I saw that number, it was hard to stop the initial reaction of “I’ve been BAD! What have I done? I need to start dieting/excersizing/restricting calories! STAT!”
When I started HAES I’d been dieting off and on since I was about 14, and tended to flux between 170 and 175 lbs. (I remember this one time my parents promised my sister and I that the first of us to lost 10% of our weight would get $100. Neither of us was fat, but we weren’t skinny either - and I did it, and I was so proud. But they never paid us, because we reached our goal at essentially the same time). And it’s funny but when I weighed myself after starting HAES and I was 181 pounds, that was totally cool with me. I was like “That makes sense” and was fine.
But then when I weighed myself and I was 186? Freaked me out. It was like 185 was this threshold that I refused to believe I would go over or something. And I seriously had to calm myself down. Remind myself that this was basically the first time in my life I was eating a full healthy diet, and ask myself if this weight had in any way shown any effect on my health. Did I feel more tired? No. Was I weaker? Stronger, actually. Was I in any way sick? No.
So this number wasn’t hurting me at all.
But it was still hard.
In my experience and to my understanding, large-scale bulimia (periods of starvation dieting followed by periods of rebound bingeing) can mess with metabolism so much that when one tries to eat normally, weight gain can happen.
Each time I tried to just listen to my body, this would happen, and I’d panic and start dieting again. Which would of course make things worse. Eventually, though, I stopped the panic cycles, and though I did initially gain some, I did settle out as my body realized I wasn’t starving it anymore. I’ve now been within 10 lbs of my current weight for the last 10 years. It’s definitely a higher point than it would’ve been had I not spent the previous 15 years doing damage to it, but I’m not about to attempt weight loss per se anymore because I don’t want to start that cycle all over again and get even bigger.
Tal, you bring up a good point. Intuitive eating can be difficult if impossible for someone recovering from an eating disorder, even years after ceasing eating disordered behaviors. For many people with an eating disorder, especially binging related disorders, the freedom to eat what you desire most can trigger binging related episodes. And while these should be taken in stride as part of the intuitive eating learning process, for someone with an ED, it can trigger the disordered cycle all over again.
Not to mention, learning to eat again after an eating disorder is not only scary mentally, but the physical side effects can shock and scare someone right back into the disordered mentality. I gained 50 pounds in the first year after entering into recovery for my eating disorder and I’ve never lost it, even now that I eat healthy and moderately and exercise regularly. People with eating disorders (as well as dieters) have been shown to regain weight more rapidly after returning to a regular diet and normal eating patterns again. The body stores fat more rapidly and in greater amounts as a safeguard against future starvation.
Even now after years of recovery, I have had to learn both to listen to and disregard my body’s cues on hunger and satiety. I’m on medication to treat ADD that as a side effect, stems my appetite. If I ate according to when my body was hungry, I wouldn’t eat at all through the day, and then when the meds wear off in the evening, I’d be ravenous and prone to overeating. I have had to learn to stop myself and eat lunch and even a snack, even if I do not feel hungry.
My weight has never been stable throughout my entire life, but since adopting the mindset of intuitive eating (even if I don’t practice it perfectly), my weight has been, for the most part, stable and my mental health even more stable.
As for the letter writer, her “meal plan” sounds much like the kind of diet my husband I regularly eat, but we practice ours without the expectation of weight loss. In itself, her strict and spartan diet isn’t disordered or unhealthy; it is rather the motivation behind such a plan that determines if it is unhealthy or not. As Aunt Fattie rightfully noted, the expectation that one will remain 120 pounds at age 20 and continue that weight throughout adulthood is unrealistic. As I noted in what someone dubbed my Fa(t)Q, body fat naturally doubles between the ages of 25 and 75 and accumulates in new places. Not to mention, the letter writer doesn’t provide enough detail about her personal life: Did she stop smoking? Has she had children or is she now on birth control? Does she take any kinds of medication? How fat is her family?
The fact that she eats such a spartan and healthy diet and has yet only lost a handful of pounds indicates that one’s diet and activity level are the end all/be all in determining one’s body weight.
That is, AREN’T the end all/be all in determining one’s body weight.
We’ve talked about having a “best of” or “fat 101″ kind of tab wherein posts on the basics would reside for a quick info grab - when and if it does happen, I’d love to see an intuitive eating section. (Because I’m queen of the world and can decree what goes on my favorite blogs
) I understand intuitive eating, I’ve read a lot about it, but my body can’t seem to do it. I fucked myself up but good with disordered eating for a few years, and I have no idea what my set point should be, if I’m above it and how far, even whether my body really knows what it needs at the moment. I know that when I eat whatever I want, I eat too much crap because I have an emotional dependence on some foods that is not real hunger, but am still trying to figure out how to “reset” my body to understand itself. I’d love a space to hear more from people like Tal and Rachel on how to learn to practice HAES when your body doesn’t want to cooperate.
[going into lurk mode, because this is screen-free week and I'm not supposed to break the no-screen rule after today]
I just want to echo what others have said about expecting one’s 20 year old body to be THE body we keep throughout life. Bodies don’t stop changing just because we’ve “matured”, and this whole idea that we get to stay the same forever is more media claptrap. I’m dealing with some normal, starting of midlife changes that tend to happen regardless of weight, so it’s a big subject in my life right now. Change happens, and it’s scary.
Regarding HAES: I always thought that the “every” in HAES really meant EVERY: small, big, tall, short, more abled, not as abled, older, younger…the whole idea was to do things you personally could for your personal body with the idea of adding to your personal health. It was the antithesis of big box medicine and BMI - not trying to reach an arbitrary standard, but being the healthiest you could be given your own circumstances, resources, abilities, and limitations - which may not be the same as anyone else even given the same situation. So given my understanding (which I freely admit could be dead wrong), EVERYONE can do HAES. (They don’t HAVE to, though.)
Finally, the comment about hating yourself….you can do that at any size, too. Really. (See the wonderful entry on “The Fantasy Of Being Thin”.)
I gained 20 lbs in one year after going on the Pill, and I’m not terrifically happy with it, but even *I* admit that gaining 20 lbs because I’m on the Pill is perfectly normal and pretty common.
Because I do know one thing: no matter what I eat, my weight stays within about 5 lbs.
I’d guess that if you ‘let yourself go’ and gained 20 lbs and didn’t lose it when going back to a ‘normal’ diet, then you were restricting too much in the beginning, or you changed another variable (like going on the Pill, or having a baby, or aging from 20 to 40) without telling us.
I don’t want to be mean, but…FFS, if the heartbreaking sorrow of accepting life at a BMI of 24 (note: still not overweight!) is too much for you, could you please get your ass to a counselor specializing in body dysmorphia issues? Thanks.
Aunt Fattie rocks. That is all.
I just went on BC for my skin, and along with the other crazy side effects is the urge to just eat and eat and eat the fattiest stuff I can find. I am usually an intuitive eater, but wondering whether something is ‘intuitive’ if it’s being controlled by a drug, and also causing me to lack variety in my diet. I want to continue to not judge my eating but it’s hard. Any advice from others in the same boat?
And in general I find that ‘I don’t want to be x’ means you’re about to be x.
>>I’d guess that if you ‘let yourself go’ and gained 20 lbs and didn’t lose it when going back to a ‘normal’ diet, then you were restricting too much in the beginning, or you changed another variable (like going on the Pill, or having a baby, or aging from 20 to 40) without telling us.
I don’t think the last part is fair–it sounds like the anti-fat people who say, “You must be lying/not telling us something, otherwise you couldn’t be that fat.”
Anyway, her body may just be taking its sweet time going back down to its old weight, because it wants to make sure it will have enough food to feel safe and healthy. It’s really too early to know if her weight will settle back where it used to me. I don’t think she her body would have changed from aging *that* much in such a short period of time. But the fact that she is older overall may mean that it takes a year (or five years!) to lose five pounds, instead of a month. Older bodies don’t rebound as quickly from neglect (whether it be inactivity, not giving it food with sufficient nutrients [junk food], starvation, anything).
Even saying your weight might go back to where it used to be (in its own time, if you let it and don’t try and speed it up), HAES is still the only option. Accepting yourself where you are now is how to be happy now. Anything else is not being fair to your beautiful body.
I should amend the above to say about the person I quoted, I agree that restriction could be a factor.
Kimu: “I don’t want to be mean, but…FFS, if the heartbreaking sorrow of accepting life at a BMI of 24 (note: still not overweight!) is too much for you, could you please get your ass to a counselor specializing in body dysmorphia issues? Thanks.”
Well, you didn’t want to be mean, but oops! you were. Go figure. I didn’t want to be a bitch and call you on it, but oops, I did. Again, go figure.
Besides, I thought we’d all accepted that the BMI is a crock of shit in terms of deciding whether a person is healthy at their set point weight. One person’s natural set point can give her a BMI of 19, in which case the weight at which her BMI would be 24 may indeed be well over that natural set point. Another person’s setpoint may be at a weight which would give her a BMI of 32, and she would be unhealthily underweight at a BMI in the “normal” range.
Yeah, the OP needs to learn to accept that she will not always have the body she had as a young adult, and that it’s okay not to diet and worry about food intake other than as a way of promoting good HAES. However, making fun of her isn’t the way to bring her to this acceptance.
Seriously, don’t be mean. As someone who was fucking devestated gaining twenty pounds in the first year of college (and I totally call bullshit on the freshman 15 being due to open access to the cafeteria; the food was so nasty, I lived off spinach with oil and vinegar dressing, fruit and Easy Mac. I was eating way less than in high school, but my body was filling out), I totally empathize with UTBT. I worked out obsessively and ate virtually nothing to get back down but I only wound up gaining another thirty. But I plateaued eventually, and I am convinced that it is because I met my husband. We, too, love food. We also love working out. So I eat what I like (although at the beginning, that was mostly “forbidden” food, and I did gain another twenty, only to lose it as I started craving produce for its own sake) and we workout together. I’m still working on not seeing myself as past my prime at 25 years old, 200 pounds, 5′5″ tall and a size 16, but I look at the women in my family and I see that they are all fat too. And they are all extraordinarily beautiful. I am finally starting to recognize myself in the mirror; the family resemblance is striking.
I agree with Rachel about how difficult HAES can be for people recovering from EDs.
Goodness knows I’m still struggling with the concept and occasionally falling back into old patterns. But if you keep pushing through and being honest with yourself, you find a way to keep healing.
Four weeks ago I had a huge freak out about some sudden weight gain (caused by comfort eating due to stress and inactivity due to depression), and for that day I just totally lost it. I swore I’d never eat again (I used to be anorexic), that I’d learn to throw up after eating (in recent years I’ve been prone to binge eating), that I’d exercise at all hours of the day. I cried, I tantrumed, I panicked.
And then the next day I settled down and went right back to HAES whilst also being mindful of issues like comfort eating and binge eating (followed by periods of starvation) to soothe my emotional woes. I started exercising again, and I’m feeling so much better in myself.
You have ups and downs naturally, regardless of your history, but as someone who has had some form of an ED for the majority of my life, HAES is about so many things: learning to listen to my body, creating a dialogue that isn’t based on emotion or pain or self-loathing; learning to love myself, learning to accept things I cannot control, breaking down moral implications of food, and generally being aware that my mind often tries to sabotage me; that it reads into food, eating, and exercise motives and issues that are not real.
And. . . now this has turned into a ramble without a coherent point. ^^;; Can you tell I’m still working on this?
This is something that I’ve been thinking about for awhile. I started my blog EAT A CHEESEBURGER a month ago and since, I’ve discovered a whole new world of body acceptance bloggers which I never knew existed. I am also fairly thin (I don’t like to give the numbers cause I think it encourages unhealthy comparisons) but I do find that there is a lack of thin women in this community and I wonder why. I don’t love my body just because it happens to look like what the mainstream is encouraging women to look like, I want to love my body because its MINE and no one else’s! That leaves me freedom to enjoy my food and relax when I gain or lose a few pounds here and there. I think that is the heart of HAES and it applies to EVERY woman no matter what her current jean size happens to be. So thank you for this post….it is a great discussion in the HAES community and one that I am striving to start on my blog.
-Tiffabee
tiffabee.wordpress.com
Well, you didn’t want to be mean, but oops! you were.
I-geek, thanks for getting there first. Kimu, it’s true that thin people, inbetweenies, and people on the smaller end of the fat spectrum don’t face nearly the magnitude of prejudice and social obstacles that fatter people do. However, self-loathing, eating disorders, and societal pressures come at any size. UTBT might have body dysmorphia issues, but then again, she might not — she lives in a world where the word “fat” is hurled as an accusation against almost everyone.
I’ve been lurking on this site for many months, trying to learn more about FA and HAES, because I agree that discrimination is a major problem and I do believe that it is possible to be healthy regardless of one’s BS BMI stats. But this post really underscored the part that I’m not getting.
Post after post, I see arguments about set points and the claim that you can’t make a fat person thin any more than you can make a thin person fat. I’ve read about the studies and I like the idea, especially in context with all the self-esteem boosts and freedom from self-hate that the notion engenders. However, I still haven’t seen the question raised by UTBT addressed in a satisfactory way. Like a previous commenter, I find the accusation that UTBT had an ED prior to her weight gain presumptuous (which, of course, doesn’t rule out the possibility that the diagnosis is accurate… just incredibly dismissive).
Can we, for a moment, work under the assumption that no ED was involved? I don’t think anyone can quibble with the idea that if someone overeats for an extended period of time they will gain weight. So what went wrong with UTBT when she stopped overeating? Did the extended overeating shift her set point? If so, I think the idea of a set point and what it means needs to be reevaluated. Or was it that her overly restrictive diet regime shut down her metabolism?
I’m not trying to be contrary - I just really want to understand. I’ve read dozens of papers in the scientific literature that leave me in no doubt as to the complexities of human weight, but I think if the FA movement wants to gain ground in the mainstream, there needs to be some resolution between “Everyone stays within their set point range” and the vast empirical evidence that people can gain a lot of weight and fail to lose it (even if they were at the previous weight for decades).
I have been unable to find any scientific studies that address this issue, so if anyone knows of any, please share them. I’m a scientist, though not a physiologist, so I can’t take up the mantle myself, but a study similar to the one done by Sims on prisoners would be useful, especially if it incorporated abrupt vs. gradual calorie intake changes and gender variables.
I think FA is incredibly important, and I love the philosophy of HAES. I just wish there were a more rigorous understanding of the set-point phenomenon, because it is difficult to sway doubters when their objective criticisms remain unanswered.
Helena, part of it is that I don’t think you can tell from the letter that she was “overeating” for an extended period of time rather than simply *not restricting.* Big difference. And we can’t do more than speculate, but for me words like “throwing caution to the wind” and the apparent return to a “very strict eating plan” imply restriction prior to eating whatever she wanted, rather than normal eating followed by “overeating” or binging. But that’s just a guess.
And yeah, I think most of us wish there was a more rigorous understanding of set points. But as far as I know, the research just isn’t there, and part of that is because of a general refusal of people who set research priorities generally to acknowledge the concept instead of focusing on calories out/calories in.
You’re absolutely right, Lilah - that’s the problem with letters soliciting advice… there are so many gaps that need to be filled in based on cues in the prose.
I wish my background put me in a position to conduct some research beyond ci/co, but alas it’s not my field. If I ever run into an appropriate person at a conference, though, I’ll float the idea by them. But like you say, it’s about people who set the priorities rather than those who do the research, and I’m afraid in the current climate the funding dollars will go to those working to combat the “obesity epidemic” rather than understand the nature of human weight. Sigh.
tiffabee, on April 29th, 2008 at 12:06 am Said:
I am also fairly thin (I don’t like to give the numbers cause I think it encourages unhealthy comparisons) but I do find that there is a lack of thin women in this community and I wonder why.
I’m on my doc’s watchlist for being borderline underweight, and I read a few FA/HAES sites, but usually stay quiet, because I just can’t relate. I don’t want to go barging in on a discussion and getting my Skeletal-American privilege everywhere.
Which is why I only de-lurked in reply to a comment that directly concerned me. ;P
I kind of feel like this is a strange comment thread for Shapely Prose - some of the things written here are making me really uncomfortable, but I’m having a hard time sorting out why.
Maybe it’s the idea expressed that the dietary habits listed in the original letter are somehow “healthy,” and that this has something to do (in part) with the virtue of food restriction to 1500 pounds. It sounds very holier-than-thou and out of place around here - I mean, no one agrees on what is healthy and what is not. Or maybe it’s the blatant assumptions being made about this woman’s body and how it works. But something feels… off.
“I don’t think anyone can quibble with the idea that if someone overeats for an extended period of time they will gain weight. So what went wrong with UTBT when she stopped overeating? Did the extended overeating shift her set point? If so, I think the idea of a set point and what it means needs to be reevaluated. Or was it that her overly restrictive diet regime shut down her metabolism?”
I completely quibble with that idea. I can overeat for an extended period of time and maintain my high metabolism and not gain weight, though I’ll feel like crap. The idea that something was going “right” until she “overate” and then something “went wrong” because she didn’t lose the weight post-”overeating” seems very pro-weight-loss and calories-in-calories-out to me. Whatever happened to the human-body-is-not-a-bunsen-burner thing? And I really don’t think the FA folks want to change their message to float in the mainstream, or to be more acceptable, fwiw.
I admit I have been waiting for maybe a more articulate (than me) Shapeling to take on a lot of this for a while, but it’s been oddly quiet around here! My feeling is that we don’t know much of anything about how or why this woman’s weight changed when it did and then didn’t change again, and unless she decides that she doesn’t feel well and wants to make sure her weight changes don’t come from being *sick* in some way, then I thought the point was that her weight fluctuations are essentially *irrelevant*. If she decides that healthiness is her goal, what matters in achieving that is eating and living in a way that makes her feel as good as she can, mentally and physically. And those healthiness choices don’t become more valid because they are in line with some (but not all) nutritionists’ ideas about what is and is not a healthy way of living. But maybe I’m misunderstanding what’s been said…
HAHAHA 1500 pounds = 1500 calories
DON’T EAT MORE THAN 1500 POUNDS OF FOOD IN A DAY PEOPLE
hm, “irrelevant” seems like the wrong word, not what i intended. but i meant, i think, that what ideally what a person eats should not depend on their size and shape.
“The important thing is this: you don’t get to decide that your weight surely cannot be right or natural. That’s something your body will decide — your choice is only whether to spend your life fighting its decision.”
This is the most helpful thing I have ever read as I’ve been on this path. Thanks, Aunt Fattie.
Aunt Fattie, you go on with your bad self!
Just to point out, in case it was unclear in my comment, I emphatically don’t think a diet with lots of fats in it is inherently bad. Nor did anyone else on this thread say that 1500 calories of a certain type are in themselves ‘healthy.’ I am in fact continuing to eat what my body tells me it wants. But I guess I am having a gut reaction that when something new I put into my body is giving me new instructions, they must be wrong…. That’s something that I’ve yet to see any ‘intuitive’ word on and I’m curious.
Great question, great answer, great comments (except the mean ones).
(Lynne, I’ll be sure to keep my food intake to under 1499.99 pounds per day.)
To respond to the question about how to get used to how one looks at a higher weight, here are the things I try to do:
As was mentioned, focus on appreciating the beauty in other women of all sizes.
Wear things that I think look good on my at my current weight/size (such as emphasizing my rockin’ calves)
Try to focus on physical activity that I enjoy (like swimming).
Try to “enjoy” the extra weight with the idea that it might not always be there. This last one might not make a whole lot of sense to everyone, but a little bit extra isn’t always a bad thing — sometimes one’s partner can appreciate it more than oneself can.
Sometimes, I try to keep in mind that weight goes up, and weight goes down. When it goes up, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, and when it goes down, it’s not automatically a good thing. It just is.
Of course, I feel like a hypocrite because I’m a little unhappy about my own weight going up a bit right now and sizing me out of some of my spring clothes, but I try to keep in mind that my health is pretty good, and I don’t have as much time for physical activity as I want, and I’m not eating as “intuitively” as I could be (as doing so takes more time than I have at the moment). So what goes up a bit may also go down a bit, or not. So best to enjoy my body at the moment, and treat it as well as I can, because either way, it’s a good strategy.
I have had natural weight gains and losses over my lifetime. It just depends on my life situation. I’ve gained weight when I’m unhappy with life, career, school, etc… because I crave rich foods to comfort myself and I really enjoy my food therapy. I’ve fluctuated from around 110 to 200 lbs. over few years and I’m only 5 ‘3′.
My attitude is that if I wanna eat, I’ll eat whatever I damn please and if I don’t wanna eat too much and exercise, then I will. It’s all up to me!!!
I’ve had friends be jealous of me when I’m thin and/or try to make me feel bad when I gained weight. I’ve dropped people from my circle for not respecting what I want to do and trying to force me to be what they want me to be. This weight thing really messes up even very rational good people.
I don’t care what weight I am or you are, just be smart, caring, interesting, and be an all around good person. Having interest in new things/ideas, new and good food, and in fashion and makeup helps too. But I do have difficulty being friends with people who don’t appreciate good food!!
Lynne, I really recognize your discomfort.
I don’t eat 1500 calories a day - I eat more than that. I’m hungry for more than that! And I think that all of the practitioners of HAES would agree that hurting yourself with hunger goes against the goal.
I’m going to use Rachel as an example - I trust her experience and philosophy, and think she’ll understand what I’m saying - but I’m not meaning to criticize. Just lay bare my own discomfort and my process of dealing with the messages in my head.
I have indeed had ED of the anorexia/bulimia variety, and much of my dieting life I would consider strongly ED. And right now I appear to be struggling again with HAES, making me a bit more sensitive. Because of my own internalization of messed up messages about food, and my struggle with fat and food as if they were The Centre of Moral Choice and the reflection of my worth, I can hear things like Rachel’s description of her own journey for health, and my old disordered food thinking says: “Okay, it might not be for weight loss anymore, but I’m still not being a ‘good girl’ like Rachel is.”
Now, 1500 calories a day, phew boy. Without size 8 as the pot at the end of the oh my god I’m starving to death rainbow, that level of caloric intake would feel like a lifetime of starvation to me. Because - and this is key - our bodies are each different. That may be sufficient calories in that nutritional arrangement may make Rachel feel full and happy, and she’s making health choices that feel HEALTHY to her, whereas those choices played out in my particular body sound like a diet without even the hope of weight loss.
The thing that HAES means is that I trust Rachel the custodianship of her body, and that she is the best person to care for and listen to and make choices for it, and that her body’s choices are not and cannot be proscriptive for the relationship I have with my own body.
Words like “overeating” can have many meanings. I do overeat, very occasionally, where overeating is not “eating more than is deemed acceptable by some external standard” and instead “eating more than suffices me, so that I feel sluggish and tired and unhappy in my body”. If Rachel says that she’s overeating, she likely means the second, but if I’m feeling particularly vulnerable, I may hear the first.
It could be, in that scenario, that UTBT, when given “permission” to eat all she wants, OFTEN eats past her satiation point until her body feels sluggish and unhealthy. I don’t know and it’s hard to tell because real HAES suggests the only way to overeat is the second, but almost everyone else on the planet means the first.
If the second interpretation is true — and I don’t think means an eating disorder, because there are a lot of social cues that can lead to eating to minor discomfort …. Christmas often gets me — and she has gained weight through eating past her body’s point of saying no more; or if for some reason she couldn’t hear her body saying no more due to any number of medical or psychological factors, then Helena’s point makes some sense.
Is it possible that we intervene with diet and make our bodies to have a higher set point than they would otherwise have?
(NB: IT is very very very common that couples gain weight together. I posit that this could be, at least in part, HORMONAL - I lose weight when I lose a partner, and it’s definitely in me a physical effect.
It makes sense if partnering makes more likely childrearing, and the marriage 15 is at least as well known as the Freshman 15.
So my working hypothesis - for both UTBT and Helena - is that it’s possible that the eating-with-partner-weight was hormonally driven; both eating more because the act of partnering, and steeping of self in opposite hormones of another, shown to have all sorts of OTHER hormonal effects, also could raise set point. It’s as good a hypothesis as “well, people let themselves go”. I have not so humorously joked that the best diet for me would be my husband’s death or our divorce, and it snaps me out of the worst of my “I’ll do anything to lose weight” insanity.)
And I would say to Helena for the other point - is it possible to eat our way to higher set points? Maybe? I think the only answer is MU, though. I have no doubt that each diet I went on that got painful, up to the plateau place where I’m weighing myself every half hour to remind myself why I’m not just bloody eating something and making the nattering OCD obsession with the next bite that goes into my face, each time I went there my set point ratcheted up some. Maybe someone it does so with poor diet…. I’ve found that if I eat more junk than my body likes I’ll gain weight, but then I’ll crave salads and apples and water and the weight goes away, no work involved. So I’ve only set my set point up the hunger, not the full, route.
But IF UTBT did eat her way to a higher set point, what in the name of medical science can anyone do about it? In my body, the setpoint Humpty Dumpty couldn’t be put back together again. If I could go grab my 11 year old self and yell, for the love of god, DON’T GO THERE!, maybe I’d be thinner today. And maybe if I could tell myself of two weeks ago today’s lottery numbers, I’d be richer. There seems no *solution*, if this extra weight is a problem. Unless UTBT is in the 5%. I’ve never been in that group, so who knows?
Wow. I managed to write an almost entirely opaque comment dealing with Helena and UTBT’s question. Apologies. I went from personal to scientific.
What I was attempting to say was way simpler than I made it.
First: I’d like to see research on the hormonally driven weight gain effects of partnering. Since hormones directly affect weight, and our hormonal state changes through partnering, I suggest this is a non-frivolous possibility.
Second: I can confirm that for my body certain patterns of food intake have made an immediate impact on my setpoint. These patterns, in my body, have been food restriction, not food overconsumption - where overconsumption is eating to my own physical cues. However, I do not deny that the other possibility exists.
Second the Important Caveat: I also am a data point of one, and I do not have an identical twin who never dieted. Therefore, it is quite possible she would also be the weight I’m currently at, only over a smoother trajectory - that my lost weight+5 after a diet
was really the phenomenon of “regression to the mean” and I would have gained 5 pounds over that 3 year period anyway.
Third: Although I confirm - and imagine many Shapelings can confirm - that they can screw with their set points by dieting, the majority, statistically and in our self-reporting data here - have never found any process, diet, procedure, exercise, drug, supplement, hypno-therapist, talk-therapist, acupuncturist, or snake oil salesman that has allowed us to adjust our set point downward. Up seems to be the only direction for many of us.
Therefore, other than preventing the gain - which in my case would have looked a lot more like people NOT fretting about weight and diet - what does the question mean?
This might sound really simplistic but I think we should be at the size that we are happy with that’s based in a healthy reality. If being size 14 is tough for you than something has to be done.
What messes us all up is that society tells us we should be 0, 3, 5 not 14, 20, or 22+. Many women wearing sizes 7, 9, 14 + consider themselves unacceptable. There are penalties for being bigger and rewards for being small.
The only thing that we can do in this irrational toxic enviroment is to really dig into our psyche and sort our what is real and what is imposed. If being size 14 makes you miserable and suicidal, you should do something about it. Either come to terms with it or lose the weight.
The choice is if you can’t lose the weight and/or keep it off while living a healthy and happy life, you have to consider the alternative and deal with the reality of your body. Therapy is a good place to start. It is sad when many women find it preferable to starve and harm themselves to be at an ’socially acceptable’ weight. That’s the messed up part that pain and suffering is preferred over a bigger body.
I have compassion for women including myself at any size, I’ve known abused women who see themselves as dirty and grotesque though they are physically stunning and socially acceptably skinny. I know how differently I’m treated in society depending on what size I happen to be at the time and understand why many girls and women make the choices that they do.
That is a brilliant idea. I would love to see that investigated and tested.
I second that about throwing away clothes that don’t fit. It is hard, because some things are gorgeous, but having small clothes around will encourage you to get into the mindset of “I’ll just lose enough weight to fit into this again”. I make it a rule to never, EVER have any clothes that are too small for me so that I don’t fall into that old trap. However, I do keep some clothes that are slightly too big for me around, which is potentially worse because I’ve overeaten junk food in the past to try and put on some more weight for two reasons: the first was that I was sick of the unfounded ED accusations and the second was that winter down here is FUCKING FREEZING and I’d heard that people with more body fat get less cold.
Some thoughts:
This is a particular way of putting it that is current, but what does it actually mean? If it means that previously, UTBT was on a constant diet, then rebound always hovers, waiting for the best moment to swoop.
Weight is metabolic, that includes appetite and hunger signals, they are part of the options open to the nervous system to manipulate to regulate weight.
As we do not have a more complete understanding of what leads it to make these adjustments-we tend towards turning mere surface observation into cause- can we say age should make us fatter.
It’s interesing that Aunt F tellsUTBT to accept the ageing process, when so many talk about fatness being caused by effcient metabolism, is middle aged weight gain a sign of ageing that makes the body more efficient as opposed to less?
I think we ought to be told.
Thanks for posting this. I was never a fat kid, and while I gained weight during puberty, I also gained 50 pounds from the aftermath of a nutritional deficiency (long story). I also don’t have fat parents - my dad is a little chubby, but my mom’s body shape is completely different from mine (she was once mistaken for my older brother). So even though I was healthy at the weight I was at, I wasn’t sure whether I qualified for HAES. I recently made a decision to stop my weight-loss diet, but I’ve been fighting myself over it.
Oops, hit “submit” too soon. I meant to add that reading this made me better able to accept that I can practice HAES, and be both healthy and fat, even though I gained weight for a specific reason and don’t come from a fat family.
I think perhaps UTBT is missing the point of a set point - it is not something you can diet towards, it is the weight you naturally weigh when eating normally (ie intuitively). If her lower weight was not due to restriction (but it sounds like it may have been) and her higher weight is due to excess (but it sounds like it was only excess by society’s standards which are, well, insane) then if she began intuitive eating perhaps her weight would gradually stabilise at her original set point.
Dieting will, as I understand things, actually make this less likely to happen, as the body will go ‘argh, what are you doing to me??’ and if she diets down to the weight she wants to be at, she is likely to find her weight creeping up again when she stops.
Guys - I just wanted to thank all of you who addressed my question with such thoughtful responses (and, Arwen, I really *liked* your “opaque” comment - it went straight to my little scientist brain
Lynne - I apologize if my comments made you uncomfortable. Just to clarify a few points: I definitely didn’t mean to imply a 1500 calorie diet was healthy… I even called it “overly restrictive”. And my vague use of “overeating” was intended in exactly what Arwen described - eating way past the point at which you are full. I do that occasionally, and I feel awful - not because of guilt or self-hate or worrying whether I’ll fit into my jeans the next day, but because my body just feels gross on the inside for several hours afterwards. (This happens any time I eat more than 1500 pounds of food
And what I meant to imply by bringing FA to the mainstream is to make society at large recognize their misperceptions about obesity and health. I think that’s an important stepping stone towards reducing fat discrimination. I was by no means suggesting that an FA army start going to airports and handing out baby donuts to raise awareness or anything…
I gained about 50 pounds in my first year of eating disorder recovery. I gained the last 15 pounds after meeting my husband.
I never realized how miserable and lonely I was until I met Brandon and had someone who loved me unconditionally and who told and showed me daily that he loved me, found me desirable and sexy, and appreciated me as I am. I began eating foods I hadn’t ate in years and I resumed, for the most part, normal eating patterns again. His love and acceptance finally gave ME the self-love and acceptance I needed to get past some of my food-related fears. Perhaps this is the same for the letter writer.
People in treatment for depression sometimes gain weight as depression therapy results in mood improvement and appetite returns. Meeting a partner with whom you are deliriously happy has much the same effect, I wager. The letter writer doesn’t make clear what her diet was before meeting her husband, nor does she reveal sufficient detail about her life for us to come to any definitive conclusions. The fact that she wrote to an anti-dieting site for advice and permission to diet indicates to me that she has experience in this department already and really doesn’t want to go back down this route.
For some people, even a modicum of weight gain can be terrifying. Throw in body dysmorphia and eating disordered issues, and the problem is compounded. I can understand why the letter writer is now so anxious and worried. To Aunt Fattie’s awesome list, I would also add:
- Exercise (and not for weight loss). It helps me feel strong and powerful and the endorphins also help with mood and depression. Oh yes, and as a fellow newlywed myself, sex totally counts as exercise (not that you should think of it as exercise, per se)
- I once threw away my scale and it helped immensely. It’s now back in the house but I weigh myself sparingly and sometimes I forget its even there.
- Get a stylish hair cut that better flatters your face.
- Stop counting calories. They only make you obsess even more about weight and body image.
I’m in my mid fifties and have never dieted (or even restricted my eating) because even the *thought* of restricting my eating makes me so anxious and miserable and *hungry* that I was sure that restriction could only lead to weight gain! (I’ve had my share of self loathing but not restricting!)
So I’ve always eaten intuitively. My weight has bounced around all over the place. But when it goes down, it always comes back up again to more than before. Even though I am not dieting. My first major weight loss was when I lived in an impoverished, tropical country and I was sick much of the time. My second major weight loss was after I went off the Pill, so that one might have had to do with hormones.
Other than that, it’s been a steady creep upwards.
I, too, have wished that people would study normal, expected weight gain.
Hmm, I’m not sure how to articulate this but, being in a relationship with a man can be absolute hell on intuitive eating. Dudes eat way more red meat and carbs and a lot fewer veggies, and while relationships are supposed to mean compromise, it usually entails adapting our way of eating to suit their tastes. UTBT might be eating perfectly tasty foods that aren’t in line with what her body really wants and needs because her hubby is into them. This doesn’t mean that UTBT has to restrict her calories, but she might want to examine if she’s really eating what she wants and needs or is making too many sacrifices for the sake of her husband. Negotiating for more of her own nutritional needs in the relationship might help her feel better, though she should do so without the expectation of losing weight.
Meanwhile, it’s the perfect excuse to go shopping for new clothes that will show off all of the, ahem, obvious benefits of gaining adipose tissue.
This is a great conversation, y’all. One thing Aunt Fattie didn’t mention but that I thought I’d throw in there: when we talk about set point, we don’t mean one exact number, we mean a range (I think people often talk of a range of about 30 pounds, but I’m too lazy morning-y to find a link right now). So it’s also possible, in fact, that UTBT is still within range of her setpoint, and she’s just experiencing (because of not restricting, being in love, what have you) the upper end of that range. When I’m moderately active, cooking my own food, and not ill, I almost always end up within a range of 15-20 pounds–sometimes at the top, sometimes at the bottom. I’ve never had an ED; that’s just the range my body works within when I’m not dieting.
The point of this is to further encourage UTBT to stop restricting her diet, stop beating herself up, and start listening to her body instead of punishing it.
Arwen, I agree 100% with your comments. Thank you for exploring all of those issues; I too feel like there is so much we don’t know about setpoints. (On a related note, Lynne, I totally hear you on the comparing myself to others, and the “I’m not as good a HAES practitioner as [whoever posted some kind of lower-calorie or 'healthier' typical diet]“, so thank you so much for speaking up because some parts of this thread felt “off” to me too and I think it’s good to bring that up when it happens.)
UTBT, I hate to “diagnose” you because only you can really know whether the “throwing caution to the wind” that you describe constituted intuitive eating or disordered overeating. And then if you’re me, even you can’t know what your own eating “means.”
It is so hard to disentangle what’s right for your own body from all of society’s messages to diet and eat less and less and less on the one hand, and on the other the availability of food and portioning can make it easy to eat more than your body needs and wants. At least for me. And overeating is nothing to beat yourself up over either, but like I say sometimes it is just difficult to “hear” my body’s signals over the other food influences out there in society.
So I don’t know, but mainly I just wanted to say that I am really impressed that you are practicing HAES. It’s hard enough for me to wrench my brain around to that mindset, much less (I would think) someone who knows what it’s like to be quite thin and who was that way for quite a long time. But I think you are following the right path. Life is too short for any of us to spend our lives “fighting [our body's] decision” to be a certain size (I agree, awesome line there). And I think you will be physically and mentally much healthier in the end without the restriction and calorie-counting. As I said, I agree that there is much we don’t know about setpoints, but once you eat 1,500 calories a day for several months and don’t really lose any weight, it would seem that you are up against yours right now for sure–perhaps it has shifted from when you were younger.
Do you find that your family tends to put on a little weight in their 30s? I’m not saying that writes your own setpoint in stone, but you could not keep weight on my husband before he was 25 no matter what you did. In fact at 6′3″ and 150 lbs., it almost seemed like his body was waiting for any excuse to lose weight; he normally eats heartily but once during a period of stress, when he was having trouble getting food down, he went down almost to 140 in a scarily short period of time. Now he has been gaining gradually for the past few years, into the “average” BMI range, without really changing his eating habits. (I mean, I guess you could argue “sedentary lifestyle,” but he is still pretty active and was not excessively active or anything in his youth, so I’m skeptical. Not, to go on a tangent, that this stopped our doctor from asking him a few years ago if he was a distance runner because of his naturally low weight, low blood pressure, and slow pulse. Meanwhile if either of us could be called “a runner,” it’s me, and she was busy making all kinds of much more negative assumptions about my “lifestyle” because I’m fat. Not that I’m bitter.) Anyway, the exact same thing happened to his dad so I think there is a setpoint shift in that family that tends to occur sometime in your late 20s.
I guess I would chime in as the 12039487th commenter to agree that you definitely need to get some new clothes that fit your current body–and, as choochoobear said, get rid of the ones that don’t fit. If funds are tight then Target or Kohl’s or Penney’s (esp. the sale racks) can be good options IME. I remember one of the times I was actively trying to follow Overcoming Overeating, and gained a lot of weight. I was miserable until I shelled out for just a few nice pieces at Lane Bryant that I could mix and match. All of a sudden, without clothes that pinched and made me uncomfortable, I felt OK (and on some days, even really cute) again. It made all the difference. If you hate to get rid of clothes because they might fit again (and assuming this is true–it is of me so I’m speaking from my own mindset) you might want to remind yourself that you buy yourself new clothes over time anyway, so you won’t necessarily be spending “extra” to replace the smaller clothes if you do eventually have to buy some more. In sort of the converse of that, I find that anything I do save that doesn’t currently fit me will often end up being out of style or not so nice by the time I revisit it. I finally got that through my head and now I find it easier to get rid of stuff that doesn’t fit me right now.
The other thing that helps me, especially if we’re talking about career clothes, is to remind myself how excited I would be to find functional, stylish career clothes in my size at the thrift store, and how much more use someone else will get out of them if I donate them. When I think about that it seems kind of selfish to hoard clothes that don’t fit me and that are just sitting in my closet, and makes it easier to let them go.
I’m someone who has never “dieted” (though I’ve occasionally dabbled with eating a little less overall for a few days when I’ve felt particularly fat). My weight has gone up and down over the years, for a net gain on a moderately constant curve. I was thin as a child, around a size 18 to 20 in high school, and hit an adult low of 14/16 my freshman year of college when I was too busy to eat and getting lots of exercise. I was a 20 again by graduation, a 24 about five or six years ago, and a 28 today. All that time, other than freshman year, I was practicing a type of what we now call intuitive eating (a.k.a. eating what I wanted except for negotiating shared meals with my family and boyfriend->fiancee->husband). I don’t believe that I’m eating significantly more or differently than when I was younger, or exercising a different amount. And yet my weight is significantly higher. I’ve been a 28 for at least three years, so this appears to be my current set point. But I have no doubt that my set point at age 20 was an 18. I think that the term “set” point falsely gives the impression that the point is set the same for your entire adult life - to the contrary, most people gain at least some weight as they age.
Interestingly, I’ve noticed that my body likes to spontaneously reshift my fat distribution every few years. I usually end up looking thinner even though I haven’t lost weight. I recently went through one of those, and even though my doctor’s scale tells me I’m a good 15 pounds up in my normal range, I’m down to a 26 in most tops, approaching a 26 in some pants, and I think dropped a cup size (I need to go get measured and buy a bunch of new bras).
tiffabee, on April 29th, 2008 at 12:06 am Said:
“I am also fairly thin (I don’t like to give the numbers cause I think it encourages unhealthy comparisons) but I do find that there is a lack of thin women in this community and I wonder why.”
Carolyn: “I’m on my doc’s watchlist for being borderline underweight, and I read a few FA/HAES sites, but usually stay quiet, because I just can’t relate. I don’t want to go barging in on a discussion and getting my Skeletal-American privilege everywhere.”
I’m also a thin person. Again, I’m not going to give numbers but with intuitive eating and moderate exercise my setpoint weight and height give me a BMI in the low end of the “normal” range. That said, I don’t think there’s a woman alive who hasn’t been made to feel bad about her weight or other aspects of her appearance. HAES/FA/body acceptance is for all of us.
Maybe it’s the idea expressed that the dietary habits listed in the original letter are somehow “healthy,” and that this has something to do (in part) with the virtue of food restriction to 1500 [calories]
I can only assume Lynne’s and spacedcowgirl’s comments are not so thinly veiled assumptions to my assertion that the letter writer’s diet in and of itself isn’t all that strange or unhealthy. So, in acting on that presumption, I will clarify further:
There is nothing inherently wrong nor unhealthy in consuming a diet based on “organic whole foods, whole grains, lean proteins, lots of veggies and fruit, no HFCS, no trans fats, no partially hydrogenated anything.” And for some people, 1,500 calories a day is a perfectly normal daily caloric intake. For the most part, my diet is attuned to that of what the letter writer describes, except I don’t eat meat. The vegetables and grains my husband and I consume are naturally lower in calories than meat, so the fact that I would consume, on average, 1,500 - 1,700 calories a day (my husband consumes more) is not unnatural nor is it unhealthy. Each person burns calories differently, and each person’s metabolism is individual and relative to their activity levels and lifestyle. For those who remain doubtful such a range is healthy, I can even show you the results of a metabolism test I paid a registered dietitian to have done a couple years ago which shows my own individual metabolic needs.
The difference between myself and my husband and the letter writer is, our dietary choices are based on our ethical beliefs and environmental concerns, as well as a concern for our overall optimal health. Weight loss is not a quotient in what it is we eat. And for those who feel I am somehow holier-than-thou because I like and eat a primarily plant-based diet, I will add the obligatory qualifier that we also eat chocolate and French Fries and baklava from time to time, though I really do think this to be a moot point.
One’s dietary choices become unhealthy only when you look at the motivations behind such food choices - this was my entire point in bringing in my own anecdotal evidence. I eat vegetarian because I am Buddhist, feminist and believe in a cruelty-free lifestyle, not as a cover for an eating disorder or because I see it as a way to lose weight. I abstain from HFCS and partially hydrogenated oils and eat organic because I am an environmentalist, can afford to do so, and because I am concerned about the effects of such processed chemicals on my body and health, not because I think and hope it will help me lose weight. My daily caloric intake is based on the foods I like and choose to eat and by how full or hungry I am, not out of an attempt to manipulate size.
For me, my dietary choices are wholly intuitive - in touch with not only my body, but my mind and soul. I am not a perfect HAES practitioner (I doubt anyone who says they are), but this is what is healthy and intuitive for me. Your definition of what is healthy and intuitive for you will no doubt differ and vary, which is one of the reasons why I don’t evangelize my own personal food beliefs on my personal site. I think Arwen nailed it on the head:
Because - and this is key - our bodies are each different. …her body’s choices are not and cannot be proscriptive for the relationship I have with my own body.
Once again, my point is not to make others feel as if they aren’t “as good a HAES practitioner” as I am, but to illustrate once again that it isn’t about food; it’s about our relationships with food.
I found that once I got married, I gained a significant amount of weight for me. My set point normally has a very narrow range, but cooking new delicious things for two, more alcohol, more meat & carbs threw off my body a little bit, and I was lingering in bed instead of running off to the gym meant that I gained some weight and felt weak and out of shape.
I’ve never dieted, so the weight gain wasn’t because this was the first time in my life I gave myself permission to eat. (That was the reaction to the letter that bothered me.) It’s just that having another person around all the time threw off my routine.
I wonder if the same thing happened to the letter writer. And I’ll give her the advice my dad gave me: enjoy your new life. And for me, that meant continuing our new cooking experiments, but returning to my usual routine otherwise. I’m not sure what I weigh now. I think it’s less. It might be more. I’m stronger and feeling more fit. But I’m happier than I would be if I’d decided to restrict calories.
I, also, needed this today.
Screwing with my preventative meds has done things to my metabolism I don’t even understand; from disappearing into the void six months ago, I’m now at my highest weight since high school. (Yes, I’m still thin…but my body-hatred brain-worm is wailing at top volume.)
I keep beating myself up over not being my itty-bitty eighteen-year-old self anymore, and my mother keeps pointing out that I am (a) not eighteen; (b) possessed of numerous angry neurological conditions; and (c) menopausal. And of course I know both Mom and Aunt Fattie are right, but I know it intellectually, not brain-worm-shutting-up-ily.
Note to self: proper “am I healthy?” questions include “Are my headaches improving?”, “Can I work a full day?”, and “Will my body keep up with my love of skating/yoga/Pilates?” Improper “am I healthy?” questions include “What’s the number on the scale?”, “Do these pants still fit?” and “Would the cat let me put tiny rollerskates on him?” Tiny cat rollerskates are as relevant to my health as the number on the bathroom scale, and much more entertaining.
Rachel, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to just provide a counter-example to this: “The vegetables and grains my husband and I consume are naturally lower in calories than meat, so the fact that I would consume, on average, 1,500 - 1,700 calories a day (my husband consumes more) is not unnatural nor is it unhealthy.”
Not because I disagree that’s good for you, but just as a data point. I think many of us have been on low-calorie-density diets of one sort or another, and for many of us all the fibre bulk doesn’t fill the hunger if there’s a calorie deficit.
So just as another anecdotal point: I have also been vegetarian for vast amounts of my life, and was born and raised as such. For full disclosure, I’m not vegetarian now, but I’d say that at least 2/3 of my life I was vegetarian, and I was vegan for about a year.
Growing up, veggies, beans, fruit, tofu, nuts, and whole grains were my whole life, I didn’t eat out, and I had very few sweets. And even during the time that I was vegan as an adult, if I wasn’t dieting I was eating more than 1700 calories per day. Mmm mmm peanut butter! Avacado! Banana! — There’s lots of calorie dense options for the Vegan or Vegetarian folk.
I’m just hungry at a higher rate of intake: if I don’t get a certain amount of higher calorie density foods, I’m hungry and for me, at least, the where I get them from part has far less effect than the total number of calories - unless I’m suffering an imbalance. I can eat 800 calories from veggies and brown rice (drizzled with sesame oil and soy, arm narm narm) or 800 calories from steak or chocolate cake, and the satiation is about the same if I’m not deficient in one area or the other. (Which is privilege that I own - I am surrounded by and can afford nutrient rich food choices .)
Which, I want to be really clear to everyone, is not to say this diet doesn’t satiate Rachel at that level, and it’s her listening to herself and doing what is best. That’s HAES.
It’s just that vegetarianism or veganism won’t necessarily cause calorie consumption to drop, all other things being equal. It is, however, a great choice, as Rachel points out, for many reasons.
i-geek, on April 29th, 2008 at 3:07 pm Said:
That said, I don’t think there’s a woman alive who hasn’t been made to feel bad about her weight or other aspects of her appearance. HAES/FA/body acceptance is for all of us.
Bleh, I sat her with a comment box open for like 20 minutes trying to phrase my reply and I can’t come up with a graceful way of doing it.
HAES, etc. just don’t resonate with me. Society does not hate my body. The movement isn’t for me. I’m not saying it should be, either. I’ll happily be an ally, but the banner’s not mine to carry. I suspect it’s that way for a lot of thin women, hence the absence tiffabee noted.
As an analogy: white folks and racism. I’ll call my (white) friends on racism, but when PoC are speaking on the topic, I’mma shut my white ass up and listen.
Rachel, I didn’t mean my reference to your calorie counts to be “veiled” at all (like wanting to sneak it past you somehow)–it just seemed overly blunt to call you out by name. But that is indeed what I was referring to.
The folks in charge can do with me as they wish for this–and I respect you and your site and your writing and what you have done for FA so much, so in some ways I hate to even say anything negative–but you have in my opinion kind of a pattern of defending your low-calorie way of eating to an extent that I personally feel is not helpful, and which makes me a little uncomfortable. Someone says 1,500 calories is a strict, sparse regimen and you always point out that that’s what you eat and there’s nothing wrong with that. Which there isn’t for any individual person, but for the average person that IS a small amount to eat and I don’t think there is anything wrong with someone saying so.
In other examples I recall, someone might post about a diet-obsessed person getting fanatical about how snacks should consist only of items as low-calorie as, say, fat-free pudding cups, and you say that you and your husband eat the sugar-free ones so the person eating the fat-free ones may feel holier-than-thou but they aren’t even eating the lowest-calorie ones. Someone says people in general skip breakfast because they are dieting and that’s sad, the human body generally needs several hundred calories as an initial fuel source, and you respond that you do not need those morning calories, so this is not true for everyone.
Again, none of these observations are “bad” IMO but over time it sort of comes off as a pattern of cheerleading a low-calorie, ultra-healthy diet. It’s like saying “there’s nothing wrong with being Christian”–everyone knows “there’s nothing wrong with eating healthily and sparsely,” god do we know it, so it’s not like anyone is oppressing those whose HAES involves fewer calories, more exercise, more veggies, etc.
I know I do kind of the opposite, counterbalancing discussions like this by seemingly always feeling the need to point out how much I eat. And for that reason I think we actually agree completely on the crux of the matter–EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT.
But there is so much existing mainstream pressure to eat 1,200-1,800 calories a day, sugar-free, low-in-”bad”-fats, minimal meat, natural diet that I feel that your tendency to describe the details of your “different” can contribute to this pressure. I mean, we already know that some people prefer not to eat breakfast and there is a sort of “moral high ground” in diet-land for not eating breakfast despite lip service that is paid to . We already know that some people prefer to eat less–there is a similar “moral high ground” in diet-land for eating 1,500 calories. Nobody really needs to have that choice validated. You get praise both from mainstream society AND FA/HAES for eating the way you do! There is no need to defend your choices because they are the “good” choices. Yet you do it anyway, and fairly often. I wonder what you are defending them against because god knows nobody is going to look down on you for eating healthily.
Whereas I tend to think that when I reveal my relatively hearty diet or my other “shameful” practices, I am validating something that can be very hard for women to talk about and saying “It’s OK, some of us eat a lot.” Sort of like liberating yourself just a bit by admitting your true weight. I understand combating stereotypes by describing your healthy diet in the context of a discussion about “all fat people are lazy gluttons” but I just don’t see how your personal daily caloric intake is relevant to this particular discussion unless you want some kind of credit for being “good.” The only “utility” I can possibly see it having is making the writer feel bad for considering her diet strict or spartan, and I don’t see any point in going there. That is what I have a problem with.
I mean “lip service that is paid to eating 3 or more meals a day,” not that you probably didn’t figure that out.
“My husband and I have since begun a very strict meal plan that incorporates about 1500 calories a day of organic whole foods, whole grains, lean proteins, lots of veggies and fruit, no HFCS, no trans fats, no partially hydrogenated anything.”
If I had to put this much thought into everything I put into my mouth, I would breal out in handcuffs. This would be after killing everyone in the room with me.
Rachel, I did forget to thank you for spelling out and reinforcing that there are other reasons for the food and lifestyle choices you make. I think that is true for a lot of people and can get lost in the shuffle of health (at least the version du jour) at any cost, so it bears pointing out. Kind of like HAES itself… “health” is not just calories, fruits/vegetable servings, minutes of aerobic exercise and pounds lifted. There’s a lot more to it than that as you point out.
I think the major difference between Rachel’s diet and UTBT’s is that for Rachel, it’s not a strain for her to eat that way. That is what comes naturally to her, that is what makes her feel and function optimally — she’s not hopping on the scale every morning to make sure she’s “doing it right.”
Some people do naturally have smaller appetites and everyone does not crave the same things. Rachel (as far as she’s told us) does not feel like she’s missing anything by eating the way she does and is not trying to force herself to do so in order to fit some social definition of “good.” But bodies and brains and what each individual needs for optimal fuel are all different, and UTBT needs to ask herself: If you were thin, would you think there was anything “wrong” with wanting to eat your fill of what satisfied you and gave you the most physical and mental energy? I’m guessing not.
I am glad Rachel spoke up, because I had been feeling that the HAES crowd was suspicious of people who *like* not eating junky foods (because they don’t make us feel good) or make ethical considerations when choosing foods, that *don’t* feel restricted by these things. And I have been tired of hearing that anyone eating under 2000 or 1800 or 1500 calories is starving themselves. Yes, some people need 3000! *I* feel like I’m starving on 1500 calories. But I do not like how I keep hearing that people eating a low number of calories are starving themselves. It’s a good way to make people who eat for hunger doubt themselves. It’s not about praising people for eating a certain way, but really being open and letting people listen to their bodies.
To clarify: My post about breaking out in handcuffs is merely a reflection of my being allergic to being as intentional about my diet as the letter writer. I aim for fruits, veggies and lean protein. I don’t “clean” eat, though. It’s crazy-making for me. I applaud Rachel and all those who eat “clean” and don’t mind it a bit.
(Clean = abstaining from processed foods & additives in my mind. Beg pardon if I’m bastardizing that term from somewhere else.)
I guess this is a difference in perception. I never say that anyone who eats less than x calories is “starving themselves.” That’s a case-by-case thing. I DO say that on average, people need more than 1,500 calories because I believe that to be true and it’s not something you ever hear; it’s like a dirty little secret.
Is this necessarily going to help any individual person in her HAES/intuitive eating journey? No. You’re absolutely right, you have to do what’s right for *you*. But I can easily see someone feeling like she’s doing it “wrong” because for some reason, 1,500 is about the highest number anyone online will ever cop to when explaining how they eat. The rest of us just sort of keep our mouths shut. If that person does need more than 1,500 than my statements will indeed help her. If she needs less, well, then there is validation all over the place for that. Call me skeptical but I just can’t imagine anyone feeling “guilty” for eating 1,500 calories or fewer if that’s what her body needs. God knows I wish I weren’t such, and pardon the hurtful word but this is what my brain chastises me with all the time, a pig. It would make my life a great deal easier if my “IE” consisted of 1,500 calories a day.
I guess many of us on either side are just defensive about our choices because I can’t imagine feeling like the “HAES crowd was suspicious of people who *like* not eating junky foods.” What *I* feel like is people are on the whole ashamed to admit that they like anything that’s not traditionally considered healthy–unless it’s some kind of gourmet locally made organic cheesecake enjoyed after a “good person” meal of fish and vegetables, or a small piece of really expensive chocolate after a workout. At some point it really doesn’t sound that much different to me than the more “sane” dieting web sites, frankly. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think at some point the desire to lose weight is not the only thing that should separate us from dieters. The good food/bad food mentality should too. This is well-known around here but it’s not so well-articulated elsewhere.
Anyway, I can only conclude that it’s a matter of me being pretty oversensitive about this issue, which I know it is to some extent.
But the fact remains that this is very tricky. It is real easy to convince yourself that you need to restrict calories, types of foods, fruit/veggie servings, blah blah blah because “it’s HAES” when what you’re really doing is trying to be a good girl and conform to what society tells you is “good for you” or to otherwise be “moral” or ascetic in your choices. I am specifically NOT saying that anyone here is doing that. (This time, I am not calling anyone out.
)But I think it is a very easy trap to fall into for new HAES practitioners and I think those folks benefit from both perspectives, those who eat very healthy and those who don’t always.
The thing that’s stupid is that *I* generally eat in a way traditionally considered “healthy.” I limit meat consumption and eat lots of fruits and veggies and try to buy local and exercise and all that crap. So this isn’t really about my diet except for the part where I try to be open about eating fairly heartily.
spacedcowgirl, I just want to say how much I value your contributions to this discussion (and others, too! Your comments always make me think!). I agree that for a lot of people, and perhaps particularly for people new to intuitive-eating, HAES can get really intertwined with “eat lean, clean, socially-approved foods in small amounts while exercising vigorously and smiling the whole time because IT FEELS SO GOOD.”
Of course, HAES isn’t that, and those of us who have been hanging out in the ’sphere for a while recognize that, but I think your honesty about what HAES is for *you* is really helpful to people who feel like they’re missing the mark because they need to eat more or differently.
As for me, I’m generally consuming over 2000 calories a day and part of that is generally in ice cream and wine. That’s HAES for me.
HAES can get really intertwined with “eat lean, clean, socially-approved foods in small amounts while exercising vigorously and smiling the whole time because IT FEELS SO GOOD.”
Yes, that is what I was trying to get at.
Thank you also for your kind words, and I’m not very good at this (HAES) so I really do appreciate hearing what HAES means to various folks who feel like they have arrived at a place where they are comfortable in their bodies and lifestyles.
Anyway, I really didn’t want to hijack the thread (I promise–though I suppose I did kind of go “me me me” thinking “gosh, what shame I would feel if I had written that letter and got the feeling that I shouldn’t even consider 1,500 cals. a small amount, and that in fact maybe I should just stop whining, keep depriving myself and on top of all that accept that I’ll never lose the weight) so I will shut up now unless anything further comes up that really needs a response from me. But thanks again.
I’ll try to address your points by issue, spacedcowgirl: