by Marilyn Wann
Gabourey Sidibe's doing a memoir — read it in 2017!
A fat fitness anthology from Candice Casas, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and Courtney Marshall is in development! Here’s the call for proposals.
Alex Gino’s new YA novel, “George,” about a young, genderqueer person, comes out soon!
Don’t miss the fat-positive novel, “Dietland,” by Sarai Walker.
A documentary team created a fake diet study and got it published in a science journal. Mainstream media reported it as fact. This brilliant muckraking shows how junk science in weight-loss research happens.
Video games that make children move around don’t increase their overall activity, according to a new study.
A new line of Barbies have their feet on the ground…no more tippy toes! Meanwhile, women who wear high heels more than three times a week can develop imbalanced ankle muscles that are prone to injury, researchers say. They recommend compensating exercises.
My new favorite fat activist is 17-year-old Vera Tieno, who just received a $5,000 art scholarship at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gala, where she partied with Usher, Pharell, DeNiro, and Whoopi. Plus model Denise Bidot spent an afternoon with her beforehand, doing liberating things with fashion. The teen, who has lived in jeans and t-shirts, said, "It’s that feeling that you don’t belong, that it [fashion] wasn’t for me. It’s the thinking that my body does not look like the media wants me to look, and if I don’t look like a magazine, then I thought I didn’t deserve it." She learned from Bidot, "That you can rock anything you want you just need to be happy feel good in what you’re wearing not for anybody else." She admitted she found the high heels painful, though.
Gabourey Sidibe's doing a memoir — read it in 2017!
A fat fitness anthology from Candice Casas, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and Courtney Marshall is in development! Here’s the call for proposals.
Alex Gino’s new YA novel, “George,” about a young, genderqueer person, comes out soon!
Don’t miss the fat-positive novel, “Dietland,” by Sarai Walker.
A documentary team created a fake diet study and got it published in a science journal. Mainstream media reported it as fact. This brilliant muckraking shows how junk science in weight-loss research happens.
Video games that make children move around don’t increase their overall activity, according to a new study.
A new line of Barbies have their feet on the ground…no more tippy toes! Meanwhile, women who wear high heels more than three times a week can develop imbalanced ankle muscles that are prone to injury, researchers say. They recommend compensating exercises.
My new favorite fat activist is 17-year-old Vera Tieno, who just received a $5,000 art scholarship at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gala, where she partied with Usher, Pharell, DeNiro, and Whoopi. Plus model Denise Bidot spent an afternoon with her beforehand, doing liberating things with fashion. The teen, who has lived in jeans and t-shirts, said, "It’s that feeling that you don’t belong, that it [fashion] wasn’t for me. It’s the thinking that my body does not look like the media wants me to look, and if I don’t look like a magazine, then I thought I didn’t deserve it." She learned from Bidot, "That you can rock anything you want you just need to be happy feel good in what you’re wearing not for anybody else." She admitted she found the high heels painful, though.
photo from Stylite.com
Fat model Tess Munster and Simply Be made made a fun little video on the topic of bikini bodies: #simplybekini.
The media celebrated the weight loss of Abby Lee Miller (of "Dance Moms"), even though it turns out to have come from grieving and medical concerns.
Amy Schumer says: "“I’m probably, like, 160 pounds right now and I can catch a d—k whenever I want. Like, that's the truth. It's not a problem…I'm not going to apologize for who I am, and I'm going to actually love the skin that I'm in. And I'm not going to be striving for some other version of myself."
Fat-positive RN and diabetes expert David Spero writes about loving food instead of living in fear of food.
Sometimes, both the question and the answer are uncool: People think smokers deserve medical treatment for lung problems, but fat people don’t deserve medical treatment to lose weight, according to a Danish survey.
Tasmania now has emergency vehicles equipped to help fat people. Uncool that the reporting of this news is steeped in anti-fat prejudice.
A comprehensive study found that fat people are less likely to die from injury, car accidents, and falls.
Half of stomach amputation survivors regain 5 percent of their body weight in the first two years, while others regain more, according to the stomach thieves' own organization (the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery). And that's just in the first two years after so-called "weight-loss" surgery.
A woman who had not one, but two "weight-loss" surgeries, lost no weight. Her doctor's recommendation was to consider cutting into her stomach a third time.
One in 20 stomach amputation survivors are back in the hospital within 30 days. Pharmacists say "many [readmissions] could have been avoided by dietary counseling and filling prescriptions before hospital discharge."
Although they found higher levels of hospital admissions among weight-loss surgery survivors in the first year or two after surgery and only followed people for three years, researchers say the surgery will save money longterm.
Stomach amputation has “longterm nutritional consequences,” a pharmacist warns. Anemia is “a big problem.” Deficiencies in macronutrients (which help regulate blood sugar), “are common.” Some medications (metformin, antidepressants, antibiotics) may further deplete people’s bodies of needed nutrients. If women become pregnant post-WLS, it’s “critical” they are monitored and take specialized absorptive supplements. The pharmacist also says that WLS complications can be mistaken for other, more familiar health concerns.
Plastic surgeons profit from increasing rates of stomach amputation, logging a 7 percent increase in saggy-ectomies in 2014. Such operations involve massive incisions to remove excess skin from people's arms, bellies, and upper legs. (Remember: nutritional deficiencies may make wound healing difficult.)
WLS…not a diabetes cure: “Some doctors had thought that gastric bypass could cure diabetes, but that did not happen for most of our patients. Also unexpected was the extent of complications in the bypass patients. Gastric bypass now appears to have less strong positives and more worrisome negatives than previously thought," says Charles J. Billington, MD, a researcher in the ongoing Diabetes Surgery Study. They found increased risk of infections, bone fractures, and nutritional deficiencies in stomach amputation survivors.
Hoping to expand their customer base among not-very-fat people, surgeons have developed a way of cutting off just 2/3 of a person's stomach, instead of nearly all of it, claiming it could produce between 30 and 80 pounds of weight loss.
What do you do if you’re a white guy “physician-scientist” who’s just finished cancer treatment and you weren't invited back to your job as chancellor of Ole Miss? You join that school’s anti-“obesity” center and tell people you’re eager to address an important issue. Ugh. Priorities?
Are medical diagnoses a popularity contest? More than half of people surveyed think "obesity" is a disease. Researchers at the Yale Rudd Center say that disease status will reduce anti-fat prejudice. I predict just the opposite. Unsurprising, since the center's mission to prevent "obesity" is counterproductive to their other stated goal of reducing weight stigma.