Dieting: how to wreck your health

That’s right.  Dieting; the bane of many people (visibly fat and not, alike).  The roller-coaster of self-congratulation / self-flagellation that so many of us know so horribly well.  Fat Chicks Rule just pointed me to yet another study that has found some interesting links between dieting and increases in people having the very same diseases that get blamed on fat.

After I was done shaking my head at the way the WebMD article begins “There may actually be an unhealthy downside to losing weight.”  Seriously y’all!  There MAY  “ACTUALLY” be a DOWNSIDE!  You mean just one?  Anyway, moving on…

A new study finds that blood levels of substances known as persistent organic pollutants were higher in people who had lost weight compared to people who maintained or gained weight.

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are compounds created by humans in industrial processes and have been linked to a wide range of illnesses, including type 2 diabetes, cancer, dementia, and heart disease. The study appears in the International Journal of Obesity.

Researchers say the findings may help explain why some studies have suggested, though not proven, that the risk of heart disease, dementia, or death may sometimes increase after weight loss. (Yeah, no study ever, not even ones about obesity, ever can PROVE something as tenuous as death risks.  Read up on how the scientific method works media!!)

(All emphasis is mine)

So, yet again, studies are finding that one of the staple means proscribed to fatties to Cure All Ills, that is to say: dieting, has a link to an increased prevalence of these harmful, disease correlated, body pollutants.  I mean, what better way can your body tell you to STOP mucking about with its natural systems than to pollute itself as a last-ditch attempt to get you to leave it the fuck alone?

Your Body when faced with dieting behaviors: “Hello?  Hello up there?  Stop messing with me!  I KNOW how to give you signals for hunger and know when I need to move around.  Stop with the enforced dietary restrictions and exercise drudgery already!!! Hello?  Hello!  Is this thing ON??!?”

I can’t help but want to shake some of these folks who act all surprised about these findings who seem to be shaking their heads at the thought that denying your body’s natural ability to regulate itself and send signals to a mind that has been so socially brainwashed into blatantly ignoring them in favor of “Controlling” themselves.  “Well, GOSH!  There’s a DOWNSIDE to starving your body of vital nutrients and forcing it to move around in hurtful and increasingly overdone ways?? How can that be???  Everyone KNOWS that the biggest risk of death is Being outside the accepted social norm of beauty Fat, right?”

No.  You want to know what carries the biggest, unquestionable, risk of death?  Life.  Simply the act of being alive, means that you will die.  100% risk. I mean, once you go about all willy-nilly with your fancy “living being” habits; there you’ve gone and done it.  It’s like you’re practically INVITING death to your doorstep by waving your breathing and heart-beating and brain-functioning in the face of nature, taunting it with your very existence.

Perhaps that thought is a bit too morbid for a Tuesday morning.  Yet, I can’t help but want to point it out in the face of all the fury that seems to surround the masses foaming at the mouth frantically struggling to decry the increased mortality supposedly linked to my body’s size.  Especially, as seen in many of the links rounded up in the post referenced above from Autist’s Corner, from the feminist arena.  Seems that lately there has been a bout of discussion concerning the way that a few of the very same people who staunchly believe that no one has a right to declare what women should or shouldn’t do with their bodies simultaneously believe that this very same fought-for right does not apply if you’re a FAT woman.  Y’all, pointing out that someone else may have attributes (fat) or behaviors (reduced activity levels, perceived or even actual overeating) that have been linked, often erroneously, to an increased risk of death; does not somehow REDUCE your own risk of death, the risk inherent in simply being alive.

Let that percolate a bit, okay?  Life carries the 100% risk of death.  Spending any time of your own brief allotment of life hating others “for their own good” does not increase your life-span or theirs.  It simply makes all involved miserable. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: even being “healthy”, for whatever value of the word you give it, does not somehow remove your human mortality.

Stop the judgments.  Stop the shaming.  Stop the dieting.  Stop the hating.  The life you have is not made better by reducing your own size in it or by hating others who happen to have a size or shape you’ve been told (or even believe) is more inclined to expire earlier.  Save your energies instead for other pursuits; like finding a way to convince the media and the masses that every human being deserves basic, decent, respectful treatment.

Don’t hold onto your perception of “Health” (Whatever it may mean to you) as the only goal worth obtaining for your fleeting time on this Earthly plane.  Be larger than life and LIVE it the way you keep thinking you will in “a few more pounds” or “just one more class” or “just a few more dollars saved up”. I’m not trying to be all “Death is coming no matter what so RUN!” here.  I AM suggesting that spending your life worried about the size of your freaking ass (or OTHER PEOPLES’ asses) certainly doesn’t sound like a fun way to spend this blessing we call “Life” to me.  There is more to life than counting calories and judging others. ~April D

Does this life-preserver make my life look longer?