The Fat Chick Diaries

Just for fun, I did a bit more poking around for stuff on the web about carbon sequestration and obesity. I found this by blogger DrRich. While I think he’s a bit rough on the scientists who study global warming, he goes on to dress down the dudes who tried to blame global warming on fat people, and once he’s done doing that, trounces them thusly:

DrRich maintains that his two assertions - which entirely counterbalance those of his opponents - make his argument equally compelling to theirs. So thus far we have a draw. But DrRich’s third assertion, which follows, wins the day.

To wit: The obese are unarguably sequestering carbon.

Storing fat, in fact, is simply a relatively efficient way to store carbon. The obese consume massive amounts of carbon in the form of food, and then they fail to burn it off (unlike thin people, who convert their food to CO2 immediately through their habitually wasteful activities). Instead, the obese store their carbon intake, taking it out of circulation forever, and removing it from the carbon cycle which (we find) is so fatally damaging to the earth. Indeed (at least according to the zero-sum crowd for whom redistribution is invariably the answer to all problems), the more food consumed by the obese, the less food remains available for the thin people who would just go ahead and metabolize it, with all their jogging and whatnot, excreting lots of excess CO2 in the process.

When we finally employ carbon caps, the obese should get a tax break based on their weight.

You really need to go read the entire thing. It’s one of the cleverest bits of writing I’ve ever seen.

I use an online food log to keep track of what I eat. I started doing this while I was seeing a nutritionist in 2008-2009, whom I lovingly refer to as the Food Nazi. I started going at the suggestion of my internist after my annual physical in the fall of 2007, when she recommended I lose weight and I told her what she should already have known: Being a fat chick, I have tried numerous times to lose weight with diet, exercise, blah blah blah, and while I have lost anywhere from 5 to 40 pounds, I have regained it every single time, usually much more than I originally lost, leaving me fatter in the long run, not thinner. In short, been there, done that, got the same results that 95% of people do. This is the story of virtually every fat person I know. Any other suggestions, doc, or is that all you’ve got?

That’s when she suggested the nutritionist. I have to say, the doc was right in the sense that I did actually learn a lot from talking to a nutritionist, and I have made some permanent changes to my eating habits that will benefit my health in the long run. The weight loss, however, was minimal. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.

After a year, I felt I wasn’t learning enough new things to make it worth the cost of continuing to see her. You see, my insurance doesn’t cover nutritional counseling unless I’m actually sick, which I’m not. However, the online food log I started keeping while under her care was a revelation to me, and I still do it. It lets me know that I’m getting the right balance of nutrients, when I’m overeating or undereating, etc. It also lets me log my weight, and sure enough, every so often I lose a pound. Not only that, but carefully monitoring my eating has helped me lick the one less-than-perfect test result that’s been dogging me for the past several years– my “good” cholesterol is always a hair too low. Now it’s perfect. So I keep doing the food log.

Most of the people on the site are there to lose weight. I will admit I am thrilled when a pound disappears, and I sometimes let myself get caught up in the weight-loss hoopla. It’s happening slowly enough for me that I let myself believe I may actually keep it off this time. One of the ways in which the site bangs the weight loss drum is to keep a running total of the combined pounds lost by all of the site’s members. So far, it is more than 34,000 pounds. That’s a lot.

There are a few problems with this calculation. First, it doesn’t tell us how many individual people factor into that calculation. Do they have 30,000 members? If so, that’s not a lot per person. In addition, it doesn’t tell us if that calculation reflects the CURRENT weight for members or just each member’s LOWEST weight, whether that’s current or not. Most importantly, it doesn’t account for people who have lost some weight, then started gaining it back and got so frustrated they stopped logging altogether. They may weigh more than they did when they started, but we’ll never know.

Anyway, that 34,000 pound figure is so huge, it got me thinking. Fat molecules are mostly hydrocarbon chains. When you use fat for energy, you are breaking the chemical bonds in those chains to release the energy stored in those bonds. As a result, you breathe out a boatload of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, as we all know, contributes to global warming.

That got me thinking about fat people as a form of carbon sequestration. The reason a lot of the carbon dioxide floating around in the air today wasn’t floating around in the air two hundred years ago is that it was hidden in the earth’s crust in the form of coal and oil. In other words, it was sequestered. Trees do a great job of sequestering carbon dioxide, but unfortunately the human race seems hell bent on stripping the earth’s surface of as many trees as possible to create grazing space for cows (who burp and fart methane all day) and suburbs (which you have to drive to and from, releasing carbon from the fossil fuel in your gas tank, because it’s too far to walk). That’s bad news for carbon sequestration.

That got me thinking about Gaia. You know, the hypothesis that the earth is just one giant superorganism, and that all of the systems and processes that take place in and on the earth are a part of the functioning of that organism. If Gaia can’t sequester carbon dioxide in one way because we’re messing her up, she’ll sequester it in another way– in fat people. It’s like Mother Earth punishing us for not letting her sequester carbon the way she needs to. We got caught burning too many fossil fuels and cutting down too many trees, and now Mother is going to punish us with the OMGbesity Epidemic.

(disclosure: I totally stole the phrase OMGBesity Epidemic from another blogger, and sadly I can’t remember who, so I can’t make a proper attribution. But it’s too cool not to use it. If it was you, let me know.)

Do I really think that’s what’s making us fat? No, of course not. But you gotta give credit where credit is due– fat people are sequestering a whole bunch of carbon that would otherwise have to be somewhere else. If all the fat people so villified by society and the media suddenly lost all that fat, well, that carbon would have to go somewhere, and where it would go would be right into the atmosphere. So what will it be, skinny people? Fat people and polar icecaps, or no fat people and no polar icecaps? Maybe you’d suddenly be much more willing to put up with fat chicks on the subway if the alternative were for the entire New York City subway system to be below sea level.

So here I am thinking I’m all clever for thinking of this, but alas, somebody already beat me to it. Take a look at this blog post from the New Scientist. The guy actually does the math, which I am way too lazy to do (because, you know, I’m fat and all…). Definitely some food for thought.

I haven’t done a Daily Pug Count in a while, so here’s today’s figure as of 4:04 p.m.: Four pugs. One in Queens, three in Manhattan. I’m telling you, NYC is Pug City, y’all.

Anyway, back to business. I saw Megan McCain on the Rachel Maddow Show the other day, and Rachel mentioned Megan is on Twitter, so I went and checked her out. Having seen images of Megan throughout the campaign and having just watched her during her interview with Rachel, I was very surprised to see among her Twitter entries (I guess they’re called “tweets”) a statement defending her own curves and encouraging the rest of us to love ours, too. I thought… did somebody make fun of her for being fat? If so, how is that possible? She’s not rail thin like her mom, but she’s certainly slim. Have we really gone that far over the edge that we’re fat-bashing Megan McCain now?

As it turns out, the answer is yes: Megan McCain, who is a size 8, got fat-bashed by her own fellow Republican. Tara Parker Pope writes about it on Well today.

That just stuns me. I mean, really? To me, a woman who wears a size 12 shouldn’t be considered plus size, because in terms of her clothing needs, she has a heck of a lot more in common with a size 8 than a size 18. A size 10 looks thin to me. But a size EIGHT??? Come on, REALLY? We’re fat-bashing in the single digits now?

You’d think there are no more pressing issues facing this country right now. Yeesh.

Over on the New York Times Well blog, Tara Parker Pope writes today about “the largest-ever controlled study of weight-loss methods.” They put people into groups and assignged each group a particular type of reduced-calorie diet: some cut down on carbs, some cut down on fat, and some cut down on animal protein. Here’s what happened:

After two years, every diet group had lost — and regained — about the same amount of weight regardless of what diet had been assigned. Participants lost an average of 13 pounds at six months and had maintained about 9 pounds of weight loss and a two-inch drop in waist size after two years.

This is somewhat ambiguous language, but the bottom line appears to be this: after all that effort, two years later people were down an average of only nine pounds. NINE POUNDS. Since the participants were considered overweight to begin with, one can assume that the pointy finger of society felt they had more than nine pounds to lose. Oh well.

My own conclusion for this study is that it proves that substantial weight loss is damn near impossible regardless of what you try. The conclusion drawn by the researchers is that it doesn’t matter what kind of calories you’re counting, as long as you’re counting calories. Cutting fat works about as well as cutting protein– the point is to be cutting something. Thank goodness for small favors. But to me, cutting 750 calories out of your diet every day only to have lost a mere 9 pounds two years down the road hardly seems worth the sacrifice. Beneath the post, one of the commenters, JenK, puts it like this:

Well, there’s also a question of whether an average net loss of 9lbs is worth that much effort.

Starting a regular exercise program is probably just as good for your health in the long run, and will probably feel better, than jumping through the food hoops.

So I wonder… what do we do with this information? Do we really want to live in a society where we all obsessively count calories? I will admit to keeping an electronic food log. I do it mostly to keep myself honest and nutritionally balanced, but it also counts calories automatically, and I will admit that I do find myself looking at that number a lot to see what I can learn from it, if anything. But do I really want to do that for the rest of my life? Does anybody? Should anybody?

Wow. That’s pretty bleak. They

I can’t recall where I first heard about Re/Dress, but there is a recent review at Fat Chicks Rule.

Bottom line: If you live in or near Brooklyn, gather up all your cash and credit cards and go to Re/Dress. It’s worth it. The staff are extremely helpful and friendly, and there is something there for every taste. And I do mean EVERY taste. The store itself is big, clean, brightly lit, and absolutely the most gorgeous vintage/resale shop I’ve ever been in. The owner, Deb Malkin (who is also involved in my beloved Fat Girl Flea Market), has assembled a truly amazing inventory, including some really amazing vintage coats. I went a few weekends ago and I had an absolute blast. I dragged my boyfriend along, and this was the first time I think he ever enjoyed being dragged along on a shopping trip. He got comfy on the couch in the lounge and just chilled out while he waited for me to come out of the dressing room in outfit after outfit. I came home with a number of really great pieces, including some Jones New York, Josephine Chauss, and other names you’d know. Several of the pieces I bought still had the original tags on them, so I essentially got brand new pieces at resale prices. I’m already getting compliments on pieces I’ve worn to work.

Re/Dress is on Facebook as both a store (”Re/Dress NYC”) and a “person” (”ReDress NYC”), the latter so it can be tagged in photos where happy customers are showing off their recent purchases. If you’re on Facebook, friend them and browse the photos to get a feel for the variety of pieces they sell.

Shopping at Re/Dress makes sense for a number of reasons. First, giving a second life to some gently used pieces is environmentally friendly. Second, Deb has gone to all the trouble to create a shopping paradise just for us fat chicks, and we should do what we can to make sure she stays in business. Third, there’s a recession on, people! Vintage/resale is just smart shopping!

One word of warning: If you go via subway, you might want to avoid the bodega on the corner by the F/G subway exit. The staff in there apparently don’t realize that driving off customers isn’t good if you’re in retail, and they love to verbally abuse customers and cheat them out of money. I’m just sayin’.

Like many of my sister fat chick bloggers, I have blogged about Governor Paterson’s fat tax. You can see my previous posts here and here. My beef has been not so much with the idea as with the abusive and misleading name given to the tax, especially since the majority of the fat people I know already drink diet soda.

I’m pretty new to this whole blogging thing, and I’m still in the process of exploring the amazing blogs out there that deal with fat issues. So forgive me if I’m the last kid on the block to clue in to this amazing resource: Junkfood Science. The blogger, Sandra Szwarc, is a thoroughly credentialed nurse among other things, and she knows how to bring the data. one of her favorite sports is taking down idiots who use outdated, debunked studies or unsupported myths to promote bogus ideas about diet and nutrition, and therefore often about fatness and health. She’s a mythbuster extraordinaire, and I can’t stop reading her stuff.

Here’s her take on the obesity tax, which she calls a fat discrimination tax. When I wrote about the tax myself, I said I didn’t think it was the fat people who were drinking the sugared sodas. She actually brings the data: the research shows not only that it’s not fat people, but rather young adult males, who drink the majority of sugared sodas. She also busts the governor’s people for using the now thoroughly debunked claim that obesity causes more than 300,000 deaths a year.

If you haven’t already, go take a look. It’s definitely worth your time.

Just for the fun of it, I was messing around on Facebook, looking to see what types of groups were there with the word “fat” in their name. There are, of course, a ton of groups about how gross, disgusting, and worthy of scorn fat folks are. Fat folks, and especially fat chicks. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.

But there were some interesting groups, too, and I joined a few. Browsing through the posts in this groups, I found a link to this amazing post from the blog Birthcycle. I’ve had this experience before, where someone bashes fat people right in front of me, as if I should understand that they don’t mean ME, and I shouldn’t be offended.

In other news, I got my retainers yesterday. My teeth have retreated a bit in the 25 or so years since I got my braces off, and it just bugs me. Maybe that’s vain, but it is what it is. I booked an appointment for a consultation with an orthodontist, where I discovered that Invisalign is wayyyy the heck out of my price range. The ortho claims he can restraighten my teeth with a series of retainers at about a third of the cost of Invisalign. He says he can do this in about a year if I wear them 24/7 except while eating or brushing. He did molds in late December, and I went to pick up the retainers yesterday. So by approximately January 12, 2010, I should have perfectly straight teeth again, and I should be able to keep them that way by only wearing the retainers at night.

Recently on Shapely Prose, Kate Harding posted about a study that shows that ovarian cancer survivorship goes up when fat chicks are dosed with chemo according to their actual weight, and not the weight that is deal for their height. The post also noted that fat chicks are not screened as often for other types of cancer as thin women. WTF is up with THAT?

All of this got me thinking. In my previous post, I noted that my parents are big into the beach, and as a kid I was taught to swim very young so they could drag me to the beach, pool, reservoir, lake, etc., without fear of my drowning. I was in the sun. A LOT.

I happen to be very fair-skinned. I also happen to have grown up during the time when nobody used sunscreen, and in fact it was widely believed that going out and deliberately getting a sunburn early in the summer was good for you, because it would fade and become your base tan.

So I kind of worry a little about skin cancer. Just a little, you know?

Friends of mine with similar complexions and life histories have told me they get regular screenings for skin cancer. They go see a dermatologist, who goes over their entire body inch by inch in search of anything they think might be cancerous or precancerous. A fair number of them have had things lopped off and biopsied.

I have asked for this examination twice– once from a general practitioner, and once from a dermatologist. In the latter case, this was the entire reason for my visit. Both times, the examination was perfunctory at best. I stripped down to my bra and panties, and the doctor quickly perused only those portions of my epidermis that were readily visible. The GP did this while standing two feet away. Can you really tell a good mole from a bad mole at that distance? The dermo did get up a little closer and used some sort of special scope, but he only looked at parts he could see while I was sitting down and wearing a bra and panties. If I had a cancerous lesion, say, on the back of my thigh, he never would have seen it. My experience does not at all resemble what has been described to me by my friends. It has occurred to me that it might be because to the average doc, my body probably isn’t as much fun to look at up close as, say, Heidi Klum, whose dermatological exams probably take at least half a day.

To his credit, my GP did identify a mole on my lower lip that he felt looked a little fishy, and had it removed and biopsied. Benign.

Here’s a little project for all my fat sisters: Before your next doctor visit, do a good, solid internet search about all the ways in which fat chicks don’t get the same kind of care from doctors as other people. Make a list. Bring it to your doctor. Make sure he or she is doing for you exactly what would be done for any other patient. If you’re skeptical, make them say it out loud. That’s what I’m going to do.

The Obesity Tax has the fat blogosphere in a tizzy. No big surprise there. There’s a good roundup at Shapely Prose. I disagree with Kate that the term is something the media made up to whip up a frenzy and sell papers, because the NYT indicates they learned the phrase from sources close to the governor (see my post from yesterday). But other than that, her analysis is right on target, as usual. I won’t rehash it here– just go read it for yourself.

The bottom line for me is this:

1. Not all fat people drink soda loaded with HFCS
2. Not all people who drink soda loaded with HFCS are fat
3. Taxes are generally named after the thing they are taxing

With all of this in mind, it’s pretty clear the name “obesity tax” is wildly inappropriate, and as such, offensive.

It’s not like the gov is proposing to tax fat people by the pound, although there are certainly people who favor that idea.

Speaking of misnomers, I should point out that I really object to the common use of the term “sugared soda” to refer to the item the governor wants to tax. Part of the problem is that the sodas in question no longer contain sugar. Sugar was abandoned years ago in favor of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the name of increasing profits. HFCS is well documented to have detrimental health effects far more several and wide-ranging than those caused by cane sugar. Soft drink manufacturers know this, and they use it anyway.

No doubt the hoardes of anti-intellectual, anti-science voters among the McCain-Palin crowd will denounce these folks as elitist eggheads, but if you actually value the contributions of the world’s top scientists, you might be interested in this.

I saw it mentioned in a blog post on the Chronicle of Higher Ed web site, below which a reader posted this comment:

“I hear that Darwin Award winners are going to endorse McCain.”