HealthNotDiets Digest, Issue 27, 2019
- Fiona Willer
- Jul 14, 2019
- 6 min read
July 5 - July 11, 2019
As always, if you like what you read here, please support the original author by liking/sharing/following/up-voting/subscribing directly to their feed.
Happy reading!
Articles & Blogs
The Gifts of Fatness
by Your Fat Friend
"Whoever you are, whatever the story of your body, your experience as a fat person has shown you a side of the world so many don’t see. It has taught you, you have learned, you have grown, and you are stronger in ways you never should’ve needed to be.”
Nearly a Quarter of Men 18–24 Have Signs of Disordered Eating
by Heather Cruickshank
"When Phillips and her colleagues studied muscle dysmorphia, they estimated that more than 20 percent of men with this condition met the criteria for an eating disorder.”
Fat Is Not the Problem—Fat Stigma Is
by Linda Bacon
“Focusing on weight—or health behaviors—puts the burden on the individual, deflecting attention from the more pernicious problem: systemic injustice.”
The Recovery I Needed
by Amelia Boone
"As I threw my hands in the air and proclaimed “I’m doing everything right” to avoid injury, I struggled with the growing internal self-flagellation for knowing that I wasn’t doing EVERYTHING I could. I could do all the PT exercises, I could do the slow return to run progression, I could take supplements, I could spend thousands of dollars on all the fancy recovery tools, but I knew one thing deep in my heart: there is no substitute for plentiful food and nourishment in order to prevent injuries."
CW: account of struggles with anorexia nervosa and some ableist language
Do vitamin drips really work? The evidence says ‘no’, so save your money and eat real food
by Emily Burch
"For most of us, the quantities of vitamins and minerals needed for good health can be obtained by eating a healthy diet with a wide range of foods and food groups. Obtaining vitamins and minerals from your diet is much easier, cheaper, and safer.
Unless you have a medically diagnosed reason for getting a vitamin infusion and it was prescribed by your doctor, you are always better off obtaining vitamins and minerals through food."
Women suffer needless pain because almost everything is designed for men
By Sigal Samuel
“When you get an over-the-counter medication, it doesn’t tell you male and female doses — it says “child” and “adult,” and that adult is a man. It’s Reference Man. To me, that shows the scale of the problem we have here. All these drugs need to be looked at to see whether male and female doses should be different.”
Why should I suck my belly in?
by Paola Balla
"Why is fat phobia so entrenched that being fat is terrifying for some? Why don’t we realise that hating our soft beautiful Aboriginal bodies comes from colonial shamings after being measured against white women’s bodies, and Henry Lawson himself naming us as black velvet-sexually subjugating us and then becoming a national icon.”
Don't Tell Demi Lovato, Or Any Woman Who Has Suffered With An Eating Disorder, To Go On A Diet
by Bonnie McLaren
“Women should not have to answer to anyone about their weight or diet, whether they have an eating disorder or not. But as approximately 1.25 million people in the UK suffer from an ED (the number is likely to be to be a lot higher), you never know the impact flippant comments can have on someone.”
CW: mentions ED behaviours and includes an image of a body emaciated from ED.
When a dying patient went to a holistic healer, this GP picked up the pieces
by Genevieve Yates
"I could not give him the hope of a cure, at any price, and he’d refused my offer of help to ease his physical suffering, but what I was able to give Peter was priceless.”
Mothers Are Teaching Their Daughters Bad Lessons About Beauty
by Hannah Seligson
“the evidence is unequivocal that talk focusing on weight, even with an eye toward “health,” is not helpful. The best practice is to portray food as fuel and to value the human body not for how it’s shaped but for what it can do.”
In overvaluing confidence, we’ve forgotten the power of humility
by Jacob Burak
"In the realm of science, if necessity is the mother of invention, then humility is its father. Scientists must be willing to abandon their theories in favor of new, more accurate explanations in order to keep up with constant innovation. Many scientists who made important findings early on in their careers find themselves blocked by ego from making fresh breakthroughs.”
How The Dangerous Lie Exposed By Nike's Plus Size Mannequin Keeps Fat People Stressed & Depressed
by Melinda Sineriz
“representation of fat people exercising or simply living happy, healthy lives does not sell a lie. It shows their lives.”
What do you do when you hear or just sense a girl criticizing her appearance?
by Nancy Gruver
“When we take the time to teach girls about the oppressive social system at the root of the beauty myth, and equip them with a powerful toolkit of actions they, their peers, and supportive adults can take, we prepare them for the real world they live in.”
The O-Word Is the Second Preventable Cause of Cancer After Smoking. Is It True? Is It Helpful?
by Vania Phitidis
“When it comes to risk, it’s important to understand two things. Relative risk is how much more likely it is that a heavier person will get cancer compared to a thin person. Absolute risk is looking at how common that cancer is in the overall population. If the absolute risk is small, then even a large increase in relative risk might not make a lot of difference to the overall risk for a heavier person.”
To end fatphobia, we need to dismantle Western civilization, says Philly therapist Sonalee Rashatwar
by Cassie Owens
“[An] almost universal collective fat traumatic experience is...how BMI and the body mass index scale is used universally to categorize and pathologize bodies based on fatness.”
Soapbox & Shareables
Please consider participating in this important study if you identify as a woman, own a smartphone, and experience eating behaviours that you feel are distressing or unhelpful. These may include binge eating, eating until uncomfortably full, and feeling a sense of loss of control whilst eating. You may describe your eating as binge eating, emotional eating, mindless eating, stress eating, overeating, or a different descriptor.
The study is being conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a smartphone-based stress-reduction intervention for binge eating and related behaviours.
I know the researcher personally and I’m certain that the study and related app is HAES-friendly 🙂
Unpacking Weight Science Podcast
How about bite-sized podcasts that you can claim as professional development?!?
I've designed the Unpacking Weight Science Podcast to suit health professionals, health science students and anyone who wants to know more about human body weight, health outcomes, interpreting weight related research and the far ranging effects of weight bias.
The 20-30 minute monthly podcasts unpack different elements of weight bias & stigma, weight research, BMI, health behaviours and weight neutral approaches. Paid subscribers (only $5/month!) get instant access to the previous 15 episodes plus full show notes, reference list, self-test quiz and resource materials for use in practice. This equates to an hour of professional development activity each month :-)
Available for subscribers now is:
'Starving in the Intensive Care Unit'
Ep 24: People of all sizes end up in intensive care, with their life hanging in the balance. Without modern medicine they’d be dead already. Despite this cutting edge of science setting, larger patients are often arbitrarily underfed. This episode discusses why this is, what the implications for larger patients are, and what we can do about it.
Subscribe now at: https://www.patreon.com/UnpackingWeightScience
and instantly access 18 episodes before the rest of the world!
Episodes 1-5 are now on iTunes!
Search 'Unpacking Weight Science'
to listen to them for free!
Training Opportunities in 2019
FACE-TO-FACE
Fremantle, Western Australia, 26-27 June SOLD OUT
Auckland, New Zealand, 7-8 October
Melbourne, Victoria, 12-13 October
Newcastle, New South Wales, 21-22 November
ALL DISCIPLINES WELCOME
Perth, Western Australia, 28 June SOLD OUT
Auckland, New Zealand, 9 October
Melbourne, Victoria, 11 October
Newcastle, New South Wales, 23 November
ONLINE (SELF-PACED)
Want these 'live'? Then follow me on Twitter (@FionaWiller), Facebook (@HealthNotDiets) and Instagram (@FionaWiller)
Want more info about the non-diet approach or unpacking weight science? Resources include books, courses, workshops and handouts: visit www.healthnotdiets.com
See anything you think I'd like to share or comment about? Post in the comments below or email me at fiona@healthnotdiets.com
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