Bless you. I don’t need permission to be fat any more than I need permission to be short.

This is pretty amazing and honestly just what I needed this week!

What an excellent, concise presentation of the issue!

I recently wrote a post on how the BMI, because of its rigidity, actually encourages people to give up on seeking better health because it is so difficult (practically impossible) for the vast majority of people to reach and more importantly, maintain, that magic BMI-correct weight.

The first response I got was from a doctor who first stated unequivocally that the BMI was 99.9% accurate in predicting health status and then went on to say that usually it’s people who can’t get down to the right BMI who complain about it. Basically, in his opinion, I was just suffering from “sour grapes”.

Fortunately, a number of other readers jumped in and gave him a well-deserved tongue lashing.

I do have to agree to a certain extent with Sarissa, though. People always need a scape-goat and those whose body shape or size does not conform to the norm are today’s favourite scape-goat…health be damned! Nevertheless, I won’t give up the fight for a better, fairer world. We *can* make a difference, no matter how small.

One of the things I am most grateful is Amy, herself, allowing herself to be at the weight her body is naturally gravitating towards and yet being considered “obese” by BMI standards. And she’s okay with that. That, to me, is truly recovery from a disorder without buying into the BS.

Let’s face it – BMI is a rehash of height/weight tables which had a level of arbitrariness to them. Because BMI doesn’t take into account issues of muscle percentage or frame, an athletic person can often find themselves in the “overweight” or “obese” category, which is completely ludicrous.

I’m glad that as a woman who is still “obese” (said tongue completely in cheek), she heads up an eating disorder treatment facility. Usually anyone in the ED world has to be thin to somehow give “hope” to the rest of us slobs. Poppycock! Amy is proof that HAES and learning to trust yourself is the antidote to diet mentality, which should, by itself, be considered a disorder of thinking.

Thanks for this!

Thank you Amy! This is wonderful and I will share the article on my FB page and website!
Warmly,
Dr. Deah Schwartz

the question is not whether you need permission to be fat…

the question is whether or not you need permission…from “experts”, “government”, “our leaders”…to be anything…

once we figure out that we are our own best experts and that any experts are merely consultants from which to retrieve information to make our own decisions, the better of as a whole society we will be.

but i’m not holding my breath because we are not easily controlled that way….

eating can be as political as breathing and its all about control…over ourselves, or something/someone outside ourselves exerting control over us.

wake up; think for yourself people. these are only other fallible humans dictating to us, not gods.

The BMI “is” like the food pyramid, but not everyone has gotten the memo that it doesn’t work in practice the way they thought in theory.

According to the BMI, I should be 145lbs. The one time I did get down to that weight, during an illness, the medical community put me on a milkshake a day to gain weight quickly because my heart was reacting like an anorexic’s. My body likes hovering around 160, my eating/exercising habits keeps me around 170. These numbers are approximate according to yearly check-ups as I do not own a scale, but have held true pretty much since my twenties.

But I can walk anything less than 20 blocks and don’t use elevators under four flights; am used to climbing 10 flights of stairs a day in the course of a subway commute, and can carry about 50 lbs on my back for miles or 40 lbs of groceries 7 blocks. I concentrate on what is “IN” my food: preservatives, additives, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, hydrogenated fats…rather than how many calories are in it.

Could I cover “Fitness” Magazine? Heck no. But more importantly, I’ve grown to the grand old age of 42 liking pretty much everything about my body–even though it it is decidedly outside the female norm at 6 feet.–except my arms (early onset grandma arms, runs in the family) which in this day and age is a serious accomplishment for a female. Especially for a female constantly informed that she was too “big” as in too tall, too strong, shoulders too wide…etc. Eh, baloney.

Concentrate on health. Concentrate on eating thoughtfully and well to nourish your body with nutrients it needs both for health and your specific illness. Work to attain the level of physical strength and ability to do the things you love or always wished you could do within the limits of disability (have you looked into water therapy/exercise?). The rest will fall into place naturally.

Targeting a number on a scale is setting yourself up for failure–the key point to the article–because they weren’t thinking of you, Anne, when they came up with it.

I think that it might be somewhat difficult for people, like that reporter, who have never experimented without a dieting map or who haven’t yet truly gotten fed up with dieting to grasp HAES.

Amy wrote “Often we are explorers without a map at first, just learning how to recognize basic cues.” So, true. Being an explorer without a map is a scary prospect for many. And, fear can sometimes turn into defensiveness about and attack of concepts that shake up our beliefs.

I learned about HAES about three years ago, after I started practicing intuitive eating. In the past few years, the importance and the impact that HAES concepts can have on the world have become more and more obvious. However, I don’t know if HAES would have really clicked, if I hadn’t already started experiencing the joy and the sense of empowerment of truly listening and responding to my body and connecting with others who were also experimenting in that way.

My own personal and professional application of HAES is the concept of supporting and experiencing one’s “best body”. I’ve shared about that concept in a recent article: http://www.transformativeeating.com/your-best-body

My favorite line from this post is: “It is about each of us individually listening with body and mind, letting our unique bodies find the way to the weight they are happy to be, and valuing whatever the result.” This is the realization that I am working to support as well. So, it’s great to read and connect with others around that vision.

I resent the idea that is constantly being pushed by overweight people that we should just listen to our bodies and let them guide us when it comes to food. This is absolutely ridiculous!

Think of it from an evolutionary perspective. Back when humans were scavenging feeders, they had to travel great distances to find food, mostly by running at a steady pace and scanning for meals someone else left behind. Whenever they saw food, they ate it, because the availability and quality of the food they found was not assured from one day to the next. Therefore, humans are hardwired to engage in food-seeking behavior AT ALL TIMES. We are also hardwired to crave foods high in sugars and fats, because they were critical sources of energy for an organism which was constantly expending energy through continuous cardiovascular exercise.

In the current day, humans are mostly sedentary and constantly exposed to processed foods that they simply do not need. However, the evolutionary drive to eat constantly is still strong. If I listened to my body, I would eat all day long, and I would certainly not eat fresh, low calorie foods. Nor would I exercise at all, because exercise is painful, and the body naturally seeks to avoid pain.

I recently embarked on a diet and rigorous exercise plan with the goal of losing a couple of pounds and changing my behavior in regards to fitness. So let me just say–I empathize with those of us trying to lose weight! It is extremely difficult to stick with a serving size of carrots while others pig out on wings and pizza. However, keep in mind that any behavior which strengthens self-control and promotes the victory of what the mind knows is right over what the body wants is a positive one! Your body is not always right. It also has the capacity to become physically addicted to many dangerous substances and behaviors, and to alter the functions of the mind in order to achieve what it desires. This certainly includes unhealthy eating on both sides of the spectrum–too much or too little.

BMI and the ideal weight for one’s height are not myths or evil concepts promoted by all those mean doctors to make us feel bad about ourselves. They are real. In fact, the only instance in which they do not really apply is for athletes with high muscle mass–certainly not the group targeted in this article. Stop making excuses for yourselves and clinging desperately to the idea your body knows the truth. You know the truth, as does everyone else–being overweight is an unhealthy condition of both the mind and body.

As a final comment, I must rebuff the claim that the author makes that overweight people live the longest. Is this really due to them being overweight, or is this a result of the fact that people of a higher socioeconomic status are more likely to have more access to food, but unlikely to consume very much fast food, leading to them being overweight but not obese? And also have greater access to health care and live saving measures? Just some food for thought.

As any synopsis we have of our ancestors is conjecture, albeit based on much study, because none of us living today have the faintest idea of how actually they lived day-to-day. We can only draw conclusion from cycles. If an eon from now someone finds one of our garbage dumps, no doubt there will be some missing pieces to any puzzle picture formed at that time.

That said, what I am proposing which you seem to mistake as a theory “pushed by overweight people that we should just listen to our bodies and let them guide us when it comes to food” IS specifically in tune with our hunter/gatherer species because I want to work in harmony WITH the creation I was given to steward, and not conquer or subsume it. I got better things to do with my time.

I bet our hunter/gatherer species learned real quick what “foods” were good for them and which ones killed them not only by watching the animal kingdoms around them, but from good old fashioned trial and error.

We modern humans have lost touch with that ability specifically through letting “experts” with their god-complex on what is acceptable “embark[ing] on a diet and rigorous exercise plan with the goal of losing a couple of pounds and changing my behavior in regards to fitness” and agribusiness deciding what is food–with the humans involved often paid by both camps. If we follow your precepts, we become nothing but automations and lab rats while you all figure out “what works” like some twilight zone episode.

I do not chose to change my behavior and become something I am not designed to be. I am not sedimentary and I do not usually eat processed foods simply because I do not know what is in it…just as an ancestor would not eat a plant until she had seen something else eat it first. If she ate an item some other species ate, and it made her feel poorly, she did not eat it again–she could not afford to be poorly but for us there are INDUSTRIES BUILT on our continued feeling poorly about our appearance.

I do the same thing with the mass marketed products entitled food. How is a gluten free, no transfat, enriched, diet, patented apple snack better than an apple? Just because some panel of experts come up with it? That is what I mean by listening to my body.

Yes, it will require education but I am advocating getting that education for oneself instead of leaving your body in the hands of someone else and doing what they say without thought–and possibly damaging your spirit if you ARE one of those exceptions that that particular systems rules. There are round pegs and square pegs but the square begs are angling for market share.

In any case my lifestyle is an evolutionary success from the standpoint that it provides me with the fuel, stamina and health I need to survive in my world, and survive happily. And, my world requires that I be able to carry 40 lbs of groceries home for my family, not that I fit into someone else’s preconceived idea of how my earthly chassis needs to look or perform.

If you are so overweight that you do not FEEL healthy, regardless of what a doctor tells you (or gives you), or if you cannot do the things you wish like run a marathon (in which I personally have no interest but I can hike 5 miles in rough terrain) then the best piece of advice I can offer you is to start reading–yes reading– about your food.

I’m not talking about its calories, fats, salts or whatever, but its marketing, its studies, its reports to the FDA, and its CEOs and their investments, its craving-inducing additives, its pesticides and growth hormones (hint: GROWTH hormone designed to cause mammals to gain weight quickly). An apple from the local fruit stand doesn’t need a CEO (unless its a GMO).

Start with your favorite…it’ll be hard, but it’s worth it. If you want to start soft, try margarine. Knowing how dissimilar that “food” is to real food, and having it drummed in over and over again the more you look, should begin to turn you toward the simple things…the things that have been healthy a thousand years.

And it don’t matter if you eat berries all day; I’m sure our ancestors did too whenever they found a berry patch. By any standard, I am at least 10 lbs overweight, which is also evolutionary and scientifically proven to be a norm in non-famine years for the female of the species. My chassis has not prevented me from doing anything I ever wanted to do from accomplishment to romance despite not fitting into any common, “desired,” mold.

Put it this way, I got 20 lbs or so, more to go before I begin to physically suffer than any size 2/ 0% body-fat individual, should another Katrina, Fukushima, tsunami, earthquake, scenario happen in my world. What’s more, I can pick up and carry a size 2-14 if need be, can the reverse be said? Even for another size 2? I am not lean and mean but built like a brick house per se, which has seemed to be considered just fine mating material to a wide variety of males so the reproduction drive is qualified. The only thing my way of life does not satisfy is: the experts.

I am healthfully, entirely in keeping with the most survivable evolutionary model for the female human animal. Having a certain heart rate while running on a treadmill is not–unless you’re a lab rat (whose lifespan while perhaps slightly longer than a wild rat…well…).

I’ll stick with the grand design and evolve at its pace. It’s been around longer than the “experts”.

I have joined and quit Weight Watchers twice in the past few months after losing 35 pounds, and then hitting a plateau. I really need to lose 65 more pounds. I have now joined again, but I feel frustrated and scared. I have lost a lot of weight in the past, only to gain most of it back. Everyone tells me how “good” I look when I’m slimmer, but all I feel is resentment for having to track every bite that goes in my mouth. I want to be thinner, but I am at the point that I am getting very depressed about it all. Is there some way to know your body well enough to control your weight on your own without a structured eating plan? I really do need help. Are we all supposed to be the weight on those charts?

I was less than 120lbs several years ago, at 5’10″ I was really quite underweight. I had a baby and put on a lot of weight. Currently I spend most of my working time running around, and even though I am nearly 210lbs now, I FEEL so much healthier, I have more energy, I am not cold all the time, and I look happier too

My new years resolution will be to feel even healthier. I don’t care if I gain or loose weight (I refuse to own scales) I just want to be healthy. Thank you so much for a wonderful article.