Get Your Tools for the Revolution

I’m excited to be speaking at the Third Annual Fat Activism Conference.  The conference will be 100% online, so you can listen from wherever you are by phone or computer.

It will take place September 23-25, 2016 and features a diverse group of speakers and topics all related to Fat Activism.

Today we launch our 48-Hour Rush Registration meaning that if you register before 12:01 Pacific Time on June 24th you’ll get the lowest registration rates, and special bonuses.

Check it out by clicking here!

 

Disclosure: I’m proud to be a part of the Fat Activism Conference organization team as well as a speaker and affiliate. By clicking on the link above and registering for the conference I will receive a commission on your purchase. Thanks in advance! 

New Year, New Program: You Can Help!

Starting a new year is a natural time to start new habits. That’s what all that blasted “resolution” stuff is about. But this year, instead of making some simple resolution that you’ll forget before the end of January, how about getting yourself set up to achieve real body love and hate loss success?

And here’s where I step in to help guide you toward that goal.

In January, I will be launching a new program to help you go further on your Hate Loss journey. This program will be a set of easy-to-implement strategies with guidance from yours truly.

The coolest part is that you get to help choose which program it will be.

Will you help me by taking a quick survey?

Tell me which step you would most like to take next on your Hate Loss journey. I’ve got six ideas and room for another if you’ve got one yourself. Click on the box below to take you there.

Your help is so very appreciated! Watch for the official launch coming up in January!

Have a great holiday!

The Milestone of Dissent

Ladies and gentlemen, readers of all types, I have reached what I consider to be a huge milestone: I got my first negative comment!

In response to my last post about ASDAH’s (the Association for Size Diversity and Health) neat video “Poodle Science” which, through the clever use of an idea foreign to some called “analogy,” breaks down the flaws in weight loss science, I received the following comment:

People are not the same as dogs. There are no breeds of humans. This is very similar to all the other HAES nonsense–unscientific and wistfully mistaken. You seem like a nice young woman. I’m sorry that your beliefs are so badly out of line with reality.

I definitely chuckled as I read this one.

First, because I had finally posted something that prompted someone to spend their precious time to tell me how wrong I was. Personally, I feel that unless you’ve got at least one dissenter, you’re not doing anything revolutionary. When you only receive positive comments, you’re not pushing any boundaries, you’re not fostering any deep thinking. You’re probably just telling the masses what they want to hear, and you’re most likely just preaching to the choir. I am happy to receive the confirmation that, after a year of sharing my views and experiences, that I have finally plucked someone’s chord of disbelief hard enough to incite a negative response. Go me!

Second thing that made me chuckle is that, yeah, it’s true: humans are not the same as dogs. I know that, because I’m a nice, young woman. ASDAH and their wonderful team decided to take the scientific analysis to the masses by using layman’s terms through analogy. People may not necessarily understand the complex biochemical reactions that go on in the body when it is forced into a starvation mode, but people definitely understand that dogs are different and a big dog is hugely different from a small one.

And, third, you do not have to share my beliefs for my beliefs to be true to me.

You do not have to believe in the intersection of fat and healthy.

You do not have to believe that it is possible for me to love my fat body.

You do not have to believe that it is right or prudent for me to stay fat.

Because I do not believe that your body love or shame threatens the way I feel about my body.

I do not believe that any of your privileges disable you from understanding my struggles.

What I do with my body does not directly affect you. I am free: I am guaranteed the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. I am free to choose, among many things, who/what I worship, who/what I love, who I become.

And one of my choices was to begin loving my fat body.

And that choice has nothing to do with you.

ASDAH Presents: Poodle Science

Have you heard about the Health At Every Size® or HAES principles but still have questions about how they really work when all the science folk are saying something completely different?

Enter Poodle Science: the false assumptions of weight loss theory. Three minutes of education you just can’t miss!

Why Isn’t Obesity Research Better Known?

Because this is a super good question that requires an answer. The research is out there, contesting the “exercise to lose weight” and “lose weight and stay thin” mentality, but few people have heard of it. Education is always the key to ending stigma, hatred and shame.

Living ~400lbs

CBC has an article on the part of obesity research that doesn’t always get talked about.

Tim Caulfield says his fellow obesity academics tend to tiptoe around the truth. “You go to these meetings and you talk to researchers, you get a sense there is almost a political correctness around it, that we don’t want this message to get out there,” he said.

“You’ll be in a room with very knowledgeable individuals, and everyone in the room will know what the data says and still the message doesn’t seem to get out.”

In part, that’s because it’s such a harsh message. “You have to be careful about the stigmatizing nature of that kind of image,” Caulfield says. “That’s one of the reasons why this myth of weight loss lives on.”

Stigmatizing.  How is it stigmatizing to know that being fat isn’t something that can be easily changed by anyone?  One…

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