jillc
Well-Known Member
Interesting - the author doesn't discuss metabolic disorder, but it's a step in the right direction IMO.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/29/morbid-obesity-anorexia-disorder-fat-shaming
A new study from University College London found that weight discrimination accounts for about 40% of the harmful psychological effects associated with obesity. Lead author of the study, Dr Sarah Jackson, thinks that the UK should have legislation to protect people against “fat shaming”, similar to our legislation on race and sex. Otherwise, we run the risk of sending out the message that it’s socially acceptable to behave in this way.
I would also ask: isn’t it time there was widespread public recognition of certain types and degrees of obesity as food disorders, which have the potential to be as complex, out of control and pernicious as anorexia? In fact, one would hope that experts in food disorders, who are dealing with everything from anorexia to binge-eating, would find this an odd question and an old one. With any unhealthy relationship with food, there are always psychological issues.
However, in terms of public acceptance of obesity as a food disorder, that might be slow to catch on. Too many people don’t want to acknowledge that, at the extremes of obesity, sufferers could be ill and helpless. These are usually the same naysayers who trumpet: “Eat less, move more,” who wave individual responsibility like a big stick with which to beat the obese.
Of course, individual responsibility works – but only for some people, and only sometimes. This is not even taking into account the fact that food itself has changed, rendering those susceptible to unwanted weight gain, or food addiction, even more at risk And, while in terms of discrimination, some might say, you can’t change your race or sex, but you can control your weight, isn’t this rather simplistic?
There seems to be a world of difference between moderately overweight couch potatoes, who would sportingly accept their own culpability, as most do, and a morbidly obese person who dramatically over-consumes food, gorging on it, craving it, as though it were a drug. Watching the latter group eat, it’s as though they are hypnotised, in a state of psychological and emotional paralysis, not entirely in control of their actions. How could “eat less, move more” and cries of individual responsibility hope to penetrate this dense, toxic, self-loathing fog?
Yet still the myth persists that being overweight is always people’s own fault. They allowed themselves to get into that state, they need to snap out of it; no exceptions, one diagnosis fits all. Would anyone dare to direct such off-the-peg attitudes to an anorexic? “Being dangerously underweight is your own fault. You allowed yourself to get into this state. Snap out of it.” Not these days.
Yet before anorexia was properly understood, “just make them eat” was a catch-all analysis. Anorexics were judged to be neurotics and attention-seekers, a bunch of spoiled, over-indulged, exclusively teenage girls. Now obese people are treated just as roughly and unkindly, the only difference being that the clueless, unhelpful, potentially deadly advice has gone from “eat more” to “eat less”.
Is this where the crude line of obesity as the new anorexia might make sense – in terms of the length of time it might take for sufferers to be taken seriously? If certain types of obesity were publicly accepted as the consequence of food disorders, the issue of personal responsibility would become void. An obese person’s lack of control around food would be deemed equivalent to an anorexic’s need for control around food. Obese people would not inspire mirth, contempt or shaming, any more than a dangerously emaciated anorexic person would.
As with anorexia, it’s all just a matter of banishing hard-wired prejudices and adjusting perception. If the public can accept the existence of a food disorder at one end of the spectrum, why not the other? Anorexia took some time to be taken seriously – how long will the obese have to wait?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/29/morbid-obesity-anorexia-disorder-fat-shaming
A new study from University College London found that weight discrimination accounts for about 40% of the harmful psychological effects associated with obesity. Lead author of the study, Dr Sarah Jackson, thinks that the UK should have legislation to protect people against “fat shaming”, similar to our legislation on race and sex. Otherwise, we run the risk of sending out the message that it’s socially acceptable to behave in this way.
I would also ask: isn’t it time there was widespread public recognition of certain types and degrees of obesity as food disorders, which have the potential to be as complex, out of control and pernicious as anorexia? In fact, one would hope that experts in food disorders, who are dealing with everything from anorexia to binge-eating, would find this an odd question and an old one. With any unhealthy relationship with food, there are always psychological issues.
However, in terms of public acceptance of obesity as a food disorder, that might be slow to catch on. Too many people don’t want to acknowledge that, at the extremes of obesity, sufferers could be ill and helpless. These are usually the same naysayers who trumpet: “Eat less, move more,” who wave individual responsibility like a big stick with which to beat the obese.
Of course, individual responsibility works – but only for some people, and only sometimes. This is not even taking into account the fact that food itself has changed, rendering those susceptible to unwanted weight gain, or food addiction, even more at risk And, while in terms of discrimination, some might say, you can’t change your race or sex, but you can control your weight, isn’t this rather simplistic?
There seems to be a world of difference between moderately overweight couch potatoes, who would sportingly accept their own culpability, as most do, and a morbidly obese person who dramatically over-consumes food, gorging on it, craving it, as though it were a drug. Watching the latter group eat, it’s as though they are hypnotised, in a state of psychological and emotional paralysis, not entirely in control of their actions. How could “eat less, move more” and cries of individual responsibility hope to penetrate this dense, toxic, self-loathing fog?
Yet still the myth persists that being overweight is always people’s own fault. They allowed themselves to get into that state, they need to snap out of it; no exceptions, one diagnosis fits all. Would anyone dare to direct such off-the-peg attitudes to an anorexic? “Being dangerously underweight is your own fault. You allowed yourself to get into this state. Snap out of it.” Not these days.
Yet before anorexia was properly understood, “just make them eat” was a catch-all analysis. Anorexics were judged to be neurotics and attention-seekers, a bunch of spoiled, over-indulged, exclusively teenage girls. Now obese people are treated just as roughly and unkindly, the only difference being that the clueless, unhelpful, potentially deadly advice has gone from “eat more” to “eat less”.
Is this where the crude line of obesity as the new anorexia might make sense – in terms of the length of time it might take for sufferers to be taken seriously? If certain types of obesity were publicly accepted as the consequence of food disorders, the issue of personal responsibility would become void. An obese person’s lack of control around food would be deemed equivalent to an anorexic’s need for control around food. Obese people would not inspire mirth, contempt or shaming, any more than a dangerously emaciated anorexic person would.
As with anorexia, it’s all just a matter of banishing hard-wired prejudices and adjusting perception. If the public can accept the existence of a food disorder at one end of the spectrum, why not the other? Anorexia took some time to be taken seriously – how long will the obese have to wait?
