The Tumblr rabbit hole part 3: HAES and doctors Part 1 Part 2 Hello again! Due to a rather boring weekend, I have taken a foray into Tumblr once more. I’ll definitely slow down with these posts now, but I hope you enjoy today’s read - in which I investigate HAES and going to the doctors as a large woman pig. We begin with the classic “my doctor told me to lose weight but I’m healthy!!” To answer your first question, doctors act like telling you about weight and health will make you want to lose weight because any sensible person will listen to what a professional will say on the subject and take into account. This doctor spent years studying medicine. You spent a few months on Tumblr. This doctor has read thousands of studies that say your weight is unhealthy. This isn’t a matter of opinion, this isn’t some valiant shitlord coming up to you on the street and oinking at you (kudos for anyone who has the bravery to do that), it’s a medical professional telling you straight, cold facts. And then you mention you felt happier when you weren’t dieting. This is merely you experiencing a form of cognitive dissonance over short term versus long term happiness. For example, today I had an intense craving for Oreos. I could have driven to the store, bought a pack and wolfed them down in my car, but I chose not to indulge my craving. True, if I had eaten the cookies, in the moment I would be happy, relishing the sweetness of my favorite treat and being washed away in the sensory experience of it all. But I knew that later, as I sat at my desk, totaling my calories for the day, I would severely regret my choices. I would love to live in a world where I could eat fries, donuts, and Oreos all day and still remain thin and healthy. But I don’t, and I never will. It takes effort sometimes, navigating the urges that my body, designed for a time thousands of years ago, struggles with when placed in a world where mountains of food are available at the push of a button. I could give up, indulging in every craving the moment it appeared. I’d be happy at the moment. But deep down, I wouldn’t be happy. I’d know, deep down, that it wasn’t natural, it wasn’t right, to live this way. What would I do with those feelings? I’d like to say I would get in shape again, use them for motivation. But if I was that far gone, it’s likely I’d deny them, twisting them around in my head and ignoring any logic thrown my way. Perhaps, for an outlet, I’d start a blog complaining about how society doesn’t cater to my ridiculous needs. See? The sequence of events that leads one to participate in the FA movement is very clear. Anyway, we move to our next example: How this toxic denial can twist any decision you make, no matter the outcome. Okay, you lost 13 pounds in one week? Now, with 1 pound of fat equaling about 3,500 calories, and since you claimed to keep no food down, you would still have to exercise enough to have a deficit of -45,000 calories. I don’t know your story. Maybe you weren’t able to keep anything down for a week. Maybe you were dizzy. Maybe (and the odds are rather stacked on one side) you exaggerated the 13 pounds of weight loss.  It’s possible you were dizzy, nauseous, and lost a few pounds. But this is where the problem was - at the end of that post. You said that you decided to stop losing weight - not because you were dizzy and sick - but because you were losing weight. I can’t wrap my head around that logic. Because it’s fatlogic. It’s too grossly large, lumpy, and misshapen to wrap anything around. How about this woman who totally missed the point? So you slathered lotion onto your rolls multiple times a day and now you think the doctor is wrong? He was wrong. He didn’t know that fatties will do everything except lose weight. I have many tattoos, and often, when they are healing, there’s a phase where they are dry, itchy, and peeling and you have to apply lotion many times a day. That is pretty fucking annoying to take care of. I’d much rather drop a few pounds rather than have to deal with that lotion every day. I’d bet a dollar to a donut (so cheap! Better stock up teehee) that the day she stops moisturizing her skin rash, the day it comes back. But it’s too bad about your skin rash because no one can ever lose weight ever! Okay. I know this is bullshit. You know this is bullshit. Any more commentary on this is just beating a dead horse. But if “permanently starving myself” is the opposite of stuffing my face with corn syrup, artificial flavors, and grease and permanently damaging my body, then sign me up! Ahh, finally! An eat beast acknowledged that HAES has serious problems - wait a minute, that’s not a problem at all! Healthy people are better people. Yes, they are smarter and have better willpower. That is the truth. To address your claim of ableism, yes, often times the disabled cannot reach normal health. In no ways am I saying that being disabled means that you have a free pass to get fat. You simply have to do the best with what you have. To illustrate this further, let me tell you about my grandfather. He had cancer and was treated for it. Over a decade later, after a series of scans, they discovered that his insides were practically swiss cheese from all the radiation he received in that area. Every day, even though he was on a cocktail of opioids and other intense pain drugs, even though his intestines were rotting inside his body, and even though he felt like someone was jamming a hot poker up his ass (his own words), he would drag himself out of bed and go on his 4-mile walk. Every single day for two years, until the infection became too much for him and his body surrendered to it.  Was he as healthy as I was? Of course not, I was in my prime and he was dying of sepsis. Was he as healthy as he could be considering his conditions? Absolutely. That is what we should strive for. It’s not health at every size, it’s health at every condition. Do the best with what you’ve got.  Yes, that means that 300 pounds is not the best you can do. It hurts to hear, I know. I like to save the craziest for last, so enjoy this: We’ve stooped so low that the doctor announcing that a patient is obese is considered triggering. Okay, so you don’t want to know what your weight is. That means that you are ashamed of your weight. That means that us shitlords/ladies are doing our work. Glad we got that cleared up. Moving on - gee, “fat chick syndrome”, doesn’t appear to be a very professional term, does it? Could this be some kind of broken fatlogic? A simple Google search for “joint pain obesity conditions” returned this. It was at this point that I was forced to pause my research for a moment in order to properly crack the fuck up. Seriously!? Your joints hurt because you’re that fat, you go to the doctor, and he tells you that you suffer from lipedema. Instead of getting treatment for a condition that affects 11% of women (webmd.com), you twist it in your slow, buttery little mind and then decide to submit a whiny post to your favorite FA blog. You have a fucking valid health condition because you fucked up your body with food, but instead of getting help, you make fun of it because your feelings are hurt from the doctor telling you you're obese. Words cannot express how hard I’m laughing at this. So what is fat chick syndrome anyway? Here are the most common symptoms- In denial about their weight and size, often choosing to ignore or avoid the number on the scale. The patient chooses to ignore and block out deeply ingrained emotions such as shame that revolve around their weight, doing so by comfort eating or misdirecting these volatile emotions towards what may be the solution to their weight issues (like “diet culture”) Is quick to react irrationally and angrily to any truth, as seen here Oh, what’s that? Every person in the FA movement has fat chick syndrome? Well, color me shocked. This your ignorant fucking squiddittle (I so want that to be my flair) signing off. Have a lovely day. Edit: Part 4!