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I’m Asking You For A Peer-Reviewed Study Showing That A Typical Fat Person Can Become Sustainably Non-Fat Through Deliberate Weight-Loss

drst:

living400lbs:

veronicastraszh:

shellcollector:

marcusseldon:

veronicastraszh:

Shots fired.

I suspect the comments on this post will prove completely the point of the post.

I understand his frustration with trolls and other obnoxious people who just want to hate on fat people. These purple are dumb, and even if most very fat people could lose a significant amount of weight from (not unhealthy) diet and exercise and keep it off in the long term (a question I’m largely agnostic on), they still shouldn’t be judged as people or hated on.

That said, I cannot help but feel this post is a quintessential example of an isolated demand of rigor. Very very few studies in the entirety of the social and medical sciences will fit the criteria he laid out because studies like this are very very hard to do. If this is evidence he requires to be convinced that dieting and exercise for long term weight loss works, then he’ll probably never be convinced because it seems highly unlikely such a study will ever exist, even if diet and weight loss in the long term do work.

I can sympathize with the fact that most social and medical science is terrible and shoddy, but if you’re going to have such a high standard then you also have to hold the hypothesis that diet and exercising doesn’t work to the same standard, and be agnostic if such studies for that hypothesis don’t exist. Maybe there are rigorous studies in this ideal mold that do show that, but I kinda doubt it from my layperson’s familiarity of social and medical science.

I don’t understand what you’re driving at, Marcus. I work in medical research, and none of these are criteria that I wouldn’t expect to see applied to clinical studies in general. In the field of transplantation, which I know most about, people are obsessed with long-term outcomes, and justifiably so, because something that only works for a year isn’t usually good enough in the context of a lifetime condition. And having most of the participants drop out is  a major red flag in any clinical research. As for ‘significant amounts of weight lost’, well, this is probably the most stringent demand here, but clinicians – and this should hardly be surprising, if you think about it – are always asking whether results are clinically significant, as in do they really represent a non-negligible change. This is exactly the kind of thing researchers get grilled about in my field when they present their research. I agree with you that there are some bad studies out there, but there are also some pretty damn good studies, which have resulted in marked increases in outcome for many conditions. And if you think that scientists and doctors aren’t concerned with the difference between those two categories, that’s… very much not my experience, is all I can say. 

I think it’s sensible and necessary to look very critically at ‘science’, rather than accepting reported findings without examination, but if you just sweep it all away as being ‘terrible and shoddy’ then you actually lose the ability to distinguish good evidence from bad. 

[CW: fatphobic language]

Agreed.

The point is, it turns out to be very difficult for fat people to lose a meaningful amount of weight. It is very, very difficult for them to lose the kind of weight that would transition them from being viewed as “gross lazy fatties with no dignity” to being viewed as “basically normal folks.”

In other words, as Mr Deutsch points out, a 10% weight loss ain’t gonna change the shit sandwich the world makes folks like him eat.

I mean, I lived that life and it’s awful. Furthermore, regardless of our aspirations for social change, fat people gotta live their lives now.

Similarly, as a trans women, I agree that we over-emphasize certain narrow beauty standards. Nevertheless, I work very hard to fit those standards. The reason is, my life ain’t merely a political statement, and I want to be happy.

Anyway, this conversation is in desperate need of a truth-bomb. It seems like, a significant fuckton of people believe that weight loss is easy, and that fat people are just lazy or unmotivated or whatever — cuz it is easier to justify being a mean-spirited shit to someone if you believe they deserve it. It is easier to believe they deserve it if you believe they have a choice.

Which, we can all see the holes in this. But all the same, people are going to believe all manner of dumb things. Laying out the truth about weight loss seems an obvious good thing.

This is not an isolated demand for rigor. There are plenty of studies showing that weight loss is much harder than believed by the general public. If people insist on believing otherwise, we get to ask them why they believe this.

Reblogging for the excellent comments about how Barry’s criteria are totally reasonable for most fields of medical research…even as they’re seen as UNreasonable for weight loss research. 

Also may be relevant: 

US NIH on best practices in weight loss recommends a 10% loss GOAL. Note how this is very different from popular thought that fat people can easily become thin.   https://living400lbs.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/weight-loss-expectations/ 

Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not the Answer is a peer-reviewed study looking at the effectiveness of current weight loss diets and determines they don’t work for most people. Key quote (emphasis added): 

Reviews of the scientific literature on dieting (e.g., Garner
& Wooley, 1991; Jeffery et al., 2000; Perri & Fuller, 1995)
generally draw two conclusions about diets. First, diets do
lead to short-term weight loss. One summary of diet studies
from the 1970s to the mid-1990s found that these weight
loss programs consistently resulted in participants losing an
average of 5%–10% of their weight (Perri & Fuller, 1995).
Second, these losses are not maintained. As noted in one
review, “It is only the rate of weight regain, not the fact of
weight regain, that appears open to debate” (Garner &
Wooley, 1991, p. 740).

Oh man, YES. ALL OF THIS.

A peer reviewed study, showing significant weight loss (not merely 10% of body weight), maintained over 5 years, with the majority of the participants remaining in the study through the end.

Until that exists, assume there is no way to permanently make fat people thin.

To Diet Or Not Diet: Science Weighs In

bigfatscience:

Let’s just summarize here:

  • The non-dieters [who practiced HAES] had better health (as measured by cholesterol and blood pressure). The dieters didn’t.
  • The non-dieters felt happier and better about their bodies and their lives. The dieters didn’t.
  • The non-dieters kept going. More than half of the dieters just stopped showing up – and based on my own life experience, I’d guess that they were at home having some ice cream and wanting to scream at themselves because they “messed up” some part of the diet and couldn’t do it anymore.
  • The non-dieters got to eat what they liked and didn’t need to obsess. The dieters got to keep conventional “food diaries” to count their calories and fat grams.
  • Oh, and no one really lost weight in the long term. (which is consistent with other research suggesting that no diet really works in the long term).

And yes, if the only thing you are thinking is: “what? NONE of the groups lost weight?” I hear you.

But here’s the thing: for most people, conventional dieting just does not work in the long run. In fact, for many people dieting can lead to weight gain as your body over-reacts to what it perceives as starvation.

It’s okay if you don’t like this reality. Most people don’t, so they just figure that they’ll go on another diet — because for them, this time, it will work. And yet: most of my clients have been on many of them, and come to me once they are completely exhausted and frustrated. They’ve spent the last few months or few decades alternating being on diets and eating way too much.

So, if you may or may not lose weight anyway, how would you like to spend the next two years?

on unsold adoptables

atrocityland:

I wrote a small note about unsold adoptables on my FA; I have quite a few designs still available in my gallery, consider taking a look. (thank you so much to all those who support my work! it really means so much to me.)

alt.support.dissociation FAQ 3/4

solipsistful:

i’m gonna give due credit to @captain-s-mindfang for finding this

*_*

look at how weird this is, from 20 years later. especially the “What causes multiplicity” and also some of the ambivalence around it being a “problem”

dissscoursesss

– Ace

I love looking back at old community hubs like these.

Remembering Japan’s badass schoolgirl gangs

rejectedprincesses:

When all-male gangs wouldn’t let them join, all-female “sukeban” gangs formed their own identities – starting with the uniform.

Between the layers of clothing, sukeban girls would conceal weapons – razors, chains and anything else that one ought to take a jot more seriously than a yo-yo. Indeed, the sukeban sisterhood rivalled their male equivalents for violence and crime: facing off with rival factions, punishing girls within their own group (e.g. for cheating with someone else’s boyfriend), or generally colouring suburban ennui with a splash of petty crime. What’s more, Yakuza-style levels of organisation meant that, at the subculture’s peak, the largest alliance had over 20,000 teenage girls sworn in.

They even inspired a series of exploitation-style movies, akin to the works of Russ Meyer. These movies bore titles like Delinquent Girl Boss, Girl Boss (Sukeban), and Terrifying Girls’ High School.

It continues today in the form of all-female bosozoku biker gangs:

As the expectations for young women to marry and settle continue to be a fact of life in Japan, so too has this all-girl outlaw subculture prevailed as an alternative narrative for young women. Today, you can spot them by their embellished and embroidered jumpsuits, floral tattoos, long manicured nails and bright pink, heavily stickered bikes.

7 Wild Reasons Why Smoking Weed Became Illegal In The U.S. In The First Place

wrecknician:

platanerx:

1. Smoking it was associated with Mexican immigrants.

In a super shocking turn of events, the war against weed has always been fueled by xenophobia and racism. When Mexican immigrants started crossing the border in huge numbers in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, American citizens began to hold them accountable for the country’s dilemmas du jour—particularly the proliferation of urban slums and labor unrest. Marijuana was available in the US for medical and recreational purposes looooong before **THE MEXICANS** arrived, but of course, the moment racist policy makers caught wind that the diablos were trafficking/smokin’ it, weed became stigmatized as a categorically Mexican—and therefore, dirty/poor/stupid/crazy—thing.

When Montana outlawed pot in 1927—a decade before the Marijuana Tax Act effectively criminalized the substance on a federal level—the Butte Montana Standard reported a legislator’sawesome statement: “When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff…he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts to execute all his political enemies.” And in Texas, a senator was quoted saying that “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [weed] is what makes them crazy.”

2. …And Black jazz musicians.

By the time jazz arrived to Harlem, weed had been established as an essential part of *the Black music scene.* Jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway wrote about pot in their music—e.g. Calloway’s “That Funny Reefer Man”—and as a result, marijuana was demonized as a *Black thing.* When the Treasury Department established the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, Harry Anslinger, the bureau’s first director, crystallized the country’s position re: Negroes ‘n’ weed when, at an FBN conference, he was allegedly overheard saying, “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.” Indeed, Chicanos and “darkies” were believed to be plying America’s youth with weed, so as you can imagine, that shit had TO GO.

3. …And ASSASSINS.

Lol, for real. People drew their associations between weed and violent behavior based on the centuries-old stories of Marco Polo (you know, the Italian merchant whose adventures he recorded in The Travels Of Marco Polo, the book credited with introducing Europeans to Central Asia and China), who returned to Europe with the tall tale that the Hassan-i Sabbah fueled his followers with hash—a potent form of marijuana—before sending them on murder missions. I shit you not—in the 1931 New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Dr. A. E. Fossier wrote, “Under the influence of hashish those fanatic would madly rush at their enemies, and ruthlessly massacre every on within their grasp.”

5. …And to make white women want to have sex with Black men.

Watch out, white ladies of early-20th century America!!!!! If you’re not careful, Anslinger says pot will make you want to fuck a Black dude: “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”

6. Racist, sensational lies about weed sells sold newspapers.

Newspaper tycoon William Hearst was, much like Sir Donald Trump, not a huge fan of Mexicans. After he lost 800,000 acres of timberland to Mexican Revolutionary general Pancho Villa, Hearst used his media empire as a platform to promote his horribly racist agenda. His newspapers bolstered the prominent view that Mexicans were lazy, savage, pothead degenerates—“Was it marijuana, the new Mexican drug,” a nationwide column observed, “that nerved the murderous arm of Clara Phillips when she hammered out her victim’s life in Los Angeles?…THREE-FORTHS OF THE CRIMES of violence in this country today are committed by DOPE SLAVES—that is a matter of cold report.” And you the fuck r u to question a cold report?

7. It was rumored to be more dangerous than heroin.

When asked if the “hardened narcotic user” falls back on marijuana, Anslinger retorted, “No…he would not touch that.” According to Anslinger, pot posed a greater threat than heroin (probably because heroin was popular among harmless white middle-class suburbanites and not big, scary Blacks and Chicanos). Still, marijuana was falsely lumped together with hard narcotics like heroin and cocaine, which were the main targets of early anti-drug laws. The association stuck such that, today, anti-weed legislators have flipped the script on Anslinger’s hypothesis, inaccurately vilifying pot as a “gateway drug.” But, as Miriam Boeri writes for Newsweek, the gateway theory—much like Anslinger’s outrageous suggestion—is utter bullshit. The theory entails that that weed boasts a causal mechanism that biologically sensitizes those who “use” it, increasing their likelihood to experiment with harder drugs; however, research overwhelming shows that pot-smokers are not at any inflated risk of “graduating” to more harmful substances.

Also: the government realized they could make a loooooot of money if they criminalized it.

Box office report: ‘Zootopia’ sets Disney record with $73.7 million opening

h0nks:

wannabeanimator:

“Zootopia roared into theaters this weekend with an estimated $73.7 million domestic opening, setting a new record for the biggest Walt Disney Animation Studios opening of all time.

The film surpassed Frozen’s record of $67.4 million to earn the biggest debut ever for a non-Pixar Disney animated film, and it also scored the fourth-highest March opening weekend in box office history.

Now in its fourth weekend of international release, Zootopia added another $63.4 million to its overseas total, bringing its worldwide cumulative gross to $158.8 million already.”

frozen is fucking dead. thank u furries

Planning to Go on a Diet? One Word of Advice: Don’t.

bigfatscience:

hugseverycat:

bfantechi:

ok2befat:

keepsakewhales:

barrydeutsch:

chloekittymtfposting:

ok2befat:

“This isn’t breaking news; doctors know the holy trinity of obesity treatments—diet, exercise, and medication—don’t work. They know yo-yo dieting is linked to heart disease, insulin resistance, higher blood pressure, inflammation, and, ironically, long-term weight gain. Still, they push the same ineffective treatments, insisting they’ll make you not just thinner but healthier.

In reality, 97 percent of dieters regain everything they lost and then some within three years. Obesity research fails to reflect this truth because it rarely follows people for more than 18 months. This makes most weight-loss studies disingenuous at best and downright deceptive at worst.”

Diets do not work because they are temporary. Permanent lifestyle changes have a 100% success rate, however.

There is no “lifestyle change” method of weight loss which has been shown to reliably make obese people non-obese over the long term. And by “shown,” I mean someone documented it in a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal.

If I’m mistaken, then please show me my mistake with a citation to a peer-reviewed paper.

But there is this: http://www.nwcr.ws/

Today’s debunk- The link above goes to the The National Weight Control Registry. 

Let’s take a look at what this registry considers “long term”.

One year.

Back when I was still engaged in destroying my body with dieting and weight cycling, I lost more than 30 pounds and kept it off for more than a year.

It still came back, plus some. 

When we say that long term weight loss does not appear to be possible in most people, we mean 5 years or 10 years or more. 

One year? 

I believe this is what The Wire referred to as “juking the stats”. 

Additionally, we see from their “Join the Registry” page, that zero attempt is made to verify self-reported information. B/c all the names are confidential, there is no way for anyone else to check this information. 

And despite 30 minutes of intense googling, I can’t find out who is funding this thing. 

Doesn’t look like good science-ing to me. 

Such self-reported results, besides being unverified, cannot be used for scientific purposes because, no matter how many report success, the data is useless if we do not know what percentage of those attempting diet they are. 

I am a mathematician by profession and it saddens me that ignorance about the basics of statistics and probability leads too many people (including some medical professionals) to ill-informed choices.

It’s like making a national registry of Powerball jackpot winners and saying that everybody can win the Powerball if you just do all the things Powerball winners do.

^^^ this is a really perfect analogy.

From Fiction

fromfiction:

So, my new website is live.

Right now, its pretty much a clone of my tumblr, with better organized information, and a mini forum and chat. In the coming days and months I will be adding much more to it.

Please feel free to come join the forums, ask questions etc.

I will still be posting to tumblr, but I will also be posting unique content to the new website.