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    Posted Monday, August 24, 2009 10:01 AM

    Confessions of a Skinny Fat Person: Welcome to The Fat Wars

    Kate Dailey
    Kate Harding almost got me fired. The week I started at NEWSWEEK, I read an advanced copy of Lessons From the Fat-o-Sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body. Written by Harding and Marianne Kirby, it put me into such a crisis of confidence that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do my job.

                The book is a plea to overweight readers to stop trying to lose weight, stop blaming themselves for being overweight, and focus instead on being healthy and happy. Weight is innate, they argue, and trying to fight it only results in a tortured relationship with food (better to listen to your body, eat when you’re hungry and stop when your full), exercise (instead of seeing the gym as torture, find movement you love to do─and give yourself a break if you have to skip a few classes), and your reflection in the mirror (if you're unhappy, find treatment in therapy and positive friends, not food or body obsession). After all, they say, most skinny people aren’t paragons of virtue, would-be fatties who have thwarted weight thanks to sanctimonious food and fitness patterns. They’re just blessed with slender genes.

                As I’ve mentioned before in print, I am what is known as a skinny fat person. I’m tall and thin, but a body-fat analysis done three years ago measured about 30 percent fat; fat that might be damaging my internal organs and putting my health at risk. I was shocked at the news─my pants fit and my ass looked good, both of which usually determined whether I went to the gym. I always tried to watch what I ate, meaning I kept myself slightly hungry until I was too hungry and binged on something huge and greasy. My eating habits were terrible, and my fitness routine sporadic, but as long as I looked good in my underwear, what was the harm?

                The harm, an analysis of my diet revealed, was a lack of nutrients, an excess of unhealthy fats, and too many calories doing too little work. After a week of carefully prescribed eating habits, I had much more energy, sharper thoughts, and brighter skin, clear indicators of how damaging my body-shape based health plan really was. There are plenty of fat people who benefit from the gym. But I'm a skinny person who would also benefit, and my focus on weight obstructed that.

                I completed the body-fat analysis for an article I was working on as weight-loss editor at Women’s Health magazine. The job had me convincing our millions of readers that dieting was not only possible, but a desirable ideal, and that whatever it was you were eating (or no matter how you looked), you could probably do a little better and weigh a little bit less. Reading The Fat-o-Sphere suddenly had me questioning all my earlier training, and for a few days after I was hired to write about health for NEWSWEEK─including covering obesity─I was at an impasse, unable to finish an article about traveling while fat: it all felt to uncertain, too exploitative, and I too uneducated.

    I wasn’t a total convert.  I do think food can have moral value, for instance, and have no problem labeling some overprocessed, chemically treated, nutritionally negligible food as “bad.” I think that humans are drawn to eat a lot of junk, and that listening to your body can sometimes steer you down a Coors-and-Cheetos laced path (or is that just me?) I do think poor choices and poor access to healthy foods, especially in childhood, can set up dangerous patterns with weight-related consequences: while some people may be designed to carry extra fat, and can do so healthfully, some people are not, and simple changes will help them find their natural, more slender range.

    But I didn't know. I started to re-examine what I thought I knew about weight and health. I also started to pay more attention to how fatness was discussed and debated in the media: It’s not pretty, and it seems that the venom we have for fat people far exceeds the scorn we lay on smokers, or adulterers, or those who text while driving, and the recent health-care debate is only making things nastier.

    The Fat Wars, a series starting today and running throughout the week, is an attempt to re-examine the attitudes we have toward fatness: is our focus on weight loss over health actually making us less healthy? Is our bias against fatness clouding our judgment when it comes to the real health risks of being overweight? Or is permissive, fat-positive attitudes just a recipe for more health problems? Do we have the ability─and responsibility─to slenderize our bodies through diet and exercise, or is health better measured in other ways? Obviously, we can’t solve all these issues definitively, and in some cases these articles may raise more questions then they answer. But we’ll start asking, and hope that we can start a discussion─free from name-calling, thanks─that brings us closer to some solutions.

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    Member Comments

    Posted By: CeliaS (September 22, 2009 at 11:52 PM)

    I’m coming in late to this discussion, but I just want to say that I agree with Shrek - if you're both obese and unhealthy, and there is no medical reason for it, then it’s perfectly reasonable to feel bad about yourself THEN work at losing weight and getting fit. There is just too much excuse-making and too little personal responsibility in our society.

    And professional MMA fighting? Way to go!

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    Posted By: anagail (September 10, 2009 at 1:12 PM)

    Thank you, Kate, for starting this discussion. I am a Registered Dietitian with a Ph.D. in nutrition, and I am fat. I got into the field of nutrition because of my interest in controlling my weight. I was a "normal" sized child up until the age of 6. Some even thought I was too thin. But I became a somewhat chubby child after I had my tonsils out. My mother was always worried about her weight, although she was not really very fat. My father was heavier than "average" at 5'10" and around 200 lbs, but he did not really see it as a problem. My younger sister started out chubby. We both got teased when we went to the swimming pool. So, it wasn't long until I felt I must diet. I stopped growing at a little under 5'2", and I managed to keep my weight under 118 until I got married at 21, pretty much dieting constantly. Marriage proved to be a challenge, because my lean husband tended to eat (and drink) far more than me. I gained, then dieted and lost, then gained it all back and more. Then came pregnancy, and my body and brain declared a moratorium on dieting.

    I don't claim to have perfect eating habits, or to exercise the way I should, but I place a higher priority on meeting nutritional needs  than I place on the number on the scale. I think that far too many fat people think far too little of themselves because of all the prejudice that is rampant in our society against fat. And I think far too many lean people give themselves the credit for being lean, when it is really their genes that should get the credit. It's not easy to make peace with a fat body, even if it's healthy, when there is so much disdain targeted at those of us who carry a significant amount of fat. But it IS possible to be fat and healthy. The research bears that out. There are well-qualified scientist who have written books that describe such research (Linda Bacon and Glenn Gaesser, to name two), and new studies continue to be published that supply evidence that the current BMI guidelines do not reflect the truth about weight and health. Prejudice abounda among scientists and healthcare providers, as well as the general public. But we live in a democracy, and people with BMIs above 25 are now in the majority. Those of us with BMIs above 25 need to stop internalizing the fat hatred, take care of ourselves in ways that do not involve dieting, and let our voices be heard.

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    Posted By: shrek (August 30, 2009 at 12:00 AM)

    I am a fairly heavy guy, at 215 lbs and 5'10".  As a kid, i was heavy and blamed it on genes and "a propensity to gain weight" i believed I had inherited from my father and mother, both of whom are heavy.  However, when I entered high school, and discovered that I was, in fact, fat, I decided that I didn't really want that for myself.  I set out on a very rigorous workout regimen, consisting of very high-contact martial arts.  I weighed over 200 lbs before high school, and graduated at a trim and very mean 165.  13 years later, and having let myself slip due to the lack of time I percieved I had, I am 215, down from 265 two years ago.  I guess my point is, that while an obsession with weight is unhealthy, if you decide you want it it certainly is attainable for you if you have the right goals.  For me?  I'm looking at professional MMA fighting at the 205 weight class.

    As far as the "unfair" criticism that overweight people face?  Well, I'd like to think that  it is unfair, but at the end of the day how many of us heftier people are just like me?  Getting lazy and not wanting to prioritize our lives?  It DOES put an UNDUE strain on the health system for people to be obese AND unhealthy (note, both, because overweight with healthy habits equals just as many visits to the doctor as other healthy people, not more).  There's just no way around it, if you're both obese and unhealthy, and there is no medical reason for it, then I feel it perfectly reasonable that you feel bad about yourself.  I have for years, and as I drop the weight I feel energized and progressively better about myself...

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