Weight Watchers cops a serve for their ‘Plate of our Nation’ campaign

Kasey Edwards takes Weight Watchers to task in the normally fat-phobic SMH:

[...I]f WeightWatchers has just cottoned on to researching ”real solutions” for people to lose weight, then what has it been doing with its customers for the past 50 years?

Oh yes, that’s right, running a highly successful business – one that profits from repeat business.

This is a company that, by its own admission, trades in failure.

[...]

But the Plate of Our Nation campaign is not focused on health. It’s focused on WeightWatchers core business – the promise of weight loss. And as any health professional should know, weight loss and health are not necessarily the same thing.

[...]

Lydia Jade Turner, the managing director and psychotherapist at BodyMatters Australasia, condemns WeightWatchers for its fat shaming imagery and messages.

”WeightWatchers is morphing itself to appear as a benevolent public health institution when in fact it is grooming customers for profit,” Turner says. ”The Plate of Our Nation website provides many healthy tips – essentially piggy-backing off already existing public health campaigns – but the problem lies in the ultimate promise of weight loss.”

Turner says ”WeightWatchers has no research to show that it is any more effective than any other diet on the market over the long term”. This makes WeightWatchers’ new aim ”to reverse this country’s obesity epidemic” at best naive and at worst highly cynical.

STUPID FATTY. BAD FATTY. GET OFF THE COUCH, FATTY.

It seems ‘Fat and Fatter’ has screened somewhere in the world. I’m getting a stream of commenters who are all so very concerned that my review of the show is being unfair and that it’s perfectly reasonable to scare people onto the diet treadmill, because don’tcha know that ‘Fat and Fatter’s fat shaming through lurid camera close-ups on bodies merely serves as a public service announcement.

I’m NOT going to publish the comments for two reasons.

Firstly, every single one of the comments fails to meet the criteria of ‘Constructive Debate’, ‘Respectfulness’ and ‘Open Mindedness’ as defined in my Comments Policy, which on this blog is required reading before anyone comments. It’s clearly listed at the top of the page, so there’s no excuse.

Secondly, all the comments basically boil down to the below and add nothing of intelligence to the discussion:

ALL FATTYBOOMSTICKS ARE GONNA DIE. FROM SUGAR AND FAT AND THE LAZY. EVERYONE KNOWS THIS, FATTY. STUPID FATTY. BAD FATTY. GET OFF THE COUCH, FATTY.

So, ‘Fat and Fatter’ viewers, if you want your comment to appear on this blog, read the Comments Policy and don’t spout fat hate.

‘Obesity’ costs skewed for shock value? Duh!

The fatosphere is always talking about how the ‘costs of obesity’ are inflated for shock value and to influence public policy and spending – and at last we have a leading actuary who has confirmed that the costs of Australia have been vastly over-estimated. Instead of $58 billion, he states the actual costs are only $8.8 billion – but I guess that just doesn’t have the same ZING!

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

A leading actuary has lampooned health lobby figures on the costs of smoking and obesity as being extravagantly inflated and based on suspect methodology.

“The numbers are all over the place,” writes Geoff Dunsford in the September edition of Actuary Australia. And they are “big numbers” – the implication being that they are too big.

and

The sheer size of the numbers, argues the Sydney actuary, perverts government policy. It can lead to poor spending decisions. The credibility of the numbers from the health lobby is therefore critical to government policy.

The press and the public have been led to believe that the costs to the system are higher than they really are so the government can “justify use of taxpayers’ money on measures to reduce its prevalence and prevention”.

and

Access Economics estimated the cost of obesity to Australia at $58.2 billion. And sure enough, this enormous headline number promptly bobbed in the press.

On Dunsford’s analysis, however, the figures are flawed, skewed by the “non-financial” estimates to make obesity seem a lot more costly to the taxpayer than it really is.

The costs break down as $3.9 billion for the health care system, $4.4 billion in “other” costs relating to lost work days, taxes forgone and other productivity losses.

More detailcan be found in the article (Be warned: the comments are full of fat-hate.)

Toxic Messages

I discarded a very toxic message recently, one that had been rattling around my brain for upwards of 25 years. It was so deeply embedded, I didn’t even realise I was still carrying it around, despite my years of fat acceptance and fat activism.

It came – as many of the toxic messages in my life have – courtesy of my step-father. He who gave me the demoralising puffy-lettered “I try to lose weight, but it keeps finding me” shirt. He of the undermining “You’ll never be Twiggy” sideswipe. He whom I no longer let into my life because of his continued toxic actions and toxic words in very many arenas.

So you’d think I’d have discarded this message along with his other bullshit.

But no.

Want to hear it? This thing I’ve unconsciously been allowing to guide my thoughts and fashion choices since I was 14 or 15?

“You can’t wear belts. You look like a sack tied around the middle.”

Hey, arsehole. Fuck you!

I limited myself with my buy-in to this bullshit rule, despite priding myself on not following the accepted fashion rules for fatties. I wear stripes. I wear patterns. I have no fear of bare arms. I wear my sexy bikini on the beach with pride.

But I steered clear of belts.

Because of an offhand comment 25 years ago from a proven dickhead who probably forgot he’d ever said it two minutes later.

But there’s an upside.

I’ve recently rediscovered belts and, therefore, a whole range of fashion looks that were previously (in my head) off limits.

I’m wearing a belt today with a cute little dress. And I look hot.

Fuck the toxic messages.

Will wonders never cease

I’m stunned; A major department store actually carried at least 2 bra styles in my actual size (24c). Wow! I actually have a well-fitting bra for once. On sale, too.

Normally I have to go up a cup size, down a chest size and/or use a bra extender, which is what they tell you to do when they can’t be fucked to make bras in your size. Somehow, a 22D or a 20D with extender is supposed to be ‘equivalent’ to a 24C, but from experience, I can tell you they ain’t.