earthbelow

Here is the first post in this journal. Not sure which journal this will be, either the transfer of "thousandpages" (thinking about it) or the transfer of "fiction-theory".

I think I may want to put the "fiction-theory" account under the "freeman" journal, just to get my name out there. At the same time, I want something cool.

I definitely want to go all DW and just have LJ be a crossposting thing!

I'm feeling mentally a little better since Andrew and I went to see his sister for her birthday, going out for a movie and a late lunch/early dinner. Positive human interaction helps a lot.

We saw Inglorious Basterds. It's your typical overly-violent, very odd Tarantino film. It didn't require a lot of brain cells or thinking and was very violent and too long because Tarantino has never heard of editing. Some of the goriest part were too much for me to handle and I covered my eyes/ears because I was kind of in a very triggery state.

If blood, beatings, and gore aren't really anything you can handle, skip it.

I wish a movie I actually felt like seeing would come out soon. I think Amelia might be nice, and I like Christopher Eccleston (he's my favorite actor) even though he seems to just be appearing in crap films now a days, which is sad. Because the man actually knows how to act. He just apparently doesn't know how to pick scripts.

I think I'm getting a kidney infection. I feel run down and my back hurts in a very specific way. I'm drinking just water and cranberry juice. I really hope that it's not a kidney infection. I just don't need that right now.

Dear Nightly News and The CDC,

You fail at responsible journalism and health statistics, respectively. I watched ABC Nightly News' report on "The Cost of Obesity", in which they stated that "obesity related health care" costs on the order of over a $140 billion dollars a year.

This is for the fail, and let me tell you why.


1. The CDC does not actually know which diseases are obesity-related and which are not. What they are really calculating is the cost of healthcare for obese people, and since 2/3rds of the American population classify as "overweight" or "obese" under their guidelines, they are calculating that it took $140 billion to care for 2/3rds of the population.

2. They assume that every disease an obese person gets is related to their obesity. This is patently untrue. I am not denying that there are conditions which are affected by weight. There certainly are. But there are also a lot of conditions, many of which get counted under the obesity umbrella, that medically aren't tied into a person's weight. There are also conditions caused by other factors. Smoking, for instance. If someone is obese and a smoker and has high blood pressure and cardiac problems, counting both of those strictly as "obesity-related" is stupid. There's no way to know whether it's because of the obesity or because of the six packs of Marlboros a day.

3. I don't see the CDC studying the diseases that thin people do or do not get. Is the rate of heart failure, high blood pressure, and diabetes really that much lower in the "thin" population? Because studies are not being done on thin people, only fat people. I would wager that it is not actually all that much lower, but that thin people are given access to treatments and proper medical attention that fat people are not, thus their conditions do not become chronic. Whereas a fat person with the same complaint may only be told to "go hit the treadmill, fatty" instead of being given medical treatment.

4. This report does nothing useful to help people better understand healthcare, their bodies, or obesity. Yes, the healthcare costs are high, but much of that does not actually even go towards patient treatment. Spending does not equal treatment. A lot of that money eaten up by other non-medical factors. Nor do they factor in that a lot of obese people aren't getting any medical treatment, either because they don't have access to it, or they don't get it from their doctors. I don't think that the one time I managed to get in to see a doctor who sat me down and told me how fat I was for an hour should count towards that total. Especially when the cost of that visit wasn't in treating me, it was in paying the doctor for his oh-so-unhelpful lecture. I never actually received any treatment.

5. This report does not specify who counts as obese, or as "people". Is healthcare spending on children included, because we do spend more on children's healthcare. Not due to obesity, but because people actually seem to care whether a child can see a doctor. Never mind if the parents can, or childless adults can. As long as the children can. See above: SPENDING DOES NOT EQUAL TREATMENT GIVEN.

6. This report does not specify what counts as a healthcare cost. Is it just the cost of prescriptions, treatment's, and doctor's visits or are you including the salaries of doctors and nurses as well as the cost of running hospitals. I don't think obese people should be held responsible because doctors are demanding to be paid more, have to raise prices because of malpractice insurance, and pharmaceuticals are expensive. That hikes up the cost of everyone's healthcare, and isn't caused by anyone weight. Fat people aren't making the cost of malpractice insurance rise, I promise you.

7. The cost of healthcare for thin people was never mentioned. Funny how that works. Maybe because the number isn't that much lower?

8. This report does not state who is doing this spending. Because much of that number comes from the out-of-pocket costs that fat people themselves are paying because of a lousy healthcare system that treats them as subhuman.

9. The report does not state how much of this number goes into preventative care. It should. Because I think if we saw the amazingly low amount being spent on preventing diseases through regular doctor's visits and affordable healthcare, people might not be inclined to feel that "the fatties are bringing down the healthcare system".

10. The report was inflammatory without being informative. The inclusion of "headless fatties" and mention of the number in the "struggling healthcare system" can only be meant to encourage prejudice against fat people rather than responsibly disseminate information.


In conclusion, you suck. You just added to all the prejudice, hatred, and mistreatment that fat people are getting in this country. And for what? For nothing. For a lousy two minute fluff piece.

Thanks for making things worse than they were, ABC News and the CDC. You two stay class.


No Love,
Meg

I find this site amazing and kind of scary: Fancy Fast Food. Someone takes a fast food meal and re-processes it without adding any extra ingredients into something fancy.

Turning A BK breakfast croissanwich into a really good looking quiche is just...wow. I mean, I know that the food there is evil incarnate and filled with god-knows-what kind of preservatives that are probably causing cancer and birth defects, but it's still amazing to see the transformation you can make with it.

It doesn't make me want to eat fast food, oddly enough. Because I've seen the pictures of the 12-year-old McDonald's Hamburger that didn't rot. Seriously. It looks almost the same as the fresh one. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, nothing can.

I found this article on possibly "curing" obesity with cancer drugs, and I expected it to be a lot more insulting than it was.

While I'm sketchy on the science, and I'm not sure I like the idea of someone coming up with a drug that could have such severe side effects that could "cure" obesity, because I think a lot of obese people who are perfectly healthy and happy with themselves would be pressured into doing something risky in order to fit in.

I know that since the advent of weight loss surgery commercials on TV, I've had family members ask me why I haven't considered and undergone it. Never mind that I can neither afford it nor want it. They want to know why I'm not running to the table to have my digestive tract surgically rearranged. And that hurts, because it's more than clearly implied that I must be defective, lazy, or willfully fat if I'm not rushing to have that done so I can fit in with society's norms.

Because god forbid I should take the slow and steady route and exercise and eat healthy and let my body decide where it naturally needs to be.

Still, aside from that, this article did contain some actual common sense and scientific thinking, such as this gem:

"Conventional wisdom is that people become obese because they overeat," says Hughes. "But the fact is that in an environment where people are exposed to the same food supply and lifestyle, some will gain weight and others will not."

*gasp*. You mean, maybe, just maybe, the fat people aren't all that much lazier or overindulgent than the thin people? Are you trying to tell me that the thin people aren't harder working or healthier or better, that maybe they're just...*gasp*...luckier? But that's ludicruous! That would mean we'd have to use science and treat people with compassion and that we'd have to do tests and examinations and use our doctor learnings before we could judge them instead of being able to diagnose them at a glance! We'd have to use ACTUAL SCIENCE!

Oh, I can't bear the thought. *swoons*.

Okay, my sarcasm aside, I have to say that the idea of finally treating obesity as what it is - a physical attribute, not an infallible indicator of lifestyle or personality - strikes me as the real breakthrough in this article. Drugs that try to make people eat less don't concentrate on the fact that if overeating were really the problem, then we'd either have far more obese people or far less, depending on what you believe about the American diet. I think if obesity had a straight, 1 to 1 correlation with eating and exercise levels? Then 90% of America would be obese.

Yes, you can lose weight by just not eating. It's called starving yourself. It does, after a fashion, work. But unless you do it all the time, it's effectiveness as a long term solution doesn't work very well. And while, yes, looking at your dietary intake with close scrutiny and cutting down or cutting out unhealthy foods is always a good idea, not to mention that getting exercise is a good idea - there does come a point when all that still might not suffice.

Adipose tissue is not a moral indicator light. It's a physical attribute. And yes, I do believe there is such a thing as having too much adipose tissue, but I don't think that number should be set strictly based on just height and gender. I think a determination of health should be made based on whether that adipose tissue is actually affecting your health. As in, with empirical evidence, not just some doctor saying, "Well, you have diabetes, it must be because you're fat!"

One day we're going to discover (and by discover, I mean some scientist is finally going to make that almighty proclamation from the mount that gets doctors to change their tune) that a lot of obesity is actually the symptom, not the cause, of a bigger root disease that we're not seeing, and that we've really been misdiagnosing and mistreating folks due to their size. I think sometimes, saying "diabetes causes heart disease, diabetes, cancer, zomg!" is like saying that coughing too much causes your sinuses to clog up and your body to feel tired and your temperature to spike. The coughing is not the cause, it's a symptom. You're tired, achey, clogged, and feverish because you have a fucking sinus infection and you need medicine, not because you chose to cough too much.

Taking the analogy further, handing out nothing more than cough drops and bad advice to chronic coughers is useless, because cough drops do not cure a sinus infection. Whether or not you stop the coughing is irrelevant, you haven't cured the disease. Unless you either give them antibiotics or their body fights off the infection, it just gets worse and worse until a sinus infection becomes an upper respiratory infection which becomes pneumonia which becomes death.

And to quote House? "In case any of you missed that class in med school, that one's untreatable."

I think it's the same with obesity. A lot of the "obesity epidemic" is probably an underlying public health crisis that is going unexplored because the fat is more visible and more socially stigmatized. It's just easier to say that people are lazy. Because then we don't have to treat them or care about them or respect their humanity - and unfortunately, it's human nature to find any excuse not to give a shit about other people whenever possible.

I think I may owe my fat ass an apology for my last entry.

The scales today show neither a gain nor a loss, and considering what I ate over the weekend, that's better than I ever could have hoped for. Also? It gives me hopes that I'll see a continuing downward trend this week.

( Discussion of weight and why I'm talking about it so much lately. )

Which is why I need to talk about this subject a lot. And if it's getting bothersome for folks, or triggering anyone who may have eating disorders (I know a couple of people on my list have struggled with anorexia/bulimia), or if it's just plain old annoying, let me know and I'll filter it for anyone who wants in. Because I don't want this to become overwhelming.

I promise, I'm doing other things in my life! It's just that my writing is over at fiction_theory and all my fannish stuff is over at sage_theory and since I'm still unemployed (*grumble grumble fuckin' economy*), this is the big Personal Life Issue for me right now.

But I just want you to know that I'm okay. Or, well, I will be. And your support definitely helps a lot, and knowing that people out there are willing to listen and comment and even just say, "Good luck" or "keep trying!" really does do a world of good.

I'd love to go out and get my morning exercise. But that would require me to be able to breathe, which I can't do. I'm not sure what it is in the air that's making my sinuses launch a revolt, but I wish it would stop.

Also? I once read one of those Tylenol ads on the subway that said that pollen is worst from 5am to 10am in the morning, and that's bullshit. Because I get this stuff in the afternoons and at night, too. In fact, this current bout of allergies started at, as usual, three am.

There must be some kind of grass or flower that emits some kind of super pollen at 3am and wafts in through our window, because this now makes several nights where at precisely that time, I get up with my sinuses in overdrive.

So I guess I'll just have to settle for only getting an hour of exercise instead of an hour and a half like I've been doing.

On the plus side, the scales seem to indicate that there is less of me to go around. That's always good news.

While my decision to remain childfree has not changed any, I do find myself getting fed up with some of the childfree communities on LJ.

( Discussion of being childfree, the communities on LJ, my own reproductive decisions and why I think some CF people and parents hate each other so much. )

5 Things That Were Good About Today

1. Really nice weather
2. It's Friday!
3. Getting to mainline Bones over lunch
4. The Wii indicates that I have lost weight. The pants concur.
5. New layout!

3 Things I Did Well

1. Worked out
2. Did dishes
3. Got wedding planning stuff done


2 Things I Look Forward To

1. Losing more weight
2. Writing more on my current project