Kombuchat

Do doctors hate fat girls?

So this pic of a thick chick flashing flesh got yanked from snapshot social media.

And the barring of the butt-shot spurred serious butthurt and pudge-udice accusations from the hefty and feminists and whoever just wanted a reason to complain because it’s Friday and yelling’s fun. So what am I yelling about? Nothing. I’m as calm as they come. And my issue’s not her; she didn’t bother me. Do what you like (also she looks like a super pretty, well-fed version of Elisha Cuthbert). That’s not a problem. Her bum exposure? That’s no matter either. Instagram removing her pic? Pretty shitty – but no.

instachick

instabum
(Dat ass is covered with sheer undies, btw)

My gripe was a plethora of articles surfacing about “singling out fat ladies – not men” and supporting psychotic claims with non-existent medical stats. This article isn’t wrong about lady folk being objectified into sex objects. That’s old hat. What is wrong whether we’re talking about moon rocks or moon sized rumps, is the whole “according to research” bullshit you can’t actually back up. And the eyeroll award goes to:

“Even health care professionals exhibit bias against larger women. According to research, doctors are more likely to assign weight-loss diets to female bodies, even when male bodies have the same BMI.”

“Research says”?!

Let me see the link! What research? And who reported it? The women who were told to lose weight? The men who weren’t given the same suggestion? Or the doctors themselves? Did they say, “Oh, yes. I’d definitely tell a woman to lose weight.”

I’ve worked in a couple different health fields and you know what?

Men never bring up weight issues themselves. But women do. Here’s a beautiful example: before I took a physical therapy job, I worked briefly for a chiropractor. In the super short time I was there, a corpulent couple would come for appointments every other day. Did the doctor bring up the fact that weight loss was needed first? Nope. But you want to know who did? Her. She did. On the way out one day, she asked “Could I be having these problems with my neck because of my weight?”

ruhroh
(this is the exact face the next boss I had made when asked the same thing) #brilliant

And while this is always a touchy subject (and while he did not initiate the topic), what he did do was be upfront. Like any medical profesh worth his weight (pardon the pun) would do, he answered her honestly and clearly. Mind you, this dude was not my favorite boss. In fact, he was among my un-favorites. But he surprised me as I witnessed this convo unfold. He was clear, honest, and (above all) professional. He said yes – but also offered a scientific explanache for why excess weight causes pain. I don’t remember his analogy, but he covered how it alters posture, strains muscles trying to compensate, and pulls on the old backbone. Boom. Pain.

Take three back packs and fill them up with 100 pounds of anything.

Whether that “anything” is 100 pounds of goat shit or kale chips, it’s still 100 pounds. And it’s heavy. And if you happen to have an inverse relache between nomming and cardio, that something’s gonna be fat stuck on your body sooner or later. It’s science, not Hollywood fat-shaming. But the latter’s how Patient X took it.

She broke out into tears and never came back.

drcox

Sorry, darling. Some docs say the Hippocratic oath the way most Catholics pray. But to the good ones, it actually means something. If you ask, any ethical ones won’t let you leave believing it’s okay to maintain detrimental diets. And it’s alright if you don’t return. There’s plenty of patients who want to recover and live their lives well. That’s even better for him (or “her”, Wanda-WE-CAN-DO-IT) ’cause people willing to meet help halfway can give his business a 5 star rating on Yelp. Boom. More business. If that sits about as well with you as a meal without Mayonnaise, maybe see a shrink to shrink your size. That’s not me being cruel. If you’ve got a deep-seated issue wrought from a wellspring of cognitive dissonance, well… the remedy’s not an M.D.

They only deal only in tangible reality.

But as women play into their own objectification by subconsciously accepting psychotic cultural dictations, we can all get batt-shitty about this sometimes. I’m no stranger. At all. But that doesn’t mean we ask these stupid fucking questions out loud – much less to a doctor. Like the girlfriend who asks if she’s pretty just to call you a liar in the next breath, these chicks are hoping to hear that validating lie from a guy in a white coat… when they already know the real answer.

rebel-les
(love this bitch)

So, in sum:

Good doctors won’t lie.

And most men don’t care enough to ask.

There’s your research, dipshits. Now let’s go for a jog.

*Sidenote: Time to start an IG page with pics of doctors’ faces after big girls ask, “Am I fat?”

Gluten intolerance: pathology or pathos?

Sometimes when I’m shopping, I’ll buy the gluten-free tortillas.

Why not? They just sound healthy. Don’t they? Like something skinny bitches in L.A. eat between sucking emerald sludge through a straw? I mean, my only real allergy to white starchy carbs is that they sit shitty in my tummy organ. I don’t turn into Violet Beauregarde or anything. I just sorta feel like her (had she also eaten the whole factory including the green haired Snookie colored micro humans). But it’s not like I implode or shit fire or whatever. So what is gluten intolerance? Does it even exist?

A recent study says…maybe not.

hills

In it, people claiming to have gluten intolerance were tested. The cool thing is that the same dude who posted the original study (prompting the 2011 commercialized craze campaign against the grain), now shows evidence negating its existence as a disease at all. While the studies don’t deny celiac disease (totally different thing) exists, they do say that gluten intolerance might just be psychological.

Now, card carrying members of the “Uh muh guh… I can’t eat that” club suddenly have their butts hurting along with their intestines. But why? I think there are a few salient points studies like these raise.

It’s not illegal to suffer from your fake disease.

So keep believing whatever you like! In college, I got a stomach-blahbla-whatever from Thai food. And suddenly I became Linda Blair upon ingesting questionable vittles. I lost a fuck ton of weight. Then it abated. But if I wanted to keep my new low weight, that meant I needed the health problem to prevent eating crap again. Well, that or willpower. People do the same thing for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it’s for pity. Sometimes it’s just an excuse to avoid really living life. And you know what’s nice about our country?

We’re free to imprison ourselves in fake infirmities whenever we like.

romymono


It’s a diet mod, not med.

When was the last time you got carded to be overcharged for carbs? So long as they say celiac disease is still real, those gluten free noms will still be labeled on shelves. And you know what? Anyone can buy them! Or am I wrong? Do they demand ID upon selling sawdust flavored wraps? Wait – do they require a prescription now? Is someone keeping a pertinent detail from me?

No? Then shoosh and shop. Buy out Wegman’s expensive bread section. Quietly.

haveitall

Disease isn’t an identity.

There are other, more productive and fulfilling ways to be special. After my herniation and shit storm of body problems, my P.T. said “grow a sack, bitch.” In retrospect, it might have been more like “you are not your pain.” But probably not. Still, he led me from walking like Quasimodo and crying into pill bottles for years – to jogging. And modelling. Lingerie. In Milan.

’cause that’s totally what I was doing before.

Do I still have problems? Hell, yeah! I gotta post-coma Beatrice Kiddo my way outta bed every morning. But it wouldn’t affect me if the news suddenly said “Backaches are fake!” Why? Because I don’t need scientific significance for my experiences. It just assigns emotions to phenomena. If something hurts, I feel it, fix it, then fuck it off. If a food makes me sick, I avoid it – not throw a pathos party at the the dinner table.

Besides, I’ve already been there, done that, bought the XS tee-shirt. It’s boring.

Genuine illnesses or not – we’re more our maladies.

foodfantastic


On the defensive or asking questions?

Instead of getting angry, why not flip it critically? Who did the research? And who was in the sample? And what parts of the story aren’t being told or emphasized? Just because it’s broadcasted doesn’t make it law.

Also, consider who ran it. The same researcher who showed evidence of gluten intolerance even being a thing several years ago – is the one disproving his own study now. While that says a lot about his humility as a professional (which is awesome) it also indicates something far larger: science revises itself because it’s not always right. Scientists do research because the field evolves.

They’re great – but not gods.

When science becomes infallible, “scientist” won’t be a job.

So, do your thang, girl.

meangirlsthelimit

Tongue Torture: Fake sugar

I’m all for self-care, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

And since that line’s not made of drugs, it’d best be made of sugar.

cookiemonster

Or at least a sugar substitute for my latte. HashtagMyCoffeeIsAHotMilkshake

I keep hearing that “quitting sugar” will help with skin or concentration or – something. I dunno. The bottom line is that it will help me remain hot into old age. The only problem is – everything that’s not actual sugar seems to cause cancer.

There’s saccharine – created on accident while trying to make a chemical dye back in the 1800’s. That should say it all. But when it didn’t, the fact that it caused cancer in rats should have. I mean, sure. Everyone shat themselves and put warnings on the labels for a short while. But by the 90’s the warning’s got retracted after an update that the saccharine cancer only happens in the lab animals – not us.

carryon
Mmhmm.

Then there’s aspartame.

I remember my parents keeping a can of aspartame infused soda in the pantry like some tin trinket of effervescent posterity. As the years passed, it slowly expanded the way my dad’s waistline did after discovering Starbucks’s confection section. Any time my wrist crossed its path en route for morning Cheerios, all I wanted to do was chuck the fckking thing against the wall to experience the wave of explosive euphoria that happens upon crashing carbonated impact.

And justified, I was, it would seem.

The rats eating aspartame landed a litany of shit – blood, breast, and kidney cancers. You name it. And I don’t want to hear that “it’s just in rats” crap. We do about four point kajillion experiments on those furry fuckers to confirm all sorts of other diseases and medication usefulness. You can’t just change the rules to sell your awful product.

Especially when you cater the ONE experiment you do on humans to yield the results you want. The research on aspartame that said humans consuming it didn’t get cancer – only studied the demographic sliver of young folk.

To be fair, that might just be because all the old people who volunteered are dead.

Of, ya know, aspartame cancer.

Of the safest sugar shoe-ins, sucralose (AKA Splenda) just might be our best bet. It’s known for being sweeter than the previous two, non-caloric, and … not broken down by the body? Wait, is that a good thing?

And there’s also Stevia (Truvia). It’s about as many times sweeter than sugar as I am after a triple tall mocha. But as someone who uses stevia in marginal amounts, I can say it’s almost worth the thin. Almost. And that “it tastes like licorice if you have too much” account on wikipedia is a dogshit description.

I made that mistake – dumping too much in my tea one time. ONCE.

And I still haven’t managed to erase the taste of burnt M&M’s doused in gasoline and napalm.

blackisfine

But let’s get down to the meat and couch potatoes. In Yale’s fatty study on people who lace their meals with counterfeit cane, it turns out they’re usually tubbier than those nomming on the au naturale.

But that shouldn’t be surprising.

Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why the scales are rocketing to the right. The reason they’re so fat is because they keep eating exponential gobs of grub covered in shit-sugar that doesn’t have caloric benefits in the first place.

First, it’s that thought of, “Maybe if I try harder, the next bite will taste less like punishment. And they say that until the meal is done.

And when that expectation fails to fulfill itself, you’ve eaten a meal full of nothing (AKA non calorie). So not only is your mouth muscle unsatisfied, your actual body is too.

Thus, the urge rises to wash away the aftertaste of baby diarrhea – by demolishing any remaining contents of your fridge with your face.

So, the rule is. Be fearless of real sugar – in bits.

Then you won’t have to fear fat or half these diseases science snarls atchya.

sugarmonster

Jared Leto; Yoga-Yoda: “Yo-Yo Diet You Shall Not”

I was reading this thing this morning about Jared Leto doing yoga before heading off to a class myself.

The article was about how his yoga and diet have kept him young, how it’s changed his view on drastically altering weight for roles, etc. It included links about the disparities in poundage, and mostly included the actor’s actual ruminations about his roles, diet, life (versus author opinion).

You can read the actual article yourself, but here’s my watered-down-from-what-I-wanted-to-say comment:

letofb

Yeah. I stand by this.

When a story is made up namely of quotes, it’s hard to call it biased. The author even included a link so that readers could see the details about the actor’s other weight transformation. They didn’t make up those medical infirmities Mr. Leto realized after packing on pizza pounds. The tranny transformation chopped off about 30 lbs – he went from his usual 146 lbs down to 116 lbs.

But for the role of Chapman double-chin, it was double that.

He surfed through snack foods and grease until he’d gained 67 lbs, saying, “I just ate giant pizzas and everything you know you’re not supposed to eat. That’s what you eat to gain weight like that. If you’re a young actor reading this, you should never do that.”

Sure, it wasn’t the longest article. I get what the commenters are saying – yoga is about equanimity. But in this case, the yo-yo extremes weren’t equal and we only have Mr. Leto’s quotes to go on. Could they have added an “extreme weight loss is just as bad” bit with a snappy of Christian Bale in the Machinist? Yeah. Sure. But not every author wants (or is allowed) to inject their own opinion into their articles.

As a writer, I know how hard it can be to try and tell a story in an ethical light, telling some universal truth, without either sounding biased or coming off like a soap box douche nozzle:

asshole

It’s not the author’s fault that Leto landed ambulatory foot pain from playing a fatso. Homeboy had to roll around in a wheelchair because of that and took a year to bring back some semblance of normalcy.

Now that’s fodder for some real mental nomming.

Let’s go back to the main point of the article: Jared looks radiant (not just Hollywood young and hot and great for his age – but like that whole glowy thing hardcore yogis have).

For him – a dude whose baseline is balanced and healthy – it took a whole year to get back to that default setting.

Fat, skinny fat, whatever – for people who’ve been punishing themselves with diet extremes their whole life (like I have), imagine how much longer that’d take? If you’re patient, it’s eventually totally worth it.

In the meantime, do some hippie stretches (actually it’s an eleventy-billion year old practice from a faraway majestic land – but let’s not get technical), get the eff outside, and maybe occasionally let the old ipod be a zero-headphones, full blast, “nature shuffle” surround-sound experience.

Says I, from my couch, cursing the cold.

And for my controversial super-biased takeaway message: nunna these’re good:
letodiff

And stop complaining about an author’s writing. People complain when it’s biased. People complain when it’s nothing but quotes. The internet is vast – look up the rest of the story if you doubt what you’re reading (which you always should – read with a critical eye, that is). And if you don’t trust any of it, close your eyes, drown out distractions, and find rurrrl truth.

Can’t show you what that’s like. Just hafta find out yourself.

I love you all like Karen Carpenter loved her ego-finger after lunch.

Diets – Fogo de Now


“I imagine Hollywood has an underground Fogo de Chao that publicly vegan celebrities secretly sneak into. Much like an opium den, it’s filled with smoke and passed out patrons – except the smoke rises off the ceaseless meat offerings, while everyone’s passed out from eating too much of it.”
-ThisBitch, TheFaceBookFiles

I joke, but really.

They’re just human people. If they say they’re vegan – they mean right now. That could change a year from now when they’ve gone batty during Valium withdrawal and shaved their head with a lawnmower. I mean, I’m not static. I’m a different human, daily. Somedays I’m productive and feel great. Some days, I feel like I got hewn apart and haphazardly sewn back together in my sleep. I loathed Lady Gaga’s music for years. Then “Applause” came out and I had to hide my newfound habit. Madonna was American. And then, one day, she was British.

We change over time – and the same can go for diets – regardless of who you are. I haven’t eaten meat in a really long time. Like – three years maybe?I dunno, honestly. I don’t identify with a dietary group that holds meat-ings or gets clean carnivore coins or keytags for it. Not here in Northern Virginia, at least.

Out in L.A., though, I’d almost be surprised if they didn’t. Out there, anyone will ask what feeding genre you fall into – from the nice folk making small talk at a restaurant – to the room service dude who brought me my fruit platter promptly at noon every day I was there.

What’s this obsession with what goes in our tummies? (and if you live in San Fernando Valley, that means something else, totally.) As someone who’s struggled with the highs and lows of food obsessions myself, I think I get it. Like, out west (in that region, at least), people are ceaselessly surrounded by slim framed celebrities discussing which sorts of fuel they prefer to turn into feces. And then there’s the element of celeb wannabes with the delusion that they’ll occupy that same glittering group in rank and air if they take sufficient lifestyle notes and match shits with them.

Then, there’s yet a third group: those whose aspirations aren’t wrought from a desire to attain some elevated status, but because they just want to be in on the spectacle.

I identify with all’a that crap. Once upon a time, I lived there a year or so myself. We could go on a spiritual tangent saying it’s all irrelevant – whether you’re acclimating for social adoption, or matching diets and de la Renta with the next chick. I could say how all three’ll get sucked down the same unaddressed void at equal velocity – and leave you ravenous for more.

But that’s a dead horse whose meat I won’t eat (do we eat horse meat?) and here’s why.

Actually, my initial incentives were totally vain. I just wanted to be hot and thin with amazing skin and mermaid hair. Then, somewhere along the way, my svelte-status motives started changing (mostly because the end goal wasn’t coming so I had to switch gears) and realigning with this annoying thing that started nagging at me (I’m told it’s the beginnings of conscience. I’ll need more proof prior to believing such conjecture).

quityou

It wasn’t that hard, quitting meat. Really, I had more trouble with cheese (took a year), still haven’t quit cream products (no, the cow pus thing still doesn’t register for me), and I’ll never give up my teatime bee spit (honey).

So, when I get that raised eyebrow from someone silently judging me while asking, “So, why won’t you eat meat when you eat animal byproducts? ” (the inspiration for this whole entry and the idea being that creatures still suffer as their fluids are being siphoned out for human consumption), I try not to judge them for judging me. They’re just sad inside and stuff – and prodding at people with an emotional poker fills it for a bit, I guess. Once I transcend my self-conscious resentments ‘bout it, I try to let them know that – yeah – I’m not perfect.

And I don’t have a current gastronomical grouping.

But what I feel is basically this:

If something can think the thought, “Ow! Fcuk! I’m dying!” on the way to my dinner plate then, like, I kinda don’t want it.

For now, at least.

#Imonaspiritualpathbetch