There always has been frequent talk on this board about health and its relation to being fat. There are probably as many opinions as there are posters on here.
Clearly there is no hard definition of "health". There is no real universally accepted definition of the word health as there is something like "petite" if a female is 5"4 or shorter or "high cholesterol" if certain numbers are above 200. Rather it seems as though health is something each poster defines for him or herself, along the lines of "I consider myself/my partner healthy because of XYZ factors."
Talk of health can, and often does, correlate with talk about weight loss. The idea that somebody loses weight for "health reasons" is oftentimes presented as the acceptable reason for weight loss. After all, who can argue with somebody's need to be healthy? In some cases, a person will say she's lost weight for her health or wants to lose weight for her health. The responses can range from supportive to disbelieving. Sometimes it's a rallying cry for size acceptance and other times it seems like a rally for FAs or even other fat people to protest that the one who claims "health" is either just evading other reasons for weight loss, or she's just blind to the true facts about her own body---the uptick in health was really a result of something apart from a drop in poundage.
What is inescapable is that in many cases, when an FA discusses health, s/he is not talking about his or her own body. As a female, I have to admit to feeling genuinely uncomfortable when a thin male FA insists that a particular person is "healthy", that the weight loss industry is evil, or that certain health metrics are, for lack of a better word, good enough. i.e. "She can walk a mile" or "Her cholesterol is good" or "Her blood pressure was excellent". Right or wrong, I can never totally shake the feeling that these insistences are at least in part self serving, "You don't need to lose weight, you're HEALTHY." It's as if some FAs try to take health out of the equation to remove the one acceptable reason for weight loss.
I almost feel I'd rather just read posts that say "dont' lose weight because it's not sexy" that the ones that say "My girlfriend was totally healthy but her family/friend/society/the weight loss industry convinced her to lose weight and now everything sucks."
I honestly feel like FAs just should not discuss health anymore. If fat people discuss it they're discussing themselves, but when FAs do it, they're discussing others.
In short i have to admit i now understand why many people didn't want the "Health Board" to be here.
Clearly there is no hard definition of "health". There is no real universally accepted definition of the word health as there is something like "petite" if a female is 5"4 or shorter or "high cholesterol" if certain numbers are above 200. Rather it seems as though health is something each poster defines for him or herself, along the lines of "I consider myself/my partner healthy because of XYZ factors."
Talk of health can, and often does, correlate with talk about weight loss. The idea that somebody loses weight for "health reasons" is oftentimes presented as the acceptable reason for weight loss. After all, who can argue with somebody's need to be healthy? In some cases, a person will say she's lost weight for her health or wants to lose weight for her health. The responses can range from supportive to disbelieving. Sometimes it's a rallying cry for size acceptance and other times it seems like a rally for FAs or even other fat people to protest that the one who claims "health" is either just evading other reasons for weight loss, or she's just blind to the true facts about her own body---the uptick in health was really a result of something apart from a drop in poundage.
What is inescapable is that in many cases, when an FA discusses health, s/he is not talking about his or her own body. As a female, I have to admit to feeling genuinely uncomfortable when a thin male FA insists that a particular person is "healthy", that the weight loss industry is evil, or that certain health metrics are, for lack of a better word, good enough. i.e. "She can walk a mile" or "Her cholesterol is good" or "Her blood pressure was excellent". Right or wrong, I can never totally shake the feeling that these insistences are at least in part self serving, "You don't need to lose weight, you're HEALTHY." It's as if some FAs try to take health out of the equation to remove the one acceptable reason for weight loss.
I almost feel I'd rather just read posts that say "dont' lose weight because it's not sexy" that the ones that say "My girlfriend was totally healthy but her family/friend/society/the weight loss industry convinced her to lose weight and now everything sucks."
I honestly feel like FAs just should not discuss health anymore. If fat people discuss it they're discussing themselves, but when FAs do it, they're discussing others.
In short i have to admit i now understand why many people didn't want the "Health Board" to be here.
