Quest for Thinness

So how fat is your state? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health released another pointless report this week ranking the fifty states by fatness. The article points to an overabundance of food, aggressive food marketing, poverty, and low levels of education as significant causes, which I suppose is a slight step up from the usual disgust and personal blame. The education thing sticks in my craw though, because it implies that if we fatties only knew better, we just wouldn't be fat. Please, thin Americans, TEACH us to overcome our body's genetic tendencies. For the love of god, won't someone tell the fatties about calories in vs. calories out?? They just don't know!


Then we have this gem, about how, chemically, being fat means that you can't resist cupcakes as well as thin people do. Again, thanks, but your study involving ten whole fat people isn't really enough to convince me that the entire fat population's brains work this way, not to mention that you don't even really know what these results mean. My favorite part of the article is as follows:

Some of the most intriguing imaging studies have peered into the brains of people who have lost significant weight and kept it off through diet and exercise alone—although researchers say they're hard to find. "They are very controlled individuals, and they are very rare. We had to fly some in from Alaska," says Angelo Del Parigi, a neuroimaging scientists who finally located 11 "post-obese" subjects who had dieted down to the lean range.

You don't say? People who have lost weight and kept it off aren't just coming out of the woodwork? Can we not maybe draw a conclusion here?


Finally, I'm sure you've seen some of the hullabaloo about the new diet drugs being tested and submitted for FDA approval. It looks like as of this morning the FDA has rejected Qnexa, which is shocking news in and of itself. Could it be that someone over there finally cares about side effects? Did they actually learn something from the whole Fen/Phen tragedy? If so, it's not stopping pharmaceutical manufacturers from trying again. Arena Pharmaceuticals is working on a drug called lorcaserin which, according to MSNBC shows "promise" and "little risk". It also shows little effectiveness, as study participants only lost an average of five percent of their body weight. That's about twenty pounds for a 375 lb gal like me. Given the risk for side effects, especially the ones they don't know about yet, I wouldn't say lorcaserin is a worthwhile bet. Seems to me that maybe we should divert those pharmaceutical resources to working on cancer or AIDS instead of trying to make the population slightly less fat and potentially harming them in the process.

But anyway...Happy Friday!

So an old friend of mine from high school gained a lot of weight and decided that gastric bypass surgery was the best answer to her weight-related concerns. She's been facebooking about it for months now and this week she finally had her surgery. I've been watching her progress with an uneasy curiosity since she announced she would have the surgery, wanting to tell her just how effed up I think the whole thing is but also recognizing that she is an adult and has to make her own decisions. Anyway, she has a blog where she has been documenting the process and I was just struck by this entry about how restrictive the pre-surgery and post-surgery eating requirements are. If you've ever spent one second of your fat life thinking "maybe I should consider that gastric bypass surgery", this will make you glad you passed it up. Check it out.

While blogging, I'm also having my "dinner". Tonight that is one cup of strained low fat cream of chicken soup. (Strained to get the chunks of chicken out!) My diet is extremely limited right now, which of course is to be expected. People are shocked when I tell them, but my tiny little stomach pocket just isn't up for too much yet! And since my understanding is that if I over do it the results will be quite uncomfortable for me, I'm not pushing it! (-:

The great news is that I am not feeling terribly hungry, and when I do feel slightly hungry, it is typically because it's time to eat something.

Here's the overall eating schedule that Dr. XXXXX requires:

2 weeks prior to surgery -- extreme low carbs -- max 20 carbs a day

day before surgery -- clear fluids only, plus Powerade with Miralax (bariatric colon cleanse)

day of surgery -- absolutely no fluids by mouth, later in the day got ice chips (was on IVs)

1st 2 days after surgery -- clear liquids only (broth, crystal light, sugar free popsicles, SF jello) -- in the hospital, they'd give me crystal light in medicine cups .... Here's one ounce of liquid, take 15 entire minutes to drink it.

Days 3-6 (where I am right now)-- Full Liquids (1% milk, low carb protein shakes, SF low fat yogurt, cream of chicken soup, plus all the things in clear liquids -- including SF jello, and SF popsicles) **now, the surprising thing here is the quantities... I should take a full hour to sip 8 ounces of whatever I eat/drink, yet I am to strive to consume at least 48-64 ounces of liquids over the the course of the day. Half should be clear liquids and half should be the full liquids, being sure to get protein in there.

Days 7-10 (begins Wednesday - woo, hoo!) -- Pureed/Soft Diet --- this is where my new magic bullet will be quite handy. See, my tiny new pouch isn't grown up enough to work as your stomach does.... using its muscles to break up and grind up the food we eat. So, for now, I gotta do that work before I eat something. Now, at this stage, I shall only eat 4-6 Tablespoons of food each "meal" and I should have 5-6 meals a day. I can add mashed potatoes, custard, and pudding, but I must be VERY careful to keep it really low sugar and really low fat. Otherwise, my tiny pouch will rebel and make me regret it. Other things, provided they are well cooked and blenderized, will be vegetables, scrambled eggs, LF cottage cheese, poultry, soups, applesauce, and stage 1 & 2 baby foods (but watch the sugar in those!). I must also be sure to remove all skins, visible fat, connective tissues, rinds, shells, seeds, etc.

Then, Days 11-30 (almost 3 weeks) -- Soft Diet -- Pretty much as above, but adding a few starches like cereal, crackers, and adding soft fruits (have to remove citrus membranes) and low fat cheeses. The instructions say "small distinct pieces of food that is tender and easily chewed. Begin with ground or flaked meats and chopped or mashed foods".

Then, Days 31-45 (two weeks) -- we continue as above, but get to graduate to 6-8 tablespoons per meal, 5 meals per day. Also can add some things like brown rice and whole grain pasta.

Then, Six weeks after surgery -- Healthy, Lifelong Meal Plan -- add a few tablespoons of food per meal, then after another month, a little more. Ultimately, the plan for post bariatric surgery patients, is to eat 3/4 - 1 cup per meal, and eat 4 small meals per day. Dr. XXXXX disagrees with the snacking throughout the day theory. Essentially, we'll need to add more fiber here, but be intentional about high protein, low fat, and lower carbs. We are told to stay away from everything High Sugar. My understanding is that high sugar will result in dumping syndrome, and that I will not like that one bit. (-; A few people have said, "yep, you'll only do that ONCE".

A few other things for post bariatric surgery patients, that are a little odd, are that we can no longer drink from straws or have carbonated beverages. Those put too much air in our pouches, and make us feel full when we aren't. Also don't want those bubbles to increase the size of the pouch, that would be dumb after having surgery, no!?

Another quirk is that we are NOT to drink while eating a meal. Yes, we must drink 48-64 ounces daily, but we must stop drinking 30 minutes before a meal, and not drink fluids again until 30 minutes after a meal. Our little pouches (can you tell I've grown attached to my little pouch already? (-: ) will tell us we've had enough to eat and we would not have. Or, the food will slide right through with the liquids, and we won't get the nutrition we need. Either way, that's bad. SOOOO, no drinking at meals!!!

Oh, and NO MORE NSAIDS. I know, what's that, right? No more aspirin or anti-inflammatory medicines like Aleve, Ibuprofen. EVER. They're bad for our little pouches. They can cause bleeding and ulcers, and bad stuff like that. Oh, except the chewable baby aspirin we take for the first month after surgery to prevent blood clots....

We must also take vitamins for ever and ever amen. Chewable Multivitamins with Iron and chewable Calcium with Vitamin D. And B-12. Can be shots or sublingual... I'll find out a bit more about that when I return to the doctor next Wednesday.

The part that shocked me the most was that it should take you an hour to drink 8 ounces of fluid. An HOUR. Also, four cups of food a day? How is it remotely possible to get the nutrients your body needs on four cups of food a day? And no straws?! That...ahem...sucks.

Anyone have any other thoughts on this? Is there anyone out there who has gone through this and can comment?

I saw an ad for this show Mike & Molly during How I Met Your Mother last night. At first I was excited...look! Actual fat people on TV! Then I read the premise:

"Police officer Mike Biggs knows his way around the Streets—and the donut shop. As a cop, Mike’s not scared of anything—except dating, so he’s joined Overeaters Anonymous® to lose those extra pounds and gain some Much-needed confidence. When he meets Molly at a meeting, the attraction is immediate, and suddenly Mike is excited about the prospect of a new life. But now he must find the willpower to give up his beloved junk food for the apple of his eye."

Oh BARF. Anyone seen any more of this tripe? Comments?

Check out this article on Japanese attitudes towards weight. I feel almost like the author is saying "Gee, if Japanese women can lose weight and keep it off, what's wrong with Americans?"
They say the rates of anorexia and bulimia aren't any higher over there than they are here, but I have to wonder if that's because the idea of an average-sized woman not eating because she wants to be thinner is so widely accepted as normal. Certainly the act of specifically not eating or eating only vegetables when you are hungry for more is something of a disorder, whether it's officially anorexia or not.
Anyone have any other ideas about what might cause the disparity between our attitudes toward weight and that of Japanese women?

This article in The Vancouver Sun just floored me, and goes back to my comment on the Is it okay to be fat? thread. Exactly how much pain and suffering is society at large expecting us to have to endure to fit their narrow body ideals? If we're not being asked to run four miles and eat a scant 1300 calories per day a la Meme Roth, then someone is coming up with a procedure where a polyethylene patch is sewn onto a fat person's tongue to make it excruciating for him or her to eat solid food. Really? Is this something we need to do to people? Isn't the fact that any fat person is willing to undergo this type of procedure enough to prove that as a society we have kind of gone off the rails when it comes to body size?

This is the question posed in the Nightline debate linked to in withoutscene's posting below. The way I see it, when we ask "is it okay to be fat?", we're really asking a bunch of other questions:

• Is a person allowed to have and maintain a body that is larger than average?
• Is being fat a health problem?
• Is a person with a health problem allowed to choose to not treat that problem?
• Is fat caused by lifestyle choices?
• Is a person in a group health plan allowed to make choices that might cause them to need more health care in the future?

When you break it down to what we're really talking about, I don't see how any rational person could conclude that it is not okay to be fat. What are your thoughts?

This video over at ABC.com just makes me crazy. Dr. Richard Besser is attempting to give advice to a parent on how to deal with her eleven-year-old child sneaking food and instead of addressing the underlying causes and mentioning the potential for eating disorders, he recommends that the parent sit down with his or her kid and draw up a contract for changing her behavior. This is horrible, terrible advice, and I know because it's what my parents did with me. Did I mention I weigh around 400 pounds now?

Here's the thing: a child is not an adult. There's a reason we don't let children sign contracts, and it's because they're busy making mistakes and dropping the ball and acting on impulse...things that aren't really conducive to setting a goal and following it through. Why would you want to put your child in a position where she is likely to fail over and over? Furthermore, Dr. Besser makes a fuss about how the parents shouldn't be the food police, but that's the exact relationship you are fostering with this contract business, because someone has to be the enforcer and make sure the terms of the contract are being followed. Even if you're not being 'the food police', per se, you're at least being the food prosecutor. Is that really better? The bottom line is that it enforces the adversarial relationship that is already developing because she clearly feels like she has to hide her eating from you.

I swear, that letter could have been written by my parents. The part about "she wants to lose weight", is especially accurate because when I was a kid all I wanted in the world was to make my parents happy,and it was abundantly clear that all they wanted was for me to be thin. I have no doubt that there were loving reasons behind it, like wanting me to fit in socially, but all their campaign did was drive a wedge between us and eff up my relationship with food and exercise.

Here's the advice I wish my parents had gotten when I was a kid sneaking food into my room: listen to your daughter. Talk to her about what's going on and try to figure out what might be bothering her. Hug her...a lot. Remind her that you love her no matter what, and that you will always be there for her. That kind of thing will go a long, long way. In the end, the most important thing to remember is that your job here is about providing unconditional love and support. Leave the contracts out of it.

I intended to write about this article by Japanese scientists that says fat people are more likely to live longer than thin people (yay fatties!), but I got sidetracked by how annoyed I was that we are still wasting so much time, energy and cash trying to figure out what size our bodies need to be so we can live the longest, healthiest, happiest life when millions of people in the world are genuinely suffering. Which led me to this:

You know what I would like to see? I would like to see Weight Watchers STFU about fighting your body's own signals of hunger and actually do something to FIGHT HUNGER. With all of the cash they're raking in making people feel bad about themselves and their choices, they could certainly buy some grub for some needy folks.

***at which point I had to stop and Google search just to make sure they weren't already doing this, because you never know, and, lo and behold, they actually are! Sort of. But you know what's gross about the whole thing? Not just the part where they pay out for pounds lost, there's also this fine print:

For every 1 million pounds lost during the campaign period, Weight Watchers will donate $250,000, up to $1 million. Pounds lost by Members will be determined by average weight lost per meeting attendance during campaign period multiplied by total number of attendances during campaign period.

So hypothetically, if you gain weight during the campaign period, Weight Watchers will take their money back. If you weren't already feeling guilty that your body isn't small enough, now because of you, hungry kids won't get to eat. Way to go fattie.

The fact that WW chooses to base the amount of its charitable gift not on a concrete action but on a physiological result that it well knows is beyond a person's immediate control (otherwise WW'd be out of business by now, right?) just highlights how clearly profit-driven their motives are and how much they do not give a shit about helping anybody but themselves.

You know, I've never really sat down and thought about this at any great length, but I really really hate those guys and the impact they have on women and men in our culture. I hate the fact that every now and again perfectly nice people in my office flog diet culture at me because of their stupid WW at work program. I hate the pyramid scheme cultishness of the whole thing, how they infiltrate local schools and churches, how they plaster ads on just about every website I enjoy, how their main enemy is A VITAL BODY SIGNAL called hunger (who is actually a rather cute little fuzzy orange thing).

I hate how they lie about their effectiveness over and over, how they pretend to not be a diet, how they support the idea that if a person isn't losing weight, he or she must just not be trying hard enough, how they've been in the weight loss business for 36 years and they still can only demonstrate an average 6.6 pound weight loss per person per YEAR. Know how much it costs to be a WW member for a year? $360 bucks. That's almost $60 per pound, people. Their product doesn't work worth a darn and they're still making money hand over fist.

There is not a middle finger in the world big enough for what I would like to convey to Weight Watchers and the diet industry in general. It's the only line of business I know of where it doesn't remotely matter if the product works, people will still clamor for it. The whole thing just makes me ill.

This article just broke my heart. Samantha Clowe didn't want to be the dreaded "fat bride", so she dutifully got permission from her doctor and started following the LighterLife diet plan. It certainly seemed to work...in her eleven weeks on the diet Samantha decreased her BMI by two whole points. Then she collapsed and died.

My heart goes out to Samantha and her family. I can only imagine the thoughts that might have driven her to choose the plan, like longing to fit her body into society's favored mold, the idea that whoever she was now wasn't good enough to stand up in front of her friends and family and get married. Maybe, like many dieters, she believed that this fat thing was only temporary and if she could just find the right plan and just try hard enough, she could finally be "normal" and, therefore, "happy".

I will confess, I have had these thoughts too. Some not even all that long ago. You know why Samantha and I and millions of other people have felt this way? Because somewhere along the way as we were growing up, enough people told us that our bodies were wrong that we started to believe it. Some of us believed it so much that we tried whatever we could to make our bodies behave and were thwarted when they fought back and grew even bigger, further outside of the realm of okay. Eventually, some of us were so freaked out by being fat that we gladly paid someone to cut into our bodies and mess with the way our digestive systems worked, all so we could finally be..."normal". The thing is, there are a million different kinds of bodies out there. "Normal" doesn't really exist.

The thing that really incenses me about this article is that the LighterLife people are blaming Samantha's death on the fact that she started out all deathfat so she was probably just a ticking timebomb anyway. So it seems we are doomed to death even if we go along and do as we're told to conform. What a load of crap.

Samantha was only 11 weeks into the program but on the LighterLife website they say women should do it for 14 weeks or even more if they want to lose more weight at the end of that time. This is at least the third death linked to LighterLife. I wonder how many more people have to die while following their program before someone finally shuts them down.

Update: As suggested by MichMurphy, I've started a photo gallery for fat brides on flickr. Feel free to join, post any and all fat bride photos and pass on the link to all of your fat bride friends! Here come the Fat Brides!

I just came across this article at MSN describing a study that says folks with skinny thighs have a 50-100% higher chance of developing heart disease than their thick-thighed counterparts. Of course, they're quick to mention that this is not a "free pass for people who want to skip the gym", or, presumably, for fat people to start loving their fat thighs. Certainly they wouldn't want to give the impression that a nonskinny bodypart would be 'okay' and 'not deadly'...lord knows those fat people are just looking for an excuse to not lose weight.

The comments are somewhat fat-hating, as expected, but I also found it amusing that so many people were skeptical of the study's results. Wait, so the studies about how fat people are just going to drop dead are beyond reproach but this one is complete BS? Sounds fishy to me...

Look at this poor woman. Doesn't it look like maybe she needs a big ol' fat hug? I concur.

The thing I like about MeMe Roth is that she is such an easy target. She wears her hatred and her bigotry on her sleeve, has no good advice to give, and 99% of the time comes across to even fat-phobic reporters as bat sh*t crazypants. Aside from the fact that she is all about the fat hatred, there are two things I don't like about MeMe:

1. She gets a lot of attention from the media for her anti-fat blather
2. I am starting to really feel sorry for her

I mean, how could you not? She's so delusional! She insists she's not anorexic, in fact says she's "never been on a diet", but then in the next breath talks about how she doesn't eat breakfast, forces herself to work out before eating during the day, and finally admits that, the day of the interview, which occurred at 3:30 PM, she hadn't eaten at all! Sounds like disordered eating to me.

The article says her (fat) family finds her crusade to be hurtful, so I can imagine that family get-togethers are probably strained and uncomfortable for everyone involved. On second thought, I really feel sorry for her kids. MeMe comes across as so cold and controlled that I can't imagine she's all that warm of a mom. Not to mention what hell it must be to grow up in a house where no one eats. I hope I'm wrong about that, but I bet I'm not.

She just seems so intensely unhappy, so rigid, so devoid of joy that I can't help but feel empathy about the lifetime of hurtful experiences she must have gone through to get to this place. That woman does NOT like herself. Not even a little bit. Sure, I absolutely hate everything she stands for and most of the time I really wish she would just stuff a sock in it, but the sad little fat girl inside me recognizes that the sad little fat girl inside her really just needs some love. I hope one day she finally gets it.

Thanks Jenny!

Okay wait...so you're telling me that people who are fat in middle age and then lose weight have a higher risk for health problems when they're old? And it doesn't occur to you that the weight loss itself could be causing the health problems? Aren't you, like, a scientist? Cause and effect? Ring any bells?

Thanks Jean!

Hey folks! withoutscene gave me a heads up to this article over at Sociological Images regarding fat camp. I had some experiences with fat camp when I was younger so I figured I'd post a comment:

I went to fat camp for three years in my mid-teens. I enjoyed being there a whole lot more than I enjoyed being in the outside world but there was definitely a hierarchy of fatness and there was plenty of fat shaming and unhealthy food behavior perpetuated. The camp I went to inexplicably also allowed girls with restricting eating disorders to attend, only they had to come up to the kitchen and eat extra snacks before bed to keep their calorie count up. I can imagine being in an environment where everyone is pushing eating less and exercising more could be a serious triggering thing for an anorexic or bulimic person.

My camp was pretty much the same as the previous commenter described, low calorie meals and exercise all day long. I definitely lost weight by the end of the summer and was happy about it because my parents were happy, but once I got back to reality the weight came right back on and it was back to the dysfunctional power struggle between my parents and my fat. They ended up sending me back two more summers but finally we just couldn’t afford it anymore. It’s not a cheap way to spend a summer, which is another sociological consideration because most of the kids there had pretty rich parents.

So. I can’t speak for every kid who has had a fat camp experience, but I knew I was there because my parents thought there was something wrong with me that needed to be fixed. It was not just a fun time. To an extent it felt like camp was my atonement for not fitting the mold. The fact that I enjoyed interacting with other kids like me at camp didn’t really ever make up for that.

As I was writing I became curious about the rest of the fat community out there. Did you go to fat camp? Were your experiences similar to mine or totally different? Do you think your experiences shaped you in a positive or negative way? If you never went to fat camp, did you ever want to? Other thoughts?

I went to Kingsmont, by the way. Anyone else?

Zombies? No, obesity doctors. You read that right. Though they want in our brains, rather than eating them up. But part of me thinks they’d eat our brains if it’d “cure our obesity”—after all, it’s for our health!

On Tuesday Nightline covered a story about a woman, Carol, who agreed to be the second person in the U.S. to undergo “the most radical treatment ever devised for obesity,” a treatment called Deep Brain Stimulation. Basically, surgeons drill into her brain and carefully poke around, sending electric currents into her brain until they identify the part that controls her hunger, feeling of satiation, etc. And then they implant “two brain pacemakers” into her chest that will send those same electric currents to her brain. TWO!!! The currents are supposed to keep her, it seems, feeling full enough—meaning they are sending volts into her brain to simulate a feeling “just below [the] threshold of nausea.” According to one surgeon, this will “readjust her weight thermostat so that she can metabolize better and potentially eat less, if that’s what it takes.” Eventually they will have to dial it up a notch to keep her feeling full.

I respect this woman’s right to do this, but I do not respect the doctors/researchers’ endeavor to perform it, nor am I very satisfied with Nightline’s coverage. Martin Bashir doesn’t ask the tough questions, evaluate the risks of this radical procedure or the assumptions it’s based on, or even present more than a flittering critical thought throughout this report. It’s not that Bashir seems all that gung-ho about it, but in the end it is just another booga-booga-OMGtehFats puff piece, rather than an investigative report.

I tend to be long-winded, so I decided to at least organize my long-windedness and post a list of my objections...off the top of my head.

1. The contention that “obesity is the most painful problem in the world.” Now, I took that out of context. The actual quote is, “For Carol Poe, obesity is the most painful problem in the world.” If she said this and she feels it’s her biggest problem, I feel really bad for her and what she must go through...not that she’d be the only one who thinks being fat is The_Worst_Thing_Evar ™. We all know that people would rather die than be obeeeeese (or “overweight” or even a little fat); fatness is many people’s greatest fear. But this segment only reinforces the idea that it’s the worst thing that could happen to a person and that we should all be very, very afraid of the fats. The same news show would likely do a story on how young girls are so afraid of fat and not see the connection between girls’ fear of fat and their own reporting.

2. The doctors’ treatment of “obesity” as though fatness is a disease like Parkinson’s. Fatness is not a disease, people. Yet doctors think that since Deep Brain Stimulation worked on Parkinson’s (not sure how accurate that is) they can and should save the world from fat people—and fat people from themselves—using DBS.

3. That’s right, we can’t control ourselves, so they’ve gotta go into our brains and do it themselves. See how much work we make them do? If this procedure “works” (whatever that means), there may be a time when any “obese” person who doesn’t subject themselves to DBS and “brain pacemakers” will be seen as both socially and personally irresponsible. If so, at the same time we will still be lamented for our inability to control ourselves of our insatiable need for instant gratification. A judgment all based on weight.

4. The “Fat Carol” to “Ideal Carol” digital transformation. Really? Like fat people don’t see enough of this on weight loss commercials. The fact that “before” and “after” pictures have become a staple in our culture is evidence that we have some real problems. When we set up any kind of “ideal” body shape/size, we have a problem.

5. This segment addresses nothing about health. No mention of measures of her health before or after. No mention of health other than the cursory mention of her mental health/anguish regarding her fatness and the implication that she is a compulsive eater paired the idea that her compulsive eating is what’s at the root of her “fat problem.” After all, they wouldn’t need in our brains if we could control ourselves. You wanna bet people still come away form the segment assuming this will improve her health? What happens if this woman actually ends up malnourished? This implant is manipulating signals sent to her brain about what her body needs; it completely suppresses any chance she would have of listening to her bodily cues regarding hunger and nourishment.

6. According to the segment, this woman is 230lbs. I think a simple WTF covers this.

7. Surgeon guy: “For some it may seem radical that electrodes should be put in the brain, that someone should be doing brain surgery for obesity. But I think we’ve gotten through that.” Me: Uh, no we have NOT.

8. This is not scientific, at least not in the sense that we can deduce anything whatsoever. (Though the fact that they know so much about the brain is pretty friggin cool, if scary.) There is no control group. She’s just one woman, and she’s doing things in addition to getting the DBS implants that might affect the outcome. Not to mention the possible placebo effects of something as serious as brain surgery. And on top of all this, we have just seen a snapshot of her experience. We in no way know what the future holds for her or whether eating less would make her thin or even “overweight.” And yet people will assume. And we will continue to suffer from their poor assumptions because when you are addressing OMGtehFatness you don't have to think critically, ask tough questions or give an accurate portrayal of risks and benefits.

Finally, I have been really trying to create “action steps” lately...but on this one I am not seeing a clear path. I did tweet Nightline a piece or two of my mind, not that they paid any attention. Maybe we should suggest that Nightline do a segment on weight discrimination and prejudice in health care and the real health consequences of both, or a segment on HAES. Any suggestions?

More info on this from Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science