Calories = BS?
By Bianca
Yesterday, Sylvia wrote a very honest post, about how she’s always thought it was her fault that she is fat. Thanks everyone for their comments.
She and I have had several discussions about whether or not fat is genetic. In these discussions I’ve always leaned towards yes in most cases, but I know she was more resistant to the idea. And I don’t blame her. I was not fat as a child or a teenager, lost most of the baby weight quickly after I had my daughter (it was Atkins and starvation, but at the time I wasn’t splitting hairs), and was shocked when I started gaining weight I could not lose shortly after.
I blamed myself. I was doing something wrong. I was eating too many carbs, too many calories; I wasn’t doing enough sit ups every day. It didn’t help that my boyfriend at the time took every chance he had to remind me how ugly and fat I was. I wasn’t good enough for him. I didn’t deserve to be treated well and for good things to happen to me in life.
What I did not know until years later, was that I had PCOS. And while there are thin women out there who have this disease, one of the big (no pun intended – ok maybe a little) symptoms of PCOS is obesity. So I was fighting an unwinable battle with my body.
However, even though I knew that there some reasons for people to be overweight, many of which are out of our control, there was still a part of me that thought that most people were simply fat because they ate too much, and were lazy. I basically thought that for any fat person what wasn’t “sick” like me. After all, that’s what every almost everyone else said.
I know that now not to be true. Maturity does have it’s advantages.
I was reading through the comments from her post yesterday and started to post my own in response. It started like this:
Sylvia and I have talked many times about whether or not we believe fat is largely genetic. As someone who eats lunch with her almost every day, and spends way to much time talking about what we had the night before for dinner, I know she eats a healthy balanced diet, and her food intake is not what has made her fat. However, I do believe that some people may be fat because they eat too much
And then I stopped. Because what is “too much”? Is eating passed the point of feeling full “too much”? Is just eating junk food all the time “too much”? Is exceeding daily calorie recommendations “too much”?
And where did these calories recommendations come from anyways? The same type of people who gave us the super accurate BMI system? Is the entire thing bs?
Coincidentally, I ran across this article yesterday. Now I have to be honest. I kind of skimmed past the big words, and sciencey parts, because they made my head hurt, but the general gist of the article is that food labels are WRONG and the way calories are calculated are WRONG.
Also, it’s not really a fat friendly article, they mention the big fat scary obesity epedemic, but I chose to ignore that part, and focus on the important part.
Scientists can’t really figure out an accurate way to tell us how many calories are in a brownie, so who the hell are they to tell us how many calories (which are not accurate anyways) we need each day?
What is overeating? I know someone who eats tons of junk all day long, but is thin, so I doubt anyone would accuse her of overeating. And yet Sylvia, who eats lots of salads, veggies, lean meats and tofu, thinks she overeats simply because she is fat?
So if calories are wrong, and no one can tell us how much of anything we should eat everyday, then why the hell do we spend so much time stressing over what we put in our mouth?
And not all the calories contained in something you put in your mouth wind up in your system. Forgive me for dropping your interesting thoughts into the gutter, but there’s a reason dogs eat poop — it still contains a lot of, uh, food. Also, dogs are gross.
One effect of a fibre-rich diet is that food moves through the system faster, giving the intestines less opportunity to absorb calories (and nutrients). And, apparently, when the number of calories entering a body is very low for a long period of time, the intestines start to develop additional folds, to provide greater surface area for absorption, so people who have starved themselves often may be absorbing more calories than people who haven’t even if they put the same food in their mouths. Now I haven’t seen the actual study on this — only a report, so don’t quote me, but it really does seem like it’s impossible to say what is “too much” even if are fatophobic.
Just to nitpick a bit, the point of the article, I thought, wasn’t that “scientists can’t really figure out an accurate way to tell us how many calories are in a brownie” but that scientists CAN figure it out, it would just cost governments more time and money than it would be worth to try to get it out there on every nutrition label in the world… especially given that tracking calories is a sisyphean task that will drive even the most anal bean counter to drink in no time. Worse, it would put the lie to the idea that a 100 calorie pack of oreos is the same as a banana. Something the good folks at GlobalMegaAgraFoodCo Inc. would really prefer we not notice.
Also, surely there would be differences in the number of calories each individual would extract from any particular food item. What if I have an irritable bowel and so the food passes more quickly? What if I am old/young/male/female, and how is this affected by what else I’ve eaten today?
Basically what I took from the article is that telling people its as “simple” as calories in, calories out is a BIG FAT LIE – its not simple at all, and even if it was there is no good way for anyone to actually “track their calories” even if they were so inclined. And I absolutely agree with Cassi that calorie-counting is a sure fire way to lose your mind… even in my most obsessed days I couldn’t manage it for more than about a week.
Oh also… really don’t read the comments on that article. *sigh*
Running the risk of TMI… I have IBS and since I had my gall bladder out last year, it has been 10 times worse than it ever was. Everything I eat goes straight through me. Today for example, involved one meal (the evening one) and about 10 urgent trips to the bathroom (starting at 8am and continuing all day long). But I am still fat. One would think nothing stays in me long enough to be converted to fat but I am still fat. Go figure…
Apologies for the super long comment Bianca but I have to say this: Okay fellow fats, I’m sick to death of all this self-hatred and shame spiral bullshit! When are we going to band together as a group and fight our oppressors? Society will continue to make us the scapegoats for all their ills unless we stand up and say No More!! I’m sick of reading countless stories of obese people harassed by airlines, by their fellow citizens, by the medical community, by everyone. We have got to take a stand, we’ve got to start fighting this. If you don’t know this stuff already, here’s your crash course: Obesity is genetic, dieting can’t alter your genetics but it can kill you or permanently damage your body, obesity does not kill and it does not cause any other disease. Period. The treatment we suffer as obese people is no different than that which was suffered by African-Americans for centuries. In fact, every time you see the word fat or obese used in a negative light, try mentally replacing that word with the n-word. It’s no different, it’s completely socially acceptable to say fat derogatorily just as it was completely socially acceptable to use the n-word at one time. Usage of these words is never justified, it’s just the way it is or was and will continue to be forever until we say NO. Every time you think of buying into the idea that fat is wrong and you need to change to be a better, more socially acceptable person, think of someone of color buying into the idea that only white is beautiful, think of that person sitting down with a bottle of bleach and a scrub brush. Neither one (fat or of color) can change the way they look but the real point is that NONE of us should be shamed into pointless, destructive self-hatred in the first damn place. We will continue to be harassed and oppressed until we stand up for ourselves. When will we say enough is enough? When will we allow our voices to be heard? When we will stop apologizing for who we are? When?