Tribune Article and recent Jama research

(cross-posted on main board) You have to cut and past the full link below in order to access the article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/health/chi-0510190205oct19,1,7712448.story?ctrack=1&cset=true Just thought I would share. I am a member of a different online community and someone posted a part of the above referenced article, along with a part of another journal article: (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/294/15/1903) in a group which supports size positivism. The poster of the article made it sound as weight loss surgery is merely about fat people wanting to be thin. Funny how people will attempt to influence others by stretching facts. My own involvement with size positivism focuses on pre-teen and teen girls. Specifically, the impact of societally prescribed standards of beauty via media messages and how the barrage of such messaged can lead to eating disorders, self-inflicted abuse, self-esteem problems, etc. There is a big difference between accepting yourself and your relatively healthy body in the face the ever present critique of the public and telling yourself you are healthy at 400lbs with the onset of high bp, diabetes and heart disease. I hope this is making sense. What are your thoughts?

Hey Katie, when i went to work last week, one of my co-workers who knew i was having surgery on Tuesday asked me if i'd seen the articles in the Trib. I hadn't but had heard a piece on NPR about the jama articles. anyway, this friend asked if i was considering not having surgery because of the results in the articles. when i told him no that i was still planning on having RNY, he said good. as you and i both know, having this surgery is a personal decision, and we each have our own reasons and came to those reasons through a variety of life experiences. i think the worst thing would be to have RNY thinking it was going to be a magic bullet and change your life without having to change your attitude towards food. there's a reason there are so many support groups. i think it's because we have shared, similar experiences, and there is strength in numbers. similarly, if there was some kind of support group for preteen and teenaged girls, probably separate groups for boys as well, there might be fewer instances of anorexia nervosa. Then again if there were fewer teen idols like brittney spears, carmen electra and the other pop idols who are super thin, that might go a longer way to improve the self image of that age group. we all remember being teenagers i'm sure. if we were fat, we were probably made fun of. if we weren't fat, we probably made fun of those who were. in our youth, we were all stupid for one reason or another and i'm sure that now is no different than back when we were "that" age. i think that more than just size acceptance and size positivism has to change. how do we learn to be cruel to our peers when we are kids? most of our attitudes when we are young are obtained through our parents and family. if uncle joe is fat, it's okay to snicker at him when he isn't looking, but you have to be nice to his face. you can't play with your friend down the block because her/his mother is fat and therefore lazy and unclean and the friend must be like her/his mother and you don't want to grow up like that do you? not so subtle messages from parents, family, teachers, and friends. and why is it okay to make fun of a fat person, but not a person of color, or someone who isn't the same religion as us, or ethnic background, or someone who has physical handicap, or a mental handicap? it's not okay, obviously. prejudice is prejudice regardless of the "class" distinction. i was pretty much okay with my body image until my doctor added insulin to my never ending regime of maintenance drugs. while it hurts less physically to give myself an insulin shot than it does to test my blood, i knew that i had started down a slowly but steadily declining road. for me, the way to stop the downward spiral is to have RNY and use it as my tool to change my life. so that's what i'm doing. i am taking responsibility for my current condition and my future. isn't that the best we can hope for from ourselves? jan