In the news yesterday, there was much hubbub about a fat boy in England whose mother was underthreat of child repossession by the state (she didn’t lose him after all).  Officially the reason is “neglect,” which makes perfect sense to me, because clearly she is neglecting to feed the kid anything fresh and green, neglecting to take care of his health, neglecting to teach him about nutrition, neglecting to keep him healthy.  She’s also neglecting to attend the pediatrician and nutritionist appointments the state has made for her in an effort to try and fix the situation before seizing takes place.  It’s an interesting case because as far as I know, this is the first time a parent was under threat of losing their kid because they let him get fat (and we’re talking very fat, not just chubby).   I don’t totally know what I think of this.  I think taking a kid out of his home is a very serious thing, but as you all know I also think obesity is a very serious thing.  If a parent resists reforming and continues to allow the child’s health to be severely compromised, what are we do to?  It’s not okay to leave kids in abusive homes; neglect is abuse.  In this case, the consequences for health, life and limb, are similar.

In the spirit of thinking about obesity, I have here reposted a rant from a month or two ago, about the BMI fuss in an American school.  If you read it before, feel free to not bother reading it again.  I’m reposting because I want it on this new blogsite, and because I liked it, dammit.

REPOST

Can we talk about fat?

 So there’s this school in the States that is sending kids’ BMI scores home, and there has been quite a lot of negative responses, and even outrage, because of it.  I happen to think there are plenty of things about this event that warrant outrage – or at least a closer look at how to make it useful (such as providing the parents with some explanation of what it all means and what to do next, which I understand is not part of the report).  Certainly the process has problems, big ones.  But there’s one thing that’s being cited over and over on the interweb that I just totally, totally disagree with: telling kids their BMI score, when they are overweight, is bad because it will hurt their self esteem.

 A brief primer is in order, before we go any further.  The body-mass index is, in the words of my physician partner, just a fancy way of measuring your height and weight.  It’s no different than the old-school growth curve charts that are also still in use today, except they do some math for you and you get a number rather than a coordinate.  In general, it’s a good measure.  It does have problems.  It doesn’t, for example, differentiate between the densities of weight of fat versus weight of muscle, so if you’re very muscular you may find yourself falling in the overweight category even though you are very fit and have little fat, and don’t need to lose weight.  But that particular exception applies to very, very few of us.  The BMI is based on a statistical model.  I just took stats so I know everything there is to know about standard deviations (ha!), and basically what we end up with is this: if you are within two standard deviations of the norm, the BMI will apply to you reasonably well.  Two standard deviations includes, wait for it, 95% of all people.

Why have a BMI?  It is associated with various weight related health disorders.  People who fall into the overweight category on the chart, or higher, have a higher than normal associated risk for things like heart disease and diabetes.  This is why you should care if you are overweight.  I suspect, but cannot prove, that many people dismiss the BMI because it seems to hold us to an unreasonable standard – i.e., “no one is that thin!”  My belief is that we think this way because obesity is so common that we’ve become used to it, and it seems normal.  That makes it hard to believe that I, at five foot three, would be overweight at 140lbs.  140 isn’t so huge – or at least, isn’t so uncommon.  But it is a health risk, no matter what I think about it.

Back to the kids.  Does it hurt your self esteem to be told you are, according to the BMI, overweight?  Possibly.  But the reality is that everyone who will be thusly categorized will also, likely without exception, look fat.  Little kids are not body builders.  Being told you are overweight will not, I promise you, be news to these kids.  Fat kids know they are fat.  They can’t help it, they live in their bodies every second of every day.  But even if they somehow totally fail to notice, their nasty little peers will delight in pointing it out.  The BMI report isn’t what hurts.  Being fat and teased for it, and/or ashamed of it, hurts.  I guarantee this is already going on at that American school.  I still remember the fat kid when I was in elementary school (his name was Jake).  I was never a teaser, but plenty of others were, and this poor kid got it harsh for his weight.  A note about his BMI wouldn’t have been news to Jake.  It might have been a wakeup call to his parents.

The self esteem of children is very important.  But here’s the thing: you can’t give it to someone.  Telling a child he is wonderful doesn’t make him feel more confident.  Confidence and esteem come from warranted recognition.  So if little Johnny gets an improved mark, or produces some art, or behaves in an appropriate manner, or goes out of his way to help others, and he is recognized for it, self esteem can grow.  Platitudes don’t work.  Pretending there is nothing wrong with being fat in order to save a child’s feelings won’t work either, because children aren’t stupid and it’s plain as day that there is something wrong with being fat.  Should there be?  I say yes, because of the health risks.  We’re not talking about conforming to sexist ideals or becoming anorexic, we’re talking about saving our joints, our hearts, and our longevity.

In short, it isn’t the label that’s hurtful, it’s the condition.  Here’s another example: the medical terminology for someone who has an IQ of less than 70 and has problems functioning in their daily life is mental retardation.  This is a term that is no longer acceptable in polite conversation because of the terrible, negative stigma that is attached to it.  I remember being called a “retard” as a kid by other, mean kids, and occasionally lobbing that one off on someone else myself.  Calling someone a retard was serious business.  So now we don’t use it, outside of medicine, to refer to people who meet the medical criteria.  Instead we said mentally handicapped, but that came to be stigmatizing too.  Then, mentally challenged, and now, amusingly enough, exceptional. (The very smart and the very dumb are labeled as one group, presumably to remove comparison based value judgments between them.  How futile.)  We are trying to do the impossible: pretend that it’s the words that are the problem, when it is the condition. 

I do not believe anyone should be prejudiced against or mistreated or disrespected because of their intelligence or their weight (or colour, etc.).  That is wrong, period.  But we have to acknowledge that nomenclature is moot.  “Retard” is an insult because no one wants to have a low IQ and its attendant problems, not because that particular combination of letters is intrinsically offensive.  (Personally, I wish we could all stop wasting time making up new terms and get down to addressing the real issue, which is the underlying prejudice, but that’s another conversation.)

Fat, overweight, big boned, BMI above 24… it all means the same thing.  But, you can lose weight.  So I believe it is worth the potential risk to self esteem (assuming the child isn’t already aware and unhappy about their weight) in order to wake up some parents, get them to take responsibility for the lifelong health and emotional wellbeing of their kids, and change their eating habits.  Saving some feelings at the cost of, say, diabetes, seems morally wrong, irresponsible, and insulting to the child.  What kind of person would chose a high risk of chronic disease and an almost certainly shortened lifespan for their child, rather than face the reality?  

I suspect the backlash against the BMI letter is fuelled largely by guilt.  Parents know they are in large measure responsible for their children’s weights and health, and they’re fucking it up.  Maybe they struggle with their weights too; many of us do.  That’s no excuse for allowing your child to be put at risk.  The BMI isn’t perfect but it’s pretty darn good, and any parent worth their salt would welcome a warning that could potentially allow them to alter their child’s life trajectory for the better. 

I got a book in the mail!  Oh happy day!

I sure love getting books in the mail!

Today may be the first day in over a week that I feel almost well.  It’s such a relief to finally feel like me again, like someone with forward momentum, like someone with a life.  I’ve been pretty lighthearted about the flu here but the truth is it really got me down.  Of course there’s the physical part, which I struggled against as much as I could while acknowledging that I can’t get better if I don’t rest.  I went to school, I went to a dinner party, I went out with Husband for mussels and beer.  But I had to force myself every step of the way, and when I got home I was drained like an empty balloon.  My heart would race simply from the exertion of walking down the street.  I was chronically exhausted, which started to get a bit frightening around day six.  This was the emotional part.
I’ve never had a serious illness or any hospitalizations (except the wisdom tooth debacle, and a chronic low grade struggle with my bowels, named Terry.  Terry the terrible colon.).  So I know I really have no right to complain about illness based fear when all I had was the flu.  But the feeling was real to me, and without minimizing what others have suffered through, I was quite anxious.  Today I have only the mildest vestiges of clinging sick left about me, and thank god for that.  It’s tiring to be anxious all the time.  It felt very alien.

I have a paper due on Sunday and now I have the juice to get at it.  The dishes are done.  I have optimism, finally!

I have decided to give up false modesty. I started this morning. It was surprisingly refreshing!

I’ve always been one of those people who can’t take a compliment. I demur: “Oh, jeez, well, you know,” and I do lots of shrugging and not making eye contact. I feel like my guts are trying to shrink down to the size of an acorn, which is frankly impossible because I take in a lot of fiber and you know where that ends up, but it’s trying. Or, I’ll say “Well it’s not such a big deal,” or “I studied a lot, you know, this stuff doesn’t come naturally to me.” But it does. And sometimes it is a big deal. Somehow I came out of childhood with this squirmy dislike of being praised. I’m not really sure why. Certainly I was praised as a child, and it was never paired with a smack or anything that would cause me to dread compliments. But it’s true, I don’t tolerate them very well. Even though I crave them. So it’s time to stop the false modesty. Sometimes, I look good. Or I made a good meal. Or I got some kind of accomplishment, and it could be praiseworthy. It’s subtly (or not so subtly) undermining of one’s self to refuse to take credit for accomplishments. I think of this as a blow for reality and the realistic appraisal of myself. I have flaws and strengths, achievements and failures - and the failures are enough of an albatross all on their own, why make the achievements albatrosses too?

Not only is false modesty a slam against yourself, it’s a slam against everyone else who tried what you did and failed, or even just appreciates it. You’re saying, Not only is this comment not deserved, but my accomplishment is not worth being considered in the first place. Or so I think, but I just laid a horrible fart, so horrible that Husband fled the dining room seeking refuge elsewhere in the apartment, but not close to the fireplace in case my fart causes an explosion, so my brain could be addled and I could be wrong.

This morning Husband and I decided that we can’t have cookies in the house any more.  Like alcoholics, we are powerless to restrain ourselves from gorging on cookies if they are here.  We have to turn our lives over to a higher power, confront our helplessness in the face of our adversary, and STOP BUYING COOKIES FOR GOD’S SAKE.  They are just so tempting, all brown and cookie-like.  Husband tells me that cookie companies use a Poisson distribution to determine the likelihood of consumers taking a bite of a chocolate chip cookie and not getting any chocolate chip; for those who don’t know, the Poisson distribution measures things that have a very, very small incidence of occurrence in the population.  In other words, they are making sure we get chips in every bite, the better to hook us all in, mwah ha ha ha!

So now all the cookies are eaten.  We are no longer cookie-slave zombie bots, eating and eating.  With the cookies gone, we’re down to some cucumber, a bag of carrots, one onion, and some packs of mushroom Mr Noodles.  I can’t tell you how relieved we are.

Another weekend of classes has come to a close.  Holy snaketoes batman - I’m exhausted!  Never let it be said that therapy school is a walk in the park!  I thought it was going to be all kittens and puppies but boy was I wrong.  Actually, I thought it was going to be all papers and reading but I was wrong about that too.  It turns out they want us to do a fair bit of self exploration, which has been enlightening, intense, educational, and sometimes very surprising.  Some of you who know me may now be snickering and making snide comments about my mental health (I’m looking at you, Joe), but let me assure you I was screened - yes, carefully screened! - for evidence of mental imbalance before beginning the program.  I passed; did you?

In other news, the flu that ate New York is still clinging to me.  I’m done being fevery, which I am very thankful for, though I would also have been thankful if the fever hadn’t broken in class Friday night.  It was somewhat less than fun to be stuck in class as the sweat rolled down my ribs and upper arms, feeling wretched, struggling to pay attention and appear masterly, wanting nothing more than to roll onto the floor and cry.  But there is no crying in grad school!  So, now all that lingers is a general sense of exhaustion paired with plugged ears and a newly developed cough and stuffy nose.  I have decided that tomorrow I will feel well again.  I only wonder, why didn’t I do this sooner?

Tomorrow some fellow students are coming over to work on a group project, so that means I have to do the dishes.  Since I’ve been sick I’ve really let the kitchen go.  Actually the whole apartment is sort of generally untidy and the sinks need washing.  I really don’t feel like cleaning but I feel less like having people over when this place is a mess, so guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow morning?  Ugh, how depressing.

I’m going to bed now.  Today is officially over.

Scene: Early morning, living room of the Vex apartment.

Husb: “You’ve only been up forty-five seconds, and already both bathroom lights are on.”

Blog:“You’ve only been up forty-five seconds, and already you’re nagging me!”

Husb: “Actually I’ve only been up for ten.”

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*With acknowledgements, but not fees, to Glass Hurricane

Welcome to the new home of my blog. After a few years of bouncing around web addresses, I believe the eagle has landed. Here. Like a shiny new egg. A shiny new egg that looks like a blog.

Fiesta!