FatBoyGetDown!

A knot in my stomach: the story of Slimband

Tonight while watching some inane thing on TV, I saw a chirpy, cheerful, upbeat ad for a wonderful new weight loss program that promised you could lose "up to half your excess weight within a year!" There was no mention of exactly HOW you would do this, though the product, called Slimband (reminding me of "slime" for some reason) was pictured on their logo as a whiplike thing shaped like a sperm. So I had to deduce (because they didn't spell it out at all) that this was in fact a surgical procedure, not a diet plan.

I had to do some digging, and before long I found out about the dark side of Slimband. Basically they implant a band that squeezes your stomach so you can't eat normally. It's about as healthy-sounding as tying your throat shut so you can't swallow. 

People have suffered all sorts of complications like perforation and internal bleeding when the thing "slips" (see cautionery article, below)as well as a complete inability to digest food, and in many cases there is little or no weight loss. The cost of the procedure is $16,000.00. I don't think this company does much if any real research on results, or if it does they don't publish it. But people seem to be so desperate, and obesity is getting so bad. Why are people so addicted to food? Does no one ask this? No, just tie a knot in your stomach and hope for the best.

Ray Baker, a doctor in the addictions field, once said to me, "An addiction is an addiction is an addiction." Food, sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling: all have the same root. If you don't start off with trauma, you end up with it through the repercussions of your seemingly-unbreakable habit. It's not uncommon for the addict to leave one pattern behind, then turn to another: switch from alcohol to gambling, or drugs, or sex, or even food. Ray called this "changing seats on the Titanic".

I know all about this stuff, having experienced it through my own body and soul, and I have touched on it before on this blog. Turning off the tap in your stomach won't do it, nor will wiring your jaw shut or taking aversive therapy to tell yourself you really don't want to eat. If the underlying crap isn't addressed, you won't have any lasting success. But we're a drive-through culture of instant gratification, which is a huge part of the problem to begin with. Conventional weight loss through dieting and exercise is too slow, too messy, and too likely to unmask the hellish conditions which caused the overeating in the first place.

When I was growing up, there was a woman down the street who was completely stigmatized and had no friends because she was a "fat lady" who weighed something like 250 pounds. Now that seems almost svelte. What happened? What we used to condemn as gluttony (one of the Seven Deadly Sins) has become a relatively cheap, semi-acceptable drug, and no one is asking why so many people have to resort to it to make life bearable.

I was shocked to discover that Slimband (and I keep seeing it as Slimb - and . . . and WHAT?) is considered a remedial process,"an option for failed gastric bypass procedure in obese patients". Nowhere in that glossy, upbeat ad is botched/remedial surgery mentioned. A great many of these "patients" are refugees from the bariatric surgery industry, a fad fostered by such wildly popular TV series as TLC's My 600-lb Life and presented as a nearly-always-successful quick fix. The couple of cases per season where it fails are presented as the fault of the patient and their rotten, uncooperative attitude. One wonders if they have been coached to fail so the show won't seem too unrealistically positive. Nowhere is reality more distorted and manipulated than in "reality TV".

But the remedial surgery aspect of Slimband which is even spelled out in some of their ads (though perhaps only in medical publications) frightens me. If it was such a failed mess the first time, how is Slimband going to help?

One of the most bizarre things I found in my poking around on the internet was a blog recounting a woman's disastrous experience with Slimband, in which she told us she had lost barely any weight, had no support and was constantly uncomfortable. Then she pulled the biggest switcheroo I've ever seen:

The folks at Slimband are trying to help me, as a patient but are doing a very poor job of it so far which is why I’m so darn upset. I got my band de-filled, but now I’m not getting enough follow up or any of the other fancy post op support options they were promising me when we still thought I would be helping the company. I feel totally abandoned again and have no idea what to do or who to talk with to get this band shit figured out! So frustrating! My dietician is trying her best, but she seems limited in her abilities to assist me in my journey. And I’m gaining weight. This make me PISSED TO THE EXTREME.

Despite the vitriol and frustration I have just unloaded, I think that if they just brought me on board, let me figure out where they’re going wrong, how to fix it, and then DO IT they could be a great company and be able to help so many people, past, present and future. A company with a good reputation is going to do very, very well in today’s social media world and bring in the big bucks. I’m trying to balance my desire to fix something broken and make it succeed with my desire to help all those past patients like me that don’t realize that THEY DESERVE BETTER.

I've seen it before: first, bust down the product and get everyone onside with complaints of their own, then subtly (or not-so-subtly) turn the ship around and get it sailing in the opposite direction, specifically for personal profit. The post was actually a bizarre sort of job application, offering Slimband her resume as a possible new pitch-person who would counter all the negative press (some of which she wrote herself). If Slimband was the problem, she was the solution. If cash registers still rang, I'd be hearing: ka-ching.

http://www.plexuspoint.com/plexus-slim-reviews/

I would have been shocked, except it's a ploy I've seen before with Plexus Worldwide, a supplement company that promises weight-loss miracles and is good for man or beast. The blogger ranted and railed against it, saying it had utterly failed her, along with every other weight loss scheme she had ever tried. Nothing worked, they were all useless, and most especially Plexus which also cost her an arm and a leg. It was weird, though. Throughout the rant there were these statements that almost seemed to be defending Plexus. In fact, they couldn't be anything else.

Update: June 22 !

You can now find out if Plexus Slim is specifically right for you.

Just choose the right answers for the 6 questions below & find out if Plexus is right for YOU...

The questionnaire, when filled out, takes you to the Plexus site. Then, even more strangely, she began to hint subtly that there WAS a way out of the weight loss dilemma, and that she had the answer. All you had to do was click on a link taking you to a site which also went on for pages and pages. 

https://www.fitfinally.com/truth/

I'll relieve the suspense right now, folks. It's an ad for her book. A book which purports to provide that one true miracle that will help you beat this problem once and for all. Never mind that every week, if not every day, we see another example of the One True Religion, that awesome Secret that will make us all look slim, youthful and desirable, not the quivering piles of fat we are today.

(For more ranting on this subject, I covered it thoroughly here. But I guess not thoroughly enough.) 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2015/11/in-pain-any-kind-of-pain-shut-fxxx-up.html

Conclusions. If a new miracle is coming out every day, if not every hour, then obviously somebody is not getting the message. Slimfast is a huge, impersonal corporation that uses a surgical chain-saw to fix people's profound emotional pain. They're selling hope, a fragile commodity that slips away in the face of hard reality. If you stuff your face to the point that you can barely walk, you are an addict. Addiction is a minefield, and there is no easy way out. No way out AT ALL, in fact, but there is a way through. Each bomb has to be defused as you come to it. If you don't, sooner or later it will all blow up in your face. 


Chief surgeon at Slimband weight-loss clinics resigns after probe reveals ‘significant history of complaints’

National Post/Files   Dr. Patrick Yau helping to perform a surgery in 2001. Yau has resigned as chief surgeon at Slimband weight-loss clinics after Ontario's College of Physicians and Surgeons ruled his care of a patient was below standards.

The chief surgeon at Canada’s most prominent weight-loss surgery clinic has resigned from the company after Ontario’s medical regulator received what it called a “very troubling” succession of patient complaints about him.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons concluded in one recent ruling that Dr. Patrick Yau of Toronto-based Slimband waited unduly long to operate on a patient suffering acute pain from the “gastric band” installed around her stomach. His response to the excruciating complications failed to meet the profession’s standard of care, the agency’s complaints committee said.

The eroded band was eventually removed by another surgeon.

The decision, not released publicly but obtained by the National Post, also cited a “significant history of complaints” alleging the surgeon had acted unprofessionally, including three others being considered at the same time as the delayed-treatment case. It said the college had also conducted a broader “registrar’s investigation” of his practice.

Related
Leading weight-loss doctor accused of trying to ‘stifle competition’ by filing advertising complaints against rivals
Thick to thin: Gastric-band weight-loss clinic denies allegations of putting patients at risk

“In light of the college’s decision, Dr. Patrick Yau has stepped down from his role at our clinic,” Lisa Borg, Slimband’s chief operating officer, said in an emailed response to queries about the physician.

Ms. Borg declined to elaborate. Neither Dr. Yau nor a lawyer who has acted on his behalf could be reached for comment.

With extensive advertising on TV and the Internet, Slimband is the most visible of a string of private clinics across the country that offer weight-loss operations, and has described itself as the busiest. Dr. Yau says he has performed over 6,000 gastric-band surgeries, more than any other physician in the country, usually with “excellent results.”

A 2012 National Post report, however, quoted malpractice lawsuits and former Slimband employees who raised questions about whether patients signed on following a persistent sales effort were adequately screened, sufficiently warned about possible complications or provided sufficient post-operative care.

The company said at the time that patients are fully informed of the risks and receive post-op service that is the best in the industry. It also cited customer surveys that showed the vast majority of patients were satisfied with the results, their lives changed “in ways they never dreamed possible.”

‘Am I going to have to live the rest of my life this way, or am I going to die because of this?’

Like most of the other private clinics, Slimband implants a liquid-filled band around the stomach, creating a small pocket and a narrow opening to the rest of the organ. The pocket fills with food quickly, making the patient feel full much sooner than normal.

In the case recently decided by the college, the patient had the operation in 2008 and did “very well” initially. But on July 10, 2012, she complained to Slimband about sharp pain and difficulty eating that seemed related to the implant.

Dr. Yau saw her a week later and did a “de-fill” of the liquid in the band to make it looser, but the pain continued, according to an independent expert’s report to the regulator. In the ensuing two weeks, she repeatedly went to hospital, with scans eventually showing the band had started to erode, a problem that can lead to dangerous internal infection.

On Aug. 4, Dr. Yau and a colleague tried to remove the band, but were unable to do so, and said they would wait a month for it to migrate to another position where it could be more easily taken out, the college ruling said. As the pain and discomfort continued, though, the patient found another weight-loss surgeon, Dr. Chris Cobourn of Mississauga, Ont., who removed the band on Aug. 10.

Dr. Yau told the regulator he treated the patient conservatively because she was not in acute danger and he wanted to avoid the potential of unnecessary complications. When her problems persisted, he acted expediently, the physician argued.

Aaron Lynett/National Post/Files   A Slimband clinic in Toronto. The company has described itself as the busiest weight-loss clinics in Canada.

The independent expert, though, said the patient’s problems demanded “a precise and quick” intervention, while Dr. Yau exhibited “no feeling of urgency.” His “surprising” approach failed to meet the profession’s standard of practice, said the expert, a conclusion the complaints committee adopted.

The patient said in an interview she felt abandoned by the health-care system as she struggled with “incredible” discomfort for a month in 2012.

“Because I was in so much pain, and not able to get treatment, it felt extremely scary, it felt hopeless,” said the Toronto-area woman, who asked not to be named. “You begin to think, ‘Am I going to have to live the rest of my life this way, or am I going to die because of this?’ … It was horrible.”

The college’s complaints committee issued a written caution against Dr. Yau, and said he had been ordered to undergo a remediation program.

The committee said it could not rule on the patient’s allegation that he had behaved in an uncaring and unprofessional manner, but added that the surgeon “has a significant history of complaints” before the college regarding his professional communication.

“In short, the committee is very troubled by Dr. Yau’s communication and what appears to be a sustained pattern of issues related to unprofessional behavior.”

The decision also said his practice had been subjected to a “registrar’s investigation,” a broader review that can sometimes look at a doctor’s treatment of several patients. That probe led to the order that he undergo remediation and continuing education.

National Post
tblackwell@nationalpost.com

And as the kicker, a tiny excerpt from the many, many post-surgery blogs I found.

Welcome to the wonderful world of lapband life.

I had weight loss surgery, and having had the lapband 2 1/2 years I am very familiar with being “stuck”. It can happen at any time, for any reason. I have eaten dense protein like chicken or steak and it went down just fine. then later that day I have attempted to eat Greek yogurt and it doesn’t want to go down. With the Lap-Band, restriction can vary from day to day, moment to moment. That is why I call my band a psycho band, lol.

What I usually do when I am stuck is to take some Papaya Extract. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Coke is another option. Although carbonated beverages are generally frowned upon with most weight loss surgeries, this is an exception. The acid in it can break down the protein. It’s usually going to go down…….or come back up. Either way, it’s a plus. Staying stuck is not a good thing!

Fluids in general can sometimes dilute it and push it on down. Since I am now used to following the “band rules” and not drinking with meals or for 30 minutes after, I wouldn’t do this initially because I thought I needed to wait 30 minutes after it finally went down to drink. Don’t hesitate though, if you’ve been stuck for more than a few minutes, take a drink. It may help.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Why is everyone so goddamn FAT?

I have a question. Call it the question of the day.

Why is everyone so goddamn fat?

I’ve been wondering about this for a long time now. Everyone’s read the statistics, though as you may realize, I hate statistics and seldom quote them. But they do reflect a certain trend.

People are getting huge. I mean, HUGE. Sometimes I wonder where it’s all coming from. In the past ten or twelve years, the population has ballooned to the point where half of us are too damn fat, and a third of us are way WAY too fat.

If it’s only in the last ten years or so, what happened? As far as I can remember, back then everybody was obsessed with their weight. Everybody wanted to be thinner. There was diet book, after diet book, after diet book coming out and hitting the top of the best-seller list.

I had to ask myself: why keep buying these things, when you obviously can’t follow them? Why the endless search for the Holy Grail of diets, the one that will take weight off and keep it off forever and evermore?

Meanwhile, in the midst of this best-sellerism – which still goes on today, only in a more scientific, theory-oriented way (can’t eat carbs with protein, have to follow your blood type, primordial cave man diet, What would Jesus Do diet – presumably, consisting of loaves and fishes) – we’re getting so damn fat, it’s shooting past the upper limits  of the scale.

You see this reflected in all those weight-oriented TV shows like Biggest Loser and whatever-the-rest-of-them-are (I don’t watch them much, too painful). Shows that are seemingly unrelated, like Hoarders, give us examples of impoverished men and women who are somehow enormous, their bodies no longer in any kind of recognizable shape. Usually it comes out that they can’t cook anything because there’s no electricity – the rats have gnawed through the cables or something – so they live on McDonalds and throw the leftovers and wrappers all over the floor (which is nice for the rats).

I shouldn’t have watched this show at all, I’m ashamed to admit it, but it was like a circus side show: once I fell into it, I couldn’t get out. It was called Taboo and it explored the weird, weird, weird, weird things people do (including having sex with the Berlin Wall), always with some expert coming on to say “their behaviour falls within the realm of normal activity”. One of these “normal” guys, somewhere in his 30s and living on disability, was probably close to 400 pounds. His “thing” was to dress up and act like an infant, goo-gooing, sucking things, toddling around in enormous fuzzy sleepers and being fed glop.

Being fed? His “caregiver”, whom at first I thought was his mother, was probably at least 200 pounds heavier than the guy. Her body was just not in a human shape, at all. It was like a misshapen cookie that had melted in the oven, everything all over the place. When she stood, which was difficult for her, her stomach touched the floor, and her breasts reached past her knees. This was supermorbid obesity at its most shocking.

The woman had no upper teeth, and maybe that’s a separate post because an awful lot of people on reality TV have no teeth. It’s a related issue, maybe. Toothlessness may explain why this guy  lives on baby food, but what about the adult diapers? Does she change them, and – no, we won’t go there. It’s just too horrific.

But let’s turn to the more mundane examples of hugeness that we see every day. I just don’t remember seeing this level of obesity in the past. I don’t remember someone lumbering on the bus who weighs maybe 400 pounds, I mean a young guy in his twenties. And I can’t help but think how on earth he’s going to get to 40, or even 30.

There are theories. The weirdest one I saw involved wheat: there’s a scientist out there who says the new strains of wheat are designed to make you fat. Supposedly, if you give up wheat, i.e. go gluten-free like many people do anyway, the excess tonnage will just drop off and stay off.

                              (Original McDonalds hamburger)

 

There are portion sizes: yes, my-oh-my! My husband and I like to go to Denny’s, mainly because it’s relatively cheap and they know how to cook an omelette. But every time we go to Denny’s, we seem to see a family who are all of them huge: most heartbreakingly, even the small children who are encased in soft, puffy fat.

Look at the menu, and you’ll see why. The Grand Slam has been replaced by a sort of grotesque Grand-Grand-Grand slam with four eggs and six sausages and God knows how many pancakes. Reminds me a bit of their bacon extravaganza, in which they offered such greasy delights as a bacon sundae.

If you’re still hungry after being slammed, you can order deep-fried hush puppies (presumably, not the shoes) with ice cream and syrup for dipping. And Denny’s is hardly alone. McDonalds Quarter Pounder is now a Third Pounder. Most people who go to McDonalds can’t do math, so maybe they don’t realize how much larger it is. Wendy’s had a three-patty bacon cheeseburger which gave me chest pains just looking at the menu board.

Meantime, in spite of all the emphasis on fitness and going to the gym, people just don’t, for the most part: they park as close to the mall as possible to avoid walking for two minutes. I wish I could find the cartoon, one of the best ones I’ve seen, in which a couple in a department store has the following conversation:

“Now let’s see, where’s that treadmill they have on sale?”


”It’s way over on the other side of the store.”

“Oh to hell with it then, let’s forget it.”

Never once seeing the irony.

We save steps. I’m a walker – it’s the only consistent exercise I’ve ever done, but I’ve been at it for more than 20 years – and people are constantly trying to give me rides, even complete strangers. Needless to say, I tell them no. But there’s something about walking. It’s stigmatized. It’s just not done. Even cycling is better, but still seen as something of a fruitcake activity around here, something they do in Stanley Park, not the suburbs where a car is the only way of getting around.

I get mowed down regularly, which says something about the car-oriented society that I believe has evolved around malls. I have learned to look obsessively over my left shoulder to avoid that dreaded, heedless right turn. They don’t see me, so I have to see them to avoid ending up one inch thick on the pavement.

I get despairing sometimes, I really do. For the statistics aren’t good. Fatness is still escalating. This makes me wonder: where have all the fat people come from? They must have been much thinner than this a decade ago.

God didn’t just pull out a whole lot of enormous balloons and blow them up and launch them out there. Surely people have done this to themselves.

If the statistics have changed this alarmingly, it means that people who used to be normal weight are now increasingly overweight, or even obese. Women’s clothing reflects this change. It seems everything I try on is stretchy – not just a little stretchy, but stretchy like chewing gum, so that it doesn’t snap back and ends up like an exhausted rubber band

Not only that: sizes have changed. I’ve been fighting weight swings all my life, and in high school I often wore a Size 14 or 16.

Now I am sure I am fatter than I was then, and can wear a 10 or 12.

So what has happened? Can you guess? This is called “vanity sizing” , and it has been done to keep women from committing suicide over their appearance.

It was long ago that Oprah, having skinnied down alarmingly on some kind of powdered protein, suddenly proclaimed, “Diets don’t work!”. She seesawed up and down after that, then kind of settled where she is now, probably a good 200 pounds. She spent one show sitting in a chair and addressing her viewers about her weight. No narcissism there! Her personal trainer came on and said she had “unresolved issues”, but Oprah has always maintained that having people like Dr. Phil on her show was just as good as therapy.

Be that as it may.

I have no doubt that the massively obese have “issues” beyond just  trying to fit behind the wheel of a car. There is a strong connection between obesity and sexual abuse (as there is with any addictive behaviour). It’s burying yourself, really.  Not to mention lugging a huge burden around. The symbolism is very potent, and hands a clear victory to the abuser.

I’ve seen people come on talk shows who represent the Fat Acceptance Movement, and in every case they round up an expert (there must be a TV-related agency called Rent-an-Expert) who says obesity has no significant negative effect on health. Just as easily, one can find experts who tell us exactly the opposite. I’m sick of experts, myself.

I’m frightened of the escalation, because it hasn’t topped out yet, and I wonder when it will. Obesity is fast becoming normalized, and we’ve learned to accept it as never before.

When I was a kid, we had a neighbour named Ruth. My mother didn’t have friends so much as caseloads, so she befriended this woman along with the blind lady, the woman who was “barren” and could not have kids, and the lady with the hydrocephalic daughter. At my estimate, Ruth weighed somewhere between 250 and 300 pounds, but no more than that. She was considered huge, enormously obese, to the point that she seldom left the house. On the rare times when she did, people disapproved. They didn’t really think she should be showing herself, and if she insisted on it, why didn’t she wear a corset or something? For that was the age when even the thinnest women wore iron girdles to shape their bodies and keep things from moving.

Doesn’t happen any more. We don’t wear girdles, except for those awful Spanx things that cover you from neck to ankles and are supposedly “comfortable”. And even though they claim “anyone” can wear them, “anyone” does not include a woman who weighs 400 pounds.

Will we ALL be obese in twenty years? Will people start exploding from the internal pressure (I have actually heard stories of skin splitting: and what happens when someone who has had a massive tummy-tuck gets fat again)? Will gastric bypasses, which often backfire (look at Carnie Wilson) become as routine as tonsillectomies used to be? Will we require significant mutilation and the risk of death to try to regain some semblance of a recognizable human shape?

 

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Peanut Butter Fritos: the Sister Wives Diet

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

INGREDIENTS

1	cup corn syrup, like Karo Syrup
1	cup white sugar
1	cup peanut butter
1	large bag Fritos scoops

PREPARATION:

1. Spread fritos out on a big jelly roll pan turning them so most of the scoop sides are up.
2. In a sauce pan combine corn syrup and sugar and stir gently.
3. Cook only until little bubbles begin to form. Do not cook too long or it will get too hard when it cools.
4. Remove from heat and mix in peanut butter until it melts. Pour over chips on pan. Good to eat immediately. Sometimes we melt chocolate chips and drizzle over the top.

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

INGREDIENTS

saltine crackers
1	cup butter
1	cup sugar
1	package chocolate chips
1	cup finely chopped walnuts

PREPARATION:

1. Line jelly roll pan with foil and spray with pan spray. Place saltine crackers close together covering entire pan.
2. Bring butter and sugar to boil for 2-1/2 minutes, pour over crackers.
3. Bake at 400 for 5 minutes. Pour chocolate chips on top, spreading as they melt. Sprinkle with chopped nuts.

Meri's Caramel Corn

Meri's Caramel Corn

INGREDIENTS

1	cube butter
1	pound brown sugar (2 3/8 cup)
1	cup white corn syrup INGREDIENT NOTE"
1	Eagle® brand condensed milk
1	teaspoon vanilla
3	gallons popped corn

PREPARATION:

1. Cook butter, brown sugar and white corn syrup in a double boiler. Test periodically by dropping a small amount of batter into cold water. If batter can be formed into a firm ball in the cold water, it is finished cooking.
2. Add condensed milk and vanilla. Boil and pour over popped corn.

Ohhhhhh. . . kay. We might just be on to something here, the secret key as to why the four wives (oh, three: one of them is pregnant and usually thin anyway) have been having a teensy bit of trouble losing weight on Sister Wives.

Don't tell me I'm obsessed with Sister Wives, because I already know. I watch them as you'd watch a train wreck staged for public amusement. Most of you will know that this is a "reality" show which follows the adventures and peccadilloes of a fundamentalist Mormon family in a "plural" (polygamous) marriage. They have about a zillion kids and lots of money from unknown sources, which is why they could afford a massive house in Utah before the proverbial shit hit the fan.


The patriarch, a sort of middle-aged Beach Boy named Kody, is the only rooster in a henhouse initially made up of three wives: but soft! Do I see a fourth wife on the horizon, a much younger, much thinner wife, a rather submissive wife who cries at the drop of a hat?


A soon-to-be-pregnant wife?


Hurricane Robyn was nothing to what happened next. In one of many "duh" moments, the family was astounded to learn that authorities were doing an "investigation" of the family on the grounds that they were breaking the law. Then, oh boy, it was getting-out-of-Dodge time.

Though it seems to me highly unlikely that Kody would have been thrown in jail for something that is widely practiced in Utah (he was more likely being punished and held up for ridicule for appearing on television), he dragged his family out of their relative security and stability all the way to Las Vegas, which seems like the worst possible choice for so-called devout Mormons who won't even let their daughters wear tank tops to school.


The big thing now - there's always a big thing - is that the clan needs a source of income to pay for all the furniture-buying jags they're going on. On one episode they said they were going into real estate, but that rather vague plan seems to have been dropped in favour of something way more hip: opening their own gym.

The gals have been making an attempt to lose weight and get in shape. Though the cameras played this down at first, it's obvious all of them except Robyn are seriously obese, well over 200 pounds.
Janelle easily qualifies as morbidly obese.


It's funny to watch them working out with a hunky male trainer for two months, then getting on the scale and being puzzled to see that they've only lost 2 or 3 pounds. When I looked up the Sister Wives recipe book, the mystery was revealed. Though the examples posted here are, I guess, meant for 20 people, a pound of sugar in a single recipe seems extreme. Even main dishes are heavily based on refined carbohydrates, with not much mention of fruits or vegetables. I didn't have space enough for the Mock Tapioca (and surely tapioca itself is "mock" enough), made mostly of Cream of Wheat. I've always thought of that as a post-op food, sort of like the lime jello they give you the day after surgery.

It amazes me that five adults responsible for a huge gaggle of kids can be so irresonsible as to think they can support themselves with this kind of venture. It just doesn't make sense. All the wives seem stressed, with Christine, the supposedly level-headed one, "confessing" that she had been on antidepressants, hastily adding that she was "half off them", to be warmly applauded by Janelle (and do not get me started on "friends" encouraging you to go off your medication! Only your doctor knows for sure.)


Meri is cracking up, obviously, and headed for something pretty dire. Janelle hides behind obesity and blandness, her eyes disturbingly blank. Robyn, well. . .Robyn has already had her baby in "real time", little Solomon Brown (a worse name even than Truely, the name of that bald-headed baby who still looks like a space alien after 18 months).

The more the Meri-er, I suppose, until the money runs out.  But with TLC footing the bill, maybe that won't happen. So Solomon may have a little brother or sister by-and-by, springing from Kody's hyperactive Latter-Day loins.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Pie are square (whoops, round!)

I'm not much when I first wake up in the morning, but I had to be up today. My daughter-in-law was stopping by this morning to pick up a newspaper flyer so she can buy one-o'-dem-dar hot water machines (the Keurig type, which we were recently given and couldn't figure out, except that now we're addicted to it, to that little sucking sound as coffee instantly, effortlessly fills your cup).

When I started noodling around this morning trying to find news sites, I hit on the New York Times. I follow Dick Cavett's blog, always backward-looking and dropping names with audible clunks, but somehow as compulsive as celebrity-watching itself.

But on the same page, I saw the link to the food section: "Pies to Die For".

I wonder if anyone else gets the irony.

We hear, constantly, about how unhealthy it is to be obese, about how it strains the health care system almost beyond the breaking point, and about how it's still escalating. It has oozed into the lives of innocent children, kids raised on McDonald's and almost complete inactivity until their arteries are plaqued-up as severely as a 75-year-old's.

Cheek-by-jowl (pun intended) with these alarms are blaring ads for family restaurants serving ever more grotesque portions of really-bad-for-you food. Fast food chains keep upping the ante, with KFC serving up these horrible things made of two deep-fried chicken patties instead of bread (and who knows what the filling is. A pound of deep-fried peanut butter?)

Blecccchhhh! But people are buying it. People are eating it.

Fat is the new thin.

I can't remember a time when the culture wasn't obsessed with thinness. Models and actresses have that translucent look, as if they'd disappear if they turned sideways. Their pictures are splashed all over the women's magazines, their bony chests sticking out like a chicken's, often with weird globular bolted-on breasts that clearly display the join. These space-alien versions of womanhood appear cheek-by-quivering-jowl with recipes for mouthwatering, saliva-gushing, quintuple-chocolate indulgence cake (the recipe always containing at least a cup of butter) and other scrumptious heart-attacks-waiting-to-happen.

Maybe that pie really is to die for.

Oh, I'm a great one to lecture. I've been a shape shifter all my life. Recently, after a major weight loss, I've begun to creep upward again. I'm just hungry all the time. There are certain intractible family stresses that take a constant toll. Or so I tell myself.

The thing is, all that scrumptiousness won't particularly appeal to a naturally thin person. They will take one taste and go, "mmmmmmmmmm!" - meaning, "bleccccccchhhhhhh". It's kind of like a non-drinker trying to get through a cocktail, finally leaving 2/3 of it sitting on top of the piano. (Sick, eh?) So how come so many people have seemingly had their "blecccccchhhhh" mechanism disabled?

It's NOT heredity, folks. You don't "inherit" fat in a couple of decades. Heredity doesn't suddenly jump out at you like a jack-in-the-box, no matter how convenient it is as an excuse.

It's not just the ready availability of four-patty cheeseburgers (Faster! Higher! Greasier! There's a recession on, and we need those obese people's bucks!). Who actually does anything any more? Who walks? Men drop their wives off at the door of the mall, thinking they are doing them a favor so they don't have to walk the one minute or so from the car.

I walk all the time, and quite frankly, I'm a freak. People stare at me strangely, constantly offer me rides because they assume I'm too impoverished or too weird to drive (maybe so!), or offer false congratulations. "Good for you! I should be doing the same thing" (but I'm not, because I don't want to be stared at and considered weird).

When my daughter-in-law, a keen observer of social trends, was looking through her Home Outfitters flyer, she saw an ad for an egg cracker. "So we don't even crack our own eggs any more?" What next, I wonder - some sort of device you attach to the toilet paper roll?

I have tried to swear off those super-hyper-morbidly-obese shows on TLC, because it's hard to look at anyone whose body has become that grotesquely misshapen. They hardly look like a human bodies any more. Like the gargantuan Mr. Creosote of Monty Python, these patients (usually in for bariatric surgery) look like they're on the verge of exploding. They usually say they don't eat very much, and have "feeders" (often wives, though husbands will do) bringing food to them all the time. What kind of food, and how much, we can only imagine, but like a stash of porn, it's kept secret.

For a while, there was a ludicrous series about an obesity clinic in the States which allowed its patients to order in pizza which was delivered right to their rooms.

There's a certain strange term that has cropped up on these shows, and it sounds like the evil scientist in some low-budget 1950s horror flick: panniculus. What happens is, when a person exceeds, say, 500 pounds and keeps gaining, the fat gets confused and doesn't know where to go. Everything is maxed out, so to speak. So, instead of exploding, the body provides a sanctuary for the excess fat: a sort of circular blob, often attached to the abdomen or inner thigh. It lives there, expanding 'til it's full-up and another one pops out somewhere. Dr. Panniculus, the evil wizard of fat, has taken over the body completely.

People in this situation sometimes do lose weight, but they end up looking like deflated balloons, the stretched skin flopping around and making life miserable. It's usually removed, but we often hear that over 90% of people with major weight loss gain it back again, and more.

What would happen then? Would you become a sort of living Mr. Creosote? How much can skin stretch, anyway?

More to the point: where did this plague come from? When I was growing up, we had a neighbor who weighed, maybe, 280 pounds. She was socially shunned and had very few friends, so my mother took her on as a project. (She had caseloads, not friends.) Though it reeked of pity, this at least got her out a little. Otherwise she would have stayed in the house, hidden from sight.

Dick Cavett posted a blog about obesity, and wondered if the circus fat lady of his youth might be considered relatively thin now, or at least unremarkable, not even large enough to qualify for something like gastric bypass.

Will this just keep on going? Where does it stop? I think obesity is affecting about a third of the population now. If something becomes that prevalent, it gradually becomes more acceptable. Or maybe we just don't see it any more.

I recently tried on some clothes, just cheap little tops, grabbing for a Size Large because my ass is so big right now (and the store so tacky). They nearly fell off me. But the Medium slid all over me too. Finally I resorted to a Small, and it was still pretty generous. I wasn't in the Women's(i.e., "plus") section either, just the average range.

I'm not huge, but no way am I small either. I just have a big butt. It has always been a fitting problem. Until now.

Is this size manipulation just an adjustment to the burgeoning bodies of consumers, or a way to make women feel better about themselves? Or just buy more? Is all this a sort of weird rebellion against the imperative to be thin, thinner, thinnest? (If so, the boomerang is about to smack us all on the back of the head.)

Years ago, it used to be considered bizarre and daring for women to wear pants. In the early '60s, long hair meant that you were a pansy. When I was a kid, nobody but sailors wore tattoos, and women never did unless they were in the circus.

We get used to things. They become normal, or at least standard and unremarkable.

Type II diabetes is so common now, people almost expect it. You manage it, but don't try to cure it. Just take your meds, and go on eating.

Food as a cheap, ready drug? Escalating stress levels? Environmental chaos, pessimism and doom? Economic recession? Nature's way of tipping the board and sending us the way of the dinosaurs, as yet another experiment that either failed or just ran its disastrous course?

Have we devolved?

A friend of mine recently wrote that he suffers from back pain. Since we can't get Ben Gay any more (or can we? Is it just going by a different handle, like Queer Shmear?), he has had good results with a sort of back-stretching device that decompresses the spine.

OK then, why are our spines so collapsed to begin with? Can you guess? Sapient types (those with degrees on their degrees) have stated that we were never meant to walk upright. If we were still dragging our knuckles, we wouldn't all be lumbar-ing along.

Interesting theory, but I don't think we're going to try it any time soon.

Not every ache is caused by the australopithicine hunch over the keyboard. Spines are complicated and age along with the rest of us. The forces of gravity really do compress discs and cause them to grind together, sometimes with considerable agony.

But the picture of human devolution (above) isn't entirely funny. We now walk on two legs, but how often do we bother? An alarming number of people literally sit all day, only getting up to pee or grab a Danish.

Having your spine curved like a wishbone can't be healthy, and how many of us remember to sit up straight when we blog and tweet and twitch and twit and twat (sorry for that last one)?

And then there's obesity. I heard an alarming statistic the other day: girls are now reaching puberty as young as SEVEN. 43% of black girls (more prone to early puberty: I'm not being racist) have developed breasts by age 8.

Eating chicken pumped full of growth hormone may be a factor, as well as being bombarded by messages to grow up faster, faster, faster, become sexualized sooner, and have your own charge card by Grade 2 so you can dress like Lady Gaga.

But the main reason girls are experiencing this bizarre, unnatural phenomenon for the first time in human history is that they are too damn fat. Excess body fat pumps up the estrogen, and the body can't help but respond.

This means our daughters will soon be able to get pregnant at ten.

In spite of our awareness that fatness curves the spine and bloats the breasts, we carry on eating. I constantly see articles on the addictive quality of junk food and its effect on the brain. In a world ripped apart by stress and uncertainty, a world where financial and natural disaster vie with each other for the capacity to completely demoralize us, it's handy to grab a drug, a really cheap and readily available drug, and just stuff it in your mouth.

I won't get into Morgan Spurlock and his documentary, EAT ME (actually it was Supersize Me, reflecting the 30-lb. weight gain he experienced from a month of eating nothing but McDonald's). That was an extreme, wasn't it? Then why do I keep seeing items on 20-20, Dateline and other programs I never watch, depicting enormous 10-year-olds lumbering around at fat camp, the boys sporting breasts bigger than the girls'?

If kids are this fat at 8 or 10, if girls are having menstrual periods when they should be playing with Play-Doh and Care Bears, something is seriously wrong, isn't it? How does all this relate to back pain? It does, and it doesn't. Not everyone whose back hurts is obese. But many, many people are carrying a crushing load, leading to heart disease, high blood pressure, type II diabetes and general emotional angst.

It may not be politically correct to say so, but fat doesn't look good on people. If it were evenly distributed, well, maybe. But it isn't. It congregates in big rolls and sticks out through clothing, which never fits quite right because everyone's fat settles in a different place. It renders the body lumpy and unattractive. It bounces and jiggles. And it definitely plays hell with our health.

I saw another astonishing item on the TV news: surely this must have been wrong! It was all about the by-now-well-known fact that belly fat, fat around the middle of the body, is more hazardous than in other places (such as a big fat head, or fat elbows).

But that's not what shocked me. A doctor set out the limits of health: the maximum waist size for men should be 46", and for women, 42".

Forty-Two Fucking Inches?????

I don't think my waist was that big at nine months pregnant. I am far from a skinny person, but my waist measurement is 28". Is this the allowance we make for the obesity rate in North America? Do people strive to get "down to" 42" or 46"? What were they orginally, 74"?

Society is still obsessed with thinness and fitness. Just look at all the useless exercise gadgets that promise 50 lbs. of weight loss in a month (with just 15 minutes of exercise, 3 times a week!). At the same time, there is a parallel march towards early death: these fat kids who can't seem to stay out of the candy aisle are going to be twice as fat in adulthood, aren't they? What's going to happen to adults who developed arterial plaque at 10?

I'm in a rotten mood, that's what. Natural disasters all over the world all seem to be caused by global warming. We've done this to ourselves. Instead of being a sleek, modern computer society, we're turning into blobs that can be rolled down the street. Why does the human race hate itself so much? Why this lack of discipline? Why do "experts" insist this is all genetic, when these mysterious genes never showed themselves until now? That's like inheriting blue eyes at 42.

I just get this awful fall-of-Rome feeling. Fin de siecle, or whatever. We used to fear plagues, but these have disappeared from the headlines, as passe as Legionnaire's disease. I know the human race likes to preach doom and gloom - it sells more products, especially self-help books that help you eat, pray, and lose 50 pounds in Bali with a gorgeous man.

But I wonder what kind of world I am leaving for my grandchildren. Have we devolved this dramatically? Has short-term greed pretty much doomed us? Are all those horrific SF movies really true: has the fabric of civilization started to seriously come apart?

So here I sit, hunched over my computer (actually, I'm trying to sit up straight, but it probably won't last), contemplating the extremes of a society that I must belong to, because I have no other choice. I wonder what contribution I have to make. I am selfish, which means I'm not willing to go overseas and help flood victims. I would soon be overwhelmed.

I can love my grandchildren, try to even out and average the violent highs and lows of being a kid in 2010, so that they have some sense of stability.

As a lapsed churchgoer, I'm surprised this passage from Isaiah leaped into my head:

"Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain."

But what else?

They're not fat. At least it's a start.