Greta Christina's fat positive manifesto

[ciphergoth]

I froze the discussion here because I thought it deserved a top-level post of its own, rather than being under a general discussion of Greta Christina. A few weeks ago she posted a very interesting series of articles on the fat-positive movement and her own beliefs; I'd be very interested to read more about what people think of them.

"I was frankly shocked at how callous most of the fat-positive advocates were about my bad knee. I was shocked at how quick they were to ignore or dismiss it. They were passionately concerned about the quality of life I might lose if I counted calories or stopped eating chocolate bars every day. But when it came to the quality of life I might lose if I could no longer dance, climb hills, climb stairs, take long walks, walk at all? Eh. Whatever. I should try exercise or physical therapy or something. Oh, I'd tried those things already? Well, whatever."

• The Fat-Positive Diet
• The Fat-Positive Skeptic
• An Open Letter to the Fat-Positive Movement

Comments

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

I think some of it has permeated, but most individual GPs seem to feel that the *reason* most diets don't work is that eithyer they are crash diets or the dieters aren't doing it right. Hence their tendency to just harangue people harder into following what they consider to be a sensible diet.

What I think they fail to take into account is the cognitive bias which can happily accept that 90% of something is crap and just assume that the thinker falls into the 10%, plus that even if they're right, pushing people harder also doesn't work.