Fat-Shaming — Differences of Opinion

What's your excuse

Most people who cause a media stir don’t wait for months to answer critics, but Maria Kang did. Last October she reacted to something that had happened a year before. Eight months after giving birth, Kang posted on Facebook a picture of herself with the youngest child and her other two little boys, ages 2 and 3. She was in great shape, and the photo caption read, “What’s your excuse?”

In response, 18,000 comments accumulated, most of them positive. In fact, the “No-Excuse Mom” has inspired countless women to follow her lead. But some have accused the Sacramento mother and “fitness guru” of bullying and fat-shaming, and a few even went so far as to demand an apology for injury to the feelings of women who have not managed to recover their pre-pregnancy figures. Last fall, after due consideration, Kang reposted the family portrait that had inspired the anger, with a reply:

I never called you fat, I never said that you were a bad mother, I never said what’s your excuse for not looking like me, I never said anything like that.

Kang told ABC News that in the past she had been on an unhealthy track during a four-year struggle with bulimia. She adjusted her lifestyle to include regular workouts and sensible eating habits, and advises parents to “Be healthy because you love your child.”

Martial artist and podcast host Joe Rogan opined that a woman celebrating her thinness does not equal fat-shaming, and delved into the psychological reasons why some people stare at and make remarks about obese individuals they encounter in everyday life. In his view, no one is trying to shame anyone, but like other members of the animal kingdom, people can’t help reacting on a visceral level to the recognition of danger. Consciously or unconsciously, he said, a person feels threatened and thinks:

‘I could do that. I’d better not do that. I don’t want to do that. That guy’s gonna die.’

If you see someone that’s super unhealthy coughing and smoking a cigarette, that feeling is not cigarette-smoking-shaming. That feeling is, you’re recognizing that someone is doing something incredibly unhealthy and that possibility exists for you too…. They don’t like the way [fat] looks on you because they’re scared of it being on them.

Rogan’s guest, Dave Asprey — who has his own podcast, “Bulletproof Executive” — said that he feels a lot of compassion for the overweight and added:

It kind of upsets me when I see fat people who are feeling guilty and fighting with all their willpower on these cravings, but they’re doing it wrong. But they don’t know that they’re doing it wrong, so they feel guilty and they get caught in all this emotional stuff, and it’s unnecessary.

Rogan, a practitioner and proponent of sheer willpower, asks what makes a person go out of their way to seek a better way, change their diet, and make the difficult commitment to start working out. (If he doesn’t know the answer, who does?)

Dr. Pretlow makes an excellent point about willpower, which is that it goes out the window when addiction comes in the door. Being helpless against the lure of a substance is the very definition of addiction.

When the Huffington Post got together with Harvard University, the resulting video discussion suggests that blaming people for lack of willpower is wrong, because of the toxic food environment in which so many foods are deliberately engineered to be addictive.

No matter what the cause of their obesity, to be fat-shamed is always rough on the young. For some kids, the unhappiness is not limited to school, and home is no refuge. According to a report from Yale University’s Rudd Center, victimization by family members has been reported by 47% of overweight girls and 34% of overweight boys.

When parents tease and stigmatize, of course that translates to siblings and other relatives as permission to harass the overweight child. Why on earth would family members, who are supposed to provide emotional support, be so cruel? Weight bias, a more clinical term for fat-shaming, has serious consequences, like causing psychological debilitation that leads to even more obesity.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “’What’s your excuse’ post from toned mom of 3 Maria Kang sparks anger,” ABCLocal.go.com, 10/17/13
Source: “Joe Rogan Destroys Fat logic,” YouTube.com, 11/05/13
Source: “Why Do We Overeat? Harvard Researchers Address Obesity And The Toxic Food Environment,” HuffingtonPost.com, 09/13/13
Source: “Clinical Implications of Obesity Stigma,” YaleRuddCenter.org, 06/27/13
Image by ABC News

One Response

  1. Are you having trouble controlling the way you eat? Many of us with this problem have found help in Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA). FA is a program based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The program offers help and recovery to those whose connection with food can be understood as a form of addiction. There are no dues or fees and the meetings include no weigh-ins. Membership is international and includes men and women, adolescents, and the elderly. All are welcome.

    People who find help in FA vary greatly. Some of us have been diagnosed as morbidly obese while others are undereaters. Among us are those who were severely bulimic, who have harmed themselves with compulsive exercise, or whose quality of life was impaired by constant obsession with food or weight. We tend to be people who, in the long-term, have failed at every solution we tried, including therapy, support groups, diets, fasting, exercise, and in-patient treatment programs.

    Some of our members have been in continuous recovery (maintaining a stable, healthy weight and enjoying freedom from obsession with food, weight, bingeing, or bulimia) for over twenty-five years. Members with five to ten years of recovery are increasingly common.

    FA has over 350 meetings throughout the United States in large and small cities such as Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Charlotte, Grand Rapids, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Austin, and Washington, D.C. Internationally, FA currently has groups in England, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Australia. If you would like more information about FA, please check out our website at www [dot] foodaddicts [dot] org. If there aren’t any meetings in your area, you can contact the office, where someone will help you.

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Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

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OVERWEIGHT: What Kids Say explores the obesity problem from the often-overlooked perspective of children struggling with being overweight.

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Dr. Robert A. Pretlow is a pediatrician and childhood obesity specialist. He has been researching and spreading awareness on the childhood obesity epidemic in the US for more than a decade.
You can contact Dr. Pretlow at:

Presentations

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the American Society of Animal Science 2020 Conference
What’s Causing Obesity in Companion Animals and What Can We Do About It

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the World Obesity Federation 2019 Conference:
Food/Eating Addiction and the Displacement Mechanism

Dr. Pretlow’s Multi-Center Clinical Trial Kick-off Speech 2018:
Obesity: Tackling the Root Cause

Dr. Pretlow’s 2017 Workshop on
Treatment of Obesity Using the Addiction Model

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation for
TEC and UNC 2016

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the 2015 Obesity Summit in London, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s invited keynote at the 2014 European Childhood Obesity Group Congress in Salzburg, Austria.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2013 European Congress on Obesity in Liverpool, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2011 International Conference on Childhood Obesity in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2010 Uniting Against Childhood Obesity Conference in Houston, TX.

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