I do not advocate eschewing exercise because you think that means you are giving in to the mainstream idea of beauty or something. Realize people can be fat and healthy. A value of a human being is not in their size. A person is not less valuable if they are fat. It doesn’t mean they are lazy either. There are plenty of thin lazy people – I’ve met some!

It’s judging a book by its cover. That’s not fair.

Some of the extremist FA stuff is as bad and wrong as the extremist “you gotta lose weight you ugly cow” side is.

Eat healthy food. Get some exercise. Accept your body and love it. Just try to be the best version of you that you can be and not some supermodel. That’s all!

I think she’s hungry. We fat people can become very grouchy when we get rumblings in our tummies.

HTTP://BIGGERFATTERBLOG.BLOGSPOT.COM

We take on fat hatred without being hateful. Stop by and we can agree to disagree.

My impressions were based on the things I clicked on and read. Perhaps if I’d spent a bit more time I would have seen more of what you are referring to.

One theme that keeps coming up is how people react when they first become aware of the existence of the FA-blogs. It’s usually amazement and disbelief, and a sense that the world has suddenly gone mad. This is probably very much due to the fact that they deny all negative health effects of obesity, and don’t allow any dissenting opinions.

As a result people go from not giving much thought to the fat/obese people they encounter in their daily lives to suddenly seeing FA-extremists everywhere, and feel a compelling need to preach about the dangers of the ideology.

Your comment that my tone is conciliatory indicates that you are assuming I have some sort of ulterior motive other than what I plainly stated. I am intensely interested in this topic and read with great interest the positions and points made in one direction or the other.

I have from time to time been known to go an a rant in defense of fat girls, but I think that some people are just totally closed off to the ideas.

From the approximately five posts I have read on this site and the material I read on myfatspouse.com I started to get the sense that this site and myfatspouse are in favor of whatever it takes to lose weight for your spouse. Perhaps it’s the anger in post after post and the constant snarky comments about the FA people and how ridiculous it is for them to feel this way or that way.

I think it’s important to understand each others anger and pain. To try and find that happy balance point.

I would never stop somebody from dieting if they felt like they’d not been eating well. I just get tired of the constant message that if you don’t fall into that mainstream media idea of beauty that you are a worthless blob.

I posted my comment in terms of extremes – eating too much or starving, because that is what I see on this site: extremes.

I feel that when weight begins to cause health problems and immobility that you probably should see a doctor and figure out what is wrong with your dietary habits and get some exercise. We all should be exercising, it’s good for us! But if you are a size 22 woman and you change to healthier eating habits and exercise more and you only ever get down to a size 18, then you shouldn’t have to feel ashamed or that you have somehow disrespected your spouse. From what I can tell on this site size 16 or 18 are not considered acceptable. That is the tone I was responding to.

I think, as I happened to mention there, that the anger comes from pain. The pain of being an outcast in a society that is just fine with you being an outcast.

Although I consider myself a fat feminist and a champion of good self esteem, it’s important to keep communication lines open, not shut them down. That doesn’t help anybody. It also isn’t very persuasive because you’re only preaching to the choir that way.

Pro ana-mia sites make me sad and scare me and I think they are wrong. The disparity between your numbers in health related issues seems persuasive at first, but you are not taking a lot of things into account when you look at the simple death numbers.

If the subject is health, neither eating large quantities of sugar-laden, fat-laden, trans-fat filled food is good nor is starving and obsessing and taking laxatives, vomiting etc.

However, more and more studies are showing that you can be well above those ridiculous height-weight table guidelines and still be healthy. In fact being fatter girl who feels good about herself and exercises is probably a lot healthier than a girl starving herself, vomiting and taking laxatives.

I wish we could all come together and lift each other up, rather than tear each other down.

Censorship is not the answer, but championing pro-ana-mia cause is no sword I’d want to die on.