Imagine That

CNN has a reasonably decent article by Madison Park about two new studies published today which "suggest reframing the way medical practitioners look at overweight and obese patients. The studies question the notion that BMI and weight determine health—even when someone is severely obese."

You mean that fat and healthy are not mutually exclusive concepts?! HOLY SHIT. It's almost like all the fat people who have been saying that very thing for years as if they knew better about their own bodies than people who had simply internalized bullshit narratives about cake-devouring fatties were right after all!

I found this bit particularly sad:

The conventional wisdom is that if you're overweight or obese, you're in mortal danger because that extra weight is like a ticking time bomb ready to unleash diabetes, heart disease and other health complications.

But doctors have known for years that obesity doesn't affect all people the same way.

And yet fat people (especially fat women) die every year because they walk into doctors' offices with complaints that are ignored by doctors who can't see past fat. Shortness of breath? Lose weight. Whoops, that was a pulmonary embolism. Pain in your leg? Lose weight. Whoops, that was bone cancer. The first doctor I saw when I had a herniated disk in my back many years ago told me it was back pain from fat. Lose weight. I damn well knew it wasn't muscle pain, and I knew damn well it was something related to a known cyst on my spine, but I walked and walked and walked because, well, maybe if I lost weight I would feel better. That's what all my doctors told me. I went on a 20-mile hike through the Scottish Highlands, and went into shock at the end of it, because my disk had herniated so severely. By the time I went to the emergency room at Northwestern in Chicago after I got home, I couldn't even walk and had permanent nerve damage to my left foot.

I never lost any weight, but I ended up in the hospital for a week after emergency surgery, and I lost significant mobility that my fat body had had before.

Whoops.