Health At Every Size show on Radio Free Nashville with Peggy Elam, Ph.D. & Pat Ballard, Queen of Rubenesque Romances

Monday, Sept. 25, 2006 show

Today's Fat & Happy Music: "Happy Being Fat" (Big Dee Irwin); "Jam"  & "Dundunba" (Djembefole Percussion Ensemble) & "I Dance" (Spirit Foundry). And some live djembe drumming by Shannon Holland!

I had three wonderful guests in the studio for today's show, all promoting this coming weekend's Queen Size Diva Dance and Joy of Movement Celebration at the Global Education Center: West African dance teacher Cheryl Townsel, Global Education Center director Ellen Gilbert, and drummer Shannon Holland.

We had a great time talking about the plans to start a size-positive dance community in Nashville through the Global Education Center. Queen size divas -- and all other divas -- are welcome!

Get a preview of some of the fun and wisdom by reading guest artist dancer Wendi O'Neal's tips for having Queen Size fun while dancing, which Cheryl read on the air.

Queen Size Diva Wendi O'Neal's "Ten Things I Do to Have the 'Most Fun-ist' Time Shaking My Groove-Thing"

Posted here with permission from dancer Wendi O'Neal, guest artist at the Global Education Center's upcoming Queen Size Diva Dance and Joy of Movement Celebration:

"...dancing helps me defy my own fears, and inspire my body-love."

TEN THINGS I DO TO HAVE THE "MOST FUN-IST' TIME SHAKING MY GROOVE-THING

1. Smile...it makes it harder to worry about getting the steps perfect!
2. Enjoy breathing hard--it's a great way to let go of stress.
3. Give myself permission to make mistakes (this one is always hard for me). One of my teachers always says, "This is dance CLASS, not rehearsal or a company audition. So just have fun with it!"
4. Only do what is fun -- It's really nice to have a way to play as an adult. I like dancing just for the joy of expressive movement.
5. I give myself permission to do whatever I need to do to make it through a class and enjoy it. Often that means not doing some portion of the warm up or dance instruction at full energy. I make sure that I do some movement, but lower impactor slower speed than what the instructor may be doing.
6. Follow the drum! And with respect to the form, do the lowest impact movement -- I translate the movements as the instructor moves, keeping up with the rhythm and moving my feet or shifting my weight the same way the instructor does. For example I might bounce rather than jump, or bend my knees to do a slight dip rather than going all the way down to the ground. I find if I smile and enjoy myself it gives my movements more energy that I might not be able to give with my physical strength.
7. I slow down if I'm tired or can't breathe enough to talk -- I might do a movement smaller or lower energy to make sure I can enjoy dancing longer rather than harder.
8. I will often just do the feet if a movement the instructor is doing is too hard for me. It seems like if I do this its easier for me to catch the rhythm, and the rhythm helps me to move!
9. I enjoy the drums and lean on them -- they really do give me energy.
10. I find colorful, comfortable stuff to wear, because it brings me joy. I often pin my lappas (wrap skirt) because they move a lot when I dance.

Copyright Wendi O'Neal, Queen Size Diva Dancing & Joy of Movement Tips.
Global Education Center presents: Queen Size Diva Dancing and Joy of Movement Celebration! (Nashville, TN) Sept. 30/Oct. 1, 2006.

Monday, Sept. 18, 2006

Today's Fat & Happy Music: "Happy Being Fat" (Big Dee Irwin), "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What A Wonderful World" (IZ), "I Like 'em Fat Like That" (Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five) & "Fat-Bottomed Girls" (Queen).

Food for Thought: I alerted listeners to the fabulous article series in California's East Bay Express on "activists and researchers at the center of the new civil-rights movement known as Health At Every Size." Read the articles here. I also read from & discussed a table on "Health Benefits of Obesity" (yes, BENEFITS) from a 1987 monograph by Paul Ernsberger & Paul Haskew called Rethinking Obesity: An Alternative View of the Health Implications. And shared some selections from Cheri K. Erdman, Ed.D.'s book Live Large! Affirmations for  Living the Life You Want in the Body You Have.

Join me next week with guest Cheryl Townsel, one of the dance teachers for the Queen Size Diva Dance Weekend & Joy of Movement Celebration presented by Nashville's Global Education Center Sept. 30-Oct 1. The Global Education Center is planning the weekend as the beginning of a size-diverse dance community in Nashville.

Monday, Sept. 11, 2006 show

Today's Fat & Happy Music: "Happy Being Fat" (Big Dee Irwin); "Choose Love" (Gary Nicholson/Fortunate Sons), "You Need A Great Big Woman" & "Fit, Fat & Fine" (Candye Kane).

Food for Thought: Pat Ballard & I had a fat & fab time talking about size acceptance, Toby Keith's fat-phobic song "Runnin' Block," Sara Evans' fundraising for the Tennessee Eating Disorders Coalition, the ASDAH press release on Health At Every Size events across the country, and yesterday's New York Times article [requires login] on Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's efforts to put state residents on a diet. (Note that despite -- or perhaps because of? -- these efforts, the reporter states that Arkansas residents have gained weight.)

News: "Chubby Man Blues" singer/songwriter Les Kerr is launching his new CD, Crawfish Caravan, with a performance (& party) at 3rd & Lindsley Bar & Grill in Nashville tonight. See his website (www.leskerr.com) for details.

Health At Every Size News from the Association for Size Diversity & Health

September 2006 press release from the Association for Size Diversity & Health:

Health Experts Challenge Damaging Weight Myths

Nationwide this month, Health at Every Size experts are publishing books, releasing movies, talking to med school students, leading fitness workouts, and challenging the New England Journal of Medicine for publishing junk science.

Health At Every Size is a weight-neutral approach to good health that focuses on behavior, not BMI.

* * *

HAES experts criticize the New England Journal of Medicine

Responses to the New England Journal of Medicine study, published August 24, that claims “overweight” Americans are more likely to die…

This study proves yet again that so-called ‘overweight’ people live longest, but that if you throw out most of your data you may still be able to reach the government-approved conclusion that they don’t.

—University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health

It’s not surprising to see this backlash. (An earlier report in the Journal of the American Medical Association — which is completely consistent with many previous studies — reported that ‘overweight’ predicted lower mortality risk than ‘normal’ weight.) Fear-mongering about weight is worth billions to industry and consistent with government policy. Few stand to gain from the news that overweight is benign, if not beneficial. That said, it’s still surprising to me that this got through peer review at New England Journal of Medicine: the data in this study actually shows overweight was not associated with increased risk of death. It took a lot of manipulation to get where they ended up!

— Linda Bacon, PhD, associate nutritionist at University of California at Davis, nutrition professor at City College in San Francisco, CA

 * * *

HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE events in September:

SEPTEMBER 1

WHO: Pat Lyons, RN, founder of WomanCare Plus, a project to reduce barriers to medical care for fat women

WHAT: Now available: A Big Woman’s Passport to Best Health

WHERE:614 Grand Ave., Suite 400, Oakland, c/o The Center for Health Training-Resource Group, Oakland, CA 94610

CONTACT: [email protected]

SEPTEMBER 1-7

WHO: Linda Bacon, PhD, associate nutritionist at University of California at Davis, nutrition professor at City College in San Francisco, interviewed by Veronica Cook-Euell, host of the Size Matters show

WHAT: Size Matters radio show on “HAES—The New Peace Movement”

WHERE: www.theeuellconsultinggroup.com/listen.asp

CONTACT: www.sizematterstoo.com, [email protected]

SEPTEMBER 2

WHO: Kelly Bliss, certified fitness trainer and lifestyle coach

WHAT: Grand opening for Real People Workout™—ongoing aerobics, toning, and stretching class

WHERE: St. John Episcopal Church, Lansdowne, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia area)

WHEN: 6:15pm on Tuesday and Thursday, 10am on Saturday

CONTACT: www.kellybliss.com

 
SEPTEMBER 5-6

WHO: Connie Sobczak, founder of The Body Positive, a HAES resource for youth

WHAT: A youth leadership training seminar for 15 high school students and their school counselor

WHERE: Canyon Crest Academy, San Diego, California

WHEN: 8:30 am-5 pm; 8:30 am-1 pm

CONTACT: www.thebodypositive.org

SEPTEMBER 8-9

WHO: Judith Matz, LCSW

WHAT: A seminar entitled Attuned Eating: Feeding Yourself from the Inside Out, and a book signing for The Diet Survivor's Handbook: 60 Lessons in Eating, Acceptance and Self-Care

WHEN: 4 pm-7 pm on Friday, Sept. 8; 9 am-noon on Saturday, Sept. 9

WHERE: The Bannockburn Club, Deerfield, Illinois

CONTACT: [email protected], www.dietsurvivors.com

 
SEPTEMBER 10

WHO: Jon Robison, PhD, co-editor of journal of Health At Every Size

WHAT:Universityof Chicago New issue release: Health At Every Size journal, with an excerpt from University of Chicago political science professor Eric Oliver's book, Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic

WHERE: www.gurze.com/client/client_pages/newsletterhes.cfm

CONTACT: [email protected]

SEPTEMBER 13-14

WHO: Beth Bernstein, MFT, and Matilda St. John, MFT

WHAT: Reading their open letter to Carnie Wilson and the hate mail it generated, as part of the book release party for Bitchfest: 10 Years of Bitch Magazine

WHEN: 7 pm on Sept. 13; 7:30 pm on Sept. 14

WHERE: Cody’s Books, Berkeley, CA; Modern Times Bookstore, San Francisco, CA

CONTACT: [email protected], [email protected]

SEPTEMBER 15

WHO: Ellen Frankel, LCSW, author

WHAT: Book release: Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature and Inner Growth

WHERE: Pearlsong Press, Nashville, Tennessee

CONTACT: http://www.beyondmeasureamemoir.com/

SEPTEMBER 17

WHO: Francie Berg, MS, editor of the Healthy Weight Network, and Linda Omichinski, RD, president and founder of HUGS, Int’l., Inc., non-diet program

WHAT: HAES exhibitors; first-ever release to dieticians of the HUGS film, Dieting: At War with Our Bodies; sale of book, Underage and Overweight: Our Childhood Obesity Crisis

WHERE: American Dietetics Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii

CONTACT: [email protected], www.healthyweight.net; www.hugs.com, [email protected]

SEPTEMBER 19

WHO: Judith Matz, LCSW

WHAT: HAES in-service training for Niles Township Consortium of 42 agencies, entitled Attitudes Toward Dieting, Food and Weight: Important Considerations for Mental Health Professionals, based on her book, Beyond a Shadow of a Diet: The Therapist's Guide to Treating Compulsive Eating

WHEN: 9:30 am

WHERE: Turning Point Behavioral Care, Skokie, Illinois

CONTACT: [email protected], www.dietsurvivors.com

 
SEPTEMBER 20

WHO: Paul Ernsberger, PhD, professor at Case Western Reserve University

WHAT: Lecture to first-year medical students on “Obesity and Health Disparities;” lecture to therapists on Health At Every Size

WHEN: noon; 5 pm

WHERE: Northwestern University Medical School; The Family Institute of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

CONTACT: [email protected]

SEPTEMBER 28

WHO: Paul Campos, Colorado University-Boulder law professor and author of The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health

WHAT: A lecture on why the BMI definitions of “overweight” and “obesity” are unscientific and harmful, and should be abandoned

WHERE: World Nutrition Conference, Barcelona, Spain

HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE events in October:

OCTOBER 1

WHO: Nomi Dekel, MFT

WHAT: Launch of a new website, VoluptuArt: Art & Gifts for Celebrating Your Body™

WHERE: www.VoluptuArt.com

CONTACT: [email protected]

OCTOBER 5

WHO: Sandy Schaffer, certified fitness trainer, and Rochelle Rice, MA, certified fitness coach and author of Real Fitness for Real Women

WHAT: Workshop on “Core Success for the Overweight”

WHEN: 1:15 pm

WHERE: IDEA Personal Trainer Conference, New York City, New York

CONTACT: [email protected]

 

WHO: Marilyn Wann, author of FAT!SO?—Because You Don’t Have to Apologize for Your Size!

WHAT: Weight diversity training

WHEN: 4:10 pm-7 pm

WHERE: San Francisco State University Women’s Health course, San Francisco, California

CONTACT: (415) 516-1474

The Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) is an international professional organization composed of individual and organizations members who are committed to the principles of Health At Every Size (HAES). The mission of the Association for Size Diversity and Health is to promote education, research, and the provision of services which enhance health and well-being, and which are free from weight-based assumptions and weight discrimination.

CONTACT for ASDAH: Claudia Clark, PhD, [email protected]

Beyond a Shadow of a Diet & The Diet Survivor's Handbook: Review

Beyond a Shadow of a Diet: The Therapist’s Guide to Treating Compulsive Eating by Judith Matz & Ellen Frankel (2004 Brunner-Routledge)

The Diet Survivor’s Handbook: 60 Lessons in Eating, Acceptance and Self-Care by Judith Matz, LCSW & Ellen Frankel, LCSW (2006 Sourcebooks, Inc.)

Review by Peggy Elam, Ph.D. in the Summer 2006 issue of Psychobits, the newsletter of the Nashville Psychotherapy Institute.

American women and girls (and, increasingly, men and boys) are bombarded with messages about ideal bodies and acceptable weights, “good” and “bad” foods and the health risks of “obesity.” Toss in the wealth of other stresses related to contemporary life and a recipe for disordered eating is born.

The disordered eating often takes the form of socially sanctioned and even professionally encouraged dieting and weight-loss behaviors. At the turn of the millennium about 116 million Americans (55% of the adult population) were dieting, supporting a $50 billion weight loss industry.

 “With more than half the population dieting at any given time, the cultural norm has shifted to a point where dieting behavior and body dissatisfaction have become the common experience for many,” Judith Matz and Ellen Frankel write in Beyond a Shadow of a Diet, their guide for therapists treating compulsive eating.

 “In a culture that refuses to acknowledge that healthy, beautiful bodies come in all shapes and sizes and that insists that dieting can make you permanently thin, a lot of people are walking around feeling that something is terribly wrong with their bodies and themselves,” the social workers add in their self-help book The Diet Survivor’s Handbook. “Dieters of all sizes feel their body is unacceptable because it fails to meet the societal view of perfection….The truth is we live in a shame-based culture that says that if your body differs from the coveted thin physique, something is intrinsically wrong with you and in need of fixing.”

 Matz and Frankel cite evidence that dieting is hazardous to physical and emotional health. For instance, dieting and dieting-related weight cycling (yo-yo weight loss & regain) increases risks of cardiovascular disease & Type 2 diabetes, eating disorders, depression, and shame. Meanwhile, the health risks of anything but the extremes of fatness (or thinness) have been greatly exaggerated by the diet-pharmaceutical-medical industries in a campaign to persuade the public--and funding agencies--that a dangerous epidemic exists for which the only hope for cure is expensive weight-management-oriented products, programs and research.

Most research purporting to link “obesity” with health risks and increased mortality is actually inherently flawed in its failure to control for the effects of chronic dieting and weight cycling--not to mention the stress of fat stigma, prejudice and discrimination--as well as almost always confusing correlation with causation. (Exercise physiologist Glen Gaesser, Ph.D. provides an excellent critique of the “obesity” related research in his 2002 book Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health, published by Gurze Books.) In Beyond a Shadow of a Diet Matz and Frankel also point out that the health risks associated with being fat actually decrease with age, which is the opposite of what one would expect if “obesity” were truly a degenerative disease.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Matz’s and Frankel’s work is their unhooking weight (and fatness) itself from eating and emotional issues. “Compulsive eaters come in all shapes and sizes,” they write in Beyond a Shadow of a Diet.

There are large people who do not eat compulsively, and there are thin and average sized people who struggle with compulsive eating problems. The amount of food eaten can vary for compulsive eaters from small amounts of ‘too much’ food throughout the day to binges characterized by large amounts of food consumed in a short period of time. The key factor, however, is that eating has little to do with physical hunger. In fact, the person may no longer know what it feels like to be hungry.

Whether a person is actually fat or erroneously thinks she’s fat, they point out, the treatment of choice is the same: Teaching/learning attuned (or intuitive) eating in which one learns to recognize true hunger, to identify the foods one is hungry for, and to eat them when one is hungry for them…regardless of one’s body size. For people who have become alienated from their natural appetites (and appetite regulation) due to the externally focused eating of dieting/weight management practices, learning or re-learning natural eating and appetite regulation is tremendously liberating.

In both books (one intended for therapists, the other a self-help resource), Matz and Frankel document the damage dieting and other weight-focused attitudes and behaviors can do to physical and emotional health, including ways they contribute to compulsive eating. They offer strategies to help clients (or, in the self-help handbook, oneself) identify ways in which uncomfortable feelings are channeled into “bad body” (or “fat body”) thoughts and sensations, for which dieting or other forms of restrictive eating or weight-loss behavior are grasped at as possible solutions.

Again, Matz and Frankel point out that grasping at weight loss as a solution is no more a healthy (or potentially successful) strategy for truly fat women (or men) than it is for those who merely think they’re fat, or who are just a few pounds over the societal ideal. And this, I think, is an important addition to the clinical and self-help literature.

While many women (and girls) who are of average weight are encouraged to embrace and accept their bodies as they are--even with a little pudge here and there--attitudes towards body acceptance often change when a very fat (or “supersize”) man or woman walks into a therapist’s office. Even, sometimes, when the therapist is experienced with the treatment of eating disorders, he or she may erroneously assume that all fat people are compulsive eaters or that their fatness stems from emotional issues.

Dieting (or restricting what one eats) is often viewed as a solution to compulsive eating (as well as to “obesity”)—but instead is actually a significant cause of compulsive eating, in part because dieting teaches and/or reinforces tuning into external rather than internal cues and guidelines for eating. In fact, dieting and other weight-loss related behaviors reinforce bodily dissociation, as individuals override natural sensations of hunger and satiety in attempts to lose or “manage” weight. Ironically, dieting also tends to make people fatter, due to lowered metabolism and the tendency of many people to regain more weight than they lost as their bodies compensate (and protect) for the self-induced famines.

In both books Matz and Frankel challenge assumptions about body size, fear of fat, and “diets in disguise.” In the clinically oriented Beyond a Shadow of a Diet they also address therapist countertransference in working with fat clients, and the importance of identifying and addressing one’s own discomfort (or issues) with fatness (or “obesity,” as fatness has been pathologized) so as not to negatively affect the treatment of fat clients.

Beyond a Shadow of a Diet and The Diet Survivor’s Handbook provide sane and empirically sound approaches to healing compulsive eating and body shame—approaches based upon considerable clinical and empirical evidence that diets do not work and, in fact, are harmful.

Matz is the director of the Chicago Center for Overcoming Overeating and Frankel is an eating disorders specialist, consultant, and author in Massachusetts.They maintain websites at http://www.beyondashadowofadiet.com and http://www.dietsurvivors.com. Frankel's personal memoir about sizeism, Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature & Inner Growth, is being published by Pearlsong Press this month.

Sample excerpts from Beyond a Shadow of a Diet & The Diet Survivor's Handbook:

Researchers have reported that a mere 3-minute exposure to photographs of models taken from popular women's magazines led to increases in depression, stress, shame, insecurity, and body image dissatisfaction....Women are repeatedly encouraged to compare themselves to an unrealistic and unhealthy view of thinness and taught that dieting and weight loss result in happiness, success and love." (BSD)

Simply by assessing body size, we often assume that the thin person is healthy and the fat person is unhealthy. Kara is a very large woman in her early 40s. She has had a series of health problems, including diabetes. For years doctors have told her that she must lose weight to be healthy. Kara has tried diet after diet but has repeatedly gained back the lost weight. She eventually followed the suggestion of her support group to look for a doctor who would attend to her medical problems without demanding that she change her size. Her new doctor helped her by finding appropriate medications. Kara also consulted a dietician who follows a non-diet philosophy and learned techniques to address her diabetes without feeling deprived. As a result of these actions, Kara is in good health. She recently had a physical and passed with flying colors. She has not lost an ounce of weight.

Anna, on the other hand, has recently lost weight. Although she was never particularly large, she is now slimmer than ever before. People at work compliment her for her weight loss, noting that she must be doing something right. Actually, Anna is dying of cancer. (BSD)

The two major factors that lead people to reach for food when they are not physically hungry are deprivation and the use of food for affect regulation....The translating from the language of feelings to the language of food and fat occurs only because people are strongly supported in their belief that losing weight solves complex personal issues." (BSD)

Calling a person who is able to give up dieting a survivor gives credence both to the damage caused by diets and to the empowerment that results when people move from a diet mentality to a normal relationship with food. The term diet survivor encourages people to get off the diet roller coaster and get on the non-diet bandwagon of living fully and joyfully in one's body through the life-affirming action of feeding oneself based on internal cues of hunger and satiety." (DSH)

Monday, Sept. 4, 2006 show

Today's Fat & Happy Music: "Happy Being Fat" (Big Dee Irwin), "Even Free" (Kristi Martel), "Built for Luxury" (Abby Burke & The Manly Band) & "Big Red Caboose" (Kristie Agee & Big Potential).

Food for Thought: Discussion of the effect discrimination and disrespect have on arterial calcium deposits and heart disease in African-American women, and how the way fat people are treated in our culture may similarly affect their physical health; reports of UK health officials deciding to refuse fertility treatments to fat women; research by Princeton economists claiming tall people are paid more than short people because tall people are smarter. (For a discussion of the latter research, see Ellen Frankel's blog. Frankel is the author of a new memoir, Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature & Inner Growth.)

Announcements: Abby Burke (whose wonderful rendition of "Built for Luxury" I often feature on the show) will perform at Douglas Corner in Nashville at 9 p.m. Sept. 8. The Global Education Center is presenting a Queen Size Diva Dance & Joy of Movement Celebration the last weekend of this month (see the GEC website for details). The Chicago Chapter of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance is sponsoring some size positive events in that area during the months of September and November; see their website for details.

Future Guests: Next week's show (Sept. 11) will feature Pat Ballard, the Queen of Rubenesque Romances. The Sept. 25 show will feature Cheryl Townsel, one of the dance teachers for the Queen Size Diva Dance Weekend.

BBW cartoon "Plastik"

Check out this great sassy BBW cartoon, "Plastik," on www.youtube.com. It's French, but you don't have to speak the language to enjoy it.

I do recall from long-ago French classes, though, that "AVANT" means "BEFORE."

Be sure to stick around through the few moments of blank screen after the credits. You  probably don't need to have taken French to figure out that "APRES" means "AFTER."

Go Plastik! http://youtube.com/watch?v=iE5Zytj45fI&search=fat%203d%25