is it weird that as i got through the tweet my understanding of it lessens?
If you had a recent ancestor who went through starvation it actually altered their genetics and may have passed down genes to you that make you hold on to fat. So this tweet is more accurate than you’d think.
MY FUCKING GREAT GRANDFATHER LITERALLY FLED LEBANON DUE TO A FUCKING FAMINE AND MY GRANDMOTHER AND DAD AND I ARE ALL FAT AS FUCKING HELL.
FUCK ME RUNNING I DID NOT KNOW THIS.
…That’s going to apply also to anyone whose recent ancestors voluntarily dieted a lot, isn’t it. Diet culture long-term causes more obesity. Sure, it takes decades to show up, but anything you’d hear today about childhood obesity would reflect that. Exercising is still very good for most people, but trying to lose weight shouldn’t be the goal for most people, because a) it usually doesn’t work very well or it comes back and b) your kids or grandkids could end up with extra wonky metabolisms. (And while fat itself is actually not that much of a problem if you keep your fitness up, it can be hard on your joints. That’s actually the biggest health risk if you’re “small end of fat,” under 40, and active–joint problems.)
THAT MOTHERFUCKING ARTIFICIAL FAMINE THAT’S IT I’M GONNA FIGHT THE ENGLISH
Honestly, “I’m gonna fight the English” is a good reaction to a lot of things.
In a footnote to a May 10, 2005, memorandum from the Office of Legal Council, the Bush attorney general’s office argued that restricting the caloric intake of terrorist suspects to 1000 calories a day was medically safe because people in the United States were dieting along those lines voluntarily.
“While detainees subject to dietary manipulation are obviously situated differently from individuals who voluntarily engage in commercial weight-loss programs, we note that widely available commercial weight-loss programs in the United States employ diets of 1000 kcal/day for sustain periods of weeks or longer without requiring medical supervision,” read the footnote. “While we do not equate commercial weight loss programs and this interrogation technique, the fact that these calorie levels are used in the weight-loss programs, in our view, is instructive in evaluating the medical safety of the interrogation technique.”
Another another friendly reminder that the Minnesota Starvation Experiment subjected adult men who were VOLUNTEERS to 1,560 calorie diets and the psychological effects were so profound that one volunteer cut three of his own fingers off and could not remember why.
These men were volunteers who knew exactly what they would be going through and when it would end, and who believed they were doing it for a good and moral reason (the research was used to help rehabilitate victims of starvation and famine at the end of WWII).
And these are the things we are expected to engage in FOREVER to stay at a “healthy” weight.
Reading about the Minnesota Starvation experiment was my wake-up call. It was what kicked me out of my eating disorder. The guy missing three fingers, whatever his name was, he was the last straw for me.
Scared me so fucking bad I stopped restricting my food that day, and never went back to it.
Just bringin’ this back around like I sometimes do.
Wow. This really hit me hard.
EAT
Fun fact– calorie restriction exacerbates symptoms of pretty much *every* mental illness.
Anorexia has ~16% mortality rate, slightly higher than acted upon suicidal ideation. It’s more lethal than actively trying to kill oneself and this is why.
“[CN: dieting]
When you become obsessed with thinness, the communication channels between your brain and body get obstructed with all kinds of static. At one time you might have had the ability to clearly hear your bodily intuition. But when we starve our bodies and our brain sends out signals that essentially say “HELLO, WE CANNOT FUNCTION PROPERLY WITHOUT ADEQUATE SUSTENANCE” we are taught not that your body is trying to keep you alive, but that it is working against us. The cycles of famine and feast coupled with shame and guilt of years of trying and failing to override our bodies’ need for regular nourishment in order to meet our need for societal acceptance play off of each other until we no longer know how to perceive the signals our bodies are sending us.”
OH and I get to work with my very least favorite co worker today.
Lovely.
I need to go make more tea.
The driver coming in to pick up the recycling, who knows that we monitor the weather radar 24/7; “Are we going to get any more storms today?”
Me, who sits right next to a monitor dedicated to weather radar, since we watch for lightning strikes in the area, and call work suspensions if any lightning gets close. “There’s a few patchy storms around yet but the bad stuff is all past us.”
Driver; “Oh good. Have a good day.”
Me; “You too.”
My dickhead co-worker, as soon as the driver walks out; “I didn’t know we were the fucking weather service.”
Me; “…he knows we monitor the radar all day and that I don’t mind him asking, and he was talking to me, not you, and again he knows I don’t mind, so chill.”
Him; “Muttering”
The weird thing is that this dude USED to be an okay guy with a good sense of humor.
But about a year ago, he started the keto diet, and he has lost a lot of weight…but he’s been a complete asshole since he started the diet. Just, will snipe at anything and everything anyone says.
Eat some bread and be happy, dude.
Oh, so his body is perpetually poisonning itself in a desesperate attempt to produce enough sugars for his brain. That’ll make me cranky too tbf.
I had no idea, but another comment here made me look it up and apparently major changes in mood are a Thing on keto. Like, a LOT of people become assholes when they go on a keto diet.
I’m no expert on the long-term effects of keto diets but…like…that can’t be a good sign.
Eat some bread. If anyone makes fun of you for being chubby, fuck ‘em.
I cannot second this hard enough. For everyone following me who may not know that: the human brain cannot use any other form of energy that glucose and ketone bodies. If it doesn’t have any available your liver will make them, producing toxic by-products and working less efficiently to purge the usual riff-raff made on a daily basis by your metabolism. Eat carbs. Fuck this fatphobic society.
I…did not know this. Holy fuck.
Carbs are not your enemy, people.
Holy shit. I am almost scared to look up this keto shit. I mean I trust it as much as I trust the Paleo nonsense (not at all) but.
Sawbones has a fascinating episode about the keto diet. It wasn’t invented as a weight loss thing. It was a specific medical tool to help prevent certain types of seizures. It’s a hard fucking diet to stay on, because it’s basically no sugars, no carbs, no not ever.
some people on insta said i should post my workout routine since i mentioned how im so happy with the results, so here’s my little workout guide for my fellow trans folk! I focused on getting a more masculine body because obviously that’s what I want. I’m so happy with the results, this workout is saving my fucking life!!!! I can’t get on T soon so this has really been keeping my dysphoria in check. I barely get body dysphoria, i love how my clothes looks on me, i love feeling confident for once in my life!!! HOWEVER Don’t go overboard with working out my friends. Do not work out in a binder, you MUST take days off to let your muscles heal, and you CAN’T starve yourself! Fitness is all about health and diet! Take care of yourself. This is also MY workout routine, you may not get the same results as I have! Every body is different.
As a person who is at the gym – I have seen ZERO change in my body because my diet hasn’t changed. I’m getting the diet plan this week, so I 100% expect to see changes here. You CANNOT expect to eat pizza and take-out and expect to go to the gym and look like Gal Gadot or Chris Evans.
I would not recommend reducing your caloric intake, it’s not an effective way to lose weight can can be very harmful especially if you have an eating disorder. Weight loss =/= fitness anyway. It’s more important to include plenty of lean proteins and healthy carbs as part of your pre- and post- workout routine, don’t worry about counting calories.
@nomadicstardust This post is advocating eating “500 calories less than what is recommended for you.” That is unhealthy. No one said anything about eating for a man twice your size.
Weight loss is not the primary goal of this post, nor is it an indication of health or fitness. Calorie counting is dangerous especially if you have or are prone to an eating disorder. It is absolutely not a good way to manage a binge eating disorder and can lead to further disordered eating. You might lose weight in the short term but severely restricting food intake is likely to cause weight gain, increase cortisol levels, and cause other health problems in the long term. You need to make sure you are eating enough, not less, when taking on a vigorous exercise program. There are better ways to be mindful about what you’re eating.
In a footnote to a May 10, 2005, memorandum from the Office of Legal Council, the Bush attorney general’s office argued that restricting the caloric intake of terrorist suspects to 1000 calories a day was medically safe because people in the United States were dieting along those lines voluntarily.
“While detainees subject to dietary manipulation are obviously situated differently from individuals who voluntarily engage in commercial weight-loss programs, we note that widely available commercial weight-loss programs in the United States employ diets of 1000 kcal/day for sustain periods of weeks or longer without requiring medical supervision,” read the footnote. “While we do not equate commercial weight loss programs and this interrogation technique, the fact that these calorie levels are used in the weight-loss programs, in our view, is instructive in evaluating the medical safety of the interrogation technique.”
Another another friendly reminder that the Minnesota Starvation Experiment subjected adult men who were VOLUNTEERS to 1,560 calorie diets and the psychological effects were so profound that one volunteer cut three of his own fingers off and could not remember why.
These men were volunteers who knew exactly what they would be going through and when it would end, and who believed they were doing it for a good and moral reason (the research was used to help rehabilitate victims of starvation and famine at the end of WWII).
And these are the things we are expected to engage in FOREVER to stay at a “healthy” weight.
Reading about the Minnesota Starvation experiment was my wake-up call. It was what kicked me out of my eating disorder. The guy missing three fingers, whatever his name was, he was the last straw for me.
Scared me so fucking bad I stopped restricting my food that day, and never went back to it.
Just bringin’ this back around like I sometimes do.
Wow. This really hit me hard.
EAT
Fun fact– calorie restriction exacerbates symptoms of pretty much *every* mental illness.
Anorexia has ~16% mortality rate, slightly higher than acted upon suicidal ideation. It’s more lethal than actively trying to kill oneself and this is why.
These are people with Eating Disorders. This is disordered behavior. But low carb bullshit has been so fucking normalized in this garbage culture that these people are being supported in the destruction of their bodies. It’s just a diet right? Whoever the fuck on Instagram told me it was okay.
There’s a common misconception that people with eating disorders are vapid or shallow or stupid and doing it to themselves. It’s really important to not buy into this – not to laugh and make fun of people who are so involved in their own distortions of reality that they try to rationalize hair loss as a healthy response to a diet.
These people need help. They need a society that acknowledges the cultural messages and obsession with perfection and success that drives people to this kind of extremity.
We laugh at fat people because they’re “stupid” and “unhealthy” and “doing it to themselves”
And then we laugh at people on crash diets because they’re “stupid” and “unhealthy” and “doing it to themselves.”
There’s no winning in the eyes of someone with an ED – so they figure they might as well fast to achieve some ludicrous standard, or self soothe with a binge. They might as fucking well if they’re always going to be stupid and unhealthy and doing it to themselves.
In general, though, your confusion comes from the over-simplified myths about weight that permeate our culture.
First, fat is not only an energy storage device, it is also an important endocrine organ. This means that the fat organ regulates hormones, and thus, helps to regulate the functioning of many other organ systems in the body. So the fat organ can grow in response to non-food-related factors, like chronic stress or sleep deprivation, as part of the body’s adaptive response to those factors. (And guess what is stressful? Dieting and weight loss.)
Second, when people do not consume enough energy to meet their needs, two biological processes are triggered. The first is catabolism, which is the process of breaking down the body’s cells to release the energy and nutrients stored in those cells. That energy is then used to fuel the body. This is what people usually think happens when people restrict their food intake to lose weight: the body breaks down fat for energy. Of course, when catabolism does happen, fat calls are not the only cells that are broken down: the body also breaks down muscles, organs, bones, and ligaments to access necessary nutrients and energy. (Yikes.)
But the second process that is triggered by an energy deficit is metabolic suppression: The body slows down all the basic, life sustaining processes of the body to conserve energy.
So a person can gain weight while restrictive dieting because an energy deficit causes the body to slow all the life sustaining processes of the body in favour of growing the fat organ, which helps the body to survive in times of stress.
This is some serious shit, people, and it’s a big part of the reason that intentional weight loss through restrictive dieting is so unhealthy.
so if the metabolism is slowed, how does that impact the energy deficit? does it mean less calories are “needed”? because that could work out, stating probably too simply, that if less energy is being used then there is more excess to store as fat.
and if fat growth is happening despite restriction, is catabolization happening?
(sorry if you cant answer these)
“so if the metabolism is slowed, how does that impact the energy deficit? does it mean less calories are “needed”?
Weight loss is often framed that way: Oh, your metabolism is slowed, so you don’t *need* as many calories as other people need! Just keep eating less and you will maintain your smaller body!
But maintaining your body in a state of suppressed matabolism is not a good thing. It literally means that your body has instituted emergency measures to survive. Any non-essential physiological processes – like the reproductive system – are dramatically slowed and can be stopped completely. And even essential bodily processes like the transmission of fluids into and out of cells (the most basic biological function), to the regeneration of cells, to the functioning of the immune system, to the re-myelenation of nerves (essential for their function) are all slowed down.
This is literally what it means when the sources I linked above say that the basal metabolic rate is slowed by weight loss: The body is slowing down all of its essential, life-sustaining physiological processes in order to survive. That is not a good thing. It is not a state that any organism can or should sustain in the longterm.
PS: And yes, when those basic processes are slowed, it can “free up” energy to grow the fat organ.
Reblogging for the person who was asking what happens when you eat less than your body requires to thrive. Basically, you destroy your body. Don’t do it.
This is how the body defends its own, unique, set point weight.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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