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The Long-term Consequences of WLS - Rich & Heather's Story
My name is Rich, but I may be better known to some of you as richie79 of the UK who used to post prolifically here on Big Fat Blog and elsewhere in the Fatosphere for many years. Don't know if any of the old faces are still around but I wanted to share my wife Heather's story and felt this was maybe as good as any a place do it. If you believe otherwise, please let me know and I'll remove it.
In February 2005 a pretty girl with big brown eyes by the screen name of 'sweetheather86' sent me a 'smile' through a plus-size dating website of which we were both members. At the time I was at a low point following the failure of a previous long-term relationship. Heather and I hit it off almost immediately despite her being in the US and at 18, almost 7 years younger than I. Looking forward to daily emails from one another quickly progressed to a first nervous long-distance phonecall, nightly 4-hour chat sessions on MSN and before either of us knew it I'd booked a ticket to Boston. Two incredible weeks on from our first shy meeting at Logan Airport I knew this was the one person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
The only cloud on the horizon was the gastric bypass Heather underwent just two weeks after we first made contact. Even then I knew of the horrendous risks of these operations but although I had already fallen for her, didn't feel i knew her well enough to ask her to delay or reconsider it. She came from a long line of big women and had herself been fat throughout childhood, resulting in numerous failed diets and all the bullying and self-loathing that accompanies being a fat child / teen. At the time the media was full of stories of this 'magic bullet' and several of her family members had undergone the surgery with dramatic initial results. She told me that she wanted it done so that she could have all the things in life she had been convinced were not available to people of her size - someone to love her, a home and a family, access to nice clothes, and not to be abused and harassed in public. Tragically she later told me that she opted for the bypass as unlike the lap-band it was irreversible (the stomach is cut in two and 18" of small intestine removed and discarded) and therefore offered no opportunity to back out at a later stage.
Our relationship continued to blossom even as her health began to deteriorate. Each of us crossed the Atlantic to spend long periods together in one another's countries and during this time we crammed in as many activities, visits etc as many couples do in a lifetime. In September 2007 I proposed to her and she accepted tearfully and without hesitation; we were married two years later almost to the day and having obtained a spousal visa, in July 2010 she finally moved to Leeds in the UK to live with me full-time. By this point she had lost around 200lb and gained back almost 100lb of that. She was on a cocktail of drugs, could eat very little, suffered from constant dumping syndrome and was developing problems with joint pain, blood sugar and constant fatigue, all of which were exacerbated by a revision to the original surgery to repair the staples but which further reduced the range of foods she was able to eat.
In October 2010 Heather gave me the news that she was pregnant. Our joy at this was tempered only by concerns about her deteriorating health. Fortunately apart from having to be artificially rehydrated several times (she suffered from such debilitating nausea throughout the pregnancy that she was at times unable to keep down fluids) her pregnancy passed largely without serious incident. Our son Ben was born in June the following year; despite several attempts to induce her at term plus two weeks she never progressed to active labour and had to undergo an emergency Caesarean section on one of the hottest days of the year in an overwhelmed Leeds General Infirmary where she was treated like an inconvenience by several of the medical staff.
Her surgeon in the US had recommended a UK counterpart in our city who might have been able to help but NHS rules decreed she would first have to see a dietician. As was often the case I went along with her as she was rightly worried that this would be used as yet another opportunity to shame her about her weight; predictably the dietician told her that on her sub-1000 caloric intake it was 'impossible' for her to be maintaining at 320lb and that there must be something she wasn't telling her (because *everyone knows* that fat people always lie about their eating habits). This was followed up by a barium swallow which suggested she may be suffering from a stricture (narrowing) of the digestive tract and the prospect of further investigation, though subsequent events meant this never ultimately took place.
On the weekend of 8th February 2013 I went to visit friends in another city an hour away from home. Heather had encouraged this rare weekend away, as we took it in turns to give one another breaks from the stresses of young parenthood when possible. She waved me off at the train station with hugs and kisses and called to tell me goodnight later that evening. That would be the last time I ever heard from her. My attempts to contact via text and phone throughout Saturday went unanswered and, knowing how out of character this was, my friend drove me home. Unable to gain access to the house, which she'd locked from within the previous night, I frantically called the police, who broke in through our basement and found her collapsed in our bathroom. I was told that she'd been gone for some hours. Our little one was fortunately still upstairs in his crib and none the worse but for need of a clean diaper, a good feed and a cuddle.
Initially we thought the cause may have been related to a persistent headache she'd been complaining of but which her doctor had failed to take seriously. The results of the post-mortem however showed the truth to be far worse. Unbeknown to anyone she'd developed a fistula at the site of the gastric bypass surgery. This had suddenly ruptured causing, as the report put it 'destruction of chest cavity and diaphragm through discharge of gastric material'. I don't even want to imagine the discomfort my poor sweet girl likely suffered in her last hours, or to think that the surgery on which she'd once pinned her hopes of acceptance (and subsequently come to regret when she realised that her happiness was not weight-dependent) had been a ticking timebomb from the very outset of our relationship.
Heather was without a doubt one of the sweetest, kindest, most loving people I have ever had the privilege to know. In a world beset with so much cruelty and unpleasantness she was a revelation of tolerance and humanity. For the first time in my 33 years she made me comfortable in my own skin, gave me confidence to be myself and become a stronger person through my recent diagnosis with Asperger's Syndrome, a strength that only left me two Saturdays ago. Our long-distance relationship was forged in patience and anticipation of better days ahead, giving us a depth of connection that is all too rare and making us soul mates in every sense of the word. Heather loved me for my differences and quirks rather than despite them, as I loved hers and trusted her implicitly. In turn she told me that my unconditional love for her had finally given her the contentment and safety she craved when so much of her life had been marked by pain and unhappiness. She often said 'I'll always be your girl', over the years it became our little refrain that she would add to the bottom of cards and emails and tell me last thing at night. My life, Ben's life, those of all who knew her and the world at large will be all the poorer for her absence from them. Rest in peace forever sweetheart, know no more pain or torment, and I'll be counting the days till I'm back at your side.
(Cross-posted as 'Rich & Heather - Love Can Bridge an Ocean' to 'First Do No Harm' blog at www.fathealth.wordpress.com, WLS Uncensored Yahoo group and my personal FB page).
NWSA 2013 Fat Studies Interest Group Call for Papers
NWSA 2013 Fat Studies Interest Group Call for Papers
November 7-10, 2013, Cincinnati, OH.
Papers on any topic at the intersection of women's studies/ feminism/ womanism/ gender/ sexuality and fat studies will be considered.
At minimum, your submission should fall under one of the following themes for NWSA 2013:
* The Sacred and the Profane
*Borders and Margins
*Futures of the Feminist Past
*Body Politics
*Practices of Effecting Change
For more information on the themes, visit: http://www.nwsa.org/
While this is an open call, topic suggestions from last year's meeting include:
-Defining and Refining Fat Studies
-Fatness and Beauty Ideals/Beauty Privilege
-Women of Color and Body Size/Fatness
-Fat Intersections (including race, nationality, disability, sexuality, appearance/beauty)
-Teaching Fat Studies (professorial bodies, student bodies, resistance)
-Fat Feminist Research Methods (including role of the researcher body)
-Fat Feminists Theorizing the Body
-Fatopias/Fat Utopias
-Transnational Fat Bodies (immigration, globalization)
-Fat Performance/Performing Fatness/Fat Icons
-Fat Activism & Feminism/Fatosphere
If you are interested in being a part of the 2013 Fat Studies panels at NWSA, please send the following info by February 13, 2013 to NWSA Fat Studies Interest Group Co-Chairs Michaela A. Nowell and Candice Buss: (email@example.com and firstname.lastname@example.com). Please make sure one of us confirms receipt of your submission.
Your submission should include your:
*Name, Institutional Affiliation, Snail Mail, Email, Phone.
*NWSA Theme your paper fits under (and fat studies topic area/s if yours fits any of the above).
*Title for your talk, a one-page, double-spaced abstract in which you lay out your topic and its relevance to this session.
*AND a 100 word truncated abstract (NWSA requirement).
Each person will speak for around 15 minutes, and we will leave time for Q&A. In order to present with your name in the program, you must become a member of NWSA in addition to registering for the conference.
If you submit a fat studies related paper or panel, you can tag it with the keyword 'fat feminisms,' and likewise search the program for 'fat feminisms' to find relevant panels. If you submit a paper or panel on your own, we encourage you to use this keyword if your paper or panel fits the bill. We thank NWSA for adding a keyword that helps conference attendees locate fat studies panels.
Conflicting research on fat kids and their health
I have three articles for y'all today, all of them about children's health, and all of them seem to be conflicting with each other (but then, what else is new with obesity research in general, right?).
The first article is Overweight Teens Typically Eat Less Than Normal-Weight Peers. This one seems like a no-brainer to me, since it's also true of "overweight/obese" adults and studies have proved that time and time again. The thing that's infuriating about the article is that it's blaming these teens for being fat in the first place because - wait for it - they overate as toddlers/young children. What it doesn't take into consideration is that maybe, just maybe, these teens are eating less than their peers because of the bullying they face for being fat, the blame and shame they face every day from every source there is because they don't fit society's "ideal" body shape, or the blame and shame they get from their doctors who ignore their metabolic health in favor of that dreaded number on the scale.
The second article is Taste Buds Less Sensitive In Obese Kids. This study has all kinds of problems with it, that I can see, anyway. First of all, 85% of the fat kids were from lower socioeconomic classes, they didn't control for gender differences, and the only thing they really did control for was whether the kids were fat or "normal-weight". The conclusion they reached was that fat kids have trouble identifying the intensity of sweet and salty until something is either very sweet or very salty (ergo, that's why fat kids eat too many sweets or too many salty snacks and are fat, I guess).
All of these kids were between the ages of 6 and 18, so I'm wondering how many of them had been on diets (and since they all came from the hospital's pediatric obesity center, you can almost guarantee that most of them have dieted at least once. So did the researchers take into consideration how that affects one's sense of taste? Did they take into consideration what the children normally ate on a daily basis? That can affect one's sense of taste. There are just too many variables to know if this study has any value.
The third article is More Exercise Cuts Kids' Diabetes Risk. The problem I have with this study is that they're saying that 28% of these kids were pre-diabetic and the aerobic exercise lowered their insulin AUC by "2.96 mU/mL relative to control in the low-dose exercise group and by 3.56 mU/mL versus control in the high-dose group". Without knowing what they considered pre-diabetic (the starting diagnostic for insulin AUC), I'm not sure I'd consider that a significant drop (going from 100 to 97 isn't a big deal with a fasting blood sugar, and if 95 is the number at which they say you're not pre-diabetic, is this really a big deal after all?). And one semester of activity, with no follow-up? WTF? Are they really aiming to improve these kids' health, or are they just using them as guinea pigs to prove a point? Because if the activity isn't continued, the improvements aren't going to be maintained, and where does that leave these kids, health-wise? Sure, their insulin AUC improved for a while, and they lost some visceral fat, and improved their aerobic fitness, but if they don't continue the activity sponsored by the research, all of those improvements could be lost. I really don't see a school continuing a sports program where movement for movement's sake is the goal, rather than winning at any cost, do you? And that was the carrot to get these kids moving - participate in the sport whether they were good at it or not, have fun with it, and who cared about winning or losing as long as they played. That's not the way schools do sports.
Man fired because of his size wins lawsuit
The Houston Chronicle reports that a man who was fired from his job solely because of his size (his performance reviews were excellent) has been awarded compensation by the local district court. The July 25th article, Fired obese worker will get $55,000, details the court case and the circumstances surrounding it.
It's good to know that larger Americans can turn to the court system when they are discriminated against by employers. However, Mr. Kratz hasn't found a new job since being fired in 2009. I hope that the sum he's been awarded by the courts helps him out, but this just underlines how pervasive size-based discrimination is in employment.
Talking Fat now available
Talking Fat: Health vs. Persuasion in the War on our Bodies is now available from Pearlsong Press, Amazon and Barnes and Noble online. Amazon says temporarily out of stock because the book is print on demand. If you order it now, you should receive it in a timely manner (depending on Amazon).
I will be at the NAAFA conference. I will not be selling books there. However, if you get a book beforehand, find me, and I'll gladly sign it for you. Feel free to come up and introduce yourself – I'd love to meet some of our readers! (Look for the tall, fat blonde with a long nose and a Texas accent.)
See you at NAAFA!
Study: Weight isn't the real issue
Big Liberty has already covered this on her blog, but I wanted to add a note about it here, too.
HAES advocates keep saying over and over again that weight isn't the real issue. If you have an issue with cardiac risk factors, then it's best to address those risk factors by tweaking your habits and, if necessary, using drugs. The same is true if you have an issue with high blood sugar. Control the blood sugar, and let your weight do whatever it's going to do in response to any changes you make. The number on the scale isn't the main issue.
Now, there's a study that strongly supports that view. It's a high quality analysis of population level data.
Anthony Jerant, Peter Franks. "Body Mass Index, Diabetes, Hypertension, and Short-Term Mortality: A Population-Based Observational Study, 2000–2006″ J Am Board Fam Med July-August 2012 vol. 25 no. 4 422-431
If you follow the link above, you'll find that the entire text of the study is available for free.
In analyses not adjusted for diabetes or hypertension, only severe obesity was associated with mortality (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.26; 95% confidence interval, 1.00–1.59). After adjusting for diabetes and hypertension, severe obesity was no longer associated with mortality, and milder obesity (BMI 30-<35) was associated with decreased mortality (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.81; 95% confidence interval, 0.68–0.97). There was a significant interaction between diabetes (but not hypertension) and BMI (F [4, 235] = 2.71; P = .03), such that the mortality risk of diabetes was lower among mildly and severely obese persons than among those in lower BMI categories.
Yes, not only were even the highest BMIs only weakly associated with excess mortality, fat diabetics are less likely to die than thin diabetics. This study also found that people with BMIs under 35 do not have an elevated mortality risk at all, not even when diabetes and heart disease aren't controlled for.
Interesting stuff.
Pre-diabetes: a fake disease?
Once again, I'm just putting this out there.
Diabetes, real diabetes, is a health condition that needs to be carefully monitored and controlled. The repercussions of not doing so can be pretty horrific.
However, what the hell is "prediabetes," and does it really mean anything? Is it just a way for the drug companies to make basically healthy people into patients and increase profits? It has to be asked.
Phamawatch Canada is asking, in "Manufacturing Diabetes":
The diagnosis of pre-diabetes is bad news for patients and their families, most of whom have no idea about all the drama in the background. But it's also bad news for society as a whole because of the enormous costs associated with treating millions of people who do not have a medical condition. But for the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industries, it's a great turn of events — and there's little doubt that Big Pharma has influenced the lower thresholds that have been put in place.
Health News Review printed this follow-up which contains links to other articles that are exploring the question.
Diabetes is a chronic disease that should be taken seriously, but slightly elevated blood sugar doesn't have the same effects on health as full blown diabetes - and slightly elevated blood sugar levels do not necessarily continue to rise until they hit diabetic levels. Is pre-diabetes simply a conservative approach to diagnosis, or is it just a cynical strategy being used by drug companies to create more customers?
Debate: 'Is obesity a disease'
I haven't had time to watch this yet, but I'm just putting it out there for discussion. It should be interesting.
Dr. Jacqui Gingras is a HAES advocate and Dr. Arya Sharma is Alberta's leading expert on obesity. I think it's fair to say that Dr. Sharma is somewhat less enmeshed in the size=health paradigm and in social prejudice than many others in his field. I'm hoping that it's going to be a sane and reasonable discussion.
Joseph Abdulnour initially posted this on Obesity Panacea.
The YouTube intro:
Dr Arya Sharma and Dr Jacqui Gingras debate whether obesity should be viewed as a disease in Ottawa, Ontario on June 7, 2012. The event was moderated by Dr Mark Tremblay, and was supported by a Café Scientifique grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research as well as an event grant from the Canadian Obesity Network and in-kind support from the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute. To download the audio of the debate, visit http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2012/06/13/is-obesity-a-disease-debate-r.... Video by Joseph Abdulnour.
WLS Surgeon Faked Data in Medical Studies
From Retraction Watch: Three more retractions for weight loss surgeon Edward Shang for making up data.
Edward Shang, the weight loss surgeon who lost his job at the University of Leipzig in May after it was revealed that he had made up most, if not all, of the patients in his research studies at the University of Mannheim, has retracted three more papers...
The authors of the above articles have requested their withdrawal, notifying the Journal that the clinical trials described in the articles were not conducted as written in the article. The Editor-in-Chief, the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, and the Publisher have determined to retract the articles.
The first paper has been cited three times, according to Thomson Scientific's Web of Knowledge, while the third one has been cited 32 times.
Shang has already retracted a study in Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, and one in Obesity Surgery. A May 9 University of Leipzig press release refers to a total of six retractions, so there is apparently one more on the way.
Here are the three latest studies in question:
- Pump-assisted versus gravity-controlled enteral nutrition in long-term percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy patients: a prospective controlled trial. Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, 2003;27:216-219.
- Pump-assisted enteral nutrition can prevent aspiration in bedridden percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy patients. Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition 2004;28:180-183.
- The Influence of early supplementation of parenteral nutrition on quality of life and body composition in patients with advanced cancer. Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, 2006;30:222-230.
UK Government criticises obesity epi-panic
Just by way of an update, the All-Party Parliamentary Group into body image has now published the report of the inquiry discussed above. Considering this a Government document there's some really good, groundbreaking stuff in there, including acknowledgement of the limitations of the BMI, the role of constant media discussion of the obesity epidemic as being key to fuelling fear of fat in children, the prevalence and effects of weight stigma, the potential harm being caused by the National Child Measurement Programme, the need to re-frame the emphasis of public health messages away from the current focus of weight and obesity and even (and perhaps most controversially) the potential for legislative action against discrimination and prejudice based on appearance, effectively making weight a protected class in terms of access to employment, housing, goods and services.
On the downside (and not entirely surprisingly) the recommendations place a disproportionate focus on the role of the media over and above that of central / local Government and their often ill-advised NHS / Education Department campaigns which deliberately target children and problematise fat at an increasingly younger stage. They also take claims that there is an obesity epidemic or multiple crises of public health for granted and avoid examination of the evidence base for these, instead regurgitating the 'accepted wisdom'. Some of the language also leaves much to be desired. But all in all, it's a good start.
However as the group's primary targets the mainstream media, has unfortunately and almost without exception attempted to downplay, dismiss and put a negative spin on the group's findings in a thoroughly spiteful and apparently co-ordinated attempt to ensure that after a flurry of animosity toward fat people the report ends up being quietly forgotten about. The worst culprits were (as usual) good old Auntie Beeb with a piece which focused exclusively on the recommendation that public health messages be presented in weight-neutral language and twisted it into being about 'banning' the use of the 'overweight' and 'obese' labels (again).
Of course all these articles have comments enabled and if one were to take the balance of opinion expressed within at face value (which I long ago learned never to do) you'd be mistaken for thinking that denying the great British Public their right to bully and shame fat people was up there with ID cards and road pricing in the list of unpopular Government suggestions; as such expect to hear little more about it. When the UK press and media bare their teeth, woe betide anyone who resists.
"What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right" - Albert Einstein
Loving Your Body
A very interesting conversation has been going on in the tumblrverse about the meme of loving your body. Marianne Kirby argues that this meme can be problematic. Kirby explained her issues with the concept on her tumblr page:
It's very much coming from a place where people want to feel good about themselves and to help other people feel good about themselves, too.
But it homogenizes bodily experience and feeling - basically it dictates the One True Way people are "supposed" to feel about their bodies. And that skeeves me. Because there are lots of reasons people have complicated relationships with their bodies - from trans identity to disability to body dysmorphia in general and so on.
I also think that for someone just coming off dieting or an eating disorder, loving the body is far too tall of an order. I found loving my body to be unfathomable at first and not something I could force. Feeling love for the body can be incredibly challenging, and really is not necessary in my experience.
However, I found that accepting my body is very important. For me, the ideas expressed in the Serenity Prayer, popular in recovery circles, are applicable in this situation:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
I spent many years hating my body and not accepting it as it was. I did myself a great deal of emotional and physical damage with that state of mind.
So, I had to make acceptance important. I could change some things such as becoming stronger or flexible. However, after 30 years of trying, I had to accept my weight as it was.
Additionally, I must accept my body as it is before I can make any improvements. I have to accept my current level of fitness before I can make progress, or I wind up injured and in worse shape. I have to accept my health where it is before I can address any issues, before I try to make it better.
To me feeling love for the body is not as important as accepting it and honoring it. Yet, I think accepting and honoring are forms of love – love the verb. We tend to think of love as a feeling – that ooey-gooey feeling we usually associate with the term. That feeling is wonderful, but fleeting even in the best of relationships or situations.
What is not fleeting is the choice to act lovingly, whether it be to ourselves or others. I can always choose to act lovingly towards my body, no matter how I feel about it. I can always choose to connect with my body. I can always choose to feed it and exercise it according to its needs. I cannot control how I feel about it.
So, in my viewpoint, trying to feel love for my body really isn't important. Choosing to treat my body with respect and honor, to act lovingly towards it, is vital.
Marilyn Wann's two cents on Weight of the Nation
Weight of the Nation. It's the toxic new HBO documentary on how all of the disgusting and out of control fat people are going to bring down western society. Fuck you very much, HBO!
Marilyn Wann is on it in her latest SF Weekly column, Weight of the Nation Serves Up More Fat-Shaming. Marilyn reminds us:
I attended the first, government-sponsored Weight of the Nation conference in 2009. I didn't pay or anything self-defeating like that. I just walked in (with a brave friend or two) and delivered plastic-wrapped fortune cookies to the fancy luncheon tables where major stakeholders were about to chew on the alleged "obesity" problem. If the professional food scolds took a cookie, they got messages like these:
- The war on "obesity" is a war on PEOPLE!
- The No. 1 threat to fat people? Your unexamined prejudice.
- What's the word for science that serves bigotry? Hint: It starts with "you."
- If you can't imagine fat people being healthy...that's YOUR pathology!
- Tell people to lose weight if you want to endanger public health AND civil rights!
- How many fat people must you starve, poison, slice up? Celebrate weight diversity now!
AND she includes this nice video from the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH):
But don't stop here. Check out the whole article.
There's a new issue of Vol•Up•2 online!
I wrote a BFB post on the first issue of Velvet L'Amore's incredible web magazine Vol•up•2, so it's only fair to give all of you a heads-up. A new issue is available! Even better, I've figured out how to embed it in this post.
However, WARNING, this is not safe for work. It contains artistic nudes.
So without further ado...
Chewing the Fat in the UK
So spring is in the air and our old friend Jamie Oliver is back to his usual rabble-rousing with demands that academy schools must be subject to the same draconian school meals standards as LEA-controlled ones and the launch of a campaign, backed by an alliance of celebrities, footballers and obesity campaigners for compulsory healthy cookery lessons in schools. The second may be a laudible objective in its own right but of course he justifies it in the context of fighting what he describes in typically potty-mouthed fashion as the 'biggest f**king obesity epidemic ever'. Ironically, the School Food Trust, a taxpayer-funded organisation set up to implement improvements' to school dinners in the wake of Oliver's first campaign in 2005, is now warning that many children are at risk of malnutrition as a result of inadequate portion sizes driven by requirements to reduce calorie contents, lack of cafeteria time and fear of weight gain.
Whilst a survey of British doctors and the claims that a majority support restricting healthcare to smokers, drinkers and fat people has been receiving a lot of attention from Fatosphere bloggers, another story involving doctors passed largely un-noticed. The Academy of Royal Medical Colleges, which claims to represent every doctor in the UK, has united in a 'crusade' against obesity, which it claims in predictably Chicken Little-esque fashion to be the biggest single issue facing Britain. According to its spokesman Prof Terence Stephenson the project will spend three months reviewing the evidence for different types of obesity interventions and strategies but the striking thing about this is how much has already been taken for granted; that obesity is a problem requiring intervention is never questioned and the familiar alarmist urgency of language abounds. Whilst it is pointed out that the recommendations are not final, the proposed inquiry seems to be something of a window-dressing exercise and I'll bet my house there's no mention of HAES or the counterproductivity of some of the more extreme proposals being mooted anywhere in the final report.
Meanwhile the latest salvo in Peta's anti-obesity crusade has not been well received. A billboard depicting a coffin-shaped meat pie with the tagline 'fight obesity, go vegan' has invoked the ire of local people (the location was apparently chosen due to the opening of new crematoria capable of dealing with 50st cadavers) and, interestingly, Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum. The hoarding was later defaced by vandals who tore away the 'obesity' section revealing a previous advertisement for McCain home fries. With food advertising next on the list of fat police ban targets, it seems that irony is rarely without a sense of humour.
Once again the language of the crisis has made the news. In an apparent rejection of a 2009 suggestion by the then opposition party that the word 'fat' should be used to shock and shame patients in preference to the more clinical 'obese' , a new NICE paper on fighting obesity in deprived communities advises against the use of the stigmatising O-word in favour of the (equally problematic from a FA perspective) phrase 'healthier weight'. Woe betide any who suggest that fat people should be entitled to the use of respectful language, with the usual 'antis' dominating what passed for a debate in the mainstream media. British fat activist Kathryn Szrodecki pointed out on the BBC's notoriously fat-phobic Breakfast show that whilst language is important in influencing attitudes, fighting the fat stigma that keeps fat people in their houses and avoiding the doctor should be even more of a priority, but was quickly drowned out with a rant from the obligatory 'expert'. The Guardian's take was typically puerile, with the implication that it was an instance of 'PC gone mad' more fitting of the Daily Mail, but even my city's local newspaper covered the story, and with an uncharacteristically balanced piece.
Also in the Guardian 'body image' campaigner Suzie Orbach discusses the(really quite horrifying) findings of a British study into levels of weight-based discrimination in the workplace, Kevin Smith talks about his vilification and ridicule at the hands of the media following the Southworst sizism incident of 2010, and there's a truly frightening demonstration of how fat hatred and rising levels of disability prejudice intersect over the issue of mobility scooters (or 'obesicles' as several commenters refer to them) and whether fat people without a specific diagnosis of a disability should now be prohibited from using them.
Elsewhere, rising rates of premature births and arthritis are the latest health crises to be blamed on weight, whilst a BBC report on a course for 'fat food workers' aimed at teaching them to cook healthier meals is also framed in terms of fighting obesity. There's criticism of the sponsorship of the London Olympics by Coca-Cola and McDonald's, renewed demands to replace the GDA method of labelling foods with a traffic-light system of 'good' and 'bad' items, another propaganda piece promoting WLS for kids and a study linking reduced testosterone levels to male obesity.
Oh, and yet another Channel 4 series, starts this week, this time claiming to tackle 'Britain's big fat problem' with 'secret eaters' by subjecting 'obese' families to 24-hour surveillance in a chilling echo of the tactics employed by Social Services in the recent Dundee child protection case.
Whew. Now enjoy what's left of the weekend...
Stories I've seen lately in my MedPage Today
I subscribe to MedPage Today and the following are some of the headlines I've seen in the last week:
Co-Sleeping May Protect Children from Weight Gain This one says
"The results may suggest that elements of parental social support or other types of positive psychosocial responses of being allowed to enter parents' bed during the night may protect against overweight, whereas types of negative psychosocial responses such as feelings of rejection when not being allowed to enter parents' bed may lead to overweight," Olsen said in a statement.
Not sure how I feel about that one, think more studies need to be done.
FDA Panel Gives Nod to New Diet Drug Lorcaserin hydrochloride, another drug that they don't know if it has any cardiovascular side effects yet, and has minimal effects on weight loss (3.3% difference between lorcaserin group and placebo group).
Big Midsection May Up Risk of Dying Suddenly Not sure what this is trying to say - are they talking heart attacks? If so, I thought they said fat people had a better chance of surviving heart attacks than thinner people. Seems contradictory to me, and in need of more study.
Program May Hold Promise for Teen Weight Control
A school-based anti-obesity program for adolescent girls from low-income communities cut down the time they spent glued to the TV or computer screen, researchers reported.
But although changes in body composition moved in the right direction, they did not differ significantly from those of girls in the control group, nor were there significant changes in physical activity, according to David Lubans, PhD, of the University of Newcastle in Australia.
The gist of the article is that BMI didn't change much (less than .2%) but the girls were more active and spent less time in front of the TV/computer. I'm assuming their health improved even though their weight didn't go down, so it seems to me that would be good, but the focus is still on weight loss instead of improving health. *headdesk*
IOM: Society Must Rally to Fight Obesity
"The costs [of obesity] have the potential to become catastrophic and unaffordable unless all sectors of society take the need for obesity prevention seriously and act responsibly," Daniel Glickman, JD, chair of the IOM's Committee on Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention, wrote in the 478-page report's preface.
Do I really have to dissect this? When are they going to admit that personal responsibility hasn't worked so far? If personal responsibility for being fat worked, all of those fucking diets that fat people have spent $60,000,000,000 on in the last year would have worked to make us permanently thin and there would be no fat people for them to get their knickers in a knot over.
Shedding Pounds May Hike Success of Fertility Tx And again, the problem with prescribing weight loss as a solution to a problem is that there is no way to guarantee that the weight loss can be maintained for long enough to do any good for the majority of people.
New Model Sees Smaller Uptick in Obesity Rates Methinks the CDC needs to get its act together - didn't they say obesity rates have been level for the last 8 or 9 years or so? Now they're predicting a smaller rise than was originally predicted? Which is it? Rates are either staying level or they're slowly rising - can't have it both ways, no matter how much you might want it.
Moms Often Blind to Toddler's Weight This one, well, this one is just outrageous fear-mongering as far as I'm concerned. Most mothers know very well if their kids are fat. Could it be that they know better than anyone how their children eat and how active they are and whether their weight is something about which to be concerned?
So that's the fat news round-up, have at it in comments.
HAES vs. Weight Management
An interesting thing has been happening lately. Some prominent doctors have started (at least occasionally) sounding like...
I go back and forth on my opinion of this. Is our message being co-opted and twisted by the medical establishment, or are attitudes changing for the better? Is the weight centered paradigm finally shifting?
Here's something very HAES-like from Dr. Rick Kausman.
Dr Rick Kausman is a medical doctor who is recognised as the Australian
pioneer of the person-centred approach to healthy weight management. Rick
has written two books including the award-winning 'If Not Dieting, Then
What?', he is the creator of a number of other resources, and has had
several articles on healthy weight management published in peer-reviewed
journals. Dr Rick is a Director of the Butterfly Foundation and a Fellow of
the Australian College of Psychological Medicine.
He talks about "everyday foods" and "sometimes foods." He talks about "weight management" rather than "weight loss" (or HAES, for that matter). Part of me is really suspicious of that terminology, but I have to admit that it would be easy to frame the same behaviors I would call HAES as weight management, since for me, a fairly stable weight - over decades - has been a side effect of HAES. And to be completely honest, yeah. There are foods that I enjoy but don't eat very often or only eat in small quantites because my body doesn't feel good when I eat them or because they're very heavy. I guess those could be framed as 'sometimes foods.'
Anyway, this HAES/weight management thing seems like it might be worth discussing. The relationship between fat acceptance and weight management is complicated. I'm pretty sure that a significant number of people in the fat acceptance movement have been below their maximum weights for quite a while, but are still fat. There are many of us that sorta kinda manage our weight the way we'd be expected to if we were thin - just listening to our bodies and striking a balance. I call it HAES and I try not focus on weight or size, but I have to admit that it's convenient to have a stable weight and I'm glad it's a side effect of HAES for me.
In the end, the difference between HAES and "weight management" can be in the intent and the focus. The two can look very similar from outside. HAES is meant to be 100% weight-neutral, but in this society, 100% weight-neutrality is difficult. Is HAES-like behavior that's conceptualized as weight management really so different? Maybe it's not complete weight neutrality that's the most important; maybe it's simply the removal of weight or BMI-based goals. If mental health, energy levels, and medical numbers other than BMI are priortized and if the goal is not to reach a certain prescribed weight, then damn. It is indeed very close to HAES, and it might help a lot of people make peace with their bodies and find ways to feel better, both physically and mentally.
Then I remind myself that "health" is a social construct that's being used as a bludgeon in our society, and that maybe the people on the fat acceptance side who have an ideological problem with HAES ("Health At Every Size") have it for exactly this reason - that it can intersect with the softer side of the medicalization of fat bodies.
What do you think?
Feeding tubes? Really?
Google "feeding tube diet" or Ketogenic Enteral Nutrition (KEN) Diet. There are a whole bunch of neutral to positive, freak show style news items. Take your pick.
You may have noticed that this weight loss diet is so incredibly embarrassing and moronic that a Google search will turn up several negative articles on the first page of results.
Canadian obesity specialist Yoni Freedhoff, who is a bit of a nutritional puritan but who helped nix the Epcot Center's crap Habit Heroes exhibition, thinks it's medical malpractice. He skewers it in a post called "Church booked? Check. Flowers? Check. Feeding Tube? Check?" Well, yeah. Sounds like medical malpractice to me too. Thanks for pointing that out.
Google News has an item called "Feeding Tube Diet? Irresponsible Doctors Condone Anorexia". The fun thing about this article is that the author clearly finds the whole thing problematic - but only when it's used by people who aren't 'morbidly obese.' For very fat people, she thinks it sounds like an excellent weight loss option.
Much as I think that Freedhoff is an okay guy for a diet doctor, I've got to say that the Yahoo article is less hypocritical than his. Don't get me wrong. I agree with everything he says about the feeding tube diet. But, this is someone who is not terribly critical of weight loss surgery. A feeding tube is less invasive than weight loss surgery and it can be removed at any time. It seems likely that the only advantage that weight loss surgery has over a permanently installed feeding tube is that it's invisible. The fact that you're tampering with your body in order to physically enforce a starvation diet isn't apparent to every single person who looks at you. But really, it's not that different. In fact, the feeding tube is not nearly as extreme and risky. It is easily reversible and does not involve the ol' slice and dice.
The feeding tube diet is marketed as a quick and easy way to lose weight. Apparently it provides 800 calories a day with no carbs, and they claim that people don't get hungry. It would be nice for the dieters if that were true, because it physically prevents them from eating. Side effects may include bad breath, constipation, dizziness, acid reflux, and nausea.
In a society that thinks weight loss surgery is a good idea, why would anyone be surprised that people want a doctor to stick a feeding tube up their noses and down their throats to provide a minimum amount of nutrition and prevent them from eating? It makes perfect sense. Not-so-fat people who love the idea of weight loss surgery but aren't eligible for it must be delighted by this new option.
I'm not surprised by it, but it is still hard for me to understand (emotionally) why someone would do this to themselves. The old "easy way out" trope doesn't fit any better than it does with weight loss surgery. This is public. It is humiliating. It is physically unpleasant and disempowering. It seems to come from a place of deep frustration and an antagonistic mind-body relationship. I keep slipping into thoughts of masochism, penance, and the mortification of the flesh. It's a self destructive (or at least risk embracing) form of self punishment. The same human impulses have found a home in religion in the past. What are those impulses acting in service of here, and why are they such a persistent part of human nature? I obviously haven't thought this all the way through, but I'm putting it out there.
A few other thoughts...
As far as I can tell, there is currently only one American doctor who is willing to insert feeding tubes for weight loss. However, this is all over the North American news. It occurs to me that:
1. All of this news coverage is free publicity for this dumb idea and it will probably spread the word to every greedy and ethically impaired doctor in North America. Coming soon: a feeding tube diet doctor in your area!
2. The news coverage sure does support the "young women are stupid, lazy and vain" trope.
Study: the Biggest Loser increases weight bias
In January's issue of the Journal Obesity, a Bowling Green Department of Psychology study: The Effects of Reality Television on Weight Bias: An Examination of The Biggest Loser.
From the abstract:
Weight-loss reality shows, a popular form of television programming, portray obese individuals and their struggles to lose weight. While the media is believed to reinforce obesity stereotypes and contribute to weight stigma, it is not yet known whether weight-loss reality shows have any effect on weight bias. The goal of this investigation was to examine how exposure to 40-min of The Biggest Loser impacted participants' levels of weight bias. Fifty-nine participants (majority of whom were white females) were randomly assigned to either an experimental (one episode of The Biggest Loser) or control (one episode of a nature reality show) condition... Participants in The Biggest Loser condition had significantly higher levels of dislike of overweight individuals and more strongly believed that weight is controllable after the exposure... Exploratory analyses examining moderation of the condition effect by BMI and intention to lose weight indicated that participants who had lower BMIs and were not trying to lose weight had significantly higher levels of dislike of overweight individuals following exposure to The Biggest Loser compared to similar participants in the control condition. These results indicate that anti-fat attitudes increase after brief exposure to weight-loss reality television.
The Biggest Loser increases weight bias, especially among thin people. No big surprise.
And Michelle Obama is appearing on the show! I really want to think that Mrs. Obama means well. I want to think that she's a decent person, if a bit misguided. But the study above has been available for months, and even without it, isn't it obvious that The Biggest Loser is horrible? That the contestants are bullied? That the methods used to make them lose weight are unsustainable?
In the Huff Post, back in 2010: Michelle Obama On Bullying: Adults Need To Set Example. I guess she's changed her mind. If fat people are the targets, she thinks bullying is a-okay. What a disappointment.
More armchair quarterbacking
There been a lot of discussion of race and the Atlanta billboard campaign in the fatophere lately. I can't say that most of it seems to me as if it would be useful to someone struggling with the issue of how to be inclusive.
I've read the original thread that caused all the fuss, and in that thread, Atchka asks a few questions about what, exactly, he should have done or should do to include people of color in the fat activism surrounding the Georgia billboards. As far as I can tell, he has never gotten an answer from anyone.
So, although I'm probably the least qualified person to try to answer that question, I do think that it's sincere and that it really should be explored, so I'll give it a shot. I hope that others will also contribute their comments and ideas. Also, I'm pretty sure that at least some of this did go on behind the scenes, but I don't know the whole story.
But First...
I want to start by saying that this whole effort has been absolutely amazing and that I am blown away by what has been accomplished. Even though it may not have been textbook perfect (and what kind of grassroots project being done for the first time would be?) it has been well managed and effective beyond anyone's expectations. Sometimes when you see that something needs to be done, you just do it. I have become very cynical about human nature over the years, and this campaign has really lifted my spirits.
I also want to make it clear that I know I'm being an armchair quarterback. I knew about the anti-billboard campaigns from pretty early on, and I could have volunteered for a role doing what I'm about to describe. However, it just didn't occur to me at the time. The fact that we were non-local and were taking action on an issue that was local to Atlanta had occurred to me, but the full implications of it really didn't hit me, as I didn't give enough thought to the demographics. However, that's a poor excuse, because what we probably should have done first is...
1. Figure out exactly where the billboards are and who lives there.
When the effort to do something about the Georgia billboards first began to gel, there was an issue of context that (as far as I know) was never fully explored. This campaign is in Atlanta, Georgia. The majority of the children in the negative stereotype-based, fatphobic Strong4Life advertisements were either Black or Hispanic. In fact, according to Wikipedia, Atlanta is approximately 55% Black, 35% White and 5% Hispanic. In Georgia as a whole, the population is approximately 60% White, 30% Black and 5% Hispanic. These are the demographics of the people whose neighbourhoods are being polluted by the negative ads.
We could have made a map of the ad locations and then figured out the ethnic and economic demographics of the specific areas that were targeted.
In reality, I think there was some awareness of this issue, especially after the first of the "stage one" billboards were removed and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta began really obviously targeting poor Black neighborhoods. However, it may not have been acted upon strongly enough.
2. Look for links into Georgia-based, activist, African American and Hispanic social networks.
Some of this could have been done through our social networks. There are size positive bloggers and commentators who may be from Atlanta or have Atlanta connections - particularly activist, African American connections. Even a general call-out for volunteers may have drawn out people who could have helped link the fatophere campaigns to local Georgians, particularly African Americans, who were concerned about the effect of the billboards on their children.
I seem to remember that an Atlanta newpaper columnist wrote a piece that was critical of the campaign, early on. It would have been a good idea to get in touch and to see if there was anything they could do to help.
3. Seek out community groups local to the billboards
After reaching out with our social networks, the next thing we could have done was seek out local Atlanta groups who are already fat positive: the local NAAFA chapter (I think Marilyn Wann may actually have done that), local BBW groups, the local plus sized fashion community. Body image activists, feminists, and eating disorders groups share common ground with the fat acceptance movement and are often based in universities and colleges. I'd look specifically for educational institutions in and near the targeted neighborhoods, with diverse faculties and student bodies. We could even have looked for privately owned plus sized and big-and-tall shops and enlisted the owners' help.
We could have tracked down community groups and cold called (or e-mailed) them. Local chapters of civil rights organizations? Volunteer-oriented churches? People in those types of organizations are going to be just as likely to be fat-phobic as they are to be sympathetic to our cause. However, it's hard to believe that the Strong4Life billboards won't have offended people involved in social justice. If we'd taken the right approach (HAES and an acknowledgement of the racist aspects of the Strong4Life ad campaign), we'd have had a chance to win some allies there and to support people in those organizations who may have already been concerned about the billboards and thinking about taking action.
4. Listen to - and amplify the messages from - local people
We could have tried to find out what the people who saw the billboards every day were thinking about them; what effects they were having. We strongly suspect that the billboards are psychologically harmful and probably counterproductive as well. We could have strengthened that argument with real examples - written, audio and video testimonials from real local people, not actors with a message someone else wrote. Then we could have plugged the hell out of these messages on our blogs and social networks.
5. Partner with concerned organizations and individuals
"Do you think something should be done about those billboards? Have you got anything is mind? Is there anything we can do to help, or can we plan something together?"
And from there on in, hopefully the fatophere's efforts could have meshed with actions taken by local groups that reflected local demographics.
The Issue of Timing
Now, I want to emphasize that this is difficult stuff. It isn't "just Google it." There's social risk involved, there's the possibility of substantial delays, however...
The billboards had been up since May, 2011. Fatophere bloggers had been aware of the campaign for a long time. I remember that someone linked to this this April 2011 article on Sociological Images right after it was posted. However the fatophere campaign didn't start until January 2012.
It's true that all of the things I describe above would have slowed down the response. The fact is, we did it at the last minute anyway. There was no organized response from the fat acceptance community for the first seven months of the Strong4Life Campaign. If we'd been on top of the issue from the beginning, there would have been time to build a coalition.
I'm not blaming anyone, because I'd have to blame myself too. I wasn't a leader in the campaign, even at the rather late time it emerged. I just photoshopped a bunch of "I Stand" posters. That was my contribution. It's just how things worked out.
The fact that we accomplished something so solid and that so many people (of all backgrounds and physical descriptions!) were ready to put their money and their pictures behind it tells me that it was needed and that it was a good idea. The fact that it got done by a group of volunteers with absolutely no grants, public or private - only individual contributions - is incredible. I don't think we should be too hard on ourselves. BUT, if it had been organized sooner, there would have been more time to build alliances.
The Issue of Distance
There's also the question of whether or not it was appropriate to get involved in someone else's local issue. In this context, we were "people from the internet," an amorphous group of size acceptance activists with no particular tie to Atlanta, Georgia, taking action from a distance. I asked a good friend who isn't involved in fat acceptance (okay, my husband) what he thought. He said "Do you think it was wrong for people outside of South Africa to take action on Apartheid or people from outside Afghanistan to criticize the Taliban for how they treat women?" And he's right. When you can clearly see that something's wrong, then how is it wrong to speak out about it and take action against it? The thing is, doing it from a distance and in relative isolation was probably not the optimal way to go about it.
On the other hand, I do see the negative Stand4Life campaign as primarily sizest and secondarily racist. The size issue is what's right out front. It was definitely not an inappropriate issue for fat acceptance activists to take a leadership role on. Some people might disagree, arguing that the ads are primarily racist because associating fatness with minority groups reflects badly on the minority groups (presumably because fat people really are - insert negative stereotype here). As someone who sees fatness as a neutral physical characteristic and fat people as a group that's in need of social justice, I am not on board with that, although I can certainly see how many people would view it that way.
In Conclusion
I think that what we did - especially what Regan Chastain, Marilyn Wann and Shannon Russell (Atchka) did, was spectacular and that it was absolutely a positive and worthwhile thing to do, even though sure, it could have been done better.
But maybe what we can start here is a list of ideas for how, specifically to establish partnerships with other community and social justice groups. And maybe the best way to reach out to people who aren't exactly like us but who share similar values right now so that we can share social networks and give each other help and support when it's needed.
I think that for my next post, I'm going to start the work I talked about above, just to see how long it takes and how difficult it is. For example, is there an easy way to find out the locations of the Strong4Life billboards when you're not actually in Atlanta?
British police and press confuse BMI with fitness
- The Daily Mail Fat Cop Crackdown: Police officers too unfit for the beat face pay cut...
- The Evening Standard: Police face the sack for being fat
- Daily News: Obese British police officers face pay cuts
- The Metro: Overweight police officers who fail fitness tests to get pay cut
- MSNBC: Unfit, overweight UK cops could be sacked, have pay docked
- Yorkshire Post: Too-fat police could have pounds docked as fifth of Met men obese
It sounds like straightforward weight discrimination, right? British cops being fired or docked pay because of their BMIs?
No. That's not it at all. They're instituting an annual fitness test, and police officers that fail it three times in a row could have their pay lowered.
The problem here is that the press in the UK (and the US) think that being classified as "overweight" or "obese" is exactly the same thing as being physically unfit. The link between "being out of shape" and "overweight and obesity" is so strong in their minds that they are using the two concepts interchangeably in headlines.
The root cause: Reuter's inaccurately titled article, Obese UK police officers face pay cuts. Reuter's is one of the world's biggest news services, and many newspapers copy their articles without any further research, if not word-for-word. If you look up this story now, some of the headlines are a bit more rational. However, when this story first turned up on my newsfeed yesterday, the headlines were consistently as idiotic as the ones above. This is probably because the earlier articles were more heavily dependant on Reuters.
Based on these headlines, it seems that most members of the press don't understand what "overweight" and "obese" mean. "Overweight" is defined as a BMI between 25 and 30 and "obese" is defined as a BMI over 30. A 5'-8" tall person who weighs 165 (11 stone) is overweight. A 5'-8" tall person who weighs 200 pounds (14 stone) is obese.
There are plenty of people who fall into those categories who are very fit; not only strong, but capable of running fast over long distances. And guess what? People whose BMIs fall into the "normal" range and especially the "underweight" range can be very unfit. So, this isn't about being overweight or obese at all. It will (presumably) hit unfit, thin police officers just as hard as unfit, fat officers.
Now, I don't know the details of this fitness test. I hope that it takes more than just distance running into consideration, because let's be honest. Heavier people do tend to be stronger while lighter people tend to be faster, and both of those characteristics can be useful to a police officer. Fight and flight, right?
I also hope that they're taking age, experience, and the type of work these officers do into consideration. Some older officers may be less physically fit but have better judgement; better mental and emotional fitness for the job. Some officers may have old injuries that limit their performance on the fitness test, or they may have a physical disability. They may be working desk jobs rather than walking a beat. Officers need to be fit for their particular role.
More importantly, being a perfect physical specimen doesn't make up for being a dumbass, having poor judgement under pressure, being lazy on the job, being a bully, being a racist, or any of the other major flaws that have occasionally been observed in officers of the law. In fact, if the idea is to turn the British Police Services into an Order of Modern Supermen* then perhaps these issues should be even higher priority than physical fitness?
Having a regular fitness test for cops is not a crazy idea, as long as it's used appropriately and with common sense.
However, for Christsakes, people. Overweight/obese ≠ out of shape. The categories "overweight" and "obese" are based on weight/height ratios, not level of fitness.
*used in the generic, inclusive sense, of course.
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text: The Anglican Church of the Good ShepherdA 9 a.m. Holy Eucharist, Rite II service is offered at the Camp Good News Christian Center at 71 Route 131 in Forestdale. The church is led by Rev. Michael Rennier. Coffee and refreshments are served after the service. Communion is celebrated each Sunday. For more information or directions, call 508-420-0800. Barnstable Friends Meeting (Quakers of the Light) Unprogrammed worship (meditations, contemplation and silent prayer) is shared Sundays from 10 to 11 a.m. at the Burgess House, 559 Route 149 in Marstons Mills. For more information on meetings, contact Rachel at email@example.com Cape Cod Synagogue Shabbat services are held every Friday and Saturday on Winter Street in Hyannis. All are invited to attend. Family Shabbat and Shabbat Dinner are on the first Friday of every month. For service times, call 508-775-2988. Christ Chapel Koinonia praise and worship are at 8:30 a.m., spiritual formation and Kids' Compass Sunday school at 9:45, a second service at 11 a.m., and an evening service at 6 p.m. (no service the last week of each month) at 1200 Old Stage Road in Centerville. Childcare is available for all morning services. Prayer meetings are held Wednesday at 1 p.m. Evening services are held the first three Sundays of each month. Associate Pastor Rev. Thomas Crumb and Youth Pastor Pete Axelson preside. For more information, call 508-420-1200 or go to www.christchapelcapecod.org. Coast Chapel Sunday morning worship is held at 10 in the Forestdale Elementary School on Route 130 in Sandwich and presided over by Pastor Joe Goldberg. Sunday school classes for pre-K through grade 5 begin at 10:30 a .m. All are invited to evening Bible study on Wednesdays at 7 at the church office. Call 508-962-3622 or go to www.coastchapel.com Corpus Christi Mass is celebrated at Corpus Christi, 324 Quaker Meetinghouse Road in East Sandwich, Saturday at 4 p.m. and Sunday at 8 and 10:30 a.m. Call 508-888-0209. Cotuit Federated Church The church holds worship and Sunday school at 10 a.m. Nursery is provided. The Rev. Nicole Lamarche is pastor of the combined United Church of Christ/United Methodist church at School and High streets. For more information, call the church office at 508-428-6163. Faith Assembly of God Church The morning message will be delivered at 9:30 a.m. Everyone is invited to an evening of Bible study Wednesdays at 7 at the church on Bearse's Way in Hyannis. Faith Baptist Church Faith Baptist Church at 245 Osterville-West Barnstable Road in Osterville holds services at 9:30 and 11 a.m. every Sunday. A mid-week service and youth group is held every Wednesday at 6 p.m. For more information, call 508-420-2252. Federated Church of Hyannis The Federated Church of Hyannis holds a service Sunday at 10 a.m. The church is located on Main Street in downtown Hyannis. The Rev. Dr. John A. Terry is minister. A taped broadcast of the previous week's service can be heard Sundays at 7:05 a.m. on WOCN-FM (104.7). For more information, call 508-775-0298 or go to www.federatedchurch.org. First Church of Christ, Scientist Services are held at 10:30 a.m. every Sunday. A Portuguese service is held the first Sunday of each month at noon following the English service. Sunday School for children and teenagers is held at the same hour. Child care for very young children is available at all services. Meetings to share healings and remarks on Christian Science are held every Wednesday at 7:30 pm. All are welcome. The church is located at 94 Stevens St. in Hyannis next to the fire station. The Reading Room located at 357 Main St. in Hyannis is open to the community. First Lutheran Church Sunday services are held at 8:15 a.m. and 11 a.m. Adult education is held at 9 a.m. Saturday services will be held the third Saturday of every month at 6 p.m., and a mid-week service is every third Wednesday at noon. The church at 1663 Main St. (Route 6A) in West Barnstable is handicap accessible. Call 508-362-3161. Gathering at Cape Cod The Gathering at Cape Cod, a Word of Faith church, conducts weekly services Sunday mornings at 10:30 in the Hyannis Room of the Hyannis Holiday Inn on Route 132. Corporate spirit-filled prayer is held every Sunday from 9:45 to 10:15 a.m. Wednesday evening services are held at 7 p.m. Pastor John Hamel is a graduate of Dr. Kenneth E. Hagins RHEMA Bible Training Center in Oklahoma. For more information, visit www.JohnHamelMinistries.org. Kollel of Cape Cod Erev Shabbat Family Worship services are held at 7 p.m. each month by Kollel of Cape Cod at 150 Flint St. in Marstons Mills. A community Shabbat dinner is at 6 p.m. Reservations for the dinner are required; call 508-428-5576. For more information, go to www.kollelcapecod.org. Living Word Church The Living Word Church meets every Sunday at 6 p.m. at the Calvary Baptist Church, 25 Lincoln Road in Hyannis. Adult worship service, Redeemed Youth for ages 12 to 18, Children's Church for ages 6 to 11, and nursery care are provided. For more information call 508-580-0952 or visit www.Living-Word.net. Marstons Mills Community Church The worship team leads in music and worship at 10 a.m., when Pastor Swanson will speak. Sunday School for all ages is at 9 a.m. Nursery and junior church are provided, and refreshments are served after worship. From 7 to 8 p.m., join the church in Cornerstone, an evening of worship and prayer attended by members of many churches. The public is welcome. The church is at 2135 Main St. For more information, call 508-428-7974 or go to www.marstonsmillscommunitychurch.org. New MashpeeCongregationalChurch (UCC) Weekly Sunday worship is held at 10 a.m. at New Seabury on Great Neck South Road. The minister is the Rev. Jim Scovil. For information on the church, call 508-477-9211 or visit www.mashpeeucc.org. One Light The Center for Spiritual Transformation is an interdenominational, new thought church, created specifically for those who do not want to align with any single spiritual tradition. Gatherings are held the second and fourth Sunday of each month at the Cape Cod & Islands Realtors Association Conference Center in West Yarmouth. Call 508-428-6248 or visit www.peaceoncapecod.org for more information. Osterville Baptist Church Services are 9 and 10:45 a.m. Dr. Harry Fletcher, vice president of Good News Jail and Prison Ministry, will speak at both services. Nursery is available at both services. Signing for the hearing impaired and Little Kids' Time (ages 3 to kindergarten) are available at the 9 a.m. service only. Sunday school for junior and senior high is held at 10:45. Bible school for adults and for infants through grade six is held at 9 a.m. A prayer group will be held Wednesdays at 7 p.m. Prayer meeting is held at 7 p.m. on Wednesdays, junior and senior high youth group on Thursdays at 7 p.m., AWANA kids club at 6:30 p.m. Fridays and Men's Life bible study group at 7 a.m. on Saturdays. Women's bible study is Mondays at 6:30 p.m. and Wednesdays at 9:30 a.m. For more information on other groups and Bible studies held throughout the week, call 508-428-2787 or go to www.ostervillebaptist.org. Our Savior Lutheran Church Worship services and Sunday School are held at 10 a.m. with Bible studies at 9 a.m., both led by Rev. Randell Bessette. A nursery is also provided. Sunday school for kids is at 10 a.m. The church is located at 14 Cape Drive in Mashpee. Call 508-477-4966. Presbyterian Church of Cape Cod Sunday worship is at 10 a.m. with Christian education classes at 9 a.m. There are study times at 6 p.m. on Sundays and 7 p.m. on Wednesdays. There is a Sunday evening worship at 7:30 conducted in Portuguese. The church is across from Cape Cod Community College on Route 132 in West Barnstable and can be found on-line at www.capecodopc.com. St. George Greek Orthodox Orthos is at 8:30, Divine Liturgy at 9:30 and Sunday School at 10 a.m. The church is at 1130 Falmouth Road (Route 28) in Centerville. St. Mary's Episcopal Church The church is on Route 6A in Barnstable Village. Regular weekend services include a Celtic Eucharist on Saturdays at 5 p.m., Holy Eucharist Rite I on Sundays at 8 a.m., church school with godly play for pre-K to grade 5 at 9:45 a.m., and Holy Eucharist Rite II with organ and choir at 10 a.m. Youth grades six to eight meet Sundays at 11:10 a.m. and the first Sunday of each month from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Children's Joy Mass is celebrated the third Sunday of the month at 10:30 a.m. Nursery care is available every Sunday from 9:30 to 11:15 a.m. holy Eucharist with healing takes place Wednesdays at 10 a.m., men's group every other Tuesday at 7:30 a.m., and a Eucharist and breakfast meeting Thursdays at 7:30 a.m. Rev. Stephen V Smith, rector, and Rev. Dr. Kris Lewis, assistant rector, preside. For information call 508-362-3977 or visit www.st-marys-church.org. St. Michael the Archangel Orthodox Christian Church Divine Liturgy and Sunday school are held Sundays at 10 a.m. All services are in English. The church is at 62 Main St. in Cotuit. Call 508-420-1113 for more information. St. Peter's Episcopal Church Services are held at 8 a.m. (Rite 1, no music) and 10 a.m. (Rite II, with music). Nursery is provided. At 11:15 a.m. the church holds an adult forum to discuss the sermon. Sunday school is at 9:45 a.m. Call 508-428-3561. The church is located on Wianno Avenue in Osterville. Seventh Day Adventist Church The SDA Church runs the Bayberry Christian School for elementary grades. Separate Sabbath School Bible studies are held for children and adults at 9:30 a.m. every Saturday followed by Worship Service at 10:50 a.m. On the first and third Sabbaths of each month, a potluck dinner is offered following the service. Wednesday night Prayer Meetings are held at 7. The SDA church is pastored by Pastor Mark Gagnon, 2736 Falmouth Road, Route 28 in Osterville. Call 508-428-8921. South Congregational Church Worship is held at 10 a.m. at 565 Main St. in Centerville. Church school for children in preschool through eighth grade is available. A coffee hour follows the service. The church also offers adult, family, children's and bell choirs. Unitarian Church of Barnstable A service is held at 10:30 a.m. The Rev. Dr. Kristen L. Harper will lead the morning service on "Let it be a dance." Child care is available during the service. The church is located on Route 6A in Barnstable Village. All are welcome to join the social hour after the services. United Methodist Church Services are held at 9 and 10:30 a.m. Coffee hour, nursery care and Sunday school are offered at 9 and 10:30 a.m. The church is located at 57 Pond St. in Osterville. Pastor Rev. John E. Holt presides. For more information, call 508-428-2811. Unity Church of the Light All are welcome at the service at 10 a.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. Wednesday at 147 Walton Ave. in Hyannis when the Rev. Steve Carty Cordry speaks. Sunday School is offered at most services. Children are always welcome. Coffee and refreshments are served Sundays. Call 508-775-8400 for more information or visit www.yeahgod.org. West Parish of Barnstable Services led by Pastor Reed Baer are held every Sunday at 10 a.m. at the church on Meetinghouse Way (Route 149) in West Barnstable. Church school, youth group and nursery care are available. For more information, call 508-362-4445 or visit www.westparish.org. NOTES Epiphany concert to help the homeless An Epiphany concert and pageant to benefit the Dennis Yarmouth Ecumenical Council to Prevent Homelessness will be held Jan. 4 at 2:30 p.m. at the St. Pius X Church on Station Ave. in South Yarmouth. The concert, featuring music director Mark Girardin, the church's choir and guest performers, will feature traditional hymns, carols and holiday music. A good will offering will benefit the prevention of homelessness on Cape Cod. For information contact Deacon Akin at 508-362-6694. Financial help at Unity Church The Unity Church of the Light, 147 Walton Ave in Hyannis, will offer a 13-week course on basic financial management, open to the general public. The class will teach information about budgeting, borrowing, saving and investing. The course is not religious in nature. Classes run Sundays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 11 to April 12. Cost is $100 for the class plus a book and CD kit. For registration call 508-775-8400. Recover in fellowship The Christian Recovery Fellowship, a group with the mission of providing a "spiritually consistent platform for the restoration of broken lives," holds a meeting Monday through Saturday from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. at the Salvation Army Service and Worship Center at 100 North St. in Hyannis. An open-discussion meeting is held Sundays from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Living Hope Family Church, 46 Mitchell's Way in Hyannis. For more information, contact Charlie Markarian at 508-775-5733 or email@example.com. Discussion and meditation Spirit Journey philosophical/metaphysical discussion and meditation group meets on Saturdays from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the Winslow House of First Parish Brewster Church on Route 6A. For details, call 508-349-0805. Meetings are free. Meditation offered for beginners The Cape Sangha, a Zen Buddhist meditation group, meets Sundays from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Unity Church of the Light, 147 Walton Ave. in Hyannis. All are welcome, and basic instruction in meditation is offered to beginners. The group is affiliated with the Community of Mindful Living and the Unified Buddhist Church. For more information, visit www.capesangha.org. Zen Center presents weekly meditation The Cape Cod Zen Center has weekly meditation practice at the Unitarian Church of Barnstable, Barnstable village on Route 6A. The Tuesday morning group meets at 8. There is meditation instruction on Fridays at 6:40 p.m. followed by meditation at 7 p.m. There are also retreats, field trips to the Providence Zen Center and monthly talks. For more information, call 508-362-2410. Send us your news The Religious Services section welcomes listings for houses of worship in Barnstable and surrounding towns as well as news of programs, achievements and events. Send your news to The Barnstable Patriot, ATT: Religious Services, PO Box 1208, Hyannis, MA 02601; or by fax to 508-790-3997, marked RELIGIOUS SERVICES; or to firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Contributed by:
Billy E
and Billy E
Last Updated: May 09, 2016 6:07 PM
Fantasy Football University – Class VII
In-Season Roster Management – Part II
The Art of Trading
The three most important things in real estate are:
#1 Location #2 Location #3 Location
The three most important things in investing in stocks are:
#1 Timing #2 Timing #3 Timing
The three most important things in trading in Fantasy Football are:
#1 Be Proactive #2 Be Proactive #3 Be Proactive
Step One: Send a blast e-mail to the other members of your league that reads something like: "I am not in love with any members of my team and everyone is available for the right price…" Include a current list of your roster for the owners' convenience. You will be shocked at the response you get, as the league will now think that your team is available, including your studs. Which by the way is the truth. The Blast e-mail accomplishes another very important thing: it opens up the dialogue between you and your league and gets the ball rolling!.
Step Two: Target Players you REALLY Want:
Remember the idea of every trade is to make your team better. Don't be afraid to target great players, and try to make deals for the studs. Trying to improve your core players is extremely important. If this was real life and you really did this for a living as a GM, the first objective would be to acquire talent. (Remember in basketball you cannot "teach height" and in fantasy football you cannot "teach talent"). If you recall what we said in a prior chapter of Fantasy Football University about tiering: players can be placed into different groups, which have similar levels of talent. Initially try to target top tier players in your proposal. They are the players you want on your team.
Step Three: Trading Multiple Players to Improve your Core:
Getting back to tiering, one of our most important concepts, it is possible to pull off a BLOCKBUSTER TRADE where you end up acquiring a "First Tier" franchise type superstar for two "Second Tier" players: Let's say you were trying to acquire Antonio Brown and you had him ranked pre-season as your 1st WR and overall 5th best player. Believe it or not another owner might accept a trade of Allen Hurns and say a solid player with upside like Lamar Miller. Here you would be trading two good second tier players for one super stud (first tier). This is just an example. This strategy is very risky: don't do it unless you have depth at RB & WR.
Step 4: Approach Other Owners who are Particularly Strong (stacked) at one Position.
It is a lot easier for another owner to trade a really good player to you if he has several other good players at that position.
Although talent is usually equally dispersed in a twelve-man league, invariably you will find certain other team's that are overly strong at a particular position. These should be your first contacts as you have the highest probability of completing a deal with them.
When I am engineering trades, my first step is to print the league's rosters. My second step is to circle the guys I covet and will target. And the third step is to locate pockets of depth by other owners. So if I see a guy stacked at a position and one of those guys are one of my targets, I have a good chance of getting something done if I can come up with a deal that he cant say no to. Since I am so active on the waiver wire, I usually have a roster full of solid type players and I can package a few for 1 stud. That's my technique that I use over and over.
Step 5: You can't get Something for Nothing!
The definition of a good trade is that both sides walk away from the negotiating table thinking they got a good deal that makes their team better and brought them one step closer to winning a championship. Remember, BRAGGING RIGHTS ARE PRICELESS! Very few people play Fantasy Football for the money. They play it for the fun, and WINNING IS FUN! When you propose a deal, try to make it as fair as possible to both sides (this increases the chances of getting the deal done and cuts down on the time it takes to close the transaction). If you think you are the type of person who has trouble being fair in general, ask yourself one simple question, "Would you accept either end of the deal?" If the answer is yes, then the chances are the deal is fair.
Step 6: Always Speak HIGHLY of your Players and Explain (politely) how the trade will Benefit the other Owner.
You are trying to win the championship. You do not want to get the reputation of trying to "steal" players or to take advantage of less sophisticated owners. You may scare other owners from trading with you. The other owners in the league are your ALLIES. They possess the assets you desire. People will do business with you if you are nice, fair, and helpful to them. You might be able to point out the benefits of certain players to them that they originally did not realize. Since the trade you are offering is fair by definition (refer to step 5) your job is to get the other owner to say yes. It is a lot easier for him to say yes when you offer real value in return.
Step 7: Think Long Term
This rule particularly applies to keeper leagues. It is also important in leagues where you can protect a limited number of players. Education may be wasted on the young, but fantasy football value is not. Simply stated, if you perceive that two players have equal value, always choose the younger one. Try to get youth for aging superstars. Remember, it's a marathon not a sprint. The idea is not to win one game in week three; the idea is to win the Championship. More importantly, the idea is to put yourself in position to win year in and year out. This rule obviously does not apply to re-draft leagues.
Step 8: Trade Players At Their Peak
If you don't want a player that is playing bad, neither does anyone else. The player that you want to trade is the one that came out like Gangbusters and is playing way over his head. ATry to trade these over-achievers for underachievers that you think will improve -- which brings me to the next rule…
Step 9: Trade For Players Whose Values Are Down.
Look for guys that have posted below average numbers so far this year. These guys, unless they lost their QB's, or are playing without their two best offensive linemen, or are in some other unforeseen situation, are going to come back and put up big numbers. Make a list of players you think are really great, but just haven't shown it yet. Go after them hard. Now is the only time you will be able to get them. If you are right, your bet will pay off big. Remember, the concepts of Risk/Reward. You are taking a big risk by trying to get this current non-performing player. If he continues to not do well you may be sorry. So try not to give up very much.
Step 10: Target Players From Fantasy Teams That Are Basically Out Of The Fantasy Playoffs.
Unfortunately in all leagues, a couple of teams stink. It may not be their fault; they may have met with a series of injuries. Maybe it is their fault and they just exercised poor judgment. Whatever the reason, the reality is that they are out of it. They are already looking ahead to next year. They may be open to trading you players (very good players) that will help you this year for either draft picks for next year, or rookies that are not producing this year but will next year. There is a trade-off here: you don't want to mortgage your future to get a marginal player. However, if you can get a player that can put you over the top and helps you to win the championship this year than: JUST DO IT! Championships are hard to come by, so when you are close do whatever it takes to get you that trophy.
Last year, I traded some mid round draft picks for some depth at QB (Roethlisberger) during a playoff run and he ended up handling my starting QB duties from there on en route to a Back-to-Back dual Championship (Overall Points and Superbowl) in this league.
Step 11: Trade From Your Strengths
Ultimately you have one position that you can clearly say is your strongest position. Remember, if it is your strongest position it is somebody else's weakest. Pick out a couple of teams that are week at the position you are strong at. See if they have strength at a position you are weak at. For example: if you have great young QB's, say Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees, you might want to trade Brees for a young RB or a pair of young WR's.
Step 12: Check the Schedule
Look for teams that are going into a stretch of the season where the schedule for their team is going to get a lot easier. Usually these guys had a tough go at it because the schedule has been tough. Their value will be way down; you can scoop them up cheap, and be on your way to the trophy. It does not take a rocket scientist to take advantage of this rule and there is no excuse not to use it. Go to the schedule right now, and pick out the teams that have easy late season schedules. Be prepared to trade for players from these teams when the time comes.
Step 13: Target Players Because New Members of Their NFL Team Make Them More Valuable
Last year there were wide receivers that didn't do well because they had a "running QB", or their QB was injured, or just plain stunk. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it does not help you in Fantasy Football. THE WAY TO WIN IS TO HAVE FORESIGHT!
Step 14: Targeting the Rookies.
This is a highly risky strategy, but can pay enormous dividends especially in keeper leagues. Rookies are obviously unproven and may not be able to make it to the "next level". For every Todd Gurleys, there are dozens of newcomers that are total flops. This being said, there are situations where taking a shot is warranted.
Step 15: Do Not Deplete Depth
One of the biggest mistake I see owners make is to trade away too much depth. They ride high because their team looks stacked and they think they are going to kill everyone else -- what they didn't realize is that they now have no backup Quarterbacks when their star passer goes out for the year with an injury (like Andrew Luck in 2015), their season is over. Make sure you secure depth on the waiver wire or get a valuable "throw in" to a trade that will reestablish your depth. Sometimes another owner will give up a good player as a throw in just to get the deal done.
In conclusion, remember to be proactive. The idea is to get the trade done. Sometimes you have to accept less than you had hoped for; sometimes you'll get more than you had ever imagined. Oh yeah, one last thing the final rule of trading is to make sure you cannot do better. Before you make a trade you should shop the same players you are about to trade around the league because somebody else might give you more for them. I know that it feels good when somebody says yes to one of your deals, remember if somebody thinks that you are going to make a trade they might up the ante because, they really want the player but didn't think you were serious, or they want to stop the other owner from getting him. As Always, GOOD LUCK. May The Trading Gods Be With You.
Using Trade Bait & Prey
Lastly, follow our Trade Bait & Prey section every week during the regular season. It is an invaluable tool which discusses which fantasy player's fantasy stock is up or down, and advises when to pull the trigger on a deal. We basically do all of the research, and you just have to pick the players up.
|Fantasy Football University
|Fantasy Football's 10 Commandments


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Listen: Pop Music take from Sonnymoon's forthcoming album The Courage Of Present Times
Mar 13, 2015
成軍於波士頓現佇立於紐約發展的兩人組合Sonnymoon,其女成員Anna Wise有特殊迷人的嗓音是賣點外,較為人熟知的是曾獻聲與美國加州知名說唱歌手Kendrick Lamar 2012年受到葛萊美獎入圍的專輯"good kid m.A.A.d city"中的Real一曲,有了上次絕佳的合作關係後Anna Wise將會再次出現在Kendrick Lamar即將發表於今年的新專輯之中,不過在此之前Anna Wise的本業組合Sonnymoon將率先於本月23號帶來一張屬於他們自己的新專輯"The Courage Of Present Times",風格裡相當有紐約團前衛的調性並且結合了電子,爵士,R&B以及西岸West Coast的Abstract Hip Hop等元素於一身。下方可完整試聽來自月初先行發表取自新專輯內一首名為Pop Muisc的單曲。
Sonnymoon - Pop Music
"Sonnymoon, a duo from Boston, have an intuitive knack for merging a strong melody with loose grooves and sleek textures." Pitchfork
"At various points it will seem as though you are listening to electronica, at other times R&B, jazz, avant-garde, even pop. Some of the songs will sound like all of the above, at once, while others will make you wonder whether you are listening to a brand new, as yet unnamed genre… Their SoundCloud says they come from Earth, but they are out of this world." The Guardian
As vocalists go, few have the distinct style and panache of Anna Wise. A classic voice, soothing yet bold, a hybrid of vintage soulful groove and 2015 feminist chic. That must have been the thinking behind Kendrick Lamar's recent decision to invite Anna to contribute on 'good kid, m.A.A.d city' – she lent vocals to four tracks on the double-album as well as being hugely involved in the overall creative/writing process.
Sonnymoon are, of course, much more than Anna's voice: in Dane Orr they have a producer capable of forming something ornate and beautiful out of the simplest of beats. To listen to 'The Courage Of Present Times' is to glide through eeriness, Flying Lotus channelling D'Angelo while Regina Spektor watches awkwardly from the corner. The Boston duo met at The Berklee College Of Music some years ago, their classical training always apparent, but the looseness and creatively free nature of the current L.A scene will always be as key to their music as their formative years.
Haunting soundscapes, dreamlike ethereal noise, all kept in tow by a keen pop sensibility – The Courage Of Present Times is the work of a duo who have found their voice, their swagger enhanced by recent time in New York and their creative flow at full force. They have also shared stages with, among others: The Roots, Shabazz Palaces, and Flying Lotus
Album: The Courage Of Present Times
Released 23rd March 2015 on GLOW365
1. Blue
3. Grains of Friends
4. For Right Now
5. Pop Music
6. Sex For Clicks
7. Trust Fall
8. The Only Face
9. Transparent Times
Posted: Unknown @ 3:47 AM
Tags: Anna Wise , GLOW365 , Kendrick Lamar , Sonnymoon
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