News Jun 29, 2010 at 11:13 am

Comments

1
You skinny cunt.
2
Suicide by food. These people are either very unhappy, or completely out of their minds. Possibly both.
3
3,000 calories? Lame. That's about the average American diet. If you really want to pack on the pounds, you need to at least double that. Which is pretty easy to do with fat food and soda. Hell, a triple whopper with onion rings and a oreo shake is more than 2500 right there.
4
Okcupid (back when they were "thespark.com") already did this. They got two people to try gaining 30 pounds in 30 days. Very scientific*

The fat project:

http://www.okcupid.com/humor/fat-project…

*By "very scientific" I mean, "very UNscientific"
5
Does anybody remember TheSpark.com, before it turned into SparkNotes and OKCupid? Yes, well. Before there were SparkNotes and OKCupid, there was TheSpark, and on it, they did The Fat Project: getting two people to gain 30 pounds in 30 days. This was ten years ago, and it was moderately interesting/funny, especially by the-internet-in-2000 standards.

It's no longer online at TheSpark, as far as I can tell, but it's readable from Archive.org. Here's a link:
http://bit.ly/beTq9H
6
I completely disagree with the author of that article quoted that these "gainer blogs" are an offshoot of the fat acceptance movement. Fat acceptance is about appreciating your body and not conforming to the bullshit weight loss industry. It's to help women understand that bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Something like Heath at Any Weight is an offshoot of the fat acceptance movement. Please note that it's HEALTH not HEALTHY at any weight. Women need to know it's ok to hit the gym, to eat regularly and to live a healthy lifestyle and to NOT GIVE UP if they don't end up a size 2.

These "gainer blogs" go against the fat acceptance movement and are only giving us who are trying to help women and men have a healthy view of their body a really hard time convincing the public that we aren't just a bunch of fatties sitting around eating ding dongs.

7
The secret to putting on pounds - smoke lots and lots of weed.
8
@5,
Great minds think alike
9
You're actually like, all wrong.

Gitbigger is a gainer, as in encourager/gainer, as in the BHM/BWW fat fetish/chubby chaser community.

This has nothing to do with a fat-pride movement, he's not rebelling against The Man, he's not rebelling period. He wants to be fatter, his boyfriend wants him fatter. It's the lifestyle they've chosen.

Their fetish is their own business, I would of expected more from you Dan, since you always say embrace your kinks, and you've given really good advice prior to people with weight-gain fetishism, struggling to deal with it.

I'm just hoping here you entirely missed the point, just like the NY Times article has and went on your diet/coke/soda crusade on by instinct, in reference to whatever the fuck this Huge show, which is completely unrelated to the gainer community.
10
So with the bars and drinking being so central to gay culture, couldn't one say that gay men allow themselves to be victims of the manipulations of the liquor industry? Dan, you need any Windex for the glass walls of your house?
11
One could say that, Chris.
12
The thing is, we're all affected by big industry. What's ridiculous is when we say we're rebelling against "Big Industry A" by buying into "Big Industry B." Unless you have information that proves Industry B is more ethical, or something. If "Stupidgit" is a gainer fetishist (as sailboatrider @9 claims), that at least makes more sense than the NYT reporter's POV.

Either way, it's definitely not related to the Health-at-any-Size campaign.
13
This reminds me of all the hipsters who wear stuff from American Apparel and Urban Outfitters and other such counter-culture manufacturers and really think they're rebels. Counter-culture can be just as sheeplike and idiotic as mainstream culture.
15
@ 11 - So drunk is better than fat?
16
I agree with #6 and #9. Bored Dan? Got no Everybody Deserves a Mother and a Father or SL Questions of the Day to post?

There is a lot of fat hatred in this country and it is perpetuated by posts like this, claiming that all overweight people are somehow the same as this marginal group. People are held to a ridiculous and often impossible standard - by BMI charts (created by life insurance companies in the early 1900s) and uneducated doctors who can't come up with anything to say to their overweight and obese patients other than 'eat healthy and exercise.'

You are an editor of a newspaper for Christ's sake - granted a snarky, opinion-based, completely biased newspaper, but a newspaper nonetheless. I'd expect such an editor to educate himself and perhaps post something on this blog that has more fact and objectivity than this does.

I just finished reading Rethinking Thin: The New Science in Weight Loss and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata. I suggest you read it and educate yourself. Or read ANY of the MANY other books out there about the so-called obesity epidemic and its biases - and how all its doing is creating profit for any number of industries.

I do not believe we are all meant to be the same size and I certainly don't believe we are all supposed to be a size zero. Thin people think they are morally superior to people who are not thin. They are not. FAT is not a four letter word. It's an adjective. It describes a physical body type. It has nothing to do with intelligence or motivation or anything else fat haters like to attach to the word when they are hurling it around like an epithet.

I am a 38 year old woman who became disabled wtih a neuromuscular disease at the age of 38. According to the BMI charts I am supposed to weigh between 114 and 144 pounds. I weighed 125 when I was 15 and weighed 180 for most of my adult life - until I became disabled and unable to walk very much (and not without the help of either 2 canes or a rollator walker and a brace on my leg). I am not going to weigh anywhere near what that chart insists I need to weigh.

I work out 5X a week. I either ride my trike for at least an hour (I'm up to 5 miles at a time) or swim in the pool at the Y for 90 minutes a pop. I eat way more than 5 servings of veggies and fruits a day. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs.
I am 'healthier' now than I have was before I developed my progressive, degenerative neuromuscular disease - when I did smoke and drink, etc. The difference then? I WALKED EVERYWHERE. I was still overweight.

I am so sick of people and how they think they have some right to talk about other people's bodies (whether they are fat or thin or anywhere on the spectrum in between). So much time and money and energy is wasted on America's obsession with weight. The blaming of fat people for all of society's ills is ridiculous and just another way to hide our collective heads in the sand about the real problems.

I fully support the Health at Every Size movement. If we are all exercising and making healthy food choices (which many of us - of all sizes are not), then that is success.

As someone who fights so hard for the rights of gays and thinks that all the lies told about being gay and the 'gay reality' I find it pretty sad, pathetic, and infuriating that you're just another hater. How do you expect people to take you seriously about treating everyone equally when really you only mean the kinds of people who are like you?

17
Man, except for times of crisis or sickness when I'm off my workout routine, I have to eat 3,000 calories a day just to maintain. If this dude is planning to get blubbery off of that he's gonna have to work harder... or less hard, as the case may be.

Clearly what this guy needs to do is have those calories delivered by IV so he can stop burning so many calories procuring and consuming food. If he could just sleep and eat all the time he'd really maximize his growth potential.
18
@ 9, if it's his "own business," then why is he publishing a blog about it?
19
I don't think Dan ever advocates for embracing personally destructive and unhealthy kinks, 9. Making yourself obese and undergoing "sudden weight gain" is medically negative.


I would of expected more from you Dan, since you always say embrace your kinks
20
Dan I think you're exactly right.
21
@7, i smoke weed all day, have done so for the past two years and....I've lost weight...
22
@16 - I'm sorry that your disease prevents you from reaching the ideal BMI, but I think you're a rare exception. I know a lot of fat people (family, friends, work associates) and all of them have a couple of things in common:

- eating way too much unhealthy food, and/or drinking too much
- hardly ever exercising

Is our society overly obsessed with weight? of course. Are the body images in magazines, tv shows, etc. unhealthy for kids self-worth, especially young girls? definitely. But at the same time this country has an enormous (pardon the pun) obesity problem. We're not saying that you're unhealthy if you're not a size 0 or a size 2. But walk down the street (or better yet go to a fast food restaurant) and you'll see lots of 22s. I'm sorry if you're offended, but being that overweight is not healthy, and many of the rest of us find it disgusting.
23
@18 Because it's a community, a very tight-knit one at that, that primarily exists online (primary way they can find each other.) Lots of them have blogs, I'm sure apart of it is some exhibitionism, and I agree with you; I think Stupidgit has actually done interviews before, definitely looking for his 15 minutes of fame, but his blog has been taken completely out of context with this Huge show --- he's been shown here as a member of the fat acceptance movement, which I don't think is correct, he's a gainer/encourager, and that doesn't have to mean if you're a member of one, you're a member of both.

@19 This has been discussed on the blog and podcast in the past. Dan used to recommend only gaining 30lbs or so, and then losing it, but was then corrected by someone else that even doing that much is detrimental to your health. But one of Dan's pillars that I've always read is to be happy, cause one day you're gonna be dead anyhow, and if this is your kink, you have to embrace it and not try to ignore it, cause you'll never be happy. But yeah, of course he's advocated safety and health, and weight-gain fetishism isn't the only one that has health risks, in the end, it's up the individual which risks they decide to wager.
24
uneducated doctors who can't come up with anything to say to their overweight and obese patients other than 'eat healthy and exercise.'

What else should they say to these patients?
25
It would be nice if fat people didn't take it personally any time someone said anything about people who lead an unhealthy lifestyle. If you exercise and eat right and are still not within perfect body parameters, HE'S NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU GET OVER YOURSELF.
26
@22,

Every woman in this country, no matter what her size, has been called fat and disgusting by fuckheads like you.

And as far as our supposedly not needing to be size zeros or twos (thank you so much for your permission, by the way), I'm a size eight, and I'm still a health risk according to BMI. I'd have to be a size six *maximum* to be "healthy."
27
For the most part the diet industry is the junk food industries best friend. There's a really good diet plan available for free that'll work for almost everyone: Eat less and/or exercise more.

Everything else is just people making money while keeping people feeling bad about themselves.
28
And this is why we don't have free public healthcare in America. Because we have people who do everything they can to kill themselves slowly - smokers, heavy drinkers, "gainers," and of course your generic couch potato living off red meat and Lays - and given the choice, most people would rather force poor people into an oblivion of debt to pay for cancer treatments, than pay for this dude's eventual coronary bypass surgeries. It's cold, but it's reality.

Fat isn't necessarily bad, to the extent that fat does not equal unhealthy, and we need to stop equating the two. I know many chubby folks who could kick my ass in a triathlon, and many skinny bitches who will probably be dead by 40. But unhealthy IS bad, because it costs us all. What a selfish thing to do.
29
Wow Dan...you screwed the pooch on this one...

We just spoke highly of you this past week: http://bit.ly/ciKqrk
30
#22 who cares if you find it disgusting? what business is it of yours how much someone else weighs? yes there are a lot of obese people in America. There are also a lot of racist assh*les, conversatives (of all sorts) who hate {insert group here}, wife-beaters, child abusers, sociopaths, serial killers, etc. etc. etc. and they are way more of a threat to society than anyone with a body type that isn't pleasing to you. Other people don't exist to decorate your world!

#25 I speak out when I see or hear discrimination against people who aren't caucasian (i am caucasian); are gay (i'm not gay); are poor or otherwise marginalized class-wise (i am not poor though i am marginalized class-wise as i am disabled and am uanble to work); and in many other ways where i feel injustice exists. I don't just speak out for myself and that was one of the points I was making in my earlier comment - Dan Savage fights for the rights of gays because he is a gay man and believes gays should have the same rights as everyone else. Too bad he doesn't feel the same way about fat people. EVERYONE deserves the same rights - my problem with the world is that too many people only give a shit about their own personal rights - and even beyond that too many people try to shove their personal beliefs down other peoples throats in the name of 'how the world should be.' I don't care if you're pro-life, I am pro-choice - but I don't expect you to be pro-choice - I just get all pissed off when you tell me what I have to do or be because that's what you believe. Why does everyone else have to be thin because you think fat people are disgusting? I personally don't like people who openly display signs of their Christianity on their cars or clothing - whether it be fishes or bumper stickers or t-shirts or them handing out pamphlets about their church - but I am not going to accost someone for being a Christian as long as they are not trying to convert me or tell me how wrong I am because I am not one.

#24 - Of course it's a place to start but that's where it begins and ends. Such a statement is not helpful. Some people don't even know what 'eat healthy' means. Some people aren't in a financial reality where they CAN eat healthy (and here's where we need to focus on the food industry and all the crap it's selling people and calling it food). Doctors are supposed to be their patients' advocates and help them fight disease - yet just like the general public there is a great deal of fat hatred in the medical community. People die because of it. Check out the blog First, Do No Harm for a taste. Telling overweight and obese patients to eat healthy and exercise doesn't help them. Overweight and obese people KNOW they have to eat healthy and exercise. MANY OF THEM ALREADY ARE DOING SO. Education and encouragement and advocacy beyond that simple statement is required if people are going to be able to change.

31
@30: Whose rights are being denied here? If some people whose opinions you don't value don't think very highly of you, what's it to you? You seem to think you have a right to have everybody only say nice things about you. There is no such right.
32
30: Please answer honestly...is your disability related to a complication of obesity?
33
This is an interesting argument.

The ARTICLE mentioned that getting fat can be raging against the machine, So Dan is correct in pointing out the stupidity of that.

But the real argument is do you let people blissfully kill themselves? Is it OK to let someone indulge to their content, knowing it will drastically shorten their lifespan?

Or

Do you make it harder and harder for people to kill themselves and demand more from them as a member of society?

Maybe if fat people knew why they were getting fat, if we had a governing system that could have real facts about weight loss and gain, laws to punish corporations that trick people into getting fatter and laws against dangerous diet trends that foster negative body images.
34
@xina, Your crazy mindset makes me think you could eventually say crazy things like "ima eat all the burgers to rally against the diet industrial complex"

It is a fact that corporations have created a system (they started around the 30's) where they could suggest what was healthy and pressure the FDA and other government organizations to work with them. Do people remember SNACKWELLS?? SO BAD FOR YOU, LABELED UP AND DOWN AS GOOD FOR YOU.

That is what you guys gotta get mad about. Separate the whole "Be ok with my body because I am ok with it" argument. One fat battle at a time.
35
@26 - being a size 8 and still being a health risk is fucking insane, so maybe the BMI needs some updating. If you can ignore the "disgusting" part of the post, my main point stands - there is an obesity epidemic in this country, and this whole "fat-acceptance" movement where people who are genuinely overweight are trying to say that there aren't health issues with their condition is just a nonsense attempt at rationalization. And while I may be a fuckhead, I've never called anyone remotely close to an 8 fat or disgusting, so you're better off saving that accusation for one of the frequent occasions when I deserve it.

@30 - Could you please point me to the post where someone other than you compares obesity as a "threat" to anything remotely close to a serial killer? Might want to take the reactionary rhetoric down a notch.
36
Did you even read the blog for gitbigger?

He wants to be a healthy fat person, which doesn't enter into the thoughts here. He works out every day and doesn't want to be an unhealthy 450 lbs (if that is possible).

His is a fetish of visuals. Much like Dan fetishizes the anorexic waifs that were popular in the late 80s and early 90s, which were also antithesis to the more beefy hairy guys in a lot of '70s porn.

There was once a letter Dan responded to about a kid who had gained weight because he had become fat due to having a job of inertness. He told the kid to move. That was appropriate because the kid wasn't happy.

Gitbigger isn't his own rebel. He may have a mental distortion in his sexuality, but that that's not exclusively rebellion. And, it's not kowtowing to Coke. It's his THING. And, I'm sure he doesn't and won't ever and wouldn't have ever found Dan attractive because Dan isn't his THING.

Also, if you read his blog, he frequently puts up pictures of his former thin self.

It's a strange blog, but interesting.
37
i may not express myself as coherently as i would like when upset and commenting on SLOG. there's lots of typos and missing words. oh well. you either get my points or you don't. as for my rhetoric, it pales in comparison to the tomes written about fat people and how obesity is the biggest health care problem in the world. people who are fat are PEOPLE and deserve to be treated with respect and humanity, just like everyone else. everyone, no matter what their size, should have autonomy over their own body - our society, for whatever reason, has made it acceptable to comment about others' bodies like we own them. we don't!

#34 why is my mindset crazy? i am not a gainer. i have no desire to be a huge fat person - nor do i have any desire to be an anorexic, weighing less than 100 pounds. i want to be healthy.

there is no way for you to tell how much i exercise or how much i eat or what i eat or how healthy i am (what my cholesterol is, what my blood sugar is, what my blood pressure is) by looking at me or anyone else - no matter what size they are! STOP HATING. all of the hate - against fat people against gays against women against this group and that group etc. etc. etc. all this hate will be the end of us. people really need to get over themselves and recognize that' were' all in this together.
38
#32 - no, my progressive, degenerative neuromuscular disease - Primary Lateral Sclerosis - has nothing to do with obesity. it's related to ALS (a less fatal version). it's sporadic - just like ALS and MS - meaning they don't know what causes it and it is not hereditary. the nerves in my brain and spine no longer communicate with the nerves in my legs, arms, and the rest of my body. dead nerves mean i can't walk like i should because the nerves (being dead) can't communicate with the muscles. if you were to investigate the population of people who have ALS and PLS - many were typically very active (i walked everywhere, didn't own a car, biked for my exercise and fun) and were type A personalities (there are lots of theories that severe stress and/or major trauma brings on the illnesses). i am sure some people were overweight or obese - i am sure there are people of all body types who get progressive, degenerative neuromuscular diseases. as i said i weighed 180 most of my adult life. i am 5'5" and considered obese. before i got sick, i was healthier in many ways than i had been my entire life - i had stopped smoking (cigarettes and anything else) and stopped drinking. i was also under an EXTREME amount of stress at a new job. i'm sure it would be easy to blame everyone who happens to be overweight or obese and who gets a serious illness on their weight - this is a big problem in the medical community - but not everything is caused by obesity. i lived in NYC for 5 years and was exposed to pesticides sprayed in my living space. perhaps that caused my illness. perhaps all of the pesticides i've ingested in my food since i was born caused my disease. i was born premature - perhaps something that happened in my early and traumatic birth or my genetic makeup caused my illness. they really don't know. when i did get sick i was told not to gain weight because it would complicate my PLS (most specifically my ability to walk). have i gained weight? yes. it is hard not to when you can't walk normally. but as i stated before - i ride my trike (up to 5 miles now!) and i swim at the pool in the Y (90 minutes a pop) at least 5X a week. i am determined to walk as long as i possibly can - though the reality is i will most likely end up in a wheelchair before the end of my life. i may also lose the ability to use my hands, to speak and to swallow. only when i lose the ability to swallow, i guess, will i finally be able to get down to that ideal 114 weight. that will be a great day won't it?
39
@xina--you're extremely articulate and clear and making valid points. @#34, you are an asshole.
40
@Xina: Your post #38 was articulate, but you started out with post #16, which was reactionary and fairly off-topic. It seems like you had some steam to blow off, and took it out on Dan (which is OK, he's handled worse), but I think if you were to read his post without having a need to blow off steam, you'd find that he didn't say anything near what you're railing against.

He never mentioned BMI. He never mentioned people who were healthy and overweight.

He reacted to a guy eating unhealthy shit as "an outcry against the manipulations of a diet-industrial complex." He mentioned that the diet-industrial complex is significantly smaller than the "food-industrial complex" and asked why someone would react against the one and embrace the other.

Your ranting, while interesting, has nothing to do with his post. I get that. After I read Fat is a Feminist Issue for the first time, I wanted to change the world and ranted at the drop of a hat on any posts even vaguely related to food, or attraction, or weight. Then, I remembered that it's not my job to change the world, and (even more importantly) that thin people are not the enemy. I'm a good healthy weight for me, regardless of the inaccuracy of the BMI (which is fairly well recognized by the research community), and I don't feel a need to rail against everyone who suggests that, maybe, just maybe, the Coca-Cola corporation isn't looking out for my best interests.

So, for now...breathe. Reread Dan's post. Actually comment on what on his post you agree or disagree with. Use quotes from his post to keep yourself on track. Don't become that douchey feminist guy from Savage Love earlier this week.
41
The number of people who 'just know' that fat people are unhealthy, and destroying any chance at public health care, and are just sooo disgusting is sorta odd, on progressive sites.

This is the shit they wouldn't let fly about, well, gays. And it all comes back to what 'everybody knows'. Well, everybody knows that being gay is an unhealthy choice that people make because it feels good in the short term, and that it will destroy your immune system and intestinal tract, and that it is why we have an HIV epidemic in the world, because all of the gay guys I know bareback, use drugs and sell their blood. Right? Right.

Seriously. Get over yourselves. Fatties disgust you, and you get your bullying jollies by attacking them and justifying it with ludicrous statements like 'this is why we don't have health care in this country'.

Yeah, and Dan's homonuptials were why your marriage failed.
42
#40 My 'rant' began because Dan posted the excerpt from the NYT article stating that this guy is representative of the fat acceptance movement. No Dan didn't write that, but he took the excerpt from the article and posted it and didn't write anything stating - hey guess what that's not true - he just regurgitated and perpetuated misinformation. He then called this guy a "fat pride rebel" and told the "fat pride rebel" to drink some water with his lunch. He's being condescending. He's being a douche. Hey stupid fat person why don't do something that I think is worthwhile!?! This guy has a very specific agenda and is going about doing what he wants to do in the way in which he wants to do it.

I stand by my original post and I don't feel it was off-topic. Good for you that you feel the way you do about not being responsible for changing the world and that thin people aren't the enemy - that's how YOU feel and involves YOUR responses. Those things have nothing to do with me. And guess what, you don't get to tell me how to respond or how to feel or what my reaction to this post should be or should have been or how I should comment on it. So you don't feel the need to rant - good for you! Just because I do doesn't mean that I am like that 'douchey feminist guy from Savage Love earlier this week' (whatever the hell that means - sorry don't read SL). Congratulations on where you are at. I am where I am at and your post telling me how to read and respond to Dan's post, while interesting (well, it's not really interesting at all), has nothing to do with me and everything to do with you. Why don't you focus on keeping yourself on track instead of trying to tell me how to be. Thanks.

43
My boyfriend's a gainer. It's got nothing to do with fighting the diet industry or anything like that. It's a fetish he's had since childhood. The idea of getting bigger excites him sexually. Not terribly healthy or practical to realize, though. Still not sure why the NYT article brought up the gainer when reviewing a show about fat teenage girls, apart from the erroneous deduction that gainer blogs are an offshoot of the fat pride movement.
44
@43: If you're still following this, could you explain more about this fetish? I'm curious. Is what you mentioned, "the idea of getting bigger," the only part that's erotic? What about the eating? Also, is the process most of it, does he gain then lose so that he can do it again? Is it a let down when he reaches the desired weight?
45
I'm a chubby woman w/ a gland condition. I've seen a nutritionist & my Dr.'s, am now on meds & am losing weight, by the classic formula of not eating as much & moving my body more. Thus, I'm one of the first people to hop up-n-down in 'net rage when I think Dan is being biphobic or is emptily fat-bashing. (I still remember the photo he took of a pair of random people's big butts. Ugh.) Above post is kinda reaching for Dan's usual points, since the kid in the blog seems determined to be fat & healthy. & the show "Huge", according to the review, doesn't sound like it has a fat-pride message ultimately, either.

But - we *should* be aware of the marketing around us, particularly aimed at our children, that encourages bad eating. We DO, as a nation, have an unhealthy dependence on things like soda pop. In Europe, when I had a Coke w/ my meal, it was a wee glass 8 oz. bottle, sweetened with cane sugar, as opposed to a 16-oz plastic belly bomb, sweetened w/ HFCS.*

My host in Germany easily ate similarly high-calorie foods to fast food - beer, spaetzle und schnitzel, anyone? - but walked *everywhere*. He had a bit of a paunch. Other than that he was one strong, fit guy. It's partly what you eat, but so much depends on what you DO. In the US, we're very sedentary compared to other developed nations & we loves us some Mc Donald's.

* = I tried to find the calorie count for one of those bigger bottles, but Coca-Cola's site only let me look up a 12-oz. can. (140 calories, 39 grams of sugar.)
46
@15. claro que si, cabron!!! let the drinking begin, it's summer already.
47
@ 22 - Oh, would like to add, that I get the occasional hairy eyeball all the time. Since I don't have huge ol' warts or a third eye, I assume this is because I'm overweight, & hairy-eyeball-givers think I am home mainlining Ben & Jerry's every night. So I'm probably one of the people you think is "disgusting". And yet, when my blood was checked out by my Dr., she praised my low cholesterol & blood sugar levels. Tonight's dinner is sockeye salmon, baked w/ a light mustard glaze, w/ spinach & avocado salad. That's a fairly typical meal for me.

I'm not a "fat pride" person. But way to snap-judge some anonymous person based on their appearance. As you see above, I think as a nation we have a doomed love affair w/the sugary & the fried. That said - save your "disgust" for more important things, OK?

Gonna go cook now. Nom nom nom.

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