November 2016 NAAFA Newsletter |
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It is with a heavy heart that we share of the passing of Frances White on October 19, 2016. Frances was a true warrior for size acceptance and a “shero” of NAAFA. Through great personal sacrifice, Frances supported and furthered the work of NAAFA for many years. She served on the Board of Directors in just about every capacity over the years, particularly as Co-Chair during her final years of active service.
We called Frances our NAAFA historian because she had so many facts about the organization stored in that marvelous brain of hers. But she was truly a historian of the San Francisco Bay Area. She led San Francisco Heritage walking tours taking people to beautiful memorial places and sharing the history of the neighborhoods she walked. She led bus tours of the beautiful area for those of us attending NAAFA conventions as well.
Frances supported the local size acceptance community by hosting a game night in her home and organizing and supporting the Bay Area’s Fat Swim group that helped hundreds of women access an amazing place to swim in a safe and supported environment. She worked with those who successfully lobbied the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to pass an anti-discrimination law which included weight and size and was signed into law by Mayor Willie Brown.
Frances loved her work at KQED, the bay area’s National Public Radio and PBS TV station, and continued that work until she couldn’t work anymore. Frances was laid to rest in Sunset View Cemetery where she will reside with her family in the beautiful Urn Garden. She is greatly missed.
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Building Strength
by Peggy Howell
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Last month Cinder talked about building strength in her fitness column, which motivated me to share my recent discovery. I told you about my accident earlier this year in the August newsletter. Following a brief period of recuperation for healing and bone mending, I was sent to physical therapy which did absolute wonders to improve my ability to use my right elbow again.
I will make a confession here; I never have liked exercise. I even joined a spa for water aerobics which I enjoyed more than regular exercise, but not much, and that didn’t last long. One thing I hadn’t tried was machines.
CareMore, my healthcare provider, employs a Physical Therapist who shares space with CareMore’s fitness center for patients called
Nifty After Fifty. This allows therapy patients and fitness clients to use the same equipment. It’s like one big happy work-out family!
Using machines that focused on my arms was part of my physical therapy treatment, and I found that I enjoyed working out on the machines. So when my therapy sessions were concluded, I made the decision to join Nifty After Fifty and continue my road to full recovery.
My therapist established the weight limits for all arm machines to insure that I would not overwork my arm and I had three meetings with a fitness coach to determine the weights and number of repetitions for each of the remaining machines. I have discovered that I really enjoy lifting/pressing weights.
My welcome letter explained that in addition to building muscle strength, regular weight lifting strengthens your bones, becoming more resistant to fractures, and improves your balance because your joints will become more stable. This is more important to me than I realized until my recent fall. Not only that, an
article in Medline Plus shared the results of a recent study. Volunteers who did weight training twice a week for six months to at least 80 percent of their maximum strength showed significant improvements in mental function. The benefits lasted for at least a year after their supervised weight-lifting sessions ended.
I like weight lifting here because I don’t have to get on the floor, the environment is welcoming, the staff and clients are accepting and non-judgmental and I feel good after my visits. Whatever the reason, I’m glad I’ve discovered that I enjoy this form of movement that has such great long-term benefits.
I encourage every one of you to try things you haven’t tried before to find what you enjoy. When we enjoy movement, we will be more likely to continue and reap the benefits. Do you enjoy walking, dancing, bike riding or swimming? Discover a type of movement that you enjoy and stick with it. You’ll be glad you did!
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What to Do?
by Cinder Ernst
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Life is filled with choices. Doesn’t it suck when you can’t seem to choose? Then when you do make a choice, do you second guess yourself? That sucks too. You didn’t line up with your choice.
When it comes to exercise sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to do. The voices of what you “should do” are so loud in your head that they interfere with your own wisdom. Then those same voices can make you second guess yourself.
When it comes to physical activity how do you decide what is right for YOU? I have a formula for figuring that out. The Make a Choice Formula comes in the form of a question:
What would a person, who is willing to be happy and healthy, do today?
Ask yourself that question and answer it. (There are other options for adjectives like physically fit or practicing good self-care, but happy and healthy cover it for me. Notice happy is first)
Sometimes the answer is resting, walking, squeezing your butt, having tea, taking a nap, calling a friend, petting your dog, cuddling your cat, stretching, yoga, baby-sitting your best little friend(s), watching a movie, going to the gym, or, or, or . . .
The point is that YOU decide what is best for you. Make a choice.
Then . . . line up with your choice.
Your brain may try to convince you that your decision is not right. Thank it for sharing and get on with it.
Try using this question when you are not clear about what to do next. The answer that comes should feel like the next logical step, no big deal. Relax, give it a shot, line up with it, you can’t get it wrong!
How to best use the Make a Choice Formula: Write the question on a post-it or widget. Write it precisely as written above. Ponder it with your breakfast or coffee/tea. Possibilities are endless. Answer the question. Do the answer. Use it to your advantage.
There is no limit as to how often you use The Formula each day. Eventually you will simply be following your own path to your own well-being
Give it a try. Trust yourself. You are your own best expert. As always, let me know if you need help with anything fitness.
Love,
Cinder
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Reflections on Thanksgiving
by Tigress Osborn
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Everything You Know About Weight Loss Is a Lie
Riley J. Dennis is a Contributing Vlogger for Everyday Feminism. She’s a polyamorous, atheist, gender non-binary trans-woman with a passion for fiction writing, feminism, and technology. Riley dismantles the myths about our weight in less than five minutes. Allies come in all sizes.
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Health At Every Size and HAES are registered trademarks of the Association for Size Diversity and Health, and are used with permission.
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Once upon a time, I was a high school teacher leading a program about diversity and inclusion. Each year, I discussed the history of Thanksgiving with my students. While many of us grew up with images of Pilgrims and Indians joyously sitting down together for a feast of friendship, the real history of white and Native American relations is not such a loving legacy. And although the Pilgrims had feasts of thanksgiving, Thanksgiving as the holiday we recognize today has more to do with President Lincoln’s efforts to create national unity after the Civil War.
So, what does any of that have to do with fat people?
When my colleagues on the NAAFA Board asked me to reflect on gratitude for the November newsletter, I knew that I wanted to write about how the fat activist community has connected me to others who care deeply about social justice. Being active in the community (in my case, the San Francisco Bay Area’s very politically progressive community) has brought me into regular interaction with people who are actively and passionately engaged in trying to create a better world. My entry point to fat community was through size-positive nightlife (I am the founder of a plus-size fashion and party promotion in Oakland). Size-friendly dances and other social activities are often intentionally devoid of political content; people go to clubs or bashes to have fun and to escape. But through those activities, I met people--including many of you--who are directly involved in the struggle for fat civil rights and who are equally interested in the struggle for all human rights. This community is one of the things I am most thankful for in life.
Fat oppression, quite frankly, sucks. So I am grateful to be part of a community that stands against that. But intersectionality (the idea that we don’t experience the world through one identity but through many) means that those among our community who are fat and members of other marginalized groups are experiencing oppression in more than one way. People who are new to size acceptance may come into it only looking for fat freedom, but what they encounter is an activist community that is thinking about more than just fairness to fat folks. But over and over again, I have seen fat community help people become more open-minded about the struggles of others. Fat community is not perfect, is not as welcoming to diversity as it could be, and still has a ways to go in order to be truly intersectional. We have work to do. But I believe I am in good company to do that work.
As we face the challenges and changes that are already in the making after our recent election, we need to find ways to unapologetically support diversity and inclusion. I am thankful to be based in an activist community where I believe people actually care about things like accessibility, class awareness, anti-racism work, and LGBTQIA acceptance. As they say, “we ain’t free ‘til everybody’s free”. And I think a lot of y’all want to help us all get free. That’s why YOU are on my “things I am thankful for” list when we go around the table this year.
Which leads me back to the Pilgrims and Indians, my friends. As you approach Thanksgiving this year, I hope you share my gratitude for fat community. And I also hope you will consider that November is National Native American Awareness Month. Think about how the Pilgrim and Indians story romanticizes Native history and erases Native struggle. Take a minute to educate yourself on some of the things Native Americans are facing in this country. I also encourage you to think intersectionally about fatness and Native American identity. Over 50% of Native Americans are obese. We know how anti-obesity campaigns target and dehumanize fat people. Let’s work on being more inclusive of indigenous voice and visibility.
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Media and Research Roundup
by Bill and Terri Weitze
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October 20, 2016: A study finds that women who have weight loss surgery prior to pregnancy have a significantly higher risk for various perinatal complications; those who have had WLS within 2 years of their pregnancy have the highest risks.
https://consumer.healthday.com/vitamins-and-nutrition-information-27/weight-loss-surgery-bariatric-1005/having-baby-too-soon-after-weight-loss-surgery-may-raise-risks-715933.html
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2569812
October 26, 2016: Charlotte Cooper writes about the language of fat, how it is political, personal, and how the history and roots of the fat activism community is being lost as fat language becomes gentrified and co-opted by academia.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/26/rhetoric-obesity-toxic-new-language-fat-people
October 28, 2016:
Project Runway fashion consultant Tim Gunn takes American designers to task for not making clothes for larger women. While we disagree with Mr. Gunn that clothing should make the wearer look taller and slimmer, we do agree that “women of every size can look great.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/tim-gunn-fashion-industry-needs-makeover
November 2016: The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force is soliciting input regarding a draft recommendation statement regarding obesity in children and adolescents and proposed interventions. Comments will be accepted until November 28, 2016.
https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Document/draft-recommendation-statement165/obesity-in-children-and-adolescents-screening1
November 1, 2016: Beth Ditto is interviewed by Vogue about her new line of clothes, including a sneak peek at her fun designs.
http://www.vogue.com/13498686/beth-ditto-launches-her-second-plus-size-collection
November 7, 2016: A study of preschoolers eating two breakfasts, one at home and one at school, finds that there is no association between eating two breakfasts and obesity, and in fact, an inverse association was found.
http://heb.sagepub.com/content/43/6/665.abstract
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Founded in 1969, NAAFA, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, is a non-profit human rights organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for fat people. NAAFA works to eliminate discrimination based on body size and provide fat people with the tools for self-empowerment through public education, advocacy, and member support.
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