Who are you, anyway? You’re a reader and a human being, which are the most important sources for criticism or votes of confidence!

(fyi, I doubt even my “right” to give you a vote of confidence, because who am I, anyway, you don’t even know me, et cetera. Let’s just say that I too prefer to fly under the radar and don’t give myself enough credit. ;))

I’m happy to perform, to have all eyes on me, but only on MY terms, only what I choose CONSCIOUSLY to present to others. Otherwise, I’d just rather blend into the background (although that’s never been a strength of mine, LOL).

Man, I can’t even TELL you how much I relate to that. Seriously. Not so much in FA (I’m still in the “it’s ok for everyone but me” stage), but in general. Can my nervousness hold hands, too?

Congratulations on coming out further – I would say welcome, but I’m still in some of my closets on this issue, too. We’ll keep pushing forward together.

I just replied to your email and thought I’d check out your website after noticing your email address–and I’m so glad I did!

I have to say, I mostly skim over the many blogs I read, but I read your entry with great interest. Thanks for the courage it took to share yourself with us; it’s really inspiring and a beautiful testament to your process. My take-away from it is a renewed interest in questioning where I am with own process and how I might challenge myself a bit. Thank you for that :)

Warmly,
Camerin

Not that Wikipedia is the end all, be all authority, but it gives a nice synopsis.

Metabolism is more than some little thing that sits in your body decrying whether you gain or lose weight. It doesn’t have some obscure dial on it that is ratcheted up or down based on the “good” and “bad” food you eat.

Like every bodily system it can be effected by ill health. There is definitely a lot of weight loss meme surrounding metabolism.

Sure you can use it, and just call me The Fat Nutritionist.

Hey, would you mind if I used that quote as an email sig? And if it’s okay, would you prefer I credit it to “The Fat Nutritionist” or another name?

Ellyn Satter is, without a doubt, my inspiration and mentor, and not a satyr at all — thanks for the Freudian slip. But nutrition IS important to me, or I never would have entered this field in the first place. My purpose in doing nutrition is because I realize how much contradictory, and utterly ridiculous, information is out there that has absolutely no basis in evidence, and that only serves to shame and confuse people. And how difficult it is in such a climate for people to figure out how to *just eat* without having a nervous breakdown, or thinking they need to have a fucking biology degree, or call in professional help, in order to do a decent job at it.

Which is a pretty ridiculous state of affairs, when you think about it. Most of us pretty much knew how to eat when we were born, for fuck’s sake. So what went wrong?

Does that make sense?

Actually, you know, if you have a background in nutrition, you’d probably get a lot out of looking at Satter’s Hierarchy of Food Needs, which is based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, only translated into nutrition and eating stages: https://ellynsatter.com/attachment/links/3681/pdf?download=1

That probably explains a lot about why I feel the way I feel about nutrition, and conversations about the “what” vs. the “how.”

I do get the feeling of wandering alone in the wilderness when I try to explain HAES and SA to my friends. I gave only mentioned it, and then with great caution, to people I know well who are overweight. There seems to be no point in arguing with my thin friends about a hypothetical for them. OTOH – I do stop them when the get into fat talk and diet talk. That kind of talk is just toxic.

The responses of my friends to HAES and SA have been mostly negative. My hope is that if they see it is working for me they will reconsider. I feel terrible for one friend who has been banded. I would like to tell her but she is still struggling. She was banded a few years ago but hasn’t lost any weight. Of course besides not loosing weight, she has many of the negative side effects and she will likely have them for life. I want to tell her it is not her fault and that there is a better way, I just don’t want to hurt her.

Anyway, so glad you are back. I look forward to hearing about the “how” of eating.

I can’t speak for others, but I’m new to FA and for me, hearing a medical professional (and a nutritionist no less!) echoing what I’ve always felt (though never really had the courage to believe) has helped enormously. When my midwife tells me not to gain any weight during my twin pregnancy, or my nurse MIL eyes me as a potential diabetic… it helps to have a blog like this that I can read to remind myself that they are *wrong*.

So please, keep your chin up!

However, separate from my identification with that inner dialogue, I’ve always been enriched by what you’ve got to say. So I’ll be happy to continue to listen.