Reading a fat acceptance blog for the first time, especially an overweight female, can seem like an epiphany, “Yes, finally someone who understands!”

Quickly devouring more and more, a freshly exposed convert finds out that he or she was never meant to be at a healthy weight, and that all diets are destined to failure. Dieting and exercise are gateway drugs to the world of anorexia. Why not believe it? After all everyone on these sites was anorexic at one time, exercising 6 hours a day, and only eating lettuce for sustenance. Even with those extreme measures THEY COULDN’T LOSE THE WEIGHT!

But, what is the alternative? Well little Ms. Kate Harding and her Fat Acceptance imitators have a solution.

One should start by practicing “Intuitive Eating”, which means, listening to your body, it knows what it really needs. When you want carrots, your body needs the nutrients from carrots. If you want some donuts then get some donuts. Your body must need the sugar and carbohydrates.

When practicing intuitive eating you may at first encounter some weight gain. Don’t fret it! Soon enough your body will reach its’ “Genetic Set Point.” This means the body weight your genetics intended you to be at. The extra weight may not make you fit the Hollywood ideal for beauty, but avoidance of “Yo Yo Dieting” will actually be better for your long term health. One can be both Fat and Fit. We all know that many skinny people eat crap and don’t exercise! There is no connection between fatness and health. At this point our fat blogger, who is often in her late 20’s, will relate how she is extremely overweight, but never felt better.

This package of ideas is a very appealing message, except that it’s total BULLSHIT! Intuitive eating is a hair brained idea with scant research backing it up. There is not one shred of evidence demonstrating that a genetic set point exists for humans. In fact it seems to be a complete fabrication of the fat acceptance movement. Finally the promoters of this pseudo religion have no medical training what so ever that would give them any authority to promote or to critique experts and physicians in the fields of obesity, diet, and exercise.

Let us begin with intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is a good idea for a book. Ironically, it really is a fad diet plan of sorts. It is appealing because it suggests that you eat as your body wants and you can still lose weight. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too, but only if your body really wants to have cake. Very little serious research has been conducted on intuitive eating. Most of the few studies I have found about intuitive eating seemed to have been conducted by advocates of intuitive eating, which makes the results fairly dubious. All the studies seem to lack statistical soundness, the most recent study I found involved a mere 32 women.

After hours of research on the internet I can’t find any scientific basis for genetically predetermined body weight set points. With the exception of fat acceptance blogs no other dialogue can be found on this subject. Genetic body weight set points are a total fictional creation of the online fat acceptance movement.

The list of hallucinations doesn’t stop there. Lacking any real evidence the HAES (Health at Every Size) movement, asserts that trying to lose weight may cause anorexia. Anorexia is the favorite bugaboo of the FA sisterhood. According to the World Health Organization, anorexia claims about 200 lives a year in the United States, close examination reveals that it is almost exclusively a white rich girl disease. There is no indication that a healthy weight loss effort that includes sound nutrition and exercise will result in a body dimorphic condition such as anorexia, in a person with sound mental health.

The interests of brevity do not allow me to continue on and elaborate on other wacky assertions of this delusional cyber/pseudo feminist movement. What must be said however is that fat acceptance blogs and their authors are not just theorizing and debating about this bullshit, they are enthusiastically and unapologetically handing out their quack advice to their readers. The total lack of scientific and medical backing does not prevent them from telling people to ignore their physician’s advice to lose weight, and instead eat what they feel like. Remember that many of these people are suffering from type 2 diabetes, and or joint issues that are aggravated and perhaps caused by their weight.

It takes a special kind of arrogance to boldly tell obese people to ignore their doctor. Let’s explore just who some of these people are, my source is their own bios contained on their blogs.

Kate Harding (Shapely Prose):

“… humorless feminist, aspiring yoga teacher, recovering grad student…”

Sweet Machine (Shapely Prose):

“…a twenty something queer grad student in Chicagoland…”

Mopie (Big Fat Deal Blog):

“…She is an advertising minion and an English professor with an MFA in poetry…”

Rachel (The F Word):

“…a 28-year-old writer and journalist… received her bachelor’s degree in history and is continuing her graduate work…”

These are great qualifications to be a writer. I wish I had their writing skills and training. These women are all good writers. They are certainly educated in the skills of rhetoric. But I can find nothing that makes them qualified to offer medical opinions to people about diet and exercise. A fanaticism is at work here that won’t allow them to waiver a bit, even if it means giving crazy dietary advice to people who already have health risks.

A great number of the more prominent Fat Acceptance bloggers are in their 20’s and early 30’s. They don’t hesitate to use their own personal healthiness as proof that their doctrine is sound. Believing that they will stay in this condition as they age into their 40’s and 50’s is a fairly tale.

This dangerous charade should be exposed, or at least covered by the mainstream media as it heaps praise on the movement. Fat acceptance promotes a dangerous politically motivated lifestyle that has no medical basis. It is understandable how the “girl power” message is interesting to publishers like Redbook and The New York Times, but in the public interest these institutions are irresponsible not to cover the more jeopardous ideas promoted by Fat Acceptance as well.