Thanks to those of you who replied in the “rude questions” thread. I’ve taken ideas from that thread, cleaned up some of the concepts from the rude comments the other night, and pulled ideas from other conversations I’ve had and questions I’ve been asked privately. I’ve strung them all together into a single chain of questions and given you a wealth of links if you want to learn more. If you have more questions, let me know. It’s a big topic, but let’s help each other spread more good information!

Are you really saying that it’s okay to be fat?

Yes. I like the phrase “fat acceptance”, because at the end of the day all the science and the studies don’t really matter. It’s really just okay to be fat. Even if being fat is caused by eating too many cookies (which it isn’t) and it dooms you to ill health (which it doesn’t), people are allowed to make decisions about their bodies and their health all on their own, and it’s none of anyone else’s business.

You aren’t serious about this “diets don’t work” thing, are you?

Completely serious. Diets don’t work. By diet, I mean anything you are doing to fuck with your eating habits in order to lose weight. Even if you’re fucking with your food to lose weight “for your health”, that’s still a diet. If you’re calling your attempt to lose weight a “lifestyle change” or “eating better and exercising”, it’s still a diet. Whenever attempted weight-loss is studied, the results are a resounding failure. The researchers say things like, “It is only the rate of weight regain, not the fact of weight regain, that appears open to debate.”

If you truly want to learn about the failure of anyone, anywhere to find a way to make people lose weight and keep it off, there is plenty out there. You can’t just read the headlines, because headlines are written to sell things rather to inform people. But scratch the surface on the available information, and you’ll find a world of evidence. Evidence of failure. 6-10 pounds lost over two years. 3-10 pounds over a year. 4 pounds after 18 months. No change in weight after 3 years. No change after 8 years. A review of 31 different studies with various levels of failure. A narrative literature review of journal articles on weight management concludes that it “fails to meet the standards of evidence based medicine” and questions the ethics of continuing to promote failed treatments.

And exercise? Yeah, that doesn’t make people lose weight, either.

But what about calories in/calories out, thermodynamics, or how losing weight is obviously SO SIMPLE?

First, if you’re using the word “thermodynamics” in your argument about losing weight, you’re talking out your ass.

Second, if you’re using a “calories in/calories out” argument, you don’t understand how bodies work and what metabolism means. I recommend reading about set point theory and thinking about the ways that limiting your “calories in” is actually just cheating your body. The bottom line is that your body is complicated, and it’s working just fine, thank you, without you getting your thinking involved with your calories and messing up the program.

At the end of the day, we have no idea how to make fat people into thin people or thin people into fat people. No amount of sputtering about laws of physics or what you think is “simple” and “obvious” will change the fact that who is fat and who is thin is largely about genetics. Oh, and also, dieting seems to cause weight gain. I don’t have any studies to back me up on this, but I’ll wager a guess that if you want a culprit for some of the uptick in weight in this culture, it’s the diet industry itself.

Aren’t fat people just lazy/not trying hard enough/not motivated enough?

Dieting is basically self-imposed slow starvation. During the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, the men were on a “diet” that many would consider modest these days. During the experiment they became “nervous, anxious, apathetic, withdrawn, impatient, self-critical…depressed…obsessed with food.” Sounds an awful lot like how a lot of dieters feel. As a result of this experiment, we got the term “semi-starvation neurosis”.

When you understand that dieting is self-imposed starvation, calling it lazy or a lack of effort or motivation is revealed as a really callous thing to say. It’s not a demonstration of poor moral character to be unable to starve yourself for very long. Imagine being tasked with holding your hand over an open flame for as long as you can. Some people could do it for longer than others, but whenever it is that you snatch your hand back, it hardly makes sense to chide you for not trying hard enough. How about trying to breathe 20% less than you currently do? Again, different people would be more or less successful at this task, but when you gasp and go back to taking in enough air, it’s not because you’re lazy.

If you think fat people aren’t motivated enough, you have a serious misperception of how much it can suck to be fat in this culture. Trust me. We are motivated. The “willpower” nonsense is truly nonsense. Almost every fat woman in this culture has actually performed many acts of extraordinary willpower in her lifetime, by voluntarily starving herself over and over and over again.

What about me/my sister/coworker/friend who lost X amount of weight in the last X amount of time just by doing X.

Almost anyone can lose some weight using any number of popular methods. However, the research and the odds overwhelmingly say that you will gain that weight back. The more recently someone has lost weight, the more enthusiastic they are about explaining how everyone can do it, but they’re still wrong.

This is an area where I’m taking a really strong stand. Promoting weight-loss attempts is at best highly misguided and at worst unethical and cruel. Almost no one can lose significant amounts of weight and keep it off long-term. Of the few who can, many do so by adopting obsessive eating habits and essentially making weight-loss their full time job. Suggesting that significant, long term, intentional weight-loss is simple, easy, or even possible is itself a hateful thing to do. Don’t do it.

Then how do you explain the starving children in Africa?

No one is arguing that starvation doesn’t lead to weight loss. It does. However, purposefully starving yourself long-term, voluntarily, is a ludicrous proposition. A person who is stuck underwater will eventually run out of air and die. That doesn’t mean that I should be expected to hold my breath for an unlimited amount of time. That’s just silly.

Even if losing weight is hard and most people don’t succeed, shouldn’t you still try? For your health?

No. The whole fat and health thing is way more complicated than than you’ve been led to believe. Oh, it sounds all dire when the media gets going, but the truth is that being fat is NOT an indicator of bad health, does NOT increase your risk of death, is NOT a risk factor for heart disease, and “NONE of the 21 diseases popularly attributed to obesity…are actually associated with excess deaths at any BMI category, including obese.”

Want more? Fat people don’t go to the doctor more or have more medical procedures or hospitalizations. They don’t take more sick days from work. The are no more likely to have chronic diseases than thinner people.

Still more? Fatter cardiac patients are more likely to survive. Fatter dialysis patients are more likely to survive. Fat people have better outcomes with blood transfusions. And then there’s this: Fatness is protective and beneficial for health issues that include infections, cancer, lung disease, heart disease, osteoporosis, anemia, high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, type 2 diabetes, and fat people are more likely to survive a hospitalization at all than thinner people.

On the other hand, dieting may very well be bad for your heath. Intentional weight-loss is associated with increased aggressiveness, loss of lean muscle, kidney stones, decreased immune function, disordered eating, negative self-image, increased mortality, and increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, higher cholesterol, higher blood pressure, depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal.

If/when your size does affect your health, what can you do about it?

Whether you’re skinny or fat or somewhere in between, you should address your health concerns by addressing your health concerns. Type II diabetes should be treated, regardless of what size you are. Sore knees should be addressed, regardless of what size you are. Weight-loss should not be prescribed as a medical intervention, since we have no idea how weight-loss can actually happen, and the attempt itself has negative health consequences.

Aren’t you just looking for a way to justify not exercising/being fat/not working hard enough/eating whatever you want?

No one needs a justification for that. I don’t have to exercise, and I can eat whatever I want. You don’t have to exercise, and you can eat whatever you want. You’re in charge of you, and I’m in charge of me, forever and ever, amen.

If that makes you uncomfortable, then we may be getting closer to the root of the problem. It’s not the fat people; it’s the desire to own and police the bodies of other people.

Are you saying that eating like shit and not exercising aren’t bad for you?

Nope. I’m saying that being fat isn’t bad for you. How you eat and how much you move around are separate topics. Eating well and moving around more are good for you, whether you’re fat or thin. This is a really important point: weight and health are two separate things. Your weight and how much you eat and how much you exercise are all different things.

So it’s true! Fat people eat like shit and don’t exercise.

Where did you get that idea? Think about it for a minute. Is it possible that you don’t really notice when you see a skinny person eating a cheeseburger, but when you see a fat person eating the same thing, you think, “Hmm, well, there ya go.” Some fat people have great, nutritious, modest diets and exercise their butts off. Some fat people are Cheetos-dust-covered couch potatoes. Some skinny people have great, nutritious, modest diets and exercise their butts off. Some skinny people are Cheetos-dust-covered couch potatoes. It turns out that fat people don’t generally eat more or exercise less than thinner people. It’s just that our collective narrative renders fit fat people invisible.

Aren’t you promoting fat/encouraging people to be fat/making people fat?

It doesn’t really matter if I am, because you can’t make thin people fat any more than you can make fat people thin, and by the way, remember, it’s okay to be fat. So maybe I am promoting it. I’m saying it’s okay to have a body like mine. What of it?

But obesity epidemic! 

Please drop the scary words attached to obesity from your vocabulary. Obesity isn’t an epidemic, a crisis, or a nightmare. “Obesity” is simply a description of a ratio between height and weight. It isn’t any scarier than tall people. Besides, when you read about how obesity is on the rampage, apparently going to take over the world, you’re being misinformed, since obesity rates have been steady for about a decade.

But the children!

Just no. Children being fat is not related to negative health outcomes. What is a negative outcome is shaming children about their weight. When everyone from the First Lady on down is convinced they’re at war against your body, that has to take a toll on a kid.

How can you be healthy or get healthier as a fat person?

The same way everyone else gets healthier. Many of the things that we hear as weight-loss advice is shit, of course. But some of the basic stuff in there – eat more whole grains, fruits, and veggies, get your heartrate up a few times a week, find ways to move around that are enjoyable to you – these things will positively affect your health, even though they don’t lead to weight loss.

This is one of the great tragedies of our focus on weight. It makes eating well and exercising a means to an unattainable end. There are lots of great reasons to eat nutritious foods and move your body around more that have nothing to do with weight-loss, but fat people who have tried to lose weight and failed may give up on these activities. Anyone can pursue greater fitness. This includes thin people. Thin people don’t benefit from the false equation of health and fat, either. Moving around more and eating better can improve the health of everyone, regardless of their size.

Also, let’s keep in mind that there is no moral imperative to be healthy. No one has an obligation to be healthy, to value health, or to do anything in particular about their health. We can focus on our own health, but the health of other people is none of our business.

In pursuing fat acceptance, are you also pursuing a fitness/exercise/workout routine?

I’m not. I promised myself years ago never to “exercise” again, because doing so is always an act of hatred against myself. Other fat people do exercise, for fun, for fitness, or to build certain skills. Fitness and fatness are two separate things. Some fat people work out, some don’t. Some thin people work out, some don’t.

Does being fat accepting assume that the doctor says you are in good health and you feel good and have the energy to participate in all the activities you want?

No, it doesn’t. Most people don’t get a doctor’s permission to live their lives. Being fat accepting is for fat healthy people. It’s also for fat unhealthy people. It’s for fat people who exercise. It’s for fat people who don’t. It’s for fat people who get winded easily. It’s for fat people who run marathons. It’s for fat people who go in for twice-yearly physical checkups. It’s for fat people who haven’t seen a doctor in years. It’s for fat people who are pursuing fitness. It’s for fat people who aren’t.

What are your thoughts on all the different ways people are fucked up about what to eat?

I think it’s no surprise. The weight-cycling industry has been marching on largely unchallenged for decades now. Who cam blame us for being a bit confused? Almost everything you read about food is framed as a pressing moral concern, an intricate puzzle to be solved, or a battle to be waged. Advice about what to eat and what not to eat is scattered, contradictory, and sometimes downright incomprehensible.

When it comes to GMOs or organic or whatever, I mostly try to avoid putting too much attention there, because it’s too easy for me to get sucked back into attaching moral issues to food. It’s more important to me to release that need for control over which foods are “right” and which are “wrong” and just eat what seems desirable to me in the moment.

Why are you so rude/aggressive?

(Yes, I really got this question.)

I get pretty worked up about this stuff sometimes, because the lies and the social pressure aren’t just interesting. They are actively harmful to real people. Over 60% of the adults in the US are categorized as overweight or obese, and we face discrimination, abuse, and in many cases extreme self-loathing as a result of the rampant moral panic about our bodies. I hope that I can muster up more aggressiveness and more energy to battle this issue. As Ragen Chastain has pointed out, our culture has declared war against us. It’s time to fight back.

And forward:

This post has 50 some-odd links in it. It took me a week to put my research in order and then write this post. I don’t expect you to read and absorb everything here immediately. I’ve been studying this topic for almost two years. And I’d love to hear your comments and questions! If you are going to comment, though, I do expect you to have a basic grasp of what I’m saying here and have accepted that at the very least, what you have “always heard” or what “everyone knows” is much more complicated.

It’s okay to be fat. Almost no one can lose significant amounts of weight and keep it off. Dieting is bad for you. You can’t make fat people thin or thin people fat. Genetics mostly decides who is who, and your bodily processes take care of the rest. It’s not unhealthy to be fat. Eating well and moving around more are good for everyone but don’t cause weight loss. No one is obligated to pursue health.

I’m interested in examining fat from a more personal perspective, and writing about how to change your relationship with yourself and your size. I feel like I needed to get this basic, factual, foundational stuff out of the way first. These are my premises. I’m excited to explore what comes next, after some of the bullshit about fat as been cast aside.

As a stark illustration of what I mean by fat-hate, a few nights ago, I received a slew of comments on my post Diets Don’t Work that I declined to publish in the comment section. Apparently that post was linked in a forum about fitness, and people came over to comment. In case you have doubts about the hatefulness that is out there, I’m going to publish some of those comments here.

Warning: Some of these comments are disgusting, misogynistic hate-speech. Please skip this section if these are likely to be harmful for you. You can jump back in at the next bolded line.

Some of the comments went the direction of general dismissal and name-calling.

You “fat acceptance” people are pathetic trying to justify why your lard-infested bodies have grown to that size.

Having a debate on this is like arguing with a supporter of the theory that storks bring babies to their parents. It’s sad to see that people with views like this exist.

Are you kidding me, you are beyond delusional. Diet do work, your attitude however does not. it takes work and time, neither of which i believe you want to give up. Stay fat as fatass.

Some managed to provide some humor.

fatties gonna fat

(Yes, that was the entire comment.)

I don’t understand why you think it is your birth right to eat yourself to death?
If you believe in god think of it as the devil testing you every time a delicious muffin is put in front of you.

I think from now on, whenever I eat a muffin I’m going to give it a devil voice and have a little mock conversation with it before I eat it.

And then some of the comments veered off entirely in hate-land.

A group of fat lazies patting each other on their fat backs… Disgusting! I have no respect for you….How is this so hard you weak willed monstrosities?

And this one I’ll copy/paste in its entirety:

check out all these fucking fat delusional whiny cunts. i’d tell you to get off the fucking internet making a fool of yourself and get your fucking wide load back into the kitchen but i’d say you disgusting blobs of what i can only assume are human females have spent far to much time there to begin with. cals in versus cals out it isn’t hard you fucking waste of organic material. I can’t believe fat people buy into the ‘fat acceptance’ mentality, being morbidly obese will never be accepted you will always live on the fringes of society as living jokes starved of human intimacy and in most cases will never find a parter willing to stick their cock in between your disgusting slabs of fat to find the brown lips between your legs, nor want to force their arse on your pale blood deprived cock. jump on a tred mill and stop being the embodiment of western society; excess, gluttony, laziness and wilful ignorance.

That’s from a forum where they’re talking about fitness, huh? You wouldn’t think fitness had anything to do with hating 66% of the population so much that you’re willing to spew this kind of hatred at them. But it does. It’s very, very easy for ideas about fitness, health, nutrition, attractiveness, etc to veer over into hating fat people because our culture is very, very good at setting up competition between us.

I’ve been seeing a “motivational” image going around saying something about how no matter how little you’re exercising you’re still doing more than someone on the couch. Who is the person on the couch in that little bit of “encouragement”? Is it a fat person? A “lazy” person? What does your exercise have to do with that person at all? Why do we need imaginary “bad” people to be better than when we’re talking about our bodies? The truth is that those imaginary people are real people, and the opposition we set up against them affects their lives.

Hating fat people is very, very popular these days. Be careful that you don’t feed into it.

An Invitation to Ask Rude Questions

Some of the comments the other night weren’t all that bad. They brought up tired old arguments like calories in/calories out or the “how could genetics have changed in 3 generations” thing. They were incredulous comments but not necessarily hateful. On any other day, I might have let them through, but I decided to reject the whole stream of comments.

I’m going to make a post that replies to some of these basic arguments. I’ve been approaching this topic pretty broadly so far, and I think it’ll be worthwhile to assemble some straight-up answers to some pointed questions.

If there’s anything you’ve wanted to ask or say and though it might be rude, here’s your chance. On this post, you can comment anything that isn’t outright hate-speech. I’ll assemble the questions/situations from these comments and the rude ones from the other night and put up a Q and A post in response.

Don’t be shy. When you hear that diets don’t work, that diets make you fatter, that your genetics plays a big role in your weight or that willpower isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, what’s your reaction? What questions do you wish you could ask? Ask away!

It’s popular to comment on the presumed intelligence of farm animals. People like to say, “Chickens are stupid,” “Sheep are stupid,” or “Pigs are smart.”

I’ve seen chickens do some really smart things. They are experts at finding food in their environment, for example. I’ve seen sheep be pretty smart, too. They are extremely adept at using their speed and the available space to keep away from you, even when it seems like it’s a small enough space that you ought to be able to catch them.

I don’t know how pigs got to be the smart ones. I’ve certainly seen them do some pretty dumb things. They are smart in their own way, too, though.

And that’s the key: “in their own way”.

Chickens are smart chickens. Sheep are smart sheep. Pigs are smart pigs.

I’d make a stupid sheep. Sheep are stupid chickens. Chickens are stupid pigs.

It’s important to remember what’s what and who is who! It makes it easier to be proud of what we can do and not need to put others down.

You know that whole “first one’s free” thing? “Just try it, you’ll like it?” Yeah. Never happened. I’ve never met a dealer giving away free product, I’ve never met a dealer who really cared whether or not you bought, and I’ve certainly never met a dealer on a personal mission to get you hooked.

On the other hand…

I am still getting free formula samples in the mail. And by samples, I mean whole cans of formula. I see formula stuff everywhere. Every time I see kids’ stuff, I see formula stuff – on magazines, in stores, in doctors’ offices.

And every month, like clockwork, I get free product in the mail. Trying to convince me to try it. Trying to get me hooked. The first one is free. And the next one, and the next one, and the next one, until I have a nice habit going on.

Fuck that noise.

In the meantime, the pigs think the formula is tasty, so I guess keep sending it my way. I’m turning it into bacon, so I think I win!

I hear that idea a lot, that children are the future or that they are a precious resource, but that’s a really distant, mechanical view to take of other human beings. Children are not “resources” to be mined or collected. Children aren’t the future. They are actual, real-life human beings right here, right now.

It seems kind of obvious when I say it like that. Of course they aren’t resources. Of course they actually exist in the present. But when I listen to people talk about kids, I’m not sure that it’s all that obvious. People talk about parenting goals, about shaping or molding their kids, about the direction they’re going, or how they are preparing them for “real life”.

All of these objectify children or treat them as “future people”, when in reality, children are real people having real lives right here in the present.

Are your parenting goals about achieving something years down the line, or are your parenting goals rooted in the relationship you’re having here in the present?

If you think of yourself as molding or shaping your child, have you considered that your child is already a wonderful shape?

Instead of considering the direction your child is going, can you just consider the place ou already is?

Instead of preparing your child for ou “real life” or “the real world”, try getting down into the life and world that already exists for your child.

Real people. Right here. Right now. With real lives. Anything else is a disservice to the awesome people that children already are.

Yesterday my friend and commenter, Wendi, left a comment on the post Dieting Makes You Fatter that’s brings up a good question and raises some other issues, so I want to give it my full attention here.

Part of her comment is the basic question:

Is there any difference in any of the studies or reports for people who start a new “diet” just to be generally healthier? … I’m wondering that since the goal of this dietary change isn’t weight loss…does that count as “dieting”?… Have any of the studies addressed that issue, and is there any information you’ve found on it?

There are a few studies that address this idea. There aren’t very many, but I think more research is going to be headed this direction. This link gives an overview of some of the available research.

My understanding is that practices that involve size acceptance and intuitive eating (Health At Every Size, HAES, is one such practice) result in improved physiological health (like blood pressure), improved emotional health (like self-esteem), and improved healthy behaviors (like increased physical activity). These results are independent of weight loss. Additionally, evidence suggests that participants are more likely to continue with their improved habits, which is not the case for dieting.

The rest of Wendi’s comment goes into some of the things she’s doing to aim for more healthy eating.

I’ve started serving portioned out meals at home, to an amount of about 2000 calories a day, just because no one in my house knows what a healthy portion of ANYTHING even looks like…Of the four of us, two tend to overestimate portion sizes, and two underestimate, so it’s definitely a problem for everyone – mostly because none of us really know what we’re eating in that respect.

If you are wanting to pursue a goal of healthy eating, it’s going to be crucial that you ask yourself at every step of the way whether you are actually veering into dieting 0r disordered eating. Our culture is beyond fucked up when it comes to food, and so it can be really hard to figure out a path that makes sense.

Now, I’m not your doctor, your chef, or your mama (not that I think you should listen to any of them, either!) so take my opinion as just that! But I would say that if you’re focused on the number of calories in the food, the size of the portions, and judging the portions as over- or under-estimated, you are not on the right track.

Intuitive eating is a process of getting away from mathematical, moralistic, or checklist judgement of food. There’s no need to count calories; there is only the need to listen to yourself and find what you want or need. There’s no such thing as a portion size; there’s what you want to eat and what you don’t.

Wendi also mentioned her family’s full/hunger signals being out of whack and that’s a common problem with people who’ve struggled with food and weight issues. It can be a really long process to get back to a way of eating that’s in tune with your body.

Outlining an entire plan for a healthier relationship with food is way beyond the scope of this post. There are plenty of resources online for learning more about intuitive or mindful eating, although make sure to steer clear on any that are aiming for weight loss. Health At Every Size is a well-supported, Googlable practice.

My favorite resource is Michelle at The Fat Nutritionist. You could browse her site all day. A few posts I recommend off the top of my head:

• Eat Food. Stuff You Like. As Much As You Want.
• The Rules of Nutrition
• How to eat, in a nutshell – lesson one: Permission.

It’s called “dieting”.

I wrote before about Traci Mann and the analysis of 31 long-term dieting studies. Mann and the other researchers found that the majority of dieters regained their lost pounds and then some. She said:

We concluded most of them would have been better off not going on the diet at all. Their weight would be pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back… Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.

Janet Tomiyama, a co-author of the study, said:

Several studies indicate that dieting is actually a consistent predictor of future weight gain.

Oops.

A couple of years back, headlines everywhere reported on a new study that showed that all diets work about the same, and if you just keep eating fewer calories, you’ll do okay. It turns out what the study actually says is that while all diets work about the same, they all suck about the same, which is what every other study says, too. Want to know happened this time that the articles don’t report on? All participants started regaining weight after a year. At two years, about half weighed more than their starting weight. On average, at the two year mark, participants were eating fewer calories than they had been eating at the 6 month mark when they were still losing weight.

Let me repeat that.

They were eating FEWER calories yet weighing MORE than when they had started.

I ran across a great phrase while researching this: “physiological defense of body weight”. When you try to go messing around with your weight, your body fights back. In The Last Supper Syndrome, Michelle talks about that big meal you inexplicably eat as soon as you promise yourself you’ll eat “better” next week. She points out that by telling yourself that you’re going to eat less, you are threatening yourself. And your body has your back! Your body responds to that threat with protective measures. Various physiological processes kick in to help you eat more and make the most of what you eat.

Some studies suggest that the metabolic changes caused by dieting stick around for a long time.  Dieting may alter the body’s metabolism in order to reset its set point in preparation for future restrictions. If you’re hungry now, there might be more hunger later, and your body is getting you ready for that.

The body is so good at what it does that for most people dieting CAUSES weight gain.

Diets. Don’t. Work.

And just for the record, when we’re talking about diets and weight loss, what are we talking about? Here’s another great phrase I ran across: “cognitively regulated eating style”. If you’re plotting and planning and thinking and calculating what to eat, how much to eat, or when to eat it, it’s a “cognitively regulated eating style”, also known as a diet:

Weight Watchers. Jenny Craig. Crash diets in bestselling books. Programs at commercial diet centers. Doctor-led plans. Meal substitutes. Fat-free processed foods. Restricting calories. Cutting carbs. Eating only whole foods. Reducing fat intake. “Portion control.” ‘Eating right and exercising.” SlimFast. South Beach. Nutrisystem. Paleo.

If you’re doing it to lose weight, it’s a diet, and it won’t work.

Kate Harding worded it well in Diets Don’t Work, But…:

Diets do not lead to permanent weight loss for the vast majority of people.

Not even if you call them “a whole new way of eating”. Or a “lifestyle change”. If your if your lifestyle change involves putting restrictions on your food intake, you will almost certainly be fat again in five years.

Fatter.

My homesteading scars are limited to a couple of lines on my arm from the wood-burning stove. I’m sure there are more to come, though. From Scars Keep The Record of Our Lives:

If you want to get a lively conversation going among farmers, bring up the subject of scars. For some reason we glory in telling about the marks of maiming or near death that decorate our bodies like so many road signs along the trail of life. Hardly a one of us doesn’t have a crooked leg or missing finger, or a lost limb… Perhaps it is the gravity of the situation that awes us into wanting to talk about it.

This spring has been undeniably bounteous for me. The growth, the babies, my joy in the details. It always seems like spring comes just in time. From Nature’s Promises Kept Again:

Going into March… I am torn between despair over a political process descending into lunacy and an economic process that guarantees only an ever-growing poverty class.  I am glad I do not know how to tie a rope into a noose.

Then I look out the window one morning and see the great miracle… Slowly but surely all the spring wildflowers return— actually this unusually warm spring, they came fast and furiously— and I feel that great uprising of joy and hope once again. Nature does not renege on her promises.

The resilience and stability of nature is amazing and we often miss it because the news of the day focuses on the failures and threats, not on the successes. In all the earth-shaking changes that have shattered our sense of security over the past forty years or so, here on our farm, right here, the state of wild nature is remarkably little changed.

And then Living At The Whim of the Weather was written right as spring was snatched back momentarily this year. I don’t think I lost any plants, even though I definitely planted early.

Gene’s most recent post It Pays to Stay Home resonates with me, too. I love to go out into the world, but I love to stay home at The Wallow, too. Until I moved here, I never knew how interesting one’s own backyard could be.

Staying home has to be one of the most unpopular ideas in America where the whole culture embraces faraway travel as essential to happiness. Many of us don’t really have homes that can provide as much enjoyment as travel promises. Rather than spending our money to acquire such a property, we are taught to buy such enjoyment with far away travel. Perhaps what we need is proper publicity. To advertise traveling at home, a documentary could open with unbelievable close-ups of ants herding and milking aphids on an apple tree, a raccoon destroying a bluebird house, a hawk dive-bombing a mouse, a flint arrowhead sticking out of a creek-side cliff. Then a roll of drums and a voice sonorously introduces the docudrama:  “Today we are going where no explorer has gone before— YOUR BACK FORTY.”

If you’re ever in the mood for some down-to-earth farming posts with insight, I recommend Gene Logsdon at The Contrary Farmer.

I’m a little late getting the first pig update written, but we have pigs! They are pink/white pigs, unlike the red ones from last year. Their breed is likely a mix of Yorkshire and Chester White, both excellent meat breeds.

Last year we asked our buyers to choose a particular pig, and they all got names. This was to avoid any conflicts of ownership if something happened to one pig mid-season. With more pigs this year and with their similar markings, I’m honestly not sure I could reliably tell them apart. So they are not going to be individually named and assigned, and if any issues arise we’ll just handle that as it comes.

One big change for this year is that Joshua built a feeder that allows the pigs to have free access to food, rather than getting a big meal or two a day. The feeder has lids over the eating areas, and the pigs lift up a lid with their noses, and then chow down. They figured it out quickly, and I’m sure they are pleased with being able to eat whenever they want. The waterer is also set up so that they have a constant supply of water that they can not climb into and get all muddy!

A neat thing we’ve discovered this year is that more seems to be better. There are 6 pigs this time, the most we’ve ever had, and they seem to be having much more fun, are more active, and I can see that they move together as a pack. I knew that pigs were social animals, but they get more social and seem to thrive the more there are. I’m so glad there are 5 groups of you buying pigs, so that this pack of 6 can all be together!

One distinct bit of personality about this year’s pigs is that they seem to be really clean. Almost every time I see them, they are spotless except for a bit of dirt on their noses. They will surely be muddier as it starts to get hotter and they use the mud to cool down, but so far I’ve been really impressed by their cleanliness. They are definitely not impressed with the shed we provide them for shelter. Almost every time I catch them sleeping they are in a pile together out in the open, sometime in the shade of a tree, sometimes right out in the sun. Their sunburned butts are their own business; I’m trying not to fret too much about that.

There’s no possible way to estimate the pigs’ finish time yet.  I can tell you that these pigs were younger when we got them, which adds a bit of time. In 2010 the pigs were ready for slaughter in July. In 2011 it was September. Their weight is one of the things I’ll try to keep you updated on as we go, as soon as they get big enough to even esimate their weight. They are still little pigs!