Episode 206 Transcript

You're listening to the Fierce Fatty Podcast, episode 206, 49 Benefits of Being Fat. I'm your host, Vinny Welsby. Pronouns, they/them. Let's do it!

Hello, welcome to the show. Are you all right? I'm all right. Are you all right? All right, glad you're here. Thanks for being here. Hey, you like the show? Want to support? Would love you to. Two ways you can. One, write a review of the show. Say that you think I'm incredibly sexy, unamazing or something like that, or not. Write what you want. Or two, uh, donate to the show. I have a ko-fi account, which is kind of like Patreon. You can, uh, do a one-time donation or you can do a monthly donation. If you do a monthly donation, you get some free shit. Who doesn't love free shit? Then, uh, go check out the notes, uh, the show notes for links to stuff. Um, I would really appreciate it.

I'm very, uh, not very good at reminding, uh, reminding to ask for support. Um, I'm the, I mean, I do this podcast. I don't accept sponsors or anything like that. I just fucking hate adverts in podcasts. Oh, don't you hate adverts in podcasts? I stopped listening to podcasts for so long because the adverts would just get on my tits so much. So that I, I only listened to YouTube things, but now I started going back to podcasts because, um, I found some without adverts in. Especially if you're, like, falling asleep and you're falling asleep and then you'll hear, like, get a new sofa. Get a mattress. And I'm just, you know, some really fucking loud adverts. I hate it so.

Anyway, that's my autism. It's like, leave me alone. Anyway, so because, you know, there's no adverts or anything. So if you want to support the work of a fat liberationist sharing this, doing it for free, then I would really appreciate it. And if you can't, I understand, but you're dead to me. No, not at all. I appreciate it, but if you can't then, you know, NBD, no big deal.

So I already made this episode a couple of years ago, a couple or three years ago, and it was 28 Benefits of Being Fat. We're up to 49. And so this is the expanded version with our new things on there. And if you haven't listened to the original one then, you know, that's absolutely a-okay. You don't need to. Um, and I think this is important that we are told benefits of being fat because when do we ever hear that? Half past never. We never get to hear it, right? And there are absolutely benefits of being fat, and saying that there are benefits of being fat doesn't mean that there are no downsides to being fat. Of course there are. And kind of like we discussed, that, you know, fat people can be at higher risk of certain things, but we don't know why and it's all kind of complicated. But also fat people could be at higher risk of lower risk of things and better outcomes. Um, but we don't tend to hear that, so I think it's good to have a reminder that being fat is not inherently evil, unhealthy, the worst thing that could ever happen. I love being fat and I hope I'm fat forever.

So let me read out the list. So if you don't want to listen to the details of these, you don't have to. You can just get the list and go. Links for absolutely everything, uh, in the show notes. If you just want it off the top of your head, it'll be fiercefatty.com/206 because we're at episode 206. We've got a ton of links. Some of them are not backed up with, with, uh, science because they're silly, so they don't need science because they're just silly. But other ones, other ones are absolutely backed up with science, and I'm gonna make an Instagram post which has all of them listed out with a link to the science for each one so that you can, uh, go and have a little look with your eyeballs and your, your brain if you want to do that.

So let me list out the benefits of being fat. 49 benefits of being fat.

Number one. This is no particular order, by the way.

Number one, curves or fat rolls and movement can make dancing look extra fluid or dramatic, right? Especially underwater. Oh, have you seen those underwater videos of fatness? Amazing.

Two, we're soft and cozy.

Three, we are strong.

Four, we have a built-in body filter, a bigot filter because of our body. And so if someone is a body bigot, they don't want to be our friends, they don't want to be with us. We've got it built in like a screening device. How awesome is that?

Uh, great for those with social anxiety because people are less likely to talk to you. And by the way, this is not always the case, right? So, you know, take some of these with your tongue in cheek. You might say it's the worst if you have social anxiety because people do this. So it's not for everyone, it's not in every instance. So yeah.

Six, stronger bones. Less risk from osteoporosis and better survival from hip fractures.

Seven, we have a built-in weighted blanket for our loved ones who like or need compression. Oh right. If you're autistic or neurodivergent or if you're just, you know, human, you could just love that feeling of pressure or weight on you that you might get from a weighted blanket, but if you're with a fat person you just get it automatically. Easy. Done.

We often have better outcomes post surgery. We have increased survival from cancers plus lower incidences of cancers and many other conditions such as COPD, fatalities from infectious diseases, premature birth and menopause, scoliosis, type 1 diabetes, UTI. The list goes on and on.

Ten, fat pads help our bodies function.

If some of these you're like, what does this mean? What's going on? Then I'm going to go into it more, you know, the not obvious ones in the podcast.

Number 11, being underestimated and sometimes being able to surprise people. Isn't that nice, right? Because fat people, they can't do that. Do you know what I love doing? This is going to yoga. I'm very stretchy and so I'm able to get into yoga poses and I just feel such a sense of satisfaction that I'm making this up in my head, right? This could be true or not, but the people around me are like, oh, that person's probably going to really suck at yoga and then I'm, you know, doing all sorts of things that they might not be able to do, do, and I feel like, like eat it, you know, in your face. They might not even be thinking that, but you know, this is my little fantasy in my brain.

Easy to find in a crowd if you have a bigger body, so you're taking up more space. There we go, find your friends quicker.

We have more tattoo space.

We are the tank division in protests, so what that means is that fat people can use their body weight to disrupt and it's especially helpful if you're using a mobility scooter, literally it's like a tank. We are hard to move, physically solid and able to hold space, right? So it's like we're like the, the heavy hitters. Put us in first.

15, fat bodies are better for snow sledding as weight equals more speed downhill.

16, more energy reserves during illness.

17, built-in community radar, so our identity isn't a secret, right? So if you're able to perceive our bodies then you will be able to perceive that we are fat, it's not a secret to others, so it's easier, easier for us to find other fat folks or allies in spaces.

18, great counterweight. Our bodies are a great counterweight, which is useful when balancing things like ladders, canoes or group activities that need weight distribution like, or tug of war. Get a fat person on your team.

19, we have decreased mortality.

20, pregnancy and delivery can be easier.

21, being a part of the fat community. Oh, it's so wonderful.

22, lower death risk after hip fractures.

23, harder to kidnap.

24, environmentally friendly. We need less water in the bath for it to be full, displacement, right?

25, staying fat versus losing weight equals a reduced all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality and hypertension, all reduced in that if you stay fat versus lose weight.

26, more lap space for pets and animals to curl up.

27, great to have sex with. Oh, squish yourself against a fat body, oh my god.

28, better survival from certain diseases.

29, increased wind resistance in a hurricane, you're gonna stay on the floor a little bit longer.

30, built-in storage, so we have storage for items between our stomach rolls. Put something under your tits, yes. Have you seen those, those pictures of that person who is an artist and she puts like brooms under her tits? It's amazing. Very built-in storage, there you go.

30, empathy and increased awareness and understanding of bigotry, right? We've been through it and so we have a little bit more of an understanding of it.

32, easier to apply testosterone gel, so a couple of people told me this, that the extra size of their body gave them more space to put on testosterone gel. One person said that they, uh, I'll tell you when I'll get there, well I'll tell you when you get there.

Okay, 33, adipose tissue, which is fat tissue, is one of the body's most active and dynamic organs. Yes, fat is an organ. Fat adipose tissue produces hormones, communicates with organs, regulates temperature and immunity, cushions organs and joints, supports bone and blood production and aids essential physiological and metabolic functions. Fat is really important for our bodies.

34, we have a safety cushion for organs and joints and bones.

35, we are incredible and resilient as we face discrimination and have survived.

36, mental health, we have lower rates of suicide.

37, we are visually interesting. Fat bodies are made of waves and honey, that's a quote from Rupi Kaur, not the fat bodies bit, but just made of waves and honey, and fat bodies are all different. Fat bodies are all different, right? Our weight can, can, can be in different places, so you can have a big belly or, or big thighs or a big bum or, or arms that have fat folds in different ways. Isn't that so interesting? It's like you don't know what you're gonna get, it's a surprise, it's a party, it's amazing.

38, more likely to survive disasters.

39, keeps us warm.

40, able to hide pregnancy for longer.

41, often we are memorable to people that we meet, our physical distinctiveness can make first impressions stick.

We recover more quickly when hospitalized from COVID.

43, buoyancy.

44, we have momentum advantage in certain sports or activities, so for example roller derby, rugby, I was talking to someone yesterday about sumo wrestling.

45, we are really cool. We are counter culture, right? What makes something cool is that it's, uh, special, away from the norm, right? And we're just, fat bodies are really fucking cool.

46, we can use our belly as a shelf for snacks or a shelf for anything else.

47, our bodies are a physical representation of resistance against anti-fat bias and diet culture.

48, a paintball superpower apparently, if the pellets bounce off without exploding you aren't out, and the softness from our bodies mean that they bounce off. I didn't know that.

49, fat joy, overcoming fat hate to live minus shame. I feel like I should have rounded it up to 50. No, 49 is good, nine's a lucky number for me.

So let's go into more detail about some of these and the science behind them. We're not going to have any science about, you know, our bellies being a snack shelf, you're just going to have to take my word for it. But also I asked in a Facebook group, uh, what are, what are your benefits of being fat? You know, I want to get all these different perspectives and so I want to share some comments from people and also talk about what, what the studies say.

Okay, so this is not in order of what I just said, it was too difficult for me to reorder them anyway.

So, community. We often find each other and develop strong communities and social connections and actually, actually, actually, actually I've spoken about this in another podcast episode, is that fat community protects us from anti-fat bias. So that's what's really cool about fat community too, is that if we are within the quote in group, so the in group is the group of people that we are a part of, if we feel like we're a part of that group and we want to be a part of that group, it helps us survive bias more than if we were like, I don't want to hang out with other fat people or I don't like fat people and I don't want to be associated with them. So just being in fat community helps us survive anti-fat bias. How cool is that?

So comments from people: “When I found fat community, bonds have been made that those who are not challenged by stigma do not get to experience.”

Someone else said, “We talked a lot about how the way we grew up and connected with, with others was shaped by our fatness in many ways we're grateful for.”

Someone else said, “The special communities of fat folks that I'm a member of online, places where everyone is accepted, loved and praised for who they are. Places that, you know, are safe and that everyone is kind where anything other than respect, kindness and compassion is not tolerated at all. I think we fatties are lucky in that respect, the thins miss out on those utterly welcoming online places.”

Oh, how nice is that?

Okay, so the mental health, lower suicide rates.

Someone said being fat and good with it is a blessing to mental health and wellness. The amount of space that gets freed in one's brain when you stop worrying about food and dieting is immense. You suddenly have so much extra time and energy to focus on the things that bring you pleasure or move your life forward and this is not anecdotal, it's backed by, um, by science.

So what the science shows is that, so one study, a systematic review meta analysis, found that this was including millions of people, that people with a lower body weight had around a 1.44 fold increase of risk of death by suicide compared to straight-sized people. So I'm having to decode a language with the O words and stuff and that being fat, a small fat or a larger fat person, was associated with lower risk of suicide relative to straight-sized people.

So the smallest people had the highest risk of death by suicide, then we have straight-sized people and people who have the biggest bodies have the lowest rate of suicide. And then another study, a cohort of over a million British women, mean age was 56, so this is looking at midlife weight and suicide, so they followed a million British women who, the mean age was 56, for 15 years and it showed the same thing, that women with a low BMI had a significantly higher risk of attempted and completed suicide and then fat women had lower similar suicide risks compared to the straight-sized people.

So again, the lower weight women had higher completed or attempted suicide risk and fat people had either the same or reduced compared to straight-sized people and definitely compared to the lower weight people. Why? We don't really know, but researchers are making guesses.

So first, biologically, adipose tissue, so fat tissue, produces hormones like leptin and influences serotonin metabolism which may help regulate mood and impulsivity. Imagine that fat tissue makes us happy. This is a may, you know, may, we don't know, we're guessing, we're guessing, right? But how cool would that be, you know?

Physiologically, fat people may have better metabolic or stress resilience while lower weight people could be lower weight because they have a chronic illness or malnutrition which then increases suicide risk.

Psychologically and socially, some fat folks may develop coping mechanisms for stress and stigma potentially reducing vulnerability. So that's like one of the ones I said where we are resilient and so because we've experienced having to learn to be resilient, we could in that effort be reducing our risk of suicide maybe, you know, that's a theory, sounds pretty, you know, that sounds accurate to me.

Yeah, so that's, that's what the scientists are saying but we don't really know, but I mean it's good news, good news for fat folks, right? That's pretty cool.

And so in regards to that resilience, someone said self-compassion, I've had to learn to love myself rather than rely on the judgments of others. Yeah, so you've had to learn to love yourself, so I guess you're, you're having to learn to get something internally rather than getting that, that, that praise consistently from other people. I guess that is like, that's what the resiliency is really, right?

Okay, so being a bigot filter, someone says my body is a sieve for bad energy, anyone who wants to judge me for my size is not worth my attention so I don't waste time on people as soon as they show me that they're judging me. Someone else says my body screens out assholes from potential friends. Yeah, it's pretty cool to think that hopefully the people we're friends with are not like secret giant anti-fat ding-dongs, hopefully they're not. Can you imagine some of your friends like, oh I really love you and then they're, but I hate that you're, that you're fat, I hate all fat people. Hopefully we'll be able to spot it.

Harder to kidnap, couple of people made comments. I lost weight and now I feel much weaker and more vulnerable to creeps now that I'm easier to carry. Someone else said I'm not afraid of walking down the street by myself because I know weighing so much is going to take a lot to take me down.

Yeah, I think about that, I think about that and also I thought about that when I was at school, you know, when I was being like, you know, when I was being bullied. But you know how, uh, so if people said shit to me about my weight, I always kind of felt a sense of safety in regards to that. They were going to say verbally, they were going to bully me, but it was probably unlikely that they were going to physically attack me because I would so just be able to dominate them just with my size unless they were some, I don't know, trained fighter and that's, that's extremely, only a trained fighter can take me down. But, you know, as kids, you know, like say if some little girl had learned karate, so maybe, you know, she'd have some tricks up her sleeve, but just an average little girl, um, was probably not going to be able to beat me in, you know, a shoving match or something, right? And that gave me a little bit of a sense of safety, but I know that's not for everyone, right? I know that even if you were the biggest person you could still obviously be attacked and stuff, but that's just something that, that my brain, my brain gave me.

All right, so decreased mortality. So by the way, mortality, if you're not sure what that, that word means, mortality is the total number of deaths from any cause, so diseases, accidents, environmental factors within a specific population during a specific time, so total number of deaths.

So decreased mortality, so you know how you see all these studies, like fatness or like headlines, fatness is costing us 50 billion dollars a second because fat people are just greedy horrible people, um, and fat people are dying at some extraordinary rate or fatness is the leading cause of death.

So this, this, this, this rhetoric came out of a CDC study that came out that said 365,000 deaths a year were caused by fatness, but there's a bit of a hoo-ha a year later, um, someone else who also worked at the CDC, Katherine Flegal, comes out with a systematic review and meta analysis, uh, looking at 97 prospective studies including 2.8 million adults and 270,000 deaths. So she had this huge data pool from all of these 97 different studies, right, and so brought that all together and said let's look at the data from almost 3 million adults, let's see what we find.

What she found was that that number that came out from the CDC, the same place that she worked, was wildly inaccurate. Um, so her, the, it's not just her but we're saying Katherine Flegal, but so her paper shows that fatness quote causes in big quotation marks 112,000 deaths, but it also reduces deaths by 86,000 because, um, small fat people have lower mortality, which equals 26,000 deaths a year due to fatness versus the original CDC was 365,000. Big difference, right?

And this is, this is famously called the O-word paradox, the obesity paradox. Something to know as well with that number of 26,000, we don't know why these people have, have, have died, right? Like they are fat people who have been classed as dying from fatness but we don't know the mechanism at play, right? So we don't know, there's a fat person who died and they happen to have diabetes, were they then saying, um, were they then said to have died from fatness when they could have, you know, died from something else? And also fatness doesn't cause type 2 diabetes, so anyway.

From this, this study, the, the, the paradox that they found is that the thinnest people are more likely to die versus fatter people and their data was, it shows a like a U-shaped curve. So the, the thin people had the highest, higher mortality and straight-sized people had, so that it's like a U, straight-sized people had, um, lower mortality than the, the, the very thin people, but then small fat people had the lowest mortality, so it was better to be a small fat person than it was to be a straight-sized person or in using their language normal weight or overweight.

And then the U went back up for the largest fat people so, but it was still better to be the largest fat person than it was to be the smallest person, so the risks were higher being a small person than it was being a fat person and being a small fat person had the best outcomes. So that's pretty cool. Decreased mortality, yay.

All right, so and then connected with this, that staying fat versus losing weight means that we have reduced all-cause mortality, so all-cause mortality, number of deaths from any cause within a specific population, and so reduced all-cause mortality, reduced cardiovascular disease mortality and reduced hypertension.

So again, we have a systematic review and meta analysis of observational studies including over 1.2 million older adults found that weight loss was associated with around a 59 percent higher all-cause mortality risk compared to stable weight. Weight cycling, which is losing weight, gaining weight, was associated with around a 66 percent higher all-cause mortality risk than stable weight and weight gain carried a smaller increased mortality risk around 10 percent compared to stability. So the safest thing to do is staying the same.

Same, staying the same weight even if you're fat is the safest, right? The second safest was gaining weight, so there was an increased risk but still was the, the risk was the lowest, around about 10 percent increased risk of mortality. The least safe was weight fluctuation, which is what happens anytime people are losing weight, you know, not, not always, almost every time, um, lose weight and then you put the weight, weight back on, and that was around a 66 percent increase to all-cause mortality versus stable weight.

And then weight loss without putting it back on, that was, um, a 59 percent. So safest is just stay the same weight, next gain weight, next lose weight, next weight cycling. So basically just stay the same weight and if you stayed the same weight it showed that you have reduced risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality, and hypertension.

Uh, quote, body weight fluctuation was associated with increased risk for all-cause mortality, CVD mortality, and morbidity of CVD and hypertension. So we have two separate studies showing this and this was one of the studies too was looking at, um, the older adults, um, and so especially in, in older adults it's really important to have a stable weight, um, if possible.

So when you know when we're, you know, telling older people to lose weight to live longer, it's just no, no, no, it's so, it's really scary.

All right, so increased survival from cancers plus lower incidences of cancer and many other conditions such as COPD, fatalities from infectious diseases, premature birth, menopause, scoliosis, type 1 diabetes, UTIs, the list is so long that I'm just, I'm just, it's just, you know, I wasn't going to include in that summary.

Um, so Paul Ernsberger wrote a book, Rethinking Obesity, and in it we've got a list of all of the different things with links to, to studies.

So cancer, overall cancer incidence, so fatness is associated with a lower incidence of, um, so lower cancer incidence, overall cancer mortality, premenopausal breast cancer, stomach cancer, lung, colon, uh, meningioma, I'm not familiar with that, meningioma, it's not melanoma if you're shouting at me saying it's a melanoma. Meningioma, the most common type of primary brain tumor accounting for approximately 30 percent of all brain tumors. They originate in the meninges, which is the outer layer tissue between the skull and the brain. Okay, haven't heard of that one. Uh, okay, uh, and so then we've also got bronchitis, COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, um, infectious disease overall, fatalities without tuberculosis, um, UTIs.

Like, I wonder why? Like UTIs, what do you think? Could it be UTIs, could it be that we have more fat, more, more fat on our vulva, meaning it's harder for bacteria to get into the urinary tract? What do you think? Lower incidences of a UTI. All right.

Also we have bone disease, so osteoporosis, hip fracture, and vertebral fracture, cardiovascular disease, gynecological and obstetrics, so eclampsia, premature birth, vaginal laceration, hot flashes, premature menopause, and other things. So anemia, type 1 diabetes, peptic ulcer, scoliosis, suicide and fatness is associated with more favorable prognosis in type 2 diabetes, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and rheumatoid arthritis.

And you know with this, we have, you know, fatness is associated with, uh, better outcomes and worse outcomes in other areas and so me saying all of this is not, it's not saying that, uh, fatness has no downsides or whatever, you know? I said this at the beginning but just in case anyone is taking this as, I'm just thinking about the body positive The New York Times thing, you know, there's someone's going to take this and be like Vinny said that fat people never get cancer. I don't know, just cherry-pick something, uh, that me sharing this is just sharing, um, good outcomes when we only ever hear bad outcomes and that doesn't mean that there are not bad outcomes, but we don't know why there are bad outcomes, um, and we do know and we don't know.

So we don't know it's adipose tissue the same way I'm like I wonder what causes this, so you know saying we have a better outcome with COPD, we don't know that adipose tissue does something that causes a lower incidence of COPD, right? So that's not the claim here. Some correlation is happening, we don't know why.

Same with, uh, studies showing say if there was a study showing that fat people have worse incidences, like, um, of a disease, the studies are not showing why in regards to the conclusion is not adipose tissue. We don't have studies that show adipose tissue causes worse outcomes. What we do have is very good guesses that it's, say it with me, these three things, I've said this so many times, poor health care, lack of access to health care, subpar health care, being told to go on a diet, right? So health care, experiencing bias, bias stigma discrimination is not good for our health and finally dieting, so dieting for losing weight, putting it back on is also not good for our health.

Strong fat people are strong, so carrying more weight can build strength. So some comments, being fat can make you strong. When I started power lifting my coach told me I had been weight training my whole life moving my fat body through the world. I can outlift anyone at the gym. That's so fucking cool. That's my, that's my toxic trait is that I am so sure that I could lift any weight with no data to back it up. I just have this, this irrational belief that I could go in and just be like some strongman with no training. I don't know, I just have this confidence. It totally is probably not based in reality.

Um, okay, so I don't, I know this isn't everyone's experience but I love my strength. I've always been really strong as a fat girl. Someone else says I box and it makes your punch land much harder, I guess because you're using your whole body weight to, to land a punch. It's not just like your arm.

Someone else said, uh, I work with kids and earlier this year I got very, very sick, the sickest I've ever been. I didn't eat for six whole straight days. Nothing would stay down. I suffered for a total of 12 days and lost many pounds, not sure how many because I don't own a scale. A thin person would have, have really been run ragged from this, and from this illness and maybe even lost weight they couldn't gain back, but me I was just fine baby. This is, this is anecdotal, right? So all right.

So, uh, stronger bones, less risk from osteoporosis, better survival from hip fractures. Higher weight is associated with better survival after hip fractures and we've got some studies. Um, okay, oh we've got, um, this one that looks at one-year survival and discharge in fat patients post hip fracture and what they found was lower mortality and higher likelihood of returning to independent living and with patients with a BMI of over 26 had a 2.6 times higher odds of surviving one year compared to people with lower weights. Okay, so we've got a couple of studies, studies for that.

Comments about this, uh, the stronger bones, less risk from osteoporosis, blah blah blah. Someone says this might be weird but I find that as opposed to my smaller counterparts I don't get hurt when I fall down. This has also come in handy in stage combat and physical theatre. Oh cool. And while I've had lots of physical mishaps throughout my life I've never broken a bone.

Someone else says I know bodies vary greatly but I generally think the padding my fat gives me is responsible for this phenomenon. Always the same person. Someone else said reply to that anecdotal but I fell off a moving horse recently and didn't break anything. I seriously think it was due to the extra padding.

Someone else says I don't bruise and I never had a broken bone and I would literally climb chain-link, literally climb chain-link baseball backstops and jump off. I mean I bruise easily, but I and the bones I've broken is just digits.

So, but I've never broken a bone. I don't know if that's because I'm fat or what, uh, who knows, but there's cushion there, right?

Soft and cozy, people are saying. Someone said my kids love snuggling me, my nephews use my tummy as a hand trampoline, my body is so cozy and soft. My lips, my kids love snuggling me. I love snuggling my fat friends. I can inspire my other fat friends to love their bodies by sharing my love for my own.

Easier to apply testosterone gel. Okay, so someone says when I was on testosterone for a bit it was so much easier to spread the gel and get it to absorb quicker. Someone else says there's a chronic shortage of HRT patches in Australia at the moment so I have to use gel. I was just thinking last night that it's easier to apply because I'm fat and I have more belly space.

More likely to survive disasters. As Homer Simpson says, I'm drought and famine resistant. Someone else says fat can help retain body heat and resist environmental conditions. Someone else says ability to swim and stay warm enough later into the year. My thin sister got hypothermia but I was fine.

All right, so for the social anxiety people have said, uh, people don't like sitting next to me so I get more space on buses and in theatres, is great for social anxiety. Someone else says people actively avoid sitting next to me on public transit. I usually have plenty of space. Someone else says I'm invisible to men. I almost never get catcalled or creeped on in public.

All right, so safety cushion for organs and bones, so let's look at the science. Um, okay, this study, fat patients who had experienced a fall had a significantly lower injury severity score. So this study is saying that, um, falls are a leading cause of injury and a significant public health issue, especially in the older population. Um, and the incidence of falls that lead to emergency unit admission is growing with the increased size and rapid growth of the geriatric population, um, and that those people who were, um, O-word, so the larger fat people had less severe injuries compared to people with lower body weight.

And the ideas around this was that fat provides a protection, like a layer of protection, right? Um, and that it cushions organs and blood vessels and there's in your stomach there's literally this like an apron of fat. So when, if they do a surgery on your stomach, they would, if then they're cutting into it, they would, you know, cut into it and then you'll see them, they lift this kind of, yeah, apron and it's not your belly, it's something that's next to your organs. They lift it up to access the organs underneath and it's, it's literally a layer of protection, right? It does other things too.

Some comments from people, uh, my elderly father has fallen several times and I'm really confident that his hips have gotten horribly bruised but he's never had a broken hip because he's got extra cushion. Someone else says ditto, I've fallen a couple of times in the last few years, my belly broke my fall. Someone else yes, when I fell off my bike the doctor told me I would probably have broken my arm if it wasn't so well padded. Someone else, I just had a terrible fall and a heavy TV ended up smushing my guts. I'm pretty sure my gorgeous fat belly protected me from organ damage plus kids like hugging it.

Someone else says it helps protect your bones and internal organs in car accidents and falls. I read an article years ago about a woman who started loving her fat after a doctor told her her fat saved her life in a car accident.

That's cool. It's nice to hear these doctors saying nice things, right?

Okay, so recover quicker when hospitalised from COVID. Okay, so we have a study, a multi-centre ICU study in Australia and New Zealand found that patients with very high BMI, over 40, had higher survival up to two years after ICU admission compared with lower BMI groups.

And then we have a meta analysis that found that fatness was not associated with higher death rates once hospitalised. Heavier patients survived at similar, and sometimes higher, rates compared to lower weight counterparts.

And this was a big thing during the height of COVID, that it was like, well, fat people are going to die sooner and we know that fat people have higher, uh, worse outcomes and higher risk of getting the disease.

What was found afterwards, when we have lots of data, is that, um, if you treat fat people the same way as straight-sized people, they have the same and sometimes better outcomes.

So there was a study with bird flu and it showed that fat people had worse outcomes. And then, when you controlled for care that they received and looked only at quick care that was given at the same time and in the same way, fat people had the same or better outcomes.

And that was looking at, that was looking at the one about COVID, was looking at hospitalisation, mechanical ventilation, and death among 10,000 U.S. veterans with COVID. And they also found that not only fat people, but with this study, that Black people and Hispanic people also, uh, didn't see increased risk of adverse outcomes because the VA system, which is, um, for veterans, was much more equitable and the care they received was similar to their, you know, white counterparts, or for fat people, their straight-sized counterparts.

Okay, great to have sex with.

I want to read a bit from this piece by Gina Tonic called Why I Only Want to Have Sex with Fat Bodies.

Gina writes:

With one X, whose body resembled mine, we settled into a regular routine of smoking a joint, eating a massive takeaway and shagging the night away. It didn't matter that the fried rice made me bloat because we were both already big anyway. Afterwards we would press our bellies together and it was the best because we were the same. My belly, boobs or any part of my body wasn't filling a groove under his ribs like a jigsaw piece, but our fat spread against each other and left me fulfilled. This secret ceremony was ours and it was one we held most nights during my second year of uni. It changed the way I fucked and the way I felt about myself forever.

Continuing on to a different section, but I've discovered that fucking thin people who want to fuck fat people and fucking fat people who want to fuck fat people is different in its intent. When a skinny man grabs my belly and begs me to sit on his face, it is him seeing what is alien to him and getting off on it. When a fat person pulls my body on top of theirs, next to theirs and into theirs, it is them looking for themselves. For both of us it's finding ourselves at home.

Although I'm far from a murderer or a fictional character, when I'm sleeping with fellow fatties, I'm finding desire in myself. This comes from their desire for me and my desire for them. The physical joy I can receive from a fat body means not just that mine can have worth, but that my body can give me a delight I previously thought was only available to thin frames. Isn't that nice?

I watched a video recently, it was like a trailer for some series about trans love, something like that, queer trans love. Anyway, there's this queer trans couple and they said that they loved belly shower time, and either one or both of them were fat. I think, you know, both of them are fat. And they said that they love going to the shower and then rubbing their bellies together, all warm and slippery. And I was like, oh yeah, that sounds nice. I don't think I've ever done that. I need to do that. I need to get naked with a fat person and rub our bellies together in the shower. That sounds really nice, doesn't it?

Okay, so pregnancy and delivery can be easier.

So some comments, and then some science. People were saying it's easier to hide pregnancy. This person says I love the benefits of being fat while pregnant. My body was strong and already used to carrying weight. I wasn't horrified by how my body was changing or worried other people would just think that I was fat like some of my thinner friends. My clothes were mostly wide fitting and could easily accommodate some extra so I didn't have to buy maternity clothes, and since I already had a big belly I could hide my pregnancy for as long as I wanted.

So the science says lower chances of experiencing minor and severe tearing during birth. So we have a large retrospective study of 32,600 deliveries. They examined the risk factor for third and fourth degree perineal lacerations, which is the most severe tears, and what they found was that fatness was associated with a lower risk of severe tearing compared with lower BMI groups. After adjusting for factors like age, delivery method and birth weight, fatness remained a significant protective factor. And so the conclusion from that study: being fat may protect against third and fourth degree lacerations independent of parity, race, birth weight and mode of delivery.

Another study, 45,500 births, compared straight-sized women to fat people and found that there was, fat people had a lower odds of minor perineal trauma. And so we have both, both minor tears and significant tears both reduced risk of that, reduced incidence of that, and that's controlling for like, oh well what if you know all the fat people looked at they had tiny babies? No, they controlled for things like that and then type of birth and whatnot.

So there's some potential explanations. No, we don't, people don't really agree on why, but we've got some hypotheses.

First, fat people can have more soft tissue, perineal soft tissue that may distribute pressure during birth. So I guess they're saying that, you know, the perineum between your bum and your vagina, there's more tissue there so that it means that there's a little bit more give versus a straight-sized person is is a theory.

Lower rates of instrumental delivery, so forceps or vacuum, which increases tear risk. Why is there lower rates of instrumental delivery? Hmm, I don't know, but there we go.

Differences in pelvic floor mechanics or tissue elasticity within the pelvic floor. Hmm, why I don't know. Do you know difference in the pelvic floor? Hmm I wonder if having a bigger body, you know how, how having a bigger body, you know you're carrying more weight so you're, you're theoretically your body is used to carrying weight therefore you're stronger. I wonder if anything to do with pelvic floor stuff, the weight of your body on your pelvic floor means that it is more robust in some way. This is really spitball I'm just pulling it out of the air of some, you know, what could be happening.

I don't know is the answer. They don't know is the answer. But it's kind of interesting to think about.

Okay, better survival from certain diseases.

By the way if you're watching on YouTube you may have noticed that I've just changed into a different version of Vinny, Vinny from the future. There's some sections here where you'll see Vinnie from the future. If you're watching on YouTube maybe you can hear a voice difference.

This podcast has taken me so long with the organising of studies. We have so many studies and creating the social post so that I've got this list linking to the studies and numbering them and blah blah blah. It's taken me so long.

Anyway, I realized that when I was originally recording there were a few studies I’d missed out, so I’m coming back to tell you about those. All right, okay.

So, better survival from certain diseases. Now we’ve got a few studies to show you here. By the way, I don’t know if I mentioned when I recorded this—when I’m talking about studies, if I say, “oh here’s a couple of studies,” it’s not that there’s only a couple of studies. It’s just that I might have decided to pick out these one, two, three, four studies.

Okay, so for this section we’ve got three studies.

First, the meta-analysis: they took 26 studies. By the way, if you don’t know what a meta-analysis is, it’s where they look at all of the studies within a certain parameter. So say if you’re looking for, “I wonder what we know about the outcome of eating pickles is on the elderly population,” you would then search for studies that include people within a certain age range that eat pickles, and other parameters that you’ve set. And then you’re looking at what these studies as a group together are saying. So it’s not just that you’ve got this one study of 13 people that shows ABC. The information should theoretically be more robust because we’ve got more people in different areas, different places in the world, more information.

So anyway, this one: 26 studies and 218,000 participants with acute coronary syndrome. And quote from this study—it starts off:

“In chronic diseases, chronic kidney disease, chronic heart failure, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, their survival is observed in small fat or medium fat patients.”

So they’re like, by the way, small fat and medium fat patients do really well with these. And then this study is looking at another area, continuing recently. Above-mentioned phenomenon called the O-word paradox has been described in patients with coronary artery disease. So that’s what they’re looking at in this study.

What they found was the highest risk of mortality was found in—shall we have a guess? Highest risk of mortality in people with the lowest weights. Small fat, medium fat, and large fat people had lower mortality compared to those who were straight-sized.

So that was looking at 218,000 people. So being fat was better, even if you are a—they use a word “severely O-word.” So even the fattest people had a better outcome with coronary artery disease than did straight-sized people.

Okay, next: systematic review, 55,000 patients. Fat folks had a better overall survival and cancer-specific survival for colorectal cancer than straight-sized people. Higher BMI was significantly associated with more favorable colorectal cancer outcomes compared with straight size people. And the smallest patients had the worst overall survival.

Next study: meta-analysis found that fat folks had lower mortality from pneumonia, and the risk of death decreased as BMI increased. This is from—they used 13 studies on pneumonia risk, which was 1.5 million participants, and then they used 10 studies on pneumonia mortality, and that was 1.3 million participants.

All right, so the higher that someone’s BMI was, the risk of death decreased. Better outcomes post surgery.

All right, so we’ve got this retrospective study with 10,400 patients who were scheduled for elective non-cardiac surgery. And what they found was that fat folks had lower long-term mortality after surgery compared to straight-sized people. And who had the highest risk? The smallest people.

So for non-elective—for sorry, scheduled—so 10,400 patients scheduled for elective non-cardiac surgery—the fat people fared the best.

Next study: we’ve got a prospective, multi-institutional, risk-adjusted cohort study of 118,000 patients undergoing non-bariatric general surgery. Okay, general surgery.

What they found: fat people had significantly lower mortality risk after non-bariatric surgery than non—than straight-size people.

I guess because they’re—they say “after non-bariatric surgery” because they didn’t include bariatric surgery in the study.

After adjusting for all significant pre-operative risk factors, the risk of death according to BMI exhibited a reverse J-shaped relationship. So imagine the letter J, flip it around. People with the lowest body weight had the highest risk, and for the people in the bigger bodies, the highest rates—the highest risk was for straight-sized people, and the lowest rates were for small and medium fat people.

All right, last one for this one: better outcomes post-surgery. 18 studies comprising 88,000 participants in this meta-analysis. What they looked at: post-operative mortality was significantly lower in fat folks. And this is for lung cancer surgery.

And they found that fatness neither increases the risk of complication nor prolongs hospital stays and is generally linked to reduced post-operative mortality in this surgery.

What they found is that it took them longer to do surgery on fat folks, but the outcomes were better. And I found that really interesting—that it’s taken them longer, presumably because, as we know, surgeons are not working on—or not being trained on—fat bodies. A lot of times when people are saying, “I can’t perform surgery on someone of your BMI,” it’s because they haven’t been trained to and they don’t have the equipment to. It’s a them problem, not a your fat body problem.

And this, I’m guessing, could be showing that. But even with that—them taking longer to do the surgery on fat people—fat people still have better outcomes. Interesting.

All right, so the one that I like the best is the adipose tissue, which is fat, is one of the body’s most active and dynamic organs. Fat produces all of these wonderful things. Let me tell you all of the things. This is from a Scientific American article, and then I’ve got the studies from that too.

The article is titled: “Fat Doesn’t Deserve Its Bad Rap. Fat Is One of the Most Dynamic, Active Organs We Have. Why Can’t We Just Learn to Love It?” by Bethany Brookshire, an award-winning science journalist.

In the past, we thought that fat just stored extra energy. But now we know it plays a really important role in keeping the body running correctly.

So let me give you a couple of quotes from this article.

It might seem odd to think of fat as an organ, in part because many of the organs we think about are so contained. There is only one liver, only two kidneys. But adipose tissue is stored all over the body. The most abundant form, white adipose tissue, lives partially in places like the omentum.

Oh, that’s the name of that thing on your—you know—the apron on your belly. Let me just double check. I think that’s what it’s called. Rings a bell.

Yes, the omentum is a large, apron-like fold of fatty, vascularized tissue in the abdomen Extending from the stomach to cover the intestines.

All right, say okay.

So it lives in the omentum, folds of connective tissue that form a fatty protective apron over the organs in your abdomen. Most white adipose tissue—80 percent of our total fat mass—is subcutaneous or beneath the skin. It tends to be concentrated in the stomach, hip, butt, and thighs.

We strongly associate this tissue with laziness. Instead, it’s full of energy. Each cell contains a large droplet filled with multi-chained molecules called triglycerides, which it releases as fuel.

White adipose tissue’s ability to grow and shrink is a feature, not a bug. It is constantly swelling and draining, taking up energy and sending it out again multiple times a day. Thanks to fat, our biochemistry hums along smoothly.

Continuing: while white adipose tissue has one large fatty droplet, brown adipose tissue has many tiny droplets and lots of mitochondria. It is thermogenic, increasing energy use to keep us warm. These relatively small fat depots can increase energy expenditure in humans between 40 and 80 percent, running hard to make sure that we run hot.

And in between there is beige fat. This adipose tissue starts white, but if it is constantly exposed to cold temperatures, some of it decides on a career change. It makes more small fat droplets and becomes capable of creating heat. These beige fat cells can then convert back to white fat cells when summer comes again.

What? How fucking cool is that? Like the fat will literally be like, “Oh, this bitch is cold, let’s turn into a different type of fat—brown fat,” and then bikini season says, “I’m gonna go back to being white fat, we don’t need to be warmed up anymore.”

And the thing about the fat that expands easily—so this one study that I’m going to be linking can protect us against diabetes and insulin resistance. So this side of us, take a dynamic organ that’s really cool.

And also, the other benefits and functions that we overlook with fat: it helps us maintain a stable metabolism, hormone production—so fat tissue secretes hormones such as leptin (remember that with the suicide thing)—leptin that help regulate appetite, energy balance, and metabolism.

Communication with other body systems: so fat tissue interacts with the brain, gut, immune system, and other organs to help regulate body functions.

Immunity and inflammation regulation: so fat cells release immune signals that can increase or reduce inflammation in the body.

It offers structural support for organs and tissues and cushions blood vessels, keeping them safe too. Do you think about like a blood vessel just hanging out, but then it’s almost like putting it in bubble wrap, isn’t it?

Fat pads in areas like knees help distribute body weight and protect joints.

Blood and bone support: so fat in bone marrow contributes to bone turnover. So bone turnover means creating new bone and the production of new blood cells, meaning that fat cells inside your bone marrow help regulate the ongoing process where bone is constantly broken down and rebuilt because your bones aren’t static—they’re always being renewed through a process called bone remodelling.

So our bones are able to stay strong because of that fat in bone marrow.

It’s probably why bone marrow tastes good, right? Because you know some people eat bone marrow and they’re like, “Oh this tastes so good.” It’s probably because it Has that fat in it, right? Because that fat is what makes it taste good. Fat is not the only thing that makes meat taste good, but I’m guessing, you know, fat is a lot of the reason why meat tastes good. I’m not—I don’t eat a lot of meat, so you know—but this is what I’ve heard on the grapevine.

So, the final quote from the article: “Diets and drugs sell the public on losing weight without regard for what kinds of tissues are being lost or how that loss might affect the rest of the body.”

Exactly. You know, we think about fat tissue as just this baddie, you know, as the villain. Fat tissue is the thing that stands in the way of us being thin and wonderful. But we need it to live.

So with fat pads helping our body function, we also have this interesting concept—let me read it.

So there’s something called the infrapatellar fat pad. So it’s a pad of fat that’s located just below your kneecap. And scientists are interested in it because they think that it’s not just fat—it’s actually doing something important in the role of how our knees work.

So not only do we have extra cushioning around our knees—literally, say if you’re gardening or whatever, or you know, on your knees, I don’t know, getting fucked, whatever you’re on your knees for—it’s not just there as a cushion, but it’s doing something else.

So even though this fat pad doesn’t touch the cartilage of the knee joint directly, it sits next to the synovial membrane, which is tissue that lines the inside of the knee and produces lubricating fluid. And as we know that fat is biologically active—actually, do you know that yet? Have I told you yet in this? Yes, I have told you that.

So it’s not just this dead tissue, is what I used to think fat was. It’s biologically active, meaning that it releases chemicals and signals. What they think is that that fat pad on your knee may influence how the synovial membrane behaves.

So the membrane under your kneecap—and because they’re so closely connected structurally and chemically, the researchers think that the fat pad and that membrane basically function together as one system in the knee, and they can inform each other and support each other, basically. I thought that was really cool.

Oh, and I think about other fat pads, things like our heel. So this study talked about how the heel fat pad bears repeated loads during locomotion and spreads them over the heel and absorbs shocks.

I think of them—that’s so cool. Like fat is a shock absorber. I wonder if fat people have more fun on roller coasters because of shock absorption. What do you think? If you’re getting, you know, shook around on a roller coaster—first off, if they’ve made the roller coaster for fat people, if you can get on the roller coaster—you know that jostling around sometimes, you know that stuff can be painful.

I wonder if we experience less pain, therefore have more fun. And then we have that shock absorption from, you know, the belt, the restraint across our stomach, and that’s like protecting our organs too. And I wonder because we’ve got that greater momentum due to body size on certain rides, not on a roller coaster because that’s not dependent on your weight, but like a, you know, one of those rides like a swing or whatever that we would have more fun because of our body. We’ve got cushioning, we’ve got body weight to make it more fun. What do you think?

This is totally out there theory, I know. Like I know that on a roller coaster when I was a kid my teacher was like, “if you want to go the fastest go on the back because it, you know, it whips around and it whips the people at the back the fastest.”

So I’m wondering if there’s anything like that to do with body size.

Anyway, whatever. This is totally me just being in awe of cool fat bodies. And I always thought that it was literally like an insulation that the fat tissue created a layer of warmth because we had this thing, this like volume. But it’s the actual brown fat that generates heat—thermogenesis—and sending messages to our bodies saying we’re cold, let’s just get some heat going.

Like I always thought of fat as this almost dead thing. Not that it was doing stuff. Poor fat. The fat’s like, “hey I’m over here just like, you know, keeping you alive and stuff,” and then you know everyone’s just trying to like chop me up and like suck me out and I’m just trying to, you know, regulate your body girl, and why are you doing this to me?

You know, our poor fat.

One of the things—so fat pads help our body function. So in our anus, fat pads are essential to maintain fecal continence. Isn’t that cool? We need fat pads in our anus so that we probably—doesn’t just fall out of our bum holes. That’s not what happens. If you don’t have fat in your bum it’s not just going to fall out. But you know what I mean.

And then fat pads all around your body, you know, even just sitting on your bum—not your anus bit, but you know, your bum cheeks sitting down—and the other ways, the other joints, and you know being on your knees or all of that.

That fat pads helping to just live life.

So that is a whole lot of benefits of being fat.

My favourite is fat community. I feel like we’re part of this like little secret club, this exclusive club. Although I mean technically it’s not exclusive because most people are fat. But fat people who don’t hate themselves—that is a more exclusive club that feels really nice.

So I think that’s my favourite. And maybe bigot filter. And the cushioning. I do like the cushioning too. Yeah, that’s nice.

I keep looking at them and be like actually I like this, I like. Oh the resilient thing too—the resilient thing. I feel like that is like one of my favourite things about me, is I feel like I’m quite resilient in my brain. And you know like we can’t ever know that shit’s not going to happen in our lives. You know, who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.

But I feel really safe. Like I trust myself that I will be able to survive and find the resources to survive. You know, it might be shit, but I can survive it. And that feels really good—that I have that resilience.

And throughout my life I’ve proven to myself that I can survive shitty stuff. So I guess that resilience starting from having a fat body as a child and the very first understanding is that my body was wrong. And so coming out of the gate we’re already kind of having to learn to overcome that stuff, which is not fair, we shouldn’t have to—but made me awesome.

Did it make me awesome? Or am I just awesome just generally? Probably both. Probably both.

All right, well if this episode brought you any happiness, joy, made you go “oh, oh really,” then feel free to leave a—what’s the thing when you say stuff about the show? Review. A review of the show.

And if you’re feeling really generous and loving, feel free to donate on Ko-fi. Link in the show notes. Link in the show notes for all the studies. There’s so many fucking links for studies, I’m sorry. Well maybe not, you know, maybe you don’t like that stuff.

But anyway, all in the show notes. Fierce Fatty forward slash 206 because we’re episode 206.

Thank you for being here and hanging out with me. I hope you’re feeling good. And remember you are worthy. You always will be. Stay fierce fatty. Goodbye.

Say hello goodbye.