fatphobia and ableism is so insidious. You can look up like, food, and it’ll say “eating a lot of food causes diabetes” and you’re like oh dang what? I thought we didn’t know the cause of diabetes. So you look up what causes diabetes and it says “we still don’t know what causes diabetes” bruh they’re just making shit up to give people eating disorders
it’s becoming clearer that “being fat makes you diabetic” is actually misapplied observation and like, backwards cause and effect. insulin resistance is the main factor in type 2 diabetes. it was thought being fat made you insulin resistant. turns out it’s the other way round; insulin resistance causes the body to store fat at a greater rate. like yes, once the weight is gained it can then contribute more to resistance and things can snowball, but the initiating factor is not being fat.
#type 1 is caused by no insulin production type 2 is caused by insulin resistance #and what causes the resistance or pancreatic damage is often uncertain #absolutely poor diet and lack of exercise can EXACERBATE EXISTING TYPE 2 DIABETES #but eating carbs and eating sugar will not give you diabetes; neither t1 or t2 #also keto is a fucking scam and a lie and puts people in the hospital on a regular basis
Also worth mentioning how hard it is to find good advice around healthy eating or exercise because almost all of the information available assumes your goal is to lose weight. So you’ll find a hundred articles for how you can reduce calories, but nothing about how you can eat more vegetables while managing a budget and still feeling satiated. Because professionals assume your goal is to lose weight, not to feel better in your body. It’s so incredibly frustrating.
As a chronically Ill/disabled fat person who just got diagnosed with full blown diabetes:
They want to blame us, because then it’s our faults and they can feel good about themselves for ‘doing everything right’. That’s it.
Diabetes can’t ‘just happen’ because then it could happen to anyone. The same with every other illness and disability. If it can ‘just happen’ then this perfectly ‘healthy’, skinny person could do everything ‘right’ and still one day develop diabetes or other illnesses. They can’t handle that, so they pick at every little possible thing that a fat/ill/disabled person has ever done until they find that thing you supposedly did ‘wrong’ to cause this thing that they so desperately don’t want to happen to them.
And this goes for everyone, including doctors and other medical professionals because they have been taught this same thing. That there must be a reason this thing happened to a person, and it’s easier if it was their fault. To look for that thing the patient must have done wrong, because then you have the ‘answer’ and the blame. And then you, the medical professional, are not culpable for any misstatements, misunderstandings, misdiagnosis, that you have done or will do.
And the cycle will continue forever as long as self-proclaimed healthy, skinny people continue to live in fear of ever not being healthy, skinny people. Being fat and sick is one of the worst things they can ever imagine to happen, and it must be our faults because if not… if not then what horrible, terrible things to then happen to them and their precious bodies?
My risk for diabetes was really high in my early 20s because I have PCOS, which fucks up your insulin resistance.
I’m just as fat as I was then, but my A1C is absolutely fine because I have been on hormonal birth control for so long it’s gotten balanced out.
I’m not even eating as well as I did back then, but I’m less at risk of diabetes than I was because my underlying hormonal imbalance has been managed.
Being fat doesn’t make you predisposed to having diabetes, being predisposed to diabetes makes you fat
Sometimes I think that, in spite of all things the biological sciences have actually revealed about how our bodies actually work, the field of Western medicine remains just as superstitious as it was 600 years ago.
The teachings around the how of it all has changed, but not the underlying assumptions around the why of it all. It’s still just as focused on purging the “sinner” of “evils” as it was when treatises on health were being written by Christian monks.