Re: not knowing any previously fat people who have lost lots of weight and kept it off. You can hear all about people who have done just that in "Thin for Life", a book about weight loss and maintenance that talks to all those people who have lost weight and kept it off. The thing is, lots of people who have lost weight and kept it off aren't exactly broadcasting "I used to be really fat!"
Myself for example: I was about 30 lbs overweight until my mid 20s. Then, I started regular exercising, low-fat eating and WALLAH... I dropped 30 lbs. It has been 15 years, and I am successfully maintaining it off. Most people never know that I was fat for the first part of my life.
It takes effort, and continual recommittment, but as some say "Being fat is hard, controlling what you eat is hard. You choose your hard.

The system of food and culture and health is larger than a single human body. The system is society-wide. The individual person attempting to eat well is trying to choose the right foods and prepare them healthfully, but must deal with cultural bias, marketing, fucked up government subsidies for cheaper high-calorie, additive-laden processed foods, ignorance, etc. Food is emotional. Food is more than fuel, it is fraught. It is ritual. It is reward. Are you suggesting that you don't sit down with your asshole family for big face-stuffing holiday meals, or some similar bullshit? Food is symbolic? "The system" is not closed. It is complex. It connects us all.

Hey fatchick (#99),

I really appreciate your post. I was raped a few years ago and put on a "protective" layer of fat. I, too, wish people wouldn't be so quick to judge why a person may be overweight.

These comments are extremely nauseating from a supposedly liberal audience.

I am typing slowly to avoid simply launching into a fit of profanity, but: COULD YOU PEOPLE BE MORE CLASSIST? Jesus Christ, how ignorant can you be? Fat people are far more likely to be also be poor people in this country. Rich people are more likely to be skinny. It's really great that you have a Whole Foods right next door, but a large part of this country is living below the poverty line and facing hunger daily* (yet we're a nation of fatties!) and these people can not afford fresh fruits and vegetables. "Eating healthy" is NOT cheap. What makes more sense to you: feeding your family for $0.49 a head on ramen and paying the rent, or spending $4+ dollars a head on a fresh chicken breast with fresh veggie sides.. which apparently you're also assuming someone has the time to cook. And when exactly is a working single mother, for instance, supposed to have time to hit the gym? Or have the luxury of walking to work instead of taking the bus (assuming she lived somewhere where it was POSSIBLE to walk/bike)?

It's so awesome for you that you can afford a gym membership or live near a community center or can afford exercise equipment or live somewhere where the geography and climate allow you to walk/bike often, but has it occurred to you that not everyone is in the same position? UGH. And please, don't give me shit about "prioritizing your health." When you simply do not have the money and are fighting for your right to food and shelter every day, you don't have the luxury of prioritizing.

Obese children, by the way, are more likely to suffer from MALNUTRITION than their peers. Which can screw up their metabolism. Which will make it that much harder for them to try to lose weight for the rest of their lives, even if they manage to move out of their socioeconomic class.

Also, yo-yo dieting is FAR more unhealthy in the long term than having a few extra pounds but maintaining a steady weight. And all diets fail, sorry. There's not a single one that has a success ratio worth writing home about - including "eat less and exercise!"

So yeah, way to assume everyone is a middle class white person with disposable income and a Curves down the street.

* 49.1 million people in the US live in food insecure households. An additional 17.3 million live in households that are considered to have "very low food security." That's 22% of Americans. 12% of Americans live below the poverty line. 20% of American households (a family of FOUR) live off $19,000/year or less. That's less than $1600 a month.

Healthy foods are expensive. The same groups who tend to be overrepresented amongst the poor (particularly Black and Hispanic women) also tend to be overrepresented amongst the obese.

It's nice to see that everyone here is an expert in the field of fitness and nutrition.

Of course, providing weight loss tips to a girl who will never read this is kind of pointless. The advice is for Some Dude, not his FWB. We have no idea how this girl feels about her weight.

He is the one with the problem, so direct your advice toward him.

Loved the response for Taft - PERFECT.

Again with the fat topic, the weight loss experts and the guys who exploit the insecurities of fat women. I hope you all die agonizing deaths very soon.

Why the fuck should TAFT have to put up with his boyfriend's old perv if they start to share an apartment and it bothers him? Hire a cleaning service. Lots of people really need paying jobs. Pay them well and tip extra. Old perv will find new broke college kid to shit on his toothbrush. That's why he lives in a college town.

83: but, as other people have pointed out, it is often not simply a matter of "well, eat less or exercise more."

Some people have slow enough metabolisms that they *can't* eat little enough to lose weight and still get enough vitamins, minerals, and other fun stuff like that. And your body will pull fun tricks on you like lowering your metabolism when you eat less, so you have to eat even *less* to actually lose weight. And you get freaking *hungry* when you eat too little, too.

And not everyone has the time and/or resources to exercise much, depending on income, residence, employment, health... if you're working 60-hour weeks or whatever, you need the time that you're not working for important little things like food and sleep. If you can't afford a gym membership, and live somewhere that it's not very safe to walk around at night, your exercise options may be very limited.

I'll admit, my weight is at least in part because I'm a little lazy, and don't eat quite as well as I should. But I walk probably an average of a mile a day (to and from work), along with other bits of exercise, and I eat reasonably well.

Or, in short? While most people could probably lose at least a little weight by reasonable improvements in diet and exercise, that doesn't mean that everyone can be skinny, and that doesn't mean that everyone who's fat is a gorging couch potato. Some people won the skinny lottery, and some people didn't.

@ #109
You're missing a GIANT point in 106's perfect argument: POVERTY. And you can't get out of your classist bubble. It's basic sociology. Poor people not only have less access to healthy foods, they also have less access to information about how to eat healthy. Poor people don't scour websites looking for fresh lentil soups that they can make for $1/person; most poor have to walk down to their local library access the internet, do you think that what they're going to do there is look up healthful ways to feed their families? No, because that isn't the way they were raised, that isn't the way they were taught in schools and they don't really understand that it even COULD be any different, much less SHOULD be any different.
For example, I grew up in a poverty-stricken home: my mom worked two jobs and my dad worked three. My siblings and I were only at day care until I was eight, then I babysat and took over a lot of the household management. I cooked mac-n-cheese, not lentil soups. We did what we had to do to survive; my parents were much more concerned with working, paying off the medical bills of an uninsured family of six and pushing us to get the best education possible than making sure we got enough fiber. And you know, it worked. I was the first person in my family to go to college and two of my three siblings followed suit. My parent's sacrifices in their lower-income-bracket shoved all of us firmly into middle-class. And if I moved out of my parent's home fifty pounds overweight but with a college degree that they paid for in blood, sweat and tears, I'll take it.
But anyone who's taken Sociology 101 will remember that MY story of breaking through the class barrier is incredibly rare; most children who grow up in a poverty-stricken household NEVER break out. So what do you do then? Start a charity that goes into the poorest parts of the country to teach poverty-stricken families that for only $20 more per week (If I remember correctly 20% more of my parent's weekly grocery budget) they can add frozen vegetables to their prepackaged meals that add very little calories, only a few more vitamins (BTW cooked cheap-ass frozen has significantly fewer than fresh and even canned... but considering everything is "fortified" now, we're really not looking at the vitamin intake) and that their kids probably won't eat anyway. Yeah, sounds like a lose-lose across the board.
If you can't read your post and see a huge, heaping tablespoonful of classist elitism, you really should just refrain from posting about things you know nothing about.... How're those five dollar text donations to Haiti treating you? Keeping you from having nightmares of emaciated children with fly larvae in their noses? You're an idiot.

One Word... Meth. You ever see a fat meth addict?

@112: My family grew up poor too, and we were all pretty thin. We didn't get fat until we moved to this country.

It's pretty funny: Americans who moan about how "poor" they are would be middle-class where I'm from, with their single-family homes, family car, and cable TV. Y'all have waaay more wealth than we had and thus far more options. You're just used to seeing yourselves as victims.

In most parts of the world, people don't have the luxury of being a victim.

@115 - it's pretty funny how you can make this generalization about Americans and say no one in your family was fat until you moved to America, and at the same time deny that social and commercial influences in this country have anything to do with an obesity problem.

Here's a thought: mind your own goddamned business. Personally, I have no intention of sleeping with you and therefore couldn't give two fat shits whether you find me attractive or healthy or think I could change if I tried hard enough. And I'm gonna go ahead and give my fellow humans the benefit of the doubt and say they don't give a shit, either.

@117: Was I talking to you? No? Then why are you butting into my business to tell me to mind my own business?

*Laughs*

If you don't care for what I'm saying, then don't read it. I know I won't bother reading anything further that you write.

@118 - I'm sorry, who was it you were talking to? Everybody else on SLOG but me?

Oh right you're just jerking yourself off to the sweet sound of putting other people down under the guise of making actual sense.

Have fun with that.

The issue here appears to be one of comparative fault.

Basically, people fall into one of two groups on the issue of obesity/fatness/fatties:

1. It's your own damned fault. You chose to eat more than your body could reasonably process without it becoming fat, your lifestyle isn't consistent with being thin. Even if you have a different metabolism, you need to act in such a way as makes up for it. If you're short, but want to play basketball, you'd best learn to jump high.

2. There are people who legitimately are irresponsible. But, to tar the entire population of overweight people as that is irresponsible. Studies do show that the body has a set point of weight, and acts to keep it there. Once you get fat, the body kills your metabolism if you eat less. The body wants to stay overweight, even on a starvation diet. It's not a question of willpower, or dedication, or "simple" solutions, it's about the physiology of it. Once you throw in legitimate addiction to food (where eating releases endorphins), you're basically talking about telling an alcoholic that they have to drink every day, but should never drink too much. It'd be like being a smoker and having to have five cigarettes a day, and expecting to be able to have no more.

My opinion is that it's a bit of both. Take skin cancer, for example. If two people sunbathe for the same amount of time, but only one gets cancer, we don't say to that one "you stupid, irresponsible, cancer-tard". We give him sympathy. If we accept differentiated responsibilities, we also have to accept that someone can act "responsibly" and "moderately" and still get cancer/diabetes/obesity. People can act in exactly the same way, and the more genetically well-off person will have a better life.

So, Fatties: get off your high horses. Accept that people are going to be shallow. Accept that you yourself are shallow in other ways, and that life isn't fair. Stop harping on whether other people are appropriately accepting of what you consider to be (at worst) something foisted upon you by forces outside of your control. Also, not for nothing, but if you really didn't think there's anything wrong with being fat, you wouldn't feel the need to justify it. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm overweight, and I recognize that it's a bad thing, that it's unattractive, and that women are less likely to want me as a result

Fatty Haters: get off your high horses. Accept that different people have different underlying physiology, and that it's not a level playing field. In the same way some people are born with more potential to be intelligent, people are born with more or less potential to be svelte. Stop seeing fat people as lazy or stupid, and stop the condescension of "just eat less and exercise more, fatty".

The issue here appears to be one of comparative fault.

Basically, people fall into one of two groups on the issue of obesity/fatness/fatties:

1. It's your own damned fault. You chose to eat more than your body could reasonably process without it becoming fat, your lifestyle isn't consistent with being thin. Even if you have a different metabolism, you need to act in such a way as makes up for it. If you're short, but want to play basketball, you'd best learn to jump high.

2. There are people who legitimately are irresponsible. But, to tar the entire population of overweight people as that is irresponsible. Studies do show that the body has a set point of weight, and acts to keep it there. Once you get fat, the body kills your metabolism if you eat less. The body wants to stay overweight, even on a starvation diet. It's not a question of willpower, or dedication, or "simple" solutions, it's about the physiology of it. Once you throw in legitimate addiction to food (where eating releases endorphins), you're basically talking about telling an alcoholic that they have to drink every day, but should never drink too much. It'd be like being a smoker and having to have five cigarettes a day, and expecting to be able to have no more.

My opinion is that it's a bit of both. Take skin cancer, for example. If two people sunbathe for the same amount of time, but only one gets cancer, we don't say to that one "you stupid, irresponsible, cancer-tard". We give him sympathy. If we accept differentiated responsibilities, we also have to accept that someone can act "responsibly" and "moderately" and still get cancer/diabetes/obesity. People can act in exactly the same way, and the more genetically well-off person will have a better life.

So, Fatties: get off your high horses. Accept that people are going to be shallow. Accept that you yourself are shallow in other ways, and that life isn't fair. Stop harping on whether other people are appropriately accepting of what you consider to be (at worst) something foisted upon you by forces outside of your control. Also, not for nothing, but if you really didn't think there's anything wrong with being fat, you wouldn't feel the need to justify it. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm overweight, and I recognize that it's a bad thing, that it's unattractive, and that women are less likely to want me as a result

Fatty Haters: get off your high horses. Accept that different people have different underlying physiology, and that it's not a level playing field. In the same way some people are born with more potential to be intelligent, people are born with more or less potential to be svelte. Stop seeing fat people as lazy or stupid, and stop the condescension of "just eat less and exercise more, fatty".

Seldon2639: That very nearly tracks with my opinion. I don't like anti-fatty bias, and I have no problem with people who are comfortable with their weight, whatever that may be. I know first-hand that some people have a much harder time losing weight than others, so a person's weight isn't even a good indicator of various mental traits. I don't even make the "health" argument: It's completely reasonable to rather live 55 years eating whatever you damn well please than living 75 years on a regimented diet, and any one of us could be hit by a bus tomorrow anyway.

My only real contention is one of agency: if you don't like some aspect of your life, then work to change it. If the amount of work required to make that change is vast-- which it is for some people, for some situations-- then either accept that the reward is not worth your effort and make peace with that, or get cracking.

In other words, I'm fine with people accepting their weight. I'm fine with people being attracted to different types of bodies. (Full disclosure: I like somewhat curvier gals than society tells me I should.) I'm fine with people trying to lose weight. What I can't stand is people who *whine* about wanting to lose weight but don't commit to doing so.

I guess what I really have is an anti-whiner bias. :)

I grew up poor as shit too, and I make my meals from scratch. I mean, potatoes are CHEAP, dry beans are CHEAP! I'm a large guy who eats as much as a family of four, and when I sinch my belt, I can eat healthy and cheap on 30 dollars a day.

Do I buy organic? Oh christ no, but every Sunday, I have this major cookathon and stock my freezer.

And really, it's good practice and great community for your neighbors who wonder what smells so awesome in your house.

Hell making my own beer is CHEAP (well, comparatively speaking if I was going to buy it outright.), and certainly quite rewarding.

Hell pasta, CHEAP, and making it from scratch is actually better, and CHEAPER and if you like the wide noodle you don't even need a pasta maker.

And with practice, you can make it roughly 10-20 minutes.

And mother worked, supported us, and made our meals from scratch. We never had pringles, candy or doritos in the house, if we were hungry, we made our food, more often than not ... 20 minutes later ... a satisfied meal.

And it's only partially elitist ... I know plenty of poor fat people (especially from my family).

But they are totally DWELLING on their victim mentality.

Go to any other country and poor people pay triple what we pay for meat, soda, and anything sugary.

And you taste candy from most other countries, and it's not nearly as sweet, will rarely ever have corn syrup.

Seriously, poor people don't shop at "whole foods" and have that crap is loaded with salt anyways.

Poor people everywhere else on the planet make everything from scratch, which is what we USED to do in this country.

I don't know why #8 mocks the term "cleaning lady", as used in the first letter. I see nothing wrong with it. And it's better than the term which my mother used when I was a boy. Until I was ten, I thought "goya" was Yiddish for "cleaning lady"!

tristate, all of you are missing the socioeconomic point.

But they are totally DWELLING on their victim mentality.

this is the point. poor people as a whole never learn that life can BE any better. they are victims of circumstance and never learn HOW there is a better way. why do you think most people who win the lottery are broke within five years or why so many NBA stars from inner cities declare bankruptcy after retirement? poverty is a mindset carved through generations. earl of sandwich, it is hopeless. the sociological conditioning that has gone into the modern american poverty mindset is to strong to DO anything about. except to lobby for better education, volunteer in inner cities, accept your unfair share of taxes to pay for social programs. you dont fix obesity in the lower classes, you fix the fact we even have a lower class. you dont go into a burning barn and try to fix the latches on the stalls, you put out the fire first.

I have a fast metabolism; I always have. When I was younger and dumber, I'd eat whatever I wanted (cookie dough for meals, mayonnaise for a beverage...literally) and I still had a teeny little waist and sixpack abs. Now that I'm in my 30s I do have to be a little bit sensible or else my weight starts to creep up, but I can still eat pretty astounding amounts of fat and maintain my figure.

Interestingly, nobody has EVER told me I was being unhealthy--not even during the hamburger-with-a-fried-egg-and-cheese-on-top-for-every-breakfast years. But my overweight friend who ate far better than I did and exercised more had guys constantly assuming that she was a lazy slob, and reprimanding her. "I'm just concerned about your HEALTH," they'd whine. Really? It's not just that you hate fat people? Really?

In conclusion: FUCK OFF, fat haters. Also: thank you, god or genetics or whoever, for giving me a body that is socially acceptable so I can live the way I want to without some nosy fucker whining at me.

Wow, this week really applies to me. My husband fucks the mattress when I'm not around, and I don't think he's ever ejaculated when we've had sex. It's disappointing to be on the receiving end of a non-orgasm, year after year.

Also, he was more weighty than I would have liked when we got married, but I thought, "hey, now that we'll be married I'll have more influence over his choices and he'll lose that weight in no time!". My naivete astounds me. Don't be like me. If you don't find it sexy now, don't expect it's ever going to change. And don't ever expect that stepping up the relationship a level is going to allow you to have any more influence over your partner's decisions or lifestyle any more than it does at the lower level. That path only leads to resentment (for both).

As far as I know, he doesn't accept $$ to have someone clean the apartment. If that were the case, I would have to say that the cleaner does a tremendously terrible job.

@125

half of these people wouldn't be diabetic if they weren't eating all the sugar all the time.

And yes, that's what poor peasants for like FOREVER. Starch, they didn't have sugar, sugar was an expensive luxury. Only in modern America has the worst of the worst sugar, corn syrup, been a staple of the American diet. The more ubiquitous of cheap sugar/corn syrup, the more obese America becomes.

If you aren't convinced, watch like anything containing normal people prior to 1995, and people are crazy skinnier.

I mean if you are genetically a diabetic, then from what I understand, most forms of starch isn't that bad ... it's sugar that's horrible.

Even then ... you have my condolences. If you are gung ho to go on a ketosis (atkins) diet, then yes you have my condolences for being an impoverished victim

106
You haven't lived in Vietnam (or other similarly poor nations). Poverty? Almost everyone there is poor (to our standards) and skinny. The thing people are missing is AMERICA. AMERICA is fat. Figure that out, it's not as simple as everyone is figuring it. The food and the drugs and the culture, education, etc... BUT like clockwork, where the western diet goes, the "Western Diseases" go. Obesity, diabetes, etc...

I don't have a problem with people making their own choices about there body, OR peoples rights to their opinions and sexual preferences (fat, not fat etc..). If you are fat and happy, you shouldn't feel the need to defend yourself. Defense seems more of a emotional protector for one defending to feel better about themselves because they are not happy. So maybe they agree, and it hurts to admit it, so they defend?
Just a theory.

Had some issues posting, my apologies.

I'd be worried about passing on some kind of virus, bacteria, or parasite, like E. coli to the toilet bowl cleaning, old tooth brush dude, especially since a dude in his late 60s who would already have somewhat of a depressed immune system. Could be very dangerous to his health or even life threatening.

@blahdidah,

I'm sorry, type I diabetes does suck.

and type II diabetes, well ... it usually is caused by your lifestyle.

This is not a fat comment, but I thought diabetics in general were encouraged to have more rigorous exercise because it helps them control their sugar level.

Hypoglycemia does run HARD in my family, and that's perhaps one of the reason both my mother and I are always on the go, eat smaller meals, avoid sugar, and became total gym nuts. We really struggle to keep sanity unless we have a regular work out routine.

Watching the Olympics, it's like half these are either diabetic, asthmatic, or even epileptic.

My sister struggles with "weight" but she is also a yoga instructor who is running half marathons, and well, she loves it.

But you know what? Whether she loses weight or doesn't, she lives a healthy active lifestyle and feels better doing it, accomplishes her goals etc. etc. And I'm insanely happy for her. She may not be pole thin, but she looks great, and has more energy for life, and I think most people recognize that and encourage her. Only the most moronic shitheads would dare call her "fat".

Why is it the US has a much higher percentage of FAT people than most other countries? It's because USans are lazy, rich, bums who don't walk much, tooling around in their gas-guzzling machines, stopping occasionally to buy some fries or a back of chips. You eat shit you don't need to eat, because you are bored with your shitty suburbs, and, you talk about anti-fatty bias, because you don't realize that you are a bloated testament to all that is wrong with imperialism.

I lived in Italy last year and the yr before too... no, people are not fat, but I dont know about more VIRTUOUS... (?) they have to walk everywhere!! people cannot afford a car and a parking space... things are urban and close together and there is public transportation (WALK to the train or bus) plus you WALK to the market which is like 90% produce, which costs NOTHING. you can go with pocket change and come home with three dinners. not only are young people skinnier but REALLY old people are still mobile, climbing long flights of stairs, using the buses... like 90 year olds, I see them every day... here most 90 yr olds are extremely isolated and not very mobile... they are out of practice! once they get too old to drive they just STOP GOING OUT completely! how tragic! and where would they go? you never see old people just playing cards at the park or something... they just go to the grocery store and people act all put upon when they try to make conversation. CITY PLANNING and FOOD/FARMING reforms would be a huge godsend to this country.

Jeezus, shit happens people. Dan couldn't get a new column in for whatever reason. Put on your big girl panties and deal.

137-
Seriously, I would think that this point would have been implicit in my post. Way to throw a red-herring into the discussion when all we've EVER been talking about has been OBESITY IN AMERICA, but just to spell it out, the reason why the poor in America look differently from the poor in Vietnam is because the one concession that the American public make toward poverty is easy, cheap access to food... They may be poor, but at least they won't starve to death. Think about how the rest of the world would view the (subjectively) most powerful country in the world if there were children in New York as emaciated as in, say, Haiti.
For example, when we were on WIC, the only foods available to us were sugar-laden fruit juices, whole-fat cheeses, sugar-packed-simple-carb cereals and breads (not quite on-par w/ fruit loops, but pretty bad). Food stamps, even now, can be used on chips, soda, candy, you name it. So while there's plenty of food available to the poor in our country, there's still nothing that breaks the nutritional cultural mores of the lower classes.

146 Obesity rates are higher in the UK than the US. Depressingly true. There are just more of you over there in total so you have more fat people.

#55 - That whole "burn more than you eat" line is NOT true. Counter intuitive on the surface though it may be, but metabolism is not that straightforward. Food affects hormones, and hormones regulate food storage mechanisms and processes in our bodies. Different foods impact hormones differently, and there are natural hormonal variances between different people. Anyway just about everyone seems to agree with you, but you're all missing a core component of the true picture of weight loss/weigh gain cycle.

I thought the letter from TART was creepy and not because of the arrangement he described between his bf and the elderly professor. TART uses the phrase "old perv" six times in his rant. It seems that in TART's estimation gayworld should only be populated by young things like himself; anyone outside that demographic is a pervert. Welcome to homophobiaville. You should have called him on that Dan.

TAFT. See that gift horse? Quit staring at its teeth. ...and by the way, who says "normal" people can't have an elderly pervert cleaning their house and beating off afterward?

Ok, I'm just throwing this out there...

You're gross. When I think about you and what you do, it makes me want to throw up! I'm surprised anyone sleeps with you and thinking about the very act fills me with disgust. I'm not entirely certain why you are what you are, but I've heard it from several, unnamed sources that it's your choice and therefore your fault. Your very behavior is fraught with moral and physical peril. Diseases that can kill are rampant with your kind. The lifestyle you lead will destroy any child you have, making them just like you. You should quit doing what your doing and start a regimen of denial. If you're depressed, withdrawn or deprived you should simply suck it up; society doesn't want or need your kind around. You're unnatural, unnecessary; a bane of society and you must be punished until you go away or conform.

Does this sound familiar? Does any of it sound close to what you've heard in your life, directed at you or a loved one? Something that made this column and it's openness feel like a safe place to come to?

Does this sound like something you may or may not have said or thought during the course of this chat about another lifestyle?

It just floors me how people who claim to be soooo tolerant of one lifestyle yet expose themselves as the biggest bigots around about another lifestyle.

And before people jump all over me about how one is "inherent" and the other a "choice" let me remind you all that 52% of Americans have for the past forty years believed that homosexuality is a "choice" (from a recent Gallup poll to explain why so many Americans approve the repeal of DADT yet continue to fail to support gay marriage). And also, let me remind you that there is very little evidence to support the "theory" that homosexuality is a biological trait.

And anyone who throws that stupid Nutrition for Dummies calories-in-minus-calories-out metabolic formula, just Google "Homosexuality is a Choice" and SEE how many people have the similar dogmatic, freshman opinions and regurgitate them without proper thought or research online.

@162: Nothing you wrote contradicts "burn more than you eat." All you've shown is that the rate of burn is not consistent, which I freely admitted. Hell, my whole point was that some people's metabolisms are really slow, and thus they don't need to (and shouldn't) eat as much as others.

jab2009, I'm not sure why it's so important to you to deny all agency for weight gain, but I think your passion is dampening your reasoning. Are you really equating prejudice against fat people with prejudice against gays and lesbians? Can fat people marry? Was being fat illegal in more than a dozen states until 2003? Do fat people worry about being killed just for being fat? Are fat people regularly disowned by their family members for being fat? Etc.

I think we all agree that there is anti-fat bias in the country, and I think we all agree that some people have to exert a lot more effort to control their weight than others. But asserting that obesity is an immutable characteristic with the same social stigmas as homosexuality is taking the argument too far.

There are a whole lot of fat people in the country. Of the fatties who would rather be thinner, some will think that their weight is within their control, and some would rather blame everything else (society, genetics, etc.) Of the dissatisfied fatties who assert agency, some will lose weight and some won't. Of the dissatisfied fatties who play the victim, all will keep the weight on. Which is the more productive attitude?

@JDKing: Please get over yourself. Everyone knows that "eating right and exercising" is much more difficult for some than others. It's awesome that you were able to make that lifestyle change, and I'm sure it was very difficult, but stop being so angry at those who still struggle with it (i.e. your family). If it were that simple, there wouldn't be obese people. Few people want to be overweight, just like few people want to be homeless, but clearly there is something much deeper going on. Be happy for yourself and sad, not angry, for the people who can't seem to achieve what you have.

@LAN8m Hralf, Milbury, etc. (a non-obesity strand)

Not Italian for bisexuals, Swiss: it is already linguistically mixed, having French, German, and Italian speakers. Belgium for water sports is good, although I feel bad being so Euro-centric. What delicious sex act can we call Thai?

to 161, s/he wrote:
"There are people who are fat because they lack self-control and eat to excess. We've all known people who were complete pigs, and whose waistline showed it.

There are also people who are fat for reasons beyond their control -- for instance, because their genes"

I just spent 3 weeks in Spain - I din't see a single "fat" human there. At layover in Amsterfam - same thing: no "fat" people. As soon as I landed in Meniapolis... gosh, virtually evryone was "fat". Any theory about that?
Thx

@125- $30 a day is A LOT of money for food. Seriously, if I could spend that much on food every day I would be incredibly happy.

@106 - My budget for food is $5 a day. That means YES, I buy dry beans and soak them. And I make HUGE pots of bean soups to last me all week. But it also means frozen vegetables are a luxury. Throwing a bag of frozen veggies into my ramen is NOT better because it is more expensive for me. The only veggies I can afford are roma tomatoes, cabbage, onions, bulk carrots, and a few others. All from the cheapest supermarket which, thank god, happens to be in my neighborhood.

I can eat healthy and survive on $5 a day ONLY because I have the time to cook/prepare fresh veggies. And I wouldn't even say I'm eating all that healthy since my budget doesn't afford me a variety of fruits and veggies.

I really feel for the other people in my neighborhood who don't have the time that I do to cook. There are nights where the only thing I do have time for is a can of condensed soup or ramen.

@171 "What delicious sex act can we call Thai?"

Why, bondage, of course!

Notes to all the people saying "ENDOCRINE DISORDERRRS"!

While this may be true, some people have endocrine disorders, do you look around and see 500 pound people on scooters, and think 'wow these people ALL have endocrine disorders!!"

I cannot believe that 25% of the population has some sort of genetic disorder that prevents them from being within normal margins of weight, even with healthy eating and active living. What, did the whole population of Canada, the US, Australia and Western Europe all develop genetic anomalies in the last 25 years which have lead us to be WalMart fat? I don't think so. AMAZING how people in every other part of the world doesn't have the same genetic conditions, so they can be skinny...or is it that they don't have transfat saturated food and cars to take them everywhere?

Most people who are overweight are overweight because of poor eating habits and lack of exercise. I'm not saying its easy in this day and age, hell, I'm chubby too. But I don't make excuses for it.

159
The only point I was contradicting is that it is 'poverty' that has to do with it. You just mentioned access and what that means in America, so perhaps you didn't follow your own argument to the real issue. It's what America eats and classifies as 'food' etc. NOT the poverty in and itself. Vegetables and fruit are cheaper than many things at the grocery store. That's all I'm saying. No red-herring, just a different opinion than yours.
P.S. I could give a shit what you (or anyone else) put in your body, just don't tell me what to think about it.

@JDKing: I'm not sure what your issue with "fat defense" is - as far as I can tell, no one is saying that YOU need to be attracted to or date "overweight" (I always wonder: over WHICH weight?) persons. People should fuck those to whom they attracted (with the caveat of consent, of course). There are a number of factors that determine adipose (body fat) retention. Consuming fewer calories than one consumes will inevitably result in weight loss, although it will not necessarily be adipose tissue that it lost, and will not necessarily be healthy. Metabolism determines the rate at which calories are burned both at rest and during exercise and as lemonrose points out, this can vary between people. Basal metabolism is dependent upon many factors including genetics, stimulant consumption, caloric intake, general activity level, and others. But metabolism is not the only, or even most important, determining factor in adipose retention. If you think about it, the fact that you WILL lose weight if you expend more calories than you consume and the fact that most people are not continually losing weight means that most people continually consume slightly (and in some cases greatly) more calories than they expend. In fact, this is healthy, as much of our industrially-produced, genetically-engineered food lacks sufficient vitamins if only expended calories are consumed. The biggest difference between chronically skinny and chronically fat people is the extent to which they store excess calories as body fat. This is largely genetic, the result of tens of thousands of years of evolution in environments with different food production patterns. Body fat is extremely useful in colder climates, as food may only be available for part of the year, so storing excess calories (at the expense of having to expend some extra energy to haul those calories around) increases the chances of survival and reproduction (adipose also helps insulate the body, which is useful in cold climates). In warmer climates, food is typically available year-round, and the advantages of not having to haul more weight around outweigh the advantages of having stored energy available.

The upshot is that it's actually HEALTHIER for some (actually, I'd bet on most) people to be over the (extremely low) normative attractive adipose percentage in our society, assuming always that one is getting one's calories from nutrient-rich sources and not junk food. And, like lemonrose, if one's goal is health (and not a specific target weight/adipose percentage), one may well find that exercise and healthy eating will still result in one being "fat". You're absolutely correct in stating that eating junk food is not healthy and certainly can contribute to adipose retention, but it's hardly the only factor - just look at the population of people who eat junk, never exercise, and are almost completely free of body fat.

Exercise and a diet low in empty calories are both important factors in maintaining general health - adipose percentage is not. There ARE correlations between high percentages of body fat and health problems, but these are due to the fact that fat retention is a SYMPTOM of various diseases/conditions/unhealthy behaviors including diabetes, thyroid damage, junk food diet, and lack of exercise; things like heart disease have common causes (like those above) shared by high levels of body fat, but the fat itself is not the cause. The only health problems that are actually CAUSED by body fat are increased joint and muscle strain, particularly in the knees and back, as the greater amount of weight increases stress on these areas.

I'm not saying that anyone SHOULD be sexually attracted to larger people or that anyone is somehow a bad person for not being attracted to larger people, but I do think it's interesting to look at WHY people generally are not in our culture, because it's not a biologically-informed sexual selection preference.

Finally, the letter screams fat-phobia to me; the guy's totally fine with having sex (friends-with-benefits) with this woman, so it's clearly not an issue of sexual attraction. The only difference with dating is that dating is a public act, which means others will see him dating 'the fat chick'; therefore, this is the likely source of his discomfort.

@175

You do realize that there's no genetic predisposition in the world that will cause problems if you don't expose yourself to the base causes, right?

If I have a predisposition to alcoholism, but I never take a drink, I can't become an alcoholic. Access to higher-quality, relatively cheaper, and more high-calorie foods accounts for the difference. This isn't a sudden thing in the past twenty-five years, it's been going on for a while in Western society. We're getting fatter because our bodies are maladaptive to a modern environment. We're *supposed* to like sweets and fats, and to gorge, since historically we didn't always know when our next meal would be.

*shrugs*. I agree that we should admit that fat people are fat due to diet, but there's no logical basis for the assertion that the only factor is whether they overeat. Overeat is entirely normalized to the individual.

It's not a level playing field, is my point. We can admit with a grave sensitivity that a person predisposed to obesity has to be more careful, more responsible, more disciplined. A fat person must eat less in order to eat an appropriate amount for his or her body. But that's not a standard we apply elsewhere. We don't (as a society) look at someone who gets skin cancer and say "see, dumbass, you shouldn't have gotten a tan".

It's even worse for someone who's predisposed to obesity. Imagine being alcoholic, but still having to have two (and only two) drinks a day. You can't avoid it, but you can't have any more. That'd suck, huh?

Pointing out the element of personal responsibility is entirely reasonable. Asserting that there is no other factor is either ignorant, or unreasonable.

Thanks, Dan, for speaking up for us old pervs, but I wonder if the guy cleaning the boyfriend's apartment was younger would still have been a perv? Just because you're older and attracted to younger men doesn't make you, in and of itself, a perv. If it did, there'd be no daddyhunt or silverdaddies or a wonderful 24 year old man in this 59 year old's heart, life and bed.