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Comments
Boo hoo for the chunkers.
One of these days, Alice, ... One of these days...
@3 you have all the maturity of a two year old. Congratulations.
I do think there is fat shaming, and discrimination against those who are very overweight. However, I see some other huge problems in this society that contribute to 2/3 of Americans that are overweight and many of those are obese to morbidly obese, the huge amount of fat in most Americans diets. I see losing weight as not that difficult compare to keeping the weight off, which has always been the crux of the problem.
Morbid Obesity is a serious health problem. Obesity is a health problem that can cause problems from Type II diabetes, joint problems to cellulitis. There is the battle of moral judgement, which has to be changed, (fat shaming) to the medical problem, obesity to morbid obesity, that has to be address and treated.
Obesity is certainly a contributing factor, but not the worst. It is a cultural problem though, and since one can not effecively enforce individual choices, we need to keep approaching it on a cultural level.
It is getting so bad, that I think regulating calorical and nutritional content of foods may become a necessity. As much as I loathe to have the government involved in more personal choices, it may be the lesser of two evils here.
- a depressing number of people who will post to this thread
@those people: go fuck yourselves.
We subsidize corn and soy - resulting in HFCS and hydrogenated vegetable oils - we might as well be subsidizing mcdonald's.
so yes, the point of this is not to focus our energy on shaming the individual, but shaming our government. policy change and reforms so that major agribusiness is disassembled and we go back to small scale, organic, community farms.
-Deep Economy
-Food Democracy Now!
Want to reduce obesity by half by the end of the decade? Outlaw high fructose corn syrup.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if most people are eating/drinking 3,000 to 4,000 calories per day, almost double the 2,000-ish that most people need. We live in an incredibly calorie-rich environment, and there needs to be mass education combined with elimination of overprocessed foods and harmful food additives, like high fructose corn syrup, if we're gonna be serious about getting our national health under control.
I love this bogus idea that people have no control over their size. Is there something magical that happens to peoples' DNA here in the USA? Because other countries do not have our same obesity rates - especially if they eat a diet high in vegetable content and low in meat/dairy/refined carbs.
It may be true that shaming fat people isn't the best way to solve obesity, but to claim that people can't help their size is a lie.
hearts, I do believe they have poor self-discipline. But that
doesn't make them bad people! I'm bad at lots of things, they
just don't make me fat.
That's a great point. I noticed at the end they quote a woman who'd just worked out who said she'd had a salad for lunch. I'd bet $100 it was covered in some kind of creamy dressing and loaded up with cheese, bacon bits, and croutons.
How about a bigger corporate tax on food companies in which a certain percentage of their foods fall below a nutritional benchmark? Something like if it has X amount of fat/sugar/calories, than it must have Y amount of vitamins/fiber/whatever.
So candy, soda and fast food companies pay more to operate, and since they would likely pass that on to consumers, the cost of junk food would increase, lowering the appeal. Maybe all the money raised by this tax goes to medical care for the poor, or other such social services?
Although, that may just mean the poor spend more of their tight budgets on McDonald's...but you can't totally legislate away poor individual choice. At least there would be more tax dollars to cover social services.
"Derp, fat people like donuts!"
"I quit eating donuts and lost a zillion pounds! Now my dog likes me!"
"I love feeling morally superior over a whole group of people I can judge without feeling like an asshole! Those people deserve to be treated as sub-human, because they did it to themselves! I'm so fucking virtuous!"
Second, what a person eats and how they take care of their body is entirely up to them. However, when they allow their body to vastly exceed typically healthy human proportions, it becomes an issue that affects everyone around them. When paramedics are suffering extremely high rates of back injury from lifting morbidly obese people, it becomes a public issue. When buildings and vehicles have to be redesigned to take on the added weight, it becomes a public issue. (Anyone notice the news about the WSFerries lowering their passenger capacity due to increased average weight figures?)
Fat shaming sucks. (Anything) shaming sucks. Simply accepting that Americans are fat and getting fatter as inevitable sucks even more.
People eat more than they did in decades past, and move less. That is why more people are fatter. That is a simple fact. Actually getting people to eat less and move like they did in the past is much more complicated.
I'm for taxing unhealthy foods, as long as it's not a sales tax. We want the food to look more expensive on the shelf, not just at the cash register.
One significant reason that obesity is so prevalent in the US is the last 80 years of land-use and building policies which have created a built environment based upon the automobile.
In Europe, Asia, and Africa, people walk and bike a lot everywhere--work, school, home, etc--unlike the US, where we're mostly relying upon cars. This is how personal choice has largely been overruled in the public arena, along with government support of harmful food ingredients mentioned above.
I do not agree with the shaming of fat people, and understand that there are cases where it's out of some people's control.
But it's publicly acceptable to look down on me for a habit that I pay a tax premium for. I think crap food should be equally taxed and looked down upon. Both choices are completely within ones control.
We will both require A greater share of expensive medical help around the same age(type two diabetes, cancer).
Stop the whining though and live up to your lifestyle choice.
It's completely acceptable to shame me for smoking yet I cannot turn around and do the same to someone who's overweight bordering on obese. Really....
Both are an addiction, and should be treated as such.
Taking as given that "thin" is not the same as "healthy and strong", most people are totally capable of making adjustments to their lifestyles that would move them further towards "healthy and strong". This doesn't equate to simply eating fewer donuts; donuts are not really the problem, any more than just eating a salad and swimming for an hour are a real solution.
I am fully aware of the systemic and sociological issues that contribute to obesity in this country. I am also aware, as some have pointed out, that to some extent various genetic traits and diseases result in some people who are more likely to gain weight or have trouble keeping it off. At the end of the day though, I reject the notion that it's not an issue of personal choice. There is a distinct difference between someone who is overweight due to the variety of above factors and someone who has allowed themselves to become obese. It's like the difference between a car that needs some work and one that is such a hazard that it needs to be taken off the road. Nobody is expected to be perfect. They can be expected to behave reasonably, however.
Everyone has the ability to eat less & exercise more, thus changing that attribute about their body. There's even an entire TV show devoted to the permise, The Biggest Loser. I think it's on NBC. I've yet to see an episode where the contestants enjoy/relish their fatness.
http://sparkofreason.blogspot.com/2011/0…
Put down the Doritos and eat some vegetables. It works a lot better than being a defensive prick.
Riding them constantly about it and making them feel like shit about it is just dickish, but not 'shaming' -- No more than a mom trying to kick their kid out of the basement is 'shaming' them into getting a job or establishing a life of their own.
That's career shaming! Self-sufficiency shaming. I want the world to accept me as a 41 year old who lives in his parent's house and eats their food and only looks for jobs when it's convenient. Also, it is womens' responsibility to find me attractive, else they will be 'shaming' me and comparing me to unrealistic ideals.
Also, I just read this this morning.
http://gizmodo.com/5912620/why-eating-wh…
Yes, I have. Idiot.
She's ingested the mental poison along with all the physical poison. And yes, this is a cultural thing. In this country we have, as has been pointed out above, grown a culture up around the automobile, and cheap and quick (unhealthy) food. This, along with 24/7 media input that emphasizes only the young and thin, is why this issue causes the pain that it does.
Hey 19 I know anecdotal evidence is just that but if what you say is true why do I know a disproportionate number of fat vegans?
The rest of the First World is catching up with us fast. I believe Australia is set to surpass us, if they haven't already.
I am the first to admit it - I am fat. Roughly 40 lbs. from where I should be. I work out for an hour to an hour and half, 3 times a week. And I don't mean like the people you see strolling on the treadmill as they read magazines. One of those workouts is with a personal trainer who kicks my ass and I am thankful for it. My workouts are a mix of weight training and cardio. I am also on a very low carb diet. I eat fresh veggies and meats. (Yes, cheese in moderation is allowed but no milk.) No, I don't eat doughnuts and couldn't tell you the last time that I did have one. And No, I don't drink sodas either. Actually, there are a lot of foods that you judgmental asshats snarf down everyday that I take a pass on. I keep a daily food journal to watch closely what I am eating. Lapses can happen. I did have pizza once and beer another time. And that is it, and I mean it. In a world surrounded by crappy processed foods, the diet I am on was tricky at first but mostly when I was out with friends. The very low carb diet is similar to what they put people with type 2 diabetes on. (No, I don't have diabetes.)
I have been doing all of this for a year and and a half now. At first I lost weight readily.I was 80 lbs. overweight. In the first 8 months I dropped 40 lbs. But ever since then I have been on a plateau. No weight gain, no more weight loss. You might suggest that I walk more. But then I have always been a walker. I barely put 3000 miles on my car last year. Otherwise, I walk and take public transit everywhere. I am just now reintroducing myself to biking. (15 year years ago I was hit by a car while on a bike. Hadn't been on one since. And biking still fills me full of anxiety. But that is another post.) I have also started meeting with a nutritionist to see if we can make some dietary changes to jumpstart things. Time will tell.
So, I exercise, I diligently watch what I eat, but still some assume that I am "a lazy fat guy who must watch tv all day while eating doughnuts." And a lot of them are like you, very willing to offer up this opinion. I can hardly wait to hear your solutions to my problem.
That's not to suggest that "fat people are lazy". It's far more specific than that - "fat people who don't want to be fat but refuse to take any steps towards making that happen, are lazy in that one specific fashion"
People eat a lot of calories without realizing it. Small incremental changes can make a big difference in calorie intake. So many people see buzz words like "whole grain" "multiigrain", "trans-fat free", or just "Fat Free", and without looking at a label assume it's a healthful food choice. More often than not, the product still has a lot of empty carbs and fats that add up to big time calories.
If you're still not making progress towards your goals at that point, keep it doing it, but do it *more*. Cut your daily calorie goal by a couple hundred calories. Add an another day's workout each week.
You're already doing all the right things. My (not very useful) suggestion is to be less impatient, and stop focussing on the number on the scale, and more on how you feel.
Are you measuring body-fat percentage? What about tracking your body measurements (waist, thigh, upper arm etc)? Are you able to lift more in your weight training than you were 4 months ago when your weight stopped trending downwards? My suspicion is that you're not losing weight numerically, but you are losing fat and gaining muscle. That is to say, you're still seeing progress, just not where you're looking (on the scale).
But seriously it breaks down to two things: calories consumed, and calories spent. Your body simply cannot continue to put on weight if you give it fewer calories than it uses. I'm also gonna guess that you haven't been doing this awesome routine your whole life, so you gotta at least admit that you did this to yourself. It's cool you're digging yourself out of the hole you dug, but stop blaming other people and keep it up.
Do report the obesity rates of Kenya, you fat dipshit. Then talk.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18428…
You might need some help with reading comprehension.
This is what I wrote:
" I guarantee that if you switch to a vegan diet comprised of whole foods (not Rice Dream mocha pies and potato chips), mostly raw, you will lose weight. "
It's quite easy to be a fat vegan. Eat lots of cookies, bread, fake meat products, fat, and low-quality carbs. The same way it's easy to be a fat lacto-ovo vegetarian, by eating lots of cheese and eggs.
If you eat a vegan diet comprised mainly of raw fruits, nuts, seeds, and vegetables you will lose weight. If you eat a vegan diet comprised of junk food you will look like an American.
Switch to a mostly raw, plant-based diet. You will see a difference.
Countries where the populations adopt a Westernized diet see obesity rates climb.
It's quite a con job our country has pulled on the world. We suck in pretty much every way imaginable, but have bamboozled most of the world into thinking our way is the best. The power of positive unthinking, I guess.
Cute how you assume I'm fat. Eat a fucking sandwich, then we'll talk.
To get back to Jen's actual post and plea re stopping fat-shaming: YES. THIS. As long as "everyone knows" (Bristol Palin-style) that obesity is simply due to fat people being lazy and stupid (in their food choices), then we as a society can make no progress along the lines of what Erica outlines @ 52.
So, holy gosh wow, we must first change our attitudes and ideas about Obesity and The Obese, before we can make progessive, impactful societal changes that will actually help to keep people from blowing up like balloons.
Funny how that works, first having to change minds before changing bodies... Seems like that could be applied to other areas, too.. Reminds me of the old Sixties notion of 'raising consciousness'... hunh... go figure.
I never once said anything about appealing or unappealing. I couldn't care less if you found me appealing. I am not doing this for you. I am doing this for my own health. But until I reach my goal people will continue to see me in a certain light. That is just a fact of life. But for some reason there are plenty of assholes that are quick with glib weight related put downs that seem to come cascading out of their mouths. But when you call them on it, you're the asshole who can't take a joke. Believe me, I hear them enough, as well as read them on posts like this one. Also, re-read to see if I even once blame someone for my problem. I'll give you a clue. I don't. You have the right to be an asshole and I have the right to find that to be most Un-appealing.
@63 I keep it at 1800 - 2200 calories a day. I don't eat anything with a "Fat-Free" label. Usually they load up on the carbs to make up for the loss of fat content. Also, no bread multigrain or otherwise. Too many carbs. i don't eat over 60g of carbs a day. It is amazing, when going out, to realize how huge portion sizes are at restaurants. It was also eye opening to see how much crap and proceeded crap there is out there that most people eat on a daily basis. Even before when I thought I was eating moderately healthy, I really wasn't.
@65
I am definitely going to continue with my dietary change. I brought a nutritionist into the mix to get another perspective as well as so changes to help facilitate weight loss. So far no huge changes from what I've been doing. The biggest surprise was the fact that the allergy meds that I am on actually facilitate weight gain. So, that has been changed. Haven't done the body-fat measurement yet. I think we'll start that at my next appointment. (I've only had one so far.) Some weeks I am able to get into the gym a 4th time. My work schedule sometimes makes that a killer. You are right about being too fixated upon scales. I would definitely say that I have increased muscle mass as well. There can just be a certain frustration working towards a goal and then see it stagnate.
Thanks, to most of you, for the kind words.
http://jezebel.com/5908787/being-mean-to…
MUDEDEDEDEDEDEDEDED
MUDEDE
MU
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Even though opinions are like assholes, I'll still throw in my two cents.
Don't do more cardio to lose weight. You'll wind up hating exercise, your body will adapt to the change (and you won't see more weight loss), and you'll probably have a higher chance of giving up altogether than if you stick to mostly strength training with just enough cardio for a healthy heart.
Beyond that, fuck the haters. (Not literally. Unless you're into that kind of thing.)
People get lost in the question of whether these behaviors are "bad" or "wrong," because of course in a moralistic society you must determine whether an act is bad in order to know whether you should shame and punish people who commit it; but the real question is how we get people to stop doing harmful things.
And on that score, all you smug shitheads saying "I'll stop making fun of fat people when they stop being fat and lazy and greedy!" are missing the fucking boat, because if there is one single solitary thing that our obesity epidemic proves it's that fat-shaming worsens, not resolves, the problem. That means you shamers are either willfully ignoring the connection (and all the behavioral research and game theory that indicates that punishment is not an effective method for changing behavior) or you're actually getting off on a growing demographic of second-class citizens you can feel superior to.
People are weak, and they can't always change themselves. They especially can't when they're trying to swim against a tide of ignorance and a society-wide foodsystem crisis that's feeding most people calorie-dense, addicting, nutrition-poor garbage at every turn. You can laugh at their suffering, or you can look at what's actually going on and figure out how we can change things for the better.
Aaaaand that's when I stopped reading.
Years back I was on board with people like Kate Harding and the early days of Fat Acceptance. But that movement, like Lindy, are now in complete denial of the impact obesity is having on Heath Care costs and impact on children's health. The Fat Acceptance movement is now like global warming denial. Or anti-vaccers. The level of cognitive dissonance is now of epic proportions.
Jesus fucking christ. Saying cancer is bad isn't shaming people with cancer, okay.
I'm completely on board with not shaming fat people. But. Heathy at Any Size is horseshit.
This kind of anti-science sentimental bullshit is literally killing people. The science on what the explosive increase in obesity is doing to public health in America is a fucking settled matter. Period. Type II diabetes in children has sky rocketed exclusively because of alarming increase in childhood obesity. This isn't some pharmaceutical company or Mean Girl conspiracy, for fuck sake. It's scientific fact.
It's gotten to the absurd point that attempting to merely address obesity as an undesirable outcome that should/and can be prevented makes you inciting a "moral panic" or a shame-er. Bullshit. To prentend it isn't a huge problem is fucked in the head.
If we want any kind of functioning healthcare reform and healthy society we have to prevent people from getting fat in the first place. In order to do that we have it admit it's something that has real negative consequences. Lucky individual cases aside this, implies obesity is a state of being that's ultimately negative and detrimental in the aggregate itself. These are scientific god damned facts.
I realize that the anecdotes != data, but surely it must count for something.
Anyway. Over weight is not obese. What we seen in the US today astronomical rise in not just obesity but in morbid obesity. It's not something just invented it's very real and every doctor in this country knows it.
If you're seriously putting forth that the increase in obesity related illnesses is insurance companies tweaking a metric for convenience. Well, I just can't take you seriously.
The world is a laboratory. The science and data are sound. We see the same increases beginning to happen in cultures who previously had no such problems but are now adopting our lifestyles.
Is the massive increase in childhood and adult Type II diabetes and hypertension some sort of statistical fudge? I assure you it is not.
And we keep going at the rate we are US life expectancies, already below other industrialized western countries, will begin falling. We are already att the point where over 60% of all bankruptcies are due to healthcare costs and complications due to health problems. And costs keep going up. There is simply no way to put a handle on it if don't get the increase in obesity in check first. That's just a fact.
Substitute "blip" for moron.
I've written extensively (some of it is here: www.reddit.com/r/InsightfulQuestions/com…) about how we talk about tolerance and discrimination. I think a lot of it boils down to whether the Thing we're tolerating (or discriminating against) is an Identity or a Behavior. We tend to be more tolerant of Identities and less tolerant of Behaviors.
In contemporary America, we generally agree that race and ethnicity are Identities, and thus we're more tolerant of it. A lot of discrimination against the obese (as we can clearly see in this thread) is because of the perception that it is a Behavior. Homosexuality has evolved over the years from being perceived as a Behavior (people engaging in the "homosexual lifestyle") to being perceived as an Identity ("Baby I was Born This Way!"). And decades ago, experts could (and did) trot out studies and data and science showing how the "homosexual lifestyle" is damaging our health and our society.
While science and hard numbers may be immutable, how we parse all that is largely informed by our commonly held social conventions and perceptions and biases. Right now, there's a strong negative bias against the obese, and it effects how we interpret data surrounding them. It's basically the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon- we are aware of a "problem", and then we somehow uncover supporting evidence of the problem everywhere. And, alternately, we tend to dismiss "data" and "facts" that tell us things we don't want to talk about. You know, like the "data" cited in the article that Jen cited in this post, saying that fat discrimination has detrimental effects on the obese (and also doesn't help them lose weight). A point that many in this thread- including you, I'm sorry to say- have largely ignored in favor of stating the "facts" that Fat Is Bad.
I guess hate is stronger than love after all.
And I don't have a 'glandular' problem. But I do have PCOS, which does contribute to weight gain, and makes it harder to lose weight. Is that the only reason I'm fat? Nope. Do I use it as an excuse to eat shitty food? No, not any more. I've lost 40 lbs and am trying to lose another 90. It's hard and discouraging and occasionally seems pointless. But I'm doing it. Unless you've been morbidly obese you don't really know what it's like. It's so very easy to get into a cycle of depression and shame. To give up because even after losing 40 lbs (which is more than a lot of "fat" people need to lose at all) you're STILL morbidly obese. I'm sure a lot of people will attack that. I can hear it now "well you shouldn't have gotten so fat", "it's your own fault" ect ect. That's fine, but I don't have a time machine. Alcoholics choose to pick up the bottle, too. But I never hear people blame them for their "disease". It's not that far different.
Shaming a fat person will not make them thin. My mother tried it and it just caused me to eat out of sadness and rebellion. Maybe if she hadn't made fun of me for weighing a ghastly 120 lbs I wouldn't have shot up to 180 in high school. And from there to 275 by my 30's. Yes that was my own response to the environment I was in. But possibly a more nurturing and supportive environment would have yielded different results.
For the record I'm a vegetarian. I was vegan for a while. I lost 80 lbs (which didn't stay off). I also lost a lot of hair and my teeth are far weaker now.
People's environments do affect the way they eat, which is why the poor (who live in poorer neighborhoods with fewer stores with healthy food options) are heavier. Of course, bottom line is that people who are fatter *do* ingest more calories and expend fewer than thin people, and that's why it seems easy to blame them. Studies have shown that if you put obese people in collectively healthier environments, they become healthier and their quality of life increases.
How do we create collectively healthier environments? Some of it may be helped by the government (things like making more bike/walking paths, parks, etc. only gives people *more* options; doesn't hinder their choices), but we also must demand this with our dollars. To do that, people have got to start caring about themselves and their lives, enough to make a special trip to get healthy goods, until farms and other companies see that poor neighborhoods *will* buy their healthy food if given the opportunity. It will be a difficult battle, of course, and the solution won't come tomorrow.
"I know how to really read labels," "I know what foods are best," "I know all about HFCS," "Other people just go by buzzwords," "People don't realize what they're doing..." blah, blah, blah.
Go clone and fuck yourselves; it's so obvious that's what you want to do.
not sure how they handle it but there's a scaling factor that ensures that we aren't stuck with the same ten threads from all time there, such that older threads with hundreds if not thousands of comments can't compare to a recent one with only 98
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazi…
Here's the deal.... obesity isn't going away. We need to deal with it, and I think "just stop eating, you fat fuck" is not going to get people to do anything productive. Everyone here thinks it has to do with being lazy, but I really think if it were that simple, we'd have solved it. People eat, and overeat for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with need. People end up eating fast food when they're going through divorces, or they're caring for relatives who are dying and have no time for themselves. It's real damned easy for everyone to look down their noses at someone else, and damned harder to do something effective about it.