What interests me is how anybody could ever come to believe otherwise. The contrary belief flies in the face of all common sense, popular experience and medical science. It seems to come entirely from propaganda on social media telling fat people what they want to believe.
1. Historically being fat was considered a sign of good health. Of course, this was during times of massive food scarcity and the definition of fat was probably very different from what we consider fat today.
2. Massive amounts of money involved in telling people to eat/drink more, and then spend more money in gyms and taking pills to lose that weight. As opposed to just eating less and then living normal healthy active lives. There’s not much money in the latter.
3. People wanting to stop fat-shaming (which is also unequivocally bad…fat shaming only makes it harder for people to lose weight), trying to convince other people that someone being fat does not make them bad, quickly morphing into being fat is good.
>1. Historically being fat was considered a sign of good health. Of course, this was during times of massive food scarcity and the definition of fat was probably very different from what we consider fat today.
I'm surprised you put that in and not:
4. motivated reasoning. People want reasons to justify their current lifestyle and not having to put in hard work to change it.
For point #1, most western cultures already idealize thinness. Therefore that's not really a factor unless you're from a culture that idealizes being fat.
> 1. Historically being fat was considered a sign of good health. Of course, this was during times of massive food scarcity and the definition of fat was probably very different from what we consider fat today.
Wasn't it more a sign of being wealthy and successful? Like if you were fat, it meant you could afford to spend a lot of money/effort on getting food and didn't need to do difficult work outside for 8+ hours a day?
Not sure people were calling it healthy, so much as treating it like a status symbol (because it kinda was).
I think the 3rd point is different for each person. Some people do like "tough love" - being told that they are in a bad place and need to improve will motivate them.
Others, on the other hand, will be pushed further back into the hole by such talk. This is very individual.
I'm interested in 3. Is there any research or data about that?
I do not encourage fat shaming at all, but I can also imagine that in some cases shame may be a powerful motivator for some people. Is there hard data showing that it actually makes it harder?
It’s because American society doesn’t let being unhealthy be an affirmative choice.
You either need to demonstrate some kind of shame for your unhealthiness or some kind rationale that explains how its actually healthy.
The honest facts that “I like to eat tasty good” and “I don’t really enjoy too much physical activity” are only permissible if you also say “and I can’t help myself” or “and it’s actually not unhealthy.”
It’s a social dance that makes people hide the personal truth that health isn’t the only thing that matters in life.
My perception is the opposite. The US is a place where you absolutely can slap your beer gut and make a joke about “having a keg instead of a 6 pack”
Perhaps your social circle doesn’t accept that attitude, but in some of the most obese parts of the country, the norm is to “eat some steak and potatoes and put some meat on your bones, skinny boy”
There’s a reason doctors are afraid to tell patients they’re overweight. People interpret it as a personal attack on their choices rather than a medical diagnosis.
Sure it does. I don't know what part of America you live in, but one of my obese coworkers jokes he eats all the processed food "so the preservatives will keep him alive".
Confident self-awareness goes a long way, although self-destructive behavior in general isn't respected, nor should it be IMO.
It isn't the only thing in life of course. If you're healthy but living on the street it's not a very nice life.
For me being obese is not really a choice. It's just really hard to do anything about it, especially because I tend to overeat when I encounter stress in life. And I'm not wired with the discipline to fix it. I often go on diets but they never last.
Also, living alone cooking is a real chore and there's not enough ready made healthy food.
And in terms of exercise I really hate team sports and mindless weight lifting. I do hike a bit though when the season permits.
Are these excuses? Sure but if I could have changed it I would have.
> It’s a social dance that makes people hide the personal truth that health isn’t the only thing that matters in life.
How do this claim make you feel? "Alcoholism isn't objectively bad because for some people boozing matters more than health."
Remember that being obese effects the people around you. Particularly, obese adults teach bad lifestyle lessons by example to their children, who in turn are more likely to be obese than other kids because of it. Having obese parents is even worse for a child's life expectancy than second hand smoke from chainsmoking parents.
It might not be the only thing that matters, but once you lose your health, it's very hard to get much enjoyment out of anything else in life. Our bodies remind us constantly in no uncertain terms when they're not functioning well. I can't imagine anything I'd willingly sacrifice my health for, except in some extreme case like saving the lives of loved ones.
dont forget multinational processed food and snack vendors benefit immensely from the perception that hyperconsumption of sugar salt and fat is normal and good, and that your obesity is a shameless wonder to cherish unto the grave.
look at the sons and daughters of branded food conglomerate moguls and their top executives. youll likely find them quite trim.
Clothing companies have also played a role in normalizing obesity with advertisements featuring obese people, often accompanied by pro-fat propaganda slogans like "healthy at any size". They do this out of pure greed; fat people have money and buy clothes, so it makes business sense to advertise products to them. But these ads are bad for public health because they promote unhealthy standards as normal and okay.
It is a reaction to obese people being butt of jokes and now majority becoming obese. If you can't change lifestyle you can use contra views as coping mechanisms. Also, like anti-science believing in snake oils and flat earth over the internet you can live in an echo chamber custom made for you.
Simple, because it's easier to convince people that being overweight is perfectly fine and healthy. As opposed to changing diets, exercising, and holding companies accountable for the junk they put in our food to cut costs.
This happens because the social norm (in the US) is to avoid any conversation or subject matter that is even remotely negative. You can see it in every day interactions, people just can't handle criticism of any kind. Conversations must only have positive tones and people are socialized to avoid anything that might result in conflict.
This has something to do with political correctness, which is now the status quo, but that's a different matter.
> What interests me is how anybody could ever come to believe otherwise. The contrary belief flies in the face of all common sense, popular experience and medical science.
Did you read the article?
I can give you two simple examples:
Look at any picture of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson when he has been ripped. Ditto with Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime.
BMI says these folks are either obese or severely obese. Extreme examples, but illustrative of the weakness of bmi.
On a personal level, I have been listed as obese by a doctor when I weighed in 205 as someone who is 5’11” (somewhat carelessly, because bmi was 28.x, and “obese” is 30+, but still…).
Doctor did not care to notice that I was very muscular, exercise regularly (weights and cardio), and was pretty lean.
The doctor wanted to talk to me about my “weight problem”. I pulled out dexa can showing that I had 176 pounds of lean body mass and was 14-15% body fat (“healthy” range, and probably much leaner than her, even though she was slight build and thin), told her about my diet and exercise regimen, and she quickly reversed course.
You can see how muscular people are unhappy about bmi being used for individual evaluation.
BMI is a measure that is meant to be used to measure populations rather than individuals. Being used as a quick a dirty evaluation tool without looking in more detail by the doctor is irresponsible medicine — yet it is common practice.
This is why “anybody could come to believe otherwise”.
Obviously, if the dexa scan comes back saying someone is 30% body fat, no amount of muscle can make that “healthy”, but I think that’s not where most thoughtful people have issues with potentially specious claims of obesity.
So two examples of individuals that are using huge amounts of anabolic steroids is "illustrative of the weakness of bmi?" Give me a break. All measures are going to have edge cases. And by the way, those two guys actually are pretty unhealthy -- your body is not made to carry around that much weight.
I’ll criticize the crudeness of BMI as a yardstick for fitness as much as the next guy, but absolutely no one is looking at Arnold’s BMI and thinking “huh, BMI says the terminator is obese therefore it’s okay for me to be obese”. They’re getting this idea from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is a nexus of social media and bizarre fat positivity propaganda that’s leaked out from obscure corners of society and into the mainstream.
There is a line between fat acceptance and glorifying being fat that gets often muddled on social media. Social media is, of course, a funhouse mirror and you'll find that most fat acceptance activists do not actually believe being fat is healthy and really just don't want people to discriminate unfairly against fat people.
The article quoted in the link (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.00053...) contains a list of plausible hypotheses and mechanisms for why some amount of fat might actually be good for you. I don't have enough background in human physiology to say how seriously those should be taken, but there you go.
The literature on the relationship between BMI and mortality is not conclusive except for a BMI > 30. Generally it seems that lower mortality is associated with a body mass index of 20-25.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1000367
> What interests me is how anybody could ever come to believe otherwise.
Probably because some popular "treatments" for the condition often attempted are far worse than obesity itself. Yo-yo dieting, amphetamine use, serial liposuction, binge eating and throwing up, et cetera.
Part of the problem is that those who are overweight don't want to be shamed for it or can wish others would avoid the topic. Consequently, it can become a socially complex issue, where people want to avoid hurting other people's feelings, but there is a clear as day health and physical appearance issue. And for many overweight people, once they are allowed to feel comfortable about it, they don't want to do anything about the problem. Too many rather live in delusion, until the end.
When societies put up facades and allows delusion to persists, the actual issue doesn't go away. People are still fat, unhealthy (and dying from it), and their appearance is still an issue (even if friends lie or avoid it).
Being obese isn’t a root cause. It is a symptom of something else.
Particularly, when it is a symptom of depression, believing in “healthy obesity” can be enabling even if it’s not the truth. That person (not statistic) needs to see themselves as healthy and loved to have a chance at being healthy.
Telling them to eat better or exercise is thinking about yourself in a generic version of their circumstances rather than them in their actual circumstances.
> That person (not statistic) needs to see themselves as healthy and loved to have a chance at being healthy.
I don't buy it. Tolerance towards fatness has risen since the 80s, as have weights; both have gone up at the same time. The more tolerance our society has for fatness, the fatter people get. If more tolerance for fat people were the key to getting people to lose weight then there should be an inverse relationship between the two, but that just hasn't happened.
Lying to people about an objective perspective of their current state of being is good for them?
Feeling better in the moment just enables people to ignore the root cause and thus fail to make progress. They need truth that their current state sucks, hope that it could be better, and to recognize that their own agency has an outsized effect on their future. And maybe they could use some help breaking down their problems into smaller more achievable steps.
It they see themselves just as healthy as obese, why would they want not to be obese?
Sounds like enabling obesity to me.
Telling them to eat better or exercise doesn't work because it's a pain in the ass to be in a caloric deficit. They have statistically low dopamine levels (among other markers being out of wack) so they just don't have the mental fuel to deal with doing what's hard. That's what lead them to be obese in the first place, seeking comfort in food, sitting on their butt and avoiding the harshness of their reality.
Another key component are high cortisol levels (ie chronic stress due to past traumas causing depression and other mental illnesses), hindering the parasympathetic brain to switch on digestive metabolism.
You don't solve all these underling issues by saying "hey fat isn't that bad, you can still be healthy being heavy".
Like you wouldn't say to a drug addict "hey drugs aren't that bad for you" to make them feel less shitty about their situation.
There are other inversion vectors in our society people seem to believe. They are numerous but for just one example, calling black people “white supremacists” is but one example.
These constructs are usually the opposite of what they claim, like “healthy” in this example.
i think the article explains that the BMI is misleading. there are ways one can be healthy and not actually overweight while having a bad BMI. the laymans conclusion: BMI says i am overweight, but actually i am healthy, therefore i must have this healthy obesity.
> Your BMI tells me your overweight.
> But rugby players BMIs are high, and they aren't overweight!
> You don't play rugby though do you.
I'm glad that "fat acceptance" may be turning a corner and will be banished hopefully and there can be a semblance of rational discourse.
Ideally you should be a BMI 22, non smoking, non drinking, long distance runner living in the countryside eating a perfectly balanced diet.
Mosy of us will achieve all that, just do what you can.
There's loads of nasty ways to mess up your health. Being fat seems to be the most appealing one (I get to eat what I want and sit around all day? Hell yeah!).
It is bizarre that you would read an article which says, “using body-mass index (BMI) to measure obesity is likely the most problematic factor,” and then immediately prescribe a fixed BMI for everyone without qualification.
Yes. BMI is your weight divided by height squared. Which is really weird when you consider that humans are 3D objects! So you should naturally expect that a taller person will have a higher BMI than a shorter person even with the exact same proportions. In practice humans who are taller tend to be skinnier so we'd ideally use something close to the 2.5th power but that math would have been impractical for the 19th century clerks who were the first consumers of BMI information.
Indeed, especially the 22 BMI target. For me (5'10") that would mean 155lbs, I'd have to shed (going by my scale which estimates body fat percentage) around 28 lbs of fat (I'm at 15% fat right now, so 28 lbs would get me to 0% which is unhealthy) and 7lbs of other weight to hit that target. Could I lose some weight? Sure. But I won't. Back on the exercise habit after a few months off and I'm getting slimmer but my weight is staying the same, as I would expect it to based on my previous experience (I pack on muscle easily).
BMI is a useful heuristic (BMI over 30 and not a powerlifter? Probably unhealthy, let's look at other characteristics and see how unhealthy and how to address it) but a terrible target until you know your own body.
>The interest in an index that measures body fat came with observed increasing obesity in prosperous Western societies. Keys explicitly judged BMI as appropriate for population studies and inappropriate for individual evaluation.
>When a team of researchers adjusted BMI to take muscle mass into account back in 2018, then associated this corrected measure with mortality risk, they found that the “U” mostly transformed into a straight line.
> I get to eat what I want and sit around all day? Hell yeah!
I am naturally thin. That statement ("i get to eat what i want and sit around all day") is true of my body. Is it such a strange idea that there are as many people who are naturally thin as there are that are naturally fat? Those people aren't making a choice to be fat any more than i am making a choice to be thin. Why should they feel bad about their body?
That's the bit that OP and the writer, if they're different people, miss. Fat acceptance is basically a position that we fatties have been forced into. If every skinny person learned to mind their own business, it wouldn't exist.
The problem is not that we aren't listening to our doctors - the problem is that people like OP exist who self-appoint themselves as our doctors and start preaching. And that word was chosen carefully, because it's exactly the same bullshit.
Almost everyone I met (incl me when I was younger) who think that way never realized just how much food obese people eat at home. It's wayyy more than you think.
They never tell the truth about it out of shame because they know how bad it looks to others.
While there are many people that have a comparatively harder time to retain a healthy weight, no one has to be obese. A small minority might find it so hard to not become obese that they simply cannot manage it, but that fact should not dominate public discourse and act as an excuse for everyone.
More importantly, obesity is contagious. You give it to your kids and family. If you don't stop it, your loved ones might suffer.
They choose it a bit. First eating all the day long some crap (sweets, processed food, fiberless industrial food), drinking sweet sodas and not walking/doing real sports is a choice. It's the choice to live unhealthy. They should feel bad the same way smokers should feel bad. It's quite a disrespect for oneself.
I'm naturally thin too, but thin is relative. I noticed on day soon after college that I was starting to acquire (relatively minor) fat deposits, and despite that not making me even close to overweight, I resolved that I wasn't going to put up with that. Since then I've payed more attention to health and fitness. I could eat pizza all the time and not be overweight, but I don't because I know that would be unhealthy.
> Is it such a strange idea that there are as many people who are naturally thin as there are that are naturally fat? [...] Why should they feel bad about their body?
Because naturally thin people, and the opposite case, are outliers.
There are very few people, especially in the 40s, that can eat a lot and still remain thin.
They are making a choice to be fat because they eat the quantity of food that creates that condition in their body. Nobody says two people should eat the same level of food. You should eat the appropriate amount for your body.
Intriguingly, it seems that the vast majority of the population of North Korea are 'naturally thin' and virtually every young person you see in footage of 1960s USA too.
> I'm glad that "fat acceptance" may be turning a corner and will be banished hopefully and there can be a semblance of rational discourse.
TFA doesn't even use the phrase "fat acceptance", which is a completely different thing than claiming "obesity is healthy". The former is simply an effort to destigmatize it, like we destigmatize other forms of addiction.
Also, "obesity is healthy" is a strawman — no credible person or group has ever asserted this. If you search for "obesity is healthy", you'll see that every result makes it clear that obesity is not healthy.
That simply isn't true. Just look into the "Health at Every Size" movement. There are some reasonable ideas there, like destigmatizing it as you mentioned. But there are also some harmful and ridiculous ideas prevalent in that movement - namely that "weight loss should not be a health goal".
> Ideally you should be a BMI 22, non smoking, non drinking, long distance runner living in the countryside eating a perfectly balanced diet.
All good except the long distance runner part. Don't think it is equivocally good as the others and may be potentially harmful (key is the long part, short/medium is good).
Walking in inclined, rough terrain is arguably more versatile exercise, and far, far less depressing to me. Hell, it actually lifts my mood.
Jogging on asphalt just makes my joints hurt and it makes me feel like I'm administering some pathetic modern substitute to the primal need to be active and to be in nature, which just depresses me. Same with everything gym based.
It's not the most appealing one, it's the hardest one to manage. You can not smoke, you can not drink alcohol, you can not take drugs, but you cannot not eat.
You can cease buying sugary foods and snacks like chips at the supermarket when you shop. You can explore swapping macros a bit so there's a bias in favor of eggs and fish and other protein. You can try to cut down eating between meals.
The idea of Predestination with regards to eating needs to stop. If there is a psychological addiction then that's the part to be addressed, it's a valid concern. I see what people eat - even people that are not obese - and it's disgusting. I can see at work, at restaurants, even walking in the streets what people eat. That this is 'normal' is what we have to actually try to stigmatize. Donuts, muffins, giant appetizes at dinner, all that stuff should be almost never eaten. Birthday cakes? All that stuff will become disgusting and nauseating to you if you step away from it for just a few months, and your body adapts away from sugar and carbs. It might be hard in the beginning as your metabolism struggles to adjust and keep signaling for you to eat more.
And for the record - not drinking alcohol is a lot harder than not eating for many people I know.
One issue is that for the betterment of society in regards to climate change, dense urban living is undoubtedly better than spread out living in the countryside. Assuming we want to maintain current population, of course.
What is your age? Let’s see in 30 years. Most young people have these strong opinions, but life happens and they end up differently. Being lean and mean when young is a lot easier then when you are 50 or 60.
on the other end, I'm 1.83m and 58-60kg since many years (I'm now 37) so a BMI 17-18, and it's my best shape, certainly not underweight. I have really thin bones & limbs (for example I can join my thumb and any other finger around my wrist, thin waist, legs a little bit stronger)
I wonder what's going to happen long term to the recent trend of celebrating obesity in advertising. E.g. go to any Target and you will see overweight or obese models wearing the clothes they sell.
On one hand you have to represent your current population, and with the majority of Americans overweight or obese, that's who your customers are. On the other, can this be seen as normalizing a disease?
The parent already acknowledges that: "On one hand you have to represent your current population, and with the majority of Americans overweight or obese, that's who your customers are."
The question is about whether this is normalizing an unhealthy disease, which your comment does not respond to.
Nothing at all unless it is forbidden by law, which it won't be. Walmart wants to make a profit, so showing how clothes look on your body is better to achieve this goal.
Dunno about you guys, but back when I was verging on being outright obese, I felt like shit. Sweating from doing pretty much any physical activity, sleep apnea, summers were horrible due to the heat and extra sweating, clothes never fit and just looked bad, non-existent interest from the other sex, and people in general being more unfriendly (trust me on this one, the difference is like night and day) - and just a general feeling of discomfort. Heartburn, tiredness, gout, the whole nine yards.
I'd be amazed if someone truly obese actually feels like they're healthy.
I blame this to political correctness. Someone who is fat is only that. She/he is overweight, unhealthy and got a problem. They should get help and get treated. That's it. If someone tells them that, they should take it as an oxymoron. It's like telling someone was how has a bad cough that they should cover their mouth while coughing as nd should check their lungs. It's just that.
But for some reason, acknowledging that someone is fat/unhealthy became an offense. People "know" that they are unhealthy but decide to live that way and feel offended. I blame the current health system. Because even if sick people wanted to get treatment, the may not be able to afford it.
The article tries to frame it as if the U-shaped mortality curve and “healthy obesity” hypothesizing have been debunked, but there’s no suggestion that the U-shaped curve was not real. What appears to actually be debunked is BMI>30 as a definition of obesity. As far as I can tell, epidemiologists operating within the framework of “obesity is BMI>30”, still the one most commonly used at the individual and epidemiological levels worldwide, were right to question whether obesity was universally unhealthy. They only become “wrong” when you redefine obesity, so this controversy seems to have been constructive in exposing methodological problems.
(And no, low-fat ripped bodybuilders aren't relevant to this discussion. They and their doctors both know that BMI doesn't work well for these rare individuals.)
Only because people stopped shaming the term "overweight", but are still adverse to "obese". The range 25-30 isn't called the "still healthy range", it's "overweight". Being overweight isn't a good thing.
The challenge is what is the closest hack to get around it, as most people, admittedly myself included, are not willing to exercise? Semaglutide seems to be the best bet right now.
There is no hack. Exercise is non-negotiable. Our lifestyles are far too sedantry for our bodies' evolution. If you are not willing to add a small amount of exercise into your life, you are admitting that you are happy to at least have health issues later in life or at most willing to live a shorter life.
A general rule is that you burn about 100 calories in a mile jog. A 12oz can of Coke has about 140 calories, a quarter of a cup of nuts has about 200 calories, an apple has about 100 calories.
Exercise is important for many reasons, but not for preventing obesity. Unless you're running marathons, or exercising like somebody who is, the amount of calories you will burn from exercising will in no way whatsoever compare to what you eat. If you start eating more because you go to the gym, you'll almost certainly end up gaining weight.
The answer today is the same as it's been for thousands of years.
My hack is to not own a car and commute by bike. It is exercise, but camouflages as required activity. I also try to deliberately walk instead of taking the subway regularly, even if it takes an hour or so.
"if you can’t find time to exercise, you’ll have to find time to be sick."
How much time for that do you have? Pushing around a walker when you're 65? Spending hours on the phone with Customer Support for some insurance issue?
My #1 hack is not having low-quality, high-sugar snacks in my house. Instead of sugared soda I have flavored soda water (Fresca, specifically) and sugar-free cola. When I do indulge in snacks I don't buy bulk, I buy the small packages, even though they're more expensive per ounce. In fact, that they're more expensive is a plus.
If I have to go way out of the way to binge on junk I'm probably not going to do it.
something bad is going to happen to people who think they can just take Ozempic for the rest of their lives
there's no way a drug that effective has no side effects
I know people who have lost weight using Ozempic...you only lose weight...you do not become healthy...you do not gain muscle...you just are a flabby person who is less fat
I don’t know about you but exercise is one of my most enjoyable parts of my day. Yoga, walking, biking, dancing, swimming are all really enjoyable. Don’t push yourself hard, just go through the motions.
> as most people, admittedly myself included, are not willing to exercise?
I'll never get that, we only get one shot at life, even a few hours of exercise per _week_ will greatly increase your quality of life and healthy life span, there are no better medicine, nothing will give you your body back once it's too late. Some people on this forum will grind 60+ (even much more) hours per week at work, absolutely wrecking their body for "success" just to be shadow of themselves at 40. I see it everywhere online "after 40 everything hurt" "I can't sneak on my kids because my knees pop at every steps". What a sad state of affair...
Get out there, get in shape, it's life's best cheat code, everything gets better, your body evolved for that very thing for hundred millions of years, you don't even need that much dedication or time. Learn to master your body, learn about nutrition, learn self control. Run, swim, climb, lift weight, yoga, dance, try everything and keep what you enjoy
I'll always remember the day a 60+ years old climber absolutely humiliated me on the wall by effortlessly completing a climb on the first try while I couldn't even get to the half point, I was 25 and in what I though was a good shape
Not exercising is like buying a high performance car and waiting for the engine check light to do an oil change. Take care of your body, once it's gone it's gone
Worry about exercise later once you're at a healthy weight. You can lose it solely by watching what you eat. "Snacking" is the single worst dietary habit of the past 100 years. Eating all the time and having your insulin constantly elevated is not good for the body.
Best hacks I've found: Get a young dog, get really into YT cooking shows.
Dog will get you out and moving in any weather. They really don't understand why you're too tired for a walk this evening.
YT cooking shows will show the fun side of cooking and get you to make food at home more. Then you're less likely to put so much oil/butter/sugar/etc into dishes vs. eating out. And you also get a taste for vegetables. You kinda tend to eat healthier in general-ish.
Combine all that with a good sleep routine and you're pointed in the right direction. Takes about 3 months though.
The hack is to ingrain the law of physics to ur brain so that you get reminded constantly that you got to eat healthy and exercise to maintain your physical body
"The challenge is what is the closest hack to get around it ..."
I owe it to you to be capable of (among other things): a few minutes of chest compressions, running a mile or so for help, and dragging an adult body a few hundred feet to safety.
I owe that to you and we owe it to each other.
There will be no hack to "get around it".
Conversely: If you can do these things, I don't care what you look like or what your actuarial table shows or what you ate for lunch.
The closest hack is living in a walkable city, and biking for personal transportation. There's a reason that obesity is not as big a problem in Europe, and even more so in East Asia.
That said, body positivity shouldn't be thought of as having anything to say about objective physical health: there is zero reason a person who is obese should necessarily feel bad about themselves. Shame is a useless or detrimental approach to changing behavior; shame is oftentimes the reason people engage in unhealthy behaviors like overeating in the first place. Being overweight is an obvious health danger, but it does not make you a bad person.
Somewhere in the idiot echo chamber of social media the idea of a healthy sense of self worth got conflated with a healthy body.
I think this is where 100% body positivity falls short, and that is context.
Being a bigger person doesn't make you less of a person, it doesn't mean that you are weak, or even mean that you are unhealthy on its own. As a random person, a friend, whatever we should not pass judgment on other people in that regard.
But on the flip side context is incredibly important. For example in a doctor setting. It is deeply concerning that I see a ton of people that immediately think that if their doctor mentions needing to loose weight that they are immediately fat phobic.
I see people saying they want a "body positive" doctor. Sure Doctor's need to be better and understand that everyone's body, diet, etc is different. But I am concerned about this desire to have a doctor never talk about your weight.
I am overweight and my doctor mentions it... I mean we are tracking it and they weight me. Him not saying anything would be wrong and him not doing his job.
But you are very right that you can't shame someone even at the Doctor. But you also can't ignore it.
The desire to avoid getting lectured at the doctor's office can result in folks avoiding the doctor in general. Avoiding the doctor had strong negative effects.
The main issue is the cognitive dissonance between being fat and bring told that being fat is unhealthy so you're unhealthy. The easiest way for one's mind to resolve this is to retreat into the imaginary realm where being fat can be healthy. The retreat into the imaginary is easier than not being fat and the cognitive dissonance is avoided.
Maybe there is some space between being shamed and being treated as a role model?
No obese people are not bad people but I would like to be able to say that I don't approve of their lifestyle and don't want my kids to believe that it is normal and fine to be obese.
For lack of other shared idols, the “common space” American society worships health and longevity. We measure everything against it and don’t make much room for debate.
We all do unhealthful things, of course, but our society makes it very hard to admit that we do so in sound mind. The role we’re asked to play is to say we’re addicted, indulgent, or ashamed.
The dissonance isn’t good for people and is not unlike the toxic dissonance we associate with religious communities that are too stringent and deny everyday realities of human behavior.
Threads about obesity tend to be the ones where even smart people talk past each other. There tends to be a lot of judgment and just eat less! proclamations.
This attitude bugs me. If a programmer "solved" a memory leak by simply adding RAM, without trying to understand why it happens, the HN commentariat would pounce on him and call him various uncharitable names.
But few people here seem to be disturbed by the fact that we don't yet know what drives obese people to eat more food than people with normal weight.
This is not a trivial question, it is actually a deep question, much like "why do some people slide into alcoholism while others can have their single glass of wine every evening for 50 years and never feel cravings to drink more".
But for some weird reason, few people even ask this question aloud, even though without discovering the root cause for overeating, any society-wide fix is unlikely to happen.
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1. Historically being fat was considered a sign of good health. Of course, this was during times of massive food scarcity and the definition of fat was probably very different from what we consider fat today.
2. Massive amounts of money involved in telling people to eat/drink more, and then spend more money in gyms and taking pills to lose that weight. As opposed to just eating less and then living normal healthy active lives. There’s not much money in the latter.
3. People wanting to stop fat-shaming (which is also unequivocally bad…fat shaming only makes it harder for people to lose weight), trying to convince other people that someone being fat does not make them bad, quickly morphing into being fat is good.
I'm surprised you put that in and not:
4. motivated reasoning. People want reasons to justify their current lifestyle and not having to put in hard work to change it.
For point #1, most western cultures already idealize thinness. Therefore that's not really a factor unless you're from a culture that idealizes being fat.
Wasn't it more a sign of being wealthy and successful? Like if you were fat, it meant you could afford to spend a lot of money/effort on getting food and didn't need to do difficult work outside for 8+ hours a day?
Not sure people were calling it healthy, so much as treating it like a status symbol (because it kinda was).
I think it's better to stick to that, and just drop the term 'fat-shaming'.
Others, on the other hand, will be pushed further back into the hole by such talk. This is very individual.
I do not encourage fat shaming at all, but I can also imagine that in some cases shame may be a powerful motivator for some people. Is there hard data showing that it actually makes it harder?
Dead Comment
You either need to demonstrate some kind of shame for your unhealthiness or some kind rationale that explains how its actually healthy.
The honest facts that “I like to eat tasty good” and “I don’t really enjoy too much physical activity” are only permissible if you also say “and I can’t help myself” or “and it’s actually not unhealthy.”
It’s a social dance that makes people hide the personal truth that health isn’t the only thing that matters in life.
Perhaps your social circle doesn’t accept that attitude, but in some of the most obese parts of the country, the norm is to “eat some steak and potatoes and put some meat on your bones, skinny boy”
There’s a reason doctors are afraid to tell patients they’re overweight. People interpret it as a personal attack on their choices rather than a medical diagnosis.
Confident self-awareness goes a long way, although self-destructive behavior in general isn't respected, nor should it be IMO.
For me being obese is not really a choice. It's just really hard to do anything about it, especially because I tend to overeat when I encounter stress in life. And I'm not wired with the discipline to fix it. I often go on diets but they never last.
Also, living alone cooking is a real chore and there's not enough ready made healthy food.
And in terms of exercise I really hate team sports and mindless weight lifting. I do hike a bit though when the season permits.
Are these excuses? Sure but if I could have changed it I would have.
How do this claim make you feel? "Alcoholism isn't objectively bad because for some people boozing matters more than health."
Remember that being obese effects the people around you. Particularly, obese adults teach bad lifestyle lessons by example to their children, who in turn are more likely to be obese than other kids because of it. Having obese parents is even worse for a child's life expectancy than second hand smoke from chainsmoking parents.
The thought goes: If I am not doing things the way others do, I must be mentally ill somehow and in need of a cure.
look at the sons and daughters of branded food conglomerate moguls and their top executives. youll likely find them quite trim.
This has something to do with political correctness, which is now the status quo, but that's a different matter.
Did you read the article?
I can give you two simple examples:
Look at any picture of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson when he has been ripped. Ditto with Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime.
BMI says these folks are either obese or severely obese. Extreme examples, but illustrative of the weakness of bmi.
On a personal level, I have been listed as obese by a doctor when I weighed in 205 as someone who is 5’11” (somewhat carelessly, because bmi was 28.x, and “obese” is 30+, but still…).
Doctor did not care to notice that I was very muscular, exercise regularly (weights and cardio), and was pretty lean.
The doctor wanted to talk to me about my “weight problem”. I pulled out dexa can showing that I had 176 pounds of lean body mass and was 14-15% body fat (“healthy” range, and probably much leaner than her, even though she was slight build and thin), told her about my diet and exercise regimen, and she quickly reversed course.
You can see how muscular people are unhappy about bmi being used for individual evaluation.
BMI is a measure that is meant to be used to measure populations rather than individuals. Being used as a quick a dirty evaluation tool without looking in more detail by the doctor is irresponsible medicine — yet it is common practice.
This is why “anybody could come to believe otherwise”.
Obviously, if the dexa scan comes back saying someone is 30% body fat, no amount of muscle can make that “healthy”, but I think that’s not where most thoughtful people have issues with potentially specious claims of obesity.
However there are studies which find lowest mortality for the slightly overweight with BMI < 30. For instance: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1555137 and https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2022.8577...
Probably because some popular "treatments" for the condition often attempted are far worse than obesity itself. Yo-yo dieting, amphetamine use, serial liposuction, binge eating and throwing up, et cetera.
When societies put up facades and allows delusion to persists, the actual issue doesn't go away. People are still fat, unhealthy (and dying from it), and their appearance is still an issue (even if friends lie or avoid it).
Being obese isn’t a root cause. It is a symptom of something else.
Particularly, when it is a symptom of depression, believing in “healthy obesity” can be enabling even if it’s not the truth. That person (not statistic) needs to see themselves as healthy and loved to have a chance at being healthy.
Telling them to eat better or exercise is thinking about yourself in a generic version of their circumstances rather than them in their actual circumstances.
I don't buy it. Tolerance towards fatness has risen since the 80s, as have weights; both have gone up at the same time. The more tolerance our society has for fatness, the fatter people get. If more tolerance for fat people were the key to getting people to lose weight then there should be an inverse relationship between the two, but that just hasn't happened.
Feeling better in the moment just enables people to ignore the root cause and thus fail to make progress. They need truth that their current state sucks, hope that it could be better, and to recognize that their own agency has an outsized effect on their future. And maybe they could use some help breaking down their problems into smaller more achievable steps.
Sounds like enabling obesity to me.
Telling them to eat better or exercise doesn't work because it's a pain in the ass to be in a caloric deficit. They have statistically low dopamine levels (among other markers being out of wack) so they just don't have the mental fuel to deal with doing what's hard. That's what lead them to be obese in the first place, seeking comfort in food, sitting on their butt and avoiding the harshness of their reality.
Another key component are high cortisol levels (ie chronic stress due to past traumas causing depression and other mental illnesses), hindering the parasympathetic brain to switch on digestive metabolism.
You don't solve all these underling issues by saying "hey fat isn't that bad, you can still be healthy being heavy".
Like you wouldn't say to a drug addict "hey drugs aren't that bad for you" to make them feel less shitty about their situation.
These constructs are usually the opposite of what they claim, like “healthy” in this example.
> Your BMI tells me your overweight. > But rugby players BMIs are high, and they aren't overweight! > You don't play rugby though do you.
I'm glad that "fat acceptance" may be turning a corner and will be banished hopefully and there can be a semblance of rational discourse.
Ideally you should be a BMI 22, non smoking, non drinking, long distance runner living in the countryside eating a perfectly balanced diet.
Mosy of us will achieve all that, just do what you can.
There's loads of nasty ways to mess up your health. Being fat seems to be the most appealing one (I get to eat what I want and sit around all day? Hell yeah!).
BMI is a useful heuristic (BMI over 30 and not a powerlifter? Probably unhealthy, let's look at other characteristics and see how unhealthy and how to address it) but a terrible target until you know your own body.
>The interest in an index that measures body fat came with observed increasing obesity in prosperous Western societies. Keys explicitly judged BMI as appropriate for population studies and inappropriate for individual evaluation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index
>When a team of researchers adjusted BMI to take muscle mass into account back in 2018, then associated this corrected measure with mortality risk, they found that the “U” mostly transformed into a straight line.
I am naturally thin. That statement ("i get to eat what i want and sit around all day") is true of my body. Is it such a strange idea that there are as many people who are naturally thin as there are that are naturally fat? Those people aren't making a choice to be fat any more than i am making a choice to be thin. Why should they feel bad about their body?
The problem is not that we aren't listening to our doctors - the problem is that people like OP exist who self-appoint themselves as our doctors and start preaching. And that word was chosen carefully, because it's exactly the same bullshit.
While there are many people that have a comparatively harder time to retain a healthy weight, no one has to be obese. A small minority might find it so hard to not become obese that they simply cannot manage it, but that fact should not dominate public discourse and act as an excuse for everyone.
More importantly, obesity is contagious. You give it to your kids and family. If you don't stop it, your loved ones might suffer.
Some are genetically predisposed to becoming fat. Its still a fact that they are fat. And being fat comes with associated health risks.
Because naturally thin people, and the opposite case, are outliers.
There are very few people, especially in the 40s, that can eat a lot and still remain thin.
IOW, 'naturally thin' is a bogus idea.
What an interesting take. Are you saying that people do not essentially "choose" what weight to be by their eating habits?
TFA doesn't even use the phrase "fat acceptance", which is a completely different thing than claiming "obesity is healthy". The former is simply an effort to destigmatize it, like we destigmatize other forms of addiction.
Also, "obesity is healthy" is a strawman — no credible person or group has ever asserted this. If you search for "obesity is healthy", you'll see that every result makes it clear that obesity is not healthy.
That simply isn't true. Just look into the "Health at Every Size" movement. There are some reasonable ideas there, like destigmatizing it as you mentioned. But there are also some harmful and ridiculous ideas prevalent in that movement - namely that "weight loss should not be a health goal".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_at_Every_Size
All good except the long distance runner part. Don't think it is equivocally good as the others and may be potentially harmful (key is the long part, short/medium is good).
Jogging on asphalt just makes my joints hurt and it makes me feel like I'm administering some pathetic modern substitute to the primal need to be active and to be in nature, which just depresses me. Same with everything gym based.
It's not the most appealing one, it's the hardest one to manage. You can not smoke, you can not drink alcohol, you can not take drugs, but you cannot not eat.
The idea of Predestination with regards to eating needs to stop. If there is a psychological addiction then that's the part to be addressed, it's a valid concern. I see what people eat - even people that are not obese - and it's disgusting. I can see at work, at restaurants, even walking in the streets what people eat. That this is 'normal' is what we have to actually try to stigmatize. Donuts, muffins, giant appetizes at dinner, all that stuff should be almost never eaten. Birthday cakes? All that stuff will become disgusting and nauseating to you if you step away from it for just a few months, and your body adapts away from sugar and carbs. It might be hard in the beginning as your metabolism struggles to adjust and keep signaling for you to eat more.
And for the record - not drinking alcohol is a lot harder than not eating for many people I know.
I wonder what the attributes of the commenter are
Should be
> Most of us will never achieve all that, just do what you can.
The mistake dramatically changed the tone of my comment but it lead to much more interesting discourse... Happy little accident?
On one hand you have to represent your current population, and with the majority of Americans overweight or obese, that's who your customers are. On the other, can this be seen as normalizing a disease?
The question is about whether this is normalizing an unhealthy disease, which your comment does not respond to.
In the 80's, cookies were small, bags of potato chips were tiny and you couldn't "supersize" your fries and Coke at McD's.
But then in the 90's cookies and chips and fries and soda sizes just exploded in size. Now they're the new normal.
Dead Comment
I'd be amazed if someone truly obese actually feels like they're healthy.
But for some reason, acknowledging that someone is fat/unhealthy became an offense. People "know" that they are unhealthy but decide to live that way and feel offended. I blame the current health system. Because even if sick people wanted to get treatment, the may not be able to afford it.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
(And no, low-fat ripped bodybuilders aren't relevant to this discussion. They and their doctors both know that BMI doesn't work well for these rare individuals.)
Exercise is important for many reasons, but not for preventing obesity. Unless you're running marathons, or exercising like somebody who is, the amount of calories you will burn from exercising will in no way whatsoever compare to what you eat. If you start eating more because you go to the gym, you'll almost certainly end up gaining weight.
The answer today is the same as it's been for thousands of years.
How much time for that do you have? Pushing around a walker when you're 65? Spending hours on the phone with Customer Support for some insurance issue?
https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/50-years-of-running
If I have to go way out of the way to binge on junk I'm probably not going to do it.
there's no way a drug that effective has no side effects
I know people who have lost weight using Ozempic...you only lose weight...you do not become healthy...you do not gain muscle...you just are a flabby person who is less fat
I'll never get that, we only get one shot at life, even a few hours of exercise per _week_ will greatly increase your quality of life and healthy life span, there are no better medicine, nothing will give you your body back once it's too late. Some people on this forum will grind 60+ (even much more) hours per week at work, absolutely wrecking their body for "success" just to be shadow of themselves at 40. I see it everywhere online "after 40 everything hurt" "I can't sneak on my kids because my knees pop at every steps". What a sad state of affair...
Get out there, get in shape, it's life's best cheat code, everything gets better, your body evolved for that very thing for hundred millions of years, you don't even need that much dedication or time. Learn to master your body, learn about nutrition, learn self control. Run, swim, climb, lift weight, yoga, dance, try everything and keep what you enjoy
I'll always remember the day a 60+ years old climber absolutely humiliated me on the wall by effortlessly completing a climb on the first try while I couldn't even get to the half point, I was 25 and in what I though was a good shape
Not exercising is like buying a high performance car and waiting for the engine check light to do an oil change. Take care of your body, once it's gone it's gone
Dog will get you out and moving in any weather. They really don't understand why you're too tired for a walk this evening.
YT cooking shows will show the fun side of cooking and get you to make food at home more. Then you're less likely to put so much oil/butter/sugar/etc into dishes vs. eating out. And you also get a taste for vegetables. You kinda tend to eat healthier in general-ish.
Combine all that with a good sleep routine and you're pointed in the right direction. Takes about 3 months though.
I owe it to you to be capable of (among other things): a few minutes of chest compressions, running a mile or so for help, and dragging an adult body a few hundred feet to safety.
I owe that to you and we owe it to each other.
There will be no hack to "get around it".
Conversely: If you can do these things, I don't care what you look like or what your actuarial table shows or what you ate for lunch.
That said, body positivity shouldn't be thought of as having anything to say about objective physical health: there is zero reason a person who is obese should necessarily feel bad about themselves. Shame is a useless or detrimental approach to changing behavior; shame is oftentimes the reason people engage in unhealthy behaviors like overeating in the first place. Being overweight is an obvious health danger, but it does not make you a bad person.
Somewhere in the idiot echo chamber of social media the idea of a healthy sense of self worth got conflated with a healthy body.
Being a bigger person doesn't make you less of a person, it doesn't mean that you are weak, or even mean that you are unhealthy on its own. As a random person, a friend, whatever we should not pass judgment on other people in that regard.
But on the flip side context is incredibly important. For example in a doctor setting. It is deeply concerning that I see a ton of people that immediately think that if their doctor mentions needing to loose weight that they are immediately fat phobic.
I see people saying they want a "body positive" doctor. Sure Doctor's need to be better and understand that everyone's body, diet, etc is different. But I am concerned about this desire to have a doctor never talk about your weight.
I am overweight and my doctor mentions it... I mean we are tracking it and they weight me. Him not saying anything would be wrong and him not doing his job.
But you are very right that you can't shame someone even at the Doctor. But you also can't ignore it.
The main issue is the cognitive dissonance between being fat and bring told that being fat is unhealthy so you're unhealthy. The easiest way for one's mind to resolve this is to retreat into the imaginary realm where being fat can be healthy. The retreat into the imaginary is easier than not being fat and the cognitive dissonance is avoided.
No obese people are not bad people but I would like to be able to say that I don't approve of their lifestyle and don't want my kids to believe that it is normal and fine to be obese.
We all do unhealthful things, of course, but our society makes it very hard to admit that we do so in sound mind. The role we’re asked to play is to say we’re addicted, indulgent, or ashamed.
The dissonance isn’t good for people and is not unlike the toxic dissonance we associate with religious communities that are too stringent and deny everyday realities of human behavior.
This attitude bugs me. If a programmer "solved" a memory leak by simply adding RAM, without trying to understand why it happens, the HN commentariat would pounce on him and call him various uncharitable names.
But few people here seem to be disturbed by the fact that we don't yet know what drives obese people to eat more food than people with normal weight.
This is not a trivial question, it is actually a deep question, much like "why do some people slide into alcoholism while others can have their single glass of wine every evening for 50 years and never feel cravings to drink more".
But for some weird reason, few people even ask this question aloud, even though without discovering the root cause for overeating, any society-wide fix is unlikely to happen.