I just don't like people pushing into my space, Lindy.If that's really a major issue in your life, then I recommend that you devote less emotional energy to angsting about it and more to being grateful for your lack of real problems. And if it's not a major issue in your life, then I recommend getting a little bit of perspective before you whine on the internet. Your righteous indignation about trivial issues just makes you look kind of petty.
I thought MetaFilter was mostly a socially liberal, you live how you want to live kinda crowd. Weird.But don't you understand? It's tremendously important to inform fat people that they're disgusting moral failures (because we're so concerned about you) at every opportunity. Otherwise they might have no idea that they're fat or that they're being judged? I mean - can you imagine? What if they don't hate their fat as much as everyone else? It would be terrible!
If she doesn't care about what people think of her, why did she write all those words about it?Most people who have arrived at size acceptance weren't born that way. We fought our way to where we are, and a lot of us suffered quite a bit on the way. I almost died; I almost bankrupted my parents; I forgot who I was and became a walking, talking eating disorder. When I call out fat-shamers, I'm not doing it for the benefit of the person I am now. I'm doing it for the miserable person I was then, and I'm doing it for all the people who are still in that bad, ugly place.
Jacqueline: Shame helped me lose 50 pounds. YMMVSo what made you gain that 50 pounds in the first place? Positive encouragement from others, and daily affirmations of your intrinsic self-worth?
The problem I see with the fat acceptance movement is that it seems hostile to the idea of wanting to lose weight at all.I think that's mostly backlash from the mainstream message that weight loss is mandatory for everyone. That gets pushed so hard that the response tends to be similarly absolute.
Land-use mix had the strongest association with obesity (BMI≥30 kg/m2), with each quartile increase being associated with a 12.2% reduction in the likelihood of obesity across gender and ethnicity. Each additional hour spent in a car per day was associated with a 6% increase in the likelihood of obesity. Conversely, each additional kilometer walked per day was associated with a 4.8% reduction in the likelihood of obesity.Obesity relationships with community design, physical activity, and time spent in cars American Journal of Preventative Medicine
Which gets us back to the question of whether most people "can" lose the weight. Physiologically, the answer is likely almost universally yes.Is it? My understanding is that study after study has shown that vanishingly few people who go on diets achieve long-term weight loss. I think it's around 5%. Most dieters end up weighing more than people in non-dieting control groups. Dieting is associated with worse health outcomes than not dieting. If dieting were a drug, it would never get FDA approval. No drug regulatory agency in the world would approve a drug with the efficacy and health risks of dieting.
In that case, I think they would be better off working to lose that weight than working to ensure that everyone respects their right to be overweight.I think that ignores the fact that all the available evidence suggests that "working to lose weight" will ultimately leave them fatter and less healthy than they would be if they took a FA/ HAES approach.
I'm quite sure that "all the available evidence" indicates no such thing, but I wouldn't know for sure, as that's an awful lot of evidence to sift through.And that's why I linked above to a report about Traci Mann's meta-study, which synthesized evidence from 31 long-term studies of weight-loss. I don't think there's anything out there that has challenged Mann's conclusions that only a very small percentage of participants in any study kept the weight off for more than a year or two. The only bright spot in weight-loss is that surgery seems to work long-term. But that's an expensive, dangerous intervention with lifelong, life-altering side effects. It's not for everyone.
It's as useful to ask overweight people why they don't do better at losing weight as it is to ask you "Why didn't you do better in college? Why didn't you go to a better college? Why aren't you getting promoted at your job? Why haven't you gotten a raise? Why do you procrastinate so much? How come you make so little money? Why aren't you better looking? Why don't you have a better girlfriend? Why is your family so fucked up? Why are your personality traits so irrritating? How come you don't get a better haircut? Why do you dress so badly?"tl;dr version: Respect others. And unless someone asks you sincerely for your personal health or appearance advice: mind your own business.
There are superficial solutions to all these problems, but I doubt that just hearing someone say "Work harder, lazy butt! You look ugly, dress better! You're just too dumb - lower your expectations!" is enough to solve your problem.
In short, YES, taking in fewer calories than one burns will result in a weight loss. However, that is one piece of a large, interconnected, and complex puzzle. To jump around excitedly brandishing this one piece of information and considering that you have found a solution is as silly as saying subprime mortgages were the cause the financial crisis. You've got one proximal piece of a much, much bigger picture whose roots and underlying causes are much deeper and more widespread, located both in the individual and in society.
I don't think that only dieting does work, but I'm not a nutritionist or a doctor or whatever. In my great anecdotal experience, I have seen many people lose weight and keep off weight, but I am far from qualified to tell you how it would be best for you to do it, and I would not claim otherwise.What?
Just to clarify, I don't see anorexia as an equivalent, but rather as a diametrically opposed issue, which shares some commonalities.I don't think that's true, fwiw. Clinical anorexia, being 20% below "normal" body weight, is the exact analog of obesity. It's a descriptive term about weight that doesn't tell you anything about the causes or health implications of the person's weight. As with obesity, there are lots of things that cause clinical anorexia. Some people are very thin, and there's no underlying health issue or problem. Some people are very thin because of an underlying physical health problem, like cystic fibrosis or another wasting disease. Some people are very thin because they have an eating disorder. Similarly, there are many reasons a person might be obese, which is to say 20% above "normal" weight.
That eating the classic, whole grains and veggies and lean protein diet and regular exercise as a permanent lifestyle with no immediate weight loss goal is the way to go? Not sure why this is a SA/HAES position, or what shame has to do with it. I think it's the medical consensus as well.That is HAES. That's the philosophy. You should eat well and exercise because it's healthy to eat well and exercise, not because you want to lose weight. Maybe you will lose weight when you eat well and exercise, and maybe you won't. It doesn't matter. The point is to have healthy habits, not to reach or maintain a certain weight.
Seriously though, I thought everyone knew this by nowYou'd think, but they really don't. HAES is super controversial, even though for the most part it overlaps with mainstream recommendations about diet and exercise.
They don't seem aware in the slightest that they are too heavy.Bullshit.
I would agree that women are much more quick to blame their weight...Well, which is it? Do they not know they're "too heavy" or are they blaming their excess weight on the wrong things? Because if they don't know, then why would they be assigning blame?
Exactly where?Well, would you say that describing people who are overweight as "eating themselves to death" is a loving sentiment?
By the numbers do you think this would be untrue?I think it doesn't have much to do with how actual food distribution networks work. I also think that, given that poor people are much more likely than middle-class and rich people to be obese in the US, this is a kind of icky sentiment. Do you really want to imply that poor Americans are more responsible for hunger in the developing world than rich Americans are?
That said, the eating disorders I see in practice are definitely about control and generally if it's a female there has always been a serious problem with the father at some level - abandonment, criticism, mild or overt sexual impropriety - to name a few.I don't want to pounce on you, and I know that you're taking a lot of hits for the entire medical profession on this thread, but God do I hate this crap. When I was anorexic, they were blaming smothering mothers, and that was bullshit, too. I don't really know why I became anorexic, but I don't have a smothering mother or a serious problem with my father. And my eating disorder complicated my relationship with my parents enough without having them feel guilty because doctors and social workers implied it was all their fault.
re: HAES - can anyone point me to a good explanation of intuitive eating?I'm definitely not an authority. It's not like I bought the book. I just figured out what worked for me, and then I read something about intuitive eating, and then I thought "oh! That's what I do!"
The claim that we are seeing an ‘epidemic’ of overweight and obesity implies an exponential pattern of growth typical of epidemics. The available data do not support this claim. Instead, what we have seen, in the US, is a relatively modest rightward skewing of average weight on the distribution curve, with people of lower weights gaining little or no weight, and the majority of people weighing ∼3–5 kg more than they did a generation ago.…posted by Lexica at 12:13 PM on February 14, 2011 [9 favorites]
Except at true statistical extremes, high body mass is a very weak predictor of mortality, and may even be protective in older populations. In particular, the claim that ‘overweight’ (BMI 25–29.9) increases mortality risk in any meaningful way is impossible to reconcile with numerous large-scale studies that have found no increase in relative risk among the so-called ‘overweight’, or have found a lower relative risk for premature mortality among this cohort than among persons of so-called ‘normal’ or ‘ideal’ [sic] weight.…
It is a remarkable fact that the central premise of the current war on fat—that turning obese and overweight people into so-called ‘normal weight’ individuals will improve their health—remains an untested hypothesis. One main reason the hypothesis remains untested is because there is no method available to produce the result that would have to be produced—significant long-term weight loss, in statistically significant cohorts—in order to test the claim. It is particularly striking that studies that have found health benefits associated with various levels of weight loss generally record no dose response: in other words, people who lose a small amount of weight, or even gain weight, get as much health benefit from the intervention as those who lose larger amounts.
That's a distinction without a difference, since diet and exercise modifications are the consensus best method for weight control. So yes, again you've proven that fad diets and fen-phen are bad ideas.It's really not a distinction without a difference. What they say is that when people were put on weight-loss programs based on nutrition and exercise, those who didn't lose any weight experienced the same benefits as those who did lose weight. Eating well and exercising had health benefits, but losing weight didn't confer any extra health benefits. You really don't understand why that would be significant? You really don't understand why that would suggest that people should concentrate on eating well and exercising, rather than losing weight? You don't get why it would be completely counterproductive to tell people who were eating well and exercising that they were failures because they hadn't lost weight?
Instead, they go for the cheap headline saying, no obesity problem at all, and no point in trying to lose weight because it doesn't work, just take these drugs we prescribe for you and everyone's happy.I really don't think that's what they're saying. Did you read the part where they suggest that the "obesity epidemic" serves the interest of doctors and pharmaceutical companies who make a lot of money treating obesity? Or that it creates a convenient scapegoat, the fat American, for rising healthcare costs, thereby letting business interests off the hook?
Dan,and
In following this, it's been my hunch that while you accuse Lindy of projecting, you yourself project your fat-phobia in your writing.
But remember: You are one sidelining injury (knees, back, etc.) from losing your six-pack.
And, don't ever get a health condition where you have to go on steroids.
I'm eating popcorn with a drizzle of organic olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt.and I wonder if these people read the same post I did. Where in his post does he say fat is bad? The closest he comes is:
Just kidding, fuck you Dan, I'm drinking a protein drink I bought at Grocery Outlet because my fat-but-much-stronger-than-yours ass works out several times a week.
You sound just like my grandma when she tried to kick me out of the house when I came out to her at 16. I told her I'd stay in the closet for as long as I could handle and she would shut the fuck up and stop prying into my life. Oh, it's for your own good, oh, I'm using science, oh, I'm trying to have your best interests in mind, oh, I had feelings kinda like yours when I was young, oh, ME ME ME. I can do it, too.
You're just pissed that your advice, your bread, your life's work, is being treated like dickery. SURPRISE! YOU GIVE BAD ADVICE FROM TIME TO TIME! STOP TWISTING IN THE WIND.
Tanizaki: One need only pay a passing glance to the "fat acceptance" movement and the fat acceptance comments in this thread to see this is almost exclusively an area of female concern because increasing body fat decreases value in the sexual marketplace. Men get fat, too, but they manage to shut up about it.Demonstrably untrue, as I- Hal "Rageman" Incandenza- have been incredibly vocal on Metafilter and elsewhere that I'm unredeemably ugly, hideous, and unloveable, and how this is the reason for the end of my life. And it's because I'm fat, and by extension I am gross, not human, and shouldn't be touched. It's a steady drumbeat, and it's not some "female problem" to be insecure, or self-loathing. I find it odd/offensive that you'd imply only women have this concern.
THAT a gestating mother’s environment can have a permanent effect on the physiology of her offspring is well established. The children of Dutch women who were pregnant during the "Hunger Winter" of 1944, for example, suffer much higher rates of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease than those born a year or two earlier. Similar observations in other famines, together with experiments on rodents, suggest this is an accidental consequence of an evolutionary adaptation to food scarcity. The offspring of starving mothers, anticipating hard times during their own future lives, adjust their metabolisms to hoard calories. If the hard times then go away, the result is a tendency to put on weight, with the unpleasant consequences that entails.posted by Miko at 1:14 PM on February 20, 2011 [3 favorites]
Part of this adaptation is a response by the embryo to the nutrition it receives through the placenta. In some cases, though, the unfertilised ovum itself is believed to be affected. Its DNA is reprogrammed, the theory goes, by a process called cytosine methylation. This switches genes on and off in a way that is maintained when DNA replicates during the process of cell division--and can thus be passed down the generations. It is, moreover, a process that could apply equally to the sperm of putative fathers who were starved around the time of mating.
This is my body. It is MINE. I am not ashamed of it in any way. In fact, I love everything about it. Men find it attractive. Clothes look awesome on it. My brain rides around in it all day and comes up with funny jokes. Also, I don't have to justify its awesomeness/attractiveness/healthiness/usefulness to anyone, because it is MINE. Not yours.posted by Lexica at 6:17 PM on February 22, 2011 [1 favorite]
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