I’m curious what you think my actual view on the subject or aim for posting about this is? You just made a pretty elaborate post outlining what cannot possibly be my opinion and why it cannot be my opinion.
So what’s your working theory?
When Americans say genetics they mean high fructose corn syrup.
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Okay, now that I’ve had a chance to get my coffee and smoothie, I’ll outline my actual, real opinion on this subject, and Melkerson can decide whether or not they accept that this is actually my opinion:
Your guiding principle on any conversation about weight should be that society holds immense, pro-thin/anti-fat bias. This is a real thing we need to take seriously. As I said in my brief post, they get shit medical care because many doctors just tell them to lose weight. Overweight and obese people have worse prospects for job advancement. The intersections with other groups are key here too: overweight/obese females and racial minorities experience discrimination more acutely than white men. It takes money and time to lose weight. Etc. In a thread about weight, we should talk about weight with the same sensitivity we have when we’re talking about race.
Various people alluded to “nothing in this thread is fat shaming.” That ain’t a great defense. You don’t need to be fat shaming to have a conversation colored by pro-thin bias. A great example of this is how the conversation seamlessly shifted from one particular person who is relatively heavy to broad, statements about entire groups. Would we tolerate this on a racial issue? Absolutely not. But we tolerate it for overweight people.
I actually don’t cosign on Clovis’ “mostly genetic” thing completely. Instead, we should think of someone’s weight like we think of their mental health. It’s an amalgam of everything that has happened before in your life, shaping who you are right now. My personal feeling, not backed by science but just intuition and what I observe, is the people’s bodies get into a shape that for whatever reason they have a really hard time changing. I’ve developed this feeling after spending a whole lot of time in health and fitness circles. Some people hit that stuff way harder than I do, have way better discipline about food than I do, and yet are not thin or close to society’s definition. It seems likely many people’s metabolisms have been set so that their bodies are at stasis with some extra body fat, probably due to an overlap of genetics and childhood diet, but probably also other things. Not the end of the world, as long as society doesn’t treat them as second class citizens. After all, it’s quite possible (and exceedingly common!) to be overweight and also healthy by all normal metrics. This is a good thing! Now we know we can stop using weight as a shortcut to assessing someone’s health, as doctors have for generations.
We’ve talked a lot about agency of the overweight people themselves, but why not talk about agency of food companies and restaurant chains? We’ve constructed society very deliberately so people will consume as much as possible of everything. People are worked to the bone and the only feasible way to nourish themselves and their children is with fast food or processed crap. Look at the ingredients in the cheap food at the store; there’s sugar in EVERYthing. The other day I saw sour patch kids cereal ffs.
The weight issue is simply us reaping what we sow.
Fortunately, Fat =/= Bad
I apologize if my initial post on the subject was shitty. It was very possibly so. I’ve said before, I’m a third tier poster on here, at best.
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Theres a lot of good stuff in here but I think that equating body weight and race is all kinds of problematic. The analogy has value but also breaks down in important ways on closer inspection.
No one thinks black people are black because of a lack of personal discipline, for example. So the biases against people of color are fundamentally different in nature than the biases against overweight people. So different approaches in dealing with those biases is completely justified.
Also the links between, say, obesity and heart disease are very real and supported by science. This is in stark contrast to, say, phrenology. So one can go seriously sideways trying to equate racism with anti obesity public policy for example. Its totally legitimate for public policy to aim to reduce obesity. It is certainly not legitimate public policy to aim to reduce the % of the population that is black.
I really think you’re going to get very wrong conclusions if you go down the road of “we should treat it like racism”. To some extent, perhaps. But they’re fundamentally different.
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My 100% amateur advice is:
Don’t lead with the weight. Nobody is more aware of her weight than she is, and presumably she has spent an absurd amount of energy in her life trying to conform with what weight society wants her to be, and given up. The goal is not for her to become thin or even to achieve a “healthy weight” or whatever. It’s for her to be healthy, or at least, much healthier.
This is a much lower hurdle that getting thin. Reducing caloric intake by 5-10%, going on 5x 2 mile walks per week, and replacing some portion of unhealthy calories with healthy calories would probably make a huge dent. She’ll probably lose a bit of weight, but her underlying health metrics should improve significantly (assuming she’s sedentary with a poor diet, which your post implies). This can add years to her life, improve her life quality dramatically, and is actually achievable.
The problem with the focus on weight is precisely that it sets this impossible hurdle for people to clear–in many cases probably literally, physically impossible–and when people fail to clear it their efforts are deemed futile. So they give up. The focus on weight ends up doing the opposite of what we want, which is for people to be healthy.
As for Clovis’ lack of knowledge that obesity is a COVID risk factor, I’m also pretty surprised by that.
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My theory is that you don’t believe the following:
Obese people are unequivocally unhealthy.
If you’re willing to state that, then I’m still not sure I’ll believe you, but I’ll shut up about it.
To be clearer about my analogies:
- We should discuss weight with similar sensitivity to how we discuss race.
- If you want a proxy of how to think about weight and overweight people, mental health is a relatively good one imo.
(Note: I also think we should discuss mental health with similar sensitivity to how we discuss race.)
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I lost 100 lbs, AMA.
Thanks, we probably agree more than disagree.
On the second point I think that at least with obesity we have a stronger understanding of the physiology behind weight gain and loss than we do with mental health.
But how much did you gain back?
I’m kidding. I know you’ve made maintaining you weight a priority.
Depends on the context. It’s a good bias in establishing public health initiatives. It’s a bad bias when you’re picking someone for a promotion at work and their weight has no bearing on their job merit.
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Plenty of people really think this.
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My impression has always been that all food is cheaper in USA#1 compared to Europe. It’s that in Europe healthy food is a bit more expensive, but junk food is way more expensive.
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Did she break up with you, or you with her?
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This is true, but that’s also a good start if you’re trying to lose weight!
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I think in the US the problem is on the other side, processed high calorie foods are directly subsidized by the federal government. So the choices are different - in the US it may be possible to buy healthy food at manageable cost, but you could instead have heaping servings of Oreos and frozen pizza for the same cost.
I hear you. Part of the issue there is low quality public discourse on what “healthy” food is. Everything is framed in bizarre, out of context terms that are not actionable. E.g. “Eat 8 ounces of seafood per week. Fresh salmon is a great choice!” People eat meals, not ounces of food. Everyone knows fresh salmon is very pricey. This kind of ostensibly useless information is structured to make people regress into thinking that fresh fish is too expensive and they dont weigh their food anyway.
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Google “Food Deserts.”
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Yes also a big issue in the US for sure. You can get rice in a food desert but steamed rice isn’t “healthy” unless you define good food as food with an absence of bad stuff in it, which is not the best heuristic.
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It’s a sign of immaturity to claim “If I can do it anyone can.”
P. S. I lost 40 lbs four years ago and have kept it off.