Fat Acceptance Movement

Great Debates
21

But wait, these don’t even make much sense.
What’s their point with the first line?
The second point seems dubious to me, but I haven’t seen the studies, so I’ll bypass that.
Third point I think is skewed perception of the meaning of the word “portion” and how those numbers should be used. Also, I believe the “diet industry” isn’t the group of people who “decided” on the average daily recommended caloric intake. Furthermore, isn’t packing a layer of fat the very definition of “overeating”? If you’re eating more than you need to maintain health and condition, you’re over-eating. You won’t put on fat if you don’t take in extra calories, it doesn’t just magically appear.
Lastly, food addiction isn’t about food, per se and strictly speaking, so what’s the problem with assuming that different methods of treatment from the “AA model” might be necessary? Even alcoholics can’t always be helped with the AA model of addiction treatment. As our illustrious QtM outlined in another thread, the 12-step method of treatment works best for certain types of alcoholics–true addicts–but that for binge drinkers and other types of problem drinkers, other methods are more successful.

More anecdotal data: In general, I eat about a third of my husband’s food intake. We’ll order a large pizza for dinner for the occasional treat and I’ll stuff myself on three slices while he finishes three quarters of the pie. I honestly cannot fathom having the internal capacity to take in the sheer volume of food he puts down his gullet. He’s wearing the same jeans he wore in college, though is maybe a little squishier around the middle. He’s not one of those rail-thin, high metabolism guys, either.

If I want to be fit and healthy, and I do, I have to limit the bulk of my intake to healthy whole foods, and be very careful about portion sizes for calorically dense foods like, you know, pizza. I also have to exercise routinely. It’s true that on “normal foods” I stay fat on a very small intake. When I’m careful to limit my intake to healthy whole foods like grains and veggies, good meat and dairy, I find myself taking in a much larger volume of food and eating much more frequently. The result of this is that I lose weight eating “more” food because I’m taking in fewer calories overall–whether you gain or lose weight isn’t about the total volume of food intake, it’s about the choices you make. You don’t get fat eating brown rice and broccoli.

The point is, “normal” weight people might be eating similar amounts of food, but either their natural metabolism is quite different, or they’re making different food choices. Either way, if a fat person wanted to be fit, they’d need to make different choices somewhere along the line. I’m the last person in the world to be flippant about weight loss, it’s hard as hell to do and harder still to maintain, but these folks don’t want to lose weight, they want to complain about the world treating them badly because they’re overweight. I’m totally down with treating people with kindness and respect across the board, and down with defense of overweight folks in general, but I don’t think deluding themselves that they didn’t put the fat on their body in the first place is helping the cause.*

*Barring health complications and blah blah blah.

ETA: samm beat me to it and said it in four sentences!

22

I think that’s a myth. My wife has gained a lot of weight over the years and only because of her over eating. She doesn’t gorge and eat giant portions but she’s eating something or other half the night.

Maybe there’s a tiny percentage of overweight people that are naturally big and get that way on the same amount of food someone else might eat but it seems no stretch to me to say over eating has a direct correlation with obesity.

23

Got it in one.

Metabolisms vary a lot less than you might think, but there’s significant individual variation in how easily our bodies store fat, and how easily we burn stored fat.

24

Well I’m only one man, among billions of people, but those who judge others usually have something to hide themselves, so please don’t let it bother you. One might lie to oneself, but mirrors are everywhere, even in nature.

25

For the movement you’re talking about specifically, where exactly do they think the fat is coming from? That their genes are spontaneously generating it?

26

I do Yoga three days a week (about to up it to five days a week for summer). I walk my dog (briskly) about an hour every day. I hike regularly. I camp regularly. I drum weekly - African Djembe. I am physical active in the sense that when my friends want to do something physical, I can (and do) participate. My cholesterol levels are excellent, my thyroid levels are excellent, my triglycerides are top-notch, every blood test and test of physical health places me squarely in the “you’re healthy” range. My grandmother, who shared my body type/size, lived to be 87, with no major chronic illnesses. My mother, who shares my body type, has MS, but otherwise is healthy.

And according to the charts (BMI or otherwise), I’m about 40 pounds overweight.

When I tell people that, they are SHOCKED. Apparently, I carry the weight so evenly distributed that while I clearly am overweight, I don’t appear to be as overweight as the charts indicate.

And yet - my measures of health above apparently don’t matter. I’m overweight, and therefore I’m unhealthy. My unhealthiness causes economic hardship to otherwise. I am overweight and therefore open to judgment.

I’m overweight because I like to eat good food, and I like to drink good alcohol. I realize that my physical activity levels do not compensate for the caloric intake. My physical health, however, has been measured by all appropriate tests and found to be excellent.

I really do feel that most people who say “I’m not being judgmental, but overweight people are unhealthy!” personally find overweight people disgusting and are dressing that disgust up in faux concern for the economic and health impact of the weight.

27

Many of these blogs talk about HAES (Health at Every Size) which I support.

The basis tenet is to move the emphasis away from the number on the scale, to encouraging people of every size to live a healthy lifestyle. That means eating nutritious food, getting regular exercise, and trying to keep stress to a minimum with a positive outlook on life. So HAES approach says stop making fat the focus, and concentrate on healthy lifestyle instead.

I think what you are seeing at the moment (in many blogs) is an overreaction to the negative way in which fat people are viewed in our society. So some blogs are a bit extreme at the moment - be proud of being fat! Everyone should be fat! Fat is great!

I feel this is a counter-reaction to the way fat people are currently treated in our society. It strikes me as being similar to the extreme feminism that happened for a while - the ‘all men are rapists’ period.

28

Why am I allowed to judge someone who doesn’t stop drinking alcohol even though he’s ruining his life with it, but I’m not allowed to judge a fat person even though they’re killing themselves with food?

Well, maybe I’m not supposed to judge the alcoholic either, but I don’t really care. Have a little bit of self respect and do something for yourself. When the doctor tells you to lose weight because you’re unhealthy, do it! It’s exactly as stupid to keep ordering extra large cokes when you’re fat as it is to buy Marlboros when you’re developing lung cancer.

29

I agree that healthy people come in lots of different sizes.

Part of a healthy lifestyle is to limit certain types of food, like high fat, high cholesterol, high sodium stuff. That doesn’t mean that you can’t treat yourself, but eating healthy is the first step to being healthy. You can’t be healthy if you have bad eating habits, just like you can’t be healthy if you are never physically active.

30

Who said you’re not allowed to judge them? But unlike alcohol, we NEED food to survive, so with alcohol you can just quit drinking all together. Food…not so much.

That said, there is a way to remain healthy, and while being a bit overweight, as Kolga is considered, by some judgements, isn’t really the problem. It’s when you’ve got the truly obese that there’s something wrong.

31

BMI and other charts are very limited in their use.
Athlete? Not valid.
Big boned? Not valid.
Small boned? Not valid.
Pregnant? Not valid.
Recently pregnant? Not valid, and every chart has a different definition of recent.

But there is a different between saying “BMI is not a good measurement of whether someone is fat, Kolga isn’t fat, Arnold the Impronunceable wasn’t fat when he was Mr Olympia,” saying “being miserable with yourself won’t help you get better, so start by accepting yourself” and saying “fat is good! Enjoy fat!”

32

I know that there are plenty of healthy overweight people. But most of the overweight folks I know personally are family members whose weight has had a definite negative impact on their lifestyle and health. Both of my parents have Type II diabetes. Because I want to avoid that, I try very hard to keep my weight within a reasonable range.

Likewise. It’s not easy, because I love good food. But by exercising every day and eating ridiculous amounts of fruits and vegetables and very little fast food, I’m able to keep myself in relatively good shape.

It seems like most people in the US, regardless of their body type, could benefit from eating less processed food and exercising more. If the fat acceptance movement promotes healthy food and an active life for its adherents, then I don’t have a problem with it.

33

There’s something to be said for this, but there’s pretty good reason to believe that being fat is in and of itself a health risk. Sweeping that under the rug isn’t going to do anyone any favors.

34

My therapist once said “Making fun of fat people is the last acceptable nasty thing to do to someone.”

35

People say that about a lot of groups, including white trash, the Irish and so on. :wink:

I think all my thoughts on this have already been posted. The notion of of “fat activism” sounds ludicrous, but when you think about the way fat people are judged - I won’t lie, I do this sometimes and I suspect most of us do - it’s pretty harsh and unpleasant. ‘That’s disgusting, how can someone be lazy and stupid enough to get into that kind of shape.’ Most people have the good sense not to say stuff like that, but I’m sure the attitude bleeds through and I can’t blame anybody for being sick and tired of it. A lot of people accept that alcoholism is a disease, but obesity is seen as a character flaw. I don’t know the science, but that may not be fair. “Being fat is healthy, accept who you are!” is stupid, but there’s nothing wrong with awarding people some basic respect.

36

I think it would do the world an awful lot of good if being overweight was not stigmatized.

Full disclosure: I’m a fatty. Shock! Horror!

After I started looking at weight honestly, I realized a lot. Can fat people, generally, lose weight? Yes. Does that mean that being fat is solely a lack of willpower and moral fiber? No.

My sister, who is quite thin, has lived with me for about a year. Several months ago, we were talking about my efforts to lose weight. She made the observation that she eats more than I do routinely, but yet, I weigh more! I have found that this is nearly universally true among thin people I know. Thin people don’t have to count calories and go hungry. Though they don’t eat everything they want, they don’t have to exercise the same control as I apparently do.

Does that mean that I am stuck being fat? No, it just means that the playing field isn’t level.

A close male friend of mine will pontificate at length that portion control and willpower are all that anyone needs to stay thin. This is a man who drinks beer whenever he feels like it (at one point, about 4 ice beers in an evening) and does not exercise. It’s very frustrating because I’ve lived with him, I’ve watched what he eats, and I know I eat significantly less than him (and always have) and yet am significantly overweight where he is not. For him, it’s impossible to understand why people could ever become obese because he would literally have to constantly stuff himself in order to become overweight.

So what does all this mean? It means we should get the fuck over fat - not just accept it as okay, but stop the histrionics about how we’re such a horribly morally deprived nation because we’re chunky. We have food in plenty compared to many places in the world, but we also live in a pretty spread out nation, where mass transit is at best sporatically available and our lifestyles largely require us to sit on our asses all day. Add to that the constant bombardment of advertising that is intended to make us feel bad about ourselves, and the news agencies’ sensationalizing of the issue, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

What ends up happening is that people – especially kids – are ostracized because of weight. I have even heard adults defend this because it’s “motivational”. I’ll tell you, being excluded from group activities (including and especially physical ones like games and sports) is not helping overweight kids. I’ve known a lot of overweight people, including myself, who were terrified of joining a gym because they felt they would be mocked or treated with contempt, because that is what they had experienced in the past when they tried to do physical activity. People who are significantly overweight often feel helpless and worthless because so many people find it so easy to manage their weight.

Even among Dopers, who in my opinion tend to be more intelligent than most, the assumption is that if someone’s big that they’re scoffing down giant sodas and Big Macs all the time. I’m sure there are those people. There are also a lot of overweight people who eat not much differently than other people who are thin, and for whom losing weight is very difficult. Nobody seems to think it’s OK to have such contempt and disdain for people who have learning disabilities. They can learn things, it’s harder for them. For some of us, likewise, we can be at a healthy weight. But it’s harder for us. It’s only harder when people call us disgusting.

I have known plenty of people who made no attempt to hide the fact that they eat pizza every day or routinely down a pound of chocolate at a time; nobody doubted their moral fiber or made comments about their health because they were thin. Nobody seems to care when thin people eat poorly and avoid exercise even if they’re unhealthy. The conversation about weight is supposed to be about health, but it’s not; it’s about the fat itself and fat makes some people uncomfortable.

37

I’ll be completely honest here, and say that I have a bias against obese people. I certainly try not to let it be apparent to the outside world, but it’s really the only prejudice I have.

If I were an employer, and two equally identical candidates applied for a job, and one was a 10 pounds overweight, and one was a 100 pounds overweight, I would immediately hire the smaller person. In truth, I might hire the smaller person who had less qualification, up until the point it effected my bottom line. It is totally unfair, but I feel that someone who has let their weight go so completely out of control doesn’t demonstrate an ability to make rational decisions, nor do they have the will power to work hard to overcome an obstacle.

I’m carrying around about 20 pounds I don’t need, and I have family members who are built more “stocky” but make good decisions on food and exercise. And then I have an aunt who is big time obese. Her children are now also getting there, and it makes me sad and angry that her personal choices have now affected a new generation. And by choices, I mean having fried cheese for breakfast.

I think a more socially and mentally healthy way to deal with “fat acceptance” is, as stated above, looking at it as a health problem. The whole “fat is sexy” idea is a non-starter, because as a human animal, we are generally attracted to reproductive health, and being obese is not healthy. I think it would be terrible if obesity became acceptable - social pressures can be a great way to promote good living, like the social pressures on smokers, green living and just generally being a jerk.

38

I think if you replace the idea of food/exercise in your above statement with “alcohol” or “pot” or “excessive exercise”, you get to the heart of why obesity is such an issue. If someone were to be drunk all the time, or stoned, or dangerously thin, most of the rest of us would doubt their moral fiber. It not a question of fat cells on belly or hips - it’s an issue of moderation, and making healthy choices.

I was an outcast in school, mostly because I was a big dork, but I felt those same pressures. I would guess many people here have for one reason or another. I don’t mean this at all snarky, but only as a way to understand - if you feel uncomfortable at a gym (which I certainly did as well) why not exercise at home?

39

Maintaining a heavier weight doesn’t take that many more calories.

this site has a basal metabolic rate calculator. It’s a rough estimate of how much a person would burn if they did nothing all day long.
For a woman who is 5’4" tall (which I think is average), and weighed 120 pounds, if they ate 1330 calories/day, even lying in bed, they’d stay 120 pounds. However a woman at the same height who weiged 180 pounds, would only need to eat 1590 calories/day to stay 180 pounds. That’s only 250 extra calories/day. Two pieces of bread/day. Or two extra pieces of fruit. Or two large glasses of juice. Or two slices of cheese. Or a large bagel. Maintaining the larger body takes more food, but not that much more food. It’s definitely not the picture we’re often given of someone stuffing their mouth with food all day every day.

40

I support it on two points.

a) The health at every size movement

b) Stopping fat discrimination

I can’t, however, defend stuff like when “Aunt Fattie” on Shapely Prose gives permissive advice to someone who writes in to ask whether it’s okay to binge eat while her father dies.

My best friend from undergrad “helpfully” sent Shapely Prose to me when I decided to lose weight (I don’t know what her intention was). I found a lot of it to be really depressing. Kate Harding brings up great points but some of the commenters go off the deep end and it ends up feeling like a commiseration circle more than anything else. It reminds me of attorneys/law students forever bitching about how it’s impossible to do well in law school-I used to read a lot of those message boards before I went and I found them so self-defeating. Then I actually went back to law school and discovered that really, it wasn’t so hard as long as you figure out formatting. It was at that point that I realised if maybe those people didn’t spend as much time on Princeton Review talking about how impossible it was to get anything above a B-/B, they would be doing a whole lot better.