I know I’m late to the party and I don’t mean to pick out martu from the chorus but this caught my eye. Do people honestly believe that the fatties are making a noticable difference in the resources we all consume? Billions of gallons of oil for our cars, billions of trees to make paper, trillions of gallons of water for golf courses and pools, etc., and the problem is Fatty MacFaterson eating an extra twinkie every day? Not to mention the huge amount of food we just throw away here in America. If you want to hate a person who uses more than their share of the Earth’s resources I’m with you but I think you want to hate the rich, not the fat, in that case.
High-caloric air.
Very MSWAS of you.
The problem with this is that it results in “I’m unlikely to succeed, why should I try?”
And if that’s the case, maybe we should just give into a Wall-E version of the future where we sit in our moving recliners and suck down our mega glups.
Or, alternatively, face the fact that obesity is a terminal illness and treat it as such - palliative care only. Get type 2 diabetes…well, sorry. We will make you more comfortable, but really, no use treating it since controlling the root cause is beyond your control
By the way, this is not so far out for treating suffers of addiction. My alcoholic sister was going to die on the street because she refused to help herself and we were pretty much done enabling her. It was only then she figured out if she wanted to exert her willpower or not.
And what I’m saying, and have been saying since entering this thread, is that this is a false dichotomy. Acknowledging multiple factors contributing to increased trends in obesity != giving up/enabling/refusing to take personal responsibility/etc. It allows for more effective treatments.
Can you suggest some? Because what you have been saying is “its overwhelming.” So how do you not make it overwhelming. Obviously “eat less, exercise” is useless advice. And we have an overwhelming problem as a society that needs to be addressed at an individual level.
It doesn’t make sense to me to address social problems at a merely individual level. I don’t agree with your assessment of the problem. I think this is a social problem that should be addressed in part at a policy level. Maybe through choice architecture or incentives for healthy living, I dunno. Maybe by improving food access for those whose budgets and time schedules make it difficult to procure the good stuff. I am a big believer in the power of macro-level change for macro-level problems.
Why do you think ‘‘eat less, exercise’’ is useless advice? That’s pretty much how people lose weight at the most fundamental level. I’m only exploring the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving that goal, and why the ‘‘fat people are just bad at life’’ argument is pretty weak.
One, and perhaps the most crucial, is social support. People who are surrounded by others with healthy behaviors find it easier to engage in healthy behaviors themselves. Interestingly, the social networking health site of which I am a regular member, SparkPeople, has a pretty high success rate. It has so far been the topic of two studies analyzing the effects of social reinforcement on making healthy lifestyle changes. It very well may be that social networking sites such as SparkPeople will help shape the future of healthy living.
There are a lot of studies out there suggesting little changes people can make, and maybe if we could combine all those little changes it would result in a bigger change. For example, people who want to lose weight should stop eating in groups. The more people there are at a dinner table, the more people eat. Then there’s portion control, and the bottomless soup bowl phenomenon – where people trust their eyes more than their stomachs in deciding whether they’ve eaten enough. You know, education is a start.
But not everyone is, you know, as proactive as the average Doper. Not everyone’s going to be able to distinguish between fact and crap or review the latest research on obesity. And not everyone is going to give a shit in the first place whether or not they are fat.
I have two purposes in participating in this thread:
- Contest the notion that our outlandish obesity rates are strictly the result of personal moral failure
- Draw a clear distinction between anti-fat bigotry and obesity as a public health concern
I don’t know what the solutions are, but you’re absolutely right. What we’re trying isn’t working and we need to rethink our strategy.
Who?
Not surprisingly, the CDC agrees with you.
I think the answer is People Kibble®. I mean, nutritionally-complete kibble for people, not kibble OF people.
ETA: Although kibble OF people would solve some problems, too.
It’s been done…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juwvwu3Z5HI
(There are about 8 episodes - well worth the watch - funny!)
Actually, SFG said she was fuckin’ smokin’ hot.
So, where is Shot From Guns, anyway? It’s been a while since Rand Rover announced his crush on her, and she hasn’t responded! How disappointing. 
We’ve been making a lot of macro level changes for years. We teach home ec in schools, teach nutrition from kindergarten. The amount of nutrition I got in school, the amount my children get, is astounding. They are getting more nutrition information than “just say no” D.A.R.E., nutrition information is a cornerstone of both health and physical education programs - and that has been the case in this part of the country for twenty years - yet the graphic in the OP indicates it isn’t helping. You cannot force someone to eat well.
Fat acceptance has also grown in my estimation. People are FAR more willing now than before to say a size 16 isn’t fat - when I was in college, a size 12 was. Maybe its my group of friends - a group of people who is sexy, fun, beautiful - and not one of us is petite (two of us are not overweight. Out of twelve. Three are morbidly obese.) These are women with incredible self confidence and self esteem - but that hasn’t helped them shed pounds (for several of them, surgery has helped a lot, but that is a rather drastic solution. Its also expensive - out of pocket it was $50k AFTER insurance for one of my friends). Its not lack of trying, and progress has been made (and lost and made again).
We could tax junk food and fast food - although the outcry when that is suggested tends to be a political non-starter. We could legislate food content, but that’s unlikely to go anywhere politically either - and also curtails personal freedoms to eat junk - after all more than half of our population isn’t obese. We could put subsidies in place for good grocery stores - but I’m not sure that would help. I used to live in Minneapolis near Uptown - a poor part of town but near one of the best co-op groceries in the country - many people STILL didn’t eat well when it was nearby and non-profit. I’m pretty convinced this is a “you can lead a horse to water, and he’ll still prefer Hi C and a bag of chips - and honestly, don’t we all.”
The whole situation makes me angry. Not on behalf of people who are making the choices - grownups get to make bad choices and if you want to eat yourself sick, or drink yourself dead, or ride a motorcycle in the rain at night without a helmet or proper gear - I kind of think that’s your problem, but the obesity epidemic in kids makes my blood boil.
I suppose this will make me look like a selfish bastard, but why should I be penalized (taxes and government control of my eating habits/choices) because someone else has a problem? I can and do maintain a sympathetic and tolerant stance, I am not a “fatty hater”, but just no.
You’re sexy when you’re playing coy.
Coincidentally, in today’s issue of the reasonably good medical journal Archives of Internal Medicine, this study was published.
With the results of that study in mind (taken at face value), it seems as if higher prices for things like soda and pizza (whether due to taxation or otherwise) could lead to changes in eating behaviour. Quoting directly, “Policies aimed at altering the price of soda or away-from-home pizza may be effective mechanisms to steer US adults toward a more healthful diet and help reduce long-term weight gain or insulin levels over time.”
Personally speaking, and on principle, I would not favour such an approach.
Hell, I’d run away too.
Actually your dubiousness is not a hijack at all, imo. It goes to the heart of the matter. It’s the North American idea that if you can decide that some physiological evidence makes something a “disease” we are helpless and must await medical intervention. The idea that we all must join _____s Anonymous and thus renounce our demon forever in order to be saved.
OK, that might have been a little over the top. Anywho, I don’t have time to do a lot of searching right now but just to let you know I’m not completely talking out of my ass, here’s a passing reference in a survey of Ontario treatment programs:
Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs:
Which is not to say that there aren’t probably some people who should just never drink. Just that there’s probably a few people who could control themselves if they really tried.
Look out, I’m gonna share.
I once spent a month being very serious and careful about dieting. Not because I particularly wanted to lose weight, but rather, because I wanted to see if I could do it. A strange project, but anyway, it’s what I did.
I did it. I lost several pounds (ten? I don’t remember). So I know it’s possible to lose weight through self control.
But here’s the thing. I don’t think I will ever put myself through that again. It’s hard to explain the degree–the intensity–to which my brain was controlled by thoughts of food during this month. It was like I had a voice constantly in my mind screaming, pleading, begging me to please eat. I wasn’t hungry. I was just incredibly sad that I wasn’t eating.
It’s really difficult to explain if it’s not like this for you. But the sadness was simply unbearable. (Well–I bore it, I guess, for a month, but it was a feeling no one should ever have to bear. That’s how I’ll put it.)
During that month the things my mom used to go through when I was a kid when she would have long bouts of deep depression over food issues started to really make sense to me. It looks like I’ve got that gene from her. Lucky for me, it looks like I’ve also got a physiology that let’s me eat basically what I want without making me (very) overweight.* This is my good fortune. But I know there are people out there who have this same emotional reaction to “food denial” and who don’t have lucky physiologies. I can’t think ill of these people. I feel really, really sorry for them. Because I know how they feel.
But I also know, from conversations like this one, that most people don’t know how this feels. Most people, it turns out, don’t go through this sort of depression when they deny themselves food. They don’t like it, they find it very annoying perhaps, quite inconvenient maybe. But it doesn’t make them sad in the way it made me sad for that month.
You guys who think fat people “just need to control themselves” please try to understand. In a way you’re right–if they controlled their eating, they would lose weight. But controlling oneself can be very different, mentally, from one person to another. To some, controlling oneself concerning food is a chore. To others, it’s a deeply depressing ordeal. This seems to be just a fact about people’s physical makeup. And this fact should indicate that condemnation or annoyance at others’ ways is not an appropriate reaction in most of these cases.
To be clear I was merely addressing the argument that the only moral issues are due to vanity or bigotry. Agreed there are other sections of society that are more wasteful with resources.