I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately from the “fat acceptance” movement. They have a lot of good points, viz. that dieting is ineffective for a lot of people; that the health risks from obesity are exaggerated; that it’s better to focus on eating healthy and exercising for its own sake than for purposes of losing weight, etc.
Still, it seems there are people who are so fat that they need a special “butt wand” to wipe their rear end after doing #2, so to speak. Who need to use special scooters to get around because they have trouble walking.
In my opinion, people who are that fat need to make an effort to lose weight. The goal should not necessarily be to have a bikini body, just to get to a point where they can comfortably walk a mile and do stuff like clipping their toenails without a special device.
Why? What makes it important to you that other people be able to walk a mile and clip their toenails?
I think that this is one of those areas where you have to let people live their own lives and make their own decisions. You can certainly encourage health, but in the end you can’t make someone lose weight, any more than you can make them stop drinking or smoking.
In my opinion, no one should smoke, ever. But I don’t have the life experiences of other people, and I can’t make their choices for them.
A lot of those severely obese people have probably tried and failed to lose weight. Losing weight sets off a cascade of endocrine changes we barely understand that make it easier to gain the weight back, as a result weight maintenance over the long term (5+ years minimum) of significant amounts of bodyweight is not very common. Until we grasp how to alter our endocrine levels (leptin, leptin resistance, ghrelin, CKK, T3 thyroid, etc. etc) losing weight permanently via lifestyle changes alone isn’t a realistic thing for most people. A lot f people who do lose weight lose it for a few months or few years at the most. Eventually their endocrine system wins the battle and they wind up where they started.
So even if someone is so fat they are having mobility problems, that doesn’t mean weight loss via lifestlye changes is likely to fix it. It could also make it worse, some people end up fatter after trying to lose weight. I’ve lost weight via low carb diets, and gained back 3x more than I lost each time. No idea why, low fat diets never did that for me. But if I had never done low carb diets I’d likely be thinner than I am now (I don’t have mobility problems but I am obese).
These threads always end up in the same place. First.
But in answer to your question, if obesity is contributing to health or mobility problems then I can understand wanting to lose weight. I just don’t know how realistic it will be with our current medical technology. Like I said a lot of those people, and I’m sure especially the women (esp the white upper middle class women since they seem to place the most value on being thin) have probably tried numerous times to lose significant amounts of weight and keep it off and couldn’t.
These are not “good points” - they are opinions by fat acceptance promoters which are asserted as facts. Diets work in every case - as long as the dieter doesn’t get lazy and start cheating. And obesity is a huge health risk.
IMHO, the fat acceptance faction are a bunch of angry lazy fatties who refuse to take personal responsibility for their lives. And in trying to deny the fact that obesity is a major health risk, they are encouraging others to stay unhealthy. They’ll be a lawsuit one of these days over someone who bought into their cult beliefs and died from obesity-related complications, rather than lose some weight.
In the same way that quitting smoking works for everyone. It isn’t easy for some people. Plenty of thin people will admit they put NO effort into remaining thin. I would wager to say that at least half of thin/average people aren’t doing anything in the terms of dieting/exercise that they don’t enjoy.
Your brain ends up tricking you. It is relatively easy to lose weight, but it is hard to keep it off.
Go to the NIH and tell them you have a sure fire solution for obesity. Eat less and exercise more. Then ask for a grant to study this theory over the long term. You can even pick your test subjects. Pick 1000 people of your choosing and give them your advice. Follow them for 10 years and find out how many succeed in losing significant amounts of weight and keeping it off for 10 years. Like I said, you get to pick the 1000 people. Pick the 1000 who have the best moral character and motivation in your perspective.
Us fat acceptance people aren’t the angry ones here. It is the people dripping with contempt and disgust for fat people who have to hide those feeling by pretending to care about other people’s health (being full of contempt and making moral judgments of people because of physical characteristics is frowned on in contemporary society, so we as a society like to pretend the obesity war is about health) who are the angry ones.
Personally I’m all for people choosing to lose weight if that is their thing. But losing weight to avoid being a recipient of contempt and ridicule is not something I’d support. And again, until we understand how endocrine regulation of obesity works losing weight and keeping it off solely through lifestyle changes isn’t going to work for most people over the long run.
I recently read a blog by a physician at Bellevue Hospital in NYC who was involved with excavating patients during the flood. Even when power was restored the elevators didn’t work because the motors were in the flooded basement and couldn’t be repaired. By having them walk, or having overworked firemen carry them if necessary, they evacuated all but two of them. Those two weighed over 600 lb a piece. THAT’S TOO FAT. Moreover, people who cannot move need to be fed, so someone continues to feed them the thousands of calories they need every day to maintain that weight.
Too fat for… what, exactly? A random person on the street does not owe anybody a damn thing. They don’t have to lose weight for you, put on makeup for you, shave for you, quit smoking for you, or wear nice clothes for you. Regular showers are, of course, highly recommended. But other than that? Why is it your business what travails someone faces in their private life? Unless you’re forced to share an airplane row with someone who is literally spilling over into your seat (in which case they’ll likely be made to buy another ticket), nobody else’s fatness affects you at all.
Before you go there, we’ve had the debate about healthcare costs before. The fact is, fat people (and smokers) incur FEWER lifetime healthcare costs than healthy people, due to lifespan. Cite:
So the next time you see a fattie or a smoker, instead of mentally badgering them for increased healthcare costs, you should mentally thank them for reducing healthcare costs. =)
Everyone has some kind of vice. Some people are into drinking too much, some are into shopping too much, some are into fucking everything that moves, some like to smoke even though they know it’s deadly. The only thing that separates fat people from anyone else is that their vice is physically visible. There are a lot of assholes out there who like to judge others, so it’s easy to pick on someone who is physically different. While I do not agree with all the fat acceptance claims, I do think the Fat Acceptance movement is a natural reaction to some of the irrational cruelty fat people face.
Very few people are fat because they want to be fat. It’s really easy to eat healthy if you’ve always eaten healthy - much harder if you were raised on an unhealthy diet and have never known any other way. I also strongly believe that some people are just hungrier than others and find it harder to be satisfied with small amounts of food. It’s hard to lose weight if you’re hungry all the time.
It’s really easy to exercise if you are already physically fit. Exercise is genuinely painful for someone who is out of shape and has joint problems from carrying around extra weight.
Not to mention that fat people are often ridiculed if they do try to go to a gym or exercise.
Yes, someone who is 600 lbs is not doing themselves any favors of course. Thank whatever you believe in that you’re not the one with whatever issues (physical, emotional, or whatever) caused that person to end up in that situation and show some compassion instead of judging them.
All right, real quick before the flamethrowers come out…
Are you still low-carbing? Did you gain the weight back while still on the low-carb diet? Or after you stopped low-carbing?
Thing is, if you want to avoid yo-yo dieting, changing the way you eat has to be the way you then eat for the rest of your life.
Well, that’s the trick of it. A person needs to find physical activity that they do enjoy or, you’re right, they’ll give up on it eventually and go back to being sedentary. That’s kind of the point. You need to incorporate it into the way you live your life. None of these changes can be temporary. A person needs to get off their butt and dance, run, walk, swim, parkour, whatever, every single day.
I don’t think the brain is the culprit here. Fear of change might be.
To the point of keeping it off, though… at this point we as a community/culture may need to focus on prevention, because as mentioned once a person is obese for a period of time, their metabolism is permanently changed and they will actually be unable to maintain a healthy weight while eating as much as someone who was never obese. This is why the rising number of obese children is so concerning. These lifestyle habits need to be instilled early, before the metabolic damage is done, and so people can’t imagine life without them.
Not saying that’s easy. If you are poor and live in a food desert, what are your options? Cheap processed foods don’t help either. They’ve recently done studies showing a correlation between type 2 diabetes and consumption of high-fructose corn syrup (which is in freaking everything these days). It means instilling the habit of always reading the labels, cooking (with whole foods, not from a box) more often than not, and culturally doing something about communities with no access to inexpensive, healthy food. Having safe spaces to run and play, convincing Corporate America that having people sit and work in an office 60+ hours a week shouldn’t be the norm. That sort of thing.
No, but she was uneducated regarding creating a healthy lifestyle for a really long time. She focused on the losing of the weight (through temporary dieting), not developing a lifestyle that would allow her to maintain a lower weight.
(Actually it was Oprah’s book Making the Connection that made the connection [har] for me, finally. I’ve kept it off for 14 years, now.)
Its good if you kept it off for 14 years, not many people have accomplished that. As for me no I don’t low carb now. however like I said I have done low fat too but didn’t regain more weight than I was when I started (I lost about 40-50 pounds and gained it back, but didn’t gain more than I weighed originally). So if I did attempt to lose weight and keep it off in the future I’d have to do low fat. If I did a permanent lifestyle change for health and bodyweight I’d probably do something vegetarian.
How much did you lose and what was your lifestyle change (vegetarian, mediterranean, low carb, etc)?
When people say “diets don’t work long term” its because the deprivation becomes mentally too difficult. It has nothing to do with the nutritional value of the food in that diet. The food itself is most certainly capable of maintaining one’s weight loss indefinitely. The key is to incorporate the major tenets of that diet into a permanent, sustainable lifestyle that becomes part of who you are.
It was about 65 pounds originally. In the last 5 years or so I’ve gained about 10 pounds while going down another 2 jeans sizes, which is presumably from starting to do aerial circus as a part of my overall physical activity regime.
Lifestyle changes: no more eating an entire box of cereal in one sitting, no more making a dinner out of McD’s large fries and vanilla shake. Getting off my ass and exercising every day, no excuses. I started with 20 minutes of walking and had difficulty finishing. Every week I increased either duration or intensity.
The basic food stuff I did: don’t drink your calories, and drink 2 litres or more of water every day. At least 5 servings of vegetables every day. Eat something (small, but something) every 3 hours. One thing I did for myself to start was 1> vegetables at every meal except breakfast, 2> vegetables first, so I could fill myself up and eat less of things that were more calorie dense.
It’s evolved over time. Over the last 2-3 years I do a lot more whole foods cooking (almost exclusively). I also can’t really afford to eat out anymore, so there’s that. Then again, I have a wicked sweet tooth, which I indulge regularly, so I’m not on some ascetic diet, either. Daily exercise, and stopping eating when I’m full, are the key points for me. I don’t really have to “watch” what I eat, as long as I’m not going insane with it (and over time I’ve developed the taste for healthier foods, so I don’t really want to go back to McD’s fries and shake, anyway).
Also, if you approach your food lifestyle like “deprivation!” you are setting yourself up to fail. Don’t deprive yourself, just learn to eat more of (and like) healthier foods. Eat the veggies first to fill up so you’re not filling up on cake. Eat the cake at the end, and if you can’t finish the entire 1 pound slab, that’s okay, really.
Check out Oprah’s book Making the Connection. I basically just followed what it said.