I believe that much like we have sex education and anti-smoking education from the ages of around ten, we should have anti-fat education (different to nutrition education). And furthermore, two things need to be mentioned because they are not common sense to a young kid.
Firstly, stretch marks - and their irrevocability. I never even knew about stretch marks until I had them. Secondly, the fact that even after losing weight if you have let yourself get obese then you will be left with loads of so-called “loose skin” which can look hideous, even worse than stretch marks.
I think that a lot of obese people, including myself, were less disciplined about getting fat on the basis that we could always lose weight later. Pointing out the fallicies of that - and from a cosmetic POV rather than health POV as the former matters more at those ages - could halt a lot of early weight gain.
Finally, I think that anorexics and too thin people with body issues should be worried about less, for the greater good. For every one normal teenager no longer disgusted with his or herself there are thousands of fat teenagers who are gaining weight who should be disgusted with themselves (in a sense). In other words, while self esteem is a good thing I don’t see that it has to come from being satisfied with one’s body; but if it does then we shouldn’t push delusional ideas. If we need to make people uneasy about weight and this leads to much less obesity yet also a tiny number of extra anorexic deaths, then from a purely utilitirian viewpoint that is the way to go.
Posted in great debates because all of these ideas may or may not be controversial, and while this is something of a polemic I hope for debate.
I do feel that had things been the way I suggest when I was younger then I would not be so obese now.
Saggy looking skin just looks old - I never saw loose skin of the kind you can expect if you lose weight past the age of about eighteen. I wasn’t even aware of the idea until I was at university (I think).
If you mean stretch marks, I don’t think I ever saw them at old people at the beach. Although you have to remember I have probably been to the beach far less than you!
This should be fun. But to point out the obvious, we really don’t understand how weight regulation works. If we did we wouldn’t have a society where 85% of the population thinks they are too fat and are unable to change it with any meaningful degree of long term success.
Energy regulation probably evolved 3+ billion years ago, and is based on tons of redundant, complicated signals that we are only beginning to understand. If you think more ridicule is going to solve anything you are wrong, the only thing that will provide a meaningful cure for obesity is comprehending the biochemical signals the body uses to regulate bodyfat and weight, and finding ways to manipulate them. Besides, it is better to be a society full of fat people who are ok with themselves than a society full of fat people who hate themselves and each other.
We have anti-fat education, it is called the outside world. There is a reason girls start wanting to diet in 2nd grade.
It’s about having the young notice the premanence of certain things to do with obesity. There is no way that most kids know about loose skin and stretch marks.
By the way note that you could use your argument against obesity education against sex education; reasoably speaking most ten+ year olds will pick up most of the essentials about sex themselves. But having some formal education will assure everyone knows the basics.
Loose skin is one thing. But thin people can get stretch marks, too… namely, during growth spurts. I remember my best friend in our freshman year of high school freaked out about wearing a bikini, because she had a couple stretch marks on her upper thighs. And this girl was TINY. She couldn’t have weighed 90 pounds soaking wet, and had never not been underweight.
Nutrition education would help some, but weight also has a lot to do with class. Food that tastes good and is good for you costs more than food that tastes good and is bad for you. It also takes longer to prepare a healthy meal at home than it does to buy something processed. Working-class folks have less leisure time than upper-class folks. They probably prefer to spend that time with their families, rather than taking the time to make healthier meals with 200 fewer calories per serving.
So, for multiple reasons, poorer people tend to be fatter. Fat parents tend to have fat children (whether this is genetic or because they passed poor habits doesn’t matter, the effect is the same). And fat children tend to become fat adults. This cycle is very difficult to break. And looking for ways to further shame fat people into losing weight is absolutely the wrong approach. We’ve tried that (are currently trying it, in fact) and it doesn’t work. All it does is drive up the demand for weight loss surgery, mental health therapy, and antidepressants.
I think Wesley Clark has put it very well already, but just to second what he’s said:
I doubt there are many adolescents out there thinking “If I get fat I’ll just look bad and get abuse now, I can always shape up when I’m 30”.
OTOH there are plenty of youngsters out there with eating disorders, self-harming or even attempting suicide over their weight and body image.
In terms of obesity the common perception that it’s just a matter of some people having low self control is increasingly conflicting with the data.
Two people could eat the same number of calories and do the same amount of exercise, but one of those people may get much fatter than the other. Or, on the same number of calories one person may feel quite comfortable while another would experience starvation-like hunger levels all of the time.
The problem is, do 11 year old really care about what they will look like when they are 30? When I was 14 I would ride a bike downhill w/o a helmet to see how fast I could go, I would top out at 45-50mph. But when you are young I don’t think people will care. I think all that would happen is people would become even more neurotic about their weights, but they wouldn’t really do anything about it. Do you think you would be less fat had you had grade school education about obesity? I personally don’t believe that, my impression is all we will do is make people more miserable and neurotic if we did that.
My fear is that this kind of teaching would just make people more neurotic and loathing of self and others, w/o really affecting obesity rates.
People who are obese as kids face longer lifetimes of obesity, or so I’ve heard. My younger brother was chubby as a kid, lost about 30-40 pounds and has essentially kept it off for the last 15 years. So you have a point, fighting obesity when you are young may make it easier to keep it off in adulthood.
But again, medical science isn’t ‘that’ advanced on the subject of fat regulation. If it were we’d have solutions other than stapling people’s stomachs and seeing that only succeed 50-60% of the time. It strikes me as you will run into a few problems.
Young kids don’t really care about how they look as adults, they aren’t thinking that far ahead.
This will result in more loathing and hate for fat and fat people
because we really don’t understand how to change bodyweight and bodyfat more than at the margins for large groups of people on a permanent basis, it won’t matter anyway. We might as well teach kids about the long term negative implications of being short.
FWIW, I lost about 11" on my waist in college (gained it back though) and never had loose skin. I was about 25 at the time. I don’t get hangovers either. I can drink 16oz of whiskey, and I sober up in about 7 hours and go back to my normal life with no headaches or anything. Yay me, those genetic gifts somewhat counterbalance all the mental health problems. Somewhat.
I’ve always been thin and I had/have the same stretch marks. They were reddish-purple for a few years then they faded to whitish.
Stretch marks do fade *a lot *with time. Also, a lot of people I know swear by cocoa butter.
Anyway, it’s certainly true that kids/adolescents aren’t very good at weighing future consequences, what with their undeveloped frontal lobes…so I, too, think that the approach being suggested here would probably not be very effective.
I think it would be more helpful if kids were taught the causes/risk factors for obesity and practical, specific strategies to avoid becoming obese. They already know they aren’t going to look their best at 40% body fat.
Honestly, I’ve always preferred women with at least a tad bit of padding on them. Also, I’ve heard that being healthy and being overweight don’t have to be at odds with each other.
Then of course from a purely cosmetic stance, some people simply prefer a big booty, yo.
I think Simple Linctus has a point in part: being overweight is something of which a lot of people think that it is just a small problem that they will solve later, only to find that they can’t. I think we are very much ingrained with the idea that if you are overweight you simply need to consume fewer calories and expend more through exercise and that will solve the problem. It is slowly becoming clear that that does not solve the problem: you need to do that to not become overweight in the first place.
The NYT had an interesting article on the subject not too long ago. Basically, what is little known, and also poorly understood, is that being overweight in way resets the standard for your body, so that your overweight weight becomes the base line. Any weight you lose from that point your body will take as starvation and will fight back hard against it. That’s why you might lose a little weight at first, but you will eventually regain it.
So in that sense I think the OP has a point: the focus needs to be that you shouldn’t become overweight in the first place, with knowledge and understanding of the permanent issues once you are overweight. I agree that many people (ok, I hate saying these gendered things, but mainly men) think that becoming a little fatter isn’t a problem, they’ll just lose the weight later. Then it turns out that that is actually very difficult. Surprise. That’s something we could focus on in education.
Where the OP becomes problematic is the use of stretch marks as an example. Stretch marks are a fact of life. I’m hot as, and I have stretch marks. The idea that they are not normal comes from magazines where they are airbrushed out. This just perpetuates an unattainable ideal that makes everybody miserable about their bodies. Of course, if you rapidly gained weight you will have worse stretch marks. Well, you’ll also have stretch marks if you have a baby, should we explain that to people too? Or perhaps we should allow stretch marks to become a normal thing that everyone has by not photoshopping them out of magazines (yeah fat chance, but it would be nice).
I don’t see what anorexia has to do with the subject. It’s not a zero sum game. You can talk about both anorexia and obesity just fine. In fact, if you’re adequately discussing a healthy lifestyle (healthy diet, exercise and body image) you automatically are.
Aren’t you just providing another disincentive for losing weight of the “Oh well, my body is already screwed and will never again look good so what’s the point in losing weight?” variety? I would like to see some numbers on how many young people think it’s ok to gain weight because you can just lose it later, because that doesn’t strike me as a mainstream attitude. Weight loss is always made out to be hard, really hard… nearly or actually impossible for some to achieve. Wouldn’t the sort of people who handwave away the problems of obesity with the attitude that you can just lose weigh later probably also dismiss lose skin as something you can just have surgically removed, or stretch marks as something you can just cocoa butter away?
I don’t like the emphasis on the DANGERS of STRETCH MARKS!! Puberty for me was depressing - all my new feminine curves came in disfigured by stretch marks. I was sensitive enough about that without a campaign warning people of the dangers of getting fat because you’ll (horrors!) develop stretch marks.
There is so much correlation between being overweight and being unhealthy. There are also things that aren’t “unhealthy” but become uncomfortable - bad knees won’t kill you like heart disease, but extra weight will really wear on your joints and very likely make your middle age and senior years less comfortable.
However, raising teens I know that “sit straight so you don’t have back problems when you are 40” is not a highly motivating incentive. I can’t imagine the “don’t eat that much so that your knees have a better chance of seeing you through life without surgery” is much more motivating.
I don’t think this is such a good idea - it seems like it reinforces the negative societal consequences to being a fat child. So not only is the fat child getting grief from his/her peers and possibly parents, now the ‘authority’ (school) is essentially saying it’s disgusting?
I don’t think the schools should be involved in teaching an opinion about the cosmetic aspect of fat. THAT said, I do think it would be helpful if the schools had some nutritional classes. In those classes the teacher could emphasize the health effects of obesity as well as other choices. I also think that schools should teach some finance - savings, credit, that sort of thing.