Impossible would be someone who showed no change in their body fat and other indicators despite significant changes in diet and activity.

I think it is well known that if a person who is sedentary and has a bad diet changes their behavior they will usually lose weight. That doesnt mean they will lose enough weight to be thin. There are people for whom thin is impossible.

The first thing the “fat pride” movement taught me was that it wasnt my fault and that was a big thing to learn. The second thing I learned was that just because other people assumed I was lazy and out of control, it didnt mean that I actually was those things. Ditto, gross and unhealthy and morally inferior. And then somewhere along the line, I learned that I am beautiful in my way and I came to appreciate my body for what it is: a fat but very healthy body. I dont have high blood pressure. I dont have bad cholesterol levels. I dont have diebetes. I dont have mobility issues. I am healthier than a lot of thin people my age (late 30’s). And FWIW, I am healthy through some effort in that I eat a pretty healthy diet and I walk around a lot. But mostly I am healthy because of factors that are outside of my control…like healthy ancestors and living in a country with really good access to health care.

The real thing is that I have been a lot happier and much more at peace since I have decided to just accept and embrace the notion that I am fat. And stress, btw, is a big risk factor when it comes to health…especially chronic stress.

I love the “Fat Pride” movement. I LOVE it that people feel it is ok to walk around feeling good about themselves. It doesnt matter to me if they are fat because that is just how they are or if they are fat because they sit on their ass all day eating bon-bons. I honestly cant see a problem with people thinking they are ok with who they are. I Love that the the size acceptance people have taught me to be kinder in my judgements of others too. I am a better person because of it.

As for the “dangers” of raising children in such an environment… I dont have kids of my own but I am reminded of a conversation I had with a friend. She was annoyed because people in her family often make remarks about fat people. How they are lazy. How they could lose the weight if they just tried hard enough. How they look ugly. She worries because you just never know how a kid will grow up. She is worried that if her kid ends up being overweight, he will internalize all those bad messages and learn to hate himself. I can certainly see why she might be worried.

I know I would have liked to have had someone in my life display a little fat pride when I was younger. I sometimes think it might have made my journey away from the self-loathing a little shorter.

But that’s right. Just keep clapping louder. I’m sure that’ll work.

I believe much of what is said about these people not being able to change is an excuse. If I have so many health issues, and so much going against me, and I can change these things, then so can many of these people out there

It should be obvious to you of all people why that is false! People have different bodies; you know yourself that your body is different from most other people’s bodies, so why would you assume that just because you manage to make lifestyle changes which have certain effects on your body, that other people must be able to make those choices too and the same effects will result?

why the heck do we have Fat Pride?

Because there are people, like you, who want to belittle us for our appearance. There are lots of people, like me, who have beautiful fat bodies. We come in all varieties, including those who are strong, fit and healthy. We take pride in our amazing capable bodies. We have fat pride events just like other oppressed groups have pride events. Why are we oppressed? Because of attitudes like yours.

Most of the time, Obesity is avoidable, if its not, there are treatments.

How can you possibly believe this? There are so many people absolutely desperate to lose weight, or not become fat in the first place. The anti-fat culture is deeply trenched in Western Society. A substantial majority of people agree in general with your attitude to obesity, we have all these people deeply desiring not to be fat, so HOW COME SO MANY OF THEM ARE FAT?

its also not ok to not do anything about your health issues

I see you’re a card-carrying member of the health police. Do you really believe that it’s not ok for people to make their own choices about their lives? What if they’d rather help out in a soup kitchen rather than work out in a gym?

Anyway, once I started altering my diet to make extremely healthy food choices (the current diet I follow is Weight Watcher’s Core Food plan, but I do not attend meetings because almost nobody in WW follows Core, and I formed a group outside WW with a couple friends from work that we discuss our experiences on Core.), I have lost a teremendous amout of weight. With a doctor’s care for pain, and my other health issues, I am starting to become more active again, and I have lost over 85 lbs from last year at this time of year. Not all of this was on the same diet, much of this was lifestyle change.

I believe much of what is said about these people not being able to change is an excuse. If I have so many health issues, and so much going against me, and I can change these things, then so can many of these people out there, and while some people may need surgeries and such to help them, I don’t believe that the overwhelming majority who end up having them did need them. (though I can count about 5 I know who struggled and did)

The biggest “movement” that bugs me is the “Fat Pride” movement. my son’s mother and her current signifigant other are involved in this, and it drives both my signifigant other and I crazy, because my side of the family believes in raising my child in an environment of healthy living. It NOT ok to be proud of being Obese. Obesity is a health problem, and while its not ok to make fun of those who have health problems, its also not ok to not do anything about your health issues. Obesity is a terminal illness if not treated IMO. It leads to heart issues, asthma, emphysema, high blood pressure, stroke, etc. Most of the time, Obesity is avoidable, if its not, there are treatments.

Do we have Cancer pride? Fibromyalgia pride? Arthritis pride?

so why the heck do we have Fat Pride?

Also, I’d like to say another thing about the varied “healthy” diets. People are right, what is healthy for one may not be healthy for another. Nobody knows this better than I do, being on opiate painkillers, I have no choice, I wouldn’t recommend it for the next person, but its a quality of life issue for myself. None of this, especially if one has health issues should be undertaken without a discussion with a doctor and/or a nutritionist, but the Weight Watcher’s core system is the closest thing I’ve seen to a sane, balanced diet, with no real limits on amounts you can eat (they limit certain food choices per day, like brown rice or whole grain pastas can only be eaten at one meal per day), and I certainly don;t feel deprived. If I want dessert, I can spend out of my extra 35 points a week. and I rarely use them all, believe it or not.

There are some who are naturally on the heavy side, I like them to Clydesdale horses, genetically, they are generally heavier built, and more muscular when toned, and not obese when in shape… my SO is majestic when she’s been working out snd eatonmg right, and lately I’m very proud of her for sticking to our program of eating right together.

Certainly nothing that would warrent the way some people treat obesity as if it were a terminal disease.

If you are using the term “diet” to mean a fad diet or sudden, temporary change in eating habits then yes, they fail with startling regularity. However many scientifically controlled clinical trials show a decrease in body fat, BMI, measurements and so on when one makes long term alterations to diet and alters the exercise regimen. Now obviously those will “fail” when the person goes back to their old habits… but that has nothing to do with it being impossible.
Impossible would be someone who showed no change in their body fat and other indicators despite significant changes in diet and activity. Those people are statistically rare as far as I can tell from my research.

Certainly nothing that would warrent the way some people treat obesity as if it were a terminal disease.

Well, some people who have an axe to grind will always take statistics and blow them way out of proportion. We see it in many issues as activism and tempers run high. NO issue that I know of doesn’t have people on every side misusing statistics to try and make a mountain out of a comparative molehill.

Being fat is a vastly exaggerated risk factor at most. At least, its a purely mythical one.

I’ll assume those are inverted because the statement literally doesn’t make sense the way it is written.

The issue is, what do you mean by “fat”? If your talking 10-40lbs then sure. If your talking about 200lbs then the correlation is much, much clearer. The thing is that being “fat” isn’t one thing… it is a term that refers to a huge range of weight.

Even more alarming is the fact that the crusade is without a viable solution. Losing weight isn’t “hard”. It is functionally impossible for the overwhelming majority of fat people.

I will be happy for any pointers to the data for this. That isn’t a “challenge” in any way. You certainly don’t have to provide a reference if you don’t want. As an offering from my side there are lots of good studies and papers published on the topic at the National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health website examining many aspects of the problem.

Of course any study is open to debate. Not only because the issue is complex (defining “health risk” to start is more complicated than it seems when multiple people need to agree). because the issue is so incredibly subjective. Unless you were going to lock people up like prisoners and drill them as such you can’t force compliance with a study. Also there is the issue of lifestyle to consider. Someone who is basically sedentary and obese will not really be at a huge risk as long as they continue to remain basically sedentary. If you put their body under stress (in a natural disaster for instance) they would be much more likely to suffer a cardiac event (as an example).

As a matter of practical reality though I see counter evidence each and every day of my life in myself and a fair number of those around me. At my Dojo there are 65 adults or so, of those about 40 of them are controlling their weight nicely with diet and activity. I say controlling because almost all of us carried noticeably more body fat when we started and wanted to reduce it. The others either simply tend to fitness and as such didn’t have any extra or have chosen not to alter eating habits that will clearly keep the weight on. Their choice and as long as their fitness level isn’t a risk for others it isn’t an issue. That’s not including all those I see at the gym who are doing it, nor all those who are in the extended fitness community who are doing it.

Now none of that speaks to a statistical issue because the sample is self selected. By definition the people you meet in someplace like a gym or a martial arts program are more interested int heir physical abilities than others. In general it seems that the truth is what our intuition tells us in this regard… those who are willing to make it a priority can succeed in controlling their weight, and those who are or cannot due to economic factors for instance not will not succeed.

It makes perfect evolutionary sense that how our body functions will change as a result of dietary intake and activity. These factors are easily observable in animals and there is absolutely no reason to imagine that humans are somehow biologically immune to this.

We need to demand that the medical establishment actually treat fat people instead of throwin their hands up and saying weight loss is always the only treatment for anything wrong with fat people.

I see no such effect in the medical community. Again, personal experience is my guide here. I have many friends who are overweight and a few who are obese. With the exception of a clear case of diet induced diabetes, another case of serious dietary induced coronary risk and one who had sever back pain due to a large and sudden weight gain none of them have had their health concerns dismissed or attributed to their weight when seeing a physician.

Now, my experience doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened to others… but it does mean that the phenomena you described is not universal.

Actually, there is some evidence that large numbers of people who are overweight are incapable of losing the excess weight in a healthy manner. I was curiouos about that so I did some looking into studies on successful diets. The best I could find was a study of people who were over a hundred pounds overweight who were able to keep off an average of six pounds over a period of five years on a closely medically supervised very low calorie diet program. That is SIX pounds off a person who is over a hundred pounds overweight. Hardly taking off the excess is it? Seriously, almost every other statistic I could find showed that most participants either didnt lose weight or actually gained weight. Some sources said that 95-98% of diets fail.

Re: “There is ample evidence that obesity for example has a large negative impact on health.”

Is there? Because I have been looking for it. I have found evidence that being more than a hundred pounds overweight is a risk factor for some health issues but not an especially large one. Certainly nothing that would warrent the way some people treat obesity as if it were a terminal disease.

Of course there are. The range of variation in the human animal includes all sorts of metabolisms and related effects. Anomalies will exist obviously. However it is accurate that to say by and large weight is most commonly a result of diet and activity level.

To point to the exceptions as if it negated the reality of that correlation for the vast majority of the cases is disingenuous in my opinion. There is no evidence that the majority of the large numbers of people who are overweight suffer from any significant genetic defect that would render their metabolism incapable of losing the excess in a healthy manner if diet and activity were adjusted.

Gaining weight is not always a bad thing. It’s perfectly normal for people to gain a little weight as they get older, and there’s no evidence showing that such minor weight gain is bad for your health.

I haven’t really seen many people indicate that minor weight gain as one gets older is a significant health issue. If I do see them I’ll be happy to take them to task for it.

The problem arises when health issues are only and directly blamed on “obvious” lifestyle choices.

Whether this is a problem depends on whether or not it is true in any particular case. While there are obviously cases where a healthy diet and moderate activity is beyond someone for physical or economic reasons there are many, many cases where those choices are available.

If someone decides that they have other priorities or simply have no desire to alter their choices in this regard that’s fine with me. I don’t think it makes them a bad human being. However refusal to accept that this lifestyle choice can lead to health problems or blaming society for the problem when the choices are available and not taken does tell me something about someone.

There is no good proof that being fat is unhealthy OR can be changed.

Well, when you refuse to use the term “obesity” it makes that sort of assertion hard to discuss. There is ample evidence that obesity for example has a large negative impact on health. However if you refuse to use the term or acknowledge that there is a huge range in the term “fat” then you will reject that evidence because someone who is only 15lbs overweight is not at a huge health risk.

It almost seems like the point of trying to erase the concept of the differing amounts of weight included in the term “fat” is so that one can pick and choose their evidence. For example it makes no sense to try and refute the clear health problems of being severely overweight by saying “well, someone who is just a little heavy aren’t at risk!” and thus try and take the medical issues off the table.

The second assertion is equally problematic as a statement of fact. What we do know is that the genetic disorders that cause significant problems in the metabolism are rare. We do ample evidence by example of many, many humans who have indeed altered their body fat levels via diet and activity both in scientific studies and by observing the world around us. In the face of such evidence, I am at a loss how someone could refuse to accept the correlations.

This is what happens when a social or moral agenda is used to determine what physical reality someone is willing to accept. I have no problem defending someone’s right to decide their weight isn’t a priority for them. I certainly understand that economics play a role in such decisions.

However to extrapolate from the social agenda (size acceptance) to trying to ignore the physical and medical realities is not something I understand.

But there sure is a lot of proof that some folks don’t consider fat to be beautiful.

The majority of the issues involved in what is or isn’t “beautiful” are probably “thread drift” dangers, so I won’t go into them here.

However on topic is this as it relates to health. Many of the factors humans consider attractive relate in one way or another to health and fitness. This is an evolutionary adaptation that occurs in all animals, and certainly humans are not immune. Like all things that are only visible as large scale trends over populations and time there are of course many exceptions, so this is not definitive for why any single individual may or may not find fat to be attractive.

Let’s assume that I accepted the argument that the majority of those who are significantly overweight are that way for a genetic reason. In that case then their weight would be a visible marker of a genetic condition that is an evolutionary disadvantage. It makes perfect sense that many humans would find such a marker as something that correlated negatively with attraction.

That I do not accept the argument postulated doesn’t change this significantly. Someone who is significantly overweight would still be showing the visible marker for what *may be* a genetic condition that is an evolutionary disadvantage.. The correlations with attraction would remain.

Trishka: “the notion that a healthy lifestyle is not sustainable for anyone is, quite frankly, absurd.”

and others like it. Thanks for clarifying that your comments were solely for those middle-class drones who have enough leisure to make bad choices.

As for the drinking water issue, here is an
EPA report on just one city that had significant contamination of the public water supply for an extended period of time. There are many others. Washington, D.C., for instance, has an ongoing problem with lead that they have been trying to correct chemically at the water treatment plant, so for many months residents were advised not to drink the tap water - I’d give a cite except I think you have to pay to read it - check out the Washington Post website.

So I guess I’m trying to say that if you live or work in a place where you KNOW the tap water is unsafe, wouldn’t you cut back on or eliminate tap water and start drinking bottled whatever you can get instead? I am NOT intending to say that rampant middle-class obesity is due to panicky people choosing sugary drinks as their sole source of liquid intake (which I think you were trying to imply that I had said). What I was, and am, trying to say is that advising somebody to do something that sounds simple (such as, “drink more water and less stuff with sugar in it”) and making out that people who don’t follow that advice are somehow deficient is kinda condescending.

However, what I cannot agree with is laying any of that at the door of The Body Shop. I’ll agree, their efforts are not ideal. Nor were the far more tame approach of Dove which lost even more points for using a body inclusive approach to sell a fat-hate product. But it was a step forward. And in addition to a full-fledged campaign promoting unapologetic fat acceptance, they have a track record of using weight diverse models in campaigns which had nothing to do with promoting that message. The says a lot more to me than just promoting their Ruby campaign. Did they do enough? Of course not. But they did something and something is better than any of their peers.

Not to mention, some say you can’t be healthy eating all that red meat, others say a vegan diet is the devil as far as nutrition is concerned, others say the only way to be healthy is to eat all raw food. People can eat fast food one week, flexitarian the next- but they are judged on the week they eat fast food, I take it?

The last one is to make people’s lives better so they can choose what they want, freely, without hearing the pronouncements from on high from the holier than thou crowd.

I’ll give you an example: a couple of years back, I was a 25-year-old female diagnosed with high blood pressure. What picture does that give you of me as a 25-year-old? Overweight, with poor eating habits, and poor exercise habits?

Apparently, that’s what going on a beta-blocker indicated to MY HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY. They spent close to a year harassing me to participate in a “health management program” to bring my high blood pressure under control “naturally.”

At that time, I was 5foot 6inches and weighed 120 pounds. I was on a three-times weekly exercise program and a low meat/high grain&veggie content diet. I didn’t drink pop/”juice” more than once or twice a year, didn’t purchase or eat most pre-prepared foods, and drank a single glass of red wine with dinner every night. (I love garlic too, and regularly went through two or three heads of garlic a week.)

Why was I doing that even before I was diagnosed with high blood pressure? Because I knew that both sides of my family had a tendency to develop life-long high blood pressure in the mid-to-late twenties. The diet wasn’t even really a “choice” of mine: it was the diet I’d been used to since early childhood, since I had two slender, exercise-dedicated parents with high blood pressure. Yes, I’d chosen to continue it into adulthood, but I’d been well-instructed and prepared to make healthy food choices and prepare those foods.

There are times when you can’t overcome your genes. Unfortunately, this has proven to be one of those situations for me. Unfortunately, it’s also laden me with a stigma: the idea that a taking a beta-blocker means that I’m not making wise decisions food, exercise, and weight-wise. This is a stigma even my health insurance company believes in (and trying to convince them that I wasn’t was hell onto itself).

seriously. from a strictly health standpoint, i personally am willing to take my chances drinking tap water throughout *most of the industrialized nations* over soda pop. unless someone can show me hard concrete evidence to the contrary.

and i also think you may have missed the part of my post where i specifically stated that i am NOT talking about people who live below the poverty line, reside only in SRO’s with only hotplates, and work back-to-back double shifts, &c, but rather:

other middle class people who have no more barriers to making healthy choices than i do. obviously, the access to healthy choices is NOT equal in this country, and i stated as much in my post.

i’ve said pretty much what i’ve had to say, and am not interested in putting a lot of energy into going back & refuting arguments that are either not against what i wrote or specifically ignore what i did write.

like i never said that thin = healthy. and yes plenty of thin people have unhealthy lifestyles. what i said was that eating an immoderate amount of junk food leads many people to not only not feel very good physically afterward but also gain weight AND develop health problems. maybe i should have said AND/OR. because they are somewhat independent issues and somewhat inter-related.

and as far as moralizing goes, the thing that bothers me isn’t so much about what choices people make, but the refusal of people to take responsibility for the choices that they do make. that’s the thing. and when people’s choices are limited by poverty or genetics, that really sucks.

but it’s one thing to say “you can’t expect me to drink water instead of soda, because look at all the contaminants in tap water.” and entirely another to say “i’ve looked at the health risks, and it looks to me like pop is safer than the water that’s available to me, and that’s what i choose to drink, even though there are problems with pop.” or “tap water probably is better for me, but it’s not worth it for me to drink it instead of pop because i like pop that much better, and if it causes me health problems in the long run, then i’ll deal with those as they come.”

but i don’t hear any of that in so much of the discussion about lifestyle choices. it’s all about how victimized everyone is by everyone else. it’s either by smug moralizing hyper-privileged middle-class people passing judgment, or by the socio-economic system in this country. the latter is worthy of addressing, and i have a real problem with the suggestion that talking about the choices that people can make to be more healthy is mutually exclusive to advocating or actively working towards removing the barriers that occur as a result of socio-economic inequity.

it’s not about eating food that doesn’t taste good. it’s about realizing that the initial buzz of good feeling that comes from fatty, salty, sugary foods wears off quickly, leaving a person feeling like crap & usually, if not consumed in moderation, gaining weight & having detrimental effects on health. the hard choice comes in the form of delayed gratification. eating well actually feels better, in the long run, to a lot of people, than eating crap.

1) There are skinny people who eat bad diets, and fat people who eat healthy diets.

2) Gaining weight is not always a bad thing. It’s perfectly normal for people to gain a little weight as they get older, and there’s no evidence showing that such minor weight gain is bad for your health.