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I think you need to decide whether you are going to convince fat people to become less fat or in making sure both fat and thin people don't create fat children. Culturally I don't know if you can shame a person into being thin, but you can promote healthy habits by praising healthy behaviours. You also need to change the idea of cleaning your plate, getting seconds, having sugar be a reward for "suffering" through healthy food. There are a lot of little cultural things that I think work better on educating adults for the purpose of helping them raise healthier children rather than be healthier themselves (although I imagine it would be a side effect). In a lot of the same ways as anti-smoking efforts may help people to quit smoking, but it's far more likely they are going to prevent people from starting smoking in the first place.
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Jan 16, 2016 03:14
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While there is likely a very small minority of fat people who are happy to be fat and also happy to have their children fat (and I honestly don't think anything can be done for those people), most fat people know that being fat loving sucks, and that helping their children not be fat is a legacy that they can pass on, even if they can't manage to do it for themselves. It's not about framing it as you, personally, are terrible, but that here are tools to help you make healthy decisions for your children so they don't fall into the same trap you did, and if in the process you get healthier too, then all the better. People want to do right by their children, and other than people who are crazy, nobody wants to have an obese child and it's a lot easier for someone to prevent being fat than for a fat person to be thin. I think the people who are advocating for the world to accommodate their size are doing so selfishly, because they want the world to be easier for them and they know that changing themselves is really, really difficult because they're already fat. The reason that thin privilege exists as a concept is that it's really hard to be a fat person in the world. It is physically and emotionally painful, and I think the majority of people aren't going to want to put that kind of world on a child if they feel they have some control over it. I think this is where the difference between fatness and being fat is important. If you allow people to separate being fat from being an important part of their identity, then they can look at it as something that is terrible that they have, but it doesn't make them a terrible person, and so as a good person you want to prevent your children from having terrible things happen to them. Exactly like a smoker may not be able to manage quitting smoking themselves, but can still not want their kids to start. This is where shaming becomes extremely counterproductive, because it ties someone to their weight. It tells that that you are not a person, you are a fat person, that is who you are and so other people can make all kinds of judgments about your character because of it. It's all anyone sees when they look at you, so therefore that must be all that you are. Then when you try to say that fatness is bad, you're saying the person themselves is bad, and most people will become defensive in that situation.
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Jan 16, 2016 04:40
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BarbarianElephant posted:Stigma against drug use is less cruel because drugs aren't "part" of you. Shaming fat people is more cruel because they are literally being told their own self - their body - is bad. This creates self -hatred. True, but a distinction can be made between you as a person and your body. Thin or really swole people aren't necessarily good people just because their bodies are in good performance, so then why can't the argument be made that fat people aren't awful people? Fat people can still be kind and generous and funny and loving and hard working and all sorts of positive things. They probably have some character flaws that let them become fat, but that is not all they are. If you want to bring it around to educating fat parents to not have fat children, then you need to appeal to them as responsible and loving parents who want to do the best for their children. Doing that builds a person up and acknowledges a lot of the ways that they are good people with good traits, and that being fat is just one bad part rather than the entirety of all of them. If you can successfully make this separation you can talk all about how harmful fatness is without hurting the egos of people who are fat and making them defensive and unwilling to listen. But honestly, fat people know how bad being fat is. You really don't need to tell them that much.
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Jan 16, 2016 17:20
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fishmech posted:If you crush up multivitamins in the gallons of Coca Cola you drink in a day, it's neither going to make you less fat nor help you feel any fuller. "Empty calories" is an oxymoron. Isn't that the exact proof of empty calories? You are consuming calories that aren't going to help you feel full or give you the proper nutrition you need in a day. If I drink 2000 calories of coke in a day, I've hit or exceeded the maximum calories I can have, but I'll still be deficient in a lot of things (protein, fibre, fat, various vitamins, etc.). If the food that you eat is going to get you to that calorie limit without giving you the rest of what you need in a day then they are empty calories.
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Jan 17, 2016 18:06
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fishmech posted:There is no such thing as calorie-dense, nutrient-poor food. It is literally impossible. The things you most need to get every day or nearly every day is carbs, proteins, and fats, and those are your so-called This is not true at all. It is extremely easy to consume thousands of calories a day and not hit daily recommendations of one or more of carbs, fat, and protein. Especially protein. There are a lot of high calorie foods that are very easy and cheap to consume and provide almost no protein.
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Jan 17, 2016 18:35
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fishmech posted:It doesn't matter if you don't hit them in a single day, you just need to average out to them over the long term. Except fat people aren't averaging them out in the long term. The problem is that they are consistently not reaching nutrition goals, so what exactly is your point?
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Jan 17, 2016 20:07
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fishmech posted:This is the opposite of true. They're consistently overreaching their nutrition goals. If they weren't reaching the nutrition goals, they'd be skinny, not fat. Nobody is arguing you should only eat one thing to be healthy. And if you count anything other than "calories" as a nutrition goal then yes, fat people (and lots of other people too) are not meeting nutrition goals. Even if you eat some variety of food, if most of that food is lacking in one or more essential nutrients you will have too many calories while not getting enough of something else. Does someone really have to provide a sample daily meal plan to show you how this is possible?
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Jan 17, 2016 20:38
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fishmech posted:Caloric nutrients are literally nutrition, friend. Apparently you do need an example. Pop Tart 200 calories Fat 5g Carbs 38g Protein 2g Hot Pocket 403 Calories Fat 20.16g Carbs 39.19g Protein 16.33g Coke 140 Calories Fat 0g Carbs 39g Protein 0g Approaches vary, but let's do the 40-40-30 distribution for these, and at a 2000 calorie diet you should be getting 200g Carbs, 150g Protein, 66g Fat. If I eat 4 pop tarts (2 packages), 2 hot pockets, and 3 cans of coke that lands me at 2029 calories. Carbs: 347.38 (Way over) Protein: 40.66 (Way under) Fat: 60.32 (Under) That's not counting any of the vitamins, minerals, and fibre that this diet is lacking. You can have too many calories and too little macronutrients.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:54
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fishmech posted:Fat people are very rarely actually deficient in any nutrient you care to name. It's because they eat so so much that they aren't. The point isn't to eat more vitamins, the point is that fat people who are overeating aren't even getting everything they need when they do so because a lot of what they eat is lacking in proper nutritional value (aka empty calories). Of course fat people should consume fewer calories, but just consuming fewer calories without actually changing what they are eating to ensure that they are getting what they need within that calorie limit is a recipe for failure.
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Jan 17, 2016 21:02
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fishmech posted:Not sure why you're so interested in the hypothetical guy who only eats pop tarts and hot pockets and coca cola and scrupulously consumes only 2000 calories total, and never ever eats anything else ever. You can pretty much pick any 3 items and if you only ate those things you'd similarly have issues, unless one of your 3 things is a purposely designed complete food the way a nutraloaf or Ensure is. fishmech posted:If you just eat pop tarts, hot pockets, and soda, you're actually pretty close to a balanced diet. It's also an assload of food so you'll get fat of course. Stop trying to talk about "societal solutions" when you don't know a drat thing about nutrition. You're the one making that argument, friend.
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Jan 17, 2016 21:06
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fishmech posted:And? You were trying to put up your silly little label rant to disprove what I said, and you didn't. The guy's pretty close as is if he did that, and you're the one who put int he stipulation "also he sticks to 2000 calories". And in the real world, that guy also eats other things from time to time, which tends to cover any deficiency. "Pretty close" meaning he's hitting less than 1/3 of his protein needs. Even if he had 6000 calories that day he wouldn't hit it. I'm sorry that my use of math and evidence did not disprove the nonsense you are spewing based on...?
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Jan 17, 2016 21:18
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Series DD Funding posted:You don't need 150 grams of protein You don't, but you don't need to be eating 2000 calories either. No matter what system you use or what your calorie goals are, 40g of protein is really too little.
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Jan 17, 2016 21:39
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fishmech posted:You're not actually using math or evidence. Eat 10 of the average hot pocket a day and you've gotten more than enough protein and you're still under 1700 calories, incidentally. Find me the nutrition facts for an average hot pocket that is less than 170 calories while still having roughly 15g protein. The one I linked which I found by googling nutrition facts for hot pockets puts you at over 4000 calories eating 10 of them. This website lists a bunch of types of hot pockets with calorie counts I've seen as low as 290, and which will get you around 100g of protein if you eat 10 of them, which is pretty good but still low for a 2900 calorie diet.
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Jan 17, 2016 21:46
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fishmech posted:They're already eating a lot of lettuce. They're already eating over a pound of chicken. That's why they're so loving fat, brah. Fat people don't just eat the same things as skinny people but in much larger doses, they actually eat different food. You're right that they aren't eating 15 pop tarts for breakfast just like they aren't eating multiple heads of lettuce. Even fat people can't eat that much in day or they would literally never not be eating. The only way that they are eating so many calories is if they are eating food that is rich in calories while not being very filling, most of which is missing a lot of nutrients! The amount of food that is in 100 calories of lettuce compared to 100 calories of chicken compared to 100 calories of poptarts is a pretty big difference in the actual amount of physical matter. So no, they aren't eating comparatively as much lettuce as they are pop tarts because, as you said yourself, that is ridiculous.
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Jan 17, 2016 21:53
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fishmech posted:What are you talking about crazypants? The recommended daily value for protein is 56 grams for adult men, and many hot pocket varieties are around 6 grams per bar, and also 170 calories per bar - common for the breakfast ones. They of course make larger hot pockets, but they also have more protein eg some of their heartier bars are 280 calories but also 9 grams of protein. You get 60 grams of protein with around 1800 calories for those. 56g of protein is the bare minimum required to not get sick. 10-35% is the recommended amount. Which hot pocket varieties are 6 grams per bar and 170 calories? Please tell me their names. The absolute lowest one I found was 290 calories.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:06
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fishmech posted:This is wrong, food that is rich in calories is by definition full of nutrients. You need to get that through your thick little head, man. God only knows why people like you insist on believing carbs, fat, and protein aren't nutrients.  Cingulate posted:And IME fat people DO eat the same stuff skinny people eat, more or less. Just, like, more of it. A lot. Yes fat people eat more than skinny people, but not proportionally more. If you eat a salad then a fat person doesn't eat 5 salads. If you eat two burgers, a fat person doesn't eat 6 burgers. It's not possible to eat less calorie dense food in such quantity that you gain weight because there aren't that many hours in the day.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:10
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fishmech posted:That is absolutely not true. Maybe for some guy who's doing a lot of strenuous work or exercise, but not the average man. Look up with Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) means, since that's where you're getting your 56g number from, and it's the minimum amount wherein 97-98% of average people will not have nutrient deficiencies. It is the minimum that you should have to make sure your needs are being met and is on the lower end of the 10-35% of caloric intake that the NIH and FDA say is adequate. fishmech posted:And your point is? Would you be happy if tomorrow morning coca cola crumbled a vitamin pill into every can of coke? Presence of calories does not equal rich in protein, carbs, and fat. Even if they did your stupid vitamin pill idea which you've brought up several times, it won't add any of those. Are you sure you know what nutrients are? Are you actually reading the label?
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Jan 17, 2016 22:27
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fishmech posted:The thing is the current messaging is not mostly "eat less calories" but all sorts of conflicting things about "cut down on food x" where another campaign says "cut down on food type y" and then the horde of for profit diet plan ads and books. Which is why education in nutrition should be emphasized, because saying "eat less calories" is just as useless as saying to stop eating food X without explaining why. If you eat the same crap you've always eaten but just fewer calories of it, you may lose weight for a time but you'll be starving and will give up. If you cut out bread or meat or whatever from your diet but still consume too many calories from other things then you won't succeed either. Both approaches are based out of ignorance and feed into the ignorance of people who want help, and both will ultimately fail.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:31
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fishmech posted:Which is way far away from "if you eat any less than this you'll be sick". The reccomended daily minimums are an amount that is well above where you'd get sick from deficiency. The average person has no need for 100 grams of protein a day, let alone more. Let me be blunt: you are incapable of reading if you think I'm making that argument, as you have stated that several times and each time I have never argued that. Nobody but you is putting up this strawman argument of saying that one food needs to have a perfect ratio of macronutrients. You are saying that calories = a variety of macronutrients which is a different argument and provably untrue.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:38
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fishmech posted:No, guy who's obsessed with eating chicken, it is in fact true that if people just ate less of what they eat, the vast majority of them would loses enough weight to get down to normal range, given sufficient time of maintaining that. Which is exactly his point, that sufficient time is going to seem like an eternity and is not at all practically feasible if people are still wasting 500+ calories a day drinking coke. What they eat is important because this is the real world and you will not be able to maintain that lifestyle for a sufficient amount of time. quote:I severely doubt that. You have to cut a lot of calories if you're already obese and you will always feel very hungry for a very long time. Also untrue. If you are eating a higher percentage of protein, you will feel fuller for longer and can make significant cuts to your calories without constantly starving. If you think starving is the only way to lose weight then you will fail every time.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:45
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Except there's lots of good catchall advice such as eat more vegetables to fill you up while not significantly increasing your calories, eat foods with a greater percentage of protein since protein will help you feel full for longer, don't drink calories whenever you can (stop drinking pop and juice entirely), use artificial sweeteners instead of sugar, make leaner substitutions whenever you can. Doing these will help you lose weight and none are going to make you hungrier. There's also the psychological factor about stopping yourself from eating when you're not hungry. Eating because you're bored or sad or frustrated. Be mindful of eating, such that when you eat it's the only thing you are doing. Eat slowly and put down the fork between bites. Don't feel obligated to clean your plate. Make only what you are going to eat and if you are full stop eating and put away the rest, don't sit and pick at it. More than eating big meals, grazing is a huge problem for a lot of fat people. They eat much more often and don't realize how much they eat during these off-meal times. While this won't apply to every fat person in the world, and each individual will need to identify their own problem foods, it's relatively universal advice, so there's no need to throw our hands up when "just eat fewer calories" isn't working as an education strategy.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:27
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fishmech posted:None of that's good enough to make up for suddenly eating thousands fewer calories per day less than you used to. And that's what you need to do start getting down from obesity. Again, assuming you aren't going to get a lot of it out of the way through lipo or similar interventions. It's true that losing a lot of weight requires big changes, but losing it in less than many many years may not be a realistic goal unless you're willing to undergo surgery. Trying to make drastic changes that make you hungry will help you lose weight quickly, but almost nobody is going to be able to maintain that for multiple years. It's too hard, so you are left with 3 options: 1) Make little changes over time that will help you lose weight while not decreasing your daily quality of life, with the understanding that getting to a normal weight will take an extremely long time. 2) Make drastic changes that will require strict adherence to a diet and exercise plan that will make you miserable for several years, but will ultimately be effective. 3) Have weight loss surgery of some kind which requires huge lifestyle changes as it is a tool rather than a solution and, depending on where you live, can be extremely expensive. All are viable options and all have significant drawbacks. Losing weight is not easy.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:36
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Feeling full is not a bad thing. Feeling hungry is not some noble stoic goal. Knowing that you are going to feel hungry for years at a time is depressing and guaranteed to make any sane person quit listening to your advice.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:55
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I never said there's a magic way to lose weight. In fact two posts ago I saidAsiina posted:All are viable options and all have significant drawbacks. Losing weight is not easy. I do honestly wonder if you are actually reading anything anyone else here is saying or just making up arguments in your head to refute.
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Jan 18, 2016 00:03
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fishmech posted:You then went on to say "Knowing that you are going to feel hungry for years at a time is depressing and guaranteed to make any sane person quit listening to your advice. " As if there's anyway to avoid this that isn't flat out lying. That's what I'm referring to as "magic ways to lose weight". There are ways. They are just either much slower or require surgical intervention. Starving yourself for years is not the only way to lose weight, and since people are emotional beings who want to avoid being in a state that is physically unpleasant for prolonged periods of time, it's not a very effective way either.
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Jan 18, 2016 00:21
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I'm starting to understand why this guy has so many probations and I regret engaging with him, as he's not actually responding to anything anyone in this thread is actually saying.Crystal Geometry posted:One can eat until one feels full. One can also eat until one no longer feels hungry. Few people seem to acknowledge that full and no longer hungry aren't the same thing. Yes, this is a good distinction to make and when I talked about filling up on vegetables I meant to combat hunger. I think it's so common among overweight people to eat practically until discomfort, since eating is so enjoyable. It's where meal planning and pre-counting calories can be very helpful to keep track that this meal you are about to have is sufficient, even if you're not literally bursting like you're used to. Overweight people also eat faster and so don't usually get fullness queues until they've already eaten too much, so slowing down eating and becoming attuned to these different levels is important.
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Jan 18, 2016 04:50
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Crystal Geometry posted:Or we could approach overweight people with something like "Your chosen lifestyle does not produce optimal health, as you probably know, however this doesn't give me an excuse to judge you for how you, an adult, choose to live your life. I respect your right to make your own decisions". Calling raising fat children child abuse is tantamount to calling religious upbringing child abuse. It does absolutely nothing to further the conversation, puts those people you're talking about on the defensive where they will never listen to a word you say, and alienates people who have more moderate beliefs about your cause. Whether you believe it is irrelevant because it shuts everything down. If you want to stop children from becoming obese you have to find an approach that is appealing to parents and make them want to invest in what you're telling them, and nobody will react positively to someone saying you are abusing your child.
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Jan 19, 2016 02:36
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Also a valid option.
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Jan 19, 2016 02:41
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Something not being possible because we haven't discovered it yet is so backwards and implies that we should just give up on all research forever, since if it exists we would have found it already. That's not how progress works.
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Jan 19, 2016 23:34
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I agree with all of that, and have been in similar situations. Losing weight is exhausting, not just physically but mentally, and most people can't keep it up forever, because the idea of forever is truly depressing when you are trying to break these habits you've had all your life. It's why healthy habits need to be in from the start. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is both figuratively and literally true.
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Jan 20, 2016 21:11
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The snacking or eating badly while out is a lot like alcoholism. Most people can have one drink and stop, or they can spend a night drinking heavily but then go weeks without drinking again just as easily. Neither of these make you an alcoholic. It's doing that every day and having a compulsion to keep going which makes you am alcoholic. Having dessert in a restaurant or overeating at Christmas isn't going to make you fat, but having high calorie food every day rather than only on occasion will make you fat. In both cases it just requires a one day (or one moment) at a time mentality to not have that thing which will make you relapse. While alcohol has a harder physical addiction to beat, unhealthy food is harder societally since you have to be around it more frequently. They really are very similar. It's not impossible, but does require constant dedication.
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Jan 20, 2016 21:39
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A lot of it is visual, which is why things like plate size can make a difference in how much you eat and how full you feel. The article does have a point that usually the "healthy options" part of the menu is uninspired compared to the rest of it, and the food just plain isn't as good, and that restaurants should have half-portions options available, but I think lumping all restaurants together blurs together different problems. High end restaurants usually have fairly small portions, but you're given many courses. You're probably not eating there all the time and when you're paying $80+ per person then it's more for the food experience than getting your required energy for the day so it's not really a typical eating experience. Mid-level chain and non-chain restaurants is mostly what they're talking about, but it's also not uncommon at all to ask for a take away container so you can take the rest of it to go when you're full. Then you don't feel like you've wasted either food or your money by not finishing your plate when you are there. I have to do this when I go out to eat so have gotten used to it, but I think most people probably don't? I don't have any statistics to back that up, but I think if it became more commonplace then people wouldn't feel compelled to finish everything in the moment whether they are still hungry or not. Fast food you can order combos and those are almost definitely too large, but you can also just as easily order something smaller or an individual item if you want less. You're not really lacking in portion size options in those cases, which is what the article is talking about. Portion sizes are a problem, for sure, but the solutions for them already exist when eating at a restaurant if you are looking for them, and are easy enough for most people to do.
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Jan 20, 2016 22:03
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Cingulate posted:On the bright side: one day you will die. Something to look forward to. Sub Par posted:If it is true that the vast majority of restaurant meals contains too many calories, whether that is due to physical portion size or calorie-dense ingredients (or both), I think that is a very good place to start looking when it comes to solutions. I think though if you just unilaterally reduce portion sizes people will feel ripped off, especially if they are paying the same money for less food, even though they were getting too much before. You'll have to educate people, which is where the larger issue comes up and is what that article is saying doesn't work. If you instead offer options like more half-portions or more varied healthier options, then I think those are mostly going to cater to the kind of people who would have used a take-away container or wouldn't have ordered the combo meal in the first place, since those are the ones you are already monitoring the amount of food they eat and using whatever the system gives them to help them control their intake, so those options aren't for them.
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Jan 20, 2016 22:35
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fishmech posted:Fat people certainly have done it and do it, so it's stupid to tout any foods as "a thing you can eat all you want of and not get fat". If you were just trying to say "if you eat a reasonable portion you won't get fat" then hello, that's also every food ever. No, they don't. If your "reasonable portion" is exactly 150 kcal, then yes all foods are equal in calories, but not equal in any other way be it a measurement of macronutrients you need or a general feeling of fullness that helps you stop eating.
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Jan 21, 2016 04:36
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Quest bars are delicious. Broccoli and chicken are both delicious. The problem with diets consisting of one of these only is that they are not personally sustainable. You aren't going to go the rest of your life eating only one thing, so when you finally break, what do you choose instead? People need to learn how to cook a variety of healthy food, so eating healthy isn't a punishment of eating bland. I think a big part of this is spices. I feel like people don't experiment with spices enough, which can completely change a dish without adding any calories. A good, well stocked beginner spice wrack and some basic instructions (or being adventurous if you can afford to have food be bad) can go a long way.
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Jan 21, 2016 18:31
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Noam Chomsky posted:I don't dispute any of that but I think a lot of people, maybe most people (and not necessarily you), believe that "lol just cook healthy foods and make them taste good" is useful advice for fat people. Yes, of course chicken and broccoli can be delicious but you need to actually know how to cook well in order to make them so. That's not something everyone knows how to do. Maybe "disgusted by chicken and broccoli" dude doesn't know how to cook so to him chicken and broccoli are just terrible forever. There is absolutely no one-size-fits-all advice or method for anyone. You have to figure out where people are starting in order to give them a map to the finish line. I don't think it's easy and I'm not saying it glibly that fatties just need to learn how to cook. I'm saying that more education about cooking can go a long way to helping people eat healthy without thinking that food has to be boring or limited. I remember trying to lose weight myself and being terrified to eat anything because "OMG everything has calories it will all make me fat, I can only have this one low calorie thing" when no, eating a variety of food that tastes good is totally possible. Learning that low calorie cooking can be both easy and delicious opens a lot of doors and helps dispel the eat only one thing diets people fall victim to.
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Jan 21, 2016 20:44
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I feel like you two are talking around each other and aren't actually disagreeing. Eating a whole pizza in one sitting is easier than eating 6lbs of chicken in one sitting. This is true. If you misjudge the calories in a portion then you are not accurately judging how much you are eating, and can easily go over any calorie budget you may give yourself. This is also true. Just because you eat a lot or have lost a lot or have always been rail thin, doesn't mean that you are a perfect accurate measure of the number of calories in an item. Ballparking calories can be dangerous to weight loss since it's really easy to underestimate what you are consuming. That said, if you have a little more of something that has a lot of calories per weight then you'll be further off from your goal then if you misjudge something that has fewer calories per weight.
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Jan 22, 2016 01:57
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BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:I did not see that one coming! That's creativity! Whatever it takes to win!
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Jan 22, 2016 06:13
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Cingulate posted:I guess I could say I think fat acceptance is a (bad) overreaction against a (bad) trend - the moralization of bodyweight. Like, between bodyshaming and fat acceptance, it seems there is no prominent way of talking about bodies that's not stupid. I agree. Fat acceptance is dumb and bad, but it's also completely understandable as a reaction to how fat people are treated. There are a lot of bad things that happen to fat people. Their imperfect body is seen as a reflection of who they are as a person, so that when you're fat you must be a disgusting person who hates yourself and you are right to think that. Strangers approach them and tell them that they are awful if they ever eat in public. It's not unusual to have people yell slurs at them or throw things at them from passing cars. When you live in that kind of world and then you find a group that says "hey, don't listen to them, you're beautiful just the way you are." It's really hard not to latch onto that sliver of positivity and believe it. The problem is when that movement goes too far and goes beyond saying that putting someone down for their weight is a seriously lovely thing to do and should be stigmatized. When it becomes more about perceived slights because the world doesn't accommodate you. For example, sitting in chairs with arms is a really hard thing to do for a fat person. It can be either impossible or just painful. I know that I've had massive bruises from sitting in lecture hall chairs or airplane seats that have something sticking out the side of the chair. So as a fat person, that chair made me feel bad about my weight and (because society links your weight to you as a person) feel bad about myself. So if we're following fat acceptance to an extreme, then people should make bigger chairs so I don't have to feel that way. This feels like a long way from literally having garbage thrown at you from strangers, but it follows from the same ideals, so it's difficult to separate. I know that I personally feel that one of those things is something that is a reasonable request and the other is just ludicrous and people need to stop whining, but I'm not sure if there's an easy break point where fat acceptance goes too far and becomes laughable. Which is a problem because if people think that fat acceptance is about these far extremes that are completely impractical and just feel like fat people are whining that life is hard then they aren't going to listen to the more legitimate parts of the movement, which is about stop actively harassing fat people and treating them like garbage because their body is in bad health.
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Jan 23, 2016 19:47
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Cingulate posted:Also they're really on point that that guy was an obnoxious creep who should go back to watching Arnold Schwarzenegger video clips and obsessing over heavy metal in protein shakes. I think the problem though is that guy is not a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. You will see that guy and hear that guy everywhere you go, especially when you are overweight. Maybe not every time, but often enough that it becomes somewhat routine for strangers to make comments. It's easy to see how it's wrapped up in feminism, when men, and in my experience it's almost exclusively men, feel that they can critique your body. As for the ignoring health advice from a medical professional, a lot of overweight people often have other symptoms ignored by doctors because of their weight. I've gone to a doctor for an ear infection and been told I need to lose weight. It took 6 months of painful visits to doctors and several trips to the ER to get diagnosed with gallstones before anyone bothered to run any tests instead of just saying I should lose weight. I had my gynecologist tell me that I should lose weight as fast as possible, no matter what the method (this was in response to saying that I was losing 2.5lbs a week as I had been told was safe). So when this woman says that she went in for a flu shot and was told she'd be a good candidate for a weight loss program, I'm sure her doctor was trying to broach the subject of her being overweight in a helpful way, but what she hears is another doctor believing every problem she could ever have must be due to her weight. I'm not saying she's right to ignore a doctor's advice, but trying to explain how someone can rationally come to that conclusion.
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Jan 24, 2016 19:27
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