In the previous post, I quoted from various peer-reviewed articles on dieting, to try and establish one point: Weight-loss programs do not work for most fat people over the long term.
Now that we’ve read all that (or skimmed it, or skipped it), let me return to Don’s question: Why do I think being fat is like being lesbian or gay?
There’s a question so often asked in queer-rights rhetoric, it’s become a cliche: “Why would anyone choose to be gay? The point is, being a widely despised minority is not fun. It’s not easy. It involves a lot of suffering, for many people. It’s not something that most people would choose. (Although, thanks to the lesbian and gay rights movement, it is now easier for many lesbians and gays than it used to be).
By the same logic, why would anyone choose to be obese? Fat people are discriminated against in jobs, are widely seen as lazy and unattractive, and are taught a truly stunning level of self-hatred. It’s not something most people would desire for themselves.
Peer-reviewed studies show that 92-96% of weight-loss plans fail over the long run – and those studies count anyone who takes off 10% or 15% of their weight as a “success.” The failure rate would be a lot higher – I’d guess more like 99% – if the measurement of “success” for fat dieters was “this person is no longer fat.” It’s clear, I think, that weight-loss treatments don’t work.
Nonetheless, some people will respond as Don did:
Don’s right, in a sense (ignoring, for lack of a civil response, his stereotypes about fat people). In theory, any fat person could become thin, if they only kept up what the New England Journal of Medicine called “extreme measures” – extreme low-calorie diets and tons of hard exercise – for the rest of their lives. (One formerly fat person who commented on the earlier thread, said that she exercises four hours every day).
By the same token, any lesbian or gay person could “not be gay,” in the sense of repressing their real desires and marrying a person of the opposite sex. (Historically, how many lesbians and gays lived their entire lives like this? There’s no way of knowing, but hundreds of thousands seems like a reasonable guess).
So in theory, every fat person and every queer person could choose “not to be.” Just choose to eat as little as an anorexic, and exercise four hours every day, for your entire life. Just choose to repress your core sexual identity. Whatever it takes.
But in practice, some choices are so difficult that they can’t reasonably be called choices at all.
And that is what fat people and gay people have in common.
I agree there is one thing that fat people and gays have in common, but I don’t think it’s necessarily tied to personal repression. To put it bluntly, fat people and gays are the “new nigger.” In other words, they are two groups society still finds acceptable to exploit for the purposes of humor in a manner often reminiscent of blackface. Shallow Hal, a popular film, illustrates my point wonderfully. First, there is the premise that someone as “attractive” as Hal (who, as a gay man, I did not find attractive in the least) shouldn’t even consider dating a morbidly obese woman, and if he were able to see the woman in question as everybody else saw her, he would immediately come to the same conclusion. Second, the morbidly obese female was played by Gweneth Paltrow, one of the more beautiful women in film. It is the act of taking something beautiful (such as Paltrow, or the concept of “whiteness”) and deliberately making it “ugly” (a.k.a. fat, or black) for no other reason than to entertain that makes Shallow Hal a Blackface film. The popular In Living Color sketches, “Men on Film,” or “Men on Cooking,” and “Men on (insert stereotype here)” is a second example of Blackface, offensive against gays, and played by African American men (who, by the way, should know better).
As for repression of urges and closeted gays and obese people….the parallel does not work. For one, gays are a significantly smaller portion of the population than the obese. Second, they are not mutually exclusive “conditions.” You can be both overweight and gay. Third, and most importantly, Americans have grown ever more obese in the past decades. The reasons for this are many but I suspect the adoption of bad eating and exercising practices are to blame. Restricting one’s self to fewer than 1000 calories and exercising for four hours are not measures the average individual must take in order to stay relatively fit. Mild cardiovascular workouts 3–4 times a week, 30 minutes per session are sufficient in most cases.
Now, the same can not be said for gays. There are no “bad eating and exercise practices” one must adopt in order to be gay. The nation is most likely NOT getting any gay-er. I imagine the number of gays in our population has remained pretty stable over time. The only number to change would be the number of closet cases and immoral heterosexual marriages. Last, no one may want to be fat but I take issue with the statement that no one should want to be gay. Be assuming that being gay leads to a harder life (i.e. more misery than the average person would endure) one already resigns his/herself to a conceptual defeat. Instead gays should infuse “pride” with some meaning and start saying, “Why wouldn’t you want to be gay? It’s in vogue, it’s excellent birth control, and most people are at least curious about trying it once or twice, therefore it must have some popular appeal, right?”
To be perfectly fair, “Shallow Hal” did not present Jack Black as “attractive”. The movie was upfront about the fact that women are held to a higher standard than men and the blame fell squarely on the men for this problem.
That being said, the movie was repugnant. The shallow, mean character got the girl at the end, the movie was one long fat joke, etc. It’s as if the movie was saying, “It’s shallow and cruel to treat fat people as subhuman but too bad, so sad nanny nanny boo boo.”
Mark:
I certainly agree with you about the parallel between fat suits and blackface (Bitch magazine had a brilliant article making the same comparison some time ago).
However, I think you totally failed to understand the point of my comparison. I did not claim “fat people and gay people are alike in all ways”; with all respect, that you can show that gays and fat people are different in ways I never compared is not relevant, and does not logically rebut my point.
That doesn’t in any way contradict the comparison I made.
I never said that they were mutually exclusive; and nothing in the logic of my comparison assumes that they are mutually exclusive.
I don’t know if you’re talking about what someone needs to do to transform from being obese into being “not fat”; or if you’re talking about what someone who’s already thin needs to do to avoid becoming fat.
If it’s your opinion that most fat people can, with a reasonably easy effort, become thin people, then I think you’re simply wrong, for reasons I explained in the previous post. If you think my previous post was wrong, please explain why, and give some evidence to support your view.
I’m not saying don’t disagree with me; I’m saying that if you disagree, do it with arguments and evidence, not just with unsupported opinions.
Judging from the evidence I’ve seen, it’s as ridiculous to say “fat people can choose not to be fat” as it is to say “gay people can choose not to be gay.” That is the comparison – and the only comparison – I was making in this post.
(And of course I wasn’t saying that gayness is caused by bad habits. (!) )
You’re right. The “who would choose to be gay” cliche seems very old-fashioned now; many lesbians and gay people build wonderful lives and can’t imagine being anyone but theirselves, and for people who enjoy being part of the queer community, there’s obviously a lot of joy in being gay.
In contrast, although the fat-acceptance movement has made some strides, almost no one nowadays would ever choose to be fat.
Lots for thinking. Thanks.
Amp, this is really interesting!
I think fat/gay is a good parallel, especially for those of us who became fat as children. As you mentioned before, there’s a GIANT difference between deciding, as an adult, to avoid getting fat and deciding, as a fat person, to try to become thin.
I won’t argue with those who’ve brought it up that moderate exercise/diet modification will keep most thin people from becoming fat, but it really ISN’T enough to make a 300-lb person lose half her body weight. Having lost 100 lbs, I know this first hand. The psychological dimension alone makes the process completely different. If you have a fat kid, likely she grew up in a household where she established habits that made her fat. Sometimes, food may have been comfort in intolerable circumstances – sometimes being fat itself may have felt like a vital form of protection or safety. Early training is very, very hard to fight. You do, in fact, have to completely change your life.
Imagine having to change your dominant hand from right to left as an adult. You can no longer use your right hand to write, eat, fence or scratch. You must re-school yourself so thoroughly that you don’t even raise it in automatic defense when someone attacks you. Imagine the amount of time, energy and sheer bloody-minded focus it would take to do this, multiply it by four or five and you’ll have some inkling of the first step in going from fat to thin.
After that, there’s the work, which is incredibly hard and, often for YEARS, without tangible reward. You still get all the insults – still are considered undatable – still (and this is REALLY galling) automatically thought to be out of shape, in spite of the fact that you exercise four hours a day.
After that, there’s dealing with the disillusionment of finding that being thin does not change your life all that much (the way ButtBurner 2000 promises us it will) – and believe me, after a lifetime of insults and deprivation all laid to the account of your fat, you do expect your life to change BIG TIME – without that hope, I highly doubt anyone could muster the will to make the changes (a good gay parallel – if you’re going to go to the tremendous effort of making yourself ungay, there’d better be a heaven, dammit). When you get to the end and find out your great reward is not having to be insulted all the time, it’s kind of a letdown, and not much incentive to keep up your rigorous life changes. After all, that never had anything to do with you – that had to do with other people using you to make themselves feel superior.
All of the people I know who have lost 100 lbs or more have regained substantially (30 lbs being the smallest regain I know of, and he may still be on the way up). I know several such people, being that I sought them out when I embarked on this project myself. I’m not saying there aren’t lots of just plain physical advantages to being thin (I can go faster uphill, don’t have to press up against the wall so someone can pass me in a narrow hall, don’t injure myself as easily when I fall and can kiss my own knee, for what that’s worth), but weighed against the druglike golden dream our culture holds out as the reward for the reduced fatty, it’s pretty…er…thin. And say what you like, eating is a wonderful, wonderful way to alleviate depression.
So while it’s true that the argument can be made that inborn sexual preference is somehow a more virtuous cultural disadvantage than fat, for practical purposes, the outcome is the same. It’s excruciatingly hard to make the change – and it takes great force of will to maintain it – the new state never becomes quite “natural.”
People aren’t heroically virtuous as a rule, and its insane to approach a problem as if they should be. If you want a solution, that is.
MG
Your data on this point seems good, and I’ve never looked into any of this myself. But, if ordinary personal choices aren’t a significant factor in one’s weight, why is it that Americans are so much more overweight than Europeans? I’d always assumed that the explanation that Americans drive everywhere and Europeans don’t to be somewhat convincing. So if ordinary changes in exercise level aren’t the determining factor (as you’ve argued somewhat convincingly) then what explains this difference?
The earlier comments on the difference between staying thin as a child and throughout life, as opposed to losing a lot of weight later in life may explain this I suppose.
Keep up the great blogging!
Here’s a theory on Europeans vs. Americans (or Americans 30 years ago vs. Americans today) is that the fat people here are all a little fatter, and the thin people here are probably a little fatter, too. Because of lifestyle differences (our car-addicted aversion to walking, our larger portions of food, our whole fast-food problem, etc), most people carry around a little more weight than they would in Europe.
The most tragic thing about the way dieters are set up to fail with unrealistic expectations is that it ends up discouraging them from doing the simple things (eat less sugar, exercise 2-3 hours a week) that won’t help them loose large amounts of weight but will significantly increase their health.
The problem is in the very question of “choice”. Americans, by virtue of our need to keep our jobs, are more sedentary than Europeans. It’s foolish to blame someone for holding a sedentary job that person needs to maintain a normal lifestyle.
Is there a solution? I don’t see one near. The thing that bothers me most is the dehumanization of fat people. Outside of discussions of how much of a choice it is, there is no reason to treat fat people like they are outside of humanity.
When all fat people are rich, then it will be acceptable to be fat.
When all gay people are rich, then it will be acceptable to be gay.
It’s already okay to be black if you are rich.
Yeah, I know. Warped values.
Ampersand,
On the first point, where I stated that gays made up a smaller portion of the population than the obese, you are correct. That in no way refutes the points you made in your post. If anything, it was my way of “thinking out loud” as I fleshed something out with the keyboard.
As for the second point, where I stated the conditions of “gay-ness” and obesity were not mutually exclusive, that was a simple matter of interpretation. After reading your post, I was left with the impression that you may be implying as such, though you never explicitly said so. Now you are clear and I understand more thoroughly what you intended to say.
As for the third point, where I went on about exercise and other things you attributed to thin people avoiding obesity, I have to stand by what I say. The same holds for obese individuals wishing to become, “not fat” (which is a relative term and ultimately up to one’s own interpretation) as opposed to those who are thin and wanting to stay that way. The state of obesity is, largely, a matter of choice. As pointed out by other comments, American life encourages obesity, but that argument is really just another form of “passing the buck.”
The point is that, rarely easy, many obese people CAN become thin and with time and the right education and support stay that way. However, I’m from the school of thought claiming that nothing “worth it” is ever easy. In the end, it is a “quality of life” question. Let us not forget that very few individuals are born fat. Evolution simply wont allow this much.
Conversely, every gay person is born gay. Although I acknowledge the fact that gays and the obese are often treated in similar ways, when compared vis-a-vis each other I have little sympathy for the obese as their state is a chosen one. In other words, to be fat and become thin isnt lying to one’s self. It is instead creating a better and healthier life. To be gay and marry an individual of the opposite sex is quite the opposite. It involves lying to a spouse, family, God ( if you believe such an entity to exist), and worst of all, yourself.
Apropos of nothing perhaps. But I spent 17 years working in a major University Library. And in every post I held there was a backlog that never went away. Whether it was serials (library speak for regularly published documents) to be entered in the catalogs, or books to be reshelved, or document delivery requests to be researched there was always a fat heap that we simply did not have time to address. Except oddly that heap never grew much, it just hit whatever limits were thought tolerable. Which when you think of it meant we were keeping up with the flow, we were digesting every bit of material flowing into our shop on a daily basis, we were just not addressing the flab around our belly.
So pointing out that based on scientific studies fat people don’t eat more than thin people is kind of missing the point, most overweight people don’t continue to add pounds without measure, which would be the case if they were simply loading up at the buffet. But given my library example the answer is to reshelve more books every day than are taken off, eventually you eliminate the backlog and can continue your normal pace.
I have my own bad habits, and indeed a family history of same, but I don’t claim that makes me some persecuted minority. If your weight holds steady that just means you have for whatever reason found a comfort level. If that means society calls you “fat” then you can accept it or deal with it. But pointing out that you eat less than the guy next door than runs marathons means nothing.
Mark: In other words, to be fat and become thin isnt lying to one’s self. It is instead creating a better and healthier life.
What of fat people who live a “better” and healthier life and don’t lose weight? What if they do everything “right” – eat what they’re supposed to, exercise, et al, and lose nothing of any consequence? Are they still not meeting your standard of health simply because of appearance?
Besides, the issue of genetics and fat isn’t an open and shut case. Although the amount of research on it has slowed down lately (to favor the current media climate of blaming the individual,) there have been studies suggesting genetics are in charge, and others suggesting environment. Gee, this sounds a lot like the issues surrounding gays, doesn’t it?
In any event, I must wonder why “But it’s a choice!” matters. Does that give everyone the a-okay to go ahead and discriminate against fat people? It seems that way. They just keep thinking, “Ah, she’s lazy and could lose weight if she really wanted to.”
Bruce: But pointing out that you eat less than the guy next door than runs marathons means nothing.
Sure it does. It means that there’s a stereotype out there being dispelled with research – combating ignorance with knowledge. I’d say that means something.
interesting article, Mr. Ampersand. well spoken. often when comparisons like this are made, they are done so cheaply & one-dimensionally & are therefore offensive. you have done a good job of drawing connection without attempting to subsume either homosexuality or body size within the other.
it’s interesting how mainstream culture tends to always present in binary, isn’t it? you’re gay or you’re not gay – you’re fat or you’re not fat. and so easy to let such simplicities do our thinking for us. even though we’re all drawing our own lines.
i mean, some folks are fat, right? really fat. you see them & in your head you go “wow. they’re FAT!” – and some folks are, y’know, big-boned. some are chunky. or maybe they just have a big fanny…
and then there’s the fat folk who are quite tall, though i’m sure we’ve all met short fat folk. black fatties & white ones. sorta pear-shaped with a buzz-cut & freckles. long fingered & barrel chested with lots of body hair. voluptuous, frizzy hair, button nosed with a killer overbite. etcetera.
can someone be a little gay? have you ever met someone & in your head you went “wow. they’re GAY!” do you have to be 100% to be gay? is 74% enough? what if i like looking at men, but not actually touching them? what if like men and women? what if you only like certain kinds of men &/or women? what if you’re like Kevin Cline in that film In & Out?
so, unless there’s a national gayness index that i don’t know about, how do we know things like the country isn’t becoming more gay? how do we know that the gayness level has remained the same, now or in the past?
the problem is the binary categorization. there is no switch that is flipped that makes you gay or not gay, fat or not fat. after all, what the hell is it to you whether someone is fat or gay? it only matters if you’re trying to stick them in a box, make them toe the line you’ve just drawn.
as if this kind of thinking makes any sense:
how much do you weigh? that much, huh? well, you see, that’s not good enough for me. yeah, you see it still falls into the “fat” category by several pounds. back on the treadmill!
almost as much sense as this:
i don’t mind gay folks. but why do some of them have to be so flamboyant? i mean, whatever. but do they have to flaunt it? some gay folks act normal. why can’t the rest of them? i mean, those sissyboys? and those bulldaggers? what are they trying to prove?
Amp, great posts.
I think the trouble that Don P and others who pose the same arguments is that they fail to understand that for many fat people, it *does* require extreme measures (not just the “put down the Big Mac and go take a walk”) and sweeping lifestyle changes, as Mary pointed out in her comments. I know fat vegans who exercise several hours a week. Likewise I’ve had thin friends who force feed themselves peanut butter sandwiches or whole pies in futile attempts to gain weight. I’m a believer in setpoint theory.
Bruce Webb,
No disrespect intended, but surely you realize that human physiology is so much more complicated than the dynamics of backlogs of books in a library that such analogies are worse than useless, and that using fatally flawed analogies to draw conclusions leads to fatally flawed, and even idiotic, conclusions.
“Well, extensive medical research may show otherwise, but my inaccurate analogy cleary shows exactly what I designed it to show, so so much for that medical research.” (not a real quote from anyone)
Your analogy is the same as Don P’s mantra of “calories – activity = weight change.”
The New England Journal of Medicine article Amp quotes rejects this formulation, stating:
Mark,
Given that you have “have little sympathy for the obese as their state is a chosen one,” presumably hating Catholics and Jews is also hunky-dory for you (in that you would have little sympathy for hated Catholics or Jews), since both are chosen states as well.
Well, actually, I guess it is only okay to hate Jews if you don’t hate Jews as long as they are willing to convert to whatever your preferred religion is. You can still sympathize with Jews about being hated as an ethnicity (since being a convert is not an out), but not as a religion (for which conversion is an out).
The choice versus not choice issue for bigotry is a fascinating one.
Surely, a far better basis for deciding if bigotry is acceptible is whether the hated thing or person causes harm. It is doubtful whether sociopathy is a truly chosen state of being, but reasonable people hate sociopaths, and wouldn’t stop hating them if it were conclusively proven that sociopathy was entirely not subject to choice.
While Don P started off arguing that fat people could be hated because they increase health care costs (and perhaps this is your justification as well), the counter argument that fatness is actually a fairly poor measure of healthiness seems to thoroughly undercut that excuse for anti-fat bigotry. In particular, sedentary, unhealthy fat people can become active, healthy fat people without loosing any meaningful amount of weight (just as sedentary, unhealthy skinny people can), so hating sedentariness (which has a clear link with poor health and medical expenses) would actually be more legitimate, but treating fatness as a proxy for sedentariness is wrong, both morally and factually.
I’m also someone who lost over 100 lbs. as an adult through changes to diet and increased exercise. Most of the initial weight came off in college, and I maintained the loss quite well until a couple of years ago, when a long bout of depression followed an injury that kept me from exercising. Now I’m older and my metabolism is slower and I’ve regained a significant amount of weight. Even when I was thinner, though, I was never really thin; I think I hit my set point and comfortably maintained it as long as I was able to work out. Now that I’ve finally gotten the damage to my ankle worked on, I’m ready to start exercising again, so we’ll see what happens within a few years.
I tried posting a comment to the other thread, but I had technical issues. Pacific Islanders were brought up as being heavier than Americans. From what I understand, there are a couple of factors at work there. One is that the people who actually survived the journey from one island to another (ever looked on a map to see how far apart the islands are?) were the people who metabolized fat slowly. Another factor is that due to isolation, over time, their bodies adapted to a limited diet and do not take nutrition well from foods introduced in the past 100 or so years. Apparently there has been quite a bit of success in Hawaii with the idea of a native diet as a way to lose weight for Pacific Islanders.
Mark, you are saying that it would be OK to hate gay people if they were not “born gay.” Right?
I’m over here via bigfatblog.com. I think that trying to change the way society treats fat people (or gay people) by saying “but it’s in our genes, we can’t heeeeelp it – no one would choose to be fat/gay” puts us in a very weak position. A few people can always be found to say they were cured of being gay or that they successfully and permanently lost weight. Ersatz medical studies can always be trumped up. So we’re in the position of basing our fight on something that is subject to endless nitpicking, which means we never get to the heart of the matter, which is: It’s wrong to try to force other people to change their behavior just because you personally find it distasteful.
I think a much better position is to compare being fat/gay to having certain religious beliefs and practices.
Religious beliefs are a choice, not a biological necessity. But they are choice that is still pretty strongly protected and supported in our society. It’s understood to be tied strongly to culture and family of origin even though it’s not biological.
Insofar as fat people can “choose” to lose weight temporarily, some of us do not do so because we don’t believe there is sufficient evidence that long-term weight loss is possible and that yo-yo dieting is healthy.
Insofar as bisexual people can “choose” only to be involved with opposite-sex partners, some of us do not do so because we don’t care to limit ourselves in that way.
Society should view those choices as protected in the same way that society views religious choices as protected.
Another benefit of tying these things together is that religious choice is currently under attack by right-wing Christians, and if we fight against their attack we will come out of the battle having preserved other kinds of choices to live in ways that right-wing Christians don’t want.
…Or perhaps, along the same lines as “What about religion?”, we could bring up the idea of chosen sexual behavior. I think that most people on this blog believe that it would be reprehensible to, say, discriminate in housing or employment against a woman who has a bunch of sex with a bunch of different partners. She could certainly choose to be celibate, but no one has the right to penalize her for choosing not to be.
And also, to add to mythago’s comment above, would also be okay to hate gay people if they were vulnerable to certain health problems (sort of like how black people are more likely to sickle-cell anemia, and Americans of Hispanic ancestry are more likely to get diabetes)?
I think the bottom line is that it’s not okay to discriminate against people based on appearance, which is really what this is at core.
Charles, I am fully aware that science is hard. But then agains physics is physics. My point may not have been artfully stated, it was really intended as a defence of the people whose weight set point is higher than mine. There is a perception that people who are “fat” are fat because they eat more than “thin” people. That may or not be the case. If you are a marathoner in training or a 98 lb gymnast you may be packing away calories in amounts that would kill the standard office worker in short order. And plenty of heavy people live on a steady diet of low-fat cottage cheese and salads. But if you are burning more calories than you injest, at whatver rate that happens, and however your body readjusts its metabolism, you will lose fat. You may or may not lose weight, muscle is denser than fat and most of your body weight is water anyway, but you will tap into your fat reserves.
Many people have bought into the notion that losing weight means permanent sacrifice, never having that piece of pecan pie again. It doesn’t need to be that way, you can still eat as much as you are eating today, and more possibly if you engage in activities previously unavailable to you.
But if your weight is steady, at whatever level, you are not overeating, you are maintaining a caloric balance. That was what my modest library analogy was trying to convey.
Yeesh. Every time this issue comes out, the “Fat Activists” come out of the woodwork. I used to be a “Fat Activist” – people (men) told me it was safe and healthy to be fat and that science was a lie. Those same men invited me to groups where we could all celebrate our wonderful fatness. And all those men turned out to be fetishists who are only attracted to obese women.
So when Big Fat Blog’s Paul, a non-obese white man, travels the internet telling women to stay fat… beware. Check your sources.
I think Stef, mythago and others here put it perfectly – what about the notion that a person “chose” to be fat makes it okay to persecute them? Especially given that, based on loads of empirical evidence, it is a “choice” that is almost impossible to go back on, even if you do establish healthier eating and exercise habits?
When people really get into blaming fat people for being a burden on society, health has little to do with it. I ate healthier when I was fat – now that I have to eat less to lose weight, I sometimes eat cake and crackers for lunch and skip dinner. I used to eat healthy beans and rice a lot, but don’t anymore because they are high in calories and not very gratifying – if I choose that for a meal, likely I will eat more later to take care of taste cravings. People haven’t stopped taunting me because I am so healthy now and not burdening the healthcare system; they’ve stopped because I look thinner. I could be rotting away from cancer and people would still praise me for losing weight.
If the “obesity crisis” could be solved (and it absolutely could) by people adopting healthy eating and exercise habits without actually expecting to lose more than 10 lbs or so (ie, becoming healthy fat people), would people stop persecuting fat people? I think not. So what’s actually going on here? Why are some thin people so adamant about sticking it to the fatties – even the ones who are responding to their supposed concerns by taking measures to be healthier?
Also, regarding Mark’s comment about “thin” being healthy, and therefore a worthwhile objective as opposed to “straight” for gay people, that’s not really the issue – health can be obtained without becoming thin. The reward for both thinness and straightness is cultural acceptance, freedom from abuse and the privilege of living in a culture where everything is cut to fit you. As I mentioned before, for someone who has gone from being fat to being thin, thinness gets easier, but never becomes natural. Force of will must be exerted constantly both to achieve and maintain it. I and those like me, if we succeed in the long run, will still always be passing for thin.
So here’s my question: if the “obesity crisis” (which should more properly be named the “sedentary behavior crisis”) were solved by fat people adopting healthy diet and exercise, yet remaining visibly fat, would the constant pressure on them to become thin still be justifiable? And if so, why? Yes, an uberheathly thin person will still always have an edge over an uberhealthy fat person, but using that as an argument for the thin imperative is like pointing out that getting two doctorates would give me more options than getting one. Sure it would, but one doctorate is enough to give me all the options I need, and the energy, time and money I might have invested in getting another one can be more profitably put to use elsewhere
(I, er cough…don’t have a doctorate, by the way. Just an example).
MG
ampersand:
Don’s right, in a sense (ignoring, for lack of a civil response, his stereotypes about fat people).
I continue to be mystified by your offense at the reference to fast food and large sodas. Hamburgers and sodas are typical of the kind of poor food choices that fat people make. It’s not a false stereotype, it’s a true stereotype. Obviously, it’s not Big Macs or Super Gulps in every case. It could be fried chicken. Or candy bars. Or pasta smothered in fatty sauces. Or Mexican food laden with cheese and refried beans. Or even a Subway sandwich containing fatty cheeses and meats. Or any of an enormous range of other unhealthy, high-calorie foods. Or, in theory, it could be the consumption of very large quantities of healthy foods. You can get fat on a diet of raw fruits and vegetables if you eat enough of them, although in practise that is going to be very rare.
In theory, any fat person could become thin, if they only kept up what the New England Journal of Medicine called “extreme measures” – extreme low-calorie diets and tons of hard exercise – for the rest of their lives. (One formerly fat person who commented on the earlier thread, said that she exercises four hours every day).
Again, you seem to conflating different issues. If by “thin” you mean Nicole Kidman-level thin, runway model-level thin, then yes, a person may need to adopt an “anorexic” diet and/or a very strenuous workout program to maintain that weight.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about maintaining a body weight within the normal range. I’m talking about not being fat or obese. Instead of Nicole Kidman, think Renee Zellweger in her Bridget Jones mode. Not “thin,” but not fat either. A little bit pudgy, perhaps. That level of weight is readily attainable for the vast majority of women on a normal diet and exercise schedule, without the extreme measures you claim above. That level of weight (or less) was the norm for American women as recently as a few decades ago. Fatness and obesity were much less common then than they are today. And women did not have to work out for 4 hours a day, or engage in “anorexic”-type diets, to maintain it.
By the same token, any lesbian or gay person could “not be gay,” in the sense of repressing their real desires and marrying a person of the opposite sex.
Again, you are confusing a chosen behavior (bad diet and exercise habits) with an unchosen state of being (the condition of being homosexual). Can you really not understand the fundamental difference between the two? And “marrying a person of the opposite sex” is irrelevant. That’s also a behavior that can be chosen by anyone regardless of their sexual orientation. A gay person does not cease to be gay when he marries a person of the opposite sex. Isn’t this obvious?
So in theory, every fat person and every queer person could choose “not to be.”
Nonsense. Fat people can choose not to be fat by choosing to give up the lifestyle that causes them to be fat. No such option is available to gay people. Gay people can choose to behave as if they were heterosexual, but they cannot choose to stop being gay, at least not as far as we know.
Charles:
While Don P started off arguing that fat people could be hated because they increase health care costs
You’re a liar, Charles. I never said any such thing.
Don P – you never have addressed Ampersand’s point about the difference between staying thin and GETTING thin once you’ve become obese. You have good tips on staying thin for those who never gained – say what you like, it’s not that easy to become thin once you’ve gotten fat.
If you’re curious, look up Renee Zellwegger’s interviews about how hard it was for her to drop the weight after Bridget Jones – and as you’ve noted, she didn’t really gain to a point where she was more than simply average. She dreaded having to take off the weight again after that second movie.
MG
In theory, every Bush voter could choose to become a Democrat in the next election. But the vast majority of them won’t. It is a choice that they simply cannot make, so it really cannot be called a choice, despite the fact that the Democrats believe that that choice would make the United States a better place. (And of course, vice versa for the Republicans.)
So why bother doing any campaigning at all? Or between the elections, what’s the point of trying to persuade the opposite side that your ideology is better, since the success rate of conversions is so low?
Mary Garden: “Don P – you never have addressed Ampersand’s point about the difference between staying thin and GETTING thin once you’ve become obese.”
Getting thin is physically easy. Just to generate their body heat, obese people have to burn a lot more calories than thin people. So if two people maintain their weight, the fatter one consumes more calories. This is no different from saying that if a big SUV and a small Toyota drive the same amount, the SUV has consumed more gas.
So simply by eating something like 2000 kcal each day, more than enough to feel full with even halfway decent food choices such as vegetables, a fat person can create a significant calorie deficit and lose a pound every three days or so, a nice and suitable speed of losing weight without any health risk.
I recall Mary previously writing that she has lost 100 pounds. Myself, I lost only about 60 pounds (going from 240 to a healthy 177). I can safely and with perfect confidence claim that no matter what her feelings and societal attitudes were when she did this, she ate significantly less than she did before. Just like I did, when I chose to lose my excess weight.
Nobody is exempt from the laws of physics. Physics does not explain everything in a complex system such as the human body, but it sets certain absolute boundaries that no body can ever go around. For example, nobody can maintain a body weight of, say, 300 pounds by eating only 2000 kcal a day, no matter what their genes and metabolism and self-image are, since nothing can generate energy out of thin air. Anyone who was really able to do this should turn themselves in to the nearest physics department and help them completely revolutionize physics and win the Nobel prize.
The fat people who maintain their weight and claim that they are not eating any more than the thin people are simply lying. When they are self-reporting, fat people routinely lie when they are asked to document their daily food and calorie consumption.
It is one thing to claim that in a modern society the fat people have difficulty in controlling their eating. In fact, I believe this. Food is readily available and it tastes so very good. It is a whole different thing to claim that there is no causal relationship whatsoever between the amount of calories consumed and the weight gain, like the fat acceptance movement likes to at least imply.
Hamburgers and sodas are typical of the kind of poor food choices that fat people make.
They are also typical of the poor food choices that thin people make. What’s your point?
All fat people do not keep an unhealthy diet, and all people who keep unhealthy diets are not fat. Furthermore, medical studies make it clear that obesity cannot be understood purely in terms of dietary choices.
I suspect that the reason that Amp finds the statement so stunning is because it ascribes to an already hated minority a behavior found in the entire population, and by doing so exempts all but the hated minority from the moral censure implied by the statement.
“Unsafe sex is typical of the kind of poor judgement that gay men show.”
Re: the fast-food and large sodas trope.
All it takes to gain 10 pounds a year is an extra 100 calories a day. That’s one light beer, a half cup of some cereals, one tablespoon of peanut butter, a slice of bread. Or just a little less activity with no change of diet.
Really, not much. It’s all a matter of accumulation.
I don’t necessarily agree that weight is immutable, and I certainly don’t buy into the idea that anything over a size 6 is fat, but I do understand from personal experience how hard it is to lose weight once you’ve put it on. Particularly from a psychological perspective. The US has such a bizarre relationship with food and weight. Just look at the high dudgeon exhibited in these comments about fat people and the assumptions made about character, morals and eating habits.
Okay Ilkka, but would you say it was *easy* for you to lose that 60 lbs? If so, why did you gain weight in the first place?
What I’m objecting to here is the notion that the same minor changes that will keep a thin person thin would also be adequate to make a fat person thin. I cut back to 2000 cal as well, but that is less than half what I, personally, was eating before – and at the weight I was before, my body burned close to 4000 cal just in basal metabolic rate and non-exercise daily activity. That’s before I add in what it burned to accommodate my workout schedule. A body that suddenly starts receiving half what it needs to maintain itself will react with alarm and insist it is starving, no matter what size it is. If your body believes it’s starving, it’s very hard to put that out of your mind for even a minute, which is one reason why it’s so hard for most people to stay on a diet.
I agree with you that you have to overconsume to get fat and overconsume to stay fat, but I’ve never seen someone become thin simply because they stopped overconsuming – losing enough weight to look thin takes a lot of work – more than most people would be willing to sink into ANY project – and it doesn’t help to imply otherwise.
No one (except for a bee) is exempt from the law of physics, true, but human beings are not automatons. There are other considerations that muck up the tidy equation: emotional dependency on food or being fat – habit – reliance on food for comfort in an intolerable situation, etc. I have a friend who gained 50 lbs to piss off her abusive husband. That more than anything makes it hard for her to lose it now, 30 years later.
I guess I’m less concerned with whether or not fat people CAN become thin that with why it’s anyone’s pressing business whether they DO or not, especially if many of the health concerns mentioned can be addressed with diet/exercise and minor weight loss (not necessarily going from fat to thin). Most people don’t spend as much time trying to browbeat people who are in debt into admitting they could get out if they really wanted to (to steal Ilkka’s analogy from another thread).
Also, you don’t have to eat healthily to become thin (as I mentioned earlier), but most people will stop lecturing you about healthy habits if you get thin, no matter how you lose the weight (cancer, heroin use, etc). I have a hard time buying that this is really a health issue for Don Pat and others like him.
MG
I think the concept of “choice” is an important one. While it is meaningless to us dealing with prejuduce every day, I’ve discovered that gay and fat bashers need to believe we are “doing it to ourselves”. My father is a vicious homophobe and gets very hostile when I try to explain that sexuality is for the most part encoded at birth, or before. He just cannot hear it – he needs to believe gays are simply “deviant” and “immoral” in order to continue his us vs. them hostility. Same with fat (Ironically, or not, my dad is fat). For me to say, fat is simply a way to look and it is how I look – almost always the response will be that I choose to look as I do and that I could be this or that if I simply put my nose to the grindstone. Why does the conversation always get derailed from the idea of simple human rights and kindness toward eople no matter how they look to a question of what people “do to themselves” and that they choose to be so? Why does the issue at hand – discrimination and cruelty – almost never get fully addressed? I’d say the answer is that, like my dad, they need to believe so in order to continue the bigotry and feelings of smug superiority.
I have enjoyed your writing, and the comments that have followed have been very interesting and thought provoking as well.
Mary Garden:
Don P – you never have addressed Ampersand’s point about the difference between staying thin and GETTING thin once you’ve become obese.
I don’t really know what his point is. Ampersand has made various claims and observations that seem to me irrelevant to what I have said. Yes, there is obviously a difference between maintaining a weight level that is within the normal range for one’s height and frame size (and, for the umpteenth time, this doesn’t necessarily mean “thin,” it means not fat) and regaining that weight level after becoming obese. To maintain the weight level, you just have to balance energy input with energy output. To regain the normal weight level from a state of obesity, you have to consume less energy than you expend, so that your body will burn the reserves of fat you are carrying to make up the difference. That means that losing weight may be more difficult than maintaining a given weight. So what? “More difficult” obviously doesn’t mean “impossible” or “unreasonably difficult.” And since losing weight tends to be harder than maintaining weight, that is all the more reason to encourage people not to put on the weight in the first place. They’re only making things harder for themselves if they want to be at the lower weight.
And except for highly unusual individuals, losing weight does not require draconian changes in food consumption or exercise. You would only need to make draconian changes if you are consuming vastly more calories than you are expending in energy, or to lose a lot of weight in a short period of time (which is risky and not recommended for most overweight people).
Most fat people gained their weight gradually, over a period of time, because of a relatively small excess of calories consumed over calories burned. And they can lose weight by the same process in reverse. Because of the “set point” phenomenon, they may need to reduce their calorie intake below the level necessary to maintain a given weight by more than the excess that caused them to gain weight, in order to achieve the same effect. But as long as their calorie intake is less than their calories burned, they will lose weight.
Mary Garden: “Okay Ilkka, but would you say it was *easy* for you to lose that 60 lbs? If so, why did you gain weight in the first place?”
It was surprisingly easy, once I chose to cut down my eating.
I gained the weight because I ate too much, enjoying the food more than I disliked the disadvantages of being fat. I then changed my priorities.
“No one (except for a bee) is exempt from the law of physics, true, but human beings are not automatons. There are other considerations that muck up the tidy equation:”
There are, but none of these considerations affect the fact that no body can generate energy out of thin air, and it is necessary to consume energy to maintain weight.
My father is a vicious homophobe and gets very hostile when I try to explain that sexuality is for the most part encoded at birth, or before. He just cannot hear it – he needs to believe gays are simply “deviant” and “immoral” in order to continue his us vs. them hostility.
Plus, I’m sure he has trouble dealing with the idea that *his* genes may have contributed to gayness, or fatness.
In theory, every Bush voter could choose to become a Democrat in the next election. But the vast majority of them won’t. . . . So why bother doing any campaigning at all? Or between the elections, what’s the point of trying to persuade the opposite side that your ideology is better, since the success rate of conversions is so low?
Are you suggesting that it ought to be legal to discriminate in the workplace on the presumption of Republicanism? So if, for example, a job applicant came in who was white, wore a crew cut, spoke with a southern accent, and had a Jesus Fish decal on his car, then it would be okay for me to cite his physical resemblance to the “sort of people” who make it harder for all of us to get decent health care as my reason for refusing to hire him?
I don’t think that would be at all acceptable behavior. Do you?
What would or would not “make the world a better place” is always a matter of dispute. I dare say that many Christians think that the world would be a much better place if all Jews converted to Christianity. But I certainly hope that you would agree with me that institutionalized anti-semitism is seriously bad news, and that it should not be legal to discriminate against people who “look Jewish.”
Prostletyzing would be obnoxious enough if that were the end of it, but it’s not the end of it. Fat people are subject to workplace discrimination and widespread institutionalized bigotry, much of it fueled by willful ignorance. Their complaints are not equivalent to whining about Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to their door every once in a blue moon to try to interest them in copies of The Watchtower.
The point is, being a widely despised minority is not fun. It’s not easy. It involves a lot of suffering, for many people. It’s not something that most people would choose.
I assume the point of this is to imply that, because no one would choose to be fat or queer, it must be a choice. I’d grant that’d be true for an economist, who studiously goes through the pluses and minuses, but isn’t there a pleasure in persecution? Not to downplay – at all – the very serious discrimination that both fat and queer people face, but isn’t the above calculus a bit oversimplistic? Hopefully some Foucault scholar can take over this half-formed line of inquiry.
Elkins:
They are also typical of the poor food choices that thin people make. What’s your point?
My point is what I said: Hamburgers and sodas are typical of the kind of poor food choices that fat people make. To the extent that thin people make bad food choices, hamburgers and sodas may be typical of those choices too. But thin people are much less likely to consume as many hamburgers and sodas (or similar choices) than fat people. It’s obviously likely to make a difference to your weight whether you eat at McDonald’s once a month or several times a week.
All fat people do not keep an unhealthy diet,
But most of them do. The exceptions are just that: exceptions. And all fat people, regardless of the nature of their diet, have consumed more calories than they are burning, and in that sense have a poor diet even if they are eating sensible foods.
and all people who keep unhealthy diets are not fat.
So what?
Furthermore, medical studies make it clear that obesity cannot be understood purely in terms of dietary choices.
Right. For the umpteenth, umpteenth time, it’s a matter of food choices and exercise. Dietary choices only affect the input side of the equation. The output side is controlled by, amoung other things, the amount of exercise or other calorie-burning physical activity a person engages in.
I suspect that the reason that Amp finds the statement so stunning is because it ascribes to an already hated minority a behavior found in the entire population, and by doing so exempts all but the hated minority from the moral censure implied by the statement.
But the behavior is not found in the entire population. Sure, almost everyone eats fast-food or other foods with a high content of fat and sugar sometimes, but fat people are likely to eat such food more frequently and/or in greater quantities. As virtually any nutrtionist will tell you, it’s okay to eat even very bad foods as long as you don’t eat too much of them. Fat people do tend to eat too much of them. That, in part, is why they are fat.
Ilkka Kokkarinen:
Myself, I lost only about 60 pounds (going from 240 to a healthy 177). I can safely and with perfect confidence claim that no matter what her feelings and societal attitudes were when she did this, she ate significantly less than she did before. Just like I did, when I chose to lose my excess weight.
OK, I just have to respond to this because my weight loss trajectory is nearly identical to yours (I’m more in the 185 range, but I started at 240 as well). I most emphatically and definately eat *more* during and since the time that I lost the weight. I did stop drinking soda, but I’m pretty sure I eat more actual food to make up for the soda calories.
If I didn’t eat that much food, I wouldn’t have the energy to exercise, which I do alot of. I had the same experience as you that it was rather easy, but not eating when I’m hungry is absolute misery for me. It was easy for me to lose the weight because I realized I really enjoyed exercise.
I guess I don’t have a general point to contribute, except to say that we probably should be careful about drawing conclusions to confidently based on our own experiences, which may be quite idiosyncratic.
Don P,
While you never used those specific words, all of your initial posts on the previous fat thread drip with hatred. I am particularly fond of the post in which you describe your revulsion when forced to sit next to a fat person on a plane. It could be that I am reading too much into your relentlessly hostile and agressive style, but I stand by my description of your argument.
Elkins: “Are you suggesting that it ought to be legal to discriminate in the workplace on the presumption of Republicanism?”
You know, I am beginning to believe that most people don’t actually really read what they comment, but instead just pick up a couple of keywords and follow up with a canned response based on those.
Hint: read the end section of the Amp’s original posting above, about choices that aren’t really choices because people are not able to make them.
zuzu:
All it takes to gain 10 pounds a year is an extra 100 calories a day. That’s one light beer, a half cup of some cereals, one tablespoon of peanut butter, a slice of bread. Or just a little less activity with no change of diet.
Right. I’ve made the same point myself at least twice now. Most fat people gained their weight gradually, over a period of time, because of a relatively small excess of calories consumed over calories burned. And they can lose the weight by the same process in reverse. Except in highly unusual cases, they don’t need to make extreme changes. To use your example above, all it takes lose 10 pounds a year is to eat one slice of bread less a day, or engage in a little more calorie-burning physical activity a day. But, apparently, even that is too much to expect of them.
Part of the problem is that fat people tend to let their weight get out of hand, and then want a quick fix. Hence all the faddish diets that advertise rapid weight loss. They’re not willing to make the permanent changes in their lifestyle that are necessary to lose the weight gradually, and then keep it off.
Bruce,
But then agains physics is physics.
And then again, simplistic physics has no guarantee that it reflects reality. Physiology obeys physical laws, but that doesn’t mean that it obeys it in simple or obvious ways. Decreasing caloric intake and increasing physical activity doesn’t inescapably lead to loss of fat (as you claim). It can lead to an increase in efficiency of base line metabolism (I always find it funny that people talk about metabolisms as being slow or fast, which valorizes the fast metabolisms of skinny people, rather than efficient or inefficient, which would valorize the metabolisms of fat people), it can lead to burning muscle instead of fat, or various other results not predicted by a simplistic physical engine-battery model.
Charles:
While you never used those specific words, all of your initial posts on the previous fat thread drip with hatred.
No, your posts drip with hatred. The fact is, you lied about what I said. You have a history of lying about what I have said.
I am particularly fond of the post in which you describe your revulsion when forced to sit next to a fat person on a plane.
It’s not “revulsion,” it’s discomfort, and the airlines themselves consider it a perfectly legitimate complaint. That is why they make very fat people purchase two seats.
Don P,
Care to provide some citations for the source of your knowledge about the food choices of fat and thin people? I’m seeing a lot of detailed claims with absolutely no substantiation.
Mary put her finger on it here:
When people really get into blaming fat people for being a burden on society, health has little to do with it. . . . If the “obesity crisis” could be solved (and it absolutely could) by people adopting healthy eating and exercise habits without actually expecting to lose more than 10 lbs or so (ie, becoming healthy fat people), would people stop persecuting fat people? I think not.
That’s it exactly. There’s nothing wrong with encouraging people to take better care of their health, but I don’t think that’s really what anti-fat discrimination is all about. It is an appearance-based prejudice, and it has far more to do with fat itself than it does with “health.”
I’ve never heard anybody defend quite so passionately the notion that employers ought have a “right” to screen job candidates for blood pressure and cholesterol levels before deciding whether or not to employ them. But suggest, even in the mildest of tones, that perhaps discriminating against a fat applicant might be inappropriate, and people get very passionate indeed! Why? Why is that?
So what’s actually going on here?
One of the parallels that Amp did not cite between obesity and homosexuality–possibly because it is not quantifiable enough by half for his preferred standards of debate–is that whiff of religious righteousness that always seems to permeate these exchanges, that stench of moralism, or even of moral panic.
It strikes me as intrinsically connected to both misogyny and homophobia, this. The terror that fat seems to inspire, the moral terror, seems rooted in the same fear and loathing that has traditionally been reserved for the promiscuous woman. She is not obeying. She is “out of bounds”–much like the fat that oozes over the sides of the airplane seat. Her problem is a surfeit of appetite–which is the reason that no matter what medical studies might actually show, people will continue to frame the problem of obesity wholly in terms of eating and of appetite.
It is also very much the way the religious right views those who dare to break gender boundaries. Queers are disobedient, they are in “moral rebellion.” They are encroaching on our public life. Those who support them must have a “recruitment agenda.” They lack the will-power to restrain their nasty urges. They are not only weak, but also insatiable.
As it becomes less and less socially acceptable to try to regulate sexual behavior, we turn to the subject of eating instead. Whether eating habits really have all that much to do with obesity is irrelevant. We must define obesity in terms of voluntary appetite for it to serve the same social function that sex once served.
Eating is the new sex. Anti-fat hysteria is the new Puritanism.
Elkins, excellent discussion, I’ve long had similar thoughts along those lines and It’s nice to see it expressed so well.
Charles:
Decreasing caloric intake and increasing physical activity doesn’t inescapably lead to loss of fat (as you claim).
He didn’t claim that. No one has claimed that. You’re lying again. Stop lying about what other people have said. Obviously, if you are still consuming more calories than you are burning even after reducing your caloric intake and increasing your physical activity, you’re not going to lose weight.
Ilkka, I believe that I did read what you wrote, although possibly I did not understand your meaning.
As I understood you, you seemed to be drawing a parallel between political campaigning (ie, trying to change people’s behavior through prostletyzing) and anti-fat campaigning (another way of trying to change people’s behavior through prostletyzing), and then posing the question: why is the one acceptable and the other not?
Did I misread your intent?
What I was trying to do was to point out the ways in which these two situations are not really congruent. They are not congruent because anti-fat and anti-gay discrimination does not consist simply of fat and gay people suffering attempts at conversion by well-meaning if intrusive individuals. They also suffer things like rampant discrimination in the workplace, and so (quite rightly) want to see more legal protections against such discrimination.
If all you meant to say was that it’s okay to try to change people’s minds about things, then I don’t think that we disagree on that as an (over?) broad statement of “rights.” I do suspect that we would agree that some forms of “trying to change people’s behavior” ought to be out of bounds.
I think that gay people and fat people are currently subject to such unacceptable attempts at persuasion in a way that Republicans are not (although at one point in time in this country, Communists were).
zuzu:
All it takes to gain 10 pounds a year is an extra 100 calories a day. That’s one light beer, a half cup of some cereals, one tablespoon of peanut butter, a slice of bread. Or just a little less activity with no change of diet.
Right. I’ve made the same point myself at least twice now.
Can you point me to those posts? Because all I’ve seen you do is insist that fat people must be consuming hamburgers and sugared sodas if they’ve become and remain fat, such as when you say: Hamburgers and sodas are typical of the kind of poor food choices that fat people make. To the extent that thin people make bad food choices, hamburgers and sodas may be typical of those choices too. But thin people are much less likely to consume as many hamburgers and sodas (or similar choices) than fat people. It’s obviously likely to make a difference to your weight whether you eat at McDonald’s once a month or several times a week.
Elkins:
The terror that fat seems to inspire, the moral terror, seems rooted in the same fear and loathing that has traditionally been reserved for the promiscuous woman.
Good grief. “Moral terror?” Where are all these supposed expressions of “moral terror” at the phenomenon of fatness and obesity? I think you’re getting a bit carried away with yourself. Most people seem to find being fat unattractive (including fat people themselves), and in certain ways repulsive, especially if it is extreme. And I think most people believe, justifiably, that the primary responsibility for being fat lies with the fat person himself. But that’s about it.
… which is the reason that no matter what medical studies might actually show, people will continue to frame the problem of obesity wholly in terms of eating and of appetite.
No one here has framed the issue of obesity wholly in terms of eating and appetite. You’re another one who needs to read more carefully.
Eating is the new sex. Anti-fat hysteria is the new Puritanism.
Do please produce your evidence of this alleged puritanical crusade again fatness. I don’t see much attention being paid to the “sin” of gluttony any more, by the Religious Right or anyone else.
Charles isn’t lying; that someone interprets something differently than you isn’t lying.
I also agree with Charles that your posts drip with bigotry against fat people. It’s a little subtle, but not any subtler than the way most “non bigoted” opponents of same-sex marriage clearly consider lesbians and gays less worthy than straights.
Finally, like Charles, I want to see some peer-reviewed citations confirming the “factual” assertations you keep making about fat people. For example:
Again, absolutely no diet plan – fad or not, long-term or short-term – has been shown to work on most fat people over the long term in a peer-reviewed study. I know this not because I’m making it up, but because that’s what the empirical research has shown (see my previous post for citations). If you’d like to disagree with me, please provide some evidence, rather than just stating your unsupported opinion over and over and over again.
(Love that last sentence – like so much of what you write, it drips with contempt (“even that is too much to expect”) for people you consider less worthwhile than yourself).
If you think that you have a diet plan that works for fat people with such little effort (all you have to do is leave a piece of bread off your sandwich every day!), then prove it by citing the peer-reviewed research that shows that you’re correct. Don’t just make it up.
The thing is, fat people are not stupider than you are, Don. They are not weak-willed. If it was that easy and simple to not be fat, then there’d be almost no fat people.
And your citation to prove this commonplace anti-fat stereotype is…
By the way, this quote was meant for you in particular. How do you respond to it?
zuzu:
Can you point me to those posts?
Sure. My post of 3:45pm in this thread, in which I said: “Most fat people gained their weight gradually, over a period of time, because of a relatively small excess of calories consumed over calories burned.” And my post of 5:19pm on December 10 in the “Discrimination Against Fat People” thread, in which I said: “Most people build up their weight gradually as a result of a relatively small excess of calories consumed over calories burned over a period of time.”
Because all I’ve seen you do is insist that fat people must be consuming hamburgers and sugared sodas if they’ve become and remain fat, such as when you say
I’ve never said that fat people must be consuming hamburgers and sodas, as you may have realized if you had bothered to read the statement of mine you quote more carefully. I never said they “must” be consuming any kind of fast-food. In fact, I explicitly said that it is possible, though unlikely in practise, to become fat on a diet of healthy foods like raw fruits and vegetables, if you eat enough of them.
First of all, thank you for assuming all fat people are routine liars.
Actually, as one of the articles I quoted in part one pointed out, a variety of methodologies (including direct observation by third parties) has failed to produce replicatable proof that fat people eat more calories than thin people.
Of course, I know very well that this is a catch-22. Since no observer study can follow fat people around 24/7 for months on end, observer studies that find that fat people don’t eat more are untrustworthy (those sneaky, lying fat people are sneaking in big macs when no one’s watching!), in your view. And since (you say) most fat people are liars, self-reporting is also untrustworthy, in your view.
Am I mistaken?
ampersand:
Charles isn’t lying; that someone interprets something differently than you isn’t lying.
Fine. I interpret you, ampersand, to have expressed hatred towards people who think that if a person is fat, the primary responsibility for that condition lies with the fact person himself.
I also agree with Charles that your posts drip with bigotry against fat people.
And I think your posts drip with self-serving rationalizations and excuses for failing to do what you need to do to lose weight.
It’s a little subtle, but not any subtler than the way most “non bigoted” opponents of same-sex marriage clearly consider lesbians and gays less worthy than straights.
Whereas your excuse-making for your own lack of self-control isn’t really very subtle at all. I also think that the fact that the suggestion that fatness is primarily a matter of personal responsibility obviously makes you so angry is a dead give-away that you do in fact see merit in that claim, however strongly you may resist it in your public pronouncements.
I’ll get to the rest of your post later, most likely tomorrow.
Don P, when you return I hope you’ve thought of something good to stay about those pesky studies. Perhaps the authors (and referees) are all fat liars?
Actually, Don, plenty of people here other than you have expressed that idea or variations of that idea, and some of those folks I find to be delightful people. Moreover, I have a very long track record of dealing with most people I disagree with – even people whose views I find abhorrant – with civility. (Most of the time.)
What pisses me off about you isn’t just that you have opinions I disagree with (your views, in and of themselves, piss me off far less than anti-SSM views do). What pisses me off about you is that you give the impression of holding me, and anyone else who disagrees with you, in contempt.
Someday, perhaps you’ll take responsibility for the fact that virtually everyone you disagree with comes away from the exchange thinking you’re an unbearable, hateful asshole. Whether or not you intend to communicate contempt for everyone who disagrees with you, that’s the message you are sending.
Who do you suppose is responsible for that?
Regarding my being fat, I don’t see much need to allocate “responsibility” at all; I don’t see it as a horrible fault that blame must be cast for. However, if I must allocate responsibility, then I’d agree with you. Obviously I’m the one responsible for my size. If I had different eating and exercise habits my whole life, I would not now be as fat as I am. (Ah, 20-20 hindsight.)
However, that doesn’t change the well-proven fact that for the vast majority of fat people, weight-loss plans don’t work over the long term (at least, not in any way that has ever been provable in the peer-reviewed literature). The idea that I could simply choose to no longer be fat is not reasonable, given the peer-reviewed evidence.
Now, you’re free to disagree with me. But I’m tired of your “anyone who disagrees with Don is irrational” tone – particularly since I’ve supported most of my assertations with relevant cites of peer-reviewed studies, and you (to put it mildly) have not. So if you want my respect (which I doubt you do, frankly), you might try disagreeing with me with less rancor and with more evidence.
Elkins: yee! Eloquently said. And thanks.
Don P – Renee Zellweger, the person you held up as “chubby-normal” weighed about 145 lbs in Bridget Jones. As far as I’m concerned, that’s thin. Bigger than Nicole Kidman, of course, but Lord! Who isn’t?
The reason I asked you to respond to Amp’s point about the difference between staying thin (let’s just agree here that that term means Bridget Jones size or less) and getting thin is that you have, in the other thread, indicated that you think it is fair for an employer to refuse to hire someone because they are fat. As I mentioned several times (and so did you, Don! Kudos), it can take years to lose enough weight not to look fat, therefore many people who look fat to you might be embarked on a heroic weight loss program and you wouldn’t even know it. Is it fair to continue penalizing them until they don’t look fat anymore?
Also, if you really think losing weight is so simple, how do you account for the fact that so few people do it? Where do you get the info that backs up your claim that losing and keeping off 100-plus lbs doesn’t have to be difficult? Also, I’m most interested to know why you feel so passionately about this. You must have invested hours in writing all these posts. Were you fat? Did a fat person run over your dog or take your job?
MG
First off, I just want to stick my head back in and state that I think Amp and Elkiss have put interesting points out:
1) Obesity/fatness are visible conditions, which leads them to be more likely to be sources of discrimination than alcoholisim, smoking or other “choices” that are bad for your health.
2) Fatness (particularly fat women) is an almost irrationally hated thing… much like Elkiss points out with the comparision to promiscuity in women or homosexuality in general. It’s somehow “unclean” to be fat.
While I find Don P’s condecension (sp?) and repetition to be surprising in this environment, he is really a rather typical example of how the “average” person thinks. If you’re fat, it’s your fault. If you’re poor, it’s your fault. If you’re dumb, it’s your fault. If you’re gay, it’s your fault. If your husband beats you or your kids, it’s your fault (these are “average assumptions” not Don specific assumptions). So in my trend of trying to find something positive in everything this holiday season, thanks Don P, for reminding me about average! Perspective is always a good thing.
More to be thankful for:
I would also like to thank the person who pointed out how the extra 100 calories a day can lead to a signifigant weight gain… personally, I’ve been slowly gaining weight for years, and this year I have had to log and journal my food (without lying thank you, this is a medical log for my doctor and it does not benefit me to lie) and have learned that even running at almost 30% below the recommended caloric intake for a person my age and size, I am steadily gaining that weight.
Not by bad food choices, not by lack of routine moderate excercise, but simply because my body is not efficient in that department (actually, I’m going to be tested to see if my thyroid is getting worse, but that’s a whole other story). So yeah, I haven’t had a Big Mac in 3 months, I haven’t had a big gulp in almost a decade, I don’t guzzle or swill OR lie about what I eat. But hey, thanks to the average observer for taking the time out of their busy day to feel good about themselves when they look at me :-) Glad I could help out.
Thank you also to the person in the other thread who clarified on ADA and HIPPA, on what 3rd party disclosure actually entails and what “reasonable need to know” means.
I really love how all these thin people can be so self-righteous and tell us “fatties” how to lose weight. In case nobody ever told you, when you cut the calories a body takes in, your metabolism lowers to accomodate the new, lower calorie intake. You can help that by exercising, true. But the more you cut your calories, the more you have to offset it by exercise. Thus you have people who are exercising four hours a day to maintain their weight loss. One reason that poor people are fatter than rich people is that they are often working two or three jobs, and don’t have the time to do even minimal amounts of exercise. And it’s faster to grab some fast food between shifts than to cook beans and rice. One thing that no one has brought up is that the poor are also a despised minority, along with gays and fat people. We must have brought it on ourselves.
I agree with Mary, it is an appearance thing and not a health thing. People were just as nasty to me when I was a fat vegan, and exercising in the dojo two hours a day as they are now when I eat whatever I want, and can’t exercise because of the bad knees my job as a nurse, heredity, kicking the shit out of people in the dojo, and being heavy gave me. And BTW, my blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol are all normal, and my Irish grandmother, whose family survived the famine because of our thrifty genes, and who weighed the same as I do, 235 lbs at 5 feet even, lived to be eighty-nine. She died shortly after she lost a massive amount of weight. Go figure.
There’s so much wrong with this post, I hardly know where to begin.
First of all, there’s nothing wrong with an “attracted to fat people” fetish, any more than there’s anything wrong with the “attracted to thin people” fetish.
Second of all, whether or not someone else has a fetish is irrelevant to if their arguments are correct or not.
Third, attacking Paul in this way is a particularly over-the-top ad hom. Don’t do it on my blog again, please.
But I do love the catch-22 nature of the anti-fat arguments, here. If a thin person argues the fat-acceptance case, it’s because he’s probably a fetishist, and should be dismissed. However, if a fat person argues the same case, s/he’s just making self-serving excuses and should be dismissed.
Very nice.
Don P: “Fat people can choose not to be fat by choosing to give up the lifestyle that causes them to be fat”
Because, of course, all of us have such powers of choice over our lifestyle. :rolleyes:
BTW, would you consider the Atkins or South Beach diets good / excellent choices for weight loss?
“First of all, there’s nothing wrong with an “attracted to fat people” fetish, any more than there’s anything wrong with the “attracted to thin people” fetish.”
Ampersand, I can remember somebody talking about this on Ms a few years ago, and there was indeed something quite wrong about it (the “fat fetish” subculture, that is). It was apparently about treating the fat women and their bodies as objects, in a very disturbing way. Does the expression “feeders” ring any bells? (And I don’t recommend googling that.)
Sheena, there’s a big difference between liking a lush figure and being a feeder. One is rooted in the appreciation of a certain asthetic and one is rooted in a fantasy of control.
BTW, would you consider the Atkins or South Beach diets good / excellent choices for weight loss?
I’ve looked into both. Atkins is very unbalanced, too much protein and fat, while South Beach is very balanced, with more whole grains and lean proteins. Plus, South Beach was developed by a cardiologist, so there’s that.
Yeah, I know the difference. I thought the original poster was pointing out that not every man who says “fat = good!” has fat women’s best interests at heart, so I was just agreeing with her & explaining why.
And my question about those 2 diets was a reference to the fact that a lot of their cookbooks which I’ve read seem to recommend lots of grilled salmon / sirloin / [insert very expensive protein of your choice] . IOW, some recommended weightloss methods aren’t viable for people who don’t have that kind of money.
Going (way) back to Bruce’s backlog analogy, let’s look at the calories minus activity model. Say you’re a librarian with a backlog. You manage to work hard enough during your eight-hour shift to maintain the level of the backlog, but not to decrease it by even one book off the shelving cart. And it’s an enormous backlog.
So, one day, you decide to tackle it. By your calculations, you’d have to work four extra hours per day, no lunch breaks, for the next few years. And for the rest of your career, it’ll be at least ten hours per day, with only a few minutes to wolf down a sandwich at your desk.
Now, it’s possible. But there are serious drawbacks. You’ll be exhausted. You won’t have time for anything else. Your carpal tunnel, the tendonitis in your shoulder, and your lower back problems will get much worse. Missing your lunch breaks will make you too irritable to help library visitors. And after a few months of twelve-hour shifts, you’ll be so exhausted that you won’t be able to do your job properly; in fact, it’ll probably take you much longer to do the amount of work you used to, so twelve hours might become sixteen….
You know, this is shaping up to be a pretty good analogy after all.
piny,
You still have to add in the fact that the rest of the library adjusts for the fact that you’ve become such a hard worker, and preferentially adds books to your stack instead of others. Or maybe your co-workers don’t like the degree to which you are showing them up, so they start undercutting your efforts.
I still don’t think it is a very useful analogy, since the above are the best I can come up with for an analogy to how the body adjusts to changes in activity level and food intake. Bodies don’t want to lose their fat reserves, and they adjust their functioning to avoid doing so.
I think it’s important to remember, with all these ‘health-based’ arguments, that in the American mind there is an odd association between ‘health’ and ‘morality’. We talk about ‘healthy’ relationships, and what we mean is relationships that meet our standards of how people should treat each other.
You’re not allowed to criticise people’s morality any more but you can criticise their ‘health choices’–choices such as unsafe sex or ‘bad’ (pleasure-inducing) food or smoking. We used to call these things ‘vices’ but now we call them ‘unhealthy’. If you want to talk about something that is really unhealthy, that really has a chance of killing you, well, there’s all that stuff like bungee-jumping and rock climbing and hiking in the wilderness. But we think of those as ‘healthy’ hobbies, don’t we? And nobody suggests that the health insurance premiums of rock climbers should be raised.
Exercise is good and wholesome. In the Victorian mind, it was thought that exercise prevented preoccupation with sex, that it used up sexual energy.
Our culture hates gays for many of the same reasons it hates fat. Gay sex is sex for pleasure, love and/or bonding, not procreation. And fat people are assumed to be eating food for pleasure, because if they only ate to fuel their bodies, they’d be eating just enough to maintain their weight. Alas, biology is not moral.
There are a lot of reasons why Americans are fatter than they used to be. We work much longer hours than we did a generation ago at more sedentary jobs. Our food is full of hidden additives–all kinds of chemicals derived from soy and corn that don’t belong there, extra sugar, extra fat. The lower your income the more difficult it is to acquire natural, unprocessed food and have the time to prepare it. Not coincidentally, you have a higher risk of being fat. None of this has anything to do with a person’s actual moral fitness, but fat folks are still viewed as gluttonous.
Fat fetishism can be very disturbing. I was involved once with a man who tried to sneak extra calories into my food and got annoyed whenever I lost any weight. Needless to say, this is just as much about control as guys who get ridiculous if their girlfriend GAINS a pound.
I want to be in a relationship with someone who will still love me for me, whether I lose fifty pounds or (G-d forbid) gain fifty more.
I really don’t have much to say about the analogy between fat and gay. But I did have a few comments on the issues of losing weight and metabolism. As you can see from my name I live in Cairo, that’s the one in Egypt. In Egypt, there are many elements of the society (NOT all, though) who actually send the message that fat is good. Kids who are plump are considered cuter (I am not talking about babies) and old movie actresses (as well as some of the modern ones) are by Western standards very hefty. I am within normal range and when I was about 15 pounds overweight I was told by many people that they were glad I had filled out and that I looked so much prettier. This would never have been said to me by an American. Now given that this is a fairly fat-friendly society there are a lot of what we Americans would consider overweight people. I see a lot of the health problems that come from it though – First, there is a high rate of diabetes (adult-onset) in Egypt. Also, I believe that the encouragement of kids to overeat contributes to adult health problems and also to the fact a lot of adults who do want to lose weight have trouble because their body is used to fat since youth. Now, some of my opinions may because I am looking at Egypt from a very thin-oriented Western perspective, which is probably partly the case, but I can’t help feeling it’s wrong to basically fatten up your kids.
And I wanted to ask those who are fat and have not been successful losing weight through diet and exercise. This is because of your metabolism, right? Is metabolism genetic, or based on early childhood habits, or a combination of the two? I actually do believe that once weight is gained losing it is really hard because the body is used to that level of fat; in support of this, anecdotal though my evidence is, from what I have been told during the 6 years I have lived here, most Egyptians don’t lose weight during Ramadan; they gain.
Ampersand: “First of all, thank you for assuming all fat people are routine liars.”
If there are two possible explanations for something so that the first one assumes that the laws of nature that we know are completely wrong or have given up working, whereas the other one assumes that people have a tendency to lie about embarrassing issues, well yes, I will use the second explanation as my working hypothesis.
“Actually, as one of the articles I quoted in part one pointed out, a variety of methodologies (including direct observation by third parties) has failed to produce replicatable proof that fat people eat more calories than thin people.”
This is simply… amazing. It is no different from claiming that there is no proof that big SUV’s burn more fuel than small compact cars. (I bet that nobody can point me to a peer-reviewed study that proves just this, BTW.)
What would you say if SUV drivers self-reported their gas consumption per mile is no more than that of the small compact cars? Would you accept their claim at its face value?
Metabolical properties of fat and muscle are well known to science. To keep up his body temperature and to move his extra mass around, a fat person needs more calories compared to a thin person. Therefore he necessarily eats more if both people maintain their weight.
Otherwise, this is a chance for any physicist to take his place in history with Newton and Einstein as a total revolutionizer of physics. Simply perform a repeatable reliable experiment that demonstrates that calories needed to maintain body weight do not correlate with the said body weight. Instant Nobel prize, as the whole concept of energy would have to be rewritten.
So to sum up, yes. When fat people self-report that they maintain a weight of 300 lbs and exercise two hours a day while eating only 1500 kcal a day, they are lying. There is really no nicer way to put this.
“Of course, I know very well that this is a catch-22. Since no observer study can follow fat people around 24/7 for months on end”
So very true. Of course, the fat people probably also lie to themselves about how much they really eat, so in one sense, they are not really lying but deluded.
Sheena: “Does the expression “feeders” ring any bells?”
It does. The concept of feederism is based on the simple assumption that by eating more calories than what the body uses, the result is a weight gain, and the larger the difference, the larger the weight gain.
I applaud the fat acceptance movement for their clear disapproval of feedering. However, simply by acknowledging that feederism works (in the sense that it results in a weight gain), the fat acceptance movement has also accepted the above assuption.
Eating too much results in weight gain.
Of course, they still continue to deny that any one of their own fat members has eaten too much, but their fatness is due to their “genes” or “how they feel about themselves”.
Ampersand to Devon: “There’s so much wrong with this post, I hardly know where to begin.”
For a politically correct profeminist, you are surprisingly dismissive towards a woman’s personal experience of being sexually objectified.
“Eating too much results in weight gain”
To much compared to what or to whom? Too much compared to the Canadian food guide? Too much according to your doctor? According to ANA? According to McDonalds? Not everyone is built the same way, not everyone has the same metabolisim/biochemistry/whatever you want to call it. Some people, while eating few calories, and excercising, can gain weight, others can maintain what they have and others loose. It’s not a one-size-fits-all equation, even when you take an individuals height/frame and current weight into it.
I’m sorry that she’s had bad experiences, of course; I don’t dismiss that or doubt that. But her comment about Paul was an ad hom, and furthermore an unusually mean one. To not criticize the illogical of such an attack because she’s a woman wouldn’t be feminist; it would be putting woman on a pedistal, and sexist.
You’re right…
Phobics Unite!
If you look at it logically, one question raised by these studies is, “is it possible that different people’s bodies absorb calories in different ways, so that different people could eat similar calories yet wind up with different levels of body fat?”
Nothing about believing that different people’s bodies can absorb calories in different ways requires accepting “that the laws of nature that we know are completely wrong or have given up working.” There is no law of nature that says “different bodies cannot absorb calories in different ways.”
To put it in crude and overly simplistic terms, there’s no law of nature that says that, all else held equal, Bobby’s body couldn’t turn more of his calories into sweat and shit while Brandon’s turns more of his calories into fat.
So in other words, regardless of what empirical results say, you’re going to stick to your preconceived theories. That’s pretty rich, coming from someone who entered this discussion by calling me illogical (and doing so in pretty rude terms, by the way).
Here’s what you don’t seem to understand: SUVs and cars are machines, and compared to human bodies they’re very simple machines. Because something is true of cars doesn’t mean that the same thing is true of human bodies – and is certainly no excuse for saying “if evidence disagrees with my theory, then I’ll ignore the evidence.”
You don’t have to believe that the laws of physics, or our understanding of physiology, has to be undone if fat people and non-fat people eat similar amounts. All you have to believe is that, all else held equal, it’s possible that Bobby’s metabolism stores a larger proportion of calories as fat than Peter’s. That you think this fairly bland and unexciting belief requires a “total revolutionizer of physics” suggests a misunderstanding of either logic or physics on your part.
Since you give absolutely no logic or evidence in support of this statement, presumably you’re arguing from your own authority as an expert on metabolical properties of fat and muscle. Since you’re arguing from authority, I can do the same in return. May I point out that I’ve already quoted experts who obviously don’t agree with you?
Unless you think I simply made up all those quotes (and maybe you do think that – after all, I’m fat, and you’ve already stated that most fat people are liars), then you have to accept it as a fact that some people who study this stuff for a living, and whose work is published in peer-reviewed medical journals, disagree with you about what current scientific knowledge says.
It seems to me that you have to either a) believe that there’s some conspiracy afoot, b) believe that medical experts and peer-review committees of medical journals (including journals focused on obesity, diet and exercise) are frequently idiots who don’t know anything about metabolical properties of fat and muscle, since it’s not possible that Ilkka could be ever be mistaken, or c) it’s possible that you, Ilkka, may be mistaken.
Logically, “C” seems most likely to me. Which one seems logically the most likely to you?
Ilkka:
I should clarify – when I’m asking you to admit that you’ve made an error, I’m not asking you to say “Ampersand is right and I am wrong about if weight-loss diets are a realistic option, likely to work, for most fat people.”
I’m asking you to admit that this is an issue that well-informed people of good faith – including medical experts – can and do rationally disagree on. I’m asking you to admit that it’s possible that you’re mistaken – not that you definitely are mistaken.
Both you and Don, intentionally or not, are communicating an attitude that you think your opinion is the only possible right opinion, and anyone who disagrees with you is irrational and anti-science. It’s that view – not your opinion of weight-loss plans – that I’m currently asking you to give up on.
Ampersand: “If you look at it logically, one question raised by these studies is, “is it possible that different people’s bodies absorb calories in different ways, so that different people could eat similar calories yet wind up with different levels of body fat?” ”
If some people’s bodies really are vastly more calorie-efficient than the average so that they could reach and maintain a body weight of 300 pounds while consuming only the calories that the average person needs to reach and maintain a body weight of 150 pounds, I would imagine the cattle industry would be very interested in finding out about this. Utilizing this phenomenon with selective breeding would allow them to raise their cattle with significantly lower amounts of feed, resulting in huge savings.
“Since you give absolutely no logic or evidence in support of this statement”
I don’t have to, since it is basic physics. If you truly deny or require scientific references to the claim that it takes more energy to heat and move a larger mass, that pretty much puts you outside logic and evidence.
You can easily find web pages with interactive calorie calculators that tell you how many calories it takes just to maintain the body temperature for each pound of flesh. As you can see, these figures are significantly different for people who weigh 150 pounds and 300 pounds.
“I should clarify – when I’m asking you to admit that you’ve made an error, I’m not asking you to say “Ampersand is right and I am wrong about if weight-loss diets are a realistic option, likely to work, for most fat people.””
Oh, I’ll even top that. I will immediately admit that you are right and I am wrong about everything, let alone the belief that some people can be fat even though they don’t eat any more than the average person, if anyone can point me to even a single reliably documented and published case of a person who
1. ate at most 2000 kcal a day
2. consistently maintained a body weight of 300 pounds for a significant time (let’s say, for two months) so that during this time, that person either gained weight, or lost at most (say) two pounds
Any takers? Ampersand, do you believe that such a feat would be possible for somebody whose body is extremely calorie-efficient? If not, why not? Note that I chose those two specific numbers (300 pounds, 2000 kcal/day) since they would seem to be in line with what the fat acceptance people in the Internets typically claim they weigh and how much they eat.
Even one documented case of such an event would be more than enough proof for me and anyone for that matter. Of course, this case must not rely on the person’s self-reporting of their food intake, but there must not be any realistic possibility of eating smuggled food in secret.
Here in the reality-based community, no such people seem to exist. Instead, people who weigh 300 pounds need to consume at least 3500-4000 kcal a day just to maintain their weight. If a fat person wishes to lose weight, they should restrict their eating to 2000 kcal a day so that they run a calorie deficit, and let physics take its course from there.
I wrote: “You can easily find web pages with interactive calorie calculators that tell you how many calories it takes just to maintain the body temperature for each pound of flesh. As you can see, these figures are significantly different for people who weigh 150 pounds and 300 pounds.”
Now, here I obviously made an error in my line of thought: first, I talked about calories per pound, and in the last sentence, the total amount of calories consumed.
Okay, yaknow what? Losing weight isn’t easy. It’s not just a matter of reducing some calories and oh, hey, the weight comes right off.
Yo-yo diets can screw up one’s metabolism. Thyroid problems can screw up one’s metabolism. Certain medications can cause weight gain. And yes, overeating causes weight gain, but I’m getting rather sick and tired of the eye-rolling and preaching on the part of the anti-fat posters here.
I’ve seen friends of mine struggle with their weight, and the judgemental attitudes they get from perfect strangers doesn’t help.
According to some of the posters here, I’m in wonderful shape and show incredible willpower. I’m actually not. I went from a normal, healthy weight (gained thanks to a perscription I had to take for a while) and lost some of it. I’m still losing. I’m not happy about it, and guess what–I’m eating like a freakin’ horse, okay? Not working. But if the problem was reversed and I was gaining too much due to the side effects of a med, I’d be lazy, stupid, and terribly immoral for gaining weight. Sure, I might be the “exception” once I tell my life story to you and therefore have permission to be overweight, but what business is it of yours, anyway? And who the hell are you people to pass judgement? How do you know the circumstance of every overweight person you see out there? Get over yourselves, already.
Metabolism plays a huge part in someone’s weight. It isn’t as simple as just reducing your calories. And frankly, being thin is *no* guarantee of being healthy–you can be a skinny-ass couch potato with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. You can be heavy and very fit–and I know people who are.
If we’re going to push healthy eating habits, then let’s push ’em on everyone, not just the overweight folks. I could subsist on HoHos and Doritos and still maintain my weight.
It’s simplistic to point fingers at overweight people and go off on bad charecter and horrible choices. Plenty of people make horrible choices, thin and fat.
Ilkka, no one is denying that claim. Period. That claim is not at issue; that claim is not what we’re debating about.
Imagine two boys, Peter and Eustice. Both of them eat the same amount of calories a day – which can, in theory, heat and move a 250 pound body. Peter’s body ends up expelling (through varous means) most of those calories without building up fat; Eustice’s body uses most of those calories heating and moving his 250 pounds.
Nothing about believing that story requires denying that, all else held equal, “it takes more energy to heat and move a larger mass.” What it does require believing is that when you’re comparing two different bodies, all else is not always held equal.
Look at it this way. Imagine two cars. Both cars weigh half a ton. Both cars are driven the same distance at the same speed on the same road. Yet one of the cars uses up more gas. Do you think this scenario is impossible? Does believing this story require disbelieving physics?
* * *
Finally, here’s a yes or no question. Please answer it directly.
Do you believe that it’s possible for well-informed, rational people to in good faith disagree with the idea that all fat people can become thin people over the long term with only a moderate, reasonable amount of effort?
It’s a yes or no question. Please answer it.
Among the myriad of problems with bigfatblog, endorsing sexual fetishism of fat people is most certainly not one of them. Such an attack defines ALL fat activism as being in service of fetishism, which is nothing more than an ignorant attack. I’ll grant that fetishists have been given far too much sway in the direction of the movement’s key institutions, the philosophical and sociological work of the movement has aways been very distinct. Indeed, I’d say one major missed opportunity for the fat activist movement has been the lack of education of men who are attracted to fat women, not a dominence of those individuals in developing the message of fat activists. There are many men who could by allies of the fat activists who have been instead coddled by the fetishists, and its been to the detriment of the movement. But again, to act as if it is a totality would be deeply inappropriate. It reminds me of those who attack the gay rights movements for the abuses of fringe groups who have no proper relation to the political movement except to seek validation for their own fetish. I’m specifically thinking of NAMBLA’s early attempts to be seen as a valid sub-group of the gay community. While I’ll, again, grant the lines are more blurred when dealing the fat community, you simply haven’t checked your sources if you condemn the movement on the basis of some fetishists.
The post was very well written, but the difficulties in getting the message across are seen clearly here. No matter how much proof against the assumpsions of the anti-fat lobby is offered, no matter how little proof the anti-fat lobby has to defend themselves, they will always respond to critisim not by addressing the concerns raised, but by restating their original attacks and acting condesending towards anyone who questions them. Indeed, the anti-gay lobby has a similiar MO. Don’t need proof or facts. If they just keep saying it over and over, it has to be true.
Ampersand’s interlocutors have an odd view of science. They take the basic rules they learned in High School to trump all the more advanced, complicated stuff that comes later. In the reality-based world they hold so dear, those simple, basic precepts we learn in HS are important building blocks but woefully incomplete, lacking the complexity and nuance to deal with the messy empirical world. So we develop more complicated theories, and we do empirical tests. When those serious about science discover a counterintuitive empirical trend, they don’t simply revert to 9th grade lessons; they investigate, with an open mind, why those lessons might not tell the complete story in this case.
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While I found this article to be interesting and I do agree with many of your points, I think there is one thing that you have missed. While both groups face discrimination, the hatred and prejudices against queer men and women are, on the whole, much more deadly. I’ve never seen a bigger person be physically attacked – or even so much as threatened with it- because of his or her weight, but I have (sadly) seen this because of a person’s sexual orientation. It’s a scary and sad thing.
I would first point out that comparisons should not be presumed to disregard differences. Certainly, homophobia is more of a day to day risk than being fat. However, there are many ways that fat prejudices endangers the health and lives of fat people. Ask a fat child whether they have been threatened or subjected to physical violence because of their size? Many will correct your assumpsion. While for adults, such violent actions are more rare, there is another risk. Fat people are routinely pressured by medical professionals to undergo a surgical procedure which has been shown to kill 1 in 20 patients in just the first year. Do not think that pointing this out in any way diminishes the gravity of civil rights crimes against gays. These are two unique circumstances that are both worth our time. The reason Amp may not have dwelled on these unique risks is because the topic of discussion is what fat people and gay people have in common.
I’m concerned by the line of thought that says, “well, my group is far more oppressed than yours and I think you need to say that”. Both are dangerous prejudices with dire consequences on the mental and physical health of so many people.
I’d say the biggest DIFFERENCE between fat people and gays is that — if they wanted to — gays could pass for straight in public, but fat folks can’t disguise themselves. If you’re gay and want to avoid harrassment, just leave the pride jewelry at home.
If you’re fat, however, you’re S-O-L. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” won’t work.
Worse, the discrimination you’ll face isn’t about being fat so much as the often-untrue ASSUMPTIONS other people make about fat people.
Annie Mayhem writes:
That’s an assertion that’s not borne out by reality — there are many lesbian and gay (and bi and trans — but this is about fat people and gay people …) who can’t pass for straight. I was visibly queer by age 12. Pride jewelry didn’t even exist at the time, which wasn’t all that long after Stonewall.
We could sit down and discuss differences all day long (no, really), but I don’t know how that would be productive. That tends to lead down the road to “my group is more oppressed than your group.”
I mean, fat people can have surgery to become thin (who cares if it kills you!), but lesbians and gays can’t have “straight surgery”, therefore not only am I more oppressed (sob, sob), but you have a choice to be fat (so there!).
Anyone feeling empowered by that last paragraph? Not so much? Anyone planning to quote it out of context and call me a fatphobic bigot? But that’s what happens when ‘difference’ is what gets discussed, because the conversation about ‘difference’ itself is often based on assumptions, like your assumption that I could have passed for non-queer by leaving my non-existent Pride jewelry at home.
Reality is often that our commonalities are far greater than our differences. The “implementation” of our oppression might be different, but the impact is often the same — loss of self-esteem, denial of opportunities, denial of humanity, depression, etc.
Sheelzebub’s post made me laugh out loud, in that “funny-because-it’s true” way. As a skinny teen, I ate enough junk food to fill up a garbage scow. I also hated exercise, because school was a bastion of team sports and I was a loner. Nowadays, my diet is a million times healthier than it was then. Part of the year, at least, biking and yardwork help keep me fairly active, but I don’t have a “normal” teen’s metabolism anymore, so I’m seventy pounds heavier than I was as a teen.
The arrogance of fat-haters in assuming they know the circumstance of a fat person simply by looking at them is really amazing. No matter how often I see it on this board and others, it never fails to astound me.
Sheelzebub, sorry that you’re having a time of it healthwise. :( I hope you can get it all sorted out the way you’d like.
I would agree that maintaining a healthy/attractive body composition is a lot harder for some people than it is for others. In today’s Western society, this is amplified 100 fold because of the food available. I do not think that this should cause people to throw up their hands and declare that they have to be/should be fat because to not be fat would be supressing who they really are. People are born with different challenges that they can ( and need to in some casses) overcome to live life to their fullest potential.
Some people are dyslexic for example. Learning to read is very difficult for them. It takes much more dedication for them to become fully literate. Them choosing to go thru life as an illiterate would not be considered just ‘living as who they are’, and in the same light, people that overcome this are not repressing their true selves. Being literate is a noble goal that is very widely accepted as a ‘good’ thing in modern society, and I don’t think many would argue that is a problem. And I think this goal will transcend any political/societal shifts we will see.
Being straight isn’t really a noble goal. Niether is being gay. One who is gay is not just someone who isn’t good at being straight and vice versa.
Having a healthy body composition I think is on par with being literate, as its a noble goal to have, but does not come as easily to each person as it may to another. Note I did not give out weight ranges, body shape etc… body composition refers to the amount of fat one carries in relation to lean body mass. Having a healthy body composition is attainable for a huge portion of the population, just like literacy. Being literate greatly improves ones experience in life within society. So does an improved body compostion. Working to attain either one, despite how difficult it might be, does not deny who you are. It is still a choice.
Hold on, people
What is this myth about Europeans being thinner than Americans?
I have been to America, and I have lived all over Europe. I currently live in England, where I would say that a great majority of the population is overweight. That applies to Germany as well…
maybe it’s just a myth.
Having a healthy body composition I think is on par with being literate.
(Yawn.)
IOW, healthy = skinny. Justin says so.
So by rights, the scores of very articulate fat folks in the Carnival here are… well, not fat. They must all be lying (or have paid ghost writers), since in Justin-land, the phrase “fat-head” takes on a whole new dimension. To be fat, you must be an unedjamacated fool who never got past picture books, or some junk. Or at least you must have the same mind-set as someone who willingly stays illiterate because they lack the “willpower” to get past picture books.
Because fat people don’t, like, ever go out for walks or eat stir-fry. You can tell because– they’re faaaaaaaaaaaat !!!
Get real.
“IOW, healthy = skinny. Justin says so.”
I never said healthy = skinny. Not once. Skinny people are often unhealthy, and actually being skinny often has little to do with body composition. Also, perhaps I was unclear, or you misread my post. I wasn’t implying that fat people are lazy or uneducated. What I was trying to say is that someone with a proclivity to carry excess bodyfat, that can manage to reduce the % bodyfat that they carry has truly accomplished an admirable feat, as has someone with a severe learning disability learning to read has. They have not turned their back on their true selves, or are not trying to be something they are not, as a gay man who marries a woman is doing. Thats the flaw in the comparison of fat people to gays.
Yes, bodyfat is necessary for a healthy human. And yes, the amount of bodyfat a person can carry and not put their body under undo stress varies by person to person. This is not a vanity issue. But if someone is carrying 100 lbs of bodyfat on their bodies, this is a taxing burden that can impede everyday, enjoyable activities. Not being functionally literate is also a taxing burden that can impede everyday, enjoyable activities. Overcoming either can improve life. Overcoming either is not pretending to be something that you are not.
So, you’re not saying that healthy=skinny, you’re just saying that fat doesn’t equal healthy? So, healthy=skinny by Justin’s slightly more generous standard but be warned that you fatties are still pathetic? Sorry, but that’s still obnoxiously arrogant and blatantly ignores the reality of the situation. For a fat person, losing weight isn’t a “challenge”. For the overwhelming majority of fat people, its simply not remotely attainable. You’re not insisting we learn how to read. You’re insisting we learn how to read minds. Its not something that can be overcome by repeatedly insisting how much you don’t like fat people. Its not something that can be overcome by wishing hard enough. Its not something that can be overcome. Period, end of sentence. Which is why we would do well to stop regarding it as a challenge to overcome. Doing so only sets fat people up for failure and discourages healthy lifestyles that are shown to have a positive impact on a person’s health and to be achievable. Fat loss hasn’t been shown to be either.
“Its not something that can be overcome by repeatedly insisting how much you don’t like fat people.”
You are interpreting an attack where there is none.
Also, I believe that you are stuck on some idea that there is a race of ‘fat’ people, that all carry identical amounts of fat. Different goals of body composition will suit different folks differently. I would agree that wanting to attain a body of a model would be the equivalant of ‘reading minds’ as you put it. But if someone who is carrying 100lbs of bodyfat were to lose 50 of them, while maintaining lean mass, I would put that as ‘reading’. (to keep with the theme) You sound like you are at a weight where you do not find yourself limited in what you want to do, but imagine if you had an additional 50 lbs of fat on you, basically wearing a 50 lb backpack everwhere you went, obviously causing things to be much more strenuous, less enjoyable. Is it hateful to suggest that carefully losing that fat would be a benefit to you?
What I am trying to get at here is reaching potential to better ones life is not turning your back on who you are. Back to the original point of my post, a gay man sleeping with a woman is not reaching potential for being straight.
one last quote:
“…discourages healthy lifestyles that are shown to have a positive impact on a person’s health and to be achievable. Fat loss hasn’t been shown to be either”
The act of losing fat can be healthy or unhealthy, depending on several factors, most importantly, rate and method. Its ignorant to proclaim losing fat is not healthy in a blanket statement. Losing fat in it of itself is rarely unhealthy, its the side effects of the methods many people choose to lose the fat which are unhealthy. (Burning away muscle with hours of underfueled cardio work causing drops in metabolism, popping dangerous amounts of stimulants, malnutrition caused by unbalanaced fad diets)
[snort.] Okay, Justin. Have it your way. Incidentally, the other reason that your parallel doesn’t work well is that I doubt most folks who learn to read forget how once they’ve learned. OTOH, it’s very common for dieters to stop losing weight once they’ve dieted a spell, long before they’ve reached the societal “ideal.” It’s also very common for weight to return once a dieter goes off the diet. Let’s not kid ourselves, most diets aren’t made to keep people content for a lifetime. You can persuade folks to eat more healthy food, of course, but why yoke that to weight loss, since it’s likely to backfire on you ? Tell people to eat healthy food because it’s enjoyable, because it encourages variety, because it’s nicer to look at that a McDonald’s bag. Anything but “eat it so the whole world can visibly notice your ‘willpower.'”
Yeesh.