- Joined
- Dec 9, 2015
One of the most annoying effects of the internet on society has been the rise of furr- tran- fatties who claim that their lifestyle is totally healthy, beautiful and something to look up to. They call it Health At Every Size, or HAES, and they refer to themselves as People of Size, or PoS (no, really). These terrible people are well documented in the community watch thread about them (and please go there for specific fat people mocking, this is not what this thread is about).
It's not a surprise that such a movement would rise, though. Today 69% of Americans are overweight or obese. Three out of four men are overweight or obese. Millenials are the fattest generation to ever live on this earth, will die earlier than others and those on the tail end of Millenials/Generation Z kids might even die before their parents because of it. Since the 70s, the number of obese people in their 20s has almost quadrupled.
Now, I realize that the title might seem inflammatory, but it is the truth. Not only is it the truth, but by far the biggest health crisis the West is facing. To recap:
1. It is your fault.
2. It is unhealthy.
3. No one looks better overweight than they do at a normal weight.
Before getting into the thick of it, at the end of the day there is only, and will ever be only, one argument at most in defense of obesity:
"I live in a free capitalist society, my health decisions impact only me, so you'll take that fifth slice of pizza out of my cold, dead, fat hands".
And it's true, but only to a certain extent. You can choose to be obese, but this is only an ethical choice if you live in a society where everyone's tax dollars are not being leeched off of the rest of society in order to be funneled toward the extra healthcare that will be required to cure your litany of diseases that will afflict you until you inevitably keel over face first in your last KFC bowl. If, however, you are unlucky enough to live in a socialist society, then you are being a drain on the system and the government should accordingly, taking more of your money/create punitive measures to stop you from being an added weight on the collective taxpayers' shoulders.
Your Fault
"It's unfair, I have a condition!" Yes, yes, we've all heard about how the dreaded thyroid/medication/litany of excuse explaining why someone is fat. And they are all bullshit. Having a thyroid problem is not something that condemns you to obesity. It means that your metabolism is going to be slower than average. That's it. So you might need to eat fewer calories in a day or work out a little bit more. 500 calories less a day than the average person means one less mars bars and soda can a day. Or exercising a bit more weekly than a regular person would. And people who suffer from hypothyroid problems tend to be women by a factor of ten, and mostly as they age.
"It's not me, it's my damn meds!" As far as being on medication, while it is true that some of them
can lower your metabolism, or create a higher rate of water retention, it is not a condemnation to obesity either. Only 10-15% of weight problems can be partly attributed to medication. Even as such, what it means in the overwhelming majority of cases is that a simple change in diet and more exercise would take care of the problem. And medication can create a fluctuation of 10-15 pounds, but it's not gonna make you suddenly gain an extra 70 pounds. That's not how it works.
"Well, my fatness is hereditary/my metabolism is really slow" is another common excuse, but it's just that, an excuse. Again, 10% of the population (overlapping with the first two) have certain genetic combination that predispose them to getting fatter. Having a disposition toward something only means that the road to get there is gonna be easier, not that you have to get there. If your parents are fat, and you are fat, it's not because fatness is hereditary in your family, its that your family has bad habits, and you are perpetuating them. If you go ahead and start eating healthy according to your body's needs and not cravings, and exercise moderately 3-5 times a week for half an hour, turns out you can beat your genetics!
"I know all that, but I live in a food desert/do you know how expensive healthy food is?". Food Deserts/the expensiveness of healthy food has been gaining in popularity in the last decade (thanks, Michelle Obama!) and is also completely untrue (if you live in America, and most likely the same holds true for the rest of the Western world). It's simply not the reason why obesity is so prevalent in poorer neighborhoods. So is the idea that you cannot eat healthy on a budget. Fresh, frozen or canned fruits/vegetable doesn't really matter. They are, for all intents and purposes, the same nutritionally wise. For $10 you can pick up 5lbs of frozen chicken breasts at walmart. There are tons of websites that will show anyone where and how to buy the best food they can get for the price
"I'm big boned". Actually, being fat is what made your bones big.
"I don't have time to exercise/it's too expensive to join a gym!" I'm glad to hear you're a doctor in residency, but why are you spending your 15 minutes of free time while on guard duty on the farms? Go to sleep, for fuck's sake! Incidently, 15 minutes a day of high intensity aerobic activity 5 days a week is the average recommended amount of exercise. 20 minutes of moderate HI aerobics (meaning you break a sweat, elevated heart rate and can't talk but can't sing) a day/7 days a week can also do it. Or you can split it however you want. 150 minutes of moderate activity a week/75 of high intensity. No need to join a gym, there are plenty of bodyweight exercises you can do/ways to exercise unless you're fully paralyzed.
So, at the end of the day, if you are fat the odds are overwhelmingly high that it's because you eat too much and exercise too little. Which can be solved by simply eating less, or exercising more.
But why should you?
Unhealthy
"It's unfair to call me unhealthy. I haven't gone to the doctors in years, I'm always up for a game of ultimate Frisbee and I don't get winded up when I go up a flight of stairs. I'm perfectly healthy!".
One of the problems with the current health epidemic is the myth that currently not being sick is the same as being healthy. When you are overweight or obese, you are not healthy. Doesn't mean you are sick, of course. At one point, however, these will catch up with you and you will become unhealthy. People who are obese yet considered 'healthy' all increasingly become unhealthy the more they age, until they all end up unhealthy and plagued with various health problems.
It might take a couple of decades, but it will catch up on you. What will? Well...
* High blood pressure/Hypertension
* Irregular cholesterol/tryglycerides
* Coronary heart disease
* Type 2 diabetes
* Sleep apnea
* Breathing problems
* Joint problems leading to osteoarthritis
* Constant pain
* Infertility
* Gallbladder disease
* Strokes
* Cancer
* Depression, anxiety and a host of other mental illnesses
to name some of them. The fatter you are/the longer you are fat, the higher likelyhood you will start collecting those like some kind of medical pokemons.
Remember what I said about ethical obesity re:not being a burden on society? Well, the healthcare costs related to obesity are between $200-250 billion dollars a year in America. It's equivalent to 25% of all healthcare resources in America being directed toward obesity.
Want to live longer and better? Want more money? Dream of affordable healthcare for everyone? Well, obesity is the single biggest obstacle to all of this.
Fat Is (Not) Beautiful
A point that has been hammered over and over again by HAES advocates is that 'Fat is Beautiful' and you should love your body. Now, that first one can be abbreviated as fib, which is pretty convenient since that's exactly what it is. As far as loving your body, you should, but by treating it in such a unhealthy manner you're basically the equivalent of an abusive spouse. 'I hit you because I love you'. Indulging in every fat and sugary craving while having a completely non-active lifestyle is not liking your body, it's being a slave to your every whims and not acting responsibly. If you love your body, you will treat it properly.
And if you want others to love your body, start by loving yourself first.
Glamour magazine just published an issue celebrating 'Plus Size' women as beautiful, and included in their list Amy Schumer. That backfired, and showed the
'There's nothing wrong with being fat BUT DON'T CALL ME THAT'. It's common for people to have a distorted perception of themselves and think they are not fat. In fact the vast majority of obese people think they are merely overweight. It's common to see people who easily need to shed 60lbs+ think that they only need to lose maybe 20lb. Some of them, like Amy Schumer, will be in complete denial over the fact that they are in fact overweight or obese.
One of the big problems is that we've now reached the point where the majority are obese or overweight, so they look up at the morbidly obese and think those are the ones who have a problem, not them. Their perceptions are so skewed about what healthy is that they see no problem with themselves.
Well, to a certain point because when it comes to others, that's when they get critical. One of the biggest point that the HAES movement pushes is that is that they deserve love too, but if you look at their blogs and tumblrs, they don't look for/wish for partners who share their BMI, it's always fit and attractive people they are into.
Some people will point out that certain sculptures of fat women were made, and extrapolate from that that it used to be the beauty standard of the time, ignoring the fact that throughout human history most paintings and sculptures were of normal weight individuals and not morbidly obese out of shape people.
At the end of the day, being overweight or obese is unealthy, a sign that you don't care about yourself or others, and not attractive to the vast majority of people who are not fetishists.
The solution to this pandemic?
It's pretty paradoxical, but it's never been easier to lose weight and lead a healthy lifestyle. I started going to the gym 20 years ago, and you had to write everything down, use complicated mathematical equations from books to figure shit out and keep a food journal with you to write all of it down to find your macros. For advice, you had to rely on common bro facts when bro science was in its infancy and believed ridiculous bro myths like 'eat smaller meals 6 times a day to boost your metabolism, bro!'.
Today? Thanks to the internet you can make calculations about exactly how much you need daily, download apps that will even scan food labels and catalog what you eat for you, there are tons of communities online geared toward helping people start working out with tons of great resources, show their success to motivate others and make them realize that they too can do it, and find ways to avoid paying anything in order to exercise. The Farms even has a weight loss support thread (just disregard everything Katsu says about fitness or diet).
If you're fat, please start taking care of yourself. If you're not fat, take care of your fat friends and direct them the right way. The last thing we need as a society is to keep lying to ourselves as our population gets worse off. The human body is incredible when you take care of it, no matter what age or your situation. So incredible a 78 year old lady can go from struggling getting up from her chair to deadlifting 225lbs in a few months:
So, what's stopping you?
It's not a surprise that such a movement would rise, though. Today 69% of Americans are overweight or obese. Three out of four men are overweight or obese. Millenials are the fattest generation to ever live on this earth, will die earlier than others and those on the tail end of Millenials/Generation Z kids might even die before their parents because of it. Since the 70s, the number of obese people in their 20s has almost quadrupled.
Now, I realize that the title might seem inflammatory, but it is the truth. Not only is it the truth, but by far the biggest health crisis the West is facing. To recap:
1. It is your fault.
2. It is unhealthy.
3. No one looks better overweight than they do at a normal weight.
Before getting into the thick of it, at the end of the day there is only, and will ever be only, one argument at most in defense of obesity:
"I live in a free capitalist society, my health decisions impact only me, so you'll take that fifth slice of pizza out of my cold, dead, fat hands".
And it's true, but only to a certain extent. You can choose to be obese, but this is only an ethical choice if you live in a society where everyone's tax dollars are not being leeched off of the rest of society in order to be funneled toward the extra healthcare that will be required to cure your litany of diseases that will afflict you until you inevitably keel over face first in your last KFC bowl. If, however, you are unlucky enough to live in a socialist society, then you are being a drain on the system and the government should accordingly, taking more of your money/create punitive measures to stop you from being an added weight on the collective taxpayers' shoulders.
Your Fault
"It's unfair, I have a condition!" Yes, yes, we've all heard about how the dreaded thyroid/medication/litany of excuse explaining why someone is fat. And they are all bullshit. Having a thyroid problem is not something that condemns you to obesity. It means that your metabolism is going to be slower than average. That's it. So you might need to eat fewer calories in a day or work out a little bit more. 500 calories less a day than the average person means one less mars bars and soda can a day. Or exercising a bit more weekly than a regular person would. And people who suffer from hypothyroid problems tend to be women by a factor of ten, and mostly as they age.
"It's not me, it's my damn meds!" As far as being on medication, while it is true that some of them
can lower your metabolism, or create a higher rate of water retention, it is not a condemnation to obesity either. Only 10-15% of weight problems can be partly attributed to medication. Even as such, what it means in the overwhelming majority of cases is that a simple change in diet and more exercise would take care of the problem. And medication can create a fluctuation of 10-15 pounds, but it's not gonna make you suddenly gain an extra 70 pounds. That's not how it works.
"Well, my fatness is hereditary/my metabolism is really slow" is another common excuse, but it's just that, an excuse. Again, 10% of the population (overlapping with the first two) have certain genetic combination that predispose them to getting fatter. Having a disposition toward something only means that the road to get there is gonna be easier, not that you have to get there. If your parents are fat, and you are fat, it's not because fatness is hereditary in your family, its that your family has bad habits, and you are perpetuating them. If you go ahead and start eating healthy according to your body's needs and not cravings, and exercise moderately 3-5 times a week for half an hour, turns out you can beat your genetics!
"I know all that, but I live in a food desert/do you know how expensive healthy food is?". Food Deserts/the expensiveness of healthy food has been gaining in popularity in the last decade (thanks, Michelle Obama!) and is also completely untrue (if you live in America, and most likely the same holds true for the rest of the Western world). It's simply not the reason why obesity is so prevalent in poorer neighborhoods. So is the idea that you cannot eat healthy on a budget. Fresh, frozen or canned fruits/vegetable doesn't really matter. They are, for all intents and purposes, the same nutritionally wise. For $10 you can pick up 5lbs of frozen chicken breasts at walmart. There are tons of websites that will show anyone where and how to buy the best food they can get for the price
"I'm big boned". Actually, being fat is what made your bones big.
"I don't have time to exercise/it's too expensive to join a gym!" I'm glad to hear you're a doctor in residency, but why are you spending your 15 minutes of free time while on guard duty on the farms? Go to sleep, for fuck's sake! Incidently, 15 minutes a day of high intensity aerobic activity 5 days a week is the average recommended amount of exercise. 20 minutes of moderate HI aerobics (meaning you break a sweat, elevated heart rate and can't talk but can't sing) a day/7 days a week can also do it. Or you can split it however you want. 150 minutes of moderate activity a week/75 of high intensity. No need to join a gym, there are plenty of bodyweight exercises you can do/ways to exercise unless you're fully paralyzed.
So, at the end of the day, if you are fat the odds are overwhelmingly high that it's because you eat too much and exercise too little. Which can be solved by simply eating less, or exercising more.
But why should you?
Unhealthy
"It's unfair to call me unhealthy. I haven't gone to the doctors in years, I'm always up for a game of ultimate Frisbee and I don't get winded up when I go up a flight of stairs. I'm perfectly healthy!".
One of the problems with the current health epidemic is the myth that currently not being sick is the same as being healthy. When you are overweight or obese, you are not healthy. Doesn't mean you are sick, of course. At one point, however, these will catch up with you and you will become unhealthy. People who are obese yet considered 'healthy' all increasingly become unhealthy the more they age, until they all end up unhealthy and plagued with various health problems.
It might take a couple of decades, but it will catch up on you. What will? Well...
* High blood pressure/Hypertension
* Irregular cholesterol/tryglycerides
* Coronary heart disease
* Type 2 diabetes
* Sleep apnea
* Breathing problems
* Joint problems leading to osteoarthritis
* Constant pain
* Infertility
* Gallbladder disease
* Strokes
* Cancer
* Depression, anxiety and a host of other mental illnesses
to name some of them. The fatter you are/the longer you are fat, the higher likelyhood you will start collecting those like some kind of medical pokemons.
Remember what I said about ethical obesity re:not being a burden on society? Well, the healthcare costs related to obesity are between $200-250 billion dollars a year in America. It's equivalent to 25% of all healthcare resources in America being directed toward obesity.
Want to live longer and better? Want more money? Dream of affordable healthcare for everyone? Well, obesity is the single biggest obstacle to all of this.
Fat Is (Not) Beautiful
A point that has been hammered over and over again by HAES advocates is that 'Fat is Beautiful' and you should love your body. Now, that first one can be abbreviated as fib, which is pretty convenient since that's exactly what it is. As far as loving your body, you should, but by treating it in such a unhealthy manner you're basically the equivalent of an abusive spouse. 'I hit you because I love you'. Indulging in every fat and sugary craving while having a completely non-active lifestyle is not liking your body, it's being a slave to your every whims and not acting responsibly. If you love your body, you will treat it properly.
And if you want others to love your body, start by loving yourself first.
Glamour magazine just published an issue celebrating 'Plus Size' women as beautiful, and included in their list Amy Schumer. That backfired, and showed the
'There's nothing wrong with being fat BUT DON'T CALL ME THAT'. It's common for people to have a distorted perception of themselves and think they are not fat. In fact the vast majority of obese people think they are merely overweight. It's common to see people who easily need to shed 60lbs+ think that they only need to lose maybe 20lb. Some of them, like Amy Schumer, will be in complete denial over the fact that they are in fact overweight or obese.
One of the big problems is that we've now reached the point where the majority are obese or overweight, so they look up at the morbidly obese and think those are the ones who have a problem, not them. Their perceptions are so skewed about what healthy is that they see no problem with themselves.
Well, to a certain point because when it comes to others, that's when they get critical. One of the biggest point that the HAES movement pushes is that is that they deserve love too, but if you look at their blogs and tumblrs, they don't look for/wish for partners who share their BMI, it's always fit and attractive people they are into.
Some people will point out that certain sculptures of fat women were made, and extrapolate from that that it used to be the beauty standard of the time, ignoring the fact that throughout human history most paintings and sculptures were of normal weight individuals and not morbidly obese out of shape people.
At the end of the day, being overweight or obese is unealthy, a sign that you don't care about yourself or others, and not attractive to the vast majority of people who are not fetishists.
The solution to this pandemic?
It's pretty paradoxical, but it's never been easier to lose weight and lead a healthy lifestyle. I started going to the gym 20 years ago, and you had to write everything down, use complicated mathematical equations from books to figure shit out and keep a food journal with you to write all of it down to find your macros. For advice, you had to rely on common bro facts when bro science was in its infancy and believed ridiculous bro myths like 'eat smaller meals 6 times a day to boost your metabolism, bro!'.
Today? Thanks to the internet you can make calculations about exactly how much you need daily, download apps that will even scan food labels and catalog what you eat for you, there are tons of communities online geared toward helping people start working out with tons of great resources, show their success to motivate others and make them realize that they too can do it, and find ways to avoid paying anything in order to exercise. The Farms even has a weight loss support thread (just disregard everything Katsu says about fitness or diet).
If you're fat, please start taking care of yourself. If you're not fat, take care of your fat friends and direct them the right way. The last thing we need as a society is to keep lying to ourselves as our population gets worse off. The human body is incredible when you take care of it, no matter what age or your situation. So incredible a 78 year old lady can go from struggling getting up from her chair to deadlifting 225lbs in a few months:
So, what's stopping you?
