Comment by Thriptic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Thriptic | Hacker News Reader

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Possibly a bit. As someone who lost about about 100 lbs and kept the weight off, I've never really understood where this concept of "fat shaming" came from. I look at obesity the same way I look at smoking:

- They are both self imposed, chronic problems

- They both induce a myriad of known health issues

- They both are readily solvable using known methods and by building healthy habits over time

It is really imperative that obese people lose weight, in the same way that it's important that smokers stop smoking. You would never say someone is being "smoker shamed" by being told to stop smoking, that they are being "smoker shamed" by being told that their smoking is causing health problems, or that they are being "smoker shamed" by being told that smoking is not that attractive. Why should it be different for obesity?

This difference makes me think that people view obesity as some inherent characteristic of themselves like race or sex. This simply does not have to be the case. I think if people knew how straight forward it was to lose weight by applying validated diet methods over time, there wouldn't be all this nonsense and controversy about "fat shaming".

If you're fat enough for long enough, it does become a part of your identity. That doesn't mean you shouldn't lose weight, but it does make it hard when it's a big part of who you are and how others perceive you.

I was fat my whole life and I didn't find it hard; I just needed people to show me the method for weight loss (in my case Atkins then IIFYM). Applying the method was fairly straight forward after a week or two of practice and experimentation. As you say, people have a tendency to incorrectly frame a lot of deficiencies as identity problems: "I'm a fat person", "I'm a weak person", "I'm forever alone", "I'm a person whose bad at X" etc. In reality most problems aren't identity problems at all, they're methods / systems problems and should be framed as such.

A person who is overweight isn't inherently a "fat person", they're a person that hasn't discovered and applied the methods and systems to be at a normal weight; A person who has no strength isn't inherently a "weak person", they're a person that hasn't discovered and applied the methods to be strong etc.

Once a problem is framed like that, solving it is simply a matter of research and applying known methods. You don't need to change your identity, you just need to change your systems.

I'm wondering if this is a difference between people who went through childhood or adolescence with weight problems versus people who developed them later?

I was pretty slim until about 23, so my identity was always firmly rooted in a healthy weight range. I never felt defensive over being overweight; sensitive, certainly, but I was also my biggest critic (no pun intended).

Then again, maybe it's something entirely different!

I'm not sure. I personally was overweight as a child and obese at 23. I never really attempted dieting because it was always presented as a complicated process which was rarely successful. Only after someone else experienced success on Atkins and explained the ease of the process to me did I attempt it on a whim one day. It was difficult for the first two weeks but quite straight forward afterwards, and I have never looked back.

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