Make no mistake, if you're very overweight, or otherwise visibly not taking care of yourself, you are absolutely losing opportunities. As a fat person, I know anti-fat bias is bulls hit; I also know it's really, really hard to control for.
The advice may not apply to you, because past a certain point it does become elitism.
It's a very difficult thing to do, and ever since my younger son started battling (and winning) his weight issues, I have become much more sensitive to how unfairly some people treat overweight people.
Can you explain why you feel like this? I can definitely see why the opposite is true (visibly not taking care of yourself means your subconscious is more powerful than your conscious mind which doesn't breed trust) but find it hard to see any redeeming qualities in being overweight.
However, being fat doesn't mean you're stupid or lazy. There's a skinny person inside every fatass. I lost the weight and I am not any more qualified to do any job than anyone else, but I know for sure job interviews would go a lot better. People automatically like a beautiful skinny person more than a fat person, and that's a huge bias to overcome.
As a fat person you
a) may not care about conventions.
b) you have little self control
c) you may be impulsive in things
I don't have any friend who is seriously overweight and successful. But I know a shitload of people the other way around. I just tried recently to do business with a seriously overweight person and, feel free to blame me, would never do that again.
So congrats for losing weight.
If being fat really is just a personality failure (no self control, impulsivity), that would imply that fat people shouldn't even try; they're defective.
There are serious environmental issues involved. For example, the stress of constantly being perceived as a non-person leads to serious anxiety and, for at least some fat people, self-hatred. I was never going to be successful making a change until I learned to love who I was, even when looking in the mirror.
Fat-shaming attitudes do a lot of harm here. Really it's a behavioral health issue and should be treated as such, not shamed.
I would also point out the links between obesity and for example poverty. Coming from a wealthy, successful background (did you have access to a gym growing up? Did your parents have time to teach you good habits? Could your family afford healthy nutrition?) can make it hard to empathize with that, but you don't really understand the problem until you do.
I work with many people every day; I could pick any trait and cherry pick interactions to come up with all sorts of conclusions; fat people are very helpful; fat people are controlling; skinny people are fucking assholes; skinny people are great. You can justify any bias that way ("that black guy I worked with was terrible; won't do that again"). You might have no fat friends because you come into every interaction with a fat person prejudiced against them. You might not know any _successful_ fat people because society doesn't afford fat people the opportunities it does thin people.
Edit: one more note: even for really motivated fat people trying to make a change, there's a lot of really bad advice out there. I've been successful in my transformation because I've ignored a lot of advice; e.g. I weigh myself every day to create a feedback loop. Doctors hate it. Or look at the demonization of fat and the promotion of sugar as a health food.
No, I have worked in the diabetes field and I do know, how difficult it is. But on the other hand, you don't get seriously overweight overnight and you have to start countermeasures early.
"Or look at the demonization of fat and the promotion of sugar as a health food." Yes, it should be the other way around. Please also take this into account: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/49/15/967.full
"skinny people are fucking assholes". The sampling size is too bigt to make any statements about "skinny" people. Also, being seriously overweight in Europe is a tiny majority, compared to some states in the US.
Terrible comparison. People from 1950 were just as black as they are now. However, people from 1950 were nowhere near as overweight as they are now, even if we control for Flynn effect.
I remember reading a couple of years ago that an average woman today weighs as much as an average man from 1960, that gave me a pause.
I once started a business with a black Nigerian partner. In fact, I would not consider a black guy as partner in business anymore. Been there, done it.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&channel=c...
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/589/tell-me-im-fat/act-two-...