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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

How strong is the data that body shaming doesn't help people get in shape?

If you're pushing a weird idea that on the face of it makes no sense, then the onus is probably on you to demonstrate that it works, not on other people to demonstrate that it doesn't.

Wait, which is the weird idea? That telling people they should lose weight doesn't make them lose weight, or that telling people that they're healthy and beautiful at their current weight helps?

I know your comment is coming from the right place here but it reads to me like "how strong is the evidence that straight conversion doesn't work for homosexually?".

I think these is some merit to the arguement that we should treat obese people (in the interest of full disclosure I'm usually in the overweight category by BMI) in the same way we treat smokers. Reduce temptation, avoid glamourising unhealthy foods, remove hidden sugers etc.

Fat shaming is like going up to each smoker you see on the street and screaming "eww that stinks" in their face.

Contries with lower obesity acceptance have much lower obesity rate. Compare US & UK to rest of the world.

Comparing yourself to gays is just #&#+$+

I would bet that acceptance follows the rate, not vice versa.

Please stop posting flamewar comments, and definitely please don't create accounts to post flamewar comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Fat shaming is like going up to each smoker you see on the street and screaming "eww that stinks" in their face.

I'm not pro fat shaming, but spending time in East Asia and getting called fat publicly (even by close friends, but especially strangers) has led to lifestyle choices that have me down 50 lbs from when I first came. I saw that society here (in this unspecified country, not trying to make a blanket statement about East Asia) views fatness very differently, and that I needed to assimulate.

Being fat in the US, where I grew up, is viewed very differently and is normalized.

I accept your own experience but realise that this isn't necessarily the whole truth.

For example, in Canada I found myself accidentally ordering a large out of habit. What arrived was invariably more than I could eat. Easily one and a half times your daily calorie requirements in one meal.

In Spain I don't even remember a large being an option.

Ah that's true. During a layover in Amsterdam I was "frustrated" at how a bottle of coke was only 350ml at a restaurant compared to the 750ml you'd find in the US "in the worst case". I didn't order another because I realized that I was probably consuming excess amounts and should instead take this opportunity to realize that optimally I wouldn't even be consuming it.

I'm also in favor of being excellent to each other.

I think discussing this topic is quite difficult because there is no agreed upon definition of "fat shaming". I'm pretty sure that there are people who would count any measures to reduce obesity as fat shaming (i.e. "cancelling fat culture" or something ridiculous like that), and the discussion tends to get emotional very quickly.

I think we have fairly strong evidence that gay shaming doesn't make people less gay (there are homosexuals even in places where that carries the death penalty). I don't think we have equally strong evidence that telling people they'd look better and reduce their risk for cardiovascular disease if they lost weight doesn't help (at least some of them) to actually do it. At least I'm not aware of any and I believe the confounding variables with anything related to nutrition are so numerous that gathering solid data is extremely difficult.

I think we're largely in agreement. I think the definition of fat shaming I was working from was more on the "Omg, look at [insert c list female celebrity], she's (gained|lost) 10lbs!" end of the scale.

There is also a problem on the low side of body weight. A lot of the models we see are unhealthily thin and/or are photoshopped to look that way. While a lot of attention has been given to how this affects body image for people who end up with eating disorders like anorexia, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the same images contribute to people feeling like they will never look like that and going the opposite direction.

To a certain extent, there is substantial amount of "smoke shaming." A lot of the smoking mass media ads involved second hand smoke which was largely a shame campaign. By demonstrating the damage you cause others, you invoke shame in the action of smoking.

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