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Comment by offtop5 | Hacker News Reader

>We'll get there ...

You can also write an article for the Huffington Post arguing it's impossible to ever lose weight.

I'm not calling for fat shamming, but you can't be both obese and healthy. You can't really be obese ( over a certain point anyway) and be happy. When I was over 300 pounds every day was an experience in pain.

But it's considered rude even for doctors to say you need to lose weight. I was fortunate enough that an alternative medicine provider told me to just lose weight.

And that said, I'm even reluctant to make the argument above since there's a lot of really angry people who will try to misconcue it and call me a monster or something. But I've been morbidly obese, and I'm in shape now ( still trying to lose that last 10 pounds ) .

Life is better now in every single way.

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> But it's considered rude even for doctors to say you need to lose weight.

I'm pretty sure this isn't actually true. I mean I'm sure there are some people that get offended, but some people will get offended at anything and being called "overweight" when you are convinced you are just "big boned" isn't pleasant.

My doctor told me to lose weight. I wasn't offended, I'm not stupid.

It wasn't my doctor's advice that led to my weight loss though, it was my father dying prematurely. He wasn't even obese, he just had a poor diet and little exercise. A real wake up call.

> But it's considered rude even for doctors to say you need to lose weight

Really? Is it a US thing?

I'm overweight but not obese, and basically every doctor I've seen for various issues (blood pressure, back pain, sprained ankle) told me to lose weight, in two european countries.

There is a Far Side cartoon with an obese doctor talking to an obese patient, and the patient says to the doctor, “you’re the first doctor who has not told me to lose weight!“

Obesity is more or less considered to be normal now, it’s a real shift in the last few decades.

> Really?

I don't think so. They may be referring to the fact that it is increasingly becoming an issue of political correctness. But science is pretty clear about the risks of obesity and the medical professions follow that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/business/ama-recognizes-o...

I have a friend who's (US) doctor told he needs to lose weight or he will die. It got him to join a gym at least.

Anecdotal from SoCal, 2 years ago I saw on my doctor’s chart that my BMI placed me in the obese category. She said nothing to me about it. I wish she had bc it was a shock to me. I had become so accustomed to that weight, and everyone I was around was a similar weight so I just didn’t know. If I hadn’t seen it on her chart I would not have made any changes.

With my new doctor, I was looking at my last 2 yrs of blood tests and my LDL cholesterol has been at 105. Losing more weight will help with that, so will changing my diet - but my doctor didn’t point my LDL out as a problem even though it is.

It would've been the right thing for her to tell you. But unfortunately, if she tells the wrong person she could get called out for fatshaming on social media and probably lose her career nowadays. It's the rational choice to not offend anyone's feelings, when those feelings can be used to crush you and your livelihood.

> You can't really be obese ( over a certain point anyway) and be happy. When I was over 300 pounds every day was an experience in pain.

So if that's the case, why does it matter what the Huffington Post says?

I'm not morbidly obese, so perhaps I've missed the pro-obesity PR. A fashion magazine might give a cover to an obese model once a year, but the other 11 months all seem to have the same rail thin models that have dominated since the '80s.

Same goes for TV and movies. Producers wouldn't hire a fat guy to play Mark David Chapman, it'd be an easier sell to get a fit actor and have him balloon up to that desired weight.

The only obese poeople of renown in our society are older politicians and the rich, i.e. people that do not care about meeting society's beauty standards.

>but the other 11 months all seem to have the same rail thin models that have dominated since the '80s

People used to see those and aspire to be like them and improve themselves. Something changed over the last decade or more, and now no one wants to do any better than they currently are. They are despairing in content with themselves.

>Something changed over the last decade or more, and now no one wants to do any better than they currently are. They are despairing in content with themselves<

People still aspire to be attractive they just don't feel the same social pressure to chase it that they used to. Personally I don't see the problem for the USA, if people are happy being unhealthy then let them be unhealthy. If this was Europe I could see a public cost argument but US businesses are already starting to charge more to people who are inconveniently obese so I don't see why it's a real concern.

> Personally I don't see the problem for the USA, if people are happy being unhealthy then let them be unhealthy.

They're not happy. They're suffering and helpless. That's the problem.

"people that do not care about meeting society's beauty standards"

It's not about beauty standards, it's about healthy standards. Remember when there was a push-back from models being too thin? Everyone agreed that it was bad to show ultra-thin models because it was unhealthy and generally unobtainable. The same should be for overweight people, except now we have the concept of body-shaming (which didn't apply to ultra-thin models??). There needs to be more of a focus on self resposibility along with a push-back against the bad practices of the food industry.

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