1. Historically being fat was considered a sign of good health. Of course, this was during times of massive food scarcity and the definition of fat was probably very different from what we consider fat today.
2. Massive amounts of money involved in telling people to eat/drink more, and then spend more money in gyms and taking pills to lose that weight. As opposed to just eating less and then living normal healthy active lives. There’s not much money in the latter.
3. People wanting to stop fat-shaming (which is also unequivocally bad…fat shaming only makes it harder for people to lose weight), trying to convince other people that someone being fat does not make them bad, quickly morphing into being fat is good.
I'm surprised you put that in and not:
4. motivated reasoning. People want reasons to justify their current lifestyle and not having to put in hard work to change it.
For point #1, most western cultures already idealize thinness. Therefore that's not really a factor unless you're from a culture that idealizes being fat.
Wasn't it more a sign of being wealthy and successful? Like if you were fat, it meant you could afford to spend a lot of money/effort on getting food and didn't need to do difficult work outside for 8+ hours a day?
Not sure people were calling it healthy, so much as treating it like a status symbol (because it kinda was).
He always responded: "I just wanted to move to a place where the poor people were fat."
I think it's better to stick to that, and just drop the term 'fat-shaming'.
It is the same as changing "retard" to "mentally challenged" or "handicapped" to "disabled"... the next term just becomes equally toxic because you haven't changed the actual stigma, just the word used to express it.
But recent efforts have been focused on blurring the lines here.
The stigma causes the hate, they're effectively the same thing (I used them interchangeably) and leads directly to adverse actions against those individuals.
And as I said above - the argument generally shifts at that point to "it's good for them to be attacked, maybe it'll motivate them". Because again, it's just a socially-acceptable vector for hate. We've gradually run out of other forms like racism and sexism, for a while it was homophobia (and the argument was that was a choice too, so it was fine to attack), but we'll always have fat people.
Stop attacking, hating, "stigmatizing", whatever you want to call it, based on traits. It's all "isms" and 50 years ago it is the same argument used to defend racism. Just be civil and treat people like human beings, it's not that complicated.
Others, on the other hand, will be pushed further back into the hole by such talk. This is very individual.
I do not encourage fat shaming at all, but I can also imagine that in some cases shame may be a powerful motivator for some people. Is there hard data showing that it actually makes it harder?
1 year later, and I'm down 35 pounds with another 10-20 to go. I feel great! Walking doesn't hurt anymore, doing physical stuff is fun again, and I have more energy than I used to. All that to say, the guilt and shame definitely helped motivate me, but YMMV :)
On a related note, find yourself in a woman’s house and notice the inspirational text artwork. “Eat, Love, Pray”, “Worrying works because it never happens”, etc. These little signs are powerful.
Unfortunately getting into that argument is a minefield.
Just let them be adults and manager their life as they please. At one point they might becone fed up with life as a fat person and they'll make the effort.
And it they don't, well, there are people who smoke from teenage years all the way to the grave
But, either eay, people dont humiliate smokers the way they do with fat people
No, we just tax the shit out of tobacco, exclude them from certain insurance plans, blame and shame them about smoking indoors or inside vehicles, and tell smokers to go huddle outside and off to the side, away from doors, windows, and air intakes, while they do the thing we don't like.
Or were you thinking of air travel, where the difference between a smoker and a non-smoker is either negligible (because they aren't currently smoking), or completely excludes the smoker from the activity (because 16 hours in a plane is too long without a cigarette for them).
Humiliate them? Not often. But we sure as hell told them to take it someplace else; anyplace else, just not near the rest of us.
If you are shamed for your body, you feel even worse; you may then eat even more to feel better.
It is not at all a constructive approach.
The "healthy obesity" thing is the pendulum flying to the opposite end of the spectrum: unconditional support turned into acceptance and promotion of what we know to not be true.
"Shame implies a personal failing, which readily translates into recognizing and correcting those personal failings."
In the 20th century, Americans fat shamed each other and were less fat. Today in Asia, people still fat shame each other and they're a lot less fat than Americans.
Now it’s a different story if you’re willing to work with them daily to help them lose weight or something similar. But just telling your friend “he your fat, it’s bad for you fix it” will only hurt
The short of it is that it increases stress, increases depression, eating disorders, and risk of suicide.
As for shame and its ironic effects, you can look to Brene Brown's research and that of other shame researchers.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
A bit brief though, probably need to check the cited material. The overall theme of the report as awhile though is that motivation issues are less of a factor than generally believed.
Well, we’re probably 70+ years into a National experiment with it, and weights are only going up.
You either need to demonstrate some kind of shame for your unhealthiness or some kind rationale that explains how its actually healthy.
The honest facts that “I like to eat tasty good” and “I don’t really enjoy too much physical activity” are only permissible if you also say “and I can’t help myself” or “and it’s actually not unhealthy.”
It’s a social dance that makes people hide the personal truth that health isn’t the only thing that matters in life.
Perhaps your social circle doesn’t accept that attitude, but in some of the most obese parts of the country, the norm is to “eat some steak and potatoes and put some meat on your bones, skinny boy”
There’s a reason doctors are afraid to tell patients they’re overweight. People interpret it as a personal attack on their choices rather than a medical diagnosis.
Confident self-awareness goes a long way, although self-destructive behavior in general isn't respected, nor should it be IMO.
For me being obese is not really a choice. It's just really hard to do anything about it, especially because I tend to overeat when I encounter stress in life. And I'm not wired with the discipline to fix it. I often go on diets but they never last.
Also, living alone cooking is a real chore and there's not enough ready made healthy food.
And in terms of exercise I really hate team sports and mindless weight lifting. I do hike a bit though when the season permits.
Are these excuses? Sure but if I could have changed it I would have.
Like: car dependent suburbia. If you don't grow up walking to the shops with your parents, walking to the park to play, walking to school, cycling to school, walking or cycling to work; if your only exposure to movement is mandatory exercise at school which is unpleasant, what does that do to your lifelong views? If your environment doesn't have anywhere interesting to walk to, or any sidewalk to walk on, what does that do?
Like: If your parents and family never moved except to get to the car, what kind of early mental expectations does that set you up with? Children try to imitate their parents, if the parents alway groan and complain about having to walk anywhere, that's some kind of lesson.
Like: Livestrong.com says "The average restaurant meal is four times larger than it was in the 1950s. Similarly, the size of American-manufactured dinner plates has increased nearly 23 percent, from 9.6 inch". If you habitually eat out at restaurants and they gradually feed you more, more sugary, food, but you still have the "clean your plate to be polite" mentality, what does that do?
Like: where did this idea of "healthy food" come from? "Health" isn't something in food.
Like: where did the idea that cooking is "a real chore" come from? Can't one grow up to find preparing food a relaxing joy, an interest, an everyday part of life? Or learn to spend less time on it, e.g. meal prepping?
Like: "I tend to overeat when I encounter stress in life" - Where does that behaviour come from? That's learned from somewhere, it isn't innate to cavepeople to have food on hand just in case life gets stressful, it's likely some family or community cultural habit where others might not do that.
I think it was Paul Lutus in a Reddit AMA, someone asked him if he baked much when living in a cabin in the woods, and he said he found it difficult to resist eating baked goods so he just didn't make them or buy them. That kind of discipline is much easier than buying them, having them nearby, and trying to resist eating them every moment forever.
> "Sure but if I could have changed it I would have."
Perhaps you can't, there are suggestions that becoming obese screws up your body forever, so it burns less fat (e.g. prefering quicker feeling of tiredness to reduce movement, rather than breaking the laws of thermodynamics), holds onto fat more strongly, distorts feelings of hunger and satiety and food cravings. UK comedian Ed Gamble who lost a lot of weight jokingly commented about thin people "if you don't think about food, what are you thinking about literally all the time?". It's possible that wasn't joking and years of obsessively thinking about food engrained that as a pattern he will be stuck with for the rest of his life, when always-thin people can forget about food when thinking about other things.
>[...]
>Like: car dependent suburbia
It seems weird to blame car dependent suburbia for the rise from 1950. Did "car dependent suburbia" really get worse compared to 1950? Given urbanization trends, you'd think that car dependence actually went down compared 1950.
Pew Research[2] says suburbs have grown 6.4 million people by migration from cities and rural populations between 2000 and 2018. Ten fastest growing communities in America in 2021 are suburbs[5].
Car companies made and sold about 58 million cars in the USA in the 1950s decade[3].
Eisenhower's interstate highway act was 1956, and miles of highway has increased by hundreds of thousands since 1990[4].
[0] https://www.insider.com/vintage-photos-levittown-suburbs-50s... and https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demogra...
[1] https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-trans...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/02/5-facts-abo...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_automobile_industry_i...
[4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183397/united-states-hig...
[5] https://legallysociable.com/2021/09/19/the-ten-fastest-growi...
Imagine if you only learned from the experience that you need more revenue sooner instead of using the most fun tech, but you hadn't had it beaten into you that it was YOUR FAULT, that would be ... unfair, right? We'd all be missing an opportunity to put you in your place which you clearly deserve by circular reasoning of being at fault.
Plus it makes us feel better because if it's your fault, that means you weren't crushed by enormous imbalanced forces so that won't happen to us. If nobody can resist the $4Bn/year CocaCola advertising spend on every media platform going, maybe I can't either. But if you're just weak, then I maybe can.
How do this claim make you feel? "Alcoholism isn't objectively bad because for some people boozing matters more than health."
Remember that being obese effects the people around you. Particularly, obese adults teach bad lifestyle lessons by example to their children, who in turn are more likely to be obese than other kids because of it. Having obese parents is even worse for a child's life expectancy than second hand smoke from chainsmoking parents.
The thought goes: If I am not doing things the way others do, I must be mentally ill somehow and in need of a cure.
look at the sons and daughters of branded food conglomerate moguls and their top executives. youll likely find them quite trim.
This has something to do with political correctness, which is now the status quo, but that's a different matter.
Did you read the article?
I can give you two simple examples:
Look at any picture of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson when he has been ripped. Ditto with Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime.
BMI says these folks are either obese or severely obese. Extreme examples, but illustrative of the weakness of bmi.
On a personal level, I have been listed as obese by a doctor when I weighed in 205 as someone who is 5’11” (somewhat carelessly, because bmi was 28.x, and “obese” is 30+, but still…).
Doctor did not care to notice that I was very muscular, exercise regularly (weights and cardio), and was pretty lean.
The doctor wanted to talk to me about my “weight problem”. I pulled out dexa can showing that I had 176 pounds of lean body mass and was 14-15% body fat (“healthy” range, and probably much leaner than her, even though she was slight build and thin), told her about my diet and exercise regimen, and she quickly reversed course.
You can see how muscular people are unhappy about bmi being used for individual evaluation.
BMI is a measure that is meant to be used to measure populations rather than individuals. Being used as a quick a dirty evaluation tool without looking in more detail by the doctor is irresponsible medicine — yet it is common practice.
This is why “anybody could come to believe otherwise”.
Obviously, if the dexa scan comes back saying someone is 30% body fat, no amount of muscle can make that “healthy”, but I think that’s not where most thoughtful people have issues with potentially specious claims of obesity.
I’m a 50-something desk jockey, and I’ve never used steroids or any sort of PED. I just eat well, make an effort to exercise, and my genetics steer me towards muscle building. I was also an athlete when I was younger (not sure if this matters).
I mentioned the rock and Arnold were extreme examples, but they were there to make a point… bmi is not meant to be used to measure individuals.
Your skeleton is there to give the muscles something to form around. Your muscles are supporting the body, not the other way around.
It’s not like your body has to drag around muscles like it’s a burden…
The point in using extremes and then a more modest (and probably realistic) example of myself was that BMI is a potential trap for anyone who has muscle (even if they are, in fact, very fat). They will most likely be rated a category or two above where they should be, and a weight loss regimen for someone who is “extremely obese” versus someone who is merely “overweight” will probably look very different. Specifically, one will probably be a major intervention or lifestyle change, while the other is most likely a small/medium lifestyle change.
2. Note the article is about how BMI is a bad measure for many weight types and frequently miscategorizes risk (e.g., by underweighting risk to “normal” bmi folks with a high body fat %).
The argument that I’m trying to make is not to “checkmate bodyshamers”, it’s to show that bmi is overall a pretty bad measure to use to evaluate weight and health in individuals that include a variety of body types.
Fwiw, I’m not a fan of the “healthy at any weight” stance (that’s clearly BS), but I am definitely trying to show that commonly held beliefs about things like BMI even and especially in the medical community can be dangerous and irresponsible (just like the article explains).
Really?
Would you mind telling that to my former doctor who wrote down in my chart that I was “obese” just based on my height, weight, and a quick visual scan? She was starting into “substantial lifestyle change” talks before I showed her my data.
She didn’t reverse course until I showed her my dexa scan and told her my diet and exercise regimen.
My point is that there are plenty of people who are labeled a category or two worse than they actually are. Yes, many people are actually obese — I get that — but people who are naturally muscular quickly grow tired of (and sometimes numb to) being categorized as worse than they actually are.
Folks who talk about obesity, especially medical folks and media folks, would do well to be more nuanced in their analysis and discussion of the data.
Those all fail to reliably predict body fatness in all populations.
All of those measurements should be taken in context with other health signs, like blood pressure, fasting glucose and maybe eating/exercise habits as well.
However there are studies which find lowest mortality for the slightly overweight with BMI < 30. For instance: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1555137 and https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2022.8577...
Probably because some popular "treatments" for the condition often attempted are far worse than obesity itself. Yo-yo dieting, amphetamine use, serial liposuction, binge eating and throwing up, et cetera.
When societies put up facades and allows delusion to persists, the actual issue doesn't go away. People are still fat, unhealthy (and dying from it), and their appearance is still an issue (even if friends lie or avoid it).
Being obese isn’t a root cause. It is a symptom of something else.
Particularly, when it is a symptom of depression, believing in “healthy obesity” can be enabling even if it’s not the truth. That person (not statistic) needs to see themselves as healthy and loved to have a chance at being healthy.
Telling them to eat better or exercise is thinking about yourself in a generic version of their circumstances rather than them in their actual circumstances.
I don't buy it. Tolerance towards fatness has risen since the 80s, as have weights; both have gone up at the same time. The more tolerance our society has for fatness, the fatter people get. If more tolerance for fat people were the key to getting people to lose weight then there should be an inverse relationship between the two, but that just hasn't happened.
"Health obesity" isn't about staying obese, it is about shifting social stigmas as they seem to contribute (paradoxically) to obesity[1]. Why is this something you feel the need to support publicly and vocally instead of letting people's health be between them and their doctors (who also need to work on stigmas[2])? The more society makes this a social issue, the worse off people will be when external stressors land [3].
[1] https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291... [2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oby.23266 [3] https://academic.oup.com/abm/article/54/10/738/5901900
Feeling better in the moment just enables people to ignore the root cause and thus fail to make progress. They need truth that their current state sucks, hope that it could be better, and to recognize that their own agency has an outsized effect on their future. And maybe they could use some help breaking down their problems into smaller more achievable steps.
Sounds like enabling obesity to me.
Telling them to eat better or exercise doesn't work because it's a pain in the ass to be in a caloric deficit. They have statistically low dopamine levels (among other markers being out of wack) so they just don't have the mental fuel to deal with doing what's hard. That's what lead them to be obese in the first place, seeking comfort in food, sitting on their butt and avoiding the harshness of their reality.
Another key component are high cortisol levels (ie chronic stress due to past traumas causing depression and other mental illnesses), hindering the parasympathetic brain to switch on digestive metabolism.
You don't solve all these underling issues by saying "hey fat isn't that bad, you can still be healthy being heavy".
Like you wouldn't say to a drug addict "hey drugs aren't that bad for you" to make them feel less shitty about their situation.
How do we know it isn't going to help? Because we've been trying it for decades. Thin people yelling at fat people to lose weight in public does nothing. Time to focus on the systemic unhealthy issues our culture has and stop treating someone's fatness as their own, individual failure.
These constructs are usually the opposite of what they claim, like “healthy” in this example.