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Comment by billy99k | Hacker News Reader

"People no longer feel obliged to pretend there’s something shameful about wanting to be thinner."

Or the notion that being morbidly obese is healthy.

I didn't mind "body positivity" too much, it was more "healthy at any size" that I found objectionable.

If you as an adult want to eat to excess (or drink, or smoke), feel free (within reason - don't encroach on my economy airline seat) and happily accepts that they might shorten their life by doing so, then have at it. Just don't pretend it's a healthy lifestyle choice.

Even body positivity goes way too far for me. If it were only adults in play that would be different, but the rise of "body positivity" coincided with a massive increase in child obesity, and there's a strong connection between the eating/health habits of parents and the health outcomes of their children.

body positivity was a very much needed reaction to the mass media starvation-chic obsession of the 2000s. Kate Winslet in Titanic, Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears in the mid 2000s were all widely mocked and panned for being fat whales despite being completely normal looking.

Exactly. It was never about 200-400 pound behemoths guilt tripping you for having an opinion about the health of their diets.

I don't think there is continuity there. Body positivity was a movement of extremely obese people trying to normalize obesity, not a movement of healthy people trying to denormalized anorexia.

The very earliest versions weren't like that. For example, "healthy at every size" was originally "health at every size" - it was supposed to be encouragement that you are succeeding in improving your health by eating better and exercising even if you don't lose weight.

> the rise of "body positivity" coincided with a massive increase in child obesity

The obesity epidemic is yet another instance of “What changed in America in 1971?” that can’t be attributed to body positivity, a movement that didn’t really get nationwide traction until the 90s.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10815706/

>If you as an adult want to eat to excess

In fairness, there are plenty of conditions and imbalances that can cause weight gain besides "eating in excess"

>don't encroach on my economy airline seat

The things are so damn small that's going to happen regardless. They're not designed for big people (even healthy weighted ones)

Thermodynamics is undefeated, people cannot just manifest mass. It must enter through the mouth.

The mouth. That magical orifice where the cake enters and the excuses exit.

Believe it or not, it's also largely where the weight exits, as the C part in CO2. Something like 85% of it.

> An adult typically removes approximately 0.8 to 0.9 kilograms (840 to 900 grams) of CO2 from the body each day.

https://biologyinsights.com/how-much-carbon-dioxide-do-we-ex...

Ok, that is way more than the dozen grams per day I thought it was.

It's one of those initially unintuitive things that makes perfect sense when you consider that "burning calories" is... pretty literally burning calories. Of course CO2 is how most of the mass goes away.

Similar to the "trees are mostly made from air" thing.

There are several multiple that cause sudden weight loss or weight gain with no change in lifestyle and eating. And then there are sicknesses that affect hunger regulation and surrounding hormones (including anorexia actually).

> there are plenty of conditions and imbalances that can cause weight gain besides "eating in excess"

There are no fat children in those places in Africa where they go hungry. And I guarantee you a lot of people have conditions and imbalances there.

There are absolutely fat kids in Africa, and widespread malnutrition / starvation isn't really a great public health option.

My point is, unless you have found a way to break thermodynamics, the only way to reduce your weight is by taking in less than what you excrete out, regardless of deficiencies and conditions.

Sure. But we know that some conditions, both physical and psychological, can make that process much harder. (Medications, too! And billion dollar companies who employ experts in breaking your will.)

"Just abstain" approaches have failed repeatedly and conclusively in public health. Hell, it's hard enough to get people to wash their hands after pooping and get vaccinated.

Personal experience: the first time i took buproprion/naltrexone it became clear to me why people that arent and have never been overweight think "just eat less move more" is the only advice you need.

> eat less move more

That's not the only advice. But, without that piece, you are unlikely to make progress. Hence all other advice is secondary to it.

Except it's not typically very effectively actionable advice.

It's more in the realm of "just be happy" to a depressed person. Sure, that'd help a lot. It's the how that's tough. So we move the levers that aren't rusted solid first.

Yeah, just like telling a heroin addict that getting clean is easy, just stop doing heroin.

Oh except the heroin is available literally everywhere and you need to do just a little bit every day to stay alive

You, earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46499273

> The mouth. That magical orifice where the cake enters and the excuses exit.

I don’t think you’re a font of nuanced advice on fitness.

For those that want to stick with thermodynamics, imagine an organism that stores 1% of consumed calories as fat, and uses the other 99%, and that cannot - for whichever reason - turn fat back into calories.

Completely in accordance with thermodynamics, and yet, "just eat less" doesn't work.

> cannot - for whichever reason - turn fat back into calories.

That organism has been outcompeted (darwinized-out) long ago by other organisms that are able to.

Being more specific, humans are not that organism.

Organism, not species.

Ok, Mr. Pedantic. Can you find me one of these organisms, or is this another spherical cow moment?

What got to me was when my own doctor was telling me I was "healthy at any size" when I was telling her about things like plantar fasciitis in my feet that clearly got worse as I gained weight. Like, it would be one thing if I told her I felt like a million bucks and my labs were excellent and I was a little bit big. But I was in there explicitly telling her that I was NOT healthy at my size.

I eventually got a better doctor and a dietitian and lost 50 lbs by changing my macros to focus on getting enough protein, fat, and fiber, which finally curbed my hunger, and wouldn't you know it, my feet feel better.

The cynic in me can imagine that the body positivity "movement" was secretly funded by the ABCD* companies.

How about "Plant Based!" Let's get some more grain into soup and milk!

I'm honestly surprised that sawdust is so far only in shredded cheese. No "tree milk" yet for my coffee?

* ADM Bunge Cargill Dreyfus

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