Yep, the same way people can take full control of their depression, alcoholism or other psycological issues. It’s all about just rolling up those sleeves and deciding not to have the issues. So we can safely assume that all heavier people are a result of them actively choosing to become heavy, so we should always treat them as such.
At the end of the day, alcoholism, depression, and obesity, they are unhealthy states of being.
They are not something people choose, and while there are treatments, it’s not something everyone can control.
That doesn’t mean we should simply accept this state of being. People living with depression deserve better, people living with alcoholism deserve better than for us to say “it’s out of their control, they can’t help it, so we shouldn’t judge, let them be” when what they need is better support and better treatment options.
Likewise, obese people deserve better than “eat less, move more, fatty!” but they also deserve more than “all bodies are beautiful, just let us be”
I say this as someone who was a fat kid, and a fat teen, and a fat adult. I had a BMI of 50 for a most of my life. In my mid 30s, I got it down to 28, and still going.
So I say all of this is as someone else who was fat, obese, and morbidly obese. Obesity should be viewed the same way we view depression and anxiety, though depression and anxiety also need some better PR.
Being obese may not not always be a choice, but the the ultimate end goal of how we view obesity as a state of being is to find ways we can all manage our weight. Because obesity is not healthy, for those who can’t easily control their weight, life sucks, they are patients in need of treatment, not morally failing people, but also not “perfect plus sized activists who are healthy at every size”
Because while bodies and sizes vary and we can do healthy things at every size. Obesity is inherently unhealthy. Obviously being bullied won’t solve anything, but neither will society politely ignoring how hard it is to live a full life while suffering from obesity.
Being black isn’t an inherent health issue. It genuinely is just a different state of being. 99% of problems unique to black people are social issues, not medical issues… So the comparison between obesity and substance abuse issues is more helpful than trying to compare being obese to being BIPOC.
Congrats on your weight loss journey! May I ask if there was a specific thing that motivated you to start and keep going? And how did you turn your mindset around?
For me it was understanding the idea of equilibrium. The way I use it is to mean the state of something given enough time that highs and lows have evened out.
A practical example is with common diet mentality of dieting until reaching a goal, and then stopping the diet. The diet is a peak, not dieting is a valley, over time youll end up back at the same weight or more. Basically the problem is that modern diets give people high expectations when studies show the most likely scenario is that the weight is lost, and gained back plus some.
So what will work. If we think of this long term equilibrium, the dieting doesnt work because they aren’t permanent changes. So if we agree the only way to stay healthy long term is to make permanent changes, we can agree that making cumulative small permanent changes that affect diet will ultimately result in lost weight.
Sugar is the easiest to target IMO. Dairy, meat, and fish also are good things to target too as they cause other health problems besides weight gain. Switching to mainly water is another thing. Even taking on a new hobby or exercising a slight bit more will result in a net loss as less time is able to be spent on eating and more energy is spent physically.
Plant based whole food diets usually result in weight loss because they are less calorie dense, so you will feel full with a fraction of the calories in your stomach. Alternatively you can lose weight with calorie dense foods, but you will likely have to deal with hunger more.
Once I started thinking more like this, it was easier to come up with my own changes rather than shopping around diets with absurd restrictions. You know yourself best, make small changes and keep trending in a good direction, and if you make a “mistake” do your best to forget about it and immediately get back to it.
Not him, but I found my will to lose weight when a close family member was told their liver was failing and they had a few months to live, due to cirrhosis from their obesity. I knew I was on a similar trajectory and my bloodwork showed a hit to my liver function.
Good news is that my relative also found the will to get healthy and their liver improved more than the doctors thought could happen and so we both are doing much better. I’m even under 25 BMI now after losing 40 lbs. Also amazing to be able to move around like I used to as a teenager again.
As to how, not very helpful but just using that fear to drive willpower to just suck it up and eat less and exercise even when I really want to be doing something else. It means to some extent just living with usually being a little hungry and almost never filling full for me. Changed the food for less calorie dense stuff and avoiding refined sugars of course, but still have to reduce food intake.
Are you claiming that depression, alcoholism, and other psychological issue cannot be treated? Are you saying that to someone who went through severe depression period twice in his life and on his path to recovery for the second period only recently? Or are you saying people will become severely obese even when eating the same healthy amount of healthy food as other non-obese people?
Just because something is hard doesn’t mean your out of control. And I know hard - nothing comes easy…
There are a variety of reasons, and of course there exists people who are in full control of their weight, but decide to not do anything about it. What I’m hinting at is that there are also a lot of people who suffer with deeper psycological issues. We don’t really tease depressed people with nick names and expect them to just snap out of it at any time. Hence I feel like we should generally treat heavier people with respect instead of assuming that it’s their active choice.
