A fat woman is like a short guy. There is nothing inherently wrong with it, but you would prefer the skinny and tall versions.
Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat
Just wanted to give some input as someone who dealt with lifelong obesity. As a fat person, some people just donât like to face the music or give themselves an honest look in the mirror. They donât want to call a spade a spade. Changing around words to describe things in more complex and softer language doesnât change the situation any, it just helps you psychologically cope.
The same with playing the blame game on outside factors like genetics and disability. Blaming everything you can but yourself and your own choices and failures and unaddressed mental insecurities. Thats not a fat person thing though, thats a general human being thing I tend to see in most groups of people one way or another. Its easier to convince yourself that you never had a choice, than it is to acknowledge the bad personal choices that lead to the consequences of your failures.
When you have fat rolls, and stretch marks litter your stomach, and you look more like a slug than a human being, and you need help wiping your own ass or a bigger toilet to support the weight, when you have to go shopping at specialty close stores (before amazon) just to find a size that fits, and you have no self control or desire to change your habits to stop the self destructive spiral as your stomach swells like a balloon, thats obesity. Regardless of arguments on BMI or CICO or genetics or whatever else, youâve got a serious problem that needs addressing or it will destroy you slowly but surely.
âAt least Iâll die happy!â my type 2 diabetic father would always gleefully tell me as he shoved another tasty cake in his mouth before jabbing himself with an insulin pen. I donât think the junk food ever did make him happy though. He had mental health issues he never worked through in life. Instead, he relied on the temporary relief of junk food for pleasure, eventually having his addiction dominate and guide his existence.
As for me? Iâve gone through cycles of gaining and loosing 100 pounds. Right now im on a downward trend, lost 40 pounds this year. Hope to loose another 40 by this time next year. I gain the pounds during cycles of extreme depression, and loose them during cycles of great determination and self-agency. Our physical well-being is tied to our emotional and spiritual well-being. Self destructive cycles are much easier to enter when you feel nihilistic and out of control of your own life.
How do I loose weight? I donât eat. CICO, Simple as. I eat one meal a day, if that. Maybe snack on some dried preserved nuts and fruits once or twice.I drink water and lemon juice. I am a 6â1 man the calorie calculators tell me I should have around 2000 calories daily and cut down by 500 to loose a pound every once in awhile. Fuck that, I have maybe 500-1000 calories daily.
Im a little hungry a lot of the time, but I see the results of my conviction when I step on the scale expecting it to raise 5 lbs and seeing it drop 10 lbs. I look at myself in the mirror, examining my fading stretch marks and receding folds, I examine my skin tightening around the muscles and notice my face not quite as round as it once was. Thats the reward physical evidence of improvement. That my efforts arenât for nothing. It helps to remind myself of what im doing it for, and the price ive already had to pay for my insecurities and failures to control myself.
The physical act of loosing weight is hard and requires self-control over a very long time often multiple years. The mental act of introspection and reflecting on what lead to your obesity often requires analyzing the roots of your negative aspects while confronting those past traumas. That requires a mental strength and intelligence many people lack. At the end of the day, its easier and feels nicer to twist words and point fingers than fix your own problems.
Wow thank you for sharing your personal experience and thoughts. I think you hit the nail on the head. To add to that, I have noticed with a family member of mine (who has been trying to loose weight for 20 years, unsuccessfully) that mental wellbeing = willpower. If something get you down, the weight usually goes up. Itâs hugely complected of course. My heart goes out to all.
Not saying that the person in the post is correct in conflating those words, I donât think thatâs accurate at all.
However, it is disheartening to see so many ill-informed comments about fatness here⌠Itâs way, way more complicated than just âcalories in/calories outâ. Even the extent to which itâs unhealthy is more complicated; obesity is linked to higher risk of heart disease, but also linked to higher probability of surviving strokes/etc. A lot of the problem stems from the fact that BMI is a nearly useless metric.
Human beings are subject to the laws of physics. If you eat more calories than you consume and do not otherwise eliminate from the body, they will still be in the body. The body stores them as fat. This is simply the mechanics of biology. If it werenât, things like Ozempic would not spur massive weight loss.
We have more obese people now than have ever existed. Countries that do not have US/Mexico levels of easy access to heavily processed, calorie-dense foods do not have obesity problems like we have. Clearly, calling people names and making them feel bad is not a good way to get them to adopt healthier habits. However, there are plain, uncomplicated things that people can do to lose weight that will work, but they will ONLY work if the people want to change, are honest with themselves and truly stick to the changes they need to make.
Losing weight is absolutely within reach of 99% of obese people, but comments like this reinforce the absolutely incorrect notion that getting healthy is some big mystery thatâs for a different class of people to solve. Itâs defeatist and makes it seem like a problem that a person canât solve on their own, which is straight up wrong.
The plain, uncomplicated things you can do? Find out how many calories a body of the weight you want to weigh uses in a day. Limit yourself to those calories. Given time, you will be that weight if and only if you stick to the plan. It may shock some people how many calories they actually consume in a day, especially if they drink soda or juice with any regularity.
Itâs a clinical term, and being obese is something that 90%+ of the time, you have a choice in.
Nobody picks their race. You cannot change your race.
What Iâm saying is, no, those terms are not remotely the same.
being obese is something that 90%+ of the time, you have a choice in
A big part of an individualâs build is genetic. Saying you âchoose to be obeseâ is akin to saying you âchoose to be tanâ. Truer for some people than others, and often more a question of degree than state. But telling a Samoan to just stop being big is about as practical as insisting a Swede needs to stop being so fucking tall.
Nobody picks their race.
Race is a social construct. Youâve got significantly more control over your perceived race than your perceived weight, as even adjustments to your outfit and accent can cause people to place you in radically different ethnic groups.
My sicilian mother was regularly mistaken as hispanic, simply because she was shorter, slightly tanner, knew more spanish than her Mayo-American neighbors. Iâve got a Philippian friend who regularly code-switches between East Asian, Polynesian, and White depending on who is around. And even generic whiteness becomes extremely relative when youâre in Europe. Being from anywhere east of Germany might as well make you a filthy mudblood (nevermind the beef between English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian folks). A bit of accent work and a certain haircut can put you on the other side of the continent.
Diet determines someoneâs body weight. If you donât eat, you donât gain. Once you gain itâs incredibly hard to lose. Once you lose itâs incredibly easy to gain.
I have lost 21 pounds in 2 months from calorie counting. I gained 60 pounds in 3 years by ordering a ton of delivery. I yoyoâd many times in the past 2 years trying to lose the weight using various programs before finding a routine that works for me. All weight gain was due to me making choices that increased calorie intake. No one forced me to eat anything, I did it to myself.
Genetic factors may make weight loss more difficult but it is never impossible. There is no possible way that if you do not eat you will gain weight. Unless you have a handful of extremely rare conditions itâs going to be the things you choose to eat and how much of them you eat that determine weight gain, alongside exercise. Some people swear that they do everything right with calorie counting but still gain weight but the reality is that if the average XXX pound person needs 1800 calories to maintain and you eat 1600 and still gain, perhaps your unique body really needs 1400 or 1200 to lose. Or maybe youâre blessed with a great metabolism and 2500 calories will be burnt for you so you can eat up to that without any issues.
Mental health challenges make it hard to stick with a routine diet for some but itâs still technically possible to lose weight even if your brain wonât let you stop eating. If someone gave you an appropriate balanced diet and there were no other possible source of calories for you, youâre gonna lose weight. You might go crazy because you canât have dressing on your salad and perhaps even wish you were dead instead of eating less, but you would lose weight.
Beyond weight
In terms of height, diet can influence height somewhat (especially in terms of deficits causing stunted growth) but your maximum height is almost entirely due to genetics. You get very little choice in that. You canât choose to drink more milk and gain a foot of height. Once your body stops producing the right growth hormone you just stop getting taller.
In terms of skin color, thereâs very little you can do about that beyond genetics. You can paint your body with fake tan or sit in the sun to get darker or hide indoors out of sunlight to be âlighterâ than if you went outdoors but thereâs no way to will your body to stop producing melanin.
In terms of âcultural behaviorsâ that you seem to call race based on how you describe it, you can choose to behave like someone from any walk of life if you learn how to do so. You can learn other languages, social norms, customs and beliefs and act on them. You are not born any more âwhiteâ, âitalianâ, âirishâ, âkenyanâ or âthaiâ culturally than anybody else. You learn the local culture from your experiences. Switching between the cultures has nothing to do with genetics. Weâre just most likely to be born into cultural groups that have the same genetics as us, the exceptions tend to be when youâre adopted or your parents happen to already be a different culture than their genetic heritageâs or your parents have different cultures.
I canât believe I had to write any of this out. Iâll probably get downvoted because no one wants to hear the absolute truth of whatever thing they canât do that they want to blame something else to feel better for their lack of discipline, but we can choose to behave however we really want to. I donât give a shit how fat or skinny someone is, I care about the content of their character, their beliefs and their actions. Iâm not going to point this shit out in polite company because itâs not my business and I believe everyone should be able to choose to do to their bodies and their lives however they wish. Doesnât change the facts though.
Diet determines someoneâs body weight.
Dietary needs vary by individual need. You need more calories to feed an adult than a child. You need more calories to feed a professional athlete than an office schlub. And thatâs before you get into food availability by region or the opportunity cost of accessing nutritious foods in a given neighborhood radius.
I canât believe I had to write any of this out.
Youâre overly simplistic and reductive, just like every other high minded bigot.
Retard was a clinical term as well, so was mongoloid idiot and imbecile.
I donât agree with the fatty in the post at all, just saying.
Iâm not gonna lie, I miss the R word so much. Everything else I totally get and can self censor. But when I see someone cut across 3 lanes of traffic without a blinker⌠Theyâre just a tard!
Iâm a little disappointed that it was a medical term at all. Itâs a very functional word, like in flame retardant, or an engine retarder.
I think it would have been much more applicable to methods of thinking and epistemology, like thought stopping techniques and special pleading, as these also severly restrict oneâs critical thought yet can be overcome socially. Thereâs no sense having a social label for a medical condition, so donât use such a punchy easy to use word for it if itâs not a choice.
Neither of those things are something you can choose to be. Similar to race, its something youâre generally born with. (Or a tragic accident could cause brain issues as well)
They are not the same as obesity. Some people donât have a choice, and it can be genetics, but the VAST majority it is a life style âchoiceâ.
