Took a little break from the internet and touched some grass and it was great. Wander back in here after my hiatus and what do I find? Just a thread with a bunch of fatphobia.
Cute.
For a community that is incredibly careful about protecting its users from the -phobias and the -isms, there sure is a hell of a lot of unchecked fatphobia here basically any time fatness gets brought up.
It’s something I’ve noticed on the left in general as well. The leftist org I’m in has almost no fat people in it and something tells me that’s not because there aren’t any fat leftists out there.
Fatphobia is rooted in anti-Blackness and ableism.
I’d highly recommend the “Maintenance Phase” podcast with Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon, as well as Aubrey Gordon’s books “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat” and “You Just Need To Lose Weight.”
TL;DR: There’s mounting evidence that anti-fat bias in medicine is more to blame for poor medical outcomes in fat people rather than just the fat itself.
Diet and exercise don’t result in long-term weight loss for something like 95% of people. As a leftist, are you really gonna sit here and blame this on individual choices rather than systemic issues? Are you really gonna try to convince us that 95% of people are just lacking willpower?
Please note that this thread is not an invitation to convince me I’m wrong or share your own personal anecdotal story of successful long-term weight loss with the implication that others can do it because you did it. This post is a request that any thin person (or thin-adjacent person) reading this who wants to argue about how being fat is bad for your health do some research and some self-crit. This post is a request that this community rethink the way it engages with discussions about fatness, diet, fatphobia, and anti-fat bias.
Anti-fat bias literally kills people.
Just going to list links.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/552038
https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/spc3.12076
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26841729/
https://asdah.org/haes/
https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9#%3A%7E%3Atext=Evidence+from+these+six+RCTs%2Cmood%2C+self-esteem%2C+body
Too tired to offer descriptions rn. Just click through them. Also I’m locking this thread. Please listen to what fat activists are talking about. Read the links that have been provided. And fatphobia on the site will continue to be addressed.
I hope what I said was fine (I think it was). I was simply responding to the prompt and just relaying my own actual near-death experience with my poor relationship with food.
Diet and exercise don’t result in long-term weight loss for something like 95% of people
I genuinely don't believe this unless you're willing to present me a study on it. Everyone I've known that's lost weight and kept it off did so with said method. I genuinely don't know anyone that put the weight back on with creating a calorie deficit and exercising regularly. Please, by all means prove me wrong on this, but I just can't believe it until otherwise proven.
I assume the argument might be related to the amount of people who relapse to their old lifestyle, but then that's not really about diet or exercise not making you lose weight.
Edit for the next person who's gonna misinterpret me and then get incredibly hostile over something I didn't write: I don't agree with this argument. I don't think being overweight is comparable to addiction, the "relapse" terminology is what I've heard used in defense of this argument however, which is why I used it.
i think you should really do some introspection on why you think fat people should be obligated to diet forever or else they’re “relapsing”
I don't think that, but thanks for the accusation. Diet culture is just another capitalist money market, it's fadbased and meant to make money. Which is why I wrote "lifestyle changes". I'm getting so sick of people here willfully misinterpreting something so they can assume bad faith and then get aggressive immediately.
your comment is reinforcing fatphobia and i am pointing that out. do you consider thin people who quit a diet and go back to eating junk food all day to be “relapsing to their old lifestyle”.
really the fundamental question here is: do you think fat people should need to lose weight in order to be treated with the same respect as thin people?
It’s not about “dieting” forever, it’s about concrete lifestyle changes which is why diet culture fucking sucks and so many people are unsuccessful.
not all fat people live the same lifestyle, as i’m sure you’re aware. many fat people live incredibly fit and active lifestyles and are still fat. and even if a fat person lives an “unhealthy” lifestyle, so what? the premise i’m operating on here that fat people should not have to lose weight in order to be treated with respect.
I’m not arguing fat people shouldn’t have respect tho, I’m just explaining that the concept of dieting is not helpful for weight loss.
I’m not even saying it falls completely on the individual.
There are so many societal factors that play a role: cheap unhealthy foods, the entire confusing industry of fad diets and all that misinformation, people being too overworked to stick to or make healthy changes, the unhealthy food culture of the US in general, people going untreated for medical conditions etc etc.I’ve suffered from plenty of these, I’ve been overweight…I’m still a bit overweight.
I have a lot of physical factors that make it harder for me to lose weight than other people.
For a long time I was just awash in a sea of conflicting information about what you should eat, how you should eat, how you lose weight.
It felt hopeless.So…maybe I have my own personal issues with all of this, but I just don’t really appreciate the talking point of “95% can’t (as opposed to don’t) lose weight or keep it off” as if it’s just a scientific impossibility.
It feels very defeatist, very crab in a bucket.
I’m at a point in my life where I feel like I finally have some control, some clarity over things and it kind of rubs me the wrong way to see stuff that could potentially keep others in that same pit I was in.Maybe I’ve got my own issues to work on, but that’s how I see it.
I’m sorry if it feels defeatist, but I do think knowing the data is important. And again, I’d really recommend the “Maintenance Phase” podcast
That's an odd premise to engage me with, considering I didn't say fat people had to lose weight to be treated respectfully.
People aren't obligated to maintain any diet or eating habit, but I don't think it's unfair to describe an undesired return to overeating as a "relapse". If it's a willing desire then it isn't, it's just a life choice. To me its about personal perspective.
I find this confusing, what's the definition of the forever diet here? If it's diet (lifestyle) it kind of precludes being forever
It’s about diet and exercise not keeping the weight off long-term. People lose weight from diet and exercise all the time, the vast majority just don’t keep it off.
Assuming it's all behavioral is one of the issues. Using the term "relapse" on this is so telling.
"Relapsing to a lifestyle". What does this mean? What is assumed here?
I see that now, thank you.
Edit: no worries, I didn't tell you to disengage (it's not a magical "last word" spell, it can't be part of a post) so you don't have to. I appreciate the clarification of the language because I missed it.
Thank you for the clarification. I am sorry I misinterpeted you.
500 calories a day is a massive deficit, why are you going into extremes? Changing your lifestyle is possible and living on a base caloric or running a slight deficit is not some herculean task.
Also diet culture is a fuck, which is why I mentioned life style changes, but hey thanks for misreading and flying off the handle.Comparing weight loss to addiction.
No actually. While some obese people have some form of addiction to food, losing weight is not comparable to addiction. Addiction is comparable to addiction and people who are addicted need with a lot more than just a lifestyle change. They need healthcare, they need therapy to adress traumas, they need a lot of stuff. Following your logic you're basically saying overweight people are sick, which seems very contrary to what you wish to advocate for.
Also in your analogy the 12-step program works? Part of it is to not be judgemental when you relapse, it's part of the process.I have a feeling this is gonna continue, so I'm gonna disengage here.
The 12 step program also does not work. Literally every intervention for substance use has an abysmal long-term success rate.
Yes I was just making a hasty comparison of the poor efficacy of 12 step programs to the poor efficacy of long term diet and exercise programs, when other better alternatives exist for both scenarios. Didn't want to imply eating as an addiction. Apologies for the poor choice
For what it's worth, at the end of my few decade long "weight maintenance" the only way to maintain my then weight was opting to fast every other day entirely. Healthy? If you asked the experts, I was still too fat.
Eating is not an addiction. Eating is not the issue. Behavior is not the issue. The issue is the construct that there is some one size a body should be that everyone fits in. This is no different than other strickt categories we are being put in. The "normal" that keeps being brought up is a statistical curve that was made by an eugenist, using fit male bodies as the baseline. It is inherently a racist construct as well.
The way body size has been weaponized in pathriarchal culture and the way the medical and Western scientists took part in constructing the ideal is the issue. The way most people need to spend their lives on a diet to try and meet this ideal is the issue. The way these diets harm peoples health is the issue. The way this is used to control especially womens bodies is the issue.
This exactly. Once they’ve lost weight, formerly fat people are expected to engage in disordered eating forever to remain thin. Expected, encouraged, and celebrated if and only if they keep the weight off. “Health” isn’t really a factor in the conversation because people have “thin=healthy” so deeply-ingrained.
Hi please put all of these calorie deficit suggestions and frankly all calorie talk behind a spoiler tag as it can be triggering to those with ED.
Edited to add: Please give an actual, helpful, informative spoiler tag that includes a content warning about ED triggers.
What you said was not fine, for the record. Frankly, formerly fat people are some of the worst about this.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5764193/
Again, I highly recommend the resources listed above as a starting point. u/khizuo listed some great info as well.
That article doesn't claim any numbers and only discusses the physiological and psychological responses that cause people to stop maintaining their diets - the central concept is that diet and exercise will result in long term weight loss, but issues around perception (both of self and how much they're consuming), appetite, support, coping mechanisms and more make it difficult for many people to maintain the diet and exercise long term without additional intervention. Literally, they put the weight back on because they stopped the dieting and exercise.
Health is more complex than just your weight, and going on a diet isn't an easy or simple undertaking, but we're not doing fucking calorie-denialism here.
Ok it says 80% of the weight lost was gained back in 5 years and it’s a meta-analysis of 29 different studies so that’s a huge dataset. There’s also some anti-fat bias in the study, but regardless, the implication here is that all the people in all the studies fucked up because they couldn’t stick to a diet and exercise plan longterm. As a leftist, that explanation comes up short for me.
But frankly, this is what I didn’t want to do in this thread.
“We’re not doing calorie denialism here.”
This is the problem. You think my body burns calories at the same rate as your body? You think the human body is a simple machine where you input 500 calories into my body and your body and our bodies process, store and burn them the same way? It’s far more complex than “CICO” and I’m fucking sick to death of thin people preaching about the SiMpLe sCiEnCE. I’m not doing it. Don’t bother responding, I do not have it in me to do the back-and-forth.
The OP specifically asked thin people to STFU, listen, do some self-crit, and do some fucking reading. It’s not an invitation to debate weight loss shit with me. Read the responses from fat people in this thread and fucking do better. It’s exhausting.
What do you mean "as a leftist"? It's incredibly immaterial to just disbelieve that large lifestyle changes are extremely difficult to make and maintain. Ask anyone who's broken a simple habit like nail biting - it takes a lot of time and effort to make small changes to unnecessary habits, and reducing your food intake and doing more exercise are incredibly big changes with lots of material conditions to get in the way. How easy do you think it is to stick to your diet when you've had a really shitty day at work, or go out and exercise when it's cold and raining? That's exactly why the study recommends maintenance visits - people checking up, advising, and encouraging them so they can overcome the many obstacles in their way. Just because "diet and exercise" are 3 words doesn't mean they're easy to stick to.
Hey, I don't mean to make this thread more unpleasant for you, but as a thin person myself, and one who absolutely hates the CICO garbage bullshit argument, I would like to point out that this is less about thin vs fat and more along the lines of the trans debate, where one side, which knows absolutely fuck-all about biology, tries to insist that its oversimplified understanding of the biology at issue is the One True Answer (and in case I'm being unclear, in this analogy the CICO people are the transphobic "muh chromosomes" types).
As someone who has studied biology, I would like to point out to these people that the body reacts to its own energy state (rich, poor, somewhere in between) in a wide variety of ways. One of the most important cellular signaling molecules is cyclic AMP, which is the depleted version of ATP, the basic energy storage molecule of life. When there's a bunch of cyclic AMP around, the cell (and by extension the body, if this is the case in other regions as well) adjusts its energetic behavior accordingly.
The idea that this doesn't work in reverse is, frankly, very silly.
Also, to all you nonbiologists arguing here: if it's entirely diet and exercise, why is Ozempic so effective in comparison to such a regimen, hmmm? Maybe it's because CICO is and has always been bullshit, eh?
The reason Ozempic is used for weight loss is because it slows down your digestion and reduces appetite and cravings. It literally just makes you eat less. How is that an argument against CICO?
Ozempic slows digestion and increases satiety in the brain, yes, but it also stimulates secretion of insulin and suppresses glucagon release (you know, the energy signaling molecules, of the sort I mentioned above--I daresay those are playing a role here). Those molecules are critically important to the way the body processes energy, and we still don't understand that system very well (if we did, we'd be able to cure diabetes).
And even if your oversimplification here was accurate, how would that be an argument that CICO is useful? That argument amounts to telling people to ignore their biological drives, all the time, and basically forever. It's like telling someone they need to pee less, as if that's an easy thing to just do.
It's useful because for most of us it's the only way we can realistically regulate our own body weight, which a lot of people want to do. For people who struggle to do that, as well as obviously for people who chose not to, I agree that it's completely useless and somewhat insulting medical advice. But there's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
CICO is true. But, it's not useful; we can't measure the actual calories your body absorbs, the actual calories your body burns, nor can we control them. Yes, some actions influence it, but there's many, many reason why 'eating 200 fewer calories and exercising 200 calories worth of work a day' may not lead to 400 calories worth of 'fat loss'.
Ozempic's most important aspects seems to be its effect on the brain (not to say its effect on digestion are unimportant). See the research showing Ozempic helping people with the gambling addictions.
Thank you. I’ll give this a look over on the other side of my shift.
I honestly didn’t see it as being potentially harmful. Just…giving my experience. :\ Sorry.
(I think it was).
Narrator: It wasn't.
Because it was literally more of the same. You were also telling OP to [will themselves to] make lifestyle changes. The point plenty of others are making is that forcing oneself to act contrary to how they act without addressing the conditions that caused the original behaviour is often a road to disappointment. Recognising those conditions is vital, and a lot of people have very little real power over them.
I didn’t tell OP to do anything though. I was passing along my own experience. Unless you mean the closing statement, but that wasn’t telling them to do anything, but rather what is general knowledge of how to lose weight. It was only said as a counterpoint to my friend who does have a wildly high metabolism and what people generally do to lose weight.
I understand your intention isn’t to harm anyone, but just like with unintentional racism or unintentional transphobia, it’s harmful regardless. Fat people are not ignorant about the concept of “CICO.” Fat people have been on diets. Fat people have heard about the dangers of obesity from their doctors and probably from everyone else in their lives too.
Yeah, that is something that can be forgotten sometimes. I can scarcely forget all of that from back when I was much larger than I currently am. It was damaging to an extent. But my motherly instincts of sorts kinda kick in without thinking cause, well, my poor habits did almost kill me and it was an invisible issue until the last second. Hells, I was lucky the problem was caught in the first place cause a semi-related issue is what brought it to surface. Idk, I remember how terrified I was in the doctor’s office that day. Still scares me to this day. I just don’t want to see others deal with that terrifying ordeal.
can't have a post talking about fatphobia without someone talking about unhealthy food.
can't have a post talking about fatphobia without someone wanting to concern troll about the "obesity epidemic".
can't have a post talking about fatphobia without someone wanting to promote losing weight.
can't have a post talking about fatphobia without someone wanting to position their experiences with weight and weight loss as universal.
y'all literally can't help yourselves!!! come to terms with how your implicit fatphobia is harmful and learn and grow from it!!!!! listen to the effort posting from people with marginalized bodies and look into to the sources they are kindly giving you!!!
Na this shit is so real. Why the hell is it ok for people to just tell you about what they think you should do whenever it's about body weight. Bro, we aren't talking about that.
I understand being overweight is a systematic and structural situation, I understand everyone is free to possess their body in whichever form they are comfortable in and nobody should receive unsolicited advice or unrequired criticism regarding their bodily autonomy, I understand at every turn there are circumstances beyond one's own control and responsibility regarding weight and weight loss. I also understand that it can be difficult to diet and exercise even if one is actively trying to lose weight and nobody is obliged to lose weight in the first place if they don't feel they need to. I also have seen examples of institutional and medical fatphobia on top of widespread fatphobia in popular cultural and media in general. I see all the time people give unsolicited advice with personal anecdotes independent of context of the interaction and abuse fat people receive just for existing and control others try to exert over their life and their situation.
However one thing that I don't understand here is the suggestion that being overweight doesn't cause any issues at all. I am not here to judge but it seems well-researched and readily apparent that being overweight is cause for great deal of health complications and losing weight can alleviate those complications that are caused by being overweight. This again is not a disagreement that there is fatphobia in medicine where people have their issues unrelated to weight or weight loss go untreated because any health issue is simply treated as caused by being overweight and fat people don't get same attention and care regarding their health by medical personnel. I am just simply not understanding how so much research regarding complications caused by being overweight can all be false independent of that. This is regarding specifically only things which weight loss has been documented to directly alleviate and no other correlational complications which may or may not be related to one's weight.
The reason I suggested the “Maintenance Phase” podcast is that they dive into a lot of the scientific “evidence” about how being fat is bad for you and suggest that anti-fat bias in medicine is actually the cause of poor health outcomes for fat people. And I do want to help people understand but it’s honestly exhausting to have the same conversations over and over.
Thank you. I am assuming her books also go over this topic? I tend to prefer reading over either listening or watching to acquire information for educational purposes and leave podcasts for entertainment only. I'll specifically check the books.
Does anyone suggest being overweight causes no issues? I don't think they do. (well, I'm sure some people do, cause anyone will say anything, but I don't think its a widespread view)
I think the argument is A) the issues are over-exaggerated and over-policed, B) we celebrate some other unhealthy behaviors (such as some aspects of weightlifting and professional sports, and some ED among the celebrity/model crowd), and C) so what if being overweight causes issues? Its not your body
I don't think they do [suggest being overweight causes no issues], but the well has been poisoned elsewhere by preemptively assuming that if we even present this as a societal issue and a negative outcome that we're 'concern trolling' and secretly only care because we hate fat people.
I grew up in Mississippi. Huge food desert, poor population, awful education, terribly obese, and the entire country is constantly being shitty to the people there like they chose it. And the healthcare sucks because doctors don't try to treat fat people. So sure, it's not my body, it's not a literal warzone, and there are other behaviors that need to die, but I have a lot of proximity to this and some of the people I've grown up with have essentially no mobility and are constantly having health scares. It's not just a 'so what' to me, these were my neighbors and the common perception is that they experienced some sort of moral failing and not that they are being exploited into an early grave. It's not my body, but I care about more than just my own body.
I don't agree.
Your second paragraph is true, yes. Though, I'd frame it more around 'health' than 'weight'. I'm not saying 'weight' has no impact on health, but the health is the important part of the equation to focus on (and, even there, 'health' can be a dog-whistle for fatphobia sometimes). It's that focus of 'fat=bad' that is the 'concern trolling'. You don't need to 'fix fatness', you need to fix all those other problems.
Its not a 'poisoned well' if someone is telling people their weight needs to be fixed pisses people off (even if it's framed as not their fault!), and it is understandable that others find such comments to read as concern trolling.
https://www.marquiselemercedes.com/read/food-deserts
I don't know how to explain to you that linking an accusation of fatphobia when I have been in this thread constantly defending fatness as 'not a moral failing,' lost family to fatphobia, and experienced assumed fatphobia from people who don't even know me is extremely patronizing.
I definitely agree that it's a topic that's overpoliced and there are certain unhealthy behaviors that are glorified. In particular I have been myself tired and critical of all the health influencer and social media information peddlers who specialize over health topics while being sensationalist and seem to made with aim of making people panic. In particular, bodybuilders and weightlifters being such an extensive part of this when it is precisely those that can promote behaviors that are unhealthy both mentally and physically is something I came to greatly dislike recently with my observation that so much information and advice regarding self-care being monopolized by lifters who may or may not be on substances not to even mention crooks and grifters selling things like carnivore diets and what not.
However it seems that there is an argument being made specifically that being overweight is not the cause of certain health complications ascribed to it, which I'll try to look up now.
yeah anytime fatness is brought up here i feel like i have to brace myself and i've been purposely avoiding that recent thread because i knew it would devolve into fatphobia. it's genuinely so demoralizing to see on hexbear.
thank you for calling it out cause i was much to anxious to and i'm really hoping people do self-crit about this.
anyways i love my fat queer body ok!
finding myself already wanting to bow out of this thread too tbh. big salute to those in the combatting fatphobia posting mines, all your time and energy is really appreciated
Same. It is giving me such anxiety. Like, jesus christ it's so bad. I have sometimes tried to muster the energy to effort post about this on hexbear, but it is in full display now why I never dared do it.
People need to do better. This fucking sucks.
What really gets my goat about this is that everyone here seems to be hyperaware about the reasons and consequences of the policing of bodies when it comes to transphobia or racism (to a certain extent), but then turn around and say shit that would make Foucault blush. I know here people don't have the highest opinion of critical theory and postmodern thinkers, but y'all need to shoot the cop inside your own heads asap and start recognizing when you're reinforcing systems of oppression or just uncritically allowing them to reproduce (not you OP, the people being fatphobic and similar).
What really gets my goat about this is that everyone here seems to be hyperaware about the reasons and consequences of the policing of bodies when it comes to transphobia
Not my experience. People will have a clear positioning on where they generally stand on trans issues, but what that actually means when we're talking about human bodies is often lackluster even among our trans comrades. Recognizing that trans women in sports actually isn't a complicated issue or that gender affirming care is a human right doesn't mean you can't have brainworms about what a woman is supposed to look like, even if you are a woman who is affected and harmed by that every single day. The brainworms run deep and ridding yourself of a lifetime of cishetnormative, misogynist, ableist and racist body propaganda is a fairly demanding task.
I need to stress that i do not mean this post (or my previous one ITT) as a callout. I'd say that you actually can't just shoot the cop inside your head, it's more like slowly strangling that fucker. It's a process, it takes time, and i try to be generous here. But you need to start somewhere and you don't do that by babystepping people, you need to make it clear that some stuff just doesn't fly.
Thank you for posting this. For a leftist platform the neoliberal individual responsibility stuff that comes up when weight is discussed here is disgusting.
I know there has been discussions here on why not many women are comfortable here and this imo is one of the reasons. This is really not a safe space for people with EDs, body size trauma and medical trauma. I've seen medical experts valorized and people with said trauma belittled.
There is a reason I block the self-improvement and fitness coms. But it seaps out from those like the thread yesterday. Such reddity strong self-hating or just fat hating people who need to read Fearing the Black Body or any feminist writings on how policing body size is tied to pathriarchy, capitalism, protestantism, eugenism and how this neoliberal self-governance stuff they do is not the Maoist taking care of the body and mind they think it is, but upholds a system of othering. The way all this impacts people in marginalized bodies is a big deal.
This site has triggered the fuck out of my eating disorder and people do not put trigger warnings on their shitty diet advice. 🙃
GOOD post
edit: worth noting that there are a lot of women on hexbear, your phrasing may imply exclusion of trans women which I assume isn't your intention; ofc the chauvinism you describe affects trans women as well, including i'm sure many trans women who use the site.
Diet culture absolutely is a problem in our trans community, as it is in any trans community i've ever been in. Trans women on this site are both affected by the chauvinist policing of women's bodies by other users and engage in such policing themselves. Disordered eating is much more common among trans people than among cis people. Fatphobia, gender dysphoria and patriarchal standards intersect in incredibly nasty ways, and a lot of us fully internalize these pressures.
I didn’t want to speak too authoritatively as I’m not a trans woman and I haven’t done enough reading on this subject, but I’m super thankful for this input!
your phrasing may imply exclusion of trans women which I assume isn't your intention
You're use of the word 'may' is being very generous here.
Like half the site is women lol
And trans women will experience anxiety about the size of our bodies very acutely for obvious reasons
This thread is really disappointing. I really hoped to find better in here. I'm sorry you had to put up with this OP.
just chiming in to say this is definitely a thing on here and it should be talked about more and addressed. glad you made this post! it's one of the more negative holdovers from reddit where it was very endemic in the site culture. as well as just being totally normalised still in mainstream culture of course.
What people get wrong about weight sometimes is that it isn't just one thing. It can be for many reasons. It can be anything from the poor quality of capitalist food to being just how a person is, some people are healthier fat, some people aren't. It's complex issue and boiling it down to "Dur Hur just eat less and exercise" isn't a catch all because everyone has different bodies.
"Eat less and exercise" is faulty not only because of different bodies. Firstly it departs (edit: maybe a better term is "stems"? Sorry, not Anglo) from a "fat is worse" mindset, and secondly it ignores the reasons why someone who may want to change weight can't actually achieve it. As others have pointed out, it reinforces the bullshit neoliberal "personal responsibility" framework. Like, just compare obesity rates between countries, it's OBVIOUSLY societal if you think for more than 0.3s
I'd look into the origins of this epidemic if I were you.
Honestly I think I understand where you are trying to come from with this comment and yet it feels like this is victimizing fat people and still framing fatness as inherently bad and also somehow an individual choice even when you aknowledge we live in a society?
You bring up the bus seats and such as a point of I assume frustration? Wonder why that is and why this has become such a big deal? Why everyone is just ok with bullying the fat person that never fits in when for example tall people and big men also have this issue and take up more space in the world. But that nobody even notices.
I'm a little confused how you came to this conclusion when I specifically responded in agreement to a comment about how this is societal, and that it is something inflicted upon people and not an individual choice, and that easily-accessed processed foods are responsible for this. It feels like you read it and interpreted it as the exact opposite, and apparently a mod somewhere did the same.
Edit: I brought up public transportation because that is the primary context where one person is affected by another person's fatness in their day-to-day lives. There's obviously the cost factor that constantly gets brought up but that's not very tangible and naturally these industries will increase prices regardless of any associated costs. I explained that the proximity makes the individual the obvious target, but again, it feels like the entire comment just got missed.
Something I’m not sure I’ve seen talked about yet is all the sugar and generally unhealthy food that is readily available. Especially in food deserts where the only food for 10 miles is ultra processed and unhealthy, not to mention expensive.
And the time, energy, storage, etc it takes to prepare healthy meals vs swinging by McDonald’s in 5 minutes.
Sugar is also addictive, and food companies know and exploit that fact. The amount of sugar in single can of Coke is like double the recommended daily total.
Edit: this is not the appropriate time or place to discuss these things, I apologize.
Sugar is also addictive, and food companies know and exploit that fact. The amount of sugar in single can of Coke is like double the recommended daily total.
It goes so much deeper than that. Have a look at this fascinating NYT article about Ozempic and its effect on the food-industrial complex: https://archive.is/QkKbv
(Incidentally, the article also challenges much of the conventional wisdom around weight loss, which I personally found rather validating.)
It's been talked about but the comments are getting deleted. You're right.
And as a result, this dis-proportionally affects exactly who you'd expect anything bad to affect. The obesity rate among African-American women is 57 percent and 46 percent among Hispanic women. You go to the doctor as a fat woman with a health issue, and they tell you to lose weight and don't actually treat you. They're doing genocide and getting away with it because they're not actively pouring high fructose corn syrup down anyone's throat and the rare fine barely puts a dent in the bottom line.
It's been talked about because someone brings it up every time someone rightfully complains about fatphobia on Hexbear, it is not the time nor place to do so.
Do you have any alternative sites to recommend discussions of how capitalism is actively harming poor people and manipulating them into blaming each other then, if Hexbear is not the place to do so?
I think the right place to talk about capitalism causing obesity is not a thread centering people experiencing fatphobia and negativity around fatness from other Hexbear posters
You’re right, I’ll leave what I said up for context but I realize most people here are already aware of these things and this wasn’t the place to talk about. Apologies.
The issue is framing it around fatness instead of actual illness like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc. Fatness is not about health, it's about appearance.
This is not a discussion about that, but resources have been posted here that you could read. But honestly you are probably cabable of finding such a place of discussion yourself if this discussion is so important to you right now when we are talking about anti-fatness.
I mean, fatness is truly the last thing standing on things that people are socially allowed to be shitty about. The fact that so many in this discussion demand receipts and resources from those who are the ones getting harmed is next level.
Here is a really good blog post about exactly this: https://www.marquiselemercedes.com/read/food-deserts
All I'll say to add to the discussion is I'm a bit fat for sure. Always have been. I also workout daily and climb mountains and hike backcountry environments in all seasons.
That is I have pretty clear evidence myself that being fit does not mean being not fat. I have friends far slimmer than me who couldn't conceive of spending a 12 hr day in the mountains comfortably.
Would I be faster hiker if I didn't carry more weight? Who knows maybe but it's not coming off unless I... I don't know... Maybe follow some strict diet?
But why I'm already capable of doing the things I want shaped like this.
I assume OP is referring to in the US/NA, depicting the bourgeoisie as obese in Europe and AES states developed independently of US racial relations.
I don't know enough about it as I have never been to the US nor do I ever intend on going there.
I wanna assume it's the connection of "soul food" and "laziness" stereotypes, and later on, probably the "luxurious welfare recipient" to black people in America because Americans are evil and it's an evil empire.
Once again, I don't know for sure but there was definitely a shift from 1800's to mid 1900's where fat people went from being depicted as jolly and hearty to lazy and uncouth (in America. Not talking about depictions of capitalist pigs and fat cat bourgeoisie)
https://prismreports.org/2024/11/25/anti-fatness-as-anti-blackness-violence-at-home-violence-abroad/
https://csw.ucla.edu/2020/11/23/fearing-the-black-body-the-racial-origins-of-fat-phobia-by-sabrina-strings-nyu-press-2019/
Here is a resource I encourage everyone in this discussion to at least look at: https://annas-archive.org/md5/a4b4291df746b2ff8f2130bef5516e9e
This is something I really want to work on as a mod and I’ve brought it up to the mod team (also I brought it up on hexbear before I was a mod.) I think this is a serious issue on this site for sure.
Thank you and I do appreciate you posting links about anti-fat bias in medicine.
please take care of yourself comrade
