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.
Fun fact: a lot of the sports people do are some of the most unhealthy behaviors we human animals can engage in. Especially at the professional end it just breaks you.
Yet that is celebrated without question. When a fitness dude breaks a knee lifting, he gets it fixed and is celebrated for it. When a fat woman breaks her knee while lifting, she is told the reason the knee broke is her fatness.
And the mandatory mention that even if someone does not eat healthy or exercise at all, they deserve to be treated well. We aren't here to earn a right to exist by eating whatever it is that is called healthy in a current moment. Which in itself is a helluva muddy thing if you scratch the surface even a little.
There are around 10,000 professional athletes in the United States. This makes them around 0.003% of the population. If you were to compare the health of those 0.003% with the health of the heaviest 0.003%, I'd be confident to guess which group is healthier.
For the rest of us in the 99.993%, sports are a good thing for your health. Running strengthens joints and greatly increases cardiovascular health (currently, cardiovascular issues are the largest cause of death in the US), weightlifting reduces risk for injury and improves mental health. Even when looking at runners, a group who are constantly injured, have better joints and longer lifespans than sedentary people.