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.
When I say CICO is the only way to regulate body weight I don't mean calorie tracking. Calorie tracking is absolutely not required, or arguably even helpful, for most people. But you have to do SOMETHING that either changes the amount of calories you consume or how much your body burns. If you don't nothing changes.
That's so vague to be useless though. Many people that struggle to lose weight, the 'problem' isn't the physics of it. It's the mental aspects, of appetite and craving, and the socioeconomic aspects, of time, money, attention, what food is available at what distance, price, and effort.
And, when eating fewer calories can make their bodies go into 'starvation mode', burning fewer baseline calories and making any physical exertion exhausting if not impossible, it is insulting to say 'CICO!'
I agree that it's useless, moralizing advice for people who struggle to lose weight. That doesn't mean the theory itself is unsound, and for people who don't have larger issues regarding their weight but want to regulate a little bit it's basically the only thing they need to be aware of.