I agree that there is unnecessary cruelty towards fat people. The subject of the article says that her parents threatened her with reduced employment opportunities because bosses want to promote...
I agree that there is unnecessary cruelty towards fat people. The subject of the article says that her parents threatened her with reduced employment opportunities because bosses want to promote attractive women. I'm sure this holds truth, but it's not something you should encourage your daughter to play into.
Granted, claiming that obesity is a non-consideration when it comes to health is flat-earther level insanity. People who are overweight shouldn't hate themselves for their size, but pressure to be healthy is a potentially healthy stress. You know you're lowering your life span, standard of living, increasing medical expenses, losing mobility, etc. Those are all good reasons to feel stress, because maybe that stress will motivate you to remove those problems.
It's as if people are claiming that showering is a part of the patriarchy. So they give up on higeine to stick it to the man. But there are good reasons that people shower.
Kinda have similar feelings about it. No need to be deliberately cruel, but no one should have to make any effort to make people feel normal, healthy, attractive, etc. It’s not any of those...
Kinda have similar feelings about it. No need to be deliberately cruel, but no one should have to make any effort to make people feel normal, healthy, attractive, etc. It’s not any of those things. It’s not “internalized phatphobia”. It’s our brains telling us, “that person looks like they couldn’t run down a deer or outrun a lion, so they are useless to the tribe. They look like they might die during childbirth or die and leave me alone with a child. ” We don’t have to do any of those things anymore, but people are naturally attracted to health and fitness.
I feel like society needs to put some kind of pressure on people to keep people doing the right thing here. Maybe not go as far as them, but Japan does this successfully. They are very blunt when someone is getting heavier and as a result there are almost no fat people in Japan.
I know, it's horribly paradoxical. I think a lot of the difficulty is that people see it as an unfixable problem. That any acknowledgement of their weight is like telling someone they're short....
I know, it's horribly paradoxical.
I think a lot of the difficulty is that people see it as an unfixable problem. That any acknowledgement of their weight is like telling someone they're short. It's not surprising, people dish out both of those judgements exactly the same. But recognizing that something is wrong is the first step to solving a problem.
I lost 60 pounds a few years ago and have done a decent job at keeping it off. All it took was an acknowledgement that I had been eating too much. I needed less than I took in. Granted, I had no addiction to food. It was just a combination of bad influence from my parents and coping with college stress. I'm still an anxious person but at least I'm healthier.
Encouraging unhealthy people to be healthy helps everyone. Unhealthy individuals increase healthcare costs for all of us, even in countries without single-payer healthcare.
Encouraging unhealthy people to be healthy helps everyone. Unhealthy individuals increase healthcare costs for all of us, even in countries without single-payer healthcare.
Sure it is. But making them feel terrible about themselves is no way to go about it. As someone who is certainly overweight (about 110kg and doing something about it), I personally couldn't give...
Sure it is. But making them feel terrible about themselves is no way to go about it. As someone who is certainly overweight (about 110kg and doing something about it), I personally couldn't give any hoots if someone tried to fat shame me. However for someone much more sensitive about their weight, it's only going to make matters worse.
So absolutely encouragement is great, but shaming or embarrassing them is not.
I wasn't trying to encourage fat shaming, however one person in the article suggests overweight individuals should not try to intentionally lose weight. Doctors absolutely should be telling their...
I wasn't trying to encourage fat shaming, however one person in the article suggests overweight individuals should not try to intentionally lose weight. Doctors absolutely should be telling their overweight patients to lose weight.
I read this article, and I have to say I at least found it interesting. The author's point about trauma was something I hadn't really considered before. I'm not completely onboard with all of her...
I read this article, and I have to say I at least found it interesting. The author's point about trauma was something I hadn't really considered before. I'm not completely onboard with all of her points, but I do think it's interesting to view fatness from a disability lense and the issues of inclusivity it brings up.
The author notes that insurance companies won't insure people, and doctors won't do certain procedures on people, because their BMI is too high. While she frames it as a fat acceptance issue, I think she would benefit from doing some research. Speaking from an insurance perspective, actuaries have been paid a lot of money to figure out if it makes sense to insure fat people. I'm going to guess it's life insurance where that becomes an issue. They are only looking at cold hard facts, and they have determined the amount it would take in premiums to make it profitable is so high nobody would pay it unless they had serious serious issues. This is called adverse selection and it's a core principal of insurance that it should be avoided. Similarly, the medical procedures probably are not safe to perform on someone when you have to cut and maneuver through several inches of fat to get to the internal organs. Even getting a really heavy patient onto an operating table could probably cause issues.
Reading some of the comments here got me thinking. I don't think I'm fat right now, I've definitely been bigger but never beyond a 2X. For me, it's come in phases. Active kid, then got into video games and computers and got big. Discovered tennis was actually really fun in high school and got skinny. Graduated, and without a team to keep it interesting got lazy and bigger. In college, I figured out that paying for drugs and secondhand textbooks was more fun than eating right and got really skinny. Then I graduated and got a job with disposable income to eat out too much and got bigger. Most recently I realized at 32 it's time to get in shape or it's going to be a lot harder as I get older.
But you know, not one time ever did I get in better shape because someone was an asshole to me about the way I looked. I don't think it has that effect on anyone.
We live in a society where there is actually tremendous pressure to do things that will cause most people to gain weight. In a lot of small towns, fast food is your only option if you don't want to make dinner. For some people on lower budgets, it may be all they can manage, and for the money fast food is very calorie dense. These fast food companies abuse our physiology and psychology and create foods that appeal to a part of our brain that is not used to dealing with plenty. They use low cost, nutrient poor ingredients so it is hard to feel full or sated. They create opiates in our brain, which if you're a far person being shamed by everyone around you might be the best you feel all day. Entertainment companies abuse our psychology to keep our butts in seats and our eyes on their shows. Most places are not bicyclist or pedestrian friendly and so vehicle transportation is the only realistic option. School budgets have been cut to the bone and they do a terrible job for the most part in fostering a healthy lifestyle in gym classes. Our jobs are mostly sedentary these days. On and on it goes, a litany of forces that encourage unhealthy lifestyles.
Compare that to a country like Japan, @brotherhood4232. I don't know a ton about Japanese culture, but I imagine pedestrian and cycling options are better. Compare the nutrition of eating curry and rice or ramen or sushi to a cheeseburger or bucket of fried chicken. I believe Japanese schools require after-school activity like sports as well.
Why should we shame people for being overwhelmed by forces with vast resources that have spent decades learning how to exploit our psychology for their benefit?
I think you have it pretty much right. We don't need fat acceptance, we need to stand up against the design of our societies that strongly encourage behaviours that cause everyone to get fat....
I think you have it pretty much right. We don't need fat acceptance, we need to stand up against the design of our societies that strongly encourage behaviours that cause everyone to get fat. There is a saying in UX that goes something like "If one person gets it wrong, maybe they are just dumb. But if lots of people are getting it wrong then your design is probably wrong".
I think the solution is partially in discouraging low activity lifestyles like driving everywhere. The other big win I see is giving people more free time so after work they still have the energy to cook dinner and will be less likely to buy fast food just because they are too tired to cook their own food.
That's great you can get to the gym regularly despite your hectic schedule, but assuming just because you can do it despite the time constraints in your life is incredibly ignorant of all the...
That's great you can get to the gym regularly despite your hectic schedule, but assuming just because you can do it despite the time constraints in your life is incredibly ignorant of all the other factors at play in people's lives that can prevent them from doing similar. If someone is clinically depressed, suffers from a general or social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia or a myriad of other serious mental and physical health issues, it's not just being "lazy" or lacking "commitment" that can prevent them from getting to the gym and/or otherwise making positive life changes.
You're right, it's not. The obesity epidemic is significantly more complicated than that, which your comment completely ignores and was the main point of mine. Those mental health issues I listed...
The obesity epidemic in North America isn't limited to the anxious.
You're right, it's not. The obesity epidemic is significantly more complicated than that, which your comment completely ignores and was the main point of mine. Those mental health issues I listed were just some examples of the factors at play, but there are plenty of others which can and do prevent people from following your incredibly reductive "solution" to obesity, such as poverty, lack of access to healthy food (e.g. living in a food desert), substandard health education, normative peer influences, etc.
And "with all due respect", I'm clearly not the only one who read your comment as not just applying to "otherwise healthy people", so calling my reply "disingenuous" for pointing out that particular fault with yours, itself feels rather disingenuous.
Fair enough, and perhaps I brought some of my own previous baggage into the mix when interpreting your comment. And rereading, it was the previous comment you replied to that mentioned "a...
Fair enough, and perhaps I brought some of my own previous baggage into the mix when interpreting your comment. And rereading, it was the previous comment you replied to that mentioned "a solution" not your own. So for both I apologize.
That's a very simplistic way of looking at it. Surely you must realize people have different circumstances than you do? Just taking you at your word you spend 15 hours between work and the gym....
That's a very simplistic way of looking at it. Surely you must realize people have different circumstances than you do?
Just taking you at your word you spend 15 hours between work and the gym. That leaves you one hour to do everything else required to live a normal life and get eight hours of sleep. Sleeping less than that regularly is bad for your health and mentally the equivalent of being drunk all the time, not exactly a great health outcome itself. So either you're exagerating, you have help, you're living an unhealthy lifestyle yourself, or you should quit your job and write books on time management.
From the sounds of your post it also sounds like you have no dependents and don’t have a significant other to spend time with, children who need to be raised, elderly family members who depend on...
From the sounds of your post it also sounds like you have no dependents and don’t have a significant other to spend time with, children who need to be raised, elderly family members who depend on you, etc. All of which uhh, take up a lot of time and energy and aren’t at all uncommon.
You grocery shop in 15 minutes? When do you do laundry? How long do you spend in the shower? What about when you need an oil change? One circumstance we all share is that we evolved for a 16/8...
You grocery shop in 15 minutes? When do you do laundry? How long do you spend in the shower? What about when you need an oil change?
One circumstance we all share is that we evolved for a 16/8 circadian rhythm. Don't take it from me, look up sources on long term sleep deprivation. Even shaving that one hour off every night can have major consequences to your health like increasing your risk of a heart attack.
i mean congratulations, but extrapolating your ability as a singular person to do something to other people is kinda stupid, because in this case what you personally can do or have access to has...
I work twelve hours a day every day for weeks on end with zero days off and I still cook all my own meals and make it to the gym for two hours every single night. The gym I currently attend is a 30 minute drive away.
i mean congratulations, but extrapolating your ability as a singular person to do something to other people is kinda stupid, because in this case what you personally can do or have access to has almost no bearing on what someone else can do or has access to. weight issues are also a lot more complicated than being able to work out or not being able to work out; things like metabolism, access to food and healthcare, whether or not you're a single person or a family, etc. all play into outcomes like this--that's why this "IF I CAN DO IT ANYONE CAN" mentality is categorically not helpful. just as example of this, i can bike the equivalent of 8 miles in 30 minutes 4 days a week and i in fact do that not infrequently, but i won't and generally don't lose more than 15 pounds of weight doing that before flatlining because my family is poor and we literally can't afford to buy good, healthy food the majority of the time and even eating the food we do have in moderation only does so much.
Think back to the 70s when people were a lot skinnier. You can watch kids movies from back then and the obligatory 'fat kid' that gets bullied is barely hefty by today's standards. What changed?...
Think back to the 70s when people were a lot skinnier. You can watch kids movies from back then and the obligatory 'fat kid' that gets bullied is barely hefty by today's standards. What changed? It's not like everyone was going to the gym back then either. What changed is people's diets. We live in a unique time in history where calorie dense, nutrient poor foods are extremely cheap and available.
You don't get to 6X by just not exercising, diet is a huge part of it. A lot of people aren't equipped with good habits from childhood, and food deserts are a thing.
the main problem isn't time for most people is the thing, although a lot of people would also struggle to find the time to do things because the reality is time is a luxury that many of us don't...
Perhaps that is why I was only addressing the idea of giving people more time to exercise,
the main problem isn't time for most people is the thing, although a lot of people would also struggle to find the time to do things because the reality is time is a luxury that many of us don't have. i, incidentally, have plenty of time: i don't have a job, i don't have school currently since it's summer, and i have minimal social priorities because my main occupation is volunteering. i can afford to sit here and literally work out for two hours if i theoretically wanted to. the mere state of having time doesn't mean anything though if nearly everything you eat is unhealthy because the nature of your socioeconomic status is such that you can only afford things that are loaded with sugars and sweeteners and fattening agents and god knows what else, or if you're someone who has no education on how to have balanced meals or moderation because educational literacy with food is basically nonexistent, or whatever else.
(also, giving everybody more time to work out honestly makes no sense if your intent is to address weight problems across the board when by far the biggest contributor is the sorts of food most people now eat. if you give people more time to work out, some people might benefit but it'll likely be hit and miss; if you tackle making the food most people eat better and cutting out most of the carbs and sugars and additives, you would probably immediately see results. it's categorically a food problem, not a people not exercising one.)
i haven't kept up with what our EBT situation is but last i checked, almost certainly less than $400/mo for three people (so <$133 per person). we lean very heavily on rice and nobody in my family...
Now, and I ask this genuinely, what kind of budget are you working with for food?
i haven't kept up with what our EBT situation is but last i checked, almost certainly less than $400/mo for three people (so <$133 per person). we lean very heavily on rice and nobody in my family eats three meals a day (generously, i snack, have something small for lunch, then take in most of my calories at dinner). if i have breakfast (which is quite a large if), it's usually leftovers from what we had the night before because that's literally the only way to make the arrangement we have work currently or, if i'm particularly lucky, some cereal that we might have from time to time.
With all due respect, that lifestyle - 12 hours work plus 2 hours at the gym plus an hour to get there and back which comes to 15 hours before you've had dinner, had any sleep, had any opportunity...
With all due respect, that lifestyle - 12 hours work plus 2 hours at the gym plus an hour to get there and back which comes to 15 hours before you've had dinner, had any sleep, had any opportunity to wind down a bit - sounds mentally unhealthy. I'm sure you're fit as a fiddle but that schedule will break you eventually.
People are absolutely not inherently lazy. If they were, our species would never have lasted. Modern living and society have made (some) people lazy.
There are plenty of nations that have no real problem with obesity and related illnesses. Oddly, with few exceptions, it's western nations that have health issues. Is fast food, Netflix, reliance on the car, fat acceptance/positivity a contributing factor? I'm no scientist, but I bet it is.
My observation through this entire sub-thread is that you argue that more free time won't help. But here you are saying yourself that cooking takes time. Look, not everyone is cut from the same...
My observation through this entire sub-thread is that you argue that more free time won't help. But here you are saying yourself that cooking takes time. Look, not everyone is cut from the same cloth. Other people's need for free time differs and I think you're on the side of the spectrum of people who don't need or are otherwise willing to sacrifice every last bit of it. I can tell you I wouldn't have the motivation to eat at all after 12h of work. With just very few hours to myself, I wouldn't be able to function. I think it's reasonable that some of the "laziness" of industrialized people is a result of overworking them. Work them less, give them more time, they might actually put it to more productive use than the little free time they have now. Viewing intellectual focus and willpower as finite resources makes intuitive sense to me, and if you deplete it at work you're not going to get an awful lot done afterwards.
Are you equating not wanting to take the time with what I described as lack of willpower? Because at face value your statement is a trivial truth that has nothing to do with what I just said....
Are you equating not wanting to take the time with what I described as lack of willpower? Because at face value your statement is a trivial truth that has nothing to do with what I just said. Otherwise I just think I explained to you how not having the willpower to do something might be caused by having too little time.
Man, I’m not saying we should actively shame anyone. But maybe fat people should feel shame. It seems to me that what some people are after is for everyone to pretend their size doesn’t affect...
Man, I’m not saying we should actively shame anyone. But maybe fat people should feel shame.
It seems to me that what some people are after is for everyone to pretend their size doesn’t affect anyone else. They shouldn’t have to buy two plane tickets. Every chair should be made stronger to support them. When they complain about feeling terrible all of the time, they don’t want to hear that losing weight will probably help. That’s actually a good example of what I said about Japan. If fat person complained about feeling sick and tired, their relatives would tell them to lose weight.
That’s the thing that bothers me. I don’t want to actively shame anyone, but if someone goes out and engages with me, the world, etc., their size isn’t insignificant and we shouldn’t have to pretend it doesn’t exist.
I somewhat share your sentiment, but I wouldn't personally prescribe weight loss to a stranger. I'd just bluntly tell them that their needs are more expensive or require something different than a...
I somewhat share your sentiment, but I wouldn't personally prescribe weight loss to a stranger. I'd just bluntly tell them that their needs are more expensive or require something different than a thin person requires. It's not my job to fix someone's life, but we shouldn't feel afraid to explain why someone needs to buy two plane tickets and how it's no one else's obligation to take a loss on their behalf.
This is what really stood out to me. If a doctor refuses to perform a blood transfusion on a patient with O- blood using blood from an AB+ family member, is it a blood type acceptance issue? This...
doctors won't do certain procedures on people, because their BMI is too high.... she frames it as a fat acceptance issue...
This is what really stood out to me. If a doctor refuses to perform a blood transfusion on a patient with O- blood using blood from an AB+ family member, is it a blood type acceptance issue?
This author sprinkles a few bits of wisdom in with a lot of potentially dangerous nonsense. Next we'll be seeing "tobacco acceptance" articles about how smokers shouldn't intentionally quit, it's societies fault if they get lung cancer.
I agree that there is unnecessary cruelty towards fat people. The subject of the article says that her parents threatened her with reduced employment opportunities because bosses want to promote attractive women. I'm sure this holds truth, but it's not something you should encourage your daughter to play into.
Granted, claiming that obesity is a non-consideration when it comes to health is flat-earther level insanity. People who are overweight shouldn't hate themselves for their size, but pressure to be healthy is a potentially healthy stress. You know you're lowering your life span, standard of living, increasing medical expenses, losing mobility, etc. Those are all good reasons to feel stress, because maybe that stress will motivate you to remove those problems.
It's as if people are claiming that showering is a part of the patriarchy. So they give up on higeine to stick it to the man. But there are good reasons that people shower.
Kinda have similar feelings about it. No need to be deliberately cruel, but no one should have to make any effort to make people feel normal, healthy, attractive, etc. It’s not any of those things. It’s not “internalized phatphobia”. It’s our brains telling us, “that person looks like they couldn’t run down a deer or outrun a lion, so they are useless to the tribe. They look like they might die during childbirth or die and leave me alone with a child. ” We don’t have to do any of those things anymore, but people are naturally attracted to health and fitness.
I feel like society needs to put some kind of pressure on people to keep people doing the right thing here. Maybe not go as far as them, but Japan does this successfully. They are very blunt when someone is getting heavier and as a result there are almost no fat people in Japan.
keep in mind that making fat people feel bad about their weight usually only makes the problem worse
I know, it's horribly paradoxical.
I think a lot of the difficulty is that people see it as an unfixable problem. That any acknowledgement of their weight is like telling someone they're short. It's not surprising, people dish out both of those judgements exactly the same. But recognizing that something is wrong is the first step to solving a problem.
I lost 60 pounds a few years ago and have done a decent job at keeping it off. All it took was an acknowledgement that I had been eating too much. I needed less than I took in. Granted, I had no addiction to food. It was just a combination of bad influence from my parents and coping with college stress. I'm still an anxious person but at least I'm healthier.
Encouraging unhealthy people to be healthy helps everyone. Unhealthy individuals increase healthcare costs for all of us, even in countries without single-payer healthcare.
Sure it is. But making them feel terrible about themselves is no way to go about it. As someone who is certainly overweight (about 110kg and doing something about it), I personally couldn't give any hoots if someone tried to fat shame me. However for someone much more sensitive about their weight, it's only going to make matters worse.
So absolutely encouragement is great, but shaming or embarrassing them is not.
I wasn't trying to encourage fat shaming, however one person in the article suggests overweight individuals should not try to intentionally lose weight. Doctors absolutely should be telling their overweight patients to lose weight.
I read this article, and I have to say I at least found it interesting. The author's point about trauma was something I hadn't really considered before. I'm not completely onboard with all of her points, but I do think it's interesting to view fatness from a disability lense and the issues of inclusivity it brings up.
The author notes that insurance companies won't insure people, and doctors won't do certain procedures on people, because their BMI is too high. While she frames it as a fat acceptance issue, I think she would benefit from doing some research. Speaking from an insurance perspective, actuaries have been paid a lot of money to figure out if it makes sense to insure fat people. I'm going to guess it's life insurance where that becomes an issue. They are only looking at cold hard facts, and they have determined the amount it would take in premiums to make it profitable is so high nobody would pay it unless they had serious serious issues. This is called adverse selection and it's a core principal of insurance that it should be avoided. Similarly, the medical procedures probably are not safe to perform on someone when you have to cut and maneuver through several inches of fat to get to the internal organs. Even getting a really heavy patient onto an operating table could probably cause issues.
Reading some of the comments here got me thinking. I don't think I'm fat right now, I've definitely been bigger but never beyond a 2X. For me, it's come in phases. Active kid, then got into video games and computers and got big. Discovered tennis was actually really fun in high school and got skinny. Graduated, and without a team to keep it interesting got lazy and bigger. In college, I figured out that paying for drugs and secondhand textbooks was more fun than eating right and got really skinny. Then I graduated and got a job with disposable income to eat out too much and got bigger. Most recently I realized at 32 it's time to get in shape or it's going to be a lot harder as I get older.
But you know, not one time ever did I get in better shape because someone was an asshole to me about the way I looked. I don't think it has that effect on anyone.
We live in a society where there is actually tremendous pressure to do things that will cause most people to gain weight. In a lot of small towns, fast food is your only option if you don't want to make dinner. For some people on lower budgets, it may be all they can manage, and for the money fast food is very calorie dense. These fast food companies abuse our physiology and psychology and create foods that appeal to a part of our brain that is not used to dealing with plenty. They use low cost, nutrient poor ingredients so it is hard to feel full or sated. They create opiates in our brain, which if you're a far person being shamed by everyone around you might be the best you feel all day. Entertainment companies abuse our psychology to keep our butts in seats and our eyes on their shows. Most places are not bicyclist or pedestrian friendly and so vehicle transportation is the only realistic option. School budgets have been cut to the bone and they do a terrible job for the most part in fostering a healthy lifestyle in gym classes. Our jobs are mostly sedentary these days. On and on it goes, a litany of forces that encourage unhealthy lifestyles.
Compare that to a country like Japan, @brotherhood4232. I don't know a ton about Japanese culture, but I imagine pedestrian and cycling options are better. Compare the nutrition of eating curry and rice or ramen or sushi to a cheeseburger or bucket of fried chicken. I believe Japanese schools require after-school activity like sports as well.
Why should we shame people for being overwhelmed by forces with vast resources that have spent decades learning how to exploit our psychology for their benefit?
I think you have it pretty much right. We don't need fat acceptance, we need to stand up against the design of our societies that strongly encourage behaviours that cause everyone to get fat. There is a saying in UX that goes something like "If one person gets it wrong, maybe they are just dumb. But if lots of people are getting it wrong then your design is probably wrong".
I think the solution is partially in discouraging low activity lifestyles like driving everywhere. The other big win I see is giving people more free time so after work they still have the energy to cook dinner and will be less likely to buy fast food just because they are too tired to cook their own food.
That's great you can get to the gym regularly despite your hectic schedule, but assuming just because you can do it despite the time constraints in your life is incredibly ignorant of all the other factors at play in people's lives that can prevent them from doing similar. If someone is clinically depressed, suffers from a general or social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia or a myriad of other serious mental and physical health issues, it's not just being "lazy" or lacking "commitment" that can prevent them from getting to the gym and/or otherwise making positive life changes.
You're right, it's not. The obesity epidemic is significantly more complicated than that, which your comment completely ignores and was the main point of mine. Those mental health issues I listed were just some examples of the factors at play, but there are plenty of others which can and do prevent people from following your incredibly reductive "solution" to obesity, such as poverty, lack of access to healthy food (e.g. living in a food desert), substandard health education, normative peer influences, etc.
And "with all due respect", I'm clearly not the only one who read your comment as not just applying to "otherwise healthy people", so calling my reply "disingenuous" for pointing out that particular fault with yours, itself feels rather disingenuous.
Fair enough, and perhaps I brought some of my own previous baggage into the mix when interpreting your comment. And rereading, it was the previous comment you replied to that mentioned "a solution" not your own. So for both I apologize.
That's a very simplistic way of looking at it. Surely you must realize people have different circumstances than you do?
Just taking you at your word you spend 15 hours between work and the gym. That leaves you one hour to do everything else required to live a normal life and get eight hours of sleep. Sleeping less than that regularly is bad for your health and mentally the equivalent of being drunk all the time, not exactly a great health outcome itself. So either you're exagerating, you have help, you're living an unhealthy lifestyle yourself, or you should quit your job and write books on time management.
From the sounds of your post it also sounds like you have no dependents and don’t have a significant other to spend time with, children who need to be raised, elderly family members who depend on you, etc. All of which uhh, take up a lot of time and energy and aren’t at all uncommon.
You grocery shop in 15 minutes? When do you do laundry? How long do you spend in the shower? What about when you need an oil change?
One circumstance we all share is that we evolved for a 16/8 circadian rhythm. Don't take it from me, look up sources on long term sleep deprivation. Even shaving that one hour off every night can have major consequences to your health like increasing your risk of a heart attack.
i mean congratulations, but extrapolating your ability as a singular person to do something to other people is kinda stupid, because in this case what you personally can do or have access to has almost no bearing on what someone else can do or has access to. weight issues are also a lot more complicated than being able to work out or not being able to work out; things like metabolism, access to food and healthcare, whether or not you're a single person or a family, etc. all play into outcomes like this--that's why this "IF I CAN DO IT ANYONE CAN" mentality is categorically not helpful. just as example of this, i can bike the equivalent of 8 miles in 30 minutes 4 days a week and i in fact do that not infrequently, but i won't and generally don't lose more than 15 pounds of weight doing that before flatlining because my family is poor and we literally can't afford to buy good, healthy food the majority of the time and even eating the food we do have in moderation only does so much.
Think back to the 70s when people were a lot skinnier. You can watch kids movies from back then and the obligatory 'fat kid' that gets bullied is barely hefty by today's standards. What changed? It's not like everyone was going to the gym back then either. What changed is people's diets. We live in a unique time in history where calorie dense, nutrient poor foods are extremely cheap and available.
You don't get to 6X by just not exercising, diet is a huge part of it. A lot of people aren't equipped with good habits from childhood, and food deserts are a thing.
the main problem isn't time for most people is the thing, although a lot of people would also struggle to find the time to do things because the reality is time is a luxury that many of us don't have. i, incidentally, have plenty of time: i don't have a job, i don't have school currently since it's summer, and i have minimal social priorities because my main occupation is volunteering. i can afford to sit here and literally work out for two hours if i theoretically wanted to. the mere state of having time doesn't mean anything though if nearly everything you eat is unhealthy because the nature of your socioeconomic status is such that you can only afford things that are loaded with sugars and sweeteners and fattening agents and god knows what else, or if you're someone who has no education on how to have balanced meals or moderation because educational literacy with food is basically nonexistent, or whatever else.
(also, giving everybody more time to work out honestly makes no sense if your intent is to address weight problems across the board when by far the biggest contributor is the sorts of food most people now eat. if you give people more time to work out, some people might benefit but it'll likely be hit and miss; if you tackle making the food most people eat better and cutting out most of the carbs and sugars and additives, you would probably immediately see results. it's categorically a food problem, not a people not exercising one.)
i haven't kept up with what our EBT situation is but last i checked, almost certainly less than $400/mo for three people (so <$133 per person). we lean very heavily on rice and nobody in my family eats three meals a day (generously, i snack, have something small for lunch, then take in most of my calories at dinner). if i have breakfast (which is quite a large if), it's usually leftovers from what we had the night before because that's literally the only way to make the arrangement we have work currently or, if i'm particularly lucky, some cereal that we might have from time to time.
With all due respect, that lifestyle - 12 hours work plus 2 hours at the gym plus an hour to get there and back which comes to 15 hours before you've had dinner, had any sleep, had any opportunity to wind down a bit - sounds mentally unhealthy. I'm sure you're fit as a fiddle but that schedule will break you eventually.
People are absolutely not inherently lazy. If they were, our species would never have lasted. Modern living and society have made (some) people lazy.
There are plenty of nations that have no real problem with obesity and related illnesses. Oddly, with few exceptions, it's western nations that have health issues. Is fast food, Netflix, reliance on the car, fat acceptance/positivity a contributing factor? I'm no scientist, but I bet it is.
My observation through this entire sub-thread is that you argue that more free time won't help. But here you are saying yourself that cooking takes time. Look, not everyone is cut from the same cloth. Other people's need for free time differs and I think you're on the side of the spectrum of people who don't need or are otherwise willing to sacrifice every last bit of it. I can tell you I wouldn't have the motivation to eat at all after 12h of work. With just very few hours to myself, I wouldn't be able to function. I think it's reasonable that some of the "laziness" of industrialized people is a result of overworking them. Work them less, give them more time, they might actually put it to more productive use than the little free time they have now. Viewing intellectual focus and willpower as finite resources makes intuitive sense to me, and if you deplete it at work you're not going to get an awful lot done afterwards.
Are you equating not wanting to take the time with what I described as lack of willpower? Because at face value your statement is a trivial truth that has nothing to do with what I just said. Otherwise I just think I explained to you how not having the willpower to do something might be caused by having too little time.
Man, I’m not saying we should actively shame anyone. But maybe fat people should feel shame.
It seems to me that what some people are after is for everyone to pretend their size doesn’t affect anyone else. They shouldn’t have to buy two plane tickets. Every chair should be made stronger to support them. When they complain about feeling terrible all of the time, they don’t want to hear that losing weight will probably help. That’s actually a good example of what I said about Japan. If fat person complained about feeling sick and tired, their relatives would tell them to lose weight.
That’s the thing that bothers me. I don’t want to actively shame anyone, but if someone goes out and engages with me, the world, etc., their size isn’t insignificant and we shouldn’t have to pretend it doesn’t exist.
I somewhat share your sentiment, but I wouldn't personally prescribe weight loss to a stranger. I'd just bluntly tell them that their needs are more expensive or require something different than a thin person requires. It's not my job to fix someone's life, but we shouldn't feel afraid to explain why someone needs to buy two plane tickets and how it's no one else's obligation to take a loss on their behalf.
This is what really stood out to me. If a doctor refuses to perform a blood transfusion on a patient with O- blood using blood from an AB+ family member, is it a blood type acceptance issue?
This author sprinkles a few bits of wisdom in with a lot of potentially dangerous nonsense. Next we'll be seeing "tobacco acceptance" articles about how smokers shouldn't intentionally quit, it's societies fault if they get lung cancer.
I stopped reading at this point.
Uhhhh. We making fun of this or what? Feels like an article that would be posted in fatlogic on Reddit.
Is that for us to tell you? If you get something from this then great. If you don't, well then you don't. Others may.