Fat Acceptance

[Kaylee]

Benefical to health, not to ADM profits.

Yep. They don't appear to have that many competitors which probably doesn't help.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/co?s=ADM+Competitors

 

[sadhatter]

Having people in my own life who try desperately to keep to a healthy weight (and cannot do so due to medical conditions and/or medications) I feel that the universal "just eat less and exercise more you slob" is quite rude. I find it especially rude when such comments come from a person who I can tell (from their lack of muscle tone) is only thin due to a fluke of metabolism.

Even at my thinnest and healthiest, when I was walking miles every day and eating very little, I still looked big. It upset me to no end that even with all that effort I simply went from a size 18 to a size 14 and stayed there. Some people can sit on the couch all day eating Cheetos and look like a walking skeleton, some can exercise and eat right for years and still look like something out of a Rubens painting. I became a much happier person when I just accepted that and started working on feeling good (and having muscle tone) rather than looking good.

Whenever i hear someone say "eat very little" i always ask for a quantification. "very little" is 90% of the time not "very little" at all. It may seem like very little, compared to what one is used to, but that has little if nothing to do with taking in an amount of calories that is less than what you are burning off.

 

[Comrade Raptor]

This ^

I don't mind if other people choose to be fat, that's up to them. I'm a smoker and I don't expect people to pick on me for my habit, so why should I pick on fat people?

In the UK, taxpayers pay for the surge in obesity and obesity-related illnesses through the state-funded healthcare system. Tobacco is taxed to pay for the cost of treated smoking related illnesses, what about the clincally obese? I'm not advocating taxing high fat and sugary foods, for this would penalise normal weight people who enjoy the odd treat, just as much as the obese, but at what point do people who have brought their ill-health upon themselves be made to pay the cost of their health care?

Tricky dilemma.

I'd be happy if it was just Rob Reiner who had to pay 60% taxes on food, was banned from eating in a public place, and who was ridiculed, persecuted, and socially shamed into a soy and lentil diet.

This would please and entertain me.

 

[sadhatter]

I have not read much about that movement, but to me it means accepting the state of being overweight or obese as an acceptable norm.

I'm not in favor of that because to me that means the same thing as us, as an entire society, throwing our hands up in the air and giving up on this perplexing problem that has only occurred on a massive scale fairly recently (1980s or so).


Even though I'm in the process of losing weight, again, for the 6th time since my late 20s -- I don't think we should give up figuring this out.

I'm not ready to give up yet at any rate.

And before anyone posts with a comment along the lines of:

"Move more, eat less"
"A calorie is a calorie -- you must burn off more than you consume"

My response is yes, of course, that is true, but IMHO it's more complicated than that.

Personally, I have finally understood that I only get good results when the majority of what I eat is "whole foods" with high fiber and little to no added processed sugar. We are biochemical machines and eating sets off a cascade of biological reactions that is affected by not only how much we eat but also by what we eat.

This is a pattern of logic in regards to losing weight that irks me.

You say yourself that you have trouble losing and keeping off weight. This is common, happened to me, happens to most folks.

What that should be telling you is that whatever you are doing, especially what you think works , is not, throw it out the window, get rid of it, don't look back.

Your essentially trying to cram the square peg into the round hole here, but because the square peg is what you would rather use, you are making excuses as to why it is not going into the round hole.

We weigh too much ( with very limited exception.) because we eat too much. Then a lot of us try to eat the same amount of food but "healthy" food, and still wonder why in the world we weigh so much. It is simple, our bodies don't need to consume the amount of food we want to, we don't need to eat every time we get a hunger pang ( again with rare medical exceptions.), and whether this is uncooked almonds, or a candy bar, the fact remains we are tossing more fuel onto the fire when it doesn't need it.

The biggest problem is folks think that they need to shave a bit off their diet, i know i did, but the stark reality is we need to severely reduce the intake of food. Skipping that midnight snack isn't going to do it, having a light lunch isn't going to do it, one needs to completely rethink their relationship with food.

I have just about the slowest metabolism out there, i eat like a bird, and if i don't, i gain weight at an epic rate. It took a lot of self convincing that even though it isn't fair i can't eat what others can, if i want to be thin, i have to do it. Life isn't fair, and dieting certainly is not fair, but if you want to lose the weight you have to give up on this concept of the "Perfect diet" in which your never hungry, and can eat at your own pace. If we throw out all the harmful fad diets, a good rule of thumb is that the less you enjoy the diet the better it is going to work.

 

[sadhatter]

Yes, I've heard it a great deal. Often from little slips of women, hardly more than girls, with skinny stick arms and next to no muscle on them. Occasionally from people who don't do this themselves, do not seem to understand that they have won the metabolism lottery and should stop gloating at the rest of us.

Actually, I have never been insulted when the person who says this to me has obviously followed this advice themselves. When someone with nice muscle tone and possibly the little bit of extra skin at their neck that indicates massive weight loss says something like that you do well to listen. Then again, people who have actually followed that advice usually have more to say than just empty platitudes.

The reason you don't hear much from folks like myself, ( 10 years later my stretch marks are still highly visible, and in amounts that let me compare with female friends who have undergone pregnancy, though obviously in different areas.) is because its the "bad news" of dieting. It'd be like if there was a cure for cancer , the catch was, it was to cut off your left hand. Maybe i am willing to go through the **** of doing that, but the chance that whomever your talking to is of a similar mind is, in my experience, very slim. Usually it results in reams of pseudoscience about how if someone doesn't eat ever X hours they gain weight (People in starving parts of the world should be friggen massive, but that is another thread.) , and about how you are just a winner in the metabolism lottery.

Personally the most specific advice i can give is become a masochist in regards to food, those hunger pangs are fat leaving the body ( obviously not literally, i am speaking in a metaphorical sense.), and to be looked forward to, not dreaded. Really, it is almost like a martial art, it is conditioning yourself to react in a specific way to stimuli that normally would have you acting in the exact opposite manner. It takes mental fortitude, but it can be done, and if i can do it, with a level of willpower somewhere slightly below Golum ( so says the new knife, that i definitely didn't have the money to buy.), and a metabolism that makes sloths giggle, so can anyone.

 

[Shalamar]

If it's possible to get them into a seat with more legroom and some nice person is willing to switch, then they should be accommodated to a reasonable extent. They should try to book their seats early or get to the gate early to avoid this if at all possible. If you're too big widthwise to fit into a standard seat though, then you should pay for business class or buy two seats.

That is what I do. I'm pretty tall (6'6") and I do NOT fit in coach class seats in most airplanes. I also cannot afford first class or business class seats.

What I do is try to check in online as soon as I can, and see if the airline offers exit-row or bulkhead seating for a small extra fee. And then I take it. On the day of my flight, I arrive at the airport early and beg/plead my case to try for extra seating. It doesn't always work, but I do what *I* can to ensure I'm comfortable. I don't expect the airline to accommodate me because I'm tall.

 

[23_Tauri]

A tax might be a good idea if it was levied at an amount that would not make the odd treat an unaffordable luxery even for the poor.

What I personally find annoying is how in the US many healthy foods cost more than their unhealthier counterparts. For example I can get 20 pounds of white rice for $5.00 but only about 3 lbs of brown rice for the same amount of money. I can buy a huge loaf of white bread loaded with corn syrup for 99 cents, but have to pay over $3.00 for a smaller loaf of 100% whole grain bread. Perhaps the difference is not that much money for an individual, but it can be more significant for a family that is struggling paycheck to paycheck. It would be nice to see that price differential between healthy and unhealthy foods disappear, or at least get much smaller.

I also think it would be good to see processed foods with added processed sugar stripped of its fiber sold in separate stores much like alcohol is only sold in liquor stores in most states in the US. Not going to happen, but I think that such a policy would be beneficial over the long run.

Ideologically I veer towards less state intervention in the private realm, not more, so I'm in a bit of a dilemma about this. I'm a smoker (see the edit I made to my post above, which I made having reflected on the idea of 'normalisation' of certain behaviours) and I don't take kindly to the state meddling the choices I make about what to put in my body. The state's job is to look after the public realm, what I do in the private sphere is my business.

That said, I confess I'm a bit fattist and don't find fat people attractive, but I hate health zealots (especially ones in government and prohibitionist pressure groups) more than anything. I support people having autonomy over what they do in their private life as long as it doesn't start impacting on others. So, if I smoke, I believe that there should be private smokers only clubs where I can go and smoke away from non-smokers. If people want to enjoy food and be a bit chubby then good on them for not being brow beaten by health nazis.

But, there's being a bit on the chubby side and there's being dangerous obese. It's the latter that we're seeing more of these days and that's a social problem that is costing us dear. I don't mind paying tax on tobacco, to cover costs to the NHS. Any more than that is taking the mick. IIRC, taxing high sugar and high fat foods is something they're trying in the Netherlands but personally I don't think it's the answer. I think we need to look more at why some people get so out of control that they become morbidly obese and tackle the problem from that end. The problem is with the person, not the sticky cake.

Coming on to the point you raise, Kaylee, about the discrepancy in price between processed and non-processed foods, I'm guessing this is due to the processing add cheaper ingredients: sugar, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable fat, to bulk out foodstuffs, therefore making them go further, and give them longer shelf life. 'Healthy' foods tend to have a shorter shelf life and are therefore more expensive. The white loaf in your example may have preservatives added to stop the bread going stale, and sugar to make the dough go further (please someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a baker or a chemist), whilst the wholemeal loaf is probably free of preservatives, hence the dearer price tag.

 

[Marduk]

I don't expect the airline to accommodate me because I'm tall.

so you allow them to discriminate against you because of your height, if youre paying for an airline ticket youve got a right to be comfortable, there are severe health repercussions for being cramped. If you're over 40 youre in a high risk category for DVT automatically and the airline has a duty of care to all its passengers.

it might benefit you to write to the airlines customer services long in advance and state your case. Doing anything on the day of the flight is too last minute to expect success.

 

[Kaylee]

<snip>

What that should be telling you is that whatever you are doing, especially what you think works , is not, throw it out the window, get rid of it, don't look back.

<snip>

I completely agree with this. Regrettably I have the tendency to fail at some of what would seem to be the basic stuff in life, such as maintaining an ideal weight. Luckily, I also have the tendency to not give up and to slightly alter whatever it is I'm doing with each new attempt. Hopefully that will eventually get me better results.

Each time I've lost weight, I've learned a few things about nutrition. Hopefully this time around I've learned enough to be able to keep continuing to lose the weight and to be able to keep it off.

My latest lesson learned is that I really do not tolerate added processed sugar without fiber well at all. The idea that it's OK to have sweets every once in a while such as on special occasions invariably causes me to regain any weight that I've lost plus more. It's sort of like telling an alcoholic that once he's got his drinking problem under control, it will be OK to join others in a drink or two on special occasions. That usually doesn't work for many alcoholics, and trying to enjoy sweets and refined grains in a reasonable fashion doesn't work for me.

To the extent that I can, I've quit it cold turkey. Snacks these days consist of fruits, vegetables, hummus and nuts. I only use whole grains. I do use sugar but very minimally. For example, I did make cornbread the other week but I found a recipe that only needed 1 tablespoon of sugar for the entire batch. I also used corn meal that wasn't degerminated and whole (vs. white) wheat flour. Despite including what many would think would be an off limit food in my menus that week, I still lost 2 lbs which is my weekly goal. (I've lost 18 lbs since Christmas.)

Since cutting the added sugars and low fiber foods I find that I'm often not hungry which usually hasn't been the case for a long time. I still sometimes get hunger pangs at night -- but its bearable, not like before. It also eventually passes, also not like before.

I figure we are all different and each have our own Achilles' heel. Refined sugar and grains are mine -- but I've, knock on wood, never had a problem with alcohol, cigarettes or drugs. Or with potato chips or cheese other common pitfalls. Everyone's mileage varies.

Your essentially trying to cram the square peg into the round hole here, but because the square peg is what you would rather use, you are making excuses as to why it is not going into the round hole.

We weigh too much ( with very limited exception.) because we eat too much. Then a lot of us try to eat the same amount of food but "healthy" food, and still wonder why in the world we weigh so much. It is simple, our bodies don't need to consume the amount of food we want to, we don't need to eat every time we get a hunger pang ( again with rare medical exceptions.), and whether this is uncooked almonds, or a candy bar, the fact remains we are tossing more fuel onto the fire when it doesn't need it.

The biggest problem is folks think that they need to shave a bit off their diet, i know i did, but the stark reality is we need to severely reduce the intake of food. Skipping that midnight snack isn't going to do it, having a light lunch isn't going to do it, one needs to completely rethink their relationship with food.

I've known how to count calories for quite a long time, but ignoring a raging intense hunger requires a super human effort that I simply cannot maintain over a long period of time. Hence the weight gain.

Quitting sugar and refined grains to almost zilch gave me the gift of no longer having a raging out of control appetite. Losing weight is much simpler for me when I'm no longer constantly hungry.

So that was my problem and that was my solution. Hopefully anyway. If I actually succeed in completing my weight loss (again) and keeping it off for a few years than I'll know that I was right.

I'll report back to you all in 2015.

I have just about the slowest metabolism out there, i eat like a bird, and if i don't, i gain weight at an epic rate. It took a lot of self convincing that even though it isn't fair i can't eat what others can, if i want to be thin, i have to do it. Life isn't fair, and dieting certainly is not fair, but if you want to lose the weight you have to give up on this concept of the "Perfect diet" in which your never hungry, and can eat at your own pace. If we throw out all the harmful fad diets, a good rule of thumb is that the less you enjoy the diet the better it is going to work.

I'm glad that you figured out what worked for you but it does sound difficult. I wish that it was easier for you, but I'm glad that you are succeeding anyway.

 

[Kaylee]

Ideologically I veer towards less state intervention in the private realm, not more, so I'm in a bit of a dilemma about this. I'm a smoker (see the edit I made to my post above, which I made having reflected on the idea of 'normalisation' of certain behaviours) and I don't take kindly to the state meddling the choices I make about what to put in my body. The state's job is to look after the public realm, what I do in the private sphere is my business.

That said, I confess I'm a bit fattist and don't find fat people attractive, but I hate health zealots (especially ones in government and prohibitionist pressure groups) more than anything. I support people having autonomy over what they do in their private life as long as it doesn't start impacting on others. So, if I smoke, I believe that there should be private smokers only clubs where I can go and smoke away from non-smokers. If people want to enjoy food and be a bit chubby then good on them for not being brow beaten by health nazis.

But, there's being a bit on the chubby side and there's being dangerous obese. It's the latter that we're seeing more of these days and that's a social problem that is costing us dear. I don't mind paying tax on tobacco, to cover costs to the NHS. Any more than that is taking the mick. IIRC, taxing high sugar and high fat foods is something they're trying in the Netherlands but personally I don't think it's the answer. I think we need to look more at why some people get so out of control that they become morbidly obese and tackle the problem from that end. The problem is with the person, not the sticky cake.

I prefer less vs. more laws and regulations also but I think this area is an exception. A lot of what food ends up in our stores has to do with price supports which must involve laws and regulations. So since they already exist, why not shape the regulations to benefit the majority? I don't think we want to eliminate regulations in this area entirely because that would probably cause a situation where we would once again have [more] starving people. That seems to be a problem that we, as a country, have somehow managed to ease. But can't we regulate our food supply along with price supports in a way that deals with the relatively new obesity problem?

Coming on to the point you raise, Kaylee, about the discrepancy in price between processed and non-processed foods, I'm guessing this is due to the processing add cheaper ingredients: sugar, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable fat, to bulk out foodstuffs, therefore making them go further, and give them longer shelf life. 'Healthy' foods tend to have a shorter shelf life and are therefore more expensive. The white loaf in your example may have preservatives added to stop the bread going stale, and sugar to make the dough go further (please someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a baker or a chemist), whilst the wholemeal loaf is probably free of preservatives, hence the dearer price tag.

I think that is part of the reason but not the entire reason. I recall reading that we have a lot of corn and corn derivatives in our food supply because of govt subsidiaries. Well, if corn isn't that healthy for us -- why not subsidize something else? Like quinoa for example? Or perhaps we don't need corn subsidies anymore since the farming industry no longer consists of mostly family farms.

I think sometimes opportunism governs prices. Chia seeds is suppose to be quite healthy and in my neighborhood goes for $7.99 a pound. But I recall chia pets being sold very cheaply back in the 1960s or 1970s as a gag gift, apparently before we knew about its health benefits.

 

[23_Tauri]

We weigh too much ( with very limited exception.) because we eat too much. Then a lot of us try to eat the same amount of food but "healthy" food, and still wonder why in the world we weigh so much. It is simple, our bodies don't need to consume the amount of food we want to, we don't need to eat every time we get a hunger pang ( again with rare medical exceptions.), and whether this is uncooked almonds, or a candy bar, the fact remains we are tossing more fuel onto the fire when it doesn't need it.

The biggest problem is folks think that they need to shave a bit off their diet, i know i did, but the stark reality is we need to severely reduce the intake of food. Skipping that midnight snack isn't going to do it, having a light lunch isn't going to do it, one needs to completely rethink their relationship with food.

This is so well said.

In the last 50 years in the West we've entered a period in history which is unprecedented: we have an abundance of easily obtainable calories. Before this, there was one food problem and one food problem only: that unless you were the rich minority we couldn't get enough to eat.

What has happened now is that we've got used to eating huge quantities because we are in the very fortunate position of not starving any more. Most people have no idea how little they actually need to eat to survive and be healthy. As a result many people have become obsessed with what they eat and how they eat it, when in reality what most of us need to do is simply eat less. A lot less, and consistently less over a protracted period of time. Not, as Sadhatter correctly points out, substituting the full fat milk for semi-skimmed or missing out the mid-afternoon snack.

 

[23_Tauri]

I prefer less vs. more laws and regulations also but I think this area is an exception. A lot of what food ends up in our stores has to do with price supports which must involve laws and regulations. So since they already exist, why not shape the regulations to benefit the majority? I don't think we want to eliminate regulations in this area entirely because that would probably cause a situation where we would once again have [more] starving people. That seems to be a problem that we, as a country, have somehow managed to ease. But can't we regulate our food supply along with price supports in a way that deals with the relatively new obesity problem?

Yes, we've overcome the big problems in history of malnutrition and starvation, and that is something that collectively we should be proud of. Now we have a situation where obesity is associated with poverty, whilst in the past it was the rich, if anyone, who were fat. And then only a small minority of the rich. Gout-ridden kings spring to mind.

I don't think raising the price of sugary and fatty foods by a few cents/pence is going to change the behaviour of the socially disadvantaged who make poor food choices. It's the same with alcohol. Raising the price of alcohol doesn't stop poor people drinking, it just means they spend more money on alcohol.

The food industry is dominated by big, powerful players who know how to sell cheaply produced junk food at inflated prices. Can you see your government taking on someone like Nestle? I can't see that happening.

I think that is part of the reason but not the entire reason. I recall reading that we have a lot of corn and corn derivatives in our food supply because of govt subsidiaries. Well, if corn isn't that healthy for us -- why not subsidize something else? Like quinoa for example? Or perhaps we don't need corn subsidies anymore since the farming industry no longer consists of mostly family farms.

Vested interests. But substituting one carbohydrate staple for another isn't going to make people eat less. They'll just eat too much quinoa and smother it in butter. The bottom line is that in a world where we have abundant cheap food and cars to drive around in people like to satisfy their once-useful evolutionary drive to seek out food, but over and over again.

I don't pretend to have the answers. Here in the UK there's a bit of drive by government to intervene in child obesity: weighing kids in schools and writing officious letters to parents if their child's BMI is too high, that sort of thing. I don't like this, it's nanny state. I'd rather see a change in attitudes come from individuals, which going back to the OP would require less fat acceptance, not more. If it was socially unacceptable to have fat kids, then you wouldn't let your kids get fat, period.

I think sometimes opportunism governs prices. Chia seeds is suppose to be quite healthy and in my neighborhood goes for $7.99 a pound. But I recall chia pets being sold very cheaply back in the 1960s or 1970s as a gag gift, apparently before we knew about its health benefits.

I don't know what chia is, I'm afraid.

 

[SezMe]

I don't know what chia is, I'm afraid.

Kinda like pet rocks.

 

[Jeff Corey]

With other medical disorders, we don't judge people for having them or kibbutz on their treatment..

A kibbutz is an Israeli collective community. I think you mean kibbitz.

 

[AvalonXQ]

A kibbutz is an Israeli collective community. I think you mean kibbitz.

Good call; my bad. I did mean "kibitz" rather than "kibbutz", which it appears are actually entirely etymologically distinct despite being so close together.

 

[Kaylee]

Yes, we've overcome the big problems in history of malnutrition and starvation, and that is something that collectively we should be proud of.

I agree.

Now we have a situation where obesity is associated with poverty, whilst in the past it was the rich, if anyone, who were fat. And then only a small minority of the rich. Gout-ridden kings spring to mind.

I don't think raising the price of sugary and fatty foods by a few cents/pence is going to change the behaviour of the socially disadvantaged who make poor food choices. It's the same with alcohol. Raising the price of alcohol doesn't stop poor people drinking, it just means they spend more money on alcohol.

The food industry is dominated by big, powerful players who know how to sell cheaply produced junk food at inflated prices. Can you see your government taking on someone like Nestle? I can't see that happening.


Vested interests. But substituting one carbohydrate staple for another isn't going to make people eat less. They'll just eat too much quinoa and smother it in butter. The bottom line is that in a world where we have abundant cheap food and cars to drive around in people like to satisfy their once-useful evolutionary drive to seek out food, but over and over again.

I don't pretend to have the answers. Here in the UK there's a bit of drive by government to intervene in child obesity: weighing kids in schools and writing officious letters to parents if their child's BMI is too high, that sort of thing. I don't like this, it's nanny state. I'd rather see a change in attitudes come from individuals, which going back to the OP would require less fat acceptance, not more. If it was socially unacceptable to have fat kids, then you wouldn't let your kids get fat, period.

You raise good points and I don't have the answers either unfortunately. I wish I did.

But I'll throw a few more comments out anyway and then I'm going to call it a night.

I agree with you that people, most people anyway, enjoy eating and that it's governed by a strong biological drive. However, that is not the only thing we want. As one of my friends put it -- most people want to look "hot." This may sound silly but there is no denying that many people spend tons of money on clothes, makeup, sexy cars, etc.

Also, it wasn't so long ago that overweight people, especially the obese, were shunned, at least by Americans. They were one of the few groups that was still considered OK to be prejudiced against and make fun of until fairly recently by the majority. I recall very obese people in public being gawked at openly even in New York City during the 1980s. I remember as a child Johnny Carson making fun of them on the Tonight Show. (1960s and 1970s)

So, as my friend said, it doesn't make sense that we rapidly developed this huge weight problem that in America at least is shared by many demographics -- not just the poor.

This change defies a historically strongly ingrained prejudice against the overweight and conflicts with most people's very strong desires to be respected, admired and sexually attractive -- and it occurred fairly quickly -- within the past 35 years. What happened?

I think part of it is that most people, including even people in the health fields, have simply not acknowledged the effects of refined sugar and grains on many people. The human body does react differently to those type of foods than to foods made with whole grains that don't include large amounts of added processed sugar without fiber.

The mayor of NYC has spearheaded a campaign against obesity and it appears to be working. Obesity among NYC school age children has dropped over the past 5 years per federal health officials reports. I would attribute the success to advertising. NYC sponsored some commercials that were stomach turning and visually gripping; IIRC they went viral on youtube and the city also placed a lot of print ads on the mass transit buses and subways. Here's an example:

Man drinking fat out of a soda can

In the US, if education won't work, good old fashion Madison Ave ads generally do. Since it looks like we will eventually join the civilized world and also get national health insurance I expect to see more ads of this nature in the future as less overweight people will save the govt money. IMHO, govt sponsored ads against cigarette smoking eventually cut back on the percentage of the population that smoked, albeit it took years and worked most sucessfully with children before they picked up the habit.

I don't know what chia is, I'm afraid.

Another "super food" from South America.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/81835-chia-seed-nutrition/

Here's an example of the Chia "pets" that use to be sold as gag gifts, IIRC, during the 1960s and 70s:

http://www.google.com/search?q=chia...urce=og&sa=N&tab=fi&ei=UdxCT5bkI6XV0QHNh_32Ag

ETA: I see SezMe beat me to it, and with a much shorter post too!

 

[epepke]

So the next time you feel like bashing a fattie and congratulating yourself on your only achievement in life being remaining a certain size - ask yourself this: if there was enough evidence that the healthiest weight category is that one or two pips above mine - would I then go out of my way to gain and retain the "missing" fat for the sake of my health, despite what problems that would cause in my daily life and how hard I would have to work to maintain that? (If you have a quick metabolism for example, you might have to plan your entire day around eating so you don't miss important calories. You would also have to keep eating even after you are stuffed, to keep this up.)

Well, would you?

Frankly, yes.

A lot of people do this. I'm doing it now, because a few months ago my weight got too low due to a pancreatic cyst that was closing off my stomach. I was starving to death, and I'm trying to get my weight back up to what is normal to me (which, incidentally, is probably higher than my BMI would indicate, because I have a large skeleton.) I also did it when I was trying to bulk up, which I'll probably do again.

It does take a lot of work. Meals alone are not sufficient. Many people who do this spend a lot of money on powders. You'll see them in these huge plastic containers at GNC and other places, which are typically only about 1/3 full of powder, wasting packaging. Smarter people make their own out of powdered milk (which is pretty easy to find) and powdered egg (which isn't so easy to find). It does require planning one's whole day around eating. But yes, people do it, and I do it.

I also have diabetes due to the pancreatic damage (anothring thing that many fat people will have to deal with, whether they like it or not). I've recently switched from Glyburide/Metformin to injectable insulin, which makes it easier for me to control my blood sugar. Yes, that requires a great deal of planning. I have to make sure that I have enough insulin, that I keep it cold even when traveling, and I have to stick needles into myself, which isn't particularly pleasant. But those are things that I have to do.

I've also been in position of lowering my body weight and getting rid of unwanted fat, so I know about that as well.

As far as fat-bashing goes, it seems to be based on a particular model of psychology, to wit:

If you shame people over a behavior, they will stop it.

I haven't seen the slightest evidence that this works, at least with adults in the long term. Furthermore, when I lost my weight, I found that the only way to get my brain to do it was to accept myself as I was and focus on achieving a goal based on my own will. Feeling shame made me less, not more likely to do what I wanted to do. I've found this to be true with everything I wanted to change about myself, including overcoming my shyness.

That having been said, I'm not sure of the usefulness of the fat acceptance movement. It is something that I remember from the 1990s. Now it seems a bit anachronistic, like "second wave" feminism, but these things sometimes come back. Such movements can get out of hand very quickly and easily.

AvalonXQ referred to cochlear implants. Perhaps he is not old enough to remember the deaf acceptance movement in the 1980s, which specifically opposed cochlear implants on the grounds that deaf culture was superior to hearing culture and that cochlear implants deprived deaf people of their superiority. There were even demands that hearing people turn over their deaf children to deaf people to raise. Fortunately, this insanity only lasted a few years after Children of a Lesser God.

There's a very fine line between a demand for acceptance and a demand that others not be accepted. Those who feel that they are oppressed turn out to be rather eager to oppress others. It's the Robespierre lesson over and over again.

 

[Stomatopoda]

I don't "bash" people for being fat, or for... well, anything else, unless they've wronged me personally. The "acceptance" movement bothers me, though. The really irksome part is how many overweight people act like it's something beyond their control and band together as "The Overweight" and crying discrimination. I support fat tolerance, but not fat acceptance.

I had a friend in middle school with a real thyroid (I think, can't remember exactly what it was called) disorder who legitimately could not lose weight, and had to work very hard just to minimize gains. He was probably around 300lbs at the time, and one of the nicest kids you'd ever meet. He likely won't live past middle-age. When I hear perfectly normal overweight people complaining about their "metabolic issues" I usually have to walk away to avoid lashing out at them. I have yet to meet a second person with a legitimate medical excuse (self-inflicted diabetes does not count) for being fat.

Types of food can make a difference, but eating 3000 calories of whole wheat and other "healthy" rabbit food, then sitting at a desk all day and driving home, is still going to make you fat. I'd certainly support ending corn subsidies, though, because cane sugar tastes better than HFCS.

Also, I notice a lot of "fat acceptance" types take pride in verbally abusing petite women. "You're not a real woman; you're a little girl", "anorexic skank", etc, and the abuse often extends to their significant others. It is absolutely pathetic and even more disgusting than the fat itself. Maybe it's less common outside the Midwest.

 

[23_Tauri]

As pointed out by SezMe the generally accepted study that checked morbidity showed that the only categories that had any increased morbidity was underweight (by post 1998 bmi charts) and the morbidly obese (by same chart) - i.e those too obese to move themselves. The underweight were slightly worse off, then the morbidly obese followed by the normal weight group. The "somewhat overweight" and the "overweight" groups had the best survival but generally the differences were pretty small and it is hard to say that any particular weight in the span that was neither underweight nor morbidly obese is healthier. Please note that this study used post 1998 bmi cutoffs as measurement. BMI is of itself only useful on population level and the decision to move overweight from pre 1998 bmi 26 to post 1998 bmi 24.9 made millions overweight over night was made for no really good reason. - When people start going on about health around fat people they almost never bother to actually check their facts.

Hmmm.... I would take this study with pinch of salt. Research on longevity indicates that long term caloric restriction is the key to long life, not being "somewhat overweight" or "overweight". Is this study looking at correlation, rather than causation? Maybe that's why the results are at odds with what research has told us.

Google search on scholarly articles on caloric restriction

Toward a unified theory of caloric restriction and longevity regulation

Abstract

The diet known as calorie restriction (CR) is the most reproducible way to extend the lifespan of mammals. Many of the early hypotheses to explain this effect were based on it being a passive alteration in metabolism. Yet, recent data from yeast, worms, flies, and mammals support the idea that CR is not simply a passive effect but an active, highly conserved stress response that evolved early in life's history to increase an organism's chance of surviving adversity.

 

[Scopedog]

Like others have said, it's extremely rare to have a condition that causes you to gain substantial weight or prevents you from losing substantial weight. I know this is kind of off topic to my own thread but along with the other great advice offered by others, my advice for those who want to lose weight (or change any bad habit, such as smoking) is this:

More than likely you are not special at all and are exactly the same as everybody else that has successfully overcome their problem (winners). What have they got that you haven't got? You're also exactly the same as everybody who makes excuses and complains and never does anything about their problem and your excuses and complaints are exactly the same as theirs, too (losers). Which group would you rather be like? Whats the worst that can happen if you try to be like the winners?

Additionally:

If you have a problem and you're not doing anything about it, you have no right to complain. If you are doing something about it, there is no need to complain.

Up until I was 20 I was obese and got up to over 280 pounds at 5'8". Somehow I got in my own head with advice such as the above and a year later I weighed 180. 11 years later I weigh less than 170 and am in the best physical health I've ever been. It seems to be more of a struggle as I age but no more of a struggle than anything else worthwhile in my life.