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Fat Acceptance

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.
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How many kids have the money to buy excessive amounts of food, let alone a car to drive themselves to the store, or the credit card to eat at buffets?

Parents don't 'let' their kids get fat, they create the environment that causes it.

As far as the government getting involved, they should be in the cases where the kid is overfed to the point of being 300 pounds at age 8, or 500 at age 13.
 
23_Tauri said:
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
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Which would support not accepting normal weight people as well, as they don't benefit from the caloric deprivation longevity effect either.
 
I still find it quite interesting, telling somebody "god, you are so fat" is the greatest insult but saying "god, you are so skinny" is quite acceptable. Although both types of people are as likely to be insulted or have body acceptance problems. Maybe some "normally weighted" atheists would be the only one equally insulted, but that's a different story....
 
crimresearch said:
They don't benefit as much.
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No, read the links. They don't benefit at all. The effect is only observed in creatures under deprivation, although it hasn't been well researched yet in humans. It's evidenced by testing mostly on small mammals so saying that it applies to only under-normal weight humans is speculation to some degree, the same degree that it's speculation that it applies at all.

It's also important to note that longevity isn't the only effect of that diet, and longevity isn't the only health metric.

I'll have to find the article I recently read, but it supported that at least in men, those who are over weight but exercise have better health outcomes than those under or normal weight but don't.
 
Conclusions Our findings suggest that 2 biomarkers of longevity (fasting insulin level and body temperature) are decreased by prolonged calorie restriction in humans and support the theory that metabolic rate is reduced beyond the level expected from reduced metabolic body mass. Studies of longer duration are required to determine if calorie restriction attenuates the aging process in humans.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/295/13/1539.short

Yes, it is speculative, but not all the research supports the 'no effect' idea.
 
crimresearch said:
Conclusions Our findings suggest that 2 biomarkers of longevity (fasting insulin level and body temperature) are decreased by prolonged calorie restriction in humans and support the theory that metabolic rate is reduced beyond the level expected from reduced metabolic body mass. Studies of longer duration are required to determine if calorie restriction attenuates the aging process in humans.http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/295/13/1539.short

Yes, it is speculative, but not all the research supports the 'no effect' idea.
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Highlighting mine. Normal weight shows no effect in the actual study, and under weight only had markers for longevity.

Note, I didn't say 'no effect' but 'no effect for normal weight. '
 
sadhatter said:
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.
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You are exactly the sort of people I tend to listen to when it comes to dieting. You've been there, you don't assume that it is easy or pretend that it is fun. Most importantly, you don't talk down to those who have not worked up to your level. You remember how hard it was for you and you have useful advice for those going through the same rough patch.

I find it strange that people understand this with drugs and alcohol but not really with weight problems. A recovering alcoholic does not want to hear the opinion of someone who has never drunk in their life. They want to hear from someone who has been in the same hole as them and can show them the way out.
 
I don't understand what the fat community at large is so weighed down over. They have their own branch of medicine, and special stretchers for being loaded into an ambulance.

Look, I'm not talking about "could probably stand to take the stairs once in a while" or "portly" or even "corpulent." When you cross over into bariatric territory, you are a drain on everything around you: your own internal organs and musculoskeletal frame for starters, and then there's the community around you.

For example: When a bariatric person in the 450 lb+ range goes down, and they will: They will require additional resources from emergency services to transport them to the hospital. Too often in practice, this means taking an entire fire company out of service, sometimes two if the patient's big enough. That can mean two dozen fire fighters that aren't able to respond to structure fires, auto accidents. Talk to any firefighter you know and odds are they've got a story about transporting an extremely large patient.
 
Kaylee said:
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.
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Indeed they do. But as Kate Moss once said:

"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels".

So that's really shallow, right? But next time you reach for the refridgerator door, say that to yourself. I can promise you, it works. ;)
 
Weak Kitten said:
You are exactly the sort of people I tend to listen to when it comes to dieting. You've been there, you don't assume that it is easy or pretend that it is fun. Most importantly, you don't talk down to those who have not worked up to your level. You remember how hard it was for you and you have useful advice for those going through the same rough patch.
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But what if it is easy? Listening to people who did it "the hard way" may not be the best idea.
 
AvalonXQ said:
Good call; my bad. I did mean "kibitz" rather than "kibbutz", which it appears are actually entirely etymologically distinct despite being so close together.
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A "kibutz" is Hebrew; literally, it means "a collective". A "kibitz" is German (or Yiddish), meaning to give unsolicited advice.
 
23_Tauri said:
Indeed they do. But as Kate Moss once said:

"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels".

So that's really shallow, right? But next time you reach for the refridgerator door, say that to yourself. I can promise you, it works. ;)
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That's a nifty quote and I'm glad it worked for you. :)

Saying similar things to myself in the past did not work for me. What did work for me was noting what type of foods trigger cravings and an overwhelming desire to eat -- and leaving those foods out of my diet. I'd rather use my self-discipline to avoid foods that make me want to overeat than include them in my meals and than have to attempt to exercise super human will power to only eat a reasonable amount of food.

Using my will power the first way ends up being much easier for me.

FWIW .. some quotes from a wiki article:

In 2008, Nicole Avena published data[4] stating that sugar affects opioids and dopamine in the brain, and thus might be expected to have addictive potential.

<snip>

The sugar industry claims that similar effects have been reported for rats given solutions that tasted sweet, but contained no calories.[dead link] [6] However, caloric value may not be the issue. Sugar and the taste of sweet stimulate the brain by activating beta endorphin receptor sites. These are the same chemicals activated by heroin and morphine.
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Searching for "effects of sugar on human behavior|diet|weight" and similar search terms in Google Scholar will give a listing of similar studies.

Also for what its worth, I have found that eating low sugar breakfast cereals will still make me hungry if they also have very little fiber. I could continue to buy those cereals and then try to continue to exercise strong will power to avoid overeating -- but its much easier for me to use my will power to only buy breakfast cereals that have 5 grams or more of fiber per serving. Than, strangely enough, after eating those kinds of foods I don't feel a compulsion to overeat.

TLDR version: I'm all for will power. In my case will power works better if I use it to focus on only including foods in my diet that don't have a history of triggering a strong appetite. Then the rest falls much more easily into place.
 
sadhatter said:
Here is the way i see it as someone who has lived on the far side of each side of that fence himself ( was over 300, now about 130).
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Meant to say this earier ... Sadhatter that is an amazing feat! Congratulations to you! :)

epepke said:
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.

<snip>

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

<snip>
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And hats off to you also Epepke! :)
 
Marduk said:
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.

;)
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The simplest solution: have all the seats equivalent to first class with all passengers paying the same price.
No discrimination there. (except for those that can't afford it)

Actually your ticket doesn't give a "right" to be comfortable, only alive when you arrive. :)
If a person has "severe" health repercussions from being cramped for a few hours perhaps they should travel by ocean liner, cattle car or if you're in a hurry, FedEx 747.
 
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