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The Fat Acceptance Movement

Ivy

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I can guarantee you that there is nothing you can say about the health risks of my size that I don't already know. It's not an awareness problem. On the contrary it's impossible to forget and informs literally every other part of my life. I have a lot of shame connected to it and it complicates several of my relationships in different ways.

I had sort of a breakthrough a while back when I realized that the things that my size telegraphs to the world (and to me) are just not true. I'm not lazy- I work my ass off in every other area of life. I'm a devoted mother and my coworkers seem to think I'm good at my job, productive and talented. Why would I believe that about myself because of one thing, my physical size? Why should anyone else believe it about me? To me, that's fat acceptance- don't assume things about people's character or personality because of their size. Engage them as you do anyone else. Don't shame them if they have the audacity to ask you out on a date. (You don't have to say yes but it's not an insult to have been asked out by a fatty.)
 
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I can guarantee you that there is nothing you can say about the health risks of my size that I don't already know. It's not an awareness problem. On the contrary it's impossible to forget and informs literally every other part of my life. I have a lot of shame connected to it and it complicates several of my relationships in different ways.

I had sort of a breakthrough a while back when I realized that the things that my size telegraphs to the world (and to me) are just not true. I'm not lazy- I work my ass off in every other area of life. I'm a devoted mother and my coworkers seem to think I'm good at my job, productive and talented. Why would I believe that about myself because of one thing, my physical size? Why should anyone else believe it about me? To me, that's fat acceptance- don't assume things about people's character or personality because of their size. Engage them as you do anyone else. Don't shame them if they have the audacity to ask you out on a date. (You don't have to say yes but it's not an insult to have been asked out by a fatty.)

Ivy, weight doesn't define you, and you definitely shouldn't let it make you feel embarrassed either. I know that there are loads of people who feel embarrassed about going to the gym, working out and eating because of their weight. I think that the shame is part of the inertia that makes up why people don't take action about it.. so it may be a good idea to look out for groups of people who - more than losing weight - are aiming to become fitter, healthier and happier. Losing weight will happen naturally, in baby steps along the way, and stick on a permanent basis. More than making it about the weight and looks, please look at it as "a lifestyle change to make myself happier and have more energy in the long run". The main thing is that being active actually makes people happier and able to do more with their lives, participate more with the people they care about and be a stronger support to the people around them. :)
 

Giggly

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I would never shame anyone about their weight and cringe when other people do this.
 

Fidelia

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I've concluded that serious issues with being overweight are almost never really about weight. If they were, I think it is socially difficult enough, and inconvenient enough that people would happily change their lifestyle (in the cases that it is indeed lifestyle related). Everyone knows the health benefits. They understand how other people look at them. They also experience the physical downsides of being heavy every day. They already have incredible amounts of shame.

What makes it more complicated to deal with are much deeper issues, some of which may be painful to look at and stem back to childhood, some of which are patterns of adult relationships which are difficult to change, or personal ways of relating to other people which allow for a kind of protection.

Rather than going after the symptoms, you have to get to the root of the problem before anything really is going to change for good and that is much more difficult, especially if there have been years of needing psychological protection from looking directly at something very painful or if the situation causing the pain is ongoing.

I fear the fat acceptance movement is a way of circumventing the need to address these issues so that the person can make progress in other areas of their life. On the other end of the spectrum are the people that look at someone fat and just reduce it down to them needing to bite the bullet and quit being lazy.

With any lifestyle decisions that are problematic, there are enough benefits to outweigh the negatives for the person to continue in the way that they have been. Until that part get unravelled and the person finds better ways to address their needs with something else instead, change their situation or change the way they view the situation, nothing changes permanently.

Usually these changes take a lot of support from other people, and involve totally restructuring the current way of living. In many cases, it's not only the person themselves, but those around them that feel panicky when the old familiar way of living, eating or even relating starts to change, even if they profess to be supportive or that they want change for the person's sake. It takes a lot of assertiveness and perseverance for the person themselves to not only do something that is difficult for them, but to stand up for themselves (usually after years of accommodating and then just dealing with the emotional fallout with food) and believe that they really deserve the time, the change or the consideration it will require for them to get into better shape.

When the adjustments to people's way of relating to those close to them, time pressures or ways of dealing with stress are made, weight loss is just a pleasant side effect, but those other changes are the real reward I believe, as they make life far more productive and joyful, and allow the person to meet their potential in many other areas as well.
 

JAVO

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[MENTION=5076]nonsequitur[/MENTION]: Thanks for your insightful posts here. It's interesting how something which most of society oversimplifies actually has multiple potential causes and contributing factors.
 

OrangeAppled

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Fat acceptance is like many movements which start with some decent ideals but in practice it gets twisted & turned into something kind of ugly.

I've seen too many fat acceptance promoters become "thin haters". It's like man-haters who call themselves feminists & don't really act in-line with the ideals of feminism. These fat acceptance people use the nature argument a lot & even seek to shame non-fat people (you must not eat enough, you're less of a man/woman, etc).

I think backlash against fat acceptance is related to those attitudes as well as FEAR that unhealthy lifestyles, one thin people engage in also, will continue to get worse & damage future generations because the lifestyle & its consequences are accepted as "normal". The health & quality of life of children as they grow up seems a major concern for those against fat acceptance. I think this FEAR justifies shaming in their minds. Of course, shaming people rarely motivates them to change for the better in the long-run.

I understand the idea behind the acceptance is you still have VALUE as a human being if you're fat, and this is important to someone dealing with the underlying causes. People who have a healthy self-esteem (not too high or low) tend to take better care of themselves. The other issue is blaming people for not changing habits which are promoted on a daily basis & ingrained into their culture. There can be a level of self-discipline needed that is almost unreasonably high, that requires a kind of alienation socially. It's crazy to me how much other people will try to sabotage others' diets/lifestyle changes... Losing weight can be a battle against OTHER people.

FYI, I say all this as a thin person who has never been overweight or struggled with weight.
 

Orangey

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I've seen some stupid people have the nerve to give unsolicited grocery advice to fat people in the store. "Oh, honey, you should get this! It's got half as much fat content as what you're planning on buying!"

I can't believe how incredibly rude and busybody-like they have the nerve to be. If fat acceptance means making people like that STFU, then I'm all for it.

That said, I don't buy into the "I only eat 1600 calories a day, do an hour of HIIT every day, and I'm still 300lbs" stuff. Some of those HAES people (it comes up on that crap xo Jane and some of the health forums) honestly get angry whenever anyone even suggests that either (1) weight loss is a good, attainable goal to strive for, or (2) that watching calories in/out is a method that works. That's taking things too far.
 

INTP

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i think whats essential for wellbeing of people is not to consume more energy(especially bad fats and carbs) than what you are using. i dont think its healthy to lose weight at any cost, but exercising and eating healthily(as in not too much or too little of the right foods) will make the fat go away and be essential for peoples wellbeing.

i think bullying fat people(or any people) is retarded, but when some fat person is crying about some issues that are caused by being fat, it makes me want to tell them to stfu and deal with the consequences of the decisions that you are constantly making or do something about it and then kindly offer my help to do something about it, like explaining proper diet etc and giving some tips on losing weight. i mean its like someone hitting himself in the face and crying about his nose bleeding..
 

Redbone

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i think bullying fat people(or any people) is retarded, but when some fat person is crying about some issues that are caused by being fat, it makes me want to tell them to stfu and deal with the consequences of the decisions that you are constantly making or do something about it and then kindly offer my help to do something about it, like explaining proper diet etc and giving some tips on losing weight. i mean its like someone hitting himself in the face and crying about his nose bleeding..

:rofl1:
 

kelric

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I'm mostly in the same camp as [MENTION=3567]Blackmail![/MENTION] in that obesity is primarily a public health issue, and that most of the increase in obesity over the last 20-30 years is attributable to diet and lifestyle changes for the typical "first world" person. Obviously there are exceptions, and the degree to which these sorts of changes affect people vary even among those who aren't clinically considered to have a "genetic predisposition" to being overweight. I'm not an expert on the topic, but I've read a bit about it, and diet (mostly) and exercise seem to be the large part of it, at least when you're looking at statistics describing populations, as opposed to individuals.

As for food, I'm willing to admit that I'm totally addicted to it (though quite ashamed of the fact). It seems like an especially cruel addiction, to be addicted to something that you have to consume daily for the rest of your life. There's no going cold turkey on food.
This is true, but you can go "cold turkey" on sugary stuff and processed food. I did it 4-5 months ago, and it was deceptively difficult, but it also worked. I lost a bit over 15 lbs in a month, and have stayed at that weight since mid-February. I'm not really more active than I was before (I do go to the gym a few times a week... but I did that before, too). One of the main problems, however, is...

There is also an access problem: healthy foods are often expensive and often grocery stores are not close to where people with transportation challenges live. We basically live like cattle in a feed log: fed corn and kept sedentary.

Like cafe says, it's expensive. Both in time and money. I probably spend, on average, an hour a day in the kitchen either cooking or cleaning up -- that's probably 55 minutes more per day than I used to. My food expenditures have probably doubled, if not closer to tripled -- and I eat out a lot less. Granted, I could trim the financial cost a little bit if I wanted to, but it would still be much more expensive. And I'm lucky in that I'm a single person with a good job and relatively few financial obligations. I can afford it (at least right now) -- but I can certainly see why that is a *major* difficulty -- certainly one that should be addressed as a matter of public policy, instead of saying "eat more subsidized corn products and take these drugs to keep your health metrics looking acceptable" sort of thing we have going on now.

I suggest you look into the work of Jeffrey Friedman, he is a geneticist that discovered the hormone Leptin. He sees obesity mostly as a breakdown in hormonal regulation. He has witnessed so called gluttonous, slothful, ignorant, weak willed obese people rapidly become slim, healthy, normal people after hormonal treatment.
If I remember correctly, this is actually related to diet. High-sugar diets tend to make us resistant to leptin, throwing off hormonal balance in just the way you describe. From what I've read a lot of issues related to diet are hormonal, but that's affected by what we eat, as well as the other way around.

How did the hormonal treatment make them a better person? How did it improve their character and make their will power stronger? The fact is it didn't, it just fixed a fault in the system.
Exactly. Nobody deserves to be bullied.
 

Quinlan

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If I remember correctly, this is actually related to diet. High-sugar diets tend to make us resistant to leptin, throwing off hormonal balance in just the way you describe. From what I've read a lot of issues related to diet are hormonal, but that's affected by what we eat, as well as the other way around.
.

I wasn't aware that the cause of Leptin resistance had been pinned down but something like sugar would not surprise me. I suspect it is something considered fairly innocous that starts the intial spiral into resistance. I think good quality sleep supposedly helps with improving Leptin sensitivity too. The scientific community doesn't seem particularly interested in Leptin though, I think we need a leptin index of food just like there is a glycemic index of food. I think exercise might improve health not so much because you are burning x amount of calories but because of its beneficial hormonal effects. I think there needs to be more research into leptin resistance. Part of the problem with the dominant view on obesity is that it is based on our understanding before we even knew things like Leptin even existed. So there was an obsession with the few things we did know about (calories) rather than less obvious things like hormones.
 

Chiharu

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I'm troubled also by some of the comments in this thread that imply all fat people are liars. It effectively sets up a system in which a fat person is unable to defend themselves from accusations; the fall-back position is that they're just lying about what they do and eat. I suspect there is more to this than the (very real) factors of food addiction, suburban sprawl, and unchecked agribusiness. What about the complete dependence on plastics for damn near everything? That wasn't the case just a few decades ago, and many of the plastics we use (even ones we pack our food in) are proven endocrine disruptors. I just don't think it's useful or productive to completely blame individual fat people for their condition when there may be (and IMO probably are) factors we haven't even identified yet that affect this on a wider scale.

I agree that too many people assume that obese people lie about what they eat. As Briochick said, becoming obese (let's say 20-40 lbs overweight) is not that difficult for normally healthy people if they stop monitoring their food intake and activity level. But, the truth is, many morbidly obese people will admit that they lie about food intake. Most emotional eating is done in secret. So while these assumptions are definitely not helpful, they are also not unfounded or motivated by hatred for the obese. And I think that hiding food is a major indicator of food addiction or emotional eating. It's a good question to ask.
 

Tiltyred

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I wonder about the total acceptance of causality regarding illness. My mother has cancer. She never smoked one cigarette, drank extremely rarely and never even to the point of being drunk, never took a drug, was never promiscuous, kept her weight well within healthy range, got light exercise regularly, stayed active in social groups, had good relationships that she kept over time, I mean ... everything you think should lead to perfect, splendid health ... but she has cancer and her arteries are so brittle she can't have a stent.

Some of you folks just sound very young to me. You don't realize you could get slammed in the face with a catastrophic illness, or find out late in life that your arteries are for shit and you're not in the great health you always thought you were either. It's not always about how you live. We're just at the mercy of some things in life -- we're not in control of everything. Have some compassion and stop making it your business to judge who's doing it right and who's not.
 

Chiharu

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I just want to reiterate that fat shaming is not the alternative to fat acceptance.

I think that everyone should be treated with respect, and literally no one on this thread has said "let's shame fat people, they suck!".

But being morbidly obese is never healthy. No one is born to be fat. Weight loss is not magical or overly complicated. And these tenets of the fat acceptance movement do more harm than good.
 

cafe

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I eat what I want, when I want and as much of it as I want. I'm mostly sedentary. I'm not overweight, despite having had four kids and eating a shitty American poor people diet for most of my life. I've become a little dumpy in middle age and I have been steadily gaining weight since my mid-thirties but I don't think I'll ever be morbidly obese unless I develop a weight-effecting disease. So I get a pass from society because of how I look without making any special effort or even being all that healthy: I have high cholesterol.

It'd be like thinking I was morally superior to gay people because I'm attracted to the opposite sex, which I did not choose and am not denying myself in any way by not sleeping with women. Makes me crazy.
 

Bamboo

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I eat what I want, when I want and as much of it as I want. I'm mostly sedentary. I'm not overweight, despite having had four kids and eating a shitty American poor people diet for most of my life. I've become a little dumpy in middle age and I have been steadily gaining weight since my mid-thirties but I don't think I'll ever be morbidly obese unless I develop a weight-effecting disease. So I get a pass from society because of how I look without making any special effort or even being all that healthy: I have high cholesterol.

It'd be like thinking I was morally superior to gay people because I'm attracted to the opposite sex, which I did not choose and am not denying myself in any way by not sleeping with women. Makes me crazy.

devil's advocate:

Let's say you're not morally superior, fine, but would you be morally bankrupt/shrugging off responsibility if let's say you did have a condition? Or you're genetically predisposed to alcoholism (no idea if that's an actual genetic feature, let's just pretend), and you decide to drink and keep lots of booze around? Or you're allergic to something, but you decide to keep eating it anyway?

Personally, I think fat people (and skinny people) should be able to just enjoy a damn cheeseburger in peace. "Health" isn't the end all and be all. If that's what they really want, let them have it. Christ, it tastes good. Not every fat person is eating out of shame or binging.

But I do tend to think that everyone comes into and picks up throughout life different crosses to bear.

Someone who isn't an alcoholic that can drink a beer and not decide to drink a whole case afterward hasn't done anything notable. An alcoholic that chooses to stock up their liquor cabinet when they know full well they can't control themselves - I'm not sure about the morality, but they are certainly demonstrating a lack of responsibility and self control. The non-alcoholic is fortunate in that they don't NEED to demonstrate special responsiblity. The alcholic does - if they don't want to fall victim to their alcoholism.

This brings up questions whether your sense of morality/responsibility is one-size-fits-all or individualized...and whether it's anyone else's business or not, anyway.

note note note:

alcoholism effects families and relationships in different ways than obesity and i'm not conflating the two.
 

prplchknz

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it's easier to accept you're fat than it is to accept you have a problem with alcohol or drugs. especially when everything glorifies alcohol and drugs
 
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