They are just bigots,
I didn’t downvote you because I disagree with your opinion (which I do). I downvoted you because you didn’t even try to make an argument for your case. You gotta give me something to work with, here.
Why would I create a well crafted argument for people who can’t even understand highschool biology. Let alone research level ideas about energy production, storage, and the genetics of different body types.
You could perhaps point to research that supports your claim? Would be better than simply talking down to people who disagree with you.
For instance:
Obesity is mainly caused by imbalanced energy intake and expenditure due to a sedentary lifestyle coupled with overnutrition. - Source
The obesity epidemic has been fueled in large part by increased energy from greater availability of highly rewarding and energy-dense food. Diet and various social, economic, and environmental factors related to food supply have a significant effect on patient’s ability to achieve the balance. - Source
Most researchers also agree that obesity is an “acquired” disease that, heavily depends on lifestyle factors (i.e., personal choices), such as low rates of physical activity and chronic overeating, despite its genetic and epigenetic influences. - Source
Do you consider anyone critical of obesity, and the lifestyle choices that lead to obesity, to be “fatphobic”?
EDIT: I just now saw the other thread that this one is most likely in response to.
People in general struggle with empathy and being objective. It’s extremely easy to assume that your own experience is universal, and overcoming your biases is probably about as hard as changing your eating habits.
Sure, I agree but eating habits have little to do with weight. And being overlyskinny or dehydrated to the point where you have no fat and can see muscle is more unhealthy than being out of shape and fat.
Sure, I agree but eating habits have little to do with weight.
I’m sorry, but there is a very great disparity between this statement and reality.
I agree somewhat with your post but this comment is utter nonsense. Diet has everything to do with it. Calories in, calories out is an immutable fact. The law of conservation of mass. However, not all calories are equal.
Obesity IS unhealthy. There are no two ways about it, but people just blame the individual, saying you just need to eat less, or or exercise more, are genuinely stupid.
There are many root causes. Modern diets are absolute garbage for one. Mass production of foods, fast foods, sedentary lifestyles from young ages, poor eating habits, etc… has absolutely fucked a lot of people.
Cravings can be addictions.
The body can quite literally work against itself. The brain can be so self destructive (which seems so ironic to me).
The world compounds that by creating body dysmorphia, either through transphobia, or celebrated body types that are unobtainable without great genetics and constant training (whose got time for that, do I really need a 6 pack?).
You don’t need to be fit to be beautiful, but don’t conflate that with “obesity is not unhealthy”, because it is.
Extra weight on your your hips and legs will wear them out quicker. It pushes on your lungs and makes it harder to breathe. It makes your heart work harder to pump blood throughout your body.
I know from personal experience. It was terrible.
High cholesterol, high blood pressure… these things WILL kill you.
Being a healthy weight, everything just feels better. More energy, moving around, getting up, sitting down, I go on and on.
My point is:
People are fat phobic and super fucking ignorant about it. There are.mamy causes, and sometimes people get given a really unfair dice roll, both environmentally and generically.
But obesity is still unhealthy, and if you are obese, I hope you can find something that works for you.
I agree with your overall message that “most modern diet advice comes across as more insulting than helpful” (at least that’s how I interpret it), but this reply isn’t doing it for me.
eating habits have very little to do with weight
Source? “Calories in, calories out” gets repeated to the point of redundancy during conversations like this, but it’s really all there is to it. If you consume more calories than you burn, you’ll gain weight, and vice-versa. The exceptions to this rule are so rare and medically-anomalous they really don’t fit into such a broad conversation as this.
And being overlyskinny or dehydrated to the point where you have no fat and can see muscle is more unhealthy than being out of shape and fat.
Again, source? This is also the extreme opposite spectrum. No one (worth listening to) is saying that this is preferable to obesity. What you call “fatphobia” is only so common now because obesity and obesity-linked pathologies is the most common cause of death in America. It makes sense that more people would be focusing on curbing these deaths than focusing on something that, speaking candidly, affects a much smaller percentage of the population.
The problem is our society has these ideals that are unachievable by most individuals. There are people out there who can have abs without effort and those who never can, but our culture doesn’t account for that and always views the skinnier person as healthier. We have never been good at catering towards individuals.
TBH, most of the time you just don’t see the effort. While there’s certainly a genetic component, most of it is what you eat, how much you eat, and your activity level. Having worked as a personal trainer for a brief period of time, I can tell you that there are a lot of people that are entirely resistant to any real, serious changes to their diet, that refuse to track what they’re actually eating, and think they’re putting in the effort when they’re barely getting their heart rate up. When you tell a person to track every single thing that enters their mouth for a single day, 99% of the people simply won’t, because the idea that they need to change their relationship with food is too scary to them.
Diet and exercise work for a lot of people but it’s just not always viable given what we’re expected to do with all our time. Also we celebrate by eating so there’s a level of enjoyment with food for many people. If people could have time and money it’d be easier but for most it’s just not feasible.
…But that’s not actually relevant to the initial opinion. From a strictly medical perspective, the overwhelmingly vast percentage of people that are overweight are overweight because of how much they eat, and what their activity level is. You’re talking about factors outside of that, and that’s simply not what the person that posted the original unpopular opinion was claiming.
Sorry what I mean is that the explanation goes beyond just science. These other factors are real and affects a broad swathe of the populace. I’m saying that fatphobics are bigots for more than their misunderstanding of science. I’d say that’s supporting the original argument.
The original statement refers only to not understanding medical science, and that they’re bigots because they don’t understand that science. I refuted that argument. Now you’re saying that there are social and cultural factors rather than just science. You have moved the goal posts of the argument.
If you disagree with this, have you never wondered why there are no internet communities dedicated to shaming other unhealthy habits? Like about how people who sleep too little or work too much are ugly and not worthy of compassion or love?
I do not agree with the phobic part, as that would imply fear. The bigotry part is probably true.
There are barriers to weight loss and weight management. Many metabolic conditions prevent the body from burning its own fat stores. Delving into how insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome work in the obese body helps bring more understanding to the issue. With that being said, it’s still our responsibility to manage our weight by any healthy means necessary because obesity is objectively a driver of many bad health conditions that you really don’t want to experience first hand.
If a person is obese and type 2 diabetic or has other metabolic syndrome symptoms, often the best course of action is to use intermittent fasting with a ketogenic diet focused around whole foods to correct weight. It also ameliorates fatty liver disease which is often concurrent with obesity. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7132133/) (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9919384/)
Overnutrition is extremely, extremely easy to do. Food cravings can destroy a diet in a second, but what I’ve come to find out is that when you stick to keto and IF, the food cravings disappear. I guess all of this makes me fatphobic and ignorant of “medical science” because I support healthy weight management. I’m really not sure what the actual argument is here. It was more of a statement. But anyway, being obese is not wrong, it’s just not healthy. It will make the person very sick and immobile as the years go by.
