Live data from Hacker News

“Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

bigthink.com

141–150 of 397 posts

Re: “Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being fat seems to be the most appealing one It's not the most appealing one, it's the hardest one to manage. You can not smoke, you can not drink alcohol, you can not take drugs, but you cannot not eat.

You can eat real food instead of processed garbage, for starters. Nobody's getting fat eating vegetables.

Healthy food can be fattening and unhealthy food can be not fattening. It has very little to do with the type of food and everything to do with the density of calories in the food, and the amount of that food eaten.

No one ever got fat eating only vegetables. But you can't eat only vegetables and get all the necessary nutrients(at least not easily).

Re: “Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

#142

The old line goes > Your BMI tells me your overweight. > But rugby players BMIs are high, and they aren't overweight! > You don't play rugby though do you. I'm glad that "fat acceptance" may be turning a corner and will be banished hopefully and there can be a semblance of rational discourse. Ideally you should be a BMI 22, non smoking, non drinking, long distance runner living in the countryside eating a perfectly b…

> I get to eat what I want and sit around all day? Hell yeah! I am naturally thin. That statement ("i get to eat what i want and sit around all day") is true of my body. Is it such a strange idea that there are as many people who are naturally thin as there are that are naturally fat? Those people aren't making a choice to be fat any more than i am making a choice to be thin. Why should they feel bad about their body…

It's unhealthy and they can change it.

While there are many people that have a comparatively harder time to retain a healthy weight, no one has to be obese. A small minority might find it so hard to not become obese that they simply cannot manage it, but that fact should not dominate public discourse and act as an excuse for everyone.

More importantly, obesity is contagious. You give it to your kids and family. If you don't stop it, your loved ones might suffer.

Re: “Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can eat real food instead of processed garbage, for starters. Nobody's getting fat eating vegetables.

There's a popular internet myth that junk food is cheaper than veggies. Of course it isn't true; junk food is more expensive by weight than anything in the produce aisle, with possible exceptions for exotic imported fruits. How this myth survives people wandering around a grocery store looking at price stickers is beyond my comprehension. A 5lb bag of potatoes costs less than a half pound bag of potato chips.

It's probably the difference in looking at weight versus calories. A cauliflower is, on average, 0.7-0.9 kg (1.5-2 pounds) and provides about 25 calories. A McDonalds burger is, on average, 0.2 kg (0.441 pounds) with about 250 calories. The cauliflower currently costs about 3 euros (yes, you read that right) in the Netherlands while a burger costs around 7 euros. So, calories per euro is 8 for the cauliflower and 35 for the burger.

Re: “Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

#144

Thinking obesity is one number is as dumb as thinking intelligence is one number. Card counting used to be one number, till they realized how much better two numbers did. Yet in this day of smart phones, one still sees geriatricians calculating stroke risk using a rule they can do in their heads. I'd rather trust my health care to prediction markets, if we could work through the data privacy issues. So where's the BM…

X-rays clearly show that "big-boned" has very little to do with whether you're overweight or not.

Re: “Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

#145
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge is what is the closest hack to get around it, as most people, admittedly myself included, are not willing to exercise? Semaglutide seems to be the best bet right now.

> as most people, admittedly myself included, are not willing to exercise? I'll never get that, we only get one shot at life, even a few hours of exercise per _week_ will greatly increase your quality of life and healthy life span, there are no better medicine, nothing will give you your body back once it's too late. Some people on this forum will grind 60+ (even much more) hours per week at work, absolutely wrecking…

Dopamine is well: a hell of a drug, and there's far easier ways to get it than excising. For example: video games. Our brains want the most pleasure from the least amount of effort and don't work on long timelines in the future. So, it makes sense.

But I'm with you - I find that exercise works well for me as the one of the best things that makes life better. But I also avoid things like video games, drugs, too much sex with too many different partners (I keep it to one at a time) - that sort of thing, as I know it'll just throw me off.

Re: “Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

#146
post #6

the only nuance i’ll add is that there’s a huge difference between subcutaneous fat (eg visible belly fat you can pinch) and visceral fat (the fat hugging your vital organs) visceral fat is significantly more dangerous than subcutaneous fat, and people who have a high ratio of visceral fat to subcutaneous fat can appear skinny but are as or potentially less well off that someone who has a more balanced ratio of visce…

Yes, people with a lot of intra-abdominal fat but very small amounts of subcutaneous fat are referred to as TOFI.

Thin on the Outside, Fat on the Inside

(Dr. Robert Lustig)

Re: “Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

#147

The old line goes > Your BMI tells me your overweight. > But rugby players BMIs are high, and they aren't overweight! > You don't play rugby though do you. I'm glad that "fat acceptance" may be turning a corner and will be banished hopefully and there can be a semblance of rational discourse. Ideally you should be a BMI 22, non smoking, non drinking, long distance runner living in the countryside eating a perfectly b…

> I'm glad that "fat acceptance" may be turning a corner and will be banished hopefully and there can be a semblance of rational discourse.

TFA doesn't even use the phrase "fat acceptance", which is a completely different thing than claiming "obesity is healthy". The former is simply an effort to destigmatize it, like we destigmatize other forms of addiction.

Also, "obesity is healthy" is a strawman — no credible person or group has ever asserted this. If you search for "obesity is healthy", you'll see that every result makes it clear that obesity is not healthy.

Re: “Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are absolutely dangerous ways to lose weight that will kill you quicker than the weight.

Sure, there are edge cases. I don't know why you're fixated on those.

Because you claimed there were “no ifs or buts”. But there are. When you lose weight, you have to be careful to do it in a safe way. Even the safest way of losing weight, diet and exercise, can kill you if done the wrong way.

Re: “Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

#149
Weight loss can be a sign of health problems, particularly if it’s unexpected. Often people lose a lot of weight before they die.

This makes collecting and interpreting the statistics more difficult because you need to distinguish “good” weight loss from “bad” weight loss. BMI isn’t enough to figure it out.

Re: “Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you

#150

The old line goes > Your BMI tells me your overweight. > But rugby players BMIs are high, and they aren't overweight! > You don't play rugby though do you. I'm glad that "fat acceptance" may be turning a corner and will be banished hopefully and there can be a semblance of rational discourse. Ideally you should be a BMI 22, non smoking, non drinking, long distance runner living in the countryside eating a perfectly b…

“Fat acceptance” doesn’t have to imply that it’s healthy, just that you don’t have to be a complete jerk to overweight people.
Post reply on HN