Live data from Hacker News

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

bigthink.com

201–210 of 397 posts

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

#201

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…

on the other end, I'm 1.83m and 58-60kg since many years (I'm now 37) so a BMI 17-18, and it's my best shape, certainly not underweight. I have really thin bones & limbs (for example I can join my thumb and any other finger around my wrist, thin waist, legs a little bit stronger)

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

#202
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ideally you should be a BMI 22, non smoking, non drinking, long distance runner living in the countryside eating a perfectly balanced diet. All good except the long distance runner part. Don't think it is equivocally good as the others and may be potentially harmful (key is the long part, short/medium is good).

Walking in inclined, rough terrain is arguably more versatile exercise, and far, far less depressing to me. Hell, it actually lifts my mood. Jogging on asphalt just makes my joints hurt and it makes me feel like I'm administering some pathetic modern substitute to the primal need to be active and to be in nature, which just depresses me. Same with everything gym based.

I wondered why I couldn't keep my swimming regime, despite generally liking this sort of activity.

The only time I have some space is during winter, when few people use the outdoor pool and that is still a 20x10m rectangle, where I have to swim in circles like some captive orca.

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

#203

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…

> Is it such a strange idea that there are as many people who are naturally thin as there are that are naturally fat? [...] Why should they feel bad about their body?

Because naturally thin people, and the opposite case, are outliers.

There are very few people, especially in the 40s, that can eat a lot and still remain thin.

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

#204

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…

It is bizarre that you would read an article which says, “using body-mass index (BMI) to measure obesity is likely the most problematic factor,” and then immediately prescribe a fixed BMI for everyone without qualification.

Yes. BMI is your weight divided by height squared. Which is really weird when you consider that humans are 3D objects! So you should naturally expect that a taller person will have a higher BMI than a shorter person even with the exact same proportions. In practice humans who are taller tend to be skinnier so we'd ideally use something close to the 2.5th power but that math would have been impractical for the 19th century clerks who were the first consumers of BMI information.

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

#205
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Almost everyone I met (incl me when I was younger) who think that way never realized just how much food obese people eat at home. It's wayyy more than you think. They never tell the truth about it out of shame because they know how bad it looks to others.

You can see the videos on tiktok. Each individual meal is actually pretty reasonable, but each one should be the main meal of the day. Having several per day (plus high calorie but healthy snacks such as nuts) is what cause the problem.

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

#206

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 cease buying sugary foods and snacks like chips at the supermarket when you shop. You can explore swapping macros a bit so there's a bias in favor of eggs and fish and other protein. You can try to cut down eating between meals. The idea of Predestination with regards to eating needs to stop. If there is a psychological addiction then that's the part to be addressed, it's a valid concern. I see what people ea…

None of this matters when it comes to pure weight. You can eat the most healthy diet in the world and still be massively obese.

On the other hand I have successfully lost 100 lbs in 6 months in the past, while eating fast food daily.

I won't discuss the "healthiness" aspect of it, but losing weight is ONLY a matter of calories.

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

#207

Ok, but what now? There is no effective treatment or cure for obesity from public health point of view. That is, sufficiently low calorie intake will make you lose weight. But, if your metabolic balance is out of whack, it will also leave you constantly hungry, lethargic, not able to enjoy one of the major life pleasures. To maintain that long term once has to essentially prioritize staying slim over all other life p…

Just like the Hackernews prescription for individual health issues is fasting, the Hackernews prescription for large-scale public health issues is government regulation.

Apply liberally. Start implementing Pigovian taxes on sugary foods. Monitor and punish companies that use added sugar in foods that don't need it. Shut down the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo.

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

#208

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.

Say that to all the obese vegetarians and vegans then? Not eating processed food doesn't mean eating healthy.

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They choose it a bit. First eating all the day long some crap (sweets, processed food, fiberless industrial food), drinking sweet sodas and not walking/doing real sports is a choice. It's the choice to live unhealthy. They should feel bad the same way smokers should feel bad. It's quite a disrespect for oneself.

There's people that don't do all that and are still fat, and making them "feel bad" about it is counter productive. In fact, the research on losing weight is quite clear: once you've put on weight, losing it and keeping it off is nearly impossible, and requires life long constant effort. Instead of focusing on individual behavior, you should be speaking out against a government that built a car society, made cities h…

Citation needed. Nobody gets fat without over-eating.

Walking and exercise in general make less difference to weight loss than diet.

People know what food is healthy. If they choose not to do it, it's on them.

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

#210

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…

It is bizarre that you would read an article which says, “using body-mass index (BMI) to measure obesity is likely the most problematic factor,” and then immediately prescribe a fixed BMI for everyone without qualification.

BMI really wasn't thought of for individuals

>The interest in an index that measures body fat came with observed increasing obesity in prosperous Western societies. Keys explicitly judged BMI as appropriate for population studies and inappropriate for individual evaluation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index

Post reply on HN