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

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

#221

Post by psychphysic »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #57
stametseater wrote: post #5

What interests me is how anybody could ever come to believe otherwise. The contrary belief flies in the face of all common sense, popular experience and medical science. It seems to come entirely from propaganda on social media telling fat people what they want to believe.

I think there are several reasons: 1. Historically being fat was considered a sign of good health. Of course, this was during times of massive food scarcity and the definition of fat was probably very different from what we consider fat today. 2. Massive amounts of money involved in telling people to eat/drink more, and then spend more money in gyms and taking pills to lose that weight. As opposed to just eating less…

That last one is a tricky, people shouldn't be bullied..it's demotivational.

I think it's better to stick to that, and just drop the term 'fat-shaming'.

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

#222

Post by kennywinker »

gadders wrote: post #209
amrocha wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1. people do get fat from things other than "over eating" - citation: https://www.drugs.com/article/weight-gain.html

2. I'm the great-grandparent in this thread. My original comment was in essence: I am naturally skinny, nobody questions that. Is it so strange that people might be naturally fat? You've said something that DIRECTLY contradicts that argument, without any evidence or argument to explain why - all you've done is assert the opposite of what I said. You're going to have to do better. Citation needed on your part.

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

#223

Post by meew0 »

Symmetry wrote: post #204
emilyst wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ce…

Humans are 3D objects, but fat is not distributed equally throughout the body. Most fat is subcutaneous fat, i.e. located right below the skin. Its abundance can therefore be approximated by body surface area, which is proportional to height squared.

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

#224

Post by amrocha »

gadders wrote: post #209
amrocha wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're not providing citations either. Get off your fat hating high horse.

Walking and exercise make a HUGE difference in average weight. Just look at Canada, a place mostly analogous to the US, but with way more walkable cities and better public transit. They don't have this problem.

Regardless of how people get fat, we know for a fact that it's nearly impossible to get back to a healthy weight. Children of fat parents are more likely to be fat, both because of genetics and because of diet. Is it their fault that they were born that way?

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

#225

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

Tade0 wrote: post #202
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My main issue is finding exercise in the winter time I can motivate myself to do. Despite growing up in Norway I just hate snow. And my favourite forest trail which is literally right outside my door is a death trap in the winter because it's in a river valley. One slip and I end up falling 50m face down into a frozen river.

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

#226

Post by _gabe_ »

dudul wrote: post #70
rhaway84773 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are several reasons: 1. Historically being fat was considered a sign of good health. Of course, this was during times of massive food scarcity and the definition of fat was probably very different from what we consider fat today. 2. Massive amounts of money involved in telling people to eat/drink more, and then spend more money in gyms and taking pills to lose that weight. As opposed to just eating less…

I'm interested in 3. Is there any research or data about that? I do not encourage fat shaming at all, but I can also imagine that in some cases shame may be a powerful motivator for some people. Is there hard data showing that it actually makes it harder?

Just some anecdata here, but I was toeing the line between overweight and obese about a year ago. I read David Goggins book Can't Hurt Me, and one of the things he talked about was having a note in the mirror reminding you of your goals (real novel concept ikr?). Anyways, the way he phrased it was something like, "If you're fat and don't want to be, right down the raw truth on that note and read it every morning, then write down how you'll fix it". I wrote something along those lines down, and read it every morning. The guilt and shame I felt from allowing myself to slip up this bad definitely helped motivate me.

1 year later, and I'm down 35 pounds with another 10-20 to go. I feel great! Walking doesn't hurt anymore, doing physical stuff is fun again, and I have more energy than I used to. All that to say, the guilt and shame definitely helped motivate me, but YMMV :)

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

#227

Post by 11235813213455 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #185
emilyst wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, especially the 22 BMI target. For me (5'10") that would mean 155lbs, I'd have to shed (going by my scale which estimates body fat percentage) around 28 lbs of fat (I'm at 15% fat right now, so 28 lbs would get me to 0% which is unhealthy) and 7lbs of other weight to hit that target. Could I lose some weight? Sure. But I won't. Back on the exercise habit after a few months off and I'm getting slimmer but my we…

> until you know your own body

that part is tricky, takes a lot of time, experiments

But also I think the body shape makes a big diff, I have very thin limbs, long legs, my best BMI is between 17 and 18, without limiting myself in food quantity (I alwways eat as much as I can, tho I naturally like to eat 1 or 2 meals a day max)

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

#228

Post by manmal »

etothepii wrote: post #175
max47 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One extra rich tea biscuit a day (100kcal) is 10lbs in a year. You don't know what you are talking about.

That’s assuming perfect conversion of energy to body fat. That’s never the case due to losses, and everybody is _vastly_ different:

> In response to 84 days of 1000 kcal/day of overfeeding, 12 pairs of monozygotic twins gained on average 8.1 kg, but the range was from 4.3 to 13.3 kg.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897177/

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

#229

Post by daveliepmann »

Syzygies wrote: post #39

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…

>So where's the BMI table that asks height and "how wide are your shoulders?"

It sounds like you want the Body Shape Index = waist circumference / BMI^2/3 x height^1/2

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_shape_index

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

#230

Post by aeturnum »

surfpel wrote: post #170
aeturnum wrote: post #159

IMO the fat acceptance movement is pushing more for people to think about obesity like alcohol consumption: not "healthy", but potentially part of a sustainable approach to life. Of course, each deviation from "perfect" health has impacts - but learning to order them productively is what you want. It's not really that you want to be fat, it's that weight is only one of many lifestyle choices and we'd give people bett…

> about obesity like alcohol consumption: not "healthy", but potentially part of a sustainable approach to life I would not classify alcoholism as a sustainable approach to life. Obesity, like alcoholism, isn’t sustainable because it accelerates death and disease. I equate “sustainable” with “not unhealthy”, which does not cover obesity. What I have witnessed isn’t that those folks call it “healthy” but that they des…

I don't think any reply could have supported my point better. All alcohol consumption is alcoholism! Good luck on your path - we would live longer if we all followed your advice. And also - like I said - this is exactly what is being critiqued.
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