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

bigthink.com

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

#41

Post by NineStarPoint »

inglor_cz wrote: post #15
DiscourseFan wrote: post #4

I think the article is arguing that there is such a thing as being healthy with a high BMI? It's just that those people generally don't have an excessively high body fat %. But if we are going by BMI, there are plenty of people who have "healthy obesity", on account of muscle mass. I've been working out for many years and I think I have a healthy body fat percentage but since I'm not very thin its hard to tell withou…

"there are plenty of people who have "healthy obesity", on account of muscle mass." The sheer amount of muscle you would need to exceed BMI 30 (obesity threshold) is pretty rare to see "in the wild" and you have to ask how many such people abused steroids etc. to grow so muscular. Natural Homo sapiens build is fairly lean, we are no Neanderthals. A very fit guy from a normal city gym may have BMI in the overweight te…

Yeah I think a lot of people confuse the overweight category with the obese category in these discussions.

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

#42

Post by wanderingbort »

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.

Simply put, it’s an enabling belief.

Being obese isn’t a root cause. It is a symptom of something else.

Particularly, when it is a symptom of depression, believing in “healthy obesity” can be enabling even if it’s not the truth. That person (not statistic) needs to see themselves as healthy and loved to have a chance at being healthy.

Telling them to eat better or exercise is thinking about yourself in a generic version of their circumstances rather than them in their actual circumstances.

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

#43

Post by lm28469 »

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.

It's easier to keep indulging in your vices when people tell you they're healthy, hear it or repeat it enough and you'll end up believing it yourself

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

#44

Post by tempsy »

tokai wrote: post #16
tempsy wrote: 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…

Your nuance is one of the main points of the article. «Nor does BMI measure where fat is located, which can make a big difference. Visceral fat jammed among internal organs is much worse than subcutaneous fat stored just beneath the skin.»

well it’s missing from the headline and not everyone is reading the article

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

#45

Post by stametseater »

nimbius wrote: post #30
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.

dont forget multinational processed food and snack vendors benefit immensely from the perception that hyperconsumption of sugar salt and fat is normal and good, and that your obesity is a shameless wonder to cherish unto the grave. look at the sons and daughters of branded food conglomerate moguls and their top executives. youll likely find them quite trim.

Clothing companies have also played a role in normalizing obesity with advertisements featuring obese people, often accompanied by pro-fat propaganda slogans like "healthy at any size". They do this out of pure greed; fat people have money and buy clothes, so it makes business sense to advertise products to them. But these ads are bad for public health because they promote unhealthy standards as normal and okay.

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

#46

Post by tayo42 »

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…

There's body fat percentage, you can calculate this with calipers or in a pool.

Even the body builder with a high bmi thing isn't that healthy. It's tough to be large.

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

#47

Post by copperx »

newaccount2023 wrote: post #37
throwawaysleep wrote: post #11

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.

something bad is going to happen to people who think they can just take Ozempic for the rest of their lives there's no way a drug that effective has no side effects I know people who have lost weight using Ozempic...you only lose weight...you do not become healthy...you do not gain muscle...you just are a flabby person who is less fat

Losing a significant amount of fat on purpose is becoming healthier, no ifs or buts about it.

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

#48

Post by swatcoder »

widjit wrote: post #21

Denial/wishful thinking are extremely powerful. That said, body positivity shouldn't be thought of as having anything to say about objective physical health: there is zero reason a person who is obese should necessarily feel bad about themselves. Shame is a useless or detrimental approach to changing behavior; shame is oftentimes the reason people engage in unhealthy behaviors like overeating in the first place. Bein…

For lack of other shared idols, the “common space” American society worships health and longevity. We measure everything against it and don’t make much room for debate.

We all do unhealthful things, of course, but our society makes it very hard to admit that we do so in sound mind. The role we’re asked to play is to say we’re addicted, indulgent, or ashamed.

The dissonance isn’t good for people and is not unlike the toxic dissonance we associate with religious communities that are too stringent and deny everyday realities of human behavior.

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

#49

Post by tempsy »

graeme wrote: post #13
tempsy wrote: 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…

True enough, but even subcutaneous fat is not benign. Sumo wrestlers have extremely low visceral fat and extremely high muscle mass. But a good margin of subcutaneous fat. They have a markedly lower life expectancy than other elite athletes and than other Japanese men.

sure I’m not suggesting people get complacent if they have excess belly fat. but controlling visceral fat should be most important goal for your average person given how disruptive it is hormonally

the main issue for your average person is there isn’t really a good way to measure the percentage or ratio outside of a Dexa scan which are pretty expensive

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

#50

Post by muldvarp »

whiddershins wrote: post #23
muldvarp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are plenty of people who have "healthy obesity", on account of muscle mass. There are _very few_ people who have a BMI over 30 purely by having an extreme amount of muscle mass and most of them are on steroids. Also, there are weight related issues for which it is irrelevant whether the extra weight is fat or muscle mass.

BMI has a problem with tall people.

Yes, BMI has problems, but "there are so many hypermuscular people that it makes BMI obsolete" is certainly not one. Ironically, people with normal weight but high body fat percentage ("skinny fat") are one of the problems of BMI, which is almost never brought up by BMI critics.
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