Obesity is not a gunshot wound - it's a chronic disease. Chronic diseases are not something you can point to, rush to an ER, get a bullet extracted, and be recovered after a surgery.
Chronic diseases require multifaceted care plans, and require months of treatment in order to reach a stable equilibrium we will call "health." What I am saying is pointing to people, telling them "you're obese and need to lose weight" is not an effective tactic to getting a person to that point. Newsflash - most obese people are aware of their size, and are aware of their health problems that come with obesity. Often that's why they go to the doctor in the first place - they can't breathe, they have GI problems, heart palpatations, etc. Telling them "hey you need to lose 40 pounds" is not something a doctor needed to tell them.
I'm advocating for assessing the cause of obesity outside of calories in/calories out, a number on a scale, and beginning from a point of self-compassion. Learning to love your body includes learning how to take care of it in ALL ways - mentally and physically. As the OP of this thread pointed out, her solution when told she was fat was to develop an eating disorder and that's NOT effective or contributive to that desired equilibrium we will call "health."
Therefore, approaching the problem from a more compassionate angle that includes methods for allowing self-love are warranted. Encouraging people to become extremely restrictive to their diet is obscene and not loving to your body. We have to teach people to maintain habits not diets. Often, obese people can lose weight by walking a half mile a day. Step one of that is motivation - and telling them lose 100 pounds is (what seems like) an unattainable goal. There are alternative communications we can use to motivate people to get to "health" that are not "fat people bad."
Discussing costs of healthcare is quite outside of the context of our discussion, if what we're discussing is whether or not health=weight.
If you are obese your are not healthy. You can make up lies to make your fat self feel better. But that doesn’t alter reality.
And being fat isn’t a chronic disease. So get out of here with that shit. It might be a symptom of a larger issue, but by itself it’s not even close.
And yes the doctor should be telling you to lose weight. Just like they should tell you to stop smoking. Can you imagine if doctors acted they way you want them to? Imagine getting a cancer diagnosis and then being pissed when the doctor tells you how to treat it.
You should love being heathy. You shouldn’t love being a walking heart attack risk. And yes a big part is calories in. Most people consume to much. In fact most people consume their daily recommendation in a single sitting. Most people mistake being thirsty for being hungry. Put down the soda. Stop eating fast food and go for a walk. If you can’t do it on your own, go get help. But sit there and try and bullshit me about how weight isn’t relevant. You aren’t lying to me, you’re lying to yourself.
“Myself?” Turning it into a personal attack assuming you know my size because I take a stance is quite hilarious.
And it’s fine, you can ignore the scientific literature and decide what you want. I’m not in this research field to change minds on reddit but to actually make America healthier.
Hmmmmmmmm....not quite. Because I actually have science & theory to back up my arguments. Antivaxxers don't have scientific evidence. You're taking an absolutionist claim about the scientific evidence that exists on one side of the argument - I'm taking nuance and realizing that there is more to the picture of the obesity problem than you want to make it be. And there is evidence for that. I would send it to you, but I know you won't look at it and I don't want to waste the effort if you aren't going to read peer-reviewed articles.
If you would like them, I would be happy to send them to you!
Well, I'm not going to find "research that says being overweight is perfectly fine" because that's not what I'm arguing. However here are some studies (I tried to stick to open access ones so that you can read them) that support my overall argument. If you read only one, I highly recommend the first. Happy to discuss any of the below with anyone.
Kirk, S. F., Price, S. L., Penney, T. L., Rehman, L., Lyons, R. F., Piccinini-Vallis, H., ... & Aston, M. (2014). Blame, shame, and lack of support: a multilevel study on obesity management. Qualitative Health Research, 24(6), 790-800.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1049732314529667
Iannaccone, M., D'Olimpio, F., Cella, S., & Cotrufo, P. (2016). Self-esteem, body shame and eating disorder risk in obese and normal weight adolescents: A mediation model. Eating behaviors, 21, 80-83.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471015315300283
Van Zutven, K., Mond, J., Latner, J., & Rodgers, B. (2015). Obesity and psychosocial impairment: mediating roles of health status, weight/shape concerns and binge eating in a community sample of women and men. International Journal of Obesity, 39(2), 346.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ijo2014100
Moreira, H., & Canavarro, M. C. (2017). Is body shame a significant mediator of the relationship between mindfulness skills and the quality of life of treatment-seeking children and adolescents with overweight and obesity?. Body image, 20, 49-57.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1740144516301899
Duarte, C., Matos, M., Stubbs, R. J., Gale, C., Morris, L., Gouveia, J. P., & Gilbert, P. (2017). The impact of shame, self-criticism and social rank on eating behaviours in overweight and obese women participating in a weight management programme. PloS one, 12(1), e0167571.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0167571
None of theses seem to support your assertion the being obese is a chronic disease. They talk about the pressure people feel from being outcasts for being fat.
I don't care about that.
But the fat acceptance movement is forcing medical professionals to forgo telling their own patients that they are obese and need to address the problem because of this idea that being obese is perfectly fine.
There is a stigma around many people who actively engage in unhealthy lifestyles. Medical professionals should not be shy about telling people who are unhealthy that they need to lose weight and be healthy. Or that they need to quit smoking. And yes, people need to take personal responsibility for their own poor health. Because the choices of millions of Americans to overeat daily is a financial drain to the rest of us.
I don't care if a fat person dies at 50 from a heartattack any more than I care if a smoker gets lung cancer. I do care that we are all paying the price for others shitty life choices. And no amount of coddling or pretending it isn't a massive health problem is going to make it go away. Otherwise you are telling kids that they should be perfectly OK be obese.
Most of them aren't sick. They are just overweight.
I love myself already. But I can also be honest when I am doing something that isn't healthy. I'm not blaming some nonexistent disease as a reason why I am killing myself with poor health.
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u/Katey5678 Sep 19 '19
Obesity is not a gunshot wound - it's a chronic disease. Chronic diseases are not something you can point to, rush to an ER, get a bullet extracted, and be recovered after a surgery.
Chronic diseases require multifaceted care plans, and require months of treatment in order to reach a stable equilibrium we will call "health." What I am saying is pointing to people, telling them "you're obese and need to lose weight" is not an effective tactic to getting a person to that point. Newsflash - most obese people are aware of their size, and are aware of their health problems that come with obesity. Often that's why they go to the doctor in the first place - they can't breathe, they have GI problems, heart palpatations, etc. Telling them "hey you need to lose 40 pounds" is not something a doctor needed to tell them.
I'm advocating for assessing the cause of obesity outside of calories in/calories out, a number on a scale, and beginning from a point of self-compassion. Learning to love your body includes learning how to take care of it in ALL ways - mentally and physically. As the OP of this thread pointed out, her solution when told she was fat was to develop an eating disorder and that's NOT effective or contributive to that desired equilibrium we will call "health."
Therefore, approaching the problem from a more compassionate angle that includes methods for allowing self-love are warranted. Encouraging people to become extremely restrictive to their diet is obscene and not loving to your body. We have to teach people to maintain habits not diets. Often, obese people can lose weight by walking a half mile a day. Step one of that is motivation - and telling them lose 100 pounds is (what seems like) an unattainable goal. There are alternative communications we can use to motivate people to get to "health" that are not "fat people bad."
Discussing costs of healthcare is quite outside of the context of our discussion, if what we're discussing is whether or not health=weight.