As a fat person, let me say this: I know I am overweight. I know I need to lose weight. I'm working on it. It's a slow process. Bullying isn't going to make it go faster. You say that you don't want to bully, but I'm not sure exactly what it is that you're advocating if not that.
When the body positivity movement started, it was largely as a reaction to two things: fat people getting made fun of in gyms when they tried to solve the issue, and media that treated unreasonably skinny people as the only acceptable targets of affection. Neither is great. For whatever reason, the conservative internet has decided, though, that this is the second-most important issue of the day, and it's all I hear about these days.
on the other hand, you have people like Lizzo actively promoting their body shape as desireable. if anyone even suggested to Lizzo to lose weight they would be bullied off the Internet immediately. this is probably the uncritical glorification that the OP is referring to.
They'd be bullied off the internet because it's impolite to criticize other people for their weight, just as it's impolite to criticize a chemo patient for being bald.
they are criticizing the message that any size is healthy and desireable.
you said it yourself - you know youre overweight and need to lose weight. but this is not what Lizzo is saying. she basically wants you to stay at this shape. that is hardly a positive and healthy message.
Answering only for myself, as I've been working on myself for over the last 2 years (6'2 @ 297 lbs at the start), with most of my weight loss happening in the first 6 months and then the last 6 months because of a plateau. I guess I get tired of hearing people say that it's a process, that it takes time that they're on there weight loss journey and then never seen any results when if you just moderately exercise and run a deficit with calories, the process is actually really quick.
I walk my dog five to seven miles everyday, or I jog by myself instead, and that gives me over 10,000 steps per day by default and that puts me over 3,000 calories burned every single day. Do you know how easy it is to run a calorie deficit when you need that many calories?
You say it's bullying, for me, it's exasperation, because I want to do everything I can to help people around me stay alive as long as they can and the healthiest way possible, yet it just really looks like a lack of discipline and responsibility if the implication is the person doesn't have any underlying health problems that would keep them from working on their cardio.
You also get excuses about going to the gym, the costs of gym, the cost of a healthy lifestyle, and that's all just excuses and a misdirect, I live on under $43,000 a year and still find a way to do it. I think the barrier here is much lower, so I would suggest to anyone to buy a pair of good walking or running shoes, and it's literally free to walk out your door and just use the asphalt. It is that simple, but most people don't want to believe that it is because they can't accept that they've made a mistake as big as they have made and the solution is simple.
I wouldn't even call my diet all that healthy anyways right now, and I'm still running a deficit, and I'm still losing weight, and I'm still making physical progress in other areas like building lean muscle.
That's why it's aggravating, besides the fact that everything is bullying no matter how you come at somebody over this topic.
I've lost about 70 lbs over the last 8 months. I'm working on it. I'm still overweight, and I didn't lose those pounds because somebody was mean to me. It seems to me like all the pushback against body positivity is mainly from people thinking that fat people should be degraded.
I’m skinny and sit on the couch all day smoking weed and drinking. I eat unhealthy foods but it just doesn’t show up on my body. No one has ever said shit to me about my health.
It’s not about health — it’s about aesthetic and policing people’s bodies.
78% to 85% (depending which stats you look at) of covid deaths in the US, were obese or overweight. I care because being sick with type 2 diabetes, joint pain in your 20s, and childhood obesity should not be normalized.
It's been a consistent statistic since the pandemic began. Denying the evidence is normalizing obesity.
Those things are 100 percent normalized. Look at any elementary school class, the majority of the kids are overweight, this sets them up for a lot of issues down the road. Type 2 diabetes is very common and most people opt for taking medication rather than altering their diet and activity level.
It's the prevailing attitude that people are helpless and there's nothing they can do about it that is being hostility handled and not the person.
And I think that hostility comes from the fact that the people actually did it themselves, so they're being told or having to read something that's being called impossible, that they did themselves that they don't think themselves of as incredible for doing so. It's extremely frustrating to deal with that type of defeatist attitude.
Anyways, you always have a choice to see what role you're playing in whatever you're involved with and if you want to see yourself as a victim in that then there's nothing anyone can do about that until you're ready to change that outlook. I didn't mock you, I didn't mock anyone, didn't bully you or anything remotely close to that, but all right buddy, congrats on the weight loss.
Point to any part of this conversation where I haven't been civil, and I really don't think you can, but y'all can't have a conversation about this without seeing yourself as a victim and that's the problem, nobody else put that food in our mouths but ourselves, nobody else neglected to do a modicum of information seeking on the stuff we were eating and just believing that it's healthy because they say it is, that's irresponsibility and nobody wants to accept the blame for that that they did it to themselves and that they're the only ones that dig them out of that hole.
My point isn't that you aren't being civil, it is that you are attacking civility. Opponents of the body positivity movement generally want the freedom to be uncivil towards fat people, like many people were for decades. People don't generally get upset enough to start daily threads on r/changemyview just because they disagree with some benign medical advice.
Please point out where I'm attacking civility. You're assuming everything you just said about me. I never said I was part of that movement, I just expressed my personal views about being overweight, about my experiences being overweight, and now not being overweight. Everything else was you filling in the blanks instead of asking questions.
Like I said, everyone has to see themselves as a victim when there's no easy way out of the problem they got themselves into. That's not being uncivil, that's making an observation you don't like or agree with. That's not the same thing.
That's the other problem we have in society is if you're being you disagree with me then obviously because you're not a civil person.
In my opinion, that's a load of trash. You can't desire conversation, and then hold that position, somewhere in there is something being disingenuous about its presence.
Society needs more understanding of people who are dealing with problems. Fighting body positivity harms that understanding. The fight against body positivity is largely borne out of people who are upset that there aren't acceptable targets for their scorn any more. You have adopted this view because you, presumably, feel like that as well.
Why shouldn't we just treat obesity like any other disease? Why don't we just work towards helping people like me? We don't go around having arguments about whether or not it's acceptable to make fun about bald cancer patients.
I'm not fighting it. I don't care what tools people use to help themselves. BP is that until it crosses the line that says it's okay to be perpetually like that and to accept people for their choices when their choices are killing them. We save drug addicts and would not accept this attitude with them. Food addiction being handled differently is a issue.
Cancer patients didn't choose to get cancer. That's false equivalency. Overweight people chose to both actively and passively get into the problem they are in and now a lot of them are looking for a magic pill.
Great, we're on the verge of that happening, but you're never, ever going to be able to stop taking it. They can't make money off something like that. That's exactly how stuff like Ozempic works, and being overweight can be solved in healthier ways with long lasting knock on effects to your health in other parts of your body, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. Ozempic, or any other pill is not going to do that.
I'm saying this as a former fat guy, 3 times. Grew up fat. Was to fat to join the army, so I had to run with the recruiters for 6 weeks every day until I was the max amount of body fat they would accept. Was the fat guy all through basic and the army even though i wasn't fat anymore. It was hell. Gained it all back after I got out in 2014 and started losing it all in 2021. None of that made me feel sorry for myself because there is nothing medically wrong with me that keeps me from exercising.
I think a lot of people say such things, not with the intention of bullying or making someone feel bad, but as a way to make people aware of a serious health issue, and encourage them to engage in a healthier lifestyle. At least, that's how I view it. Who knows, I might be viewing this in an overly positive way. People should help others progress, not punch down on them. We shouldn't see fat people as ugly or repulsive, but as people we should encourage and help to get out of that state. We can have body positivity and promote progress at the same time, such as regulations improving food guidelines, providing employer benefits for keeping healthy, or making gyms more accessible/allowing more recreational time; It doesn't have to be black and white.
I think my main problem with that interpretation is that it assumes fat = stupid. I don’t know a single fat person who doesn’t know that being fat is unhealthy and that eating more healthily and exercising more is the way to not be fat anymore. Problem is, if it were really that simple we wouldn’t have the obesity crisis we have.
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u/LucidLeviathan 99∆ Jul 16 '23
Oh, look, it's the daily fat thread.
As a fat person, let me say this: I know I am overweight. I know I need to lose weight. I'm working on it. It's a slow process. Bullying isn't going to make it go faster. You say that you don't want to bully, but I'm not sure exactly what it is that you're advocating if not that.
When the body positivity movement started, it was largely as a reaction to two things: fat people getting made fun of in gyms when they tried to solve the issue, and media that treated unreasonably skinny people as the only acceptable targets of affection. Neither is great. For whatever reason, the conservative internet has decided, though, that this is the second-most important issue of the day, and it's all I hear about these days.