Body shaming, and "My Big Fat Fabulous Life"

[CapnAwesome]

Telling someone they have a choice is going to make them feel powerless?

Sure, if it's said in tones as accusatory as yours.  It's like telling someone their cancer won't go away because they aren't praying hard enough.

I've got to say, you seem to have a lot of opinions about fat people.  But why does it matter to you to hold those opinions, and to express them in the way that you do?

Well I don't really care about fat people, so much as I care about the Fat acceptance movement, which is full of lies and anti-science claims. If it were Christians who were opposing the basic knowledge we have about metabolism, about diet, about nutrition who were telling so many lies that make people stay fat and miserable then you guys would be all over it. I also think the movement is anti-free speech and I will oppose that wherever I see it.

[bennyboy]

Okay, there's some sense to that. I don't believe in humiliating people or even blaming them when they lose control of their situations. However, I certainly wouldn't bow down to a vocal minority of fat people who want to rewrite reality, either.

[Aroura]

In the end, it is all about excuses.

True fact: a balance of diet and exercise ensures weight loss.  

Another true fact: those obese people who make excuses are not keeping up a regular schedule of exercise and diet change.

No, they just want to make excuses.

One of the major problems with weight loss in relation to obese individuals is lack of willpower.

The fact is that they can lose weight.  They try, and then they decide to stop, because the food tastes too good and the exercise is too hard.

You're welcome for me bringing you this reality check.

It isn't that simple.  Advertising pressure, overwork, poverty, and other factors besides medical conditions can cause people to be overweight.  My little bro has been fighting with his weight for most of his life. 

THIS is fat shaming, just telling them to suck it up, that they are somehow lazy for being fat.  This helps no one.

Yes, obese people can lose weight, but it is far from simple, and much more complicated than just eat right and exercise.  Single moms working 2 jobs may not have time to eat right, or have the money for healthy foods, or the education to know what the hell to eat, even.

Education and support, this is what we can offer the overweight folks. They are people and deserve to be treated as people.  With love and support, not scorn. 

But we still should not be celebrating obesity.  We have to find a medium where we aren't shaming them, but we aren't enabling them either.

[Jackalope]

Anyone who says that weight loss is simply a matter of eating fewer calories than one burns I suspect has never struggled with a real weight problem.   Either that or they've got an iron will.

If you honestly thing it's really that simple, you don't know shit.

Scientifically, that is exactly what weight loss is about.

No shit, Sherlock - here's your sign.

Psychologically and physiologically it's a damn sight harder than that.

[Aroura]

Even scientifically it isn't that simple.
Some hormones caused by stress can lead to a body storing more of the calories eaten as fat. Age changes it. Hell, the current weather effects it. And psychology is part of it as well, which is still scientific. Not to mention medications that can affect weight loss and weight gain, some of them long after you stop taking the meds, like certain antibiotics.

It's a far more complicated issue than many people realize.

[Faith No More]

In the end, it is all about excuses.

True fact: a balance of diet and exercise ensures weight loss.  

Another true fact: those obese people who make excuses are not keeping up a regular schedule of exercise and diet change.

No, they just want to make excuses.

One of the major problems with weight loss in relation to obese individuals is lack of willpower.

The fact is that they can lose weight.  They try, and then they decide to stop, because the food tastes too good and the exercise is too hard.

You're welcome for me bringing you this reality check.

Simple views for simple minds.

People need to remember that food can be as addictive as hard drugs, and there's a reason a person needs comprehensive treatment when dealing with addiction. There are underlying psychological issues that need to be addressed, because the addiction fundamentally alters the brain. Why we do what we do and what motivates us is complex, and saying that losing weight is simply a matter of will belies a basic understanding of psychology and how the brain operates.

That's not to say we should just coddle people with weight issues or just accept them. Far from it. But arguing that obesity is just a matter of putting down the fork is so simplistic that it's laughable.

You're welcome for me bringing you this reality check.

[Silver]

You're welcome for me bringing you this reality check.

If obesity was as simple as accepting that one has a problem, then we could be squared away.

Obese people do not want to admit that they have a problem.

They do not want to exercise or to change their diets. They just want to be themselves.

You are welcome for this reality check.

[GrandizerII]

You're welcome for me bringing you this reality check.

If obesity was as simple as accepting that one has a problem, then we could be squared away.

Obese people do not want to admit that they have a problem.

They do not want to exercise or to change their diets.  They just want to be themselves.

You are welcome for this reality check.

Except heaps of them do admit it's a problem. My cousin struggles immensely with it, but the internal motivation just isn't continually there.

Friendly advice: Best for you to just shut the fuck up.

[CapnAwesome]

Even scientifically it isn't that simple.
Some hormones caused by stress can lead to a body storing more of the calories eaten as fat. Age changes it. Hell, the current weather effects it. And psychology is part of it as well, which is still scientific. Not to mention medications that can affect weight loss and weight gain, some of them long after you stop taking the meds, like certain antibiotics.

It's a far more complicated issue than many people realize.

Well, at the end of that day those things just effect the number of calories that people burn. Except for the medications, most of them causes only minor changes in your metabolism at most. Even those psychology maybe change how much someone eats, the underlying cause of weight loss is always the same. Which is you consume more calories then you burn. All the things you mention only effect calories in or calories out in one way or another.

I'm however, not in the camp that says it's easy to lose weight and fat people are lazy or anything like that. If I imagine my life while wearing a 50 lb bag of flour on my stomach, it becomes literally impossible to do the things I normally do. In fact a fat person who is trying to lose weight through exercise is anything but lazy because of how difficult it is to be overweight. Same with losing weight through diet, likely most overweight people are addicted to food to one degree or another. So losing weight through diet is extremely difficult.

However the fat acceptance movement wants to deny basic reality and basic science. As feel, as an Atheist, it's almost my duty to oppose them as they spread so much disinformation. I also think that people who are fat feel bad. They feel bad because being fat makes your life far more difficult. The fat acceptance movement wants to shift that blame for feeling bad to other people, rather then the individual. If there were 0 fat shaming tomorrow, fat people would still feel like shit. That's because of the difficulties that go with being fat.

My final problem with the movement is the free speech aspect. You know any movement has a major problem the moment they start going after comics and humor. It's one thing to say that mannequins are too skinny or that television actors are unrealistic looking (which is a complaint I have myself), but quite another to say that comics and television shouldn't make this joke because it offends fat people. Well here is a hint: Turn off the fucking TV. Don't watch the comics that make fat jokes. Not being able to handle fat jokes is immature. Instead the movement brutally tries to censor people who, in their minds, fat shame.

[Athene]

Scientifically, that is exactly what weight loss is about.

No shit, Sherlock - here's your sign.

Psychologically and physiologically it's a damn sight harder than that.

You can say that again.

From an evolutionary standpoint, our brains and bodies still consider food as scarce/difficult to come by. The human brain is programmed to interpret even a modest weight loss as starvation, and subsequently responds to it as a threat to survival . The brain makes no distinction between true starvation and a reduced calorie eating plan; It will "defend" the body with ruthless efficiency by attempting to hold on to existing fat stores (significantly slowing metabolism) and attempt to recover/regain any fat that's been lost (witholding/decreasing the release of hormones that signify fullness) all the same. 

That alone is enough to make voluntary, permanent weight-loss extraordinarily difficult to achieve and a highly unlikely state to maintain. Human beings are literally fighting an onslaught of real neurological/chemical responses honed by millions of years of evolution, that are expressly designed for the task to fail ; not just general laziness or a lack of "willpower". 

Keep in mind, that's without other contributing factors such as genetic predisposition, excessive cortisol production/additional hormonal issues, disorder/disease, addictive behavior, etc. even being brought into the picture.

This is why the notion of weight loss as a simple matter of calories in/calories out is nonsense. It's clearly an assertion that's primarily derived from ignorance (and personal distaste, I suspect) as it blatantly fails to account for the human body being a complex biological machine. The protests of those who insist that they're "logically" arguing the matter are quite laughable, considering the fact that ACTUAL scientists say otherwise.