obesity

EmperorHenry , 1 month ago

Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat

Smokeydope , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Just wanted to give some input as someone who dealt with lifelong obesity. As a fat person, some people just don’t like to face the music or give themselves an honest look in the mirror. They don’t want to call a spade a spade. Changing around words to describe things in more complex and softer language doesn’t change the situation any, it just helps you psychologically cope.

The same with playing the blame game on outside factors like genetics and disability. Blaming everything you can but yourself and your own choices and failures and unaddressed mental insecurities. Thats not a fat person thing though, thats a general human being thing I tend to see in most groups of people one way or another. Its easier to convince yourself that you never had a choice, than it is to acknowledge the bad personal choices that lead to the consequences of your failures.

When you have fat rolls, and stretch marks litter your stomach, and you look more like a slug than a human being, and you need help wiping your own ass or a bigger toilet to support the weight, when you have to go shopping at specialty close stores (before amazon) just to find a size that fits, and you have no self control or desire to change your habits to stop the self destructive spiral as your stomach swells like a balloon, thats obesity. Regardless of arguments on BMI or CICO or genetics or whatever else, you’ve got a serious problem that needs addressing or it will destroy you slowly but surely.

“At least I’ll die happy!” my type 2 diabetic father would always gleefully tell me as he shoved another tasty cake in his mouth before jabbing himself with an insulin pen. I don’t think the junk food ever did make him happy though. He had mental health issues he never worked through in life. Instead, he relied on the temporary relief of junk food for pleasure, eventually having his addiction dominate and guide his existence.

As for me? I’ve gone through cycles of gaining and loosing 100 pounds. Right now im on a downward trend, lost 40 pounds this year. Hope to loose another 40 by this time next year. I gain the pounds during cycles of extreme depression, and loose them during cycles of great determination and self-agency. Our physical well-being is tied to our emotional and spiritual well-being. Self destructive cycles are much easier to enter when you feel nihilistic and out of control of your own life.

How do I loose weight? I don’t eat. CICO, Simple as. I eat one meal a day, if that. Maybe snack on some dried preserved nuts and fruits once or twice.I drink water and lemon juice. I am a 6’1 man the calorie calculators tell me I should have around 2000 calories daily and cut down by 500 to loose a pound every once in awhile. Fuck that, I have maybe 500-1000 calories daily.

Im a little hungry a lot of the time, but I see the results of my conviction when I step on the scale expecting it to raise 5 lbs and seeing it drop 10 lbs. I look at myself in the mirror, examining my fading stretch marks and receding folds, I examine my skin tightening around the muscles and notice my face not quite as round as it once was. Thats the reward physical evidence of improvement. That my efforts aren’t for nothing. It helps to remind myself of what im doing it for, and the price ive already had to pay for my insecurities and failures to control myself.

The physical act of loosing weight is hard and requires self-control over a very long time often multiple years. The mental act of introspection and reflecting on what lead to your obesity often requires analyzing the roots of your negative aspects while confronting those past traumas. That requires a mental strength and intelligence many people lack. At the end of the day, its easier and feels nicer to twist words and point fingers than fix your own problems.

StormWalker , 1 month ago

Wow thank you for sharing your personal experience and thoughts. I think you hit the nail on the head. To add to that, I have noticed with a family member of mine (who has been trying to loose weight for 20 years, unsuccessfully) that mental wellbeing = willpower. If something get you down, the weight usually goes up. It’s hugely complected of course. My heart goes out to all.

boatsnhos615 , 1 month ago

Where do you set the weight loose

MxRemy , 1 month ago

Not saying that the person in the post is correct in conflating those words, I don’t think that’s accurate at all.

However, it is disheartening to see so many ill-informed comments about fatness here… It’s way, way more complicated than just “calories in/calories out”. Even the extent to which it’s unhealthy is more complicated; obesity is linked to higher risk of heart disease, but also linked to higher probability of surviving strokes/etc. A lot of the problem stems from the fact that BMI is a nearly useless metric.

snow_bunny , 1 month ago

Yeah, CICO is a subtraction problem, but it’s just one part of a massive system of nonlinear equations when it comes to health.

sploosh , 1 month ago

Human beings are subject to the laws of physics. If you eat more calories than you consume and do not otherwise eliminate from the body, they will still be in the body. The body stores them as fat. This is simply the mechanics of biology. If it weren’t, things like Ozempic would not spur massive weight loss.

We have more obese people now than have ever existed. Countries that do not have US/Mexico levels of easy access to heavily processed, calorie-dense foods do not have obesity problems like we have. Clearly, calling people names and making them feel bad is not a good way to get them to adopt healthier habits. However, there are plain, uncomplicated things that people can do to lose weight that will work, but they will ONLY work if the people want to change, are honest with themselves and truly stick to the changes they need to make.

Losing weight is absolutely within reach of 99% of obese people, but comments like this reinforce the absolutely incorrect notion that getting healthy is some big mystery that’s for a different class of people to solve. It’s defeatist and makes it seem like a problem that a person can’t solve on their own, which is straight up wrong.

The plain, uncomplicated things you can do? Find out how many calories a body of the weight you want to weigh uses in a day. Limit yourself to those calories. Given time, you will be that weight if and only if you stick to the plan. It may shock some people how many calories they actually consume in a day, especially if they drink soda or juice with any regularity.

MystikIncarnate , 1 month ago

It’s a clinical term, and being obese is something that 90%+ of the time, you have a choice in.

Nobody picks their race. You cannot change your race.

What I’m saying is, no, those terms are not remotely the same.

BruceTwarzen , 1 month ago

Retard was a clinical term as well, so was mongoloid idiot and imbecile.

I don’t agree with the fatty in the post at all, just saying.

Zoot , 1 month ago

Neither of those things are something you can choose to be. Similar to race, its something you’re generally born with. (Or a tragic accident could cause brain issues as well)

They are not the same as obesity. Some people don’t have a choice, and it can be genetics, but the VAST majority it is a life style “choice”.

meliaesc , 1 month ago

Retard isn’t the same as the n word either.

zerog_bandit , 1 month ago

I’m not gonna lie, I miss the R word so much. Everything else I totally get and can self censor. But when I see someone cut across 3 lanes of traffic without a blinker… They’re just a tard!

Tlaloc_Temporal , 1 month ago

I’m a little disappointed that it was a medical term at all. It’s a very functional word, like in flame retardant, or an engine retarder.

I think it would have been much more applicable to methods of thinking and epistemology, like thought stopping techniques and special pleading, as these also severly restrict one’s critical thought yet can be overcome socially. There’s no sense having a social label for a medical condition, so don’t use such a punchy easy to use word for it if it’s not a choice.

UnderpantsWeevil , 1 month ago

being obese is something that 90%+ of the time, you have a choice in

A big part of an individual’s build is genetic. Saying you “choose to be obese” is akin to saying you “choose to be tan”. Truer for some people than others, and often more a question of degree than state. But telling a Samoan to just stop being big is about as practical as insisting a Swede needs to stop being so fucking tall.

Nobody picks their race.

Race is a social construct. You’ve got significantly more control over your perceived race than your perceived weight, as even adjustments to your outfit and accent can cause people to place you in radically different ethnic groups.

My sicilian mother was regularly mistaken as hispanic, simply because she was shorter, slightly tanner, knew more spanish than her Mayo-American neighbors. I’ve got a Philippian friend who regularly code-switches between East Asian, Polynesian, and White depending on who is around. And even generic whiteness becomes extremely relative when you’re in Europe. Being from anywhere east of Germany might as well make you a filthy mudblood (nevermind the beef between English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian folks). A bit of accent work and a certain haircut can put you on the other side of the continent.

Lets_Eat_Grandma , 1 month ago

Diet determines someone’s body weight. If you don’t eat, you don’t gain. Once you gain it’s incredibly hard to lose. Once you lose it’s incredibly easy to gain.

I have lost 21 pounds in 2 months from calorie counting. I gained 60 pounds in 3 years by ordering a ton of delivery. I yoyo’d many times in the past 2 years trying to lose the weight using various programs before finding a routine that works for me. All weight gain was due to me making choices that increased calorie intake. No one forced me to eat anything, I did it to myself.

Genetic factors may make weight loss more difficult but it is never impossible. There is no possible way that if you do not eat you will gain weight. Unless you have a handful of extremely rare conditions it’s going to be the things you choose to eat and how much of them you eat that determine weight gain, alongside exercise. Some people swear that they do everything right with calorie counting but still gain weight but the reality is that if the average XXX pound person needs 1800 calories to maintain and you eat 1600 and still gain, perhaps your unique body really needs 1400 or 1200 to lose. Or maybe you’re blessed with a great metabolism and 2500 calories will be burnt for you so you can eat up to that without any issues.

Mental health challenges make it hard to stick with a routine diet for some but it’s still technically possible to lose weight even if your brain won’t let you stop eating. If someone gave you an appropriate balanced diet and there were no other possible source of calories for you, you’re gonna lose weight. You might go crazy because you can’t have dressing on your salad and perhaps even wish you were dead instead of eating less, but you would lose weight.

Beyond weight

In terms of height, diet can influence height somewhat (especially in terms of deficits causing stunted growth) but your maximum height is almost entirely due to genetics. You get very little choice in that. You can’t choose to drink more milk and gain a foot of height. Once your body stops producing the right growth hormone you just stop getting taller.

In terms of skin color, there’s very little you can do about that beyond genetics. You can paint your body with fake tan or sit in the sun to get darker or hide indoors out of sunlight to be “lighter” than if you went outdoors but there’s no way to will your body to stop producing melanin.

In terms of “cultural behaviors” that you seem to call race based on how you describe it, you can choose to behave like someone from any walk of life if you learn how to do so. You can learn other languages, social norms, customs and beliefs and act on them. You are not born any more “white”, “italian”, “irish”, “kenyan” or “thai” culturally than anybody else. You learn the local culture from your experiences. Switching between the cultures has nothing to do with genetics. We’re just most likely to be born into cultural groups that have the same genetics as us, the exceptions tend to be when you’re adopted or your parents happen to already be a different culture than their genetic heritage’s or your parents have different cultures.

I can’t believe I had to write any of this out. I’ll probably get downvoted because no one wants to hear the absolute truth of whatever thing they can’t do that they want to blame something else to feel better for their lack of discipline, but we can choose to behave however we really want to. I don’t give a shit how fat or skinny someone is, I care about the content of their character, their beliefs and their actions. I’m not going to point this shit out in polite company because it’s not my business and I believe everyone should be able to choose to do to their bodies and their lives however they wish. Doesn’t change the facts though.

UnderpantsWeevil , 1 month ago

Diet determines someone’s body weight.

Dietary needs vary by individual need. You need more calories to feed an adult than a child. You need more calories to feed a professional athlete than an office schlub. And that’s before you get into food availability by region or the opportunity cost of accessing nutritious foods in a given neighborhood radius.

I can’t believe I had to write any of this out.

You’re overly simplistic and reductive, just like every other high minded bigot.

Lets_Eat_Grandma , 1 month ago

I love how you glossed over what I said to pick up a strawman argument which is aligned with what I said. e.g. everyone’s needs are different. My exact quote from the post you replied to:

the reality is that if the average XXX pound person needs 1800 calories to maintain and you eat 1600 and still gain, perhaps your unique body really needs 1400 or 1200 to lose. Or maybe you’re blessed with a great metabolism and 2500 calories will be burnt for you so you can eat up to that without any issues.

You can believe whatever you want but assuming i’m bigoted means you probably didn’t read everything I wrote. It’s a really, really long post for social media. The irony is your complaints of it being reductive though. If you want scientific papers perhaps you should be looking at nature instead.

UnderpantsWeevil , 1 month ago

You can believe whatever you want

This isn’t a question of belief but of established nutritional practice. “Just eat fewer calories” isn’t a panacea, because people don’t respond in the same way to calorie deficits. Composition of diet, opportunity for exercise, age, physical health… you almost seem to hit on it when you talk about metabolism, but then you skitter right past when you conclude “Just eat more/less”.

It’s a rudimentary understanding of how people gain and lose weight, and it inevitably leads people towards crash diets and weight loss drugs that ruin your body in pursuit of a certain popular aesthetic.

ealoe , 1 month ago

Obese people acting like they can’t control it is precisely why they’re obese. It’s vile to discriminate against someone for their height, race, sexual orientation, and other factors because they have no control or choice over those things. But if someone makes a bad choice that negatively affects their own health and others around them, it’s acceptable to tell that person it’s unsafe. Shaming them is ineffective, but just pretending being obese is normal and healthy isn’t ok either. These folks need help.

Don’t even start with me on thyroid disorders, those are a small fraction of people who are obese and even they do not defy basic laws of thermodynamics. Eat less than you burn, it’s basic math. You may not be able to control the disorder but you are in control of how you respond to it.

shinratdr , 1 month ago

It might be acceptable but is it effective? Thyroid disorders are not common, but food addiction is extremely common. The same way you couldn’t understand what drug or alcohol dependency feels like if you’ve never felt like that before, you couldn’t understand what food addiction is like if you don’t have that experience with food.

It’s clear that there is a spectrum of how people respond to food, from “always hungry and literally never not wanting to eat” to “forgets to eat for days and barely notices until they pass out”. I personally know people on both ends of that spectrum and every place in between.

So I think your response is a little insensitive, or at least lacks empathy. To boil it down to the classic “stop stuffing your face” or “basic math” assumes your level of willpower required to not overeat is applicable to all people and it can’t possibly be different or harder than it is for you, so the only explanation is that everyone else must have less willpower than you.

Either that, or they feel like they are starving all the time and are literally addicted to food. Most science shows that it’s that one, but feel free to believe whatever you wish.

ealoe , 1 month ago

I understand the level of willpower is different, I have an eating disorder myself. But the fact remains it is something that can be willed. Changing myself to be a different race or sexual orientation isn’t a willpower issue, it’s simply impossible. Hence why the comparison in this tweet is ridiculous.

shinratdr , 1 month ago

Agreed, I’m not defending the tweet or saying it’s the same as things you literally cannot change. It’s stupid. I just take issue with your characterization of it just being math, feels oversimplified to me.

ealoe , 1 month ago

Makes sense, enjoy your day

Lets_Eat_Grandma , 1 month ago

Weight is a technical problem. Eat less than you need and you lose weight. Eat more than you need and you gain weight. Simple.

Willpower to follow through with the technical steps to lose weight is a mental health issue. That is way more nuanced, complicated and ultimately why so many people can’t lose weight. I think you consider them holistically, whereas those who disagree with you keep those concepts separate. There is a logical argument for both and neither argument is wrong.

meliaesc , 1 month ago

I went from a perfect healthy BMI to gaining 50lbs over the course of a year (lockdown wasn’t great for my mental health). I’m obese now, and I need to stop stuffing my face. There’s explanations for every behavior, especially addiction, but there’s no “cause” or solution for something like skin color or other genetic features.

shinratdr , 1 month ago

Yeah just to be clear, I never said there was. Obesity is not race, I am in no way trying to defend the tweet itself. Although I would say that I think with near 100% certainty that how you respond to food and how addicted to it you can be is absolutely something in your genes. People have wildly different reactions to things like stress or depression, some don’t eat at all and can get very sick and waste away, others get ravenous.

So I wouldn’t be so quick to put everyone in the same bucket, even if the end result is the same that they need to consume a healthy amount of calories. That may be much harder for them, in both directions.

UnderpantsWeevil , 1 month ago

Obese people acting like they can’t control it is precisely why they’re obese.

Body Mass Index doesn’t do a good job of scaling by height. Its much easier to qualify as “obese” when you’re 6’ tall, simply because your frame is so much larger. And quite a few people really are just larger. Samoans are large folks, which is why they produce so many football linemen. South Americans tend to be a lot smaller and leaner by their nature.

You can change your diet to cut out the excess sugars and limit your carbs, but a person whose body demands 5000 calories a day is simply not going to be the same size as someone who can get by perfectly fine on less than 1500.

ZILtoid1991 , 1 month ago

I hope you also saying it to smokers, drinkers, etc.!

Maybe bring back the “slow suicide” and “brain damage” jokes for them, or at least call them “self harm”, that will be totally not counterproductive or anything!

werefreeatlast , 1 month ago

Chris Rock… There are two types of obese people. There’s fat people, and then there’s Biggas and the Biggas have got to go!

Nerrad , 1 month ago

deleted_by_author

Krzd , 1 month ago

Lol, no she’s not.

Superfool , 1 month ago

That is not what she is saying.

She is equivocting a medical term with a racist term, and by extension implying obese people as oppressed victims.

She is objectively wrong.

Enkrod , 1 month ago

Fun Fact:

A northern German youth-slang word for “Bro” is “Digga”, which is a friendly way to say “Fatty”, from “Dicker - dick” (lit.: Fatty, fat/thick), but with the implication of being very dear friends, “dicke Freunde” (lit.: thick friends) just has the meaning “close friends” with no implication of being fat and “dick miteinander sein” (lit.: being thick together) is also an expression of closeness, not of weight.

Interestingly, Digga is being used in exactly the same way as black people in the US use the soft n-word with each other. “Mein Digga!” (lit: my thicky) is 1:1 analogous to “My n-word!”. It’s common for tourists to do a double take when they hear some very German and very white youths yell at one another “Ey Digga!” and many German rappers definitely use it as a stand in for the soft n-word, but It’s use and etymology is rooted in the old dock workers culture of Hamburg and has absolutely nothing to do with the n-word.

janNatan , 1 month ago

I’m from the USA, and when I first heard “digga,” I was certainly confused! It seems the youth say it even more than the generation that invented the phrase now.

Anyway, English speakers have an old phrase that is similar and might help some understand the usage of the word “thick” here. The phrase is “thick as thieves” - meaning thieves stick together.

01011 , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Comparing a health condition to ethnicity is peak whiteness.

Nevermind the fact that melanin is a very practical and healthy trait.

Jimbo , 1 month ago

Bigga please, I got my mind on much bigger things to say the least

My latest beat just sound like they was released by David East

Annoyed_Crabby , 1 month ago

Despite popular believe, people doesn’t and can’t suddenly turn black as they pleased, while body weight is something you can at least control through dedication.

Until next time ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

interdimensionalmeme , 1 month ago

Also known as the “obesity is a personal moral failing” hypothesis.

jj4211 , 1 month ago

I think there’s a danger in oversimplifying.

On the one end, some people do have a hard time or maybe even actually impossible time to fight their obesity.

On the other end, a lot of people are dismissive of trying to lose weight and hide behind “body positivity” and “obese people can’t help it” when they could really get a lot of results if they actually took it seriously. A relative of mine has been obese for decades, even as the diabetes came on the general take away they had was “apply medicine, keep living how I like”. Then when their liver started failing due to the fat and got the prognosis that they were probably going to die in a matter of months, they found the motivation to lose 40 pounds, in the goal of extending their life a little. Now they have what is, by all appearances, a healthy liver again. They also have much better mobility, reduced joint pain, blood sugar that doesn’t need medication anymore. Though they are still stuck with a lot of the damage already done, losing weight has been a great boon to their life, and something they always had dismissed as being something other people could do but they were just stuck that way.

yamanii , 1 month ago

Keyword: some. The number of people that actually have a dysfuncional thyroid gland is extremely low to the percentage of obesity in a population, like your example, the majority needs a push since it’s more of a mental thing, even therapy can help it.

CileTheSane , 1 month ago

On the one end, some people do have a hard time or maybe even actually impossible time to fight their obesity.

Correct, so unless you know for a fact you’re not talking to one of these people it’s probably best to keep your mouth shut.

interdimensionalmeme , 1 month ago

Well we’ve had fat hate for much much longer and most attitude about fat by most people is still hate, especially by fat people themselves and that has never helped decreasing obesity.

In your example, it took clear evidence of imminent death to find the motivation to lose the weight.

I would posit that the public hate and self hate about being fat is not helping. And whenever I hear complaints about body posivity around fatness, what I think I’m hearing is the fat hate enforcers being upset at being denied. I imagine they quite like being able to hate freely and feel superior “for a good cause”.

I suspect that fat hate has never helped anyone, and probably made things worse.

I think framework of being is a personal moral failing, just doesn’t work and perpetuates the problem. Like many other “forever problems” like drug use and homelessness.

I think it’s safe to assume that problem that persist through entire lifetimes simply are bno ever going to spontaneously resolve themselves through sheer will power, especially not today where it is being sapped away by commercial interests.

jj4211 , 1 month ago

We don’t have to abolish the word ‘Obese’ to avoid ‘hateful’. This started with someone being offended at the mere word ‘Obese’ and elevating it to a racial slur, then a comment saying a lot (likely the vast majority) of obese people can improve their situation.

We shouldn’t be mocking and laughing at someone because they are fat, or harping endlessly on it, but it’s sufficiently bad that when my doctor saw me being obese, he never directly said anything, just said things like “make sure to eat plenty of vegetables” and “being active really helps people be fit”. When Rebel Wilson decided to lose weight, people acted like she somehow betrayed obese people, that she abandoned her role as a model of body positivity.

The pendulum has swung too far to the point where people get too offended at the plain statement of being obese means health issues.

interdimensionalmeme , 1 month ago

The pendulum hasn’t even stopped swinging toward the “more fat hate camp”. What you perceive as"too far in the anti hate direction" is merely the begin of slowing down in the more hate direction.

This entire discussion is a ad absurdum attack by the “more hate” camp to counter this slowing down. It is the endlessly repeated clip of the angry blue hair girl of the antisjw craze.

And it’s going to take way way more than that to smoke out the hate mongers out of their last refuge.

dQw4w9WgXcQ , 1 month ago

Yep, the same way people can take full control of their depression, alcoholism or other psycological issues. It’s all about just rolling up those sleeves and deciding not to have the issues. So we can safely assume that all heavier people are a result of them actively choosing to become heavy, so we should always treat them as such.

NightShot , 1 month ago

Just because something is hard doesn’t mean your out of control. And I know hard - nothing comes easy…

dQw4w9WgXcQ , 1 month ago

There are a variety of reasons, and of course there exists people who are in full control of their weight, but decide to not do anything about it. What I’m hinting at is that there are also a lot of people who suffer with deeper psycological issues. We don’t really tease depressed people with nick names and expect them to just snap out of it at any time. Hence I feel like we should generally treat heavier people with respect instead of assuming that it’s their active choice.

NightShot , 1 month ago

I don’t really think there is anyone with full control of their weight.

I wouldn’t call obese a nickname - fat would be the equivelent of the n-word

You can’t be 300-400 lbs and not call it an active choice…

Annoyed_Crabby , 1 month ago

Are you claiming that depression, alcoholism, and other psychological issue cannot be treated? Are you saying that to someone who went through severe depression period twice in his life and on his path to recovery for the second period only recently? Or are you saying people will become severely obese even when eating the same healthy amount of healthy food as other non-obese people?

swampwitch , 1 month ago

I mean medical intervention is a common way to try mitigate mental health issues. For many people it can never truly go away, but the effects can be lessened. Similarly, there are avenues to help with obesity, whether it be the psychological or physiological aspect.

DillyDaily , 1 month ago

At the end of the day, alcoholism, depression, and obesity, they are unhealthy states of being.

They are not something people choose, and while there are treatments, it’s not something everyone can control.

That doesn’t mean we should simply accept this state of being. People living with depression deserve better, people living with alcoholism deserve better than for us to say “it’s out of their control, they can’t help it, so we shouldn’t judge, let them be” when what they need is better support and better treatment options.

Likewise, obese people deserve better than “eat less, move more, fatty!” but they also deserve more than “all bodies are beautiful, just let us be”

I say this as someone who was a fat kid, and a fat teen, and a fat adult. I had a BMI of 50 for a most of my life. In my mid 30s, I got it down to 28, and still going.

So I say all of this is as someone else who was fat, obese, and morbidly obese. Obesity should be viewed the same way we view depression and anxiety, though depression and anxiety also need some better PR.

Being obese may not not always be a choice, but the the ultimate end goal of how we view obesity as a state of being is to find ways we can all manage our weight. Because obesity is not healthy, for those who can’t easily control their weight, life sucks, they are patients in need of treatment, not morally failing people, but also not “perfect plus sized activists who are healthy at every size”

Because while bodies and sizes vary and we can do healthy things at every size. Obesity is inherently unhealthy. Obviously being bullied won’t solve anything, but neither will society politely ignoring how hard it is to live a full life while suffering from obesity.

Being black isn’t an inherent health issue. It genuinely is just a different state of being. 99% of problems unique to black people are social issues, not medical issues… So the comparison between obesity and substance abuse issues is more helpful than trying to compare being obese to being BIPOC.

DrFuggles , 1 month ago

Congrats on your weight loss journey! May I ask if there was a specific thing that motivated you to start and keep going? And how did you turn your mindset around?

rekorse , 1 month ago

For me it was understanding the idea of equilibrium. The way I use it is to mean the state of something given enough time that highs and lows have evened out.

A practical example is with common diet mentality of dieting until reaching a goal, and then stopping the diet. The diet is a peak, not dieting is a valley, over time youll end up back at the same weight or more. Basically the problem is that modern diets give people high expectations when studies show the most likely scenario is that the weight is lost, and gained back plus some.

So what will work. If we think of this long term equilibrium, the dieting doesnt work because they aren’t permanent changes. So if we agree the only way to stay healthy long term is to make permanent changes, we can agree that making cumulative small permanent changes that affect diet will ultimately result in lost weight.

Sugar is the easiest to target IMO. Dairy, meat, and fish also are good things to target too as they cause other health problems besides weight gain. Switching to mainly water is another thing. Even taking on a new hobby or exercising a slight bit more will result in a net loss as less time is able to be spent on eating and more energy is spent physically.

Plant based whole food diets usually result in weight loss because they are less calorie dense, so you will feel full with a fraction of the calories in your stomach. Alternatively you can lose weight with calorie dense foods, but you will likely have to deal with hunger more.

Once I started thinking more like this, it was easier to come up with my own changes rather than shopping around diets with absurd restrictions. You know yourself best, make small changes and keep trending in a good direction, and if you make a “mistake” do your best to forget about it and immediately get back to it.

jj4211 , 1 month ago

Not him, but I found my will to lose weight when a close family member was told their liver was failing and they had a few months to live, due to cirrhosis from their obesity. I knew I was on a similar trajectory and my bloodwork showed a hit to my liver function.

Good news is that my relative also found the will to get healthy and their liver improved more than the doctors thought could happen and so we both are doing much better. I’m even under 25 BMI now after losing 40 lbs. Also amazing to be able to move around like I used to as a teenager again.

As to how, not very helpful but just using that fear to drive willpower to just suck it up and eat less and exercise even when I really want to be doing something else. It means to some extent just living with usually being a little hungry and almost never filling full for me. Changed the food for less calorie dense stuff and avoiding refined sugars of course, but still have to reduce food intake.

datelmd5sum , 1 month ago

Didn’t MJ turn into a white lady though?

Annoyed_Crabby , 1 month ago

MJ turning white is because of Vitiligo, he use makeup to cover up the skin condition.

Also he’s black by birth, not a choice he made either.

FlyingSquid , 1 month ago

And even on his level, he had to deal with systemic racism. It took two years for MTV to start broadcasting videos with black people in them, including videos already made by Michael Jackson (although it’s not true that Billie Jean was the first video by a black artist on MTV. That honor went a couple of weeks earlier to Pass the Dutchie by Musical Youth).

MeDuViNoX , 1 month ago

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/79a7e1a2-98b5-4ecd-957d-3ef87e9bee41.jpeg

Valmond , 1 month ago

Sure, but I see it (also?) as a societal failure.

bruhduh , 1 month ago

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9e8ca7db-b4b3-40e7-a505-c342c142170e.jpeg

rottingleaf , 1 month ago

while body weight is something you can at least control through dedication.

Generally not.

There are quite a lot of disorders affecting eating habits, and there are quite a lot of conditions that mean that even on something like a keto diet you’ll get obese (or extremely thin).

So no, if you are not obese, you most likely are not more “dedicated” than some person you know who is. You are just healthier. Most likely since birth, and there’s nothing they’ve done wrong.

Obviously it’s still bad to be obese.

Honytawk , 1 month ago

Try staying fat while eating nothing.

Try staying thin while eating a whole cow each day and injecting fat into your veins.

If both are impossible, then you can control your weight.

rottingleaf , 1 month ago

What your will allows you is too defined by health.

Sam_Bass , 1 month ago

Nobody wants to be an original it seems. Just borrow from another with a small modification to make it fit your situation and go with that. If youre a chunk dont be a punk. Own it, dont rent

Etterra , 1 month ago

Your medical status is not a racial slur.

milicent_bystandr , 1 month ago

But neither is your skin colour expressed in Latin. It becomes a slur based on how and when it’s used.

I agree with feeling ‘obese’ is a neutral, objective term for the physical/medical fact. But then, coming from a non-Anerican context, I used to have no sense of the N word being so offensive, any more than any other random insulting (or even affectionate!) term.

In the wrong context, ‘obese’ can certainly be hurtful and inappropriate. I can imagine, for some people, it’s a trigger word of years of pain and mockery.

Etterra , 1 month ago

Look I’m a fat American and here at least nobody I’ve ever heard has used “obese” as a slur. You hear actual insults, “fatass” comes immediately to mind but there’s plenty of others; I’ve heard plenty of them personally. The OP in the pic is a fucking doctor according to her obscured user name and needs to be far more responsible. Obesity is party of a medical status - being called a land whale is an insult.

Further, the N-word has centuries of racist cultural weight behind it. The word “obese” is far more recent and isn’t used as part of the systematic oppression of an entire ethnic to group - one that makes up an enormous amount of American population.

This isn’t even apples and oranges. This is cantaloupes and blueberries. Not watermelons though, that has racist baggage too.

LifeInMultipleChoice , 1 month ago

She’s off her rocker to compare the two, but I do want to say people are policing medical terms as being offense, so maybe she was trying to express (very poorly) that obese should be considered offensive like using the terms retarded, idiot, or what not that started as a medical diagnosis/meaning, and now can be viewed as hurtful. I don’t agree with it because the reasonsaying the term retard is insulting is because the person you are calling it isn’t actually fitting the medical diagnosis, and therefore using a medical term to put other people down. (Doubt it is used by doctors today, they likely have found different ways of expressing a person’s mental growth in terms of comparing to average growth, growth within science and all that). So if we were calling people who were not obese obese to put them down, maybe it would start to make sense, but it hasn’t occured around me much. That said, I have seen jokes made around belimic people calling themself a fat ass for eating say a slice of pizza, but even most movies have moved away from joking about such anymore.

redisdead , 1 month ago

I never used or seen used ‘obese’ as a slur.

Fatty, yes. Absolutely, all the time. Obese, no.

If you’re ‘triggered’ by being called a fatty, stop being fat.

milicent_bystandr , 1 month ago

If you’re ‘triggered’ by being called a fatty, stop being fat.

Now that’s a bad take.

We shouldn’t mock people for things they struggle with, even if we think they could just stop.

redisdead , 1 month ago

Struggling with actual problems, sure.

Struggling with being unable to stop shoving burgers in your mouth is not an actual problem.

FlyingSquid , 1 month ago

And saying things like that is exactly why obese people have so much trouble having the confidence to start losing weight. And no, it is not as easy as you are suggesting. We live in an era of processed foods and food deserts where people are so overworked and often with such long commutes that they don’t have the energy or the time to cook a healthy meal when they get home.

Telling those people to stop shoving burgers in their mouth doesn’t help anything.

Also, and I can’t believe this is the second time I’ve had to say this to someone today- have you ever been insulted into making a lifestyle change? I sure haven’t.

redisdead , 1 month ago

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redisdead , 1 month ago

deleted_by_moderator

MedicPigBabySaver , 1 month ago

Shut up.

aesthelete , 1 month ago

I forget what comedian said it, but if you’re discussing two words and you cannot even say anything except the first letter of one of the words, that’s the worse word.

TheRealKuni , 1 month ago

John Mulaney

Guy_Fieris_Hair , 1 month ago

It’s quite literally the medical term… i… I am an obese man, I am an obese man mostly of my own doing, their might be some psychological or socioeconomic reasons, but it’s mostly the fact that food is good, exercise sucks, and impulse control. I wasn’t born this way, I wasn’t treated as nonhuman for something beyond my control, and obese is not used for the sole purpose of being derogatory.

Those two words are very, very different. Even if you are obese because of a thyroid, or injury, or whatever, a doctor can, and will call you obese in your medical reports. And if you can’t handle that because you can’t handle that slight uncomfortability, no wonder you are still obese.

Liz , 1 month ago

I’ve been bedbound for five years. I have managed to stay a healthy weight by harassing my mother every time she buys unhealthy food. I ain’t got that kind of self-control!

wolfpack86 , 1 month ago

Apparently you do?

Cypher , 1 month ago

Self control is a lot easier to exercise when you remove the immediacy. If a bag of chips are next to you not eating them can be really hard.

Not buying them in the first place? Usually much easier.

Lemminary , 1 month ago

Yeah, it’s a sterile medical term that unfortunately takes on other meanings that people dislike. For example, I had a friend who went off the deep end and started claiming that obesity was made up by doctors and began trying to convince me to think likewise. It was kind of eerie to see this otherwise rational person fall for this type of denial over something that made them uncomfortable.

It doesn’t help that some doctors were shitty to him about his weight (a fair and very real complaint) so he insisted it was a systematic problem within the medical establishment to oppress. I don’t doubt it happens but it’s a bit extreme to think it’s solely used to that end and that it’s not a handy label for managing weight and conducting research.

Guy_Fieris_Hair , 1 month ago

I do agree that if you are obese and have unrelated medical issues the doctors will very much say “you need to lose weight”, and call it done. And that is x10 if you are a woman, for some reason. Yeah, these problems may not be so bad if I was not obese, and they may not have existed is I wasn’t (bulging disks my back, in my case etc.), but the truth is, I am fat, I still need my problems fixed, go ahead and do the surgery to trim the disk that is pinching my nerves to fix my back because otherwise I can’t move and I will just get fatter and my back will just get worse. Perpetually.

It is just laziness and they have a blanket scapegoat to use to get out of doing their job if you walk in and are overweight.

catbum , 1 month ago

It is just laziness and they have a blanket scapegoat to use to get out of doing their job if you walk in and are overweight.

(Please take the following as pondering general discussions of obesity between doctors/patients and not specifically directed at you.)

This was a really thought-provoking summary for me, your belief that doctors are telling people to lose weight out of “laziness.” If a suggestion like this is lazy, are patients who don’t listen to their doctor somehow not lazy?

The idea that doctors make weight a scapegoat seems prevalent in American healthcare (probably because we’re generally obese, myself included). It feels a lot like projection of one’s “laziness” (mentally it’s much more complex than that) onto a doctor, even though that doctor has probably seen hundreds of cases with the same predictable outcomes and knows that appropriate weight management would head off more serious treatment.

Frankly, I think doctors are anything but lazy when they are “forced” to order and perform risky and invasive treatments on a patient who refused to meet them halfway before the treatment became necessary in the first place. I get it, nobody likes being told what to do, especially when it seems (and literally is) so personal. But doctors also don’t like to be told what to do (“fix me!”) when a patient deigns even the gentlest suggestion to take some control of their issues at hand.

I am 15lbs into the obese BMI category myself, but 30lbs below my highest weight. The severity of my issues (joint pain, lethargy, depression, etc.) has palpably lessened losing that 30lbs very inconsistently over the last four years. If anything, I think doctors need to better read the psychological resistance many people have with weight loss and then illustrate to, rather than tell, patients how to attain weight loss in ways that don’t seem restrictive.

That 30lbs of mine, could I have done that in 30 weeks or fewer? Sure, but I didn’t want to feel perpetually hungry. In fact, I never even set a goal weight. Instead of thinking “Idgaf about my weight” or “I must lose 20lbs by Christmas!!” I just made the tiniest changes, the biggest one being taking advantage of times I wasn’t hungry by (gasp) not eating.

… Shit, I guess lazy weight loss works, too!

Guy_Fieris_Hair , 1 month ago

I guess I work in the medical field and I know a lot of doctors are overwhelmed and are really only looking for the quickest way to get you back out the door. They aren’t “lazy” … I guess, just overworked. But also lazy. I live in a rural town, good doctors don’t come here.

yamanii , 1 month ago

I mean, they really are, it also happened to me, I’m not that big, I weight 115kg, almost fell down a hole on the sidewalk but my foot twisted high and I was able to keep my balance.

Now my foot was hurting real bad for days, went to a doctor and he said that I should lose weight to fix it, even though I told him what happened, so I just went to another one that actually gave me a solution via physiotherapy and now I’m good.

Skates , 1 month ago

And yet when I call people retarded lemmy commenter’s go all autistic for some reason?