I don’t agree with all of this article. I especially think that comparing weight loss among non-obese people to weight loss among obese people is flawed; that study about how it’s impossible to lose weight and keep it off or else you’ll be hungry every day for life, etc? As a person who has been 15 pounds heavier and naturally tends to maintain around my current weight, it just doesn’t jive with my own experiences...but I’ve always been a “healthy weight.” I just think sometimes in data we tend to look at population averages and make conclusions when it might better serve us to look at sub-population averages. Idk. Anyway still a great read
Also just like. If everybody is fat, then can everybody be discriminated against? 80% if Americans are obese and half of them feel judged on a daily basis (paraphrasing). By whom? (I get that the people we see in ads and on TV create a culture of thinness etc which can result in feeling judged even if you’re not. But to me that seems like you’re the one who’s making yourself feel judged. Trust me I am an expert in that arena)
Athletes who need high caloric foods are able to do so just fine without stuffing their bodies with junk food that’s low in nutrition (source: anecdotal from my personal experiences and all my friends and acquaintances who are ultra runners, Ironman athletes, kayakers, etc etc.) Second, that’s such a small portion of the population that it’s no reason not to tax food that is objectively mediocre for a person.
Seattle attempted this to some extent. Even implemented perfectly (which Seattle's law wasn't), it doesn't really work, and ultimately such a move is little more than a topical money grab.
The problem with this happening at all in the US: The main issue I see here is that cheap corn and cheap soy are driving the flood of ultra processed and calorie dense, designed-to-be-delectable food into the US market. Cheap corn and cheap soy are cheap because they're subsidized by the gov't. For the gov't to start taxing those products, it would be counterintuitive. For the gov't to stop subsidizing those products, farmers would revolt. Or at least get poorer than they already are (except for the factory farms). The factory farms exist because people realized they could grow mass products including corn and soybeans and snatched up all the land they could to mass produce and mass process monocultures. Like corn and soy. If you're a small farmer in the farming cycle you're caught in the farming cycle which is pushed in no small part by gov't subsidy. You're broke, forced to buy seed that's expensive and can't be saved, forced to grow certain crops because that's what guarantees at least some money, and once the money finally comes in from sales and the gov't you have to buy a new round of seed again. It's simply not logical for the gov't, with its left hand, to offer subsidies for crops which are used to fuel terrible food, then turn and with the right hand tax the products of those crops and drive down demand/attempt to limit consumers. Gov't needs us to eat as much corn and soy as possible. Every year US produces huge huge surpluses which is how we figured out how to make so much terrible stuff like HFCS in the first place. The gov't is effectively already subsidizing terrible food and nutrition available en masse to make gen pop obese. They can't choose to make the population healthier with health taxes when they've already chosen to make the population engorged.
France has had a calorie tax since 2011. Hungary since 2012. Over 9 million Americans live under a calorie tax right now. Not a single nation, city or municipality has repealed a calorie tax and the principle result has been a 15-20% decline in the consumption of sugary beverages.
I feel as though I'm too jaded to participate in social discussions about obesity. Fat people hurt my nurses. Lift teams are becoming mandatory on every inpatient floor because bariatrics has been over-capacity since it was opened. Obese, frequent flyer CHF patients who just can't stay away from the ham and salty snack foods overburden cardiac care teams and emergency facilities across the board with issues that are entirely, 100% preventable. I know that they are entirely, 100% preventable because I have to take the same measures. If a person has got so much visceral fat that it's intruding into their organs, can't sleep properly because fat is obstructing their neck and airways, then regardless of what else is going on with them physically, those issues have to be addressed because they affect everything else so drastically. Big people need more medication and more and more frequently anesthesiologists are refusing to do surgery on obese people because the line between 'adequate sedation' and 'overdose' is hair thin, if it exists at all. I am currently heavier than I want to be. I have a complicated relationship with food and exercise. Simultaneously there is no better example of personal responsibility than your own body. I can't run the miles for anyone else. I can't daily eat the veggie dish instead of the fried chicken and waffles for anyone else. I do also want to say that there is a significant issue of classism involved in access to affordable, nutritious food. I say nutritious food and not calories because calories in all sorts of non-nutritious forms are abundant. Nutrition is harder to come by than raw kcal and is stratified by class to some degree.
I'm obese, 5' 9", 220 pounds. I eat oatmeal and fruit for breakfast. Flour tortilla with cheese and egg for lunch. Fish and salad typical for supper. From 0 to 2 glasses of red wine. If I do start losing weight I tend to start snacking ... granola bar and small glass of milk. I play tennis, still pretty good, one to two times a week, walk a couple a times a week, typically a mile, sometimes as much as three. Swim some weeks. Cut weeds, work in yard. I have been this weight, plus or minus 10, usually plus or minus 5, for two plus decades. Should I mention, I am 71. Not diabetic. 150 total cholesterol, all blood work great. Doctors used to talk to me about my weight, but they never say anything anymore. They say I look better than most of their patients who are 50 years old. They used to send me have my blood work redone, but they have accepted that it is real. BP is controlled by meds. I used to try to diet all the time and I can lose weight easily, almost as easily as I return to my old habits and put weight back on. Although I eat healthier than 90% of the people I know. Avoid all sugars and carbs. Stomach is the main fat area, legs are still reasonably muscular and firm. So, I have just resigned myself to being this weight until I get sick someday and lose weight. So, I am wondering how usual it is to be my age, obese and apparently still in good health. I know, it's going to catch up with me.
Do you think they intend to? Do you think society has made it radically more acceptable to be fat? Or has something larger than individual behavior changed?Fat people hurt my nurses.
Lift teams are becoming mandatory on every inpatient floor because bariatrics has been over-capacity since it was opened.
Shockingly I'm not that dense or heartless. Intention has nothing to do with it. It's a thing that happens. It's a preventable thing that happens. Can everybody be a swimsuit model? No. Are there things that can be done to stop this particular problem from killing so many people, and making life living hell for so many others? Definitely. And there is a small but tenacious group of people who use the same kind of science denialism as the anti-vaxx crowd to say that obesity isn't dangerous or unhealthy. That kind of shit has to be stamped out with a vengeance. I was bullied for being fat until I was an adult, and even then didn't escape it fully until very recently. I'm allowed to feel strongly about the issue. Weightloss is hard enough without blatant false information being pushed. Significantly. It sort of has to because so many more people are fat. It was almost inevitable really. That said, it's not a good thing. Somebody is going to leave a serious illness untreated because they saw a Tess Holliday or similar figure as inspirational. That someone is going to suffer serious, life altering consequences that will also cause their friends and loved ones pain. If this happens once because someone decided it would make a loud-mouth blogger feel good to be on the cover of a magazine, that's once too many times. We've already had the problem of unhealthy images of women (and men!) in media promoting things like bulimia, anorexia, damaging amounts of exercise in pursuit of one extreme. Let's not try to correct that by pulling the wheel hard into oncoming traffic! If an individual had poor impulse control with regard to food in the 1400's it wasn't really an issue because the spare and accessible kcals just weren't around. These days it requires an effort of will and careful vigilance to NOT buy dogshit food CONSTANTLY. It's not even as simple as making the healthy choice over the unhealthy choice, salad over burgers because guess what, Mickey D's salad will fuck you up worse than a Big Mac so you can't just make a good choice, you have to have the time and energy to make sure that you are executing that good choice. Yes it's hard. It's fucking terribly hard. And the poorer and more stressed, and more crunched for time you are, the harder it is. My parents are both obese on the downslope of fifty and it takes a toll on them DAILY and it absolutely destroys me to watch it happen.Do you think they intend to?
Do you think society has made it radically more acceptable to be fat?
Intention has everything to do with it. Out of one side of your mouth you're compassionate for those poor people who can't eat properly but out of the other you justify your righteous dudgeon with the splinter faction that can't walk a mile and feels okay with it. Yeah, you're allowed to feel strongly about it but don't for a minute think that the one's your compassionate for don't see themselves as Tess Holliday in your eyes. As for acceptance, France had to pass a law to stop models from dropping dead. Here's Victoire Dauxerre. She was discovered at 123lb but wasn't allowed to walk the runway until she hit 103. Here's Isabelle Caro. She was under 100lb in this picture (at Milan fashion week). She died under 60. Meanwhile, you know what TLC's top ratings earner is?
"Do you think they intend to?" I can see his deeper point, and you honestly should have too instead of passive aggressively implying something disingenuous.
Come at me, bro. I'm not going to speak for Ben, but I know for damn sure that the judgemental tone in that post has kept two of my relatives from seeking any medical care for a dozen years each. And if you wanna scold me for calling him on it, I will take you the fuck apart.Obese, frequent flyer CHF patients who just can't stay away from the ham and salty snack foods overburden cardiac care teams and emergency facilities across the board with issues that are entirely, 100% preventable.
Nah this has been a legitamite healthcare issue for quite some time now. The enormous healthcare costs that come from obesity and its complications are mindbogglingly steep, especially when you consider that the simple solution of a caloric deficit and exercise would take care of the vast majority and dramatically improve quality of life. There's a reason why family med docs joke that half of their job is trying to make their patients shove some damn vegetables in their mouths
Naw, I'll just leave you to swing wildly. If you want to die on this hill, that's your choice.
Yeah, so, obesity and overweight increases across all income levels since the 80's. Source. Source Source These are, undeniably, problems. The article touches upon this: there are socioeconomic factors contributing to obesity. The proliferation of fast food, working multiple jobs, external stressors, lack of availability of parks or outlets for exercising. These are things we as a society should be working to fix, especially the food supply chain. But. Here's why I don't get into fat acceptance, or whatever you want to call it. Projections estimate that by 2018, obesity will cost the U.S. 21 percent of our total healthcare costs - $344 billion annually.18 It affects per capita spending on healthcare. There are health and financial reasons to tackle this problem. Acceptance is giving up.Across all adult age groups, current asthma prevalence was significantly higher among adults with obesity compared with those in lower weight categories.
Less than 5% of adults participate in 30 minutes of physical activity each day;2 only one in three adults receive the recommended amount of physical activity each week.3
Typical American diets exceed the recommended intake levels or limits in four categories: calories from solid fats and added sugars; refined grains; sodium; and saturated fat.2
Obesity-related illness, including chronic disease, disability, and death, is estimated to carry an annual cost of $190.2 billion.17
Painting the subject as criticism being akin to shaming inherently implies that fat acceptance is the suggested correct answer. It's disingenuous to pretend the underlying message is anything else.
The criticism is shaming. That's the point of the article, that's the argument made for several thousand words, that's the experience much of society faces. More than that, the point of the article is that it's unhelpful, it's devoid of empathy and it's a society-wide problem that vast swaths of society refuse to acknowledge as a problem. Much like you, right here, are doing. I'm gonna share a little secret with you. I'm not fat. Not by any standard other than BMI. My belly has not protruded my chest or my waist in twenty five fucking years. But I have been counting calories for fifteen years now, have spent years dealing with bulimia and have a deeply troubled self-image because furries and fat people are the two groups we're still allowed to shame. And it's fucking bullshit. This entire fucking page is fucking bullshit because everyone who has never had a weight problem is loudly proclaiming they've never had a weight problem because they're virtuous. Thereby announcing to the rest of us that, as always, we are lesser human beings. And you don't see it that way because you've never been in the outgroup.
Certainly. Some choices are easy. Some choices are hard. When you spend your life surrounded by a society that defaults to you feeling shame in everything you do and everywhere you go, the choice to not feel shame is an impossibly hard choice to make. Especially when people like OftenBen will champion you as the causitive force of all that is wrong in America. You seem to depend heavily on flippancy. I hope for your sake that you can continue in your simple trajectory, unsullied by the complexities the rest of us face.
I got kind of caught up on that and was thinking of some other articles when I wrote that sentance. I largely agree with this article, especially the part about treating it as a societ Which, a lot of the comments here, mine included, kind of support this, don't they? Tangential - interested in if OftenBen agrees with this quote or not?This has always been the great hope of the fat-acceptance movement. (“We’re here, we’re spheres, get used to it” was one of the slogans in the 1990s.)
Which brings us to the most hard-wired problem of all: Our shitty attitudes toward fat people.
Still, despite the Task Force’s explicit recommendation of “intensive, multicomponent behavioral counseling” for higher-weight patients, the vast majority of insurance companies and state health care programs define this term to mean just a session or two—exactly the superficial approach that years of research says won’t work. “Health plans refuse to treat this as anything other than a personal problem,” says Chris Gallagher, a policy consultant at the Obesity Action Coalition.
Yep. Thin people go "I have no problem being thin therefore everyone should have no problem being thin." Fat people disappear into the woodwork because never once, in the history of their lifetimes, has this discussion benefitted them in the slightest. Mostly it serves as a poignant reminder that everyone around them is utterly devoid of empathy.Which, a lot of the comments here, mine included, kind of support this, don't they?
In practice, wherever I have encountered 'Fat acceptance' I have encountered science denialism. 'Being overweight and sedentary doesn't cause diabetes.' 'Obesity doesn't contribute to heart attack and stroke.' 'You're wheezing because you have asthma, not because you are 400lbs and fat is literally blocking your windpipe.' As some examples. I'm all for not being a dick to people. AND Science denialism needs to be stamped out with a fucking vengeance. Actions have consequences and lying to (young people) about the consequences of their dietary choices helps exactly nobody.
I've dealt with it a few times at work. Usually an obese set of parents who blame the obesity of a child on 'genetics' and not the fact that she is guzzling Fanta from a sippy cup. Thankfully I'm not the doc, but I have been in the room for these conversations. Also everywhere on the internet.
I’ve witnessed personally obese children raised by obese parents. It’s very clear to see these children become doomed to so much (not just high weight but bullying, poor self esteem, ignorance etc etc) when raised by two people who are obese, don’t plan on losing the weight, and don’t talk about it. I found it incredibly sad. At the same time, i found it disgusting and unconscionable behavior on the side of the parents.
You have to keep in mind that you're looking at two thinking, feeling adults that have capitulated in their struggle to conform to social norms. I know it's hip to pretend that fat people enjoy sweating when they go up a flight of stairs and having to sprinkle Gold Bond in their crevices to forestall dermal yeast infections but fundamentally we're talking about people who have given up on normalcy. They have, as a consequence, adapted to other coping strategies to live their lives to their own best abilities. They teach their children these strategies not because their behavior is "disgusting and unconscionable" but because it is the culmination of their life experience. They concluded at some point that their children would live as they do, much to their heartbreak, and so they are propagating the wisdom of the tribe. Mt sister's kids look like a Gap ad. They're impossibly thin. My own daughter will, if she's lucky, be built like Lucy Lawless. She's five but I already know that I will raise her to be her, not my sister's kids. Don't make me tell the story of the bamboo skewer.
My assumption is basically that they live like that and raise their children like that because a) they don't know better (about nutrition/eating properly), b) they don't care/don't have the energy to tackle the problem. Some combination of the above. I'm sure they had a lot of other things going on in their lives too. As someone who doesn't have kids, I feel like the timesuck of having multiple children and raising them "well" in all the other vectors a person might possibly want to raise their children well in - quite reasonably reduces the amount of time and energy a parent can direct towards self-improvement. Or changing what's always worked for them. Or teaching their children an entirely different lifestyle from what the parents know and live. It'd require a re-self-education and then application and re-teaching of that new knowledge to 1, 2, however many children. And even if you can change the lifestyle, the kids already absorbed what life was like before the change for however long that was. I just felt really bad for the younger kid. who was obese at like 10. Sure, sometimes people seem to raise perfect kids, but for the most part I think it's impossible. You can raise your kids as best as you can and that's about it. Even just a blind spot in the 'wrong' vector -- any possibly significant vector, which is like almost all of them -- can leave a kid vulnerable or disadvantaged. Guess what! That's being human for ya. I don't know any adults who are perfect (in my life, anyway). Why expect parents to produce children who excel in every way and are in control of and smart about all their choices, when the parents aren't like that and also no one in society really expects that of them?
Your a/b is actually an a/b/c; don't know better/don't care/ don't have the energy might all be of a kind at first glance but it's a can't/won't/can't. It's not a can't/can't/can't. And that, right there, is the fundamental issue - externally, everyone here is arguing that fat people are fat because they can't or won't change (same diff) while internally, fat people are 100% all the time at "can't" or, more accurately, "have tried fucking everything and who the fuck do you think you are implying my can't is a won't". And the answer is always some form of "someone calling you fat, fatty, what the fuck are you going to do about it." Above, you're basically saying "these people can't or won't take care of their children." And while you might get agreement on "can't" (be it grudging, despairing or defiant), you will never ever ever convince someone they won't take care of their kids. Especially when you're arguing that allowing them to look like their parents is child abuse.
How does the only actual instance you mention impact your life? Are fat children harming you? Is scientific ignorance of these parents directory impacting your life? I'm deeply sympathetic to you for having to read the opinions of idiots on the internet in the second example
It makes my work and the work of every other medical professional vastly more difficult. It causes direct physical harm for some. It causes the patient distress when we have to use giant needles to get venous access. As one example. The frequent flyers in cardiac wards I described earlier fill up the limited time of specialists with bullshit. Those who add on blatant science denialism add hours of fighting and stress to already packed schedules. I find child abuse distasteful, sue me. I was a fat kid and I get to watch the same cycle repeat itself. I also get riled up when I see someone kick a dog. Does that make me a snowflake? For not being 'tolerant' of alternative parenting styles? There is a non-zero number of cases where obesity related illness has directly led to the death of one or more parents, leaving a child or children orphaned. That's reason enough to oppose science denialism. Stopping kids from growing up fat and sick is reason enough.How does the only actual instance you mention impact your life?
Are fat children harming you?
Is scientific ignorance of these parents directory impacting your life?
Bandaid measures won't work. Gallagher is correct when he says that insurance companies are going to redefine 'intensive, multicomponent behavioral counseling' into 2-3 'wellness' sessions or possibly somehow stack it on top of their normal doctors visits.
One thing I often think about (interested in what kleinbl00 thinks about this, too) is the future market for OTs/PTs. When I think about general wellness, and insurance driven or, hell, just the way our society works with fitness, I think of a larger need for those types of jobs.
It's super-good. OTs/PTs are: - a low-impact degree. Training 'em up is easy and cheap. - far cheaper to hire than doctors. Any insurance company worth their salt will integrate their care. - essential for the elderly. What 'boomers want, 'boomers get. Fundamentally? If it's part of eldercare it's gonna be bangin' business for the next 30 years.
Also worth noting that obesity has increased in European and African countries that were once associated with universally thinner and in some cases "healthier" bodies. It's happening all over the world. The common threads are an increasingly automated, sedentary lifestyle, and an increased consumption of engineered processed foods that lack nutrients while promoting further, compulsive consumption.
I've lost nearly 100lbs (250-160ish) over the past ~13 years simply by being more aware of what I was putting into my body and gradually consuming less. I wasn't really taught that excess caloric intake = increased body fat when I was a kid and I guess no kid really should. Parents need to be taught so that they can be that health-buffer. (a tangent) Over the past few years I've been incorporating more exercise and I intend to start a bit of weight-lifting before I hit that age peak where performance drops off. I figure it's an investment into my body that will pay off in me being more mobile should I make it to old age. I've elders in my family that have different levels of fitness at around the same age (say, 60s-70s) and the gap in quality of life is astounding. I do NOT want to be feeble or immobile in my late 60s-early 70s. Naturally, I'm also self-conscious/narcissistic and want to work myself to a good 'bod' while I still can. Sure, societal pressures drive this a bit, but I don't think it's harmful to my sense of self-worth. Basking in the glory of a six-pack would just be the icing on the cake of my being.
By way of contrast, my parents restricted me to 600 calories a day when I was 7 and spent 8 months requiring me to do half an hour of Canadian Air Force calisthenics before bed. And when that didn't work, they gave up. When I went from outweighing my father by 50 lbs to underweighing my father by 50lbs in the space of three months, they said "congratulations." I'm 7 inches taller than my father.I wasn't really taught that excess caloric intake = increased body fat when I was a kid and I guess no kid really should. Parents need to be taught so that they can be that health-buffer.
Jesus Christ. My mom is a huge (negative) influence on my body image as I grew up — she’s a former anorexic who never seems to have gotten any therapy about it — but your parents are just fucking next next level. As sadly seems usual hearing from you about them.
How does obesity happen? and Is there any solution? are not what this article is about at all, but those are the questions that pop into my head. If only they gave sailors limes a hundred years sooner is a setup for a different ending than quality food and quality care have the best results, but they only kinda work, so stop being dicks. I don't remember hearing a mass appeal to stop being dicks that didn't also make a bunch of people stand up and be louder dicks. I don't really know where I was going with this comment anymore.
Pearl Harbor. Walk with me. ______________________________________________________ There are well-known and less-well-known consequences of American involvement in WWII. It's common knowledge that the eventual nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki set up the Cold War which was the ultimate battleground between capitalism and communism. Less well-known is the fact that the United States didn't ultimately win the war because of the atom bomb but because of our powers of industrial and agricultural production. Marc Reisner argued that the Army Corps of Engineers won WWII with Grand Coulee Dam. It produced an impossible surplus of power when it was brought online; it had no customers. Then the war broke out and Americans were able to refine aluminum (an electrically-intensive process; the Intalco plant in Blaine, WA uses more electricity than Los Angeles) at a fraction of the price of anyone else in the world. But in addition to aluminum, the impossible edge in oil refining really took off in WWII. Germany ground to a halt when we took their oil fields in North Africa. Meanwhile our fields in California and Texas turned out gasoline in quantities unmatched anywhere else in the world. And when you make gas, you can also make fertilizer. And when you've converted the Great American Desert to "the Heartland" you make food. You make food that travels. You make corn, potatoes and rice. And you feed that corn and rice to chickens, cows and pigs. And you drop food on the Russians, you drop food on the Chinese, you ship food to England and Australia, and while Germany and Japan are wracked with famine you share your American bounty around. An interesting side note: because it was a Japanese attack, the safe thing to do, obviously, is lock up all the Japanese. Especially as they're sitting on a bunch of plum farmland on the West coast. You know, the one closest to the Japanese Empire. The one full of refugees from the Dust Bowl. Itinerant farmers from the South and the Midwest who came to California and starved because there are only so may people to pick oranges and strawberries. The ones who will thank you and vote for you and keep growing oranges and strawberries and everything else on formerly-Japanese farms they bought for pennies on the dollar when their original owners get shipped off to Manzanar. So now Europe is in ruins and the Marshall Plan is going to make everything better. Ship that food out. Soft power! But it's got to travel. Hedgerow to Hedgerow we'll even push the Soviets around by selling it when they behave and withholding it when they don't. But it's got to travel. So corn, rice, soy and potatoes are food. We'll do anything we can to grow more food so that we can influence the behavior of the world with food. We'll subsidize the shit out of food so that everyone is growing food. Meanwhile those now-rich farmers on the West Coast who are growing carrots and olives and lettuce and spinach and oranges and apples? Yeah, they don't need any competition. They don't grow food because then those uppity black folx might go into competition with them for the high-value stuff. So they grow specialty crops. And it's assigned a fair market value. A market value that goes up because you don't need to eat "specialty crops," not really. After all, the Irish subsisted off of potatoes and potatoes are food. And corn can be made into anything, man. It can be made into sugar - sugar that's way cheaper than cane sugar! It can be fed to cows - way cheaper than grass! It can be fed to chickens! Pigs are less likely to eat it, so pig farming largely goes away (it's come back with a vengeance because the Chinese have a preference for pork but as a foodstuff it's consumption by Americans has plummeted). But Americans eat corn, and things that eat corn, and there's so much excess corn and rice and soy when we're not shipping it all over the world to cajole our foreign policy needs through soft power that there are entire divisions of the USDA trying to figure out what to do with all the stuff. And you know capitalism. Make more money. Finished products make more money than raw ingredients; you'll get so much more for a box of macaroni and cheese than you will for wheat and milk. Process the shit out of it and it'll keep forever. Process the shit out of it and it'll travel far. Process the shit out of it and you can turn it into whatever flavor you want it to be. Process the shit out of it and you can sell it to anyone, anywhere forever. Somewhere around here we've got an article that argues the dominant species on earth isn't humans, it's corn. After all, we've basically given over our food production to it. A Wendy's meal, if I recall correctly, was ultimately about 80% corn (including the French fries). And against that we've got "specialty crops" that we have to refrigerate to get them across country and there are vast swaths of the US where "specialty crops" aren't even sold because it's so easy and cheap to get food. A box of Little Debbie snack cakes costs less than a head of lettuce. And a box of Little Debbie snack cakes will keep you alive if you're starving. And a box of Little Debbie snack cakes will sit on the shelf for nine months or more and nobody will be the wiser. The power goes out on that head of lettuce and it's garbage before morning. And it's fuckin' lettuce. Meanwhile we're all working harder for less, working longer for less, driving farther for less. The calories are easy and the nutrition is hard and that's before you recognize that we've arranged our entire food economy around food not "specialty crops." Reuters pointed out yesterday that one in three workers also has some form of job in the gig economy; even if we're working 40 hours a week (we're not, we're working 47) we're also filling our spare time with TaskRabbit, with Uber, with Mechanical Turk. And as humans, we're biologically programmed to pack on pounds when we're stressed because stress means starvation. I think it was Richard Wrangham who pointed out that there have only been about 125,000 generations since homo habilus split off from Australopithecus. Homo Sapiens is only 7500 generations. Go to Mile High Stadium, start "The Wave" and by the time it makes its way back round to you, the person next to you is a Neanderthal. So here we are. Impossibly cheap calories, impossibly sedentary lifestyles, impossible stressors. Fight or flight doesn't care if it's a mastodon or an impending bankruptcy they'll both keep you up at night. At least if it's a mastodon you can run. We can't. So we get fat. And because we're Americans, and we've got a nice Protestant work ethic, and because we're rugged individualists, if you're fat it's a personal failing. Society hasn't let you down, the system hasn't failed you, you're a glutton and you should feel bad. Well, I'd start with 1) Take it the fuck easier on the poor and lower middle class. 2) Prioritize nutrition over calories. Know who used to be in charge of school nutrition? The goddamn Department of Defense. Then Nixon kicked 'em out and Reagan categorized ketchup as a fruit. 3) Make healthcare a nonprofit industry again. Know what's stupid cheap? Diet, exercise and sleep. Know what's crazy expensive? The time of medical professionals. Know where you can't make any money? Diet, exercise and sleep. Know where your profit centers are? Prescription drugs. Weight Watchers costs around $700 a month - including food. They get an extra $13 a week to tell you "atta boy! You're doing good!" Insulin costs around $500 a month. No food. Insurance pays for insulin, usually. It rarely pays for Weight Watchers. Can you imagine what our society looked like if we had, you know, nutrition? The fundamental basis of this article is "we know how to make people healthier, but we don't give a shit." I think it's more than that. It's more than tradition. It's that in order to solve the problem, we have to break capitalism. And nobody wants to break capitalism.How does obesity happen?
Is there any solution?
Thanks for doing the work on writing, "The History of Corn in America: Or, Why You're Fat". I've written this and explained it so many times... I just couldn't do it again. (And thanks for skipping over the Surplus Corn Story, and Farm Subsidies. Those just make people angry at farmers, and we don't need that.)
Oh, I was thinking about the process of: 1. Hey Farmers, Uncle Sam here... here's money to grow SHITLOADS OF CORN FOR THE WAR EFFORT, 2. Hey Farmers, Uncle Sam again... umm... damn... that's a lot of corn. Like WAY too much! 3. Hey industrial food makers, Uncle Sam here, we need you to add corn to EVERYTHING to suck up this surplus, or our farmers are going to suffer. 4. Oh. And we'll subsidize it, just to ahem sweeten the pot. 5. Hey heathcare providers, Uncle Sam here, why are Americans so fat and lazy? Have some money to research the topic. 6. Healthcare researchers: because we eat too much sugar/corn. We need to cut back and eat real food. Not processed cheese food product. 7. HEY NOW! WHAT ABOUT THE FARMERS!! THAT's ANTI-AMERICAN! Result: Today's supermarket.
Yeah but you're forgetting step 0.5: 0.5 Hey, Farmers, Uncle Sam here... we've discovered that we can radically influence the domestic and foreign affairs of half the world by using food as a carrot and/or stick. Therefore, the more food we have, the bigger the carrot and/or stick. The rest of it flows from that. Our agricultural policy is designed around massive surpluses for tactical export. Whenever we have too much at home it's because everyone else is doing fine without us, much to our regret. Whenever we have too little at home... wait, what am I saying. We never have too little at home.
Healthcare as non-profit sounds so wonderful, and I'm not just saying that because for the first time in my adult life I have medical bills (that are extremely manageable and could be considered as optional visits). I couldn't agree more with nutrition over calories. My opinion based on anecdotal personal experience is eating more vegetables helps me feel better. If people ate more stuff that goes bad and less stuff that's shelf stable for months the calorie surpluses would erode. My dad recently told me he, at 71, finally figured out how to eat. He said he told the same thing to his physician's assistant who said it's great and a lot of people never figure it out. In lieu of ending capitalism, do we do the best we can with education? Education won't solve this for the masses but can help individuals.
The more time I spend in the medical industry the better I like single-payer. The prices are public, mandated by the state or feds, and argued over as policy. Your lobbyists, my lobbyists, your experts, my experts, your doctors, my doctors, your executives, my executives, they're all going to get together in a public space and hammer this shit out. This ICD-10 code pays this much. That one pays that much. Publish it all as a schedule on the interwebs so everyone can see it (my state already does). Now any insurance company under the sun can bid on providing services in that state. Their profit is the difference between what it costs them to pay out those codes and what what they pull in as premiums (which are paid, in full or in part, by the state - there's another whole committee there). You can no longer make your profits by screwing patients - they aren't paying you directly. You can no longer make your profits by screwing healthcare providers - their pricing schedule is publicly available and if they gave a shot of Rhogam, you pay what the state says you pay for a shot of Rhogam. The only way you can make money is by keeping people healthy. Preventive care starts looking really cheap then. So does group therapy. Nutrition? Fuck yeah let's pay our nutritionist her rate and have her be at the community center twice a week. And now you have a major multinational company whose profits depend on inner-city Detroit being healthy because those guys are eligible for healthcare, and they signed a contract to provide it. For some reason, public health is considered a private problem. But trust me: you make Aetna's bottom line depend on welfare mothers eating healthy and welfare mothers will be eating healthy. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/12/15629716/aetna-ceo-bertolini-single-payer
Goddamn it. Corn, wheat, rice and soy. Even potatoes are specialty crops.
Not finished the whole article yet, but at least the first paper that's cited has obviously not been read beyond the first few lines. The author cites this meta-analysis for this: The prevalence of metabolically healthy obesity: a systematic review and critical evaluation of the definitions used (can't post link in comments) To quote the conclusion of the full paper: debated. This systematic review showed that the overall prevalence of MHO varied from 6% to 75%. The preva- lence seems to be higher in women, young people and Asians. However, when only studies with at least a 70% response rate were considered, the overall MHO preva- lence ranged from 10% to 51%. Considering the marked heterogeneity of MHO definitions described in the litera- ture, it is clear that the establishment of a common MHO definition is urgently needed, although this may not be an easy task because we still do not know the precise mechanisms that are involved with this phenotype and its clinical implications in the long term. C) young people are more likely to be MHO, meaning that they simply haven't developed damage yet. Asian people are more likely to be MHO, because some of the trials in asian populations "define obesity was a lower BMI cut-off point ≥25 kg/m² (22% of the studies)", whereas in trials with caucasian/western populations it was a BMI >30kg/m². Another poignant quote from the original meta-analysis: Unlike the HuffPos authors conclusion, mine is that MHO is by and large a myth and for most people, for most individuals, obesity equals being unhealthy.But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy
The prevalence of the MHO phenotype has been widely
A) there's no widely accepted definition for being metabolically healthy in obese people, this also ignores all non-metabolic issues, i.e. having a good HbA1c but arthrosis due to your joints being overwhelmed.
B) with rising trial/study quality, the rate of MHO obese people dropped On one hand, high prevalence estimates (arbitrarily set in ≥ 33%) were obtained when the definition was based on less strict criteria, for example, that proposed by Meigs et al . (37) using only HOMA-IR. On the other hand, low prevalence estimates were found when a more stringent definition of MHO was used, for example, that proposed by Karelis et al . (36), which is based on five cardiometabolic factors: blood pressure, HDL-c, low- density lipoprotein cholesterol, total cholesterol and HOMA-IR.
Again, HMO prevalence is tied to low trial quality.
As someone who was overweight for a while and then finally lost enough weight to get to nominal normal... it doesn't matter what is motivating or demotivating you. 1) Obesity is a fundamentally unhealthy state. 2) Either you have habits that contribute to your obesity or you have habits that contribute to being a healthy weight. If you are obese and want that to change, you have to fundamentally change various aspects of how you live your life (and I realize I'm scratching the surface of a complex topic in saying that, but it's true). That is not easy, especially in today's sedentary, instant-gratification society, and that's why the obesity rate keeps climbing. Shame is also a choice. Shaming is a misnomer. A person has to choose to feel shame. You can "shame" someone all you want, but if the target has decided not to feel shame, tough luck. Shame is honestly only one person's fault, and that's whoever has chosen to feel it. Fat acceptance is akin to saying I should embrace a heroin addict's heroin addiction instead of asking them to change.
That is a oversimplification. The near instantaneous emotional responses we have to things aren't dictated by any one choice. We don't sense something then manually assign an emotion to it, it just happens. Ultimately, the emotions we feel in any one situation are the result of innumerable choices and situations we've experienced throughout our lives. What we do have a choice in is how we respond to an emotion, whether we let go of or prolong it. Whilst that's a subtle difference, it's important. It's no easy task to let go of negative emotions. It takes a lot of practice, honesty, and self-reflection. It's a consciously learned skill which lot of people aren't even aware they could have. And even then, it's only through the daily application of that skill that we gradually reprogram ourselves to react to things differently. But that takes a long time and it's unfair to expect it of someone. Especially with regards strong, social, constantly reinforced emotions such as shame. I used to have some rough anxiety issues. Through the aforementioned practice, honesty, and self-reflection, it is now a non-issue for me. That took 2-3 years and it's not like I never feel anxious anymore, I've just learnt to process it better. But if there was some sort of anxiety equivalent to body shaming, you can bet that it would still overwhelm me on some days. At the end of the day, you are responsible for the emotions you cause in people. Whether you make them feel happy, sad, offended, angry, bored, frustrated, shameful, anxious, whatever. You can chose not to give a fuck about that - and sometimes you shouldn't - but that doesn't make you any less responsible for your actionsShame is also a choice. Shaming is a misnomer. A person has to choose to feel shame. You can "shame" someone all you want, but if the target has decided not to feel shame, tough luck. Shame is honestly only one person's fault, and that's whoever has chosen to feel it.
It really is that simple. People make taking personal responsibility hard, because it requires proactive personal effort.
You're what, 5'6? "Normal" is 40lbs wide at that height. Should you ever get pregnant expect to gain 25-40lbs. That 15lbs is "heavy" for you indicates that you have a normal metabolism. I'm hungry right now. I just had lunch half an hour ago. 20 minutes before that I had a banana. It's fair to say that if I'm awake, I'm hungry. If I eat until I'm not hungry, the scale is 4-6lbs heavier the next day and will take two weeks to a month of aggressive dieting to return to the previous numbers. I've weighed 92 lbs less than I weigh now. I've only weighed about 6lbs more. I got there by eating until I wasn't hungry - at 15 - and got to 92lbs less by not eating. It was the opposite of healthy but there is effectively zero guidance for people attempting to do it right. From the article: I have Jesus Insurance. It covers four sessions with a dietician, with a referral, including initial visit. It bloody covers sixteen PT appointments a year. Behold the Pareto Principle. If those 20% account for more than 20% of hiring managers, then fat people are going to be discriminated against. I have a cousin who has been morbidly obese ever since she was raped as a freshman in college. I understand that body image is a sensitive issue for nearly everyone, but those who have been more than 15lbs overweight have more of it than those who don't.that study about how it’s impossible to lose weight and keep it off or else you’ll be hungry every day for life, etc? As a person who has been 15 pounds heavier and naturally tends to maintain around my current weight, it just doesn’t jive with my own experiences...
In 2017, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the expert panel that decides which treatments should be offered for free under Obamacare, found that the decisive factor in obesity care was not the diet patients went on, but how much attention and support they received while they were on it. Participants who got more than 12 sessions with a dietician saw significant reductions in their rates of prediabetes and cardiovascular risk. Those who got less personalized care showed almost no improvement at all.
Also just like. If everybody is fat, then can everybody be discriminated against? 80% if Americans are obese and half of them feel judged on a daily basis (paraphrasing). By whom?
Trust me I am an expert in that arena)
Do you have ideas on what the solution might be, whether for you or the population in general? Or is the solution that we need to not whinge about it?
>Also just like. If everybody is fat, then can everybody be discriminated against? 80% of Americans are obese and half of them feel judged on a daily basis (paraphrasing). By whom? I totally agree with you. Of course, people have been discriminated for a long time, if we talk about the history of humankind. But nowadays "discrimination" has nothing in common with the real one. Seems like some people claim to be discriminated if they don't easily get things they want or someone is better than they are.
>Also just like. If everybody is fat, then can everybody be discriminated against? 80% of Americans are obese and half of them feel judged on a daily basis (paraphrasing). By whom? I totally agree with you. Of course, people have been discriminated for a long time, if we talk about the history of humankind. But nowadays "discrimination" has nothing in common with the real one. Seems like some people claim to be discriminated if they don't easily get things they want or someone is better than they are.
mycosmeticclinics Abdominoplasty is a procedure to reduce the excess skin and fat from the lower abdomen and also tightens the muscles of the abdominal wall. The degree of excess skin and fat differs in amount and distribution amongst individuals. The choice of technique varies based on each individual patient. The standard abdominoplasty involves creating a transverse scar on the lower abdomen/pubis. The skin and fat are lifted off from the muscles, the muscles are tightened, and the excess tissues are trimmed. The umbilicus is relocated at a new point on the ‘new tummy’. This technique addresses the excess tissues in the front of the abdomen but may not treat any excess fat on the flanks. This maybe further addressed in a second stage with liposuction. Every effort is made to produce a single longitudinal scar, however, in a few instances there may also be a small vertical component in the midline below the umbilicus. The mini-abdominoplasty involves removing the excess skin and fat from under the area under the umbilicus without having to relocate the umbilicus.
mycosmeticclinics Abdominoplasty is a procedure to reduce the excess skin and fat from the lower abdomen and also tightens the muscles of the abdominal wall. The degree of excess skin and fat differs in amount and distribution amongst individuals. The choice of technique varies based on each individual patient. The standard abdominoplasty involves creating a transverse scar on the lower abdomen/pubis. The skin and fat are lifted off from the muscles, the muscles are tightened, and the excess tissues are trimmed. The umbilicus is relocated at a new point on the ‘new tummy’. This technique addresses the excess tissues in the front of the abdomen but may not treat any excess fat on the flanks. This maybe further addressed in a second stage with liposuction. Every effort is made to produce a single longitudinal scar, however, in a few instances there may also be a small vertical component in the midline below the umbilicus. The mini-abdominoplasty involves removing the excess skin and fat from under the area under the umbilicus without having to relocate the umbilicus.
i think that that is something one can be ashamed about. you can be as disappointed in yourself as much as you'd like, but that won't change anything. it's what you do about that shame that will affect you. i personally believe that if you really do work hard enough toward a goal such as weight loss or getting more lean and/or fit, you will achieve it. but it will all depend on you.
Obesity is something that comes with lifestyle. We must be carefully choose on what we eat, what activities we do etc.
I would disagree. Obesity is caused by inquinchable thirst for the food and no control over your taste buds. Eat healthy and not just just stop eating.
Hmm. There’s a lot of study and documentation that points to the development of eating disorders, including binge eating, as a response to trauma (most specifically and what I’ve read the most about, as a response to sexual trauma like rape, abuse, molestration). I don’t think every obese person has that experience as the driving cause for their obesity, but it’s one clear and significant example where obesity is not simple, not truly caused by hunger, and not really the result of having no control — at least, not the result of having no control over a person’s appetite. I also have observed personally children who are born into fat or obese families who are surrounded by gluttonous eating and who naturally follow the examples set before them. This happens before a child is old enough to understand calories, health, even really that “eating an excess of food leads to weight gain.” I don’t think that’s an unquenchable thirst or a lack of control; I think it’s a situation where children are truly doomed by their family before they can even start to manage their own health. I’ve also read articles about things like emotional eating where a person eats to assuage their feelings and not their physical hunger. I do agree that the solution to weight loss has much more to do with what a person eats than whether they eat at all; if you don’t eat you are in for a bad time and going to fail. However, it’s true that proper nutrition isn’t taught in schools and even the food pyramid put out by the US government, and other similar models or advice about what to eat from such sources, are very flawed and influenced by lobbies.
Absolutely i do agree. The thing is some people have issues in their genes derived from parents etc. But those are very few cases. The most and the biggest problem is no control over the tongue. Don't mind me but american pallet is too much indulged in cream, butter and creamy tasting products. This is according to me the biggest issue. Though milk is good and milk refined products in high measures create obesity. Green vegetables and flour is the solution with thai spices.
I would disagree. Obesity is caused by inquinchable thirst for the food and no control over your taste buds. Eat healthy and not just just stop eating...Read more h ttp ://ww w.writerscafe. org/writing/johnyexpert /2062482/
Every time someone tell me it's hard to do something (a lady faint from starvation with no weight lost! proof how hard weight loss really is) I assume there is foul play. If you want someone to succeed you dont tell them it's hard. You dont tell a kid it's so damn hard to learn bicycle, or difficult to learn swimming (it's damn hard, I still cant swim properly). You reassure them. It will be easy. If someone tell you it's hard to quit smoking, they dont want you to quit. They want you to buy a patch, a magical syrup, or to boost their ego because they quit smoking and they are so proud of themselves. My point is: I will be the guy saying it's easy to eat better. So, I'm one of the bad guys, highlighted in the article. But, as an European (not a UK citizen, it's not in Europe anymore: they grew too fat to stay in) I'm not used to obesity at all (never knew anyone over 100kg). I cant even fathom what the problem is like. Good luck fellow American/Mexican. The place to start is at the doctor’s office. Hahaha.. no it seems it start at Mars, Monsanto and McDonalds' officesMars or a Monsanto or a McDonald’s, each working tirelessly to lower its costs and raise its profits. But that’s still no reason to despair. There’s a lot we can do right now to improve fat people’s lives—to shift our focus for the first time from weight to health and from shame to support.
I am obese by BMI. I have ten pounds to lose to be overweight. Note that I put on those ten pounds on the advice of a dietician who said that in order to lose weight I needed to eat more calories. IT WAS SUPER-EFFECTIVE. I am burning a spare 2000 calories a day, biking 30 miles for roughly 2 1/2 hours a day. I eat principally vegetables and protein, probably drink two drinks every couple weeks. I'm 35lbs away from "normal". I got within 10lbs of "normal" a few years back; to get there I have to be light-headed when I stand up all day every day. As you might imagine, blood sugar that low does not improve my mood, nor my interactions with my fellow humans. I don't have that luxury here; if I eat to lose weight burning that many calories the bike wobbles and I hit stuff and then I don't make it to work. I can't get a flu shot without someone telling me to lose weight. I went to the doctor once with foot pain while running. They told me "you know you'd be in a lot less pain if you lost about 40lbs." I mean, what do you think I'm trying to do here? Two days later I broke a pedal off the exercise bike (which I did an hour on every day after working out). It was the second time in six months. I debated bringing it in and asking her how she wanted me to go about it but knew she wouldn't have any idea, nor would she care. She'd looked at BMI and discarded everything else. She didn't even do anything about the foot pain. I went to a nutritionist who said "you're not fat, and we need to get your percentage body fat by doing a wet measure." I said "great. Can we do that here?" "No. There's only one place in Seattle to do it." "Is it covered by insurance?" "no. And it's $600." "Will it lower my insurance rates?" "No. They only care about BMI." You know what it's like? It's about crafting a Mii, standing on that goddamn passive-aggressive scale thing and have it balloon your character out to parade float proportions, complete with shame-faced shaking head and sad trombone.I cant even fathom what the problem is like.
What are you saying ? You and 80% of Americans have a special metabolism which make them only functional with 2500+ cal/ day? or BMI is a totally wrong measuring stick for Americans, but it work just fine for Japaneses? It seems you exercise way way too much to get there I have to be light-headed when I stand up all day every day.
You said you couldn't understand what the problem is like. I can only speak for myself, but for myself, the act of attempting to match society's expectations is arduous and humiliating. For the greater country at large, calories are cheap, nutrition is expensive, cortisol is abundant and exercise is a luxury. I used to be an exercise bulimic. Now I'm a commuter. When I'm not working I eat about 1300 calories a day. And I gain weight.
Oatmeal for breakfast, three pieces of lunchmeat and a celery stalk in a low-carb wrap for lunch, and a Blue Apron at around 500 calories for dinner. Last quarter sucked because I didn't have time to exercise. This quarter will be better because I'll have three afternoons off a week. I run basically so that I can have seconds. Or a snack. It basically takes me about two miles of running a day to fit in 2000 calories.
That's impressive - I reckon if I ate that I'd cease to exist. Or at the very least be extremely unpleasant to be around. Free-time rears it's head as a differing factor, I manage 6 evenings in the gym in sport off-season. If I get round to building a house/having a family I wonder how badly my body would cope with simply not having the time to get training done. Priorities shift and belly expands. Well that's a depressing link - although I'll take some hope from my low resting heart rate and try and tell myself it's working in my favour!
My maintenance is 1400. I’m 5’3. Sucks to be a short female. To lose it is like 1200. I have a lottttt of “natural” energy. I walk a lot, basically. So I usually get to eat more than 1200 kcal/day. FWIW, according to Fitbit (which maybe I live or die by) I average around 20k steps/day. That would be double what is recommended by the AHA for the average american in order to maintain weight.
1200! Do you just get to look at an apple for an afternoon snack? 20k steps in intense though, I recall having a challenge like that at my old work place; we formed teams and tried to get everyone to do 10k steps a day, but we're all desk bound so it was quite an undertaking. I walk to and from work (inner city living in a place that barely counts as a city is great) and coupled with all the sports and training, seems to keep me battling to get enough food in. I guess it's a good problem to have.
You know that doctor in the article who said he had an egg for breakfast? I was like yeah me too Seriously, I've been mealplanning. Here's what an average day looks like: Breakfast: 2-5 days a week, skip breakfast. Most of the rest of those days a week, 1 hardboiled egg with salt around 10 am. 1 of those days a week, an egg sandwich with bacon and cheese and sriracha (480 kcal) Lunch: 4-5 days a week, a mealprepped standard usually consisting of 12oz of a vegetable/lentil soup and 8 oz of a protein/veg mix. ranges between 490-650 kcal. dinner: a variation on the above. snacks: hardboiled egg or protein stick. also remembered that sugar free jello is 10 kcal a pack yay lol . or frozen vegetable packets hit minimum 12,500 steps a day, a 12-25 minute yoga session (at home) 3ish times a week, at least one set of 10 push-ups 4x a week, and that is my general daily. on weekends i like to max my steps bc i do step competitions on fitbit. that's how i average 20k a week when m-f i usually hit 1500 lately i keep my drinking to 3x a week, if i drink i try to take the calories out of meals. i allow myself a cheat day a week but it's usually a weekend day during which i also hit 25-34k steps. etc etc etc i have a beautiful mfp streak
Nice! Thanks for writing it out. Mine is quite.. straightforward - I guess that's a perk of not being too bothered by eating the same stuff over and over. Breakfast: Banana on toast, vegemite on toast or baked beans on toast. Depends on my mood that morning. Morning Tea: Two protein bars and a biscuit Lunch: Sandwich with any variation of ham/lettuce/bacon/tomato/cheese along with some nuts or crackers to snack on. Afternoon Tea: Banana and some mandarins Dinner: The big one, usually some kind of meat with sauce (beef or chicken), a head of brocolli, spinach, mixed veg on rice or potatoes. if I'm doing a vegetarian dish this changes quite a bit and I'm doing that more and more often, but the staple is always a big, big dinner. Protein Shake to see out the night. I walk about 3km a day at least, just getting to and from work. Then the gym training 6x a week for about 90 minute sessions. In Rugby season those sessions get cut down, with trainings twice a week with a Saturday match, in Touch Rugby season two games a week so on day gets dedicated to that - last thing I want is maxing on deadlifts only to be rapidly accelerating an hour after. Unfortunately I've developed a taste for craft beer. It may be my undoing.
I don't mind eating the same thing every day...but I really enjoy cooking. My compromise is to take one day a week and cook a bunch of things, so I get my cooking fix, and then eat it through the week to do the right cal/macro balance (or at least try!). :) If I didn't enjoy cooking so much, I would aim for the classic chicken and broccoli...but the truth is, my cheat day and the day I drink the most is the day I get to go grocery shopping and start cooking with a glass of wine and go for like 4 hours doing different things. Alcohol for a long time has been my undoing, which is why I limit myself so consciously now. When I drink, I also try to minimize the calories -- but I definitely have been expanding my appreciation for beer (had a great dark ale tonight, an almost-stout, brewed with coffee and pb which just tasted like coldbrew) -- so now each beer is more precious!
Can we get #Grubski up in here? Is there a go-to veg/lentil soup recipe you use?
I like to switch it up because I cook different things. My go-to food recipe website is budgetbytes because hey, cooking that is also budget conscious? How could you say no? Here is the soup I had this past week; morrocan veg and lentil. my opinion: it was ok. i like cauliflower so i liked that add in. however, could use more spice. (I am a CHRONIC hot sauce consumer. My current belief is anything another person would look at and go "hey that'd probably be good with some cheese in it," is something that I would think "hey that'd be great with some hot sauce in it." it is an enjoyable theory.) this is the one i've made the most, chunky vegetable and lentil i have also made this mexican lentil stew -DONT forget the lime it really makes it! I do find lentils don't really have a lot of flavor so here is a bonus cabbage and veg soup recipe which I also really enjoy. As you go on the site, I encourage you to check out the Zuppa Toscana recipe; I've made that easily half a dozen times and man. That is one soup that doesn't even need hot sauce. I love it. I plan on trying the golden coconut lentil soup recipe this weekend.
Can we get #Grubski up in here? Is there a go-to veg/lentil soup recipe you use?
What am I missing? How is it about the guy on the treadmill or the lady that brings beautiful salads for lunch?“I don’t want to be portrayed; this is not about me. It’s about that guy you always see on the far treadmill at the gym. Or the lady who brings the most beautiful salads to work every day for lunch. It’s about the little girl who got bullied because of her size, and the little boy who was told he wasn’t man enough. It’s not about me, but had it been about me when I was that chubby little girl, maybe I wouldn’t be standing here, head against the door, wondering if I’m enough.”— ERIKA
Here's what you're missing: Not "the treadmill." The far treadmill. The one away from everybody else, self-shunning to save everyone else from the trouble. Not "beautiful salads." "The most beautiful salads." The ones that reflect painstaking, obsessive care, the objects of focus, the most important part of the day that serves triple duty as the high point of the work day, the ward against being invited to Cheesecake Factory for lunch (2700 calories in them nachos) and the virtue signaling of "yes I know I'm fat I'm working hard to do something about it please don't judge me for what I'm eating." You're making her point, really - you read "guy on the treadmill" and "lady that brings beautiful salads" and completely missed the obsessive qualifiers that fat people live in so that you completely miss them.It’s about that guy you always see on the far treadmill at the gym.
Or the lady who brings the most beautiful salads to work every day for lunch.
I guess I do then. Not coming from an obsessive relationship with food, I didn’t recognize that it was from that perspective. I’m physically fit for my age and I feel fortunate to be so and to have the opportunity to be this way. I typically bring a salads in a very vegetable heavy lunch to work each day and get a bunch of flak from some less fit coworkers about it. Not that it bothers me too much. This article got me thinking a bit and the comment about the salad piqued my interest.
It's entirely possible that I notice more about my surroundings than nearly anyone I know because when you're fat, you're constantly on the alert for things that will cause you social stigma. And, because you're fat, you blend into the background as much as possible. Watch the heavier people around you. I'll bet (A) they move like ninjas (B) you've never noticed that before. That's because when you stomp around you're being loud. If you hear them walking it's because they're gigantic hippos. I know one guy who is more observant and quieter than me. He's also heavier by far.
I get similar comments too - I certainly wouldn't be commenting on someone elses food choices so the idea of others doing it do me does bother me a bit. I eat food I like and I make sure I have enough of it to progress in my training - I guess I'm lucky it's that simple for me!
Ahhh, see - but if you're skinny and someone comments on your food they're an asshole. Either that or they're making conversation. If you're fat and someone comments on your food they're helping. They're offering advice. Because, you see, it's clear you know fuckall about diet, just look at your plate! I commented on Reddit once that I was frustrated over the fact that eating 3 slices of pizza caused me to gain 4 lbs. Then Reddit got mad at me, trolled back through my comments, and all of a sudden there were about eight posts mocking me for thinking I could lose weight when all I ate was pizza. Whenever you're fat, the meal you're eating right then is the meal you eat all the time, unless it's something healthy in which case you're clearly sneaking a dozen donuts when nobody's looking because after all they're thin with no problems so obviously you must be an absolute glutton, you fat disgusting pig.
I could be in the minority but I just don't comment on anyone's food unless it looks or smells fantastic. I used to be chubby and I hated people doing it to me, whatever their intentions - I do find it funny that now people comment more often on my food choices than before when I wasn't fit. Maybe I'm letting the past dictate; people could just be asking out of curiosity. Though I can't imagine anyone asking "are you sure you should be eating that" to an overweight person, like that just seems so monumentally stupid. Wtf are you expecting in answer when you ask that. Apparently it happens though. This gets me - and when you see someone obviously fit getting a pizza I've "earned it" or it's a "cheat meal". Immediately explained away as something they deserve.Whenever you're fat, the meal you're eating right then is the meal you eat all the time
This gets me - and when you see someone obviously fit getting a pizza I've "earned it" or it's a "cheat meal". Immediately explained away as something they deserve. I say screw to hell with any dumb-ass that would ever spend the time to think or mention it. With an attitude like that, they'r e not even worth the time or consideration anyway. Eat for health and happiness. Not that it's easy to do, given much of pop-culture. But that part of pop culture should be disregarded also. Also, I lay off the cheese and dairy. No pizza for me. Damn, but that stuff gives me me acne. I mean, it's meant to make baby cows grow really fast. I find it acts as an inflammatory, plus I can feel my blood sugar levels surge after a lot of dairy, of course, especially in the form of ice cream. Blah.Whenever you're fat, the meal you're eating right then is the meal you eat all the time
Except they're your friends. And they're your family. And they're doing it out of love. And they're doing it out of concern. And they want to know why you can't be normal. And they want to know why you can't look like them. I mean, listen to yourself. Here in the midst of solidarity you go on an anti-dairy rant - despite it all, you can't help but give dietary advice based on your experience. Three spare sentences separate "eat for health and happiness" and "Also, I lay off the cheese and dairy." My cousin (150lb overweight) has been shunned by her sister (100lb overweight) and her aunt (75lb overweight) because she started posting body-acceptance images on Facebook. The 100lb-overweight cousin posted this and the 150lb overweight one - her big sister - replied "I was going to post this but I was too busy eating twinkies." The psychology is so deep most people can't even see it even when we're talking about it. Only person on my feed who didn't argue with it? And keep in mind, I didn't post it - is the former counselor at an eating disorder clinic.I say screw to hell with any dumb-ass that would ever spend the time to think or mention it.
If they don't ask, they look at you meaningfully. If they don't look at you meaningfully, they pause their conversation. I literally stopped eating in high school. For four years, I ate nothing - no calories - before 5:30pm. Then at 5:30 I gorged. Then I ran eight miles. Nobody else can see the stars in front of your eyes but that's okay. You know they're there. They're your halo. They're what make you worthy. Because fuckin' nobody else will.Though I can't imagine anyone asking "are you sure you should be eating that" to an overweight person, like that just seems so monumentally stupid. Wtf are you expecting in answer when you ask that. Apparently it happens though.