Fatties and their Haters

[CancelMyService]

While it's obviously rude to make fun of/discriminate against someone who's overweight, those "fat acceptance" groups bother me because they are basically advocating a lifestyle that is horribly unhealthy.

I mean, as stated already in the thread, there are those who are overweight for reasons they can't control. The folks who are the most vocal about others "accepting" overweight people are the ones who overeat and don't excercise enough.


(In the interest of fairness, I'm overweight myself so don't think this is some "skinny dude bashes fatties" post)

[AFPheonix]

I'm 30 pounds over currently. Between this thread and a few going on over at Something Awful, I'm doing something about it. I'm stopping drinking soda. I figure one small change to get started. Nothing huge. I like water, if I want a little flavor my store sells these little packets that are like Crystal Light for a buck a box.
I looked at the gatorade bottles I was drinking and was honestly amazed at how much sugar was in those. Those are going away too.
Something simple, but it's a start, and it will be interesting to see if and how it pays off in a few weeks.
I was reading a blog by a woman who got up to over 500 pounds as a fat activist. She decided to get weight loss surgery because her health was in danger. Now she's getting flak from the fat activist crowd for "selling out". She gets crap from other people for still being super obese although she's lost a fair amount of weight. But reading about her travails got me thinking. Everyone always asks themselves how people let themselves get that way, even if they're packing a few pounds more than they ought. Well, I'm not about to let myself get there.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Check out this video blog on sugar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3g8OSOolmE


You'll probably lose weight, just quitting the soda. You will not be the first, I know several folks dropped quite a bit of weight just knocking it off with the soda.

[Boozy]

Sodas are the easiest thing to remove from your diet, because they don't fill you up. Dropping sodas provides bang for your diet buck - you can drop a ton of calories without leaving yourself hungry.

I stopped drinking sodas a few years ago when I was removing various things from my diet in an effort to figure out how to control my migraines. I lost a lot of weight, to the point where I became too thin. It made me realize just how much of my daily calorie intake I must have been getting from those sodas. All in refined white sugar.

I changed my diet immediately. It has done nothing for the migraines, but I feel better in general.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I probably could get down to a size 14-16 if I dieted, but I really don't see the point. I'm happy in my own skin, after years of not being and I don't see it's anyone's business. I've had a few skinny girls make comments, but as far as I'm concerned, if you send bitchery my way, expect to get it back times ten. It's amazing how many of these girls fold as soon as someone hits back at them where it hurts; I refuse to feel guilty cuz a girl who'd called me a "fat cow" bursts into tears cuz I call her a "skinny bitch" in return. As I stated before, I'm not obese, just curved. I eat relatively healthy; however, I refuse to diet just to fit society's ideal. In any case, due to my body shape, I couldn't be skinny anyway.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

One reason I went to a low carb diet was to treat migraines. I still get them, but extremely rarely. A couple a year instead of maybe once or twice a month.

The ups and downs of sugar/insulin response can cause an addrenaline response, and by turn, migraines. And because I suffer from chonic low sugar, this was a big issue for me. Controlled carbohydrate diet very effectively fixed that right up for me.

[blas87]

Quitting soda doesn't work for everyone.

When my pants stopped fitting properly and I was growing a muffin top, I quit soda all together and started drinking 8-16 bottles of water a day, on top of doubling my exercising and eating only fresh, good food. I did not lose a single pound. With everything I had done to myself, I completely slowed down my metabolism.

I admit, I bought into the diet pills. I bought Mega T Green Tea diet pills in February or March. I have ONE soda pop a day (sometimes 2 on the weekend to splurge) and occasionally will have one of those small frappuccinos after work. I still kept exercising and went back to how I had been eating, which wasn't that bad or that much to begin with.

And I lost ALL the extra weight by late April/early May.

But please be aware, I gained all that weight because of stress and stress alone. I didn't drink much soda to begin with, drank lots of water and had been exercising for at least 30 mins a day since age 14. I was under so much stress and was angry and anxious all the time that my body literally gained that weight all by itself. Everything I ate seemed to turn into more fat.

I still take the diet pills, but not to lose anymore weight, but to make sure I will not gain it back. I don't trust my own metabolism after what happened. And I don't want to find out what will happen.

[Boozy]

Quitting soda doesn't work for everyone.

It's not a magic bullet. And some people can down sodas like there's no tomorrow and not gain an ounce. My husband is one of those people.

It's just an easy way to cut back calories; nothing more, nothing less. 160 calories per can. Substitute water for just one of those daily cans, while changing absolutely nothing else about your lifestyle or diet, and you will lose over 15 pounds in a year.

[AFPheonix]

It's still just about the 1st law of thermodynamics. You cannot get fat off of nothing. The energy stored as fat had to come from somewhere, and it's from the food you eat. If you take in less energy than your body needs, then your body will take energy from stores. This is a basic law of physics that really has yet to be broken.

And healthful food does not necessarily mean low-caloric food. It can be very good for you and still be energy dense.

[BlaqueKatt]

People can put weight on in essentially two ways: heavy weight training or just getting fat. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell am not seeing over half the populace running around muscle bound. So, option number 2 is the more plausible again.

That's because you're looking for this, when the reality is this

I'm close to 160 in that picture(157.5 actually)-do I look all "muscle bound" to you? Not all people with high muscle mass look like bodybuilders/musclebound. Not even a high percentage of them do, to look like the first pictures takes hours a day in a gym, to look like me takes walking, biking, working in a warehouse loading furniture onto trucks. I've got muscle mass and strength, but I really don't care about muscle definition that would require working out, and targeting specific muscle groups.

[AFPheonix]

Ok, so that is you. A single person does not a trend make.

So. Again, do you see more people like yourself, or people who are frankly packing more fat around then they ought to?
I still say the latter. I have a fair amount of muscle on me too, but it's still got fat over the top. More than there should be, so I'm doing something about it.

[tropicsgoddess]

There are a few people who love the larger person, but they are rare. I'm a gutbucket, and I know that if I went searching for romance I would have to lose a fair amount of weight to have a better chance of being considered. Looks aren't everything, but they bloody well help at first.

As a kid I was big for my age, then I grew out of it when I was in my teen years and remained skinny until I moved out of my parents house at 21. I was around 115 lbs at the time, but now I'm 5'7" and 180 lbs. I don't look incredibly huge,but you could see I'm a little thick in some areas. I always say, I'm not fat I'm rubenesque. My SO on the other hand, he's always been big since day one. He's 6'9" and over 300lbs and he's the first big man I've ever been with. I have no issues over weight as long as it's not to a point where he's putting his health at risk. Besides the health risk, I have an issue with the really big women who go out wearing tight,skimpy and trashy clothes. It's all good to have some meat on your bones, but I don't wanna see somebody dressed like a hooker with a muffin top and *shudder* camel toe or moose knuckle. My personal gripe in regards to my weight is where people mistake me for being pregnant. I think it's pretty insulting to just assume that a woman who has a little tummy and meat on the bones is pregnant when they're not.

[BlaqueKatt]

Ok, so that is you. A single person does not a trend make.

I never said it did, you're the one that said you aren't seeing people walking around all "muscle bound", and I was just showing that not everyone with high muscle mass looks like a bodybuilder. If you saw a group of 20 people like me, you would more than likely assume we were a "normal weight", but for statistical purposes we are lumped in as "overweight" or "Obese" because the BMI is not accurate. How much do you think that skews the statistics? Remember any bodybuilders and professional athletes aren't taken out of the stats they're added in under the overweight or obese category which makes the problem look worse than it really is.

It's like taking a group of 100 people and saying 50% are blond because they have light hair and not bothering to find out 25 dye their hair to be blond but they're actually redheads. They're giving an incomplete statistic to induce panic. To put it another way: headline-new killer virus has 75% death rate!!!!! What they don't ever tell you is there are only 4 confirmed cases and 3 died.

The members of the US Armed Forces usually have a BMI that places them in the overeight to obese category due to muscle mass from the amount of physical training they must complete, as of May 2007 this was 2,885,105 both active duty and reserve components they are included in the statistics as overweight or obese as they are part of the US population which according to the US Census is around 303,824,646, take out under 15(BMI is only for over 18 but the census only breaks down to 0-14, 15-64, and 64-up) and you are left with 242,677,893. Granted that only accounts for 1 percent-but they never include that in their figures. What is the number of bodybuilders/professional athletes/people that work out regularly? But when they claim only 37% of almost 250 million people(94,644,378) are at a healthy weight, I honestly don't see anywhere near that (they say 63% overweight with 26% obese-I certainly hope that those numbers aren't to be added* but they never clarify that either-if they are to be added that leaves only 11% of almost 250 million people{26,694,568} at a healthy weight) I find that extremely hard to swallow.

So. Again, do you see more people like yourself, or people who are frankly packing more fat around then they ought to?

If you see a group of "normal sized" people and one who is around 400 pounds which one will you notice? you'll totally forget about the 20 or so normal weight and remember the "fatty".

And if you're asking what I personally see around-I actually see more girls that are way too thin, I'm talking pelvic bones protruding over the top of their hip huggers, ribs countable from a distance-thin. I live in a college town, most of the population here is under 30, I may see 4-5 overweight people a week. The rest are my size or smaller.


*I'm assuming the following is how the numbers are expressed:
total population =242,677,893
percentage that is overweight=63
percentage of above overweight number that is also obese=26
(the 26% would be a percentage of th 63% that are overweight)

As opposed to
total population =242,677,893
percentage of population that is overweight=63
Percentage of population that is obese not counted in the above overweight percentage=26
(the 26% would be above and beyone the 63% and would need to be added to the 63% overweight to have a total not at normal weight)

[AFPheonix]

Looking at the people who come into my pharmacy, this is the type of body shape I see most often:
http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIV...G/pix/flab.jpg

Also, using army stats to extrapolate over an entire population is misleading, as you have to have a certain fitness level to even get into basic training. I would hazard to guess that army doctors also use other methods like calipers to double check their first evaluation with BMI. Again, BMI is only a quick way to estimate your fat level, and is only best applied over large sample sizes.

Furthermore, you can have some muscle mass, but still be obese as you can still have a high fat percentage. The types of people who are muscular and have a 30+ BMI yet still have less than 10% body fat are far rarer than those with a 30+ BMI and a much higher body fat percentage. This is what I meant behind my muscle bound comment.

I have about a 28 or so BMI right now, I don't know what my body fat percentage is, I don't have a set of calipers kicking around. I can still tell you I have too much fat on my abdomen though.

You mentioned that BMI was invented in the mid 1800's. Do you think that there were more or less of your body type then? It was a more agrarian society.
I would expect to see more of your type per capita then, and those with even leaner body mass. So what would explain the rise in BMI per capita. especially over the last 20 or 30 years? I don't think that muscular people are throwing off the calculations off THAT much. I think people in Lil' Rascals scooting around Disneyland with a turkey leg in both hands are.

[Xanthina]

the thing that gets me... is the way people are treated as a whole. Which I think is the original point of this post. Back a few years ago, I was very careful in my dieting and had lost almost 40 lbs, leaving me only 15 lbs over weight. I'd been very good, and in my lunch I had packed myself a cookie. A normal sized, homemade cookie. I also had fruit, a nice sandwich and water. While I was eating my lunch, my coworker started making nasty, P/A comments about my cookie and how I should only eat fruit.

Why is it that people think it's ok to say harmful things about others? She said these things in front of coworkers and customers. When my manager confronted her, she said that she was trying to help me. It's not helpful... it made me what to run away so that I could cry.