Fatties and their Haters

[Ree]

That's where it's from. If the above poster loves Charlie Brown so much, I would imagine they'd be able to figure out that easy reference on their own.

Duh!!

I knew where the reference came from, and once again, if you had actually read the words posted instead of jumping the gun to bash me, as you have been doing for reasons I don't really understand, you would see that.
I meant that I didn't feel the analogy was warranted and so, didn't really understand what the heck you were trying to say.

I don't know what your real name is, nor do I really care but I used the name "Lucy" as a bit of a tongue in cheek joke.
You see, I have always felt that Lucy is a bit of a bully, (and is my least favourite character as a result), and your reply to me came off as just a bit on the hostile and bullying side, so you rather did remind me of Lucy.

I've lived with a weight problem my whole life, and as much as I would like to blame it on other factors and pretend that genetics just dealt me a lousy hand, the truth is, while genetics does play a small part in my body shape and build, my eating habits and activity level do not match.

I really don't eat all that much, actually, and on some days, I will even forget to eat meals, but if I look back at what I actually did consume, it was either something really quick and full of starch, salt, or fat, yet my activity level for the day was practically nil outside of my normal workday or running around after and lifting my granddaughter.

I don't really understand the need for such venom toward my comments.
I thought I had made the point that nobody deserves to be made fun of just because of their weight, and I had thought that was your point, too.

In other words, I had thought we were on the same team.
You talk about me siding with the team that's against us, but you're the one slapping away the hand offered in solidarity.

[ladyneeva]

I was using an average for my calorie estimate -- 40 year old female, 5'10", 150lbs, exercising 30-60 minutes a day. As for the 1500 calories being what people try to stay under, you're seriously telling me you did not notice that at least twice it has been stated that that is the poster's goal? And thats just this thread... I can link to at least a half dozen threads I've participated in or read in the past year where people were advocating down to 800 calories a day as being the magic amount that will 'fix' everyone.

Assumptions are being made (in all threads of this nature, including this thread) about people when the people making them have no way of knowing if they're true... and if we try to tell you you're talking out your ass about us you accuse us of lying! It's a no win situation, you have already made up your minds about us, sight unseen, based solely on the number on a scale.

Regardless of the reason I (or anyone else) is fat... we're not BROKEN. We do not need you to fix us, and we sure as hell don't need or in most cases WANT your pity and condescension. We just want to be treated like human beings, not called "whales" or have garbage thrown at us from car windows because we dared show our hideousness in public.

I find it infuriating in this society that if someone were to post on a board like this that they were called a stupid slut because they're skinny, blond and dressed in revealing clothes almost everyone will comment about how inappropriate that comment was, yet if someone says they were called a fat cow because they're over 25 BMI they get told "well if you don't like it, lose weight".

Why should a fat woman be expected to put in an enormous amount of effort to temporarily change something (every study ever done except the most biased and least scientifically valid ones has pegged the long term success rate of dieting to lose weight at no more than 20%, most put it at between 3% and 5%) just to earn the right not to be insulted? We don't expect the blond to dye her hair and wear sweatpants if she wants to be treated like a person.

All anyone wants to discuss though is why people are fat... and honestly, that just doesn't matter. What needs to be discussed is why society in general thinks how someone looks is the single most important facet of their personality and if they don't fall within some narrow range of "average" they're free game to be called names, physically and psychologically assaulted, and assumed to be stupid, lazy, immoral, and anything else the person in question wants to accuse us of. Who *cares* why we're fat, what I want to know is why everyone only thinks that is wrong but the way we are treated because of it is just something we should accept as being nothing more than we deserve for our "crime"?

[Lace Neil Singer]

Plus there's a huge difference, pardon the pun, between being a few pounds overweight and being morbidly obese.

I could probably stand to lose a few pounds, however I'm a lot healthier than some of my skinnier friends; one in particular is thin, exercises regularly and is a vegetarian, yet catches every cold going and has far more health problems than I do.

[ladyneeva]

I hate the term obese. And overweight for that matter. Those are clinical check marks on some bullshit mathematical scale, and once you get labeled with one of them you're screwed. You're no longer just a large person who can choose if they want to diet away a couple pounds for vanity, you are suddenly a national freaking health crisis and the symbol of all that is wrong, lazy, gluttonous and horrible about modern life.

I am not even kidding. I have a family member who was going in for monthly checkups due to a completely non weight related issue (broken hand due to getting it crushed between a trailer hitch and the associated trailer while hooking it up... how she managed that I have no idea). As a routine matter of course, they took her weight every visit. For months her doctor had absolutely no problem with her weight. She even asked a couple times if he thought she should diet and he said that he did not think it was necessary.

Then one month she went in and the magical BMI formula came back overweight... and suddenly she was getting The Lecture. You have to lose weight, you have to lose it right now or you will die! You need to lose at least 50lbs if not more! Here's the number for a nutritionist so she can teach you what foods you can and can't eat if you want to live.

How much weight had she gained?

ONE POUND.

That is how BMI (the system which the terms 'overweight' and 'obese' are based on) is used. You can argue until you're blue in the face that it's intended for use in statistical models of population trends, but the fact of the matter is that when it comes to health care, insurance, and public opinion it's used to decide who is a good person and who is a bad person that just has to accept being mocked/insulted/assaulted because it's really all their fault anyway.

[Nyoibo]

Possibly different in the US, but in Australia people being overweight has a bearing on me, my taxes go up, public health care gets overtaxed treating symptoms of overweight people.

PS: Damn, there was something else I was going to post but I've just had a mental blank, I'll come back to it.

[AdminAssistant]

Possibly different in the US, but in Australia people being overweight has a bearing on me, my taxes go up, public health care gets overtaxed treating symptoms of overweight people.

So does smoking, tanning, drinking alcohol, and having children. I would actually argue that having kids is a larger burden on the insurance system than being overweight. That argument doesn't hold much water with me; there are many activities that can potentially increase someone's health costs - everything from laying out in the sun for an hour a day to riding a motorcycle.

ETA: Actually, my weight had never come up directly at a doctor's appointment until recently. When I went to the clinic for migraines, the doctor told me, "Well, exercising for 30 minutes a day would help." Um, how exactly? *sigh* Then when I went to see the gyno she said, "You know, your BMI isn't where we'd like to see it, but I bet you know that." (She said it in a friendly, polite manner; we'd been laughing and joking our way through my medical history). Then, "You may want to consider talking to the folks in our wellness center". Which I intend to do once I'm in classes again and can go to the clinic without an extra fee.

[ladyneeva]

Considering that three fourths of the health care costs are to pay to treat fatness itself and not anything that might be caused by it, if the medical care system would stop pushing expensive drugs (with equally expensive to treat side effects, remember fen-phen?) and even more expensive surgical mutilations on us in an effort to 'fix' us, the cost savings would be immense.

Then you have the observed fact that many many fat people resist going to the doctor until it is very seriously bad... mainly because we know that we'll just be told to lose 100lbs and call them in the morning anyway. If we're going to get blown off until the problem has escalated to the point where even a first year medical student can't ignore it anymore anyway, why bother spending the $20 to $40 for the office visit?

So by the time we do go, we're usually in such severe straits that a condition which could have been entirely cured with a cheap pill or minor outpatient procedure is now something requiring much much more money just to stabilize and often CAN'T be cured but only maintained.

Of course, part of the "added cost" of being overweight on the health care system might just be that instead of dying from a stroke, heart attack or kidney failure we actually have a better chance of SURVIVING? http://tinyurl.com/yuf3tu

The fact that we survive those incidents better means that yes we'll cost more than someone who dies the first time.

For that matter, there is an idea starting to be tossed around that maybe the higher risks of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc aren't a result of being unhealthier overall but rather the result of being healthier overall... and therefore living long enough to get them! Maybe these things are actually very common as our species ages, and it's just that previous generations weren't living long enough for them to develop. Since we're now living longer on average, we're now seeing them more. And since medical care is better than ever, they're also starting to be detected earlier than ever, which is also adding to the "rising numbers" that are being reported.

But nobody wants to think like that when it's easier just to blame people... after all, if you can convince yourself that they brought it on themselves because they were lazy, gluttonous, or stupid that means that since you know you aren't any of those things, that you're a good person, it means you won't get them yourself.

[AFPheonix]

I'm sorry, you're quoting a blog as gospel. A blog that goes pretty much in the face of every peer reviewed article I've ever read on the subject.

Being fat is NOT GOOD FOR YOU. I really don't care that much if your fat. Whatever, that's your gig. Hell, even after that 10 pounds I lost by mild restriction and substitution, I have probably 15 more to go. But deliberately spreading misinformation displeases me. I deliberately ignored the fact a few pages ago that you quoted me as an example of someone who hates fatties, when you apparently didn't bother to read that particular post, or even any of my other posts. I am not hating on fatties in general. That post was railing against pretty much what you've been doing the last few posts, which is being deliberately ignorant about basic physics and heath.

It is a FACT that obesity greatly increases the risk and severity of heart disease.
It is a FACT that it greatly contributes to our rising numbers of type 2 diabetics, and the age for onset of that type of diabetes is getting younger.
It is a FACT that excess adipose tissue acts as part of the diffuse endocrine system and proceeds to screw up the rest of your glandular activity. (see the fact about diabetes)
It is a FACT that you can lose weight with a moderate calorie deficit. It is a FACT that creating a large calorie deficit prevents you from actually losing weight.

[violetyoshi]

*MOD EDIT due to excessive quoting~Please edit quotes.

It is a FACT that obesity greatly increases the risk and severity of heart disease.
It is a FACT that it greatly contributes to our rising numbers of type 2 diabetics, and the age for onset of that type of diabetes is getting younger.
It is a FACT that excess adipose tissue acts as part of the diffuse endocrine system and proceeds to screw up the rest of your glandular activity. (see the fact about diabetes)
It is a FACT that you can lose weight with a moderate calorie deficit. It is a FACT that creating a large calorie deficit prevents you from actually losing weight.

www.bigfatfacts.com

Try reading these FACTS.

[AFPheonix]

www.bigfatfacts.com

Try reading these FACTS.

Ah yes, from the Big Fat Blog. Again with the people using blogs from fat activists as gospel.

Get me some peer reviewed articles to back up your claims that obesity is a healthy condition.

[BroomJockey]

Get me some peer reviewed articles to back up your claims that obesity is a healthy condition.

From the references at the bottom of the quoted page.

"Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity" by Katherine M. Flegal, PhD; Barry I. Graubard, PhD; David F. Williamson, PhD; Mitchell H. Gail, MD, PhD
JAMA. 2005;293:1861-1867.

"The Epidemiology of Overweight and Obesity: public health crisis or moral panic?" International Journal of Epidemiology 2006;35:55-60
by Paul Campos, et.al.

Check through whatever journal viewing sources you have for appropriateness of citations, I suppose. I'll look at them when I have a spare.

[AFPheonix]

From the references at the bottom of the quoted page.

"Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity" by Katherine M. Flegal, PhD; Barry I. Graubard, PhD; David F. Williamson, PhD; Mitchell H. Gail, MD, PhD
JAMA. 2005;293:1861-1867.

Here's the abstract of that one. Oh look, obesity is associated with more deaths relative to people at normal weight.

"The Epidemiology of Overweight and Obesity: public health crisis or moral panic?" International Journal of Epidemiology 2006;35:55-60
by Paul Campos, et.al.

This seems to be the one they pulled most of their info from, but I guess they totally ignored the many later articles at the bottom of the page that cite this one and then proceed to prove exactly the opposite of what this one says. Go figure.

Both of those blogs are classic examples of the fat advocacy does. They pick and choose out of different articles, completely represent other findings, and in general obfuscate facts to make themselves feel better. If you're really happy about being fat, then be happy. Whatever, that's your schtick. It doesn't affect me directly. BUT. Don't try to lie to make yourself feel better or even feel superior to others. It's wrong.

[BroomJockey]

Oh look, obesity is associated with more deaths relative to people at normal weight.

You CAN park the snarky attitude. As I said, I'd not had the chance to read them yet.

[powerboy]

You CAN park the snarky attitude. As I said, I'd not had the chance to read them yet.

Seriously, AFPheonix you seem to be doing the samething as the people who wrote the blogs. If you do not want any fat people around, then you have a couple of choices. 1) Do something about it, besides bitching on some website. 2) Move to a deserted island, where you can be by yourself.

Who gives a damn, if someone is overweight. As long as they are happy. For your information, people can be in shape and still be overweight. It is called muscle mass. Think about that.

[Boozy]

Powerboy, I fail to see where AFPhoenix has said that she doesn't "want any fat people around". She's said multiple times that she's fine with people weighing whatever they want to weigh. But like me, she dislikes bad science, or real science used in dishonest ways.

I could care less what someone weighs. I don't judge based on appearance. I don't tell my overweight friends to lose weight, because their body is their business. I don't even care if someone's weight costs me more in taxes (due to universal health care here in Canada), or otherwise mildly inconveniences me. After all, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

But if facts are being misrepresented, especially on a debate forum, then someone is well within their rights to point that out, without being accused of hating fat people.