Took a little break from the internet and touched some grass and it was great. Wander back in here after my hiatus and what do I find? Just a thread with a bunch of fatphobia.
Cute.
For a community that is incredibly careful about protecting its users from the -phobias and the -isms, there sure is a hell of a lot of unchecked fatphobia here basically any time fatness gets brought up.
It’s something I’ve noticed on the left in general as well. The leftist org I’m in has almost no fat people in it and something tells me that’s not because there aren’t any fat leftists out there.
Fatphobia is rooted in anti-Blackness and ableism.
I’d highly recommend the “Maintenance Phase” podcast with Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon, as well as Aubrey Gordon’s books “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat” and “You Just Need To Lose Weight.”
TL;DR: There’s mounting evidence that anti-fat bias in medicine is more to blame for poor medical outcomes in fat people rather than just the fat itself.
Diet and exercise don’t result in long-term weight loss for something like 95% of people. As a leftist, are you really gonna sit here and blame this on individual choices rather than systemic issues? Are you really gonna try to convince us that 95% of people are just lacking willpower?
Please note that this thread is not an invitation to convince me I’m wrong or share your own personal anecdotal story of successful long-term weight loss with the implication that others can do it because you did it. This post is a request that any thin person (or thin-adjacent person) reading this who wants to argue about how being fat is bad for your health do some research and some self-crit. This post is a request that this community rethink the way it engages with discussions about fatness, diet, fatphobia, and anti-fat bias.
Anti-fat bias literally kills people.
It’s not about “dieting” forever, it’s about concrete lifestyle changes which is why diet culture fucking sucks and so many people are unsuccessful.
not all fat people live the same lifestyle, as i’m sure you’re aware. many fat people live incredibly fit and active lifestyles and are still fat. and even if a fat person lives an “unhealthy” lifestyle, so what? the premise i’m operating on here that fat people should not have to lose weight in order to be treated with respect.
I’m not arguing fat people shouldn’t have respect tho, I’m just explaining that the concept of dieting is not helpful for weight loss.
I’m not even saying it falls completely on the individual.
There are so many societal factors that play a role: cheap unhealthy foods, the entire confusing industry of fad diets and all that misinformation, people being too overworked to stick to or make healthy changes, the unhealthy food culture of the US in general, people going untreated for medical conditions etc etc.
I’ve suffered from plenty of these, I’ve been overweight…I’m still a bit overweight.
I have a lot of physical factors that make it harder for me to lose weight than other people.
For a long time I was just awash in a sea of conflicting information about what you should eat, how you should eat, how you lose weight.
It felt hopeless.
So…maybe I have my own personal issues with all of this, but I just don’t really appreciate the talking point of “95% can’t (as opposed to don’t) lose weight or keep it off” as if it’s just a scientific impossibility.
It feels very defeatist, very crab in a bucket.
I’m at a point in my life where I feel like I finally have some control, some clarity over things and it kind of rubs me the wrong way to see stuff that could potentially keep others in that same pit I was in.
Maybe I’ve got my own issues to work on, but that’s how I see it.
I’m sorry if it feels defeatist, but I do think knowing the data is important. And again, I’d really recommend the “Maintenance Phase” podcast