You understand that that campaign wasn’t to promote “being fat” but was, instead, about ending the cycle of despair that traps many people in obesity, right? Like, food is addicting (on purpose, gotta make those profits) and there are people who struggle to eat the appropriate amount or get the correct nutrition. When you pile shame onto people, sure, some will change their habits and get their health back on track. But most people, when confronted with negative emotions, will attempt to soothe the feelings of negativity rather than deal with the source of the negativity. For many people, negative campaigns against obesity will just drive them to consume more. Or, maybe they’ll try a fad diet out of desperation, unknowing that fad diets tend to be focused on quick results that don’t have lasting impacts on overall health. Or even negative impacts, as they’ll fail to stick with the diet and gain even more weight than they lost back.
Health at any size was focused on helping people to make small, meaningful changes that they could keep going with for a lifetime. By attempting to remove the stigma of weight, they were trying to get people out of focusing on their weight and instead focused on what they could do to feel better right now (in a healthy and constructive manner).
But, like most things, people who didn’t understand what was being attempted shit on it endlessly until people stopped trying to do it.
The obesity epidemic isn’t some moral failing of individuals it’s a systemic failing and, until it’s treated as such, the obesity rate will only continue to rise.
I already know this is going to be awash with downvotes (again, soothing negativity rather than dealing with the source) but it needs to be said.
I am a formerly obese person who got out of that cycle before HAES hit. I had obese people tell me that HAES meant they are healthy if they could walk up a flight of stairs. Those are the people I am talking about, and they seemed to be people saying HAES the loudest. If there’s a public perception problem surrounding HAES that’s not on the public, that’s on the people who let their message get diluted.
For the record, I made no comment about morality, though I do consider overconsumption to be immoral.
It’s genuinely great to hear that that wasn’t the overall goal or intention of the idea.
That said, I think it also does need to be acknowledged that there absolutely were prominent influencers on social media who preached HAES literally - as in, posting videos vehemently declaring the doctors are lying to you and obesity is actually perfectly healthy.
I guess as with many other things, it’s a case of the extreme outliers (who in this case, as you say, didn’t even get the point) getting the most attention and spoiling things for the sane people.
The thing about HAES is that it has always been a wolf in sheep’s clothing
The very origins going back to the '60s come from “we aren’t happy that we are fat and viewed as unattractive, so lets change what people think is attractive.”
Health related concepts were thrown in to legitimize the argument and to act as a convenient red herring.
Yes there is always been a shame reduction aspect, but that shame reduction has been consistently used to enable further self destructive behavior.
It is a highly poisonous mindset that has set back public health by decades.
I’m neurodivergent and sometimes need to psych myself up to post something I think is important. Don’t know what else to say. Downvoting is a type of social conditioning and I don’t do well with that, in general.
What bothers me is that people like you are so focused on what some see as “overcorrection.” Y’all spend more time talking about that then the reason that reaction happened in the first place: ridiculously unhealthy, constantly plastered images of what we “should“ look like that usually involve women being thin as a needle and men looking like a Greek hero. That’s the crux of the situation here. That we need to challenge these very unhealthy standards. Those standards have been far more damaging than “big is beautiful“ comments have ever been.
How many women have required medical intervention or even died because of unhealthy attempts to make themselves look like a magazine cover? How many people hate themselves and are mocked ruthlessly because a soap commercial shows a body type that most people will never be able to have? That’s the issue at hand here.
What bothers me is that people like you are so focused on what some see as “overcorrection.” Y’all spend more time talking about that then the reason that reaction happened in the first place: ridiculously unhealthy, constantly plastered images of what we “should“ look like
I’m sorry, but this is not the origin of this particular problem. It doesn’t help the problem, but it is in fact not the main contributing factor. The data is pretty clear, and if you work in the healthcare industry, you would know that this is endemic and it typically begins at an age before children start adapting to social pressures.
The causative correlation is social economic in nature, it all has to do with the food availability and affordability for lower income families. Poor families in rural communities or poor families in urban food desserts make up the vast majority of bariatric pediatric patients.
Those standards have been far more damaging than “big is beautiful“ comments have ever been.
I mean, I don’t think there’s a lot of sense in debating which we should be okay with if they are both damaging to people’s health. You can be a little overweight and still perfectly healthy, and you can be a little underweight and be perfectly healthy.
How many women have required medical intervention or even died because of unhealthy attempts to make themselves look like a magazine cover?
Again neither is great, but if you want to be accurate… Dealing with the consequences of being overweight is overwhelmingly a larger healthcare issue than anorexia. 1 in 4 Medicare dollars in the US is currently spent treating diabetes, and that number is expected to climb. The subsequent health factors of obesity is the number one cause of naturally occurring death in the country.
Like with the vast majority of things that affect our health, environment, not an individual control is the root of the problem. I think food corporations and big sugar have spent a lot of money attempting to present obesity as a personal problem instead of a societal one.
“Big is beautiful” is a direct response to the discourse about body image. Obesity is also a real problem tied to many things like you mentioned. These can both be true.
Right, but its response is inadequate and can be harmful. Instead of refocusing the body image issue to incorporate health, it just refutes one extreme and replaces it with another.
How many women have required medical intervention or even died because of unhealthy attempts to make themselves look like a magazine cover?
Adding on to this, I’m type 1 diabetic and was diagnosed when I was very young (type 1 is the one where your immune system just kills off your pancreas, and type 2 is the on most people think where it’s mostly from unhealthy diet and exercise).
Anyways I remember the doctor telling me it’s very important for me to check my blood sugar, of course being young my parents asked the question of what if I go to low or high. The doctor answered with telling us that some girls go into hypoglycemia (dangerously low) to lose weight since your body burns through fat while in hypoglycemic shock [citation needed I was young when I was told this]
You might be misremembering the doctor, or he was being general, because the issue we found with adolescent females (and some males, though I saw less of them) was that they were hiding their shots (not taking them), so that they would by hyperglycemic. Your body is constantly using fat as an energy source simply due to metabolic pathways, but the one that really kicks into overdrive is the ketone production when there is not a good source of carbohydrates, because certain areas of the body (the brain is the big one) do not use protein catabolism for energy production and rely on either glucose or ketones to feed into the kreb cycle.
Smart kids either made the connection in their high school bio classes or heard the information passed along at the doctor’s office, and there was a large wave of DKA hospitalizations that happened due to avoiding the shots of insulin.
This is a really popular take, but I think quite the opposite has happened actually: most people in media are a normal healthy weight, but they’ve been demonized as having “impossible” bodies, and I think a major driver of that is people who don’t want to admit that their body is unhealthy. If you claim that a BMI of 22 is “ridiculously unhealthy” then you dont have to put any work in to lose weight; after all it’s the standard that’s wrong!
As far as the Greek statue thing goes, people just need to understand that they are on steroids. You can look like that too, if you want to juice.
but I think quite the opposite has happened actually: most people in media are a normal healthy weight, but they’ve been demonized as having “impossible” bodies, and I think a major driver of that is people who don’t want to admit that their body is unhealthy
No? My claim is based on countless studies over decades. We know for a fact that there are unhealthy standards of beauty/body types pushed in media, advertising, etc. and that they are harmful to our society, particularly for women. This is a measured, proven thing.
You are providing a competing theory and you need sources.
What bothers me is that people like you are so focused on what some see as “overcorrection.” Y’all spend more time talking about that then the reason that reaction happened in the first place: ridiculously unhealthy, constantly plastered images of what we “should“ look like that usually involve women being thin as a needle and men looking like a Greek hero.
We focus on the topic at hand. Currently we’re discussing fat people. If this post was about some anorexic model or someone who destroyed their face with plastic surgery we would be shitting on the other side of things. Just because HAAS is newer and doesn’t have as high of a body count yet doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize those who are using it as an excuse to ignore the very real health problems they are causing for themselves and anyone else who buys into their rhetoric. Maybe it’s different in other parts of the world but living in the midwest I see far, far more people killing themselves via obesity than I do underweight people.
People can be metabolically healthy at any size. That’s the first step. If children are metabolically healthy, and not spiking their insulin all day, then their body will self regulate and lose weight.
I.e. don’t lose weight to get healthy. Get healthy to lose weight.
Is health at any size still a thing or did they all have heart attacks?
You understand that that campaign wasn’t to promote “being fat” but was, instead, about ending the cycle of despair that traps many people in obesity, right? Like, food is addicting (on purpose, gotta make those profits) and there are people who struggle to eat the appropriate amount or get the correct nutrition. When you pile shame onto people, sure, some will change their habits and get their health back on track. But most people, when confronted with negative emotions, will attempt to soothe the feelings of negativity rather than deal with the source of the negativity. For many people, negative campaigns against obesity will just drive them to consume more. Or, maybe they’ll try a fad diet out of desperation, unknowing that fad diets tend to be focused on quick results that don’t have lasting impacts on overall health. Or even negative impacts, as they’ll fail to stick with the diet and gain even more weight than they lost back.
Health at any size was focused on helping people to make small, meaningful changes that they could keep going with for a lifetime. By attempting to remove the stigma of weight, they were trying to get people out of focusing on their weight and instead focused on what they could do to feel better right now (in a healthy and constructive manner).
But, like most things, people who didn’t understand what was being attempted shit on it endlessly until people stopped trying to do it.
The obesity epidemic isn’t some moral failing of individuals it’s a systemic failing and, until it’s treated as such, the obesity rate will only continue to rise.
I already know this is going to be awash with downvotes (again, soothing negativity rather than dealing with the source) but it needs to be said.
I am a formerly obese person who got out of that cycle before HAES hit. I had obese people tell me that HAES meant they are healthy if they could walk up a flight of stairs. Those are the people I am talking about, and they seemed to be people saying HAES the loudest. If there’s a public perception problem surrounding HAES that’s not on the public, that’s on the people who let their message get diluted.
For the record, I made no comment about morality, though I do consider overconsumption to be immoral.
Fair enough, there were also people that misused the term that also made the messaging worthless as well.
They chose their slogan really poorly. Because “healthy at every size” makes it seem like there’s a healthy way to be fat.
If most come off with the wrong conclusion from a campaign then that’s a poorly done campaign.
It’s genuinely great to hear that that wasn’t the overall goal or intention of the idea.
That said, I think it also does need to be acknowledged that there absolutely were prominent influencers on social media who preached HAES literally - as in, posting videos vehemently declaring the doctors are lying to you and obesity is actually perfectly healthy.
I guess as with many other things, it’s a case of the extreme outliers (who in this case, as you say, didn’t even get the point) getting the most attention and spoiling things for the sane people.
The thing about HAES is that it has always been a wolf in sheep’s clothing
The very origins going back to the '60s come from “we aren’t happy that we are fat and viewed as unattractive, so lets change what people think is attractive.”
Health related concepts were thrown in to legitimize the argument and to act as a convenient red herring.
Yes there is always been a shame reduction aspect, but that shame reduction has been consistently used to enable further self destructive behavior.
It is a highly poisonous mindset that has set back public health by decades.
Then the campaign slogan runs a close second for All Time Stupid, right next to “Defund the Police”.
Two great ideas who managed to suicide over idiot slogans.
Man what a valuable comment, thanks for sharing it. I had never heard of health at any size but it sounds great. Sad story tho :(
Few things are as pathetic as preemptively whining about down votes.
I’m neurodivergent and sometimes need to psych myself up to post something I think is important. Don’t know what else to say. Downvoting is a type of social conditioning and I don’t do well with that, in general.
What bothers me is that people like you are so focused on what some see as “overcorrection.” Y’all spend more time talking about that then the reason that reaction happened in the first place: ridiculously unhealthy, constantly plastered images of what we “should“ look like that usually involve women being thin as a needle and men looking like a Greek hero. That’s the crux of the situation here. That we need to challenge these very unhealthy standards. Those standards have been far more damaging than “big is beautiful“ comments have ever been.
How many women have required medical intervention or even died because of unhealthy attempts to make themselves look like a magazine cover? How many people hate themselves and are mocked ruthlessly because a soap commercial shows a body type that most people will never be able to have? That’s the issue at hand here.
I’m sorry, but this is not the origin of this particular problem. It doesn’t help the problem, but it is in fact not the main contributing factor. The data is pretty clear, and if you work in the healthcare industry, you would know that this is endemic and it typically begins at an age before children start adapting to social pressures.
The causative correlation is social economic in nature, it all has to do with the food availability and affordability for lower income families. Poor families in rural communities or poor families in urban food desserts make up the vast majority of bariatric pediatric patients.
I mean, I don’t think there’s a lot of sense in debating which we should be okay with if they are both damaging to people’s health. You can be a little overweight and still perfectly healthy, and you can be a little underweight and be perfectly healthy.
Again neither is great, but if you want to be accurate… Dealing with the consequences of being overweight is overwhelmingly a larger healthcare issue than anorexia. 1 in 4 Medicare dollars in the US is currently spent treating diabetes, and that number is expected to climb. The subsequent health factors of obesity is the number one cause of naturally occurring death in the country.
Like with the vast majority of things that affect our health, environment, not an individual control is the root of the problem. I think food corporations and big sugar have spent a lot of money attempting to present obesity as a personal problem instead of a societal one.
“Big is beautiful” is a direct response to the discourse about body image. Obesity is also a real problem tied to many things like you mentioned. These can both be true.
Right, but its response is inadequate and can be harmful. Instead of refocusing the body image issue to incorporate health, it just refutes one extreme and replaces it with another.
Adding on to this, I’m type 1 diabetic and was diagnosed when I was very young (type 1 is the one where your immune system just kills off your pancreas, and type 2 is the on most people think where it’s mostly from unhealthy diet and exercise).
Anyways I remember the doctor telling me it’s very important for me to check my blood sugar, of course being young my parents asked the question of what if I go to low or high. The doctor answered with telling us that some girls go into hypoglycemia (dangerously low) to lose weight since your body burns through fat while in hypoglycemic shock [citation needed I was young when I was told this]
You might be misremembering the doctor, or he was being general, because the issue we found with adolescent females (and some males, though I saw less of them) was that they were hiding their shots (not taking them), so that they would by hyperglycemic. Your body is constantly using fat as an energy source simply due to metabolic pathways, but the one that really kicks into overdrive is the ketone production when there is not a good source of carbohydrates, because certain areas of the body (the brain is the big one) do not use protein catabolism for energy production and rely on either glucose or ketones to feed into the kreb cycle.
Smart kids either made the connection in their high school bio classes or heard the information passed along at the doctor’s office, and there was a large wave of DKA hospitalizations that happened due to avoiding the shots of insulin.
Ah
Yeah like I said it was a very long time ago so thanks for the correction
This is a really popular take, but I think quite the opposite has happened actually: most people in media are a normal healthy weight, but they’ve been demonized as having “impossible” bodies, and I think a major driver of that is people who don’t want to admit that their body is unhealthy. If you claim that a BMI of 22 is “ridiculously unhealthy” then you dont have to put any work in to lose weight; after all it’s the standard that’s wrong!
As far as the Greek statue thing goes, people just need to understand that they are on steroids. You can look like that too, if you want to juice.
What is this based on?
The exact same thing your comment is based on.
No? My claim is based on countless studies over decades. We know for a fact that there are unhealthy standards of beauty/body types pushed in media, advertising, etc. and that they are harmful to our society, particularly for women. This is a measured, proven thing.
You are providing a competing theory and you need sources.
We focus on the topic at hand. Currently we’re discussing fat people. If this post was about some anorexic model or someone who destroyed their face with plastic surgery we would be shitting on the other side of things. Just because HAAS is newer and doesn’t have as high of a body count yet doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize those who are using it as an excuse to ignore the very real health problems they are causing for themselves and anyone else who buys into their rhetoric. Maybe it’s different in other parts of the world but living in the midwest I see far, far more people killing themselves via obesity than I do underweight people.
Some young obese people have healthy markers, but sooner or later, as they age, the problems start.
Still a thing, unfortunately
People can be metabolically healthy at any size. That’s the first step. If children are metabolically healthy, and not spiking their insulin all day, then their body will self regulate and lose weight.
I.e. don’t lose weight to get healthy. Get healthy to lose weight.