I’ve been fat basically all my life.

Around kindergarten or so my parents realized that it wasn’t baby fat any more and that maybe, just maybe me opening the pantry lock on multiple occasions and using a chair to reach the peanut butter jar and shove as much of it into my mouth without a drink until I got caught might be a warning sign. But rather than investigate for any nutrient deficiencies or mental issues their autistic child was going through they decided to start putting me on trend diets. I’m assuming they felt a pang of guilt making a small child go on adult diets, so they would also go on the same diets. Instead of motivating me it would just make me feel worthless whenever the diets worked on them but not me. I remember a few months where they would have me pack a can of slimfast for lunch and then by the time I got home I’d be starving and scarf down whatever was in the pantry. The diets would change about every year or so, and so I ended up having weight fluctuations while my overall weight increased. I remember my mom crying one day about my weight being 150 pounds before I even reached middle school and then yelling “YOU WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT, DON’T YOU?” and telling her that her and dad were the ones who wanted me to lose weight. They’d guilt me about being fat every chance they got. The only thing that worked in my childhood wasn’t diets but being forced to go to a gym and lift weights for half a year. Muscle really does help burn weight. But then I hit high school and because grades always come first we all forgot about the gym and the weight bounced back. Eventually I was able to drive my own car in high school and that’s when my weight fucking skyrocketed.

So I’m an adult now and I’ve realized that I have both a physical and mental need to over eat. I’ve used food as a coping mechanism since I was a toddler, and that only increased as I continued to push down my autistic self and replace it with someone that can pass as just a little odd. I know that I need therapy, but I also know that I need to keep my finances in check and that therapy might end up being as expensive as a second car even with health insurance because I live in the fucking U.S.A. and with covid I can’t even work overtime to put extra money into savings. I feel like I’m so close to getting professional help and yet part of me always pulls my arm back and says “Next year might be even worse financially, yet you already know what it’s like to be fat. You’re still young, you can gamble on your health a little longer. Bad finances could fuck over your credit score and ability to rent for years to come.” Like FUCK, why do I have to pick???

Guess I’ll just continue to cope until I can afford professional help.

:amerikkka: :amerikkka: :amerikkka:

But my mother’s story, like Sam’s, like everyone’s, didn’t have to turn out like this. For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost

Oh wow, that’s crazy. When I lost >100 lbs over the course of a year doing keto and carefully tracking my caloric intake (with very little exercise) it must have been the fat fairy that was actually making me lose weight.

But it IS a medical issue for many people. Of course people can chose what they want to do with their bodies and disparaging them doesn’t work. However many people are trying to “overcorrect” by pretending that abnormal weight is actually good for you or that nothing you ever try will help you deal with it and I really don’t think it is helpful at all. My cousin has struggled with obesity for a long time, at some point he had to be operated because it was damaging his body. He is doing better than back then now but it’s really not that great, and his learning difficulties plus a mostly unhelpful family in that regard are making it harder. I don’t think this kind of approach is necessarily helpful.

Thanks good sharing those links, comrade, I’d known a bit about set points, capitalism’s impact, and fatphobia but never did any in depth reading on the subjects.

Reading about people insisting that fat people just needing better discipline and impulse control really resonated with me since I got used to hearing that about other things before I got diagnosed with ADHD.

Other people’s weights have never really been on my mind but knowing the actual research behind why some people are fat and how most of the health implications of being fat are societally driven is gonna help me discuss it with people who are being fatphobic rather than just telling them to knock it off

I was never morbid, but I was obese for almost 20 years. I was shamed, it made me hate myself more which led to stress eating.

It wasn’t until I lost my health insurance that I became hyper health focused to help prevent medical bankruptcy, even if it was only marginally improved. Gave up meat and dairy, work out regularly, and follow nutritional guidelines. The US healthcare system scares the shit out of me and I know it’s only delaying the inevitable but its worth it to me. Definitely helped my sex life too, until last year…but fear and pleasure will only take you so far down the road.

One day I looked into the mirror and saw fat, I gave my torso a squeeze and two things came into my mind that cemented my resolve: My consumption habits deprived food from the hungry while destroying myself and I need to plan and commit to my own physical/mental transformation (like going from an agricultural to industrial civilization) if I was ever going to commit to advocating societal change of AmeriKKKa.

It worked for me, not because of the Darwinist healthcare system or fat shaming, but because I finally learned to attach positive health habits to my moral desires.

I think that Huffington Post article has some good points about how obesity should be addressed on a personal level and how the American medical system will never be able to actually address this issue. But I don’t think they approach the weight/health problem very well. They mention that weight isn’t inherently tied to health because 1/3 to 3/4 of obese patients may show no signs of high cholesterol or insulin resistance. However, obesity is like smoking in that you could take a cross section of smokers and find that a large portion of them are healthy. The real issue is that being obese or smoking are drastically increasing the odds of negative medical outcomes in the future.

Haven’t seen any fatphobia on here at all, it’s been refreshing.

Fat is beautiful. It’s quite possible to be fat and extremely healthy, if you take care of your joints.

It’s extremely difficult to be fat and healthy in a capitalist system, in a food desert, if you’re poor, if you’re subject to constant psyops pushing transfats and sugars, if you don’t have the time and space and motivation to prepare all your own food, if you don’t have the time and space and motivation to exercise, if you have mental health issues, if you’re sleep deprived…

I hope this doesn’t feel too contentious. Getting healthy, at any body composition, is a holistic issue related to class, environment, behaviour and mental health, among other things.

Getting healthy is a lifestyle change, not a temporary diet. Incorporating daily activity into your life, even a walk. Taking control of what you eat and drink back from the corporations and preparing all your own food. Just going to fucking bed so your willpower isn’t shit because you’re sleep deprived (not me). Simply not buying anything unhealthy at the supermarket so that there’s nothing unhealthy in the kitchen.

The good news is it’s doable, you never have to be hungry, and there are more resources out there than ever before to help, including this place.

The even better news is that getting healthy means that enjoyment of those occasional vices doesn’t have the same negative effects - for example an occasional smoke isn’t as bad if you’re not in a constant state of systemic inflammation.