Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
Fat Acceptance (No, I will not make you a sandwich)
Posts
As for the overweight, they can change it. Don’t give me any of that bullshit. I used to be skinny, ridiculously so due to an extent to actual health reasons. I didn’t mope about how hard life was, I started trying to eat right and working out. And guess what? Shockingly it worked. Whilst I haven’t reached my ideal weight or level of health, I’m slowly getting there. I mean I've passed 200lb which was a big milestone for me.
Now this brings up the question of why should be criticise those in poor health? This is a difficult question, I still check myself for what true motive might lie there – my unexamined subtle prejudices. I think it is because I can’t comprehend people actually being happy to live a as self imposed cripples. That they can stay in such a state. I think modern circumstance drives them there. And that they need the encouragement to escape those pitfalls. Insults and derision may not be the best way to do this (to say the least). This doesn’t mean that we should tell people it’s okay to be so afflicted. I think that’s an awful message to send to people. Rather we should send the opposite one, if you aren’t Apollo that’s fine, just aim for it with what time and effort you can set aside.
I mean sure, if someone is well and truly happy to be obese or anorexic, good for them, I find it real hard to believe such people exist in any notable number though.
It is an issue, and why dieting alone is set to fail for most people. Changing your diet is important, but you need to exercise on top of it because exercise takes away one of the things that leads to obesity, being sedentary. By virtue of getting off your ass you can't be taking in empty calories at least while your exercising (well barring drinking soda/beer/having a sandwhich set up).
All of those things are reasons you can put on weight. But exercise is a good treatment for clinical depression, bipolar disorder, etc. I'm not going all Tom Cruise on you here. I don't think vitamins and exercise are the ONLY treatments for those things, but I'm saying they are not magic cards you can wave in the air to explain everything.
There are reasons every fat person is fat. That doesn't mean they can't get in better shape if they don't want to.
Besides, the point of this thread isn't "fuck fat people". It's "fuck the fat acceptance movement." I don't accept that poor lifestyle choices that are going to negatively impact a huge segment of the population are a good idea. I don't accept that lifestyle choices which are going to cost everyone else money are just fine. and dandy.
I hate piling it on, but losing weight for 90% of the people is not that hard. It takes will power, yeah, but it's not impossible. I LOVE to eat, and I actually didn't change my diet drastically. I naturally stopped eating out at fast food as much as I used to, but I still eat meat, chicken, and what not. It's all about moderation. And of course, excercise.
Something that stuck with me is that when a lot of people would see me during my early weight loss, they would ask me if I had gotten sick, or what crazy diet I had gone through. People were basically surprised that you could lose weight through simple hard work, and I think that's at the root of the obesity problem here in America.
Let's be honest: A few extra pounds won't kill you. And I reserve the right to have an occasional hamburger, or a drink, or a smoke because it's my choice. People have a right to choose the kind of life they want to live so long as they understand the consequences of such choices. Sure, the occasional drink or a smoke might take a couple years off the end of my life, but I would rather keep a balance and enjoy the life I've got rather than live to be 120 years old and hate every single day of it. For the record, I'm 5'11" and about 180 to 185 pounds. I've got a few extra pounds, but I've had several physicals and my doctor has confirmed that I'm perfectly healthy. But if you ask someone like my grandmother, she'll make snide little remarks dictating to me what she think I should look like and that I'm obese, because she knows what makes her happy and therefore it makes everyone happy whether they like it or not. Again, health nazi.
In short, maintain a balance.
They are probably referring to the BMI definition of obesity. The only good thing the fat acceptance movement has done is to increase awareness that BMI is bullshit.
I'm considered obese if I'm 6'3" and 260 lbs of pure ripped muscle.
An interesting, thoughtful post. But I think your last sentence needs to be included in some form in any sending of the bolded message. I don't have much trouble believing that people are happy to be obese, but even if I did, is that a valid reason to tell those who are that they need to lose weight?
Edit: My grandmother is a bit of a medical mystery in that doctor's can't explain why she can't lose weight. She was on a ridiculously harsh calorie restriction diet with hours of exercise a day, and only lost a pound, despite being visibly obese. I'm sure such cases are rare, but they do exist, and I think they serve as a valid reminder that fat people aren't hurting anybody by being fat. It's a lifestyle choice I don't agree with, but there's nothing wrong with it until you start asking everyone else to subsidize your obesity through medical bills or something else.
Yeah, I didn't think you were being particularly unreasonable. I just thought it was an important point to make, because I think a lot of people use "OK, if you really have a glandular problem then I guess I can be less of a bigot" as a kind of token attempt at political correctness. Weight issues aren't just caused by laziness and/or a fucked up thyroid. If someone is clinically depressed and that causes them to overeat this does not make them a bad person. In many cases being overweight can trigger depression, so the issue needs to be handled delicately. I don't think it would be controversial to assume that most people, when faced with their own obesity, will "drown their sorrows" in comfort food, further compounding their condition.
Some people are just fucking lazy. I've met more than a few of them, and I've read the riot act to a couple of my friends for their binge eating habits, but in each case I bookended my concerns with supportive language and a careful tone. But overweight people are not fundamentally defective just because they respond differently to stress.
I think I'm so sensitive to this partly because I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum, and have spent almost my whole live dangerously underweight. I know from personal experience that being too tired to cook /= too lazy to eat right. Even trying to walk downstairs when my blood pressure is spiking can be terrifying, and the last time I tried doing free weights my shoulder ratcheted painfully eight times with each lift. I've been called ugly, lazy, weak, and worthless for looking drawn and sickly, despite doing everything I knew how to keep weight on. My body just reacts to stress differently; I came back from Japan eating 2800 calories a day with 96 pounds on my 5'8" frame.
I don't want to equivocate and try to claim that my experiences with ostracism are equal to or the same as those suffered by people who are overweight despite their best efforts. But I do know what its like to be snickered at for my weight, and it's not just because I lack self control.
BMI is a measure of populations, which it works fine as. Yeah you might be arnie, but is your average person at that weight going to be any such thing? (Outside of like Somans)
Though yes, it as a measure of personal fitness is quite clearly ridiculous.
Man, it's your tax money paying for their medical treatment. When I see the annual federal budget each year, I cheer increased funding to hospitals because I imagine that money helping people with terminal illnesses, people with serious mental conditions, children with leukemia, etc etc. Then I realise that, every year, a significant portion of it goes to help obese people who are content to remain the way they are.
Ambulance fleets are being remodeled to accomodate the morbidly obese. Hospital doorways are being widened. Oh, and have you read about how morbidly obese women in both the US and Australia are getting pregnant but refusing to lose weight during pregnancy, thus endangering their unborn children?
Being obese is not something that anyone should be content with. It doesn't mean that obese people should be treated with scorn, but we can't be complacent about it either. "Oh, it's not hurting anyone." Well, yes, it is.
Drunks Against Mad Mothers
<---- Exhibit A
No, no it fucking isn't. Being obese while pregnant may be hurting somebody. Fine. Don't give a free pass to pregnant obese people. Being obese and asking the government to accommodate you may be hurting somebody. Fine. Don't have the government spend money on those accommodations. But there's nothing fucking wrong with being fat!
He can't decide whether he likes this thread for the right reasons or not.
I'm 6'2", and about 230-240. I'm overweight, and have been for a few years now. I recently lost a bit (so I might very well be under 230) due to changing my diet. However, I love food. I honestly think that food is one of the most wonderful things that human beings can experience, and I love to eat. Now, I don't eat constantly, and I try to eat in a relatively healthy manner (which means I cook a lot instead of eating junk food). I'm pretty committed to being overweight for the rest of my life. I hate exercising, and I refuse to give up one of the greatest pleasures in my life in order to lose a few pounds. I also have a tolerable level of fatness for myself, and I reached that (what prompted the cutting of sugared sodas out of the diet) and I wont reach it again.
The question is though, how tolerant should we be of my kind of mentality? I wouldn't really say that I'm obese (at least not a lot) but I don't really want to be fit and healthy either (and I probably wont ever be). Is it okay to do things that are unhealthy even knowing that I might be more sick when I'm older or die sooner?
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Neitzsche
The flip-side to that (and the reason the movement is mostly nonsense now) is that going to the opposite extreme and preaching that obesity is a lifestyle choice, that all sizes are "OK" and "nobody should change who they are" "everyone is beautiful" etc. well, none of that helps people lose weight either.
As soon as you've abandoned the mindset that obesity is a problem, and it needs to be overcome, you have entered the land of fatty-fatty-crazyville.
So if you are fat and want to be treated decently, that's fine. You should be treated decently, you are a person and have worth.
But if you expect society to endorse an unwillingness on your part to shape up, then you are wrong.
Likewise, treating people like shit because they have a problem is generally also very wrong.
super fucking tolerant. I don't see how you're doing anything wrong.
edit:
So make them stop costing everyone else money. The choices are not a priori destined to fuck over those of us who don't make them.
dappled sunlight / strikes your butt
girl you got a / real sweet butt
I mean, I have seen people who work incredibly hard and manage to have success. My mom, for example, lost at least 40 pounds on Weight Watchers. Ironically, though, even though she continues to be diligent about points and works out three times a week, she is still probably what most people would call overweight.
Actually if you balance your diet to where your calories burned are equal to or less than your calories ingested, you will not gain weight.
Yes, this means that some people need to push the plate away, avoid higher energy foods that their slow metabolisms won't accomodate, and even, especially for those already overweight, eat small meals and be hungry for a while until they get used to ingesting the calories they need instead of the calories they want/are used to.
But yes, for all but a tiny segment of the obese, it is a choice.
It's as much a choice as being indoctrinated from birth into a belief system is a choice. They are learned, trained behaviors.
Which has nothing to do with being fat.
Drunks Against Mad Mothers
I never said it was easy, or something that most can do without assistance. But the only government accommodation for the obese should really be treatment and programs to help them not be obese anymore. Even a moderate amount of weight lost on an obese person will result in improved health for them, it's not some zero sum game where you must be marathon-runner lean or you might as well be a whale.
Drunks Against Mad Mothers
Don't be delusional, it has everything to do with being fat. Fat people are people who at some point ingested more calories per day than they expended, usually over a long period of time. The only solution lies with them doing the reverse of this, and being hungry sucks so most of them don't want to do it.
Most activities are harmful if done in excess.
I'm actually all for making fun of people's differences. I firmly believe that central to any real attempt at self-improvement is looking at your flaws with good humor. But just because I can joke about being sick doesn't mean I want my illness to dominate every conversation I am a part of, and it doesn't mean that there isn't a line and a point where I'll stop laughing at myself and start calling you an insensitive dickface for bringing it up.
Getting someone who is fat to honestly laugh at themselves is probably one of the healthiest things you can do for them. It lightens the burden, and turns their heft from something shameful into something humanizing, which is absolutely critical for anyone who actually wants to lose weight instead of just burying their misery under an avalanche of deep-fried twinkies. But getting them to laugh at themselves does not mean getting other people in the room to laugh at them, and it's not something you try with someone who doesn't know you well or trust you personally.
Read what I said again. For the vast majority of overweight people, it is not a choice.
It is not a choice for these kids. Even if we just ignore the genetic and biological aspects of obesity, calling it a choice is just plain fucking offensive.
You can't just wave a magic wand and make these costs go away, unless you are advocating that obese people not receive medical treatment.
Read what I am saying here:
Argument that people who are raised with poor eating habits are hopelessly broken and free from personal responsibility and not possessed of free-will: REJECTED
-edit-
The so-called "biological aspect of obesity", which 99% of the time just means the person has a slower metabolism than the norm, and substantially slower than the naturally thin (rather than an actual medical condition) might explain obesity, but in no way mitigates the serious health risks of being obese. It is an explanation not an excuse. No matter how much sanctimony you load onto it.
As for the Fat Acceptance "movement", it's made up of people who just plain don't want to change their lifestyle and want to make excuses for their dependence on food. Seeing as how there are so many overweight and obese people I wouldn't say that fat people are pathetic and failures as human beings; I'd say that they suffer from a common human trait that has no use in modern civilization.
This is exactly what I'm advocating. If you make a choice that can lead to medical problems, and then you have those medical problems, I don't think the government should spend a dime to save you. Certainly not if the government spending that dime is used as a reason people should not be permitted to make the same choice you did.
The argument seems, to me, to be analogous to this:
"I give everyone who wears a green shirt $5. I've given you $5 the past three days. Stop wearing green shirts, you're stealing my money!"
The choice to wear a green shirt or be fat is not related to the detriment of losing $5 or paying for other people's avoidable medical bills.
And for once in your fucking time on these boards read something I am saying.
It.
Is not.
A choice.
At no point, ever, have I suggested that they should be absolved of responsibility. I'm telling you that your wording is wrong and offensive. That's it.
Do you fucking grok?
Edit: I'm not excusing anybody, you illiterate fucking monnkey.