Can we have an honest, good faith conversation about fat acceptance and body positivity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It’s 2021. 5% is the new 100%. Right? Also, the cheeseburgers made people eat them.

In short, we can’t even have this discussion if the conversation diverts to rare disorders to the exclusion of actually talking about the overwhelming majority.

You really want to play this game? Metabolic syndromes include: cystic fibrosis, Tay Sachs, PCOS, maple syrup urine disease, phenylketonuria, tyrosinemia, sickle cell anemia.... you catch me, right? No, being overweight doesn’t cause most metabolic syndromes

Oh, you guys misspoke and when you said “metabolic disorders” you just meant type 2 diabetes? Maybe. But some researchers theorize that there’s something else at play, that the pre-diabetes/diabetes exist and stimulate the person to eat, much like how kids start eating before a growth spurt.

Seriously, read the two books I linked to. I know you think fat is funny and entirely the fault of the fat monster walking around in it, but you’re not right. (And since I mentioned it, PCOS is another one that causes a person to gain weight vs gaining weight causes a person to develop it.) You guys just want so badly for fat to be the person’s fault entirely because you know that if it’s true that there are multiple factors at play - and 2/3 of the US being overweight/obese suggests there are - then you’re kind of a smug douche. I don’t brag that I don’t need wine and beer to get through my days. Instead of being a smug douche who can control herself around the sauce, I recognize that I get no reward from alcohol. I can take or it or leave it and I pretty much leave it. You... go the other way.

All of this is incredibly narrow. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have historic rates of obesity. That wasn’t a thing as recently as the 1970s. I guess it’s all a wild conspiracy and the human body itself changed in the last 40 years. Amazing.

I’m not sure what you mean by “incredibly narrow.” I just enjoy pointing out where the fat shamers are wrongity wrong wrong.

I’ve posted a bunch on this thread and one of my other posts is that the low-fat/high-carb diet that was (and still is, sadly; some of you fat shamers have been scolding about fat people who have - gasp! - whipped cream) the doctor recommended diet for forty years is probably the main driver of the obesity epidemic. They effectively wrecked people’s diets by recommending people remove meats, sour cream, cheese and cream, fats for cooking/serving vegetables with, avocados, nuts, eggs and having them replace them with bread, generally. Back in the 80s, remember, the emphasis wasn’t on whole grain anything, it was on carbs and fruits and lean meats.

“But I’m a normal weight,” you might say. Bully for you! If you didn’t have the predisposition to blood sugar issues, I’m sure the low fat diet worked out great for you. Dr. Dean Ornish made an absolute killing, as did many other gurus. It just didn’t work for *most* people.

Sounds great as an academic exercise. We are talking about the overwhelming majority. It’s eating garbage and not moving enough. That’s it.

If you want to spend hours noodling about narrow population segments and rare conditions, go ahead. It’s meaningless in the grand scheme of the question presented.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Excess body fat is an objectively bad thing. There’s no use shaming people over it, but it’s an odd thing that people celebrate. Do we celebrate smoking? If you are obese, your body is not in good health. It’s strange that people are demanding we celebrate bad health, but I guess it makes people feel better.

Why do you need to judge - bad thing, good thing? Who give you the right to decide who should celebrate what.

Determining what is good and bad and collectively as a society celebrating or not celebrating things is sort of the core deal there. We don’t celebrate a lot of bad things. Like punching people in the eye randomly. That’s a bad thing. Not celebrated. Making a lot of unhealthy choices, also a bad thing. That’s the whole point of this discussion.

Putting an overweight person in a fashion magazine is not celebrating unhealthy choices. We really need to uncouple the idea of encouraging healthy choices with promoting respect for all bodies.

If you want to put unhealthy bodies in fashion magazines, that’s fine, it’s. But the OP was about body positivity, which means celebrating larger, unhealthy bodies. And it is undeniably odd to promote unhealthy living; it is no different from running “smokers are beautiful!” campaigns. There are objective measures of health, and obesity is an objective marker of bad health.

I don’t think we are really debating about healthy non size zero women in fashion magazines. That is fine of course. We are talking about normalizing unhealthy behavior which is manifested in this country by obesity. It’s all over the place and a serious problem nobody has the guts to actually talk about lest you crack a few eggs to make that omelette.

Eh. Crack as many eggs as you like, because the thing is, when you scratch that “health concerns” omelette, the insides are just fat shaming. Always. As much as you’d like to pretend it’s about “normalizing unhealthy behavior,” the fact is that there’s nothing inherently unhealthy about the behaviors of most fat people. They exercise. They eat right. So what are you concerned about? Nothing. You don’t like obese people. We know.

Not pp, but this lying BS needs to stop. I told myself the same things when I was obese, and it's easier to lie to yourself than to lie to others.

If fat/obese people want to have more empathy, then just be honest - you've had many years of eating far more than you burn (via exercise, BMR, etc), and losing weight is hard, and food can be overwhelmingly delicious. I get that. That's understandable. But come on pp, stop with the "they exercise, they eat right, they're just naturally obese" horseshit.

Yeah the lying BS DOES NEED TO STOP. Stop lying that you care you care about anybody fat. You don’t. PP was right. You don’t like fat people, obese people, overweight people, plus sized, people and any body that wants you to stop judging their physical appearance. So stop lying and stop with the BS with your fake “when I was obese...” NO fat person is lying to themselves, they know exactly who they are. And you did too “when you were obese”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It’s 2021. 5% is the new 100%. Right? Also, the cheeseburgers made people eat them.

In short, we can’t even have this discussion if the conversation diverts to rare disorders to the exclusion of actually talking about the overwhelming majority.

You really want to play this game? Metabolic syndromes include: cystic fibrosis, Tay Sachs, PCOS, maple syrup urine disease, phenylketonuria, tyrosinemia, sickle cell anemia.... you catch me, right? No, being overweight doesn’t cause most metabolic syndromes

Oh, you guys misspoke and when you said “metabolic disorders” you just meant type 2 diabetes? Maybe. But some researchers theorize that there’s something else at play, that the pre-diabetes/diabetes exist and stimulate the person to eat, much like how kids start eating before a growth spurt.

Seriously, read the two books I linked to. I know you think fat is funny and entirely the fault of the fat monster walking around in it, but you’re not right. (And since I mentioned it, PCOS is another one that causes a person to gain weight vs gaining weight causes a person to develop it.) You guys just want so badly for fat to be the person’s fault entirely because you know that if it’s true that there are multiple factors at play - and 2/3 of the US being overweight/obese suggests there are - then you’re kind of a smug douche. I don’t brag that I don’t need wine and beer to get through my days. Instead of being a smug douche who can control herself around the sauce, I recognize that I get no reward from alcohol. I can take or it or leave it and I pretty much leave it. You... go the other way.

All of this is incredibly narrow. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have historic rates of obesity. That wasn’t a thing as recently as the 1970s. I guess it’s all a wild conspiracy and the human body itself changed in the last 40 years. Amazing.

I’m not sure what you mean by “incredibly narrow.” I just enjoy pointing out where the fat shamers are wrongity wrong wrong.

I’ve posted a bunch on this thread and one of my other posts is that the low-fat/high-carb diet that was (and still is, sadly; some of you fat shamers have been scolding about fat people who have - gasp! - whipped cream) the doctor recommended diet for forty years is probably the main driver of the obesity epidemic. They effectively wrecked people’s diets by recommending people remove meats, sour cream, cheese and cream, fats for cooking/serving vegetables with, avocados, nuts, eggs and having them replace them with bread, generally. Back in the 80s, remember, the emphasis wasn’t on whole grain anything, it was on carbs and fruits and lean meats.

“But I’m a normal weight,” you might say. Bully for you! If you didn’t have the predisposition to blood sugar issues, I’m sure the low fat diet worked out great for you. Dr. Dean Ornish made an absolute killing, as did many other gurus. It just didn’t work for *most* people.

Sounds great as an academic exercise. We are talking about the overwhelming majority. It’s eating garbage and not moving enough. That’s it.

If you want to spend hours noodling about narrow population segments and rare conditions, go ahead. It’s meaningless in the grand scheme of the question presented.

That’s my point! The people who were predisposed to have a body that did not fare well with a low fat (and the relatively high carbs that went with it) diet is not a narrow population, at all. You can just take the loss and admit that “being overweight leads to metabolic disorder” is not remotely accurate, and if you want to claim that “being overweight leads to type 2 diabetes specifically,” we could still probably have a scientific debate about it. Think of your skinny, healthy, marathon running friends who developed gestational diabetes and now have a greater chance of developing type 2 diabetes. That’s a thing. Lots of skinny and people with just a few extra pounds are roaming around with pre-diabetes, too. It’s not the weight.

Going back to the post I wrote to which you’re replying: basically we broke people’s bodies. Simply carbohydrates are simply not healthy for some people (they’re not healthy for anyone, really, but lots of people’s bodies can deal with them, no problem) and we were told, as a population, that there was no problem with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Excess body fat is an objectively bad thing. There’s no use shaming people over it, but it’s an odd thing that people celebrate. Do we celebrate smoking? If you are obese, your body is not in good health. It’s strange that people are demanding we celebrate bad health, but I guess it makes people feel better.

Why do you need to judge - bad thing, good thing? Who give you the right to decide who should celebrate what.

Determining what is good and bad and collectively as a society celebrating or not celebrating things is sort of the core deal there. We don’t celebrate a lot of bad things. Like punching people in the eye randomly. That’s a bad thing. Not celebrated. Making a lot of unhealthy choices, also a bad thing. That’s the whole point of this discussion.

Putting an overweight person in a fashion magazine is not celebrating unhealthy choices. We really need to uncouple the idea of encouraging healthy choices with promoting respect for all bodies.

If you want to put unhealthy bodies in fashion magazines, that’s fine, it’s. But the OP was about body positivity, which means celebrating larger, unhealthy bodies. And it is undeniably odd to promote unhealthy living; it is no different from running “smokers are beautiful!” campaigns. There are objective measures of health, and obesity is an objective marker of bad health.

I don’t think we are really debating about healthy non size zero women in fashion magazines. That is fine of course. We are talking about normalizing unhealthy behavior which is manifested in this country by obesity. It’s all over the place and a serious problem nobody has the guts to actually talk about lest you crack a few eggs to make that omelette.

Eh. Crack as many eggs as you like, because the thing is, when you scratch that “health concerns” omelette, the insides are just fat shaming. Always. As much as you’d like to pretend it’s about “normalizing unhealthy behavior,” the fact is that there’s nothing inherently unhealthy about the behaviors of most fat people. They exercise. They eat right. So what are you concerned about? Nothing. You don’t like obese people. We know.

Not pp, but this lying BS needs to stop. I told myself the same things when I was obese, and it's easier to lie to yourself than to lie to others.

If fat/obese people want to have more empathy, then just be honest - you've had many years of eating far more than you burn (via exercise, BMR, etc), and losing weight is hard, and food can be overwhelmingly delicious. I get that. That's understandable. But come on pp, stop with the "they exercise, they eat right, they're just naturally obese" horseshit.

It’s not lying BS. I’m sorry if you take it that way, but you have no idea, looking at an obese person, what their habits actually are. Even if they did take in more than they burnt, looking at someone does not mean you know how they actually live. You do not know how they eat, you do not know how they move. You have no evidence that they’re actually unhealthy, just as you have no evidence that the skinny person you’re looking at is healthy. They could be skinny obese.

Morbid obesity is correlated with unhealth, yes, but just being overweight appears to be health protective, and in a discussion like this, I don’t know your version of “fat,” or “obese” or “morbidly obese.”

PP I was responding to said that we’re “talking about normalizing unhealthy behavior which is manifested in this country by obesity.” And I call bull. ESPECIALLY in regards to models, many of whom have to resort to some of the most bizarre, unhealthy behaviors to retain their teenaged body build as they move into adult modeling. Shaming fatties does. not. work. It doesn’t. You aren’t talking about “unhealthy behaviors,” you just want to bag on fat people.

More nonsense. And you can’t even get one narrative straight.

Obesity is a major issue. It is a thing because people eat garbage and don’t move. The medical profession is not a scam or a conspiracy on this. 40 years ago we had nowhere near the numbers of obese people. It’s all there in the data.

Would you do me a solid? Would you read “Why We Get Fat”? Would you? It will really help you understand this, rather than you insulting me.

[Anonymous]

PP, I would just give up. You are fighting the good fight, but that person is dim and intransigent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I’m obese. I hate it. I was the gorgeous, healthy, skinny woman everyone envied before I was long-term sexually harassed at work and went on medication for depression and anxiety. I was milested by my father repeatedly in ES so that I may be a bit sensitive to the workplace issue.

Now, I’m afraid to leave the house I don’t want anyone to see how fat I am. I take lithium and abilify, which cause weight gain.

I’m fine to pay extra for a seat on an airplane, but I’m also a millionaire.

I’d give anything to have a friend to walk with, but obesity is a lonely thing. My doctor has no advice for me. Last appointment, he just shrugged when I asked for exercise ideas. I can’t afford a personal trainer because, while I have money, I also don’t work so I need to save it. (I’m not on disability.)

I’d give anything to not be shamed. I feel like the shaming closes me in. There’s no way out. My only comfort is that I will die early and be done with this miserable life.

I’m also obese - morbidly - and struggle so much with despair over my body because I was also one very healthy and had a beautiful body until serious illness forced me to be largely sedentary, medication also tanked my metabolism and I started eating very unhealthy while coping with childhood trauma and the adult sexual harassment that triggered all the buried toxins to rise to the surface.

If you can swim somewhere (YMCA?) I highly recommend it - it’s a great overall exercise and zero impact, so really perfect for heavy people. I’m anxious for the pool at my low cost gym to reopen. In the meantime it’s walking in the woods with my dog where I’m less likely to see people and feel their judging gaze, and where the surface is gentler on my joints - sidewalks give me sore feet and shin splints.

One thing that makes me crazy - my doctor sent me for an evaluation at the medical weight management center, and the bariatric surgeon was very bullish on me getting sleeve gastrectomy. My insurance company will happily shell out many thousands for me to go under the knife - but won’t shell out anything for gym membership or personal training. I truly believe that with the help and motivation from a trainer I could make a serious change in my health without surgery, but I can’t afford a trainer on my own. I hesitate to just jump in and try weights and machines and all that without guidance, because I have a number of previous injuries from the serious illness I suffered and I’m afraid to hurt myself in a serious way - I would need the guidance of a professional, like a PT (physical therapist) even to make sure I could work out without harming myself in permanent ways.

I think this is a big issue in our healthcare system, that it will happily pay tens of thousands and risk the costs of very serious surgical complications, but won’t pay a few thousand to give an obese person with health issues an opportunity to get expert guidance in changing their lifestyle and health for the better. It just seems to underscore that true health isn’t really the objective.

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of obesity in low income POc can be linked to trauma.

I do agree we need to treat like a systemic health issue.
Why can’t middle schools have home EC c
Asses where kids learn about shopping for healthy meals, cooking, differences between soda, juice, and water, the cost of obesity, calories in, calories out,etc. honestly I would teach about the nastiness of the fast food industry and factory farming too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP, I would just give up. You are fighting the good fight, but that person is dim and intransigent.

The only dim and intransigent here are the apologists that can’t accept the historical data. It’s all right there. Obesity didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It’s not some long complicated explanation for the majority affected. And people do care. Thats why this thread is here.

It’s dragging us all down. What do you think the affect is on the US economy and our health care costs? All bad news.

But words are cheap, so we will just continue using those and gloss over reality since feels.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of obesity in low income POc can be linked to trauma.

I do agree we need to treat like a systemic health issue.
Why can’t middle schools have home EC c
Asses where kids learn about shopping for healthy meals, cooking, differences between soda, juice, and water, the cost of obesity, calories in, calories out,etc. honestly I would teach about the nastiness of the fast food industry and factory farming too.

Agree 100%. This should be on the agenda for every education secretary of every state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I’m obese. I hate it. I was the gorgeous, healthy, skinny woman everyone envied before I was long-term sexually harassed at work and went on medication for depression and anxiety. I was milested by my father repeatedly in ES so that I may be a bit sensitive to the workplace issue.

Now, I’m afraid to leave the house I don’t want anyone to see how fat I am. I take lithium and abilify, which cause weight gain.

I’m fine to pay extra for a seat on an airplane, but I’m also a millionaire.

I’d give anything to have a friend to walk with, but obesity is a lonely thing. My doctor has no advice for me. Last appointment, he just shrugged when I asked for exercise ideas. I can’t afford a personal trainer because, while I have money, I also don’t work so I need to save it. (I’m not on disability.)

I’d give anything to not be shamed. I feel like the shaming closes me in. There’s no way out. My only comfort is that I will die early and be done with this miserable life.

I’m also obese - morbidly - and struggle so much with despair over my body because I was also one very healthy and had a beautiful body until serious illness forced me to be largely sedentary, medication also tanked my metabolism and I started eating very unhealthy while coping with childhood trauma and the adult sexual harassment that triggered all the buried toxins to rise to the surface.

If you can swim somewhere (YMCA?) I highly recommend it - it’s a great overall exercise and zero impact, so really perfect for heavy people. I’m anxious for the pool at my low cost gym to reopen. In the meantime it’s walking in the woods with my dog where I’m less likely to see people and feel their judging gaze, and where the surface is gentler on my joints - sidewalks give me sore feet and shin splints.

One thing that makes me crazy - my doctor sent me for an evaluation at the medical weight management center, and the bariatric surgeon was very bullish on me getting sleeve gastrectomy. My insurance company will happily shell out many thousands for me to go under the knife - but won’t shell out anything for gym membership or personal training. I truly believe that with the help and motivation from a trainer I could make a serious change in my health without surgery, but I can’t afford a trainer on my own. I hesitate to just jump in and try weights and machines and all that without guidance, because I have a number of previous injuries from the serious illness I suffered and I’m afraid to hurt myself in a serious way - I would need the guidance of a professional, like a PT (physical therapist) even to make sure I could work out without harming myself in permanent ways.

I think this is a big issue in our healthcare system, that it will happily pay tens of thousands and risk the costs of very serious surgical complications, but won’t pay a few thousand to give an obese person with health issues an opportunity to get expert guidance in changing their lifestyle and health for the better. It just seems to underscore that true health isn’t really the objective.

I don’t want to derail this thread, but to the both of you posters, I think help may be coming in the form of a pill if you are open to it. Read about semaglutide. I was a part of a study with this medication and it really helped me. I lost a significant amount of weight and it helped me get motivated to exercise because I loss so much weight, I had the energy to exercise. It’s not a cure. And as soon as the study ended I gained some weight back. But I’m bringing this up in this thread because it finally worked on the physiological brain fv%ck that I felt food was doing to me. Even though this medication doesn’t work on the brain, because I lost so much weight I was able to see myself differently for the first time in 35 years. I was able to see me not fat. And wow that was a real brain f-+$ck. I was no longer waiting to die fat.

See that’s the thing people that haven’t been fat before don’t realize either. When you are fat, you are invisible. People look past you. You can move in this world like a ghost. That’s how I felt, but when I lost the weight, I couldn’t do that anymore. People suddenly saw me. I wasn’t invisible anymore. That has pros and cons. So I was happy to gain the weight back, I didn’t like the attention of being smaller.

Some of these posters think being fat is just calories in and calories out, that’s it’s just will power. That’s just a tiny piece of the puzzle. For many who have been fat for most of their lives, it’s a part of them, it’s a part of me. It is a core part of who I am. And you can be afraid of what life will be if that piece of the puzzle isn’t there. When I lost weight, I still had bills to pay, I still had a sucky a$$ job. But for many years, I thought if I just lost the weight it would be all rainbows and roses. But life is still $hit and you still got folks like many on this thread judging you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
There is a difference in speed of digestion. Sugar will hop the blood almost immediately, starches even on white bread, would take a bit longer. Glucose will rise either way, but with sugar it would be much faster and higher. I did test it, myself (pock my fingers and tested blood sugar levels multiple times after meals) and seen it with my own eyes. And I felt the drops too, with tremor in my hands and racing heart. I know my do and fonts. But whatever, you don't hear any one but yourself.

So you've got it all wrong. Glycemic index of sucrose (table sugar) is 65 while for white bread it is actually higher - 75.

Besides, it's glycemic LOAD and not index that is more important and accurate. For example, watermelon has high GI but low GL which means that it will have rather low impact on your blood glucose because carb content in one serving is only 5 grams.

Mind boggling, right?

HOWEVER, all there is to know is that

The American Diabetes Association, on the other hand, says that the total amount of carbohydrate in a food, rather than its glycemic index or load, is a stronger predictor of what will happen to blood sugar.

That's what I and other pps where trying to explain. But no, you choose to demonize only *added* sugar.

[Anonymous]

Pp. Forgot to post a link.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/the-lowdown-on-glycemic-index-and-glycemic-load

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, I would just give up. You are fighting the good fight, but that person is dim and intransigent.

The only dim and intransigent here are the apologists that can’t accept the historical data. It’s all right there. Obesity didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It’s not some long complicated explanation for the majority affected. And people do care. Thats why this thread is here.

It’s dragging us all down. What do you think the affect is on the US economy and our health care costs? All bad news.

But words are cheap, so we will just continue using those and gloss over reality since feels.

Well, yes, you do seem to place your feelings above science and reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I’m obese. I hate it. I was the gorgeous, healthy, skinny woman everyone envied before I was long-term sexually harassed at work and went on medication for depression and anxiety. I was milested by my father repeatedly in ES so that I may be a bit sensitive to the workplace issue.

Now, I’m afraid to leave the house I don’t want anyone to see how fat I am. I take lithium and abilify, which cause weight gain.

I’m fine to pay extra for a seat on an airplane, but I’m also a millionaire.

I’d give anything to have a friend to walk with, but obesity is a lonely thing. My doctor has no advice for me. Last appointment, he just shrugged when I asked for exercise ideas. I can’t afford a personal trainer because, while I have money, I also don’t work so I need to save it. (I’m not on disability.)

I’d give anything to not be shamed. I feel like the shaming closes me in. There’s no way out. My only comfort is that I will die early and be done with this miserable life.

I’m also obese - morbidly - and struggle so much with despair over my body because I was also one very healthy and had a beautiful body until serious illness forced me to be largely sedentary, medication also tanked my metabolism and I started eating very unhealthy while coping with childhood trauma and the adult sexual harassment that triggered all the buried toxins to rise to the surface.

If you can swim somewhere (YMCA?) I highly recommend it - it’s a great overall exercise and zero impact, so really perfect for heavy people. I’m anxious for the pool at my low cost gym to reopen. In the meantime it’s walking in the woods with my dog where I’m less likely to see people and feel their judging gaze, and where the surface is gentler on my joints - sidewalks give me sore feet and shin splints.

One thing that makes me crazy - my doctor sent me for an evaluation at the medical weight management center, and the bariatric surgeon was very bullish on me getting sleeve gastrectomy. My insurance company will happily shell out many thousands for me to go under the knife - but won’t shell out anything for gym membership or personal training. I truly believe that with the help and motivation from a trainer I could make a serious change in my health without surgery, but I can’t afford a trainer on my own. I hesitate to just jump in and try weights and machines and all that without guidance, because I have a number of previous injuries from the serious illness I suffered and I’m afraid to hurt myself in a serious way - I would need the guidance of a professional, like a PT (physical therapist) even to make sure I could work out without harming myself in permanent ways.

I think this is a big issue in our healthcare system, that it will happily pay tens of thousands and risk the costs of very serious surgical complications, but won’t pay a few thousand to give an obese person with health issues an opportunity to get expert guidance in changing their lifestyle and health for the better. It just seems to underscore that true health isn’t really the objective.

I don’t want to derail this thread, but to the both of you posters, I think help may be coming in the form of a pill if you are open to it. Read about semaglutide. I was a part of a study with this medication and it really helped me. I lost a significant amount of weight and it helped me get motivated to exercise because I loss so much weight, I had the energy to exercise. It’s not a cure. And as soon as the study ended I gained some weight back. But I’m bringing this up in this thread because it finally worked on the physiological brain fv%ck that I felt food was doing to me. Even though this medication doesn’t work on the brain, because I lost so much weight I was able to see myself differently for the first time in 35 years. I was able to see me not fat. And wow that was a real brain f-+$ck. I was no longer waiting to die fat.

See that’s the thing people that haven’t been fat before don’t realize either. When you are fat, you are invisible. People look past you. You can move in this world like a ghost. That’s how I felt, but when I lost the weight, I couldn’t do that anymore. People suddenly saw me. I wasn’t invisible anymore. That has pros and cons. So I was happy to gain the weight back, I didn’t like the attention of being smaller.

Some of these posters think being fat is just calories in and calories out, that’s it’s just will power. That’s just a tiny piece of the puzzle. For many who have been fat for most of their lives, it’s a part of them, it’s a part of me. It is a core part of who I am. And you can be afraid of what life will be if that piece of the puzzle isn’t there. When I lost weight, I still had bills to pay, I still had a sucky a$$ job. But for many years, I thought if I just lost the weight it would be all rainbows and roses. But life is still $hit and you still got folks like many on this thread judging you.

I have read about semaglutide, when you’ve posted about it before. Not currently available in the USA for weight loss alone - my pre-diabetes would have to become diabetes before I could get a prescription.

About the imagining oneself not fat: I’ve been fat for less than a decade and spent the vast majority of my life healthy weight - and subject from the time I ‘developed’ at age 11, and subsequently experienced my first molestation by an adult male stranger who ‘copped a feel’ at a parks and recreation sporting event, to the blistering humility of the very often highly intrusive and even assaultive male gaze.

If there is one thing that is a benefit of my obesity, it is that I no longer see myself sexualized in the eyes of half the people I encounter in my life. It’s really, really sad that I had to become obese/unhealthy to finally feel this freedom of being invisible to that assault, and it’s sad that as a survivor of molestation in early childhood, and date rape as the means by which I lost my virginity in high school, and a lifetime of experiences of sexual harassment in academic and the workplace, I actually feel apprehensive about losing my weight because all that might start up again and I’ve already endured nearly 4 decades of it.

Someone above posted that obesity in low income POC is largely linked to trauma. Well I’m here to attest that in my experience, my own and knowledge of many other women who are obese, trauma is also at the root of a lot of obesity in middle and upper middle class white women, too. (I don’t know about obese men in those income brackets.)

[Anonymous]

I woke up this morning thinking about this thread and the example of Subway in particular. I recall an episode of the Biggest Loser where the trainers treated everyone to a teriyaki. Chicken sub and extolled the virtues of this healthy lunch. That's the problem! So much added sugar and so much bad information. So many of us are trying so hard. We tried nutri systems and weight watchers and Jane Brody and fit it's and podcasts and it really does feel like the whole diet industry just takes your money and lies to you. He'll, I went to some shady place where they sold me amphetamines to curb my appetite. Now I have given up carbs and sugar and am weighing and measuring my food. I have been dieting for thirty years.