Why do people pick on and complain about fat/obese people so much?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I recently got diagnosed with high blood pressure (which runs in my family, including my mother and grandmother who were skinny skinny people who didn't work at it at all, and were at the heart of all the condemnation in my family because they consider being overweight an intentional moral failure) so I really need to drop some weight because I don't like taking medications. So I'm back to really unhealthy eating patterns, eliminating entire categories of food from my diet and in such small quantities that I'm dropping 10 pounds a month, and here we go again..."Oh you're doing SO great! Wow you look great! Isn't it great to be so healthy? What did you do? I want to tell my sister so she can get skinny too". I haven't had anything that tasted good in months (because now even salt is off the table, along with sugar and wheat), I haven't been full in forever, and I get really woozy when I stand up too fast. But this is all for my "health", right guys?

Sounds like you're just eating like a normal thin person, TBH.

Normal thin people do not eliminate entire categories of food. Surely you know that?

Um...normal thin person here. I don't eat processed foods or candy. Pretty sure those aren't food groups, but rather empty calories.

Normal thin very athletic person here who eats candy and ice cream we are not all like you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm late forties. I've been fighting depression and anxiety since my late 20's - which is when I steadily gained a lot of weight. Eating too much is a mental and physical coping mechanism for me. When you feel bad about yourself, how you look, how you feel in your own body and clothes most of the time, life is pretty miserable. Not making excuses or looking for a pity party. I have a lot to be grateful for, but I still can't shake the feeling of comfort I get from food when I am stressed - I guess like some who turn to alcohol or marijuana. I've been to counselors, psychologists, and on many medications for depression and anxiety - and I still am. But it seems that a certain level of depression is just inescapable for me... like there's a mental problem that medications can't fully fix.

I'm 6'1" and I've been as high as 360 lbs. My weight has fluctuated between 260-300 lbs the last decade. I've accepted that there are a lot of people that look at me with disgust, and that there ARE some people who have a strange visceral hatred (not just a dislike) of obese people. I will spend $$$ to fly first class if I must fly. I don't go to concerts or shows. I am used to children who have no filter calling me fat, a whale, and some just flat out asking me why I am so fat. Which I answer matter of fact saying I don't eat well or get enough exercise.

I am otherwise successful. I am married, I have two healthy kids and a high income even by DCUM standards. So you would think I could shake the addiction and do better for myself, and my family. But real depression is a serious problem - and I don't think most people can appreciate how it affects people. They think they can and do, relating it to their own moments of stress, anxiety and trials and tribulations in their lives. And they think that gives them the license to judge and ridicule fat people openly or discreetly. Which is unfortunate. But live isn't easy for most people. My problem is just one that's plainly visible for all to see.

NP. You're minimizing. W lot of people suffer from chronic depression. It is one of the few mental illnesses that can be fatal.

You have company, if you are willing to allow it to be so.

[Anonymous]

OP, if you are truly interested in knowing more start reading: Never Too Thin by Roberta Pollack Seid, Fasting Girls by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, which is about anorexia but is interesting to think about in the context of body control. Both are classics and you can likely get them very cheap used. Controlling one's body is a part of the neo-liberal project. Yes, I was a professor and taught classes on the history of the body. It's a fascinating subject.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think people have more opinions now after extensive Covid shutdowns that were seen as mostly being for the benefit of obese people.

And I don’t know why you insist that the costs to other people aren’t a valid reason. Everyone can remember a time that they were squashed in a seat because the person next to them didn’t fit in their seat, and how uncomfortable it was. And it’s a fact that many heath conditions are related to obesity and that this affects us all.

I’m sorry that you’re upset but being obese is not a private thing that only affects you. It affects us all. It doesn’t mean that people should be openly hostile about it but they have reasons for their beliefs.

WTF nobody shut down due to obese people? WTF is wrong with you? YOU are exactly who OP is talking about. I mean seriously W H A T T H E F U C K IS WRONG WITH YOU????

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a lot of respect for obese women out in public. So brave. I am insecure so if I became that way I would probably avoid being seen in
public and my world would get very small/limited.

?????? SOME OF YOU PEOPLE ARE INSANE!!!!

[Anonymous]

Just responding quickly to some of OP’s points without having read any responses.

Obesity IS classified as a disease, it’s a condition code on my medical records and there are various medical interventions available and covered by health insurance.

Serious nutrition science isn’t taught in a single United States medical school, and most doctors are as ignorant as lay people about nutrition science. A significant number of doctors are themselves overweight or obese.

The current medical system is a for profit nightmare which encourages doctors to spend 12.5 minutes per patient - hardly time enough to scratch the surface at breaking down myths and emotional blocks around diet, exercise and self care. We don’t have a healthcare system, we have a sick care system that treats the symptoms of disease and not the causes. There is a phenomenal amount of money to be made in treating symptoms of chronic illnesses, much less so to be made in curing.

The same corporations that own big Pharma also own big food and big tobacco and are heavily invested in big medicine. You bet your keister it is a conspiracy to profit, and it starts with the way these corporations have infiltrated our school lunch programs over the last few decades and lay the groundwork for food addiction and obesity in kids starting in kindergarten. Watch Fed Up for the details of how that all worked and still works, to our collective detriment.

Sanjay Gupta’s podcast Chasing Health is focusing on the science of obesity this season, and a lot of the folks who comment on threads on weight and obesity on this board should be listening. Obesity is a symptom of metabolic dysfunction and gut biome dysfunction and is much more complex than many who like to sneer and judge and bark about calories in/calories out, weak character etc. want to accept, because the truth is they are also vulnerable.

I spent 35 years of my life at normal weight, and another 10 at overweight but still curvy/sexy. A number of factors led to my metabolic dysfunction and obesity, and I’ve actually found it very liberating to the extent that it shut off the male gaze and I finally have had some peace from the ogling, molesting and unwanted advances I have dealt with since I was 10 years old and sprouted breasts (I’ll save the stories of my molestations by neighbors and friends of parents while still a very young child for another thread).

I don’t like being obese for the reasons that I’m more readily tired, my joints hurt, I cannot be as active as I would like to be without my poor feet hurting, and I have a lovely wardrobe of clothes I miss wearing. I’m working hard to lose the weight after teaching myself nutritional biochemistry and changing my diet and lifestyle in very big ways which weren’t easy but I feel will be something I can maintain for life - the weight is coming off slowly but surely. I look forward to feeling healthier and hope that my gray hair and general crankiness will keep the male gaze at bay when I am back to a more normal weight.

The way some people treat overweight and obese people is truly awful, including in the medical profession. Same for how some people treat people struggling with mental health issues or substance use disorders. Across my life experience I’ve found that often such people have a beam in their own eye while they obsess over the mote in someone else’s eye. It’s an ugly aspect of human nature and I don’t know what the fix is, but given 70% of us are now overweight or obese and the rates continue to rise, I suspect after not too many more years there will be few folks left to point fingers and sneer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think anyone hates fat people. I do think fat people hate skinny people.

That is also true, but mostly in online spaces which are just as radical as the people ranting about fat people. Just in the opposite direction.

[Anonymous]

If my husband told me what that shithead husband said I'd get a stun gun and shock the living hell out of him multiple times while packing his rags and putting them in a paper bag. Can I call you an UBER hon ?
Then I'd drain the bank accounts.

As for being fat, lately it is getting out of control. It really isn't attractive to see a 400 pound women half dressed or a face tatted Jelly Roll jiggling to his tunes. That being said, it isn't anyone's fault. I know some people want to believe it's a fork and plate thing but it's not. It's all that poison crap they, the government, puts in our food to make us sick and obese. Always remember, the outside package means nothing. It's what's inside that matters.

So if you ladies have husbands that fixate on your weight you tell him okay, let's do this together, honor code, then we can work on how unattractive you are. Sounds like a plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a very American thing. As a foreigner, I hear so many excuses for overeating.

I lived in Germany. Belgium, France, and Italy and saw a lot of obese people so overeating isn't just an American problem.

[Anonymous]

I don’t pick on obese people. But I am probably unfairly judgmental in silence. When I see a very very large person at the airport I don’t want them to sit next to me on the plane. I’ve been in that situation before where the large person did not buy an extra seat and their leg took up half my seat. It’s uncomfortable and unfair to other passengers to be subject to that. I genuinely wonder how they got to that point. Growing up in the 80s we didn’t have anywhere the obesity that we do now, think about it. Why is this? It cannot just be genetics. It’s a compounding effect of food choice, which is now filled or made of poison (fructose etc), undisciplined eating habits, the death of home cooking which leads to medical issues, thyroid issues,etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a lot of respect for obese women out in public. So brave. I am insecure so if I became that way I would probably avoid being seen in
public and my world would get very small/limited.

?????? SOME OF YOU PEOPLE ARE INSANE!!!!

Yeah, this is absolutely ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

I think unhappy people love a scapegoat. What I find interesting is the types who hate on the obese. My cousin did back when she had a fast metabolism. Now in middle age she is obese headed toward morbid obesity and her kids are overweight and she doesn’t seem to have remorse for her previous attitude, though she is protective of her kids.

I knew someone morbidly obese who had gastric bypass and years later gained a lot back. She gossiped about fat people. It was so strange how critical she was of anyone who struggled as much or more than she did.

[Anonymous]

I don’t have a problem with fat people as individuals. I have a problem with fat acceptance or normalizing obesity when it’s taken to mean that being obese is healthy and okay. Our life expectancy is declining. Cancer rates have gone up among people under 50. Our food is full of chemicals and crap and nobody is doing anything about it.

If you individually are fat I would not sit here judging you because I am not an arsehole. I know sometimes it’s genetics but a lot of the time it’s our whole damn system surrounding you with addictive sugary crap that is literally as addictive as cocaine. People try their damndest their entire lives and can’t beat it on willpower alone. So no, I don’t fault fat people.

But I do fault the corporations who have taken cultural control and hijack the body positivity movement and turn it into glorifying obesity or just normalizing being unhealthy to this extent where people think everything is fine, and as a society we’ve just given up on trying to make ourselves healthier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I judge parents with significantly overweight or obese kids. You are the parent; YOU control what they eat. Stop feeding them garbage.

I'm skinny and my kids are skinny, and you are flat out wrong. I have friends who try so hard to serve healthful foods. Meanwhile, my children live on pediasure and candy and it's a struggle to get calories into them.

I know a kid who literally eats three cans of chickpeas a day. They only have healthful food available. The kid is always hungry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I judge parents with significantly overweight or obese kids. You are the parent; YOU control what they eat. Stop feeding them garbage.

I'm skinny and my kids are skinny, and you are flat out wrong. I have friends who try so hard to serve healthful foods. Meanwhile, my children live on pediasure and candy and it's a struggle to get calories into them.

I know a kid who literally eats three cans of chickpeas a day. They only have healthful food available. The kid is always hungry.

I am sure that children like this exist, but most of the time it’s made. The obesity rate is too high too quickly, especially among kids, to think that human physiology has changed that much in 50 years.