Reply to Is People Magazine glorifying obesity or celebrating diversity?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Glorifying obesity - seriously? Does anyone actually think that one magazine with an obese person on the cover - among the thousands of magazines with thin people on the covers - is going to make people aspire to obesity? I promise it won't. It won't even make people think that &quot;obesity is OK,&quot; although people should think that, actually.

Obesity is not a lifestyle or a behavior or a moral failure, it's a body size. With few exceptions (none that I know of), obese people have suffered for their weight, do not want to look as they do, and have lost weight with varying degrees of success. Yet public debate about obesity assumes that fat people spend all their time binge-eating, don't care about their health or are too stupid to know how to be healthy, and are happy with how they look. Psychological research on willpower shows that it's not actually the magic key to weight loss; fat people do not score lower on self-control. It's very, very complicated biologically. Yes, the calories in &lt; calories out equation is technically correct (absent medical issues), but it's just not that easy 95% of the time. (95%, btw, is the long-term failure rate of attempts to lose weight.)

We all have our struggles and our flaws. Maybe yours is your weight. Maybe it's something else not so good for your health - smoking, drinking too much, abusing prescription meds, driving aggressively, starving yourself, being sexually promiscuous. Maybe it's something not health-related - spending too much money, gossiping, yelling too much, cheating on your spouse, trolling online, generally being a shitty human being.

Anyway, obesity is &quot;OK.&quot; It's as OK as any human imperfection. And I don't think that only people who can &quot;pass&quot; for perfect based on physical appearance deserve to be seen in public or celebrated for their accomplishments. No one is obligated to attempt to meet anyone else's definition of beauty. No one is entitled to be shielded from seeing people they consider ugly.

And honestly, if you do believe that people become obese because they've actively chosen a binge-eating, no exercise &quot;lifestyle,&quot; so what? It's a free country and I can choose that if I want to. You are certainly free to choose differently and to teach your children differently. Exposure to someone with different values will not change your kids' values, any more than seeing a magazine with the Pope on the cover will make them convert to Catholicism.[/quote]

Yes! To the whole damn thing![/quote]

YES to this!!!

I am technically obese, but you would probably just call me overweight based on my appearance (BMI of 30.8).  I have actively tried to lose weight and I am trying to lose weight right now.  For the past 6 weeks, I have tracked every single piece of food that enters my mouth.  I do not eat more than 1200 calories a day.  I walk at least 20 minutes every day and do 30 minutes on the elliptical 1-2/week in addition.

I have lost a grand total of 3 lbs in those 6 weeks.  My thyroid is normal.  There is no medical reason why I cannot lose weight.  I eat whole grains and very little processed food.  I eat out very rarely.  My metabolism just sucks.

And I don't need other people telling me that I should be unhappy with my body and that, by my mere existence, I am setting a bad example for other people.[/quote]

Cut out carbs and all sugar. [/quote]

Done it.  Did South Beach diet religiously.  Did not eat any refined sugar or as much as a piece of fruit for a month.  Lost zero pounds.  My doctor doesn't know why I can't lose weight.  Neither does the nutritionist I worked with, to whom I provided detailed food diaries.

I am a smart, educated person.  But people who look at me see someone who they assume just has no willpower.[/quote]

It's not about what you eat.  It's all about how much you eat.  Portion control.  It's not rocket science. It's willpower.[/quote]

Did you miss the part about eating only 1200 calories a day?  Everything I eat is measured.  I know about portion control.  It's not all about willpower when your metabolism slows down any time you reduce calories.

I'm sure I could lose weight if I actually ate nothing.  But no medical professional is supportive of me eating less than 1200 calories per day due to concerns about worsening my metabolism any more in the long term.[/quote]

I am not trying to be rude or cause offense, but absent a major medical issue, it makes zero sense and is basically impossible that you are actually eating only 1,200 calories a day, exercising 20-30 minutes a day, and not losing any weight.

An interesting study was done that found obese individuals claiming intakes at 1,200 calories or less a day were significantly underreporting their intake and over reporting their exercise.

[quote]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1454084

[b]Some obese subjects repeatedly fail to lose weight even though they report restricting their caloric intake to less than 1200 kcal per day. [/b]We studied two explanations for this apparent resistance to diet--low total energy expenditure and underreporting of caloric intake--in 224 consecutive obese subjects presenting for treatment. Group 1 consisted of nine women and one man with a history of diet resistance in whom we evaluated total energy expenditure and its main thermogenic components and actual energy intake for 14 days by indirect calorimetry and analysis of body composition. Group 2, subgroups of which served as controls in the various evaluations, consisted of 67 women and 13 men with no history of diet resistance.
RESULTS:
Total energy expenditure and resting metabolic rate in the subjects with diet resistance (group 1) were within 5 percent of the predicted values for body composition, and there was no significant difference between groups 1 and 2 in the thermic effects of food and exercise. Low energy expenditure was thus excluded as a mechanism of self-reported diet resistance. In contrast, the subjects in group 1 underreported their actual food intake by an average (+/- SD) of 47 +/- 16 percent and overreported their physical activity by 51 +/- 75 percent. Although the subjects in group 1 had no distinct psychopathologic characteristics, they perceived a genetic cause for their obesity, used thyroid medication at a high frequency, and described their eating behavior as relatively normal (all P &lt; 0.05 as compared with group 2).
CONCLUSIONS:[b]
The failure of some obese subjects to lose weight while eating a diet they report as low in calories is due to an energy intake substantially higher than reported and an overestimation of physical activity, not to an abnormality in thermogenesis.[/b][/quote][/quote]

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