Fat Shaming.

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I'm not actually supporting this. As a Trainer, I do not. I never fat shame my clients, nor do I let them fat shame themselves. It's not about the misery, it's about their decisions to do something different. And I often say that I can help them change their bodies, but if they have self loathing issues... that's not going to go away even if you lose pounds. I've helped people lose dozens of pounds and they still hated what they saw because it wasn't good enough in their heads.

Once again, I'm not saying this out of acceptance... but people are always going to find a way of being a tremendous dick. We are Netizens. We know that more than anyone else. If people can find a way to be horrible, they will fill themselves with delight in doing so.

But worse than those people? Those who actually convinced themselves that they are helping. That somehow being 'honest' (New World Slang for "Heartlessly Cruel") is exactly what these people need. Now, would these people who handed out these cards accept honesty about them being douches? Oh no. You're attacking them. Or worst yet, you're censoring them.

Because Lord knows people who are being thoughtless judgmental and wish to change the world in a manner of which they see fit ABSOLUTELY HATE IT... when you try to be judgmental to them and change them into a manner which they disagree with.

Odd, that.

The entire problem with fat shaming is that it's a method of tearing people down, not building them up, there have been many studies that shows negative reinforcement doesn't work.

Excuse me for being a dick. I'll try to be an ok dick.

Negative Reinforcement is the act of taking something away when the stimuli that you crave happens. Say you want your child to do better in school and when he or she does, you take away their restrictive curfew as a reward. That's Negative Reinforcement

 

[BloatedGuppy]

On the other hand, I wonder how people would react if it was being done to smokers. Say what you will, but with the cost obesity has on the health care system being overweight should be seen in the same light as smoking,

The handing out of nastygrams to strangers out of pure malice is fundamentally reprehensible, so that wouldn't change. That said, there are a few key differences between smokers and the medically obese.

1. While both nicotine and food can be addictive, you don't need nicotine to live, and at some point you made a conscious (and frankly inexplicable) decision to take up a hobby that you knew was wildly addictive and toxic. It's very difficult for a food addict to separate themselves completely from the source of their addiction, and the body will naturally crave things in food. The body will never naturally crave nicotine without someone willfully introducing it to themselves.
2. Smoking has a variety of effects that travel outside oneself, including the potential to instigate disease states in bystanders via second hand smoke.

...especially given the fact that in 99% of cases it is in fact a choice on the part of the person who is overweight due to their lifestyle habits.

Source for this ridiculously inflated statistic? I mean, we both know the source is the imagination, but I'm curious to see if you used your own or someone elses.

 

[mrdude2010]

It doesn't even make any sense. All research has shown that fat shaming is completely ineffective when it comes to helping someone lose weight. If someone doesn't realize the problems with being obese, it's certainly a good idea to have someone they trust politely point out the health risks to them, but it's not like most fat people don't already realize they're fat.

I do think it's a mistake to normalize obesity, though. It seriously isn't a good thing.

 

[Kolyarut]

it's not food is heroin.

No, because you can stop taking heroin.

I mean, not saying it's easy, if you're addicted to heroin. But if you're trying to cut back on your heroin intake the best thing to do is not take any heroin, because if you take heroin you're probably going to take a lot of it. If you stop taking any food that doesn't really work out so well for you. Food is an addiction you can never quit.

 

[Zontar]

1. While both nicotine and food can be addictive, you don't need nicotine to live, and at some point you made a conscious (and frankly inexplicable) decision to take up a hobby that you knew was wildly addictive and toxic. It's very difficult for a food addict to separate themselves completely from the source of their addiction, and the body will naturally crave things in food. The body will never naturally crave nicotine without someone willfully introducing it to themselves.

And no one forced people who are fat to eat more then 2500 calories each day. The average adult's stomach can only handle 900ml of liquid at any given time in terms of volume, and it's no secret which foods can be eaten in small quantities with make you feel full.

We may need food to live, but like hell do we need to eat a whole pizza and down 2L of coke in one sitting.

2. Smoking has a variety of effects that travel outside oneself, including the potential to instigate disease states in bystanders via second hand smoke.

Being overweight tends to lead to things like a weakened immune system, which makes carrying (and as a result spreading) diseases easier. When factored in with the health care costs involved, it's a fair comparison.

Source for this ridiculously inflated statistic? I mean, we both know the source is the imagination, but I'm curious to see if you used your own or someone elses.

Is there any evidence that glandular problems that are the CAUSE instead of the RESULT of being overweight exists in more then a marginal part of the obese population? Because the very sudden rise in obesity doesn't line up with the access to plentiful or healthy food over the past 50 years, so if anything is the result of this problem it's a cultural one instead of economic or medical.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I find it rather odd the incidents of the diseases that cause obesity have remind at the same level per head of population while obesity itself has dramatically increased. I wonder how people avoided obesity before there was food labeling, processed food is not new.

I'm not disclaiming that. But that doesn't change the fact that there are plenty fat people who's weight is pretty much outiside of their control. And assuming anyone who's fat is automatically some gluttonous pig, which is what these people are doing, is a horribly judgemental mentallity to have.

 

[Casual Shinji]

it's not food is heroin.

No, because you can stop taking heroin.

I mean, not saying it's easy, if you're addicted to heroin. But if you're trying to cut back on your heroin intake the best thing to do is not take any heroin, because if you take heroin you're probably going to take a lot of it. If you stop taking any food that doesn't really work out so well for you. Food is an addiction you can never quit.

To be fair though, I'm sure there's a lot of drug addicts that got hooked due to at one point in their life being in massive amounts of pain.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

And no one forced people who are fat to eat more then 2500 calories each day.

Becoming addicted to a substance you are already consuming is significantly easier than becoming addicted to one you're aware is deadly and have to make a conscious effort...as an adult...to expose yourself to. This is so abundantly self-evident I'm having trouble understanding how anyone could debate the point while keeping a straight face.

It's a bad analogy.

Being overweight tends to lead to things like a weakened immune system, which makes carrying (and as a result spreading) diseases easier. When factored in with the health care costs involved, it's a fair comparison.

Immune suppression comes from digestive health in general. You can be as thin as a rail and still have a horribly compromised immune system. The overwhelming majority of complications arising from obesity are self-inflicted harms, like heart disease, cardiovascular issues, diabetes, etc, etc. Unless you're worried a person is going to give you type 2 diabetes by eating an ice cream cone next to you on the subway, I think you're probably safe.

Is there any evidence that glandular problems that are the CAUSE instead of the RESULT of being overweight exists in more then a marginal part of the obese population? Because the very sudden rise in obesity doesn't line up with the access to plentiful or healthy food over the past 50 years, so if anything is the result of this problem it's a cultural one instead of economic or medical.

No, sorry, that isn't how this works, Zontar. Please establish a source for your "99%" statistic. Your inability to find evidence that contradicts your claim...most likely without looking...is not proof of its veracity.

As I said in my first post, the reasons for obesity are multi-factoral. Attempting to reduce it to just one, likely in the hopes of making a population easier to attack, is willful oversimplification of a complex issue in the hopes of validating malice.

 

[Kolyarut]

it's not food is heroin.

No, because you can stop taking heroin.

I mean, not saying it's easy, if you're addicted to heroin. But if you're trying to cut back on your heroin intake the best thing to do is not take any heroin, because if you take heroin you're probably going to take a lot of it. If you stop taking any food that doesn't really work out so well for you. Food is an addiction you can never quit.

To be fair though, I'm sure there's a lot of drug addicts that got hooked due to at one point in their life being in massive amounts of pain.

Oh, sure, that's not meant to be a slam on recovering heroin addicts at all. I'm sure there are reasons people get hooked and I'm sure it's agonisingly difficult to break an addiction to it - but if every heroin addict had to take heroin every day for the rest of their life I'm sure cutting back would be even more difficult than it already is.

 

[Superbeast]

I find it rather odd the incidents of the diseases that cause obesity have remind at the same level per head of population while obesity itself has dramatically increased. I wonder how people avoided obesity before there was food labeling, processed food is not new.

I'm not disclaiming that. But that doesn't change the fact that there are plenty fat people who's weight is pretty much outiside of their control. And assuming anyone who's fat is automatically some gluttonous pig, which is what these people are doing, is a horribly judgemental mentallity to have.

Not only that, but if they are a self-aware gluttonous pig "fat-shaming" isn't going to help matters - either they don't give a shit or they have other issues behind it.

For instance, I know I'm overweight. Medically obese even. I have self-esteem issues and depression. One of my (bad) coping strategies is junk food. I know it is not healthy, which is why I am seeking help with a variety of professionals. If some jackass came up to me and gave me a card like that, or verbalised similar feelings, they are being counter-productive. I am likely to get angry, upset and depressed, causing me to seek comfort food and likely to make me hesitate to leave the flat for fear of further humiliation - therefore likely gaining weight from increased caloric intake and reduced exercise as a result of their intentions to "shock" me into losing weight.

As it happens I often find that these folks (those who think fat-shaming is a good idea)tend to be the same jackasses that laugh at fat people when they go to the gym or go for a run. They don't honestly care about global food shortages or the strains on the NHS (otherwise why are they not spending this time they are trolling the tube for fat people collecting for Unicef, MSF, Save the Children or the Red Cross?) but they just enjoy being dicks to people and upsetting them.

Fuck these fuckers and any fucker who agrees with them.

 

[wulf3n]

They spelt beautiful wrong. Unless there referring to this [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Beatiful] but that seems worse.

 

[Superbeast]

And no one forced people who are fat to eat more then 2500 calories each day. The average adult's stomach can only handle 900ml of liquid at any given time in terms of volume, and it's no secret which foods can be eaten in small quantities with make you feel full.

In some ways it can be a secret, thanks to the barrage of conflicting information. One month "not eating carbs" is the best, healthiest way to lose weight. The next, "not eating protein" is in fashion and did you know that cutting out carbs is bad for you. There are so many people that want to sell a pill or a new diet that they intentionally saturate the market with mutually exclusive statements.

There are also so many "hidden" calories in food (and labelling varies by country depending on national laws so in some places it is much worse, for example compare the USA with the UK in this regard). Some food additives are highly addictive and banned in one country rather than another, but even ones still allowed on the market can be nasty (MSG I'm looking at you). Some studies suggest that sugar may be as addictive as cocaine, for example. Soft drinks are a well-known carrier of "empty calories" but they can sneak their way into all sorts of things - "low fat" foods are particularly bad for this. Fat naturally tastes good, so foods that have the fat content reduced tend to taste a bit bland, and therefore companies try to increase the palatability (and thus marketability) of their products by adding excessive amounts of sugar. Then there is all the other crap they add to try to add the texture and feeling of fullness the fat would have created - there's a cellulose ingredient that is added to a lot of "diet foods" which is essentially wallpaper paste. Crap like that is not healthy, yet it is marketed as such.

For someone who has been overweight for a long time, they may in fact need to consume over 2500 calories a day. You see, if you drastically cut your caloric intake then your body essentially goes into a starvation mode, converting increased amounts of carbohydrate chains into fats and lowering your metabolism to prevent the burning of fat stores. Therefore eating 3,000 calories per day will lead to more effective and sustainable weight-loss than a simple quasi-starvation diet to fit in with the "recommended" daily allowances. Such a person may even need to paradoxically increase how many calories they were otherwise eating if they begin an exercise plan in order to maintain suitable metabolic function. Naturally this should be established with your doctor/dietician rather than used as an excuse, but the platitude "no one makes them eat more than 2500 calories" is simplistic (not to mention highly fit people who may need far in excess of 2500 calories to maintain their physique and their levels of exercise).

 

[Godhead]

As a fat person, this is one of the most hilarious things I have seen all month. It's honestly too funny for me to even consider being offended by this.

 

[Thyunda]

I like that when a conversation about 'fat shaming' comes up, half the debate turns into whether or not it's okay to be fat. As though that's the point.

I think you'll find the real point is that nobody's got the right to mock anyone else for any reason. I mean, sure, mock various things in general, I'm all for that, but when you start specifically harassing people over it, you just become a ****. Though, if you're going out of your way to take the piss out of strangers, you were probably already one.

Though this does remind me - there's that whole thing where implying somebody is overweight is an insult, even if it's not particularly damaging to their health. I have a friend who's rather large and kind of hovers in the middle of corridors, and took minor offence when I said "Dude, shift, you're taking up the whole corridor." Because, y'know, he occupies more physical space than most. That's not an insult, that's just reality. It was best exemplified, though, and I mean beautifully done, when a former co-worker posted on Facebook that an old college mate of hers had implied she'd gained weight since college.

She had. That's not up for debate. It was true. But all of her friends left incensed comments on her status reading things like "You're not fat, you're beautiful!" or "That's not a true friend, a true friend would never say something like that." Thing is, though, there's no way this girl is completely oblivious to her weight. Nobody is. So why would a true friend try to establish a setting for 'beautiful' and discount 'fat' from it when the person she's talking to is a bit fat? It's total nonsense to me. Complete and utter bollocks.

 

[Erttheking]

Oh goodie, loaded internet topic #913. I look forward to everyone getting pissed that their opinion isn't universal before talking about how right they are and everyone who disagrees with them just doesn't get it while refusing to admit any flaw in their arguments, no matter how minor.

And can we at least agree that flat out insulting people is a bad thing? Or are we too angry to even admit that anymore? Because I feel like we're letting real world issues slide under our view in favor of having ideological clash number one million and ten. Like we're more concerned in having our world view reaffirmed than actually talking about what's happening.

 

[9tailedflame]

I really don't get it. If there was some indication that they were trying to help, i might be understanding, even if i'm not sympathetic, i'd have some logical concept of where they're trying to come from, but as it stands, they just look like they're acting like gigantic assholes.

 

[veloper]

I'd only draw the line at following fatties around with this kind of stuff.

It's an opinion, on a card, that you don't have to agree with and held by some stranger you don't even care about. Don't let yourself get trolled. Problem solved.

This is just littering the public space at worst.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Wait? How are they doing this in the tube? I've been to London a month ago and needless to say it get overcrowded very quickly let alone putting something in place for it to stay still (I can get if they sneak it into their pocket).

OT- Too bad Wander (Wander over Yonder) isn't real otherwise he would had taught a thing or two about hating stuff.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

"Fatshaming" itself is just a stupid concept and "fat acceptance" is inherently detrimental to the individuals it supposedly supports. Ya know the sort. This is Thin Privilege and what-not.

However.

To me, this isn't a fat shaming issue. This is just people being rude, obnoxious trolls. The fact being fat is being mentioned is secondary to that.

This.

Doing this kinda stuff? It's just an asshole thing to do. I mean, just look at that phrasing, "perverted chubby-lover"?

Seriously?

If this were online, I'd call it a troll and move on, but this takes a lot more effort than typing up some bullshit and jetting.

 

[Odbarc]

If you renamed 'Fat Shaming' to 'Choice Shaming' people would probably be more for it.
This way you can also include other bad choices you incorporate into other peoples lives like driving poorly, being rude and smoking.

But from a perspective of a hobbyist bodybuilder, when I was in my early 20's, I couldn't gain weight over 200lbs. I'm in my 30's now and I can't get it below 200lbs. Luckily some of that weight is muscle and height but it makes a lot of sense to me that there could easily be people who don't have the time to manage their calorie intake and expense to be thinner due to other responsibilities.

If a man is working all day and comes home to a wife's home cooked meal and happens to be 30+lbs over weight, there isn't much he's going to be able to do other than starve himself with some awful vegan diet most people of nominal weight would ever manage themselves.

But then there's also that kind of people whose horrifically gluttonous, whose sole purpose seems to be to indulge their appetites and take up space. There aren't many of them but they all seem to be the fattest of us all and have the worst attitudes and personalities of any people.