Obesity Discrimination

Bedewyr

New member
Oct 25, 2009
29
0
0
Amarok said:
RafaelNegrus said:
At the very least can it be agreed that making sure everyone has access to the foods they want, and access to safe movement options is a better way forward than nurturing a culture of fear, stigma and shame?


As for your other ponderings, I'd suggest looking at Tom Naughton, and his film Fathead. It comes from a far more cool, clinical perspective, but also debunks the totally erroneous "obese=automatically unhealthy" idea. He's got some ideas on what causes fat, but make sure to bear in mind that fat isn't automatically ill health, and that stigmatising and shaming -- and linking to comprehensive lists of fat jokes as an academic counter-argument -- is just an all-round stupid idea.
That film is also absolute garbage because of how he goes about his "Fast Food" diet. So I'll eat fast food except I won't drink sodas (excess calories, sugar, etc,) won't eat french fries (empty carb and oil calories) will eat a caloric deficit (less than 2,000 calories a day) and will exercise 6 days a week. I lost weight!? (gee you think?)

His doctors even explain in the film that if people ate a more appropriate low glycemic index diet (full of vegetables, fruits, nuts, meat, and whole grains) as opposed to they way they do eat (garbage) they would probably end up the same as Naughton and lose weight. Crazy I know.

It does nothing to debunk the idea that obese = unhealthy because Naughton was only JUST tipping in at Obese on the BMI and studies have shown that people who are slightly overweight live longer than those who are either morbidly obese or excessively skinny.

This one documentary does not undo the fact that being mobidly obese is linked to Diabetes, Cancers, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure, Sleep Apnea, Gout, Gall Bladder Disease, etc, etc, etc.
 

Bedewyr

New member
Oct 25, 2009
29
0
0
Farseer Lolotea said:
Bedewyr said:
All of this right here is utter horsecrap.

a Gallon of milk is 3.99 if you aren't completely inept and know at all where to shop. A bag of Apples (5lbs) from the grocery store is usally less than 5 dollars. If you find local farmers markets you can get them for half that price. A loaf of bread is not 6 or 7 dollars either. Good lord where do you shop?
Congratulations: You don't live in a food desert [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert], have little trouble making ends meet, or both. Your experiences are not representative of everyone's.
I've been to Yellowknife which is about as bad as it gets for food costs. My cousin, his wife, and 3 kids live there and I have ample first hand experience with the most punishing costs of food within Canada.

This is the first and only time I will respond to you as your have been nothing but condescending and pompous for the entirety of this thread.
 

RamirezDoEverything

New member
Jan 31, 2010
1,167
0
0
You can't help being black, white, gay, straight, male, female.

You can help being fat.

Even with genetics, the majority of fat people can be somewhat healthy.

Being fat is a waste to your evolutionary processes that have been working for billions of years.

If it is discrimination, than call the feelings-police, I am a bigot.
 

Farseer Lolotea

New member
Mar 11, 2010
605
0
0
Bedewyr said:
I've been to Yellowknife which is about as bad as it gets for food costs. My cousin, his wife, and 3 kids live there and I have ample first hand experience with the most punishing costs of food within Canada.
"I've got one example of high food costs in one area! This proves my point!"

This is the first and only time I will respond to you as your have been nothing but condescending and pompous for the entirety of this thread.
Glass houses much? And no; I've been snarky, opinionated, a helluva lot better informed than certain people would like to admit, and unafraid of poking people in the privilege. Which clearly struck a nerve.

Also, that was about the quickest flounce I've ever seen. Didn't even try to argue.

RamirezDoEverything said:
You can't help being black, white, gay, straight, male, female.

You can help being fat.
I'm sure that viewpoint makes it easy for you to pass judgment. Too bad its accuracy has been called into question.

Even with genetics, the majority of fat people can be somewhat healthy.
Healthy, yes. A socially-acceptable size? Not necessarily.

Being fat is a waste to your evolutionary processes that have been working for billions of years.
Prove it, or you're talkin' smack.

If it is discrimination, than call the feelings-police, I am a bigot.
ITT: reducing discrimination to a matter of "feelings" and implying that one is being persecuted justifies it.
 

Marowit

New member
Nov 7, 2006
1,271
0
0
Farseer - I'm not arguing for a weight-lose focused approach, we've been agreeing about that. I'm a big proponent of muscle-mass-change as the way of modifying your health outcome. I know several people who have started working out, and didn't drop a pound, quite the opposite, and feel much better and their vitals have changed to the better as well.

I also completely agree with poverty being a better predictor for health outcomes, because it's those people who generally must eat the crap I'm so against. They however, also have a myriad of other stressors in their life that lead to terrible health outcomes. That research is easy enough to find.

At the end of the day though, I think it's a a lot of denial and a bit of ignorance for the most part. There is no better example of this than smoking. If someone thinks smoking, or eating a doughnut/bag of chips/bottle of soda, doesn't have health consequences you're only lying to yourself. And, papers that can't be properly digested by the lay-person stating that being overweight is not the problem can be pretty dangerous. Not because their research is fundamentally flawed, but because they require a certain amount of interpretation most people haven't learned to do - reports in news media about, 'this new breaking research,' are great examples of this.

I dunno, will I tell my obese, by the medical definition, patients they need to lose weight? Probably. Will I advocate for diet changes? Yes. Will I advocate for diets? No. I'll advocate and try to educate about proper nutrition and exercise...and they, for the most part, won't listen and will try their Atkin's and L.A. blah blah blah diets, because they're easy...just like eating junk is easier than cooking for yourself.
 

FoolKiller

New member
Feb 8, 2008
2,409
0
0
This discussion reminds me of an episode in House.... here is the quote:

Dr. Cameron: Is it so wrong for them to want to have a normal child? It's normal to want to be normal.

Dr. House: Spoken like a true circle queen. See, skinny, socially-privileged white people get to draw this neat little circle. And everyone inside the circle is "normal". Anyone outside the circle needs to be beaten, broken and reset so that they can be brought into the circle. Failing that, they should be institutionalized. Or worse - Pitied.
 

bushwhacker2k

New member
Jan 27, 2009
1,587
0
0
I'm foolishly posting on this thread despite the fact that this is clear bait for a flame-war...

I get the general argument against obesity (it's bad for you, it's unappealing) but the argument that all fat people should simply drop all their beliefs and experiences in life and immediately hustle to the gym until they look like professional body-builders is a tad ridiculous.

I exaggerate, but the point I'm trying to make is that change is one of the most difficult things in this world. It's easy to judge other people (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=fundamental+attribution+error) but in actuality changing things about yourself is really difficult.

FoolKiller said:
This discussion reminds me of an episode in House.... here is the quote:

Dr. Cameron: Is it so wrong for them to want to have a normal child? It's normal to want to be normal.

Dr. House: Spoken like a true circle queen. See, skinny, socially-privileged white people get to draw this neat little circle. And everyone inside the circle is "normal". Anyone outside the circle needs to be beaten, broken and reset so that they can be brought into the circle. Failing that, they should be institutionalized. Or worse - Pitied.
:D What a great show
 

Farseer Lolotea

New member
Mar 11, 2010
605
0
0
Marowit said:
Farseer - I'm not arguing for a weight-lose focused approach, we've been agreeing about that. I'm a big proponent of muscle-mass-change as the way of modifying your health outcome. I know several people who have started working out, and didn't drop a pound, quite the opposite, and feel much better and their vitals have changed to the better as well.

I also completely agree with poverty being a better predictor for health outcomes, because it's those people who generally must eat the crap I'm so against. They however, also have a myriad of other stressors in their life that lead to terrible health outcomes. That research is easy enough to find.
I think we're actually in agreement on all of this.

However! From what I've been able to tell, the medical industry as a whole does favor the weight-loss-focused approach. There's an underlying idea that there's no point in improving your lifestyle unless you slim down in the process, and that you've failed if you don't slim down.

At the end of the day though, I think it's a a lot of denial and a bit of ignorance for the most part. There is no better example of this than smoking. If someone thinks smoking, or eating a doughnut/bag of chips/bottle of soda, doesn't have health consequences you're only lying to yourself.
For the reasons I've detailed, I still have to disagree about the "denial" factor. I don't think anyone's actually operating under the misconception that junk food isn't crap. (As for smokers: well, like it or not, they're drug addicts.)

And, papers that can't be properly digested by the lay-person stating that being overweight is not the problem can be pretty dangerous. Not because their research is fundamentally flawed, but because they require a certain amount of interpretation most people haven't learned to do - reports in news media about, 'this new breaking research,' are great examples of this.

I dunno, will I tell my obese, by the medical definition, patients they need to lose weight? Probably. Will I advocate for diet changes? Yes. Will I advocate for diets? No. I'll advocate and try to educate about proper nutrition and exercise...and they, for the most part, won't listen and will try their Atkin's and L.A. blah blah blah diets, because they're easy...just like eating junk is easier than cooking for yourself.
It's not even just a matter of expediency. Fad diets aren't popular because they're healthy; they're popular because they're shiny, so to speak. Lots of media endorsement and a catchy name means that it must be good, and all that rot. Especially if it appeals as much or more to your sense of vanity as to any health concerns that you might have.

And I'm not sure how a simplified version of the health at every size material (emphasizing nutritional balance and fitness and leaving weight out of it altogether) would be any more "dangerous" than the current fat scare.

FoolKiller said:
This discussion reminds me of an episode in House.... here is the quote:

Dr. Cameron: Is it so wrong for them to want to have a normal child? It's normal to want to be normal.

Dr. House: Spoken like a true circle queen. See, skinny, socially-privileged white people get to draw this neat little circle. And everyone inside the circle is "normal". Anyone outside the circle needs to be beaten, broken and reset so that they can be brought into the circle. Failing that, they should be institutionalized. Or worse - Pitied.
Yeah, that's pretty much the size of it. (I'll leave it up to the readers as to whether or not that was a deliberate pun.)
 

Spineyguy

New member
Apr 14, 2009
533
0
0
Bedewyr said:
Spineyguy said:
What people may not be quite so considerate of is that excess weight is a common side-affect of having better things to do than run laps.
So what are those better things than even doing a modicum amount of exercise for maintenance? Shoving 4K+ calories into the mouth while living a completely sedentary lifestyle of TV, Movies and Video Games?

You can make up excuses all you want but, excess weight usually comes down to 3 issues.

1) Eating Too Much
2) Exercising Too Little
3) Actual medical problems (Diabetes, certain medications cause weight gain, thyroid, glandular)
I agree that making excuses like 'It's in my genes' is a bit pointless. If you have sufficient willpower then no amount of DNA will stop you losing weight. But my point remains, many of the people upon whom the smooth running of our society depends are expected to work frankly unhealthy hours and this will not leave them much time or energy to go and exercise. Still, the motivation to exercise will drive people regardless of their work, if they really want it.

The fact of the matter is that most people are no longer required to maintain a high level of physical fitness, the number of jobs that demand long hours of manual labour decreases with every new advance in technology. The work to be done today has a lot more to do with what you know and how well you can think your way through a problem than how much you can bench-press.

Unfortunately many people maintain the eating habits (as in size and frequency of meals) that were required a hundred years ago, even though they no longer need that many calories.

And then there is the matter of gluttony, which comes from a lack of self control and the abundance of advertising for (and the sheer deliciousness of) unhealthy food. But I don't think any of these things are issues we really need to worry about. When it matters people will shape up. Obesity is unlikely to reach an apocalyptic scale any time soon.
 

Farseer Lolotea

New member
Mar 11, 2010
605
0
0
Spineyguy said:
I agree that making excuses like 'It's in my genes' is a bit pointless. If you have sufficient willpower then no amount of DNA will stop you losing weight.
Temporarily? Sure.

Whether or not you'll be able to maintain it through healthy means, keep it off for any length of time, or actually improve your health via weight loss alone? Different beasts altogether. (Modern medicine, by the way, is fully aware of this.)
 

TheVioletBandit

New member
Oct 2, 2011
579
0
0
It's funny to me that the name of this thread is "obesity discrimination", and so many people are openly discriminating against obese people.
 

Spineyguy

New member
Apr 14, 2009
533
0
0
Farseer Lolotea said:
Spineyguy said:
I agree that making excuses like 'It's in my genes' is a bit pointless. If you have sufficient willpower then no amount of DNA will stop you losing weight.
Temporarily? Sure.

Whether or not you'll be able to maintain it through healthy means, keep it off for any length of time, or actually improve your health via weight loss alone? Different beasts altogether. (Modern medicine, by the way, is fully aware of this.)
Again it's about having the willpower. Most people choose to lose weight based on some absurd aesthetic ideal or because they think that a few extra months of ill health and agony at the end of their life is worth it, then they remember that they like cake and suffer a relapse. It takes a lot of hard work and discipline to lose weight and maintaining that level of concentration is even harder.

When all is said and done, it's simply not worth the effort in my mind. I, however, am tremendously lucky that I am not naturally prone to gaining weight.
 

pandorum

New member
Mar 22, 2011
249
0
0
obese people are the reason we have a shitty 20kg limit for bags on airplanes, just found this out.
 

Grey Day for Elcia

New member
Jan 15, 2012
1,773
0
0
hulksmashley said:
It's not nice to discriminate against anyone for any reason.
I discriminate against rapists, murderers and paedophiles and I'm sure you do too. Or are you opposed to treating them differently--sending them to prison--and would rather they be allowed to roam the community?

Sweeping, absolute statements tend to have glaring flaws such as that.

Xiroh86 said:
Fat Whores
Why would anyone care to listen to a group calling themselves that?
 

Grey Day for Elcia

New member
Jan 15, 2012
1,773
0
0
Brutal Peanut said:
At one point I was 100lbs overweight - clearly in the 'obese' category. I have lost 73lbs so far.
I so thought that said "I was 100lbs once," and was freaking out at the thought of you losing 73 of those pounds, lolol.
 

Grey Day for Elcia

New member
Jan 15, 2012
1,773
0
0
Brian Conmy said:
Over a month ago I stood on the scales and was actually disgusted with the weight I was at, 'll admit it was 241 pounds. 'm only 5'10, that's a ridiculous weight. Since then with basic diet and exercise 'm already down to 224lbs and am not gonna stop till I hit a weight 'm happy with. This was my choice but even in the limited time 've been losing weight I notice I already judge people based on their shopping baskets in grocery stores. It's involuntary and I don't like judging people but it's hard when you see someone massively overweight with a basket full of pizzas and white bread.

I don't think it's right to discriminate based on weight but the obesity epidemic is increasing healthcare costs at a time when money is tight for everyone. When a few people's choice (not everyone who's overweight is in control of it and I don't wanna discriminate against those people) affects the rest of us then... Maybe we can positively discriminate? Get health insurance cost decreases for people in healthy weight ranges or something. Just a thought
Better yet, ditch healthcare systems all together. I really, really don't understand why we have them. You give the greedy assholes more money than you will ever use on healthcare, then some of it is used to help strangers who may or may not have caused their own problems. If people want to be in that sort of a system, let them. But in my country everyone pays for basic healthcare through taxes. That's bullshit.

Example: I attempted suicide and ended up in hospital for a month or so. Why should anyone else have to pay for my treatment? I made that choice. Same with smokers; someone smokes, knowing it'll fuck them, gets sick and then has everyone pay for their care.
 

Farseer Lolotea

New member
Mar 11, 2010
605
0
0
Spineyguy said:
Again it's about having the willpower. Most people choose to lose weight based on some absurd aesthetic ideal or because they think that a few extra months of ill health and agony at the end of their life is worth it, then they remember that they like cake and suffer a relapse. It takes a lot of hard work and discipline to lose weight and maintaining that level of concentration is even harder.
Yes, it's easy (and, in the current environment, even tempting) to accuse failed dieters of lacking "willpower" and being overly fond of cake.

But that ignores the fact that the whole system is flawed. Again, even modern medicine knows it's flawed. But there's some big bucks to be had in keeping the population in a constant state of body dysphoria; tacking a trumped-up health scare onto it just makes it easier.

When all is said and done, it's simply not worth the effort in my mind. I, however, am tremendously lucky that I am not naturally prone to gaining weight.
I can tell. While you did accuse failed dieters of being weak-willed, you weren't rabid about it.
 

Bertylicious

New member
Apr 10, 2012
1,400
0
0
Daystar Clarion said:
Save the whales, harpoon a fat chick

[sub]Can't remember where I heard that line but it's freakin' terrible :D[/sub]

Being fat is associated with greed and/or a lack of self control/discipline.

It's understandable that people would want to paint those personality traits in a negative light, but at the same time, fat jokes stopped being funny a long time ago.
I profoundly disagree with the notion that fat jokes aren't funny. The only thing more funny than a fat person in difficulty is an alcoholic who can't get to his drink.
 

MetalMagpie

New member
Jun 13, 2011
1,523
0
0
I don't have a problem with people carrying a bit of extra weight. I have a problem with people who think that being fat is a disability that they should get special benefits for.

Be fat if you like. I really couldn't care less. But stop demanding that the government pay for your gym membership. If I have to pay rip-off rates to take my un-special body to the gym, then I don't see why someone else should get it for free just because they weigh more than I do.

Note: Having a diagnosed medical problem that causes excessive weight gain is a disability. Just being fat is not.

And while I'm grumbling: Every time some "supportive" person labels a curvy lady as a "real woman", it feels like they're spitting in my face. Big boobs, hips, etc. are not a requirement for being a "real woman".

 

Farseer Lolotea

New member
Mar 11, 2010
605
0
0
MetalMagpie said:
I don't have a problem with people carrying a bit of extra weight. I have a problem with people who think that being fat is a disability that they should get special benefits for.

Be fat if you like. I really couldn't care less. But stop demanding that the government pay for your gym membership. If I have to pay rip-off rates to take my un-special body to the gym, then I don't see why someone else should get it for free just because they weigh more than I do.

Note: Having a diagnosed medical problem that causes excessive weight gain is a disability. Just being fat is not.
I actually agree with this. (People seriously do that?)

And while I'm grumbling: Every time some "supportive" person labels a curvy lady as a "real woman", it feels like they're spitting in my face. Big boobs, hips, etc. are not a requirement for being a "real woman".
Attitudes towards women's bodies are seriously fucked up. That's probably a whole 'nother rant in its own right.