Instead of fat shaming, how can we encourage healthy eating habits?

James Freyr wrote:

Travis Johnson wrote:

That is all true, but then there is the cost of quality food.

I live adjacent to the poorest town in the United States, and people here just do not have the money for quality food.

Indeed, quality food does cost more, but, I think it's important to inform and educate people that quality food isn't only accessible with money, but a good portion can be grown in a backyard garden to offset the costs, just like Nicole mentioned in her post above. Seeds don't cost a whole lot, and can theoretically be purchased once and saved each year, providing a lifetime of vegetables for a person who gardens. Animal proteins may be another matter, but I believe that just because someone doesn't have much money for food, doesn't mean they're de facto limited or even restricted to eating junk. I think this is really wading into philosophy and I do realize that some folks just don't want to garden; it's too much work, it's a hassle, it's inconvenient, it's too hot outside etc. No one can force anyone to change. People have to want it. I think it's very complicated - talking about it is easy, but making lifestyle changes isn't. Maybe some just don't even consider gardening but if they just tried they may discover they really like it.

You are right yet again, and during dinner, I thought of this success story that ties into what you are saying here.

Here, in the spring of the year, the poor people on food stamps can buy seeds and 6 packs of transplants (like cauliflower, peppers, broccoli, etc that needs to start in a greenhouse due to our short growing season), and the cost of those gardening supplies gets deducted off their food stamp card. These seeds and transplants, come from area farms. A poor person just uses the order form to make their seed order, and in a few weeks, those seeds and plants arrive. But farmers here are good, they always include more seeds than what is ordered because they love that poor are trying to feed themselves.

Now keep in mind why Maine is so poor, we are the oldest state in the nation by age, so we have a lot of elderly people who still love to have gardens. This system of getting them seeds and plants allows them to grow gardens without costing them in precious cash. I am not saying everyone who is poor here uses the food stamp seed system, BUT THEY CAN.

Towns also help. They calculate how many elderly are in town, and buy CSA shares for the elderly. It is a set amount of money, but again area farmers are pretty good people. They provide boxes of food to the elderly even after the money from the town is used up.

Another success has been the local food pantry giving real live laying hens to the poor. This wa only semi-succesful because food stamps does not pay for chicken feed, so the cost of grain often exceeded the cost of eggs in the store. But again, chickens are available to the poor for free if they wish to have them.

I think proximity to good food choices is more important than income. There are many food deserts in the US, and they tend to be in low income areas. So people in those areas must either spend time and money on transportation, or choose whatever is available. This assumes that people want good food, which may not be the case if they've never been taught what is good for them and internalised that.

I've been to places where low income just about forces people to eat a healthy diet. In both Kenya and the Philippines, I met rural people with very low cash incomes. Farmers who eat what they grow. Not everyone was well-nourished, but the vast majority at least had the ability to eat properly.

Both countries contain cities where the average income is higher than in the countryside. And both have people who choose to eat lots of expensive junk food, when healthy foods are quite inexpensive. This is more pronounced in the Philippines. You don't have to wonder about income. Well-dressed people who get out of cars, are often markedly heavier than the people who show up on small motorcycles, on public transportation and by foot. These people tend to be of higher education as well. Philippine television and public bulletins of all sorts, advise them on the latest dietary research. Those who own cars can also read and they have a television, something that not everyone there has. But I see them making the worst dietary choices.

People like junk food. If it was discovered that Coca-Cola and potato chips were one of the healthiest things I could eat, I would be crunching and slurping right now. If they came out with a really healthy version of chocolate ice cream, I would eat it daily.

When the unhealthy choice is accessible, many people just can't resist, even though they are smart enough and well-informed. Junk food is made to taste good. Not just good, but to be addictive. Tasting so good that well-balanced people who don't have serious emotional problems, still decide to have a few more chips, when they know they've had enough.

I overindulge whenever I go to a buffet restaurant, because I'm such a cheapskate. I know I've had enough, but once you've paid, it's all free from there. So I stuff myself to the point where I must sleep when I get home.

My cheapness protect me from some junk food. Chips are $3 at Thrifty Foods. Chips are $1 at Walmart. If they aren't the same chips, they are close enough that I can't tell the difference. So if I don't make it to a Walmart for one month, I'm not going to be eating any chips, no matter how badly I'd like to have them. If I had a bag with me right now, I would commence eating and stop when I see the bottom of the bag.

Edit-  Speaking of the bag, it usually says how many calories per serving. And that serving is 6 chips. Have you ever ripped open a bag of potato chips and eaten 6 chips? I have, but then I ate six more and 6 more and...Point made.

When I met my husband, he was just then realizing that people would actually sell things at the store that we bad for him. Growing up, he thought there would be government regulations preventing companies from selling stuff that was bad for him. He also grew up with his mom telling him that every plant he saw outside was inedible. He had no idea how to store carrots--I found them in his silverware drawer! He was 23 at this point.

It's easy to think that, since we've learned things about nutrition, that others have as well. But, I honestly don't think that's the case.

My husband works at the hospital as a phlebotomist. He works with people who have years of medical school. Many are very overweight and eat very unhealthy foods. And, even if they think they're making good choices, they're drinking "sugar free" soda and eating microwaved foods that claim they are "low fat," and therefore those foods are healthy. These are people who are educated about health and wellness, and they don't eat well.

Most people don't read labels. They eat food and take a multivitamin and think they will be okay.

The idea that people don't know what's healthy is truer than a lot of us realise, I think.

I work with a woman with type 1 diabetes. She's intelligent, affluent, and well educated, careful of what she eats, and scornful of people who don't have their diabetes under control. But she has Ensure, which I think is a every bit as bad as any phood abomination, and fruit flavoured yoghurt full of sugar for lunch every day. Okay, it's maybe not terrible, but it's not great either.

My grandma has trouble eating enough and is truly skin and bones right now. One of my relatives, again, well educated and intelligent, suggested Ensure. Luckily my mum, who's a nurse and therefore has some credibility with her, heard the suggestion, shot it down, and gave her a bit of a lesson on what's actually in that stuff.

Another woman I work with buys some energy drink kinda thing. Because it's organic and full of herbs and bioflavonoids and whatever else, she thinks it's food. Another smart person.

My friend's mother was given more chocolate flavoured Ensure than a 92 year-old woman could drink. I was the beneficiary of this, so I would sometimes have three when I came to visit. It seemed like a chocolate milkshake. I'll have to check out the ingredients, but probably better than if I had gone to McDonald's for that milkshake , and the price seemed right.

I remember the comedian George Wallace used to talk about when he went on the milk shake diet. It ended with the punchline , six or seven of those for breakfast and I don't feel hungry anymore. Haven't lost any weight.

James Freyr wrote:I believe that a lot of people, I’m not pointing at anyone here in this discussion just kind of American society as a group, think short term when it comes to food costs - How much money leaves our wallets when purchasing food today, and few seem to consider the long term costs of health problems later in life after decades of eating fast food and soda pop & processed and boxed foods. Decades of daily consumption of processed fat & sugars often leads to diabetes and becomes quite an expense to manage, and comes with new dietary restrictions and guidelines. There are a host of other health maladies that can largely be avoided, simply by eating real food. If we cast aside and don’t even consider the monetary costs of ailments such as diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver, obesity etc, it’s a real downer on ones quality of life. I do my best to avoid making broad generalizing statements, especially written ones here on Permies, but I’m going to make one here: I bet nobody, anywhere, dreams of and fantasizes about being chronically sick during their lifetime. It just happens to people, and some don’t realize it’s largely avoidable, and they’ve been bringing systemic illness upon themselves by not taking into consideration their food choices.

Part of this can be explained by the Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice (courtesy of Terry Pratchett):

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

IOW someone who is living paycheque to paycheque and barely has enough money to make ends meet, often just doesn't have the option to make the choice that is more expensive up-front but cheaper in the long run.

There's also the issue of time. I would have a hard time telling, say, a single mom with two jobs that the solution to her problems is to take up time-intensive solutions like cooking from scratch or a backyard vegetable garden. Especially a backyard vegetable garden. It takes time to learn how to garden and time to improve your soil, and you can shorten the timelines on both if you have money to invest, but low-income people don't have that money and that's part of the problem. There's also issue of crop failure. When you don't have spare time and money to be wasting and you spend both time and money on a crop that fails, that's pretty devastating. A little while back we had a thread on what was failing in our gardens, and someone who had been gardening for many years posted that their entire garden had failed, and they were understandably very upset. Imagine if they were relying on that garden to feed their family and had no room for a plan B. And what about people who are disabled, or don't have a backyard, or live somewhere that the local authorities forbid vegetable gardening, or somewhere that crops are regularly stolen?

I don't mean to say the situation is hopeless. I honestly think that decentralized food production is pretty much the only hope the world has of ending world hunger. Globally we have more than enough food to feed everyone already; the problem is that either someone controls production of way more food than they could ever need, or they control none. So some people go hungry (or eat low-quality food that will make them sick) while other people are destroying their own crops to keep the price stable. Or others are letting perfectly good food go to waste because they have too much and it's cheaper to let it rot and throw it away than it is to give it to someone who needs it more. But I don't think expecting every impoverished household to be able to take up vegetable gardening on their own is realistic and not just because it's a "hassle". Some people have a lot more barriers to deal with than others and obesity has a strong correlation with poverty. Trying to do it all alone is just way too much to ask, in some cases it would be literally impossible.

What I would love to see is for someone to put together a simple community garden starter kit, or a hellstrip food forest starter kit, if not both. A step-by-step guide on how to figure out where to find land (or clear your hellstrip planting with the city), how to recruit and organize the community, how to set up the physical infrastructure on the cheap, how to improve the soil quickly on the cheap, how to get the garden producing at a reasonable level as quickly as possible, etc. Because I think if 10 impoverished households with no gardening experience each start their own backyard veg garden it's likely that 9/10 will fail that same year, if not all of them. Eventually someone is going to have to work some crazy series of shifts and not have time to do some essential garden task. In a shared garden, there's a higher chance that someone else can pick up that dropped work. I think it would also reduce the "feast or famine" issue where you get nothing for a long time and then ten billion zucchinis or beans or tomatoes that you have to invest extra effort and time into preserving, or else it goes bad. If the zucchinis are split up across a bunch of households, they can each have some, and if there's still a bunch left over, maybe single mom won't have time to process them but lonely retired granny down the street will, and will enjoy that people are enjoying her zucchini bread.

Awareness is somewhere near the beginning of healing....  Is it really shaming to tell someone that they'd feel better if they weren't morbidly obese?

Having visited clothing optional hot springs over the years has provided a good education on how bodies look, over time. over various conditions, etc? I think that it's a very good thing for everyone to be exposed to. It allows one to see what real bodies look like, and reinforces that naked bodies and/or attraction doesn't give permission for sexual behavior. Consent is still required.

As a previous smoker, I would occasionally be confronted by someone "educating" me on the negative health concerns regarding smoking. I did not regard their comments to be in good faith. I was a smoker, not living under a rock. They were being judgmental and condescending, that is never helpful.

There is a vast difference between being overweight and being morbidly obese, but even if there wasn't. Others don't know my life, and why things became what they are, nor should I feel obligated to explain myself. I am entitled to empathy and compassion just because I'm human, it needs no other explanation.

I'm going to go ahead and default to the brainwashing of my youth, and say that I think there are circumstances in which shaming is an appropriate response to various types of bad, ill-informed, or unhealthy behaviors. At least when I was a child, there were good behaviors, and bad behaviors, and people making bad choices were shamed for their bad choices.

In the case of being fat, I would love to see us shaming the doctors, and food/medicine-manufacturers who have a self-interest in keeping people fat, and unhealthy.  

Honestly no one can say anything to me that I have not said to myself when I look in a mirror.   I managed to lose weight for many years, but some where along the way I gave up.  I can tell you it is painful to hate what you see in the mirror, but it is what I have to deal with.  No one has a right to be hateful or unkind to others!  You don't know what that person is dealing with.  I wish we lived in a world where people thought before they opened there mouth.  Weather we are taking about weight, or handicap, or how someone looks or dresses, or anything different from the "norm"  we all need to treat each other with kindness.  
As far as helping our future generations, I do think there are things the government could do, like subsidized farmers who grow food organic,  and educating people on how to grow food that has the nutrients they use to before we became a nation of chemicals.  There are lots of things that could be done that don't include same and blame.
For me personally I just try to get my fat butt in my garden, grow more, eat fast food less.  Teach and encourage my children to treat others as they want to be treated.  A smile and a little kindness go along way.

I don't really trust "normal" standards.  I am not normal in every way.  No one is.  I knew a guy who was kicked out of the military for being "overweight" who was down to 3% body fat.  He just had a big, wide frame.  He couldn't meet the numbers the had on their standards sheet.
(It was in the 90's and they were downsizing and looking for excuses to kick guys out).

It's funny how we recognize some forms of harrasment or discrimination as wrong, but other forms, or even the same forms practiced by a different group, is seen as acceptable or even laudable.

There are times when you need to confront loved ones on behaviors that are hurting them.  This is really hard to do properly, since you are attacking them in a way.  You have no business confronting strangers or acquaintances.  You won't be effective and you'll look like a bully.

I thought the way my wife approached weight and appearance issues with my daughters was good.  When they got to an age that boys looked interesting she pointed out that there were way more women wanting a really good man than there are really good men, so the women are in competition and need to be able to put their best foot forward.  I don't think she talked to them about it more than once or maybe twice, but it stuck, partly because she picked her time and place.  My daughters grew up pretty tomboyish,  and still enjoy that side of life, but they also know how to put their "gameface" on, and enjoy being feminine.

You need to figure out what is good for you, and what motivates you.  The extreme athletes and the extreme couch potatoes both die younger than the moderately active.  Find your niche and what works for you.  My mom was in great health, but then started running up and down bleachers at the gymn because she got a lot of praise for it (a woman in her 50s doing that was rare).  She ended up getting both knees replaced a few years later.  She is sure it was the bleacher running that did it.  I guess there is a reason women in their 50's don't do that).

Mick, i agreee with a lot of what you said, but this bit bugged me, especially in a topic about fat shaming.... I am hoping/suspect that's not the only conversation your daughters had at home about appearance. Going a bit off topic, because this is something I am pretty opinionated about.

Mick Fisch wrote:

I thought the way my wife approached weight and appearance issues with my daughters was good.  When they got to an age that boys looked interesting she pointed out that there were way more women wanting a really good man than there are really good men, so the women are in competition and need to be able to put their best foot forward.  I don't think she talked to them about it more than once or maybe twice, but it stuck, partly because she picked her time and place.  My daughters grew up pretty tomboyish,  and still enjoy that side of life, but they also know how to put their "gameface" on, and enjoy being feminine.

Did you also tell your sons/nephews that they are in competition for good women, and they need to keep their appearance up in order to attract good women? And make sure to repeat it a few key intervals? Make sure they manscape, get a six-pack, wear tight jeans, get a nice tan, whatever?

I hate this opinion/expectation (honestly, in either direction), as it implies to me womens most important value is their appearance and the ability to attract a good man, and you are lucky to get one. I also hate the idea that women should compete with each other over who is more attractive. I have several female friends who learned this from their mothers, and they feel they need to keep up an appearance to stay in a relationship, and let their partners belittle their appearance/extra 5 lbs, whatever, and it's really not healthy. One starves herself/her partner controls her food, and then she visits me or other friends and binge eats because she feels comfortable and is starving. She is otherwise a slender, strong, active, athletic, funny, empathetic, and wonderful woman, just with this insecurity about her weight because she has gained 5 or 6 lbs over when she started university a decade ago, which makes her think he has the right to criticize her!  This sort of thinking seems like a very slippery slope to me.

It also implies that attracting a man is a more important reason to stay in shape than personal health,  ie relationships are more important than personal health.

I think women (and men) should dress well and treat their body well/be healthy  for THEMSELVES first, not any potential partner.  I can enjoy being feminine occasionally (usually work in a male dominated industry where being feminine is a detriment to my perceived capability) without ever feeling it's something done to attract a man! I was taught to dress up/wear make up as something for fun or as armour to make myself feel more confident in public situations, not for men! Yeah, sure, i will wear a dress on a date, because its fun, and to surprise a partner, but i feel no obligation to always "look my best". Women and girls have enough pressure in the media to be attractive above all else to get a man without reinforcing it at home.

Personally,  if i had daughters(and I say this to a few younger friends of the family), I would say some thing like... there are very few really good women, and very few really good men. You are intelligent, strong, hardworking, and wonderful... you will have your pick of men, make sure you chose a good one who treats you well, respects you, and values you, because a bad relationship is far worse than no relationship. I would say the same thing to sons, tbh.

Catie George - well said. I would add that if a person is only interested because of your looks, that is not a good person.

I have made it clear to my  sons that they are in competition for a suitable mate.  There is nothing more prized in society than an attractive, capable young woman.  So of course all guys are in competition.  Both with guys their own age and guys who have had more years to hone their social and earning skills.

I realize I am stereotyping and will probably get slammed for it, but men tend to be visual and women pay more attention to earning potential.  (Once they hit the real world, high school is it'sown little sphere).  This has held true world wide in multiple studies, although the earning potential becomes less critical in affluent societies.  There are of course, multiple, more important character traits, but you generally can't see them up front.  In fact, most folks try to look better than we really are.  (This is not always hypocrisy, often times it is simply that we aspire for more than we can currently consistantly do).

Whether this is how it should be is open for discussion, whether it is true (broadly speaking) is pretty settled.  There is a reason stereotypes exist.  They usually reflect some general truth.  The problem with stereotypes is that they do not reflect truth in every instance.

I told my boys they needed to be able to provide for a family.  I told my girls they needed to make sure they married a hard worker. I told both that looks were of minimal importance compared to character, but your going to be rolling over and looking at that face for 50 years, so it helps if you like what you see (later, the face is less critical because you just see THEM).

I watched Bill Maher live as I usually do on Friday nights and cheered him on in his 'Fudge Report'.  I am formerly obese now merely overweight and I am aiming to be 10 lbs less than my heaviest non-overweight weight and a full 75 lbs  less than my heaviest weight (242 lbs @ 5'11'').  I never blamed anyone but ME for being overweight. Not the modern sedentary diet, not portion sizes, not food prices, or snacks or any other sad excuse.  I know I am personally responsible for every over indulgence that made me obese no one else. I ate that food and no one put a gun to my head and made me.  I believe every overweight person knows the same.

The point Bill was making is that we as a society reduced the prevalence of drinking and driving, texting and driving, driving without a seat belt, and smoking BECAUSE these things killed people. We have laws against illegal narcotics because they kill people too.  Eat too much and for too long and it will kill you.  Go to a seniors home and see how many 90 year olds are obese.  You wont find any.  Diabetes, heart disease and cancer killed them off long before their skinny friends.  Denying that obesity will shorten your life is anti-science.

The fact is rich or poor, urban or rural a normal weight  is achievable for all of us through intermittent fasting.  It cost $0 to say I am not going to eat!  There are loads of great videos on Youtube on the subject. Look for videos by Dr. Fung.

Ive been IFing since Victoria Day weekend (roughly Memorial Day for you Yanks!) and have lost 36 lbs with another 39lbs to go. If it takes me a year or 2 to get to my goal weight I am fine with that. I will stick with it. Its more of a lifestyle than a diet.

I am basically doing the OMAD diet (One Meal a Day). I eat after 8pm and stop at 10 and then fast for 22 hours.  I have actually fasted for 4 days in a row before.  Yes you get hunger pains sometimes but they go away.  My blood pressure is down to 120/80 with meds (used to be 140/95 with meds) I hope to be able to come off BP meds.

Not gonna lie being hungry during the day is no fun but its temporary. 30 minutes later your not hungry anymore.  As I write this I have been fasting for 19.5 hours and I AM NOT HUNGRY.  Trust me.

You know what else is nt fun? Gout or having to inject increasing amounts of insulin, or having your foot amputated due to diabetic gangrene, or kidney failure because your blood pressure was too high or chronic liver failure due to Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.

I think what Bill tried to do was for us to start having an honest conversation .  From this forum and other like it I think he succeeded.  You might not like how he said certain things but what do you expect from someone who used to host 'Politically Incorrect'.

I have a permaculture hobby that I used to doubt that I would be able to enjoy in my retirement if I followed my old trajectory.  With the IF lifestyle I plan to mucking around with swales on contour and black locust trees well into my 90's.

"Don't You want to see how it ends?"

Nice one Jeff! Education is indeed key and intelligence is no guarantee on the quality of education. It does help though as curiosity for better information leads ultimately to better choices.

I've been on all sides of the fence: underweight, just right and overweight.

The underweight has been due to extreme exertion (particularly in the Army) and poverty when I was younger.

The just right was intentional with a focused desire to look muscly and "good". Also, to perform well in my various chosen sports, which I did.

Overweight was eating my emotions.


Losing weight is simple: education helps understand just how effective OMAD'ing is.

And its extremely sustainable.

I fasted with water only for 12 days in the last six months due to a health issue and it was very effective. Surprisingly doable. Got me out of my very overweight phase to just merely overweight. The effects were wonderful really. The most difficult days were day 4 and 5 and 6.


So, being obese/overweight is a personal choice, and the way out of it is pretty darn simple.

Its all in the choices we make.

Yes, I much prefer life to be simple.

Catie George wrote: [Why do men's magazines celebrate "bulking up" and gaining muscle mass, or lifting heavier, and womens magazines focus on how to achieve a number on a scale? We are one species, why the double standard for health?

Sexual dimorphism is a real thing in nature. Bucks compete by antler size and number of tines, does don't even have antlers (unless they are reindeer or caribou). Orangutan males have those round face pads, orangutan females have slender faces. It has less to do with health, and more to do with sex appeal. That is also the case with the men's and women's magazines you referred to: despite titles like "Men's Health," they are mostly about increasing sex appeal, not about being healthier per se.

Sex appeal is largely a cultural thing. The Venus of Whittendorf may have represented her tribe's ideal beauty. If women who looked like her were more successful at obtaining mates, then her genes would have become more prevalent, and potentially could explain, in part, the way some women appear today.

When a heavier person asks a thinner person, "What's your secret?," I think this indicates one of the flaws in the way information is presented. There is no secret. Thin people do not have access to special information that isn't out there available to everyone. In my case -- writing as a thin person -- I have to say that I really believe that luck plays a role. At 5'8", male, the heaviest I have ever been was 150 lb, and that was when I was in the Navy, doing more physical training than I ever did before or since. I got out of the Navy, stopped training like that, and very quickly dropped back down to my previous 135 or so. I just so happened to be born with a body that doesn't keep weight on.

Jason Hernandez - my ex was of similar build. Always trying to bulk up, and always failing.

But from a survival standpoint, given that historically lack of food was the issue, it seems likely that not being able to pack on extra pounds when available was not a good thing. I know being a parent, you worry less when your infant has a few pounds to fall back on if they get sick, because a few pounds can mean life or death with babies.

Jeff Marchand - I'm glad that you have found a way of eating that works for you. It does not work for everyone though. I was extremely ill doing intermittent fasting. I do the best with small frequent meals. People are not all the same.

I’ve tried introducing healthy, low calorie food habits in my extended family and it just doesn’t work. The people I know seem to be comfortable with their life, even though they don’t like their overweight appearance or the health risks they’re creating. They shouldn’t be shamed, but probably shouldn’t think that their weight and eating habits are normal. Someone said to me a few times “see I don’t eat anywhere near as much junk food as other people” when they’d see someone’s shopping trolley, to which I’d always reply “it’s not the junk food you avoid that’s the problem, it’s the junk food you’re actually eating that’s the problem”.

However it’s a common mistake to think people are fat just because of sugar or junk food. It all comes down to calories. Healthy bread has HEAPS of calories... I can easily eat 4 slices of bread (330 calories) with pure peanut butter (480 calories) as a snack and I’ll have eaten around 800 calories. The average woman will get fat eating over 1,800 calories a day and for men it’s only a little more. You’ll actually get fatter eating those four peanut butter toasts than from eating a Big Mac (550 calories) or two McDonalds cheeseburgers (around 500 calories).

My friend was fat shamed, in a very bizarre way. He is on the heavy side of chubby. He is not attracted to chubby women. He found a very fit and slim girlfriend.  This led to chatter amongst a group of heavier female acquaintances on whether he might secretly desire children. His girlfriend is about the size of a typical 12 year old. She's also 45 years old.

I think there was an expectation of solidarity. He is chubby, and should stick with his own kind, maybe. It was weird.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
Awareness is somewhere near the beginning of healing....  Is it really shaming to tell someone that they'd feel better if they weren't morbidly obese?

I don't know about shaming, but it's definitely condescending.  Skinny people often assume that fat people don't know, don't care, or don't understand the implications of being fat.  That's rarely the case.  As hard as this can be for skinny people to understand, many fat people believe based on bitter experience that their condition is intractable. And, indeed, obesity is, statistically speaking, an immutable characteristic; there is literally no combination of diet, exercise, or non-surgical therapy that has ever resulted in long term weight loss for more than about five percent of obesity sufferers.  See also.  This is based on huge numbers studied; one study looked at 175,000 patients who were monitored for up to nine years, concluding "maintaining weight loss was rare and the probability of achieving normal weight was extremely low."

Telling somebody that they'd feel better if they would only change an immutable characteristic is not helping, and will not result in healing.  And, speaking from experience, it's likely to piss them off in direct proportion to the number of painful years they have already spent trying to change that immutable characteristic.  

Dan Boone wrote:And, indeed, obesity is, statistically speaking, an immutable characteristic;[/url] there is literally no combination of diet, exercise, or non-surgical therapy that has ever resulted in long term weight loss for more than about five percent of obesity sufferers.  See also.  This is based on huge numbers studied; one study looked at 175,000 patients who were monitored for up to nine years, concluding "maintaining weight loss was rare and the probability of achieving normal weight was extremely low."

You can’t maintain a high weight unless you fuel it with enough calories to sustain it. It’s physically impossible to be overweight if you don’t over-eat calories, so being overweight isn’t immutable.

I became obese last year because I had no idea what a calorie was or what my limit should be. This year I learnt it, limited my calories every day, and now am a healthy weight again (220lbs down to 160lbs, and still dropping). I know that mentally and even physically it’s really hard to change food habits, but it’s physically entirely possible.

Tim Kivi wrote:It’s physically impossible to be overweight if you don’t over-eat calories, so being overweight isn’t immutable.

There's an old joke: if your aunt had balls, she'd be your uncle. Overweight people do overeat for their activity level, obviously and pretty much by definition.  Which calls into question how useful it is to suggest that if they didn't, they wouldn't be overweight.  

The implication of the statistics is that there are powerful reasons why people overeat.  The condescending assumption, supported by no evidence of which I am aware, is that those reasons -- whatever they may be -- are amenable to conscious alteration over the long run. The Western philosophical model of perfect free will posits an intellect that can ride and control a body like it's a chariot, controlling every aspect of behavior.  The reality is more complicated.  Overeating appears not, in fact, to be within the power of most people to control by exercise of will.  That's what the statistics tell us, and they match what we see around us.  How many people truly want to be and are content with being heavy?  If there were a simple behavior that the intellect could successfully impose on the body to lose weight, a lot more people would be doing it.

We already know that if you lock an overweight person in a cage and do not feed them, they will lose weight ... eventually.  That's not the point, and it's not interesting.  The question is how much they will weigh twenty years after they escape from the cage.  And, over and over, the data tell us they will weight the same or a bit more than they weighed before the starvation began.  Their condition of overweight is thus immutable, in the sense I mean, even though gross clinical interventions (like the cage) can have temporary effects.  

Some fat people are in denial about the physical reason for weight gain though. They fail and then insist it isn’t physically possible for them to be thin. I had one fat person even insist her body creates calories out of nothing.

I agree with you that in practical terms most overweight people will find it too hard to lose weight long-term even if they try. Bad habits are hard to change, corporations create addictive high calorie foods that are pushed on us all the time, and people develop mental problems from failing. A lot of morbidly obese people have struggled since childhood, often starting with parents over-feeding them as a gesture of love.

I didn't  want to be fat and forty. Then I didn't want to be fat and fifty. My 60th birthday is in April. I will still be fat. And I am ashamed of myself. I do not need other people to do the shaming.  I have given up smoking and alcohol, I have lost 15 kilos this summer, have cut my cholesterol almost by half and am no longer classed as diabetic. Sounds good, right. But I am still obese and all the exercise I have been doing has degraded my hip to the point that I need a new one and am in constant pain with sciatica. I need to lose another 30 kilos and even then a new hip will not be forthcoming until I am a little older or the pain continues until it is affecting my life more than now. The point is I was fit but not healthy. My heart was fine as was my blood pressure, but my belly fat is very unhealthy, my liver is fatty, my joints are taking the strain of 50 kilos too many. I could have done something years ago - I am not unintelligent, but I am dumb and as long as I felt OK I just kept eating. Food is my hobby. Now I am paying for it. I am miserable with not being able to eat the foods I want or drink the beautiful wines we have here. If you are overweight, do something about it now. Do not convince yourself that you are healthy, you are not. Change your mindset while it is still possible.
And on top of all that where I am losing weight I HAVE BAT WINGS AND TURKEY NECK. AND I LOOK LIKE MY MOTHER.

Self pittying rant over.
Tra la!

Keep up the good work Mandy. Maybe you should have lost the weight sooner but its never too late.  I wish I had lost weight sooner too.

Unless people are on  drugs that cause hypoglycemia (e.g. Glucagon) I have great skepticism of claims people make saying "I cant fast because of reason XYZ."   We routinely expect smokers, drug addicts and alcoholics to go cold turkey but if someone says they feel faint if they dont eat every 4 hours thats OK? Do you think feeling hungry is worse than nicotine withdrawal symptoms?  If you honestly think so then dont ever ask a smoker or a junkie or an alchoholic to quit .

I think we need to think of overeating as a life long addiction.  Just like there are no former alcoholics just recovering alcoholics I am and always will be a recovering over eater.   The major challenge with over eating is unlike tobacco, scotch or heroine, food abstinence  is not an option, only moderation and moderation is harder to achieve now a days is nt it? But hard does nt mean impossible and we owe it to older selves and our kids to aim for moderation.

If I want to celebrate something, I don't think 'what shall I buy' or 'where shall we go', I think 'where shall we eat?'  I can control my eating when I am hungry.  When I am not, woah! Food is an addiction that you cannot go cold turkey on.  I find controlling my eating much harder than giving up alcohol (I drank a lot) or smoking.  Having the image of size 8 girls paraded in front of  one just makes doing anything about it seem impossible. I do not want to be stick thin (well maybe...) I just want to be pain free and not look like I should be refused dessert.

One of the ways I encourage healthier eating habits in the folks I work with (quite often teenagers) is I always carry healthy food, that I buy cheaply, and offer it to anyone who wants it. I always have decent brands of granola bars in my work truck, anyone may always eat them, no permission required. I generally have fruit, cut up and ready to snack on too, again, enough to share. I'd rather see the people I work with eat them than stop at the gas station and get something worse. Are commercial granola bars going to save them? No, but it's better junk food than they'd buy on their own, and it isn't so unfamiliar to them that they won't eat it. If I make things I consider good and take them, I can give you 95% odds no one will eat them, but the commercial granola bars and fruit gets eaten. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the social pressure they are exposed to to eat fast food etc, but drops add up.

:D

Mandy Launchbury-Rainey wrote: Food is an addiction that you cannot go cold turkey on.

I really think there's something to this. I recall a NPR story some years ago about how junk food rewires a brain and it becomes a physical addiction, and changing from eating junk to healthy whole food can be rather difficult for some people. There's also a lot of research going into the gut-brain link, how junk food changes the bacterial populations in our guts and how the bacteria in our gut can make us crave certain foods, and influence the brain like affecting mood and more. I did a little searching and found some info on the subjects for those that may want to read into this a little further.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rewired/201710/food-addiction-stop-dieting-start-rewiring
https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/junk-diet-rewires-rat-brains/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/its-easy-make-people-healthy-foodjust-rewire-their-brains-180954026/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201505/junk-food-gut-and-brain
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-tell-their-hosts-what-to-eat/

James, I think we should resist looking for exogenous causes of obesity. I am fat because I ate too much.  My gut bacteria did nt make me eat that Big Mac and large fry.  I believe we have stone age appetites in a post scarcity economy.  It used to be over eating in times of plenty was an excellent strategy to  survive the next famine. When was the last North  American famine? The 1930s? Maybe but I think there was still plenty to eat.

My ancestors came to Canada in 17th century. I dont know for sure but I doubt they were fat. There was lots of food but they had to work their asses off clearing, ploughing, planting and harvesting the fields.  In winters one man in every two was working in the bush felling trees with axes.  I probably used to eat like them but I can tell you I never worked like them.

All this talk about diet made me start intermittent fasting again.  I started last night and I'm 20 hours in to this one.  I'll eat dinner at 6ish tonight and then fast another 22 or 23 hours.

I have the usual slight light-headedness I get when I start IF again, but it's not that bad.  I'll be ready to eat dinner, that's for sure :)   After the first few times, this gets much easier for me.  I weighed myself today, I'll do that weekly for a while until I get tired of this.  

Jeff Marchand wrote:James, I think we should resist looking for exogenous causes of obesity. I am fat because I ate too much.  My gut bacteria didn't make me eat that Big Mac and large fry.

There are different reasons for weight gain, eating big macs is one, lack of exercise is one, but having a body the metabolizes things weird (due to gut bacteria or medications) is another. I was on meds that every time we adjusted the dosage up or down my weight went up or down an exact amount, I ate the same and exercised the same. Having gut bacteria that is doing a similar thing has the same result.

There are also other factors like hormones, some women shift their whole body weight due to hormones, that gets interesting. A woman who has a man she loves, that wants a baby, will often put on extra weight, as her body prepares for pregnancy. Also as previously mentioned, genetics, my genetics are classic European peasant, adding weight when you can buffers you against starving later. Anyone with those type of family histories will have different weight set points than others who have less starvation in their history. Eating nutrient dense, healthy food helps me balance it in a society of abundance.  

I use the current abundance to have all the nutrient dense food I want, instead of the high sugar foods that others eat to fill the same cravings. To me, to be able to eat fresh mushrooms any time I want is a serious treat, way better than any candy. And broccoli out of season!!

Trace Oswald wrote:All this talk about diet made me start intermittent fasting again.

I try to intermittent fast each day, not eating for at least 12 hours - for me, typically this means not eating until about 10 -11 am.  This is helping me lose some extra weight I gained during a period of inactivity.  Unfortunately I'm now at an age when weight is easily gained and not so easily lost.  Though, when I think back to when I was actually too thin, I was very active, thinking nothing of walking 5-10 miles in a day.  I can cut calories or increase activity, or both.  I'm trying to do both, but I find increasing activity to be easier than cutting calories.

Tim Kivi wrote:

Dan Boone wrote:And, indeed, obesity is, statistically speaking, an immutable characteristic;[/url] there is literally no combination of diet, exercise, or non-surgical therapy that has ever resulted in long term weight loss for more than about five percent of obesity sufferers.  See also.  This is based on huge numbers studied; one study looked at 175,000 patients who were monitored for up to nine years, concluding "maintaining weight loss was rare and the probability of achieving normal weight was extremely low."

You can’t maintain a high weight unless you fuel it with enough calories to sustain it. It’s physically impossible to be overweight if you don’t over-eat calories, so being overweight isn’t immutable.

I became obese last year because I had no idea what a calorie was or what my limit should be. This year I learnt it, limited my calories every day, and now am a healthy weight again (220lbs down to 160lbs, and still dropping). I know that mentally and even physically it’s really hard to change food habits, but it’s physically entirely possible.

Maintaining a healthy weight for one year is not that hard for many dieters. Maintaining it for life is a very different story. The majority of people who go on diets do eventually fail, and doing a diet yoyo is worse for your body than if you hadn't dieted at all. You end up with a screwed-up metabolism and if you eat the same amount of food as before the diet, you end up at a higher set weight.

I really don't like "calories in, calories out" as a shaming mantra. On a very basic level of physics, it's the truth, but it's not very useful in practice because you don't have very much control over how your body uses those calories. If your body was a perfectly efficient calorie-using machine, fat people would never feel sluggish or tired because they started a new diet or skipped a meal. In fact they would never feel hungry, until their body had burned off all the excess fat. That's not really how it works, though. Most of these fat people we're telling to go on diets have jobs and lives. If going on a diet causes their body to starve itself of energy then that can have a big negative impact on their ability to deal with their other life responsibilities and goals. For most people, being a healthy weight is a concern, but not the only concern or the most important concern. For someone who's poor (the majority of the obese), it's usually wayyyyy down the list below survival needs. When you are already living so close to the edge, adding in the crankiness and fatigue involved with most diets could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Besides that, getting enough food to eat is not just a matter of eating a certain number of calories and then you're done. You need nutrients, too, and cheap food these days tends to be high in calories and low in nutrients. When most people think of a malnourished person they think of someone who's very thin, but there are an awful lot of people who are both fat and malnourished.

If people are actually looking for ways to reduce obesity in society here are some constructive ideas:
- Start a community garden in a low-income area, so that poor people have better access to good food
- Call up your local food bank and ask what kinds of healthy foods would be appreciated as a donation
- Stop sabotaging your friends and family when they try to make healthier choices, and call out other people you see sabotaging others. "Just one slice of cake", "it won't kill you to take a break from jogging for one day" -- these kinds of things can kill momentum when what the person needs is support.
- Push for laws that put better nutrition information on foods. "Serving size" nutritional information is garbage -- companies intentionally manipulate serving sizes as part of their marketing, and when every product in a given lineup has its own serving size, it's impossible for a normal human being to quickly assess which product in a category is healthiest. I believe in Europe, they're required to give nutritional information per 100g. We should also probably add nutritional facts to alcohol; it's a consumable so I'm not sure why that's not already required. There is a staggering range in the amount of calories in beer, even ignoring the "light beers", and I bet a lot of people don't know that.
- Push for healthier options for fast food and ready-to-eat meals, or anything else a time-starved person might turn to for a meal. Double check that these healthy options are actually healthy. Most of the salads at McDonalds for example have just as many calories as the burgers, and sometimes more.

Meg Mitchell wrote:
I really don't like "calories in, calories out" as a shaming mantra. On a very basic level of physics, it's the truth, but it's not very useful in practice because you don't have very much control over how your body uses those calories.

Yes.  Some people are "thrifty gainers" like my husband, who gains weight very easily.  Being a thrifty gainer is good if you are a pig destined for slaughter, or a hunter-gatherer, but it isn't good if you are a modern civilized person.  My dad, on the other hand, has the perfect metabolism  - his appetite apparently exactly matches his activity level.  At 89 he is the same weight he was when he entered the Navy way back during the Korean War.

Tyler Ludens wrote: I can cut calories or increase activity, or both.  I'm trying to do both, but I find increasing activity to be easier than cutting calories.

I can certainly understand the people that look at it from either side. For me, it takes a lot of extra activity to burn a given amount of calories. I'm already pretty active, and i work pretty long hours, so it's easier for me to eat 500 calories less than to burn an extra 500, but i can easily see how it would be easier for some people the other way. Lifestyle, energy levels, time, and personal preference can all swing this one direction or the other.

Meg Mitchell - You have some very good things to say. I would add that the serving size thing has gotten worse, not better, in the last few years. Serving size used to be determined by food type, not package size, but that has changed, making it harder to compare side by side.

I have to say, overall, my impression is that people seem to think that others have become overweight for the same reasons that they have become overweight. That is not a reliable assumption. There are as many reasons that people are overweight as there are overweight people. Your junk food diet is not mine, nor has it ever been. Nor is there any consensus on what is a "healthy" diet. I think most permies regulars are familiar with the fact that many dietary needs/preferences are discussed on this site, and that one is not considered right or wrong, merely what works for each individual. I find it troublesome that the same differences are not permitted for the ability to fast.

I haven't read all of this interesting post, but would like to just mention how amazed I am at the number of people employed in the 'medical field' who 'seem' to be overweight.  I've only had to be in hospitals, labs, clinics, etc. in the last few years, and find it astonishing that the common advice (correct or not, I can't say) for being healthy doesn't seem to carry much weight with medical personnel.  

Nancy,

As the son of a nurse, I can say from observation how unhealthy the work hours and environment are for health care professionals. This is similar to a lot of fields of overworked altruists (i.e. teachers, social workers, etc), but to an extreme extent with life threatening consequences for failure to perform. It seems a certain level of masochism is expected for those who care for our wellbeing. This expectation of accepting deleterious working conditions as an expected trade off for doing inherently rewarding work goes beyond health care providers of course (the aforementioned teachers and social workers as well as many other civil servants, not to mention regenerative farmers and conservationists). My mom has battled lifelong health problems as a direct result of her job, and as a result of the stress it put her under psychologically. Sleep deprivation that is the norm for nurses, doctors, and EMTs is known to be a cause of muscle mass loss and fat retention, in addition to its tax on mental health and impulse control (i.e. insomniac binge eating). Of course, we can always bring up will power, but we only have so much, and those who put themselves in constantly stressful situations dealing with crazy people or saving lives often use it on things other than self-care.

Sorry for taking this OT...but thank you, Ben, for expanding my (limited) understanding of the working conditions for our 'care givers'.  (Having recently been a care giver for my brain damaged brother, I'm beginning to understand... including the 'compassion fatigue' that must be a constant temptation.)  One thing I learned early on, after four 24 hr days in the ICU, is that the real 'healers' are the nurses who 'live' with their patients.  Others also, but the nurses really impressed me.  And, re: the OP, this is another lesson for me in 'judging' regarding weight.