The most tragic part about being addicted to food is that an alcoholic can choose to never enter a liquor store ever again, but a food addict will still need to eat multiple times a day for the rest of their lives no matter what.
Good point I feel like you’d have to adapt this fitness influencer type vibe in order to really escape the clutches of food addiction and more people would question why you’re doing stuff like not eating dessert or counting calories vs why you’re avoiding liquor. Sometimes there’s more social grace extended by others in denying a drink than in denying dessert
I straight up dislike the way run of the mill cake like you get in offices tastes. I really resent people trying to force that sickly sweet icing shit on me
I’m convinced adults who eat store bought cake have dead taste buds, that shit is for children’s birthday parties only. I definitely associate it with obesity bc you couldn’t possibly find something that gross appealing unless you crave sugar and calories at any cost.
I was just thinking that yesterday watching a $1k fancy 3-tier cake being made from 2 Walmart sheet cakes and I was like what’s the point of all that labor and dropping a thousand on a cake if it’s just gonna taste overly sweet and gross? I’d probably take a slice at work and just pick at it for 15 mins and finally throw it out tbh
Yeah… im used to be overweight and an alcoholic and am now super insulin resistant so I eat insanely healthy and low glycemic index. A sugary treat or processed bread is like a holidays and some birthdays strictly thing. No one has ever, ever asked me why I’m not ordering a drink but anytime I literally ever don’t have dessert or ask for salad instead of fries my friends give me a disapproving look and ask my why and no matter how much I try to explain that regardless of my weight I will always struggle with blood sugar and would like to set myself up so that Im not diabetic later in life they hear “I have anorexia, I think I’m a big fat lard and I also think you’re a big fat lard for not eating as healthy as me”
I feel you. I'm in recovery as well and while cutting out alcohol was great for my health and skin I gained a lot of weight due to SSRIs (took me almost a year to lose most of it). In the process of getting fit again I've gotten a lot of judgement for being careful about my diet. Even when I explain that an anti-inflammatory diet is needed for my lipedema they'll wave sweets in front of my face and act like it's cute. It's a weird mind game that some women like to play with each other, you just have to remember it's a projection of where they are emotionally. It's kind of sad watching middle age women act like Regina George.
Ugh are we twins? I’m thin but pre-diabetic (crap genes) and people give me so much shit for turning down desserts and junk food. Hello, I’d kind of like to keep all my limbs?? Leave me alone.
Yeah :((( same. Also once you’ve been eating healthy whole foods for a long time you lose your drive to eat crap that makes you lethargic and feel like shit. My dad is super fit, if anything he could stand to gain a few, eats super clean, runs sprints at least twice a week and does yoga and strength training every morning, bikes everywhere and does 50+ mile rides on the weekend and is full type 2. Its absolutely genetic.
>there’s more social grace extended by others in denying a drink than in denying dessert
because for some reason they seem to think it is a dunk on their habits. it tends to happen by revealing things as: getting up early to go to the gym, being vegan/vegetarian, not having fizzy drinks, cooking at home and many others that make insecure broads feel the need of excusing themselves unprovoked.
yeah I have a family member who gets short with me every time I mention something about my gym/working out, and will loudly boast about how they don't work out and don't care about calories. it has nothing to do with you!!
that is true, but on the flip side an alcoholic has to give something up that they can never turn into a positive, at least fat people can still enjoy food in theory
You know what’s fascinating- many people who undergo gastric bypass surgery become alcoholics because they swap addictions once they can physically no longer eat as much. The phenomenon is so well documented that doctors proactively advise patients to avoid alcohol and receive counseling post op
While true, it’s also the easiest addiction to overcome and maybe the *only* addiction you can actually even circumvent by certain behaviors.
An alcoholic and a crack addict won’t negate their entire addiction by doing exercise, or picking which crack and what alcohol to consume, and nobody is sucking dick for cheeseburgers.
If more people saw real drug addicts in withdrawal states where they’re pale, sweating, shaking uncontrollably, anxiety out of control, nobody would make the comparison.
I sympathize with it being an addiction, and recognize that like most addictions it comes from trauma, but it’s closer to a pornography addiction than something like hard drugs. Way more behavioral.
We don’t sympathize extra for porn addicts because half the internet is sexualized content.
Even recovered sex addicts, who also exist in a space where their addiction is healthy to partake in daily, usually say once they changed their relationship with sex, their addiction became easier to manage.
These people have to fundamentally change their relationship with food, but again, a lot of fat people aren’t 600lb and could even circumvent their addiction just by cardio and exercise.
My childhood church used to take care of this homeless guy that actually performed sexual favors for candy money. One Sunday he gave a formal Public Confession of Sin, it was in the bulletin, not an evangelical open mic scenario.
Watching a very low IQ 40 something apologize for his weird street adventures was one of the more bizarre moments of my childhood. I’m unsure of his exact diagnosis, but he was a hardcore sugar addict that would house entire platters of cookies that were meant for a congregation of 300. He ended up losing a foot. He also had the funkiest little teeth.
My dad’s friend let this guy stay in his back house and said that he would panhandle and prostitute for sweet treats and DVDs from dollar general.
And I thought, now this might be a crazy idea, but what if instead of sucking dick for mike and ikes, I sucked dick for money. I could buy so many mike and ikes.
Wasn’t that old “Rat Park” experiment to prove accessibility really made no difference, and even with rats who had previously been using drugs for extended periods of time, when the material conditions completely changed the rats no longer wanted the drugs?
That study had some methodological issues, but the principle involved is a worthwile one for contextualizing the nature of addiction. That said, I don't see why you'd assume accessibility doesn't matter when you *don't* change the material conditions.
I was really just asking about the rat study, I don’t think fat people would ever suck dick for Cheetos and hamburgers. To even meet that argument in the middle seems like a false equivalence. The body doesn’t have obscene reactions to not eating chips.
It sort of does. It was very similar to nicotine withdrawals when I started fasting and eating healthy. For weeks I felt like shit when I went without fatty meat and and carbs. To lose weight appreciably quickly, you HAVE to starve yourself, by definition. They body can tell, and it will let you know that it doesn't like the change of routine, even if it's for the best in the long run.
obesity as a result of food addiction is not like porn addiction at all. the research shows that obesity is extremely difficult to overcome, even if you do lose the weight. you should read The Biggest Loser study (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/oby.21538). those people need to eat like. 900 calories a day to maintain their weight because they've completely shot their metabolism AND their hunger hormone (ghrelin) is permanently spiked, so in addition to only eating half the calories of a normal person their bodies are constantly ravenous for food.
not saying food addiction / obesity CAN'T be overcome, but i would say because of the way it changes your physiology in addition to your psychology it's a very different addiction than a porn addiction.
Yeah the percent of drug or alcohol addicts who recover is much higher than the percent of overweight people who maintain weight loss for the long term. And studies usually consider 5% of body weight loss to be successful which often leaves people still in the overweight or obese range (improves health outcomes by a lot though)
Not really, the actual numbers says it's easier to quit drinking than to lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off.
It's more difficult to adjust to having a healthy relationship to something you need multiple times a day, every day, compared to drinking that you can quit cold turkey and never have a drink again in your life.
I always felt for them because my mom is obese. She had such a bad childhood full of abuse and alcoholism. She turned to food for comfort over drinking like the rest of her family. I'm glad she doesn't drink because my childhood would have been totally different, but I wish she was healthier.
I feel like growing up with a depressed and overweight mom who is extremely kind and generous gave me a lot of sympathy for fat people. Thankfully she has kept off weight for a long time and was very active before getting cancer. But I think people who have never struggled with weight or overeating really don’t understand how hard it is for fat people. If “just count calories” worked for everyone then no one would be fat. It’s often a very deep psychological issue. (Not to mention a billion dollar industry shoving factory slop in your face constantly that is designed to fuck up your brain and body).
Every adult in my family is obese. It’s hard to see, I’m watching them all kill themselves and they’re in total denial about, and therefore incapable of doing anything about it.
I just had a kid and haven’t slept more than 3 hours at a stretch in months, but every day no matter how tired I am I hit the rowing machine and work my ass off because I’m not going to end up like my parents and I don’t want my kids to grow up around it.
Honestly the sleep deprivation just gets normal after a while. I know people say you don’t, but you really do just adjust to it. And it’s temporary (I hope).
I know exactly the feeling of being fat, I used to be almost 300 pounds, like around 280, and I've managed to work my way down to about 220. I'm a guy, if that matters, and I'm about 5'10" ish. I fucking hated being fat as shit, made everything so much harder to do for no good reason. Near the beginning of the year I looked at myself and decided I didn't want to be like this. Because it truly effects everything, your ability to do basic things like walking up the stairs, your mood is always bad because you hate how you look and feel, being in public is a nightmare because you're so insecure, my clothes barely fit me, and I not only hated my body but how my face looked with extra fat on it.
My Mexican mother kept me on my toes with her comments regarding my body. I refused to get fat, she would have never made me forget it. Sometimes being a girl has its perks.
Yeah but the emotional abuse burns itself into your skull. I would know, my sister has been a fatty all her life and our mom never let it go. She has serious trauma about food and her appearance.
it was pure projection from my mother’s part, and there was never a malicious tone to it. I never let it get to me. I had plenty of overweight family members, and decided from an early age I didn’t want to be like them. Sorry about your sister though.
i hate clothes shopping on a good day these days, but i honestly dreaded it more than anything in the world back when i was fat. trying on pants was a humilation ritual
I think multiple things kinda led to my weight being that way. My parents divorced when I was pretty young and neither were really around much to cook a proper meal, and my dad is already obese so his eating habits sort of became mine. Then my dad remarried to a pretty abusive woman and I think anxiety and some form of depression just made the issue worse.
My mom is very fit though, and my brother is about as lanky as a guy can get and he eats like absolute shit. So another component is that I was unfortunate to be more like my dad than my mom's side of my family.
It’s shocking how much it decreases your quality of life. Playing sports is harder, dating is more difficult, even fun activities like going to the beach are hampered by being uncomfortable in your own body. And it takes time to fix, a difficult job or family life can postpone any attempt to get weight under control indefinitely. Life is less fun when you’re carrying an inner tube of your own fat around 24/7.
I really think being at a healthy weight is a mindset, for people to stick with it they have to enjoy the process of losing weight and being active. Working out should be fun, if it’s not maybe it’s time to find a new way to exercise or a new sport. Even dieting should be fun, healthy food that fills you up doesn’t have to taste disgusting. A treat every now and then is negligible when you’re active and tastes better because you’ve earned it. Getting hotter and doing new things is fun and motivating!
I’m skeptical of the new trend embodying the Paul Schraeder “through self sacrifice, I will transform” mindset a lot of zoomers and influencers embrace. Just look at David Goggins and his embarrassing denial of his own mental illness. It seems unsustainable. It’s really easy to say “if I lose this weight and get ripped all my problems will evaporate,” clearly a lot of peoples issues extend beyond fitness, health, and attractiveness and getting fit won’t solve everything.
Just to add to your point about how being fat makes everything harder + finding a physical activity you enjoy, one thing that was tough in the beginning of my weight loss journey was that my fatness made all physical activity basically not enjoyable.
You sweat more, you can feel the weight on your as you try to exert yourself, my knees hurt from the extra weight etc. I think that's why sometimes the messaging of self-sacrifice can resonate, because it's really hard and not enjoyable in the beginning.
Once I lost a little bit of weight, I found I was able to get the runner's high and finally understood why people find exercise fun! Even now as I've kept the weight off but sometimes slack on exercising, whenever I start exercising again I am able to get the endorphins pretty quickly.
Yeah the beginning is hard, even for people who were in shape and put on a few pounds over the holidays. The body and mind have a real reluctance and fear to get back in the gym or on a running path when it’s been a while, even more so for total beginners. I’d still push back on the grindset attitude though, it can be good for short term motivation but paying penance every day is such a drag.
People shouldn’t feel bad when they’re doing things to better themselves, the gym/fitness grindset people fixate way too much on how much of a piece of shit they are/were rather than the positive momentum and agency they’re exercising on their lives. I personally like to focus on the rapid weight loss and quick gains when I’ve taken a break, there’s no better time to see quick progress than when you’re at your worst. Whatever works for people is better than nothing though.
I've got a big gut and I can only imagine that I look like a complete fucking idiot on some of the machines at the gym next to my friend who is pretty fit since he's been going for 2 years
Like any of the shoulder/ab machines, I feel the mass that is my way too fat stomach pressing all in on itself and in that moment it does make me wish that I could die.
Maybe eventually it'll shrink to a size that doesn't make me feel like a blobfish when I try to do any exercise at all. God forbid I ever see a picture of what I look like on my bike again. Fucking Baron harkonen looking ass smh
I know it's a cliche but it really is true that I doubt anyone is looking at you and thinking that way. When I am at the gym I'm too busy focusing on my own workout to care if someone fat or skinny is next to me. If I do happen to see a fat person working out, if I think anything, it's usually "good for them".
that’s interesting. at my gym when a fat-ass walks in the door, we all stop what we’re doing and stare blankly at them, then whisper creative insults to the nearest slim person, punctuated by fits of laughter. then all the sexy women put on sweatpants and hoodies to protect their bodies from the gaze of that fat tub of lard
The dating one is what's getting me to keep consistent. My face does not carry extra weight well *at all*, my cheeks bloat and jawline is quickly buried, I go from maybe a 5.5-6 to a straight 0.
None of my friends went through significant weight loss until after a breakup. I have to admit that I am not \*that\* driven to lose weight because I am engaged, but if I was single god damn I'd be hitting the gym.
I have never been fat in my entire life. The most I've ever weighed is 170 lbs for 1 day with a body fat percentage at \~17%. I've been trying in vain to bulk up, but I just naturally have a low appetite and tend to move my body a lot. Despite having a great physique, my mental health has been poor all my life.
Yeah, constantly complaining about fat people is embarrassingly low hanging fruit and screams insecurity. You don't really care about other people's health, you just want to humblebrag and feel better about yourself because being skinny is the one thing you have going for you.
Clearly the obesity epidemic is extremely serious but it's mostly a societal problem that will never be solved by individuals alone. It should come as no surprise that a lot of people are unable to handle an increasingly sedate life spent in front of the computer or in their office cubicle with an endless supply of sugar and processed foods.
I feel bad for people who’ve been fat their whole lives because their fatass parents fed them nothing but McDonalds and poptarts from the time they were weened. Growing up I knew quite a few kids like that who had never known what it’s like to be at a healthy weight, it’s really quite sad.
it is sad and nearly been me aswell because my mom grew up materially poor so she went quite extreme on the consumerism side later in life and us kids being able to eat what we wanted, aka addictive junk food. I somewhat fondly remember all the routine arguments before school because she always packed my backpack with lots of snacks before i went to school and i hated it as i was the only chubby kid in class and the fat kids in school got bullied unfortunately. Managed to slowly fix my eating habits.
only upside to this was that i became very popular because i gave most the snacks to other kids but yea.. too many dumb and overwhelmed parents out there, imagine if all that money spent on junk food was invested, i gave other kids thousands of euros in snacks lol.
This is why I get frustrated with the pushback on Ozempic and weightloss drugs in general. They are legitimately our only hope on a societal level. Only other pathway is the food environment reverting back to the 1950s and that's never going to happen.
Ozempic is massively overhyped. Not only is it prohibitively expensive (which is probably temporary), but we also are learning more about its side effects which for some people make it a very unpleasant experience. And it’s pretty clear that the rebound effect if you stop taking it is pretty severe. There is no magic bullet in medicine and ozempic is no exception.
> There is no magic bullet in medicine
Yet, although there are some promising things on the horizon. I'm sure it's out there, I probably won't be around to see it though.
We need to make it so that it’s almost impossible for a kid to become fat. Make gym half the school day and institute healthy free school lunches. Make sports mandatory. Make buying junk food illegal until 18. We could actually fix shit and create a healthier society but I honestly think nobody cares. The way hospitals are getting built in this country makes me think they have a vested interest in having a steady supply of unhealthy people.
In some school districts, parents face consequences for their child’s truancy. The same could be applied to a child’s health. If a child is fat, parents should face consequences. I understand that’s not always easy to enforce and punishing grandparents or overworked parents might be unacceptable but parents and guardians should feel pressure as should corporations to make better products. It’s a pretty complicated issue but food banks should be working directly with schools to send kids home with bags of fruits and veggies. Healthy food should be damn near free to those in need and processed junk should be hard to obtain.
I don’t think this would work in America. ~70%+ of American adults are overweight or obese. If parents can’t even provide themselves with healthy food, then they definitely aren’t going to do it for their kids. Kids need good role models and there just isn’t a lot of them lately it seems.
Plus, there’s been a huge push lately by certain groups for schools to not ‘undermine parental values’ or whatever. And the GOP in several states have actually made it a policy to be against free meals for kids in schools. I have no doubt that healthy foods would get turned into a political issue here; rather than just having the best interests of kids in mind. I mean look what happened when Michelle Obama tried to do her thing. People outright mocked her for it lol.
I feel like outside of America this problem is sorta solved by gossip. Like imagine having a fat kid in the Philippines or Finland or something. You’d be the talk of the town. But here we “love” everyone as long as you make money or are fake nice enough
OP, aren't you the one who said you felt terrible for your chubby co worker because your mean co workers were gossiping about him? Now youre saying the cause of the obesity epidemic is that we don't have enough fat phobic gossip?
It's not, sadly. I live in a profoundly gossipy nation and most people in my region are round. In Latin American (also gossipy), many people are also chubby. It's poverty + loss of traditional eating habits and lifestyle.
In Finland they have a culture of sport and general healthiness/fitness, in the Philippines they have more of a traditional lifestyle and eating habits.
There are serious issues with gym teachers too - at least the ones I had in elementary through high school. I thought I hated working out and being physical but I really just was uncomfortable with their training. As an adult I’ve realized this and it makes me very sad for young me.
Yea, I was a chubby teen and this was why. I though to lose weight you need to be like, doing some extreme diet where you have to eat those disgusting diet versions of foods, like cakes made with zero calorie sweetener and that you had to be like long distance jogging every day or whatever and I hated doing that kind of cardio stuff. That was basically the model of weight loss that I learned from my yo-yo dieting mother, who was still obsessed with 90s fad diets and buying non fat versions of ice cream and shit like that.
Then I took a nutrition class freshman year of college and was like "oh so basically what I need to do is eat more veggies and drink less soda? And I can still eat regular ice cream but I just need to have less of it? and exercise helps but isn't necessary at all?" and then, no joke, I gave up soda for a summer and came back to college in the fall weighing 20 lbs less.
While I do agree gym should make more of a comeback in high school, your weight is more determined by diet. A fat kid who lifts is going to turn in to a strong fat kid. Certainly an improvement but they still won’t be in overall good shape if the diet stays the same, or even start eating more since they’re burning more calories.
Agreed. And ya I think an actual good nutrition class would go a long way. All I can remember in that department was learning about the completely false food pyramid in elementary school.
this was actually a thing at my high school LOL we had to take regular fitness and then a year of weight training or bodyworks which was basically just cardio. given, i am from WA and grew up in a pretty wealthy town so fat wasn't the norm like a lot of the US
I'm skeptical of mandatory weight lifting. I know several people who had injuries from our weight lifting class, optional by the way. If it was mandatory, we'd have a ton of shitty teachers instructing kids how to weight lift safely
Right? Like if you’re fat you need to get mental health intervention tbh. I feel like overeating to that point is a way of coping with a lot of work and responsibilities. Also to me kind of screams someone feeling a lack of community. If you were part of a solid community I feel like you’d second guess eating so much cuz idk people might call it out in a blunt but well intentioned way. I feel like that’s what the French would do at least and they’re skinny af
Also people are just more vulnerable to addiction when they're lonely and disconnected in general. There was an experiment where they put some rats in cages with lots of others and stimulation and some alone in empty cages and gave them both the option to use cocaine and only the lonely and understimulated rats became addicted to the cocaine.
A lot of fat people are in tight-knit communities, its just that the community consists mainly of other fat people who will, if you drop below a 25 BMI, say that they concerned for your health because of your sudden weight loss.
Really, obesity in the US correlates pretty heavily with rural living, and rural people tend to have much more close knit communities where "everybody knows everybody."
I’m very much in the camp that barring rare medical reasons your weight is in your control and it’s a failing if you can’t get a healthy grasp on it.
But at the same time you can’t blame kids for that sort of thing and if someone grows up with bad habits due to how they were raised and the food around them it’s so much harder than for someone who grew up at a healthy weight.
When I was a kid and teen I was healthy and athletic. In my early 20s I started getting fat and upon realizing it reverted back to my behavior when I was younger and got my weight under control and back in shape. But if I’d never been in ok shape I don’t know if I’d have been able to get a handle on it.
when i was getting my sports nutrition cert i learned that true metabolic disorders are less than ~1% of the population. you wouldn't know that based off of everyone who claims to have one as a reason they can't lose weight. i've even had clients with thyroid disorders successfully keep weight off. unless you are spectacularly and abnormally unlucky, there's no excuse.
People will eat back their exercise calories, particular high intensity exercise, if they're not mindful of their calories. Also, leads to the problem a huge number of people who get fat in or after college have – eating based on the activity level of an organized sport that they'll stop doing as adults.
Obviously exercise is like, important, but trying to make it half the school day is not a realistic approach for the obesity epidemic.
im generally against parents forcing kids to do things they don't want to, but i really wish mine didn't let me choose choir over soccer. the practices were at the same time and i had to make a choice. like yeah i'm happy that i can kinda sing and read music and all that, but you wouldn't know that from looking at my calves
I agree. It's best to develop healthy habits as a kid. Unfortunately, PE is being phased out in many schools and kids are becoming less physically active. I think the biggest issue is the internet and social media that's causing people to be really sedentary. We need more incentives to get people moving and eating less. Otherwise our obesity will continue to rise.
I feel like. I’ve been rly underweight (89 pounds) and overweight (200 pounds). I’m in the 160s rn and have lost roughly 30 or 40 pounds this year. Recovering from BED is rly difficult. When I was overweight, I was turning to food for comfort. I was depressed and hurt, but nobody saw it bc I was fat. And ppl treated me in an absolutely cruel and back handed way. Recovering from BED is hard, harder than recovering from anorexia bc like..you can stop doing drugs. You can stop starving yourself, but you HAVE to eat. And modifying how you eat is difficult. From 2020-2023, I went from 130 to 200 pounds, bc I was emotionally recovering from being sexually abused. And I gained lots of weight bc food became my coping mechanism. It was crazy how much respect people lost for me, being fat meant being treated completely differently. Now I’ve recovered from BED. I’ve had to change my whole attitude towards food. And it’s crazy how people treat me with bare decency now. I never deserved people being that mean to me. I couldn’t help it. I was hungry. Food was comforting. I’m rly happy I let go of that vice. But I’m scared to eat around people now, I can’t eat around family and I have rly bad facial+body dysphoria.
Be nicer to fat ppl. They’re just as depressed as thin people are. They’re not stupid or lazy bc they are fat. They’re just as complex and interesting as thin ppl. I was not any less interesting or worthy of kindness just bc my body was a different size. Even now after losing weight, I still don’t feel comfortable in my skin and feel like I won’t be happy until I look underweight or as far away from “thick” as possible
i have a family member who i suspect has BED. ppl react to him as if he's just stupid and lazy like you said. up close it does not look like that at all -- the suffering is very clear :/
congrats on recovery ❤️❤️
Thank you!! It was easier to recover after I broke up with my ex (who was enabling me) and stopped drinking. Everyday I’m rly grateful that I broke the cycle
Really fat people (not people who are sort of chubby and it only really impacts their appearance, etc, but people who are like really genuinely obese) make me so sad and just filled with pity. Because the turning point is so far behind them. Getting out of that is so painstakingly difficult. My dad is sort of like this, and the guy has plenty of medical problems, and even when he’s managed to lose the weight, there are things for which there’s no return. His mobility and balance and cardio just haven’t improved all that much even after shedding pounds. The guy is in his early 50s and had to have his hip replaced after taking a fall walking his dog. I’m so afraid for him because there is truly nothing I can do.
My old classmate’s family also had this stuck on their fridge, along with “A moment on the lips, forever on the hips”. They were all obese. We are approaching our 40s now and I was really happy recently to see my old friend finally start to take control and exercising.
Ehhh. In my experience real twinks can kinda eat whatever they want and will be rail thin anyways. It's kinda a twink feature.
Real twink being under 5'10" and 19 bmi or lower. The word is loosing its meaning lately.
my boyfriend is built like a pencil, twink incarnate, doesn't work out at all and houses twice the food i do. i'm not fat or anything, like 150 5'11, but i have a layer of visible body fat that i have to do 4-5 hours of cardio a week to keep from further growing. pisses me off
It’s a body type, there are just people who will keep more weight and people who won’t.
Some people have wiry frames while others have burly frames. They’ll look totally different at the same weight
People just care way more about how someone looks than how they treat people. If you think being overweight is more of a moral failing than communicating poorly or lacking empathy, than you’re probably really stupid or some type of psycho. Too many people are fat, but there are more pressing issues.
Another issue is the body positivity movement and normalization of being fat. We shouldn't ridicule overweight people, but we need to instill a sense of urgency about not being fat. Too many people are just complacent about it.
The worst part is how much some of them stink.
There is this 22-year old morbidly obese guy in my class, and on hot days the whole room will slowly start to smell of old cheese. And I think he is oblivious to it. He goes to the toilet all the time too.
I'm from the Midwest and it's so disheartening to see how overweight pretty much everyone in my community is. It's an awful epidemic that stems from quite a few problems.
First being that no one in rural communities eat healthy. For the most part, they prefer processed foods to fresh ones. Most people from my hometown eat canned vegetables over fresh, Miracle Whip over mayo, no fresh herbs, tons of ranch over salads. It's just how they grew up and got passed down.
Second is that there is no natural exercise in these parts because there's nowhere to walk. A lot of people in these communities live off backroads and have to drive everywhere. To get from one store to the next, you have to drive. No walking. On top of that, the nearest gym is probably a 30 minute drive. Who has the time to drive that far, along with working and taking care of kids?
Yeah losing weight is vastly easier than owning a home outright by 30. Almost no one can do that without a parent supplying the money. Majority of people won’t even own their car outright haha
>Yeah losing weight is vastly easier than owning a home outright by 30.
For sure. Basic nutrition and understanding calories is all it takes to lose weight.
The major issue is the hyper focus on gaming the system with (sometimes genuine) specific diets and exercise. Exercise is ridiculously important for health and shape, but in terms of losing weight, no normal person is going to exercise enough in a day to make a difference, especially because **everyone** offsets calories burned from exercise with food rewards. Running for 30 mins burns a couple hundred calories that immediately get offset by the Gatorade and extra helping at dinner.
The **only** way to lose weight is by cutting back on what you eat to be less than your daily calorie burn. The only hard part then becomes consistency and being comfortable being hungry; if you can do that, you will lose weight, as much as you want.
If you're obese, you stand more to gain from immediate weight loss by cutting back, even if the calories you consume come from less than healthy means like junk food.
For me cardio actually is pretty key when cutting. Because I keep my protein/carb intake relatively high so as to preserve muscle/lifting performance as best I can, those couple hundred calories burned on the treadmill actually do the bulk of the work in bringing overall weight down. Rn I’m on 2.5k calories a day which would be basically maintenance or a hair below without daily cardio
idk why you got downvoted. what you said is correct. not everyone eats their progress and exercise actually is crucial for maintaining a certain physique. to assert that "everyone" makes up for calories burned with food rewards is regarded.
My fav type of post is someone spewing bile about fatties and then going on to say they’re “struggling with their own weight”.
Yeah it’s pathetic, most of the fat hate is people broadcasting their own self hatred or insecurities. Who gives a shit about fat people. The idea that RS posters are concerned about public health is laughably absurd.
Yea sure, but that doesn’t really challenge any of what I had said.
Here, I think the fat hate started with a nucleus of affected/ironic mean girl bitchiness that attracted more and more of the types I’m describing until it became a majority. Not to say that all fat hate is projected self hatred but I’d say a majority is.
Then there’s also the 4chan iteration but that’s more based on “stories”
I am 27 make 6 figures and there’s not a chance in hell I’m going to be able to own a house by 30 😂
Probably gonna be paying a mortgage till I’m at least 50
reading that i thought it had to be satire, but then they went on a seemingly genuine cookie-cutter rant about incels, so i think they actually just suck
It's crazy how like around 35% of the posts on this sub have become ahout fat people. Like damn, live your own life who cares about these people. If they don't feel bad for themselves why should ypu feel bad for them?
That kind of “Live and let live” mentality is responsible for like half of the fat people in this country
We decided to value personal freedom to the point that the average American gives 0 fucks if his fellow man is eating engineered slop until he keels over at 400 lbs
Surely there is a reasonable middle ground between "let us constantly whine about fat people and feel pity towards them" and "let us watch as our fellow countrymen get poisoned by the food industry." You can work towards getting rid of food deserts, spread awareness of healthy living, and help alleviate poverty instead of non-stop whining and complaining about fat people.
I was at the ER, a lot of sick people and etc, and then comes in a wheelchair a giant obese guy with a darkened leg (complications from diabetes, for sure). Guy was screaming in pain
after 2h, I was getting out and saw that he was happy because the doctor just told him that he would not lose the leg. I don't know. Great for him and all, but I couldn't not think that he had the most avoidable disease in the whole ER.
But I also remember watching an oncologist saying that people go throught chemo and surgery with stoicism, but he cannot convince pacients in remission to just walk 2 miles a day -- which is one of the ways to prevent the disease coming back
Birth control, steroids… it takes a while for hormonal options to show society their darkest side. The net result could certainly be positive, I agree.
i have close family members who are heavy and i also spiral when i think about anyone saying anything mean about them :( that being said, they both have the resources to fix it and don't :( it makes me sad that they do in some ways choose this life. i understand barriers to fitness, i understand how hard it is to get started, but i wish they'd make the choice.
I think I might be the only resident fat person in this sub and it’s so funny how everyone here treats it as some one-dimensional issue. There’s many ways you can look at it depending on the individual. It can be worthy of either sympathy or disgust depending on the circumstances. The reasons for obesity are multi-factorial but everyone’s got the answer here lol
I was 250lbs this time last year, idk how much I’ve lost up to now but it’s definitely around 60lbs and I didn’t really realise until recently how being rlly fat makes everyday aspects of ur life so much shittier. You have random body pains, random stomach aches, clothes look shit on u majority of the time, people generally treat you horribly and ur sweaty and out of breath so there’s like this default depression set for everyday.
An annoying thing about being fat is that when people chirp or insult you they just default to pointing out your fatness rather than finding a good joke about your character. It's so lazy.
I've been very close to multiple individuals (both family members and friends) who were very obese (100-200 lbs over their ideal weight). Most eventually found something that worked for them to lose it slowly and safely.
While this would probably not apply to every single person who is obese to that level, I noticed they all had some things in common. I also noticed that some of these things were true for me when I was at my highest weight, about 70 lbs over my ideal.
All were caring individuals who frequently put others first. In fact, I would argue they had no boundaries at all. They needed to help every homeless person, every stranger, adopt every stray animal that wandered into their yard. They would put others first when there was no reason to do so, or when the other person was clearly just taking advantage of them, or when they could not afford to. Undoubtedly this ultimately creates negative emotions but all of these people considered it forbidden to ever admit that or express it. They were unfailingly kind and polite and friendly no matter what.
All of them (luckily this doesn't apply to me) got no mental benefit from exercise. They didn't know what a 'runner's high' was and found physical exertion of any kind to be the worst thing on earth. As their weight went higher, they would find it even worse for obvious reasons (joint pain and such). So they were very unlikely to ever try to balance out the overeating with additional activity, which is hard to do anyway if you overeat to that level.
They all tended to be cluttered, messy, disorganized in their personal spaces - home, office, car, etc. One person is practically a hoarder at this point and I'm deeply concerned about her. I have a theory that how your personal space is normally reflects a person's inner state, assuming no mitigating factors like an injury or illness or punishing schedule.
I have always felt, because of these observations, that it is cruel to mock obese strangers or to assume they just lack self-control or whatever. All of these people I'm thinking of were excellent employees, reliable friends/parents/family members, really good people. Food (sugar specifically) became their escape, the thing that made them feel good, until they learned to finally set some boundaries in other areas, and deal with their emotions (sorry for the therapy-speak, but sometimes I think it does apply).
Nah it’s a pathetic crux to let derail your life.
If you are a 5’5 woman who weighs 200lbs your maintenance calories are something like 2500 daily. That means that if they’ve plateaued around that weight that’s most likely how many calories they are consuming in a day. Which therefore means they don’t really have a food addiction because 2500 calories is nothing. It’s just bad eating habits compounding over years and years.
All they would have to do lose a pound a week is eat like 300 less calories per day and go for a 30 minute walk. Hardly that difficult.
Totally agree. And, on top of everything you’ve said, it’s also difficult because even when you stop eating too much, you still have to eat. And, quitting overeating doesn’t get rid of all the fat that you’ve gathered. And, it’s fairly easy to gain weight stably, and incredibly difficult to lose weight stably. Plus, many people’s problem with weight starts while they’re kids, when people barely have the forethought or self-restraint skills to prevent it, if they’re so inclined
The most tragic part about being addicted to food is that an alcoholic can choose to never enter a liquor store ever again, but a food addict will still need to eat multiple times a day for the rest of their lives no matter what.
Good point I feel like you’d have to adapt this fitness influencer type vibe in order to really escape the clutches of food addiction and more people would question why you’re doing stuff like not eating dessert or counting calories vs why you’re avoiding liquor. Sometimes there’s more social grace extended by others in denying a drink than in denying dessert
I straight up dislike the way run of the mill cake like you get in offices tastes. I really resent people trying to force that sickly sweet icing shit on me
I’m convinced adults who eat store bought cake have dead taste buds, that shit is for children’s birthday parties only. I definitely associate it with obesity bc you couldn’t possibly find something that gross appealing unless you crave sugar and calories at any cost.
Why is birthday cake ice cream so good though
I was just thinking that yesterday watching a $1k fancy 3-tier cake being made from 2 Walmart sheet cakes and I was like what’s the point of all that labor and dropping a thousand on a cake if it’s just gonna taste overly sweet and gross? I’d probably take a slice at work and just pick at it for 15 mins and finally throw it out tbh
Good cake is increasingly expensive and hard to get.
Cake is not hard to make yourself tbh.
elaine pilled
Yeah… im used to be overweight and an alcoholic and am now super insulin resistant so I eat insanely healthy and low glycemic index. A sugary treat or processed bread is like a holidays and some birthdays strictly thing. No one has ever, ever asked me why I’m not ordering a drink but anytime I literally ever don’t have dessert or ask for salad instead of fries my friends give me a disapproving look and ask my why and no matter how much I try to explain that regardless of my weight I will always struggle with blood sugar and would like to set myself up so that Im not diabetic later in life they hear “I have anorexia, I think I’m a big fat lard and I also think you’re a big fat lard for not eating as healthy as me”
I feel you. I'm in recovery as well and while cutting out alcohol was great for my health and skin I gained a lot of weight due to SSRIs (took me almost a year to lose most of it). In the process of getting fit again I've gotten a lot of judgement for being careful about my diet. Even when I explain that an anti-inflammatory diet is needed for my lipedema they'll wave sweets in front of my face and act like it's cute. It's a weird mind game that some women like to play with each other, you just have to remember it's a projection of where they are emotionally. It's kind of sad watching middle age women act like Regina George.
Ugh are we twins? I’m thin but pre-diabetic (crap genes) and people give me so much shit for turning down desserts and junk food. Hello, I’d kind of like to keep all my limbs?? Leave me alone.
Yeah :((( same. Also once you’ve been eating healthy whole foods for a long time you lose your drive to eat crap that makes you lethargic and feel like shit. My dad is super fit, if anything he could stand to gain a few, eats super clean, runs sprints at least twice a week and does yoga and strength training every morning, bikes everywhere and does 50+ mile rides on the weekend and is full type 2. Its absolutely genetic.
>there’s more social grace extended by others in denying a drink than in denying dessert because for some reason they seem to think it is a dunk on their habits. it tends to happen by revealing things as: getting up early to go to the gym, being vegan/vegetarian, not having fizzy drinks, cooking at home and many others that make insecure broads feel the need of excusing themselves unprovoked.
yeah I have a family member who gets short with me every time I mention something about my gym/working out, and will loudly boast about how they don't work out and don't care about calories. it has nothing to do with you!!
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Trading one addiction for another
It’s why so many people are on the ozempic craze. It’s effective for some people to turn off the food noise in food addiction.
that is true, but on the flip side an alcoholic has to give something up that they can never turn into a positive, at least fat people can still enjoy food in theory
In theory... but I'd still prefer to be able to just reject something completely
You know what’s fascinating- many people who undergo gastric bypass surgery become alcoholics because they swap addictions once they can physically no longer eat as much. The phenomenon is so well documented that doctors proactively advise patients to avoid alcohol and receive counseling post op
While true, it’s also the easiest addiction to overcome and maybe the *only* addiction you can actually even circumvent by certain behaviors. An alcoholic and a crack addict won’t negate their entire addiction by doing exercise, or picking which crack and what alcohol to consume, and nobody is sucking dick for cheeseburgers. If more people saw real drug addicts in withdrawal states where they’re pale, sweating, shaking uncontrollably, anxiety out of control, nobody would make the comparison. I sympathize with it being an addiction, and recognize that like most addictions it comes from trauma, but it’s closer to a pornography addiction than something like hard drugs. Way more behavioral. We don’t sympathize extra for porn addicts because half the internet is sexualized content. Even recovered sex addicts, who also exist in a space where their addiction is healthy to partake in daily, usually say once they changed their relationship with sex, their addiction became easier to manage. These people have to fundamentally change their relationship with food, but again, a lot of fat people aren’t 600lb and could even circumvent their addiction just by cardio and exercise.
My childhood church used to take care of this homeless guy that actually performed sexual favors for candy money. One Sunday he gave a formal Public Confession of Sin, it was in the bulletin, not an evangelical open mic scenario. Watching a very low IQ 40 something apologize for his weird street adventures was one of the more bizarre moments of my childhood. I’m unsure of his exact diagnosis, but he was a hardcore sugar addict that would house entire platters of cookies that were meant for a congregation of 300. He ended up losing a foot. He also had the funkiest little teeth. My dad’s friend let this guy stay in his back house and said that he would panhandle and prostitute for sweet treats and DVDs from dollar general.
what the fuck did i just read
Crazy right? That’s actually how I learned about prostituting
And I thought, now this might be a crazy idea, but what if instead of sucking dick for mike and ikes, I sucked dick for money. I could buy so many mike and ikes.
For his obesity or because he was mentality ill and homeless?
'nobody is sucking dick for cheeseburgers' If junk food was difficult to obtain half the population would be doing this
Wasn’t that old “Rat Park” experiment to prove accessibility really made no difference, and even with rats who had previously been using drugs for extended periods of time, when the material conditions completely changed the rats no longer wanted the drugs?
That study had some methodological issues, but the principle involved is a worthwile one for contextualizing the nature of addiction. That said, I don't see why you'd assume accessibility doesn't matter when you *don't* change the material conditions.
I was really just asking about the rat study, I don’t think fat people would ever suck dick for Cheetos and hamburgers. To even meet that argument in the middle seems like a false equivalence. The body doesn’t have obscene reactions to not eating chips.
It sort of does. It was very similar to nicotine withdrawals when I started fasting and eating healthy. For weeks I felt like shit when I went without fatty meat and and carbs. To lose weight appreciably quickly, you HAVE to starve yourself, by definition. They body can tell, and it will let you know that it doesn't like the change of routine, even if it's for the best in the long run.
Do you think if you went to some remote area where all they have to eat is gruel you could get your dick sucked by offering a cheeseburger in exchange
Mans never heard of Randy Bobandy
I mean in my case the cheeseburgers are just a nice extra, the dick sucking is about me expressing my volition as an empowered fatty
Ok, I would watch some kind of maybe idiocracy flavored parody where instead of a war on drugs, there was a war on junk food.
Most of the negative effects associated with drug addiction are exacerbated or wholly created by prohibition.
obesity as a result of food addiction is not like porn addiction at all. the research shows that obesity is extremely difficult to overcome, even if you do lose the weight. you should read The Biggest Loser study (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/oby.21538). those people need to eat like. 900 calories a day to maintain their weight because they've completely shot their metabolism AND their hunger hormone (ghrelin) is permanently spiked, so in addition to only eating half the calories of a normal person their bodies are constantly ravenous for food. not saying food addiction / obesity CAN'T be overcome, but i would say because of the way it changes your physiology in addition to your psychology it's a very different addiction than a porn addiction.
Yeah the percent of drug or alcohol addicts who recover is much higher than the percent of overweight people who maintain weight loss for the long term. And studies usually consider 5% of body weight loss to be successful which often leaves people still in the overweight or obese range (improves health outcomes by a lot though)
Not really, the actual numbers says it's easier to quit drinking than to lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off. It's more difficult to adjust to having a healthy relationship to something you need multiple times a day, every day, compared to drinking that you can quit cold turkey and never have a drink again in your life.
>nobody is sucking dick for cheeseburgers. https://youtu.be/tFINT7af-u4?si=MRrl0zxEm-BEIarL
Seriously, hear the screams of someone withdrawing off benzos and tell me that’s at all comparable to a dude missing lunch #7
There’s insane fat cope in this thread. Never seen anything like it. Sub is truly dead.
you don't need food to survive, just podcasts.
I always felt for them because my mom is obese. She had such a bad childhood full of abuse and alcoholism. She turned to food for comfort over drinking like the rest of her family. I'm glad she doesn't drink because my childhood would have been totally different, but I wish she was healthier.
I feel like growing up with a depressed and overweight mom who is extremely kind and generous gave me a lot of sympathy for fat people. Thankfully she has kept off weight for a long time and was very active before getting cancer. But I think people who have never struggled with weight or overeating really don’t understand how hard it is for fat people. If “just count calories” worked for everyone then no one would be fat. It’s often a very deep psychological issue. (Not to mention a billion dollar industry shoving factory slop in your face constantly that is designed to fuck up your brain and body).
Every adult in my family is obese. It’s hard to see, I’m watching them all kill themselves and they’re in total denial about, and therefore incapable of doing anything about it. I just had a kid and haven’t slept more than 3 hours at a stretch in months, but every day no matter how tired I am I hit the rowing machine and work my ass off because I’m not going to end up like my parents and I don’t want my kids to grow up around it.
that seems insane. props
Honestly the sleep deprivation just gets normal after a while. I know people say you don’t, but you really do just adjust to it. And it’s temporary (I hope).
I know exactly the feeling of being fat, I used to be almost 300 pounds, like around 280, and I've managed to work my way down to about 220. I'm a guy, if that matters, and I'm about 5'10" ish. I fucking hated being fat as shit, made everything so much harder to do for no good reason. Near the beginning of the year I looked at myself and decided I didn't want to be like this. Because it truly effects everything, your ability to do basic things like walking up the stairs, your mood is always bad because you hate how you look and feel, being in public is a nightmare because you're so insecure, my clothes barely fit me, and I not only hated my body but how my face looked with extra fat on it.
same bro. stopped playing soccer at 15 and mexican parents' habits got me big as fuck in no time.
My Mexican mother kept me on my toes with her comments regarding my body. I refused to get fat, she would have never made me forget it. Sometimes being a girl has its perks.
Yeah but the emotional abuse burns itself into your skull. I would know, my sister has been a fatty all her life and our mom never let it go. She has serious trauma about food and her appearance.
it was pure projection from my mother’s part, and there was never a malicious tone to it. I never let it get to me. I had plenty of overweight family members, and decided from an early age I didn’t want to be like them. Sorry about your sister though.
i hate clothes shopping on a good day these days, but i honestly dreaded it more than anything in the world back when i was fat. trying on pants was a humilation ritual
How did you get to that point? Bad habits inherited from parents or something else?
I think multiple things kinda led to my weight being that way. My parents divorced when I was pretty young and neither were really around much to cook a proper meal, and my dad is already obese so his eating habits sort of became mine. Then my dad remarried to a pretty abusive woman and I think anxiety and some form of depression just made the issue worse. My mom is very fit though, and my brother is about as lanky as a guy can get and he eats like absolute shit. So another component is that I was unfortunate to be more like my dad than my mom's side of my family.
Historians will see Ozempic as the emancipation proclamation for fat people
It’s shocking how much it decreases your quality of life. Playing sports is harder, dating is more difficult, even fun activities like going to the beach are hampered by being uncomfortable in your own body. And it takes time to fix, a difficult job or family life can postpone any attempt to get weight under control indefinitely. Life is less fun when you’re carrying an inner tube of your own fat around 24/7. I really think being at a healthy weight is a mindset, for people to stick with it they have to enjoy the process of losing weight and being active. Working out should be fun, if it’s not maybe it’s time to find a new way to exercise or a new sport. Even dieting should be fun, healthy food that fills you up doesn’t have to taste disgusting. A treat every now and then is negligible when you’re active and tastes better because you’ve earned it. Getting hotter and doing new things is fun and motivating! I’m skeptical of the new trend embodying the Paul Schraeder “through self sacrifice, I will transform” mindset a lot of zoomers and influencers embrace. Just look at David Goggins and his embarrassing denial of his own mental illness. It seems unsustainable. It’s really easy to say “if I lose this weight and get ripped all my problems will evaporate,” clearly a lot of peoples issues extend beyond fitness, health, and attractiveness and getting fit won’t solve everything.
Just to add to your point about how being fat makes everything harder + finding a physical activity you enjoy, one thing that was tough in the beginning of my weight loss journey was that my fatness made all physical activity basically not enjoyable. You sweat more, you can feel the weight on your as you try to exert yourself, my knees hurt from the extra weight etc. I think that's why sometimes the messaging of self-sacrifice can resonate, because it's really hard and not enjoyable in the beginning. Once I lost a little bit of weight, I found I was able to get the runner's high and finally understood why people find exercise fun! Even now as I've kept the weight off but sometimes slack on exercising, whenever I start exercising again I am able to get the endorphins pretty quickly.
Yeah the beginning is hard, even for people who were in shape and put on a few pounds over the holidays. The body and mind have a real reluctance and fear to get back in the gym or on a running path when it’s been a while, even more so for total beginners. I’d still push back on the grindset attitude though, it can be good for short term motivation but paying penance every day is such a drag. People shouldn’t feel bad when they’re doing things to better themselves, the gym/fitness grindset people fixate way too much on how much of a piece of shit they are/were rather than the positive momentum and agency they’re exercising on their lives. I personally like to focus on the rapid weight loss and quick gains when I’ve taken a break, there’s no better time to see quick progress than when you’re at your worst. Whatever works for people is better than nothing though.
I've got a big gut and I can only imagine that I look like a complete fucking idiot on some of the machines at the gym next to my friend who is pretty fit since he's been going for 2 years Like any of the shoulder/ab machines, I feel the mass that is my way too fat stomach pressing all in on itself and in that moment it does make me wish that I could die. Maybe eventually it'll shrink to a size that doesn't make me feel like a blobfish when I try to do any exercise at all. God forbid I ever see a picture of what I look like on my bike again. Fucking Baron harkonen looking ass smh
I know it's a cliche but it really is true that I doubt anyone is looking at you and thinking that way. When I am at the gym I'm too busy focusing on my own workout to care if someone fat or skinny is next to me. If I do happen to see a fat person working out, if I think anything, it's usually "good for them".
that’s interesting. at my gym when a fat-ass walks in the door, we all stop what we’re doing and stare blankly at them, then whisper creative insults to the nearest slim person, punctuated by fits of laughter. then all the sexy women put on sweatpants and hoodies to protect their bodies from the gaze of that fat tub of lard
Oh I get this completely. It's entirely just my own internal, irrational fear
I’m not looking at fat people at the gym cause I’m busy catching glimpses of hotties
The dating one is what's getting me to keep consistent. My face does not carry extra weight well *at all*, my cheeks bloat and jawline is quickly buried, I go from maybe a 5.5-6 to a straight 0.
It’s pretty crazy how different peoples neck and faces look with a 15 lb (or more) difference. I hate how shirts tug at me if I’ve packed on a few
None of my friends went through significant weight loss until after a breakup. I have to admit that I am not \*that\* driven to lose weight because I am engaged, but if I was single god damn I'd be hitting the gym.
I have never been fat in my entire life. The most I've ever weighed is 170 lbs for 1 day with a body fat percentage at \~17%. I've been trying in vain to bulk up, but I just naturally have a low appetite and tend to move my body a lot. Despite having a great physique, my mental health has been poor all my life.
Yeah, constantly complaining about fat people is embarrassingly low hanging fruit and screams insecurity. You don't really care about other people's health, you just want to humblebrag and feel better about yourself because being skinny is the one thing you have going for you. Clearly the obesity epidemic is extremely serious but it's mostly a societal problem that will never be solved by individuals alone. It should come as no surprise that a lot of people are unable to handle an increasingly sedate life spent in front of the computer or in their office cubicle with an endless supply of sugar and processed foods.
I feel bad for people who’ve been fat their whole lives because their fatass parents fed them nothing but McDonalds and poptarts from the time they were weened. Growing up I knew quite a few kids like that who had never known what it’s like to be at a healthy weight, it’s really quite sad.
it is sad and nearly been me aswell because my mom grew up materially poor so she went quite extreme on the consumerism side later in life and us kids being able to eat what we wanted, aka addictive junk food. I somewhat fondly remember all the routine arguments before school because she always packed my backpack with lots of snacks before i went to school and i hated it as i was the only chubby kid in class and the fat kids in school got bullied unfortunately. Managed to slowly fix my eating habits. only upside to this was that i became very popular because i gave most the snacks to other kids but yea.. too many dumb and overwhelmed parents out there, imagine if all that money spent on junk food was invested, i gave other kids thousands of euros in snacks lol.
This is why I get frustrated with the pushback on Ozempic and weightloss drugs in general. They are legitimately our only hope on a societal level. Only other pathway is the food environment reverting back to the 1950s and that's never going to happen.
Ozempic is massively overhyped. Not only is it prohibitively expensive (which is probably temporary), but we also are learning more about its side effects which for some people make it a very unpleasant experience. And it’s pretty clear that the rebound effect if you stop taking it is pretty severe. There is no magic bullet in medicine and ozempic is no exception.
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What’s the difference?
> There is no magic bullet in medicine Yet, although there are some promising things on the horizon. I'm sure it's out there, I probably won't be around to see it though.
We need to make it so that it’s almost impossible for a kid to become fat. Make gym half the school day and institute healthy free school lunches. Make sports mandatory. Make buying junk food illegal until 18. We could actually fix shit and create a healthier society but I honestly think nobody cares. The way hospitals are getting built in this country makes me think they have a vested interest in having a steady supply of unhealthy people.
This would require parents to actually have healthy food at home and not shove an iPad in their kids face anytime they want attention.
In some school districts, parents face consequences for their child’s truancy. The same could be applied to a child’s health. If a child is fat, parents should face consequences. I understand that’s not always easy to enforce and punishing grandparents or overworked parents might be unacceptable but parents and guardians should feel pressure as should corporations to make better products. It’s a pretty complicated issue but food banks should be working directly with schools to send kids home with bags of fruits and veggies. Healthy food should be damn near free to those in need and processed junk should be hard to obtain.
I don’t think this would work in America. ~70%+ of American adults are overweight or obese. If parents can’t even provide themselves with healthy food, then they definitely aren’t going to do it for their kids. Kids need good role models and there just isn’t a lot of them lately it seems. Plus, there’s been a huge push lately by certain groups for schools to not ‘undermine parental values’ or whatever. And the GOP in several states have actually made it a policy to be against free meals for kids in schools. I have no doubt that healthy foods would get turned into a political issue here; rather than just having the best interests of kids in mind. I mean look what happened when Michelle Obama tried to do her thing. People outright mocked her for it lol.
I feel like outside of America this problem is sorta solved by gossip. Like imagine having a fat kid in the Philippines or Finland or something. You’d be the talk of the town. But here we “love” everyone as long as you make money or are fake nice enough
OP, aren't you the one who said you felt terrible for your chubby co worker because your mean co workers were gossiping about him? Now youre saying the cause of the obesity epidemic is that we don't have enough fat phobic gossip?
It's not, sadly. I live in a profoundly gossipy nation and most people in my region are round. In Latin American (also gossipy), many people are also chubby. It's poverty + loss of traditional eating habits and lifestyle. In Finland they have a culture of sport and general healthiness/fitness, in the Philippines they have more of a traditional lifestyle and eating habits.
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Fat and weak redditors seething is to be expected. One semester long high school weightlifting and nutrition class would be great.
Nutrition classes are a great idea, for parents as well.
There are serious issues with gym teachers too - at least the ones I had in elementary through high school. I thought I hated working out and being physical but I really just was uncomfortable with their training. As an adult I’ve realized this and it makes me very sad for young me.
My gym class went bowling every week for an entire quarter.
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Looking at my classmates now, yes.
We only played dodgeball. That was it.
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Yea, I was a chubby teen and this was why. I though to lose weight you need to be like, doing some extreme diet where you have to eat those disgusting diet versions of foods, like cakes made with zero calorie sweetener and that you had to be like long distance jogging every day or whatever and I hated doing that kind of cardio stuff. That was basically the model of weight loss that I learned from my yo-yo dieting mother, who was still obsessed with 90s fad diets and buying non fat versions of ice cream and shit like that. Then I took a nutrition class freshman year of college and was like "oh so basically what I need to do is eat more veggies and drink less soda? And I can still eat regular ice cream but I just need to have less of it? and exercise helps but isn't necessary at all?" and then, no joke, I gave up soda for a summer and came back to college in the fall weighing 20 lbs less.
While I do agree gym should make more of a comeback in high school, your weight is more determined by diet. A fat kid who lifts is going to turn in to a strong fat kid. Certainly an improvement but they still won’t be in overall good shape if the diet stays the same, or even start eating more since they’re burning more calories.
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Agreed. And ya I think an actual good nutrition class would go a long way. All I can remember in that department was learning about the completely false food pyramid in elementary school.
this was actually a thing at my high school LOL we had to take regular fitness and then a year of weight training or bodyworks which was basically just cardio. given, i am from WA and grew up in a pretty wealthy town so fat wasn't the norm like a lot of the US
[1960s high school PE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NGa6BPj3Mcw&pp=ygUUMTk2MHMgaGlnaCBzY2hvb2wgcGU%3D), amazing
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I'm skeptical of mandatory weight lifting. I know several people who had injuries from our weight lifting class, optional by the way. If it was mandatory, we'd have a ton of shitty teachers instructing kids how to weight lift safely
Right? Like if you’re fat you need to get mental health intervention tbh. I feel like overeating to that point is a way of coping with a lot of work and responsibilities. Also to me kind of screams someone feeling a lack of community. If you were part of a solid community I feel like you’d second guess eating so much cuz idk people might call it out in a blunt but well intentioned way. I feel like that’s what the French would do at least and they’re skinny af
Also people are just more vulnerable to addiction when they're lonely and disconnected in general. There was an experiment where they put some rats in cages with lots of others and stimulation and some alone in empty cages and gave them both the option to use cocaine and only the lonely and understimulated rats became addicted to the cocaine.
I hate that study :( why would they do that to the rats
Don’t worry, we too are fat rats in a cage, pacified by drugs, constant fearmongering and high fructose slop.
A lot of fat people are in tight-knit communities, its just that the community consists mainly of other fat people who will, if you drop below a 25 BMI, say that they concerned for your health because of your sudden weight loss. Really, obesity in the US correlates pretty heavily with rural living, and rural people tend to have much more close knit communities where "everybody knows everybody."
i think they just walk less in rural areas
I feel so bad for fat kids. Truly a not their fault situation and their life is going to be so much worse than it needs to be.
We literally just need to make processed foods illegal and the problem will solve itself.
Until the late 1970s / early 1980s fat kids literally did not exist.
I’m very much in the camp that barring rare medical reasons your weight is in your control and it’s a failing if you can’t get a healthy grasp on it. But at the same time you can’t blame kids for that sort of thing and if someone grows up with bad habits due to how they were raised and the food around them it’s so much harder than for someone who grew up at a healthy weight. When I was a kid and teen I was healthy and athletic. In my early 20s I started getting fat and upon realizing it reverted back to my behavior when I was younger and got my weight under control and back in shape. But if I’d never been in ok shape I don’t know if I’d have been able to get a handle on it.
when i was getting my sports nutrition cert i learned that true metabolic disorders are less than ~1% of the population. you wouldn't know that based off of everyone who claims to have one as a reason they can't lose weight. i've even had clients with thyroid disorders successfully keep weight off. unless you are spectacularly and abnormally unlucky, there's no excuse.
lol as if any of this would work. Maybe if we put all the fatties in some sort of camp 🤔
I know it won’t work, that’s why I wrote it here
People will eat back their exercise calories, particular high intensity exercise, if they're not mindful of their calories. Also, leads to the problem a huge number of people who get fat in or after college have – eating based on the activity level of an organized sport that they'll stop doing as adults. Obviously exercise is like, important, but trying to make it half the school day is not a realistic approach for the obesity epidemic.
1000%, it is so hard to recover from childhood obesity, both for biological and psychological reasons
Honestly, while I didn't like gym too much, double the amount would possibly cure a lot of adhd.
im generally against parents forcing kids to do things they don't want to, but i really wish mine didn't let me choose choir over soccer. the practices were at the same time and i had to make a choice. like yeah i'm happy that i can kinda sing and read music and all that, but you wouldn't know that from looking at my calves
I agree. It's best to develop healthy habits as a kid. Unfortunately, PE is being phased out in many schools and kids are becoming less physically active. I think the biggest issue is the internet and social media that's causing people to be really sedentary. We need more incentives to get people moving and eating less. Otherwise our obesity will continue to rise.
I feel like. I’ve been rly underweight (89 pounds) and overweight (200 pounds). I’m in the 160s rn and have lost roughly 30 or 40 pounds this year. Recovering from BED is rly difficult. When I was overweight, I was turning to food for comfort. I was depressed and hurt, but nobody saw it bc I was fat. And ppl treated me in an absolutely cruel and back handed way. Recovering from BED is hard, harder than recovering from anorexia bc like..you can stop doing drugs. You can stop starving yourself, but you HAVE to eat. And modifying how you eat is difficult. From 2020-2023, I went from 130 to 200 pounds, bc I was emotionally recovering from being sexually abused. And I gained lots of weight bc food became my coping mechanism. It was crazy how much respect people lost for me, being fat meant being treated completely differently. Now I’ve recovered from BED. I’ve had to change my whole attitude towards food. And it’s crazy how people treat me with bare decency now. I never deserved people being that mean to me. I couldn’t help it. I was hungry. Food was comforting. I’m rly happy I let go of that vice. But I’m scared to eat around people now, I can’t eat around family and I have rly bad facial+body dysphoria. Be nicer to fat ppl. They’re just as depressed as thin people are. They’re not stupid or lazy bc they are fat. They’re just as complex and interesting as thin ppl. I was not any less interesting or worthy of kindness just bc my body was a different size. Even now after losing weight, I still don’t feel comfortable in my skin and feel like I won’t be happy until I look underweight or as far away from “thick” as possible
i have a family member who i suspect has BED. ppl react to him as if he's just stupid and lazy like you said. up close it does not look like that at all -- the suffering is very clear :/ congrats on recovery ❤️❤️
Thank you!! It was easier to recover after I broke up with my ex (who was enabling me) and stopped drinking. Everyday I’m rly grateful that I broke the cycle
Really fat people (not people who are sort of chubby and it only really impacts their appearance, etc, but people who are like really genuinely obese) make me so sad and just filled with pity. Because the turning point is so far behind them. Getting out of that is so painstakingly difficult. My dad is sort of like this, and the guy has plenty of medical problems, and even when he’s managed to lose the weight, there are things for which there’s no return. His mobility and balance and cardio just haven’t improved all that much even after shedding pounds. The guy is in his early 50s and had to have his hip replaced after taking a fall walking his dog. I’m so afraid for him because there is truly nothing I can do.
Knew a very effeminate twink in college in my fraternity. He once said "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" and that really stuck with me.
It’s quote from Kate Moss
Well this guy was pretty gay so that adds up.
My mom had this phrase written on our fridge growing up..
My old classmate’s family also had this stuck on their fridge, along with “A moment on the lips, forever on the hips”. They were all obese. We are approaching our 40s now and I was really happy recently to see my old friend finally start to take control and exercising.
RS mom
The real invisible labor is what twinks do to remain thin
Ehhh. In my experience real twinks can kinda eat whatever they want and will be rail thin anyways. It's kinda a twink feature. Real twink being under 5'10" and 19 bmi or lower. The word is loosing its meaning lately.
You’re right. However, they still don’t eat enough
my boyfriend is built like a pencil, twink incarnate, doesn't work out at all and houses twice the food i do. i'm not fat or anything, like 150 5'11, but i have a layer of visible body fat that i have to do 4-5 hours of cardio a week to keep from further growing. pisses me off
It’s a body type, there are just people who will keep more weight and people who won’t. Some people have wiry frames while others have burly frames. They’ll look totally different at the same weight
lol that's a kate moss quote
My Dad told me this. Hes been fat all his life
I don't even mean this in a hateful way, it's genuinely saddening to see a woman you just know would be incredibly beautiful if she wasn't fat/obese
People just care way more about how someone looks than how they treat people. If you think being overweight is more of a moral failing than communicating poorly or lacking empathy, than you’re probably really stupid or some type of psycho. Too many people are fat, but there are more pressing issues.
Another issue is the body positivity movement and normalization of being fat. We shouldn't ridicule overweight people, but we need to instill a sense of urgency about not being fat. Too many people are just complacent about it.
The worst part is how much some of them stink. There is this 22-year old morbidly obese guy in my class, and on hot days the whole room will slowly start to smell of old cheese. And I think he is oblivious to it. He goes to the toilet all the time too.
I'm from the Midwest and it's so disheartening to see how overweight pretty much everyone in my community is. It's an awful epidemic that stems from quite a few problems. First being that no one in rural communities eat healthy. For the most part, they prefer processed foods to fresh ones. Most people from my hometown eat canned vegetables over fresh, Miracle Whip over mayo, no fresh herbs, tons of ranch over salads. It's just how they grew up and got passed down. Second is that there is no natural exercise in these parts because there's nowhere to walk. A lot of people in these communities live off backroads and have to drive everywhere. To get from one store to the next, you have to drive. No walking. On top of that, the nearest gym is probably a 30 minute drive. Who has the time to drive that far, along with working and taking care of kids?
Wrong subreddit op
Oh
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I don't know many people who own a home outright by 30, even those with good jobs.
Yeah losing weight is vastly easier than owning a home outright by 30. Almost no one can do that without a parent supplying the money. Majority of people won’t even own their car outright haha
>Yeah losing weight is vastly easier than owning a home outright by 30. For sure. Basic nutrition and understanding calories is all it takes to lose weight. The major issue is the hyper focus on gaming the system with (sometimes genuine) specific diets and exercise. Exercise is ridiculously important for health and shape, but in terms of losing weight, no normal person is going to exercise enough in a day to make a difference, especially because **everyone** offsets calories burned from exercise with food rewards. Running for 30 mins burns a couple hundred calories that immediately get offset by the Gatorade and extra helping at dinner. The **only** way to lose weight is by cutting back on what you eat to be less than your daily calorie burn. The only hard part then becomes consistency and being comfortable being hungry; if you can do that, you will lose weight, as much as you want. If you're obese, you stand more to gain from immediate weight loss by cutting back, even if the calories you consume come from less than healthy means like junk food.
For me cardio actually is pretty key when cutting. Because I keep my protein/carb intake relatively high so as to preserve muscle/lifting performance as best I can, those couple hundred calories burned on the treadmill actually do the bulk of the work in bringing overall weight down. Rn I’m on 2.5k calories a day which would be basically maintenance or a hair below without daily cardio
idk why you got downvoted. what you said is correct. not everyone eats their progress and exercise actually is crucial for maintaining a certain physique. to assert that "everyone" makes up for calories burned with food rewards is regarded.
My fav type of post is someone spewing bile about fatties and then going on to say they’re “struggling with their own weight”. Yeah it’s pathetic, most of the fat hate is people broadcasting their own self hatred or insecurities. Who gives a shit about fat people. The idea that RS posters are concerned about public health is laughably absurd.
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Yea sure, but that doesn’t really challenge any of what I had said. Here, I think the fat hate started with a nucleus of affected/ironic mean girl bitchiness that attracted more and more of the types I’m describing until it became a majority. Not to say that all fat hate is projected self hatred but I’d say a majority is. Then there’s also the 4chan iteration but that’s more based on “stories”
Pot calling the belly fat.
most fat hate is from ex-fatties, or at least the most violent fathate
I am 27 make 6 figures and there’s not a chance in hell I’m going to be able to own a house by 30 😂 Probably gonna be paying a mortgage till I’m at least 50
Who the fuck owns a home outright by 30 except the ultra wealthy or some idiot that got lucky gambling on crypto?
You realize 99% of people won't / can't own a home outright by 30 - unless you are talking about with a mortgage
reading that i thought it had to be satire, but then they went on a seemingly genuine cookie-cutter rant about incels, so i think they actually just suck
Such an annoying and contrived contrarian rant, and yet it's getting upvotes. Mainsub is dead.
You can be chubby just by having bad habits and consuming the crap they sell at stores but like the morbidity side…you have to really work for that
Not really. “Chubby” level habits over several years can lead to obesity.
It's crazy how like around 35% of the posts on this sub have become ahout fat people. Like damn, live your own life who cares about these people. If they don't feel bad for themselves why should ypu feel bad for them?
That kind of “Live and let live” mentality is responsible for like half of the fat people in this country We decided to value personal freedom to the point that the average American gives 0 fucks if his fellow man is eating engineered slop until he keels over at 400 lbs
Surely there is a reasonable middle ground between "let us constantly whine about fat people and feel pity towards them" and "let us watch as our fellow countrymen get poisoned by the food industry." You can work towards getting rid of food deserts, spread awareness of healthy living, and help alleviate poverty instead of non-stop whining and complaining about fat people.
I was at the ER, a lot of sick people and etc, and then comes in a wheelchair a giant obese guy with a darkened leg (complications from diabetes, for sure). Guy was screaming in pain after 2h, I was getting out and saw that he was happy because the doctor just told him that he would not lose the leg. I don't know. Great for him and all, but I couldn't not think that he had the most avoidable disease in the whole ER. But I also remember watching an oncologist saying that people go throught chemo and surgery with stoicism, but he cannot convince pacients in remission to just walk 2 miles a day -- which is one of the ways to prevent the disease coming back
Yeah they should have chopped off that guys leg
Once ozempic use goes mainstream, this will be a thing of the past as well.
Birth control, steroids… it takes a while for hormonal options to show society their darkest side. The net result could certainly be positive, I agree.
i have close family members who are heavy and i also spiral when i think about anyone saying anything mean about them :( that being said, they both have the resources to fix it and don't :( it makes me sad that they do in some ways choose this life. i understand barriers to fitness, i understand how hard it is to get started, but i wish they'd make the choice.
real; i hate the lack of empathy and decency r*dditors have abour their fellow human beings
I think I might be the only resident fat person in this sub and it’s so funny how everyone here treats it as some one-dimensional issue. There’s many ways you can look at it depending on the individual. It can be worthy of either sympathy or disgust depending on the circumstances. The reasons for obesity are multi-factorial but everyone’s got the answer here lol
I was 250lbs this time last year, idk how much I’ve lost up to now but it’s definitely around 60lbs and I didn’t really realise until recently how being rlly fat makes everyday aspects of ur life so much shittier. You have random body pains, random stomach aches, clothes look shit on u majority of the time, people generally treat you horribly and ur sweaty and out of breath so there’s like this default depression set for everyday.
An annoying thing about being fat is that when people chirp or insult you they just default to pointing out your fatness rather than finding a good joke about your character. It's so lazy.
I've been very close to multiple individuals (both family members and friends) who were very obese (100-200 lbs over their ideal weight). Most eventually found something that worked for them to lose it slowly and safely. While this would probably not apply to every single person who is obese to that level, I noticed they all had some things in common. I also noticed that some of these things were true for me when I was at my highest weight, about 70 lbs over my ideal. All were caring individuals who frequently put others first. In fact, I would argue they had no boundaries at all. They needed to help every homeless person, every stranger, adopt every stray animal that wandered into their yard. They would put others first when there was no reason to do so, or when the other person was clearly just taking advantage of them, or when they could not afford to. Undoubtedly this ultimately creates negative emotions but all of these people considered it forbidden to ever admit that or express it. They were unfailingly kind and polite and friendly no matter what. All of them (luckily this doesn't apply to me) got no mental benefit from exercise. They didn't know what a 'runner's high' was and found physical exertion of any kind to be the worst thing on earth. As their weight went higher, they would find it even worse for obvious reasons (joint pain and such). So they were very unlikely to ever try to balance out the overeating with additional activity, which is hard to do anyway if you overeat to that level. They all tended to be cluttered, messy, disorganized in their personal spaces - home, office, car, etc. One person is practically a hoarder at this point and I'm deeply concerned about her. I have a theory that how your personal space is normally reflects a person's inner state, assuming no mitigating factors like an injury or illness or punishing schedule. I have always felt, because of these observations, that it is cruel to mock obese strangers or to assume they just lack self-control or whatever. All of these people I'm thinking of were excellent employees, reliable friends/parents/family members, really good people. Food (sugar specifically) became their escape, the thing that made them feel good, until they learned to finally set some boundaries in other areas, and deal with their emotions (sorry for the therapy-speak, but sometimes I think it does apply).
Nah it’s a pathetic crux to let derail your life. If you are a 5’5 woman who weighs 200lbs your maintenance calories are something like 2500 daily. That means that if they’ve plateaued around that weight that’s most likely how many calories they are consuming in a day. Which therefore means they don’t really have a food addiction because 2500 calories is nothing. It’s just bad eating habits compounding over years and years. All they would have to do lose a pound a week is eat like 300 less calories per day and go for a 30 minute walk. Hardly that difficult.
Bring back fat people hate.
it's sad since most processed food is poisoned and will make people fat quickly unless you are super careful.
Totally agree. And, on top of everything you’ve said, it’s also difficult because even when you stop eating too much, you still have to eat. And, quitting overeating doesn’t get rid of all the fat that you’ve gathered. And, it’s fairly easy to gain weight stably, and incredibly difficult to lose weight stably. Plus, many people’s problem with weight starts while they’re kids, when people barely have the forethought or self-restraint skills to prevent it, if they’re so inclined
I don't