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Metabolism privilege
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InsertFunnyUsernameHere wrote: »Weight loss is not a competition with a winner and a loser. People who believe in that intersectional BS see life as a competition where winners win because of privilege and losers lose because of... oh I don't know... institutional oppression. It's a poisonous enough concept to introduce into politics, much less trying to apply it to personal internal struggles, like weight loss.
This is not an accurate description of intersectionality, btw.10 -
Well it isn't true and purely hypothetical - metabolism is simply based on mass and there is little variation in this process. This question only has the slightest bit of merit in a society cursed with abundance.
I have compassion, but there's a matter of prioritization at play here. On par with the compassion I felt when Metallica was railing against Napster.3 -
So pretending that is true - I'm not saying it is, just for the purposes of this discussion - would knowing this alter how you think about losing weight with other people? And if so, how?
Like, would you trust people's dieting advice more if you knew they had the same metabolism as you did? Would you have more compassion for people with low metabolism or less sympathy for those with high metabolism, when they are struggling? And so on.
Pretending it's true, no, it wouldn't, because I don't really rely on advice for others, but base what I try on my own research and what works for me, and I don't judge others based on their weight or weight loss. There are many, many reasons some people may find it harder than others. I imagine for most of us it's been harder or easier based on other things in our lives.
Beyond that, I don't see why metabolism wouldn't affect hunger, so that a 500 cal deficit would be equally hard, all else equal (which it never is).
Also, I now am positive the whole "privilege" thing has gotten way out of hand. A pretty good book on it is The Perils of Privilege by Phoebe Maltz Bovy: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2017/03/23/the-last-thing-on-privilege-youll-ever-need-to-read/?utm_term=.df627ef762a84 -
...For the purposes of this question, let's pretend it exists. Not only exists, but has a huge impact. So a person could have, essentially, 'metabolism privilege.' It's like people with a low metabolism are playing the game of 'losing weight' at the high difficulty setting, and people with a high metabolism are playing the game on the 'easy' setting.
So pretending that is true - I'm not saying it is, just for the purposes of this discussion - would knowing this alter how you think about losing weight with other people? And if so, how?
Like, would you trust people's dieting advice more if you knew they had the same metabolism as you did? Would you have more compassion for people with low metabolism or less sympathy for those with high metabolism, when they are struggling? And so on.
No, not at all. In your hypothetical example if someone has a crappier metabolism that just means their CO is a lower. Yes, it means they don't get to eat as much as someone with a higher CO, but it also means they don't need as much food. In other words, they should be less hungry.
You don't really even need this hypothetical. A 5' person has a much lower CO than someone who is 7'. The short person needs to eat much less, but they will also have less hunger. If that wasn't the case obesity would be inversely proportional to things like height... the percentage of short people who are obese would be higher than the percentage of tall people who are obese.
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cmriverside wrote: »So here's your belief, then, @shaumom?...
...Because that sort of puts a different spin on this topic.
No, actually. The spin you have assumed is no in way what's going on here.
This topic is not based in reality. There is no reality currently where we have proven that metabolism has a huge impact on weight gain, or any sort of standardized understanding of it. Sure, maybe there could be in the future, sorta-kinda, because I don't think we have it fully understood yet, but who cares? That literally doesn't matter here.
That other conversation DID trigger the trip down the rabbit hole, though, to think about what would it be like in a world where metabolism was an actual thing, that made a big difference. I'm a fan of old sci fi; I think about crap like 'if the world was X way, what would happen?' So it's related that way, sure. But right now, I was honestly just curious about the intellectual exercise of trying to think about 'what if.'
So reality doesn't matter - doesn't matter if metabolism doesn't work this way, or if CICO is a thing or not, or that people wouldn't be exactly the same, etc... Literally irrelevant.
It's looking at the ethical and social implications of a physical hypothetical. No different than speculating 'hey, what if half the world only had one leg,' or 'what if everyone you know was suddenly homeless.'
Honestly, I was kind of surprised by some of the answers, because they definitely went down a different rabbit hole than my own.
For me, I started thinking about things like, say, if there would be a financial issue for folks of one persuasion or another. More time available to work because you need less time to exercise if you're hi metabolism(HM)? Or there is more financial difficulty because LM folks find it harder to lose weight without professional help they'd have to pay for? Or maybe the opposite, because HM folks have to pay for more food to keep healthy.
And compassion - I personally tend to feel for anyone struggling, but I've noticed that sometimes, people can have an attitude that boils down to: I did it this way, and it worked, so if it's not working for you then you are just not trying hard enough. But if a world existed where it had been literally proven that the same thing won't work for both groups of people...would that change? Would we be more understanding when people are trying what we try and it's harder for them, or easier for them? Would we be more understanding when people who are struggling more have more failures?
Personally, I think it can be easier sometimes to understand and empathize with someone else if we know some of the struggles that they are going through, so I'd like to think that people might be more understanding of others, or more tolerant of people struggling without being as judgmental, if there was a specific, known, physical thing that people knew about each other. More compassionate about people who can't gain weight, or can't lose it, without enough effort that they are unable to keep it up, when they have other stressors in their lives, that sort of thing.
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Okay. So what would "more compassionate" look like to you?
Because I'm wondering how you surmise whether someone is compassionate "enough"?
It waxes and wanes, honestly.
Sometimes I really care, but then stop caring after I hear the same person complain about the same thing eleventy times and do nothing to address the actual problem.10 -
cmriverside wrote: »So here's your belief, then, @shaumom?...
...Because that sort of puts a different spin on this topic.
No, actually. The spin you have assumed is no in way what's going on here.
This topic is not based in reality. There is no reality currently where we have proven that metabolism has a huge impact on weight gain, or any sort of standardized understanding of it. Sure, maybe there could be in the future, sorta-kinda, because I don't think we have it fully understood yet, but who cares? That literally doesn't matter here.
That other conversation DID trigger the trip down the rabbit hole, though, to think about what would it be like in a world where metabolism was an actual thing, that made a big difference. I'm a fan of old sci fi; I think about crap like 'if the world was X way, what would happen?' So it's related that way, sure. But right now, I was honestly just curious about the intellectual exercise of trying to think about 'what if.'
So reality doesn't matter - doesn't matter if metabolism doesn't work this way, or if CICO is a thing or not, or that people wouldn't be exactly the same, etc... Literally irrelevant.
It's looking at the ethical and social implications of a physical hypothetical. No different than speculating 'hey, what if half the world only had one leg,' or 'what if everyone you know was suddenly homeless.'
Honestly, I was kind of surprised by some of the answers, because they definitely went down a different rabbit hole than my own.
For me, I started thinking about things like, say, if there would be a financial issue for folks of one persuasion or another. More time available to work because you need less time to exercise if you're hi metabolism(HM)? Or there is more financial difficulty because LM folks find it harder to lose weight without professional help they'd have to pay for? Or maybe the opposite, because HM folks have to pay for more food to keep healthy.
And compassion - I personally tend to feel for anyone struggling, but I've noticed that sometimes, people can have an attitude that boils down to: I did it this way, and it worked, so if it's not working for you then you are just not trying hard enough. But if a world existed where it had been literally proven that the same thing won't work for both groups of people...would that change? Would we be more understanding when people are trying what we try and it's harder for them, or easier for them? Would we be more understanding when people who are struggling more have more failures?
Personally, I think it can be easier sometimes to understand and empathize with someone else if we know some of the struggles that they are going through, so I'd like to think that people might be more understanding of others, or more tolerant of people struggling without being as judgmental, if there was a specific, known, physical thing that people knew about each other. More compassionate about people who can't gain weight, or can't lose it, without enough effort that they are unable to keep it up, when they have other stressors in their lives, that sort of thing.
But I feel like most of these hypothetical consequences are already in play when it comes to weight loss, just due to different causes.
For example . . .
Someone without kids may be "advantaged" when it comes to burning calories because they have more time to exercise before and after work.
Someone who naturally loves vegetables may find it easier to create high volume, nutrient-rich, lower calorie meals than someone who struggles to enjoy vegetables.
Someone who loves cardio may wind up burning more calories per week because they're more aggressive about making time for exercise.
Someone who is only cooking and shopping for themselves is likely to find it easier to stick to their calorie goal because they're less tempted by snack foods of other household members.
Someone with extra money may find multiple components of weight loss easier (more flexibility with foods to buy, activities to try, etc).
I could go on and on. None of us are probably in the "ideal" situation for weight management, some of us are lucky enough to have several advantages, some of us may be working in the context of having few or even no advantages. Metabolism, if it turns out to be a factor, may not even be the biggest advantage.
Like for me -- I'm a childless woman who loves to cook, has enough money to indulge when it comes to food, really enjoys running, and have a job where it's pretty easy to make time for exercise. Even if I had the choice, I would probably choose to keep these advantages instead of having a metabolism boost of 100-200 calories a day.7 -
..and yeah, all we can do is say, "Here's what worked for me. Try it."
If 20 people say the same thing, maybe there's something to it.4 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »Seems a pointless debate, given what we know about the actual distribution of resting metabolic rates.
Pointless maybe if this were a reality-based debate looking at what should we do IF this is ever found to be true.
But I guess I don't view it as pointless if we're looking at a discussion about attitudes and ethics that involve people and losing weight, more. Such as, our own beliefs about other people, especially from the perspective of how we think about/treat them if we have known differences. Especially known differences that mean their experience of weight loss may not be the same as our own.
That's more what I was interested in discussing, not 'whether this could ever happen,' if that makes sense?
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Some people like to "exercise" and "work out" and "eat vegetables."
That does not sound fair to me.
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magnusthenerd wrote: »Seems a pointless debate, given what we know about the actual distribution of resting metabolic rates.
Pointless maybe if this were a reality-based debate looking at what should we do IF this is ever found to be true.
But I guess I don't view it as pointless if we're looking at a discussion about attitudes and ethics that involve people and losing weight, more. Such as, our own beliefs about other people, especially from the perspective of how we think about/treat them if we have known differences. Especially known differences that mean their experience of weight loss may not be the same as our own.
That's more what I was interested in discussing, not 'whether this could ever happen,' if that makes sense?
So can I turn the question back on you? How do you think people's advice here would or should look different if we knew some people had this genetic advantage? Would the advice just be couched more in sympathetic phrases? Would the advice be different? Because honestly, I guess I don't understand!3 -
janejellyroll wrote: »
But I feel like most of these hypothetical consequences are already in play when it comes to weight loss, just due to different causes.
For example . . .
Someone without kids may be "advantaged" when it comes to burning calories because they have more time to exercise before and after work...
I could go on and on. None of us are probably in the "ideal" situation for weight management, some of us are lucky enough to have several advantages, some of us may be working in the context of having few or even no advantages. Metabolism, if it turns out to be a factor, may not even be the biggest advantage.
Like for me -- I'm a childless woman who loves to cook, has enough money to indulge when it comes to food, really enjoys running, and have a job where it's pretty easy to make time for exercise. Even if I had the choice, I would probably choose to keep these advantages instead of having a metabolism boost of 100-200 calories a day.
Very true, this particular one I simply chose because it had come up just a few minutes before, and because it would be an advantage, or lack of one, that is physical rather than situational. I know for myself, I have sometimes viewed weight loss problems differently if it's physical vs. situational challenges. I suppose because situational vs. physical challenges require different things to cope with, maybe?
So I think sometimes it can be viewed differently, when considering the implications. Or not, depending - that's the fun of thinking about this sort of thing, IMO. Makes it interesting to see what people think about it. :-)0 -
cmriverside wrote: »Okay. So what would "more compassionate" look like to you?
Because I'm wondering how you surmise whether someone is compassionate "enough"?
It waxes and wanes, honestly.
Sometimes I really care, but then stop caring after I hear the same person complain about the same thing eleventy times and do nothing to address the actual problem.
I think compassion is pretty individual - what's more compassion for me might be really low compassion as far as someone else is concerned, you know? I don't think it's a matter of being compassionate 'enough,' it's more a look at how we, ourselves, view other people.
What evokes compassion in us, you know? What problems in others make us feel that empathy, and if we KNEW - absolutely knew - that they had a certain problem that meant their situation was harder than our own in a very concrete way (or easier), does that impact how we think of them and their struggles?
Because I absolutely get the frustration with someone who has a problem and is not helping themselves with it. But if I knew that someone is struggling more than I am with the same problem...is that different or the same? Is that really them not struggling, then, or is it more that their problem is actually a different one than mine is?
A lot of times I think we assume others have similar struggles to our own - we all have problems, and some of us abso-freaking-lutely have worked harder than other folks to get where we are today. so it can be super frustrating to see someone who just talks about all the ways it is hard, but doesn't do anything about it, when we DID do something.
But in the hypothetical HM and LM world...would it be the same? Or would we need to adjust our 'we have the same experience' meter and assume a little less about what their experience is like?
And I just mean these as questions - I don't have the answer. I don't even know for sure how I'd react in this kind of world. But I find it interesting to think about.0 -
@shaumom, Does your interest in this topic bear any relation to a commonly discussed topic known as "fat acceptance"?
Looky what I found: http://www.realclearlife.com/daily-brief/poor-eating-choices-rooted-bad-lifestyle-habits/
Maybe you have a point.1 -
So can I turn the question back on you? How do you think people's advice here would or should look different if we knew some people had this genetic advantage? Would the advice just be couched more in sympathetic phrases? Would the advice be different? Because honestly, I guess I don't understand!
Assuming you mean, like, advice to someone else who is also losing weight, if we had different metabolisms, and that was a thing that existed as a concrete, significant difference in losing weight?
I don't think I have any 'should' for something like that. It's such a big concept - fun to talk about, IMO, but really big, too.
I guess, for myself... I don't think I'd couch things more sympathetically (If I was successful with weight loss and the one giving advice, that is). One idea, I suppose, might be to try and assume less about what the other person has done, and instead find out how their experience IS different, you know? Like, okay, I can share how when I lose weight, this is what I eat, and what I do for exercise, and how I feel. And then ask them about their experience.
Because, maybe what I have experienced would be really helpful, like in terms of how to stay focused, or how I motivate myself when things get tough. Maybe we have that in common. Maybe that's something I can help someone with.
But maybe, their problems aren't similar to mine, and knowing that, maybe I can offer a different kind of support. Like, listen when they talk about struggling with not eating when other people eat, where my experience might be more having to find ways to eat at times when others aren't eating. So we might connect over eating habits that are not common to other people, even if they are not the SAME eating habits. But if I had advice for healthy snacking through the day, that wouldn't necessarily be helpful for someone who needs help with how to not eat when there is food around, if that makes sense?
I'll be honest, when I started thinking of this myself, and what I might do, I started thinking of various situations where I assume someone else has the same experience as me when they don't, and it got me thinking of this discussion as something I'd like to see others discuss. Because frankly, I think there could be some great ideas on how we all talk to each other or treat each other, that may not apply to this at all (being imaginary), but might actually be relevant in other areas that I haven't even thought of in my life, you know?
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Metabolism is not a constant, not for any individual. We are all playing the game on a constantly shifting setting ranging from 'easy' to 'hard' because the human body is not a simple machine, it's a very complicated system.5
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cmriverside wrote: »So here's your belief, then, @shaumom?...
...Because that sort of puts a different spin on this topic.
No, actually. The spin you have assumed is no in way what's going on here.
This topic is not based in reality. There is no reality currently where we have proven that metabolism has a huge impact on weight gain, or any sort of standardized understanding of it. Sure, maybe there could be in the future, sorta-kinda, because I don't think we have it fully understood yet, but who cares? That literally doesn't matter here.
That other conversation DID trigger the trip down the rabbit hole, though, to think about what would it be like in a world where metabolism was an actual thing, that made a big difference. I'm a fan of old sci fi; I think about crap like 'if the world was X way, what would happen?' So it's related that way, sure. But right now, I was honestly just curious about the intellectual exercise of trying to think about 'what if.'
So reality doesn't matter - doesn't matter if metabolism doesn't work this way, or if CICO is a thing or not, or that people wouldn't be exactly the same, etc... Literally irrelevant.
It's looking at the ethical and social implications of a physical hypothetical. No different than speculating 'hey, what if half the world only had one leg,' or 'what if everyone you know was suddenly homeless.'
Honestly, I was kind of surprised by some of the answers, because they definitely went down a different rabbit hole than my own.
For me, I started thinking about things like, say, if there would be a financial issue for folks of one persuasion or another. More time available to work because you need less time to exercise if you're hi metabolism(HM)? Or there is more financial difficulty because LM folks find it harder to lose weight without professional help they'd have to pay for? Or maybe the opposite, because HM folks have to pay for more food to keep healthy.
But given that we are pretending, what difference does it make? Rather than the hypothetical, I think we can focus on real struggles people have already, as janejellyroll pointed out.
Also, exercise is about fitness and health, so someone with a high metabolism still should be working out. And someone with a low metabolism wouldn't need professional help just for that reason, or even need to exercise more. As someone else noted, there's no reason hunger levels wouldn't go along with metabolism (in fact lots and lots of things determine hunger levels, but it's clearly not the same for someone who needs 1500 cals a day to eat 1200 as someone who needs 3000 cals a day).But if a world existed where it had been literally proven that the same thing won't work for both groups of people...would that change? Would we be more understanding when people are trying what we try and it's harder for them, or easier for them? Would we be more understanding when people who are struggling more have more failures?
This is already the world in which we live, since people are different. All we know is that you need a calorie deficit to lose and what things worked for us. I never assume the things that helped me maintain a calorie deficit would work for others, but I can suggest ideas to think about and mention what helped me, especially if my struggles were with similar things.
Also, we don't know how much others are struggling -- some don't talk as much about their struggles, after all. That someone seems to have lost weight easily doesn't mean they didn't struggle with lots of things while doing it, or didn't struggle for years before it clicked, etc.2 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »Seems a pointless debate, given what we know about the actual distribution of resting metabolic rates.
Pointless maybe if this were a reality-based debate looking at what should we do IF this is ever found to be true.
But I guess I don't view it as pointless if we're looking at a discussion about attitudes and ethics that involve people and losing weight, more. Such as, our own beliefs about other people, especially from the perspective of how we think about/treat them if we have known differences. Especially known differences that mean their experience of weight loss may not be the same as our own.
That's more what I was interested in discussing, not 'whether this could ever happen,' if that makes sense?
No, I'm not saying your hypothetical question is a pointless debate. I quoted the part that was specifically a pointless debate:
^That has been studied. It is an empirical question. There just doesn't exist the vast differences in human rest metabolism.but how much it impacts one's ability to gain or lose weight is debated, from what I've seen.
I see a point in arguing using facts, but I don't see a point in arguing actual facts. It is a fact that a statistical sample shows 96% of the human propulation falls withing a 10-16% difference from a mean in calories.3 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »@shaumom, Does your interest in this topic bear any relation to a commonly discussed topic known as "fat acceptance"?
Looky what I found: http://www.realclearlife.com/daily-brief/poor-eating-choices-rooted-bad-lifestyle-habits/
Maybe you have a point.
Hadn't even been thinking of fat acceptance, honestly. Interesting article though. I've heard of the sleep issue before, but the cluttered kitchen thing was new.0 -
tcunbeliever wrote: »Metabolism is not a constant, not for any individual. We are all playing the game on a constantly shifting setting ranging from 'easy' to 'hard' because the human body is not a simple machine, it's a very complicated system.
Yup - this is not supposed to be a question on how metabolism works, or at least I didn't mean it that way. Just some fun thinking about 'what if the world WAS a certain way' and would that change how we interact with other people?0
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