The 'Fat Acceptance' Movement

The same exact scientists? Well I'll be, ain't that something. I'll assume they're the same scientists who said that blacks were genetically inferior to whites. Or the scientists who said gay people have a mental illness. Or maybe the scientists who helped justify the Holocaust? Ohhh wait, I bet you mean different scientists...

Don't believe everything you hear on the news and read in your little diet books - it's all a business. I'm not talking correlation vs. causation, I'm talking about the billion dollar companies that benefit off of falsifying research to make money off of YOU. Yes, they do it, and yes, they will happily take your money even if it means plugging millions into fake research. Don't think money can't buy everything, because it can and it does. After working in research labs, I've seen how researchers will write down fake data to receive that $1M grant or a brand new laboratory. Don't think these "scientists" are all moral - even morals can be bought for the right price.

ANd let me guess,all the "real" science is hidden, bought up, or the scientists who do it are suspiciously murdered, right?

The real answer, the TRUTH, that you know is out there, is real. Any scientific evidence to the contrary is simply bought research, squelching, or falsified research.

I guess that makes sense.

Being over-weight is just like being a smoker, except tobacco companies failed at infecting the majority as the food industry has.

Those things are not the same at all. Food is needed to live. Food is not an infection. Food doesn't cause disease. Cigarettes are not needed to live. Cigarettes cause disease. Your analogy is very poor.

Certain foods do cause disease. Being over weight causes disease.

Who told you that? The companies that pay "scientists" to conduct biased, uncontrolled research so they can sell diet pills? What foods cause disease? What diseases do these foods cause? Do you have sources for that statement?

Are you trying to tell me that saturated fats dont contribute heart disease? That refined sugars dont contribute type two diabetes? Or that salt doesnt cause high blood pressure?

Or that excess weight doesnt cause degenerative disk disease? Or other joint problems and chronic inflammation?

You're telling me these things contribute but don't cause these issues. Weird, because that's not what you originally said... So that must mean these problems don't affect people who aren't heavy. Because only heavy people eat lots of saturated fats/refined sugars/salt. Right, right - keep slapping your stigma onto fat people and glorify thinness even if it's "unhealthy".

Wait, what? Me saying large amounts of body fat is unhealthy is me stigmatizing fat people and glorifying thinbess as healhty? Lmao! You can be considered thin and still have a hugh percentage bodyfat.its a proven fact that having a highpercentage of bodyfat puts you ay risk for health problems. But as somebody pointed out, it could just be a vast conspiracy by diet pill companies.

I also called smoking unhealthy, am I stigmatizing myself.

A lot of the "hating thin people" is unintentional.

EG: the "real women have curves!" crap that turns up on FB.

Sure, it's a stand against the somewhat ridiculous standard put forth with freakishly tall and thin supermodels.

it's also an unsult, probably unintentional, to anyone who is built like my wife.

She's 5'4, about 125, eats whatever she wants, runs 15 miles a week, doesn't count calories, and other than when she was pregnant, has never weighed much more or less than that.

"real women" have XY. Beyond that.. there's no flat statement.

I presume you intended ""real women" have XX" - Y is the male sex chromosome.

"Just my 2 cents. There are two sides to the fat acceptance movement. One strives to stop discrimination and hatred towards fat people. The other glorifies obesity and supports the hatred of thin people. I support fat acceptance, but not fat glorification."

My feelings also.

I think people that are overweight (obese) have a mental illness. It Is lack of self esteem. I think sites like this (MFP) help. I think counseling helps. The continued hatefulness from others towards obese people only makes it worse for them.

I was scoffed at in another thread for saying this but I'll say it again:

It was not until I looked at myself in the mirror, at 325lbs and said "Hey, you are as fundamentally good and deserving of good things as any other person out there." that I lost any weight. I have kept off over 50lbs for over 3 years. I had to embrace the girl that I was then so I could become the woman that I am now. I lost and gained the same 40ish lbs over and over for the majority of my adult life, but it wasn't until I said "you are good, too" that anything really changed.

I write a blog that I guess you could consider to be a "fat acceptance" blog. I prefer to use the terminology "body positivity". I write a blog for plus sized horse back riders that while not ignoring the need to be conscious of yourself, encourages those who don't fit the stereotypical body type of a horse back rider to not wait until all the stars align to do the things that they enjoy in their life. I wasted an easy HALF of my life not doing the stuff I wanted to do because I was overweight and thought that I didn't get the good stuff - the good job, the loving SO, the good LIFE, unless I was thin. NO MORE.

Accepting my body and seeing the value of having a body in the first place also helped me to be more attuned to it. If I stopped writing it off as useless and valueless, I started to pay attention to when my body was saying things like "I'm getting sick" and thus rest it, or "I'm dehydrated" and hydrate it. I ignored it because it was, in my estimation at that time, a POS that I was meant to hate.

Well said! :flowerforyou:

Tagging

I say mental illness because of their self esteem.

I agree with you. You know if you are overweight. I think a lot of people stay overweight because society has made them feel unacceptable and worthless. Why try? It is easier to just ignore it all. That is why they need help not ridicule.

I say mental illness because of their self esteem.

I agree with you. You know if you are overweight. I think a lot of people stay overweight because society has made them feel unacceptable and worthless. Why try? It is easier to just ignore it all. That is why they need help not ridicule.

They don't need pity either.

What they need is to be told that they are okay being who and what they are, and that they don't have to live up to someone elses standards or face ridicule, pity, or exclusion.

If they want to lose weight, they will. If they don't want to, they wont.

Neither you, nor I, have the ability, right, or position to decide what is best for someone else, and therefore, take a position of ridicule OR pity.

you ask the person BEFORE you decide to help them across the street, if they actually want to cross it.

QFT.

You can be overweight outwardly, but active and eat a balanced and varied diet - just too much of it, and be a picture of health on the inside.

You can be skinny outwardly, but completely sedentary and eat like crap day-in, day-out, and be so unhealthy inside it's scary.

The thing is, outward appearance is often - not always - an indication of lifestyle choices. The overweight are often the sedentary ones eating like crap, and the thin people are often the active and "healthy eating" types.

As people have said, body image isn't really an indicator of health to a point. "To a point" because let's not kid ourselves that the 5'4 woman at 300lbs is healthy. If you're a bit chubby, I'm willing to venture a guess you have a fairly active lifestyle and pair it with decent food choices on a regular basis and I'm willing to celebrate your body type and lifestyle therein.

Quoting these because they're worth a second look:

This is a disturbing thread. Acceptance does not pertain to a person's weight, but rather, their identity and rights to employment, transportation and inclusion in society. Individuals who garner stares, comments and so on because of their weight are oppressed. Meanwhile, they may be overweight for a a variety of reasons - they may suffer from depression or endure poverty. And while many individuals on MFP are successful at meeting these challenges, there are many people who ares still struggling. I think an open mind towards all people is healthy and deserves as much developing as our bodies.

Thank you for mentioning poverty. A lot of people ignore the role of environmental and economic factors in obesity rates and disbursement. Just google "food desert" if you're unclear about how these factors play into health and body size. A disproportional amount of America's overweight and obese population live at or under the poverty line, in places with little to no access to affordable nutritious foods, safe spaces for fitness activities, or proper medical care to address underlying issues that can contribute to or cause weight gain. A lot of the attitude around weight loss is not only misinformed or hateful, it's classist as well.

- "We are people too": Just because a person is fat, doesn't mean that should be treated as sub-human, or with any less respect than a normal or thin person. Period.

"Just my 2 cents. There are two sides to the fat acceptance movement. One strives to stop discrimination and hatred towards fat people. The other glorifies obesity and supports the hatred of thin people. I support fat acceptance, but not fat glorification."

My feelings also.

I think people that are overweight (obese) have a mental illness. It Is lack of self esteem. I think sites like this (MFP) help. I think counseling helps. The continued hatefulness from others towards obese people only makes it worse for them.

I feel that judgemental douchecanoes should keep their opinions to themselves. telling someone who is overweight they are overweight.. don't think they know that? Mentioning in passing that there's "a diet version" available. They know that too. Comments like "are you sure?" when they are ordering food.. yes, they are sure.

That's the kind of crap that wears people down, day after day.
[...]
A person's value is not their dress size, standing weight, bicep dimension, or bench press ability.

We have become such a shallow and narcissistic culture, that some of us assume that because we are skinnier than others, we are somehow more accomplished, more learned, or better as a person.

I don't think saying anyone who is obese has a "mental illness" is helping the situation, at all.

Hear hear!

To me, fat acceptance is about embracing the body you have and learning to love it despite its "flaws". Does that mean you don't try to lose weight? No.It just means that you accept that, if you are fat/thin/in between that you are still worthy of love and should treat yourself well and not let others treat you crap because of how you look.

For many, many people shame and self loathing aren't effective motivators. If you love your body and truly want to honor it - the idea is you start making choices that will hopefully bring/keep you in good health -- which likely means weight loss if you are overweight/obese.

I don't think it's about celebrating an unhealthy lifestyle, it's about saying I deserve to be treated like a human being and not persecuted for my size. I read quite a bit around the fat acceptance movement. I hated my body and had very low self esteem when I was bigger. It wasn't until I accepted myself and be happy in own skin that I could make life style changes, which incidentally resulted in weight loss.

Fat Acceptance, Body Positivity and Health At Every Size all share a common core of beliefs: that people, no matter what SIZE, no matter how they LOOK, and no matter their HEALTH STATUS, deserve to be treated with the same care and respect as anybody else.

People engaged in FA, Body Positivity, and HAES seek to change the way that fat people are treated on many levels, which can essentially be boiled down to:

1. Political/commercial , i.e. encouraging laws or rules that protect us from discrimination based on our bodies or health status.

2. Social, i.e.resisting and speaking out against the continuous media onslaught of fat hate (every joke that ends in a broken chair or cow sounds, ever), fat fearmongering ("omg if you get fat no one will ever love you so buy our product to stay slim or else you'll die alone"), and the public devaluation of fat people's contributions or efforts ("that politician is so fat, there's no way she could be a good senator", "she's such a talented singer, too bad she's huge", etc).

3. Personal, i.e. helping people repair the broken relationship between their bodies and their minds, through learning to accept and love yourself as you are and wanting the best for yourself whether you're 110 pounds or 310 pounds.

Our society is broken. It advocates healthful eating and fitness, and shames or even punishes the parents of children who are obese for having fat kids, but ignores the fact that some people have no access to a grocery store or a safe place to play (google food desert, and obesity & poverty). It wants everyone to "respect themselves" by eating better but glorifies television shows that actively seek to tear down fat people for "their health" (read: profit), even after participants have come out and explained how unhealthy and dangerous the practices behind the camera really were (google the biggest loser competitor talks eating disorder). We tell our children to love themselves but plaster billboard size images of models so thin they have to be photoshopped fatter (google models photoshopped to look fatter), and headless images of fat bodies designed to literally scare you into buying advertising space (google fat guy stripping billboard) or to go vegetarian (google PETA save the whales) or whatever else they're selling .

Fat Acceptance, Body Positivity and HAES seeks to address these issues and give people the tools to combat the mental toll that our culture takes by the constant barrage of "reasons" to hate ourselves. We live in a radically unbalanced culture, and so of course there will be some radical reactions within any attempt to make change to it. That doesn't invalidate the need for change, and the change starts in learning to accept our bodies as they are right now, and learning to respect other people whatever their bodies may be. It's not just the decent thing to do, it's the right thing to do, and ultimately it will be far more healthy for our society as a whole than any diet program or fitness machine ever will be. After all, people that love themselves want to treat themselves right, and sustainable healthy changes in diet and activity levels can only really be made when they come from a place of self-love and care, and our society as a whole will be healthier when we start recognizing that community health is about everyone supporting each other, rather than sitting back and judging others.

Just my thoughts.